"That chrono hasn't been working for three years. I stopped it three
years ago. You haven't even noticed it, have you?"
"I guess not, sir."
"Take a long look out there, Barton. Nothing to see but blackness. No
feeling of distance. Imagine your mind going out there, exploring,
trying to fit in somewhere. You look out there, you project your
thoughts out there, nothing comes back. So what time is it? Where are
you in all this? There was nothing out here until you came along, not
even any meaningful kind of time out here. _But there has to be some
feeling of time, Barton!_"
Barton felt a tinge of uneasiness. He looked out. It looked cold.
"What time is it, Barton?"
"What difference does it make?"
"Your body has to know. Your body works on a timetable doesn't it?
Your lungs, expanding, contracting regularly. Your heart beating so
many times regularly--_every minute_. Your blood circulating regularly.
Look here, Barton. You're a product of a specific environment, on a big
scale, call it Earth, the Solar System. You claim it means nothing,
time means nothing. But your heart beats regularly so many times every
minute and that's why you're alive. Where did the arbitrary rhythm of
that beat come from, Barton? You were born with it. It isn't anything
you control, or had anything to do with developing, is it? What's a
minute? On Earth, it has meaning. Sixty seconds part of a minute. Sixty
minutes make up an hour. What's an hour but a segment of a 24 hour day.
Where does that figure come from? The Earth, Barton. It rotates on its
axis approximately every 24 hours. 24 hours make a day, seven days a
week, so many weeks in a month, twelve months make up a year. A year,
Barton, the Earth rotates around the sun once a year."
For the first time in the basketball, Barton began to feel some
discomfort. He closed his eyes and while they were closed he became
acutely aware of his heart beating, and the expanding and contracting
of his lungs.
"You claim there is no Earth any more, Barton. No Earth rotating on its
axis, no Earth rotating around the sun. No sun, no moon, no time. Why
should your heart go on beating regularly so many times a minute--when
there's nothing out here that gives a minute any meaning? Has time
stopped here? Is there any time here, Barton, when there's nothing here
to turn time into measurable segments? How can your heart beat so many
times a minute, a year, a lifetime if there's no such thing here any
more?"
Barton slowly opened his eyes. His hands felt wet.
"This basketball doesn't rotate, Barton. Doesn't move toward, away
from, or around anything. It's moving with the Galaxy but that can't
mean anything to you can it? Listen, Barton, your body operates largely
on an unconscious level, but what if unconsciously your heart, your
lungs, your bodily functions start to lose their conditioned memory of
the Earth's rotation, the regularity of its movement on its axis and
around the Sun that gave your birth? What will happen then, Barton?
What happens to your heart-beat if your heart begins to forget how long
a minute is?"
Von Ulrich leaned down close to Barton's damp face.
"What time is it, Barton?"
Barton started to look out the spaceport again, but jerked his head in
the other direction. He didn't want to look out. Von Ulrich waited, but
Barton didn't say anything. Finally, with a tight smile on his face,
Von Ulrich got up and went to the door.
"I'll see you again, Barton. Some time."
Barton started. "Wait--don't go," he started to say. But something
constricted in his throat and he hardly even moved his lips, and no
sound came out at all.
He saw the cold streak flash past the view port. It was Von Ulrich's
clinic. Quickly he looked toward the wall. The chrono was gone. Von
Ulrich had taken it with him. There was a watch, a wrist watch. Barton
ran around looking for the wrist watch, but he couldn't find it.
When he lay down again and closed his eyes, he couldn't rest. He
couldn't sleep. His heart beat got louder, and after a while that was
all he could hear, and when he tried to figure out how many times a
minute his heart was, or was not, beating, he couldn't.
What time was it?
* * * * *
The war in which all of Earth's outposts were involved, lasted thirty
years. The basketballs were forgotten for a long time, and when they
were remembered again, a special search was rewarded by finding only
two of them. In the first basketball there was no trace of the watchman
who had been abandoned in it almost half a century before, and no
indication of what had happened to him.
In the second one, Von Ulrich found Barton still lying peacefully on
the couch, looking hardly any different than when Von Ulrich had walked
out and left him there.
Von Ulrich, who had been retired for a long time and who was unable to
get about except in a wheel-chair, had requested inclusion among the
search boat's personnel. No one had figured out why because even if
they found any basketballs, it was certain that no one would be alive
on any of them, let alone anyone needing Von Ulrich's specialized
talents.
Von Ulrich had hoped that Barton's basketball would be found and when
it was found, he insisted on being carried through the interconnecting
airlock into the spheroid that looked on the outside like a dead piece
of slag.
The ship's medical officer, a man young and rather stiff, was shocked
at first to see Barton lying there, but he had a ready explanation as
he used his stethescope. "Must have sprung a leak and let in preserving
frigidity."
"But then how did the leak repair itself and the temperature return to
normal?" Von Ulrich asked as he studied Barton's smooth, unaged face.
"Dead," the medical officer said, and he dropped the stethescope back
into his case.
Von Ulrich gripped the husks of his hands together to keep them from
rattling, and he smiled slowly. "Barton didn't like death much."