We had just about forgotten the colonel, not to mention Mr. Yardo who contributes another "Ha! Ha!" so this reminder comes as a slight shock, nor do we see what he is talking about but this he proceeds to explain.
"I don"t know why M"Clare thought it necessary to stage this discussion. I am already acquainted with his plan and have had orders to co-operate. I have expressed my opinion on using undergraduates in a job like this and have been overruled. If he, or you, imagine that priming you to bring out his ideas like this is going to reconcile me to the whole business you are mistaken. He might have chosen a more suitable mouthpiece than that child with the curly hair--"
Here everybody wishes to reply at once; the resulting jam produces a moment of silence and I get in first.
"As for curly hair I am rising twenty-four and I was only saying what we all thought, if we have the same ideas as M"Clare that is because he taught us for four years. How else would you set about it anyway?"
My fellow students pick up their stylers and tap solemnly three times on the table; this is the Russett equivalent of "Hear! Hear!" and the colonel is surprised.
Eru says coldly, "This discussion has not been rehea.r.s.ed. As Lizzie ... as Miss Lee says, we have been working and thinking together for four years and have been taught by the same people."
"Very well," says Delano-Smith testily. "Tell me this, please: Do you regard this idea as practicable?"
Cray tilts his chair back and remarks to the ceiling, "This is rather a farce. I suppose we had to go through our paces for the colonel"s benefit--and Mr. Yardo"s of course--but can"t we be briefed properly now?"
"What do you mean by that?" snaps the colonel.
"It"s been obvious right along," says Cray, balancing his styler on one forefinger, "so obvious none of us has bothered to mention it, that accepting the normal limitations of Ma.s.s-Time, the idea of interfering in Incognita was doomed before it began. No conventional ship would have much hope of arriving before war broke out; and if it did arrive it couldn"t do anything effective. Therefore I a.s.sume that this is not a conventional ship. I might accept that the Government has sent us out in a futile attempt to do the impossible, but I wouldn"t believe that of M"Clare."
Cray is the only Terry I know acts like an Outsider"s idea of one; many find this difficult to take and the colonel is plainly one of them. Eru intervenes quickly.
"I imagine we all realized that. Anyway this ship is obviously not a conventional model. If you accept the usual Ma.s.s-Time relationship between the rate of transition and the fifth power of the apparent acceleration, we must have reached about four times the maximum already."
"Ram!" says B suddenly, "What did you do to stop the Hotel scope registering the little ship you picked up me and Lizzie in?"
Everybody cuts in with something they have noticed about the capabilities of this ship or the hoppers, and Lenny starts hammering on the table and chanting! "Brief! Brief! Brief!" and others are just starting to join in when Eru bangs on the table and glares us all down.
Having got silence, he says very quietly, "Colonel Delano-Smith, I doubt whether this discussion can usefully proceed without a good deal more information; will you take over?"
The colonel looks round at all the eager earnest interested maps hastily put on for his benefit and decides to take the plunge.
"Very well. I suppose it is ... very well. The decision to use students from Russett was made at a very high level, and I suppose--"
Instead of saying "Very well" again he shrugs his shoulders and gets down to it.
"The report from the planet we decided to call "Incognita" was received thirty-one days ago. The Department of Spatial Affairs has certain resources which are not generally known. This ship is one of them. She works on a modified version of Ma.s.s-Time which enables her to use about a thousand channels instead of the normal limit of two hundred; for good and sufficient reasons this has not been generally released."
Pause while we are silently dared to doubt the Virtue and sufficiency of these reasons which personally I do not.
"To travel to Incognita direct would take about fifteen days by the shortest route. We shall take eighteen days as we shall have to make a detour."
But presumably we shall take only fifteen days back. Hurrah we can spend a week round the planet and still be back in time for Commemoration. We shall skip maybe a million awkward questions and I shall not disappoint Dad.
It is plain the colonel is not filled with joy; far from it, he did not enjoy revealing a Departmental secret however obvious, but he likes the next item even less.
"We shall detour to an uninhabited system twelve days" transit time from here and make contact with another ship, the _Gilgamesh_."
At which Lennie DiMaggio who has been silent till now brings his fist down on the table and exclaims, "You _can"t_!"
Lennie is much upset for some reason; Delano-Smith gives him a peculiar look and says what does he know about it? and Lennie starts to stutter.
Cray remarks that Lennie"s childhood hobby appears to have been s.p.a.ceships and he suffers from arrested development.
B says it is well known Lennie is mad about the s.p.a.ce Force and why not? It seems to have uses Go on and tell us Lennie.
Lennie says "_G-Gilgamesh_ was lost three hundred years ago!"
"The flaw in that statement," says Cray after a pause, "is that this may be another ship of the same name."
"No," says the colonel. "Explorer Cla.s.s cruiser. They went out of service two hundred eighty years back."
The s.p.a.ce Force, I remember, does not re-use names of lost ships: some says Very Proper Feeling some say Superst.i.tious Rot.
B says, "When was she found again?"
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Lennie says it was j-just thirty-seven revolutions of his native planet which means f-f-fifty-three Terrestrial years ago, she was found by an Interplanetary scout called _Crusoe_.
Judging by the colonel"s expression this data is Cla.s.sified; he does not know that Lennie"s family come from one of the oldest settled planets and are s.p.a.ce-goers to a man, woman, and juvenile; they pick up ship gossip the way others hear about the relations of people next door.
Lennie goes on to say that the Explorer Cla.s.s were the first official exploration ships sent out from Earth when the Terries decided to find out what happened to the colonies formed during the Exodus.
_Gilgamesh_ was the first to re-make contact with Garuda, Legba, Lister, Cor-bis and Antelope; she vanished on her third voyage.
"Where was she found?" asks Eru.
"Near the p-p-pole of an uninhabited planet--maybe I shouldn"t say where because that may be secret, but the rest"s History if you know where to look."
Maybe the colonel approves this discretion; anyway his face thaws very slightly unless I am Imagining it.
"_Gilgamesh_ crashed," he says. "Near as we can make out from the log, she visited Seleucis system. That"s a swarmer sun. Fifty-seven planets, three settled; and any number of fragments. The navigator calculated that after a few more revolutions one of the fragments was going to crash on an inhabited planet. Might have done a lot of damage. They decided to tow it out of the way.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"Grappling-beams hadn"t been invented. They thought they could use Ma.s.s-Time on it a kind of reverse thrust--throw it off course.
"Ma.s.s-Time wasn"t so well understood then. Bit off more than they could chew. Set up a topological relation that drained all the free energy out of the system. Drive, heating system--everything.
"She had emergency circuits. When the engines came on again they took over--landed the ship, more or less, on the nearest planet. Too late, of course. Heating system never came on--there was a safety switch that had to be thrown by hand. She was embedded in ice when she was found. Hull breached at one point--no other serious damage."
"And the ... the crew?"
Dillie ought to know better than that.
"Lost with all hands," says the colonel.