"You're a little confused, Mr. Duncan," the doorman said, putting away his gun. "All Souls was last night; this is Friday."
Something's gone wrong, Ian realized. But he said nothing; he merely nodded and hurried on toward the elevator.
As he emerged from the elevator on his own floor, a door opened and a furtive figure beckoned to him. "Hey, Duncan."
It was Corley. Warily, because an encounter like this could be disastrous, Ian approached him. "What is it?"
"A rumor," Corley said in a rapid, fear-filled voice. "About your last relpol test – some irregularity. They're going to rouse you at five or six A.M. tomorrow morning and spring a surprise quiz on you." He glanced up and down the hall. "Study the late 1980s and the religio-collectivist movements in particular. Got it?"
"Sure," Ian said, with gratitude. "And thanks a lot. Maybe I can do the same -" He broke off, because Corley had hurried back into his own apartment and shut the door; Ian was alone.
Certainly very nice of him, he thought as he walked on. Probably saved my hide, kept me from being forcibly ejected right out of here forever.
When he reached his apartment he made himself comfortable, with all his reference books on the political history of the United States spread out around him. I'll study all night, he decided. Because I have to pass that quiz; I have no choice.
To keep himself awake, he turned on the TV. Presently the warm, familiar being, the presence of the First Lady, flowed into motion and began to fill the room.
"…and at our musical tonight," she was saying, "we will have a saxophone quartet which will play themes from Wagner's operas, in particular my favorite, 'Die Meistersinger.' I believe we will truly all find this a deeply rewarding and certainly an enriching experience to cherish. And, after that, my husband the President and I have arranged to bring you once again an old favorite of yours, the world renown cellist, Henri LeClercq, in a program of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter." She smiled, and at his pile of reference books, Ian Duncan smiled back.
I wonder how it would be to play at the White House, he said to himself. To perform before the First Lady. Too bad I never learned to play any kind of musical instrument. I can't act, write poems, dance or sing – nothing. So what hope is there for me? Now, if I had come from a musical family, if I had had a father or brothers to teach me how…
Glumly, he scratched a few notes on the rise of the French Christian Fascist Party of 1975. And then, drawn as always to the TV set, he put his pen down and turned to face the set. Nicole was now exhibiting a piece of Delft tile which she had picked up, she explained, in a little shop in Vermont. What lovely clear colors it had… he watched, fascinated, as her strong, slim fingers caressed the shiny surface of the baked enamel tile.
"See the tile," Nicole was murmuring in her husky voice. "Don't you wish you had a tile like that? Isn't it lovely?"
"Yes," Ian Duncan said.
"How many of you would like someday to see such a tile?" Nicole asked. "Raise your hands."
Ian raised his hand hopefully.
"Oh, a whole lot of you," Nicole said, smiling her intimate, radiant smile. "Well, perhaps later we will have another tour of the White House. Would you like that?"
Hopping up and down in his chair, Ian said, "Yes, I'd like that."
On the TV screen she was smiling directly at him, it seemed. And so he smiled back. And then, reluctantly, feeling a great weight descend over him, he at last turned back to his reference books. Back to the harsh realities of his daily, endless life.
Against the window of his apartment something bumped and a voice called at him thinly, "Ian Duncan, I don't have much time."
Whirling, he saw outside in the night darkness a shape drifting, an egg-like construction that hovered. Within it a man waved at him energetically, still calling. The egg gave off a dull putt-putt noise, its jets idling as the man kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and then lifted himself out.
Are they after me already on this quiz? Ian Duncan asked himself. He stood up, feeling helpless. So soon… I'm not ready, yet.
Angrily, the man in the vehicle spun the jets until their steady white exhaust firing met the surface of the building; the room shuddered and bits of plaster broke away. The window itself collapsed as the heat of the jets crossed it. Through the gap exposed the man yelled once more, trying to attract Ian Duncan's faculties.
"Hey, Duncan! Hurry up! I have your brother already; he's on his way in another ship!" The man, elderly, wearing an expensive natural-fiber blue pin-stripe suit, lowered himself with dexterity from the hovering egg-shaped vehicle and dropped feet-first into the room. "We have to get going if we're to make it. You don't remember me? Neither did Al. Boy, I take off my hat to them."
Ian Duncan stared at him, wondering who he was and who Al was and what was happening.
"Mama's psychologists did a good, good job of working you over," the elderly man panted. "That Bethesda – it must be quite a place. I hope they never get me there." He came toward Ian, caught hold of him by the shoulder. "The police are shutting down all my jalopy jungles; I have to beat it to Mars and I'm taking you along with me. Try to pull yourself together; I'm Loony Luke – you don't remember me now but you will after we're all on Mars and you see your brother again. Come on." Luke propelled him toward the gap in the wall of the room, where once had been a window, and toward the vehicle – it was called a jalopy, Ian realized – drifting beyond.
"Okay," Ian said, wondering what he should take with him. What would he need on Mars? Toothbrush, pajamas, a heavy coat? He looked frantically around his apartment, one last look at it. Far off police sirens sounded.
Luke scrambled back into the jalopy, and Ian followed, taking hold of the elderly man's extended hand. The floor of the jalopy crawled with bright orange bug-like creatures whose antennae waved at him. Papoolas, he remembered, or something like that.
You'll be all right now, the papoolas were thinking. Don't worry; Loony Luke got you away in time, just barely in time. Now just relax.
"Yes," Ian said. He lay back against the side of the jalopy and relaxed; for the first time in many years he felt at peace.
The ship shot upward into the night emptiness and the new planet which lay beyond.
Waterspider
I
That morning, as he carefully shaved his head until it glistened, Aaron Tozzo pondered a vision too unfortunate to be endured. He saw in his mind fifteen convicts from Nachbaren Slager, each man only one inch high, in a ship the size of a child's balloon. The ship, traveling at almost the speed of light, continued on forever, with the men aboard neither knowing nor caring what became of them.
The worst part of the vision was just that in all probability it was true.
He dried his head, rubbed oil into his skin, then touched the button within his throat. When contact with the Bureau switchboard had been established, Tozzo said, "I admit we can do nothing to get those fifteen men back, but at least we can refuse to send any more."
His comment, recorded by the switchboard, was passed on to his co-workers. They all agreed; he listened to their voices chiming in as he put on his smock, slippers and overcoat. Obviously, the flight had been an error; even the public knew that now. But -
"But we're going on," Edwin Fermeti, Tozzo's superior, said above the clamor. "We've already got the volunteers."
"Also from Nachbaren Slager?" Tozzo asked. Naturally the prisoners there would volunteer; their lifespan at the camp was no more than five or six years. And if this flight to Proxima were successful, the men aboard would obtain their freedom. They would not have to return to any of the five inhabited planets within the Sol System.
"Why does it matter where they originate?" Fermeti said smoothly.
Tozzo said, "Our effort should be directed toward improving the U.S. Department of Penology, instead of trying to reach other stars." He had a sudden urge to resign his position with the Emigration Bureau and go into politics as a reform candidate.
Later, as
he sat at the breakfast table, his wife patted him sympathetically on the arm. "Aaron, you haven't been able to solve it yet, have you?"
"No," he admitted shortly. "And now I don't even care." He did not tell her about the other ship loads of convicts which had fruitlessly been expended; it was forbidden to discuss that with anyone not employed by a department of the Government.
"Could they be re-entering on their own?"
"No. Because mass was lost here, in the Sol System. To re-enter they have to obtain equal mass back, to replace it. That's the whole point." Exasperated, he sipped his tea and ignored her. Women, he thought. Attractive but not bright. "They need mass back," he repeated. "Which would be fine if they were making a round trip, I suppose. But this is an attempt to colonize; it's not a guided tour that returns to its point of origin."
"How long does it take them to reach Proxima?" Leonore asked. "All reduced like that, to an inch high."
"About four years."
Her eyes grew large. "That's marvelous."
Grumbling at her, Tozzo pushed his chair back from the table and rose. I wish they'd take her, he said to himself, since she imagines it's so marvelous. But Leonore would be too smart to volunteer.
Leonore said softly, "Then I was right. The Bureau has sent people. You as much as admitted it just now."
Flushing, Tozzo said, "Don't tell anybody; none of your female friends especially. Or it's my job." He glared at her.
On that hostile note, he set off for the Bureau.
As Tozzo unlocked his office door, Edwin Fermeti hailed him. "You think Donald Nils is somewhere on a planet circling Proxima at this very moment?" Nils was a notorious murderer who had volunteered for one of the Bureau's flights. "I wonder – maybe he's carrying around a lump of sugar five times his size."
"Not really very funny," Tozzo said.
Fermeti shrugged. "Just hoping to relieve the pessimism. I think we're all getting discouraged." He followed Tozzo into his office. "Maybe we should volunteer ourselves for the next flight." It sounded almost as if he meant it, and Tozzo glanced quickly at him. "Joke," Fermeti said.
"One more flight," Tozzo said, "and if it fails, I resign."
"I'll tell you something," Fermeti said. "We have a new tack." Now Tozzo's co-worker Craig Gilly had come sauntering up. To the two men, Fermeti said, "We're going to try using pre-cogs in obtaining our formula for re-entry." His eyes flickered as he saw their reaction.
Astonished, Gilly said, "But all the pre-cogs are dead. Destroyed by Presidential order twenty years ago."
Tozzo, impressed, said, "He's going to dip back into the past to obtain a pre-cog. Isn't that right, Fermeti?"
"We will, yes," his superior said, nodding. "Back to the golden age of pre-cognition. The twentieth century."
For a moment Tozzo was puzzled. And then he remembered. During the first half of the twentieth century so many pre-cogs – people with the ability to read the future – had come into existence that an organized guild had been formed with branches in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Pennsylvania. This group of pre-cogs, all knowing one another, had put out a number of periodicals which had flourished for several decades. Boldly and openly, the members of the pre-cog guild had proclaimed in their writings their knowledge of the future. And yet – as a whole, their society had paid little attention to them.
Tozzo said slowly, "Let me get this straight. You mean you're going to make use of the Department of Archaeology's time-dredges to scoop up a famous pre-cog of the past?"
Nodding, Fermeti said, "And bring him here to help us, yes."
"But how can he help us? He would have no knowledge of our future, only of his own."
Fermeti said, "The Library of Congress has already given us access to its virtually complete collection of pre-cog journals of the twentieth century." He smiled crookedly at Tozzo and Gilly, obviously enjoying the situation. "It's my hope – and my expectation – that among this great body of writings we will find an article specifically dealing with our re-entry problem. The chances, statistically speaking, are quite good… they wrote about innumerable topics of future civilization, as you know."
After a pause, Gilly said, "Very clever. I think your idea may solve our problem. Speed-of-light travel to other star systems may yet become a possibility."
Sourly, Tozzo said, "Hopefully, before we run out of convicts." But he, too, liked his superior's idea. And, in addition, he looked forward to seeing face to face one of the famous twentieth century pre-cogs. Theirs had been one brief, glorious period – sadly, long since ended.
Or not so brief, if one dated it as starting with Jonathan Swift, rather than with H. G. Wells. Swift had written of the two moons of Mars and their unusual orbital characteristics years before telescopes had proved their existence. And so today there was a tendency in the textbooks to include him.
II
It took the computers at the Library of Congress only a short while to scan the brittle, yellowed volumes, article by article, and to select the sole contribution dealing with deprivation of mass and restoration as the modus operandi of interstellar space travel. Einstein's formula that as an object increased its velocity its mass increased proportionally had been so fully accepted, so completely unquestioned, that no one in the twentieth century had paid any attention to the particular article, which had been put in print in August of 1955 in a pre-cog journal called If.
In Fermeti's office, Tozzo sat beside his superior as the two of them pored over the photographic reproduction of the journal. The article was titled Night Flight, and it ran only a few thousand words. Both men read it avidly, neither speaking until they had finished.
"Well?" Fermeti said, when they had come to the end.
Tozzo said, "No doubt of it. That's our Project, all right. A lot is garbled; for instance he calls the Emigration Bureau 'Outward, Incorporated,' and believes it to be a private commercial firm." He referred to the text. "It's really uncanny, though. You're obviously this character, Edmond Fletcher; the names are similar but still a little off, as is everything else. And I'm Alison Torelli." He shook his head admiringly. "Those pre-cogs… having a mental image of the future that was always askew and yet in the main -"
"In the main correct," Fermeti finished. "Yes, I agree. This Night Flight article definitely deals with us and the Bureau's Project… herein called Waterspider, because it has to be done in one great leap. Good lord, that would have been a perfect name, had we thought of it. Maybe we can still call it that."
Tozzo said slowly, "But the pre-cog who wrote Night Flight… in no place does he actually give the formula for mass-restoration or even for mass-deprivation. He just simply says that 'we have it.' " Taking the reproduction of the journal, he read aloud from the article:
Difficulty in restoring mass to the ship and its passengers at the termination of the flight had proved a stumbling block for Torelli and his team of researchers and yet they had at last proved successful. After the fateful implosion of the Sea Scout, the initial ship to -
"And that's all," Tozzo said. "So what good does it do us? Yes, this pre-cog experienced our present situation a hundred years ago – but he left out the technical details."
There was silence.
At last Fermeti said thoughtfully, "That doesn't mean he didn't know the technical data. We know today that the others in his guild were very often trained scientists." He examined the biographical report. "Yes, while not actually using his pre-cog ability he worked as a chicken-fat analyst for the University of California."
"Do you still intend to use the time-dredge to bring him up to the present?"
Fermeti nodded. "I only wish the dredge worked both ways. If it could be used with the future, not the past, we could avoid having to jeopardize the safety of this pre-cog -" He glanced down at the article. "This Poul Anderson."
Chilled, Tozzo said, "What hazard is there?"
"We may not be able to return him to his own time. Or -" Fermeti paused. "We might lose part
of him along the way, wind up with only half of him. The dredge has bisected many objects before."
"And this man isn't a convict at Nachbaren Slager," Tozzo said. "So you don't have that rationale to fall back on."
Fermeti said suddenly, "We'll do it properly. We'll reduce the jeopardy by sending a team of men back to that time, back to 1954. They can apprehend this Poul Anderson and see that all of him gets into the time-dredge, not merely the top half or the left side."
So it had been decided. The Department of Archaeology's time-dredge would go back to the world of 1954 and pick up the pre-cog Poul Anderson; there was nothing further to discuss.
Research conducted by the U.S. Department of Archaeology showed that in September of 1954 Poul Anderson had been living in Berkeley, California, on Grove Street. In that month he had attended a top-level meeting of pre-cogs from all over the United States at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. It was probable that there, in that meeting, basic policy for the next year had been worked out, with Anderson, and other experts, participating.
"It's really very simple," Fermeti explained to Tozzo and Gilly. "A pair of men will go back. They will be provided with forged identification showing them to be part of the nation-wide pre-cog organization… squares of cellophane-enclosed paper which are pinned to the coat lapel. Naturally, they will be wearing twentieth century garments. They will locate Poul Anderson, single him out and draw him off to one side."
"And tell him what?" Tozzo said skeptically.
"That they represent an unlicensed amateur pre-cog organization in Battlecreek, Michigan, and that they have constructed an amusing vehicle built to resemble a time-travel dredge of the future. They will ask Mr. Anderson, who was actually quite famous in his time, to pose by their humbug dredge, and then they will ask for a shot of him within. Our research shows that, according to his contemporaries, Anderson was mild and easy-going, and also that at these yearly top-strategy assemblies he often became convivial enough to enter into the mood of optimism generated by his fellow pre-cogs."