Timemaster Page 12
"Come, Mr. Barkham," he snarled. "Is the Silverhair a plant or an animal?"
"I'm not going to allow those beautiful intelligent aliens to be enslaved!" yelled Oscar. Turning maniacal, the ex-football player grabbed Senator Hurley by the throat and started to choke him, sending his red wig flying to the floor. The judge rose and tried to intervene, but Oscar sent her flying to the floor with a jab from his elbow. The marshal for the courtroom rushed over and started struggling with Oscar, trying to free Senator Hurley from his grip. Randy, slipping around behind everyone, finally stopped Oscar with a vicious judo chop to the back of his neck.
AFTER Oscar had been taken away by the marshal, Senator Hurley turned to the judge, bald head shiny with sweat. "Based on the testimony of the plaintiff himself, Your Honor, I submit that even the plaintiff would have to admit that the living objects known as Silverhairs are plants. I also have a long list of biology and zoology experts ready to give testimony that the Silverhairs are plants. Since they are plants, they are subject to patent coverage and to monopoly ownership and control for the term of the patent under the terms of the Standardized International Patent Law statutes."
"You won't need to call your expert witnesses," said the judge, looking ruefully at her reading spectacles, broken when Oscar had knocked her down. "I've heard enough."
"COO," SAID Harold Randolph Hunter, Jr., his pudgy fingers trying to grab hold of the buttons on his daddy's shirtfront. Randy looked down at his son, nestled against his chest in a dark-blue belly-hugging carrier harness. Junior had been born ten months after their marriage, making Rose's mother happy in more ways than one. Randy gave Junior a long loving hug and kissed him on top of his head. Then, while walking slowly to the edge of the ha-ha moat around the make-believe castle on his estate, he unconsciously wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Randy grinned with pleasure and started to rock the baby from side to side as he looked out at the brilliantly sunny countryside stretching out for miles around the small hill they were on. Behind him, Rose was busy tidying up after their family picnic.
"I wish you wouldn't go," she said plaintively.
"I've got to," said Randy. "I've already told you that a thousand times. I've dreamed of doing it my whole life."
"I know," said Rose with a resigned sigh. "I just never thought it would happen."
"Neither did I," said Randy, looking out at the horizon and giving his baby a few absentminded pats.
"But five years!" exploded Rose, slamming the picnic basket lid shut in frustration.
"It takes a year to get up to speed," said Randy. "And the radiation shields are only good to eight-tenths cee. During the coast phase, I make up a little due to the time dilation, but then it's time to decelerate again. I'm lucky it's only five years of travel for a four-light-year journey."
"Lucky!" yelled Rose at his back. "Junior will be in first grade when you finally get back." She calmed herself and walked over to join them at the edge of the moat. Tears streaming down her face, she pleaded with him, "Can't you use the warpgate to trade places with someone so you can come home to visit once in a while?"
"The warpgate can't be dilated when I'm moving," said Randy. "In an emergency I could decelerate, match speeds with Earth, then arrange a trade with someone, but every time I did that, it would add two years to the length of the trip."
"U-u-h-h-g-g," grunted the baby.
When he heard the noise, Randy panicked and started undoing the straps on the belly carrier. Rose came to his rescue.
"Here!" said Randy, handing the smelly baby to her.
Hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes, Rose took the baby and put him down on his blanket. "Are you sure you don't want to change this diaper?" she asked. "It'll be your last chance before you go."
"No. Thank you," said Randy. He took out one of his handkerchiefs and wiped his hands. He started to put the handkerchief back in his pocket, then dropped it in the diaper bag.
"I sometimes think you're going to Alpha Centauri to avoid having to cope with the messy stage of Junior's life," said Rose as she raised the baby's legs and wiped its bottom.
Randy said nothing, but went back to look out at the countryside from the top of the moat. He knew that he shouldn't be doing this to his wife and son. He knew he was being selfish, and it made him feel rotten inside ... but he had to do it. An opportunity like this only happened once in a lifetime ...
He would be the first man to travel to the stars!
IT TOOK a little over thirteen months before Randy reached eighty percent of light speed. The radiation indicator was already in the yellow zone. He switched off the drive and, floating weightlessly, made his way through the tiny combination control deck and living quarters crammed behind the radiation shield. Gidget was making up Randy's narrow bunk, taking advantage of free-fall to put bright-blue grasping manipulators on all eight appendages instead of having to use magnetic grippers on four of them for feet. Randy made his way down past the negmatter drive at the center of the ship to the spherical room in the hold that held the ship's Silverhair, put on his tightsuit, and cycled through the vacuum lock. Reaching out from the walls of the vacuum chamber were six insulating posts with large metallic plates at the ends. When they, were under acceleration, the plates became charged and pushed on the Silverhair to keep it centered in the room. But now, there was nothing there. The Silverhair was gone.
The first time that had happened on the way out, Randy's heart had skipped a beat. With the warpgate gone, Randy would have lost his link back to Earth. But it was only the Silverhair playing peekaboo.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Randy in feigned surprise. "I wonder where Sil has gone ..."
Randy started to look in an exaggerated fashion behind each electrode support post, all the time keeping up a constant patter. "I wonder where Sil is? Is Sil behind this post? No ... I guess Sil is gone! Maybe Sil is behind this post. No ..."
It didn't take him long to spot, out of the corner of his eye, a tiny silver thread hiding behind the plasma gun fastened to its bracket on the wall, but he continued his exaggerated search routine and passed by the plasma gun without looking at the thread. He tensed his buttocks for what he knew would come next ...
ZAP! came the lightning bolt, followed by an explosion of alien laughter.
"Yeow!" yelled Randy, not really having to fake it. He turned around, and as he did so, the tiny silver thread exploded into a large silver dandelion seed.
"OK," said Randy, picking up the plasma gun and turning on the music. The pompous oompah of a German polka band came over the suit comm link.
Randy now used the six posts to augment his suit jets as he did a polka around the Silverhair, plasma gun swinging back and forth as he sprayed plasma at the silver threads swaying in time to the music.
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After about fifteen minutes, the Silverhair said,
Randy turned off the plasma gun, but kept on dancing with the Silverhair for a while until its searching tendrils had cleaned out all the iron atoms floating in the cavity. The dance over, Randy fastened the plasma gun back into its wall bracket next to the vacuum lock and turned off the music.
"Godget!" he said through his suit link. "Are you ready with the laser communicator?"
"I am in the vacuum lock," said Godget in a deep voice.
Randy cycled the lock door and the bright-yellow body of Godget floated through, its eight yellow manipulators pulling a small instrument package with it. Godget set up the communicator on a wall bracket and pointed the laser at the body of the Silverhair. It pushed a button on the side of the communicator, and over the radio came a warning buzz. The Silverhair, hearing the sound, remembered its training and stopped still. Shortly afterwards the silver tendrils spread apart like the petals of an opening flower. A red beam sprang from the end of the laser and struck the silvery body in a red-speckled millimeter-sized spot.
Its body rapidly developed a depression, then a deep hole. In just a few seconds the laser beam had punched a warpgate through to Earth. In response, a tiny laser beam from Earth came shining back through to bathe the communication apparatus with speckled red light carrying video messages from Earth. Randy's video monitor now showed the face of Andrew Pope in a vacuum helmet. Standing behind him was Hiroshi Tanaka.
"How is the radiation level?" asked Hiroshi in a concerned tone.
"In the lower part of the yellow zone," said Randy. "I could probably go a little faster."
"I wouldn't if I were you," said Hiroshi.
"I don't intend to," said Randy. "Wouldn't save that much time, anyway, and I might hit a gas cloud. Is Rose available? I'd like to talk with her."
"You got up to speed a little faster than we had estimated," said Andrew. "We didn't expect your link until tomorrow. Rose and Randy, Junior, are in New York City today. I know where they are, however, so it will only take me a few seconds to set up a link. Don't forget, although there is no time delay through the warpgate, there will be a quarter-second delay in the comm link to Earth and back."
A few seconds later, Rose's image appeared on the screen. She was holding a naked child; it was Junior. He was twisting and turning and leaning over, trying to get away from her and get down on the floor. There was a woman in a white coat in the background.
"Rose!" exclaimed Randy. "And Junior ..." He waved at the camera and called, "Junior, it's Daddy. Hi, Junior. It's me, Daddy." Junior ignored the screen and wiggled and squirmed to get down. "Harold Randolph Hunter Junior!" yelled Randy, trying to get the child's attention.
"He doesn't recognize your voice, Randy," said Rose quietly. She let little Randy escape down off her lap. He crawled away across the floor, but the woman doctor came over and picked him up. He squirmed in her arms, trying to get down again.
"It's good to see you again, Randy," she said with a loving smile. "Is your trip going OK?"
"No problems," said Randy. "Only three and a half more years to go."
Rose's smile faded and a glistening of tears started to show on her crinkled face. Randy became concerned.
"But now that I'm up to speed, I can call you every day," he said, trying to make his wife feel better.
"That'll be nice," said Rose, swallowing hard and putting on a smile again. The doctor paced back and forth behind her, trying to calm young Randy down.
"Where are you?" asked Randy. "Is that a doctor?"
"We're at the clinic," said Rose.
"Clinic! What's wrong?"
"Don't worry," Rose said reassuringly. "The doctors have been monitoring Junior's growth rate since you've been gone. They projected his final height at five feet. I just brought him in for more tests before they start giving him growth-hormone therapy."
"Growth hormones!" said Randy. "That could give him cancer!"
"The doctors assure me that the new hormones don't have that problem," Rose said firmly.
"Besides," blustered Randy, "being small didn't hurt me. As my mother said, 'Everybody has to have something wrong with him.' I was short. Let him be short."
Rose straightened up. "I don't agree with your mother, Randy," she said. "And since you left me in charge of raising our son, I'm going to do it my way."
"Rose!" Randy protested. "Let's talk it over."
"I'll be glad to talk it over, if you'll come back here and talk with me face to face."
"I can't do that!" said Randy. There was a long silence.
"I love you, Randy," Rose said finally. "But I love our son too. And I'm going to do what I think is best for him."
"Rose!" hollered Randy.
"I'll talk to you again tomorrow, darling," Rose said sweetly as she reached out to turn off the link.
Her image was replaced by that of Andrew.
"Anything we two need to discuss?" Randy asked.
Andrew's face clouded up. "Our problems with the Animal Rescue Front are becoming serious," said Andrew. "It started after they lost their case in patent court. First, it was just demonstrations in front of the various Reinhold buildings around the world. Those soon escalated into paint balloons thrown at Reinhold trucks and into lobbies. Next came vicious computer viruses introduced into our networks by sympathizers who took jobs with the company. Now it's worse."
"What have they done now?" asked Randy angrily.
"Three days ago, a mail clerk at Reinhold headquarters was seriously injured by a letter bomb," said Andrew. "The letter was addressed to you."
"Those murderous bastards!" yelled Randy.
"A telephone call from someone claiming they were from the Animal Rescue Front told us there would be more bombings if the Silverhairs weren't freed immediately," said Andrew. "Oscar Barkham denies the A.R.F. was involved and insists that the organization only condones 'civil' violence, like property damage."
"I don't believe him," said Randy. "With those ZED flashbacks making him unstable, he is capable of anything."
"I think I partially believe him," said Andrew. "I suspect the real problem is that his organization has lost control over some of its more violent members, but Oscar doesn't really care enough to do anything about it."
"We've got to do something!" Randy cried.
"Alan has implemented all the antiterrorist procedures that the police recommend," said Andrew. "But even the police have to admit that there isn't much you can do."
"Break the link," Randy snorted in frustration.
The red laser beam from Earth blinked off, and Godget slowly lowered the intensity of the laser beam on the ship's communication gear. The hole in the Silverhair disappeared.
Randy turned his radio link to the Silverhair back on.
"Good-bye, for now," he said.
Randy shut the vacuum port on the Silverhair's spherical chamber and ottered his way back up around the drive room toward his cramped quarters. Gidget and Gadget helped him off with his tightsuit in the bottom engineering deck, and after dressing in a jumpsuit he went up to the living deck and strapped himself in the pilot's seat. Floating weightlessly in his seat, Randy rotated the ship around until it was facing backward along its direction of flight from Earth to Alpha Centauri. He started the drive again, this time at a half-gee. That would give him enough acceleration for good footing. He would rotate the ship around again every day, just before breakfast, so he would keep near eighty percent of the speed of light while always being under gees.
By the time Randy had completed the ship maneuvers, Gidget had finished making breakfast. Bright-blue manipulators flashing, Gidget laid out breakfast option number seven, yellow scrambled eggs and crisp brown English bangers, toasted, floury white scones with orange shred marmalade, light-green reconstituted apple juice, and strong brown tea with real demerara sugar and thick UHT double-cream.
Since the pilot's seat was the only place to sit in the cramped quarters other than the bunk and the toilet, Randy simply swiveled around from the pilot's video console against one wall to face the all-purpose table in the center of the room. On the other side of his plate, hanging from the ceiling, was another videoscreen.
Normally, Randy would eat slowly and deliberately, enjoying the good food the robots had prepared for him out of the many options available from the frozen food lo
cker that made up a large portion of the weight of the good ship Rosita. Today, however, he just shoveled in his food, for his mind was busy watching the first of the video messages from Rose that had been linked through from Earth during their last brief contact through the warpgate.
RANDY had the telescope pointed in the proper direction as he approached the first star in the three-star Alpha Centauri system, so it wasn't long before he picked up the largest planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. The planet was a large, cold, blue-green gas giant far distant from the small, reddish star. It had been seen from the observatories at Backside on the Moon many decades ago and named Hercules. The blue-green disk in the telescope monitor stayed nearly featureless as Rosita zoomed past it, still decelerating.
Knowing where to look, Randy easily found the three other known planets around Proxima Centauri, and set the telescope controller to take pictures of Hercules and the other three planets every hour. The pictures would be transmitted back to Elena Polikova and Andrew Pope, who would turn them into a scientific paper for Astrophysical Journal Letters and a publicity release for the Sunday science sections of the major papers around the globe.
Randy then set the telescope controller to take high-magnification pictures of the small region near the star that constituted the "life zone", where water on a planet would be warm enough to be a liquid but not so hot as to be evaporated into space. For many hours the search revealed no new planet. Then the alert bell rang and Randy looked up from his lunch at the monitor screen.
Randy would never forget the thrill he felt when he saw his planet. It was still a small disk on the screen, but distinct features were already visible. Fortunately, Rosita was still moving toward it, so it would grow larger for the next few hours. Randy's lunch grew cold as he watched—enthralled—as the telescope took picture after picture of the rapidly rotating planet. After gazing in awe at the strangely shaped continents and oceans, hidden here and there behind swirls of clouds, Randy finally came to his senses and initiated the preprogrammed science routine in the telescope controller. The controller would now alternate visual photos with infrared and ultraviolet photographs, and high-resolution spectroscopy scans over the whole spectrum.