by E. C. Tubb
There had been failures; one woman had gone mad, another had slashed her wrists and died before aid could save her. A man had gone berserk, beating his hands and head against a wall, calming to look with child-like eyes as Mathias had tended him. The man, with luck, would recover. The woman would not.
Helena said, ‘John, have you ever seen this?’
She was holding the old plan of a house which Bergman had designed. Koenig dropped his hands and looked at it.
‘No. Victor’s?’
‘Yes, he told me about it. Did you know that he once intended to get married?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you? Did anyone ever mean that much to you?’
‘Once.’ He shook his head as if to clear it from an unpleasant memory. ‘A girl, young, beautiful, rich—the old story. I’d rather not talk about it.’
She recognized the barrier and accepted it, knowing that his scars, though unseen, ran deep. Knowing too the probable cause. A woman herself she had no illusions as to the potential cruelty of her sex.
Changing the subject she said, ‘How are you going to test the shield?’
‘The hard way.’ Koenig met her eyes, smiling. ‘It’ll be a public demonstration. As soon as Victor is ready we’ll begin. You can watch from Main Mission.’
She hadn’t guessed what they intended.
Carter had taken up an Eagle, one fitted with the atomic missiles. It rose high as Koenig and Bergman, suited, left the base to stand beside one of the towers.
Bergman gave the order.
‘Establish the shield, Anderson, and watch those meters!’
‘Will do, Professor. You heard, Carter? Come in when ready. Shield operational as from—now!’
It rose to cover the suited figures, the base, a coruscating shimmer of broken rainbows. Koenig looked at it, imagining the Eagle arrowing down, fire spitting from one of the tubes, nuclear flame blossoming from the impact-point of the missile.
He saw nothing but a dull glow which spread over a point on the shimmering screen, which clung to it for a moment, to fade and die leaving it unbroken.
‘It worked!’ Bergman’s voice echoed his pleasure. ‘It worked, John! It worked!’
Helena’s voice came over the radios, sharp with brittle anger.
‘You pair of fools! What if the shield had failed?’
‘Then we’d have had a small problem.’ Koenig was deliberately casual. ‘And we’d have had to try something else.’
The casualness was deliberate, she had missed the point of the demonstration, the importance of convincing everyone of his utter trust in the shield.
As it died he looked up into the sky. The glowing brilliance of the stars was blotched now by the disc of darkness at which they were headed. A gaping maw which would swallow the entire moon, the base, every soul it contained.
Koenig shivered and hurried after Bergman into the familiar surroundings of Alpha.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Helena was stubborn. She said, ‘No, Commander. I refuse and that is final!’
The formality betrayed her. Koenig said harshly, ‘I’m not arguing. I’ve given you an order and it will be obeyed. The same goes for the rest of you. Carter, Osgood, Fujita—you are the three men chosen by the computer to have the best chance of survival. You, Helena, Sandra Benes and you, Aretha Robinson, complete the team. The Eagle has been prepared and loaded. You will leave immediately.’
‘I insist—’
‘You will do as I order, Doctor Russell, or I will have you tied and dumped aboard.’ Koenig’s anger was genuine. ‘Six people have a chance of escaping and you are the ones. I want no further objections. Time is too limited for argument. I want no self-sacrifices, no mistaken heroism, nothing but your obedience. Is that clearly understood?’
He stared from one to the other as they sat at the desk in his office.
‘Good. Carter your best course will be to leave at right angles to the moon, take up an expanding orbit and hope to pull free.’
‘I—yes, Commander.’
‘I wish that I could have given you a better chance, but first we had to make sure the base-shield could be established and maintained without the components Eagle carries. Professor Bergman has strengthened the anti-grav shield and given you all the power the ship will contain. You have food and water. I suggest you ration both. I also suggest you establish the shield the moment you leave. This will mean we will not be able to make contact. So I wish you all the best of luck—now get on your way!’
It had been sudden, deliberately so. The anticipated arguments had been quashed by the sudden hope of reprieve, his own displayed hostility—a change which had startled at least two members of the team and had hurt one.
As the Eagle left he remembered Helena’s expression, the mask which had dropped to display an apparent composure.
Well, if she lived, she would get over it.
‘Commander?’ Morrow’s voice was flat. ‘Will they make it?’
Sandra and he had been close, it would have been nice had the computer kept them together.
‘They have a chance.’
‘A good one?’
‘No.’ Koenig was honest. ‘They might not be able to escape being drawn into the hole—but we have no hope at all. Would you have wanted to see her die?’
‘No.’ Morrow squared his shoulders. ‘No, of course not I—I guess I understand, Commander. We all have feelings.’
An extension of something, sympathy, perhaps, a common loss shared and so a mutual comradeship established? Two women gone, two men left, if Morrow believed that Koenig and Helena had been close then he had no cause for complaint.
Koenig said, ‘We’ll establish the field within three hours, Paul. I want everything shut down—we have to save all the power we can. Emergency lighting only.’
‘The sensors?’
‘Everything. We can’t use them anyway. When we hit that hole we go in blind.’ Koenig turned to where Kano stood by the computer. ‘That applies to you too, David. You’ll have to cut power to the banks.’
‘Total?’
‘Yes. You can freeze the data, can’t you?’
‘I can, but, Commander, it’s almost like killing a friend.’
The female voice which seemed to hold an individual personality. Working with the machine as he did Kano could easily have come to regard it as human.
‘You’re not killing it, David, just putting it to sleep,’ said Koenig, reassuringly. ‘Did you get the prediction of what we can expect?’
‘I did, but it’s all surmise, sir. No radiation will be able to reach us, no light leave, we’ll be in total darkness as far as external sources are concerned. The gravity—’
‘What about that,’ said Morrow, quickly. ‘Won’t we be crushed.’
‘No. Gravity won’t affect us while we’re falling. It’s only when we hit anything that we’ll be in trouble.’ Koenig recognized the misplaced humour. ‘Sorry, but you’ve been in free fall and you know what I mean.’
‘Victor was saying there needn’t be anything in the hole at all. Just mass—I can’t understand it.’
‘You and the rest of us, Paul. That’s the trouble, we just don’t know. There could be all kinds of danger, but with the shield we should be safe. At least it will contain our environment.’
‘So we stay alive until the moment we die.’ Morrow smiled, shrugging. ‘Sorry, Commander, but you started it. What do we do now?’
‘Shut down everything and wait.’
It was odd to see Main Mission empty, the screens dark, the stations empty of personnel. In the dim glow of the emergency lights the place had a ghostly appearance, familar shapes grown suddenly eerie. Only the clear windows held a touch of beauty, the shimmer of the shield, broken rainbows keeping out pressing darkness. A bowl of light that had faded and was continuing to fade.
Light obeying different laws—the power was constant and if the instruments could be believed the protection was all that could be gained.<
br />
Koenig took a deep breath, fighting his imagination, wishing that he, like others, had found things to occupy his mind.
Like Mathias and Kano locked in an endless game of chess. Morrow strumming a guitar and singing oddly mournful songs. Like the technicians playing poker for incredible stakes.
And like the woman he had seen quietly praying.
Of them all she was probably helping the most.
A divan stood in his office and Koenig sat, looking up as Bergman came through the door. He carried a bottle and two glasses, pursing his lips as he opened it and poured. His breath made a little cloud of vapour as he spoke.
‘This is sixty years old, John. Genuine brandy. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.’
‘A toast, Victor?’
‘Something to keep out the cold. Notice how the temperature has fallen? Half the personnel are wearing extra covers. I saw two women who looked like squaws and a bundle I didn’t know was alive until it moved. Elgar, you know him?’
‘From security?’
‘Yes.’ Bergman lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to us, John. All of us.’
The brandy was smooth, slipping over his tongue and down his throat to light little fires in the pit of his stomach. Warming fires which eased the chill, a coldness more severe than Koenig had realized.
Refilling the glasses Bergman said, ‘To absent friends.’
‘Helena?’
‘If you want to drink to her, John, why not? She’s a remarkable woman.’
‘A beautiful one.’
‘I wondered if you’d noticed. You never said.’
‘Was there any point?’ Koenig finished the last of his brandy. It seemed to take a long time for him to extend his glass for more and, startled, he glanced at the chronometer. The second hand crawled.
‘Time,’ said Bergman. ‘We can expect a variation. Do you realize, John, that we must be approaching the speed of light?’
‘Swartzchild’s radius?’
‘Yes. If the gravity pull is high enough to prevent light escaping then it must work in a converse direction—186,000 miles a second—how many Earth normal gravities is that? And it could be more. Much more. It has to be when you think of it. If light cannot escape then . . . the . . . gravity . . . pull . . .’
Bergman, Koenig, the hands of the clock, everything frozen. Time had stopped, hearts not beating, lungs empty of breath, a stasis in which only thought had progression.
An image of endless space littered with the dust of stars, each gleaming point a neurone in a gigantic brain. A brain so vast that a galaxy occupied no more room than a cell.
Sages walking, robed, conversing with means other than words.
Light stabbing, stimulating, a cosmic egg opening, scattering fragments of matter, whirlpools of gas, streams of vapour. Nebulae coalescing, suns forming, planets, satellites, moving, turning, dissolving into dust. Entropic death followed by a gathering, a compression, a time of quiescence, and again the stab of stimulating light.
Again the egg opening.
Again the picture of creation.
And more images, more concepts, a stream without number, flickering like the frames of a film thrown on the screen of his mind.
‘. . . must . . . be . . . greater than the speed of light itself. John! Did you?’
Koenig’s hand shook as he helped himself to brandy.
‘We’re through it,’ he said. ‘We passed through the centre. Time halted for a while—a while?’
‘An eon perhaps.’ Bergman’s voice was awed. ‘I saw—I thought I saw—’
‘Creation?’
‘Something. And there was a voice, talking, a child’s voice. John! If there were a god, a superior being, a Creator, and it spoke only a few words each thousand years—would there be anyone around to hear?’
‘I don’t know—maybe not.’ Koenig drank his brandy, his face thoughtful. Already the memory of flashing images was fading, replaced by a new urgency, a sudden understanding. ‘Victor! We’re through!’
The shield was down, the sky filled with stars, points of colour glistening in strange patterns, a host of suns and close, so very close.
‘A ball,’ whispered Bergman. ‘That’s what we were, John. A ball pulled through a hole in our own universe and thrown into some other region. Another universe, perhaps, one where the normal laws of time and motion no longer apply. Look at those stars. Think of the worlds which must circle them. An infinity of stars, John, an infinity of worlds.’
Koenig said nothing. It was enough just to stand and look, to hear the hum of activity all around, men and woman laughing, relieved, glad to be alive, filled with the wonder of what they saw, the knowledge of what had happened.
Another universe, Victor had said, and he could be right. A place in which they would wander, searching, looking for and perhaps finding a new home, another Earth.
‘Alice in Wonderland,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Victor, just a thought.’ And yet it held a similarity. She too had passed through a door into strangeness. She too had found amazing adventure. And, she too, had survived.
As they would survive.
As they had to survive.
Morrow had taken his seat, activating his instruments, his screens. He was subdued, his face bearing an odd expression. He had lived while others had died; the woman who had gone mad, others who had been found resting in apparent sleep, dying with a peculiar expression on their faces as if they had found something of incredible joy . . . and Sandra.
‘All installations operating, Commander,’ he reported. ‘Condition green throughout.’
‘Kano?’
‘Computer now fully functional. Data being received and collated.’
Facts found and filed, distance calibrated, their velocity determined—details to ensure the maintenance of their environment. Like a well-oiled machine the base resumed optimum operation.
‘Commander!’ Morrow’s voice was sharp. ‘Something heading toward us. A ship, I think. A—’ His voice rose, became incredulous. ‘It’s the Eagle! It’s Sandra and the others.’
Sandra, naturally, he would think of her, but there was no delusion. The Eagle was real, growing larger, steadying to settle on the pad.
‘They must have been caught,’ said Bergman. ‘Drawn into the hole after us. John, they followed us through, their shield must have saved them as ours did the base.’
Luck or perhaps more than luck, later Koenig would compute the odds against the ship following the exact path, emerging from the hole with the same velocity. Now he had thought for only one person.
She looked very drawn as she stepped from the travel tube, the golden helmet of her hair a little dishevelled, her eyes haunted, composure like an iron mask.
A mask which broke as she saw him.
‘John!’
‘Helena!’
She was soft and warm and wonderfully human in the circle of his arms, her lips firm as they pressed his own, her hands gripping him as if she would never let him go.
A greeting as spontaneous as it was natural.
‘John, I—’
‘I had to let you go, Helena. You know that.’
The others had needed her and she had been chosen.
‘I know it,’ she admitted. ‘After we left I had time to think. To understand.’
To know and appreciate the loneliness of command, the rejection of personal desire for the common good, the setting of others above self. His way, the thing which made him what he was.
Her hand rose to gently touch his cheek.
Koenig said, quietly, ‘What was it like, Helena?’
‘At first terrifying. Alan did his best, but it was impossible to pull free. He lowered the shield and we saw the moon vanish. It seemed to stretch, to expand, and then, suddenly, it was gone. He followed, a chance he said, and one we all agreed to take. And then—’
Images and memories and a sudden flash of understanding which had pro
vided the answers to questions which had plagued mankind since the dawn of time. Answers which had dissolved to leave only a haunting impression of a fantastic dream.
‘And then we were through,’ she said. ‘There was a time of cold and everything slowed and then we were through. Somehow we knew that. Alan lowered the shield and we saw the moon and Alpha. We saw it, John and knew that we were home.’
Home.
A place on a barren world hurtling into an unknown region in which the familiar could become strange. A wanderer among alien stars facing unguessed dangers and with limited resources. Torn from their own universe and flung into the unknown.
And yet she was right.
‘Home,’ he said, and dropped his arm around her shoulders. ‘Home.’
It would do until they found another.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
BREAKAWAY
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN