The Winds of Time
Page 3
across hisshoulders and smashed off the passage wall.
With that, he was around the corner, and boiling mad. He had no greatliking for gunfire, but it didn't shake him like the silently attackingbeast in the dark storage had done. He reached the deserted instrumentroom not many seconds later, had his gun out and cocked, and was facedback towards the passage by which he had entered. Maulbow, if he hadpursued without hesitation, should be arriving by now. But the passagestayed quiet. Gefty couldn't see into it from where he stood. He waited,trying to steady his breathing, wondering where Kerim Ruse was and whathad got into Maulbow. After a moment, without taking his eyes from thepassage entrance, he reached into the wall closet from which he hadtaken the gun and fished out another souvenir of his active servicedays, a thin-bladed knife in a slip-sheath. Gefty worked the fasteningsof the sheath over his left wrist and up his forearm under his coat,tested the release to make sure it was functioning, and shook his coatsleeve back into place.
The passage was still quiet. Gefty moved softly over to one of thechairs, took a small cushion from it and pitched it out in front of theentrance.
There was a hiss. The cushion turned in midair into a puff of brightwhite fire. Gefty aimed his gun high at the far passage wall just beyondthe entrance and pulled the trigger. It was a projectile gun. He heardthe slug screech off the slick plastic bulkhead and go slamming down thepassage. Somebody out there made a startled, incoherent noise. But notthe kind of a noise a man makes when he's just been hit.
"If you come in here armed," Gefty called, "I'll blow your head off.Want to stop this nonsense now?"
There was a moment's silence. Then Maulbow's voice replied shakily fromthe passage. He seemed to be standing about twenty feet back from theroom.
"If you'll end your thoughtless attempts at interference, Rammer," hesaid, "there will be no trouble." He was speaking with the restraint ofa man who is in a state of cold fury. "You're endangering us all. Youmust realize that you have no understanding of what you are doing."
Well, the last could be true enough. "We'll talk about it," Gefty saidwithout friendliness. "I haven't done anything yet, but I'm not justhanding the ship over to you. And what have you done with Miss Ruse?"
Maulbow hesitated again. "She's in the map room," he said then. "I ...it was necessary to restrict her movements for a while. But you might aswell let her out now. We must reach an agreement without loss of time."
Gefty glanced over his shoulder at the small closed door of the maproom. There was no lock on the door, and he had heard no sound frominside; this might be some trick. But it wouldn't take long to find out.He backed up to the wall, pushed the door open and looked inside.
Kerim was there, sitting on a chair in one corner of the tiny room. Thereason she hadn't made any noise became clear. She and the chair werecovered by a rather closely fitting sack of transparent, glisteningfabric. She stared out through it despairingly at Gefty, her lips movingurgently. But no sound came from the sack.
Gefty called angrily, "Maulbow--"
"Don't excite yourself, Rammer." There was a suggestion of what might becontempt in Maulbow's tone now. "The girl hasn't been harmed. She canbreathe easily through the restrainer. And you can remove it by pullingat the material from outside."
Gefty's mouth tightened. "I'll keep my gun on the passage while I doit--"
Maulbow didn't answer. Gefty edged back into the map room, tentativelygrasped the transparent stuff above Kerim's shoulder. To his surprise,it parted like wet tissue. He pulled sharply, and in a moment Kerim camepeeling herself out of it, her face tear-stained, working desperatelywith hands, elbows and shoulders.
"Gefty," she gasped, "he ... Mr. Maulbow--"
"He's out in the passage there," Gefty said. "He can hear you." Hisglance shifted for an instant to the wall where a second of theshroudlike transparencies was hanging. And who could that have beenintended for, he thought, but Gefty Rammer? He added, "We've had alittle trouble."
"Oh!" She looked out of the room towards the passage, then at the gun inGefty's hand, then up at his face.
"Maulbow," Gefty went on, speaking distinctly enough to make sureMaulbow heard, "has a gun, too. He'll stay there in the passage andwe'll stay in the instrument room until we agree on what should be done.He's responsible for what's happened and seems to know where we are."
He looked at Kerim's frightened eyes, dropped his voice to a whisper."Don't let this worry you too much. I haven't found out just what he'sup to, but so far his tricks have pretty much backfired. He was countingon taking us both by surprise, for one thing. That didn't work, so nowhe'd like us to co-operate."
"Are you going to?"
Gefty shrugged. "Depends on what he has in mind. I'm just interested ingetting us out of this alive. Let's hear what Maulbow has to say--"
* * * * *
Some minutes later Gefty was trying to decide whether it was taking aworse risk to believe what Maulbow said than to keep things stalled onthe chance that he was lying.
Kerim Ruse, perched stiffly erect on the edge of a chair, eyes big andround, face almost colorless, apparently believed Maulbow and waswishing she didn't. There was, of course, some supporting evidence ...primarily the improbable appearance of their surroundings. Thepencil-thin fire-spouter and the sleazy-looking "restrainer" had asufficiently unfamiliar air to go with Maulbow's story; but as far asGefty knew, either of them could have been manufactured in the Hub.
Then there was the janandra--the big, snakish thing in the storage whichMaulbow had brought back up from the moon along with the batteredmachine. It had been, he said, his shipboard companion on anothervoyage. It wasn't ordinarily aggressive--Gefty's sudden appearance inthe vault must have startled it into making an attack. It was notexactly a pet. There was a psychological relationship between it andMaulbow which Maulbow would not attempt to explain because Gefty andKerim would be unable to grasp its significance. The janandra wasessential, in this unexplained manner, to his well-being.
That item was almost curious enough to seem to substantiate his otherstatements; but it didn't really prove anything. The only point Geftydidn't question in the least was that they were in a bad spot whichmight be getting worse rapidly. His gaze shifted back to the screens.What he saw out there, surrounding the ship, was, according to Maulbow,an illusion of space created by the time flow in which they were moving.
Also according to Maulbow, there was a race of the future, human inappearance, with machines to sail the current of time through theuniverse--to run and tack with the winds of time, dipping in and out ofthe normspace of distant periods and galaxies as they chose. Maulbow,one of the explorers, had met disaster a million light-years from thehome of his kind, centuries behind them, his vehicle wrecked on anairless moon with damaged control unit and shattered instruments. He hadmade his way to a human civilization to obtain the equipment he needed,and returned at last with the _Silver Queen_ to where the time-sailerlay buried.
Gefty's lip curled. No, he wasn't buying all that just yet--but ifMaulbow was _not_ lying, then the unseen stars were racing past, themass of the galaxy beginning to slide by, eventually to be lost foreverbeyond a black distance no space drive could span. The matter simply hadto be settled quickly. But Maulbow was also strained and impatient, andif his impatience could be increased a little more, he might starttelling the things that really mattered, the things Gefty had to know.Gefty asked slowly, as if hesitant to commit himself, "Why did you bringus along?"
The voice from the passage snapped, "Because my resources were nearlyexhausted, Rammer! I couldn't obtain a new ship. Therefore I charteredyours; and you came with it. As for Miss Ruse--in spite of everyprecaution, my activities may have aroused suspicion and curiosity amongyour people. When I disappeared, Miss Ruse might have been questioned. Icouldn't risk being followed to the wreck of the sailer, so I took herwith me. And what does that mean against what I have offered you? Thegreatest adventure--followed, I give you my solemn word, by a safereturn to your own
place and time, and the most generous compensationsfor any inconvenience you may have suffered!"
Kerim, looking up at Gefty, shook her head violently. Gefty said, "Wefind it difficult to take you on trust now, Maulbow. Why do you want toget into the instrument room?"
Maulbow was silent for some seconds. Then he said, "As I told you, thisship would not have been buffeted about during the moments of transferif the control unit were operating with complete efficiency. Certainadjustments will have to be made in the unit, and this should be donepromptly."
* * *
"Where do the