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“Right.”
“And not because you realized that neither of us could possibly stand to read books or watch vids or even converse about anything until we succeed in getting back to the right timeflow.”
“Not because of that at all,” said Noxon. “That never crossed my mind. I don’t even care about that. I’m truly only thinking of the mice. You’d feel the same way, if you had known them as long as I have.”
“As brief as my acquaintance with the mice has been,” said Ram Odin, “I already feel that I know their deep inner essence, which consists of a ruthless survival instinct hidden behind clouds of deviousness and hypocrisy.”
“That’s pretty much it,” said Noxon.
“We’re trying to learn civilized behavior from you,” said a mouse. “But it’s hard to know when we’re seeing anything particularly civilized.”
“Everything we do is civilized,” said Noxon.
“Talking to the mice again?” asked Ram Odin. “I’ll step outside so you can converse in private. Oh, wait. I can’t.”
“All right, hold on to me,” said Noxon. “Father . . . Ramex . . . expendable. Would you be so kind as to raise your hand again when this ship is firmly docked, as it was just after Ram Odin boarded it with all supplies and colonists ready for the voyage?”
“I won’t know when that is,” said the expendable. “They’ll all be invisible to the ship’s sensors.”
“You’ll know that the ship is in the dock because it won’t be moving,” said Noxon. “Raise your arm then.”
&n
bsp; Ram Odin put his arm around Noxon’s shoulder, while Noxon held tightly to the box of mice, and then Noxon sliced them all forward at such a clip that within only a minute or two, the expendable’s arm rose.
“We’re here,” said the expendable. “Are you?”
“Yes, I’m here,” said Noxon. “Give me a minute to unwind from the slicing. It uses a completely different approach and I’m kind of exhausted. Mentally. Physically I didn’t even break a sweat.”
“Take all the time you need,” said Ram Odin.
“Thank you for your completely insincere expression of patience,” said Noxon. “I’ve never been to Earth before, expendable. Is there some way of getting a view from here?”
There was a pause. “Noxon,” said the expendable, “you do understand that we’re the only objects in the universe moving backward in time.”
Noxon felt like an idiot. “I just thought that—planets would be visible.”
“Not even stars,” said the expendable. “We can’t even detect gravity. Nothing.”
“Then how did you know when we were inside the orbit of—”
“We have a perfect record of the exact moment when the outbound ship reached each distance,” said the expendable. “Since we’re locked to that ship, we’re assuming that our clock will tell us when we’ve reached any particular point along the way.”
“So our only navigational instrument is a clock,” said Noxon.
“The clock was the only means that sailors in the old days were able to tell their longitude,” said Ram Odin. “There are precedents.”
“But if the clocks are off—”
“Why would they be?” asked the expendable. “We have the same clock now that we had then. Only our direction in time has changed, not our velocity.”
“As far as you can tell,” said Noxon.
“We might be inside a sparrow’s eyeball for all we know,” said Ram Odin. “But we assume we’re not. By the only means we have of estimating our location, the ship says we’re in place for you to start looking for forward-moving paths so you can get us going in the right direction . . . a few centuries ago. If you don’t find the paths, then we’ll know something’s wrong.”
“All right, of course, yes,” said Noxon. “I think that this time, you won’t need to hold on to me. Either the ship will come with me or it won’t. If it does, you’ll come along with it. If it doesn’t, then at least you won’t be stranded in space without a ship.”
“That’s dumb in sixty ways,” said Ram Odin. “If we’re not sure that the ship will come with you, why would we want to stay with the ship? I’m hanging on to you for dear life, my boy, though if you want to try your experiment with the mice, I don’t mind. That’s what mice are for.”
