by Chad Oliver
Ben chewed on his pipe. It made sense, to the extent that anything made sense any more. “I’ll buy that. But where does it leave us?”
“Still up that well-known creek. Every answer we get just leads back to the same old question. Why did they leave us a history book?”
“Answer that one,” Gottwald said, “and you win the gold cigar.”
Ben got to his feet. His head felt as though it were stuffed with dusty cotton.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going fishing. As long as I’m up the creek I might as well do something useful. I’ll see you later.”
“I hope you catch something,” Ed said.
“So do I,” Ben Hazard said grimly.
The car hummed sleepily across the monotonous flatlands of New Mexico, passed through the gently rolling country that rested the eye, and climbed into the cool mountains where the pines grew tall and the grass was a thick dark green in the meadows.
Ben loved the mountains. As he grew older, they meant more and more to him. The happiest times of his life had been spent up next to the sky, where the air was crisp and the streams ran clear. He needed the mountains, and he always returned to them when the pressure was too much to bear.
He turned off the main road and jolted over a gravel trail; paved roads and good fishing were mutually exclusive, like cities and sanity. He noted with approval that the clouds were draping the mountain peaks, shadowing the land below. When the sun was too bright the fish could see a man coming.
He took a deep breath, savoring the tonic of the air.
Relax, that’s the ticket.
He checked to see that no interloper had discovered his favorite stretch of water, then parked his car by the side of Mill Creek, a gliding stream of crystal-clean water that tumbled icily out of the mountains and snaked its lazy way through the long green valley. He grinned like a kid with his first cane pole.
Ben pulled on his waders, assembled his rod with practiced skill, and tied on his two pet flies—a Gray Hackle Yellow and a Royal Coachman. He hung his net over one shoulder and his trout basket over the other, lit his pipe, and waded out into the cold water of Mill Creek.
He felt wonderful. He hooked a nice brook trout within five minutes, taking him from a swirl of dark water shadowed by the bank of the stream. He felt the knots and the tensions flow out of him like melting snow, and that was the first step.
He had to relax. There was no other way.
Consider the plight of a baseball player in a bad slump. He gives it all he has, tries twice as hard as usual, but everything he does backfires. His hits don’t fall in, he misses the easy grounders. He lies awake at night and worries.
“Relax, Mac,” his manager tells him. “All you gotta do is relax. Take it easy.”
Sure, but how?
It was the same with a tough scientific problem. Ben had long ago discovered that persistent and orderly logic could take him only so far. There came a time when no amount of forced thinking would get the job done.
The fresh insights and the new slants seldom came to him when he went after them, no matter how hard he tried. In fact, the more he sweated over a problem the more stubbornly recalcitrant his mind became. The big ideas, and the good ones, came to him in a flash of almost intuitive understanding—a flash that was conditioned by what he knew, of course, but a flash that did not come directly from the conscious mind.
The trick was to let the conscious mind get out of the way, let the message get through—
In Ben’s case, go fishing.
It took him two hours, seven trout, and part of a banana to get the answer he sought.
He had taken a long, cool drink from the stream, cleaned his fish, and was sitting down on a rock to eat the lunch he had packed when the idea came.
He had peeled a banana and taken one bite of it when his mind was triggered by a single, innocuous word:
Banana.
Not just any old banana, of course. A specific one, used for a specific purpose.
Remember?
Charles Darwin and Cleopatra, two chimpanzees in their cages. Charles Darwin pushing his ape brain to the limit to fit two sticks together. Why?
To get a banana.
One lousy banana.
That was well enough, but there was more. Darwin might get his banana, and that was all he cared about. But who had placed the sticks in the cage, who had supplied the banana?
And why?
That was an easy one. It was so simple a child could have figured it out. Someone had given Charles Darwin two sticks and a banana for just one reason: to see whether or not he could solve the problem.
In a nutshell, a scientific experiment.
Now, consider another Charles Darwin, another problem.
Or consider Ben Hazard.
What is the toughest problem a man can tackle? Howells pointed it out many years ago. Of all the animals, man is the only one who wonders where he has come from and where he is going. All the other questions are petty compared to that one. It pushes the human brain to the limit …
Ben stood up, his lunch forgotten.
It was all so obvious.
Men had been seeded on the Earth, and a problem had been planted with them—a real problem, one capable of yielding to a true solution. A dazed huddle of human beings had been abandoned by a fire in the mouth of a cave, lost in the morning of a strange new world. Then they had been left strictly alone; there was no evidence that they had been helped in any way since that time.
Why?
To see what they could do.
To see how long it would take them to solve the problem.
In a nutshell, a scientific experiment.
Ben picked up his rod and started back toward the car.
There was one more thing, one more inevitable characteristic of a scientific experiment. No scientist merely sets up his experiment and then goes off and forgets about it, even if he is the absolute ultimate in absentminded professors.
No.
He has to stick around to see how it all comes out. He has to observe, take notes.
It was monstrous.
The whole history of man on Earth …
Ben climbed into his car, started the engine.
There’s more. Face up to it.
Suppose that you had set up a fantastic planetary experiment with human beings. Suppose that you—or one of your descendants, for human generations are slow—came back to check on your experiment. What would you do, what would you be?
A garage mechanic?
A shoe salesman?
A pool room shark?
Hardly. You’d have to be in a position to know what was going on. You’d have to work in a field where you could find out the score.
In a word, you’d be an anthropologist.
There’s still more. Take it to the end of the line.
Now, suppose that man on Earth cracked the time barrier. Suppose a Temporal Research Project was set up. Wouldn’t you be in on it, right at the top?
Sure.
You wouldn’t miss it for anything.
Well, who fit the description? It couldn’t be Ed; Ben had known him most of his life, known his folks and his wife and his kids, visited the Texas town that had been his home.
It wasn’t Ben.
That left Franz Gottwald.
Franz, who had come from Germany and never talked about his past. Franz, with the strangely alien accent. Franz, who had no family. Franz, who had contributed nothing to the project but shrewd, prodding questions …
Franz.
The Grand Old Man.
Ben drove with his hands clenched on the wheel and his lips pressed into a thin, hard line. Night had fallen by the time he got out of the mountains, and he drove across an enchanted desert beneath the magic of the stars. The headlights of his car lanced into the night, stabbing, stabbing—
He passed the great New Mexico rocket base, from which men had hurled their missiles to the moon and beyond. There
had been talk of a manned shot to Mars …
How far would the experimenters let them go?
Ben lit a cigarette, not wanting to fool with his pipe in the car. He was filled with a cold anger he had never known before.
He had solved the problem.
Very well.
It was time to collect his banana.
It was after midnight when Ben got home.
He stuck his fish in the freezer, took a shower, and sat down in his comfortable armchair to collect his thoughts. He promptly discovered yet another fundamental truth about human beings: when they get tired enough, they sleep.
He woke up with a start and looked at his watch. It was five o’clock in the morning.
Ben shaved and was surprised to find that he was hungry. He cooked himself some bacon and scrambled eggs, drank three cups of instant coffee, and felt ready for anything.
Even Franz.
He got into his car and drove through the still-sleeping town to Gottwald’s house. It looked safe and familiar in the pale morning light. As a matter of fact, it looked a lot like his own house, since both had been supplied by the government.
That, he thought, was a laugh.
The government had given Gottwald a house to live in.
He got out of his car, walked up to the door, and rang the bell. Franz never got to the office before nine, and his car was still in the garage.
His ring was greeted by total silence.
He tried again, holding his finger on the bell. He rang it long enough to wake the dead.
No answer.
Ben tried the door. It was unlocked. He took a deep breath and stepped inside. The house was neat and clean. The familiar books were on the shelves in the living room. It was like stepping into his own home.
“Franz! It’s me, Ben.”
No answer.
Ben strode over to the bedroom, opened the door, and looked inside. The bed was tidily made, and Franz wasn’t in it. Ben walked through the whole house, even peering inside the closets, before he was satisfied.
Franz wasn’t home.
Fine. A scientist keeps records, doesn’t he?
Ben proceeded to ransack the house. He looked in dresser drawers, on closet shelves, even in the refrigerator. He found nothing unusual. Then he tried the obvious.
He opened Gottwald’s desk and looked inside.
The first thing he saw was a letter addressed to himself. There it was, a white envelope with his name typed on it: Dr. Benjamin Wright Hazard.
Not to be opened until Christmas?
Ben took the letter, ripped it open, and took out a single sheet of paper. He started to read it, then groped for a chair and sat down.
The letter was neatly typed. It said:
My Dear Ben: I have always believed that a scientist must be capable of making predictions. This is not always an easy matter when you are dealing with human beings, but I have known you for a long, long time.
Obviously, you are searching my home, or you would not be reading this note. Obviously, if you are searching my home, you know part of the truth.
If you would like to know the rest of the story, the procedure is simple. Look behind the picture of the sand-painting in my bedroom. You will find a button there. Press the button for exactly five seconds. Then walk out into my patio and stand directly in front of the barbecue pit.
Trust me, Ben. I am not a cannibal.
The letter was signed with Gottwald’s scrawled signature.
Ben got up and walked into the bedroom. He looked behind the picture that was hanging over the dresser. There was a small red button.
Press the button for exactly five seconds.
And then—what?
Ben replaced the picture. The whole thing was a trifle too reminiscent of a feeble-minded practical joke. Press the button and get a shock. Press the button and get squirted with water. Press the button and blow up the house—
No. That was absurd.
Wasn’t it?
He hesitated. He could call Ed, but then Ed would insist on coming over right away—and Ed had a wife and kids. He could call the police, but the story he had to tell would have sounded absolutely balmy. He had no proof. He might as well recite “Gunga Din.”
He went back to Gottwald’s desk, found some paper, and typed a letter. He outlined the theory he had formed and wrote down exactly what he was going to do. He put the letter into an envelope, addressed the envelope to Ed, stamped it, and went outside and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner.
He went back into the house.
This time he did not hesitate—not for a second.
He punched the button behind the picture for exactly five seconds. Nothing happened. He went out into the patio and stood directly in front of the barbecue pit.
The wall around the patio hid the outside world, but the blue sky overhead was the same as ever. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
“Snipe hunt,” he said aloud.
Then, with breathtaking suddenness, something did happen.
There was an abrupt stillness in the air, a total cessation of sound. It was as though invisible glass walls had slipped silently into place and sealed off the world around him.
There was no perceptible transition. One moment the cone of yellow light was not there, and the next it was. It surrounded him: taut, living, seething with an energy that prickled his skin.
He knew that yellow light.
He had seen it once before, in the dawn of time …
Ben held his breath; he couldn’t help it. He felt strangely weightless, buoyant, a cork in a nameless sea—
His feet left the ground.
“Good God,” Ben said.
He was lifted into the yellow light, absorbed in it. He could see perfectly, and it didn’t help his stomach any. He could see the town below him—there was Gottwald’s patio, the barbecue pit, the adobe house. He began to regret the bacon and eggs he had eaten.
He forced himself to breathe again. The air was warm and tasteless. He rose into the sky, fighting down panic.
Think of it as an elevator. It’s just a way of getting from one place to another. I can see out, but of course nothing is visible from the outside …
But then how did I see the yellow light before?
This must be different. They couldn’t risk being seen—
Relax!
But he kept going higher, and faster.
The Earth was far away.
It was an uncanny feeling—not exactly unpleasant, but he didn’t care for the view. It was like falling through the sky. It was impossible to avoid the idea that he was falling, that he was going to hit something …
The blue of the sky faded into black, and he saw the stars.
Where am I going, where are they taking me?
There!
Look up, look up—
There it was, at the end of the tunnel of yellow light.
It blotted out the stars.
It was huge even against the immense backdrop of space itself. It stunned his mind with its size, that sleeping metal beast, but he recognized it.
It was the same ship that had landed the first men on Earth.
Dark now, dark and vast and lonely—but the same ship.
The shaft of yellow light pulled him inside; there was no air lock. As suddenly as it had come, the light was gone.
Ben stumbled and almost fell. The gravity seemed normal, but the light had supported him for so long that it took his legs a moment to adjust themselves.
He stood in a cool green room. It was utterly silent.
Ben swallowed hard.
He crossed the room to a metal door. The door opened before he reached it. There was only blackness beyond, blackness and the total silence of the dead.
Ben Hazard tried to fight down the numbing conviction that the ship was empty.
There is an almost palpable air of desolation about long deserted things, about empty houses and derelict ships and crumbling ruins. There is a spe
cial kind of silence about a place that has once known life and knows it no longer. There is a type of death that hovers over things that have not been used for a long, long time.
That was the way the ship felt.
Ben could see only the small green room in which he stood and the corridor of darkness outside the door. It could have been only a tiny fraction of the great ship, only one room in a vast city in the sky. But he knew that the men who had once lived in the ship were gone. He knew it with a certainty that his mind could not question.
It was a ghost ship.
He knew it was.
That was why his heart almost stopped when he heard the footsteps moving toward him through the silence.
Heavy steps.
Metallic steps.
Ben backed away from the door. He tried to close it but it would not shut. He saw a white light coming at him through the dark tunnel. The light was higher than a man—
Metallic steps?
Ben got a grip on himself and waited. You fool, you knew they had robots. You saw them. Robots don’t die, do they?
Do they kill?
He saw it now, saw its outline behind the light. Twice the size of a man, its metal body gleaming.
It had no face.
The robot filled the doorway and stopped. Ben could hear it now; a soft whirring noise that somehow reminded him of distant winds. He told himself that it was just a machine, just an animated hunk of metal, and his mind accepted the analysis. But it is one thing to know what a robot is, and it is quite another to find yourself in the same roam with one.
“Well?” Ben said. He had to say something.
The robot was evidently under no such compulsion. It said nothing and did nothing. If simply stood there.
“You speak English, of course?” Ben said, recalling the line from an idiotic story he had once read.
If the robot spoke anything, it wasn’t English.
After a long, uncomfortable minute, the robot turned around and walked into the dark corridor, its light flashing ahead of it. It took four steps, stopped, and looked back over its shoulder.
There was just one thing to do, and one way to go.
Ben nodded and stepped through the doorway after the robot
He followed the giant metallic man along what seemed to be miles of featureless passageways. Ben heard no voices, saw no lights, met no living things.