Found himself speeding on and on, his velocity of flight incomputable, while stars and planets and the numberless vorticial barrier walls of what multiple-universe he crashed through whirled about him—he knew that he lived!
He knew that whatever strange interior thing of his once seemingly solid body it was that lived, yet it did live, and was conscious and knowing, seeing and hearing and registering the endless wonder of his crashing flight through the barriers that hold the many-walled frames of the multitudinous universes together—and that whatever he was, he thought and tried to understand what was happening to him, and failed.
His “cosmic force,” so ingeniously discovered and developed by his tireless labor and prying mind, had played him false! He was wrong in his theories as to what it was. He was very wrong, and characteristically he wanted to go back and do that construction work inside Mt. Falsmore all over again. But he knew that for him there would never be any going back.
AS AT LAST his velocity fell away, and the spinning confusion of wheeling stars ceased; he found himself floating comfortably, peacefully—floating in space!
This about him, this was not his sky! These stars were different, closer together, arranged in patterns and strange associations in which no familiar star remained! This sky was alien, utterly and frighteningly alien!
There were a lot more stars, they were closer together, closer to his eyes, and they were telling his striving mind that what had happened to him was not going to be understood fully by him for a long, long time.
Timeless, this being. Except for a strange bleeding sensation, a weakening, a something that drew upon his life and left it always less! Drawing away from this weakening, as naturally as one pulls the bedclothes over one in the night, Grayson found himself willing a shield of force into existence around him. A bubble, in which his new self floated, at peace, and waiting for life to begin in reality. Not that he wasn’t alive, but nothing was happening! There was only himself in his bubble of strange strength, and the endless starred expanse of alien space.
CHAPTER TWO
“But ere you free the glass from all its wine
And through its crystal see a new world shine,
Throw some to those who knew that magic, too,
And cool the wind—the wind’s their drink, and mine.”
Hafiz
ONLY himself? What was that?
Speeding past him a monstrous shape—a ship? A pursuer hard after, great and glowing, and from the sharp prow three mighty paths of force, moving inexorably together in a focus upon the first fleeing ship. As the beams converged, the ship disintegrated, and the space about Grayson’s sphere of mental force became suddenly strewn with the wreckage of a vast disaster. Pieces no larger than his hand, and fragments as wide as a city block sped past him in a silent flaming death storm.
Now there were other ships, near and nearer, a fleet—nay, two fleets in deadly combat! Hour after hour the deadly game of tag went on, and Grayson found himself in the center of a storm of Titanic forces locked in combat, from which he was unable to make the slightest motion toward safer areas.
There were screens of force shimmering around each great hull, and the combatants seemed to be bending every effort to shatter or pierce the force-screens with their fiercely flashing rays. Once this shimmering screen of protection was destroyed, the rays made short work of the victim.
Grayson lay quiescent within his own mental shell of force, unthinking now of self, absorbed in watching the terrific battle, the maneuvers and technique of a vast engagement were a lesson in three dimensional chess for him, he could not tear his attention away. He felt the approach of some body, and with an effort sent his perceptions toward it—saw a small replica of the vastly larger vessels approaching.
With an effort of which he did not know he was capable, Grayson managed to propel his shell a short distance. But the pitiful speed with which he moved was relatively negligible.
A tiny lance of gleaming force reached out from the prow of the strange, windowless vessel. His protective sphere collapsed about him like a pricked bubble.
With an effort, Grayson again set up the sphere about himself. He found that with the same effort, he was able to set the sphere in motion, he was now gliding rapidly away from the scouting vessel which had been attracted to his presence.
But too late had he found the means of propulsion. This time a round tube of shimmering something reached from the side of the vessel, and he felt the grapples of a powerful magnetism seize him, draw him like an all-powerful hand. As he approached the strange ship, a round door slid open, and through this opening his unwilling being was drawn.
Grayson stood, now unclothed of his protection, naked as Adam, shivering in the icy cold of an air-lock. Or was it an air-lock—was he breathing, or only imagining himself to be earthly matter and capable of breath? Was he seeing this material steel and flesh about him, or was he making it to be there in the same way he had conjured the force-sphere about his naked self in space?
Whatever the truth, his confused mind scon found safer anchorage, for a man as apparently material as his own naked self opened an inner door—stood there peering at Grayson with an expression of pure astonishment. He was speaking, but he was not moving his mouth! Grayson heard in his mind a series of unfamiliar thought-sounds, he would have thought they were his own, but for the utter alien strangeness of their coloration and objectivity.
Grayson gathered vaguely that the man, a uniformed member of some military organization, was asking him his name and number.
As Grayson struggled to understand and answer, the man threw up his hands in a gesture of complete failure, backed out, closed the door. Grayson stood there shivering in his bare skin. Tentatively he tried conjuring some heat into existence about him—found that the place was warmer. He felt like a babe who takes the first step at the discovery that environment here responded to his mental commands. It was a fine thing to learn!
AFTER a second the soldier reappeared at the doorway, draped a great scarlet cloak about Grayson’s shoulders, led him forth into the strangest surroundings he had ever dreamed could exist. This was a ship of space? It looked more like a solarium, a plant fancier’s experimental green-house, in which some mad genius had constructed a series of elaborate mechanisms expressly designed to confuse the simple mortal who dared to trespass.
But they gave him little time to examine the weird alien surroundings. At quick step he was led forward along the green leaflined corridors, to a great cone-shaped chamber which was the nose of the ship. Here, Grayson realized, was the chief officer of the scout vessel—a vessel small only in comparison to the huge dreadnaughts locked in combat about them.
He was elderly, tall, graybearded and stern. But he seemed amused at Grayson’s embarrassment in his nudity, standing there like a fugitive from the locker room clutching his cloak about him, his legs sticking out bare and hairy beneath,
Again Grayson noticed the phenomena of hearing without speech taking place. Of the confusion of alien images arising suddenly in his mind, he gathered that again he was being asked who he was and what he did there in the midst of battle.
Carefully Grayson made a detailed mental effort to send a condensed but complete report on the incident leading up to his finding himself afloat in space. That he believed he was a stranger in a strange universe, at the mercies of an alien environment.
Grayson found himself almost understanding the commander’s conversation with the officer beside him.
“Istar must hear of this. This wanderer may bear information which our technicals will find helpful. Who knows what powers a being from another space-frame might have in this universe? They must hear at once of this miracle!”
“I will communicate with Istar’s flagship at once. It is true that a member of an alien race may bear strange and powerful knowledge that would aid us against the Karnians. But it will take time to learn from him, he must be intensively educated in our ways to understand our needs a
nd his own differences, for in them will lie his strength. And we have no time!”
“There will come another day! This day’s conflict will not end Azura!”
While the three stood there thus conversing, the ship had approached one of the great super-ships, slid beneath, been lifted into the vast belly of the craft. The graybearded commander himself led Grayson from the ship, along the curving corridors of the vast craft, into a sleeping room.
“Wait here, stranger. Have no fear, we mean no ill to you or anyone. We are warriors of Azura. You will learn, do not try to flee or struggle, until you know that you want to do so! That time will not come, if I am any judge.”
Grayson lay down upon the soft, shapeless bunk, and sent out his newfound perceptions. He sensed that the whole mighty fleet, numbering too many to understand how many, was in flight, retreating in order, but taking fearful punishment.
Again and again his singular far-reaching mind-sight shuddered to the impact of force beams upon the shell of shimmering strength about the mighty ship; again and again he felt the singular bubble collapse and be instantly renewed—felt the loss as if a part of his own life had been drained away. What manner of universe was this? How had he come here in truth? What would become of him?
So questioning himself, Grayson at last fell into troubled sleep.
He awoke to find the ship, in fact most of the great fleet, at rest upon a strange world. His awakener bore clothing upon his arm, and a smile upon his face.
“We are safe here on Azura, friend. Come, dress, it is time for you to be taken before our ruler.”
Grayson understood his speechless thought, though with difficulty. He tried a question.
“Who is the ruler of Azura?”
“The Lord God Nardan is our glorious ruler.”
Within what seemed minutes, Grayson found himself being escorted through the city.
STRANGE, spectacular beings these; riding through the streets ahead of him, beside him, and after him. A company who made Grayson, accomplished man of the world as he was, yet feel like a callow youth.
But of them all, Grayson found himself most lost in admiration of the figure of Istar, the high commander of the Azuran fleet.
Riding home as he was from a defeated fleet, to report a disastrous engagement, he yet carried himself with a high and proud and utterly capable aspect. If there had been a defeat, it was evident that it had not been caused by any lack in leadership—but from causes other than character.
To Grayson’s as yet confused sight, (confused because he was unknowing what he was, matter—flesh—or some alien kind of mental illusion of flesh) Istar was a man of middle age, strong and tall and with a face carved from the milk-stone of human granite, the very heart-rock of man’s (or were these fleshy apparitions tryly men?) spirit of kindness and firm leadership and grim, high resolve.
These nobly clad and generously built men about him wavered now and then in Grayson’s sight, and taking their places was a different vision of tall, grey shapes of force, shimmering and vibrant with vortical organized forces fluxing and pulsing within the vague, strange shapes. Then quickly the seeming alien apparition would waver again, blink out—and once more about him were shapes of flesh and blood. Yet Grayson knew in his heart that he himself could not be himself, for his body must have been shattered into its primal atoms in that explosion which had reft Mt. Falsmor from base to crest-crater.
Riding! It was strange that these great white horses should have been waiting to bear them along these pale, almost ghostly streets. Strange that spacemen should ride horses so well. Strange that at times the horses seemed to fade, to become another thing, vast amorphous clouds of force, weaving and fluxing inwardly, transparently, looking out of eyes that were but tunnels of glimmering force whorls, behind which one could see strange bright formations of complex coloration, shifting and moving and coiling upon themselves—the brain! And then instantly his strange new seeing would vanish, and once again they were a company of defeated warriors riding home to report disaster. Flesh and blood soldiers, uniformed in blue and scarlet and gold, their weapons girt at their sides, their faces grim and weary, their eyes gloomy with foreboding of what was to come as a result of their defeat.
Between this fleeting insight which showed him that all was not as it seemed in this alien plane of life, and his natural sight of natural seeming things, there was in Grayson a conflict which he could not resolve, but which spun in his mind like whirling fire. Was this a world of matter or a world-of-appearance-of-matter—; where matter as he knew it did not exist except as a cloak over some strange other form of organization of energy into life-shapes?
Beside Grayson rode a man named Marduc. Proud of bearing, his was a character not appealing to him, Grayson decided. He looked down upon Grayson as a kind of lesser creature, but during those moments of maddening insight, (or was it mere lucidity) when Grayson’s eyes suddenly peered out upon a world completely unfamiliar, this man beside him appeared as a cloud of blackness, wrapping about him a cloak of gold beneath which Grayson could see an evil, crawlingly different interior! This sight of the man’s inner self, gave Grayson the idea that perhaps the others, the natives here, did not have this strange weakness of his, to see what was solid suddenly become about them something transparent and deeply divergent from familiar nature. Or was the weakness strength?
MARDUC, a black-haired man of powerful build, with a sharp blue eye, took advantage of the ride to question Grayson.
“You say you are a man of another world and universe? How can that be? No man has ever traveled beyond our universe?”
“I don’t know how it can be. I only know this life of yours is an unfamiliar one to me.”
“More likely you are a spy of the Karnians! Such a flimsy lie will never get you by our intelligence. Better think up a better.”
“What makes you think I am a spy?” Grayson was nettled, and something about the man gave him suspicion. For the words, shaped as they were in thought-flow into his inner mind, were subtly different from the Azurans, and the sharp blue eye he bent upon Grayson as he said these words of advice and scorn, had in them a seeking after some sign, he was looking for Grayson to say something which Grayson had no intention of saying! He wanted Grayson to admit he was a spy! Strange! As if he were warning him!
“What else could you be? There were only men of the Karnian fleet there in the void, and other life light years away! You are not one of our men, hence you must be one of theirs, making up a fancy explanation for your presence. It is too obvious! I would advise you to amend your story.”
“Do you have such concern over the safety of Karnian spies, then.”
“Well, man, you will be extinguished! Better admit you survived the wreck of a Karnian ship. Your wild tale will never be believed!”
“Thanks, Mr. Marduc,” murmured Grayson aloud, though Marduc did not seem to notice anything different in Grayson’s speech. Abruptly Grayson’s wavering vision shifted to the strange way of seeing, and remained there. For a moment he was lost, then he began to adjust to the parent wavering forces where his eyes had seen matter but moments before.
“You needn’t thank me, man! I’m only doing my duty. I have no affection for Karnians. If you’re a spy, better for me to find it out before the intelligence gets hold of you. They will be sure—we were fools enough to swallow your cock and bull story.”
“Well, you needn’t bother yourself with me, great Marduc. I have no idea what your rank, or give a damn. But if you think I am a Karnian, why don’t you talk to your fellow officers about it?”
The black wavering interior of the tall insubstantiality that Marduc had become suddenly was shot with fire-gleamings, and Grayson drew back from beside the figure. Unknowing Grayson’s seeing of his inner passion, Marduc said:
“Proud talk for one about to be blasted out of life as a liar and a spy!”
“Overbearing and rash talk you give vent to, Marduc. I would prefer silence from you. If I were not a
stranger to your customs, I would take such offense as you would be sorry you had aroused!”
As suddenly as it had come, Grayson’s vision reverted to the seeing of normal flesh about him, shaped though it was in unfamiliar guise, except for the fact that these were men, with four limbs—every other detail was strange and wildly variant from his experience. This beast between his legs, not truly horse,—but some strange fiery beast of similar appearance, with great bulging eyes, a round domed forehead, white smooth hide and flowing muscles, too broad of chest and short of spine to be a true horse!
Anger boiling in him at the strange tone and over-bearing actions of this Marduc, Grayson suddenly urged the beast ahead, riding quickly past the others, to take his place behind the broad back of the leader, Istar. Though the others cast sharp thoughts at him, he paid no attention, continued to ride directly behind the great black steed of the Commander. He had no desire for more of the company of the rude officer, whatever he meant by his words. If Grayson had only realized fully what was in Marduc’s mind, it would have saved him much future trouble.
NOW THE cavalcade rode beneath a dome of crystal, shutting out the pale light of the sunless sky—a gray, clear light it was—and the sky was a gray clear infinity which his new way of seeing sensed reaching on and on. The crystal overhead lent a pleasant greenness to the light, and along the strangely silent roadway columns of trees marched beside them, trees that were not trees but great carven red crystal trunks with spreading, too-graceful branches upon which shimmered and turned leaves that were themselves crystalline, chiming in soft muted little sounds as they touched and turned.
Along the overhead ways moved shapes now familiar to Grayson as the true people behind the seeming flesh which his eyes persisted in seeing. Shapes that walked along ways arching from pale shimmering wall of glass-like matter to rosy pale wall of adjoining building. Or now and then a shape that floated free of all gravitational attraction, thistledown lifting of its own volition, floating to see the warriors below, or swiftly hastening on some incomprehensible errand.
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 12