Twists in Time

by Murray Leinster

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

This volume contains 7 short works by Murray Leinster, including: "Rogue Star," "Dear Charles," "Dead City," "Sam, This Is You," "The Other Now," The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator," and "The End."

Release date: October 22, 2019

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE ROGUE STAR’S COURSE and time of approach had been listed in the astronautic manuals for at least two hundred years, but it did not appear to matter—at least to Earth. Its point of nearest approach was computed to be a spot some three light-years away. It seemed a mildly interesting celestial visitor, but nothing more. Nobody guessed that human civilization depended on it—not only on Earth, but on all the colony-planets now feverishly filling up with the excess population of the overcrowded mother world. The existence of a human culture was actually contingent on the coming of the Rogue Star, and it is literally impossible to imagine what would be the present state of affairs if it hadn’t appeared.

Yet there was no obvious reason for anybody to feel concern or relief or anything else when it was reported duly on course. Its mass—enormous as it was—would make no measurable difference to anything in the solar system. It did not shine brightly, so it was not a spectacle in the star-filled sky. Actually, it was dead-black and lightless, and it could not be seen more than a very few million miles away. Then it was only a disk of blackness that hid the shining stars behind it. But it was excessively difficult even to get close enough to see it.

The Rogue Star was contraterrene matter, with negatrons instead of positrons in the nuclei of its atoms, and antielectrons in the orbits where electrons ought to be. Consequently, its gravity was reversed with respect to Earth and Sol and all the normal bodies in the galaxy. It did not attract them. It repelled. It was not drawn toward the flaming suns whose planets men now explored and colonized. It caromed off their gravitational fields in an erratic, frantic, bewildered effort to escape from a galaxy in which it did not belong.

Its origin was unguessable. Its entrapment in a star-cloud of positive-nuclei matter was inexplicable. If any particle of native substance ever touched it, matter and anti-matter would annihilate each other in a blast of atomic flame to make mere fission-bombs seem feeble. Yet such an event was impossible. Even calcium-clouds in emptiness parted to let it through. Hydrogen-plasma glowing in space drew aside as it came near. So it bumbled blindly about among hostile suns, dodging them fearfully. It was so remote from the right and proper that it had been computed and then proved by experiment a century before that even time ran backward on the Rogue Star. It came blundering through our galaxy from the distant future. In its progress it moved toward the past.

But it was not to come nearer than three light-years, and it did not shine or even reflect radiant energy beamed toward it—and it took enormous amounts of power to approach it. Therefore, there seemed to be no connection between the fact that, when the Rogue Star was very near its closest approach to Earth, the tramp freighter Cytheria lifted from the spaceport at Canaveral. At a suitable distance out from Earth the ship matter-of-factly oriented itself toward the Coalsack region and went briskly into overdrive. It presumably droned on through nothingness upon a strictly lawful occasion. The Cytheria was an old ship that hauled freight profitably because newer and faster ships were carrying passengers to the new colonies at fantastic passage rates. There was nothing odd about it taking off with a cargo of some millions of credits’ worth of germanium and a few stray sacks of Earth-seeds for test in dirt instead of hydroponic tanks on the Coalsack planets. There was nothing odd about the spaceport she left, or the Earth that vanished when she went into overdrive. There was nothing visibly odd about anything. Even the oddity of the Rogue Star wasn’t odd, considering.

But about forty minutes after the Cytheria lifted, the police ground-scanners spotted movement at the spot from which the ship had risen. The police keep close watch on spaceport tarmacs against prowlers and thieves. They went to check up.

They found the crew of the Cytheria just staggering to its collective feet. The skipper and first officer and every man of the Cytheria’s complement—save one—had been left behind. They’d been occupied with last-minute duties when unconsciousness hit them. The first officer had heard footsteps behind him before a stun-gun knocked him out. One of the engineer-officers had heard a compartment door open. The rest of the crew had slumped unconscious without any warning. They came to lying on the ground with the Cytheria gone off to space.

The spaceport checked up—fast. There were three people missing. One was an elderly spaceman third class, named Thomas Brent, who was close to seventy years old. Another was hydroponist Rex Hall, and the third was air-checker Marge Daly. The last two should have been giving the ship its final air-room check when it lifted. On the record, none of them was qualified to handle the ship. So far as could be determined then or thereafter, the Cytheria had lifted off of her own accord, aimed for the Coalsack stars and vanished.

And that was that. In time the spaceport people tried to notify the next-of-kin of the three missing persons. Rex Hall had no family. Marge Daly’d had one, but her last aunt had died just about the time she went to work at the spaceport. Thomas Brent was simply an elderly spaceman. Nobody knew anything about him. Thomas Brent might not even be his real name.

In due time the Cytheria was listed as missing, and again in due time the insurance on her was paid. Nobody ever inquired for Rex Hall or Marge Daly. Apparently nobody ever thought about Thomas Brent. There was nothing but the mystery of its disappearance to make anybody think of the Cytheria, and in time that was forgotten too.

But human civilization kept on, and ships hauled colonists to new planets, which were advertised as just like Earth of ten thousand years earlier, and in time men began to look speculatively across intergalactic space. The Rogue Star and the Cytheria and the three people it had carried away were never mentioned.

Which, in its way, is ironic. Because human civilization depended on them.

Rex Hall and Marge Daly boarded the Cytheria through an air lock a full hour before its scheduled time to lift. Spaceport regulations called for a seal-up four hours before lift, and an air-check within an hour of lift-time. They went competently to work. The air-room had its hydroponic units, which were Hall’s specialty. Sampler-tubes from all parts of the ship ran to the air-room too, of course, and Marge matter-of-factly drew air-specimens from each compartment to make CO2 and contamination readings.

They worked briskly; it was all routine. The fluid-pumps hummed, there were bubblings in the algae-tanks, there were small trickling sounds. They did not talk as they worked. This was an old story to them.

Marge finished the list of air-purity readings just as Hall completed a bacteria-count in the fluid for the legumes. Marge slapped her notebook shut, and he put away the microscope. Somewhere there was a small metallic thud, which would be the closing of a compartment door. And at that exact instant a gong clanged loudly, the air-room door hissed shut and the peculiar furry feeling of a lift-field enveloped them. There was that first and only lurching of the floor, which meant that the ship had broken clear of ground. The Cytheria lifted for space.

“The devil!” said Hall. “The ship’s lifting! Somebody made a short!”

Marge looked uneasy.

“What do we do?”

“For the moment, nothing,” said Hall. “We could ring emergency and the Skipper’d have to cut lift and get back to ground any way he could. He’d think there was a hull leak. But emergency landings are risky. We’d better wait. A relanding can be made from space more safely. Bad business for the Skipper, though. He should have waited for us to certify the air.”

Marge nodded. She was a trifle pale because the lift-field felt queer. The ship rose and rose. Presently she tried to smile.

“This is my first time off-ground. I never thought I’d make it. Funny, isn’t it?”

“It’s my first, too,” said Hall. “Since we’re up, how about taking a look out a port?”

Marge took a deep breath.

“We might as well,” she said. “I’ve wished a thousand times …”

Hall went across the air-room and undogged a port. The outside shutters opened as the inner ones drew back. They looked out the port together. They saw Earth as only spacemen and those who could raise the money for emigration ever saw it. At first glance it seemed a vast bowl, with a horizon rising level with them all around. But, as they continued to rise, the world seemed to flow toward their feet, each object growing smaller as it flowed. Suddenly the horizon was neither level with them nor straight. It curved and was below them, and the Earth became a vast globe of which they saw only a portion. But it retreated and retreated, and presently it was a ball. They saw icecaps and continents and oceans. Marge stared with all her eyes.

The furry lift-sensation ended. The Cytheria was well out in clear space. The planetary drive went off, and the globe that was Earth swung to where it could no longer be seen through the port. Myriads of stars vanished with it, and other myriads took their place.

“We’ll report ourselves now,” said Hall. “They’re starting to aim the ship for overdrive.”

He pushed the intercom button. The screen flicked to brightness. He saw the interior of the ship’s control-room, and then a grizzled, slyly humorous face appeared. It stared, and the slyness and humor disappeared in a look of blank amazement.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded the face.

“I was inspecting the hydroponic tanks when you lifted,” said Hall. “Miss Daly was with me, checking the air. We hadn’t given you air-clearance, so we didn’t expect you to lift.”

The grizzled face grimaced.

“What do you want?” it demanded.

“Why—to be put aground, of course,” said Hall.

Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. Earth was crowded, and the human race instinctively craved more room. Nobody starved, of course, but, whether consciously or otherwise, everybody wanted to get back to the roominess and greenness and freedom their ancestors had known for ten thousand generations. Hall knew he didn’t want to go back to overcrowded Earth, simply because it was overcrowded. But he’d said it.

“It’s too late for that!” said the face. “Much too late!”

Hall saw a hand move in the screen. The screen went blank. Hall stared at it incredulously. A moment later it flicked back
to brightness, and the grizzled face said reproachfully, “If you think you’re surprised, figure out how I feel!”

Hall turned to Marge. He opened his mouth to speak. Then the lights dimmed almost to extinction. All the cosmos seemed to reel. Neither Hall nor Marge felt any motion from the ship. It was the universe that seemed to whirl dizzily in a narrowing-spiral fashion that was unspeakably strange.

The sensation ended. The lights came back. Marge had not moved, but her face was white.

“He went ahead,” she said with an odd composure. “We’re in overdrive. I’ve—heard about the feeling it gives.”

She nodded at the port out which they’d looked. It was still open, but it showed dead-black. In overdrive, a ship travels at the rate of a light-year of distance in a day of elapsed time. Light from behind, obviously, cannot overtake it. Light from ahead goes up in frequency until it is as far beyond even electron-frequency as that is beyond long radio waves. Only within the overdrive field a ship gathers about itself is vision possible. A ship travels blindly and helplessly in the quasi-cosmos of its own making. But cosmic-dust particles and the stray atoms of emptiness acquire the ship’s own speed when they enter the overdrive field. It is wise to come out to normal, unstressed space every so many light-centuries to get rid of the accumulation.

There was silence in the ship. The air-room pumps hummed, and there were bubblings from the algae tank.

Hall said, “He didn’t act like a skipper. Something’s pretty wrong!”

He went purposefully to the air-room door and wrenched at the handle. Nothing happened. He ground his teeth.

“We’re locked in,” he said coldly. “But there are some tools here. I’ll take that door apart—”

Marge said, as composedly as before, “Maybe the intercom’s on for speech but not pictures.”

Instantly the screen lighted. The sly, grizzled face appeared.

“It is!” said the face cheerfully. “Smart girl!”

The screen went silver again. But after a moment it flickered bright once more.

“Is either of you an astrogator?” asked the face interestedly. “Can either of you find your position in space?”

Marge shook her head.

Hall growled, “I’m a hydroponist. No!”

“That’s good!” said the face, beaming. “That’s very good! That’s splendid!”

“Why?” asked Marge.

But the screen had gone off. Yet, after ten seconds, it brightened once again. The face peered out.

“Because,” said the voice cheerfully, “I won’t have to kill you. I think we’ll get along!”

The screen went silver and stayed that way. Hall stared at it, his fists clenched. Marge stirred and shook her head almost imperceptibly. She was much paler than she had been. Now she looked at her wrist watch and rose. She went to the bank of sampler-tube ends, where she’d made her check of the ship’s air in each compartment. Intently, she made a fresh determination of the CO2 content of the air in each. She wrote down the readings in the record-pad. They were identical to three decimal places in all but one record-space. She drew an arrow to that and wrote three lines in the Comment bracket. She showed the pad to Hall.

Nobody is breathing out CO2 in any compartment but the control-room, he read. It looks like there’s only one person on board besides ourselves.

He felt a certain chilliness run up and down his spine. It would have been bad enough for Marge to be the only girl on a long journey in a ship with a lawless crew. But it was not much more promising, in the long run, to be in a ship with only one extra person—if he were not quite right in the head.

“If there’s only one other man on the ship,” said Hall, with confidence, “I’ll take care of that!”

But Marge was multiplying something. She looked up.

“You don’t know how to astrogate,” she said steadily. “I’ve heard that from Pluto, which is four light-hours out, the sun is simply the brightest star in the sky. We’ve been in overdrive for twenty minutes. We’ve traveled thirty times as far as from the sun to Pluto. If we came out of overdrive right now, we couldn’t pick out the sun to aim back to. It won’t be the brightest star any longer.” Then she added, “That’s why he wanted to know if we were astrogators. We can’t hope to get back to Earth unless he takes us.”

She watched his face for a moment. Then she said, “He—he could be heading for a colony planet. I wouldn’t mind that. Only—”

Hall made an inarticulate sound. He went abruptly to the intercom and unplugged it. There could be no more eavesdropping. He picked tools from the tool-box. He stuffed his pockets and went to the air-room door. Grimly he began to release the screw-plates that held the door in place. He loosened the door and pulled it away.

“Now I’m going to—”

There was a stirring in the corridor beyond.

“Why, yes!” said the cheerful voice that had come through the intercom. “You’re going to talk things over with me, aren’t you? And you, too, my dear. I didn’t mean to bring either of you along. But you seem to understand so well! And you’ll both be company for me. I’d expected a lonely time!”

The little man of the intercom stood in the doorway, a stun-pistol in his hand. He beamed at them.

“Come along!” he said brightly. “I’ll pop out of overdrive so you can see how things go, and then I’ll tell you what it’s all about, and then we can be friends—I hope! I’ll be!”

He beamed at them, but his cordial air did not imply any hesitation. Hall knew that a little man with a stun-gun is apt to use it much more freely than a big man. And, if he has to knock a man out, he takes even greater precautions against renewed attack . . .