Rocket from Infinity (12 page)

But the pirate was bigger and stronger with a second more concentrated effort; he jerked the gun away and at the same time hurled Pete backward where Pete lost his balance and fell.

He lay there. It was all over. He had only the satisfaction of knowing he'd fought a good fight. Still, he'd lost the battle. The pirate, not given to ceremony, lifted the rifle.

Then something whizzed past Pete's ear, a bright object that flashed viciously as it sank shaft-deep into Art's chest. Art was surprised, but he probably died without pain. Pete turned and saw Homer Deeds teetering from weakness and pain at the top of the stairs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

INFINITY—AND BEYOND

“There's only one thing,” Jane said. “I don't know what will happen.”

Pete had returned to the control cabin. He limped on a wrenched thigh, and a sprained wrist throbbed. But the pain was almost pleasant when he considered his miraculous luck. A lot of bruises, but no bones broken.

He'd given Jane the picture—Rachel in charge back there; the crippled pirate's agony alleviated by the drugs from the medicine kit he'd brought in from the monocar; Homer Deeds also patched up, his condition far less serious. He mentioned Homer's role as a melodramatic hero but left the rest of it for later, other things being more important at the moment. Not the least of these was to reassure Jane that the pressure was off—the crisis ended.

“I'll go out and kill that scrambler and we'll call for help,” he'd said.

Jane took the news quite calmly and Pete realized her complete preoccupation with the task she'd set for herself—solving the mystery of the cybernetic brain.

She already had it open. A switch controlled a lifting device that came down through a hole in the ceiling. It gripped the globe and lifted the top half of the shell away, and when Pete re-entered the control cabin he was brought to a flat-footed halt by what lay revealed. The interior of the globe looked like a huge treasure chest. It was a fantastic mass of wires, modules, gauges, stabilizers, and parts Pete could not even begin to identify.

But the most arresting aspect was the materials used. The glitter, the glow, the aura of absolute purity, told of precious stones and metals of fabulous value. Evidently, the science that created this cybernetic brain tolerated only the finest of materials with which to work.

Jane had been studying the complex maze and Pete had watched. Her pattern of operation was strange. She would touch a part and pause as though asking a silent question. Then, as though the answer were in the negative, she would withdraw her hand and place it on another part.

The thing's talking to her, Pete marveled—telling her where it hurts. Then he was ashamed of his own wonder. After all, he'd been the one who'd persuaded Jane that the metaphysical and the higher mental reaches were practical areas for her to move around in.

“I found a book,” she said.

“A book? Where?”

“It was in a cabinet up front. It's on the shelf there.” She pointed without taking her eyes or her attention off the brain.

Pete went over and picked up the book and began studying it.

“You're getting in my way again,” Jane said.

He knew what she meant and moved toward the door. “I'll go outside and look this over.” In the doorway, he stopped. “One thing—you said you don't know what will happen. What did you mean?”

“I'll find what's wrong, I think. I'll probably be able to fix it. But I don't know what will happen afterwards.”

Pete shrugged. “When you fix the thing, it will work again. That's logical, isn't it?”

“You're getting in the way.”

Pete left the cabin and went to his favorite place of seclusion, the first empty loft on that level. He felt that he should go down and help Rachel Barry, but the urge wasn't great enough to overpower his curiosity concerning the book.

It was an interesting object, an example of how comparative but widely separated cultures cleave to the same basic functional principles. It was a book that opened from the left and had a hard binding. But it was different. There were pages inside. The pages were of paper, but the paper too was different. And the symbols—the language in which the symbols were inscribed was the most different thing of all. Pete knew he didn't have a chance of even beginning to comprehend them. But somehow he thrilled at the touch of an object so old he could scarcely conceive of the time span—one that had probably come to him from a distance too great to even contemplate.

For a time he became lost in his sheer inability to understand the writing that he studied.

He was not aware of how long he was lost to the time and the place, but it seemed that he was projected, almost immediately into the weirdest, most unreal experience of his life.

It began with the entrance into the hold of the four Barrys. He noted first that Jane had reverted completely. This, he sensed rather than saw, and the previous Jane—the one he associated with the cybernetic brain—seemed never to have existed.

Another thing about Jane confused him. Her beauty had increased in his eyes. Yet, in this sense, she had not changed. In recollection, he realized that the beauty had been there from the first. How had he been so blind as to miss it?

He knew also, that another surprise was in store for him, but one of a different nature than Colleen's hysteria-heralded discovery down below. This one, whatever it was, had stunned them all to speechlessness, rocked them into something unique—a condition of total dependence upon him. They approached him and stood mute as though waiting for permission to speak.

“How is Uncle Homer?” he asked.

“He will be all right,” Rachel said, dully. “That is, he has no pain. And he's very sorry for what he did.”

“For saving my life?”

“For what went before. As I told you, Homer is weak.”

“I'm willing to forgive him everything.”

Ellen spoke up, her voice small and awed and deeply frightened. “We came to tell you something.”

“What?”

It was Colleen who broke the restraint that gripped them. “We came to tell you we don't know where we are!” she shrieked, and broke into a torrent of tears.

Pete turned to Jane. “What's she talking about?”

“Look out the port.”

Pete turned and saw, not the normal twilight of the Belt illuminating the circular cluster of jagged rocks in the Badlands, but a portful of velvet black glittering with gorgeous stars.

He turned back, confused. “What does this mean? I don't get it. We haven't gone anywhere. But—”

“Yes, we have,” Jane said.

“But we were fused to an asteroid. How could we…?”

“I don't know, but we did. I found a series of connections jarred loose in the cybernetic brain. I put them back and the ship wrenched herself loose from the asteroid quite easily.”

Pete looked out the port again. He turned back and spoke doubtfully. “Then everything's all right.”

“I'm afraid not. Something else happened. I don't know how or even when. All I know is it had to happen instantly. We aren't in the Badlands any more. We're somewhere else, but I don't know where.”

Pete didn't have the least idea what to do, so he laughed and spoke briskly. “I'll go outside and have a look. That makes sense, doesn't it?”

Colleen had fallen silent while Jane spoke. Now she exploded again. “I'm afraid! I want to go home to the
Snapdragon.
And I can't find Omaha, either!”

“Omaha will turn up,” Pete assured her cheerfully. “There's an old saying. A cat has nine lives.”

“Omaha's only got one—and I'm scared.”

They were moving out of the hold and down the ladder to the lower companionway. Rachel was shepherding Colleen while Ellen had thrust her hand into Pete's and walked close beside him. Without thinking, he extended the other hand to Jane and they moved after, a touching picture of togetherness.

“There's nothing to be alarmed about,” Pete assured them. “All the problems are solved and the trouble is over. And we're all as rich as Earth industrialists. We can go and live there now if we want to.”

Pete was talking to raise their spirits, but those spirits were very heavy and the lifting was difficult.

“That's fine,” Jane said with only a shade of the old spark in her voice. “Fine except for one thing. It's dark out there and we don't know where we are.”

Pete laughed. “You talk as though we can't travel without headlights. I'll go out and see where we are.”

He donned his air equipment, lashed the belt buckle tight and stepped into the air lock. They said nothing as the door closed.

A few moments later he stepped out on the hull of the ship.

His first impression had a double nature: A cold so intense it chilled him to the bone even as he automatically snapped his heat unit to
High,
an emergency level that was almost never used in the Belt. And a black darkness so thick and heavy that it was like a living cloud of pure hostility attempting to devour him.

Cold and dark in combination. And so intense it reached through his body and mind to his very spirit and dragged it down to a level of despair he had never before known.

The despair was akin to panic; enough so that he fought back instinctively. This was ridiculous! Something had happened, sure, but they were still alive and had a solid ship around them and they had defeated their enemies.

But had they?

Jerking sternly at his mind, Pete began scanning the heavens. He knew them well. They had been a major part of his life. The major stars, the flaming suns millions of light years distant. The great sprawling galaxies. The heavens were a great Constant to those who spent their lives in the Belt.

But not these heavens. They had changed to become a new and totally different aspect of infinity.

Pete shivered.

He stayed outside until the living cold had burrowed deep into his bones. Then he went inside.

As he stood in the air lock he made a firm resolution. The truth, of course. They had to know the truth. But not with overtones of doom.

So when he stepped inside and stripped off his gear, he managed a light, casual tone. “As near as I can figure,” he said, “we're about four miles this side of Orion.”

“But that's ridiculous,” Rachel Barry cried. “We must get to a hospital. We have sick people aboard.”

That sparked Pete's laugh—made it sound real because it was real. He wanted to snatch Rachel into his arms and kiss her. Strictly out of orbit, perhaps, running against the stream most of the time, maybe, but she was still the solidest human being he'd ever met.

“Jane and I will check the mechanism,” he said. “While we're doing it, I suggest you look into the food situation. There are boxes and boxes up forward. See if you can whip up a banquet.”

That reminded Colleen. “I'm starved!” she howled, and led the way forward.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TOLL CALL FROM THE VOID

Alone in the control room, Pete and Jane faced each other with seriousness but without panic.

“I guess we both know what happened,” Pete said.

“Tell me what you think happened,” Jane replied.

He shrugged. “One thing is dead certain. We're far out in space—farther than anyone in the System ever dreamed of going. We're far beyond the perimeter where our most advanced science, even theoretical, could possibly take us.”

“So there is only one way we could have gotten here,” Jane cut in. “Isn't that right?”

“Right. We know only the theory.”

“The theory?”

“Yes. To exceed the speed of light, which is practically crawling so far as infinite distances are concerned, time and space must be blended or merged into one—become the same thing. That way, the limitations of both are negated. Expressing it another way, to travel infinite distances, space must be bent so that the place we leave and the place we are to arrive at become one and the same. In such a theoretical process the trip would be made in a far shorter time than instantly—in fact, in no time at all because from our point of view there would be no place to go. We would already be there before we started.”

“You're making me dizzy.”

“Welcome to the club,” Pete said dryly, and went on. “What's happened to us, whether we like it or not, corresponds to the practical application of a wild theory. But it happened. We're out here. So we've got to assume that the people who built this ship successfully supplied the principle I outlined.”

All fear had vanished from Jane's expression. Her eyes were bright with interest in the new problem.

“I'll bet,” she said, “that I hooked those wires up wrong.”

“I wouldn't be at all surprised.”

“Then the thing to do is to change the wiring.”

“Of course. It might pay to be a little careful, though.”

“I'm always careful!”

“Of course, but keep in mind that we're not so bad off at the moment, comparatively speaking. We're only a few hundred million light-years away from our own galaxy. Make the wrong connection, and we might land out where time and space start bending back.”

“Is there such a place?”

“I'm not sure, and I hope we never find out.” Jane had already pulled the switch that lifted the cap off the brain. Pete said, “One thing first. Before you start tinkering, do you think we could find a radio on this tub? They must have had a way of talking to the folks back home.”

“I already found that. Or at least I think it's a radio.”

Jane pulled another switch that opened a section of the wall. “The brain can open this panel itself when it wants to send signals. At least it could when it was healthy. Don't ask me who it talks to, though.”

Pete studied the mechanism that was revealed. “There are no manuals here—no way to tune by hand. There must be a manual radio somewhere.”

“Why must there be?”

“Because that panel up front is for visual operation. The cybernetic unit wouldn't need dials. So the ship is obviously equipped for manual operation; maybe for emergencies or short hauls.”

“It's a thought,” Jane said pensively.

A few minutes later she found the unit behind another panel. Pete's eyes lit up. “Now we've found something a mere human can understand.” He took a position in front of the installation.

“They could have given you a chair,” Jane said.

“Maybe they weren't built to sit down. Be quiet now. I have to listen.”

“Are you going to call your father?”

“Not yet. I've got another call to make first.” He began experimenting with the dials. “Now if these people only paid their radiophone bill…”

It took quite a while, many disappointments, and a lot of doubts before a faint, questioning voice came out of the void.

“Who are you? Identify yourself.”

“A satellite station in the System,” Pete murmured in awe. Then he raised his voice. He gave the operator his Belt call letters and then said, “I'm in a salvaged ship somewhere out in far space—”

“I don't understand.”

“Tell him you don't, either,” Jane whispered.

“Shut up. Not you, sir. I'm trying to get in touch with a party on Mars—Doctor LeRoy, the Dean of the New Portland Mining College in New Portland on Mars. I don't know the call letters.”

“I'll connect you with information,” the voice replied.

“This is ridiculous,” Jane said.

“No!” Pete called. “This is an emergency. I'm pretty far out and I can't risk losing you. Check the letters and put us through—please!”

There was silence, then some static. Then the voice of Doctor LeRoy, by the miracle of someone's science, still identifiable across X number of light-years.

“Peter? Peter Mason? Why, how are you, son? How are things going?”

“Rather exciting, sir. I've got something to tell you and I hope you won't think I've gone mad, because I haven't. I can't explain it because there isn't time. I might lose this connection at any moment. So please just believe me and wait for explanations if we ever meet again.”

“All right, Peter. I'll believe you,” LeRoy answered mildly.

“I'm on a strange ship, a derelict. It's run by a cybernetic brain and I think it's the answer to Barco Village.”

“I see.”

“There are a lot of dead people aboard. I think Barco Village was an experimental pioneering station for a race of people who were much farther advanced thousands of years ago than we are even now.”

There was no excitement in Doctor LeRoy's voice when he replied. No unbelief, either. He could have been brightly interested in Pete's solution of a reasonably difficult problem.

“These bodies you found, Peter—were they…?”

“Definitely two races, also, men, women, and children,” Peter said exultantly. “They fit the indications of the artifacts perfectly.”

“Then I think you've hit on something. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir. It's my theory that the race we're talking about gave up the station after giving it ample time to prove out. For some reason, anyhow, they decided to leave Mars and sent this ship after the colonists. They loaded the balance of their supplies and themselves on the ship and took off. On the way back to wherever it was taking them, it crashed into an asteroid and ended up in the Badlands in the Asteroid Belt. That was where we found it.”

“Wonderful,” Doctor LeRoy enthused. “Now we'll have actual specimens of the Barco Village races.”

“We'll have more than that if we can get back, Doctor. There's something funny about this ship. We tried to fix the cybernetic brain that controls it and made a mistake. The ship didn't even move, but we're millions of light-years out in space right now.”

There was the silence of consternation. Then, “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be from what I know about star patterns. And I'm pretty good at them.”

“I—I don't know what to say.”

Pete remembered something. “The last time I saw you, sir, you told me you had a theory on how the Village came to be. Does the discovery of the ship prove or disprove it?”

“I think examination of the bodies will tend to disprove it. I had an idea that Barco Village might have been a prison colony for one of the Outer Planets. It occurred to me that testing the possibilities of colonization and using prisoners as test pieces so to speak, might have gone together. That might have accounted for the primitive conditions we found—primitive that is, when balanced against the sort of colony an advanced civilization might have set up.”

“Finding the ship exploded another idea we had,” Pete said. “That the civilization collapsed and wasn't able to send for its colonists.”

“That's true.”

“And as to your prison theory, I suppose the presence of women and children does hurt it.”

“Another idea I had—that the second, smaller race constituted slaves and servants doesn't speak well for an enlightened civilization.”

“Maybe they were just testing the staying power of two different races on their planet.”

“That could be. We'll learn more about that later, after checking into the new data. Another interesting field of investigation is open to us now, also. Instantaneous transportation looks pretty obvious. This, you've definitely proven. Yet the ship hit something out in space while apparently on the way home.”

“It would seem to me, sir,” Pete said, “that whatever happened to fault the home voyage had to happen at the moment of takeoff from the Village. The trip was started or the ship would have remained on Mars. But it was never finished. Therefore, the telescoping of the distance between the planets can obviously be reversed in a microsecond. That microsecond put the ship out in space where it later collided with an asteroid. It must have drifted helplessly, with all on board dead, before that happened.”

The intense scientific interest of both Pete and LeRoy, had created a bizarre situation—a calm discussion under the most perilous of circumstances.

This thought hit LeRoy starkly. “Pete! You said you were millions of light-years out in space! And I sit here chattering as though—”

“I sort of forgot the situation for a minute myself, sir.”

“Something must be done! I'll have to find a specialist to put you in touch with. Someone here on Mars—or on Earth—Someone who can advise you—”

Pete started to reply. Then, strangely, he smiled as he turned to look at Jane. There was pride in his eyes, and maybe something more as he said, “No thanks, Doctor. I'll ride with the adviser I've got right here on the ship.”

Static cut in sharply, crackling across the voice. Pete waited for a few moments and then turned from the panel. Jane was regarding him with a slanted gaze.

“Did you mean that?”

He grinned. “Don't get any ideas. I was referring to Colleen.”

“If I could pick this thing up I'd hit you with it.”

“Just try fixing it. Now I'm going to try and get in touch with my Dad.”

Jane's lips trembled just slightly. “I wish you'd tell me something.”

“What?”

“Where are they going to send the bill for that radiophone call you just made to Mars?”