Collected Short Fiction, page 643
He hung gazing at me. His hollowed eyes caught the instrument lights, and his gaunt head looked shockingly like the skull on Lilith’s ring. I had to turn away.
“I see no chance at all,” his dull voice rasped. “Didn’t the mutineers sabotage your spare emergency rocket?”
“I’ll take the escape capsule that Lilith and Habibula got here in.”
“What will keep the invaders from picking you off like they did the mutineers?”
“I’ll maneuver behind the ice asteroid,” I said. “Get up velocity and cut the rockets before I come out. I’ll coast down the cone. With the rockets dead, they may not detect me.”
“Or, again, they may!” He gave me a mirthless, redeyed grin. “What weapons will you carry?”
“That’s a problem,” I said. “The mutineers wrecked our big proton-guns—which might be useless anyhow. The best chance I can think of is a couple of tons of cathode plates from the atomic power plant, with an improvised detonator—”
“To turn the capsule into a nuclear missile?” He nodded slowly in that blood-colored dusk. “You’re willing to pilot such a missile—on such a desperate strike?”
“I’m going to try.” I turned to the dome again, to study that fearful funnel swelling at the heart of the anomaly, the captured asteroid burning brighter now and nearer the center. “We’ve no more than three hours to try anything.”
“Lars!” Lilith’s hand clung to mine. “Lars—”
I squeezed her hand, let her go.
“Come along, Habibula.” I started out of the dome. “If you’re so clever with machines, you can help me rig a detonator for those uranium plates—”
“Wait a moment, Ulnar!” Ken Star’s lifted voice interrupted me. “I approve the general outline of your plan—just because it looks better than no plan at all. But I’m going to revise a few details.”
“Yes, sir.” I stopped obediently, hovering in the dark above the cherry-glinting instruments. “I welcome your suggestions, sir.”
“I’m making two changes in your plan,” Star said. “First, I’ll pilot the capsule myself—”
“Sir!”
“Listen, Captain!” Ken Star barked sternly at me. “Remember your duty here. Nowhere Near may be a wreck, but it’s still your command. You haven’t been relieved—”
“Sir, you could relieve me—”
“I could, but I won’t.”
“But, sir, you aren’t fit for such a desperate strike. You’re already exhausted—”
“Lilith has given me a shot. Considering the nature of the mission, I’m more fit than you are for it. I’ve spent most of my life studying this anomaly. I welcome—gladly welcome the bare possibility that I may live to see it from the other side.”
“Sir, it’s—suicide!”
“It was your own idea, Captain—and I rank you in the Legion!” His low chuckle rippled through the gloom. “I’ll pilot the capsule. And I’m making one other change in your plan.”
“Yes, sir,” I muttered. “What’s that, sir?”
“I’m not sure that any homemade nuclear bomb would be very useful against the technology that opened that gate. I’m going to take a more flexible weapon. I’m going to take Giles Habibula—”
“Wa-a-a-a-a-ah!” Old Habibula’s broken cry echoed dolefully from the transite dome. “I ain’t no mortal weapon. I ain’t even in the Legion now. I’m just a peace-loving veteran. I came to Nowhere Near to find immortal youth—not to die in a foreign universe!”
“Giles, I’ve heard you tell of your own exploits.” Ken Star grinned like that small black skull. “I’ll take your own word that you are more formidable than any machine—and I’ll hear no more about it. I want you aboard in fifteen minutes.”
“For life’s precious sake, I—I—” Old Habibula floated unsteadily, blinking his rust-colored eyes at Ken Star. “Yes, sir,” he wheezed. “I’ll be aboard.”
Lilith caught Ken Star’s arm.
“Shouldn’t I come?” she whispered. “Don’t you think there might be a different space beyond the anomaly, where my weapon might work again?”
His dull-eyed skull shook bleakly.
“Wait here,” he said. “We’ve yet to find a target on the other side, and we have no assurance that AKKA would function there. Your duty is to guard it faithfully.”
I heard the hurt gasp of her breath.
“I’ll guard it.” I caught a faint flash of red and black and platinum, as she glanced at her deadly ring. “I’ll guard it faithfully.”
Ken Star swung urgently to me.
“Captain, is the capsule ready?”
“It will be ready, sir,” I promised. “In fifteen minutes.”
The cable-way was closed now, since that shot from the invader had punctured the air-space we had dug out and sealed off inside the ice asteroid. We had to leave the dome through emergency tubes—and we found that the automatic valves had closed most of them.
Nowhere Near was badly crippled. That micro-missile had exploded against it like a tiny supernova. The blast had torn an enormous crater in the asteroid. The shock wave had shattered equipment everywhere. Debris had carried away half of the full-G ring. Hard radiation from the initial impact had poisoned one whole quadrant of the asteroid.
But we found the capsule intact. Two broken lines from the supply pumps had to be patched, but within that desperate quarter-hour it was filled with fuel and air and water, loaded with space rations, stocked with survival gear. Old Habibula came rolling dolefully aboard, stumbling under a load of wine and caviar that would have buried him at full gravity.
Lilith came with Ken Star to the lock. Standing ready at the lock monitor, I watched their farewell. He kissed her briefly. She murmured something. He started into the lock and stopped to call back sharply:
“Guard your secret well. Trying to use it, we may have compromised it. Avoid capture.”
“Trust me, Ken.” The smile on her gaunt and bloodless face looked almost gay. “I won’t fail!”
“Guard her, Captain,” he snapped brusquely at me. “Keepers of the peace have been lost in the past. That must not happen again. The security of AKKA is your first duty now.”
“Yes, sir.” I gave him a quick salute. “I understand, sir.”
Moving with a brisk and almost jaunty haste, as if he felt more eagerness than fear, he slid into the capsule and sealed the hatch. A pang of envy stabbed me as I thumbed the launching-cycle button.
“I wish—” Lilith whispered beside me. “I wish we were going.”
I said nothing. They had at least a chance to find what was beyond the anomaly. I thought we had no chance at all—but I saw no need to speak of that. Silently, I caught Lilith’s hand. It lay cold and lifeless in my grasp.
The inner valve thudded shut. The pumps roared briefly. The outer valve opened less than halfway—and stuck fast.
“Wait for me,” I told Lilith. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I scrambled into an emergency suit and cycled through the man-lock. Inside the main chamber, I slid around the capsule and found room to slip through the jammed valve. Outside, I discovered that it had been fouled by a deflated plastic shaft—a spoke from the broken full-G wheel—blown across the lock.
Working in frantic haste, with emergency tools designed for smaller and more delicate tasks of repair, I slashed away the crumpled plastic tube. The embedded steel cables still fouled the valve. They were too tough for my cutter, almost too heavy for my torch. Precious minutes were gone before I could part them.
Then I found the valve still jammed, the servo-motor dead. Sweating in the suit, I toiled at the hand-wheel to widen the opening far enough so that I could guide the capsule past the knife-edge of the valve.
Outside, we found that we were screened from the invaders only by the flimsy wreckage of the full-G ring. With laserphone dark, for fear of another shot, I jammed my helmet against the capsule to carry sound and shouted a warning to Ken Star that the invaders could see his rockets here.
He let me push the capsule safely beyond the ice asteroid before he fired. That effort drained too much mass from my own pack. When he used his laserphone, in the shadow of the asteroid, to warn me to drive clear, my thrusters were too sluggish.
The roaring jets of the capsule caught me, flung me spinning back toward the station. Flying through the dark, thrusters dead, I caught a frightening glimpse of the anomaly.
The invading machines were still too far for me to see, but that terrible funnel of darkness had swallowed more of the reddened and distorted stars around it. The trapped iron asteroid was brighter now, closer to its black throat, still falling ahead of the station.
Though that giddy glimpse of Nowhere left me cold and shaken, the more normal space around me was deadly enough. Helpless to control my flight, I missed the gray starlit bulk of the ice asteroid. Flying past it, I had time to wonder whether the direction and velocity of my unplanned flight lay within the critical cone that would take me into Nowhere.
Then a whipping metal tentacle struck me savagely.
10 ANOMALY IN TIME
BRUISED AND DAZED, I seized that flailing tentacle. After one stunned instant, I knew what it was—a loose cable from the broken full-G wheel. Though half the ring had been blown away by that exploding micro-missile, wreckage of the rest still spun around the ice asteroid.
The cable twisted away, slipping in my gloves. I held on grimly, for I clung to life itself. Desperately, I kept my grip until my unguided flight was checked. Laboriously then, fighting the centrifugal force that was like inverted gravity, I started climbing toward the axle of the broken wheel.
That took a long time.
Though I had been able to stop that first terrifying slide not far beyond the half-G point, the suit itself, even with empty mass-tanks, was still as heavy as my body. The gloves gave me only a precarious grip on the whirling cable. I climbed and had to rest, climbed and had to rest.
For all my years in space, I could not escape a terrifying illusion. The asteriod seemed suspended overhead, a shadowy starlit bulk. The whirling cable seemed to hang straight down into an insane black pit. The stars themselves seemed to spin crazily around and around and around me, until I had to fight a giddy nausea.
Northward, the anomaly was near one stationary pole of that whirling universe. The black funnel of the guarded gateway was larger every time I looked, the yellow fleck of the trapped asteroid always brighter in its bottomless throat.
Somewhere southward, Ken Star was maneuvering the capsule under cover of the ice asteroid. Once or twice I saw the pale blue jet receding into starry distance. For a time I lost it. Then I saw it coming back—a faint blue flare with the capsule itself a tiny black point at its heart.
It passed while I clung to that slippery cable. The blue flare winked out. A shadow flickered across the whirling stars, just below me. It went on, rockets dead, invisible.
Twisting anxiously on the cable, I looked after it into the anomaly. Dizzy and shivering, I watched the rim of the funnel for the flash of a weapon. I waited for the small new star that would be the capsule, sterilized.
The dark universe kept whirling around me. The funnel kept growing. The point of yellow-white light in its throat was suddenly gone as that remote asteroid went through, into Nowhere.
Nothing else happened.
Muscles knotted and quivering, I climbed up through a cruel agony of sick exhaustion. Though my strength was failing, that savage force decreased as I drew toward the axis of rotation. Without thrusters, I had to make a reckless leap from that broken wheel to the nearly stationary hub that held the locks.
I caught the edge of the collapsed plastic shaft that lay across the lock and hauled myself along it until at last I could drag myself through the fouled valve and fall inside the lock.
For a time I simply lay there, trembling with exhaustion, until I found strength and purpose to cycle myself through the man-lock and clamber out of the suit and look for Lilith. She was gone from the lock deck. Calling her name, I got no answer.
A dreadful stillness hung inside the ruined station. Listening desperately, I heard only the thudding blood in my own ears. Cold alarm clutched at me. Snatching a hand-jet, I soared wildly around the hub, hoarsely shouting her name.
Still she didn’t answer, but a muffled sob drew me to the deck of the next lock, the one from which the mutineers had fled. I found her there, lying face down on a pile of space gear which the fugitives had left abandoned on the deck.
“Lilith!”
Whimpering and quivering, she didn’t seem to hear. But I saw a darting, furtive movement, caught a flash of black and red and platinum. For one dazed instant I thought she was trying her weapon on me. Then dreadful understanding stunned me.
“Lilith—don’t!”
Scrambling for traction in the nearly null gravity of the slowly turning hub, I launched myself across the deck. I came down sprawling on her, caught her arm, twisted her hand away from her teeth.
Fighting back with tigerish fury, she nearly won. I was still reeling from my ordeal in space, and her Legion teachers had trained her well. Feinting, kicking, jabbing with a deadly expertness, she twisted her hand free. She got it nearly back to her lips. To stop her mouth, I kissed her.
“Lars?”
She spoke my name with an unbelieving gasp. Suddenly she was limp, sobbing in my arms. I snatched her hand again, stripped off the poison ring. Her teeth had not reached that ugly skull. Its red wink mocked me, deadly still.
“Lilith—” Panting for breath and strength and courage, I fought a wild impulse to throw the ring down the air duct. “It’s just me! And the time hasn’t come to—”
I couldn’t say it.
“You were gone so long!” Wide and glazed and dark, her bronze eyes stared at me. “I thought you’d been lost in space. When I heard something moving, I was afraid—afraid it was an invader—come to capture me—”
She clung to me, shuddering and sobbing.
“Lars! Lars! I’m so terribly glad it’s you!”
I kissed her again, this time not to stop her mouth.
After a while she laughed softly in my arms.
“Captain Ulnar, your first duty is the security of AKKA.” Her breathless voice mocked Ken Star’s brusque command. “I like the way you’re attending to it. You’ve saved my life—and made me human again!”
I held her alive and wonderful in my arms.
“Never—destroy yourself!” The words even were so painful that I could scarcely whisper them. “The invaders will be taking care of that,” I told her bleakly. “Too soon now—unless Ken Star and Giles do better than I expect.”
“Don’t speak of that!” she breathed. “Let’s forget!”
We tried to forget. For a little time, we almost did forget. But the stillness of the station was a monstrous voice of warning, and our thudding hearts were tramping feet of terror. Imperative dread drove us back to the laser dome.
We were deep in the anomaly. That black funnel had covered half the northward stars. With the electron telescope I searched its long rim for the invading machines hanging there. I found nothing. They were nearer now, I knew, but we had no light to see them by. When they sterilized our asteroid, I thought bleakly, its glow would make them visible again, but not to us.
“Lars—it’s the shot!”
Crouching back against me in the chill red gloom of that null-G space, Lilith pointed at the dome. Beyond it, against that vast and featureless pit of blackness, I saw a sudden pale blue flare.
“It’s the sterilizing shot!”
“I don’t—don’t think so.” An unbelieving relief took away my voice. “I think it’s the retro-rockets of that capsule.”
“Giles and Ken?” She hung peering at me, a pink and adorable ghost in that lifeless night. “Can they really be coming back?” She caught a sobbing breath. “Can you call them? Find out what they’ve found?”
“I’m afraid to risk a call,” I said. “Any signal might draw another shot. But it is the capsule—in braking flight toward the station hub.”
We were waiting in the hub when the capsule nudged its way back into the lock. The drive motor for the hull valve was still dead, but I stood ready to cycle through the man-lock and seal the valve by hand.
Air roared into the chamber. Shucking off the space suit, I stumbled around the capsule to help with the hatch. It stuck at first, groaned open rustily. A man’s head thrust out—shrunken, white-bearded, old. Sunken eyes peered out at me, warily alert.
“Lars Ulnar?” Ken Star’s voice was rasping at me, queerly thin, queerly aged, queerly unbelieving. “You are still waiting here?”
“Of course we are.” I caught his parchment hand. “Let me help you, sir.”
Queerly dwindled, queerly bent, he let me help him through the hatch. Old Habibula followed. Even he was thinner, though his skin still looked smooth and pink as Lilith’s. His pebble-colored eyes rolled wildly at her and me.
“Lars!” His voice was a wheezy, unbelieving croak. “Lil! We’re mortal glad to find you here—and still alive! When we saw the station not repaired we thought it must have been abandoned.”
Squinting strangely at us, he shook his hairless head.
“Did they maroon you here?” he gasped. “Alone in this wicked wreck? Or did the relief ship never come? Have you been trapped out here all this mortal time?”
Leaning on Lilith’s arm, as if he needed support even here where gravity was nearly null, Ken Star stood peering with those bright, sunken eyes at her and me.
“How long—” His old voice quavered and broke. “By your time, how long have we been away?”
“Two hours.” I studied my watch. “Perhaps a little longer—”
“Two mortal hours!” old Habibula bleated unbelievingly. “You’re joking with us—when we’ve suffered too much and toiled too long and endured too many mortal disasters to be met with silly jokes.”
Flushed with indignation, he sobbed for his breath.
“We’ve just got back from beyond the anomaly. We’ve fought through perils that would freeze the precious brain in your skull. We’ve existed for desperate years on synthetic gruel and iron determination. We’ve set our precious wits against the grimmest riddles of a foreign universe.”
