Godspeed Page 8

  I found my piece of paper, and wrote Liscarroll. Then I said, "Give me the second data level."

  If there is such a thing as too little information, there is also such a thing as too much. Words began to stream through the open box, line after line of them. I read, with little understanding: . . . primary assay obtained as extrapolation of surface spectra, composition as mass fraction: hydrogen, 0.44; helium, 0.20; lithium, 0.00; beryllium, 0.01; boron, 0.00; carbon, 0.06; nitrogen, 0.05; oxygen, 0.08;fluorine, 0.01; neon, 0.00 . . .

  The list went on and on. I did not attempt to write everything down, but instead moved the green pointer to a new light. This one was of pale amber. I said, "First data level."

  The box emptied. And refilled.

  Corofin was the first word. Below it, as before, were six new nine-digit numbers, five of them again close to unchanging and the sixth steadily increasing.

  I had learned my lesson, and I did not ask for any second data level. Instead I began to move the green point systematically through the display, recording the names that popped into the open data box. Kiltealy, Timahoe, Moynalty, Clareen, Oola, Drumkeerin . . .

  No two words were the same. Every one had its own string of six nine-digit numbers. I settled down, determined to record a complete list. I would begin with the topmost point of the display and move the green marker systematically down through the whole thing, light by light.

  I was becoming very tired, and maybe what I was doing was my way of avoiding further real thinking. But I went on, through name after meaningless name. Rockcorry, Ardscull, Timolin, Ballybay, Culdaff Annoy, Tyrella, Moira . . .

  And then, almost without realizing it, I found that I was copying the words, Paddy's Fortune.

  I stopped, tingling all over. It could be a name, no different from any other. The usual six nine-digit numbers that sat below it supported that idea.

  Or Paddy might be Paddy Enderton. Paddy's Fortune might be his own words to describe what was shown in the data box.

  It was the middle of the night, but that made no difference. I went through to Mother's room with the display still on, intending to wake her up. She was not there.

  She was downstairs. The three guards were in the living-room, sound asleep—so much for their value as protectors. Mother and Doctor Eileen were sitting facing each other at the kitchen table, glasses and an open bottle between them.

  It was the first time that I had seen Mother drinking wine when we did not have one of her spacer visitors. I suddenly realized that I might not be the only one having trouble sleeping. Although my own past couple of days had been hard, Mother's had been far more filled with stress. She had been questioned, and beaten, and threatened with worse. She had been the one who had to sit with Paddy Enderton's corpse, and dispose of poor Chum's body.

  "What woke you up?" she said, when I approached the table.

  "I never went to sleep. I couldn't." I put the wafer onto the table along with my written list, and pointed at the displayed data.

  "That green point is on something called Paddy's Fortune. Do you think it means Paddy Enderton?"

  Mother stared at the glowing nimbus of lighted points, but Eileen Xavier seemed more interested in the data box and the list that I had written.

  "Where did you get this from?" she asked.

  "It's the words that the calculator seems to give to the points. Each one has a different name."

  "Just a name? Nothing else?"

  "Lots and lots more. I just didn't know what it meant, so I didn't write it all down."

  Doctor Eileen put down the paper. Her eyes were gleaming as she turned to the display. "Show me."

  I moved the green pointer to a glowing red point that I had looked at before, and said, "First data level."

  Ardscull, read the data box. Beneath that, as before, were the usual six mysterious numbers.

  Mysterious to me, I should have said. Because Doctor Eileen exhaled her breath, as though she had been holding it for the past minute, and gasped, "Jay, you've done it! Molly, you ought to be proud of him."

  "I am proud of him," Mother said. "Most of the time. But I don't know what he did."

  "Those little sparks of light." Doctor Eileen pointed. "They represent places. Those names that Jay wrote down are the names of some of the bigger worldlets, out in the Maze. I think the whole display is of the Maze. And Paddy's Fortune, for a bet, is the place where Paddy Enderton believed you'd find Godspeed Base."

  "But that doesn't tell you how to get anywhere," Mother protested. "It's just a picture."

  "It would be—if it weren't for these." Doctor Eileen indicated the six nine-figure strings of digits below the word, Ardscull. "I'm no spacer, and I don't know that much about planets and moons. But six numbers are enough to fix the location and speed of any object in space. I'll bet that five of them, the ones that hardly change, describe the form of the orbit. And this sixth one, the one that keeps increasing, tells the object's position in its orbit. It's all you need to reach a place."

  "There's other information, too." I returned the green marker to coincide with the point of Paddy's Fortune. After the name and the usual six numbers had been displayed again, I intoned clearly: "Second data level."

  The display box became annoyingly empty. "That's funny," I said. "It worked for the others I tried. Why doesn't it work for this one?"

  "Because Paddy's Fortune is different from all the natural worlds of the Maze." Doctor Eileen stood up and began to walk round and round the table. "My God, Molly, do you know what this means? No wonder the men last night were willing to beat you and smash your house to pieces to get this. We have to tell everybody what we've found. Then we have to hire a ship and go there."

  "Just a minute." Mother held up her hand, stopping Doctor Eileen in midstride. "You're doing what you accuse me of—-jumping to conclusions. First, you're assuming that Paddy's Fortune has to be the same thing as Godspeed Base."

  "That thing Jay is holding was never made in the Forty Worlds."

  "Maybe not. But you were the one who insisted that Paddy Enderton had not been to Godspeed Base. If that's true, where did he get the calculator and display?"

  "I don't know. You're worrying over details. There's one good way to settle everything—go and see."

  "All right. But the last thing you can afford to do is let a lot of other people know you're going." Mother glanced around and lowered her voice—though it would have taken a lot more than ordinary speech to wake up the snoring louts in the next room. "Let people learn where you've been and what you've found, after you come back. The more we keep this to ourselves, the less trouble we'll risk. The bruisers who were here last night would love to know your travel plans."

  Doctor Eileen flopped down again on her chair. "Well, somebody has to know. You have to help me find a ship, and a few reliable spacers."

  "All right. We'll find a ship. But I can't be directly involved, Eileen."

  "Why not?"

  "The men who were here last night. I would recognize them—and they'd recognize me. If they saw me, you might as well hang out a sign saying where you are going."

  "Then I'll find a ship for myself."

  "That's nearly as bad. You need a man to do it, Eileen, if you don't want to be conspicuous. Whoever heard of a woman going to space?"

  "That's for quite different reasons, and you know it."

  Mother might know it. I didn't, and at the moment I didn't care.

  "They didn't see me!" I said. "They wouldn't recognize me. I'm a man. Let me help find a ship."

  Mother shook her head. "You've done wonderfully well, Jay. But you're much too young."

  Too young, after everything that I had done and been through! I grabbed Paddy Enderton's calculator and held it close to my chest.

  "Too young to find a ship," said Doctor Eileen. "Yes, I agree. But is Jay too young to go? Look at his face, Molly. He's earned the right, if anyone has."

  Mother did look at my face, and I at hers. It was the longest
few seconds of my whole life, until finally she nodded.

  "All right," she said slowly. "You have earned it, Jay. You truly have. You can go with Doctor Eileen—if she goes."

  "I'm going," Doctor Eileen said firmly.

  "All right," repeated Mother. "And now get to bed, Jay," she added automatically. "It's far too late for you to be awake."

  CHAPTER 9

  I know two ways to make time stretch forever.

  One is to go somewhere you have never been before, and do a hundred new and interesting things. After two days you think you have been away for ages, and you just can't believe that so little time has passed since you left home.

  The other way is to be waiting for something, waiting and waiting and waiting, and not able to speed up its arrival at all.

  That's what happened to me in the two weeks after Doctor Eileen declared that we were going off to space to take a look at Paddy's Fortune. While others did the interesting work I had to stay home, helping Mother and keeping my eyes open for the possible return of the violent strangers.

  That danger seemed to lessen toward the end of the first week. Since Paddy Enderton had left no one to inherit any of his possessions, Mother and Doctor Eileen arranged for them to be taken over to Skibbereen and sold at auction. The proceeds would go to pay for Enderton's burial and the repair of our damaged property.

  As it turned out we didn't get a penny toward either one. Before the auction could take place, the storage place in Skibbereen was broken into and everything was stolen. Mother seemed to think that this was a good thing, because it made us a less attractive target.

  Another dull week followed. Duncan West, who knew far too much to be treated as an outsider, had been sent over to Muldoon. Sworn to secrecy, he was negotiating for a ship and crew. It wasn't likely to be easy, with crews scattered all over after Winterfall. Doctor Eileen was back on her rounds, quietly arranging for a physician from the north end of Lake Sheelin to serve as her substitute while she was away. She was also busy with something else that I didn't find out about until later.

  She dropped in on us every couple of days, but the only visit of interest was when she gave me what she called a Maze Ephemeris. It contained names of worldlets and sets of numbers called orbital elements, six of them for each place.

  Comparing her list and Paddy Enderton's calculator/recorder/display and who-knew-what-else unit, I was able to relate the two sets of numbers to each other. They did not quite match, but Doctor Eileen said that the difference was just that one set was centered on Maveen itself, and the other on what she called "the whole Maveen system center of mass."

  I was also able to match most of the names on Doctor Eileen's place list to items on the calculator display, and vice versa. Paddy's Fortune was not on her list, but she said that was not surprising. There were far more worldlets in the Maze than anyone had ever surveyed, and small bodies in particular were liable to be left out. I didn't know at the time what she meant by "small," and I was astonished to learn that anything less than a mile or two across—the full distance from our house to Toltoona, and more—was unlikely to be on anyone's list. For the first time I began to develop a feel for the vast region covered by the Forty Worlds.

  One fine, calm day, when there was no breath of wind and the temperature was above freezing, I ventured again to the top of the water tower. In four nerve-tingling trips I brought down the telecon, and demonstrated it to Doctor Eileen on her next visit. She said that it was more evidence of a technology no longer possessed anywhere in the Forty Worlds, but she could see no way to relate it directly to Paddy's Fortune, and she did not even take it away with her.

  I put it up in the front bedroom, my bedroom again, and used it to stare every day across the lake at Muldoon Spaceport. The facility was very quiet. I saw only two launches in a week. Most of the rest of the time, when Mother did not have me running around helping her—I think she deliberately kept me busy—I sat upstairs playing with the calculator.

  It was soon obvious that it was capable of many more things than I could understand. At the simplest level, I could point to one of the worlds of the Maze and obtain more and more detail simply by calling for "Second Data Level," "Third Data Level," and so on. The trouble was, most of what I was shown seemed useless. There were listings of object composition (that's what I had looked at and not understood the first time I used it); there were things called "delta-vee" lists, that told how easy or hard it was for a ship to get from any world to any other at a chosen time. And finally, at the most detailed level of all, the complete set of data acquired by any visit to or survey of the object was included. For a prospector, or anyone hoping to scavenge the Maze, the whole collection of data could be priceless.

  For us, though, it was useless. We were going to Paddy's Fortune and only to Paddy's Fortune. But I did wonder if we had missed the point. Perhaps the men who had broken into our house were interested in data about the known worldlets of the Maze. Or perhaps they wanted something completely different, something we had not thought about.

  I had spent a lot more time with Paddy Enderton than had either Mother or Doctor Eileen. He was rough and tough and dirty, but he was also practical. He had never mentioned the stars or the Godspeed Drive to me, not once. No matter what Doctor Eileen might believe, try as I might I could not see him as a person who would care one jot about the existence of Godspeed Base, or the long-term future of human beings on Erin. If he called a place Paddy's Fortune, that's what he would expect to find there: something to make him rich.

  Before I had time to worry about that, a thousand things happened at once. Time began to stretch in the other way, with so much going on that I have trouble remembering what came when.

  It began when Doctor Eileen came to the house, late one evening. She had heard from Duncan West. He had located and hired a ship, the Cuchulain, complete with crew, and was now busy arranging for supplies to be ferried up to it from Muldoon. He needed help, and he told Doctor Eileen that I could join him as soon as I was ready.

  I was ready that minute, and said as much. Mother stayed up half the night, making me a spacer's jacket and trousers of dark blue, and first thing the next morning she zipped me over to Toltoona in Doctor Eileen's cruiser. They loaded me and my little bag on board a ground transport to Muldoon. I thought for a horrible moment that Mother was going to hug me in front of the other passengers, but she didn't.

  Muldoon Port was a steady four-hour run around the bottom end of Lake Sheelin. I spent the whole trip in a hot glow of anticipation. Every previous time at Muldoon Port, I had been an interloper. Now I was going in as an honest-to-goodness spacer.

  At the dropoff point inside the port I slung my bag over my shoulder and strolled the long way round to the cargo staging area where I was supposed to find Uncle Duncan. I wanted to see everything, and I wanted everyone to see me. It seemed a pity that the port was in its winter quiet.

  In fact, I don't think anyone noticed me at all. And my grand arrival at Duncan West's side in the staging area was an anticlimax.

  He didn't even say hello. He just nodded at me and went on talking to a big-boned, lantern-jawed man with carroty-red hair and a scrubbed-clean red face, who glared at me, said nothing, and kept on shaking his head.

  "That's where the money is coming from." Uncle Duncan never raised his voice, ever, but today he did seem more intense than usual. I had the feeling that an argument had been going on for some time. "I have no stake in this, so I have no authority to change the deal. But remember the golden rule: The one with the gold gets to make the rules."

  "Not in space," the big man said. He had the gravel voice and breathy wheeze of a spacer, and with your eyes shut you might have taken him at first for Paddy Enderton.

  "You ought to have told us what you had in mind when we started," he went on angrily, "so we could have stopped then and there. You say you can't change the deal. Well, neither can I. If you want to take a woman on board the Cuchulain, that's up to you. But I cert
ainly can't agree to it. You know about women and space. You'll have to talk to the chief, see what he says. He'll be back down here tomorrow." He stared down his long, thin nose at me. "And what's this, then? Another winter surprise?"

  "No. This is Jay Hara. I told you he was on the way." Duncan turned to me. "Jay, meet Tom Toole, purser of the Cuchulain. You're going to be working with me and him on the supplies."

  Toole made no move to shake my hand, but he did give me a much longer, thoughtful stare. "Jay Hara," he said after a few moments. "You're a young 'un. But I started young myself. Can you organize a list of items by their masses?"

  "Sure." If I couldn't, I was going to learn fast.

  "Here, then." He handed me a long printed list. "You locate these items on the pallets over there, and you set them in order, most massive first. Then you wheel them to the ferry ship. They get loaded that way, see, heaviest near the ferry's center line." He turned back to Duncan accusingly. "If you can't change the deal at your end, who can?"

  "Doctor Xavier. Doctor Eileen Xavier. I'll make sure she's here tomorrow to meet with your chief."

  "Is she one of the women who wants to go up?"

  "Yes. One of two."

  "How old is she? The chief is sure to ask me."

  "Pretty old. Maybe sixty-five."

  Tom Toole grunted. "That's one bit of good news. How about the other one?"

  "A lot younger. Thirty-five." Duncan seemed ready to say more, but he noticed that I was still listening. "Here, get to work, Jay. I didn't ask you to come over to Muldoon to stand there gaping."

  I began to walk slowly across toward the pallets and the cargo loading area. As I did, I heard Tom Toole say, "In her thirties. And pretty, I suppose. Now that's damned bad news. Your doctor and the chief are going to have a good go-around on that one, I'll tell you."

  * * *

  Doctor Eileen and the Cuchulain's chief did have a good go-around, just as Tom Toole had predicted.

  I was there to hear it, but in a sense I missed the first minute or two, because of how it began.