“Yeah, a little more room than you’ve got now. I bet you’ve all got elbows in your eyes.”
“Metaphorically, perhaps.”
“But how do I get out? That’s the question.”
“Our reading of you reveals that you have remarkable powers of instantaneous choice based upon intuitive powers, a gift that has often removed you from difficulties.”
“And often gotten me into trouble.”
“Nonetheless, you must rely on it again.”
“Right. Any help from you guys would be more than welcome.”
“Naturally.”
She went over and tried the door. It was bolted shut.
“So I guess,” she said, “I’m going to have to wait until they come and get me. It shouldn’t be too long. Feels like I’ve already been in this place for ages.”
“Not necessarily,” said Andrew. “While you were asleep, we also took the liberty to adjust your cybernetic components, with the necessity of escape in mind. If you will simply touch the lock with the contact points on your fingertips, we will do the rest.”
Laura obeyed. A stream of electrical power crackled from her fingers. The lock snapped. The door opened.
“Wow,” said Laura. “Great.”
She stepped out into the drab hallway. No alarms were sounding. There were no guards to be seen, either.
“But which way?” Laura asked. And immediately the answer came to her, like a tremble of deja vu. She struck out toward the right.
“Excellent, Laura,” said Andrew. “A wonderful illustration of your talent. But you could have waited for the answer from us. We are quite aware of the direction you must go.”
“Now you tell me.”
“Take note that there is a guard posted around the waited next corner, Laura. We suggest that you render him unconscious and arm yourself with his hand weapon.”
“Sure. If you’ll give me that little hand-zap again!”
“With pleasure!”
Sure enough, there he was, stationed right outside an elevator. Short and handsome, in a brutish Feddy way.
Laura instantly knew that stealth was not the way to handle this particular occasion. She walked directly up to the guard, practically bumping into him with her chest. “Hi! Can you tell me which way it is to the ladies room?”
Her hand shot out. A small electric charge hit him just behind his ear. He went down like a sack of potatoes.
“Jeez, you didn’t kill him, did you?” asked Laura.
“No. A simple stunning. Visually impressive, perhaps, but no harm will come to him.”
“I really don’t care, but it just seemed unnecessary.”
“Our thoughts precisely.”
She kneeled by him, took his proton pistol from him. “Elevator, right?”
“That is correct.”
“Lobby.”
“A very direct method.”
“The fastest, and I don’t think they’re expecting this.”
“No, that is absolutely true.”
She took the elevator.
The vital factor, of course, was time. How much longer did she have before Zarpfrin decided she had suffered enough and sent those guards back to shovel up the pieces and deposit her back in his office, to as certain the Starbow’s location? She could almost visualize his face when he discovered she was gone. She smiled wryly at the thought.
The doors opened upon nothing much exciting in the lobby: the usual checkpoints, strolling people, air of deadness.
She walked casually down the corridor toward the access tube to the small Block starport, ready at any time to go for the pistol tucked into her belt. Her senses were clear and alert, and she felt keen and alive, even without the Zernin coursing through her veins.
She took the tube car to the starport terminal, then walked to the security checkpoint. “Hello,” she said, extending her good hand for identification check. “I’m Laura Shemzak. I just got here this morning. Checked into Berth 1943. I’m checking out now. My business with Overfriend Zarpfrin has been completed.”
The man behind the desk wore a professional frown as he reviewed his screen. He looked up, his frown somehow deeper. “I’m sorry, Pilot Shemzak, but I’ve received no release clearance for you.”
“Oh, but I’m so pretty. You must give me clearance.”
“What?”
“Don’t you find me stunning?”
The guard was lost for words. “Uhm … well yes … but I don’t see—”
Laura drew her gun and shot him square in the groin. He was unconscious before he hit the ground, both hands defensively locked. Before walking away, she glanced down at the man and smiled. “Quite stunning, indeed.”
She didn’t wait for a car to take her out onto the field, but found the nearest exit and headed toward her blip-ship on foot.
The sky was bright with a spatter of clouds, and a nice breeze tousled her hair as she ran. She was halfway to her docking berth before the alarms began to ring.
“What now?” she said.
“Run!” said Andrew.
“What a brilliant suggestion!”
Fortunately, she had only about another two hundred yards to go. Thank God she had a small ship with antigrav; if it was larger, it would have been on the other side of the field, away from things.
She ran at top speed and was surprised at what good shape she was in, despite her recent exhausting bout with Zernin withdrawal.
The ship was up ahead, unguarded. It looked good—sleek salvation. She yearned to get jacked in, feel the power course through her, the engines firing, the suspensors pushing her up toward the haven of space, away from this dreadful world.
She was almost there when she heard shouts behind her: “Halt! Stop!”
And the pound of pursuing feet.
Damn!
But there was still time. She vaulted up the access ramp, punched out the code on the hull. The door opened, and she jumped into the cockpit.
A low-intensity volley of energy weapons smashed against the hull. She slammed the door closed and immediately went into linking procedure, hitting the warmup toggle. The XT 9 began to thrum and buck in its berth like an anxious, feisty bronco sensing imminent release. Jacking in, she prepared to take mental control, directing the next actions.
But nothing more happened.
Her consciousness did not expand to become the blip-ship, nor would the thing obey her commands.
“What the hell—” she said, for there was nothing restraining the ship. And then she knew.
The Zernin.
She must be out of Zernin, and somehow that drug had been able to allow the intimate link with her nervous system, her cybernetic components, her mind, and the XT 9.
And there were no manual controls on a blip-ship.
She could hear the power beams hitting the hull as she sat, shocked.
She was trapped!
Chapter Fifteen
“This is Omega Space?” said Ratham Bey, turning around and surveying the strange landscape. “This is what we’ve been knocking our brains out for?”
“You and the Jaxdron,” Cal returned mildly. “And who knows who else?”
“But it’s just some kind of plain on a planet.” He sipped his drink. “A plain with mountains in the distance and a weird sky. I mean, this seems to be just a point in normal space!”
“At first,” said Cal, pacing leisurely. “But then you notice that it’s different here … or more precisely, it’s more like normal space … certain aspects of normal space.”
“Where’d you get this drink? And this chair.” The dark-skinned man’s eyes shone very brown as wonder sank into them.
“Yes, and that’s part of the point,” said Cal. “But let’s get some real world facts straight first. I’ll go first.”
> He gave Bey a brief rundown on how he had been captured by the Jaxdron, how they had put him through all sorts of tests, shuttled him hither and thither, and finally perfected the group of clones to be linked in the mind matrix to augment his own intelligence and powers and thus form a portal to this plane of existence.
“But I outfoxed them, you see. I jumped through, closed the portal, and escaped. Only what I’m going to do now that I’ve escaped, I really can’t say. But then, this is a hell of a lot better than being held prisoner by a bunch of crazy aliens.”
Bey nodded. “Incredible. But how do you know they won’t be able to figure out a way to reopen the rift?”
“Unlikely. That’s why they needed me, you see … and now they don’t have me!” He folded his arms with satisfaction. “But I should sit down, too, I suppose.”
He visualized a plushly cushioned, high-backed chair. It was suddenly there before him, red and comfy-looking. He sat down and looked at Ratham Bey.
“Amazing,” said Bey.
Cal shrugged. “You just have to know how to do it. I’ll explain later. Right now, I’d like to hear about the Starbow and how you got here yourself.”
“Well, I’m only an officer aboard the Starbow—a lieutenant. I was recruited in the Pleiades sector—after what the Federation did to my planet, I was ready for vengeance, let me tell you. But you don’t want to hear about me, you want to hear about Laura Shemzak.”
“She’s with you? God, I wondered why you were looking for me and not the damned Feddies! How is she?”
“She’s a handful, your sister is.”
Cal grinned. “Oh, yes, she is! I don’t know many other people who would try to move the starways to perform an impossible rescue.”
“It wasn’t easy for her, I’ll say that!”
Bey related the events that had occurred from Laura’s arrival on board the Starbow after its attack on the Ezekiel, including the retrieval of the XT 9 on Shortchild. Laura’s rescue of Captain Tars Northern, and their journey to Baleful, the class L planet in the Coridian sector.
“Wait a minute,” said Cal. “How did you know I was there?”
“We didn’t, but Laura did. Federation analysis beams read the retreat of the Jaxdron ships that attacked Mulliphen sufficiently long to calculate high probability they were taking you there. It was a planet previously controlled by the Federation, now owned by the Jaxdron. It made sense.”
“Right. They needed me on the Fault. Okay. But I didn’t stay there long. For some reason they shipped me off again. Maybe because they had better facilities on another base, who knows? But what happened?”
“We got an SOS from one of the atmosphere domes. We figured it was you, trying to contact any possible rescue attempt. Needless to say, it wasn’t you. But they left behind three of those cyborg clones of you.”
“No kidding.”
“Yes. And Laura shot one of them dead.”
Cal went white. “She what?”
“Yes, she didn’t care much for that either.”
“Did it attack her?”
“No. Overfriend Zarpfrin had placed an implant on her optical nerve.”
“He wanted me dead! Of course! He didn’t want the Jaxdron to use me to get into Omega Space!”
“Something like that, apparently. Anyway, Laura was understandably relieved when she found out that it wasn’t really you she had blasted.”
“Nice to know.”
“We had a scrape with the Jaxdron, and some sort of broadcast from them that we’d find you—and our destiny—on Snar’shill.”
“So that’s where I was!”
“It’s almost as though the Jaxdron were toying with us. As though it were all some vast game!”
“You hit the nail on the head there, pal,” said Cal. “That’s exactly where their heads are at.”
“Pardon?”
“From the very beginning I was forced to run through all sorts of games. Their way of testing me, I thought. But it was more than that. I spoke to them. That’s the way they see things—as some sort of cosmic game to which only they know the rules.”
“Curious.”
“You bet. A mystery and an enigma too! But that’s just something we’ll have to solve later. So tell me more. How did you get here?”
“Oh, that’s an entirely different, though related, story. You see, we’ve got this alien on board the ship, name of Shontill.”
Ratham Bey explained to Cal about Shontill and his search for his lost race, the Frin’ral. He told of the discovery of the Frin’ral derelict ship.
“There was some sort of portal inside. And quite simply, I got sucked in. The rest was just like limbo until somehow you conjured me back into existence. Thank you, by the way.”
“My pleasure,” said Cal thoughtfully, “They’re still hot on my tail, then, bent upon rescuing me?”
“Yes, and getting into Omega Space as well.”
“Encouraging.”
Ratham Bey finished his drink. “I don’t know how much time has passed, but please. I’m no scientist, just a pretty good ship’s gunner and navy man.” He gestured around. “What is this place?”
“Think about it. Omega Space … as opposed to Alpha Space.”
“Our dimension.”
“Right. Beginning and end. Interconnected yet different. Now, I won’t go into the quantum mechanics—the physics involved—I’ll simply put things into simple, laymen’s terms. They don’t make sense any other way.”
“I’m listening.”
“The average intelligent being is trained to think about their existence in a certain way by the culture they are born in. They are taught reality, but it’s a construct reality, created by the society and culture purely for self-continuation. But anyone with imagination breaks out of those reality chains, sees things differently, makes things different. But then, after this breakthrough, whether it be personal or technological or philosophical, the mechanics of culture assume it … and it becomes part of the status quo.
“Human beings operate under certain assumed laws in our universe. It’s very objective. But when you get down to the basic structure of existence, you see that the universe cannot exist without you to participate in its existence. Thus, we create our own universe, create our own boundaries and limitations … and well we should, because otherwise, chances are there’d be no laws and parameters, nothing to compare things with, no sense whatever.
“Omega Space is simply a full expression of this aspect of existence, a place where literally anything can happen, as long as you know how to make it happen, as long as you know that it’s your mind that is creating everything all the time. In a very real way, the reason it looks like this right now, this plain, these mountains, is because that’s apparently the way that I want it to be … subconsciously, perhaps, but all the same … it’s something that my conscious mind can understand, assimilate, deal with easily. But say I want a house, or a chair, or another glass of iced tea for you—I can change the fabric to create it, right out of nothing. Because that’s the truth about Omega Space—it’s the intersection between absolute nothingness and something. The plane of creation itself.”
“No wonder the Jaxdron want it.”
“But you say that the Frin’ral are here … they escaped here, somehow.”
“Correct. The question is, where are they? If it’s nothingness, then they’re nowhere.”
“But if they know the nature of Omega Space sufficiently, then they’re everywhere they care to be.”
“Look,” said Ratham Bey. “These philosophical answers are all very well and good. And it’s nice to know that we won’t starve or go thirsty and we can sit down on comfortable chairs. But how do we get out of here?”
“Good question. Maybe the Frin’ral know. We’ll have to try and find them.”
“So where
do we look?”
“Tell me more about this Shontill fellow. What does he look like, how does he act, that sort of thing. Give me an idea of who the creature is.”
Ratham Bey shrugged. “Sure. I’ll do the best I can.”
The man described Shontill.
“Big, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Fierce?”
“I guess sometimes … but might merely be the way you would interpret him from a human perspective.”
“Good enough. Thanks, Ratham. Now what I want you to do is to close your eyes and visualize Shontill … or rather, creatures like Shontill. I want you to see them here, now … and I want you to imagine them talking to us.”
“Okay, I understand. Sort of the way you brought me here.”
“Precisely.”
Cal Shemzak did not close his own eyes. Instead, he picked out a spot ahead of them both, and thought about Shontill the way Lieutenant Bey had described him—the stature, the broad shoulders, the roughly humanoid face, the tentacles turning into arms. He doubled this image, tripled it ….
And three members of the Frin’ral race stood before them.
They spoke in a guttural alien tongue.
“Good grief,” said Ratham Bey, opening his eyes. “It worked!”
“Hold a moment,” said Cal. “We need something else.”
He visualized the necessary object in his hand. It appeared: a translator.
“This is not necessary,” said one of the Frin’ral. “We have already read your minds, and know your tongue.”
“Then you know who we are as well,” said Cal.
“Yes.”
“Can you help us?”
“You must come with us to our home. The home of our people. Then we will see in what way we can help you.”
Bey said, “Is it along walk?”
“We need not walk,” said another of the Frin’ral. “We shall bring it here.”
And in an instant they were surround by buildings of quite peculiar architecture—tilted, leaning, towering. It was a hodgepodge of alien construct and urban planning.
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