The shock that affected Heshke and the Lieutenant, once they understood this news, lasted some time. They stared for long moments without speaking.
“But the Earth Mother,” the Titan stuttered.
Ascar gave a harsh laugh. “Earth Mother!” He made the words sound like a curse.
Heshke turned to Ascar and gestured with his thumb through the window. “Aren’t we too exposed? What if they see us?”
“They can’t see us. We’re not synched on their present moment; we’re pacing a few minutes behind it.”
“Collision!” gasped the Titan. “It’s inconceivable! What will happen, Ascar?”
Ascar laughed again, this time horribly and savagely. “Can’t you envisage it? The converging time processes are now only four hundred years apart, and already we’ve become aware of one another. Each will make massive preparations to destroy the other.” His eyes shone, as though he were privy to some dreadful vision. “And while the time-waves are yet centuries apart an indescribable war of annihilation will be in progress. Each civilisation, on seeing the constructions of the other rising magically in its midst, on seeing them become newer with each passing year, will grow more and more fearful. Both sides will find themselves trying to manipulate the same materials from different points in time! But everything will be in vain – for what will happen when the two time-streams actually collide? Can anything survive such a shock? Annihilation, that’s what will happen. Annihilation, followed by the cessation of all time.…”
With an effort the Titan broke free from the spell of Ascar’s words. He drew himself erect.
“There’s no time to lose: the High Command must be made aware of the situation immediately.”
“Yes, that’s where our duty lies.” Ascar was trembling with nervous reaction. He drew back from the pilot’s seat, leaving his gun where it was, and wiped his brow with a shaky hand. “Take over, Lieutenant.”
The Titan seated himself at the control panels and made calibrations. He appeared to have recovered his composure completely and spoke with authoritative self-righteousness.
“It has to be admitted that you’ve rendered mankind a service, Citizen Ascar. Nevertheless when we return to Absolute Present you will be charged with disobeying orders and with murdering a Titan officer.”
“Leave him alone, for God’s sake,” Heshke pleaded worriedly. “Can’t you see he’s insane?”
“Yes, insane,” muttered Ascar. “Who wouldn’t be… five years alone in that place. Who wouldn’t be? The strain… knowing I was the only man on Earth who could solve the problem… who could give humanity the secret of time travel… I wasn’t sure I could do it. The enemy had an advantage over us. We had to take away that advantage or perish… now we’re going to perish anyway.”
The fuzzy hum of the time traveller rose in volume as the machine picked up power and glided away from its position to go surging pastward. Heshke settled down for the journey, reassured by seeing the tall Titan once more at the controls and by Ascar’s apparent lapse into inactivity.
For about an hour they journeyed in silence. Heshke began to doze, but was awakened by a hoarse cry from the pilot, accompanied by a sickening lurch. The pilot was taking evasive action.
Heshke observed that the Absolute Present register was again flickering. The pilot cleared the windows to transparency to reveal the shape of a pursuing enemy time machine. Ascar shouted incoherently; at the same time they sustained a shuddering shock and seemed to go into a kind of spin.
Heshke became dizzy. When his head cleared the cabin was motionless, but leaning crazily, and a large hole had been torn in its side. Behind them the drive-unit gave out a ragged, injured buzz.
Somehow it came as a surprise to Heshke to find that the alien time traveller had been armed.
“Damn!” moaned Ascar. “Damn!”
Heshke got to his feet. The Titan officer was already peering out of the smoking hole in the side of the cabin. Heshke joined him and saw, in midair, a cylindrical shape half materialise, shimmering, and then fade away again. He shrank back momentarily; then, when the officer stepped cautiously to the ground, he followed him and stood staring around.
If death was the absence of life, then Heshke had never imagined such an expanse of death. The landscape stretched all around them in a grey, sterile tableland, featureless except for some hills in the west and some tumbled ruins to the north. There was not a blade of grass nor anything that moved. And dust, everywhere dust – Heshke had never conceived of so much dust, unless it was on the surface of the moon.
Ascar scrambled out of the cabin after them, his face gone ghastly pale. “The drive’s ruined!” he exclaimed in a strangled tone. “That bastard knew exactly where to aim for!”
His glance darted around helplessly. “You asked me about the future, Heshke – well, here it is. The future that time hasn’t reached yet. And we’re stranded in it!”
That was what he was afraid of, Heshke thought.
“We’ve failed,” said the Lieutenant in a stricken voice. “Our comrades will never hear our report now.”
“It doesn’t matter, you fool,” Ascar snarled. “Life on Earth has exactly two centuries to run – then everything’s finished.”
Blood and soil, Heshke thought. Blood and soil.
They all stood staring at the dead landscape.
5
Far from earth, the ISS – Interstellar Space Society – known to its inhabitants as Retort City floated as if transfixed in the blackness of space, approximately mid-way between Altair and Barnard’s Star – that is, as far from any celestial body as it could manage. It took its name from its appearance, which was that of a double retort, or hourglass, but long and elegantly shaped. Retort City was, in fact, a city in a bottle, its outer skin being transparent and having a glassy sheen. An observer watching from the void would have discerned within the glass envelope a sort of double spindle, this being the general plan of the city’s internal structure, and would have seen through a muted blaze of lights an intermittent movement as the internal transport facilities passed up and down.
The city had a history of about five thousand years, having lived it uneventfully for the most part. Probably, its rulers thought, there were other ISS establishments somewhere within a hundred light-year radius of Sol, all surviving fragments of long-vanished Earth civilisations, for at one time the idea of forsaking life on planetary bodies and taking to artificial cities in the interstellar void had been a fashionable one. But they did not know this for sure, and felt no urge to comb space for their lost cousins.
Colloquially the two halves of the ISS were known as the Lower Retort and the Upper Retort – terms with social, rather than spatial implications. Officially they were the Production Retort and Leisure Retort. And no one, except newborn babes, ever passed from one retort to the other.
Or almost no one.
Hueh Su-Mueng shut down his machine and stood for a few moments looking abstractedly around him at the work area: a large, spacious hall filled with rows of machines, some like his own, some different. The next shift was already beginning to wander in; some of the men stood around chatting, others looked over their spec sheets or started up their machines, already becoming absorbed in their work.