CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TOLL CALL FROM THE VOID

Alone in the control room, Pete and Jane faced each other with seriousness but without panic.

“I guess we both know what happened,” Pete said.

“Tell me what you think happened,” Jane replied.

He shrugged. “One thing is dead certain. We’re far out in space—farther than anyone in the System ever dreamed of going. We’re far beyond the perimeter where our most advanced science, even theoretical, could possibly take us.”

“So there is only one way we could have gotten here,” Jane cut in. “Isn’t that right?”

“Right. We know only the theory.”

“The theory?”

“Yes. To exceed the speed of light, which is practically crawling so far as infinite distances are concerned, time and space must be blended or merged into one—become the same thing. That way, the limitations of both are negated. Expressing it another way, to travel infinite distances, space must be bent so that the place we leave and the place we are to arrive at become one and the same. In such a theoretical process the trip would be made in a far shorter time than instantly—in fact, in no time at all because from our point of view there would be no place to go. We would already be there before we started.”

“You’re making me dizzy.”

“Welcome to the club,” Pete said dryly, and went on. “What’s happened to us, whether we like it or not, corresponds to the practical application of a wild theory. But it happened. We’re out here. So we’ve got to assume that the people who built this ship successfully supplied the principle I outlined.”

All fear had vanished from Jane’s expression. Her eyes were bright with interest in the new problem.

“I’ll bet,” she said, “that I hooked those wires up wrong.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“Then the thing to do is to change the wiring.”

“Of course. It might pay to be a little careful, though.”

“I’m always careful!”

“Of course, but keep in mind that we’re not so bad off at the moment, comparatively speaking. We’re only a few hundred million light-years away from our own galaxy. Make the wrong connection, and we might land out where time and space start bending back.”

“Is there such a place?”

“I’m not sure, and I hope we never find out.” Jane had already pulled the switch that lifted the cap off the brain. Pete said, “One thing first. Before you start tinkering, do you think we could find a radio on this tub? They must have had a way of talking to the folks back home.”

“I already found that. Or at least I think it’s a radio.”

Jane pulled another switch that opened a section of the wall. “The brain can open this panel itself when it wants to send signals. At least it could when it was healthy. Don’t ask me who it talks to, though.”

Pete studied the mechanism that was revealed. “There are no manuals here—no way to tune by hand. There must be a manual radio somewhere.”

“Why must there be?”

“Because that panel up front is for visual operation. The cybernetic unit wouldn’t need dials. So the ship is obviously equipped for manual operation; maybe for emergencies or short hauls.”

“It’s a thought,” Jane said pensively.

A few minutes later she found the unit behind another panel. Pete’s eyes lit up. “Now we’ve found something a mere human can understand.” He took a position in front of the installation.

“They could have given you a chair,” Jane said.

“Maybe they weren’t built to sit down. Be quiet now. I have to listen.”

“Are you going to call your father?”

“Not yet. I’ve got another call to make first.” He began experimenting with the dials. “Now if these people only paid their radiophone bill…”

It took quite a while, many disappointments, and a lot of doubts before a faint, questioning voice came out of the void.

“Who are you? Identify yourself.”

“A satellite station in the System,” Pete murmured in awe. Then he raised his voice. He gave the operator his Belt call letters and then said, “I’m in a salvaged ship somewhere out in far space—”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tell him you don’t, either,” Jane whispered.

“Shut up. Not you, sir. I’m trying to get in touch with a party on Mars—Doctor LeRoy, the Dean of the New Portland Mining College in New Portland on Mars. I don’t know the call letters.”

“I’ll connect you with information,” the voice replied.

“This is ridiculous,” Jane said.

“No!” Pete called. “This is an emergency. I’m pretty far out and I can’t risk losing you. Check the letters and put us through—please!”

There was silence, then some static. Then the voice of Doctor LeRoy, by the miracle of someone’s science, still identifiable across X number of light-years.

“Peter? Peter Mason? Why, how are you, son? How are things going?”

“Rather exciting, sir. I’ve got something to tell you and I hope you won’t think I’ve gone mad, because I haven’t. I can’t explain it because there isn’t time. I might lose this connection at any moment. So please just believe me and wait for explanations if we ever meet again.”

“All right, Peter. I’ll believe you,” LeRoy answered mildly.

“I’m on a strange ship, a derelict. It’s run by a cybernetic brain and I think it’s the answer to Barco Village.”

“I see.”

“There are a lot of dead people aboard. I think Barco Village was an experimental pioneering station for a race of people who were much farther advanced thousands of years ago than we are even now.”

There was no excitement in Doctor LeRoy’s voice when he replied. No unbelief, either. He could have been brightly interested in Pete’s solution of a reasonably difficult problem.

“These bodies you found, Peter—were they…?”

“Definitely two races, also, men, women, and children,” Peter said exultantly. “They fit the indications of the artifacts perfectly.”

“Then I think you’ve hit on something. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s my theory that the race we’re talking about gave up the station after giving it ample time to prove out. For some reason, anyhow, they decided to leave Mars and sent this ship after the colonists. They loaded the balance of their supplies and themselves on the ship and took off. On the way back to wherever it was taking them, it crashed into an asteroid and ended up in the Badlands in the Asteroid Belt. That was where we found it.”

“Wonderful,” Doctor LeRoy enthused. “Now we’ll have actual specimens of the Barco Village races.”

“We’ll have more than that if we can get back, Doctor. There’s something funny about this ship. We tried to fix the cybernetic brain that controls it and made a mistake. The ship didn’t even move, but we’re millions of light-years out in space right now.”

There was the silence of consternation. Then, “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be from what I know about star patterns. And I’m pretty good at them.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

Pete remembered something. “The last time I saw you, sir, you told me you had a theory on how the Village came to be. Does the discovery of the ship prove or disprove it?”

“I think examination of the bodies will tend to disprove it. I had an idea that Barco Village might have been a prison colony for one of the Outer Planets. It occurred to me that testing the possibilities of colonization and using prisoners as test pieces so to speak, might have gone together. That might have accounted for the primitive conditions we found—primitive that is, when balanced against the sort of colony an advanced civilization might have set up.”

“Finding the ship exploded another idea we had,” Pete said. “That the civilization collapsed and wasn’t able to send for its colonists.”

“That’s true.”

“And as to your prison theory, I suppose the presence of women and children does hurt it.”

“Another idea I had—that the second, smaller race constituted slaves and servants doesn’t speak well for an enlightened civilization.”

“Maybe they were just testing the staying power of two different races on their planet.”

“That could be. We’ll learn more about that later, after checking into the new data. Another interesting field of investigation is open to us now, also. Instantaneous transportation looks pretty obvious. This, you’ve definitely proven. Yet the ship hit something out in space while apparently on the way home.”

“It would seem to me, sir,” Pete said, “that whatever happened to fault the home voyage had to happen at the moment of takeoff from the Village. The trip was started or the ship would have remained on Mars. But it was never finished. Therefore, the telescoping of the distance between the planets can obviously be reversed in a microsecond. That microsecond put the ship out in space where it later collided with an asteroid. It must have drifted helplessly, with all on board dead, before that happened.”

The intense scientific interest of both Pete and LeRoy, had created a bizarre situation—a calm discussion under the most perilous of circumstances.

This thought hit LeRoy starkly. “Pete! You said you were millions of light-years out in space! And I sit here chattering as though—”

“I sort of forgot the situation for a minute myself, sir.”

“Something must be done! I’ll have to find a specialist to put you in touch with. Someone here on Mars—or on Earth—Someone who can advise you—”

Pete started to reply. Then, strangely, he smiled as he turned to look at Jane. There was pride in his eyes, and maybe something more as he said, “No thanks, Doctor. I’ll ride with the adviser I’ve got right here on the ship.”

Static cut in sharply, crackling across the voice. Pete waited for a few moments and then turned from the panel. Jane was regarding him with a slanted gaze.

“Did you mean that?”

He grinned. “Don’t get any ideas. I was referring to Colleen.”

“If I could pick this thing up I’d hit you with it.”

“Just try fixing it. Now I’m going to try and get in touch with my Dad.”

Jane’s lips trembled just slightly. “I wish you’d tell me something.”

“What?”

“Where are they going to send the bill for that radiophone call you just made to Mars?”