4. GRAVITY

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 4

We looked at Igor, both of us shocked to the core. The man was dying! I’d never thought of Igor with the same brain cells with which I’d thought of mortality. He was Igor and I rather suspected immortal, and if he wasn’t he surely had the brains to fix things so that he was.

“That’s dreadful, Igor,” whispered Angelina. “What’s Margie got to say? Surely she must be cut to the quick by that news.”

“I haven’t told her,” he replied, shortly. Margie was his live-in lover and keeper of his cave, and she was also Angelina’s sister.

“Then you should,” was all Angelina said, frowning.

“You’re a clever man,” I said at last, “surely there’s something you can do, some piece of research that would help you fight whatever it is that’s going to...” I couldn’t finish the sentence because there are some things that, once said, seem so dreadfully final and real.

“Kill me?” murmured Igor, finishing it for me, “yes, I may be clever enough, as you put it, to sort it out, I may even have some ideas now, but the factor that denies me a good long life may be time itself. I may not have long enough to work things out. But take it from me, I am working on it!”

“You’d best get back to your cave and roll your sleeves up, then, and do some meaningful research while you still can,” said Angelina, tears in her eyes.

“I will, when I know your answer,” replied Igor, “will you help me destroy the thing that may kill us all if it falls in the wrong hands, and we all know that just about anything evil will fall into the wrong hands sooner or later? There have always been the sort of persons to say to hell with it and drive off the edge of a cliff believing in the supporting strength of fresh air. So will you climb aboard my space vehicle, it can’t be called a rocket ship because it doesn’t have rocket engines? And will you take my diamonds to the sun where they will end up being totally destroyed in the nuclear havoc of a star? Will you do that one thing for me, please?”

“No rockets? What does it have then?” asked Angelina, “I thought the only known form of propulsion that would take a vessel big enough to hold a couple of people into space used some form of rocket engine? You know, powerful thrust and lots of noise?”

“That’s what most people think, but I don’t,” grinned Igor, “I depend on gravity. Everything of any mass has a gravitational field, and by carefully balancing the effects of one against others we can take my vessel just about anywhere. Even away from Earth, by blocking the gravity of our beloved home planet and being attracted by, say, the sun. Even distant stars exert a tiny amount of attraction, and that can be used to fine-tune my propulsion. To me it’s simple but I’m afraid you probably don’t have enough knowledge to understand what I’ve created. But take it from me, it works.

“Do you remember that talk a month or so ago about something odd in the skies over the UK? There were headlines about flying saucers and UFOs and even eminent scientists were rolled out by the news channels to say what they thought might be going on? Well, that was me on a trial flight at three in the morning. I’d hoped nobody would notice, but there’s always radar...”

“So that’s it?” I asked flatly. “You’ve had one trial flight and decided it works, so your friends are duty bound to take a huge risk out of sympathy for your state of health and probably vanish into the wide blue yonder, never to be seen again.”

“That’s a bit harsh,” murmured Angelina, the love of my life, squeezing my fingers.

Igor nodded. “Something like that,” he said with his old familiar and very whiskery grin, “though I can’t agree with the never to be seen again bit. If you go in my stead you will come back quite safely unless you do something idiotic and unforeseeable to rock the carefully balanced boat, like take a space walk without a space suit. All I’m asking is that you sit and twiddle your thumbs or play cards or whatever you choose to do while the computer on board my vessel does all the work. You’ll have plenty of spare time with nothing particular to do. And when you get into the shadow of Mercury, note I said into its shadow, where you won't burn to a frazzle, you launch the diamonds on a trajectory that will take them into the heart of the sun, and having done that all there is for you to do is turn round and come back again. That’ll be your one job, and all the calculating will be done by the onboard computer anyway.

“And when you get back you’ll be national heroes, awarded millions by a grateful government, and have the freedom to spend the rest of your lives bonking in luxury on desert islands surrounded by native girls with extravagant hips and garlands of flowers if that’s what you choose to do, all bills paid!”

“So Royston gets the native girls and their hips with garlands of daisies and dandelions, but what do I get?” asked Angelina.

“You get Royston,” smiled Igor. “Though I can’t actually promise any rewards, it’s just that people who bravely take such risks find themselves being honoured with that kind of thing when it’s all over.”

“Well I don’t think it’s worth it,” I began, “I’d love to help, and all that, I’d love to be the one who saves the future of the human race, but the risks...”

Angelina interrupted me. “Of course we’ll go,” she said, nudging me, “the two of us together, but rest assured, I’ll hold you to one or two luxuries when we get back!”

And at that point that old familiar black shadow crept up on me, overcame me, and I passed out.

It’s plagued me for years, this tendency for me to blackout. Angelina’s got used to it and takes it in her stride, like I have to do. But while I’m like that, and it usually only lasts a few minutes though sometimes my periods of unconsciousness have been longer, I’m not able to take part in and discussion and, more importantly, any decision making.

This time it was only for a few minutes, and the fog gradually lifted. My senses returned to full functioning and I could hear Angelina speaking to Igor.

“That’s agreed,” she said, “I’ll tell him when he wakes up. But this time next week, exactly to the day, we’ll do the anti-gravitational equivalent to blasting off and take your miserable diamonds to a place far away where the sun shines brightly and they’ll be gone forever.”

That made me pass out again.

© Peter Rogerson, 16.02.20