Dimension A

by L. P. Davies

“Let ’em get inside first,” Lee whispered. “I’ll slam the door behind. One of ’em may try to make a bolt for it.” He essayed an experimental swing with his sandbag. “The back of the neck, I think …”

  Sandals slithered softly on the hard ground outside. I poised my weapon as the door started to open.

  The details of what happened then were lost in the half-light and the confusion. I was aware of two fur-clad figures, one carrying a bowl and a small basket, the other with shoulders bent by the weight of two leather bags. Two slow-motion silhouettes … Then the door slammed and I stepped forward. My homemade cosh, swinging, thudded down across the neck of the nearest Toparian. He reeled forward, bowl and basket flying from his grasp, and dropped to his knees, then his face. As I threw myself down on him, my knees jammed into the small of his back. Letting my sandbag fall so that I could grip his neck with one hand, I clamped the other over his mouth in case he was still conscious and able to shout.

  It was an unnecessary precaution; he was out cold. Breathing heavily, heart thumping, I leaned back to look at Lee. Still on his feet, he was looking down at his prone victim with every expression of a job well done.

  Lee grinned at me, but his voice was inclined to shake a little.

  “Easier than I imagined. I must take this sort of thing up as a hobby. The satisfaction …”

  Maver moved quickly to retrieve the two precious water-containers, both lying sideways on the floor, one leaking a little. He propped them against the wall, then stepped over the white mush contents of the bowl that had splattered across the floor to open the door a fraction while he peered out into the semi-darkness. Closing it, he nodded confirmation that all was well outside, then busied himself collecting the small loaves that had scattered from the basket.

  To immobilise my victim I sacrificed strips from the tail of my shirt. Gagging him, I bound his wrists together behind his back and then used his own cord belt to tie his ankles. As Lee had said, there was a queer sort of satisfaction to be derived from the affair. He dealt with his Toparian in much the same way. When both our prisoners were securely trussed, he set about emptying his socks and replacing them on his feet.

  We stuffed our pockets with the loaves of bread. Lee picked up one of the water-bags, I the other. The Professor opened the door again for another survey outside. It was really dark now. Both the Toparians had regained consciousness, and their eyes glistened whitely as they followed our movements. We dragged them to the wall, propped them up and made them as comfortable as we could. I seemed to remember muttering some kind of apology; they looked so helpless and harmless. From his post at the door Maver nodded impatiently. We left the house for all the world as if we were doing a moonlight flit without paying the rent.

  The sky was high and clear, ablaze with the strange constellations of stars. The twin moons had yet to appear, but even without them there was more than enough light for us to see the way. We went round the side of the house and paused in the shadows there for one last final inspection. We had a fairly good view of the village. Nothing moved, everywhere was quiet, and there were no lights in any of the windows. It was like a village of the dead.

  We had no trouble in reaching the belt of palm trees. If anything—if one could have forgotten what lay behind all this—it was almost a pleasant evening stroll. But it was already obvious, even at that early stage, that we would not be able to keep up our rate of progress. For one thing, the bags we carried were much more heavy and cumbersome than we had bargained for. Each held perhaps the equivalent of three buckets of water; they were no light weight. Neither were they provided with handles.

  The other impediment was much more serious, something neither Lee nor I—nor the Professor—had taken into account. Both Lee and I had noticed Maver’s bare feet when we had first met him, but after that we had just taken them for granted, forgetting all about them. As had their owner.

  Inspecting them, he admitted as much.

  “I’ve got used to pottering about the village like this—the ground’s not very rough between the houses. I was only wearing thin canvas shoes when I came through the field, and they wore out very quickly. The Toparians supplied me with a pair of their sandals, but I found them most cramping and uncomfortable. I wore them very little …”

  “We’d best go back for them,” Lee said doubtfully.

  “I don’t even know where they are.” His uncle looked up worriedly at the sky. “We cannot afford the time.”

  “We can’t afford to have your feet slashed to ribbons,” Lee rejoined sensibly, and looked about him. “We might be able to find some kind of substitute.”

  We did. We used palm leaves folded and tied about the Professor’s feet with more strips from our shirts. The result was a fairly serviceable and moderately comfortable pair of makeshift moccasins. And while we worked, Mayer’s eyes were continually turned to the sky, his worried voice urging us to hurry … When we set off again, moving now across the lower, gentle slopes, he kept pace with us well, even at times forging ahead in his haste to be away from the village and in sight of shelter.

  His anxiety increased as the steeper slope and tumbled rock perforce slowed us down. My back and shoulders were already aching with the weight of the water-bag which I had to keep changing from hand to hand Lee, I noted, was having to do the same.

  After a while, when we were some distance from the village, the twin moons rose, their orbs flooding the landscape with a clear yellow light. But only for a short while. Five minutes or so later the light was wiped away as if a curtain had been drawn. So unexpectedly that, about to climb a rocky funnel between sharp-edged pinnacles, we stopped and turned with surprise. And because Lee and I had seen once before the ominous coiling in the sky that was the prelude to a storm, we didn’t need the Professor’s warning to make us quicken our pace. We scrambled along as fast as we were able.

  There was the same change to the air we had experienced before, the same nettle-rash tingling on the exposed flesh of face and hands. There was the stirring of the breeze, the first indication of the coming of the oppressive heat. Gradually the stars winked out. The breeze strengthened, lifting clouds of dust before it, invisible clouds, but stinging against the sides of our faces. As the light faded, so we had to slacken our pace. Now we had the hazard of the spined shrubs to contend with. It was no longer safe to grope blindly for handholds. Not knowing if our trousers would be sufficient protection against the spines, we had to peer ahead before taking each step, making all the use we could of what little light still remained.

  And with each step I took, the water-bag became heavier. I tried carrying it slung over one shoulder, but that was no better; its weight digging through the thin fabric of my shirt chafed the flesh beneath.

  An unexpected, vicious gust drove us against the wall of a ravine. In the silence that followed I could hear the breath sobbing in Maver’s throat. I wondered how long it would be before he would have to give up. Lee and I were young; he was an old man. We rested there, leaning against the warm rock.

  And then we heard the distant roaring. The sound set us moving again. Another gust drove us back. We fought against it, struggled forward to be met by an even fiercer gust as we emerged from the ravine. There was still enough light left for me to see Lee take hold of his uncle’s shoulder to steady the old man against the rising fury. To help, I put the flat of my free hand between Maver’s shoulder-blades, and between us we managed to struggle on against a wind that now seemed to be coming from all directions at once, tingling, biting with dust, stinging hands and faces.”

  With the wind rising to a shrieking inferno we fought our way round a corner to come up against what at first seemed to be a solid unbroken wall of rock.

  It was Lee who found the narrow entrance to the cave. Finding it was the result of good luck and not management. The wind hurled him against the wall —hurled us all, separating us—and sent him rolling along it. Then Lee vanished. And reappeared, beckoning. His mouth—a dark circle on shapeless
white—was open in a shout that was lost in the tumult. But his meaning was clear.

  We were just able to make out the black slit of the cleft. We staggered the last few feet towards it, my free arm about Maver’s shoulders, Lee reaching to help. The storm broke in its full fury as we turned the corner into safety.

  * * *

  I spent my first night in Dimension A huddled with the others in the pitch blackness at the far end of a cave that could only have been a few feet wide and perhaps a score of yards deep.

  While the storm lasted, life—to say the least—was unpleasant. The wind lashed into the cave, driving dust with it. The thundering, deafening roar seemed to reach inside my head, where a numbness precluded thought and reason. We crouched with our backs towards the cave entrance. Hands covering our faces, we protected them as best we could against the dust and magnetic tingle. There were times when I was sure I could feel the ground rocking under my knees. Once, even above the tumult, I heard a crash, as if a rock had been hurled against the cave opening.

  It lasted a lifetime, that unbelievable storm. And then came the time when the roar seemed not quite so loud, when there seemed to be breaks in the wind, so that now it came in gusts. Gradually the intervals between the gusts lengthened. Gradually, imperceptibly, there was a diminishing of the howling, shrieking inferno. For a while, wind still lashed into our shelter. Then that too ceased. The night was silent and still. Uncovering my face, I opened my eyes. Light, the pale golden radiance of the moons, was already filtering into the cave.

  Lee was stretching himself, looking back fearfully over his shoulder as if unable to believe it was all over. And the Professor—astonishingly, he was asleep, head lodged against jutting rock, mouth drooping open. But then, after his long stay in this world, he must have become accustomed to the magnetic storms, able to sleep through them.

  Recovered, Lee regarded his uncle and then turned to grin at me with eyebrows raised. Still without speaking he licked his lips and nodded at the water-bags propped against my side. I heaved one over to him. He needed a few fumbling moments to master the thongs that bound its neck. And then he had to struggle to raise the water-bag to his mouth. When he finished he passed it back to me, and it was my turn to cope with its weight and awkward shape. More water spilled down my chest than passed my lips. I hadn’t realised just how parched I had become.

  Carefully refastening the thongs, I set the has upright against the wall.

  Lee said softly, “That was a snorter and no mistake. Worse than that other one. Now I see what Uncle John was driving at. If we hadn’t found this place in time—” His shudder was graphic. “What a hell of a world in which to live.”

  “You can’t really blame the Toparians for trying to find somewhere else,” I said.

  “To blazes with that! This is their bed, they made it, now they’ve got to lie on it. One day there’ll be an end to the storms. In the meantime they’ve learnt to live with them. They’ve got the Vorted Nests to contend with. All right, so what about our Iron Curtain? They’re finding food tightish. All warrant they’re still better provided for than a few million people in our world. It’s up to them to sort their problems out without trying to overflow in our direction.”

  His voice had risen toward the latter part of the diatribe. I glanced warningly at the sleeping Professor.

  “If he could sleep through that lot …,” Lee said. And then: “Yes.” He closed his eyes. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes as well. Sleep must have come almost immediately. I woke only once during the night, when a sound disturbed me. At first I thought another storm must be blowing up, but it turned out to be the steady drumming of heavy rain. When I awoke the next time, I found the cave flooded with the clear light of morning.

  The professor was still asleep, but Lee—awake and about—was standing at the entrance. Coming stiffly to my feet I went to join him. He moved to one side so that I could see outside. There were pools of water in the hollows of the narrow rock ledge that fronted Che cave. Beyond was a sea of drifting white mist. It was almost like looking from a plane onto a bank of clouds.

  “Came the dawn,” he said. “Sleep well?”

  “The rain woke me once.”

  “Me too. It must have been quite a downpour. I’ve been up some time.” Hands in his pockets, he leaned against the side of the entrance. “Doing some thinking. We’ve been in this damned place a little over twenty-four hours. Back on Earth that’s only a couple of hours. Almost impossible to imagine, isn’t it? I wonder how long it was before Leming found we were missing?”

  “I’ve thought about that too,” I told him. “It was a bit after six-thirty when I came over to the lab. Mrs. Robson was in the kitchen, so she’d know where I’d gone. She’d have breakfast ready for about half past seven. I’m guessing she’d do as she’d done before— give the lab a ring to let me know the meal was ready.”

  Lee took over the process of reasoning.

  “Getting no reply, what would she do? Come over to the lab herself? Almost a certainty. You didn’t lock the door behind you, Gerald?”

  It seemed an age ago since I had pushed the metal door open and gone into the lab.

  “No. This time they won’t have to waste time breaking it open. Which probably means Mr. Leming will know by eight o’clock that something is wrong. Which means too that right now he’s only had about half an hour in which to try to get the field back again. Not very long.”

  “That’s how I had it figured,” Lee said soberly. “As you say, not very long. Barely time to get the sleep out of his eyes. And we don’t know whether the equipment was damaged or not. According to Uncle John, it probably was. So it will have to be repaired again before Leming can even start trying to find the right sequence of readings. And every hour back there is almost a day and a night here.”

  He brooded on that for a while and then turned to glance back over his shoulder into the cave as if to reassure himself that his uncle was still sleeping.

  “There’s something else I’ve been mulling over,” he continued in a low voice. “Dabbling in the possible future, envisaging a situation that might arise. We’re on our way now to the hill to be ready there for when the door opens. The Vorteds and the Toparians are already there, presumably with the same idea in mind. Suppose …”

  He paused.

  “Suppose we got there safely and saw the door open, but knew we didn’t stand a chance of getting through it. That could happen. And suppose we could see either the Vorteds or the Toparians making preparations to go through. And suppose again that we had the means of destroying the door before they could get to it. Would we destroy it, knowing that as a result we would probably be marooned in this place for the rest of our lives?”

  It was an unusual, serious mood for Lee. And an unusual grim mask for his face.

  He pressed the thing home, making sure I understood.

  “At the risk of sounding corny, would we be prepared to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of mankind?” He had envisaged a situation that I had not thought about before, a situation that might easily happen, and one which I was coward enough not to want to dwell on now. There was a way of evading his question.

  “Even if we want to, we haven’t the means of destroying the door.”

  “We would have if we could lay our hands on one of those heat-projectors. All we would have to do then is point it at the door, directing the ray through it. It would play havoc with that equipment in the lab, putting it out of action, probably for good. I’m damned sure no one would know enough about the equipment to be able to rebuild it.”

  “If the door was open,” I said bleakly, “Leming would be in the lab.”

  “He would. That would make four of us.” Lee stared down at the cotton wool mist. “In a way, he’d be better oft than we three left here. He’d be dead.”

  His cold, dispassionate voice shook me. I fought anger.

  “That’s all surmise. It may not happen like that at all. And even if it did—w
e couldn’t kill—”

  And a voice came in from behind.

  “We would have to, Morton. I know Martin Leming. If he knew—if it were possible for the choice to be laid in front of him, I know which he would take.”

  Lee turned to regard his uncle.

  “So do we try to get hold of one of those projectors?” he asked.

  The other nodded. “Yes, I think so. Even if only as a precautionary measure. You have put into words an idea I have been harbouring for some time. Let us hope that Morton is right, that the contingency will not arise. But there is a strong possibility it will.”

  He pushed between us to step out into the open, looking about him. The warmth of the sun was dispelling the mists to some small extent. Through a gap on the right we caught a glimpse of the village, much nearer than I had imagined. In the few seconds before the mist closed in, we could see signs of great activity down there, much coming and going of armed Toparians.