The Paradox Men Read online

  “You said this body will ‘land’ on the earth,” said Haven. “You think then—”

  “It will prove to be another intergalactic ship.”

  “But even the biggest lunar or solar freighters don’t exceed a mass of ten thousand tons,” objected Gaines. “The ship that crashed five years ago was really rather small. Even the largest interstellar ship couldn’t possibly have a detectable gravitational effect on a planet, let alone on a whole galaxy.”

  “Objects traveling at trans-photic velocities—even though such velocities are theoretically impossible—would approach infinite mass,” reminded Alar. “And don’t forget, the mass of this object increased with increasing velocity. Its mass at rest is probably relatively small. But it needn’t be large if its velocity is trans-photic. I suspect that a mere gram weight hurled past the M Thirty-one nebula at a velocity of several million c’s would do damage comparable to our own hypothetical intergalactic ship.”

  “But no intergalactic ships were known in the solar system five years ago,” protested Keiris, yawning sleepily. “And you said that it left our system five years ago and passed M Thirty-one at many times the velocity of light. Do you mean there are two intergalactic ships? One that arrived five years ago from parts unknown and a second one that left here five years ago and is due to return next week?”

  Alar laughed harshly. “Insane, isn’t it? Especially when there were no intergalactic or even interstellar ships in existence in the solar system five years ago.”

  “Maybe the Eastern Federation furnished it,” suggested Haven. “I have a suspicion that Haze-Gaunt has consistently underestimated them.”

  “Not likely,” said Gaines. “We know they’ve got a tremendous plutonium production network, but that’s just talcum powder compared to muirium. And they’d have to have muirium for an interstellar drive and they don’t have it—yet.”

  Alar began pacing the floor. Two intergalactic ships. One crashed five years ago and he must have been on it. Another was due to arrive on July 21—next week—bearing whom? Furthermore, on earth, the T-twenty-two was due to blast off in the early morning of July 21. Again—with whom?

  By the river that bore him, that made three ships! He groaned and gnawed at his lip. It seemed that the answer was within his grasp, that it lay on the tip of his tongue. That if he solved this riddle he would know who he was. He knew Haven and Gaines were watching him covertly.

  How strange that he, the apprentice, had grown so in stature within the past few weeks. And yet he had no sensation of development. It seemed that the others were growing dull, slow-witted. The genius, he knew, never appears particularly intelligent to himself.

  He stopped and looked at the woman.

  Keiris seemed to be asleep. Her head had fallen forward on her right shoulder, and her lock of gray hair had dropped over her right eye. Her face had assumed the same waxen pallor that had characterized her since her arrival at the observatory. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically under her enveloping cape.

  As he stared at her closed and sunken eyes, the conviction seized him that he had seen her thus before—dead.

  The Thief blinked. The hallucination was undoubtedly the result of overwork and sleeplessness. With his nervous system thus deranged he could endanger the lives of all of them.

  “Gaines,” he whispered, “your guard won’t relieve the regular I.P. officer at the landing docks for another two hours. Let’s all take a nap until then.”

  “I’ll stand watch,” volunteered Haven.

  Alar smiled. “If they want to kill us, finding out about it in advance won’t do us any good. I’ll wake us up in plenty of time.”

  Haven patted a yawn. “All right.”

  Alar got down on the cold metal tiles just in front of Keiris’s chair, forced his mind to become blank, and was instantly asleep.

  After a quarter of an hour Keiris listened carefully to the steady breathing of her three companions, then opened her eyes and studied the man asleep at her feet. Her eyes soon came to rest on his upturned face.

  It was a strange, unworldly face—yet attractive and gentle. A deep peace lay about the eyes. As she watched him, the lines in her own cheeks softened a little.

  She crouched forward slowly, her moody, half-opened eyes fixed on the man’s closed ones, and then got out of her chair entirely and stooped beside him.

  She stiffened, then relaxed. Across the room Gaines mumbled fitfully and shifted in his chair.

  Again she bent over the sleeping Thief until her eyes were but a few inches from his face. After a brooding pause, she eased back into the chair, slipped the sandal from her right foot with the toe of her left and flexed her toes luxuriously over the material of Alar’s left sleeve. Her right foot reached hesitantly toward his hand, then quickly withdrew.

  She took a deep breath and clenched her teeth, and the next instant her long toes, like fingers, were caressing the man’s hand, barely touching the skin. She let her foot rest against the back part, across the knuckles and fingers, so much like an awkward hand gently holding his.

  For a while she remained that way. Then she withdrew her foot and knelt forward. Her eyes, once more inches from his own closed ones, studied him. Satisfied that he was deeply asleep, she tilted her head and laid her cheek to his. She could feel the faint stubble of a new beard, the firm, angular cheekbone. Her spine tingled as his uncombed black hair brushed her forehead and pressed against her own. Her face was flushed and hot, and she had a curious feeling that time was standing still.

  14

  Escape from the Moon

  TOWARD THE END of the second hour Alar quickened his breathing. She drew herself back silently, thrust her foot into the sandal just before he opened his eyes and looked at her.

  His eyes roved somberly over her body, which was completely hidden from throat to knees by her cape, then returned to her face. He said quietly, “You have no arms.”

  She turned her face away.

  “I should have guessed. Was it Shey?”

  “It was Shey. The Thief surgeons told me there wasn’t enough left of them—that they had to amputate to save my life.”

  “Some remarkable prosthetics are available.”

  “I know. The thieves fitted me with computerized arms. I could never get used to them. I let them go. But it isn’t too bad. I can wash my face, thread a needle, hold a knife—”

  “You know that Thieves are not permitted to kill even in self-defense, Keiris?”

  “I don’t want you to kill Shey. It doesn’t matter any more.”

  The Thief lay on the cold floor, his eyes soft and thoughtful. Then he pushed himself to his knees, reached out, grasped her around the waist gently and lowered her to the pillow beside him. She sat there, silently, feet tucked under, as he curled himself in front of her, close to her.

  “Keiris,” he said, keeping his hands at her waist. “It matters to me. It matters to me how you feel, whether you can be happy now.” His face was near to hers and he caught that exasperatingly familiar scent which came from her. Again he wondered if he had known this still beautiful woman in his phantom past. Several times there had seemed to come from her the faintest hint of recognition.

  She just stared at him. Not wild-eyed, but calmly, almost tenderly, as though she too sensed the bond between them and accepted it. The lines in her face had loosened and the increase of moisture in her large black eyes magnified the unfathomable emotion in them. Unrouged to the extent she usually was, yet there was a warm color in her face now.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said simply, “but I feel a kinship toward you. Something unexplainable.” He felt her body tense beneath his hands.

  “I know what you feel, my dear,” she said. “And neither can I explain it. I have always loved Kim, I always shall love him. But I know that to love you too will not be disloyal.” She turned her head sharply away and her hair swung softly against her neck.

  Alar thought back into the vanished hours. He recalled
how he had met this woman, and how they had gone to the great ball together, and how they had parted there. He relived that final terrible scene in his mind. Aloud, he mused: “You said I reminded you of someone you used to know. It was Kennicot Muir, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet I am not Muir. There’s not the faintest resemblance.”

  She raised her head. She was not crying, though her eyes were sparklingly wet. “True,” she said. “You are completely different from him—and yet I felt when we first met that I once before had seen your face, with those oh so intense dark eyes.”

  He took his hands from her waist and cupped them around her face.

  “Keiris,” he said, the name a caress on his lips, “one day, not so long from now, we will know who I am.” He put his hands in his lap. “We must not give up until we find that day.”

  “We won’t,” she said.

  Alar lay his head on her knees, hiding from her the hard concentration in his eyes.

  He remained in that twisted position for many minutes, unable to relax.

  At last the woman spoke, her cheek briefly stroking his ear. “Gaines’s guard is probably on duty by now.”

  “Yes, I know.” He got heavily to his feet and wakened the others.

  Gaines rubbed his eyes and stretched. “The three of you will have to stay here a moment until I check out clearance with my man,” he warned.

  He stepped into the corridor, and the panel wound shut quietly behind him.

  Alar was grateful for the delay. Ever since he had learned that the Phobos had docked, en route for the sun, he had been making calculations. Even now, despite the trauma wrought within him by what Shey had done to Keiris, his thoughts were sunward.

  On the sun would be station masters who had served under Muir. If he could meet just one who knew Muir’s whereabouts—just one who could explain why he, Alar, had been found with the Log of the T-twenty-two in Muir’s handwriting…

  On the other hand, a quasi-safety awaited him on Terra, under the protection of the Society. There he could pursue his personal mystery in relative peace and quiet. And there he could be with Keiris, who really needed him now.

  “Gaines ought to have been back before now,” he said to Haven shortly. “Something may have gone wrong with his plan. I’d better reconnoiter.”

  Haven shook his head. “No, boy. I’ll go.”

  Apparently Haven still viewed him as nonexpendable. On the other hand he knew from his past experience with danger that he would be more likely to come back alive than Haven.

  “You’d better stay with the girl,” urged the biologist persuasively.

  Against his better judgment Alar let the older man through the panel and watched him as he walked slowly up the corridor. At the first intersection Haven turned left toward the passenger docks. His head jerked once, and, leaning awkwardly against the intersection corner, he tried to turn around. Then he slumped to the floor.

  Keiris watched Alar’s body grow rigid. “What’s wrong?” she whispered tensely.

  The Thief turned an ashen face to her. “He has just been killed with a poison dart.” Stricken eyes looked into hers and beyond. He had to breathe several times before he could speak again. “You stay here. I’m going out there.”

  But she followed him closely as he stepped through the panel, and he knew it was futile to insist that she remain. Together they walked slowly up the corridor.

  The Thief could not take his eyes from the sprawling body of the man who had walked into death—for him. He could not think but knew he must think, and quickly.

  He paused a few feet before the intersection and looked at the face of his dead friend. It was a craggy, noble face, almost beautiful now in its final peace.

  While he gazed, the misty stupor that numbed his mind evaporated and he had a plan. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. His scheme required that the killers show themselves, but to lure them out he would have to expose himself in the intersection, with the probability that they would shoot first and ask questions later. It was a risk he had to run.

  “I am unarmed,” he called. “I wish to surrender.”

  The military heart, he knew, longed for recognition. The capture of a man who had eluded even the great Thurmond might bring a transfer to Terra and rapid promotion. He hoped an imaginative officer was in charge of the detail.

  He stepped into the intersection.

  Nothing happened.

  Around the corner he could see Gaines’s body sprawled out lifeless. A wicked metal sliver protruded from his neck. His bribed guard had evidently been discovered.

  “Put your hands up, Alar—slowly,” said a tense voice behind him. “You too, sister.”

  “I will do so, but madame has no arms and cannot raise her hands,” said Alar, concealing the rising excitement in his voice. Arms high, he turned slowly and saw a young I.P. officer covering him with a snub-nosed gun, apparently powered by compressed air, or by a mechanically wound spring, to give a muzzle velocity of a hundred or so meters a second—just slow enough to penetrate Thief armor.

  “You’re right,” said the officer grimly, noting Alar’s rapid survey of the weapon. “It’s not accurate beyond fifty yards, but its poison darts kill faster than bullets. Fourteen of these guns are covering you from peepholes at this instant.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and approached the two cautiously.

  The icy exterior of the Thief’s face concealed a frantically racing mind. Both eyes were focused on the radioreceptor button on the guard’s right shoulder, directly below the ear, that connected all guard personnel with the central police room. Alar’s eyes were growing beady and feverish but nothing was happening.

  He knew he was capable of emitting photic beams in the infrared with a wave length of at least half a millimeter. The U.H.F. intercom band certainly shouldn’t exceed a meter. Yet his eyes were pouring out the electromagnetic spectrum from a few Angstroms to several meters, without raising a squeak in the receptor button.

  Something had gone wrong. He was aware of Keiris’s body shivering near his side.

  In another instant the I.P. would step around to slap the handcuffs on him from behind, and he would lose precious visual contact with the receptor disc.

  A bead of perspiration slid down Alar’s cheek and dangled at his stubbled chin.

  “A.M.” said Keiris quietly.

  Of course! Amplitude modulation, unheard of since the earliest days of radio, could be used here, where there was virtually no static.

  Suddenly the button whistled. The officer stopped uncertainly.

  “Instructions for Gate Eleven,” intoned the receptor button. “It has been decided to permit the Alar group to ‘escape’ in their ship. No further attempt shall be made to kill or capture members of the party. End.”

  Although modified by the liaison neural network that integrated his larynx, optic lobe and retina, further disguised by the imperfections of the one-inch speaker cone on the officer’s shoulder, it seemed to Alar that the other could not fail to recognize the voice of the man he was about to manacle.

  “You heard Center, mister,” said the officer harshly. “Get going. Carry this stiff with you; I’ll have the other sent out.” His face was knotted in a hard smile. Quite evidently he expected the great lunar guns to open up on the tiny craft immediately after it had blasted off.

  The Thief knelt without a word and gently gathered Haven’s body into his arms. The body of the older man seemed curiously shriveled and small. Only now did Alar realize what stature the bare fact of being alive contributed to flesh and bone.

  Keiris led the way and opened the panels for them. The little spacer was just ahead. To one side of it lay a larger freighter, the Phobos. Someone was on the landing platform and calling into the sunbound ship. “No word yet. We’ll give him three minutes.”

  Alar’s heart skipped a beat. Slowly he climbed the ramp to the Thief spacer, stooping as he entered.

  His lifeless
burden he placed on one of the rear bunks.

  A puffing guard dragged Gaines in behind him, left the body on the cabin floor and departed without a word.

  Alar looked up pensively, and after a few seconds realized that he was gazing into Keiris’s somber eyes.

  “My hypothesis was wrong,” he said.

  “You mean about the two—or was it three—intergalactic ships?”

  “Yes. I said that one left the earth five years ago, crossed the universe and is due to return in a few days—on July twenty-first.”

  She waited.

  “It can’t be returning,” said Alar, still seeming to stare through her, “because it hasn’t left yet.”

  The cabin was utterly silent.

  “To travel at a velocity greater than light,” continued the Thief, “seems to require that the Einsteinian equation for the equivalence of mass and energy be overthrown. But the conflict is only apparent. The mass of a Newtonian body may be restated in terms of an Einsteinian body through a correction factor thus—”

  He wrote the formula on a bulkhead with a pencil:

  “Here c is the velocity of light, v the velocity of the moving body, m is Newtonian mass and M is Einsteinian mass. As v increases, of course, M must grow. As v approaches c, M approaches infinity. Heretofore we have considered a limiting velocity. Yet it can’t be, because something—my hypothetical intergalactic ship—has crossed the universe in only five years—less than one-billionth the time required by light. So v can be greater than c.

  “But when v is greater than c, it would seem that Einsteinian mass M must be meaningless, involving as it does the square root of a negative number. But such a conclusion is inconsistent with the observed effect of the ship on galactic matter during the whole of its flight.

  “Now the alternative to meaningless M is negative v, which would make v-square positive, and the equation then follows the usual pattern for the determination of M. But v is simply a ratio of distance to time. Distance is a positive scalar quantity, but time can be either positive or negative, depending on whether it stretches into the future or the past.”