Time for the Stars Read online

  “But it has to. The laws of physics—”

  “Oh, dear! Have we given you the impression that telepathy is physical?” She twisted her hands. “It probably isn’t.”

  “Everything is physical. I include ‘physiological,’ of course.”

  “It is? You do? Oh, I wish I could be sure…but physics has always been much too deep for me. But I don’t know how you can be sure that telepathy is physical; we haven’t been able to make it register on any instrument. Dear me, we don’t even know how consciousness hooks into matter. Is consciousness physical? I’m sure I don’t know. But we do know that telepathy is faster than light because we measured it.”

  Pat sat up with a jerk, “Stick around, kid. I think we’ll stay for the second show.”

  Graham looked stunned. Dr. Mabel said hastily, “I didn’t do it; it was Dr. Abernathy.”

  “Horatio Abernathy?” demanded Graham.

  “Yes, that’s his first name, though I never dared call him by it. He’s rather important.”

  “Just the Nobel prize,” Graham said grimly, “in field theory. Go on. What did he find?”

  “Well, we sent this one twin out to Ganymede—such an awfully long way. Then we used simultaneous radio-telephony and telepathy messages, with the twin on Ganymede talking by radio while he was talking directly—telepathically, I mean—to his twin back in Buenos Aires. The telepathic message always beat the radio message by about forty minutes. That would be right, wouldn’t it? You can see the exact figures in my office.”

  Graham managed to close his month. “When did this happen? Why hasn’t it been published? Who has been keeping it secret? It’s the most important thing since the Michelson-Morley experiment—it’s terrible!”

  Dr. Mabel looked upset and Mr. Howard butted in soothingly. “Nobody has been suppressing knowledge, Mr. Graham, and Dr. Abernathy is preparing an article for publication in the Physical Review. However I admit that the Foundation did ask him not to give out an advance release in order to give us time to go ahead with another project—the one you know as ‘Genetics Investigations’—on a crash-priority basis. We felt we were entitled to search out and attempt to sign up potential telepathic teams before every psychological laboratory and, for that matter, every ambitious showman, tried to beat us to it. Dr. Abernathy was willing—he doesn’t like premature publication.”

  “If it will make you feel better, Mr. Graham,” Dr. Mabel said diffidently, “telepathy doesn’t pay attention to the inverse-square law either. The signal strength was as strong at half a billion miles as when the paired telepaths were in adjoining rooms.”

  Graham sat down heavily. “I don’t know whether it does or it doesn’t. I’m busy rearranging everything I have ever believed.”

  The interruption by the Graham brothers had explained some things but had pulled us away from the purpose of the meeting, which was for Mr. Howard to sell us on signing up as spacemen. He did not have to sell me. I guess every boy wants to go out into space; Pat and I had run away from home once to enlist in the High Marines—and this was much more than just getting on the Earth-Mars-Venus run; this meant exploring the stars.

  The Stars!

  “We’ve told you about this before your research contracts run out,” Mr. Howard explained, “so that you will have time to consider it, time for us to explain the conditions and advantages.”

  I did not care what the advantages were. If they had invited me to hook a sled on behind, I would have said yes, not worrying about torch blast or space suits or anything.

  “Both members of each telepathic team will be equally well taken care of,” he assured us. “The starside member will have good pay and good working conditions in the finest of modern torchships in the company of crews selected for psychological compatibility as well as for special training; the earthside member will have his financial future assured, as well as his physical welfare.” He smiled. “Most assuredly his physical welfare, for it is necessary that he be kept alive and well as long as science can keep him so. It is not too much to say that signing this contract will add thirty years to your lives.”

  It burst on me why the twins they had tested had been young people. The twin who went out to the stars would not age very much, not at the speed of light. Even if he stayed away a century it would not seem that long to him—but his twin who stayed behind would grow older. They would have to pamper him like royalty, keep him alive—or their “radio” would break down.

  Pat said, “Milky Way, here I come!”

  But Mr. Howard was still talking. “We want you to think this over carefully; it is the most important decision you will ever make. On the shoulders of you few and others like you in other cities around the globe, all told just a tiny fraction of one per cent of the human race, on you precious few rest the hopes of all humanity. So think carefully and give us a chance to explain anything which may trouble you. Don’t act hastily.”

  The red-headed twins got up and walked out, noses in the air. They did not have to speak to make it clear that they would have nothing to do with anything so unladylike, so rude and crude, as exploring space. In the silence in which they paraded out Pat said to me, “There go the Pioneer Mothers. That’s the spirit that discovered America.” As they passed us he cut loose with a loud razzberry—and I suddenly realized that he was not telepathing when the redheads stiffened and hurried faster. There was an embarrassed laugh and Mr. Howard quickly picked up the business at hand as if nothing had happened while I bawled Pat out.

  Mr. Howard asked us to come back at the usual time tomorrow, when Foundation representatives would explain details. He invited us to bring our lawyers, or (those of us who were under age, which was more than half) our parents and their lawyers.

  Pat was bubbling over as we left, but I had lost my enthusiasm. In the middle of Mr. Howard’s speech I had had a great light dawn: one of us was going to have to stay behind and I knew as certainly as bread falls butter side down which one it would be. A possible thirty more years on my life was no inducement to me. What use is thirty extra years wrapped in cottonwool? There would be no spacing for the twin left behind, not even inside the Solar System…and I had never even been to the Moon.

  I tried to butt in on Pat’s enthusiasm and put it to him fair and square, for I was darned if I was going to take the small piece of cake this time without argument.

  “Look, Pat, I’ll draw straws with you for it. Or match coins.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about!”

  He just brushed it aside and grinned. “You worry too much, Tom. They’ll pick the teams the way they want to. It won’t be up to us.”

  I know he was determined to go and I knew I would lose.

  CHAPTER IV

  HALF A LOAF

  Our parents made the predictable uproar. A conference in the Bartlett family always sounded like a zoo at feeding time but this one set a new high. In addition to Pat and myself, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and our parents, there was Faith’s fairly new husband, Frank Dubois, and Hope’s brand-new fiancé, Lothar Sembrich. The last two did not count and both of them seemed to me to be examples of what lengths a girl will go to in order to get married, but they used up space and occasionally contributed remarks to confuse the issue. But Mother’s brother, Uncle Steve, was there, too, having popped up on Earthside furlough.

  It was Uncle Steve’s presence that decided Pat to bring it out in the open instead of waiting to tackle Dad and Mum one at a time. Both of them considered Uncle Steve a disturbing influence but they were proud of him; one of his rare visits was always a holiday.

  Mr. Howard had given us a sample contract to take home and look over. After dinner Pat said, “By the way, Dad, the Foundation offered us a new contract today, a long-term one.” He took it out of his pocket but did not offer it to Dad.

  “I trust you told them that you were about to start school again?”

  “Sure, we told them that, but th
ey insisted that we take the contract home to show our parents. Okay, we knew what your answer would be.” Pat started to put the contract into his pocket.

  I said to Pat privately, (“What’s the silly idea? You’ve made him say ‘no’ and now he can’t back down.”)

  “Not yet he hasn’t,” Pat answered on our private circuit. “Don’t joggle my elbow.”

  Dad was already reaching out a hand. “Let me see it, You should never make up your mind without knowing the facts.”

  Pat was not quick about passing it over. “Well, there is a scholarship clause,” he admitted, “but Tom and I wouldn’t be able to go to school together the way we always have.”

  “That’s not necessarily bad. You two are too dependent on each other. Some day you will have to face the cold, cruel world alone…and going to different schools might be a good place to start.”

  Pat stuck out the contract, folded to the second page, “It’s paragraph ten.”

  Dad read paragraph ten first, just as Pat meant him to do, and his eyebrows went up. Paragraph ten agreed that the party of the first part, the LRF, would keep the party of the second part in any school of his choice, all expenses, for the duration of the contract, or a shorter time at his option, and agreed to do the same for the party of the third part after the completion of the active period of the contract, plus tutoring during the active period—all of which was a long-winded way of saying that the Foundation would put the one who stayed home through school now and the one who went starside through school when he got back…all this in addition to our salaries; see paragraph seven.

  So Dad turned to paragraph seven and his eyebrows went higher and his pipe went out. He looked at Pat. “Do I understand that they intend to appoint you two ‘communications technicians tenth grade’ with no experience?”

  Uncle Steve sat up and almost knocked his chair over. “Bruce, did you say ‘tenth grade’?”

  “So it says.”

  “Regular LRF pay scales?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how much that is, but I believe they ordinarily hire skilled ratings beginning at third grade.”

  Uncle Steve whistled. “I’d hate to tell you how much money it is, Bruce—but the chief electron pusher on Pluto is tenth pay grade…and it took him twenty years and a doctor’s degree to get there.” Uncle Steve looked at us. “Give out, shipmates. Where did they bury the body? Is it a bribe?” Pat did not answer. Uncle Steve turned to Dad and said, “Never mind the fine print, Bruce; just have the kids sign it. Each one of them will make more than you and me together. Never argue with Santa Claus.”

  But Dad was already reading the fine print, from sub-paragraph one-A to the penalty clauses. It was written in lawyer language but what it did was to sign us up as crew members for one voyage of an LRF ship, except that one of us was required to perform his duties Earthside. There was lots more to nail it down so that the one who stayed Earthside could not wiggle out, but that was all it amounted to.

  The contact did not say where the ship would go or how long the voyage would last.

  Dad finally put the contract down and Charity grabbed it. Dad took it from her and passed it over to Mother. Then he said, “Boys, this contract looks so favorable that I suspect there must be a catch. Tomorrow morning I’m going to get hold of Judge Holland and ask him to go over it with me. But if I read it correctly, you are being offered all these benefits—and an extravagant salary—provided one of you makes one voyage in the Lewis and Clark.”

  Uncle Steve said suddenly, “The Lewis and Clark, Bruce?”

  “The Lewis and Clark, or such sister ship as may be designated. Why? You know the ship, Steve?”

  Uncle Steve got poker-faced and answered, “I’ve never been in her. New ship, I understand. Well equipped.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Dad looked at Mum. “Well, Molly?”

  Mother did not answer. She was reading the contract and steadily getting whiter. Uncle Steve caught my eye and shook his head very slightly. I said to Pat, (“Uncle Steve has spotted the catch in it.”)

  “He won’t hinder.”

  Mother looked up at last and spoke to Dad in a high voice. “I suppose you are going to consent?” She sounded sick. She put down the contract and Charity grabbed it again just as Hope grabbed it from the other side. It ended with our brother-in-law Frank Dubois holding it while everybody else read over his shoulders.

  “Now, my dear,” Dad said mildly, “remember that boys do grow up. I would like to keep the family together forever—but it can’t be that way and you know it.”

  “Bruce, you promised that they would not go out into space.”

  Her brother shot her a glance—his chest was covered with ribbons he had won in space. But Dad went on just as mildly. “Not quite, dear. I promised you that I would not consent to minority enlistment in the peace forces; I want them to finish school and I did not want you upset. But this is another matter…and, if we refuse, it won’t be long before they can enlist whether we like it or not.”

  Mother turned to Uncle Steve and said bitterly, “Stephen, you put this idea in their heads.”

  He looked annoyed then answered as gently as Dad. “Take it easy, Sis. I’ve been away; you can’t pin this on me. Anyhow, you don’t put ideas in boys’ heads; they grow them naturally.”

  Frank Dubois cleared his throat and said loudly, “Since this seems to be a family conference, no doubt you would like my opinion.”

  I said, to Pat only, (“Nobody asked your opinion, you lard head!”)

  Pat answered, “Let him talk. He’s our secret weapon, maybe.”

  “If you want the considered judgment of an experienced businessman, this so-called contract is either a practical joke or a proposition so preposterous as to be treated with contempt. I understand that the twins are supposed to have some freak talent—although I’ve seen no evidence of it—but the idea of paying them more than a man receives in his mature years, well, it’s just not the right way to raise boys. If they were sons of mine, I would forbid it. Of course, they’re not—”

  “No, they’re not,” Dad agreed.

  Frank looked sharply at him. “Was that sarcasm, Father Bartlett? I’m merely trying to help. But as I told you the other day, if the twins will go to some good business school and work hard, I’d find a place for them in the bakery. If they make good, there is no reason why they should not do as well as I have done.” Frank was his father’s junior partner in an automated bakery; he always managed to let people know how much money he made. “But as for this notion of going out into space, I’ve always said that if a man expects to make anything of himself, he should stay home and work. Excuse me, Steve.”

  Uncle Steve said woodenly, “I’d be glad to excuse you.”

  “Eh?”

  “Forget it, forget it. You stay out of space and I’ll promise not to bake any bread. By the way, there’s flour on your lapel.”

  Frank glanced down hastily. Faith brushed at his jacket and said, “Why, that’s just powder.”

  “Of course it is,” Frank agreed, brushing at it himself. “I’ll have you know, Steve, that I’m usually much too busy to go down on the processing floor. I’m hardly ever out of the office.”

  “So I suspected.”

  Frank decided that he and Faith were late for another appointment and got up to go, when Dad stopped them. “Frank? What was that about my boys being freaks?”

  “What? I never said anything of the sort.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  They left in a sticky silence, except that Pat was humming silently and loudly the March of the Gladiators. “We’ve got it won, kid!”

  It seemed so to me, too—but Pat had to press our luck. He picked up the contract. “Then it’s okay, Dad?”

  “Mmm… I want to consult Judge Holland—and I’m not speaking for your mother.” That did not worry us; Mum wouldn’t hold out if Dad agreed, especially not with Uncle Steve around. “But you could say that the matter has not been
disapproved.” He frowned. “By the way, there is no time limit mentioned in there.”

  Uncle Steve fielded that one for us; “That’s customary on a commercial ship, Bruce…which is what this is, legally. You sign on for the voyage, home planet to home planet.”

  “Uh, no doubt. But didn’t they give you some idea, boys?”

  I heard Pat moan, “There goes the ball game. What’ll we tell him, Tom?” Dad waited and Uncle Steve eyed us.

  Finally Uncle Steve said, “Better speak up, boys. Perhaps I should have mentioned that I’m trying to get a billet on one of those ships myself—special discharge and such. So I know.”

  Pat muttered something. Dad said sharply, “Speak up, son.”

  “They told us the voyage would probably last…about a century.”

  Mum fainted and Uncle Steve caught her and everybody rushed around with cold compresses getting in each other’s way and we were all upset. Once she pulled out of it Uncle Steve said to Dad, “Bruce? I’m going to take the boys out and buy them a tall, strong sarsaparilla and get them out from under foot. You won’t want to talk tonight anyhow.”

  Dad agreed absently that it was a good idea. I guess Dad loved all of us; nevertheless, when the chips were down, nobody counted but Mother.

  Uncle Steve took us to a place where he could get something more to his taste than sarsaparilla, then vetoed it when Pat tried to order beer. “Don’t try to show off, youngster. You are not going to put me in the position of serving liquor to my sister’s kids.”

  “Beer can’t hurt you.”

  “So? I’m still looking for the bloke who told me it was a soft drink. I’m going to beat him to a pulp with a stein. Pipe down.” So we picked soft drinks and he drank some horrible mixture he called a Martian shandy and we talked about Project Lebensraum. He knew more about it than we did even though no press release had been made until that day—I suppose the fact that he had been assigned to the Chief of Staff’s office had something to do with it, but he did not say.