Dimension A

by L. P. Davies

  “The three of us,” Maver said. “Adam had me brought to him so that he could deliver an ultimatum. If we will go with him into the Vorted Nest he will see that no harm comes to us afterwards.”

  “And if we refuse?” I asked.

  “Not a pleasant alternative, Morton. Quite simply, we will be taken up in the hills, staked down on an exposed slope and left there to wait for the next storm. He explained that this was their usual method of dealing with their criminal element. It was, he further explained, a most painful way of dying.”

  “Adam?” Lee breathed incredulously. And then burst out, “He’s mad!”

  “In a way,” his uncle agreed placidly, “yes. The megalomania of a man who has tasted power. Not a new thing—at least on our world. He has organised the Toparians as we have already discovered. He has evolved small-arms drill. He has virtually created an army. He issued his ultimatum from behind a table with a line of armed men at his back. Impressive in its way.”

  “You agreed, sir,” I said, not making a question of it.

  “I did. On the principle of while there is life, there is hope. There can be no doubt that our refusal would mean our deaths. He was not bluffing. And if we come safely out of the Vorted Nest we may still have a chance of putting a spoke in his invasion plan.”

  He added, “I said earlier that I would give a great deal to be able to see inside one of the Nests for myself. Now it seems my wish is to be granted.”

  It was a sensible decision. The only decision. We would be furthering the plan to invade Earth, but refusing to agree to Adam’s demands wouldn’t prevent that invasion. I felt certain he would go ahead with that, waverers or no. One thing was for sure: being staked on a hillside at the mercy of the next storm wouldn’t help Earth any.

  But there was something about Adam wanting to prove himself a superman that didn’t ring true. Maybe power had gone to his head, but I couldn’t see a man whom Maver had described as intelligent risking his life merely to ensure the blind obedience of his followers. There had to be another reason—a much more important one. And then it came to me, and I jerked my head up to meet Maver’s gaze.

  “An alliance?” I breathed.

  “That is what I think, Morton. Proving himself is only part of it. I know something of the way Adam’s mind works, distorted though his reason is at the present time. When he laid his ultimatum in front of me, to balance our deaths he chose to mention only one reason for his going into the Nest—the reason I would be most likely to accept.

  “And the other reason … The Toparians have the perfect offensive weapon in the shape of the heat-ray, but they have no defence. The Vorteds have the force field, the perfect defence, but, as far as we know, no offensive weapons. Put the two together …” His shrug was expressive.

  “An invincible invasion,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognise.

  Lee stared at us. “A conference table. Vorteds and Toparians. God …” And then: “Are we still going through with it?”

  “It alters nothing,” Maver said. “We have no option.” He tugged at his nose. “It seems we are less heroic than Adam gave us credit for. Less self-sacrificing. But with more plain common sense.”

  “When are we supposed to go?” I asked.

  “When Adam is ready, he will send for us. Soon.”

  Lee, over his shock, lifted an eyebrow at me. “Fancy another stroll through the woods, Gerald?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Afraid of what they might dream up for us this time? Or are you thinking about that private view you had?” Lee turned to his uncle. “We haven’t told you about that. That time we went deliberately through the damned force field Gerald here was treated to a special display. Nature in the raw with a vengeance, according to him. I didn’t see it.”

  “See what?” the Professor asked me sharply.

  I described briefly the weird landscape of mist, bubbling pools, and contorted trees.

  “But it could have been just another of their tricks, sir,” I added. “Or even a sort of after-effect of going through the mist. It was only there for a few seconds. And I was in pretty poor shape at the time. Going through the field is no joke.”

  Lee’s grin was back.

  “And that’s an understatement if ever I heard one.” He tugged at his ear. “I wonder if the Vorteds will decide to show themselves on our next visit?”

  * * *

  They came for us about an hour later, a gang of grimfaced, armed Toparians, herding us unceremoniously out of the house and marching us towards the centre of the village. In an open space there, perhaps a hundred or more of them were assembled, drawn up in rough ranks of three. Four stood apart from the rest, deep in discussion. And one of them wore a land of fur forage-cap, the first headgear I had seen in this dimension.

  Lee dug his elbow in my ribs. “Friend Adam,” said he.

  Clearly, the professor’s erstwhile assistant had dressed to fit the role he had made for himself, using what materials were at his disposal. His tunic was more elaborate than those of the rest. A large round glass ornament hung from a cord about his neck. Glass decorations on the shoulders had some semblance of badges of rank. A glass emblem adorned the front of his hat.

  I had my first sight of his features when, legs apart, hands set on hips, shoulders thrown well back, Adam turned to glare in our direction. Like the faces of his fellow-Toparians, his swarthy one wouldn’t have drawn a second glance back on Earth. The hair that curled from beneath his hat was black. His nose was perhaps broader than usual, and there was a wide space between it and his thick-lipped mouth. An ordinary face made arrogant by the expression of the moment.

  He swung back to his listeners, apparently to issue orders. One Toparian stepped back smartly enough, raising one hand to his chest in a kind of salute. Children playing soldiers, I thought. But this was no game. Notwithstanding their resemblance to a musical comedy, Adam’s simulated uniform and strutting gait, the men drawn up in their ranks, and the outlandish salute were all part of the domination of one man over the rest, the trappings of dictatorship.

  After that first glance he completely ignored us. Striding away, he barked orders as he went. A projector jabbing into my back sent me stumbling forward. Lee and his uncle were treated the same. And so the expedition set off for the Vorted Nest—Adam leading the way, a small group of Toparians at his heels, then we three, the centre of an escort of a score of more brown-faced men.

  We were not permitted to talk. That was made abundantly clear right at the onset when Lee, refusing to be awed by the pseudo-military appearance of the party, muttered a comment about toy soldiers and received another jab in the ribs for his pains. After that, we marched in silence.

  I tried not to think of the coming discomfort of the passage through the mist or of what might be waiting for us on the other side. I had to force myself not to dwell upon what might happen when the door to our own dimension opened again. The sensible thing, I tried to persuade myself, was to make my mind a blank and live from minute to minute.

  For a while we marched on level ground, a kind of wide, natural highway leading from the village and skirting the lower slopes of the hills. When this began to narrow, we swung away and started to climb. At the crest of the incline we dropped down into a narrow ravine. Although I felt that Lee and I had probably come this way before, it was all strange to me. I was unable to pick out any familiar landmarks until, emerging from the ravine into a desolation of tumbled rock, I glanced back. I discovered that this was the way we had earlier approached the village, only instead of passing through the ravine we had climbed the slopes to take the long way round.

  Some distance ahead, outlined faintly against the eternal haze, there was our hill—a shape that I would never forget. The Toparians in the hollow sprang to their feet at our approach, standing in a line, one of them using the hand-on-chest salute. We passed the other hollow, the one that contained the flimsy-looking wooden platform. Adam swung to the left then, leading the
way between tall, needle-pinnacles of rock. At the top of another incline he stopped, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

  In front was the familiar scene of sloping ground, with our hill on the right and the greeny-white curtain of mist on the left, my pyramid and spire silhouetted starkly against it.

  Adam issued curt commands in his own tongue. Our escort broke ranks to form in a rough semicircle behind us. The observers, I thought; the boys who are going to watch their leader go into the mist and— they hoped—emerge unscathed again. And then they would pass on the news to the rest. All hail, great chief.

  We moved forward then, the four of us, Adam gesturing—he seemed reluctant to speak English—for us to move ahead. And that is how we went into the mist—Lee and I side by side, Maver next, Adam bringing up the rear.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  This time seemed different to me. There was less discomfort and less resistance from the mist—perhaps because I knew what to expect. I had braced myself for the unpleasant shock of contact. Holding my breath, tensing all my muscles, keeping my hands in front of me and moving quickly, I tried to get the torment of transition over and done with as quickly as possible.

  But it was unpleasant enough for all that. The mist clung at first, holding me back, its touch a strange blend of tingling heat and cold. It held me, and then gave way in front like curtains being parted. I sensed the mist closing in behind, so that for a moment or two there was the frightening, lonely feeling of being enclosed in some place remote from everywhere else. There was the stomach-heaving sensation of some kind of force surging through my body. The curtains in front withdrew even more so that I was moving with nightmare slowness through a tunnel of vapour.

  Then I caught the first whiff of the sickly-sweet animal smell. Choking, I put my hands to my face, and over my fingers saw the last vestiges of mist dissolve into nothing. I had come through the Vorted force field to emerge, not into a glade of emerald grass, colourful flowers, and statuesque trees, but to stand on the fringe of that frightening, alien landscape I had glimpsed once before.

  The ground felt firm enough under my feet. It sloped down gently to what seemed a stream of sluggish, barely-moving grey water. Beyond was the dim nightmare landscape of coiling mist tentacles, bubbling, heaving pools, and grotesque plants and trees.

  There was no sunshine. Overhead was a thunderous mass of cloud, hanging so motionless no wind could have moved it, hanging so low it seemed I could have reached up to touch it. The light that filtered down was almost the cold leaden grey of a late November evening on Earth, when hedges and trees are flattened shapes against the cold sky and nothing can be seen distinctly. But here, in this alien place, the leafless plants and contorted, bleached bushes seemed to move in the mist tendrils with some unholy life of their own. What little of the desolate landscape was visible made me inexpressibly thankful that I was not alone. Lee had come to stand on one side of me, the Professor and Adam on the other. It was impossible to tell from their faces in this pale light how they had weathered their passages through the force field, what their reactions were to the scene in front.

  Maver was the first to break the silence.

  “No apparent sign of animal life,” he observed calmly, clinically.

  “What in Hades could live in a place like this?” Lee asked in an awe-stricken voice. “Is this what you saw that other time, Gerald?”

  “Be my guest,” I said as steadily as I could.

  “I would say,” Maver observed evenly, “that this is the place as it really is. The natural habitat of the Vorteds.”

  He moved forward to stoop over the sluggish grey stream, inspecting it closely.

  It was narrow, barely three feet across, a man’s long stride. Whatever the stuff was, it certainly wasn’t stagnant water or anything like that. To me, standing now at Maver’s side, it seemed more solid than liquid. But for all that, it was in constant movement; not lengthways, as one might have expected, but up and down, pulsating, as if the putty-grey matter was only a crust, a skin beneath which something fought slowly and painfully to escape. And it was from that pink-veined, moving grey substance that the smell was coming. I stepped back hastily, choking a little. Maver, seemingly impervious to its unpleasantness, straightened, frowned, and rubbed his cheek with pensive fingers.

  “Is it possible—?” he wondered aloud, and let it go at that, looking about him with narrowed eyes.

  Watching him, waiting for him to finish what he had started to say, I became aware of the old sensation of being watched by invisible eyes. The sensation may have been there from the first moment of our entering the Vorted Nest, but it was only now I noticed it.

  The Professor seemed content to stand there, looking about him with interested eyes. I felt some easing of my fears in his calm assessment of our surroundings. Adam made the first move. Without speaking he went to the brink of the stream, hesitated a moment, and then stepped across. On the far side, his feet set on what seemed solid black soil, he suddenly swayed, arms outflung as he fought to keep his balance. Lee went over next, then Maver and I together. Under my feet I could feel the ground give, as if I were standing on a thin coating of soil beneath which lava bubbled and writhed.

  But thankfully, only a pace or two away, was the start of a path—a path made of solid-seeming pieces of stone. Strangely, I couldn’t recall having noticed that path when we had stood on the far bank, but there it was now, meandering away between bubbling, geyser-like pools and clumps of slimy, bleached plants to become lost in the grey murk.

  Adam, still taking the initiative, stepped onto it That it was as solid as it had appeared was patent from the way he stood upright, no longer swaying, arms back at his sides. Without waiting, without any hesitation, he turned to walk along the path. We followed in silence. It was a great relief to feel firm ground beneath my feet again.

  Although the causeway was more than wide enough to take two abreast, Adam still walked on alone. Always a few paces ahead, he never once turned to be reassured that we were behind. Although I had come to regard him as an enemy, I found myself admiring

  . him for his courage, for the way he stalked with head up and shoulders back into the greyness of this strange world of the Vorteds, which certainly he must have been taught from childhood to fear.

  On either hand was the unstable black soil, its moist surface broken by round pools of oily, black-looking liquid. Bubbles rose slowly to the surface, bursting, releasing small clouds of yellow mist. Apart from the pad of our feet the only sound to break the oppressive stillness was the almost continual soft plopping of the bursting bubbles.

  We walked without knowing where we were going, where the path would take us to. It was far more hot in here than even in the midday sun outside. Sweat streamed down our faces, soaked our clothes. The evil smell seemed to be getting stronger. Lee remarked on it in a low voice, adding—looking uneasily about him—that he had the old feeling of being watched. I looked back over my shoulder, finding that the mist had closed in behind. There was no sign of the thicker, different-coloured force field. Behind was the same spine-chilling desolation as in front.

  The path changed direction to pass between low jagged peaks of black rock. The smooth surfaces glistened with an oily sheen. Scabrous-topped fungi, bloated shapes with long stems and hanging gills, protruded from crannies.

  Emerging from the ravine the path passed between long chains of pools, all circular, all filled with that slow-bubbling tar-like liquid, almost touching each other, only separated by clumps of pallid, elongated leafless plants.

  With no means of telling the passage of time, with little change in the scenery to break the evil monotony, we seemed to have been walking for hours. Despite the many changes of direction, I felt sure we were heading towards the centre of the Nest. And I felt equally sure—knowing of some of the Vorteds’ capabilities—that the path had been put there for just that purpose.

  After a while another grey stream, almost a duplicate of the first one we
had encountered, came to run at one side of the causeway, following its bends and curves. If we had wanted to, we could not have crossed this one; it was far too wide.

  The stream left us at a place where the path swung to follow the flanks of another and much larger outcropping of slime-coated black rock. High at one side, the rock sloped down to a level-topped plateau, at its lowest point little more than a couple of feet above the surface of the ground. It looked like a black island in a black sea, almost like a ship.

  When we rounded the island we found a change in the scene ahead. Adam stopped. Maver went to stand on one side of him, Lee and I on the other.

  I was first struck by the odd way in which the mist some distance ahead seemed to have withdrawn, collecting itself, forming a dense white curtain to enclose the scene. To one side was a cluster of what seemed to be ordinary green-foliaged trees. In front of them —in this uncanny halflight they seemed to float a few inches above the ground—was a collection of about a dozen houses, built of pale stone, circular in shape, with domed, beehive tops. It was impossible to believe that anything could live in this terrible place. But people, or beings, did live here, for these were their houses and there, standing a little to one side, were the beings themselves.