“I hope some of the beans are Colombian,” Anderson said.
Long before the beans arrived the article was done.
Rising stiffly, uncoiling his lengthy limbs, Poul Anderson said, “I think you have what you want, there. The mass restoration formula is on typescript page 20.”
Eagerly, Fermeti turned the pages. Yes, there it was; peering over his shoulder, Tozzo saw the paragraph:
If the ship followed a trajectory which would carry it into the star Proxima, it would, he realized, regain its mass through a process of leeching solar energy from the great star-furnace itself. Yes, it was Proxima itself which held the key to Torelli’s problem, and now, after all this time, it had been solved. The simple formula revolved in his brain.
And, Tozzo saw, there lay the formula. As the article said, the mass would be regained from solar energy converted into matter, the ultimate source of power in the universe. The answer had stared them in the face all this time!
Their long struggle was over.
“And now,” Poul Anderson said, “I’m free to go back to my own time?”
Fermeti said simply, “Yes.”
“Wait,” Tozzo said to his superior. “There’s evidently something you don’t understand.” It was a section which he had read in the instruction manual attached to the time-dredge. He drew Fermeti to one side, where Anderson could not hear. “He can’t be sent back to his own time with the knowledge he has now.”
“What knowledge?” Fermeti inquired.
“That—well, I’m not certain. Something to do with our society, here. What I’m trying to tell you is this: the first rule of time travel, according to the manual, is don’t change the past. In this situation just bringing Anderson here has changed the past merely by exposing him to our society.”
Pondering, Fermeti said, “You may be correct. While he was in that gift shop he may have picked up some object which, taken back to his own time, might revolutionize their technology.”
“Or at the magazine rack at the spaceport,” Tozzo said. “Or on his trip between those two points. And—even the knowledge that he and his colleagues are pre-cogs”
“You’re right,” Fermeti said. “The memory of this trip must be wiped from his brain.” He turned and walked slowly back to Poul Anderson. “Look here,” he addressed him. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but everything that’s happened to you must be wiped from your brain.”
After a pause, Anderson said, “That’s a shame. Sorry to hear that.” He looked downcast. “But I’m not surprised,” he murmured. He seemed philosophical about the whole affair. “It’s generally handled this way.”
Tozzo asked, “Where can this alteration of the memory cells of his brain be accomplished?”
“At the Department of Penology,” Fermeti said. “Through the same channels we obtained the convicts.” Pointing his sleep-gun at Poul Anderson he said, Come along with us. I regret this… but it has to be done.”
VI
At the Department of Penology, painless electroshock removed from Poul Anderson’s brain the precise cells in which his most recent memories were stored. Then, in a semi-conscious state, he was carried back into the time-dredge. A moment later he was on his trip back to the year 1954, to his own society and time. To the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in downtown San Francisco, California and his waiting wife and child.
When the time-dredge returned empty, Tozzo, Gilly and Fermeti breathed a sigh of relief and broke open a bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch which Fermeti had been saving. The mission had been successfully accomplished; now they could turn their attention back to the Project.
“Where’s the manuscript that he wrote?” Fermeti said, putting down his glass to look all around his office.
There was no manuscript to be found. And, Tozzo noticed, the antique Koyal typewriter which they had brought from the Smithsonian—it was gone, too. But why?
Suddenly chill fear traveled up him. He understood.
“Good Lord,” he said thickly. He put down his glass. “Somebody get a copy of the journal with his article in it. At once.”
Fermeti said, “What is it, Aaron? Explain.”
“When we removed his memory of what had happened we made it impossible for him to write the article for the journal,” Tozzo said. “He must have based Night Flight on his experience with us, here.” Snatching up the August 1955 copy of If he turned to the table-of-contents page.
No article by Poul Anderson was listed. Instead, on page 78, he saw Philip K. Dick’s The Mold of Yancy listed instead.
They had changed the past after all. And now the formula for their Project was gone—gone entirely.
“We shouldn’t have tampered,” Tozzo said in a hoarse voice. “We should never have brought him out of the past.” He drank a little more of the century-old Scotch, his hands shaking.
“Brought who?” Gilly said, with a puzzled look.
“Don’t you remember?” Tozzo stared at him, incredulous.
“What’s this discussion about?” Fermeti said impatiently. “And what are you two doing in my office? You both should be busy at work.” He saw the bottle of Scotch and blanched. “How’d that get open?”
His hands trembling, Tozzo turned the pages of the journal over and over again. Already, the memory was growing diffuse in his mind; he struggled in vain to hold onto it. They had brought someone from the past, a pre-cog, wasn’t it? But who? A name, still in his mind but dimming with each passing moment… Anderson or Anderton, something like that. And in connection with the Bureau’s interstellar mass-deprivation Project. Or was it?
Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”
“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though—it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”
“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”
“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.
“The truth of the matter, “ Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”
The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.
“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.
The three men looked at one another blankly.
“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”
“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.
At the Science Fiction Convention at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Poul Anderson looked around him in bewilderment. Where had he been? Why had he gone out of the building? And it was an hour later; Tony Boucher and Jim Gunn had left for dinner by now, and he saw no sign of his wife Karen and the baby, either.
The last he remembered was two fans from Battlecreek who wanted him to look at a display outside on the sidewalk. Perhaps he had gone to see that. In any case, he had no memory of the interval.
Anderson groped about in his coat pocket for his pipe, hoping to calm his oddly jittery nerves—and found, not his pipe, but instead a folded piece of paper.