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Chapter 8

"The Survey Service looks after its own," said Grimes.

"Then it's high time that it started doing so," she said.

"You can't organize a Search and Rescue Operation in five minutes," he told her.

"All right, all right. We can't expect any help from Skink, We've already agreed on that. But Frankie will have informed Base of the destruction of the derelict. In the unlikely event of Skink's having been destroyed herself—you said that she was well out of effective range of the explosion—Base will have been wondering why no reports have been coming in from anybody. And how long have we been here now? Over three weeks."

"If the Carlotti transceiver hadn't been smashed . . ." he began. "And the mini-Mannschenn . . . ."

"The Normal Space Time transceiver is working—you say, and we hope. Surely by now there'd be somebody in this vicinity, sniffing around for wreckage—and not, therefore, running under interstellar drive. Even I know that. How many days did it take from Lindisfarne Base to the interception?"

"Twenty."

"And this is our twenty-third day in this tin coffin. For most of the time we've maintained a continuous listening watch as well as putting out distress calls at regular intervals. I suppose somebody might just pick them up a few years from now."

"Space is vast," said Grimes.

"You're telling me, Buster! But surely Delamere was able to give accurate coordinates for the position of the derelict when we boarded her—when we tried to board her, rather—even if he didn't want to risk his own precious hide investigating . . . ."

"We've been over all this before," said Grimes.

"Then we'll go over it again, lover boy."

"Nobody survives a nuclear explosion at Position Zero, as we were," said Grimes.

"Are you trying to suggest that we're dead and in some sort of spaceman's heaven? Ha, ha. It certainly ain't no policewoman's paradise!"

Grimes ignored this. In any case, the double negative made her meaning unclear (he told himself). He went on, "And Delamere had his schedule to maintain . . . ." Even so, Delamere must have reported the destruction of Delta Geminorum to Base. And Base must have dispatched a properly equipped vessel to the scene of the disaster to gather whatever evidence, no matter how little, remained, even though it was only radioactive dust and gases.

But why had the boat, and its occupants, not been reduced to that condition?

She broke into his thoughts, remarking, "As I've said before, I'm not a spaceman."

He looked across the table at her spectacular superstructure. "Insofar as gender is concerned, how very right you are!"

She pointedly ignored this. "I'm not a spaceman, but I do remember some of the things that you people have condescended to tell me, from time to time, about the art and science of astronautics. More than once people have nattered to me about the peculiar consequences of changing the mass of a ship while the Mannschenn Drive is in operation."

"Old spacemen's tales!" scoffed Grimes.

"Really? Then how is it that in every ship that I've traveled in people have regarded that cock-eyed assemblage of precessing gyroscopes with superstitious awe? You're all scared of it. And what about the odd effects when the Drive is started, and the temporal precession field builds up, not when it's stopped, and the field fades? The feeling of déjà vu . . . The flashes of precognition . . ." She started to laugh. "What's so funny?"

"I had a real beaut aboard Skink. I saw you out of uniform. When I saw you for the first time out of uniform, in actuality, it was in this boat. But I'd already seen that scar you have on your right thigh. But that isn't the funny part. In my . . . vision you were not only naked, but riding a bicycle . . ."

"Very funny. As a matter of fact I saw you the same way. But bicycles are one article of equipment that this boat doesn't run to."

"All right. Let's forget the bicycles. Maybe someday we'll enjoy a holiday on Arcadia together. I suppose the Arcadians ride bicycles as well as practicing naturalism. But Delta Geminorum . . . . She was running under interstellar drive when she blew up. So were we, maintaining temporal synchronization with her."

"Go on."

"I'm only a glorified cop, John, but it's obvious, even to me, that a few thousand tons of mass were suddenly converted into energy in our immediate vicinity. So, Mr. Lieutenant Commander Grimes, where are we?"

Grimes was beginning to feel badly scared. "Or when . . . ?" he muttered.

"What the hell do you mean?"

He said, "Brace yourself for yet another lecture on the Mannschenn Drive. The Mannschenn Drive warps the Continuum—the space-time continuum—about the ship that's using it. Putting it very crudely, such a ship is going astern in time while going ahead in space . . . ."

"So . . . . So we could be anywhere. Or anywhen. But you're a navigator. You should be able to find out something from the relative positions of the stars."

"Not so easy," he told her. "The Carlotti transceiver, which can be used for position finding as well as communicating, is bust. We do carry, of course, a Catalogue of Carlotti Beacons—but in these circumstances it's quite useless."

"Especially so," she pointed out, "when we don't even know if there are any Carlotti Beacons in this space-time. So, lover boy, what are you doing about it?"

Grimes' prominent ears flushed angrily. She was being unfair. She shared the responsibility for getting them into this mess. She, the bomb-disposal expert, should have warned him of the possible consequences of using a Carlotti transmitter in close proximity to the derelict. He rose from the table haughtily. It was no hardship for him to leave his unfinished meal. He stalked, insofar as this was possible when wearing only magnetic sandals in Free Fall, to the forward end of the boat. He stared out through the control cabin viewports at the interstellar immensities. There was no star that he could identify, no constellation. Had he been made a welcome visitor in Skink's control room he would have known how the stars should look in this sector of Space. As it was . . . . He shrugged. All that he could be sure of was that they were in a universe, not necessarily the universe. At least the boat hadn't fallen down some dark crack in the continuum.

He turned away from the port, looked aft. He saw that Una Freeman had taken the broken, battered Carlotti transceiver from the locker in which it had been stowed, was picking up and looking at the pieces intently. Nude with Moebius Strip, he thought sardonically.

She waved the twisted antenna at him. "Are you sure you can't do anything with this lot?" she demanded.

"Quite sure. I'm not a radio technician."

"Then you can't be sure that it is a complete write-off." Her wide, fun mouth was capable of quite spectacular sneering. "Get the lead out of your pants, lover boy—not that you're wearing any. You've been having a marvelous holiday for the last three weeks; it's high time that you started work again."

"Mphm?"

"I thought, in my girlish innocence . . . ."

"Ha, ha."

She glared at him. "I thought, in my girlish innocence that all you spacefaring types were men of infinite resource and sagacity, able to make repairs, light years from the nearest yard, with chewing gum and old string. I'd like to see some proof of it."

He said, "I might be able to straighten out the antenna and get it remounted. But the printed circuits are a mess."

She said, "There're soldering irons in the workshop."

"I know. But have you had a good look at those trays?"

"Of course. Trays of circuitry. Since simple soldering seems to be beyond your capabilities . . . ."

"And yours."

"I'm not the skilled, trained, qualified spaceman, lover boy. You are. But let me finish. As a Sky Marshal I had to do quite a few courses on general spacemanship, including Deep Space communications. One of the things I learned was that quite a few circuit trays are interchangeable between NST and Carlotti transceivers. Since it's obvious now that we shall not be needing the NST transceiver—we cannibalize. After that's been done, lover boy, all we have to do is home on the Lindisfarne Beacon."

"And how many years will it take us?" he asked sarcastically.

"Oh, I forgot. After you've fixed the Carlotti set you fix the mini-Mannschenn."

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