Collected Short Fiction, page 642
“See that, Captain!”
Ken Star’s husky voice seemed at first to come from far away. I had to close my eyes and catch my breath before I could release my sweaty grasp on that cold rail and follow him to the electronic telescope.
“See that light?” he was calling. “That’s your mutineers. They’ve been shot to junk and caught in that sterilizing field—I saw the puff of gas when their fuel exploded. Now the wreck is trapped in a more intense gravitic field—”
Breathlessly, he interrupted himself.
“Here! Come take a look!”
I joined him in front of the green-glowing screen. That black circle filled half of it—still a monstrous funnel to my eyes, so dark and deep that I shrank away from it, dizzy and shivering. The wreckage of the rocket was a hot bright point, toppling down its bottomless throat. Now I found something else—four fainter points, spaced outside the circle.
“Those objects—”
“Can you get the ’scope on one of them, with a higher power?”
Breathing even and hard to still the tremor of my hands, I brought one of those four points to the center of the screen. I turned up the power. The point swelled. It became a greenish blur. Out of the blur emerged another invader machine, the dark twin of Ken Star’s attacker.
“Four invaders,” Star rasped. “Spaced in tetrahedral pattern around the bubble. Guarding that gateway—perhaps helping create it. I believe they have come from that more ancient space-time universe, to hold a bridgehead against us—”
“Huh!” My exclamation interrupted him. “It’s gone!”
The screen was blankly greenish-black again. Turning to the transite dome, I saw that the moving star was gone from that shadow-disk.
“The glowing wreck just went through the gate into—somewhere,” Star said. “Without its light, we can’t see the invaders. But they’re still there.”
“And Nowhere Near is still dropping toward them,” I said. “That spot covered one degree when we first saw it, five hours ago. Now it covers two—which means we’ve come halfway. Without the position rockets, we’re falling faster. I suppose we have three hours, maybe four.”
As helpless as Ketzler, I stared at his gaunt face. “Commander, what can we do?”
Jetting nearer, he loomed tall in the crimson gloom.
“We do have a weapon,” he whispered at last. “Humanity’s ultimate defense. A top secret thing—but you will have to know about it now. Because I think we may be forced to use it. Where is Lilith?”
“Still in the hospital,” I said. “Doing what she can for those injured men.”
I clung to a chrome rail in that zero-G space, still shaken from my giddiness. The riddle of the soldier and the girl spun crazily in my mind.
“Is she—?” I gasped. “Who is she?”
“My niece,” he said. “Bob’s youngest daughter. Her real name is Lilian Star—Lilith Adams is her own invention. She and her two sisters are keepers of the peace. Chosen guardians of the absolute weapon.”
Awe struck me, cold as the black space beyond the transite dome.
“I guess that explains a queer detached aloofness I felt about her—a feeling that almost frightened me. So she isn’t a nurse at all?”
“She is a nurse,” Star told me. “She says she needs some humane interest, just to balance her power to destroy. She has done original medical work. She led the research team that developed the longevity serum she’s testing on Giles Habibula.”
Hot humiliation flashed over me.
“And I’m the one who turned them away,” I breathed bitterly. “When they came with Scabbard, I wouldn’t let them aboard—because I couldn’t believe Habibula’s tale about how he loved machines!”
“A cover story,” Star said. “But Giles does have a feeling for machines.”
“Why didn’t they tell me? Scabbard’s men could have murdered them!”
“They’re both more competent than they look.” Star grinned faintly in the dim red dark. “Their scheme to get aboard Nowhere Near worked well enough, without compromising anything.”
“What is the weapon, sir?”
“Its code designation is the letters AKKA. That’s about all you’ll need to know about it.”
Floating behind that cold chrome rail, I glanced out through the dome at the round black shadow growing in the core of Nowhere. Something alien as space breathed on my spine.
“Is it—good enough?”
“It’s absolute—at least in ordinary space. Just the threat of it, three hundred years ago, was enough to overthrow the Ulnar Emperors and their Purple Hall. With one stroke, in the last century, it destroyed Earth’s old satellite and the invading Medusae there. I don’t know what will happen when it hits the anomaly.”
He peered uneasily at the dome.
“Can you call Lilith from here?”
I tried to call, but the mutineers had evidently wrecked the intercom.
“Let’s get her here,” he said. “Though the Green Hall has forbidden any needless or premature use of her weapon, I think the time has come to set it up.”
The station hospital spun in a half-G ring section, almost grazing the crust of the ice asteroid. Breathless with haste, I burst out of the elevator there. Old Habibula challenged me with a proton-pistol I hadn’t known he carried.
“Sorry, Captain.” His murky eyes searched me. “What do you want?”
“Commander Star wants Nurse Adams in the north dome,” I blurted. “He says it’s time to set her weapon up.”
“So Ken has told you?” His pink baby-grin was warily friendly. “Now we can stop playing silly games. I’ve been telling Lil that we’ve been waiting too mortal long for those fearful invaders to make a gesture of friendship. Wait. I’ll bring her.”
He waddled into the hospital and returned with Lilith. She turned to smile back toward her patients.
“They’re all sleeping,” she whispered. “I think they’ll recover—”
“If those monstrous machines give ’em time!” old Habibula panted. “Ken says it’s time for us to strike. For life’s sweet sake, don’t waste time!”
Gravely unhurried, she waited for me to lead the way into the elevator. As we dropped, I turned to look at her. Her lean proud loveliness pounded in my veins and ached in my throat—yet now she was a goddess, moving to the seat of cosmic judgment, serenely untouchable.
“Please—please forgive me,” I stammered. “For sending you away with Scabbard. I—I didn’t know.”
Her bronze eyes fell to me, aloofly amused.
“You were not to know.”
“Couldn’t you—couldn’t you have trusted me?”
“I asked your name.” The dance of light died in her eyes. “I learned you are Lars Ulnar. I remembered that twice keepers of the peace have been kidnapped by Ulnar traitors. I didn’t want to be the third.”
I said nothing, but she must have seen me flinch.
“Sorry, Lars.” A softer smile warmed her gaunt face. “We trust you now.”
We left the elevator at the cable stage. I clipped her D-grip to the moving cable and we soared toward the dome through the shadowy heart of the hollowed asteroid.
“Scabbard’s mate and those two spacemen?” I twisted around to look at Lilith. She floated behind me, staring toward the dome as if she could already see our unknown antagonists waiting out in Nowhere. “Was it your secret weapon that—disposed of them?”
She nodded silently.
“And mortal well it did!” puffed old Habibula, flying behind her. “Lil’s got a precious obligation to protect herself. Even now, when both her sisters share it, the duty of the keeper of the peace is a fearful thing for any being!”
In the dull red dusk of the zero-G dome, I found fan-jets for Lilith and old Habibula. She had stopped at the entrance, gazing at that black funnel in the heart of the anomaly, her face gaunt and grave and white. Ken Star came soaring toward us from the red-glinting mass of the electronic telescope.
“Are you quite certain, Ken?” Her solemn question greeted Mm. “It’s an awful decision—the future of worlds at stake. Do you know that they are able and acting to destroy us? Are you sure that no truce is possible? Are you quite certain that they or we must die?”
“You can assure the Green Hall Council that we have made every effort,” he answered huskily. “Our signals have got no reply—except unprovoked attacks from weapons we can’t counter with anythng short of AKKA.”
“But radio and laserphones don’t work reliably in the anomaly,” she said. “How can you be sure that they knew we were trying to signal?”
“We can’t.” He caught a rasping breath. “But I believe we have shown forbearance enough. After all, we want to survive—”
An alarm bell interrupted him, chiming from the computer.
“Mortal me!” old Habibula puffed. “What’s that?”
Glancing out at that bubble of darkness, I saw another dull spark creeping out across it, the way the mutineers had gone. We soared across to the electron telescope, and I got its image on the screen—a jagged irregular mass, its projecting points and edges glowing faintly though most of it was dark. I recognized its angular coffin-shape.
“It’s one of those queer iron asteroids,” I said. “The last one to appear. The electronic chart had showed it between us and the bubble. I suppose it has been sucked in ahead of us.”
Clinging to the chrome rail, Ken Star spoke urgently to Lilith.
“It’s giving light we need,” he said. “We can see four of those fighting machines, spaced at the points of a tetrahedron around the bubble—which I think is the gate through which they came. I suggest you pick ’em off.”
“Not yet.” Moving with a confident skill in that null-G space, she turned to measure that dark blot through the dome again, with her own unfrightened eyes. “I’m not yet certain. The station is an obvious artifact. The fate of the mutineers shows that we are within range of their weapons. Yet they have not attacked us.”
“Life’s sake, Lil!” old Habibula gasped. “They’re dragging us into that tunnel of wicked night—perhaps into another universe! They’ve left us just a few precious hours. Isn’t that attack enough? Can’t you see that we’re all in fearful danger?”
“You knew this job was risky, Giles.” Her smile was a flash of kindly malice. “Yet you accepted it.”
“To save my mortal life!” he wheezed. “Old age was killing me.”
She turned to me.
“Captain, we’ll try one more signal.” Her air of absolute command made her again the goddess judging worlds. “Train the strongest laser beam you can on one of those machines. Transmit the simplest signals possible. Begin with the series of squares. One flash. Four. Nine. And so on.
“Monitor everything you can, for their reply.”
“Lil, don’t!” old Habibula gasped. “You’re asking for a dreadful death!”
But her air of power left me no choice. In the increasing light of that asteroid falling into the bubble, I chose the machine that hung northward from it. I set all our search and reception gear to tracking, and trained the main laser beam. Using the computer for a manual key, I tapped one flash.
Watching the angular shadow of that invader, I saw a pale, greenish flicker. Then the screen went blank. The red instrument lights went out. That chrome rail shuddered under my hand. A dull reverberation boomed through Nowhere Near.
“Well, Lil?” old Habibula croaked faintly. “That’s your answer!”
“Answer enough.” Her voice was calm in the dark. “We have no choice.”
That shot—a few milligrams of matter fired perhaps at one tenth the speed of light—had pierced the armored hollow of the ice asteroid and wrecked our main power plant. For a few seconds, Nowhere Near was dead. The only light was the cold blaze of the stars beyond the transite dome. The only sound was the far roar of our air escaping.
But then the emergency reactors. came on. Automatic valves began to thud, sealing off that deadly rush of air. The instrument lights shone again. The green image of that terrible machine swam into the screen again.
“Hurry, Lil!” old Habibula was puffing. “They may fire again! What you promised me was precious immortality—not that I’d be shot like a trapped rat!”
“Quiet, Giles!” Ken Star whispered. “Don’t bother her.”
But Lilith seemed unaware of any of us. Working very deftly and quickly, she was assembling her weapon. The parts of it were oddly small and simple. She used a worn iron nail and a twist of wire that old Habibula produced, two or three pins from her hair, and her platinum ring—the red-eyed grin of that dull black skull gave me an unpleasant start, but now at last I thought I understood what it meant.
In a few seconds, the thing was done.
Holding it one steady hand, she pointed it toward that blot on the stars. She moved her thumb, pressing the end of a bent hairpin against that platinum band. The death’s-head leered redly at me. Shivering, I turned from her to watch that iron asteroid, which was brighter now, a tiny yellow star. Waiting for I didn’t know exactly what—perhaps for some spectacular explosion—I swung again to the electron telescope. The greenish shadow of the invader was brighter now, but otherwise unchanged.
A low, wordless moan came from old Habibula.
“It doesn’t work—”
Lilith’s voice was broken, quivering. Her aloof serenity had been shattered. That air of power was gone. She was sobbing like a hurt child.
“I—I don’t—know why—”
9 BACKDOOR TO NOWHERE
COLD FEAR caught me. For one sick instant I thought the transite dome had somehow turned transparent to heat, draining off our warmth of life. In the ghastly glow of the instruments, old Habibula and Lilith and Ken Star were faint frozen ghosts, floating motionless around me.
Implacable hostility glared down through the dome. The natural universe, the mist and frost and dust of stars, was suddenly as dreadful as that unnatural midnight funnel in the anomaly. Hanging to the hard chrome rail, I shrank from the pitless, bottomless mystery of infinite space.
We were terribly alone.
“Oh!” Beside me, Lilith made a small, frightened gasp. “No—”
Working with both hands to aim and try her absurd little weapon, she had let herself drift away into that null-G space. Now, flailing out in a sudden unthinking panic, she snatched at the railing. She couldn’t reach it.
With a gentle thrust of my fan-jet, I overtook her. Her hand quivered in mine. She stared at me as we flew back together, her eyes black and strange and stricken in that deathly light. She gave me a faint, pale smile.
“Thank you, Lars!” Her cold hand clung to me. “I need you now!”
For a moment we clutched the cold rail, staring at the green and monstrous image of that enemy machine. I still hoped somehow to see her weapon take effect, still feared some grim retaliation. But nothing changed that glowing shadow.
“They aren’t even shooting back!” Lilith swung in the air to face Ken Star. “I can’t understand it,” she whispered bitterly. “Why did my weapon fail?”
“Because of the anomaly, I suppose.” His voice was dull and dry, broken with defeat. “Space is different there. The difference affects the transmission of light and radio and gravity. Perhaps it also affects your weapon.”
“That might be.” She nodded helplessly, her icy hand limp in mine. “AKKA works by producing a peculiar distortion of space, in which matter cannot exist. If the anomaly creates a conflicting distortion—”
Her voice trailed off into desolate silence. Moving like a stiff machine, she took her useless weapon apart and slipped the ring back on her finger. That ugly skull caught the red light, with a mocking wink of evil.
I felt her shiver.
We hung to the rail, watching that funnel of darkness swallowing the northward stars. Though I could not quite see it grow, at every glance it looked larger. The white point of the incandescent iron asteroid was drifting slowly but visibly toward the center of it, moving in the way we would go.
Old Habibula uttered a wordless, tragic moan.
“Giles, you know machines.” Ken Star’s sudden voice was strained, hoarse, somehow startling. “Tell us how to stop those machines.”
“My precious life!” Old Habibula shuddered in the blood-red gloom. “Maybe I do know machines—I know these are wicked. I respect machines because they have a purpose I can understand. These have made their fearful purpose clear.
“Their unknown makers mean no mortal good for us!”
The girl’s cold hand shuddered in mine.
“No hope!” she breathed huskily. “Nothing we can do—”
“Perhaps—I think there is!” A quick excitement caught me. “Commander—Commander Star!” I stopped to smooth my shaking voice. “I think there’s something we can try. A pretty grim and hopeless thing—but better than waiting to follow that burning boulder into Nowhere!”
His haggard eyes peered through the red dusk at me.
“What’s that, Ulnar?”
“I ran a computer analysis on the motions of those rocks,” I said. “Months ago. The results didn’t make much sense till just now. But now I think your theory explains them. I think I know a back door into—into Nowhere!”
Shifting his grip on the cold chrome, he hauled himself toward me.
“Let’s hear about it!”
“We’d observed the way those rocks were moving,” I said. “At the instant of appearance. At the instant of disappearance. I fed the data into the computer, to search for common elements. In the appearing rocks, I found none—they seem to come out with random directions and velocities. But the rocks that vanished had all been moving up a cone less than one degree across, at nearly the same velocity.”
Lilith’s hand squeezed mine, alive again.
“What I want to do is take a rocket up that cone,” I said. “If your theory is correct, I think it might come through into the world beyond that bubble—without being sterilized! I think it might give us a chance for some sort of surprise attack on whatever is beyond. Not a good chance—but any is better than none!”
