"The creature is going off in that general direction," Oni said. "But it is not taking a light with it."
"It's really a robot, not a creature," I told her. "He can probably see in the dark pretty well. I wonder why he took off." I scratched-my head. "Oh, well. Ragna? What about these emergency food stores you were telling me about?"
"They are being hidden in various parts of caves. Is old custom among Ahgirr in case cave is invaded by unfriendly sorts-retreat and survive."
"Oh. And you know where these stores are?"
"Assuredly."
"Good. Well, I hope you'll be comfortable here."
"We will be jim-dandy, and we will be thanking you."
I laughed and took Ragna's smooth-skinned hand. I had come to know and love these aliens, and I would miss them, too.
We hard a squawk. Turning, I saw Arthur rushing out of the darkness. He looked flustered.
"I don't believe it happened again!" he shouted.
"What?" I said.
"You're here. You. Again, it happened. He saw me."
"Yeah, I know," I said. "I remember that, too."
"Well, for pity's sake, this is getting ridiculous."
"Why did you go wandering off like that?"
"Just wanted to explore. This is the first vacation I've had in six million years. I'm loving this little jaunt, and I wanted to see the sights."
"Well, you saw another ghost. Consider yourself lucky. Hard to book a tour with those on the itinerary."
Ragna and Oni accompanied us back to the entrance. They now knew exactly how long they would have to lay low. When they finally showed themselves, they would have some explaining to do, though.
"Everyone will be listening politely," Ragna said, "then will be thinking, Ragna has finally attained craziness. But Oni and I will be writing our memoirs and be selling them to publishers for big bucks."
We said our good-byes. They cried, I got a little dampeyed.
What could be more human?
30
There isn't much left to tell.
Among the loose ends, there was the matter of rescuing myself from the Colonial Militia on a planet called Goliath. I remembered seeing someone who had my face standing over me in the cell, administering a shot of a drug that would bring me out of the quasihypnotic state I was in.
Here again was an opportunity to mess things up. We could simply decide not to do it. That would, theoretically, snap the whole chain of events that led up to and proceeded from the rescue… but no. I couldn't resist thrusting a hand through the glass to help my mirror twin. After all, he was in a bind, and he just might be in a position to do the same for me some day.
But there were problems. I didn't know how we could do it at all, much less do it quietly, efficiently, and without causing unwanted paradoxes. We had the means: the Reticulan dream wand, the mind control device that I'd taken from Corey Wilkes aboard the Laputa, which still lay almost forgotten in the glove box under the dashboard. It was a good guess someone had used the wand, or one like it, to knock out everyone in the Militia station.
But just how were we going to juggle all the balls?
The answer came when Arthur announced that the spacetime ship had completed its repair work.
"It's fine now. I've run some tests, and it's working very well."
We discussed the rescue operation, and Arthur had plenty of suggestions.
"Well, adapting the ship's auxiliary systems to duplicate the effects of the wand wouldn't be a problem at all," he said, "if you want to do it that way."
"That'd be swell," I said. "There're a few problems. We'll have to be in the vicinity, and we'd be vulnerable to the effect, too. The only antidote I know of is a good dose of a moderate tranquilizer-and the medicine chest is just about empty."
"Oh, that's no problem. I said we could duplicate the effects, as you've described them. That doesn't imply we have to use the same means, although they'll probably be similar. I'll just tune the beam so that it won't resonate with your particular brain scan. You'll be immune, and you can go in I there and do your duty."
"Well, that's fine I guess," I said, then snapped my fingers. "No, it isn't. Then my double will be immune, too. And history says he succumbed to the effect."
Arthur shrugged his negligible shoulders. "So, can't history give us a little break? The universe won't miss a few historical facts here and there."
"I dunno," I said, scratching my beard stubble. I was also running out of razor blades. "I really have no idea."
"Arthur," Sam said, "you must tune that gizmo to my brainpan and I'll go in and do what has to be done."
"No, Sam. It won't work. I didn't see you at the station."
"Wait a minute."
He went into the aft-cabin for a moment, then came back. He had done something to his hair, parted it differently, combed it to the side, something. I couldn't tell exactly what.
Zoya studied him, then looked at me. "You could pass for twins."
I conjured up the memory of the rescue, tried to see the mysterious face hovering above me. How could I have not recognized my father's face? Or was it that I could not bring myself, at the time, to believe it? Perhaps the explanation simply was that my recollection wasn't very clear. After all, the memory was half concealed in a hypnagogic fog, and always would be. So be it.
"What about the tranquilizer?" I said.
"We won't need it," Sam said.
I said, "Then why do you have to go in at all?"
"Oh, your double will need something to pep him up."
Arthur said. "I don't know about that dream wand gadget, but my technique is going to call for some chemical relief, if you want your double to be up and about, doing things."
And he would have things to do, to be sure. We did have one ampoule of amphetamine sulfate left. That would do nicely.
Still, there was the problem of getting there, and getting near enough to the station without causing no end of paradox problems. Arthur suggested we make the trip in the spacetime bus, and we took him up on it. I did not feel up to trying the Backtime Route again. Besides, I felt my connection with the Culmination growing ever more tenuous.
On a dusty planet with no name, Arthur unloaded the spacetime ship and inflated it. I drove the truck in, and we took off.
We had spent some time giving Arthur the most accurate temporal data we could, and with the help of the Roadmap, we were able to pinpoint the spatial coordinate exactly. Goliath was part of Ten an Maze, and the planet's star was known to Terran astronomers, albeit only as a catalogue number. It was enough; by the time we'd locked up the truck and gone to the control room, we had arrived.
"That fast?" I said in some amazement.
"Well, the ship makes all transitions-jumps-in zero time. What takes time is making successive jumps and setting up for them. However, Goliath wasn't all that far away, and I did it in one clean transition." Arthur looked proud.
I gazed at the dun-colored world turning below. It looked huge, untamable, and cruel; a big sprawling monster of a planet.
"Now I have to search for that city," Arthur said, his stubby plasticine fingers feeling the control box. "Oh, there it is." He laughed. "Well, of course. It's the only one on the planet. What's it called?"
"Maxwellville."
"A real cultural mecca, huh? Okay, here we go."
The dun-colored ball rushed to meet us, then became the vast arid world it was, its sky coloring to hazy blue, the various shades of its surface separating and becoming features, the most salient of which was a high plateau ringed by dark jagged mountains. Maxwellville sat up here in the cooler air. The surrounding plains were uninhabitable. We could attest to that-we'd nearly died out there.