The Lost Secret

by Vaughn Heppner

  He wore his garments but no spacesuit. He had a blaster out, wore the anti-T headband and kept his other hand on the scatter-light gun in a belted holster. He felt faint emanations as he flew past different bulkheads…

  He realized they were many things Balron had neatly avoided mentioning. For instance, how had the C.I. Nubilus become trapped in the Library Planet system? What kind of machine was running on the second planet that had helped tear open a portal and then hold the ship in place? Who was presently messing with the Library Planet machine? Oh. And how had the gathering vessel gotten thousands of hull breaches and then slowly repaired itself?

  Did he believe what Balron had told him about planes of existence, shadows and reality? Maddox did not shrug, did not frown or shake his head. Yeah. He did believe the ball of light. It was a crazy story, but it did fit the facts he knew. Here was a question. Was it crazier if Balron had been a time-traveler or was it crazier that he was a dimension-traveler between planes of existence?

  Balron with his insane powers had interfered with Victory. For once, it wasn’t an end-of-the-world or end-of-humanity event. Did Maddox want to steal the Portal Maker—he hated the term. He would call it a Dimensional Portal. Did he want to steal the device that could do that?

  As he flew weightlessly through the main ship corridor, Maddox snorted. He had enough on his plate dealing with this reality or plane of existence. No. He never wanted to cross dimensions. It sounded more like a nightmare than an adventure. He had too many people here that he cared about deeply, starting with Meta and his grandmother.

  Now—Maddox frowned. He sensed something up ahead, something out of place with this C.I. Nubilus. The sensation grew stronger so Maddox’s grip on the blaster tightened even as he started to slow his speed. He was barely floating when the feeling slammed against him, so it took an effort of will to breathe.

  With a shooter’s squint, Maddox studied the corridor. He whipped his head around, looking back the way he’d flown, expecting to see a reception committee coming. Nope, the ship was still empty. Finally, he studied the deck—his head jerked back. “What the heck?” He pushed himself down until he hovered over a knife. It looked exactly like the monofilament blade he’d dropped when traveling up that weird tube back to Victory. Could this be his knife?

  He holstered the blaster and dared pick up the blade. It was his all right. It had the same heft he knew well. He sliced a bit of bulkhead so a shaving of metal floated free. It was a monofilament blade.

  He took out the combat knife from his boot and put the monofilament blade back where it belonged.

  Did the knife indicate he’d been on the ship before? Or was this a shadow of that event?

  He snorted. This was his knife. He’d been here when the Ardazirhos had been alive. Now, they were all hiding or possibly dead. Maybe Balron had been telling him the truth. Until this moment, Maddox had wondered if half of it had been BS as Ludendorff said he liked to sling around when needed.

  He shoved off the deck and continued sailing down the corridor, feeling better with the monofilament blade back in his possession. Now, all he had to do was find an ethereal door and go down an even more…weird corridor, hunting for—

  He saw it then. An area of bulkhead up ahead pulsated with energy. As he floated closer, the pulsating caused the metal bulkhead to waver as if with heat on a hot road on a blistering day in the desert.

  Sweat prickled Maddox’s neck as he stared. He didn’t like this, didn’t like the feeling, didn’t like the sense of disorientation emanating into his body or—

  Maddox licked his lips, pondering this.

  The Yon Soth in the star system eighteen hundred light-years from here had helped the poor sap of the ball of light. What kind of song-and-dance story had Balron told an ancient Yon Soth—an evil malignant entity—that would cause the vile monster to help the Traveler? The Yon Soth certainly wouldn’t have given a service out of the goodness of his heart. Balron must have come off as a sinister bastard of a Traveler that could grant the Yon Soth even greater power and knowledge than it already possessed. In the end, the Yon Soth had paid a terrible price, losing much of its vast intelligence, becoming a moron, a retard of a Yon Soth, slumming in a shunned star system gone haywire.

  Did Balron get his kicks getting others to do crazy deeds for him?

  Settle down, Maddox told himself.

  He swallowed, realizing this was making him paranoid. It should. This was far weirder than traveling to another spiral arm. This was as out there as he ever wanted to be. Well…he’d been to pocket universes or null regions before. He’d dealt with spiritual entities like Skas and Erills.

  “Okay,” Maddox said to himself. “It’s go time.” And yet, he hesitated, and looked back once more. He wanted to see wolfish crewmembers coming, but the damn corridor remained empty. At last, Maddox pulled on a float-rail, sending himself toward the shimmering ethereal area of bulkhead, closing his eyes at the last second.

  -76-

  Captain Maddox wasn’t sure what to expect, but he never would have guessed what actually happened.

  He sailed through the bulkhead. Yeah, he’d expected that. He had done something like this not so long ago: sailing up through a ship ceiling. Before that, he’d fallen from Victory down a tube and onto the C.I. Nubilus.

  He now sailed through the ghostly area of bulkhead and immediately began to fall. With a cry of surprise, he twisted in the air, opening his eyes, attempting to catch himself the way a cat could when dropped upside down—every kid has tested that at least once. Maddox failed miserably, slamming onto his chest, groaning in pain and only slowly sitting up.

  He was in a long narrow corridor, a dimly lit one with flickering bulbs in the ceiling. His gaze narrowed. The ceiling was old rock like in a mine and had sweaty beads of moisture. There was nothing of outer space, sleek starships and ray guns about the place. It belonged elsewhere, a world of dirt, mud and possibly lava.

  Could Balron have given him faulty directions? Could this be a setup? For what possible purpose, though?

  Maddox climbed to his feet, dusted off his garments and drew the blaster. Did the sixth sense cause him to try? Was there something off about this place, or dreadfully real? In any case, he aimed the blaster at some rock and squeezed the trigger.

  Not a damn thing happened. The blaster did not quiver in his hand to indicate its operation. No force beam gushed out. In this place, it was a useless piece of junk.

  He holstered the blaster and tried the scatter-light gun. It proved just as useless.

  Maddox considered that and drew the monofilament blade. He tried to cut through rock. That failed. Maddox stared at the rock in astonishment. The monofilament blade had never failed him.

  He sheathed the knife in his boot top, thinking.

  Finally, Maddox tried to break off a narrow piece of rock. But no matter how hard he tried—even kicking it with the heel of his boot—he could not do it.

  Maddox sat down cross-legged and considered the possibilities. Balron had left out data, or possibly the ball-of-light creature did not understand how this corridor operated. Balron had spoken about hard-matter planes of existence. Might one hard-matter universe be more real or harder matter than another?

  Maddox climbed to his feet. That must be the case, or…maybe this was the ultimate universe or plane of existence. If there were many planes or realities, the true or ultimate realm might have…more substance than the endless shadows.

  “Enough,” Maddox whispered. He wasn’t a philosopher and he certainly wasn’t a pondering Methuselah Man. He was the man-of-action captain.

  Maddox walked down the dimly lit corridor. Wait. This was a tunnel, not a corridor. He had to be deep in a planet instead of in a spaceship or ghostly between-realm.

  What proved odd was how tired he was getting. He tested it the next time he lifted his foot to walk. It wasn’t heavier than it should be, that would have indicated greater gravity. There was something else at work. He panted, and hi
s limbs shook. The energy to move in this place was rapidly exhausting him.

  This was what Balron had failed to tell him. No wonder the ball of light had needed a simian-hominid sap to do his dirty work. Balron had picked him because of his physical strength and maybe his intense willpower. The extra sixth sense had just been to get through the freakish gateways and operate in places where others became unconscious.

  Maddox’s feet dragged as he continued to trek. His shoulders slumped, and his bones began to ache with weariness. He spied something dark up ahead and tried to remember what Balron had told him.

  He couldn’t. Maddox could hardly think, hardly function. It was as if the farther he traveled into the tunnel, the harder it was. Maybe the farther he traversed, the more he entered the real reality.

  He staggered the last part of the way, seeing a blue uniform-wearing Ardazirho lying on the floor. The creature was lean and might have been agile in life. The wolf-creature was clearly dead, however.

  Maddox collapsed onto his knees beside the corpse. There were shoulder boards on the blue uniform and two stars on each. That must have indicated his rank. Ahead of the corpse was a metal container. If Maddox were to guess, the creature had negotiated the tunnel while carrying the metal box, about the size of a shoebox. Finally, the two-star Ardazirho had fallen. It must have never gotten the energy to climb back up.

  “End of the line,” Maddox whispered wearily.

  Shuffling past the corpse, Maddox let his hands drop onto the metal box. He yelped and snatched his hands back. The thing was red-hot, even though it did not glow.

  Maddox inspected the corpse’s hands. They looked burned, badly burned, with the fur on the other side singed black.

  Maddox used his monofilament blade and cut off the Ardazirho’s uniform. That was interesting. The blade cut as well as ever—the corpse’s garments, at least.

  Maddox sheathed his knife and wrapped strips of cloth around his hands until he had crude gloves of sorts. Only then did he lift the hot metal box.

  He shuffled along on his knees as he held the shoe-sized metal container. He continued even though he scraped the material from his knees.

  Once he’d made some distance, a sliver of strength returned, so he climbed to his feet. It was a good thing, too, because the material at the knees had worn through. He would have started rubbing away flesh soon.

  He continued gaining strength as he neared a shimmering rock wall. The tunnel led to that. For a moment, Maddox wondered if he could push through the shimmering wall.

  The extent of his panic was a quickened walk, a lowering of his left shoulder and—he bounced off the wall, tripped, staggering backward, and fell onto his butt.

  A spot in his throat became thick so he wheezed. If he was trapped in this realm…Maddox jumped up before he could think about it, charged the wall—he bounced off again, flung farther this time because he’d rushed the wall harder.

  Maddox slowly climbed to his feet as a feeling of terror swept through him. He belched several times, and then vomit gushed from his throat. He vomited a second time, panting afterward, wiping his mouth with a sleeve. The vomiting must have helped, as he didn’t feel as awful and regained his mental bearings.

  Setting the box on the ground, Maddox approached the shimmering wall and tried to push his hands through. They did not go through, although he felt the slightest bit of give like an old stiff mattress might have.

  He stepped back, thinking. The bit of give to the wall gave him hope. But he was going to need more than hope to cross through the portal.

  He stared at it, focusing. He switched off his headband, but nothing came to him.

  What am I doing wrong? Maddox cocked his head in one direction and then another. He must be doing something wrong, something different—aha!

  He had an idea. It struck him as he pondered the situation. He had done something different just now that he hadn’t done the times before. With hope surging, he picked up the box, careful to only touch it with the padded strips of cloth. He approached the shimmering wall and closed his eyes.

  He’d shut them the other times. Why that should make a difference, he had no idea. He recalled that Balron had said different planes had different rules, different elementary principles. For whatever reason here, shutting one’s eyes was critical.

  Maddox charged forward with his eyes shut, his muscles tensed for another slamming failure. Instead, he began to float.

  Maddox opened his eyes, finding himself in the C.I. Nubilus’s large main corridor, with the metal box still in his cloth-bundled hands.

  He laughed. This crazy scheme might actually work. He was eager to get back to the tin can and to have Balron leave them the hell alone for the rest of existence.

  -77-

  Maddox didn’t have to float far before Balron intercepted him. The ball of light oozed out of a bulkhead and hovered in place. Maddox slowed until he stopped.

  “You did it,” Balron said. “I can feel the parts emanating from within the container. They have dearly suffered, I’m sure.”

  Maddox let the box hover weightlessly as he began unwinding the cloth strips from his hands. He paused, asking, “How can parts suffer?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Balron said. “Open it. Hurry. I’m eager to be on my way.”

  “Why did I become so weary in the other place, the underground tunnel?”

  “Captain Maddox, we must act with haste. The volraptor could figure out where I am. If it does, it might try a last-ditch assault against me.”

  “My blaster didn’t work on the other side,” Maddox said. “My monofilament blade couldn’t cut the native substance and I found it almost impossible to keep awake there. Why, Balron? What was it about that other place?”

  “Are you truly so interested?”

  “I’m curious, yeah. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “I see… First, open the box. Then, I’ll explain.”

  Maddox became wary. “You’re going to keep your word after I open the box?”

  “I did to the Yon Soth.”

  That seemed too specific. Oh! Maddox reached up and turned on the anti-telepathy device attached to his headband.

  “You are quite mistrustful of me,” Balron said. “I cannot say I appreciate that.”

  “So sorry,” Maddox said flatly. “I had a rough childhood. It must have warped me. So, tell me, how do I know you’re going to keep your agreement once you have what you want?”

  “Because I have said so,” Balron replied.

  “Let’s take the box to the Between Realm. I’ll open it there.”

  “No, no, no. You must open it here. The parts are surely fatigued by their time…their time locked away. They will need all their substance to fuel the dimensional portal.”

  Maddox frowned. Balron was making less sense the longer he talked. Was the dimensional machine broken or just out of fuel? Maddox had the distinct impression that Balron had left more than a little out of his original explanations.

  “What happens to the C.I. Nubilus once you zip back to your plane of existence?” Maddox asked.

  “The Nubilus you can see in your universe will disappear,” Balron said.

  “This one is a shadow Gatherer then?”

  “Why must you drag this out, Captain? Let me leave this plane. Get on with your normal life and I will get on with mine.”

  “I hope you’re telling the truth, Balron. For once, I’m not sure what to believe.”

  “Turn off your headband and let your intuition guide you.”

  “I’m not that uncertain,” Maddox said. “You keep asking me to open the box. Is that because you can’t open it yourself, or might there be a surprise inside?”

  “To you show you my good faith, I will tell the truth: both.”

  Maddox examined the floating box. It was closed tight. He didn’t want to wrestle with it and burn his hands. With a flash of inspiration, he drew his monofilament blade.

  “You must not do it that way,” B
alron warned.

  The heck with that, Maddox swung, and the blade did its usual thorough job, cutting the metal box in half.

  Three sparks sizzled upward, and they began to circle each other, moving faster and faster.

  “You have agitated them with your violence,” Balron said.

  “So—”

  Something screeched.

  Maddox whirled around, drawing his blaster. A volraptor flapped toward him from farther down the main corridor. The captain pulled the trigger, rewarded with a normal gush of force beam. It struck the volraptor on its leathery snout.

  The creature’s eyes glowed fiery red. Blackness appeared before it, and the volraptor sailed into the blackness and out of sight, perhaps out of the ship altogether.

  Bewildered at the sight—no longer firing—Maddox turned back just in time to see Balron gather the three sparks like a mother hen gathering chicks beneath herself. The sparks disappeared under Balron, and he shined more brightly.

  “Did you eat them?” Maddox asked.

  “That is revolting,” Balron said. “I should strike you down for such an insult. But you did just chase away the volraptor. It will be some time before he can zero in on me again. He is a relentless hunter—but I suppose that does not really interest you. Now, I have what I want. I shall soon be gone. For once, I do not have to wait upon you to act.”

  Maddox holstered the blaster and took out the scatter-light gun.

  “I understand your gesture, Captain. That is another insult, this time against my good word. You are fortunate that I am in such a tremendously good mood. I am about to return home. This goes against the grain, but thank you, you repulsive hard-matter creature. It has been a difficult seven hundred years in your universe. You have no idea who I really am, and perhaps it is better that it remain that way. I doubt we will ever meet again. Now go, before I change my mind about you.”

  A ray beamed from Balron, striking Maddox. He staggered and almost lurched out of the tin can’s open hatchway. Maddox looked around wildly, but Balron and the ship’s corridor were nowhere to be found.