Into the Fourth Universe
Robert Wingfield
Into the Fourth Universe
Illustrated by Simon Walpole
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters and locations are the subject of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locations, organisations or objects, past, present or future is purely coincidental.
It is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the writer’s prior consent, electronically or in any form of binding or cover other than the form in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Replication or distribution of any part is strictly prohibited without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Copyright © 2019 Robert Wingfield
www.cantbearsd.co.uk
ISBN 9780463989692
All rights reserved.
Dedication
For lost friends and colleagues
exploring new horizons
Acknowledgements
Illustrations by Simon Walpole
http://swalpole6.wix.com/handdrawnheroes
Cover: Intergalactic Vista From A Lonely Star by James Gitlin (STScI)
Editing by Dai Cooper
Contents
Parking the Issue
Thinking Outside the Box
Drop Dead Date
The Magus takes a Holiday
A Man touches Base
Blue Sky Thinking
The Doll Bites Back
Investigatory Best Practice?
Personal Death Insurance
A Girl in the Bush
Value Added, Off the Shelf
Skirt Length Theory
Tom Drills Down
The Magus Plumbs the Depths
Caryl does the Laundry
Allan switches off a Hairdryer
Some Genitals Explode
Outsourcing Challenges
The Magus shares a Cab
Tom draws some Lines
Hawk burns her Fingers
Offboarding the Plank
Flight to Liquidity
Tom looks into a Hole
Closed Door Policy
Postlogue – Third Universe
Parking the Issue
T
he party was still in full swing when the man left. The girl he wanted there did not want him now, and even consolation from the statuesque blonde had not been enough; he had found out that she apparently had ‘consoled’ a lot of other people that evening. He liberated a bottle of fine Scotch and was now erratically piloting a ‘borrowed’ hover-car over the waves to where he expected to find an island. There was a girl there who he hoped would be waiting for him. He set the car to automatic, and settled down to doze.
Barely an hour after he put to sea, a bank of mist loomed. With unnatural speed the vehicle was swallowed into damp darkness. He blinked awake with the change in the air. The moon he was using for navigation had disappeared. He took the controls and the auto-pilot disengaged. “Try to keep on course,” he muttered to himself groggily. “Mustn’t miss the Island.”
The fog seemed to go on forever and he strained his eyes, trying to make out anything to confirm that he was still on course. There was nothing; it was like being in a corridor to another world. He shuddered as he felt the vehicle passing through a curtain of rain, almost as though he was entering a different reality. He smiled. This is what he had been searching for, the threshold between his world and the Island. The light-headedness from the alcohol dissipated instantly. Hangovers obviously could not pass through portals; something he thought must be useful in other circumstances.
Despite his new level of concentration, he was totally unprepared when something dark and solid loomed up ahead of him in the headlights. He cut the engines, but it was too late. There was a tortured screaming of metal and the car concertinaed into what looked like a bulkhead of a ship. His head bounced forward, and off the emergency airbag. Power failed.
“Bugger, this isn’t the Island,” he muttered.
It was dark, but the odours from the crash site were not what he was expecting. He climbed shakily from the ruined vehicle and fished a star-shaped object off his belt. A blue glow leached outwards as he held it aloft. His eyes adjusted, and he realised that he was in a vast warehouse, some sort of storage facility, packed solidly with plants and trees; solid that was apart from the furrow he had ploughed with his car. It felt like he was on board a ship, but the silence of the whole space made him wonder if it was moving at all. At sea, he would have expected some vibration or rolling with the swell of the ocean. There was nothing. He gazed around, bewildered.
“Oh for Phoist’s sake!” Realisation dawned. “I’ve got it wrong. That fogbank must’ve thrown me off course and I’ve hit this thing. I should have guessed that there was more than one possible destination from that portal.”
He leaned dizzily on the side of the car, ignoring the salt-water soaking into his shoes from a puddle draining off the vehicle. “The sodding thing’s dumped me somewhere else, but where?”
Almost as if in answer to his question, there was the sound of a large door hissing open, and then the sound of military boots on a metal floor, and then the sound of a dozen lethal blasters being unsheathed, and then he was staring into the helmeted face of a very attractive woman, a woman who looked strangely familiar. Unfortunately, she was backed up by a number of unfamiliar faces, and way too many unfamiliar and unfriendly firearms.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, parking in here?” The strangely familiar face used a strangely familiar voice, the tone of which sounded dangerously unfamiliar. “Don’t you realise that these plants are priceless?”
“But… Where am I then?” The man was trying to grasp what was happening; the ringing in his head from the impact on the airbag was not helping.
The strangely familiar voice continued. “You must know, you unforeseen hooligan. You broke in here and tried to destroy our cargo.”
“Broke in?” He retaliated haughtily. “Crashed more like. Look at the state of my car if you don’t believe me.”
“Your car? What, that thing?” The woman shone a powerful torch on it. “Sorry, I assumed it was one of those Executive Skyunpriatsu special star cruisers. They all look like that to me.” She walked closer and studied the wreck. “I can see it doesn’t have the Skyunpriatsu badge, but otherwise it seems identical.”
“Really, it was quite different before it crashed.” The man relaxed slightly—perhaps the locals were a bit simple if they were having this much trouble identifying his car. Perhaps he would be able to talk his way out of the situation. “Anyway, where is this place?”
“I’m sure you know, but in case you’re suffering from concussion or are a traffic warden, I shall remind you that you’re parked illegally on the star-ship, ‘Small Business’. We’re en-mission for the planet, Skagos, to repair damage done by a criminal strip-mining operation. You’ve had the nerve to damage our stock. Who are you, by the way, before I give my men the command to fire?”
“I’m Tom $mith (sic), sometimes known as Two-Dan.” He extended his hand. She regarded it with disdain. “I’m just a guy looking for true love,” he continued hopefully, “and going down in flames.” He indicated the car, which was starting to smoulder.
“Aren’t we all?” The strangely familiar face looked wistful. She turned to one of the troops, who was scanning Tom with a hand-held device. “Is he armed?”
“Apparently not, captain.”
&
nbsp; “Good, this helmet’s buggering up my hair.” She pulled off the offending article and shook her head. A mass of golden ringlets cascaded round a very familiar face. “Captain Suzanne Chips. I would be at your service, if I wasn’t so angry and you weren’t a scum-sucker.”
“Suzy!”
“Do I know you?” The captain challenged. “I really don’t think so. Pretending to recognise me will not save you, even if you think it might help you to gate-crash a party. You’ve committed a criminal offence as a stowaway,” she regarded the smouldering car, “pyromaniac and trespasser. In space I’m sure you know that this specific combination of crimes is punishable by death.” She snapped an order at the troopers. “Take him out and shoot him.”
“Look,” Tom shouted back as he was being ‘taken away’, “Can you give me some time? I might be able to help.”
“Of course,” said Suzanne kindly. “Hold there, men.”
“Thank you,” said Tom, much relieved.
“Yes,” continued Suzanne. “Get him to put the fire out first, and then shoot him.”
Thinking Outside the Box
A
small man walked with a spring in his step, his detective’s fedora set at a jaunty angle. The world was a good place to be. The familiar fragrances of his home planet, Glenforbis, assailed his nose. “There’s nowhere in the cosmos that smells like this,” he thought. “Some people don’t like it, but for me and my beloved lady, Rannie, it’s home, aromatic home.”
He thought back to when he first brought his woman to see the massive estate which he had purchased with the cash from a particularly lucrative class-action lawsuit, one that had been very straightforward, building evidence to enable the removal of an honorary title from a businessman who had nearly brought the galactic dung markets to the brink of ruination. The payment would have only bought a small family car on other planets of course, but property on Glenforbis was particularly good value. Rannie had made some comment about the bracing atmosphere, but when she saw the ‘surprisingly spacious’ house with its ‘many features, character and charm, in exceptional decorative order’, the ‘Olympic sized’ swimming-pool and the ‘extensive’ grounds, even the doku busily fertilising the fields around the estate, went largely unnoticed.
Admittedly, his later clientele were picked up via word of mouth and engaged through the Universal Wide Web (UWW) and it meant he had to travel further and more often than he had hoped. After that successful investigation though, his fame meant that he could now choose the easier and better paying jobs: galactic benefit fraud, cheating spouses, sex android piracy and the illegal flying of miniature spacecraft by underage life-forms who should have been at school.
They were comfortably successful. Rannie did the books for him and ensured that tax was paid after only the usual three red reminders. And of course, he always had her waiting for him with open arms when he returned. He knew she loved him without reservation. He was concerned about leaving her alone for long periods, but she seemed quite content, saying that she had plenty of on-planet activities, such as the Local Women’s Gilding Society, where they thought up ingenious ways of persuading tourists that their planet was one which really had to be visited—‘see Glenforbis and Die’ was one of their favourites, although they did issue warnings about getting too close to the Doku.
“I hope she’ll be in,” he thought. He was slightly concerned that she had not replied to his call when he landed. She usually met him at the spaceport, but this time his flight had been delayed by a supernova and had been forced to make a detour via Glasgow, so he did not expect her to wait. “I expect she’s in the shower. She always seems to be in the shower—can’t think why.”
His security gate was open. He stopped and investigated the mechanism. It appeared to have been forced. Now he was worried. He broke into a run and then remembered the technique he originally used for getting himself out of tight corners. It had been a while, but back in the old days when people spent considerable effort attempting to kill him, he had perfected a way of teleporting himself short distances. The type of life-form he was (actually, he was the only one he had ever met), although it looked like a normal human, seemed to have the ability to take its molecules apart and transfer them to anywhere he could see or remember, subsequently reassembling them into an identical shape. He suspected that he could change himself into different forms if he tried, but that seemed to involve a knowledge of anatomy that he was currently lacking, and could have resulted in a number of embarrassing mistakes. Like riding a crocodile though, the skill was something that once mastered, he could not possibly lose. He took the long driveway at a run and teleported himself to the front door of his mansion, cannoning straight into the doorpost. His hat flew away into the potted meat-bush under the ‘reception room one’ window. “Bugger, I forgot that accuracy was never one of my strong points,” he muttered.
The door came open under his touch. He paused. The house was silent. There was a strange smell not there. The scent of shower gel which always filled the house when Rannie was in. He picked up the baseball bat he kept in an imitation elephant’s foot inside the door (solving that ‘imitation elephant’ scam was one of his greatest sleuthing achievements) and crept slowly towards the study, where the scent was not coming from. He thought about teleporting inside the house, but there was no way of telling if Rannie had rearranged the furniture and he certainly did not want to materialise inside a sofa. He carefully poked the door open with the bat. The sight that met his eyes made his heart sink. His criminal case processing equipment was scattered across the floor and smashed into pieces, the furniture was scattered across the floor and smashed into pieces, and his lady was lying on the floor and not looking very hearty at all. He rushed up to the nearly naked body. Blood oozed between her thighs and splattered the floor around her. Her clothing and skin were torn in many places by what looked like animal claws, and her neck was fixed at an unnatural angle. He gave a sob and bent down to take her head in his hands.
Her eyes flicked open. “Moggy, darling,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I tried to stop them but… look out…” There was a crash on the back of his head, and before the investigator’s world went black, he remembered the first rule of being a private detective; never take your hat off.
* * *
After what seemed like an age later, the man opened his eyes. “I’ve gone blind,” he thought. “Ow, that hurts.” He gingerly felt a tender lump on the back of his head. “Someone hit me. Where am I?” He reached out and his hands touched something solid. He reached sideways and felt the same material. He was inside a box, a wooden box. He pushed upwards. Nothing yielded. The air was getting warmer; his breathing became more laboured. He levered his arms against the lid of the container. There was a slight movement. He focused his strength and pushed. This time the cover moved and a trickle of soft earth (smelling slightly of dung) joined him in his enclosure. The reality dawned. He was buried; buried alive. “How, why?” Thoughts rushed through his head. The terror of the situation gripped him. He pummelled the lid and only succeeded in letting in more earth. He could feel the weight of the ground above him. “Calm, be calm. Save the air. I can get out of this. I can teleport out. Just got to find where I am, so I can work out where I’m going.”
His mind searched upwards. “Where is the air and the light? Why isn’t it there?” It was dark as far as his probing could see. He could not get away. There was nothing he could do except run out of air. He thought of Rannie, and then he thought of the people who had murdered her, and the anger built up. He breathed more heavily and the atmosphere became fetid. He gasped and desperately imagined what it would be like to breathe fresh air; he thought of the scent of the open space above him. Suddenly the box was full of that air. He took a deep breath and absorbed the unmistakeable sulphurous odours of nocturnal fire beetles. That was why he could not find the light; it was night-time above him. Perhaps he was not so deep in the earth.
“How can I
breathe?” he thought. “Maybe the panic of not being able to teleport out has teleported air into the box with me instead?” As he pondered, he began to pant. He tried concentrating on the air again, and managed to bring a few more breaths into the container. The effort was making him sweat. He thought of Rannie. Was she dead? Suppose she could have been saved if he was not buried? Panic gripped him. The more he thought of her lying there, the more he felt the dread of her dying without him doing something. Dismay mixed with anger and the desire to revenge himself on the people who had done this. Lights flashed in front of his eyes as his rage built up. Negative emotions he thought he was incapable of spiralled round and round in his head. He let the whole force channel into a blast upwards. There was a massive explosion. He was staring at the stars. A column of broken wood and earth rocketed skywards. “I guess that’s what you call, ‘thinking outside the box’,” he groaned, clawing his way out of the crater.
Soil and rocks rained down as he lay panting at the rim. The air misted with his breath and then something wet and hot nuzzled the back of his neck. He rolled over, ready for battle and stared up into the inquisitive face of one of the Doku. “Oh, just go away will you?” he slapped it gently on the muzzle. It backed off and looked over its shoulder at the other members of the herd. He could have sworn it shrugged. The beasts gathered around him expectantly as he struggled to his feet. He pushed them aside and tried to build his strength to teleport back to the house. How long he had been unconscious he had no idea. At least half a day, he guessed as he materialised by the door again. This time he took no chances and barged in to the office with the entire elephant’s foot raised over his head. He switched the lights on and reeled backwards. There was nothing out of place. The furniture was intact, the crime processing unit was in its usual position and even his collection of Humphrey Bogart movies was back on the shelf.
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