Visitors (Pathfinder 3)

“You’re telling me how timeshaping works?” Noxon tried not to sound too scornful, but didn’t think he succeeded.

But Ram Odin took it. “Then explain to me why we won’t explode.”

“I’m not playing with timeflow here because there’s not too much I can do. The only paths visible to me are your own—your own since the jump, when this version of the ship came into being. Nothing from the outbound voyage.”

“And you need these paths to travel in time?”

“I need them to travel into the past. I also suspect I’ll need them to get us back into the normal timeflow.”

“So you have to get back to where there are more people and therefore more paths.”

“Yes. And I need to get to a place where the past is deeper, reaching much farther back.”

“That still doesn’t solve the exploding starship problem,” said Ram Odin.

“If I can find a path at all that’s going the right way,” said Noxon, “it will be farther in the past. Therefore, when I jump to it, the original ship will already be somewhere else, so we won’t be in the same space and time.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

“If I can do this at all,” said Noxon, “I’ll make sure I jump us back to a time when there were no starships. No satellites. Nothing for us to collide with. And nobody on Earth prepared to think of this starship as anything other than a point of light—a meteor or planet or previously undiscovered star.”

“Yes, that would be a stealthy return to Earth,” said Ram Odin. “But then?”

“If we’re going the right direction, then I can slice time forward so that in a few days, we can return to a more useful time.”

“But then the starship will appear in a time when people will notice it.”

“I didn’t say I’d bring the starship forward into the future with us,” said Noxon. “We can stash it in the past and go back and get it when we need it again.”

Ram Odin shook his head. “I’m just not used to thinking of the past as a place where things can be stashed.”

“I’ve had a few years,” said Noxon. “You have no idea how strange it can get.”

“Going backward in time was pretty strange. I kept trying to find ways to communicate with myself. You know, the outbound me, the one who—”

“I know who you mean,” said Noxon.

“But the ship I’m in isn’t the ship he’s in. We occupy the same space but not the same . . . direction.”

“I’m still trying to figure out the rules myself,” said Noxon. “For instance, river travelers leave behind paths, not on their boat, but in the air above the water. Showing their course in relation to the planet’s surface. But when I was inside this ship after it crashed on Garden, I could see your paths inside the starship. Including your path right back to the moment you emerged from the fold. But that should have been clear out in space, where the starship was when it jumped between stars.”

“Apparently the universe doesn’t regard starships as boats,” said Ram Odin.

“But why not? Because it’s so big? It’s nowhere near as big as a planet. And this isn’t theoretical. Because when I jump us back into the main timeflow, I think it’s going to be very useful if I can take the starship with us.”

Ram Odin nodded. “That thing about having air to breathe . . .”

“I can bring vehicles with me. I moved a carriage once. Took it back in time with me. But our paths weren’t inside the carriage, they were in the air above the road. Here, though, your path and mine are definitely here in the starship. We’re not leaving them behind us in space as we go.”

“So the starship acts more planet-like.”

“Paths cling to the surface of the planet, rather than haring off into space. Now the paths are clinging to the interior of the starship, as if this were a hollow planet.”

“Well, in a way it is,” said Ram Odin. “If I had decided against going through the fold, I would have revived the colonists and we would have created a habitat in the ecohold. It would have been the whole world for generations of colonists.”

Noxon shook his head. “I can’t imagine that the paths would respond to whether there was potential farmland in the ship.”

“So maybe they cling because the ship moves in space. Independent of any world.”