[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To the men of the future, the scientific
goals of today were as incomprehensible
as the ancient quest for the Holy Grail!
There was a thump. Maitland stirred, came half awake, and opened his
eyes. The room was dark except where a broad shaft of moonlight from
the open window fell on the foot of his bed. Outside, the residential
section of the Reservation slept silently under the pale illumination
of the full Moon. He guessed sleepily that it was about three o'clock.
What had he heard? He had a definite impression that the sound had come
from within the room. It had sounded like someone stumbling into a
chair, or--
Something moved in the darkness on the other side of the room. Maitland
started to sit up and it was as though a thousand volts had shorted his
brain....
This time, he awoke more normally. He opened his eyes, looked through
the window at a section of azure sky, listened to the singing of birds
somewhere outside. A beautiful day. In the middle of the process of
stretching his rested muscles, arms extended back, legs tensed, he
froze, looking up--for the first time really seeing the ceiling. He
turned his head, then rolled off the bed, wide awake.
_This wasn't his room!_
The lawn outside wasn't part of the Reservation! Where the labs and
the shops should have been, there was deep prairie grass, then a green
ocean pushed into waves by the breeze stretching to the horizon. This
wasn't the California desert! Down the hill, where the liquid oxygen
plant ought to have been, a river wound across the scene, almost hidden
beneath its leafy roof of huge ancient trees.
Shock contracted Maitland's diaphragm and spread through his body.
His breathing quickened. _Now_ he remembered what had happened during
the night, the sound in the darkness, the dimly seen figure, and
then--what? Blackout....
Where was he? Who had brought him here? For what purpose?
He thought he knew the answer to the last of those questions. As
a member of the original atomic reaction-motor team, he possessed
information that other military powers would very much like to obtain.
It was absolutely incredible that anyone had managed to abduct him from
the heavily guarded confines of the Reservation, yet someone had done
it. How?
* * * * *
He pivoted to inspect the room. Even before his eyes could take in
the details, he had the impression that there was something wrong
about it. To begin with, the style was unfamiliar. There were no
straight lines or sharp corners anywhere. The walls were paneled in
featureless blue plastic and the doors were smooth surfaces of metal,
half ellipses, without knobs. The flowing lines of the chair and table,
built apparently from an aluminum alloy, somehow gave the impression
of arrested motion. Even after allowances were made for the outlandish
design, something about the room still was not right.
His eyes returned to the doors, and he moved over to study the nearer
one. As he had noticed, there was no knob, but at the right of this
one, at about waist level, a push-button projected out of the wall. He
pressed it; the door slid aside and disappeared. Maitland glanced in at
the disclosed bathroom, then went over to look at the other door.
There was no button beside this one, nor any other visible means of
causing it to open.
Baffled, he turned again and looked at the large open window--and
realized what it was that had made the room seem so queer.
It did not look like a jail cell. There were no bars....
Striding across the room, he lunged forward to peer out and violently
banged his forehead. He staggered back, grimacing with pain, then
reached forward cautious fingers and discovered a hard sheet of stuff
so transparent that he had not even suspected its presence. Not glass!
Glass was never this clear or strong. A plastic, no doubt, but one he
hadn't heard of. Security sometimes had disadvantages.
He looked out at the peaceful vista of river and prairie. The character
of the sunlight seemed to indicate that it was afternoon. He became
aware that he was hungry.
Where the devil could this place be? And--muscles tightened about his
empty stomach--what was in store for him here?
He stood trembling, acutely conscious that he was afraid and helpless,
until a flicker of motion at the bottom of the hill near the river drew
his attention. Pressing his nose against the window, he strained his
eyes to see what it was.
A man and a woman were coming toward him up the hill. Evidently they
had been swimming, for each had a towel; the man's was hung around his
neck, and the woman was still drying her bobbed black hair.
Maitland speculated on the possibility that this might be Sweden; he
didn't know of any other country where public bathing at this time
of year was customary. However, that prairie certainly didn't look
Scandinavian....
As they came closer, he saw that both of them had dark uniform suntans
and showed striking muscular development, like persons who had trained
for years with weights. They vanished below his field of view,
presumably into the building.
He sat down on the edge of the cot and glared helplessly at the floor.
* * * * *
About half an hour later, the door he couldn't open slid aside into the
wall. The man Maitland had seen outside, now clad in gray trunks and
sandals, stood across the threshold looking in at him. Maitland stood
up and stared back, conscious suddenly that in his rumpled pajamas he
made an unimpressive figure.
The fellow looked about forty-five. The first details Maitland noticed
were the forehead, which was quite broad, and the calm, clear eyes.
The dark hair, white at the temples, was combed back, still damp from
swimming. Below, there was a wide mouth and a firm, rounded chin.
This man was intelligent, Maitland decided, and extremely sure of
himself.
Somehow, the face didn't go with the rest of him. The man had the head
of a thinker, the body of a trained athlete--an unusual combination.
Impassively, the man said, "My name is Swarts. You want to know where
you are. I am not going to tell you." He had an accent, European, but
otherwise unidentifiable. Possibly German. Maitland opened his mouth
to protest, but Swarts went on, "However, you're free to do all the
guessing you want." Still there was no suggestion of a smile.
"Now, these are the rules. You'll be here for about a week. You'll have
three meals a day, served in this room. You will not be allowed to
leave it except when accompanied by myself. You will not be harmed in
any way, provided you cooperate. And you can forget the silly idea that
we want your childish secrets about rocket motors." Maitland's heart
jumped. "My reason for bringing you here is altogether different. I
want to give you some psychological tests...."
"Are you crazy?" Maitland asked quietly. "Do you realize that at this
moment one of the greatest hunts in history must be going on? I'll
admit I'm baffled as to where we are and how you got me here--but it
seems to me that you could have found someone less conspicuous to give
your tests to."
Briefly, then, Swarts did smile. "They won't find you," he said. "Now,
come with me."
* * * * *
After that outlandish cell, Swarts' laboratory looked rather
commonplace. There was something like a surgical cot in the center, and
a bench along one wall supported several electronics cabinets. A couple
of them had cathode ray tube screens, and they all presented a normal
complement of meters, pilot lights, and switches. Cables from them ran
across the ceiling and came to a focus above the high flat cot in the
center of the room.
"Lie down," Swarts said. When Maitland hesitated, Swarts added,
"Understand one thing--the more you cooperate, the easier things will
be for you. If necessary, I will use coercion. I can get all my results
against your will, if I must. I would prefer not to. Please don't make
me."
"What's the idea?" Maitland asked. "What is all this?"
Swarts hesitated, though not, Maitland astonishedly felt, to evade an
answer, but to find the proper words. "You can think of it as a lie
detector. These instruments will record your reactions to the tests I
give you. That is as much as you need to know. Now lie down."
Maitland stood there for a moment, deliberately relaxing his tensed
muscles. "Make me."
If Swarts was irritated, he didn't show it. "That was the first test,"
he said. "Let me put it another way. I would appreciate it a lot if
you'd lie down on this cot. I would like to test my apparatus."
Maitland shook his head stubbornly.
"I see," Swarts said. "You want to find out what you're up against."
He moved so fast that Maitland couldn't block the blow. It was to the
solar plexus, just hard enough to double him up, fighting for breath.
He felt an arm under his back, another behind his knees. Then he was on
the cot. When he was able to breathe again, there were straps across
his chest, hips, knees, ankles, and arms, and Swarts was tightening a
clamp that held his head immovable.
Presently, a number of tiny electrodes were adhering to his temples and
to other portions of his body, and a minute microphone was clinging to
the skin over his heart. These devices terminated in cables that hung
from the ceiling. A sphygmomanometer sleeve was wrapped tightly around
his left upper arm, its rubber tube trailing to a small black box
clamped to the frame of the cot. Another cable left the box and joined
the others.
So--Maitland thought--Swarts could record changes in his skin
potential, heartbeat, and blood pressure: the involuntary responses of
the body to stimuli.
The question was, what were the stimuli to be?
"Your name," said Swarts, "is Robert Lee Maitland. You are thirty-four
years old. You are an engineer, specialty heat transfer, particularly
as applied to rocket motors.... No, Mr. Maitland, I'm not going to
question you about your work; just forget about it. Your home town is
Madison, Wisconsin...."
"You seem to know everything about me," Maitland said defiantly,
looking up into the hanging forest of cabling. "Why this recital?"
"I do not know everything about you--yet. And I'm testing the
equipment, calibrating it to your reactions." He went on, "Your
favorite recreations are chess and reading what you term science
fiction. Maitland, _how would you like to go to the Moon_?"
Something eager leaped in Maitland's breast at the abrupt question, and
he tried to turn his head. Then he forced himself to relax. "What do
you mean?"
Swarts was chuckling. "I really hit a semantic push-button there,
didn't I? Maitland, I brought you here because you're a man who wants
to go to the Moon. I'm interested in finding out _why_."
* * * * *
In the evening a girl brought Maitland his meal. As the door slid
aside, he automatically stood up, and they stared at each other for
several seconds.
She had the high cheekbones and almond eyes of an Oriental, skin that
glowed like gold in the evening light, yet thick coiled braids of
blonde hair that glittered like polished brass. Shorts and a sleeveless
blouse of some thick, reddish, metallic-looking fabric clung to her
body, and over that she was wearing a light, ankle-length cloak of what
seemed to be white wool.
She was looking at him with palpable curiosity and something like
expectancy. Maitland sighed and said, "Hello," then glanced down
self-consciously at his wrinkled green pajamas.
She smiled, put the tray of food on the table, and swept out, her cloak
billowing behind her. Maitland remained standing, staring at the closed
door for a minute after she was gone.
Later, when he had finished the steak and corn on the cob and shredded
carrots, and a feeling of warm well-being was diffusing from his
stomach to his extremities, he sat down on the bed to watch the sunset
and to think.
There were three questions for which he required answers before he
could formulate any plan or policy.
Where was he?
Who was Swarts?
What was the purpose of the "tests" he was being given?
It was possible, of course, that this was all an elaborate scheme
for getting military secrets, despite Swarts' protestations to the
contrary. Maitland frowned. This place certainly didn't have the
appearance of a military establishment, and so far there had been
nothing to suggest the kind of interrogation to be expected from
foreign intelligence officers.
It might be better to tackle the first question first. He looked at
the Sun, a red spheroid already half below the horizon, and tried to
think of a region that had this kind of terrain. That prairie out there
was unique. Almost anywhere in the world, land like that would be
cultivated, not allowed to go to grass.
This might be somewhere in Africa....
He shook his head, puzzled. The Sun disappeared and its blood-hued
glow began to fade from the sky. Maitland sat there, trying to get
hold of the problem from an angle where it wouldn't just slip away.
After a while the western sky became a screen of clear luminous blue,
a backdrop for a pure white brilliant star. As always at that sight,
Maitland felt his worry drain away, leaving an almost mystical sense of
peace and an undefinable longing.
Venus, the most beautiful of the planets.
Maitland kept track of them all in their majestic paths through the
constellations, but Venus was his favorite. Time and time again he
had watched its steady climb higher and higher in the western sky,
its transient rule there as evening star, its progression toward the
horizon, and loved it equally in its _alter ego_ of morning star. Venus
was an old friend. An old friend....
Something icy settled on the back of his neck, ran down his spine, and
diffused into his body. He stared at the planet unbelievingly, fists
clenched, forgetting to breathe.
Last night Venus hadn't been there.
Venus was a morning star just now....
_Just now!_
He realized the truth in that moment.
* * * * *
Later, when that jewel of a planet had set and the stars were out,
he lay on the bed, still warm with excitement and relief. He didn't
have to worry any more about military secrets, or who Swarts was.
Those questions were irrelevant now. And now he could accept the
psychological tests at their face value; most likely, they were what
they purported to be.
Only one question of importance remained:
What year was this?
He grimaced in the darkness, an involuntary muscular expression of
jubilation and excitement. The _future_! Here was the opportunity for
the greatest adventure imaginable to 20th Century man.
Somewhere, out there under the stars, there must be grand glittering
cities and busy spaceports, roaring gateways to the planets.
Somewhere, out there in the night, there must be men who had walked
beside the Martian canals and pierced the shining cloud mantle of
Venus--somewhere, perhaps, men who had visited the distant luring stars
and returned. Surely, a civilization that had developed time travel
could reach the stars!
And _he_ had a chance to become a part of all that! He could spend
his life among the planets, a citizen of deep space, a voyager of the
challenging spaceways between the solar worlds.
"I'm adaptable," he told himself gleefully. "I can learn fast. There'll
be a job for me out there...."
_If--_
Suddenly sobered, he rolled over and put his feet on the floor, sat
in the darkness thinking. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would have to find a
way of breaking down Swarts' reticence. He would have to make the man
realize that secrecy wasn't necessary in this case. And if Swarts still
wouldn't talk, he would have to find a way of forcing the issue. The
fellow had said that he didn't need cooperation to get his results,
but--
After a while Maitland smiled to himself and went back to bed.
* * * * *
He woke in the morning with someone gently shaking his shoulder. He
rolled over and looked up at the girl who had brought him his meal the
evening before. There was a tray on the table and he sniffed the smell
of bacon. The girl smiled at him. She was dressed as before, except
that she had discarded the white cloak.
As he swung his legs to the floor, she started toward the door,
carrying the tray with the dirty dishes from yesterday. He stopped her
with the word, "Miss!"
She turned, and he thought there was something eager in her face.
"Miss, do you speak my language?"
"Yes," hesitantly. She lingered too long on the hiss of the last
consonant.
"Miss," he asked, watching her face intently, "what year is this?"
Startlingly, she laughed, a mellow peal of mirth that had nothing
forced about it. She turned toward the door again and said over her
shoulder, "You will have to ask Swarts about that. I cannot tell you."
"Wait! You mean you don't know?"