There was blackness, emptiness, a swirl of omnidirectional motion…
Burt Tyson felt the soft foam rubber of the couch beneath his limp body. Sensation was returning to his limbs and trunk in a pins-and-needles tingle.
He opened his eyes. Yarmolinski’s long, perpetually worried face was staring down at him.
“You all right, Burt?” Yarmolinski said mechanically.
“Of course, Ralph,” Tyson said with a little smile, feeling control of the muscles of his face coming back to him. “Never lost a Voyager yet, have we?”
“Not yet.” Yarmolinski said with a sly grin. Yarmolinski was such a notorious pessimist that it had become a standing Project joke, even to Yarmolinski himself.
“Cheer up, Ralph,” Tyson said. “There’s always a first time. We’ll have a disaster for you yet.”
Now Tyson felt himself regaining full control of his body. He sat up shakily on the couch and dangled his legs over the edge, wiggling his feet experimentally.
“What was it like this time?” Yarmolinski asked, turning on the tape recorder.
“Pretty simple one,” Tyson said. “Red clouds, yellow desert, black cliffs. No vegetation, no life of any kind…”
“Sounds like it might be the same Place Jack went to on his last Voyage, though of course, there’s no way to be sure…”
“Ralph…?”
“What’s the matter, Burt?” Yarmolinski, seeing the sudden shadow cross Tyson’s face.
“It was there again,” Tyson said softly.
“Did you see anything?”
“No.”
“Hear anything?”
“You never hear anything.”
“Smell it? Taste it? Feel it?”
“No!” Tyson snapped. “Hell, Ralph, it was just there. You have to be a Voyager yourself to understand. It was just there. There was me, and there was the Place, and there was something that was neither part of me nor part of the Place. That’s all I can tell you about it because that’s all I know.”
“Have any ideas what it might be?”
“Hell man, we don’t even know what the Places are! Planets? Other dimensions? Other times? So how can anyone even guess at what it might be?”
“Take it easy, Burt. After all, you know you’re always jumpy afterwards. It’s just one of the side effects.”
“Not this time, Ralph. Look, I’ve been on what, thirty-six Voyages now. Thirty-two of ’em have been normal Voyages—if you can use such an idiotic word to describe a Voyage—bur four times out of thirty-six, I’ve run into this something. Maybe not the same something each time, but anyway the same kind of something. It’s not just nerves. When I’m there, I feel that finding that something is the most important part of the Voyage, and yet somehow, I can’t bring myself to…”
“You’re afraid of it, aren’t you?” Yarmolinski said evenly.
Tyson sighed. “Give me a cigarette, will you?” he said. Yarmolinski handed him a cigarette and lit it for him. Tyson took a quick puff and exhaled it through his nose.
“Yeah, Ralph,” he said, “I’m afraid of it. I don’t know why, but I am.”
“I’ve got a theory,” Yarmolinski said. “Want to hear it?”
“Go ahead, Ralph.”
“Okay. Let’s assume that the Places have no objective existence. No one has really been able to prove otherwise. The Psychion-36 makes hidden segments of the Voyager’s own subconsciousness accessible to him. The Voyager ‘visits’ his own mind. Well, then the something might very well be something in your subconsciousness that you are afraid to face. Every human being has things like that in his subconscious mind. It would explain the fear. It would explain why the fear grows more intense the closer you get to it—there’s a very similar effect in psychoanalysis. The closer a patient gets to the core of his neurosis, the more he fears it and the harder it becomes to approach.”
“Very pretty,” Tyson said. “The only thing wrong is your basic assumption—that the Places are figments of Voyagers’ minds. I’m not saying the Places exist, in the same way that this couch, or the Earth exists, but they can’t just be personal hallucinations. If they were, how do you explain the fact that different Voyagers seem to have visited the same Places?”
“Seem is the word, Burt. Since there’s no way for Voyagers to objectively record what they see, we can’t be positive that any two Voyagers have experienced the same Place.”
“You’re entitled to your theory, Ralph,” Tyson said, “and I’m entitled to mine. Maybe the something is another Voyager…?”
“Impossible! There are only seventeen Voyagers in the Project, and we never put more than one under at the same time.”
“Sure,” said Tyson, “but what if the Places are in another time? What if they’re all in the same time? Then two Voyagers, even though they were put under at different times here, could meet in the same Place, would have to meet if they voyaged to the same place…”
“Sounds kind of far-fetched,” Yarmolinski said, “but it is just as logical as my idea. But then why the fear?”
“Maybe because we just don’t know that it’s another Voyager. All we sense is that there’s something alien around, alien to the Place, and because we don’t expect another Voyager, alien to us as well.”
“Seems to me,” Yarmolinski said, “that you’re making assumptions about the Places as questionable as mine. It all seems to depend on what the Places really are, and that, no one knows.”
“Well,” Tyson sighed tiredly, “that’s what Project Voyage is about in the first place, now isn’t it?”
Just what is Project Voyage really all about…? Burt Tyson thought as he washed his fatigue away in the near-boiling shower.
The trouble seemed to be that the Project just grew; it had no real goal, unless you could call Voyaging itself a goal. The real goal, Tyson thought, should be to find out exactly what Voyaging was, what the Places were, but no one even knew how to go about asking those questions.
All that anyone really knew about Voyaging was how to do it…
Voyaging had been discovered by sheer chance. Psychion-36 was one of dozens of still enigmatic so-called “consciousness-expanding” drugs developed in the late sixties and early seventies. People who took Psychion-36 experienced hallucinations, as they did under many similar drugs. But Psychion-36 hallucinations were like no others. They were Voyages.
They traversed a short period of blackout to awake as disembodied egos in the Places. While their bodies lay in inert trances lasting for about an hour, their minds wandered through fantastic landscapes. And what was different about these hallucinations, what had made Project Voyage imperative, was that, although no one Voyager had yet visited the same Place twice, there was strong evidence that different Voyagers had been to the same Places.
Tyson rinsed himself with warm water and turned the cold tap on full blast for a minute or so. He was beginning to feel more like himself. Voyaging always took a lot out of him.
Trouble is, he thought as he dried himself, there’s no common ground between the Places and reality, no point of tangency, no way to relate the two levels of existence. The Places might be anywhere, any dimension, any time… or sheer hallucination…
Everyone in the Project had a minimum of one pet theory. The only thing the theories had in common was that none of them could be proved or disproved.
And now there was a… something, or a class of similar somethings that were appearing in the same Places with Voyagers with greater and greater frequency. First on only one in thirty Voyages, then one in twenty, one in ten… It was as if there were some weird kind of kinship drawing Voyagers and… somethings together, as if the unknown mechanism in the human mind that chose the Place for any given Voyage was acquiring a bias for Places where the somethings lurked, where the somethings lurked and filled the Voyagers with a nameless fear…
“You sure you want to Voyage again so soon?” Yarmolinski said again, as Tyson settled himself on the foam-rubber couch.
>
“I feel fine, Ralph,” Tyson replied, “and I want to find it. I have a feeling that I’ll meet it again… And I somehow sense that those somethings, whatever they are, are more important than the Places, or Voyaging itself. I’ve got to find out what they are.”
“I hope you’re not going in over your head, Burt,” Yarmolinski said. “What happens if you do make contact with it? What if it’s dangerous?”
“For crying out loud!” Tyson laughed. “How in blazes can it really be dangerous? My body is right here the whole time, under your mother-hen care. How can anything harm me in any of the Places when I’m not really there?”
“Who knows?”
“Stop it Ralph, or you’ll have me acting as paranoid as you do. Let’s get on with it.”
Yarmolinski shrugged, swabbed Tyson’s arm with alcohol, and injected the Psychion-36 into the vein in the pit of Tyson’s elbow.
Tyson closed his eyes. He felt the feeling retreating from his toes and fingers… his legs and arms… his pelvis… his chest… his neck…
He was a disembodied mind, a sightless, soundless, sensationless point of view floating in a sea of nothingness…
The Voyage began.
The blackness became blacker than black. The soundlessness roared in his non-existent ears. There was a feeling of swift motion in all directions at once…
Then, quite suddenly, the darkness dissolved. He was in a Place.
It was a Place of gently rolling green hills and valleys stretching to the horizon in all directions. The sky was a strikingly Earthlike blue, but there were three suns in it, blue, yellow, red.
Tyson moved his point of view closer to the ground, like a man bending. Although he had no body, his point of view was limited to what his corporeal body could do. He could not fly above obstacles any more than he could on Earth. Moving about in the Places was, in a sense, much like walking—your conscious mind willed you in a certain direction, and mechanisms which you were but dimly aware of translated, in some unknown manner, will into act. Somehow, in the Places, the mind translated what would ordinarily be a desire to walk or run or bend into an equivalent displacement of point of view.
Now Tyson could see that the green of the rolling countryside was not that of grass. The ground was covered, every square inch of it as far as he could see, with a luxuriant coat of green moss less than a half-inch thick.
Tyson went up gentle hills, down into little valleys. This was certainly one of the more monotonous of the Places, nothing but moss and sky, sky and moss…
As Tyson shifted his point of view aimlessly about, he noticed that there seemed to be black spots scattered at very wide intervals on the mossy plain. He willed himself over to the nearest one.
It was a hole. It was a perfectly circular hole perhaps twenty feet in diameter. It seemed to have no bottom, at least not as far as Tyson could tell. Had he a body, and had he something to drop, he might’ve tested the hole’s depth, but he had neither.
This sure is a strange one… Tyson thought. Almost like some weird pool table. Green moss and holes…
But then, all Places had their own brand of weirdness. Each was an adventure. That was the lure of Voyaging…
Aimlessly, Tyson moved on. There was not very much to explore in this Place. Everything was all the same… Perhaps over the horizon…?
Tyson passed close by another hole.
Suddenly a gibbering dread filled his mind. It was there. In the black depths of the hole a something lurked. The something.
Tyson fought with his own mind as it demanded: escape! escape! This was as close as he had ever been to it, as close, so far as he knew, as any Voyager had been…
The fear he felt was shattering, total, unbearable. Tyson screamed silently in the depths of his mind. He screamed and screamed and screamed, but this time he was determined to stand his ground.
He forced himself to the edge of the yawning hole, at the bottom of which it waited. He looked down, down into the blackness. He saw nothing, but the horrible, objectless dread tore irresistibly at his will.
Tyson flinched back. Then he forced himself forward. Again the fear slammed him back.
Again he pressed forward, fighting a battle with madness in his own mind. He had to face it, he had to.
Slowly, haltingly, agonizingly, he felt it begin to rise up out of the depths of the pit.
Alien, terrible, he felt it rise. The entire Place seemed flooded with primal dread. It was too much; no man could face this.
Tyson fled. He fled over the mossy hills, down the green valleys. Mindlessly, panic-stricken, the ego that was Burt Tyson fled.
It followed.
He could feel the something pursuing. He could feel the alienness clawing at his mind. He could feel a half-formed desire emanating from it. Something vague, almost pleading, yet totally fearful. Tyson fled.
A tiny lost portion of his mind remembered Tyson’s resolve, wanted to stop, to turn, to face that which followed… But the fear was too much, the resolve seemed something far, far away and long centuries ago. Tyson fled, he willed his ego over hills, down valleys, as fast as a man could run. He wished forlornly that the unguessable laws of Voyaging did not limit his speed to human capabilities, but it was in vain. Even the fatigue of running was beginning to overcome him, completing the Earthly illusion.
No! No! No! Tyson screamed in his mind.
It was gaining. What would happen if it caught him? What nameless horrors could it inflict, what terrible death…?
Tyson tried to tell himself that his body was safe in the Voyage Room with Yarmolinski. But he could not make himself believe that there had ever been anywhere but the Place, the green moss, the hills and valleys, the holes, and it gaining on him, always gaining.
Then, finally, the green moss began to blur. The hills grew misty. The suns began to flicker, to gutter and go out…
The Voyage was finally ending. With only moments to spare, with it almost upon him, the Voyage was finally ending…
Thank you! Tyson thought, as he felt the blackness enveloping him. Oh, thank you… thank you… thank you…
“Thank you! Thank you!” Tyson screamed.
“Burt! Burt! Calm down. It’s over. It’s me, Ralph.” Yarmolinski shook Tyson’s trembling body. Tyson opened his eyes. They were wild with terror.
“Take it easy, Burt, take it easy…” Yarmolinski soothed. He lit a cigarette and pressed it between Tyson’s trembling lips.
“Ralph… Ralph…” Tyson took long, hurried drags on the cigarette.
“You okay now?” Yarmolinski finally said.
“Yeah,” Tyson grunted. “I’m all right now… Lord…”
“What happened?”
“There was an—it there again, Ralph. This time, it almost… caught me. It was nearly on top of me when the Voyage ended.”
“Burt,” Yarmolinski said softly. “You think maybe you’ve had it? You’ve been on thirty-seven Voyages now, more than anyone else. You’ve run into this thing five times, also more than any other Voyager. Maybe there’s some kind of limit to how many Voyages a man can stand. Maybe you’ve reached your limit.”
Tyson stared silently at the ceiling for long moments, watching the cigarette smoke curl lazily upwards.
“No Ralph,” he finally said. “No! We’ve got to find out what this thing is. We can’t keep running from it. I can’t keep running. Sooner or later, someone has to face it and find out.”
“Why you?”
“Because I’ve run into it more than any other Voyager. You said so yourself. Now I’ve had it happen twice in a row. I think that I must be somehow becoming a magnet for it… or vice versa, or maybe both. Maybe it has something to do with my brainwave pattern, or maybe it’s just because I’ve had more Voyages than any one else. Whatever the reason, I think that I’ll run into it almost every time out now. Someone has to stand and face it, and since I’m the most likely Voyager to run into it on any given Voyage, it might as well be me.”
“But what happens if you do face it?” Yarmolinski asked.
“I don’t know…” Tyson said. “I just don’t know. And that’s what I have to find out, I guess.”
“You know what curiosity did to the cat.”
“Good old cheerful Ralph,” Tyson laughed shortly. “Makes me feel better already, knowing that at least you’re your old optimistic self. Talking about curiosity, I almost get the feeling that it’s curious about us. If only I had stood my ground. If only I weren’t so damned afraid…”
“But you were afraid, Burt. Maybe you had good cause. What if the Voyage hadn’t ended when it did?”
“What if—?” Tyson shuddered. If the Voyage hadn’t ended, it would’ve caught up with him. It had been gaining. Another few minutes in the Place, and…
That was it!
“What’s on your mind, Burt?”
Tyson exhaled a great puff of smoke. “I’ve got an idea, Ralph…” he said slowly. “It scares the hell out of me, but I’m sure it would work. If I can bring myself to do it… If I’ve got that much guts.”
“Want to tell me, Burt?”
“Not yet,” said Tyson. “Schedule me for another Voyage tomorrow. I’ll tell you then, if I still want to go through with it. Otherwise… well, it’s not the sort of thing one man has the right to suggest to another.”
“You’re absolutely sure you want to go through with this?” Yarmolinski said, as he swabbed Tyson’s arm with alcohol. “Remember, there’ll be no way to change your mind.”
“I’m sure,” Tyson said grimly. “It’s the only way. I’ve got to be forced to face it. I’ll never be able to do it otherwise. So, an hour after the Voyage begins, you give me a second shot of Psychion-36. Double the time of the Voyage. If we’d have done it last time, it would’ve caught up with me, and…”
“And what? That’s just it, Burt, we don’t know—”
“Please, Ralph! That’s the whole point. We don’t know what the Places are, and we don’t know what it is. This is the only way to find out. Get on with it!”
Yarmolinski shrugged. “It’s your funeral,” he said, as he injected the first shot of Psychion-36 into Tyson’s arm.
The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde Page 17