CHAPTER 4 DISORIENTATION,. NAUSEA... The stars were different for the fifth time. Acceleration hit like a tree trunk ramming into Jim's chest. His fingers danced on the sub-light conltrol buttons. The voice of Raoul Penard was howling his battle song again- ... When you come drive de beeg saw log, You got to jump jus' lak de frog! De forenian come, he say go sak! You got in de watair all over your ....... Time passed.... "Check Ten!" shouted Jim once again. "All ships Check Ten. Transmit in three seconds. Three. Two-" No Laagi ships in the telltale sphere again this time. And the next. And the next- Suddenly AndFriend bucked and slammed. Flame flickered for a fraction of a second through the cabin. The telltale was alive with green lights, closing fast. Fifteen of them or more... Directly ahead of AndFriend were three of them in formation, closing on her alone. In Jim's ears rang the wild voice of Penard.. P'ras's you work on drive, tree four day- You find dat drive dat she don' pay.... "Gunner!" cried Jim, seeing the peen lights almost on top of him. It was a desperate cry for help. In a moment- Two of the green lights flared suddenly and disappeared. The third flashed and veered off. "Mary!" yelped Jim, suddenly drunk on battle adrenaline. "You're a gunner! A real gunner!" "More to the left and up-sector ten-" said a thin, calm voice, a voice he could hardly recognize as Mary's, in his ear. He veered, saw two more green lights. Saw one flare and vanish-saw suddenly one of his own white lights flare and vanish as the scream of torn metal sounded from one of the screens before him. Glancing at the screens, he saw for the moment the one picturing Fourth Helen's cabin, showing the cabin split open, emptied and flattened for a second before the screen went dark and blank. Grief tore at him. And rage. "Transmit now!" he howled at the other ships. "Check Ten! checkTen-" He slapped a magnetic on the battered cone shape that fled by a miracle still beside him and punched for the jump- Disorientation. Nausea. And- The stars of the Frontier were ahead of them. Jim stared into his screens. They floated in empty space, three gray- white dart shapes and the ravaged shape of La Cnasse Gal- lerie. Lela rode level with Jim's ship, but Swallow was slowly turning sideways like a dying fish drifting in the ocean cur- rents. Jim stared into the small screen showing the Swallow's interior. The two suited figures sat in a blackened cabin, un- moving. "Swallow!" said Jim hoarsely. "Are you all right? Ac- knowledge. Acknowledge!" But there was no answer from the two figures, and the Swallow continued to drift, turning, as if she was sliding off some invisible slope into the endless depths of the universe. Jim shook with a cold, inner sickness like a chill. They're just unconscious, he thought. They have to be just unconscious. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make the jump to here. "-Bngadier!" the voice of Penard WM singing with strange softness- ...repondit Pandore Brigadier! Vous avez raison. Brigadier! repondit Pandore Brigadier! Vous avez raison!- Jim turned slowly to look into the screen showing La Chasse Gallerie. He stared at what he saw. If the old ship had been badly slashed before, she was a ruin now. Nothing could be alive in such a wreck. Nothing. But the voice of Penard sang on. "No..." muttered Jim out loud, unbelievingly. "Not even a semianimate control center could come through that. It couldn't-" He stirred himself and shifted once more, push- ing for speed by settling for any location in the general direc- tion of the Frontier's other side.... "Identify yourself!" crackled a voice suddenly on Jim's ears. "Identify yourself! This is Picket Six, B Sector, Frontier area." "Wander Section-" muttered Jim, still staring at the tat- tered form of La Chasse Gallerie. He remembered the original legend about the return of the dead voyageurs in their ghost canoes, and a shiver went down his back. "Wander Section, returning from deep probe and rescue mission into Laagi terri- toty. Five ships with two lost and one sent wide and home, separately. Wander Leader, speaking." "Wander Leader!" crackled the voice fiom Picket Six. "Alert has been passed all along the Frontier for you and your ships and orders issued for your return. Congratulations, Wander Section, and welcome back." "Thanks, Picket Six," said Jim wearily. "It's good to be back, safe on this side of the Frontier. We had half the laaagi forces breathing down our-" A siren howled from the control board, cuuting him off. Unbelieving, Jim jerked his head about to stare at the telltale sphere. It was tilled with the white lights of the ships of Picket Six in formation spread Out over a half light-year of distance. But, as he watched, green lights began to wink into existence all about his own battered Section. By sixes, by dozens, they were jumping into the area of Picket Six on the human side of the Frontier. "Formation B! Formation B!" Jim found hinsself shouting at the Lela and the Swallow. But he'd forgotten that Swallow had fallen away on the other side of the Frontier, and only the Lela was here to respond. The Swallow, he knew, was still on its long, drowning fall into nothingness. "Cancel that. Lela, follow me. Help me carry La Chasse-" His voice was all but drowned out by transmissions fiom Picket Six. "Alert General! Alert General! All Pickets, all Sectors!" Picket Six was calling. "Full fleet Laagi attack. Three Wings enemy forces already in this area. We are overmatched! Re- peat. We are overmatched! Alert General-" At maximum normal acceleration, AndFriend and Lela, with La Chasse Gallerie caught in a magnetic grip between them, were running from the enemy ships, while Jim com- puted frantically for a jump to any safe area, his fingers danc- ing on the black buttons. "Alert General! All ships Picket Six hold until relieved. All ships hold! Under fire here at Picket Six. We are under-" The voice of Picket Six went dead. There was a moment's silence and then a new voice broke in. "-This is Picket Five. Acknowledge, Picket Six. Ac- knowledge!" Another moment of silence, then the new voice went on. "All ships Picket Six. This is Picket Five taking over. Picket Five taking over. Our ships are on the way to you now, and the ships fr"m other Sectors. Hold until relieved! Hold until relieved-" Jim fought the black buttons, too busy even to swear. "Wander Section! Wander Section!" shouted the voice of Picket Five. "Acknowledge!" "Wander Section. Acknowledging!" grunted Jim. "Wander Section! Jump for home. Wander Leader, key for data. Key to receive data, and Check Ten. Check Ten." "Acknowledge!" snapped Jim, dropping his own slow computing. He keyed for data, saw the data light flash and knew he had received into his computing center the informa- tion for the jump back to Earth. "Hang on Lela!" he shouted. "Here we go- He punched for jump. Disorientation. Nausea. ..... Peace. AndFriend lay without moving under the landing lights of a doncrete pad in the open, under the nighttime sky and the stars Earth. The daylight hours had passed while Wander Section had been gone. Next to And~~~nend lay the dark, torn shape of La Chasse Gallerie, and beyond the ancient ship lay Lela. A hundred light-years away the Frontier battle would still be raging. laaagi and men were out there dying, and they would go on dying until the laaagi realized that Wander Section had finally made good its escape. Then the Laagi ships would withdraw from an assault against a Frontier line that well over a hundred years of fighting had taught was permanently un breachable by either side. But how many, thought Jim with a dry and bitter soul, would die before the withdrawal was made? He punched the button to open the port of AndFriend and got clumsily to his feet in the bulky suit. During the hours just past, he had forgotten he was wearing it. Now, it was like being swaddled in a mattress. He was as thoroughly soaked with sweat as if he had been in swimming with his clothes on. There was no sound coming from La Chasse Gallerie. Had the voice of Raoul Penard finally been silenced? Sodden with weariness, Jim could not surnmon up the energy even to wonder about it. He turned clumsily around and stumbled back tirrough the ship four steps and out the open port, vaguely hearing Mary Gallegher rising and following behind him. He stumped heavy-footed across the concrete toward the lights of the Receiving Section, lifting like an ocean liner out of a sea of night. It seemed to him that he was a long titne reaching the door of the Section, but he kept on stolidly, and at last he passed through and into a desuiting room. Then attendants were helping him off with his suit. In a sort of dream he stripped off his soaked clothing and showered, and put on a fresh jumper suit. The cloth felt strange and harsh against his arms and legs as if his body, as well as what was inside him, had been rubbed raw by what he had just been through. He walked heavily on into the debrief- ing room, and dropped heavily into one of the lounge chai,rs. A debriefing officer came up to him and sat down in a chair opposite, turning on the little black recorder pickup he wore at his belt. The debriefing officer began asking questions in the safe, quiet monotone that had been found least likely to trigger off ernotional outbursts in the returned pilots. Jim an- swered slowly, too drained for emotion. "... No," he said at last. "I didn't see SwatIow again. She didn't acknowledge when I called for Formation B, and I had to go on without her. No, she never answered after we reached the Frontier." "Thank you, Major." The debriefing officer got to his feet, clicking off his recorder pickup, and went off. An enlisted man came around with a tray of glasses half-filled with brown whisky. He offered it first to the pilot and the gunner of the Lela, who were standing together on the other side of the room with a debriefing officer. The two men took their glasses absentmindedly and drank from them without reaction, as if the straight liquor was water. The enlisted man brought his tray over to where Jim sat. Jim shook his head. The enlisted man hesitated. "You're supposed to drink it, sir," he said. "Surgeon's orders." Jim shook his head again. The enlisted man went away. A moment later he came back followed by a major with the caduceus of the Medical Corps on his jacket lapel. "Here, Major," he said to Jim, taking a glass from the tray and holding it out to Jim. "Down the hatch." Jim shook his head, rolling the back of it against the top of the chair he sat in. "It's no good," he said. "It doesn't do any good." The Medical Corps major put the glass back on the tray and leaned forward. He put his thumb gently under Jim's right eye and lifted the lid with his forefinger. He looked for a second, then let go and turned to the enlisted man. "That's all right," he said. "You can go on." The enlisted man took his tray of glasses away. The doctor reached into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket and took out a small silver tube with a button on its side. He rolled up Jim's right sleeve, put the end of the tube against it and pressed the button. Jim felt what seemed like a cooling spray against the sliin of his arm. And something woke in him after all. "What're you doing?" he shouted, struggling to his feet. "You can't knock me out now! I've got two ships not in yet. The Fair Maid and the Swallow-" The room began to tilt around him. "You can't-" His tongue thickened into unintel- ligibility. The room swung grandly around him and he felt the medical major's arms catching him. And unconsciousness closed upon him like a trap of darkness. He slept, evidently for a long time, and when he woke he was not in the bed of his own quarters but in the bed of a hospital room. Nor did they let him leave it for the better part of a week. He had had time, lying there in the peaceful, un- eventful hospital bed, to come to an understanding with him- self. When he got out he went looking for Mary Gallegher. He located the geriatrics woman finally on the secret site where La Chasse Gallerie was being probed and examined by the Geriatrics Bureau. Mary was at work with the crew that was doing this, and for some little time word could not be gotten to her; and without her authorization, Jim could not be let in to see her. Jim waited patiently in a shiny, unlit lounge until a young man came to guide him into the interior of a vast building where La Chasse Gallerie lay dwarfed by her surroundings and surrounded by complicated items of equipment. It was apparently a break peflod for most of the people working on the old ship, for only one or two figures were to be seen doing things with this equipment outside the ship. The young man shouted in through the open port of La Chasse Galierie, and left. Mary came out and shook hands with Jim. There were dark circles under Mary's eyes and she seemed thinner under the loose shirt and slacks she wore. "Sorry to hear about Swallow," she said. "Yes," said Jim, a little bleakly. "They think she must have drifted back faitner into Laagi territoty. The unmanned probes couldn't locate her, and the Laagi may have taken her in." Mary looked steadily at him. "That's what chews on you, isn't it?"~she said. "Not know- ing if her pilot and gunner were dead or not. If they were, then there's nothing to think about. But if they weren't... we never know what becomes of them-" He shook his head at her in a silent plea and she broke off. "Fair Maid made it in, safely," he said hoarsely. "Anyway, it wasn't about the Section I came to see you. "No." Mary looked at him with a gentleness he had not seen in her before. "It was about Raoul Penard you came, wasn't it?" "I couldn't find out anything. Is it-is he alive?" "Yes," said Mary. "He's alive." "Can you get through to him?-What came to me," said Jim quickly, "while I was resting up in the hospital, was that I finally began to understand the reason behind all his poetry- quoting, and such. It struck me he must have started all that deliberately. To remind himself of where he was trying to get back to. To make it sharp and clear in his mind so he couldn't forget it." "Yes," said Mary nodding. "You're right. He wanted insur- ance against quitting, against giving up." "I thought so. You were right." Jim grinned with a slight grimness at her. '~I'd been trying to quit myself. Gr find some- thing that could quit me. You were right all the way down the line. I'm a dragon-slayer. I was born that way, I'm stuck with it and I can't change it. I want to go through the Laagi, or around them and end this damn murderous stalemate. But I can't live long enough. None of us can. And so I wanted to give up." "And you don't now?" "No," said Jim slowly. "It's still no use, but I'm going to keep hoping-for a miracle." "Miracles are a matter of time," said Mary. "To make yourself a millionaire in two minutes is just about impossible. To make it in two hundred years is practically a certainty. That's what people like me are after. If we could all live as long as Penard, all sorts of things could be possible." "And he's alive!" said Jim, shaking his head slowly. "He's really alive! I didn't even want to believe it, it was so far- fetched." Jim broke off. "Is he-" "Sane? No," said Maiy. "And I don't think we'll ever be able to make him so. But maybe I'm wrong. As I say, with time, most near-impossibilities become practicabilities." She stepped back from me open port of La Chasse Gallerie, and gestured to the interior. "Want to come in?" Jim hesitated. "I don't have a Secret clearance for this project-" he began. "Don't worry about it," interrupted Mary. "That's just to keep the news people off our necks until we decide how to handle this. Come on." She led the way inside. Jim followed her. Within, the an- cient metal corridor leading to the pilot's compartment seemed swept clean and dusted shiny, like some exhibit in a museum. The interior had been hung with magnetic lights, but the gaps and tears made by Laagi weapons let almost as much light in. pilot's compartment was a shambles that had been tidied and cleaned. The instruments and control panel were all but obliterated and the pilot's com-chair half gone. A black box stood in the center of the floor, an incongruous piece of mod- ern equipment, connected by a thick, gray cable to a bulkliead behind it. "I wasn't wrong, then," said Jim, looking around him. "No human body could have lived through this. It was the semian- imate control center that was running the ship as Penard's alter ego, then, wasn't it? The man isn't really alive?" "Yes," said Mary, "and no. You were right about the con- trol center somehow absorbing the living personality of Pen- ard. -But look again. Could a control center like that, centered in living tissue floating and growing in a nutrient solution with no human hands to care for it-could something like that have survived this, either?" Jim looked around at the slashed and rained interior. A coldness crept into him and he thought once more of the leg- end of a great ghost cargo canoe sailing through the snow- filled skies with its dead crew, home to the New Year's feast of the living. "No..." he said slowly, through stiff lips. "Then... where is he?" "Here!" said Mary, reaching out with her fist to strike the metal bulllhead to which me gray cable was attached. The dull boom of the struck metal reverberated in Jim's ears. Mary' looked penetratingly at Jim. "You were right," said Mary', "when you said that the con- trol center had become Penard-that it was Penard, after the man died. Not just a record full of memories, but something holding the vital, decision-making spark of the living man himself. -But that was only half the miracle. Because the tissue living in the heart of the control center had to die, too, and just as the original Penard knew he would die, long before he could get home, the tissue Penard knew it, too. But their determination, Penard's determination, to do something, solved the problem." She stopped and stood staring at Jim, as if waiting for some sign that she had been understood. "Go on," said Jim. "The control system," said Mary', "was connected to the controls of the ship itself through an intermediate solid state element which was the grandfather of the wholly inanimate solid-state computing centers in the ships you drive nowadays. The link was from living tissue through the area of solid-state physics to gross electronic and mechanical controls." "I know that," said Jim. "Part of our training-" "The living spark of Raoul Penard, driven by his absolute determination to get home, passed from him into the living tissue of the semianimate controls system," went on Mary, as if Jim had not spoken. "From there it bridged the gap by a sort of neurobiotaxis into the flow of impulse taking place in the solid-state elements Once there, below all gross levels, there was nothing to stop it infusing every connected solid part of the ship." Mary' swept her hand around the ruined pilot's compart- ment. "This," she said, "is Raoul Penard. And this!" Or~ce more she struck the bulkhead above the black box. "The human body died. The tissue activating the control center died. But Raoul came home just as he had been determined to do!" Mary' stopped talking. Her voice seemed to echo away into the silence of the compariment. "And doing it," said Mary' more quiedy, "he brought home the key we've been hunting for in the Bureau all this time. We pulled the plug on a dam behind which there's been piling up a flood of theory and research. What we needed to know was that the living human essence could exist independently of the normal human biochemical machinery. Now, we know it. It'll take time, but someday it won't he necessary for the vital element of anyone to admit extinction, unless whoever it is wants to." But Jim was only half-listening. Something else had oc- curred to him, something so poignant it contracted his throat painfully. "Does he know?" Jim asked. "You said he's insane. But does he know he finally got here? Does he know he made it home?" "Yes," said Mary. "We're sure he does. Listen..." She turned a little away from Jim and spoke out loud, as if Raoul was right around a corner, hiding there in the ship's interior. "Raoul?" she said. And softly the voice of Raoul Penard spoke from the ship's hull all around them, as if the man was talking to him- self. But it was a quieter, happier talking to himself than Jim had heard before. Raoul was quoting one of the poems of William Henry Drummond again. But this time it was a poem entirely in English and there was no trace of accent in the words at .1.... 0, Spirit of the mountain that speals to us to-night, Your voice is sad, yet still recalls past visions of delight, When 'mid the grand old Laurentides, old when the Earth was new, With flying feet we followed the moose and caribou. And backward rush sweet memories, like fragments ~a dream, We hear the dip of paddles... Raoul's voice went on, almost whispering, contentedly to itself. Jim looked up from listening, and saw Mary's eyes fixed on him with a strange, hard look he had not seen before. "You didn't seem to follow me, just now," said Mary'. "You didn't seem to understand what I meant. You're one of our most valuable lives, the true white knight that all of us dream of heing at one time or another, but only one in billions actu- ally succeeds in being born to be." Jim stared back at her. "I told you," he said, "I can't help it." "That's not what I'm talking about," said Mary. "You wanted to go out and fight the dragons, but life was too short. But what about now?" "Now?" echoed Jim, staring at her. "You mean-me?" "Yes," said Mary. Her face was strange and intense, and her voice seemed to float on the soft river of words flowing from the black box. "I mean you. What are you going to be doing, a thousand years from today?"