Chapter 15
Toller stared at the woman, knowing without being told that she was Bartan Drumme’s wife, and his inner model of the universe and all its ways flowed and was changed for ever. He felt cold and weak, but somehow unafraid. Berise and Zavotle had not moved, and although they were looking in different directions he knew they were seeing exactly what he was seeing. The woman was beautiful, and she was wearing a simple white dress, and she glowed like a candle in the dimness of the ship’s interior. She spoke in anger shaded with concern.
At first I could not believe it when I sensed Bartan drawing nearer, and then I searched and found that it was true! You set out across space without even understanding the effects of continuous acceleration! How could you fail to realise that you were heading for certain death?
“Sondy!” Bartan had returned to the upper deck and was clinging to a handhold near the head of the ladder. “I am coming to bring you home.”
You are a fool, Bartan. All of you are reckless fools. You, liven Zavotle, you who drew up the plans for the voyage—how did you expect to land on this world?
Zavotle spoke like a man in a trance. “We planned to slow our ship down by plunging it into Farland’s atmosphere.”
And that would have been the end of you! At the speed you would have attained on reaching Farland the friction with the atmosphere would have produced so much heat that your ship would have become a meteor. And even if by some miracle you had landed safely—had you simply assumed that the air would be breathable?
“Air? Air is air.”
How little you know! And you, Toller Maraquine, you who style yourself leader of this ill-conceived expedition—do you accept full responsibility for the lives of those you command?
“I do,” Toller said steadily. A part of his mind was telling him that he and the others ought to be cringing with fear or reeling with astonishment, anything but calmly answering questions put to them by an apparition, but it was in the nature of the mental communion that all normal human reactions were prorogued. He now understood Bartan’s previous assertion that, by definition, anything which happens cannot be supernatural.
In that case, Sondeweere continued, if you retain any vestiges of a conscience, you will immediately abandon this wildest of ventures. I will give you the instructions and guidance necessary to effect a safe return to Overland.
“I cannot agree to that proposal,” Toller said. “While it is true that I boast the title of commander of this extraordinary mission, its members have their individual and separate reasons for wanting to set foot on Farland. My authority is rooted in the common will to proceed, and were I to propose turning back my voice would become only one among many.”
A slippery answer, Toller Maraquine. The vision regarded him with blue-seething eyes. Does it mean that you are prepared to lead your crew to their deaths?
“I see no need for that? If it is within your power to guide us safely to Overland you must be able to do the same with regard to Farland.”
How little you understand! How little you know of the dangers that await you here! The silent words were now tinged with impatience. Many years ago you found Overland to be uninhabited, and now—blindly—you presume that Farland is the same. Has it not occurred to you that this world is peopled, that it has its own civilisation? Did you think I had an entire planet to myself?
“I had given the matter no thought,” Toller said. “Until this minute I believed that Bartan was mad, and that you did not exist anywhere.”
I see now that I should never have reached out to you, Bartan. It was a mistake I would not have made had my development been complete, but I must bear the responsibility for the jeopardy in which you and your companions have been placed. I beg you, Bartan—do not add to my remorse. You must persuade your friends to return to Overland.
“I love you, Sondy—and nothing will keep me from your side.”
But what you contemplate is sheer folly! You cannot hope to rescue me with a force of only six.
“Rescue!” Bartan’s voice became sharper. “Are you being held captive?”
There is nothing that anyone can do. I am content here. Turn back, Bartan!
In spite of the curious mood that had been induced in him, the casual and dreamy acceptance of the miraculous, Toller was aware of a growing clamour deep within himself as he listened to the exchange between Sondeweere and Bartan. Revelation was piling on revelation, and with each there came a host of questions which cried out for answers. What were the people of Farland like? Had they landed on Overland by stealth and physically abducted Bartan’s wife? If so, what had been their motive? And, above all, how had an unremarkable woman living on a remote farm acquired the awesome ability to project her image and thoughts across millions of miles of space?
Seeking enlightenment, Toller tried to study Sondeweere’s face and discovered that it was impossible to focus on any single aspect of her. The vision he had seemed to exist behind his eyes, and it was a composite of many images which continually shifted and merged, making it impossible to scrutinise any one in particular. She was standing a few paces away from him, and at the same time she was so close that he could distinguish the individual down hairs on her skin, and at the same time she was so far away that she had the semblance of a bright star which pulsed in harmony with the silent rhythms of her speech…
By refusing to turn back you place me in an impossible situation. The only way I can save you from certain death in space is by leading you to an equally certain death here on Farland.
“We are responsible for our own lives,” Toller said, knowing that he had the full support of his crew. “And we are not easy to kill.”
Sondeweere came to the ship many times in the days that followed her first visitation, and for the most part her concern was with discarding its stupendous velocity and altering the course.
After he had recovered from the shock of learning the vessel’s true speed, Zavotle became absorbed by the mechanics of the operation. It had not simply been a matter of turning the ship over to reverse the direction of its thrust—numerous course corrections had to be carried out by tilting the ship and firing the engine at an angle to the line of flight. There was no means of looking directly aft, therefore Farland could not be seen and the crew had to take it on trust that they were steadily drawing nearer to their destination.
Zavotle found much to write about in his log, and was particularly intrigued when his spectral tutor explained to him what had been wrong with the plan to halt the ship outside the reach of Farland’s gravity. The radius of a planet’s gravity can be regarded as infinite, Sondeweere told him, and therefore the ship had to be placed in orbit, a condition in which it falls forever around the planet, in exactly the same manner as the planets circle their parent sun.
Toller tried to take an interest in the difficult concept, but found that his normal thought processes were inhibited by the essential strangeness of the situation. There had been too many revelations, and too many mysteries had been uncovered—all of them turning on the central enigma of Sondeweere herself.
He would have expected Bartan Drumme to be more taxed by that enigma than any other member of the company, but the youngster seemed too bemused by the prospect of being reunited with his wife to think much about what had so drastically interfered with the course of her existence. Allowances had to be made, Toller decided, for the fact that Bartan had spent a long time in an alcoholic twilight of the mind, living with the knowledge that his wife had somehow been transported to Farland and had communicated with him from that distant world.