To The Stars

The two weeks ended and, in a way, they did not mind turning their backs on the warm waters of that sea. Some memories could be left behind there. They had good tans to show their envious friends back in England and they looked forward to it. And some good meat and potatoes after all the rich and unusual food. Good enough, but you wouldn’t want to live on it forever. They parted in the air terminal at Victoria, with one last lingering kiss, and Jan went to his apartment. He made a pot of strong tea and took it to his workroom, unconsciously relaxing as he walked through the door and the lights came on. The wall over the bench was racked with instruments, their chrome surfaces polished and gleaming. The workbench was clean, with the rows of tools mounted on it. Held in a frame was the breadboarded apparatus that he had been working on before he had gone away. Jan sat down before it and rotated it — then picked up a jeweler’s loupe to examine a soldered connection. It was almost ready to go — if it went at all. It should; the computer simulation had checked out. And the idea was a simple one.

All of the large ocean going vessels used satellites for navigation. There were always at least two of these satellites above the horizon anywhere on the ocean. The shipboard navigating instruments sent out a signal that was bounced back by the satellites. These signals, giving the azimuth, direction and angles of elevation of the satellites, were fed into a shipboard computer. It was simple work then for the computer to work out the ship’s position in the ocean accurate within a few meters. These navigation instruments were very efficient, but also bulky and quite expensive — which did not matter at all to a large ship. But what about a small navigation instrument? For a personal yacht. Jan had been working for some time on a simplified design that would accomplish the same thing for any ship, no matter what the size. An instrument small enough and cheap enough for anyone to use. If it worked he might even patent it, make a profit. That was in the future. Meanwhile he had to get it to work — then miniaturize all of the components.

Yet he wasn’t relaxing here, as he usually did. Something else was on his mind. He finished the last of the tea and took the tray into the kitchen. Then went into the library on the way back and took down volume thirteen of the Encyclopedia Britannica and flipped through the pages to the entry he wanted.

ISRAEL. Manufacturing and agricultural enclave on the shores of the Mediterranean. Former site of the Nation of Israel. Depopulated during the plague years and resettled by UNO volunteers in 2065. Now administers the Arab farmlands to the north and south and is responsible for all shipments of produce from the area.

There it was, in black and white, in a book he could trust. The facts of history shorn of all emotion. Just facts, facts…

That was untrue. He had been on that submarine, and had talked with the Israelis. Or some people who called themselves Israelis. Had they been? If not, who were they really? What had he got involved with?

What was it that T.H. Huxley had said? He remembered reading it when he first entered university and writing it down and posting it above his desk. It was something about the… great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” He had adhered to those hard-headed words and studied science in a hard-headed way. Facts, give him facts — then let the hypothesis fall by the way.

What were the facts here? He had been aboard a submarine that could not exist in the world as he understood it. But the sub had existed. Therefore his world image was at fault.

Saying it that way made it easier to understand — but made him angry as well. He was being lied to. The hell with the rest of the world, they could take care of themselves, but he, Jan Kulozik, was being lied to on a continuous, full-time basis. He didn’t like it. But how could he find out which were the lies, which the truths? With this realization came the accompanying one that Sara was right about the danger he faced. Lies were secrets and secrets were meant to be kept. And these were state secrets. Whatever he did, whatever he discovered, he could tell no one else about it.

Where did he start? There would be full records somewhere — but he did not know which records to look for or even what he was looking for. That would take some thought, some planning. Yet there was one thing he could do at once. Look closer at the world around him. What had Sara called him? A slave master. He didn’t feel like one. It was just that his class was used to taking care of things, taking care of people who couldn’t take care of themselves. And the proles certainly couldn’t be allowed to be in charge or everything would come to pieces. They just weren’t bright enough or responsible enough. That was the natural order of things.