“Give him one more hand, honey, so he can hold his nose,” Kornal said.
After an hour on the phone, Bard Lane found out that Walter Howard Path was in a private sanitarium, committed by his wife, for an indefinite stay.
Seventeen
As closely as Raul could estimate, it was ten days before the keening whine of a warning device startled them into immobility. They had been eating at the moment it sounded.
Leesa, startled, lost her grip on the wall railing and floated out beyond any chance of grasping it again. She writhed in the air, but could not appreciably change her position.
Raul calculated, pushed against the wall with his hand as he let go of the railing. As he passed Leesa he grasped her ankle and the two of them made one slow pinwheel in the air before touching the high railing on the opposite side of the cabin. He strapped her in, then made a slow shallow dive toward his own position. He arranged his own straps, slid forward into proper position, staring up at the panel.
Five long minutes passed before there was any change.
And then came an indescribable twisting. It was as though in one microsecond, vast hands had grasped him, turning as though wringing moisture from a bit of cloth, releasing him. Dimly he heard Leesa’s startled cry. His vision cleared at once and he saw that the value of the first dial had returned to zero. A softer bell-note sounded, and he guessed that it meant an end to the warning period. Adjusting the screen he looked at strange star patterns.
Days later, when the warning sound came again, they strapped themselves in. The second time jump was like the first, but easier to bear because it was expected.
For the third, one day later, they did not go to position. They waited near the rail, and as the twisting came, her fingernails dug into his arm. He watched the convulsed look fade from her face as they smiled at each other.
An hour later the warning sound was more shrill. Again they went to their positions. One twisting, wrenching sensation followed closely on the heels of the next. When at last he was able to look at the dials, he saw that all of them had returned to zero. With a weakened hand he adjusted the image screen.
“Is... it over?” Leesa called.
“I think so.”
“What do you see? Quickly!”
“Wait. I must turn the ship. Now I see a sun. Blazing white, Leesa.”
“Their sun, Raul.”
“I’ve seen their sun from Earth. It is yellow, Leesa.”
“Look for the planet.”
He turned the ship. A tiny distant planet was ghostly in the reflected sun glow.
“I see a planet!” he called.
“Take us there, Raul. Quickly. Oh, very quickly.”
Cautiously he made the sound that drove the ship ahead, gave them weight after so many days. He felt the slick movement of the great cylinder which compensated in part for the force of the acceleration on their bodies. He made the sound again and the planet began to grow. He watched it grow, and it did not seem that he could breathe deeply enough.
And then he knew. He did not speak for a long time. He called to her and his voice was old.
“What is it, Raul?”
“The planet has nine moons, Leesa. Theirs has but one.”
In the long silence he heard the muffled sound of her weeping. The planet grew steadily.
“Raul, are we still heading toward it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember your promise?”
“I remember.”
“Close your eyes, Raul. Do not touch the controls. It will be quick, Raul.” Her voice had a curiously haunting quality, as though she were already dead.
He closed his eyes. Resignation. An end of struggle and rebellion. It would have been better to accept, to force belief in the warm, slow world of the Watchers. He thought of Earth. Possibly he had misread the metallic sheets, selected the wrong index. Out of so many millions of numbers, it could easily have been the wrong one.
Bard Lane and Sharan Inly would never be able to convince Earth that the Watchers existed. Just as he could not convince the Watchers that Earth was another reality, as true as their own.
He opened his eyes. The planet was alarmingly close. They were diving toward it. He closed his eyes again.
Someday maybe Earth would build such ships as this one. First they would go to the other planets of their own...
As the thought came he opened his eyes wide. He gave the replica ship a brutal twist and in the same instant the vowel sound. As the acceleration hammered him into unconsciousness he kept the thin impression of the face of the planet sweeping slowly off the screen.
In Bard Lane’s dream he was back at Tempo watching the Beatty One rise into the arc of destruction. But this time the drive impetus was not steady. It came in hard flaring jolts that made the ship rise erratically on her suicide course. The dream faded and the jolting sounds turned to a heavy knocking at the door. He rubbed sleep-stuck eyes, rose painfully from his cramped position in the chair in which he had fallen asleep after Sharan had gone to bed.
“Coming, coming,” he called with annoyance. He stretched and looked at his watch. Ten in the morning. The windows were gray, patterned with rain flung against them by a gusty wind. For a moment he could not remember why he felt so thoroughly depressed. And then he remembered Hallmaster’s talk the night before.
He was in a completely foul mood when he yanked the suite door open. “Why didn’t you just batter it down?” he said.
A thick-jowled man mouthing a cigar stub stood planted in front of the door, two uniformed policemen behind him.
“Another minute and that’s just what we would have done, friend,” the man said. He walked flatfooted toward Bard, forcing Bard to step aside. The two policemen followed him into the suite.
“Maybe it would help if you tell me what you want,” Bard said.
The jowled man knuckled his hat back off his forehead. “You’re Lane.” It was a statement of fact rather than a question.
“Nice of you to come and let me know so early on Monday,” Bard said.
“I could learn to dislike you, friend.” The stocky man turned and nodded at one of the two policemen. The uniformed man walked casually over and trod heavily on Bard’s foot.
“Gee, excuse me,” he said. He took his weight away, trod heavily on the other foot. Bard’s fist swung automatically, all the strain and heartache and disappointments of months erupting into a rage that was like ice.
The policeman partially blocked the blow, but it slipped off his forearm and landed on the heavy cheekbone with a satisfying crack.
The two policemen moved in with deft efficiency and pinned both of Bard’s arms. The jowled man took the cigar from his mouth and rolled it between his fingers.
“It was reported to me, Dr. Lane, by the management of this hotel, that you were acting strangely. I am Hemstrait, the health officer. I came here to investigate the report and find that it was true. You attacked Patrolman Quinn without provocation.”
“Just what do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. I’m committing you to the state hospital for sixty days of observation and treatment. Nuts like you can’t run around loose.”
“Whose orders are you following, Hemstrait?”
The man had the grace to blush. “Hell, Lane. They’ll do you some good out there. Where’s the Inly woman?”
“You don’t need her too.”
“The hotel says that she’s crazy too. I got a job to do. I got to investigate all reports.”
At that moment Sharan, flushed with sleep, a white robe belted around her, opened the bedroom door and came out. “Bard, what is—” She stopped and her eyes widened as she saw Bard being held.