The Coils of Time Read online

  “But,” objected the spaceman. “Rats …”

  “But,” countered the physicist, “a girl’s thumbprint. And, furthermore, a print identical, in everything but size, with that of a girl in this day and age. Rats, and a girl’s thumbprint, and good, rich, organic mud on a planet that’s never supported any life more complex than a virus….”

  Said Wilkinson, “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. And neither does this machine of mine make sense. Time travel is impossible, a mere fantasy. There are too many paradoxes. So …”

  “So …” echoed Wilkinson. He looked at the complex array of gleaming rotors, silent now and motionless, looked from it to its maker. He said, “But there’s something. There’s the evidence. The mud — and the thumbprint.”

  “The mud,” agreed Henshaw. “The mud, and the thumbprint, and Rufus’s survival without protection in what must have been a breathable atmosphere, and those animals he fought, wherever and whenever it was….”

  The spaceman picked up the photograph, staring at the picture of the laughing girl. He said softly, “What have I got to lose? I’ve already lost everything….”

  “And you still want to be my guinea pig?” asked Henshaw.

  “Of course. What do you think I’ve been telling you for the last half hour? You can send me now, if you like.”

  “Not so fast, young man. Not so fast. To send anything through as large as a human being I have to make adjustments, modifications. But I’ll arrange to have your gear sent over from the Spaceport Hostel, and have you made an honorary member of our mess during your stay here.”

  “And when will you be ready for me?”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps,” snapped Henshaw. Then, his manner softening, “Tomorrow.”

  III

  HENSHAW ORGANISED a dust sled and a driver to take Wilkinson back to the Spaceport Hostel. There he said his few farewells, signed for meals and accommodation up to the time of his departure and packed his gear. In a short time he was back in the pressurized cabin of the vehicle, trying to ignore the uneasy motion as the thing skimmed over the dunes like a small sea-going craft in a heavy swell. He was not sorry when he saw the main airlock of the Advanced Physics Laboratory ahead, the big door sliding open at the sled’s approach.

  In the vestibule beyond the airlock the tall, dark girl who had first met him was waiting for him. She wasted no time on courtesies or formalities, saying brusquely, “Follow me.”

  Wilkinson followed her, through long corridors, past a seemingly endless series of closed doors. At last they came to a large hall, the common room of the laboratory staff. At this time of the day (every establishment on Venus maintained Greenwich Mean Time) it was almost deserted, although at one table two bearded men were playing what was obviously a long, slow game of TriDi chess. Wilkinson looked around with interest. There were bookshelves and magazine racks, there were billiards and tennis tables and, in an alcove, the large screen of a big playmaster glimmered whitely. There were flowering plants growing from pots and tubs, and from plots set in the floor of the common room itself.

  As he stood there, a serving robot of unusual design, functional rather than humanoid, glided towards him on noiseless wheels and asked, “Your order, sir?”

  “Later!” snapped the girl, before the spaceman had time to reply. Then, to Wilkinson, “All the living quarters open on to this hall. We’ve put you in No. 14. It’s next door to Dr. Henshaw.”

  She led the way to one of a row of doors set flush with the curved wall. It opened as she touched a button set to one side of it. She gestured to the man to enter. It was a simple suite — bed-sitting-room with adjoining shower cubicle — but it looked comfortable enough, about on a par with what Wilkinson was used to aboard ship.

  “Dinner’s at 1830 hours,” said the girl. “You’ve time to freshen up if you want to.”

  Wilkinson thanked her, and she left him. After showering and dressing he went out into the common room. The two oldsters, still hunched over their interminable game, ignored him. A tall, thin man was pottering around a tank of gaudy fish built around the thick central pillar of the dome. He looked around as Wilkinson approached him, grinned whitely and remarked, “Ah, the guinea pig.”

  “I suppose you could call me that,” Wilkinson admitted.

  “As a biologist,” the other said, “I’m something of an expert on guinea pigs. I hope that you’re luckier than my white rats were.”

  “Dr. Titov?” queried the spaceman.

  “In person. But let’s take the weight off your feet.”

  The two men walked to one of the tables, and sat down. The serving robot glided up to them and asked in its flat, mechanical voice, “Your orders, gentlemen?”

  “What are you having, Wilkinson?” asked the scientist. “I can recommend the Tio Pepe.”

  “I’d rather have something long and cold,” Wilkinson said. “Lager beer, in a tall glass.”

  The machine clicked sharply and whirred softly. A hatch set in its bulbous belly slid open and a tray was extended on which stood two glasses, the tall one with the beer misty with condensation.

  “Clever,” said Wilkinson. “Clever. You people do yourselves well here.”

  Titov snorted and said, “Wait until you’ve seen our common room, in the Biology building. Like a garden it is. It is a garden. None of this functional rubbish.” He added parenthetically, “I just look in here now and again to keep an eye on their plants and tropical fish.” He took his sherry from the tray. “And we have none of these monstrosities to serve the liquor. We have genuine Bunnies, recruited at great trouble and expense from the various Play Clubs back on Earth, imported regardless of cost. Of course, they’re shown on the books as laboratory assistants. Which they are, I suppose. The trouble is that quite a few of them start getting interested in science and become real technicians….”

  “What sort of work do you do in Biology?” asked Wilkinson.

  “Oh, anything and everything. My own project at the moment is breeding the assorted wogs brought back from the surface of Jupiter by the last probe, and finding out if any of ‘em will attack alien — to them — organisms such as the Terran mammalia, up to and including Man.”

  “Rather pointless,” said the spaceman. “We shall never make a manned landing on Jupiter, or if we ever do, it will be in some enormously strong ship and nobody will be able to go outside.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Titov told him. “Another project that we’re working on is breeding new races of men and women, each of which will be adapted to a different planet. Mars will be easy, of course — the Adams and Eves will be of Andean or Tibetan stock. Jupiter’s not so easy — there’s both the poisonous atmosphere and the crushing gravity to consider.”

  “I don’t like the idea,” said Wilkinson. He grinned. “After all, if it works out it will be putting spacemen out of employment.”

  “There are always the stars,” Titov said. “Sooner or later one of the bright boys in Physics will come up with an interstellar drive, and then you’ll be pushing up and out to explore the worlds of distant systems. It may be closer than you think. After all, this thing of Henshaw’s may be the answer to the problem.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, I’m just a biologist, not a physicist or a spaceman. But just suppose you had a ship that went astern in Time while going ahead in Space…. Then the planets of Rigil Kentaurus would be only a few weeks distant.”

  “So you think that this thing of Henshaw’s works?”

  “I — I’m not sure. There’s something odd about it. Oh, it makes things vanish, and it makes them reappear, but it may be teleportation rather than Time Travel. There was that mud, and Venus was never muddy.”

  “And there were the micro-organisms in the mud,” said Wilkinson.

  “So Henshaw told you, did he? Yes, there were the micro-organisms. Some of them were what you’d find in any sample of swampy soil picked up on Earth. And some could have been mutated
varieties. And others — well, perhaps they were mutants too. After all, since we started making full use of atomic energy for industrial purposes back on Earth, the radio-activity of the Terran atmosphere has increased more than somewhat.”

  “Teleportation …” murmured Wilkinson slowly. He felt let down, disappointed. If all that Henshaw’s apparatus had done had been to teleport the cat and the rats to, say, the Amazonian jungle and back again, then his wild hopes were no more than a wishful dream. There was that thumbprint; but now, in his mind’s eye, he watched it being made by some wild, naked Indian child, some little savage who, by utterly fantastic but not impossible chance had suffered a slight, scar-leaving injury to the ball of the thumb. The pattern of the two prints had appeared to be similar — more than similar, identical — but neither he nor Henshaw had been qualified to make a proper examination and comparison.

  “Teleportation …” he whispered again. Then, in a louder voice, “But it can’t be.”

  “And why not?” asked Titov.

  “Think of the movements of Venus and Earth relative to each other, each planet in its orbit around the Sun, each rotating on its axis. Imagine a sort of focused ray or beam, along which the teleportation takes place…. Oh, it would be possible to keep this beam always lined up to focus on one spot, and one spot only, on the Earth’s surface — but it would require some very complicated machinery and a first class electronic brain.”

  “Both of which,” observed the biologist drily, “friend Henshaw could cook up as an afternoon’s relaxation. But if he did, then he’d boast about it.” He sipped his sherry. “Odd. Very odd.”

  “So it could be Time Travel,” pressed Wilkinson.

  “It could be any damn thing. And I advise you, my friend, to be prepared for anything.”

  “I shall be,” said Wilkinson, feeling again the beginnings of what he would not admit was an utterly illogical hope.

  IV

  As TITOV and Wilkinson were finishing their drinks, Henshaw bustled through the common room on his way to his quarters. He paused by their table, saying rapidly, “Afraid you’ll have to excuse me, young man. Too busy to look after you. You mind doing the honors, Titov?”

  “It will be a pleasure,” said the biologist to Henshaw’s retreating back. He put his empty glass down on the tray extended by the patiently waiting robot. Wilkinson drained the last of his lager, following suit. The machine asked tonelessly, “Your orders, gentlemen?”

  “Nothing further, thank you,” Titov told it. Then, turning to the spaceman, “Come on. Let’s get out of this mechanised boarding house. You can be an honorary member of our mess tonight. It’s better than this dreary dump.”

  They got to their feet, and Wilkinson followed Titov into the maze of tunnels that connected the domes. Later, much later, he was glad of the services of a guide back to his own quarters. As Titov had told him, the biologists did themselves well. Rather too well, he thought ruefully as he carelessly pulled off his clothing and fell into his bed.

  When morning came he felt surprisingly fit. He had slept deeply and dreamlessly in the strange bed, and when he awoke it was with a sense of urgency, or excited anticipation.

  It was Henshaw’s diffident cough that stirred him to full wakefulness. He was standing by Wilkinson’s bed, and beside him was one of the gleaming robots. The machine, as soon as the spaceman’s eyes were open, grated, “Tea. Coffee. Tomato juice. Orange juice. Apple …”

  Wilkinson threw back the light bed covers. “Later,” he snapped.

  “You might as well order,” said the scientist glumly. “There’s no hurry.”

  “What do you mean, there’s no hurry? You promised …”

  “Yes. I know I promised. And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve kept my promise. It’s that damn Clavering who’s let us down.”

  “Clavering?”

  “Our Master Mechanic. So called.” He addressed the robot. “All right. Coffee for me.” Then, to Wilkinson, “What are you having?”

  “Coffee, I suppose. Black.” Wilkinson lay back on the bed. He did not try to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “And now, I suppose, you’ll condescend to tell me what all this about.”

  The automaton buzzed sharply and the tray, with its two steaming cups, was extruded from the hatch in its belly. Henshaw took them, and set them on the bedside table, while Wilkinson waited impatiently.

  He said abruptly, “Of course, I had to obtain the Director’s permission before I could employ a human guinea pig. He gave his permission, but he made the rules.”

  “As long as your Time Machine’s in working order, what rules can there be?”

  “You’d be surprised. But this is the one that concerns us right now. The Director insisted that you wear one of our V.I.P. suits. You know about them, of course?”

  “Yes, spaceships on legs.”

  “Tanks on legs, we call them. They’re so heavily armored that you could never move in one of them without a power unit.”

  “So?”

  “So all the suits but one are out to various people engaged on lines of research that take them outside the domes. The one suit not in use has a faulty power unit. Clavering was supposed to be repairing it last night …”

  “And?”

  “And he had a more important engagement. With a bottle of Scotch.”

  “This suit,” said Wilkinson sharply. “It’s just the power unit that’s on the blink? What about air supply and conditioning?”

  “As far as I know they’re in order.”

  “Then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have our trial run. There’ll be no need for me to tramp around all over whatever cock-eyed world it is that you’ll be sending me to. For my first visit I’ll be quite content just to stand still and observe. After all, if those suits are as heavily armored as you say, I shall be safe enough.”

  “Yes …” murmured Henshaw dubiously. Then, with more assurance, “Yes.” He jumped to his feet. “I’ll see the Director now. And Clavering. You should have your answer in a few minutes.”

  • • •

  It took more than a few minutes to obtain the consent of the Director. Wilkinson had to appear before him in person, had to listen patiently while that burly man, an executive rather than a scientist, stated his side of the case.

  “Yes, Mr. Wilkinson, I know that you have no dependents, and I know that you have some personal interest in Dr. Henshaw’s experiments, but we must consider your employers. A trained space officer represents a quite considerable investment in time and money made by the Interplanetary Transport Commission. We, in Science City, have always endeavored to remain on friendly terms with the Commission. After all, we are utterly dependent upon its services.”

  “And utterly dependent upon the services of the spacemen employed in the Commission’s ships,” remarked Wilkinson.

  The Director allowed himself a brief chuckle. “Well put.” He looked at Henshaw and Wilkinson across the wide, polished expanse of his desk top. “You want to go to wherever or whenever it is that Henshaw has been sending his guinea pigs. All right, you can go. But first …”

  He pushed a closely typed sheet of paper across the desk to Wilkinson, who picked it up and read it. It was simple enough in content. It cleared Science City of all liability for any injury incurred by himself. Fair enough, he thought. He took the proffered stylus and scribbled his signature.

  “And good luck to you,” said the Director. “You’ll need it.”

  • • •

  Cleavering, a wizened gnome of a man, was already in Henshaw’s laboratory when the physicist and Wilkinson got there. He was fussing around with what looked, at first glance, like a huge, anthropomorphous robot. He turned as they entered, peering at them sourly from red-rimmed eyes. He snarled, “All right, Dr. Henshaw. She’s as ready as she ever will be at short notice. But I take no responsibility.”

  “What about air supply and temperature control?” asked Henshaw sharply.

  “They’ll do,�
� admitted the other grudgingly. “I’ve put in a small, temporary power unit to look after that side of it. But she’s not mobile, and won’t be until I get the proper unit back in.”

  “Then it will do,” said Wilkinson quietly.

  “It’s your neck, mister, not mine,” growled the machanic. “But I’m telling you that you’d not get me into one of these tin coffins unless I was able to take steps, and long ones, away from any danger.”

  Wilkinson ignored him, inspecting the suit with interest. The back of it, through which he would enter it, gaped open. The enormous thickness of the skin was self-evident — the insulated padding and, outside that, the tough, overlapping metallic plates. Perhaps, thought Wilkinson, in Free Fall a man might just be able to move inside it, but on any planetary surface with an appreciable gravitational field he would be helpless.

  He asked, “Where are the controls of this thing?”

  “There aren’t any,” Clavering told him. “None that you can get your interfering paws on, that is. When she’s working properly she adjusts to you, to all your movements. You bend a finger, and the corresponding finger of the glove also bends. You take a stride, and the electro-magnetic muscles in the legs take one as well. You kick a brick wall, and if you aren’t wearing the suit you break a couple of toes. But as long as you’re in the suit it’s the wall that gets broken.”

  “Happy, Wilkinson?” asked Henshaw.

  “I’d be happier if the thing were working properly.”

  He fingered the armor. “But I think I’m safe in saying that anything carnivorous with designs on me would break a few teeth trying to get me out of this shell.”

  “This armor,” said Clavering proudly, “is proof against fire from a twenty millimeter cannon.” He asked Henshaw, “Where do you want her?”

  “In the middle of that circle on the floor,” said the physicist, pointing.

  “You’re the boss.” The little man pushed the heavy suit, which was on a dolly, until it came to rest at the center of the painted circle. “What now?”