I have no clear memory of reaching a boat, nor of starting the engine and casting off and heading out to sea. But in spite of being semi-conscious at the time, I can recall vividly what it was like when Sharly turned Icewell 37 into a miniature sun. I lay there, shielded by the gunwale, drowning in the sudden awesome wash of noontime brilliance.
It lasted less than three seconds, but when it was over the icewell and everything connected with it – including the Taker and the mortal remains of Sharly Railton – had vanished in a mile-high column of fire and steam. Clouds of vapour were rolling upwards to the stratosphere, and circular waves were racing towards the ocean’s distant shores with their message that a battle had been fought and won.
I lowered my head and wept till I lost consciousness.
They’ll never believe me!
The words of the old song kept mingling and merging with my own thoughts, interfering with all attempts at lucidity. I lay in that hospital bed for the best part of a day, fighting off the drugs that had cushioned my nervous system during the excision of the spleen, and my principal concern was that nobody would give my story credence. It was the kind of inversion of priorities which is typical of the semi-lucid state. I imagined myself to be in the situation which crops up so often in children’s fiction, the one in which all evidence of a fantastic adventure is maddeningly lost and the protagonist, if he speaks at all, meets knowing smiles of disbelief.
But I had forgotten about my buttonhole recorder.
It had continued working through the entire episode, and its tape became one of the single most valued artefacts in history, even though the evidence was imperfect in many ways. The Taker, for example, registered only as a vague area of darkness – with no sign of the legs which I had seen so distinctly; and the scene in Field Control was obliterated here and there because I had been clinging to the stanchion. However, the scientific and technical teams got most of what they wanted from it. They were able to see something of what Sharly-Plus had done to the warp control complex, to deduce others, and to make inspired guesses about much of the rest.
That was three years ago, and they believe that before another three have passed the first of the new breed of power stations will be operational. It will employ much the same equipment as an icewell, but with the big difference that the zeta-locus, instead of wandering blindly in space, will be positioned exactly where we want it. Instead of serving as a heat sink for the construction of ice islands, it will be used to import unlimited energy from the vicinity of the sun.
Visionaries, and there are quite a few of them in the scientific community, say it won’t be too long until we achieve the reciprocity that Sharly used to talk about, that an advanced form of the telecongruency warp is going to give us instantaneous travel to the stars. As Sharly once put it, “We’ll be able to grow food or gather diamonds or pick flowers on any planet in the galaxy.” I guess that’s the sort of memorial she would have chosen for herself.
CROSSING THE LINE
When Hewitt picked the dog up he got the impression it was slightly heavier than a real animal, but that might have been because it was still inert, a dead weight in his hands. He ran his fingers through the wiry hair, noting as he did so that the markings of a Lakeland terrier had been perfectly simulated. There was no doubt that the dog was very well made, but there was a lingering question in his mind as to whether it was worth a month’s salary. He turned the compact body upside down and gave it a tentative shake.
“It won’t rattle,” Burt Pacer said, from behind the commissary counter. “Fluid solenoid construction throughout. Just like real muscles.”
“I can tell it’s a good machine, Burt.” Hewitt frowned into the dog’s immobile face. “It’s just the money.”
Pacer smiled sympathetically. “We’re a long way from Earth.”
Hewitt nodded, wondering if the comment was meant to explain the cost of the little robot or to justify the extravagance of buying it. There were other things he and Liz could do with the money, and for weeks he had been stoutly rejecting the idea of getting a dog for Billy. The trouble with domestic budgets, however, was that they were sometimes required to accommodate items whose true value could not be reckoned in cash. Yesterday evening, for instance, Hewitt had stood at the rear window of his house and had watched his eight-year-old son scamper to the far end of the mowed plot which was their back garden. There had been nothing to stop Billy running on through the longer grass of the plain beyond, but the boy had come to a halt and had stood there, reluctant to advance into alien territories. The sight of the small figure – utterly alone, upright, probably thinking of friends he had left behind on Earth – had filled Hewitt with sadness. With the emotion had come uncertainty about the ambitions which had led him to subject his family to the rigours of the Ferrari Transfer, and he had reacted by deciding to enquire about a dog first thing in the morning. The memory of how he had felt at that moment resolved the conflict in Hewitt’s mind.
“Okay,” he said. “You talked me into it.”
“Right.” Pacer took Hewitt’s citizenship card and showed it to the computer terminal along with the dog’s specification tag. He worked with an airy casualness which was intended to remind people that he was a qualified electronics man and only helped out at the commissary on a voluntary basis, for the good of the colony.
His official ownership of the dog, now confirmed, prompted Hewitt to start activating it. He probed at the back of its skull with his fingertips, searching for the subcutaneous push-button which was mentioned in the instruction leaflet.
“What are you doing?” Pacer said with some show of concern.
“Trying to turn it on.”
“I thought it was for your boy.”
Hewitt was mildly surprised. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s best if the prime owner is the one who activates the dog,” Pacer said. “His should be the first face it sees.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No joke, Sam. All our dogs are the same. We programme in a canine personality which causes each dog to fixate on one special owner.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” Hewitt said slowly.
“Oh, it’ll be friendly to everyone else in the family, but it’s important to have that one special relationship with the owner – that’s what the whole boy-and-his-dog thing is all about.” Pacer had forgotten to be nonchalant, and a note of evangelical zeal was creeping into his voice.
“I just wanted to make sure it works,” Hewitt said defensively. “I was going to switch it off again.”
“You can’t do that, Sam.”
“What? Why not?”
“The brain is too sensitive and complex for that sort of treatment. It can be wiped clean, of course, but it has to be done progressively, using special equipment.”
“What have I bought here?” Hewitt set the rodog down in a swath of sunlight which lay across the counter. The individual hairs of its coat gleamed brown and black and white. “It sounds like it’s going to be as much trouble as a real dog.”
“A piece of clockwork wouldn’t be much use to your boy,” Pacer commented, folding his thin freckled arms. ’Besides, there’s the security aspect – the way the dog is made, no stranger can come along and steal it and blank out its memory of the proper owners.”