PAGE 9
The Instant Of Now
by
“Why not go yourself, Paul?”
“I can do more for the liberation if I stay here.”
“I wish I’d been at the meeting yesterday when the vote was taken. I’d have liked to discuss it with the others before–“
“Why so many questions, Eddie? Why so many doubts all of a sudden?” Sorgel stood and faced Dirrul, holding his shoulders in a grip that hurt. “Are you trying to back out? Maybe it wasn’t a good thing to let you play around with the science boys after all. Be honest with me, Eddie. If you’re not sure where you stand, say so. There’s no room in the Movement for traitors.”
When Dirrul said nothing Sorgel added in a voice that rang with fervor, “You’re the only man in the Movement who has had any training as a space-pilot. It depends on you now–everything you’ve ever dreamed of, everything Glenna and Hurd wanted. Can you forget what the Agronian police did to Glenna? Is your courage any less than hers?” Again Sorgel paused but still Dirrul said nothing. “The future of your world depends on you, Eddie–don’t let it down.”
“I’ll go,” Dirrul whispered.
As Eddie made up his mind his internal tension relaxed and he was filled with a sense of well-being. When he thought about it he couldn’t understand why he had hesitated–unless perhaps what Sorgel suggested was true–that his contact with the Ad-Air faculty had blunted and nearly perverted his established sense of values.
An hour later Dirrul boarded the battered antiquated space cargo carrier on the launching rack at Barney’s emergency field. At the last minute Sorgel pressed a curious disk into his hand. Made of a very light metal and suspended from a short chain it was two inches in diameter and covered with a complex grid design.
“Put it around your neck before you land, Eddie. Don’t remove under any circumstances until you report. Give it to the Chief then. He’ll know I sent you because it’s my own identification activator.” Sorgel clasped Dirrul’s hand warmly. “When you land on Vinin take the North Field below the capital. It’s the HQ operational center. Use Wave-code three-seven-three and they’ll know you’re friendly.”
IV
After the launching space-flight was normally a monotonous routine. The course was charted by automatic navigators and the vast pattern of interlocking machinery and safety devices was electronically controlled by robot relays from the pilot master-panel. The chief function of a trained space-pilot, aside from his services as a diplomat, was to handle emergency situations for which automatic responses could not be built into the machinery.
Dirrul, however, could not depend a great deal upon the robot devices. He had to avoid the well-traveled and well-charted commercial space-lanes. He had to be constantly on the alert for the telltale white of a police cruiser. A cargo carrier was the slowest ship in the universe–Dirrul could outrun nothing, not even a playboy’s sport jalopy, and inspection by the customs police would have been disastrous.
He followed a roundabout route, keeping as far from inhabited planets as he could, and he made good time. In ninety-five days he had reached the mythical border in space, which divided the territory of the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy.
He was almost at midpoint in the galaxy. On the glazed screen of his space-map the mirrored pinpricks of sun systems glittered like microscopic gems scattered over the curve of a gigantic black saucer. Dirrul had never been so far from Agron. He felt a stifling sense of insignificance.
The meaning of time as he understood it was somehow overwhelmed by the immensity of space. Now and yesterday, today and tomorrow, became a single unity. Dirrul had a new sense of the past in terms of the present. His mind groped for word symbols that he understood which could crystalize the shadowy new concept filling his mind.
New understanding seemed to arise from the space-map. Somewhere among the glowing points of light was the Place of the Beginning, a single planet called Earth. In the far-distant past Earthmen had made themselves rational beings. But for centuries thereafter they had made no further progress, apparently appalled by the audacity of such presumptive evolution. They had fought through a long primitive period of violence, erecting system on system and philosophy upon philosophy to conceal, destroy and wipe out their own biological machinery.