“Hit me with a what?” Hobart scrutinized the policeman’s neat frame, looking for weapons.
“I forgot you’ve been away eighteen years.” Shimming opened his right hand, revealing what looked like a silver golf ball. “This is a spider. If I threw it at you it would explode on contact and wrap you up in metal ribbons – same way some spiders truss up flies. It wouldn’t hurt, but you’d have to be carried off the ship all done up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and it would be bloody undignified. It would be really embarrassing for you.”
“I see. Thanks for bringing me up to date.” Hobart pretended not to notice the threat which had been implicit in the description of the restraint system. “I would have cooperated with you anyway.”
“That’s good.” Shimming made no move to put the silver ball away. “Shall we go?”
“Don’t I get to hear what this is all about?”
“Not now, not in here – it wouldn’t be considerate.”
“Considerate?”
“Yes. The ship has to remain officially sealed until I get you off, and it wouldn’t be fair to all the others if we caused unnecessary delays. They must be pretty anxious to get their feet back on the ground after all this time.”
“Okay.” Unable to shake off a feeling he was being manipulated, Hobart detached his holdall from the spring clip which prevented it from drifting about the room. He glanced around the tiny compartment, scarcely able to believe he would not be spending the night in its familiar confines, and moved out into the corridor. It was a long time since he had walked in zero-gravity conditions with the aid of suction soles, and at first he swayed grotesquely as he made his way towards the transfer port. Shimming laboured along behind him, obviously ill at ease, allowing too much suction to build up under his shoes and having to struggle to lift his feet clear of the deck. His progress was punctuated by popping noises and occasional bursts of subdued swearing.
The pilot was already waiting in the blue-and-grey police transit vehicle, which looked strangely unreal against the background of powdery green that was the Langer Line’s house colour. The vehicle was smaller than the company transits, too, making the cylindrical transfer port seem exceptionally roomy. Aware of the curious stares of the lock technicians in the control chamber, Hobart climbed aboard the shuttle and strapped himself into a deep chair in the midsection passenger compartment. When he looked out through the transparencies at his side he found he was now on a level with the lock crew, all of whom were gazing back at him with undisguised interest. Hobart’s cheeks began to tingle. Suddenly angry, he turned to Shimming, who was hauling himself down into the next seat.
“This is an imposition,” he said. “It’s too much! I ought to have a lawyer here.”
Shimming frowned at the buckle on his seat belt. “You’re not being denied access to a lawyer – but think of the expense of bringing one up here. And the delay.”
“The company should take care of the expense – they’re supposed to look after contract officers. I should have spoken to Colonel Langer.”
Shimming looked up from the buckle, which he seemed to find as tricky as a Chinese puzzle, and an odd expression appeared briefly on his long face. “How in hell do these things go together?”
“Like that.” Hobart slid the metal connectors home across the other man’s stomach. He thought about the reaction his mention of Colonel Langer had produced, and it crossed his mind that he might benefit by showing he had friends in high places.
“Yes,” he said reflectively, striving for maximum effect, “I should have spoken to the colonel. I’ll call him as soon as we touch down.”
“You’ll be wasting your time,” Shimming said. “Colonel Langer died four years ago.”
“But that’s im – ” Hobart broke off in the middle of the word, gagging on his first real taste of what space travellers called timeslip. As far as he was concerned, he had been away on a voyage lasting thirteen months – but during that period a total of eighteen years had elapsed on Earth, and the effect of those years was real. No longer was it an abstract idea in Hobart’s mind, a textbook paradox to be marvelled at and dismissed from his thoughts. His world had run the gamut of eighteen winters, been warmed by eighteen summers, and there had been lots of time for old men to grow older still, and then to die…
“…how you guys do it,” Shimming was saying. “Skipping ten or twenty years at a time would cut the feet out from under me – I’d be lost, if you know what I mean – but you just take it in your stride, calm as you like. Something I really admire, that.”
“How did the colonel die?”
“Some say it was bourbon, some say it was gin.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” Hobart said, deciding to pursue his original intent. “He was a good friend.”
Shimming snorted. “Some friend!”
“What do you mean?”
Shimming placed his finger tips together and lowered his chin to his chest a couple of times as a preliminary to speaking. “It would be best for you, Dennis, if you didn’t try to palm off some story about you and old man Langer belonging to the same social set, playing polo together, and that sort of thing. You were one of the bunch of young rams that Mrs Langer used to invite up to the house to keep her amused, and I doubt if the colonel ever did more than say hello and good-bye to you. Am I right?”
“Certainly not,” Hobart snapped, appalled. “Colonel Langer invited me to his place personally, several times, and although we weren’t all that close we had a good…”
“Dennis,” Shimming cut in, smiling apologetically, “it was Langer who started this whole thing off. He was the one who said you killed Craven.”
Hobart was unable to prevent his jaw from sagging as a partial understanding of his predicament seared itself into his mind like a spark tracing a message on chemically treated paper. The colonel must have known what Wolf and I did, he thought in sudden panic. He must have seen us, or been told – and this is his revenge.
He became aware that Investigator Shimming was scanning his face with eyes as intent as those of a gambler watching the wheels of a chance machine shudder to a halt, and it came to him that he needed to protect himself. No doubt Shimming was highly skilled at reading expressions and interpreting instinctive verbal responses – so what was he to say in his own defence?
He composed his features with an effort and retreated into youthful pomposity. “This is too ridiculous for words.”
“That’s unfortunate, because words are the only tools I can use,” Shimming replied. “There’s nothing…” He stopped speaking and glanced around him as the shuttle’s doors sprang together with a pneumatic gasp. There was a diminishing hiss as the transfer dock was bled of air, and a few seconds later the outer door slid open to reveal the blackness of space. Because of the brightness within the dock the stars appeared sparse and dim. The shuttle wallowed slightly as the berthing clamps were released. Manoeuvring jets sounded faintly and the vehicle began to slide out into a boundless ocean of emptiness, forsaking the homely environment of beams, panels and pipe runs for one in which the mind was lost for visual anchors.
Shimming gave a wan smile, and Hobart realized the investigator was highly nervous. He repressed the sympathetic grimace with which he would normally have reassured anyone who was new to space and stared straight ahead, trying to assess the likelihood of his ending up in the death chamber. A chill descended over him as he considered the proposition that his life might terminate on Earth in a few months’ time, in the year 2131, instead of at some vague and postponable date centuries ahead.