The spaceship shot up into the sky above the hospital. The rush to leave Earth’s orbit was so great that father and son found themselves clinging to each other on the floor beneath the sofa in the Earth side of the ship.
‘We should have been strapped in,’ gasped Vateelin, holding on tight to Tonitheen and pressing his elbows into the base of the ship in an earnest effort at least to stay in one place till the turbulence was over. ‘Not long,’ he breathed, ‘not long. A few seconds, that’s all.’
But a few seconds of that force can feel like an eternity. Tonitheen was still Earth child and terrified. He dug his fingers into Vateelin’s arms and clenched his eyes shut. Please God help us!
Then a calm came over the ship as it escaped the gravity of Earth. Vateelin and Tonitheen soon found that they were able to sit upright. This was no Earth spaceship. There was no question of floating about once the escape had been made. Each Ormingat ship had its own internal gravity: up was up and down was down.
They recovered enough to rise from the floor and sit on the sofa. The ship seemed very still.
‘We’ve stopped moving,’ said Tonitheen anxiously.
‘We haven’t,’ said his father. ‘We are still accelerating, but so smoothly you can’t feel it.’
Vateelin and Tonitheen, sitting side by side on the long sofa, did not look like parent and child. The slight, slim boy was dark-haired with eyes like jet. His father was fair and well built. Over the next three years, as they journeyed home, they would slowly regain their Ormingat features and the Earth genes would be gradually withdrawn. It was a process that had already begun.
‘You must be tired, Tonitheen ban. Now it is time for us to sleep.’
‘Nallytan, Vateelin mesht,’ said the boy drowsily, automatically using the only Ormingat phrase he really knew. So much had happened, and there had been no time to absorb it all. He curled up in one corner of the sofa.
The lights on the walls of the ship grew dim. Then father and son both slept.
They were awakened when the lights grew bright again, extra bright, and the communication cube glowed spectral green.
Awake, awake, awake! This is emergency. Leave now sleep.
Vateelin opened his eyes and yawned and stretched as if he had been asleep for a week, which is not surprising considering that he had in fact slept for a fortnight.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘What is it? It can’t be time to wake up yet. Otherwise I would feel more rested.’
Wake up, Vateelin. Wake up, Tonitheen. Information is required.
Tonitheen stared at the green cube and then tugged at his father’s sleeve. Vateelin was still wearing the shirt in which he had entered the ship. It was dry now and in the warmth of the ship he had long ceased to shiver.
The cube changed from green to yellow. It is necessary to discuss your clothing.
‘We needed to become part of the ship again before we could have the energy to refresh ourselves and change,’ said Vateelin. ‘You know how swift our departure was. We are still recovering.’
It is necessary to make understanding of your lack of coat.
It took Vateelin no more than a second to make sense of this. ‘I left my coat on the hospital bed,’ he said. ‘We of Ormingat have no wish to create difficulties for people on Earth. It was to indicate that my son had not been stolen from the hospital by some stranger.’
Sometimes difficulties are unavoidable. You may have betrayed us.
‘Besides,’ added Vateelin thoughtlessly, ‘I could not go allowing Stella to believe that harm had come to Thomas.’
The cube turned a deeper yellow and began to vibrate.
Say more about Stella. Say more about Stella Dalrymple.
That was a surprise. Of course, Vateelin knew he would have to explain that when he and his son were living on Earth in the village of Belthorp their next-door neighbour, Stella Dalrymple, had become their closest friend, a second mother to Tonitheen, whom she knew as Thomas. The journals Thomas had kept bore Stella’s name on nearly every page: these, in microform, would be passed on after they arrived in Ormingat. They had been Tonitheen’s work on Earth, written daily and conscientiously from the age of six.
Yet the machine already knew Stella’s surname without being told. Where had the information come from? What else did the machine know?
To question would do no good. Vateelin understood the ways of the communicator. So, wearily, he provided some answers.
‘Stella Dalrymple was our best friend on Earth for five whole years. She cared for us. She looked after Thomas. She is a widow with no children of her own.’
Tonitheen, moved by his father’s words, felt tears stinging his eyes. Leaving his beloved Stella had been very, very painful.
‘You are upsetting my son,’ said Vateelin sharply. ‘To leave the coat was surely a minor infringement.’
It is now essential that Ormingat children be removed. Children are danger.
Vateelin did not understand what the machine meant. Ormingat children? ‘My son has been removed from Earth. He is here with me now,’ he said.
There are on Earth two other children of Ormingat entwining. You have made clear the danger of their situation.
This was the first Vateelin had heard of the ‘other children’. He had thought that his son was the only Ormingatrig child ever to visit Earth.
‘Who are these children?’ he said. ‘I was told that my son was the youngest ever to leave Ormingat and come to Earth.’
No untruth was told. The other children, older than your child, were born on Earth and entwined with Ormingat by their parents. That is why Tonitheen was sent to Earth – to provide control. Now we know that children can betray.
Vateelin thought of the stories his son had told to Stella, of their flight to Earth in a spaceship the size of a golf ball, their diminishing to enter it and their increasing on leaving it. To allow the child to tell these stories had been a calculated risk.
‘No one ever believed him,’ Vateelin protested. ‘They simply thought that he had a vivid imagination. No one can accept as truth any story they believe to be completely impossible.’
The cube reverted to its original green.
Not every mind on Earth is completely closed.
‘What do you mean?’ said Vateelin impatiently.
Stella Dalrymple now believes that the stories your son told her are true. The coat you so carelessly left was matched with a torn strip found on the wheels of the vehicle that nearly killed you. This woman has clearly been able to put the facts together and reach conclusions that should have been beyond her understanding. She should never have believed those stories. Without the mystery of the coat, she never would have done. They were too incredible. You leave us the task of dealing with her.
Tonitheen heard these words and shivered. What did ‘dealing with her’ involve?
‘I love Stella,’ he cried, ‘and no one must hurt her.’