It was now almost a year to the day since Stringer had first met Pike, and a year after Stringer had expected to leave. If it had been up to him, once he had decided to go, Stringer would have leaped on the rocket and departed immediately for Hendig’s World. Evidently Pike had other ideas. In fact, at first the preparations had moved so slowly that Stringer was not sure they were going to leave at all. But then, one day, the final go-ahead came and Pike’s plans proceeded in all fervor.
That day, perhaps a month or so after the initial meeting, Stringer had been in the shooting gallery, practicing. He had been spending more and more time there lately, expending more and more energy on the deadly concentration. He liked the feeling it gave to his body.
Stringer faced the far wall and watched from the corner of his eye a little ball roll off a ramp and fall in a lazy parabola to the floor. Relaxed, Stringer waited for it to fall halfway, then raised his pistol in a motion invisibly fast and vaporized the ball a centimeter from the floor. Stringer glanced at his pistol. Pike had told him that it was a graser: a gamma ray or nuclear laser. Stringer didn’t know what that was and doubted that Pike did, either. He shrugged, watched the next ball fall, pushed slightly faster than the last, and vaporized that one, too. It was easy.
Valyavar was there, also. Valyavar might have had another name, but Stringer had never heard it, not in the short time since they had first met. He heard very little from Valyavar, and after that first encounter at Elswer’s, had made a point of avoiding him. However, Stringer did enjoy watching the granite giant’s daily entrance into the training center. Valyavar would kick open the door, march in with his sack thrown over his shoulder, and wipe his sleeve. He would throw his sack into the corner, unwrap the scarf he was wearing around his neck with a single twirl of the arm, throw that on top of the sack, and then do the same with his cloak. All but simultaneously, he would fish some mottled weed from the sporran attached to his belt, and, within a moment, an expertly rolled cigarette, done with a single hand, would be protruding from the great beard that covered his face almost to his eyes. Then, taller by a head, he would nod down to Stringer and start to work.
The whole process was carried through with such elan that Stringer found he could only smile. But he still avoided Valyavar’s eyes.
At that same moment Pike was in his office discussing the preparations with Hendig, who had recently recovered from his wound, when an animated figure burst into the room, carrying the metal ring that Hendig had given Pike as proof of the journey.
Have you finished testing that ring?
Pike asked,
pointing to the object in the man’s hand.
Ahh, yes. We have.
Pike saw that the scientist was excited. Well, please
continue.
I don’t supposed you have a blackboard around?
How can I explain anything without a blackboard?
I suggest that you do your best.
Well,
the man replied, hesitated, and then
proceeded in one quick breath, whatever it is,
it’s at least ninety-nine percent metallic hydrogen.
What’s that, may I ask?
Pike raised his eyebrows
and scribbled metallic hydrogen
on a notepad.
The scientist paced back and forth, staring first at the floor, then at the
ceiling, then picked a piece of lint off his worn shoe. We’ve never been able to make it. Most people gave
up long ago and said that it never existed, at least in the quantity and
form that had been predicted by theory. You see, it used to be thought that
if you cooled hydrogen down to almost absolute zero and then compressed it
with pressures characteristically of several million atmospheres
—the
man squeezed his fist shut—two things would
happen. First, it would heat back up to room temperature from adiabatic
compression. Secondly, and more importantly, it would turn into a solid
because of the pressure. A solid metal, you see, of course, because the
electrons were being squeezed into the conduction bands—
Now, hold on a minute, this is a little too
four-dimensional for me. Can you reduce it to three?
Pike’s request was
ignored, and he leaned across his desk to Hendig. These fellows are really impossible once they get
started.
Then he wrote on his pad in capital letters, NO
SCIENTISTS
.
It would almost certainly be a superconductor;
you put a current in a loop of the stuff—this ring—
the scientist said,
tapping the specimen, and it goes around forever
without decaying. The current produces a strong poloidal field around the
loop. That’s why that plasma torch wouldn’t touch this ring. The magnetic
field protected it.
I see,
Pike said.
What’s more, and this is the most interesting
point, it was speculated that metallic hydrogen would remain solid and
superconducting once the pressure was removed at room temperature. Here it
is. This ring. It seems to be alloyed or coated—we haven’t determined which
yet—to make it very strong and resistant, stable rather than
metastable. Naturally, it is also the lightest metal you’ll ever see.
Are you quite finished?
Yes, quite,
the visitor said, nodding
sharply. Except that a spherical liar is a liar
from any direction you look at him, and we’ve examined Hendig’s story from
all angles. You’re an optimum fool if you believe what he tells you about
that planet.
Pike jotted the words optimum fool
on his pad. So, maybe Master Hendig is a spherical liar and I am an
optimum fool for believing in a nonexistent planet, in which case I ask you
a simple question: if you can’t produce the metallic hydrogen, where did
that ring come from?
Ah, well, I…
Thank you for your most interesting information. Now,
I suggest you get back to your laboratory and write up your report for one
of your obscure journals.
Pike waved the man out of the room.
The scientist left the office muttering under his breath.
Pike sighed. Can you imagine listening to that for an
entire expedition? We would never get off the ground with his constant
nit-picking. If that was a bid to get me to take him along, he certainly
had a misconception of what this expedition was about. I put this to you:
who needs a scientist on an economic venture?
Hendig shrugged. If he doesn’t believe Hendig, let
him rot.
Pike laughed. You are something of a poet, Hendig, and
your tendency to bask in hyperbole is well known. I will not be surprised
to find a planet twice as big as Two-Bit or one with days twice
as long. I will
expect to find this hydrogen. Now, in that matter, I suggest we call in
Stringer and Valyavar and tell them the good news.
Within ten minutes Stringer and Valyavar had been located and brought up to the office. After he entered, Stringer walked to the opposite side of the room and faced Hendig.
My boys,
Pike said, you will
be happy to know that we have just received a report from the laboratory,
and, as I suspected, this venture will be well worth the
expense. Therefore, we now shift into high gear.
Wait a moment,
Stringer said, pointing to
Hendig. That’s fine. But you have never explained
to me how this oaf is going to get us to your city.
Hendig growled. Navigator had charts and he
disappeared on Hendig. I know where to find him or charts. We get them and
then go to the city. Otherwise we have to find city by my memory.
Stringer guessed what result that would bring. And
where is this navigator?
he said.
He left us on Hendig’s World.
Now Stringer laughed. And you expect him to be
alive and waiting for us after twenty-odd years?
Hendig and I have gone over this before,
Pike
said. We will have to take that risk.
And why should it be easier to get to this
navigator than to the city itself?
Hendig does have a map of such area. It was first
place we arrived, and duplicate charts were made. Hendig said he shall get
you to that navigator, and so he shall.
This oaf is only likely to get us killed,
Stringer said. Hendig was even more of an idiot than he thought if Hendig
believed the tale he was telling.
Hendig picked up a stool and hurled it at Stringer. Stringer ducked as it
flew over him, crashing into the wall. Once again Stringer unsheathed his
kalan against Hendig. This time, Hendig, my point
will be placed where the decision is final.
Pike stepped between the two and faced Stringer. You
had better remember that Hendig is now a colleague of yours, and you will
have to get along with him.
It would be easier to kill him now and save the
extra fuel.
Stringer!
Pike cried. I told
you once before not to argue with me. Remember, I am your commander in this
mission. Remember that.
Pike had raised both arms and they were shaking
with rage.
Ahh,
Stringer muttered, and began walking to
the door.
Suddenly Hendig bounded after him with raised fists, but he had only taken two steps before Valyavar strode forward and stopped him cold with one swift blow on the jaw.
Stringer whirled around and glanced at Hendig, then at Valyavar. The two smiled broadly at each other and left the office together.
If the remainder of the year left a moment to breathe, it was a moment as rare to the eye as a perfect sunset. Pike needed the year, not only to complete the preparations for the expedition but to place his vast financial holdings in good hands. And although Stringer was impatient to leave, he conceded that the delay had its advantages. He was now an expert pilot; Pike had made sure of that, if nothing else. To zoom down a runway five meters off the ground, scaring half the support crew out of their wits, was something at which Stringer was now brilliantly proficient, as well as at performing hair-raising acrobatics in any of a dozen types of aircraft.
The swing-winged shuttles, light of molybdenum-iridium alloy, powered by hydrogen, and with sailplanelike glide ratios, were designed to cover distances on the scale of planets. Stringer thought he could take apart these planes and put them back together blindfolded now. And because they did fly like gliders, Stringer was trained in gliders too. He learned to fly in such a way as to conserve a maximum amount of fuel, and to fly in conditions where, if one’s attention lapsed, the wings of the more expensive and irreplaceable shuttles could easily snap in two. Pike was not taking any chances. To that end, Stringer found himself becoming a fair electronics technician, a little harder than flying, and even learning some mathematics. That was the hardest.
When he was flying the gliders, which Stringer viewed as an extravagant waste of time, and learning the mathematics, which he viewed as even less relevant to the journey, he occasionally thought it contradictory that Pike should spend so much exacting energy in preparing for every possible contingency while, at the same time, the entire expedition was being readied on the word of a liar and the evidence of one mysterious piece of metal. Stringer wondered if they were all fanatics. But he always managed to put the thought out of his mind within a moment and return to work.
During that year, when Stringer did find those precious moments to breathe, he made sure that they were spent at least half a kilometer from Hendig. He was glad that Valyavar seemed to have sided with him, but even long after the incident in Pike’s office, Valyavar spoke little and still not at all outside routine training matters. Stringer decided that he would probably never get to know the fellow, but shrugged this off immediately, deciding also that it probably mattered less than nothing.
One evening, at the year’s end, exhausted from overwork and yet working still, Stringer and Valyavar were down in the hangars, checking over the shuttlecraft that were soon to be sent up to the main ship in orbit. A technician called Valyavar over to the hangar office, saying that Pike wanted to talk to him over the phone. A few minutes later Valyavar returned.
Well, ’tseems that we’re to be off in a
week.
It’s about time,
Stringer said. Something has to give soon. I’m feeling totally
punch-drunk.
Valyavar leaned back against the shuttle’s shiny hull. Tell me, if ’twouldn’t make a difference, why to
Hendig’s World?
Why? Stringer thought. To get rich,
he replied
aloud.
Valyavar screwed up his furry eyes and studied Stringer’s face intently. No, that’s why I’m going, ’tis. After traveling
across all Two-Bit and her sisters, ’ts about time I’m rich. At least that
will comfort the body—if not the immortal soul. You, not to be. If you were
the richest man in all of Two-Bit and had every comfort and every woman,
you’d still have your energy and you’d still have to go. That’s clear,
’tis, very clear.
He paused, stroked his amazing beard, and smacked his
lips loudly. I think
—another pause—that you are going to find God.
Stringer couldn’t help but laugh. You’re crazy,
nonlinear. Why would I want to meet a god who was evil enough to create
Two-Bit?
Stringer rested his hands on the latch of the shuttle and
pulled on it absently. Gods don’t exist anyway, so
there is no point in discussing it.
Okay, we won’t talk about it then. But I’ll take a
peldram of kob, my pistol, and my beard that someday you will find your
religion and your God. Now…
Valyavar held his finger in the air,
pointing skywards, and pulled a book out of his never-absent sack that was
lying by the shuttle. The book had been carefully preserved, with inlays of
rare jewels and white leatil. He held it up to Stringer for his inspection
and continued speaking in his lowest voice, which emerged from a vast
subterranean cavern concealed in the depths of his body. Can I interest you in this ancient and priceless
edition of the Galan Codices? They are guaranteed to bring you spiritual
comfort in times of distress.
Valyavar tilted his head slightly, and
perhaps, just perhaps, the minutest trace of a smile crossed his lips.
Stringer doubled over with laughter, holding his sides tightly with his
arms in an attempt to prevent his entrails from spilling out over the
ground. Many minutes passed before the last tears were wiped from his damp
face and his natural green-tinted gray replaced the red flush on his
cheeks. You were a priest?
Valyavar’s smile became a distinct frown for a brief moment. I was.
Stringer began laughing all over again in his fatigue and then shouted
hysterically, To Hendig’s! For glory! For riches!
For God—
But remember,
Valyavar warned, first dress warmly, then put your faith in God.
I’ll remember, surely,
Stringer laughed. Now I think it is time for a very long rest.
And with that, they were ready.