Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Now here's the strangest part," the captain reported at last. They strained for every word, cursing him for his maddening conversational tone. "I've gotten to the rescue signal. It's about a kilometer from the camp, on a low ridge. But it isn't turned on."

  It was almost two hours more before Nathan Brazil was back aboard the ship. He didn't get out of his suit, although he left the helmet on his chair while he checked the computer. It assured him once again that it was indeed receiving a distress signal from the beacon below.

  Only Brazil knew that it wasn't.

  It just wasn't possible.

  He unlocked the aft compartment and made his way back to the passengers, all of whom were seated in the lounge.

  "So what do you make of it, Captain?" Hain asked seriously.

  "Well," replied the other hesitantly, "I'm about to start believing in ghosts. That signal isn't on. To make sure, I disabled it completely before coming back. But it's still coming in loud and strong up here."

  "There must be another signal," Vardia suggested logically.

  "No, there isn't. Not only is one the standard issue—and everything else there is standard issue—but a computer that can plot a course in deep space through the underdimensions and get you to a particular port on a particular planet in the middle of nowhere doesn't screw up in plotting the coordinates of a distress signal."

  "Let's proceed on what we do know, then," Hain suggested. "We know that there is a signal—no, no, let me finish!" he protested as Brazil was about to cut in. "As I said, there is a signal. It was set or sent by someone who, presumably, is one or both of the people who survived the—ah, disaster. Someone—or something—wants us to come down, wanted us to find the wrecked station, wants something."

  "A malevolent alien civilization, Hain?" Brazil retorted skeptically. "Come on. We've got—what?—a thousand, give or take, solar systems explored to date, with more every year. We've found remains of the Markovians—one of their cities is near the camp, probably what the group was investigating—and lots and lots of animal and plant life. But no living, present-day alien civilizations."

  "But we've done only a trifle!" Hain protested. "There are a billion billion stars around. You know the odds."

  "But not here, inside our perimeter," the captain pointed out.

  "But, he is right, you know," Vardia interjected. "Perhaps someone—or something—discovered us."

  "No," Brazil told them, "it's not that. There is some simple explanation. What happened down there was cold-blooded human murder by one of the team. For what madness, I can't guess. They can't get off the planet with what they've got. If they don't starve to death first, their pickup ship will get them."

  "You mean you aren't going to try to find them?" Vardia asked. "But you must! Otherwise some other ship might answer them and the killers might be able to overpower them before they are forewarned!"

  "Oh, the odds against anyone else hearing that signal are astronomical," Brazil replied patiently.

  "I assure you," Hain said flatly, "that the last thing I wish to do is stalk a murderer on an unknown world. Nevertheless, Citizen Vardia is correct. If we found them, someone else might."

  Brazil's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Can you handle a pistol?" he asked the fat man. "Can you?" he asked Vardia.

  "I can," Hain replied evenly, "and have."

  "That is left to the military caste," Vardia replied, "but I am an expert with the sword, and I have a ceremonial one with me. It will puncture a pressure suit."

  Brazil almost laughed. "A sword? You?"

  She ran to her room and came back with a gleaming, handsome blade that glittered as if it were made of the finest silver. "It builds quick reflexes and good muscles," she explained. "Also, for some reason the sword is traditional in our service."

  Brazil's face grew serious again. "And what about Wu Julee?" he asked, not of her but of Hain.

  "She goes where I go," Hain replied cautiously. "And she will, in a pinch, help protect us with her life."

  I'll bet, Brazil thought sourly. You, anyway.

  * * *

  There was never any problem of pressure suits; they expanded or contracted to fit almost any known human wearer, although Hain's did give him a little problem. Each of them had worn one before, at least in the practice drill before the ship left port. They were extremely light, and, once the helmet had been set into place and the seal activated, a person hardly knew he had it on. Air was recirculated and refined through two small, light filters on the side of the helmet. The supply would last for almost a day. In an emergency situation, the lifeboat could recharge the air supply for fifteen people for a month, so there was plenty of air to spare.

  Brazil led them first to the distress beacon, if only to prove to himself that he was correct. They examined it carefully, and agreed that there was no way it could be sending.

  But the little lifeboat monitor connection to the mother ship still said it was.

  So they climbed back in and sped northward, the mystery so pressing on them that they barely noted the Markovian ruins near the camp and along the route. The ship's computer had located the two missing shuttlecraft on a plain near the north pole, and that seemed the next likely place to investigate. If anyone was left alive, he would be there.

  "Why do you think they are up there?" Vardia asked Brazil.

  "My theory is that the murderer couldn't trap one of them in the base camp and that that one took a shuttle and flew off. There must have been a chase, and that plain is where they met up," the captain replied. "We'll know in a little while, because we're almost there."

  Being in a lifeboat with a major spatial propulsion unit, Brazil was able to make the long trip by going back up into orbit and braking back down again. Thus, the nine-hour journey was reduced to just a little over ninety minutes. He braked to the slowest speed he could maintain as they cleared a last mountain range and came upon a broad, flat plain.

  "There they are!" Vardia almost shouted, and they all looked ahead at the two craft, small silver disks in the twilight, shown prominently at the edge of a slight discoloration in the plain.

  Brazil circled around the spot several times.

  "I can see no one," Hain reported. "Not a sign of life, not a pressure suit, nothing. They may still be in the craft," he suggested.

  "Okay," Brazil replied, "I'll set down a few hundred meters from them. Hain, you stay back just outside this boat and cover me. The other two of you stay inside. If anything happens to us, the mother ship will reclaim the boat."

  There was a soft bump, and they were down on the surface of Dalgonia. Brazil reached into the broad, black belt he wore on the outside of his pressure suit and removed one of two pistols and handed it to Hain.

  The pistols didn't look like much, but they could fire short pulses of energy at rates from one per second to five hundred per second, the latter not doing much for aim but able to spread things enough to knock off a small regiment. There was a stun setting that would paralyze a man for a half hour or more, but both men placed their weapons on full.

  There were seven ugly bodies far to the south.

  Brazil eased out of the hatch in the eerie silence of a near vacuum, and, keeping the two shuttlecraft always in view, moved to cover behind the lifeboat. That was a relatively safe haven. Since the boat had been built to take a tremendous amount of stress and even friction, it would be impervious to any weapons likely to be in the hands of their quarry.

  Hain emerged shortly after, having more trouble climbing down with his bulk despite the weak gravity. He chose a position just forward of the nose where he was mostly sheltered but could still use the edge of the boat to steady his pistol.

  Brazil, satisfied, moved cautiously forward.

  He reached the nearest craft in less than two minutes. "No sign of life yet," he told them. "I'm going to climb up on top and have a look inside." He mounted the rail-type ladder along the side of the shuttle and walked over to the entry hatch.

&nbs
p; "Still nothing," Brazil reported. "I'm going in."

  It took only another three minutes to get inside and find nobody home. He then repeated the sequence with the second craft and found it empty too, although this one showed signs that somebody had spent many hours there.

  "Come on up, anybody," he called. "There's no one here, or for many kilometers around. See what you make of it."

  Hain told Wu Julee to join him. Vardia climbed out last, and they all went over to the captain, who was standing near the second shuttle and looking anxiously at the ground. Brazil noted with some amusement that Vardia clutched her nice, pretty sword.

  "Look at the ground here," he said, pointing to the tracks of a person in a pressure suit coming up to a point at which the dust around was greatly disturbed for a large area.

  "What do you make of it, Captain?" Hain asked.

  "Well, it looks as if my theory's right, anyway. See—the first one was here, then saw the second one land, and he hid out on the back of the shuttle. When the pursuer—the guy who landed second I assume was the murderer—found nobody home, he walked around to here"—Brazil gestured at the mottled dust thrown about—"and was jumped by the first person from on top. They fought here, then one took off across the plain, the other in pursuit. See how we get only the toe tracks coming out of the fight scene?"

  Vardia was already following the tracks out onto the plain. Suddenly she stopped short and stared, incredulous, at the ground. "Captain! Everyone! Came here!" she called urgently. They rushed up to her. She was pointing at the ground immediately ahead of her.

  The fine dust was thinner here, and the rock changed color from a dull orange to more of a gray, but at first they didn't see what she meant. Brazil went over and stooped down. Then it sank in on him.

  At the place where one man had stepped, just where the two strains of rock met, there was half a footprint. Not the running type—it was angled, so that a little less than half of a grown man's footprint, pressure suit pattern and all, was visible in the orange. Where it met the gray, there was unbroken dust.

  "How is it possible, Captain?" Vardia asked, awed for the first time in her life—and not a little scared.

  "There must be an explanation. It's a freakish thing—but I'd believe almost anything after all we've seen. I'm sure we'll find their prints continue farther on. Let's see."

  They all walked onto the gray area for some distance. Vardia suddenly looked back to make certain that they were making footprints, and was relieved to see that they were. Suddenly she stopped short.

  "Captain!" she exclaimed, that toneless voice suddenly tinged with panic and fear. The rest caught it, stopped, and turned. Vardia was pointing back at the ships from which they had come.

  There were no shuttlecraft. There was no lifeboat. Only a bleak, unbroken orange plain stretching off to the mountains in the distance.

  "Now what the hell?" Brazil managed, looking all around him to see if they had somehow turned around. They hadn't. He looked up to see if he could spot anything leaving, but there was nothing but the cold stars as darknesss overtook them.

  "What happened?" Hain asked plaintively. "Did our murderer—"

  "No, that's not it," Brazil cut in quickly, a cold chill suddenly going through him. "No one person—not even two—could have managed all three craft, and nobody but me could have lifted that lifeboat for another two hours."

  There was a sudden vibration, like a small earthquake, that knocked them all off their feet.

  Brazil broke his fall and held on in a crouch on his hands and knees. He looked up suddenly.

  The whole area seemed bathed in eerie flashes of blue-white lightning, thousands of them!

  "Damn me for an asshead!" Brazil swore. "We've been had!"

  "But by whom?" Vardia called out.

  Wu Julee screamed.

  Then there was nothing but darkness and that weird, blue lightning, now laced, it appeared, with golden sparks. They all felt the sensation of falling and turning and twisting in the air, as if they were dropping down some bottomless pit. There was no up, no down, nothing but that dizzy sensation.

  And Wu Julee kept screaming.

  Suddenly they were lying on a flat, glassy-smooth black surface. Lights were on around them, and there seemed to be a structure—as if they were in some building, like a great warehouse.

  Things didn't stop spinning around for a while. They were dizzy, and sick. All but Brazil threw up into their helmets, which neatly and efficiently cleared the mess away. A professional spaceman, Brazil was the first to recover his equilibrium. Then he steadied himself, half sitting up on the black, glassy floor.

  It was a room, he saw—no, a great chamber, with six sides. The glassy area was also a hexagon, and around it stretched a railing and what appeared to be a walkway. A single great light, also six-sided, was suspended above them in the curved ceiling. The place was huge, Brazil saw, easily large enough to house a small freighter.

  The others were there. Vardia, he saw, was already sitting up, but Wu Julee, it appeared, had passed out. Hain just lay on the floor, breathing hard. Brazil struggled to his feet and made his way unsteadily to Wu Julee. He checked and saw that she was in fact still breathing but unconscious.

  "Everybody all right?" he called. Vardia nodded and tried to rise. He helped her to her feet, and she managed. Hain groaned, but tried, and was game about it. He finally managed it.

  "Just about one gee," Brazil noted. "That's interesting."

  "Now what?" asked Datham Hain.

  "Looks like some breaks in that railing—the closest one is over there to your right. We might as well make for it." Taking their silence for assent, he picked up Wu Julee's limp body and they started off. She weighed hardly anything, he noted, and he wasn't a particularly strong man.

  He looked down at her, sorrow in his eyes. What will happen to you now, Wu Julee? But I tried! God! I tried!

  Her eyes opened, and she looked up into his through the tinted helmet faceplates. Perhaps it was the gentle way he carried her, perhaps it was his expression, perhaps it was just the fact that she saw him and not Hain, but she smiled.

  She got much heavier about halfway there, he noted, as his body was drained of the adrenalin that had pumped into him during the—fall? Finally he was straining at the weight, although she weighed no more than half what she should. He finally admitted defeat and had to put her down. She didn't protest, but as they continued to walk she clung tightly to his arm.

  No matter what, Hain no longer owned her.

  Steps of what looked like polished stone led up to the break in the rail—six of them, they noted. Finally they were all up on some kind of platform from which a conveyor belt stretched out. But it was not moving in either direction.

  They all looked to the captain for guidance. For the first time in his life, Nathan Brazil felt the full weight of responsibility. He had gotten them into this—never mind that they had talked him into it, it was his responsibility—and he didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.

  "Well," he began, "if we stay here we starve to death, or run out of air—or both. We may do so anyway, but we at least ought to see what we're into. There has to be a doorway out of this place."

  "Probably six of them," Hain said caustically.

  Brazil stepped out onto one of the conveyors, and it suddenly started moving. The movement was so unexpected that he found himself carried along farther and farther away from the rest before anyone could say anything.

  "Better get on," he called back, "or you'll lose me! I don't know how to stop this thing!"

  He was receding farther and farther, when Wu Julee stepped on. The other two immediately did likewise.

  The speed wasn't great, but it was faster than a man would walk briskly. A larger, broader platform loomed ahead before Brazil could see it. So he slid off onto it, stumbled, fell down, and rolled halfway across.

  "Watch out! Platform coming up!" he warned. The others saw the platform and him in time to step
off, although each one nearly lost his balance in the attempt.

  "Apparently you're supposed to be walking on the belt," Vardia said. "That way you just walk onto the platform. See? There are actually several belts just before the platform, each one going at a slightly slower speed."

  The belt suddenly stopped.

  "No doorway here," Hain noted. "Shall we press on?"

  "I suppose so—whoops!" Brazil exclaimed as he was about to step out. The other belt had started in the reverse direction!

  "Looks like somebody's coming to meet us," Brazil said jokingly, a tone that didn't match his inner feelings at all. Even so, he pulled and checked his pistol, noting that Hain was doing the same. Vardia, he saw, still held onto that sword.

  They could see a giant figure coming toward them, and all stepped back to the rear edge of the platform. As the figure came closer, they could see that it was like nothing in the known universe.

  Start with a chocolate brown human torso, incredibly broad, and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms—in threes, spaced in rows down the torso—extremely muscular but attached, except for the shoulder pair, on ball-type sockets like the claws of a crab. Below, the torso melded into an enormous brown-and-yellow-striped series of scales leading to a huge, serpentine lower half, coiled, but obviously five or more meters in length when outstretched.

  As the creature approached the platform, it eyed them with large, human-looking orbs punctuated with jet-black pupils. As it reached the edge of the platform, the lower left arm slapped the rail. The belt stopped just short of the platform. Then, for what seemed like forever, they just stared at each other—these four humans in ghostly white pressure suits and this creature of some incredibly alien spawning.

  The alien finally pointed to them, then with its top pair of arms made a motion to remove their helmets. When it saw they made no move, it pointed again to them, then did what appeared to be a deep breathing exercise.