Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (331 page)

(1930-2001)

More than a decade after her death, MZB remains one of the field’s most puzzlingly complex figures. She was an inspirational figure to many groups and individuals, all of whom saw her as one of their own. It wasn’t enough for her to be a friend to people (as well as a fine writer and editor); many among her family and friends needed to claim her as a symbol of their causes, which in many cases contradicted each other. Regardless of whether she was Pagan or Episcopalian; gay or straight; or some combination of all the things people wanted her to be, if Marion was a symbol of anything, it was warmth, tolerance, and open-mindedness.

After years of writing for fanzines, Bradley sold “Women Only” and “Keyhole” to
Vortex Science Fiction
in 1953.
The Door Through Space
, her first (albeit short) novel, came out in 1957; by this time her stories were selling regularly. The next year, the first of what would eventually be thirty-five Darkover novels,
The Planet Savers
, was serialized in
Amazing
. Part planetary romance, part sword and sorcery, and all grounded in science fiction, the Darkover books had the excitement and feel of high fantasy without any of the stigma still attached to fantasy in those days before the publication of Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
in the U.S.

The Darkover books sold well enough that Bradley was able to tackle more controversial projects, like her feminist retelling of the King Arthur story in
The Mists of Avalon
(1983). Because the book became a huge best-seller it’s easy to forget how reluctant publishers were to touch it when she was first writing it in the late 1960s. Bradley, who loved editing magazines and short fiction venues, also started
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine
in 1988 and for years edited an annual anthology called
Sword and Sorceress
for DAW Books.

Bradley’s relationship history is complicated, and a number of contradictory stories have circulated. She was married twice, although she and her second husband had lived separate lives for years before his arrest on child molestation charges. Years of fairly rough living and emotional stress affected her health as well; she had multiple heart attacks and years of declining health (mostly screened from her fans by those closest to her) before the massive heart attack that killed her.

One of Bradley’s brothers, Paul Edwin Zimmer, and her oldest child, David R. Bradley, were also published SF writers.

The Door Through Space
is set in the same universe as Bradley’s Darkover novels and stories. It is an expansion of “Bird of Prey,” first published in
Venture
magazine in May, 1957.

First published by Ace Books as an Ace Double, 1962

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I’ve always wanted to write. But not until I discovered the old pulp science-fantasy magazines, at the age of sixteen, did this general desire become a specific urge to write science-fantasy adventures.

I took a lot of detours on the way. I discovered s-f in its golden age: the age of Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton and Jack Vance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my early efforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange dimensions went out of fashion, and the new look in science-fiction—emphasis on the
science
—came in.

So my first stories were straight science-fiction, and I’m not trying to put down that kind of story. It has its place. By and large, the kind of science-fiction which makes tomorrow’s headlines as near as this morning’s coffee, has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at ease with a rapidly changing world.

But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science-fiction are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow’s headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won’t live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.

—Marion Zimmer Bradley

CHAPTER ONE

Beyond the spaceport gates, the men of the Kharsa were hunting down a thief. I heard the shrill cries, the pad-padding of feet in strides just a little too long and loping to be human, raising echoes all down the dark and dusty streets leading up to the main square.

But the square itself lay empty in the crimson noon of Wolf. Overhead the dim red ember of Phi Coronis, Wolf’s old and dying sun, gave out a pale and heatless light. The pair of Spaceforce guards at the gates, wearing the black leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered at their belts, were drowsing under the arched gateway where the star-and-rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra. One of them, a snub-nosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth, cocked an inquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his head at me.

“Hey, Cargill, you can talk their lingo. What’s going on out there?”

I stepped out past the gateway to listen. There was still no one to be seen in the square. It lay white and windswept, a barricade of emptiness; to one side the spaceport and the white skyscraper of the Terran Headquarters, and at the other side, the clutter of low buildings, the street-shrine, the little spaceport cafe smelling of coffee and jaco, and the dark opening mouths of streets that rambled down into the Kharsa—the old town, the native quarter. But I was alone in the square with the shrill cries—closer now, raising echoes from the enclosing walls—and the loping of many feet down one of the dirty streets.

Then I saw him running, dodging, a hail of stones flying round his head; someone or something small and cloaked and agile. Behind him the still-faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understand the cries; but they were out for blood, and I knew it.

I said briefly, “Trouble coming,” just before the mob spilled out into the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get even a fleeting impression of his face—human or nonhuman, familiar or bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for the gateway and safety.

And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring over half the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition which permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they came to a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side.

I stepped up on the lower step of the Headquarters building, and looked them over.

Most of them were
chaks
, the furred man-tall nonhumans of the Kharsa, and not the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked with filth and disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two in the crowd were humans, the dregs of the Kharsa. But the star-and-rocket emblem blazoned across the spaceport gates sobered even the wildest blood-lust somewhat; they milled and shifted uneasily in their half of the square.

For a moment I did not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw him crouched, not four feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneously the mob saw him, huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl of frustration and rage went ringing round the square. Someone threw a stone. It zipped over my head, narrowly missing me, and landed at the feet of the black-leathered guard. He jerked his head up and gestured with the shocker which had suddenly come unholstered.

The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Terran law has been written in blood and fire and exploding atoms; and the line is drawn firm and clear. The men of Spaceforce do not interfere in the old town, or in any of the native cities. But when violence steps over the threshold, passing the blazon of the star and rocket, punishment is swift and terrible. The threat should have been enough.

Instead a howl of abuse went up from the crowd.

“
Terranan!
”

“Son of the Ape!”

The Spaceforce guards were shoulder to shoulder behind me now. The snub-nosed kid, looking slightly pale, called out. “Get inside the gates, Cargill! If I have to shoot—”

The older man motioned him to silence. “Wait. Cargill,” he called.

I nodded to show that I heard.

“You talk their lingo. Tell them to haul off! Damned if I want to shoot!”

I stepped down and walked into the open square, across the crumbled white stones, toward the ragged mob. Even with two armed Spaceforce men at my back, it made my skin crawl, but I flung up my empty hand in token of peace:

“Take your mob out of the square,” I shouted in the jargon of the Kharsa. “This territory is held in compact of peace! Settle your quarrels elsewhere!”

There was a little stirring in the crowd. The shock of being addressed in their own tongue, instead of the Terran Standard which the Empire has forced on Wolf, held them silent for a minute. I had learned that long ago: that speaking in any of the languages of Wolf would give me a minute’s advantage.

But only a minute. Then one of the mob yelled, “We’ll go if you give’m to us! He’s no right to Terran sanctuary!”

I walked over to the huddled dwarf, miserably trying to make himself smaller against the wall. I nudged him with my foot.

“Get up. Who are you?”

The hood fell away from his face as he twitched to his feet. He was trembling violently. In the shadow of the hood I saw a furred face, a quivering velvety muzzle, and great soft golden eyes which held intelligence and terror.

“What have you done? Can’t you talk?”

He held out the tray which he had shielded under his cloak, an ordinary peddler’s tray. “Toys. Sell toys. Children. You got’m?”

I shook my head and pushed the creature away, with only a glance at the array of delicately crafted manikins, tiny animals, prisms and crystal whirligigs. “You’d better get out of here. Scram. Down that street.” I pointed.

A voice from the crowd shouted again, and it had a very ugly sound. “He is a spy of Nebran!”

“
Nebran
—” The dwarfish nonhuman gabbled something then doubled behind me. I saw him dodge, feint in the direction of the gates, then, as the crowd surged that way, run for the street-shrine across the square, slipping from recess to recess of the wall. A hail of stones went flying in that direction. The little toy-seller dodged into the street-shrine.

Then there was a hoarse “Ah, aaah!” of terror, and the crowd edged away, surged backward. The next minute it had begun to melt away, its entity dissolving into separate creatures, slipping into the side alleys and the dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three minutes the square lay empty again in the pale-crimson noon.

The kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, slipping his shocker into its holster. He stared and demanded profanely, “Where’d the little fellow go?”

“Who knows?” the other shrugged. “Probably sneaked into one of the alleys. Did you see where he went, Cargill?”

I came slowly back to the gateway. To me, it had seemed that he ducked into the street-shrine and vanished into thin air, but I’ve lived on Wolf long enough to know you can’t trust your eyes here. I said so, and the kid swore again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit. “Does this kind of thing happen often?”

“All the time,” his companion assured him soberly, with a sidewise wink at me. I didn’t return the wink.

The kid wouldn’t let it drop. “Where did you learn their lingo, Mr. Cargill?”

“I’ve been on Wolf a long time,” I said, spun on my heel and walked toward Headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed me anyhow, discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough.

“Kid, don’t you know who he is? That’s Cargill of the Secret Service! Six years ago he was the best man in Intelligence, before—” The voice lowered another decibel, and then there was the kid’s voice asking, shaken, “But what the hell happened to his face?”

I should have been used to it by now. I’d been hearing it, more or less behind my back, for six years. Well, if my luck held, I’d never hear it again. I strode up the white steps of the skyscraper, to finish the arrangements that would take me away from Wolf forever. To the other end of the Empire, to the other end of the galaxy—anywhere, so long as I need not wear my past like a medallion around my neck, or blazoned and branded on what was left of my ruined face.

CHAPTER TWO

The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circling more than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun, the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once you step inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth would be alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by the strangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glass world inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing into thin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes, readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights.

The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chrome and polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clerical machines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave a view of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercury vapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered over with swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready for skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I’d be on it when it lifted.

Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself stride forward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, a lean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred on both cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk, my neat business clothes—suitable for an Earthman with a desk job—didn’t fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of my feet, approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from the Coronis plains.

The clerk behind the sign marked
transportation
was a little rabbit of a man with a sunlamp tan, barricaded by a small-sized spaceport of desk, and looking as if he liked being shut up there. He looked up in civil inquiry.

“Can I do something for you?”

“My name’s Cargill. Have you a pass for me?”

He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professional spacemen, which I obviously wasn’t. “Let me check my records,” he hedged, and punched scanning buttons on the glassy surface. Shadows came and went, and I saw myself half-reflected, a tipsy shadow in a flurry of racing colors. The pattern finally stabilized and the clerk read off names.

“Brill, Cameron…ah, yes. Cargill, Race Andrew, Department 38, transfer transportation. Is that you?”

I admitted it and he started punching more buttons when the sound of the name made connection in whatever desk-clerks use for a brain. He stopped with his hand halfway to the button.

“Are you Race Cargill of the Secret Service, sir?
The
Race Cargill?”

“It’s right there,” I said, gesturing wearily at the projected pattern under the glassy surface.

“Why, I thought—I mean, everybody took it for granted—that is, I heard—”

“You thought Cargill had been killed a long time ago because his name never turned up in news dispatches any more?” I grinned sourly, seeing my image dissolve in blurring shadows, and feeling the long-healed scar on my mouth draw up to make the grin hideous. “I’m Cargill, all right. I’ve been up on Floor 38 for six years, holding down a desk any clerk could handle. You for instance.”

He gaped. He was a rabbit of a man who had never stepped out of the safe familiar boundaries of the Terran Trade City. “You mean
you’re
the man who went to Charin in disguise, and routed out The Lisse? The man who scouted the Black Ridge and Shainsa? And you’ve been working at a desk upstairs all these years? It’s—hard to believe, sir.”

My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to believe while I was doing it. “The pass?”

“Right away, sir.” He punched buttons and a printed chip of plastic extruded from a slot on the desk top. “Your fingerprint, please?” He pressed my finger into the still-soft surface of the plastic, indelibly recording the print; waited a moment for it to harden, then laid the chip in the slot of a pneumatic tube. I heard it whoosh away.

“They’ll check your fingerprint against that when you board the ship. Skylift isn’t till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as the process crew finishes with her.” He glanced at the monitor screen, where the swarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobile spacecraft. “It will be another hour or two. Where are you going, Mr. Cargill?”