The Forever Man (20 page)

“All you're saying, really,” said Mary, “is ‘trust me'.”

“Right. Trust me. I trust my instinct,” said Jim. “While you're at it, remember that all the instruments in Raoul's ship had to have been long gone by the time he started to come back to Earth. But he traveled in the right direction. How do you suppose he knew his way?”

Mary said nothing for a long moment.

“I don't know,” she said finally. “But—”

“Hold it!” Jim interrupted suddenly. “Bandit! Straight out!”

Sure enough, there it was on the long-distance screen. Just the barest pinpoint of light at the moment, but with the halo around it that identified it as something radiating as no natural object would.

“How can you tell it's a Laagi? Maybe there's something unknown out here—” began Mary.

“It's Laagi. I can feel it.”

“Going away from us? Or coming toward us?”

“That I don't know—yet. I've put the instruments on it. Indications right now are it's traveling parallel to us and about half a light-year in from us. But whether down-galaxy or up-galaxy, I've no way of knowing until we're closer to it.”

“Can it see us?”

“I don't know that either,” said Jim. “I'd bet a month's pay it hasn't—yet. A lot depends on which way it's going, whether it's facing toward or away from us.”

“With screens looking every which way, that shouldn't make any difference,” Mary said.

“It does, though. Human—I mean, Laagi nature. Our attention and theirs, too, seems to be directed most of the time in a ship-forward direction, one of the things that makes us assume they've got eyes looking forward, like animal predators and humans, and not out to each side like birds and prey animals. If it's headed this way, he's going to see us sooner or later, unless we move. And if we move, we're bound to attract the attention of his instruments.”

They waited.

“He's traveling down-galaxy. Looking toward our direction,” said Jim finally.

They waited a little longer.

“He's seen us. He's turned in our direction. Stand by for him to jump into battle range of us.” Jim's mental voice had become remote, businesslike. He felt as well as heard it in his own mind as he was used to hearing it, talking to his Wing on the Frontier, just before contact with an approaching gang of Laagi ships.

“Oh, God!” said Mary. “And we've hardly started.”

“Don't worry, baby.” Jim could feel that if his body had been with him, it would be grinning, the same way the combat-recorder films always showed him grinning as he went into battle; and not even he could tell if it was to
AndFriend
, to Mary, or to both of them he spoke: “If he gets close enough to hurt you, I'll kill him.”

The Laagi ship made a phase-shift just as Jim said this, and suddenly it was big enough to be pictured as something more than a dot on their longest-looking screen.

“I'm wrong,” said Jim. “It's not us he's aimed at. From this angle he'll pass us but only at better than instrument mid-range. Either he's got a destination off to one side of the centerline, or…”

He fell silent.

“You mean we could be in among the star systems having Laagi-occupied planets?” Mary asked.

“Your guess on that's as good as mine,” said Jim slowly. “But it looks like he's going to pass us by at a distance which could mean his instruments don't see us.”

“Don't Laagi instruments see as far as ours?”

“We don't know for sure—just the way we don't know so much about them,” said Jim. “But it's a good angle. I mean, like I said, we've noticed that when we're at an angle to them, they don't seem to see us as well as from more head-on angles—or up close; distance helps, too. It's all guesswork because on most things their ships can do as well, or better, and our own ships are under orders to act on that premise. Actually, fighting them, I get the impression there're weak spots in their observation. And that's the way most combat pilots feel. If we're right, it could explain why sometimes they turn and run—if you want to call it running—when you're sure they're ready to joust.”

“You're thinking of just letting him go by?” Mary said. “But aren't we a sitting duck here, if he suddenly starts turning toward us?”

“If we move we might attract his attention, as I mentioned,” said Jim. “Remember, we're where no Laagi ship is going to expect to run into something like us—particularly just a ship alone, the way we are. If he's really not seen us, and if he's really headed by us, we can sit still and he'll never know we were here. Or if he does, maybe he'll take us for an experimental new design of Laagi ship. Or—oh, I don't know…”

“I've never known you to hesitate like this,” Mary said. “Why're you willing to take such a chance he'll go by without seeing us, or even seeing us without attacking us?”

“Because,” said Jim slowly, “I don't think he's armed.”

There was a second or two of pause.

“Why? What makes you think that?” she said. “More to the point, what makes you think it so strongly you're ready to gamble our whole mission on it?”

“I can't tell you exactly why. It's the way he's acting. Look at him. He's three-quarters on to us—his whole side's a target. Just a little more on that same course and I could cut him wide open with a beam. Then it'd take less than a minute to stand in beside him close enough to drop a mine that'd blow him apart a second after we were out of range of it, ourselves. Why's he taking a chance like that, unless he's unarmed and doesn't see us?”

“You're still gambling,” said Mary flatly.

“But with something at stake,” muttered Jim. “Suppose he's expected somewhere and they come out looking for him when he doesn't show up… and scoop up some dust they can identify as part of his ship? Wouldn't that mean killing him would be like a flag planted to tell them we've been here?”

There was another pause.

“It could be. All right,” Mary said. “You're the expert on alien ships. It's up to you.”

“We'll sit,” said Jim.

They sat.

The Laagi ship went by in one phaseshift and vanished from their instruments with a second.

“Of course,” said Mary when it was gone, “you know it might just have pretended to go innocently by because it was unarmed; and it's right now reporting us to the nearest equivalent of military authorities the Laagi have.”

“In which case,” said Jim, “the sooner we get out of here, the better.”

He was setting up a phase-shift for
AndFriend
as he spoke.

“Down-galaxy, I think,” he said, “now that we've found Laagi space traffic this far up. As far as his reporting us goes, if you were a Laagi military commander and you heard of a human ship where we just were—just which way do you think that ship might have jumped after it was last seen? And how far away from that point where it was seen could it be, by the time you can get your own fighting ships out after it?”

Mary said nothing.

“So if you were such a military commander,” said Jim as they shifted, “wouldn't you find it a lot easier and safer just to file a report and let it get tangled up in the bureaucratic wheels, rather than take a chance on something that might possibly be the figment of a civilian pilot's imagination?”

“You're really assuming they're like humanity,” said Mary.

“Well, we've got nothing else to base assumptions on,” said Jim. “And a lot of what we've seen of them does parallel what we've got and what we do. We use a theoretical centerline. They seem to, too. Our ships are shaped differently from theirs, but they phase-shift to cover large distances just as we do. They use cutting weapons that seem developed from lasers, like we do. Their fighter ships are only big enough for a crew of two individuals. They seem to think in terms of a Frontier in space, just like we do…”

He got tired of thinking up comparisons and ran down.

“Et cetera,” he said. “All very fine,” said Mary. “But you could be wrong because there're things you don't know. And there've got to be things you don't know—that we don't know.”

“Right enough,” said Jim. “How about it? Drop the subject?”

“Subject dropped.”

“I like you, Mary.”

There was a long pause.

“If you don't mind,” said Mary in a distant voice, “I've got a few things to mull over. Call me if you need me for anything. Otherwise, I'll be in conference with myself, if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind,” said Jim.

There was no further word from Mary.

They crept down-galaxy, in shift-jumps no farther than their instruments could safely read ahead. Twenty-four hours went by, and no more Laagi ships were encountered. Then another twenty-four hours with the same result. And another twenty-four.

“We must be beyond Laagi space, down-line, by this time, mustn't we?” asked Mary. They had been back in conversation since about an hour following Mary's withdrawal.

“Should be,” said Jim. “There's some interesting star systems ahead. I count at least eight G0-type stars within a ten lightyear box no more than twenty or thirty lightyears down the line. If any of those have got livable worlds, maybe we've found Raoul's Paradise. Maybe we should go all the way in to the line and follow it down.”

They had been slowly angling back in toward the centerline as time went by and no more sign of Laagi ships was encountered.

“Any comment?” asked Jim.

“No,” said Mary. “I think that's a good idea, Jim.”

They had been on considerably warmer terms, lately, for no particular reason Jim could understand. Following Mary's agreement, he made the necessary adjustments in the ship's controls, and took them in a single shift most of the light-year-and-a-half distance that still separated them from the centerline.

“We'll keep a watch, still, though,” said Jim. “You watch upgalaxy, I'll watch ahead, down-galaxy. Before I forget to mention it, by the way, I still don't feel the least bit sleepy. How about you?”

They had made an agreement earlier that each of them would let the other know if he or she noticed any sign of tiredness.

“I don't,” said Mary. “But I spoke to you twice and caught you sleeping. You had to ask me again what I wanted.”

“I did?” said Jim. “I don't remember that. Are you sure?”

“I learned too much about your sleeping patterns in the lab to be mistaken,” said Mary.

“Well, that checks out with what I noticed when I first became part of
AndFriend
, back at Base,” said Jim. “It also explains how Penard could keep coming steadily that way if he was consciously using his mind to drive
La Chasse Gallerie
. Maybe we don't have to worry about needing sleep for the rest of the trip if we can do it without knowing we do it, and wake up at the first word from the other one of us—at any rate, back to what I was saying. If there're any Laagi moving this far down the line, we're much more likely to run into them from here on, this close to the line.”

“Where did you grow up?” Mary asked him unexpectedly.

“Actually, in country a lot like the Base is in,” said Jim. “I was born in a hospital in Denver; but my folks lived in Edmonton and that's where I grew up. Every kid's a Frontier pilot when he's five years old. In my case it stuck. I was able to pass the tests—and here I am.”

“Have you got any brothers or sisters?”

“Not one,” said Jim solemnly.

The solemnity was a fake, but he had forgotten his ability, now that he was only a mind in a ship, of recall. He was suddenly young again, suddenly back among the mountains. Suddenly wondering what it would be like to have a brother or sister to play with. Somehow he always imagined the brother or sister as younger than he was. He remembered now, with painful clarity, being extremely young and telling his mother what very good care he would take of a brother or sister if she would only get him one—or two. It was not until years later that he came to understand that medically what he wanted was not possible; that the circumstances of his own birth had ended his mother's capability to have any more children. All he recognized at the time of his asking was that by doing so, he had made her unhappy.

“We lived outside of Edmonton, a way,” he said to Mary now. “My father was a metallurgist with a speciality in metal extraction from water. He was a consultant and gone off somewhere around the world, most of the time.”

“Do they still live there?” asked Mary.

“They're both dead,” he said. “My father had an accident on an underwater inspection. The oxygen exchanger on his diving mask failed. My mother died a year or two after that in a car accident. She went off the road one night when she was driving home from Edmonton to our place by herself. The officers thought there might have been a hit-and-run accident, some other driver might have nudged her car off the road into a fall down a slope; but they were never able to find anyone who might be responsible. My uncle got me into the Cadet Corps.”

“I had no idea,” murmured Mary. “It must have been awfully hard for you. Both my parents are still alive.”

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“Los Angeles Complex,” she said. “We were actually in San Diego. My folks still live there.”

“Good,” he said. “You can see them whenever you want.”

“I don't, though,” she said. “We were always pretty separate in my family. In fact, I couldn't wait to win the scholarship that took me away to Boston to college. One good thing—they let me go.”

“Why shouldn't they have?” he said, surprised.

“Why? Oh, I was young,” Mary said absently. “I was fifteen when I graduated from high school. I was big for my age, though, and old for my age. I don't just mean I acted old. I'd grown up with a pair of independent adults; and I was an independent adult from the time I could walk. Also, I was good at things. Show me something you can do and I'll bet I can learn to do it better.”