Out of This World

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Believe me, Mr. Brown,” Cahn answered, amused, “you’ve seen everything worth seeing on this planet!”

  Pel didn’t argue; for one thing, Nancy was glaring at him. It was quite obvious that she wanted him to shut up and not do anything that might delay their return home, and he belatedly realized that he didn’t want himself to do anything that might delay their return home, either.

  Still, it seemed wrong, somehow, to visit another planet, an outpost of the vast Galactic Empire, and see nothing but a few hundred miles of desert and the spaceport waiting rooms.

  This was another planet, after all, thousands of miles across, big enough for whole oceans and continents, entire new civilizations—and all he’d seen was a little of one town.

  Maybe rushing home as quickly as possible wasn’t all that necessary...

  He cut his chain of thought right there.

  Getting home as fast as possible was necessary. He had responsibilities there, Silly Cat not the least of them. He had a home and a business and friends and family, all of whom would be wondering what had become of him.

  And while he might be in the Galactic Empire, he didn’t have so much as a toothbrush with him.

  The possibility of coming back here later, properly prepared, occurred to him. It was an idea, certainly.

  If Earth had anything the Galactic Empire wanted, then they could probably open a healthy tourist trade; who wouldn’t want to visit an entire new universe, with strange new worlds, different air and light and gravity—and where everybody spoke English?

  The business prospects in that began to percolate through his mind. That was certainly full of marketing possibilities, and marketing was what he did, after all.

  But on the other hand, the Empire didn’t seem to be a particularly friendly place, and seemed to be unhappy about the very existence of other universes. It might well be that they wouldn’t want tourists.

  And Earth might not, in fact, have anything they wanted—would a culture with interstellar travel and the resources of a galaxy be interested in a single planet’s output?

  Looking around, Pel thought that they just might, at that. Psi Cassiopeia Two was a backwater, admittedly, but it seemed to him that what he’d seen of the Empire and its works wasn’t all that impressive, in many ways. They did have anti-gravity, which was amazing and wonderful and useful and all that, and they had blasters, which were effective enough, but they seemed to be rather backward in their use of metals, and he hadn’t seen anything using any sort of electronics anywhere—no digital clocks, no LED read-outs anywhere, certainly no computers. No one had even mentioned television.

  There were innumerable possibilities, not just in tourism, but in trade of all sorts.

  Where Shadow’s universe fit into this he wasn’t sure. And of course, he had no idea what the difficulties of inter-universal travel might be; so far, it had seemed simple enough, stepping through portals, but those had been magical portals, opened from Shadow’s realm—the technologically-created space-warps the Empire used might not be so easy.

  Scientifically-created space-warps, he corrected himself—the Empire didn’t seem to like the word “technology” much, and preferred to call it “science.”

  Had the Empire considered the possibility of trade?

  Oh, they must have, he told himself. How could they not? Just because nobody had mentioned it to him, because everything anyone had said so far was about diplomatic or military interactions, that didn’t mean that no one had thought about trade.

  Somebody must have thought of it. Surely, once the preliminaries of opening relations and dealing with Shadow were done, the Empire didn’t intend to just shut itself off from Earth again!

  He stumbled slightly, the toe of his shoe catching in an uneven patch of gravel, and brought himself back to the present reality. Right now, nobody was talking about doing business between universes, because right now they all needed to get back to Base One and pick up where they had left off, in coping with Shadow and its creatures.

  Raven probably wasn’t concerned with trade possibilities at all—he just wanted Stormcrack Keep back. Captain Cahn was just doing what he was told to do by his superiors, and not worrying about long-term consequences.

  And there wasn’t really much point in his worrying about them, either, he decided. He squeezed Rachel’s hand, and on a sudden whim, leaned over and kissed Nancy on the cheek.

  They stepped up from the gravel to the concrete pad, and marched on toward the ship. Pel could see her name now, painted on the side near the nose, in gleaming gold letters—Emerald Princess.

  Captain Cahn stepped to one side at the foot of the steps, and started counting noses; Raven’s boots clanged loudly on the metal steps as he led the way up, into the waiting vessel.

  The narrow steps created a slight bottleneck, and the Browns had to wait their turns for a few seconds while Stoddard and Valadrakul and the rest sorted themselves out.

  “Nine days,” Nancy whispered, leaning over close so Rachel wouldn’t hear. “The cat will be frantic!”

  “Everyone will be frantic,” Pel whispered back. “And unless these guys prove they’re real, somehow, no one’s going to believe our explanations.”

  “Well, we’ll just say we were kidnapped by a UFO,” Nancy said. “It’s almost the truth, isn’t it?”

  Pel started to protest; this was real life, not the absurd fantasies of little men with big heads who went around mutilating cattle. Then he stopped, before a word had escaped him.

  After all, if one other universe was trying to contact Earth and botching it, why couldn’t there have been dozens, over the years? What if all those flying saucer stories were true?

  Now that was a terrifying thought. Pel had grown up with science fiction and fantasy, in books and in movies and on TV, and while he enjoyed the stuff immensely, he’d always been very clear on where the line was between fantasy and reality.

  Flying saucers and UFO abductions and psychics and all the rest of the material found in tabloid headlines he had always put on the “fantasy” side—and he’d considered them bad fantasy, at that.

  But here he was, boarding a spaceship, and that woman, Prossie Thorpe, was a telepath—a psychic, in other words. He’d been abducted from Earth, after a fashion, and had found himself in a world of little men—though Grummetty’s appearance in his basement had hardly been the stereotypical close encounter of the third kind. Grummetty had seemed thoroughly down to earth, despite his impossible size.

  The stairway was clear, and Captain Cahn was waving them forward; Nancy went first, leading Rachel by the hand. Pel brought up the rear, with a steadying hand on Rachel’s back.

  As they climbed toward the warmly-lit doorway into the ship, Pel considered UFOs and the Galactic Empire.

  This ship made sense, though. The people had an explanation for what was happening—the whole thing about Shadow and space-warps and telepaths all fit together. The space creatures in the UFO stories never made sense, flying around conducting mysterious experiments with no rhyme or reason to them, kidnapping people at random.

  But on the other hand, would the Emerald Princess and all the rest make any sense to, say, an Australian aborigine?

  Pel didn’t know anything about Australian aborigines, but he suspected that it wouldn’t.

  Then he was at the door, being helped in by Susan Nguyen, of all people; she was wearing an unfamiliar outfit, a white blouse and maroon wool skirt combination cut oddly.

  The door, or hatch, or whatever it was opened into a small chamber, presumably an airlock, painted in a friendly mustard color; a wine-colored drapery on one side incompletely hid a bank of gadgetry of some sort, probably the pressure controls.

  The inner door was open; he stepped through into a room, or cabin, or compartment, whatever the correct term was, about the size and shape of a one-car garage. Amy Jewell, in white and maroon like her attorney, was standing there, welcoming people aboard; behind her was Spaceman Peabody, his arm
in a cast and sling, the rest of him in one of the purple uniforms the guards had worn, rather than his own ruined outfit. Grummetty and Alella were perched atop a cabinet bolted to one wall—their clothes were the same, but somewhat cleaner.

  A loud clang interrupted Pel before he could say more than a quick general hello; the last arrival, Captain Cahn, was aboard, and had just slammed the outer airlock door shut.

  Now he was in the lounge, closing and locking the inner door as well.

  Pel had looked first at the people, but now he considered the chamber in which he found himself.

  The walls were covered in rich yellow wallpaper, flocked in a stylized floral design; the floor was covered in lush plum-colored carpet. The several doors leading elsewhere were dark polished wood, set with round, brass-rimmed windows. Plum-upholstered seating was bolted to the floor— two round things, like circular sofas, that reminded Pel of an old-fashioned hotel lobby. Light came from lantern-like brass fixtures on every wall. The overall impression, he decided, was of a turn-of-the-century ocean liner.

  The Titanic, for example.

  As Pel greeted the others he wished he hadn’t thought of that particular comparison.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As had been obvious from the first glance at its interior, Emerald Princess was a luxury vessel; that it had stopped at Psi Cassiopeia Two was, Amy later learned, merely a lucky chance. Psi Cass the Deuce, as it was known, happened to lie along the route between Omicron Cygnus Three, better known as Avalon, and Alpha Ophiuchus Three, better known as Ishmael. Noticing that fact on the charts, the party of Avalonian tourists who had chartered Emerald Princess, bored by the long flight, had decided to stop in at Psi Cass, unaware that the planet was home to nothing more interesting than a small and rather dismal mining colony.

  Amy hadn’t noticed any mines, but she was assured that Psi Cass the Deuce was a mining colony.

  From the point of view of the Avalonians their timing had been absolutely abominable. Pleas of injustice, threats of punitive action, and attempted bribery were all insufficient to prevent Captain Cahn and the local governor from using their authority, as agents of the Empire, to seize the ship temporarily, in order to transport the crew of Ruthless, along with people from two other universes, to Base One with all possible haste.

  A suggestion that the freighter, or the battered little scout, be used instead was rejected; the freighter had no room for passengers and was too slow, and the scout was simply too small for the entire group.

  The Princess was perfect.

  Getting the entire group safely from Psi Cass the Deuce to Base One was obviously a matter of importance. If there had been any doubt of that, orders authorizing the seizure had come through, by way of Registered Telepath Thorpe, even before Captain Cahn had added his voice to the Governor’s in suggesting it.

  That the Governor had hesitated when Prossie relayed orders, and had only paid heed when Cahn showed up and started talking, was not mentioned in Amy’s hearing.

  Nor did anyone mention that the more desperate charter passengers had tried to throw doubt on Thorpe’s reliability and trustworthiness. Once convinced, however, the Governor had been unyielding, and when word reached the Captain he was seriously offended. While it might be true that Thorpe, being a telepath, was a damnable mutant bitch, as one man had called her, she was his damnable mutant bitch, and no mere civilians were going to impugn her honesty and get away with it.

  Cahn had made no explicit threats, but he did calmly point out that interfering with a ranking Imperial military officer in the performance of assigned duties could draw the death penalty. This remark was passed aboard by the same Town guards who had first informed Captain Gifford that his ship was being claimed by the Empire.

  That ended the debate, and the frustrated passengers and crew of Emerald Princess had mostly huddled in the control room or the aft salon, complaining bitterly to each other, while the first batch of refugees, as they were now called, came aboard and sorted themselves out in the forward lounge.

  This was the party that had been put aboard the first aircar, under the command of the limping but still mobile Lieutenant Alster Drummond; his second in command was Spaceman James Peabody, with his chewed-up arm. Prossie Thorpe was undamaged, and they had in tow Susan, Elani, Grummetty, and Alella, in addition to Amy.

  This group, led by an armed and wary Lieutenant Drummond, came aboard while the later groups were still eating. They were greeted in the forward lounge by Captain Gifford and his chief steward.

  Both sides seemed nervous, as if expecting a nasty confrontation; the sight of Drummond’s hand on the butt of his blaster didn’t help any. Blasters were not subtle little things, either; nobody would fail to notice the hardware.

  Peabody, with his injured arm, made no move toward his own weapon. Prossie Thorpe, as a Special, carried no sidearm. Elani was carrying the two little people, who were both now seriously ill, and none of that threesome was very clear on just what was going on; they were also unarmed.

  Still, that blaster was there, ready to draw.

  And Amy noticed not just Drummond’s weapon, but also that Susan’s hand had strayed into her big black purse, as if fiddling with something; they were both stepping out of the airlock into the lounge before Amy realized what Susan was doing.

  Susan had a gun of her own in that handbag, the pistol she’d fired at the monsters back in Raven’s place—Raven’s world, though Amy really didn’t like thinking in terms of multiple worlds.

  Did that mean Susan was ready to get into a firefight with these people? Amy couldn’t really imagine that; she was glad that she had left her own gun safely at home. Using it to defend her house against Captain Cahn’s men would have been one thing, and she thought she might have done that, but getting into a battle here, with all these people who presumably knew far more than she did about what was going on—no. No way.

  But Susan was Susan; if she wanted to have her gun ready, Amy wasn’t going to try to stop her.

  And maybe she was right.

  The spaceship’s captain was eyeing his unwanted guests cautiously, very much aware of Lieutenant Drummond’s blaster, but probably with no idea at all that Susan was armed.

  For a moment they all stood there, not speaking.

  Oddly, what finally broke the silence and settled the situation peacefully was Amy—to be precise, her appearance. When the chief steward finally looked past the tall threatening blond man in the rumpled, worn, and bloodstained Imperial uniform and saw the deep, half-cleaned scratches on Amy’s forehead, the tattered condition of her flowered dress, his protective instincts took over. Here was a female in distress, and one who was to be a passenger aboard his ship, at that.

  “Come in, my dear,” he said, beckoning, “and we’ll get you fixed up and find you something to wear!”

  Susan made a small, wordless noise, and tugged at the jacket of her suit. Her hand was no longer in her purse, and Amy felt a definite relief upon seeing that.

  “You, too,” the steward said.

  “If that’s all right,” the captain said, glaring at Drummond.

  “Absolutely,” Drummond said, smiling. “Excellent idea. We’re going to be stuck with each other for awhile; I don’t suppose anyone’s going to like it, but there’s no reason we can’t make it as comfortable as possible.”

  The captain thawed slightly.

  “I’m not going to interfere with the way you run your ship, Captain,” Drummond continued, “and I’m sure Captain Cahn won’t, either, just so long as you get us all to Base One as quickly as possible.”

  Captain Gifford nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  * * * *

  Pel and most of the others were blithely unaware of any prior conflict as they trickled in through the airlock. It didn’t even occur to Pel to wonder whose ship he was on, or where the crew was, until someone else brought the subject up.

  The earlier arrivals, once aboard and with Drummond’s authority accepted, had
sorted out the accommodations. Despite the complaints, the refugees posed no serious hardship to anyone. In fact, the ship wasn’t even crowded; all the original complement had to do was double up, so that the unmarried passengers were two to a stateroom instead of one, and that provided enough space to fit the twenty-two refugees in at three or four to a room. Crew quarters, far less luxurious to begin with, were not disturbed at all.

  The Browns were given a cabin for the three of them, with a double bed for Pel and Nancy a folding cot for Rachel.

  Susan, Amy, Elani, and Prossie, the four unmarried women in the group, took the largest cabin aboard—a suite, actually, with a tiny sitting room and miniscule bedroom, one of two suites aboard the vessel.

  Raven, Stoddard, and Drummond were grouped together, as were Godwin, Ted, and Valadrakul. Peabody, Lampert, and Squire Donald were assigned to a single room. The more observant noticed that this put at least one Imperial in each group of men—either one lieutenant or two spacemen—but nobody bothered to comment on the fact.

  The other suite, opposite the one the unmarried women shared, went to Captain Cahn, who claimed the bedroom for himself, and left Smith, Soorn, and Mervyn occupying the sitting room.

  The little people, Grummetty and Alella, were given an unused storage locker; since the ship’s furnishings weren’t suited to them, nobody saw any point in giving them a stateroom. They made no objection; the locker suited them just fine.

  Besides, they were really too sick by then to care very much.

  While these assignments were being made up forward, the twenty original passengers divided themselves into pairs for the ten remaining staterooms. Since that happened to work out to a nice even two to a room, there were no serious accusations of added unfairness or injustice.

  By the time these arrangements were settled and explained Pel was thoroughly bored with the whole affair. He had begun to tune out the chatter and wonder how much time this group would waste before getting under way.

  Nine days to Base One, they said, and there were bound to be delays there, as well—the Galactic Empire seemed to be full of delays. They did some things quickly and well—Prossie had made the original telepathic contact with Town within minutes—but others they seemed to dawdle on. It had taken forever, it seemed, to actually pick everyone up.