The Stardroppers Read online

  With an effort as tremendous as heaving up a gigantic weight, Dan seized control of his mind. He had had a momentary impression that he was thinking in several directions at once, his consciousness ballooning out from a center. It was one of the most shocking sensations he had ever experienced.

  For a few seconds he remembered where he was and what was going on, and heard the sound the stardropper on the dais was now emitting; a liquid pulsating noise with a definite but irregular rhythm, like bubbles coming to the surface of a pan of boiling water. Then he felt himself tugged back into his stream of speculation.

  Look: it couldn’t be that a big, power-hungry stardropper had a greater “range,” because the whole point about Berghaus’s new kind of continuum—invented to account for information transfer future-to-past—was that within it distance, in the normal sense of space-covered-in-measured-time, was theorized out of existence.

  But, if you discarded distance, how could you have separation? How could there be discrete—anythings?

  Easily, of course. That was the truly astonishing thing. Hadn’t events been turned up by nuclear physicists which called for precisely that? Like an electron departing simultaneously in more than one direction from a given point, or coexisting with itself on two different paths. There was your separation, and there was your absence-of-conventional-distance. Because the one electron involved wasn’t traversing an intervening space. The whole point of Berghaus’s hypothesis was that in his continuum “instantaneity” had to reacquire the meaning it had lost in Einstein’s, where it takes time for even a beam of light to cover the gap between source and recipient.

  You could justifiably say, in that case, “at the same time.” Which you couldn’t in Einsteinian terms.

  But that meant—!

  He was never so angry in his life as he was for the next few moments. On the brink of fitting together his newly formulated thoughts about the nature of things in this eerie alternative kind of space Berghaus had postulated, he was slammed back to the here-and-now, back to the room over the pub, back to the distractions of sensory input. Choking with rage, he opened his eyes.

  Fractionally afterward the lights went up, and his fury was displaced by amazement. What in hell was he doing sprawled idiotically sideways across the chair next to his own? The noise of the stardropper ceased abruptly. There was a shrill cry in a girl’s voice, and a wave of frightened exclamations followed.

  “Leon!” someone said clearly. “Where’s Leon?”

  Dan pushed himself back to an upright position and remembered that the chair alongside his had been Leon Patrick’s. The chair was empty, and across it Angel was staring at him with naked terror in her eyes.

  He rose slowly to his feet. Neill and Watson were hurrying down from the dais, the former gesticulating wildly, the latter solemnly calm. Everyone fell silent, as though confident Watson would give them a lead.

  “You were thrown across Leon’s chair, weren’t you?” Watson said to Dan, raising his voice so that all present could hear him.

  “Yes!” Dan felt his palms sticky with sweat.

  “And there was a slamming sound—like a gigantic handclap?”

  A dozen eager voices confirmed this.

  “Then,” Watson said after a pause, “I’m afraid we may have seen the last of Leon Patrick.”

  He hesitated while a wave of horror and dismay went through the audience, and finished, “Poor devil!”

  X

  Dan remembered clearly when he had last seen so many ghastly-white faces at once: at the scene of a collision where a bus had slammed into a station wagon with four kids in the back and killed them all. And it wasn’t just the paleness that was the same. There were the same expressions, too—the look of people reminded in a flash that they were involved in a dangerous pursuit.

  And who had, until this moment, shared the attitude Lilith had invoked to explain why she wasn’t concerned about the risk of going insane. This sort of thing “happened to someone else.”

  It was pitiable to watch them struggling to adjust—no that Dan had much attention to spare from his own chaotic thoughts. “Someone tell his wife?” came a nervous half-question from a man Dan hadn’t met, and Watson gave a nod.

  “I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry.”

  Upon which the assembly started to disperse, leaving Dan baffled. Surely this couldn’t be the limit of their reaction—the snuffing out of a life glossed over as lightly as the extinction of a candle flame? But no one else seemed to question that Patrick’s vanishing was simply an event to be accepted. The slamming noise apparently indicated that something had gone wrong. Too bad!

  Helpless, he looked around for guidance. The girl Angel was staring at Leon’s chair, her cheeks pale, her lower lip caught between her teeth; she was hugging her arms close to herself as though to control a fit of shivering. Neill, his face lugubrious, had turned back to the dais to disconnect his machine. That left Watson, impassive as a statue of Buddha.

  “But”—Dan hadn’t meant to speak; the words came of their own accord. “But aren’t you going to …?”

  “What, Mr. Cross?” Watson returned.

  “Well—call the police, or something!”

  “And what crime is supposed to have been committed?” Watson snapped crushingly. Raising his voice, he added, “This meeting is declared closed!”

  “No! Oh, no!”

  The cry was flung like a bomb, and everyone still in the room turned to stare at the speaker. It was the membership secretary, Mrs. Towler, elbowing her way through those trying to leave in order to confront Watson.

  “No, that’s not fair!” she went on, aggressive now she was the center of attention. Dan saw a trembling of her mouth that suggested she might burst out crying. “I was getting something, I swear I was, and it’s the first time I ever did, and I don’t see why I should be cheated like this!”

  “Ghoul!” a voice said at Dan’s elbow, barely above a whisper. He jerked his head around to discover that it was Angel who had addressed him.

  “What?”

  “I said ‘ghoul’! Can you imagine anything nastier than wanting to go on after—?” She gestured at the chair which had been Patrick’s, and added with a bitter smile, “Shall we leave them to fight it out? Or are you in the ghoul line too?”

  For a moment, to his own dismay, Dan found himself hesitating. He recalled that he also had been on the verge of some revelation, and that he had been angry when it was snatched from him. But it was no more real to him now than a dream, or the transitory euphoria which followed the use of his personal spoken code.

  “Let’s get the hell out,” he said. “I imagine you could use a drink, and I’m damned sure I could.”

  The downstairs bar was already crowded with the members of the club, being interrogated by the ordinary customers about why they were so upset. Dan sent Angel to a corner table that was still vacant and somehow contrived to avoid being questioned himself while he was collecting double Scotches for them both. Others, Jerry Bartlett among them, had not been so lucky, and there was a buzz of muted alarm in the air.

  Yet …

  He shook his head in incredulity. Redvers had hit on the right point when he said, “Try thinking of it as ‘performing a miracle.’ ” Yet these people didn’t react as though they’d been present when a miracle happened. It might have been nothing more than—than, say, the breaking of a storm, which was now offending the ear with dismal rain.

  In the case of those who hadn’t been upstairs, that was predictable. But in the case of those who had …

  He sat down beside Angel, handed her her drink, and offered cigarettes. Taking one, she gave a sudden harsh laugh.

  “It’s different actually being there when it happens, isn’t it? I’m sort of having to rearrange my private universe.”

  Noticing that his hand shook visibly when he held his lighter out, Dan said, “Didn’t you believe it was true?”

  “Oh, I believed it in my mind.” Breathing s
moke, Angel leaned back with a mutter of thanks. “I had to. After all, I was engaged to Robin Rainshaw. But I didn’t believe it in my guts, where it matters.”

  “You were Robin Rainshaw’s fiancée?” Dan halted the lighter in midmovement so abruptly the flame blew out.

  “I was. Am, I suppose, failing his return to collect this.” She turned a ring on her finger which he hadn’t noticed. “But you sound as though you knew him. Did you?”

  There was a pleading note in the words, but wistful, as though she was prepared to be disappointed. He disappointed her.

  “I’m afraid not. I only heard about him.”

  “Not many people even heard.” Angel moved her glass on the, table between them as on a chessboard—a knight’s move, with the unique diagonal kink in the middle of it. And fell silent, though Dan had expected her to continue.

  His hand still trembling, he finally got his own cigarette lit, and said when he was sure Angel didn’t propose to add anything, “You know what beats me?”

  “Probably the same that beats me. But go ahead anyway.”

  “The—the way all these people are shrugging it off! As though there wasn’t anything extraordinary about a man disappearing into thin air!”

  She gave him a curious look. “You’re a real novice, aren’t you?” she said. “In spite of claiming to know Berghaus, and being so well informed in so many ways.”

  “Yes—hell! I am a novice, I guess. But how do people stop being novices if they won’t learn by asking questions?”

  “In this business you don’t learn by asking. You only learn by experience.”

  “But if you’re apt to vanish in a clap of thunder, what in hell can induce anyone to want more—experience?”

  Before Angel could reply, there was a distraction. The red-haired Mrs. Towler rushed down the stairs from the clubroom and forced a path to the street door, tears streaming down her face. A murmur of incredulous comment followed her.

  In her wake Watson appeared, his face tired and pale. He stood watching until Mrs. Towler had gone out, then collected himself a drink at the bar and glanced around. Spotting a vacant chair at the table Dan and Angel were using, he sat down unbidden.

  “Did you cool her down?” Angel asked, with a headshake toward the door through which the weeping woman had left.

  “Sort of. I promised her a private session with Jock Neill’s equipment. It was all I could think of.”

  “She isn’t going to make it, though, is she? Regardless of what anyone does for her.” Angel didn’t look at him as she posed the question.

  “I wouldn’t care to make a prophecy about that,” Watson said wryly as he sipped his drink. “She might. Though, admittedly, if she does she’s likely to go out like Leon.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever make it?” Now Angel raised her head and stared him straight in the face.

  “I’m not going to risk predictions about anyone,” Watson muttered. “You just keep trying until something happens.”

  Carefully choosing the nastiest available turn of phrase, Dan cut in. “It seems to me that people who want to carry on when they have an example like Patrick before them have a lot in common with drug addicts, going on doping when they know what’s in store.”

  He had intended the remark to be provocative. He wasn’t prepared for the raw fury which blazed in Angel’s eyes, nor for her to thrust back her chair as though to storm away in disgust. But Watson, though he whitened around the lips and eyes, controlled himself and caught her by the arm, making her sit down again by main force.

  “I don’t know what you expect to gain by that cheap kind of baiting, Cross,” he said tightly. “But I’ll accept that you’ve had a shock. All of us have. There’s no need, though, to fling insults around.”

  Dan muttered something inaudible; even he wasn’t certain what he’d had in mind.

  “Do I look like a dope peddler?” Watson pursued.

  “Do they ever?” Dan snapped.

  Watson flushed. He said, “Is that all you think stardropping amounts to—an escape from reality, like drugs? Well, it’s the exact fucking opposite!” He slammed his balled fist on the table, making their glasses jump. Now it was Angel’s turn to try and calm him down, but he shook her hand off and leaned close to Dan, his voice tremulous with conviction.

  “Stardropping is quite literally what Berghaus guessed it might be—a path to new knowledge! But to grasp it requires an act of mental agility you can only compare to making a great scientific discovery. And when in all of history has the chance been offered to everyone, every single member of the human race, to share in that kind of experience? Hm?”

  “But—” Dan began, and was cut short.

  “If you’re not interested in the offer that’s being made, then the hell with you!” Watson seized his glass and drained it at one draught. “Go give that pretty Binton of yours to someone who cares, someone who thinks it’s important to bust down the blind blank walls of stale tradition and open his mind to new data, new discoveries new achievement! Stay in your mud-wallow and be happy if you prefer, but don’t pester me with your stupid insults!”

  There was a pause, which happened to coincide with a general silence into which one of the barmaids threw a shrill insincere laugh. Watson’s tension subsided. He said as the regular babble of conversation resumed, “Sorry. It’s been a shock to us all, as I said. Leon was a long-time member of the club, and … Another? What was it?”

  Dan would have preferred to get away from the pub altogether, but duty impelled him to carry on until he couldn’t stand the pressure a moment longer. He accepted the offer, and sat silently with Angel until Watson returned from the bar with the refilled glasses.

  “Cheers,” he said, sitting down again. “Sorry, Cross. I didn’t have to blow my top any more than I said you did. Let me tell you a little story which I just remembered. Once a European found himself among a people so primitive they hadn’t invented the wheel. He decided to show them how to make carts and lighten their work.

  “Well, at first they were delighted. But then the day came when one of the carts overturned, and the natives saw one of the wheels spinning around on its axle in midair. And they took to their heels, and from that day forth they’d have nothing to do with the carts. A wheel rolling along the ground—that was all right. But one spinning of its own accord in the air smacked of magic, and they were terrified.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re the missionary teaching us about the wheel!” Dan said acidly.

  “No, but Berghaus is—even though he may well not realize it himself.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Dan challenged. “Have you made some fantastic discovery through your ’dropper, or are you indulging in wishful thinking like Mrs. Towler?”

  “I thought we had given up needling each other,” Watson said in a tone of mild reproof. “Anyway, what answer would you expect to that question? If I say yes, you’ll say, ‘Show me! Teach me!’ And that’s impossible. But if I say no, you’ll ask why I’m so sure there is this new knowledge to be had.”

  Dan hesitated, seeking a line of approach that might breach that all-too-logical defense. He said finally, “Well, something obviously happened to Leon Patrick. Do you claim to know what it was?”

  Watson took his time over replying, his eyes—very bright—fixed on Dan’s face. He said at last, “Frankly, Mr. Cross, I think you’re a sensation-seeker rather than a serious researcher, but I’ll give you the same answer anyhow because I think Angel might understand it even if you don’t.”

  “So you think you can explain what became of Patrick!” Dan snapped, nettled.

  “I didn’t say that. I can tell you what happened to him; explaining it is something else.” Watson sipped his drink and wiped his lip with the back of his hand. “Quite simply, Leon learned something. But he didn’t get the whole of it. Tell me, have you ever dropped an old-fashioned light bulb, the kind called vacuum-filled?”

  “I don’t think I—oh! The sound?”
>
  “That’s right”

  Angel was looking from one to other of them, mystified. “Light bulb?” she echoed, puzzled.

  “If someone did physically vanish, there would be an implosion. And a sound like a thunderclap. Displaced air rushing into vacancy.” Dan felt his nape prickle. This was logical, where so many other aspects of the matter had been crazy. He went on, turning to her, “There was no sound when your friend Robin disappeared, was there? Watson, suppose Patrick had vanished silently?”

  “He would answer to ‘Hi!’,” said Angel, and laughed.

  “What?”

  “Carroll. The Hunting of the Snark. When the snark proved to be a boojum he softly and silently vanished away.” Angel gulped the rest of her drink and rose. “Sorry. I’d better do exactly that myself. I’m a bit hysterical.”

  “Shall I run you back?” Watson offered. “You live around the corned from Cosmica, don’t you?”

  “Thanks, I have my own car. You stay and answer some more of Dan’s questions. He needs his hand held. He’s scared.”

  With quick irregular steps she went to the street door. As she passed, Jerry Bartlett called after her, but she ignored him. He looked around, caught sight of Watson, and hastened over.

  “I didn’t see you hidden in this corner,” he said. “Wally, I want to talk about Leon. Can I join you?”

  He sat down without waiting for an answer, and Dan had to give up hope of continuing with his own questions as he began to speak with machinegun rapidity.

  “I don’t mind telling you this thing has blown my mind—absolutely blown my mind! I’ve never before been present when somebody went out, of course, and I wasn’t entirely convinced it really happened. Now I’ve witnessed it myself, I’m spinning so fast I’m dizzy. I’ve been talking with Jock, who hadn’t seen it before either, and he fetched up against the same problem I did. We can’t work out the conditions for instantaneous displacement. I mean, it must be instantaneous! If a man-size body were to leave at finite speed the shockwave would probably bring the building down! All we got was this bang consistent with air imploding into a sudden void.”