Open Writing

Holly watched anxiously as sleep inducing field was
turned off and Jase began to show signs of waking. The
procedure had appeared to go smoothly, although the
Clarke’s medical people said they could not tell what, if
any, degree of success had been achieved. That would
only become apparent after Jase woke up.

The operation itself had seemed simple enough; super-
oxygenated blood had been fed into the carotid artery on
one side of Jase’s neck, then passed through his brain and
out again through the jugular vein on the other side.
Simultaneously, a carefully monitored electrical current
had been passed through his system. These two actions,
taken in harmony, were supposed to stimulate his brain
cells and start their re-growth.

Holly had been warned not to count on too much
change in Jase’s condition immediately, but she found
herself half-expecting a miraculous transformation, for
her lover to wake and be normal again. She tried to keep
this feeling under control, telling herself that it wasn’t
going to happen. However, she couldn’t prevent a part of
her hoping that it somehow would.

Holly watched the unconscious form of her man with
love. Although they had only been together for a short
time, they had been through so much it seemed like she
had known him forever. Please be all right, Jase, she
thought. If nothing else, at least let nothing happen to
make things worse. The doctor had told her that there was
a small possibility that Jase could suffer a deterioration of
his condition, due to the massive influx of oxygen his
brain was receiving, and the invasive trauma of the
procedure. The effect on the undamaged cells was
virtually impossible to predict and, while it was unlikely
that it would cause any real harm, there was always the
chance that things could go wrong.

Now, as Holly looked, Jase’s eyelids began to flicker,
and he made a small sound. Then his eyes opened, and he
looked straight at her. Holly held her breath, not daring to
move or make a sound. Then Jase smiled.

“Hi, Holly. H-how goes it?”

The relief was so great, Holly almost fainted. With a
sob, she sat on the bunk at Jase’s side and took his hand in
both of hers. After a couple of attempts, she managed to
speak.

“Hi, yourself. How do you feel?”

Jase frowned, then said, “It’s funny. I re-remember
everything that happened after the accident, I think. But
it’s kind of fuzzy, like it h-happened to someone else, you
know? But I remember one thing.”

Holly held her breath, waiting, hoping. Then Jase
smiled again.

“I love you, Holly.”

Holly wept then, but they were tears of joy. Her man
was going to be all right, she knew it in her heart. His
stammer had diminished, and she knew he would get even
better with time. She stayed like that, holding his hand
and talking quietly until the doctor suggested that the
patient get some sleep. With one last kiss, she left him
and went to the cabin she had been allocated.

Jase was going to be all right, that was the main thing.
As to the rest of their problems, she had not really given
them any thought. Her only concern had been Jase, and
whether or not he would be all right. Now, free of her
main worry, she was able to turn her mind to other things.
The sleepers were her other concern. What was going to
become of them? Could they have the surgical procedure,
too? The improvement shown by Jase suggested that they
could, although the degree of success would probably
vary from one to another. Also, there were a lot of them
who were in far worse shape than Jase had been.

She would talk to the captain and the doctor about that
soon, but first she had to give some thought to what she
and Jase were going to do now. Continuing with the
colonizing mission, even if some of the sleepers could be
restored to some semblance of their former selves, did not
seem to be a serious option. Each colonist had an
important task to perform, a part of the overall whole, and
too many of them would be simply unable to function at
full capacity.

Her other main area of concern, apart from Jase, was
the one thousand children on board, many of whom would
have been her pupils had the mission proceeded as
planned. What was to become of them? Could they also
be treated as Jase had been? One thing was certain: if the
adults could not go on to the mission’s objective, then the
children certainly could not.

But if they did not continue on to Procyon VII, what
would they do, where would they go? Holly covered her
face with her hands and rubbed her eyes. If only there was
someone she could… The thought hit her almost
immediately. The computer! It might be able to help her,
to suggest something she had not thought of, had not
considered in her worry and concern over Jase. She
moved to the cabin’s terminal and punched up the
Clarke’s computer, then requested to be patched through
to the Asimov, which was moored alongside. The
connection was made immediately, and she smiled as the
familiar figure appeared beside her.

“Hi, doll. How ya been?”

“I’ve been fine, Doc,” she smiled. “How’ve you
been?”

“Just great. It’s been terrific to have an old buddy to
talk to after all this time.”

Holly frowned, puzzled. “Old buddy? What are you
talking about? What old buddy?”

The computer-generated image of Isaac Asimov
beamed. “Well, Sir Arthur, of course. You know, as in
Arthur C. Clarke.”

Holly smiled in understanding. “I suppose you’re
going to tell me that this ship’s computer is a
reincarnation of that famous sci-fi writer, too.”

“Of course,” the computer said, perfectly straight-
faced. “We’ve been having a great time, catching up on
each other’s news. I tell ya, it’s been a real old home
week around here for a while.”

Holly smiled, then said, “Doc, I wonder if you could
do something for me. Could you and your new friend put
your heads together and see if you can come up with any
suggestions as to just what we’re going to do now? We
seem to be a little short of choices, I know, but I’d
appreciate any help you could give us.” Quickly, she
explained that Jase had seemed to come through the
operation well, and the prognosis for improvement was
good.

The computer told her that it knew this; it had been
monitoring proceedings through its friend, and had all the
information already. Then it dropped its bombshell.

“I’ve been talking with Arthur, Holly, about just that
very thing, the colony and the sleepers and all. Now, you
have to remember that he’s a couple of centuries in
advance of me, which kinda ticked me off at first,
although he’s very kindly downloaded a few million gigs
of info into my banks, and updated me on scientific
advances. He’s come up with a suggestion that I think
could be the answer to your problems.”

Holly sat up straighter. “What, Doc? Tell me.”

“Well,” continued the computer, the eyes twinkling
behind the spectacles, “Arthur thinks you can return to
earth.” Holly began to speak, and the computer went on.
“And what’s more, he thinks you can be taken back to
around the time that you originally left.”

Holly sat, stunned, unable to comprehend at first just
what the computer was saying. “Back to the…what are
you saying, Doc? Are you talking…time travel here?”

The computer image had the good grace to look
shame-faced.

“I gotta tell ya, Holly, ya coulda knocked me over with
a feather. See, it seems that the lightspeed capacity of the
Clarke has nothing to do with tachyons, as I originally
thought. Instead, it comes from its ability to accelerate
constantly, thereby going on increasing its velocity until it
just goes through a kind of light barrier that they’ve
discovered. After that, all kinds of weird things happen. I
don’t wanna bore you with the science, but suffice to say
time travel is a kind of by-product. It seems they can move
around, up and down the time-line, pretty much at will.”

The computer chuckled again, then continued.
“Y’know, it’s pretty ironic, really. In my earlier
incarnation, I was the one who wrote the stories about
time-travel; Arthur always poo-pooed the idea, saying it
wasn’t feasible for serious literature. Now look at us.”

Holly thought about this for a moment, struggling to
settle her reeling mind. “So,” she said finally, “what
you’re saying is that Jase and I could be returned to the
same time as we left earth?”

“Well, not exactly the same time,” the computer
replied. “As you probably know, two objects can’t occupy
the same space at the same time, so you’d have to go back
to a time just after you left earth. But close, yeah.”

Holly jumped up from the terminal and raced to the
cabin door.

“Where ya going, Holly?” the computer asked.

“Sorry, Doc,” she said, punching the door lock, “I’ve
got to talk to the captain.” The door slid open, and Holly
ran down the corridor. As she went, it occurred to her for
the first time that the Clarke had some kind of artificial
gravity, but the thought was gone as quickly as it
surfaced. Racing through the ship, she headed for the
captain’s cabin.

* * *

“Under normal circumstances, Ms. Parmentier, I’d
have to say no.”

Holly looked at Captain Henshaw closely, watching
for a sign that he was, in this case, somehow willing to
make an exception.

“However,” he went on, “you and Mr. Kerr seem to
have had more than your share of hardship on this trip.
While I’m sure you can appreciate that you must expect to
encounter difficulties on a voyage like yours, I’m also
sure you were never meant to have to go through what
you did. So, yes, Ms. Parmentier, I think we can bend the
rules a little here.”

Holly almost sagged with relief. Then she found her
voice. “Where… I mean, when do you think we can get
back to?”

Henshaw rubbed his cheek absently, and settled into
the chair behind the large antique desk. “Well, I’m no
temporal expert; if you want an exact answer, you’ll have
to talk to my science officer. But…we should be able to
return you to the lightspeed barrier somewhere close to
the time you left earth, say about a month after. Then it
would be several more months of deceleration until we
reached earth.”

Holly stared out through the portal beside the desk at
the stars, with the bulk of the Asimov hovering nearby.
“When can we leave?” she asked excitedly.

“Very soon,” replied Henshaw. “I’ll have to have a
medical team take care of the sleepers, to make sure
they’re ready for another two hundred year trip, and
engineers to get the Asimov turned around and headed
back to earth. Obviously, they can’t stay here; even if we
had the same success with a few of them as we had with
your friend, they wouldn’t be able to continue with the
colonizing mission. They have to return to earth; I don’t
think it’ll matter how long they take, so they can remain
on the Asimov, and the computer can bring them home.”

Holly thought about this. “But there have to be some
who will recover as well as Jase, or even better, and they
might want to go on. What are we going to tell them when
they ask why they weren’t allowed to continue the
mission?”

Henshaw shrugged. “In that case, they can come back
out here when they’re cured. Procyon will still be here,
and we’ve got colonizing missions leaving earth pretty
regularly now. And,” he added, “they won’t have to spend
hundreds of years in cryosleep, either. Just a year or so to
get up to lightspeed, then zap: anywhere they like, almost
instantly.”

Henshaw, at Holly’s request, had decided that security
precautions did not apply to her, and had elaborated on
the lightspeed capability of the ship. Using a drive
utilizing a new kind of fusion power, it could accelerate
continuously up to the speed of light, where it passed
through a barrier that had been discovered by the first ship
to do so. Depending on how long they spent on the “other
side”, they would, on deceleration, emerge in normal
space to find themselves many light years from where
they had first passed lightspeed.

Through a system calibrated by ordinary trial and error
and perfected over many decades, they could now travel
to virtually anywhere in the known galaxy that they
wished. The temporal displacement that caused them to
move about in time was determined by how long they
spent just below lightspeed. Spending a longer period on
the return trip canceled out the temporal shift of the
outward journey, and returned them to a point in time just
after they originally went through the barrier.

Holly hadn’t tried to understand the science behind it;
the captain and his engineering and science officers
assured her that it worked, and she was happy to take their
word for it.

After the captain said he would contact her when they
were ready to leave, Holly left his cabin and headed back
to the room she shared with Jase. Her step was light as
she walked quickly through the ship, and she hurried to be
with her man. They were going home.