‘Hi, boss! Better we eat, huh? Not only because I’m starving by inches, but if we don’t eat pretty quick well get only one meal today instead of three. Did you eat your candy bar?’
‘Damned right.’
She smiled. ‘In that case, you can kiss me.’
He did, still tenderly, and they strolled to and through the Main and into the alcove. James and Lola, the latter looking terribly strained and worn, had already eaten, but joined them in their after-breakfast coffee and cigarettes.
‘You’ve checked, of course,’ Garlock said. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Absolutely. Even to Lola and her biologists. Everybody’s full of joy and gratitude and stuff – as well as information. And we managed to pry ourselves loose without taking up you two trumpet-of-doom sleepers. So we’re ready to jump again. I wonder where in hell well wind up this time.’
‘I’m glad you said that, Jim,’ Garlock said. ‘It gives me the nerve to spring a thing on you that I’ve been mulling around in my mind ever since we landed here.’
‘Nerve? You?’ James asked incredulously. ‘Pass the coffeepot around again, Brownie. If that character there said what I heard him say, thisll make your hair stand straight up on end.’
‘On our jumps we’ve had altogether too much power and no control whatever. Consider three things. First, as you all know, I’ve been trying to figure out a generator that would give us intrinsic control, but I haven’t got any farther with it then we did back on Tellus. Second, consider all the jumps we’ve made except this last one. Every time we’ve taken off, none of us has had his shield really up. You, Jim, were concentrating on the drive, and so were wide open to it. The rest of us were at least
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thinking about it, and so were more or less open to it. Not one of us has ever ordered it to take us to any definite place; in fact, I don’t believe that any one of us has ever even suggested a destination.
Third, consider this last jump all by itself. It’s the first time we’ve ever stayed in the same galaxy. It’s the first time we’ve ever gone where we wanted to. And it’s the first time – here’s the crux – that any of us has been concentrating on any destination at the moment of firing the charge. Brownie was willing the Pleiades to this planet so hard that we could all taste it. The rest of us, if not really pushing to get here, were at least not opposed to the idea.’
‘Are you saying the damn thing’s alive’}” James asked. ‘No. I’m saying I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe in coincidence – that concept is as meaningless as that of paradox. I certainly do not believe that we hit this planet by chance against odds of almost infinity to one. So I’ve been looking for a reason. I found one. It goes against the grain – against everything I’ve ever believed – but, since it’s the only possible explanation, it must be true. The only possible director of the Gun-ther Drive must be the mind.’
‘Damn it, now you are saying that the thing’s alive.’ ‘Far from it. It’s Brownie who’s alive. It was Brownie who got us here. Nothing else – repeat, nothing else – makes sense.’ James pondered for a full minute. ‘I wouldn’t buy it except for one thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take a taste of it. So go on.’
‘Okay. You know that we don’t know anything really fundamental about either teleportation or the drive. I’m sure now that the drive is simply mechanical teleportation. If you tried to ‘port yourself without any idea of where you wanted to go, where do you think you’d land?’
‘You might scatter yourself all over space – no, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t move, because it wouldn’t be teleportation at all. Destination is an integral part of the concept.’
‘Exactly so – but only because you’ve been conditioned to it all your life. This thing hasn’t been conditioned to anything.’ ‘Like a new-born baby,’ Lola suggested. ‘Life again,’ James said. ‘I can’t see it – pure luck, even at
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those odds, makes a lot more sense.”
‘And to make matters worse,’ Garlock went on as though neither of them had spoken, ‘just suppose that a man had four minds instead of one and they weren’t working together. Then where would he go?’
This time, James simply whistled; the girls stared, speechless.
‘I think we’ve proved that my school of mathematics was right – the thing was built to operate purely at random. Fother-ingham was wrong. However, I missed the point that if control is possible, the controller must be a mind. The idea never occurred to me or anyone working with me. Nor to Fother-ingham or anybody else.’
‘I can’t say I’m sold, but it’s easy to test and the results can’t be any worse. Let’s go.’
‘How would you test it?’
‘Same way you would. Only way. First, each one of us alone. Then pairs and threes. Then all four together. Fifteen tests in all. No. Three destinations for each setup – near, medium, and far. Except Tellus, of course; we’d better save that shot until we learn all we can find out. Anybody not in the set should screen up as solidly as he can set his block – eyes shut, even, and concentrating on something else. Check?’
James did not express the thought that Tellus must by now be so far away that no possible effort could reach it; but the thought was nagging at everyone’s minds anyway.
‘Check. I’ll concentrate on a series of transfinite numbers. Belle, you work on the possible number of shades of the color green. Lola, how many different perfumes you can identify by smell? Jim, hit the button.’
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SIX
The tests took much time, and were strictly routine in nature. At their conclusion, Garlock said:
‘First: either Jim alone, or Lola alone, or Jim and Lola together, can hit any destination within any galaxy, but can’t go from one galaxy to another.
‘Second: either Belle or I, or any combination containing either of us without the other, has no control at all,
‘Third: Belle and I together, or any combination containing both of us, can go intergalactic with full control.
‘In spite of confession supposedly being good for the soul, I don’t like to admit that we’ve messed things up – do you, Belle?’ Oarlock’s smile was both rueful and forced.
‘Not one bit.’ Belle licked her lips; for the first time since boarding the starship she was acutely embarrassed. ‘We’ll have to admit it, of course. It was all my fault – and it makes me look like a damned stupid juvenile.’
‘Not at all, since neither of us had any idea. I’ll be glad to settle for half the blame.’
‘Will you please stop talking Sanskrit?’ James asked. ‘Or lep it, so we two innocent bystanders can understand it?’
‘Will do,’ said Garlock, and he went on in thought: ‘Remember what I said about this drive not being conditioned to anything? I was wrong. Belle and I have conditioned it, but badly. We’ve been fighting so much that something or other in that mess down there has become conditioned to her, something else to me. My part will play along with anyone except Belle; hers with anybody except me. Anti-conditioning, you might call it. Anyway, they lay back their ears and balk.’
‘Oh, hell!’ James snorted. Talk about gobbledegook! You’re
still saying that that conglomeration of copper and silver and
steel and insulation that we built ourselves has got intelligence,
and I still won’t buy it.’
‘By no means. Remember, Jim, that both the concept of
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mechanical teleportation, and that the mind is the only possible controller, are absolutely new. We’ve got to throw out all previous ideas and start new from scratch. I postulate, as a working hypothesis drawn from original data as modified by these tests, that that particular conglomeration of materials generates at least two fields about the properties of which we know nothing at all. That one of those properties is the tendency to become preferentially resonant with one mind and preferentially non-resonant with another. Clear so far?’
‘Dimly.’ James scowled in thought. ‘However, it’s no harder to swallow than Sanderson’s Theory of Teleportation. Or, for that matter, the actual basic coupling between mind and ordinary muscular action. Does that mean we’ll have to rebuild half a million credits’ worth of … no, you and Belle can work it, together.’
‘I don’t know.’ Garlock paced the floor. ‘I simply can’t see any possible mechanism of coupling.’
‘Subconscious, perhaps,’ Belle suggested,
‘For my money that whole concept is invalid,’ Garlock said. ‘It merely changes “I don’t know” to “I can’t know,” and I don’t want any part of that. However, “unconscious” could be the answer, and if so, we may have a lever. Belle, are you willing to bury your hatchet for about five minutes – work with me like a partner ought to?’