Now and Forever (12 page)

“What do you know of the passage of dark planets and bright comets?”

“I think you must teach me, sir,” said Redleigh.

“And I will,” said the captain. “Here are a thousand thousand star-charts, stamped, runneled, and humped. Run your hand over this expanse. Touch the long mark of Halley's comet; feel the heat of the comet of Alliostro Minor. Here, the deep night plans for all God's circuitings and maunderings, all his long thoughts. God dreams joy: green Earths appear. God suffers torments: Leviathan issues from the vast portal of His raving eye and mouth. It rushes here! I know a way to meet it head-on, fast, six weeks before it destroys Earth. We must move fast to surprise it.”

“Surprise?” Redleigh turned from the charts that hung so brightly on the air. “You cannot
surprise
a comet, sir. It neither lives nor cares.”

“But
I
live,
I
care,” said the captain.

Redleigh shrugged. “And shift the burdens of your knowledge to some great wandering child, some universal accident that prowls the worlds, homeless for eternity. I —”

“Go on,” said the captain.

“Sir, if as the Reverend Colworth says, all space is one flesh with us, all worlds, suns, creatures extensions of one ground, one all-encompassing will, then that ghost you speak of, sir, that comet, that great terror-trailing monster, is but a true out-mouthing of God Himself. Not his sickness and despair, but His bright will that lights the universal night. Would you stand against such breath?”

“If it wrenched my soul and burnt me blind, yes! Listen to the sound it makes this very hour, out beyond.”

The captain reached out a hand, touching a screen. A loom of energy wove immense sounds throughout the ship.

Nodding at this, the captain continued. “There's the breath you spoke of. It is a cold thing. It is all the graveyards of history somehow put to space, and in its light-year shroud, ten billion on a billion men's lost souls yammer for release. I—we—go to rescue them!”

“That sound is but a dumb thing, sir, mere chemistry born of chaos, now pulled by this tidal star, now hauled by that. You may as well stop your own heart as try to stop that great pale beating.”

“But if both stop at once?” said the captain, “will not my victory over it be as large as its victory over me? Small man, great traveling doom—both weigh the same when the scale is death.”

“But in rending it,” said Redleigh, in quiet desperation, “you rend your own flesh, Captain, which God has loaned you.”

“This flesh offends me!” cried the captain. “If it is all one, God manifesting himself in minerals, light, motion, dark, or sensible man, if that comet is my sister-self come preening by to try my Joblike patience, was it not blasphemy it first tried on
me
? If I am God's flesh, why was
I
felled, struck blind? No, no! That thing is lost and evil. Its great face hovers in the abyss. Behind its mindless glare I sense the blood that oils the cogs of nightmare and the pit. And whether I perceive all this in hell-fire man, sweet blood-mouthed cannibal shark, or huge white blinding mask flung down among the stars to frighten men and push them to impulse much less than human, more than bones and soul can bear, I must attack. Talk not of blasphemy to me, sir. It tried
me
at breakfast. I will dine on it
tonight.
”

“Oh God,” whispered Redleigh. “Oh God help us, then.”

“He
does,
” the captain responded. “If we are His stuffs, alive, then we sinew His arm, thrust out to stop that light-year beast. Would you turn away from this greatest hunt?”

“I would,” murmured Redleigh, “and go to check my computers, sir.”

Redleigh turned to leave, but stopped when the captain said, “Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust ‘reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings. Lie down with machines, rise up
castrato.
Sweet Jesus, you'll make the pope's choir yet. Such innocence quakes my bones.”

“Sir,” Redleigh responded. “I am against you. But don't fear me. Let the captain beware the captain. Beware of yourself … sir.”

And once more Redleigh turned, and this time he walked away.

CHAPTER 4

I backed off and returned to my cabin, deeply distressed. I barely slept the hours remaining till dawn, instead tossing and turning in my bunk, while Quell lay undisturbed, dreaming who knows what alien dreams.

At the first bell, I rose and made my way to the communications deck. There I found crewman Small, bent over his console.

“Do you know that a rocket feeds itself in space?” he asked.

“Feeds? What do you mean?”

“It wallows,” he explained, “like a great fish in currents of solar vibration, cosmic rays, interstellar X-ray radiations. Ever hungry, we—this ship—search for banquets of shout and shriek and echo. I sit here, day in and day out, tuned to the great onrushings of space all around us. Most of the time, all I hear is variations of anonymous sound—hum and static and vibration. And once in a while, by accident … listen!”

He touched a contact and from the console speaker came voices—distinct human voices. He turned his face to mine, a strange light shining there.

As we stood, we heard broadcasts that had been made to crowds on Earth, to the listening ears of people two hundred years ago. Churchill spoke and Hitler shouted and Roosevelt answered and mobs roared; there were football and baseball games from long-ago afternoons. They rose and fell, moved in and out, like ocean waves of sound.

Small said, “No sound, once made, is ever truly lost. In electric clouds, all are safely trapped, and with a touch, if we find them, we can recapture those echoes of sad, forgotten wars, long summers, and sweet autumns.”

“Mr. Small,” I said. “We must trap these broadcasts so we can hear them again and again. Is there more? What have you found?”

“We have come upon a fountain of Earth's younger days. Voices from centuries past. Strange radio people, ghosts of laughter, political charades. Listen.”

Small fiddled with the console dial again. We heard the moment the
Hindenburg
went up in flames. Lindbergh landed in Paris in 1927. Someone named Dempsey fought someone named Tunney in 1925. Crowds screamed in horror, mobs cheered. And then, it began to fade away.

“We're beyond them now,” said Small.

“Go back!” I cried. “That is our history.”

Another voice sounded from the console: “This afternoon at Number Ten Downing Street, Prime Minister Churchill …”

The captain strode onto the deck.

“Sir,” said Small. “We have found a fountain of Earth's younger days. Voices from centuries past. Strange radio people, ghosts of laughter, political charades. Listen!”

The captain said, most sadly, “Yes, yes.” And then, suddenly, “Small, Jones, leave that now. They speak but to themselves. We cannot play, nor laugh, nor weep with them. They are
dead.
And we have an appointment with the
real.
”

Small reached again for the console dial, as a final voice announced: “Line drive! Mantle safe at first!”

Then, silence.

I touched my cheek to wipe away a tear. Why do I weep? I wondered. Those voices were not my people, my times, my ghosts. And yet once they lived. Their dust stirred in my ears, and I could not stop my eyes.

Suddenly, over the ship's intercom, a voice boomed: “Blue alert. All scanning stations. Visual sighting. Star sector CV7. Visual sighting. Blue alert!”

 

Quell and I stood before his viewing screen, stunned at what we saw there.

“Great God,” I said. “What's that?”

“A moon,” said Quell.

“Yes,” I said. “But what a moon. It looks so old. Much older than our own, covered with towns, cities, ancient gardens. How long do you think that moon has been spinning in space alone?”

Quell consulted his instrument panel, and zoomed in the picture.

“Ten thousand times a million years,” said Quell. “Oh lovely, lovely … the spires, the jeweled windows, the lonely and deserted courtyards filled with dust.”

And then we heard Redleigh's voice: “Stand by! Diminish speed.”

And then the captain's voice cut in: “Mr. Redleigh!”

“Sir, this moon! It's very old and fine. Our mission is to explore, to find, to report.”

“Yes, Redleigh, I can hear it in your voice. It is a lovely lost and wandering world, an ancient beauty, passing strange, but pass it we must. Resume course.”

And over the intercom came the order: “Resume full speed. Blue alert canceled.”

The image of the lost moon, which had been projected on all the screens throughout the ship, began to pass away.

“Lost again,” said Quell.

And once again, the ship was surrounded by black space.

CHAPTER 5

From Small's console came dim voices, cloaked in static, from untold miles away: “
Lightfall 1
calling
Cetus 7. Lightfall
here. Inbound from twelve years out.
Cetus 7,
do you read?”

My God, I thought, another spacecraft.

Quell's voice touched my thoughts. “Impossible. In all these billions of miles of space. What are the chances of meeting—”

“Another spaceship?” I asked aloud.

“This is
Lightfall 1,
” came the voice again. “Shall we hang fire,
Cetus 7
?”

Men were running to the main deck from every direction, crowding around monitors.

“
Cetus 7,
request permission to approach, link, and board.”

“Yes!” cried the crew.

“No!” thundered the captain.

“
Cetus 7,
please respond.”

The captain instructed Small to open a communications channel to the other ship. “
Lightfall 1,
this is
Cetus 7.
Permission denied.”

“
Cetus 7—
please confirm: permission denied? Do I read you?”

“You do,” our captain replied.

“But my men, Captain, listen to them!”

And over the open communications channel we hear a grand clamor from the other ship, a few thousand miles off.

“Damned fools at nursery games,” said our captain. “There is no time. No time!”

“Time?!” said the voice from
Lightfall 1.
“Why, for Christ's sake, that's all there is in space! God has a plentitude of time. And I? I am full of long years wandering and news of strange stars and terrible comets.”

“Comets?” our captain cried.

“The greatest comet in the universe, sir!” said the commander of
Lightfall 1.

“Stand by, then,” our captain said. “Permission to come aboard.”

We watched on the viewscreens as the
Lightfall 1
approached. Both ships reached out mechanical arms and grasped each other as friends. There was a dull thunk as the linkage was complete, and within the hour the
Lightfall 1's
captain stepped aboard the
Cetus 7
and saluted.

“Jonas Enderby here, of the
Lightfall 1.”

He stepped out of the airlock, and from behind him came a dozen or so crew members of the
Lightfall 1
—dark, light; male and female; short, tall; human and alien—glancing about them. We smiled in welcome, eager to hear their story.

 

Later, in the communal mess, Commander Enderby raised a glass to our captain, with whom he sat at the center table. “To your health, sir. No,
mine.
My God, it's been nine months since I've had an honest-to-God drink. I'm with child! And that child is thirst.”

The
Lightfall
commander drank.

“More!” he demanded.

“More, yes,” our captain said. “And then speak.”

“Would you like to hear of comets?” said Enderby of the
Lightfall 1.

“I am tuned to that,” replied our captain, a bright light glinting in his eye.

We all inched a little closer, as close as protocol would allow, to listen.

“God sickened in my face,” said Enderby. “I am not clean yet. For it was the greatest, longest, brightest—”

Our captain cut in. “Leviathan?!”

Enderby gasped. “You know it?”

“You tracked it then?”

“Tracked it, hell, it bled me white and cracked my bones! I only just escaped with my life.”

“Ah,” the captain cried. “Do you hear, Redleigh?”

Enderby continued. “I do not mean to stretch the joke. It tried me, sir. It swallowed me, my ship, and crew in one great hungry gulp. We lived
in
Leviathan!”

“In! Hear that, Redleigh? In!”

The
Lightfall 1
commander went on. “You do make it sound jolly, sir.”

Our captain stood, all stony silence. “I meant no offense. Of all people, I well know …”

“And jolly it was!” Enderby continued. “What else can one do when stuck deep in the belly of the beast? We danced a rigadoon in Leviathan's gut!”

“And yet—you're
here
!”

“Sir, it could not stomach us! We poisoned it with laughter. All round within it we rose, we fell, we rose again, mystified by Fate, hysterical with chance. We fired our laughs like cannons at its heart!”

The captain shook. “Laughter? Dancing?” he wondered.

And Enderby of the
Lightfall 1
touched his right eye. “Yes! Though before it took us into its maw, it spoiled my sight and killed this eye. See? Pure forge-cast Irish crystal. Glass! I swear. Shall I pluck it out and play at marbles?”

“No, no. Let it be,” our captain said with a sigh. “I believe you.”

“I see you do,” Enderby replied. “Leviathan did blind me once, but completed only half the job. It would have destroyed my other eye, if it'd had the chance. But we raised such a riot that Leviathan suffered sickness and spat us out back unto the stars!”

Our captain seized Enderby's arm. “
Where?”

“Ten million miles beyond the outermost circumscape of Saturn's transit.”

“Do you hear that, Redleigh?” our captain cried. “It is still on course!”

“Course?” The
Lightfall 1
captain laughed. “What course? Do you think it
knows
what it is doing, where it is going? How can chaos be plotted, planned,
coursed
? Where is that gin? I need another drink.”

Redleigh stepped forward and doled it out.

“My charts are right and true,” said the captain, grabbing Redleigh's arm and spilling gin in the process. “I will go to meet that ghost!”

“On
my
recommendation?” Enderby said, astonished. “Did I make it sound too bright? Hell.” He shook his head. “Here's to caps and bells and rollicking tunes. Here's to Leviathan and you, sir. May you cap its bile as it spits you out. God will that it
may
spit you out.”

“We must be away, and now,” the captain said, his brow glistening with sudden sweat. “All hands, on deck!”

Enderby stood and said, “But Captain, can we not stay a bit longer? My crew would do well for some more time with new faces, new friends, news of home. We are weary, and dry as sand.”

“My thirst is greater,” the captain thundered. “We must be off.”

Enderby drained his glass and slammed it on the table. “To hell with you, sir! Go on your fool's mission, if that is what you choose.”

Enderby stood, and motioned for his crew to follow. They wound their way through the corridors to the airlock doors, donned their suits, and left.

In moments,
Lightfall 1
and all its crew were gone, lost again to soundless space.