Eradani sauntered casually up the gravel drive that led to Tompkins’ house. She had no idea exactly how many times she’d walked up that way over the past few months, and she didn’t really care. It was enough for her to know that whatever events were to transpire when she reached the end of the drive, they would almost certainly be totally uninspiring and a complete waste of time with it. The fact that she was over half an hour late didn’t bother her either - nobody had ever drawn attention to her hazy grasp of the concept of punctuality before, and it was unlikely that they would start now. Anyway, these meetings were nothing more than an excuse for drinking lots of tea and, more importantly, eating lots of biscuits, so what was the use of fretting over it?
This particular meeting was held every Monday by Tompkins as a sort of progress discussion group, although she and Dr. Richter were the only ones ever invited to it. These Monday meetings had always been a particular favourite of hers because Tompkins invariably had a huge selection of biscuits on offer, a sure-fire way into her heart. Her love of all things biscuity stemmed, she supposed, from those trips to her grandparents’ house when she was small. They always had a full tin of biscuits ready and waiting on the paper-doilied side table. She could even remember the sorts of biscuits that they used to have. There were the shortbready ones, the intricate snowflake ones with the sugar coating, the pink wafer ones, those strange curly ones covered in chocolate... the list was endless. Yep, no doubt about it, Eradani liked biscuits.
As she rounded the last corner and Tompkins’ house came into view from behind the bushes that lined the driveway, she saw something that startled her. There were three cars parked outside the front. The red Pagani Zonda she recognised as Dr. Richter’s, but the other two were new to her. She had no idea who they belonged to.
Maybe today’s meeting was going to be a little bit different.
Intrigued, she made her way up to the door and pushed the bell. Tompkins’ resident butler opened the door for her and showed her into the spacious but cosy lounge. As she had suspected, there were two newcomers in the room.
‘Good morning, Eradani,’ beamed Tompkins as he stood up from his armchair to greet her with a bow of his hat, which he often wore whilst indoors despite suggestions to the contrary from concerned friends and colleagues. ‘It is a particularly efficacious day, is it not?’
‘Er, yes, it is, very... efficacious,’ replied Eradani.
‘Please, sit down. We have much to discuss on this historic occasion.’ Tompkins indicated a spare dining room chair that he had brought out especially for her. It was one of the two highly ornate mahogany carvers with the arms shaped like the forelegs of a lion.
Eradani casually strutted instead over to the two-seater settee and parked herself by Dr. Richter, who was looking at her in a particularly strange way, with his mouth twisted up at one corner, one eye half closed and other wide open. She couldn’t even make out what his eyebrows were doing. ‘What?’ she mouthed at him silently. He responded by rolling his eyes around. Eradani half nodded and half shook her head in confusion. She could see it was going to be a perfectly normal day.
‘You may be wondering what is so special about today that I referred to it as particularly efficacious,’ began Tompkins, once again happily seated in his armchair. There was a general agreement amongst those present that this statement was correct. ‘It may not have escaped your attention,’ he continued, addressing everybody in the room, ‘that there are two strangers in our midst.’ Again, everybody agreed with this. ‘You see, I have begun the process of assembling a flight crew to man the Garden Wall.’
Eradani suddenly snapped upright. Dr. Richter started to mouth something and pointed repeatedly between himself and her. ‘You’re not serious?’ she said astonished.
‘But of course,’ said Tompkins as brightly as ever. ‘I present to you one half of the Garden Wall flight crew. Let me introduce you properly. The smart gentleman is Captain G. Smith, an ex United States Air Force test pilot.’
‘Pleasure to meet you, men,’ said the large uniformed man in a broad American accent.
‘Men?’ repeated Eradani indignantly.
Richter wondered what the G stood for.
‘And the not so smart lady,’ Tompkins carried on, ‘is Miss Denise Gayle. Her last occupation was that of a, er...’
‘Oh, I was a commercial information collector, analyser and processor,’ she informed.
Eradani thought she looked a bit too normal to be involved with Tompkins. Average height, medium length black hair, no distinguishing features and wearing jeans. Far too average. At least the Captain seemed to fit in a bit better. He was the very embodiment of American military stereotypes: crew cut fair hair, hard face and a complete lack of humour.
‘Yes, I remember now,’ said Tompkins. ‘How silly of me to forget. Right, let’s reciprocate the introductions. Captain, Denise, this is our project co-ordinator Dr. Tobias Richter, an eminent physicist and natural leader.’
‘Er, well, ex-physicist actually.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked the Captain.
‘Erm, bringing the, er, university into disrepute, I suppose,’ he fumbled.
‘I see,’ said the Captain with excessive contempt.
‘And sitting beside him is his lovely assistant, Eradani. Again, she is an ex-physicist.’
‘And what did you do, then?’ asked the Captain. ‘I assume you were sacked as well.’
‘No, I was expelled. I was an undergraduate student.’
There was a brief pause. Denise looked at the floor and twiddled her thumbs. The Captain glanced at Tompkins, who was grinning away happily, and then back at Richter and Eradani.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ he postulated. ‘You were a member of staff and, I assume, a lecturer, am I right?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Dr. Richter.
‘I see. So, a lecturer and a student get booted out of university for bringing it into disrepute. I think we can all guess what went on there, then,’ he cackled. Dr. Richter went extremely red in the face and became very agitated. He obviously wanted to say something in response, but was too busy trying to get his brain in gear. Eradani, in contrast, remained perfectly calm.
‘I hope you aren’t casting dispersions upon Dr. Richter’s unblemished reputation,’ she said.
‘It’s asperions,’ corrected Dr. Richter quietly.
Eradani ignored him. ‘Because if you are, you’d better have some good evidence to back it up.’
‘Now, now,’ said Tompkins uncomfortably, ‘everybody calm down. I’m sure it was just a little joke the Captain was trying to make. A misjudged attempt at breaking the ice. Am I correct?’ he added with an edge.
The Captain looked suitably abashed. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Please accept my apologies.’
‘Very well,’ said Tompkins. ‘Let us continue and put this little incident aside. Please, sit back down, Eradani.’
She sat back down. Dr. Richter had started his face-pulling exercises again. Eradani began to suspect he might be trying to communicate with her on a non-verbal level.
‘Maybe we should start again,’ suggested Tompkins. ‘Now that the introductions are thankfully out of the way, I wish to discuss the current status of the Garden Wall project. As you know, construction work on the Garden Wall was completed three weeks ago. It is about to be put through a series of safety trials and systems checks to ensure it is spaceworthy. Once these are finished, and they will not take long as they are somewhat of a formality, we shall be in a position to arrange a launch date.’
‘And what is involved in determining that?’ asked Dr. Richter, feeling he should at least try to make some contribution.
‘I have done a little research into this and it turns out that under British law you may launch any vehicle to any height you so desire, even into orbit, as long as you have permission from the aviation authorities.’
‘And have we got that?’ continued the Doctor.
‘Yes. They cannot refuse permission as long as you don’t interfere with controlled airspace, which of course we won’t.’
‘Nah, surely that’s not right,’ said Eradani, but she was ignored.
‘So where is the launch site, then?’ asked the Captain.
‘Not so very far away at all, my dear fellow. Not so far at all. In fact, you passed it on your way to this very meeting.’
‘We did?’ asked a surprised Eradani.
‘Yes. Actually, I think... yes, if you look out of that window there,’ Tompkins pointed out of the window to his left, ‘you can just see the edge of the launch site.’
Four heads peered out of the window. Most of the view was taken up by that part of Tompkins’ excessively long drive that just curled by the side of the house, but at the extreme left hand edge a patch of pink turf was just visible.
‘But that’s your garden,’ said Eradani matter-of-factly.
‘It is indeed,’ said Tompkins, looking absolutely delighted. ‘A most perfect location, don’t you think? We can witness the splendour of the launch from our very own barbecue area.’
‘It’ll make a mess of the lawn,’ said Denise.
‘In fact it won’t, Miss Gayle, we are to lay down a sturdy surface first,’ said Tompkins patiently. ‘I think even British law, tolerant as it may be, might have something to say about launching a space vehicle from a landscaped back garden resplendent with rockeries and fountains.’
‘And azaleas,’ added Dr. Richter. ‘Don’t forget them. They make your garden.’
‘Yes, of course. Now, are there any more questions?’
‘Yes, I have a question,’ said Denise.
‘Please, ask away,’ prompted Tompkins expertly.
‘Yes, do you know, by any chance, if we are allowed to take books and things with us, in case we get bored?’
‘Bored?’ repeated the Captain. ‘This is a pioneering deep space experiment. How can you possibly get bored?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe we’ll end up just staring miserably out of the windows for years on end,’ replied Denise.
‘Well if that’s going to be an issue for you...’
‘I didn’t say it would be an issue. I was just wondering.’
‘Erm, if I may,’ said Tompkins, trying to attract their attention. ‘Yes, thank you. Now, of course you may take amusements with you, Miss Gayle. You will be gone rather a long while. However, there may not be quite so much time to kill as you expect. I’ll let Dr. Richter explain further.’
Dr. Richter stared at Tompkins for a second as he tried to work out what the old man was referring to. When he realised, he promptly turned to Denise and the Captain to explain. ‘Yes, there was a lot of uncertainty about this a few months ago. You see, our target destination was selected almost immediately - the nearby Barnard’s Star which, as it happens, has long been suspected of harbouring a planetary system. Now, this star is some six light years distant, that is, it would take six years to travel there at the velocity of light. However photons, small packets of light energy, travel along null geodesics in spacetime, or, should I say, zero mass particles that travel at the speed of light experience zero proper time, and... no, I’m not explaining this very well am I? Okay, let’s just say that the theories of Relativity suggest that a particle, or a spaceship if you like, travelling at light speed would arrive at its destination instantaneously. To observers outside the ship, however, the journey would appear to last the full six years. But Cofomaristics as it stood when the project began was not entirely consistent with Relativity. A later version of it, called the Consistency Theory of Cofomaristics, rectified this by proving that any particle or object governed by Cofomaristic laws was not strictly subject to Relativity at all, or more rather it is, but it is its actual real-space velocity that is affected relativistically rather than the Cofome-space velocity.
‘What I’m trying to say is that it’ll take us the full six years to get there.’
The others in the room relaxed at this point and nodded their heads in understanding.
‘So we thought,’ continued Richter, ‘that six years was a long time to be cooped up inside a small ship like the Garden Wall, so we hired some people to try and find a way around it. To cut a long story short, they invented some suspended animation chambers for us.’
‘Ah,’ said Denise, recognising this term. ‘You mean you stop time for the crew? Put them in, what are they called... stasis booths?’
‘Well, no, not entirely,’ said Dr. Richter. ‘In fact, no, not at all. We don’t have any kind of technology that would allow us to stop time, as it were. There isn’t even any theoretical physics that suggests it’s possible, although with Cofomaristics around I imagine it’ll be but a matter of time (no pun intended). Anyway, the suspended animation chambers work by reducing a person’s metabolism to such a low level that they are effectively hibernating and can remain in such a state for many years without showing any adverse effects and without ageing. The science behind this is quite complex and, to be honest, is more biological than physical so I am no expert in it myself. As an analogy, though, imagine freezing someone very quickly, keeping them frozen for six years, and then defrosting them when the destination is reached. There is no actual freezing as such in our method, but the biological principle is broadly similar. The net result of all this is that, from the perspective of the astronaut, six years would pass by instantaneously.’
Denise nodded her head in comprehension. ‘That was very well explained,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, any time,’ said Dr. Richter nonchalantly, looking at the ground.
Eradani thought Dr. Richter was perhaps grinning a little bit more than usual.
‘Right,’ said Tompkins cheerily and clapping his hands together. ‘Well, unless anybody has any other questions I think that just about wraps things up.’
‘Does it?’ asked the Captain.
‘Yes. We have discussed everything I wished to discuss, and I see all the biscuits have gone.’
‘Yeah, somebody ate them all,’ said the Captain, with a sharp glance at Eradani.
‘Yes?’ she asked innocently.
‘Nothing,’ growled the Captain.
‘And I shall see you all tomorrow,’ added Tompkins.
Eradani frowned for a second. ‘When are you going to find the rest of the crew, then?’ she asked.
‘Oh, eventually,’ said Tompkins vaguely. ‘Goodbye, everybody.’
Next thing Eradani knew, she and the other guests were being seen out of the big old house by one of Tompkins’ servants. They stood around just outside the front door for a couple of minutes wondering what to do, then they all hopped in their cars and drove home. Except for Eradani, who realised she’d forgotten to bring hers.