The Instant of Now

Dirrul backed into the desk, knocking a fragile statuette to the floor. When it lay shattered at his feet he understood why he could still plan and reason, even though the disk was gone. The Chief's shot, fired so close to his head, had deafened him either temporarily or permanently.

Dirrul ran to the control panel and twisted dials frantically, pulling every lever he could find. He had no idea what he was doing and it didn't matter so long as something happened. If he could decontrol even half the disks on Vinin it would create enough confusion to cover his own escape.

Twenty-five days later the Space-dragon shot up from the space-field which was hidden among the stony Vininese mountain ravines. As it cut through the stratosphere Dirrul's bonds were released. He felt exhausted and empty. His last memory was of talking to Hurd on the mountain trail. Beyond that was a blank. He looked up at Glenna, as beautiful as ever but somehow more mature.

"You're all right now, Eddie?" she asked in a loud voice that betrayed her deafness.

"I think so. Where are you taking me?"

She touched her ears, still crudely bandaged. "You must say everything very slowly, Eddie. I haven't yet learned to read lips as well as Hurd does."

"Where are we going?"

"Back to Agron."

"We have no right, Glenna—we're traitors!"

"We have a duty to tell them the truth. What they do with us doesn't matter."

He shook his head weakly, still lost in his stupor. "Tell me what happened, Glenna—I can't remember anything."

"You got out of the government building and stole a Space-dragon. Then you came looking for us. Just after you met Hurd your hearing began to come back and of course you lost control of yourself. Hurd wanted to break your eardrums but I wouldn't let him.

"Since we had a space-ship at last we could get away from Vinin and I knew you'd be all right when we did. But it took us a month to steal enough fuel. Something you did in the government building paralyzed a lot of the leaders for a while but by the time we got around to looking for fuel the others had restored order again."

The door of the control room slid open and Hurd dropped down on the bunk beside Dirrul. "Feeling better?" he asked anxiously.

"I guess so. The whole picture's beginning to come back."

Hurd sighed with relief and his face relaxed.

Dirrul asked slowly, "How did you get away from them, Hurd?"

"I lost my hearing in the beating Sorgel gave me on Agron."

"Sorgel!" Dirrul repeated unbelievingly. It was the last illusion to go and for that reason the most painful. "Then it wasn't the Agronian police—"

"Of course it was Sorgel," Glenna said quietly. "He had to get rid of us because we wouldn't go along with him on the idea of a Vininese invasion. I tried so hard to tell you, Eddie, but I couldn't because of the drugs they gave us."

"The Vininese never knew I was deaf," Hurd went on. "It's easy enough to escape from a work camp when you can think for yourself. The Vininese resistance found me in the hills and I've been working with them ever since. A pitiful band of the deaf, fighting insurmountable odds to win back the human dignity of half the galaxy! But they won't turn tail and run and their numbers grow every time they raid a work camp."

"Were you with the men who kidnapped Glenna?"

"We were all out that night, trying to keep watch on the camps near the capital. We didn't know which one Glenna was in but I was sure the Vininese would try to reach her after they got your teleray message. We counted on the Vininese leading us to her and we knew we had to kidnap her first if we were to keep them from learning about the Plan on Agron.

"Unfortunately I wasn't with the group that picked you up, Eddie. They thought they had taken a Vininese leader and it seemed such a suitable punishment to take your disk away and let you hear the sound for a while. Later—after you'd escaped—when the others described your Air-Command uniform I took a chance and sent my note."

He helped Dirrul to his feet. "You'll have to take over from here on in, Eddie. You said you knew how to pilot this thing. I figured out a take-off but that's as far as I can go."

"Sorgel's pilot showed me once," he said. "What I don't remember I'll improvise. He said a Space-dragon could make the run in thirty days. This baby's got to do it in less than twenty-five if we're going to beat the Vininese fleet to Agron."

"You didn't tell them the Plan, did you, Eddie?"

"No."

"The Vininese won't land without instructions."

"Sorgel may get up enough courage to send a teleray code. We can't take any chances either."

Dirrul drove himself without rest. He cut every corner he knew, used every trick of navigational skill he had ever learned. Nonetheless it was twenty-eight days before the little ship hung in the air over the Agronian capital.

His heart sank. On the space-field, in neat ranks, the Vininese space-fleet was drawn up in proud review. The planet had fallen! Dirrul made his decision instinctively.

The Space-dragon wheeled and swept low over the field, its vicious guns blazing. The yellow clouds of destruction swept up toward the sky—the little ship was caught in the blazing flame. The interplanetary freight sheds loomed ahead. And the world exploded, falling apart into a soothing painless silence.

Dirrul opened his eyes and looked at the neutral blue of a hospital ceiling. Gradually he became conscious of Dr. Kramer, seated by the bed.

"Dr. Kramer!" Dirrul whispered. "Then everything's all right."

"If by everything you mean your companions, yes. There's even a chance we can restore the girl's hearing."

"And the Vininese?"

"Defeated."

"Dr. Kramer, we've got to destroy the Confederacy! I saw their transmitters—I know how their system works."

"Hush, Edward—I promised not to excite you. We know about it."

"Then how could you have been foolish enough to let them land?"

"It seemed a pity not to give a few of their people another chance. It's working out quite nicely too."

"I don't follow you, Dr. Kramer."

"Long ago we became interested when tourists told us about the curious block-buildings on Vinin. Our physics boys worked out an ingenious device for analyzing their atmosphere. It was a little machine concealed in the lining of an ordinary air-freight crate, as I recall.

"A machine is quite objective, Edward—and Customs men don't stamp freight crates with the negative adaptors. When we learned that a Vininese fleet was going to land here we simply issued insulating helmets to all our people and let them come. As soon as we destroyed their portable transmitters the Vininese army proved quite adaptable to a new environment."

"Then—I did nothing to help when I destroyed their fleet?"

"Unfortunately you wounded two of our mechanics."

"I'm a traitor, Dr. Kramer. Even when I try I can't redeem myself!"

"Only on Vinin can you betray an external absolute, Edward. To an Agronian all objective concepts are relative to the subjective interpretations made by each individual. You can only be a traitor to yourself."

"The words are pleasant to say to a sick man but the fact remains—I would have betrayed Agron."

"But you didn't. Why not?"

"When I saw what their efficiency really meant—"

"You changed your mind before you knew about the transmitters?"

"Yes."

"Then you're libeling yourself. Don't trap yourself in another self-delusion, Edward. All that's happened is that you've grown up."

Dirrul said slowly, feeling for words that would express the idea as he felt it, "When I was in the center of the galaxy, looking out on space, I almost grasped a new concept but I lost it when the Agronian patrol attacked me. It's coming back.

"Time and space seem to be one and the same. Neither exists as an objective reality. There is no past and no future—all of it occurs eternally in the instant of my own being. I am everything and nothing—infinity and a speck lost in space."

"Thus you discover the Rational Potential," Dr. Kramer smiled. "I think you're ready for the space-pilot promotional, Edward." After a pause Dr. Kramer inquired, "Did you see the Chief of Vinin, Edward?"

"Then you know about that too?"

"I've guessed—it seems likely."

"I scraped off the putty and the face color. Beneath it he was an Earthman. A hundred thousand of them rule the Confederacy."

"All time and space, forever occurring for each of us in the instant of now! Yes, he would be an Earthman, Edward—quite logically. Both good and evil begin with the same source. Both have the same Rational Potential. The act of being has always been the same struggle of constant forces, between the absolute and the relative. The time never changes nor the event but merely the passing illusion of place."

Shaking his head the chubby professor departed. Dirrul closed his eyes, at peace with himself.

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