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Read Ebook: Time and the Woman by Dewey G Gordon
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Ebook has 918 lines and 65475 words, and 19 pages
Ninon watched him with envious eyes, waiting until he was fully alert.
"Robert!" she said, and the youth paused at the sharpness of her voice. "How old are you?"
"I've told you before, darling--twenty-four."
"How old do you think I am?"
He gazed at her in silent curiosity for a moment, then said, "Come to think of it, you've never told me. About twenty-two or -three, I'd say."
"Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be fifty-two."
He stared at her in shocked amazement. Then, as his gaze went over the smooth lines of her body, the amazement gave way to disbelief, and he chuckled. "The way you said it, Ninon, almost had me believing you. You can't possibly be that old, or anywhere near it. You're joking."
Ninon's voice was cold. She repeated it: "I am fifty-two years old. I knew your father, before you were born."
This time she could see that he believed it. The horror he felt was easy to read on his face while he struggled to speak. "Then ... God help me ... I've been making love to ... an old woman!" His voice was low, bitter, accusing.
Ninon slapped him.
He swayed slightly, then his features froze as the red marks of her fingers traced across his left cheek. At last he bowed, mockingly, and said, "Your pardon, Madame. I forgot myself. My father taught me to be respectful to my elders."
For that Ninon could have killed him. As he turned to leave, her hand sought the tiny, feather-light beta-gun cunningly concealed in the folds of her gown. But the driving force of her desire made her stay her hand.
"Robert!" she said in peremptory tones.
The youth paused at the door and glanced back, making no effort to conceal the loathing she had aroused in him. "What do you want?"
Ninon said, "You'll never make that flight without me.... Watch!"
Swiftly she pushed buttons again. The room darkened, as before. Curtains at one end divided and rustled back, and a glowing screen sprang to life on the wall revealed behind them. And there, in life and movement and color and sound and dimension, she--and Robert--projected themselves, together on the couch, beginning at the moment Ninon had pressed the three buttons earlier. Robert's arms were around her, his face buried in the hair falling over her shoulders....
The spaceman's voice was doubly bitter in the darkened room. "So that's it," he said. "A recording! Another one for your collection, I suppose. But of what use is it to you? I have neither money nor power. I'll be gone from this Earth in an hour. And you'll be gone from it, permanently--at your age--before I get back. I have nothing to lose, and you have nothing to gain."
Venomous with triumph, Ninon's voice was harsh even to her ears. "On the contrary, my proud and impetuous young spaceman, I have much to gain, more than you could ever understand. When it was announced that you were to be trained to command this experimental flight I made it my business to find out everything possible about you. One other man is going. He too has had the same training, and could take over in your place. A third man has also been trained, to stand by in reserve. You are supposed to have rested and slept the entire night. If the Commandant of Space Research knew that you had not...."
"I see. That's why you recorded my visit tonight. But I leave in less than an hour. You'd never be able to tell Commander Pritchard in time to make any difference, and he'd never come here to see...."
Ninon laughed mirthlessly, and pressed buttons again. The screen changed, went blank for a moment, then figures appeared again. On the couch were she and a man, middle-aged, dignified in appearance, uniformed. Blane Pritchard, Commandant of Space Research. His arms were around her, and his face was buried in her hair. She let the recording run for a moment, then shut it off and turned up the lights.
To Robert, she said, "I think Commander Pritchard would be here in five minutes if I called and told him that I have information which seriously affects the success of the flight."
The young spaceman's face was white and stricken as he stared for long moments, wordless, at Ninon. Then in defeated tones he said, "You scheming witch! What do you want?"
There was no time to gloat over her victory. That would come later. Right now minutes counted. She snatched up a cloak, pushed Robert out through the door and hurried him along the hall and out into the street where his car waited.
"We must hurry," she said breathlessly. "We can get to the spaceship ahead of schedule, before your flight partner arrives, and be gone from Earth before anyone knows what is happening. I'll be with you, in his place."
Robert did not offer to help her into the car, but got in first and waited until she closed the door behind her, then sped away from the curb and through the streets to the spaceport.
Ninon said, "Tell me, Robert, isn't it true that if a clock recedes from Earth at the speed of light, and if we could watch it as it did so, it would still be running but it would never show later time?"
The young man said gruffly, "Roughly so, according to theory."
"And if the clock went away from Earth faster than the speed of light, wouldn't it run backwards?"
The answer was curtly cautious. "It might appear to."
"Then if people travel at the speed of light they won't get any older?"
Robert flicked a curious glance at her. "If you could watch them from Earth they appear not to. But it's a matter of relativity...."
Ninon rushed on. She had studied that book carefully. "And if people travel faster than light, a lot faster, they'll grow younger, won't they?"
Robert said, "So that's what's in your mind." He busied himself with parking the car at the spaceport, then went on: "You want to go back in the past thirty years, and be a girl again. While I grow younger, too, into a boy, then a child, a baby, at last nothing...."
"I'll try to be sorry for you, Robert."
Ninon felt again for her beta-gun as he stared at her for a long minute, his gaze a curious mixture of amusement and pity. Then, "Come on," he said flatly, turning to lead the way to the gleaming space ship which poised, towering like a spire, in the center of the blast-off basin. And added, "I think I shall enjoy this trip, Madame, more than you will."
The young man's words seemed to imply a secret knowledge that Ninon did not possess. A sudden chill of apprehension rippled through her, and almost she turned back. But no ... there was the ship! There was youth; and beauty; and the admiration of men, real admiration. Suppleness in her muscles and joints again. No more diets. No more transfusions. No more transplantations. No more the bio-knife. She could smile again, or frown again. And after a few years she could make the trip again ... and again....
The space ship stood on fiery tiptoes and leaped from Earth, high into the heavens, and out and away. Past rusted Mars. Past the busy asteroids. Past the sleeping giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Past pale Uranus and Neptune; and frigid, shivering Pluto. Past a senseless, flaming comet rushing inward towards its rendezvous with the Sun. And on out of the System into the steely blackness of space where the stars were hard, burnished points of light, unwinking, motionless; eyes--eyes staring at the ship, staring through the ports at Ninon where she lay, stiff and bruised and sore, in the contoured acceleration sling.
The yammering rockets cut off, and the ship seemed to poise on the ebon lip of a vast Stygian abyss.
Joints creaking, muscles protesting, Ninon pushed herself up and out of the sling against the artificial gravity of the ship. Robert was already seated at the controls.
"How fast are we going?" she asked; and her voice was rusty and harsh.
"Barely crawling, astronomically," he said shortly. "About forty-six thousand miles a minute."
"Is that as fast as the speed of light?"
"Hardly, Madame," he said, with a condescending chuckle.
"Then make it go faster!" she screamed. "And faster and faster--hurry! What are we waiting for?"
The young spaceman swivelled about in his seat. He looked haggard and drawn from the strain of the long acceleration. Despite herself, Ninon could feel the sagging in her own face; the sunkenness of her eyes. She felt tired, hating herself for it--hating having this young man see her.
He said, "The ship is on automatic control throughout. The course is plotted in advance; all operations are plotted. There is nothing we can do but wait. The light drive will cut in at the planned time."
"Time! Wait! That's all I hear!" Ninon shrieked. "Do something!"
Then she heard it. A low moan, starting from below the limit of audibility, then climbing, up and up and up and up, until it was a nerve-plucking whine that tore into her brain like a white-hot tuning fork. And still it climbed, up beyond the range of hearing, and up and up still more, till it could no longer be felt. But Ninon, as she stumbled back into the acceleration sling, sick and shaken, knew it was still there. The light drive!
She watched through the ports. The motionless, silent stars were moving now, coming toward them, faster and faster, as the ship swept out of the galaxy, shooting into her face like blazing pebbles from a giant slingshot.
She asked, "How fast are we going now?"
Robert's voice sounded far off as he replied, "We are approaching the speed of light."
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