Escape Across the Cosmos

by Gardner Fox

  The aerodyne slowed after a while, slid above a ramp that curved down and into a smaller edition of mighty Mooralor, where it came to a halt. Carrick paid the tab, telling the driver to wait.

  Starways Road was lined with stil-front houses, two stories high. Years before, these had been the homes of the construction workers, the minor officials, the hunters and the unskilled laborers who has been sent here to make Hilnoris livable.

  4637. The numbers were black in a white slab. A woman came to the hall door at his ring, clutching a kimono to herself. Her hair was black and glossy, long uncut and falling about her shoulders almost to her waist. Her face was slightly puffed from sleep.

  She said nothing, staring with dull green eyes.

  Carrick smiled. “I’m here to see Felton Pratt.”

  She shook her head. “Can’t see him. He’s dead.”

  Ice touched his middle as he heard her words. A dead Felton Pratt could tell him nothing. “When did he die? Where? Can you tell me how it happened?”

  She shrugged, holding the kimono tighter. Carrick took out a credicoin and put it on his palm. “Any information at all will be appreciated.” He put a second coin beside the first.

  The woman slid her eyes up and down the street. She was afraid for some reason, and Carrick thrilled. He might not have wasted his time after all. A third coin joined its fellows on his palm.

  “He got hit with an atomiburner, early part of last month. Nobody knows who did it. Nobody asks questions about something like that.”

  Her hand stabbed out, caught the coins.

  The door slammed in his face.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAI VALORIS was trying on a fashionable gold sheath when he walked into the suite. She swung around, her face bright with delight; she sobered when her eyes went over him and she sensed his dejection.

  “Something went wrong,” she said flatly.

  “Everything. Felton Pratt is dead.”

  “Then the holiday is over.”

  She sat on a vanity bench and leaned her elbows on her thighs, unconsciously in imitation of his own hopelessness. She was a beautiful woman, Carrick thought, studying her. Her body might have been created especially to set off such a magnificent gown as the gold sheath. Any man would be proud to have her as his wife.

  “I hoped so desperately you would succeed,” she said heavily. When he looked surprised, she smiled. “Have you forgotten I’m a criminal, too? If you could have proved your innocence, there’d be a chance for me. I was counting on it. Foolishly, I suppose.”

  “Maybe it isn’t all lost,” he offered slowly.

  Her eyes lifted to his features. “There’s still a chance? Is that what you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Not much of one—but a chance.”

  “Go on.”

  “Hannes Stryker had a friend, a rich industrialist. Stryker was no business man, so he let Alton Raymond handle his financial affairs. Sometimes when he needed money, Raymond advanced it against royalties that would come in when an invention was marketed.”

  “How can he help?”

  “He’s the administrator of the estate. If there’s anything to be learned from Stryker’s notes and papers—who might have been in touch with him lately, who might have some reason to—”

  “A sneak thief doesn’t send calling cards telling when he’ll arrive.”

  He grimaced slightly. “If it was a sneak thief who did it, I’m lost. But I have a hunch this was something more than a casual killing to prevent discovery. My own theory is, Stryker was killed because someone wanted what he invented—or found. And that means it would have to be something big—something so big it would stagger the imagination.”

  “What about Raymond himself? You suspect him?”

  Carrick grinned wryly. “Alton Raymond is the richest man in the star worlds, or one of the top three, at any rate. He owns whole planets. He’s Mister Colonization himself. Parkman homes, Brennis furniture, Folsom power tools, he furnishes them all, and the spaceships to carry them to whatever planet is being opened up. He runs half a dozen planetary governments. He has a fleet of starships bigger than some planets space navies.”

  “Ohh,” she said in a small voice. “He’s that Raymond.”

  “He is. He has no need of money. So it’s safe to go to him and ask his help.”

  “Suppose he informs on you?”

  Carrick pondered that, sitting on the edge of the bed. At his trial, Alton Raymond had been helpful, claiming he did not believe that Kael Carrick had murdered Hannes Stryker. It was his money that had hired excellent defense counsel, his money that let Carrick live almost in luxury until the jury had brought in its verdict.

  Of course, Raymond had said over and over again that a man was innocent until proven guilty. Perhaps now that he had been sentenced for the crime, his attitude would change. It was a risk he had to take.

  He said as much to Mai, then added, “If he wants to turn me in, I’ll have to dissuade him. Violently, if necessary. Oh, I won’t kill him, nothing like that, but I might not be above kidnapping him as a hostage.”

  Mai Valoris smiled wanly. “What’ve we got to lose?”

  She became animated, rising to her feet and striding back and forth on the foamoid carpeting. “The first thing to do is to off-planet just as we are, as Alpheus and Carolla Neumann. There’s no need to change our disguises until we’re closeted with Alton Raymond.”

  “I’ll buy that. The only thing is, we aren’t going by spaceship. I want to see Raymond fast. We’ll teleport to Aldebaran, to its planet Dyarnal.”

  She frowned. “I’ve never teleported. What’s it like?”

  “Not many people have. Teleported stations are few and far between. I don’t believe there are more than twenty of them, all told, though I suppose they keep building new ones. They cost too much to make them worthwhile unless the planet where they’re built has enough natural resources or enough of a population to make it a paying proposition. It costs money to teleport.” He grinned. “We’ll probably use plenty of the smugglers’ credicoins to go that way, but it’ll be worth it—if I can talk Alton Raymond into helping me.”

  “Is there a telestation on any of the Aldebaranian worlds?”

  “One on each, and Alton Raymond has his own.”

  “Is this Alton Raymond married?” She wondered impishly.

  Carrick chuckled. “Years ago, he was. He gave his wife a planet in exchange for a divorce. Now he buys his women. When he’s through with them he makes them independently wealthy.”

  “Mmmm. A girl might have a future there.”

  When he growled at her she squealed delightedly and clapped her hands. “You’re jealous! Carrick, I could kiss you.”

  “Save your energy to pack. I want to be out of here before nightfall. We’ll freight our baggage by spacer. If we need clothes, Alton Raymond will furnish them. He has closets with more garments than some stores. I saw one of them once, when I went with Stryker to pay him a visit.”

  “You mean I get to take only one dress?”

  “And it’d better not be that gold thing. It won’t stand up to wear and tear—though I will say you do something for it.”

  “Carolla Neumann can’t walk out of here in a bolero and clingpants,” she wailed. “There’d be talk.”

  “Damn convention,” he said, but she made sense. “All right. A small valise, no more. No frills, no fripperies.”

  “I should have known. Once in my life I get to buy all the clothes I want and I have to leave them. It’s not fair.”

  “They’ll follow you to Dyarnal.”

  “But not in time to impress Alton Raymond.”

  He swung at her flank. This time he landed.

  She yelped and ran to fetch a valise.

  The lines to Aldebaran were clear, fortunately.

  Carrick stood with Mai Valoris under the great constellation-flecked dome of the telestation, waiting for the space coordinates to be cleared so that they might be swept across a
dozen light years to Dyarnal, which was Alton Raymond’s home world.

  All around them seethed the life and activity of the star planets. A flight of business men was being readied for teleportation to Earth itself; there was a conference of high government officials under the Empire aegis, new laws to be discussed, and the delicate problems of six new planets which had been discovered with eleven planets claiming sovereignty over them. To one side, three exquisitely gowned young women were seated on floatistools, waiting for a Pollux clearance; Mai guessed they were the daughters of rich men on their way to Anstralar for a vacation; the Anstralar sunlight gave marvelous tans. Here and there other men and other women were waiting patiently.

  “I always play a may-be game when I’m waiting anywhere,” Mai whispered in his ear. “For instance, the man over there may be a diplomat, carrying that attache case. The girl beside him may be a bride on her way to one of the Border worlds, she looks demure and excited enough.”

  “He’s probably a power tool salesman and she’s a dancer on her way to the Cetian planets to give the home-grown beauties some compet—”

  “Telstat to Dyarnal. Telstat to Dyarnal ready. Call for—”

  “Let’s go,” said Carrick, getting to his feet, picking up the small valise which would fit onto the platform lock when the power was relayed on full and be carried along with them for the twelve light years distance between Capella and Aldebaran.

  A metal door of blue craylite opened as they approached, disclosing a ramp that sloped gently downward toward a great glass bubble a hundred yards high and forty yards across at its widest point. Suspended magnetically inside the teleglobe was a black platform. The ramp conducted them inside the globe and onto the platform, then retracted.

  There were plain benches on the platform. Mai sat down and clasped her hands somewhat nervously. Carrick walked to the edge of the platform and watched a section of the globe slide into place when the ramp was back inside its slot.

  The wall of the globe was transparent. Through it the teletraveler could see the great chamber that housed the telestat, its walls flushed with brilliantly hued craylite, its dome black and luminous high above. Every time Carrick teleported he found this period of waiting for the condensors and generators to build to full power to be a time of utter breathlessness. The air was charged with excitement as though it understood and imported to the teletraveler the full impact of what was about to happen.

  Within split seconds all space would vanish. He and the girl would be in a point of no-where and no-when, while the entire universe shifted under the tremendous focal points that whirled so madly deep in the bowels of the planet. Time and distance would be annihilated by those energies and cease to exist as such. They would contract for a nano-second into one point, then expand.

  Then they would be on Dyarnal.

  Mai said, “I’m scared.”

  He turned and came across to her, sat on the polished solus-wood bench and put an arm around her. She was soft and warm to his touch, pleasantly scented.

  “Kael? Do you—ohhh!”

  The telechamber vanished and the great globe stood in a fantastic shower of pulsating squares and circles, polyhedrons and rhomboids of brilliant colors. The sensation was that of being encased in some old surrealistic painting, where matter was reduced to its ultimate formulae, where graphs and grids and the many shapes of nature came alive and swirled wildly in some unbelievable cosmological saraband.

  Mai stared, her mouth open, her eyes wide.

  It was beautiful, that awesome scene outside the globe. It pulsated as if with sentient life and caught them up in its eerie glows as though they were no more than dust motes. The black platform remained stationary; the effect was purely illusory, but so powerful was its impact that most people held their breath while teleporting.

  The sensation lasted only a few seconds.

  Yet while it existed, the teletraveler was one with the cosmos, with all matter, all energy. He was swept up into a primal dance of life. He quivered to the raw forces in the universe, shook to the titanic gales that spawned the stars and planets, almost collapsed before this magnificent aurora telesialis which held him in its grip.

  The walls of the chamber were rose red.

  “This is Dyarnal,” Carrick said.

  He let his arm fall from the girl and felt the coolness of his flesh where her own flesh had been so warm, so vitally alive. She was still filled with awe. Her eyes went around the chamber in disbelief.

  “What was that? Where were we?”

  “In no-where and no-when. Spacelessness. Timelessness. I’ve read theories that this crazy patchwork universe through which we traveled gave birth to our own, ages ago in some dreadful cataclysm, as if its pure energy rejected the matter of which our own universe is formed. That our stars and planets are the waste products of that other cosmos.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too much for me.”

  Carrick grinned down at her. She looked so much like a little girl right now, in that pumpkin-colored wool blouse and tweed skirt, that he felt the urge to catch her in his arms and hold her close. There was no time for that sort of nonsense, not right now.

  The globe hatch was opening with a whisper of air and the metal ramp of Dyarnal planet was sliding through it, right up to the platform. Carrick contented himself with putting a hand on her shoulder, turning her toward the ramp.

  “Let’s go,” he said gently.

  Mai Valoris muttered under her breath. He had been on the point of doing something she desperately wanted him to do. Something foolish and inane, for Kael Carrick. She wanted him to kiss her as a man kisses the woman he loves. Mai sighed. He wondered whether he were quite human, with that bionically changed body of his; she had begun to wonder the same thing.

  Her feminine instincts told her that—

  His hand nudged her forward. She went where he pushed, moving one foot after the other but she was still standing back on the platform, mentally. She put her hand to her mouth and rubbed it viciously to still the trembling of her lips.

  As blue had been the motif of the telestation on Hilnoris, so rose red was the dominant color of the telestat on Dyarnal. When Carrick and Mai moved across the marble floor of the huge waiting room, and out into the brilliant sunlight, Mai Valoris saw the reason.

  A great red sun stood at high noon.

  Aldebaran was a red giant. It hung in the sky like a bloated balloon, huge and monstrous, despite the fact that it was close to two hundred million miles distant from Dyarnal, which was its second planet. Explored more than fifteen hundred years before, it stood third among the star systems in commercial value. Its three most important planets were models of Empire culture, ranking with Earth itself, with Klinn of Deneb and Neoterra of the Centauris in the brilliance of its artisans, the polish of its social leaders.

  A skimmer eased close and dropped its ramp.

  “Skytowers,” Carrick said.

  The driver jerked around. “Skytowers? You got an invitation?”

  Even the public served Alton Raymond, it seemed Carrick smiled, nodding. “I will be admitted.” When he had come here with Hannes Stryker, he had learned the curious combination of numerals and words that acted as a passport into the Raymond domain.

  The driver shrugged and inserted the ramp by touching a button. Then he was sliding the aerodyne into traffic, moving it swiftly but carefully until he reached the level he wanted. Then he threw the vehicle into high gear.

  From the distance, Skytowers was an island floating in the air. Its faery towers and turrets rose out of the crimson western sky like those of fabled Camelot. Neatly trimmed bushes and shrubs dripped greenery over its edges. Skytowers was unique in the star worlds. There was nothing else like it, anywhere. Alton Raymond had seen to that, having copyrighted the construction of its craylite bottom and the gravity plates that held it aloft.

  Skytowers could go anywhere on Dyarnal, any time Alton Raymond wanted it to go, and at whatever speed he desired. His
home was his skimmer. Gossip said that there was a craystil dome which could be fitted over it so it could travel in space, but this was a lie. There was a private telestat embedded in its construction, however, which would take Alton Raymond to any of the commercial worlds that demanded his personal attention.

  The skimmer halted below a floating platform that rose and sank between Skytowers and the planet. There was a sentry hut here and a uniformed man inside it, on duty.

  The man came out and waited respectfully. The skimmer driver sat bulky and amused behind his wheel, waiting to see this couple thrown out on their ears, the way he had seen so many men and women brushed aside when they attempted to crash the floating palace high overhead.

  Carrick took the plastique from the guard and scribbled on it. The guard stared down at what was written, at that curious gibberish that was neither more nor less than the age of Alton Raymond, its cube root, and the address of the house on Earth where he had been born. Every year the number changed, but a man had to know the day and the hour when Alton Raymond had been born in order to write it correctly.

  The guard opened his eyes wide, then bobbed his head.

  The skimmer driver grunted and meshed gears.

  A glistening metal disc lowered swiftly, hovered a moment, then settled to the ground. An operator put a hand to his forehead, making a little bow. Mai stepped forward with Carrick at her elbow.

  The disc lifted swiftly to a landing platform. A railed ramp slid out; they stepped on it and were lifted into a formal garden. Color made a dizziness in the bright sunlight. Riotous red caltans from Arcturus-11, blazing yellow pufftals from Acrux-4, white dallipods, blue stardiscs from Ceti and of course, the old standbys from Earth, roses and dahlias and peonies, daffodils, iris and columbines grew in tangled profusion. There was no spring or summer season here; gardeners kept the plants always in bloom for when Alton Raymond strolled in his gardens he wanted to see flowers.