The Way Back Page 4

  And so we're the first . . . thought Grimes. The first spaceship . . . A fragment of archaic poetry came into his mind.

  We were the first that ever burst

  Into that silent sea . . .

  Then he remembered the fate of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. There had just better not be any shooting of albatrosses, he told himself firmly.

  Inward sped the Quest, and the Commodore realized that her voyage would soon be over. He could feel, in his bones, that Earth was getting close. Not the next sun, nor the next, but the one after that would be Sol. He didn't know how he knew—but he knew.

  Nonetheless, he wanted to be able to rely upon more than a hunch. He told Carnaby to have all of Faraway Quest's surveying instruments in readiness. "Look for nine planets," he said. "Or possibly ten . . ."

  "Ten, sir? I thought that the Solarian System had only nine planets."

  "So it does—in our time. But this is not our time. The so-called Asteroid Belt, the zone of planetary debris between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was once a sizeable world. Perhaps, when we are now, it is still a sizeable world . . ."

  "Nine planets, then, sir. Possibly ten. Any other special features?"

  "You've never been to Earth, have you, Mr. Carnaby?"

  "No, sir."

  "As you should know, the sixth planet—or possibly, the seventh—is one of the wonders of the Universe. Saturn is not the only gas giant, of course, neither is it the only planet with rings—but it is the most spectacular."

  "A ringed planet, then. And earth itself? Any special thing to look for?"

  "Yes. One satellite. One natural satellite, that is. A big one. More of a sister world than a moon."

  "Should be easy enough to identify, sir. But there's just one more point. There aren't any charts of Earth in the ship's memory bank."

  "We didn't know that we should be coming this way, did we? But I think that I shall be able to draw some maps of sorts from memory. How much use they'll be depends on how far back we are in the Past . . ."

  "Surely the effects of erosion shouldn't be all that great, sir."

  Grimes sighed. Carnaby was a good spaceman, an excellent navigator—and a trade-school boy. He was qualified, very well qualified to guide a ship between worlds, but knew nothing of the forces that had shaped, that were still shaping, those worlds. His specialized education had taught him his job and no more. Of what use to a navigator was knowledge of cataclysmic epochs of mountain building, of the effects of climatic change with consequent variation in sea level, of continental drift?

  He said, "We might be able to recognize Earth from the maps that I draw. If we don't, it just might not be my fault."

  But Earth was, after all, quite recognizable.

  Chapter 8

  Saturn, however, was the first member of Sol's family approached closely by Faraway Quest. The huge planet was not quite as the Commodore remembered it; the rings were even more spectacular than they had been (would be) in his proper time. It was while he and most of his crew were admiring the fantastically splendid sight that Daniels, able at last to listen out on his NST equipment, reported the reception of radio signals that seemed to be emanating from one of the inner worlds.

  Reluctantly, Grimes, accompanied by Sonya and Mayhew, left the control room, went down to the compartment in which the main receivers and transmitters were housed. He stood beside the little radio officer who, hunched over his controls, was making fine adjustments, listening intently to the eerie whisperings that drifted from the speaker. They could have been music; there was an odd sort of rhythm to them. They could have been speech, something so prosaic as a weather report or a news bulletin. One thing was certain; they issued from no human throat.

  Grimes turned to Sonya. "What do you make of it?"

  "What am I supposed to make of it?" she countered.

  "I'm asking you. You're the family linguist."

  "It's no language that I've ever heard, John."

  "Mphm." After all, thought Grimes, he had been expecting rather too much from his wife. He turned to Daniels. "Can you get a bearing, Sparky?"

  "I'm trying now, sir . . . 177 relative . . . 180 . . . 185 . . . Damn it, it keeps changing . . ."

  The Commodore laughed. " 'Relative' is the operative word. We're in orbit about Saturn, you know, maintaining a fixed attitude relative to the planet's surface . . ." He pulled his empty pipe from his pocket, played with it. He would have liked to have filled and lit it, but tobacco, now, was severely rationed. He visualized the planetary setup as he had studied it in the Quest's big plotting tank. At this moment the ship was still on the sunward side of Saturn. Inward from her, almost in a straight line, were Mars and Earth. Radio broadcasts—from Earth? In a non-human language? Had there, after all, been pre-human cultures, civilizations? Intelligent dinosaurs, for example? Had it been such a good idea to return to Earth?

  But what about Mars? A few artifacts had been found on that world, if artifacts they were. Time-corroded and -eroded they could well have been no more than fragments of meteoric metal roughly shaped over the millennia by natural forces. There had been the so-called Venus of Syrtis Major, a piece of alloy resembling bronze that had the likeness, the very crude likeness, to a woman, that bore far less semblance to the form of a woman than did the famous Colossus of Eblis, the huge, wind-sculptured monolith in the Painted Badlands of that world, to the figure of a man.

  "Ken," said Grimes to Mayhew, a little reproachfully, "Sparky's picking up someone. Or something. What have you to report?"

  The telepath flushed. "I've already told you, sir, that there's life, intelligent life, human life in towards the sun from our present position."

  "That . . . noise isn't human," said Sonya.

  "No . . ." admitted Mayhew. His face assumed a faraway expression. Grimes did not need to be told what he was doing. He would be mobilizing his department, putting it on full alert. He would be talking—wordlessly, telepathically—to Clarisse, still in the control room, informing her and instructing her. He would be awakening his psionic amplifier, the naked brain of a dog that floated in its tank of nutrient fluids in his quarters. Soon the three brains—the man's brain, the woman's brain and the dog's brain—would be functioning as one powerful receiver, reaching out from the ship, sensitive to the faintest whisper. Psionic transmission and reception was practicable across light years; surely Mayhew and his team would be capable of picking up signals from a source only light minutes distant.

  Mayhew said, his voice barely audible, "Yes. There is a . . . whispering. I . . . I was not listening for it, until now. I was—forgive me for borrowing your technicalities, Sparky—tuned in to the psionic broadcast from Earth. That's human enough. Raw emotions: hate, fear, lust. Thirst and hunger. The satisfaction of animal appetites. You know. But there is something else. Not fainter. Just on a different . . . frequency. I can feel it now. It's more . . . civilized? More . . . intellectual. How can I put it? Yes . . . This way, perhaps. Once, I was present at a chess tournament. All the Rim Worlds masters were competing, and there were masters from other worlds. I shouldn't have . . . snooped, but I did. I couldn't resist the temptation. It was . . . fascinating. To feel those cold minds ticking over, playing their games many moves in advance, their Universe no more (and no less) than tiers of checkered boards, inhabited only by stylized pieces . . ."

  "Chess," said Grimes, "is a very old game."

  "I used chess," Mayhew told him, "only as an analogy."

  "Never mind the parlor games," snapped Sonya. "What you're trying to tell us, Ken, is that there's a highly developed civilization in towards the sun from where we are now. Right?"

  "Right."

  "And it could be on Earth?"

  "I . . . I don't think so. The images, the images that I can pick up, the visual images, the sensory images, are . . . vague. The people are humanoid, I think. But not human. Definitely not human. And I get the impression of a world that's mainly desert. A dying world . . ."

  "Mar
s?" murmured Grimes. Then, more definitely, "Mars."

  The return to Earth could wait, he thought. On the Home Planet there would be, as yet, no organized science, no scientists. On Mars, if Mayhew were to be believed (and there was no reason why he should not be), there would be no shortage of either. Scientists, even alien scientists, could do more to help Faraway Quest's people than high priests or shamans.

  He said, "We set trajectory for Mars. The Martians may not be human, but they'll be more our kind of people than Stone Age savages on Earth."

  "You hope . . ." said Sonya sardonically.

  "I know," he replied smugly.

  "I . . . I'm not so sure . . ." whispered Mayhew.

  Chapter 9

  Provided that normal care is exercised, the interstellar drive may be employed within the confines of a planetary system. Grimes had no doubts as to the ability of his officers to handle such a not-very-exceptional feat of navigation. So, after the lapse of only one standard day of ship's time, Faraway Quest was hanging in orbit above the red planet Mars.

  Looking out through the control-room viewports at the ruddy globe he wondered, at first, if there had been some further displacement in Time. Mars looked as it had looked when he had last seen it—how many years ago? There were cities, and irrigation canals with broad strips of greenery on either side of them, a gleaming icecap marking the north polar regions. There were the two little moons, scurrying around their primary.

  Said Mayhew, "They know we're here . . ."

  Demanded Grimes grumpily, "And who the hell are they, when they're up and dressed?"

  "I . . . I don't know yet . . ."

  "Doesn't much matter," contributed Williams, "as long as they tell us that this is Liberty Hall and that we can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes around the stem of the empty pipe that he was holding between his teeth. "Mphm." Then, speaking almost to himself only, "What the hell happened—will happen—to those people? The cities, the canals—and damn all there when Man first landed but a very few dubious relics . . ."

  "Perhaps we happened to them," said Sonya somberly.

  "Come off it. We aren't as bad as all that."

  "Speak for yourself," she told him, looking pointedly towards Hendriks, who was seated at the console of his battle organ.

  Grimes laughed. "I don't think, somehow, that one ship, only a lightly armed auxiliary cruiser at that, could destroy a flourishing civilization with its own high level of technology." He gestured at the telescope screen, where Carnaby had succeeded in displaying a picture of one of the cities. It was as though they were hanging only a few hundred feet above the taller towers. "Look at that. The people who erected those buildings are at least our equals as engineers!"

  Tall and graceful stood the buildings, the essential delicacy of their design possible only on a low-gravity planet. Glass and stone and glittering metal filigree, the materials blended in a harmony that, although alien, was undeniably beautiful . . . The sweeping catenaries of gleaming cables strung between the towers, some of which supported bridges, but most of which were ornamental only or filling some unguessable function . . . Green parks with explosions of blue and yellow and scarlet, and all the intermediate shades, that were flowering trees and shrubs . . . The emerald green of the parks, and the diamond spray of the fountains, arcing high and gracefully in shimmering rainbows . . . Surely, thought Grimes, an extravagance on this world of all worlds! The people, walking slowly along their streets and through their gardens, even from this foreshortened viewpoint undeniably humanoid, but with something about them that was not quite human . . .

  "Carlotti antennae," said Daniels suddenly. "Odd that we didn't receive any signals from them while we were running under Mannschenn Drive . . ."

  Yes, Carlotti antennae—or, if not Carlotti antennae, something indistinguishable from them. Mounted on the higher towers were the gleaming ovoids of metal, each like a Mobius strip distorted into elliptical shape. But they were motionless, not continually rotating about their long axes.

  "Could be a religious symbol . . ." suggested Grimes at last. "After all, we have—or will have—crosses, and stars and crescents, and hammers and sickles, and what else only the Odd Gods of the Galaxy know . . . Why not a Mobius strip?"

  Mayhew began to speak, slowly and tonelessly. "They have telepaths. They have a telepath. He . . . He is entering my mind. There is the problem of language, you understand. Of idiom. But his message is clear."

  "And what is it?" the Commodore demanded.

  "It is . . . It is that we are not wanted. It is that those people cannot be bothered with us. To them we are an unnecessary nuisance, and one that has cropped up at a most inconvenient time."

  Grimes' prominent ears reddened. He growled, "All right, we're a nuisance. But surely we're entitled to tell our story, to ask for assistance."

  "What . . . What shall I tell them, sir?"

  "The truth, of course. That we're castaways in Time."

  "I'll . . . I'll try," said Mayhew doubtfully.

  There was silence in the control room while the Commodore and his officers looked at Mayhew and Clarisse. The two telepaths sat quietly in their chairs, the woman's right hand in her husband's left hand. The face of each of them wore a faraway expression. Their eyes were half closed. Clarisse's lips moved almost imperceptibly as she verbalized her thoughts.

  Then Mayhew said, "It is no good. They want nothing at all to do with us. They tell me—how shall I put it?—they tell me that we are big enough and ugly enough to look after ourselves."

  "Try to persuade them," ordered Grimes, "that it will be to their advantage to allow us to land. There must be some knowledge that they do not possess which they can gain from us—just as we hope to gain knowledge from them . . . ."

  There was another long silence.

  Mayhew said at last, "They say, 'Go away. Leave us to our own devices.' "

  Grimes knew that he had often been referred to in his younger days as a stubborn bastard, and on many occasions latterly as a stubborn old bastard. He had never been offended by the epithet. It was his nature to be stubborn. He was prepared to hang there in the Martian sky, an artificial, uninvited satellite, until such time as these Martians condescended to talk to him. Surely there must be some among their number capable of curiosity, of wondering who these strangers were and where they had come from.

  "They say," said Mayhew, " 'go away.' "

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes.

  "They say," said Mayhew after a long interval, " 'go away, or we will make you.' "

  "Bluff," commented Grimes. "Tell them, or tell your telepathic boyfriend, that I want to talk to whoever's in charge down there. Whoever's really in charge."

  "Go away," whispered Clarisse. "Go away. Go away. The message is still Go away."

  "Tell them . . ." began Grimes—and, "Look!" shouted Williams.

  Coming at them on an intersecting trajectory was a spacecraft. ("It isn't showing on the radar, it isn't showing on the radar!" Carnaby was saying to whoever would listen.) It appeared to be large, although, with no means of determining its range, this could have been an illusion. It was an odd-looking construction, with wide, graceful wings. There were no indications of rocket exhaust.

  "Like a bird . . ." somebody murmured.

  So they've finally condescended to notice us, thought Grimes smugly. Then another thought crossed his mind and he turned to Hendriks. But he was too late to give the order, Hold your fire! that trembled on his lips. Invisible but lethal, a laser beam slashed out from the Quest, shearing a wing from the Martian ship. She fell away from her trajectory, the severed plane tumbling after her. She spiraled away and down, down, falling like a leaf towards the distant planetary surface.

  . . . With my crossbow

  I shot the albatross . . .

  But this was no time for quoting archaic poetry to oneself. While Mayhew whispered, unnecessarily, "They are annoyed . . ." the Commodore barked his orders. "I
nertial Drive—maximum thrust!" Acceleration slammed him deep into the padding of his chair. "Mannschenn Drive—start!" He did not know what weaponry the Martians had at their disposal and had no intention of hanging around to find out.

  The gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive whined querulously as their rate of revolution built up to its maximum. Precession was initiated. Outlines wavered and colors sagged down the spectrum as Faraway Quest lurched into the warped continuum engendered by her temporal precession field.