The Zero Stone

by Andre Norton

  Nor could I move my arm, or even my legs. I was frozen into this position - a human arrow aimed for a target which I could not guess. That I was aimed I did not doubt. There was no rope on me- no, I was swinging through the void following that light on my glove. My glove? No! The space ring on my finger!

  That once-clouded stone was the beacon of light pulling me on and on. I could turn my head a little and see in the reflected glory of that light that I still towed the box with its furry occupant. But the creature was curled in a tight ball which rolled helplessly and I thought it was probably dead.

  Where the Vestris might be I had no idea. There was a sense of speed about my present passage. And I could not turn my head very far to see what lay behind, above, or below.

  Time ceased to have any meaning. I wavered back and forth between consciousness and black non-being. Only gradually did I become aware of approaching something. At last I could make out the outline of what once might have been a ship; at least the inner portion of that drifting mass might have been a ship. About it, like tiny satellites about a planet, were crowding bits of debris, grinding now and then against the hull, swinging out, but not to break away. And the ring was pulling me straight into that grinding! Caught by even a small fragment of that and I would be as dead as if a laser had cut me down.

  Yet try to fight the pull as I did, I had no chance against the force drawing me on. My arm was numb, the joints seemingly locked in that position. I had ceased to be a man; I was only a means for the ring to reach whatever target it must find.

  Inside the suit, my helpless body, that which was the thinking, feeling part of me, cowered and whimpered. I shut my eyes, unable to look upon what lay before me, and then was forced to open them again because hope refused to die. We were very close to the outer circle of debris, and I thought I could see a hole in the side of the derelict ship - either an open hatch or some other break.

  It was, as far as I could guess, since my sight of it was limited by the mass of stuff about it, larger than the Vestris, perhaps closer to passenger liner. And its lines were not those of any ship I knew. Then - we were in the first wave of debris-

  I waited for the crushing of those bits of jagged metal - until I saw that the floating stuff was parting before the beam of the stone, as if that had the power to cut a clear path. Hardly daring to believe that such would be the case, I watched. But it was true, a great lump dipped and bobbed and moved reluctantly away.

  So we came to that dark doorway. I was sure it was a hatch, though there remained no evidence of any door. But the opening was too regular to be a mere hole. Into and through that dark arch the ring continued to pull me, lighting up dim walls. And then my beacon hand struck painfully against a solid surface, and continued to beat through no desire of mine, hammering upon the inner hatch of this long-dead ship as if demanding entrance. Finally my gloved flesh came to rest on that resisting surface as if it were welded there, while I struggled until my magnetized boots struck the floor and I could stand, my right hand pinned to the door, my feet anchored once again.

  SIX

  There was such an overwhelming relief in being shut in, out of the void, that for a space that was all I felt - until the knowledge that I was now caught in another trap dispelled my only too short sensation of safety. My hand was still fast against the door and I could not pull it loose. Rather, it dragged me further and further forward, until my whole body was flat to that surface, almost as if the strength of the attraction could ooze me through the age-worn metal itself. And a second wave of fear arose in me at the thought that I would be held so for all time, trapped in this hatchway.

  The glow from the stone was no longer so bright as it had been. In these confined quarters it would have been blinding had its brilliance shown as it had in space. But it was still flickering. I struggled wildly against the hold, until I wilted, exhausted, held upright by my hand against the door.

  As I hung there, staring dully at the light, my hand, and the door, a fact broke through my bemusement. The flickering was now more deliberate. Almost it followed a pattern - on, off, on, off, with varying intervals between flashes. The suit was insulated, of course, but where the palm of my glove met the substance of the door, a reddish stain was spreading. Even through that insulation I could feel a tingle of concentrated energy.

  Again I sensed I was only a thing to be used by the stone, that I was its tool and not it mine. The tingle became pain, and finally agony, with nothing I could do to ease it. The red stain brightened and at last I saw dark lines crack open. As the agony grew, the door began to give way. It fell in broken shards from the frame and I was pulled on.

  I caught only glimpses of corridors, for it seemed that the stone now sped to make up for the time lost in defeating the barrier at the hatch: I was twice pulled past breaks in the hull.

  My journey ended in a section where there were strange shapes of machines - or I believed them to be machines. And this part of the ship seemed intact, undamaged by whatever had struck to finish its life. The stone whisked me around and through a maze of rods, cylinders, latticework, piping, coming at last to a box wherein I could see a tray. And set on that were black lumps. With a last spurt the stone once more plastered my hand to the viewplate of the box. It flared in a burst of dazzling light. And behind the plate I saw a small answering flicker from one of those lumps. But it was only a flicker and quickly gone. Then the glow of the stone died, too, and my hand fell limply to swing by my side, a dead weight. I was alone in the dark bowels of a long-dead ship.

  I collapsed, to float, and then felt the bump of the box in which my companion traveled. How much air I had left in my suit tank I did not know, but I doubted whether it was enough to keep me living long. The stone had clearly led me to my death, not in a void where I would have spun forever, but in this tomb of blasted metal.

  There is the ancient fear of my species of the dark and what may creep therein. I raised my left hand and fumbled with the button on the fore of my harness until the sharp ray of a beamer glowed, picking out the case of lumps which might once have been stones to rival that in the ring. There was, of course, no hope that I could find any compartment with air remaining, or any form of escape. But neither would I stay supine where I was, just waiting for suffocation to finish me.

  My right arm was still useless. I took that hand with my left and wedged it into the front of my harness, keeping it across my chest. I would have cast off the box with the dead creature, only, when I looked down at that tightly curled body, to my vast amazement, I saw the head move, caught the gleam of eyes. So it had also survived our voyage to the derelict!

  The magnetic plates on my boots allowed me to walk along the deck, though the slow spin of the ship made the deck become wall, or even ceiling. Finally I loosed the plates and pulled along by handholds.

  All ships of my own time carried lifeboats, with directional finders which would locate the nearest planetary body and would then direct the boat there - though there was always a chance the survivors might be landed on a world inhospitable to human life. Perhaps this ship had a similar arrangement for the safety of passengers and crew. If so - and I could find one - though they might have all been used when the ship was first abandoned - I might still have a thin chance.

  It is the nature of my species that we find it necessary to keep fighting for life until a last blow ends us. That inborn instinct drove me now.

  The stone, I deduced, had brought me to the engine section of the ship. Whatever empowered it in space and acted as a homing device had drawn it straight to those burned-out bits in the box, once, perhaps, the motive power for the ship.

  I pulled myself through the remains of the engine room. There might, I thought, be other energy sources in the lifeboats. They should be several decks higher, close to the crew and passenger quarters - always supposing this ship duplicated the general layout of those I knew.

  I found no ladders, only wells which were cut through the levels. There were hints here
and there that this vessel had never housed beings of my type. At the foot of the second well I hesitated. The ship rolled lazily; I might float through one of these - only my beamer showed no handholds to pull me along, and to be sucked in and then spin helplessly- At last I used my boot plates, walking up along walls which moved ever to make my head swim and induce a return of the vertigo which had been a symptom of my illness.

  The next level had cabins, most of their doors open. I peered into one or two. There were shelves which might have been bunks, save that they were very short and narrow, and they were so uniform in the interior design I thought this must have been crew territory.

  Once more I made a spin walk to the next level There had been a carpet on the floor here and the cabins were larger. My beam illuminated a splash of color on the wall, focused on a picture or mural - queerly disjointed figures or objects, which my eyes could not follow, colors which hurt. Passenger territory. Now - along here I should find LB hatches.

  There was something floating against the wall of the corridor. It seemed to lurch at me and I fended it off with aversion, refusing to look closely. Passenger or crewman, here was one who had not reached any LB. My touch sent it swirling back and away.

  I had begun to think I was wrong in my hopes when I came to the first port and looked through its door into an empty socket. The LB had been launched, which meant live passengers had reached it. Some had escaped that long-ago wreck. And though the port was empty, it raised my flagging hopes.

  The dial on my air tank had swung far toward red. I glanced at it once and then swiftly away. Better not to know how near I was to the end. Even were I able to find a usable LB and launch it, bow long would it be before I reached, a planet? If and if and if again-

  Suddenly the numb arm across my breast twitched and pulled against the confining strap. I looked down. The stone shone. Was it answering once more a call from an installation similar to the one I had found in the engine room?

  Though the pull tugged at my secured arm, it was not enough to jerk it free of the fastening. But it did provide a guide along this corridor. Past two more empty berths I traveled. Then my arm gave a hard jerk, which did tear it loose and bring its dead weight around to point to a surface now almost under me as the ship rolled. There was another hatch to an LB berth - but it was closed. Perhaps no one had reached it.

  Again my glove went to that door, anchored me, and the light from the stone flared. But this time it did not burn through. The hatch cover rolled aside and I saw the projectile shape of an LB. Once more my arm dropped, but I pulled myself along with my left hand, pried at the hatch of the LB. It gave and I fell into its interior, bringing the box of the creature with me.

  There was a flickering of light, not only from the stone, but on a panel at the nose end of the LB. There were hammock-like slings to take the bodies of passengers and one was close enough for me to clutch. I could feel a vibration through the small cabin. Whatever energized this LB was not dead - the thing had at least enough power to cruise out of its sling inside the skin of the parent ship. We shot forth with enough force to pin me down, and I blacked out.

  “Air-“

  I looked blearily about. The beamer still shown, now straight against a curving wall, to be reflected back dazzlingly into my eyes. Suddenly I realized that I was breathing in shuddering gasps, coughing a little. For the air I fought to draw into my lungs had a strange odor which irritated my nasal passages. On my shoulder was a furry burden, and a whiskered face was thrust close to mine, dark beads of eyes watching me intently.

  “Air it is,” I answered dreamily. More and more this had the cast of a weird nightmare. Logical, perhaps, after a fashion which nightmares seldom are, but certainly not believable. For now, however, I was content to lie half entangled in the hammock, rapidly breathing that disagreeable air.

  When I turned my head a fraction I could see a board of controls. The numerous lights which had played so swiftly across it at my first entrance now were cut to three - one yellowwhite, in the center and a little above the other two, one red, and the other a ghostly blue. I looked down at my hand. There was still a glint of light in the stone, showing beneath the clouded surface, and a faint tingling prickled in my hand.

  At least I was still alive, I was free of the dead ship in an LB, and I had air to breathe even if it was not the air my lungs craved. It would seem my entrance into the projectile had activated its ancient mechanism.

  If we were on course for the nearest planet, how long a voyage did we face? And what kind of a landing might we have to endure? I could breathe, but I would need food and water. There might be supplies - E-rations - on board. But could they still be used after all these years - or could a human body be nourished by them?

  With my teeth I twisted free the latch which fastened my left glove, scraped that off, and freed my hand. Then I felt along my harness. These suits were meant to be worn planetside as well as for space repairs; they must have a supply of E-rations. My fingers fumbled over some loops of tools and found a seam-sealed pouch. It took me a few moments to pick that open.

  I had not felt hunger before; now it was a pain devouring me. I brought the tube I had found up to eye level. It was more than I could manage to sit up or even raise my head higher, but the familiar markings on the tube were heartening. One moment to insert the end between my teeth, bite through, and then the semiliquid contents flooded my mouth and I swallowed greedily. I was close to the end of that bounty when I felt movement against my bared throat and remembered I was not alone.

  It took a great deal of resolution to pinch tight that tube and hold it to the muzzle of the furred one. Its pointed teeth seized upon the container with the same avidity I must have shown, and I squeezed the tube slowly while it sucked with a vigor I could feel through the touching of its small body to mine.

  There were three more tubes in my belt pouch. Each one, I knew, was intended to provide a day’s rations, perhaps two if a man were hard pushed. Four days - maybe, we could stretch that to eight. But the gamble was such as no sane man would have taken by choice.

  I lay quietly until my strength began to return. The leaden weight of my right arm tingled a little, not from the action of the stone, but as if circulation returned. With that came a painful cramping. I forced myself to flex my fingers inside the glove, to raise and lower my forearm, setting my teeth against the hurt those exercises caused me.

  In time my arm obeyed me as well as it had before the stone had taken over. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and gazed about the LB. There were six of the hammock slings, three on each wall, and I lay in the last to the right. None of them had been placed close enough to the control board for the occupant to reach it. This was true also of the regulation escape boats I knew. Their course tapes were set, so that if a badly injured man managed to reach one of them, it would serve without need for human manipulation.

  Like the bunks I had seen in the ship, these hammocks, gauging by their size, were not intended for the human frame. And certainly the air still rasping my nose and lungs was not normal. I wondered briefly if it held some poisonous element which would in time finish me. But if that were true there was nothing I could do about it.

  On the wall I traced outlines which I thought marked storage compartments. Whether E-rations lay behind those still- The dreamy state continued to hold me. Though my strength returned to my body; it was as if I watched all this from a distance and nothing really mattered. Once I raised my hand to look at it. Those dark patches which had been the purple, swollen blisters, and then scaling scabs, had rubbed off their rough surfaces inside the glove. The skin beneath was shiny pink and new.

  Again the furred body moved and I felt the wiry hair rasp against my neck. Then my companion moved out, crawling down my body, reaching out a hand-paw to catch at the webbing of the next hammock. It was a long space to span, and at last the creature dug the claws of its hind legs into the stuff of my suit, lunged forward, and so was just able to grasp t
he edge of the web. With sinuous dexterity it took firm hold and swung over to its new position.

  The hammock served it as a ladder and it climbed agilely to one of the outlined lockers. Holding with a left forepaw and both hind legs to its swaying anchorage, it ran the other set of small gray fingers over the surface. When it pressed or released, I could not tell, but a panel swung open with such speed that the creature had to duck to escape.

  Behind were two tubes secured in a rack. Each had something vaguely resembling a laser grip, and I thought they might be weapons - or perhaps survival tools. Leaving that door aswing, the creature went methodically to the next. I was a little troubled as I watched it.

  Even after our communication I had continued to think of my companion as an animal. It was clearly the offspring of Valcyr, strange though its begetting had been. I had heard of mutant animals able to communicate with man. But now it was brought home to me that whatever this creature was, it had intelligence above the level I had assigned it. And now I asked, my voice overloud in the small cabin:

  “Who are you?”

  Perhaps it would have been better to ask, “What are you?”

  It paused, its forepaw still outstretched, its long neck twisting so that it could look straight at me. And for the first time I remembered I had awakened without my helmet, with the air reviving me. Surely I had not taken it off while unconscious - so -

  “Eet. “

  A single word with a queer sound - if a word in one’s mind may also register as a sound.

  “Eet,” I repeated aloud. “Do you mean you are Eet as I am Murdoc Jern, or Eet as I am a man?”

  “I am Eet, myself, me-“ If it understood my division of terms it was not interested. “I am Eet, returned-“

  “Returned-how? From where?”

  It settled back into the hammock, which swayed under its weight as light as it was, so that it must clutch at the webbing to keep its position.