“Nor does the Godspeed Drive.” I saw his raised eyebrows. “Come and look, Jim, you have to see this for yourself. I don’t know what the Godspeed Drive did to space-time when the Isolation happened, but it’s different now. Space-time repaired itself. The drive is working again.”
I led the way to the Godspace chamber at top speed, and dived through with Jim close behind me.
“There you are,” I said. “It takes a minute to get used to things, but see for yourself.”
He squinted at the monstrous body shapes, like towering smoke outlines in the great spherical chamber. “See what?”
“Can’t you tell what they’re doing?”
There was a long pause, while Jim studied slow-lifting arms and gaping mouths in remote, indistinct faces. “I can’t be sure. But it seems to me that they’re eating and drinking.”
“That’s right. They’re in the middle of a meal. Don’t you see what that means?”
He didn’t. “You drag me in here,” he said in a rising tone, “when I have us almost ready to go home—just to show me a bunch of people eating?”
“You don’t understand. You told me that what I’ve been seeing here is an echo of what happened before the Godspeed Drive was turned on. That once the drive operated, they vanished.”
“That’s right. They disappeared from our universe.”
“But they’re eating.”
“Jay, people still became hungry—even when they were getting ready to use the Godspeed Drive. It was their last meal, but they didn’t know it.”
Jim had spent as much time in space as I had. And he didn’t understand spacers, not one little bit.
“They’d never sit down for a meal,” I protested. “Not just before a ship’s departure. Not even if it were a ship that they’d known for years, like the Cuchulain. Certainly not on a new ship. What we’re seeing happened after the drive had been turned on, when they were sure that everything was going well. The drive didn’t cut them off from the universe—the Godspace chamber is still in contact with them.”
“That’s nonsense. The crew were hungry when they went aboard the Godspeed ship. What makes you think you know what they would do?”
Because I think like a spacer, and you won’t ever. It would have caused nothing but trouble to say that. “Even if they wanted to sit down for a meal with the Godspeed Drive all ready to fire, that would never happen with Danny Shaker as the boss. He would never have permitted it.”
Jim Swift’s face was hard to see behind the visor, but his actions were enough. He turned abruptly away and headed for the grey membrane of the exit. “Danny Shaker, Danny Shaker,” he shouted, just before he entered it. “That’s all we hear from you. You worship that man, he’s addled your brain. Can’t you see that he was no more than a ruthless savage? Yes, and an incompetent, too. He led the crew to their doom, and his own. Don’t waste any more of my time with him.”
Jim was going off into one of his rages. It was pointless to argue. I stayed in the chamber for a long time after he had left, trying the impossible task of reading Danny Shaker’s expression. That had been beyond me, even face to face aboard the Cuchulain. The satisfaction that I read there now was probably all my imagination.
When I returned to the Slowdrive ship no one was interested to hear a single word about Danny Shaker, the crew of the Cuchulain, or the Godspace chamber. All that Mel and Doctor Eileen cared about was the Slowdrive. They had become as much monomaniacs as Jim Swift. It was Erin, Erin, Erin. They wanted to fly to Erin, as soon as possible.
And finally, fly to Erin we did.
After all the dangers and difficulties that we had met on the way out, the journey home was pure anticlimax. The ship’s controls had been designed to be operated by an idiot (or, as I told myself, by a Jim Swift-like research scientist). At Doctor Eileen’s insistence, I held the Slowdrive to its lowest power level. Even so, we snaked our way from the depths of the Maze to Muldoon Upside Port in little more than two days.
Anyone of us who expected excitement at our return to Erin would have been disappointed. I had forgotten the extent to which the Downsiders were wrapped up in their ground-level affairs. Our arrival was greeted with massive indifference. You found a space base? Then go and bring something useful from it, something we can use on Erin. A new drive, you say? We already have ships that can explore the Forty Worlds. A female visitor from the Maze? Don’t try to fool us, you took her with you from Erin.
The most interesting response at the end of our trip came not from Erin, but from Doctor Eileen during final arrival. We were together in the control room, just before she and Jim Swift transferred to a ferry ship for Muldoon Downside. Mel and I would follow them down later.
I complained about my husky voice. It had been hoarse and hard to control since we left Paddy’s Fortune.
“Can you give me anything for it?” I asked.
Doctor Eileen burst out laughing, something she did about once a year. “Not one thing, Jay. Any more than I can do anything for Mel. Maybe you ought to discuss it with her. She’s been complaining, too.”
And with that baffling comment she was off to the ferry.
Last night I dreamed about Danny Shaker. The two-half-man, face invisible, arms crossed, massaging the red line of scar across his biceps. In my dream he was talking to my mother, telling her of his hopes and plans for me. She was smiling and nodding, and speaking to him like a close friend in the breathless, throaty voice that I remembered from as long ago as I remembered anything. I could tell that she really liked him.
That is where I ought to end my story; because tomorrow we leave for Paddy’s Fortune. Mel can’t wait to lord it over the stay-at-home girls she left behind, Jim Swift wants to meet the controller, and Doctor Eileen is keen to study the local plant and animal life.
We expect to be there for perhaps two weeks. After that we will take the next big step. Not the stars—not yet, although the Slowdrive should certainly be capable of it. We will content ourselves with a trial run, out to the far reaches of the Maveen system. On the way, Jim Swift wants to take another look at the Luimneach Anomaly. After visiting the Eye, he’s not convinced that the Luimneach is as empty as it is assumed to be.
But the stars are waiting, and we can’t ignore them forever. Someday, before very long, we will try the long journey out. Are there other planets and other people waiting and watching the skies, or searching to find a hidden Godspeed Base, or discovering their own version of the Slowdrive?
I know of only one way to find out. And I can’t help wondering. If and when we reach the nearest star, what we will find? Dead worlds, fading empires, great living civilizations. And might we find that Danny Shaker and his crew have been before us?
That thought should blow me away. In most ways it does, but it does not dominate my mind as it would have a week ago, because this morning I finally acted on Doctor Eileen’s suggestion. I complained to Mel about my hoarse voice.