The Wind Between the Worlds (5 page)

“Maybe…” Flavin began doubtfully, but Vic cut him off. His faith in mankind’s right to its accidental niche in the Galactic Council wasn’t increasing much.

“No dice. The field is a space-strain that is permanent, unless canceled by the right wave-form. The canceling crystal is in the transmitter. Destroy that and the field never can be stopped. It’ll keep growing until the whole Earth is gone. Flavin, you’d better get those experts here, fast!”

V
ic sat in the car the next morning, watching the black cloud that swirled around the station, reaching well beyond the old office. His eyes were red, his face was gray with fatigue, and his lanky body was slumped onto the seat. Pat looked almost as tired, though she had gotten some sleep. Now she took the empty coffee cup and thermos from him. She ran a hand through his hair, straightening it, then pulled his head down to her shoulder and began rubbing the back of his neck gently.

Ptheela purred approvingly from the other side, and Pat snorted. “Get your mind off romance, Ptheela! Vic’s practically out on his feet. If he weren’t so darned stubborn, this should make him go to sleep.”

“Romance!” Ptheela chewed the idea and spat it out. “All spring budding and no seed. A female should have pride from strong husbands and proven seeding.”

Vic let them argue. At the moment, Pat’s attention was soothing, but only superficially. His head went on fighting for some usable angle and finding none. He’d swiped all the knowledge he could from Ptheela, without an answer. Plathgol was more advanced than Earth, but far below the Betz II engineers, who were mere servants of the Council.

No wonder man had resented the traffic with other worlds. For centuries he had been the center of his universe. Now, like the Tasmanians, he found himself only an isolated valley of savages in a universe that was united in a culture far beyond his understanding. He’d never even conquered his own planets; all he’d done was to build better ways of killing himself.

Now he was reacting typically enough, in urgent need of some race even lower, to put him on middle ground, at least. He was substituting hatred for his lost confidence in himself.

Why learn more about matter transmitting when other races knew the answers and were too selfish to share them? Vic grumbled, remembering the experts. He’d wasted hours with them, to find that they were useless. The names that had been towers of strength had proved no more than men as baffled as he was. With even the limited knowledge he’d pried from Ptheela, he was far ahead of them—and still further behind the needs of the problem.

T
he gun Flavin had insisted he wear was uncomfortable, and he pulled himself up, staring at the crew of men who were working as close to the center of wind as they could get. He hadn’t been able to convince them that tunneling was hopeless. All they needed was a one-millimeter hole through the flooring, up which blasting powder could be forced to knock aside the glass fragment. They refused to accept the fact that the Betz II shielding could resist the best diamond drills under full power for centuries. He shrugged. At least it helped the general morale to see something being done; he’d given in finally and let them have their way.

“We might as well go back,” he decided. He’d hoped that the morning air and sight of the station might clear his head, but the weight of responsibility had ruined that. It was ridiculous, but he was still in charge.

Flavin reached back and cut on the little television set. With no real understanding, he was trying to learn tolerance of Ptheela, but he felt more comfortable in front, beside the chauffeur.

Pat caught her breath, and Vic looked at the screen, where a newscast was showing a crowd in Denver tearing down one of the Earth-designed intercity teleports. Men were striking back at the menace blindly. A man stood up from his seat in Congress to demand an end to alien intercourse; Vic remembered the fortune in interstellar trading of levo-rotary crystals that had bought the man’s seat and the transmitter-brought drugs that had saved him from death by cancer.

There were riots in California, the crackpot Knights of Terra were recruiting madly, and murder was on the increase. Rain had fallen in Nevada. There were severe weather disturbances throughout the country, caused by the unprecedented and disastrously severe low over Bennington. People were complaining of the air, already claiming they could feel it growing thinner, though that was sheer hysterical nonsense. Also, the Galactic Envoy was missing.

The editorial of the Bennington Times came on last, pointing a finger at Vic for changing the circuits, but blaming it on the aliens who hoarded their knowledge so callously. There was just enough truth in the charge to be dangerous. Bennington was close enough to the transmitter to explain the undertones of lynch law that permeated the editorial.

“I’ll put a stop to that,” Flavin told Vic angrily. “I’ve got enough pull to make them pull a complete retraction. But it won’t undo all the harm.”

V
ic felt the automatic, and it seemed less of a nuisance now. “I notice no news on Pan-Asia’s ultimatum.”

“Yeah. I hear the story was killed by Presidential emergency powers, and Pan-Asia has agreed to a three-day stay—no more. My information isn’t the best, but I gather we’ll bomb it ourselves if it isn’t cleared up by then.”

Vic climbed out at the local station office, with the others trailing. In the waiting room, a vaguely catlike male from Sardax waited, clutching a few broken ornaments and a thin sheaf of Galactic credits. One of his four arms was obviously broken and yellow blood oozed from a score of wounds.

But he only shrugged at Vic’s whistled questions, and his answer in Code was unperturbed. “No matter. In a few moments I ship to Chicago, then home. My attackers smelled strongly of hate, but I escaped.” His whistle caught at a signal from the routing office, and he hurried off, with a final sentence. “They will survive, I am told.”

Remembering the talons on the Sardaxan’s hands, Vic grinned wryly. They were a peaceful race, but pragmatic enough to see no advantage in being killed.

Vic threw open the door to his little office and the four went in. It wasn’t until he started toward his desk that he noticed his visitor.

The Galactic Envoy might have been the robot he claimed, but there was no sign of it. He was dressed casually in expensive tweeds, lounging gracefully in a chair, with a touch of a smile on his face. Now he got up, holding out a hand to Vic.

“I heard you were running things. Haven’t seen you since I helped pick you for the first year class, but I keep informed. Thought I’d drop by to tell you the Council has given official approval to your full authority over the Earth Branch of Teleport Interstellar, and I’ve filed the information with the U. N. and your President.”

Vic lifted his head. “Why me?”

“You’ve learned all the theory Earth has, you’ve had more practical experience with more stations than anyone else, and you’ve undoubtedly picked Ptheela’s brains dry by now. You’re the obvious man.”

“I’d a lot rather see one of your high and mighty Galactic experts take over!”

The Envoy shook his head gently. “We’ve found that the race causing the trouble usually is the race best fitted to solve it. The same ingenuity that maneuvered the sabotage—it
was
sabotage, by the way—will help you solve it, perhaps. The Council may not care much for your grab first rule in economics and politics, but it never doubted that you represent one of the most ingenious races we have met. You see, there really are
no
inferior races.”

“Sabotage?” Pat looked sick. “Who’d be that stupid and vicious?”

T
he Envoy smiled faintly. “Who’d give the Knights of Terra money for a recruiting drive? I can’t play much part in things here—I’ve got limited abilities, a touch of telepathy, a little more knowledge than you, and a certain in-built skill at handling political situations. Your own government is busy examining the ramifications of the plot now. It had to be an inside job, as you call it.”

“Earth for Earth, and down with the transmitters,” Vic summed it up.

The Envoy nodded. “They forget that the transmitters can’t be removed without Council workers. And when the Council revokes approval, it destroys all equipment and most books, while seeing that three generations are brought up without knowledge. You’d revert to semi-savagery and have to make a fresh start up. Well, I’m lucky—your President Wilkes is sympathetic, and your F. B. I. has been cooperative so far. If you solve things, the sabotage shouldn’t prove too much of a problem. Good luck.”

Flavin had been eying him, and his dislike flared up as the Envoy left. “A hell of a lot of nerve for guys who claim they don’t interfere!”

“It happened to us twice,” Ptheela observed. “We were better for it eventually. The Council’s rules are from half a billion years of experience, with tremendous knowledge. We must submit.”

“Not without a fight!”

“Without a fight,” Vic said bluntly. “We’re babes in arms to them. Anyhow, who cares? Congressional babble won’t save us if we lose our atmosphere. But they can’t see it.”

The old idea—something would turn up. Maybe they couldn’t cut off the transmitter from outside, and had no way of getting past the wind to the inside. But something would turn up.

He’d heard rumors of the Army taking over, and almost wished they would. As it stood, he had full responsibility and nothing more. Flavin and the Council had turned things over to him, but the local cop on the beat had more power. It would be a relief to have someone around to shout even stupid orders, and get some of the weight off Vic’s shoulders.

S
abotage! It couldn’t even be an accident; the cockeyed race to which he belonged had to try to commit suicide and then expect him to save it.

He shook his head, vaguely conscious of someone banging on the door, and reached for the knob. “Amos!”

The sour face never changed expression as the corpselike figure of the man slouched in. Amos was dead—he’d been in the transmitter. They all realized it at once. But Amos shook off their remarks. “Nothing surprising, just common sense. When I saw the capsule start cracking, I jumped into a capsule headed for Plathgol, set the delay, and tripped the switch. Saw some glass shooting at me, but I was in Plathgol before it hit. Went out and got me a mess of
tsiuna
—they cook fair to middling, seeing they never tried it before they met us. Then I showed ’em my pass, came through Chicago, here, and home. I figured the old woman would be worried. Nobody told me about the mess till I saw the papers. Common sense to report to you, so here I am.”

“How much did you see of the explosion?” Pat asked.

“Not much. Just saw it was cracking—trick glass, no temperature tolerance. Looked like Earth capsule color.”

It didn’t matter. It added to Vic’s disgust to believe it was sabotage, but didn’t change the picture otherwise. The Council wouldn’t reverse its decision. They treated a race as a unit, making no exception for the behavior of a few individuals, whether good or bad.

Another knock on the door cut off his vicious circle of hopelessness. “Old home week here, evidently.
Come in!
”

The man who entered was the rare example of a fat man in the pink of physical condition, with no sign of softness. He shoved his bulk through the doorway as if he expected the two stars on his shoulders to light the way and awe all beholders. “Who is Victor Peters?”

Vic wiggled a finger at himself, and the general came over. He drew out an envelope and dropped it on the desk, showing clearly that acting as a messenger was far beneath his dignity. “An official communication from the President of the United States,” he said mechanically, and turned to make his exit back to the intercity transmitters.

It was a plain envelope, without benefit of wax seals or ribbons. Vic ripped it open, looked at the signature and the simple letterhead, and checked the signature again. He read it aloud to the others.

“To Mr.—damn it, officially I’ve got a doctor’s degree—to Mr. Victor Peters, nominally—Hah!—in charge of the Bennington Branch of Teleport Interstellar—I guess they didn’t tell him it’s
nominally
in charge of all Earth branches. Umm. You are hereby instructed to remove all personnel from a radius of five miles minimum of your Teleport Branch not later than noon, August 21, unless matters shall be satisfactorily culminated prior to that time. Signed, Homer Wilkes, President of the United States of America.”

“Bombs!” Pat shuddered, while Vic let the message fall to the floor, kicking it toward the waste-basket. “The fools! The damned fools! Couldn’t they tell him what would happen? Couldn’t they make him see that it’ll only make turning off the transmitter impossible forever?”

Flavin shrugged, dropping unaware onto the couch beside Ptheela. “Maybe he had no choice. Either he does it or some other power does it.”

Then he came to his feet, staring at Vic. “My God, that’s
tomorrow
noon!”

V
ic looked at the clock later, and was surprised to see that it was already well into the afternoon. The others had left him, Ptheela last when she found there was no more knowledge she could contribute. He had one of the electronic calculators plugged in beside him, and a table of the so-called Dirac functions propped up on it; when the press had discovered that Dirac had predicted some of the characteristics that made teleportation possible, they’d named practically everything for him.

The wastebasket was filled, the result of pure futility. He shoved the last sheet into it, and sat there, pondering. There had to be a solution!

Man’s whole philosophy was built on that idea.

But it was a philosophy that included sabotage and suicide. What did it matter any—

Vic jerked his head up, shaking it savagely, forcing the fatigue back by sheer will. There
was
a solution. All he had to do was find it—before the stupidity of war politics in a world connected to a Galaxy-wide union could prevent it.

He pulled the calculator back, just as Flavin came into the room. The man was losing weight, or else fatigue was creating that illusion. He dropped into a chair as Vic looked up.