Tomorrow Is Too Far

Copyright © 1971 by James White

Michael Joseph edition published 1971 Corgi edition published 1973

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James White, a well-known and well-loved figure in the S.F. genre, is the author of many successful and ingenuous novels and short stories.

Creator of the
Sector General
series--that incredible galactic hospital where any creature in the universe can be treated!--he has also been awarded the Europa Science Fiction Prize for the best British novel written between 1969 and 1971--
All Judgement Fled
.

Tomorrow Is Too Far
takes the reader across time and space in a story handled with enthusiasm and all the expertise of the professional SF writer.

For
Frank Kelly
in appreciation

The fire had broken out during the early hours of the morning in a supposedly fire-proof storeroom and a small pile of rubbish had been almost completely consumed. Damage to the room was negligible--one of the metal girders supporting the corrugated iron roof was smoke-blackened, as was a few square yards of concrete floor. In itself the incident was unimportant, but it was an important part of Carson’s job as Hart-Ewing’s chief security officer to discover how and why fires started even when they did no damage.

When he arrived on the scene tense with cold and interrupted sleep he was assured by everyone concerned that it was unimportant and not worth wasting his time over. Carson ignored them politely and firmly. As usual his politeness was misconstrued as weakness and his firmness as a stupid, stubborn streak in an otherwise ineffectual personality so that Carson found himself being called a nosey, petty-minded bastard, frequently within earshot.

This did not bother him too much because in his opinion a person who was not curious about everything which went on in the world around him might just as well be dead. He had documentation to prove that his birth was legitimate so they were only half right about him.

The fire had been discovered by Patrol Officer Sands shortly after one-thirty in the morning. At that time it had almost burnt itself out and Sands had completed the job with his size elevens, so there had been no real reason for the chief security officer to get out of bed. But Carson had wanted to make sure that the incident was as unimportant as it seemed. After taking a quick look around the storeroom he had locked the door, posted Sands outside and begun to ask questions.

He discovered that the storeroom had been unused for a very long time. The section foreman insisted that someone from another factory--he did not know who--had had it cleared three or four years ago so that they could move material and records into the place, and presumably they still intended doing so because when he asked if he could have it for his own section’s use he was always told no, that the space was shortly to be allocated to another section. He added that he did not know who had moved the rubbish into the room, and that it must have happened during the early part of the night-shift because otherwise some of his operators would have noticed it going in--he promised to ask around anyway and let Carson know the result. There was no reason for anyone to go into the place--it was cold, the lights did not work and if anyone wanted to smoke there was no fire hazard in this area so they were free to do so at the bench.

Carson asked him if he would mind looking at the ashes to see if it was possible to identify and perhaps place the origin of the rubbish. The foreman did so, shining Carson’s torch at the acrid-smelling heap for less than a minute, and saying that it could have originated at any one of twenty spots inside this or the other factories, and it was not the sort of rubbish which was burned as a rule--it was simply dumped in the nearest litter bin for collection each morning by the waste-disposal people--and that obviously someone was playing some kind of joke because to get to the storeroom the man transporting the stuff would have to pass at least three convenient litter bins. In any case, the foreman did not see why Carson was making such a fuss over a pile of burned toffee wrappings, empty cigarette packs, used Kleenex and the like.

It was possible that the man was covering up for someone, but Carson doubted that. His irritation sounded too genuine.

Was there a pyromaniac loose, someone who took great pains to conceal his movements while gathering his tiny hoard of combustibles and even greater care to see that his small conflagration did not spread or do any damage whatever. Could a fire-bug get his kicks from a small-scale, controlled blaze? The idea was ridiculous, so ridiculous that there just had to be a more logical explanation for it.

The rubbish itself was valueless--obviously, because it had been burned. But the burning; now, that was a different matter. A fire could be used for all sorts of things in addition to supplying light and heat...

It was at that point that Carson decided to take a really close look at the scene of the crime.

The first thing he noticed was that the upper frames of the storeroom’s three small windows had cuphooks screwed into them so that it would need only a few seconds and three pieces of thick sacking for the place to be made light-proof. Two of the pieces of sacking were still in place and if the third had not come adrift from one of its supporting hooks Sands would not have noticed the fire at all. The blackened area in the centre of the floor was larger than he had expected, and closer examination showed that a number of fires had previously occurred on the same area of concrete. The earlier fires had not been reported, of course, because on those occasions the sacking had not slipped and the ashes had probably been moved as covertly as the rubbish had been brought in.

A faint smell of aviation fuel pervaded the place and two small pieces of paper--a lightweight bank normally used for carbon copies--smelled very strongly of it. Both pieces were badly charred, covered by several lines of typing and legible in an area roughly the size and shape of the sole of Sands’s boot. The typing contained a great many errors, strike-overs and xxx-ings out as if the typist was not only unfamiliar with the machine but also unused to typing.

Carson’s next call was to the area typing pool where he knew there was a copying machine. He slipped the charred papers between a plastic carrying sheet and took a photo-copy, left the deserted room as he had found it and returned to the storeroom to replace the two scraps of paper among the ashes. Then he left, dismissing Sands with the remark that he no longer considered the room worth guarding.

Sands was a trifle vehement in his agreement.

Irritated, Carson said, ‘You are on duty until mid-day, I understand. When the day-shift comes on I want you to do a little detective work. This area is badly lit and practically deserted late at night, but earlier there are a lot of people not specifically engaged on night work but tacking a few hours overtime on to the end of their day-shift, and these people may have noticed something. You are to ask them if they saw an electric truck carrying two or three full litter bins moving about this section last night and if they know the driver’s name. Got that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sands patiently.

‘I’m going to my office now--it’s too late to go back to bed. Ring me there as soon as you have anything to report ...’

A few minutes later Carson let himself into his office, locked the door carefully and quietly behind him and went to his desk. The bottom left-hand drawer was slightly warped and difficult to open, but it was not locked--a fact which should, he hoped, indicate that it contained nothing of value. There was a drawer very like it in most desks, regardless of the neatness and efficiency of the occupant. It was the drawer reserved for junk.

In Carson’s case it contained a couple of old girlie magazines belonging to his six-years-gone predecessor, a quantity of picture postcards with the stamps cut off--his secretary had a philatelist nephew--wishing he was in various places, a pair of old shoes and a fossilised sandwich. At the bottom there was a large padded envelope of the kind used to send books through the post. It was torn and scribbled on and bore a large number of brown circles made by overfull coffee cups.

Without removing it from the drawer Carson opened the envelope and withdrew a slim, clean, foolscap file to which he added the photostats he had just taken. There were only a few pages in the file, most of them containing lists of requisition numbers and drawing reference numbers which did not quite fit any of the company’s current projects. Another page was covered with neat calculations concerning the time taken by a body accelerating at ninety-six feet per second to travel a distance of 2,376,000 miles, thrust being applied only during the first and final fifteen minutes of the journey.

But the two new items were the first actually to say anything. One of the charred scraps said
...Available measuring instruments incapable of differentiating between instantaneous and the velocity of light over this distance. Five weeks real time required to reach ... of plus trip home. Theoretically it is possible to reach the systems of Tau Ceti and ... ately the return journey is impossible with existing power sources and until we understand the ... try jumps of a few hours in the minus direction only. The philosophical implications need careful investigation before the two-way sequence is attempted. Biological effects and structural damage to the brain is negligible with lab ... a human subject able to report on the psychological side-effects on his return so that ... MMIT TO MEMORY AND DESTROY AT ONCE.

Whoever they were and whatever it was, they were extremely security conscious.

The second scrap was covered by handwritten calculations where someone had multiplied two hundred and fifteen by three hundred and sixty and then by twenty-four and used the rest of the sheet to doodle.

Carson replaced the file in its padded envelope, rearranged the junk over it, closed the drawer and unlocked his office door. The paperwork was piled high on his in tray and he really should take this opportunity of clearing some of it. But he could not concentrate. His stomach was bothering him.

He did not feel sick exactly--it felt a little like indigestion, or hunger, or that unpleasant sensation so inadequately described as butterflies in the stomach. He realised suddenly that he was feeling excitement so intense that it was actually painful.

What was going on ... ?

As a rule Carson was kept too busy to be bored, but at the same time his work could never by any stretch of the imagination be called exciting. That was why he took such a keen interest in everything that went on--even though a great many people detested him for it--and it was the reason why he had become even more curious when he discovered something going on which was, if not actually wrong, at least highly unusual.

It had begun when he chanced to hear a couple of operators belly-aching happily at their benches. The men had been discussing the components they were making, suggesting that somebody up top had boobed because the part they were producing did not quite fit the sub-assembly they were making it for, and complaining about the moral cowardice of the section chief because he would not listen to them because apparently his chief did not want to know.

Even if what the men said had been true it represented a very small wastage of the operators’ time in relation to the enormous output of the company as a whole, and in any case it was a job for the efficiency experts. But then Carson had discovered similar wastage and inefficiency occurring in a number of sharply defined areas in several factories. Mistakes, the same mistakes down to the last millimetre, were being made over and over again and either being ignored or covered up.

The mistakes, it became clear to Carson, were being very carefully planned.

He had taken to working late two or three times a week, choosing the nights at random and tramping through the various buildings which had lights burning, ostensibly to check on the efficiency of his own men.

Without, of course, being able to join them he had discovered liaison meetings in progress between engineers and design staff some of whom had nothing in common to liaise about, and an occasional production meeting which went on for hours without using or producing minutes or paperwork of any kind. Even the wastepaper baskets contained only a few empty cigarette cartons.

Paperwork, the proof that something was in fact going on, was virtually non-existent except for his pitifully small list of drawing issue notes, materials requisition forms and the like bearing the identifying numbers of the suspect components. Carson knew that something was going on but he did not know what it was or whether it was small, medium or large as projects went. He still did not know exactly, but today’s discovery had rendered his ignorance less abysmal.

It had to do with space-travel, perhaps a new method of propulsion effective over interstellar distances. And it was important--there could be no doubt about that--and secret. So secret that even the Hart-Ewing security section had been kept in the dark about it.