S.T.A.R. Flight

by E. C. Tubb

  “That’s right.” They shook hands. Maddule was a man of comfortable middle-age. He wore the silver disc of a civilian and smelt a little of brandy. “You’re young,” he said looking at Preston. “On your first tour of duty?”

  Preston nodded.

  Maddule sighed. “I remember when I was about your age,” he said. “Every time we put the Gate through I had to take a look. Must have been a hundred different places in that first tour alone. But we all do it,” he added. “Like a kid with a new toy. The thrill wears off after a while.”

  “I expect so,” said Preston cautiously.

  “That’s why I was surprised to see you,” continued Maddule. “There’s not much here to attract a young man. Not for another week or two at least. The buffalo will be along then,” he explained. “They go south in the winter and back up north in the summer. Millions of them.”

  “Buffalo?”

  “That’s right. Big ugly beasts. The natives have fun in killing them. It’s quite a spectacle in its way. They use horses to cut off a few and kill them with arrows and spears. Sometimes you’ll get a young buck jump on one and kill it with a knife. That makes him popular with the women,” said Maddule dryly. “Fortunately we don’t need to prove ourselves in that way. You fond of shooting?”

  “I’ve done a little,” said Preston.

  “You could have some fun here in that case.” Maddule turned, waved at a waitress. “Let’s have a drink. You like brandy?”

  “Yes,” said Preston. Luck, he thought, was still with him. Maddule was obviously a shade under the influence, loquacious and eager for company. The more he drank the more talkative he would become and the more Preston would learn. “You come here often?”

  “Not often.” Maddule poured, sipped, nodded his appreciation. “Aside from the buffalo 1576 has little to offer. Easy targets, of course, if you like that sort of thing, but for real sport you should try 382. They’re still in the dinosaurage,” he explained. “Great ugly creatures with a brain the size of a nut. You need rocket rifles and lasers to bring them down.” He lifted his glass. “Your health!”

  They drank.

  “But if you like setting yourself up against something really vicious, you want to try 891,” said Maddule, refilling the glasses. “The insects are big on that one, damn big. Get yourself involved with a spider the size of a horse with a couple of wasps like vultures diving at your back and you won’t forget it. Bottoms up!”

  Preston reached for the bottle as Maddule set down his empty glass. “How about the other worlds?”

  “The M and R types?” Maddule shook his head. “Nasty,” he said. “Radioactivity can play the very devil with protoplasm. Those mutants —” He shook his head. “All right for the scientists, I suppose, but unless you like freaks they’ve nothing to offer. Except nightmares,” he added. “More brandy?”

  They had more brandy.

  “Tell you what,” said Maddule. “I could show you around a bit if you like. Cut a few corners. You’ve got the time?”

  Preston nodded. This was what he’d been hoping for. “I’ve got plenty of time,” he assured the other man. “If it wouldn’t put you to too much trouble I’d like to take advantage of your offer.” He smiled sycophantically. “It’s very good of you, sir. To be so generous, I mean.”

  Maddule beamed. “That’s all right,” he said. A delta stood before the hitching rail. “You,” Maddule called. “Get me a hover car.” He reached for the bottle and smiled at Preston. “Let’s have one more for the road.”

  Maddule drove the car, sending it weaving towards the Gate, droning up the ramp and jarring to a halt. “Attention,” he called.

  A panel slid open in the apparently solid wall. A gamma looked out. “Sir?” he said respectfully. Beyond him Preston could see an elaborate instrument panel.

  “Where does the Gate lead?”

  “5354, sir.”

  Maddule pursed his lips. “Bronze age,” he said. “Not much of interest unless you like gladiatorial games. Change to 1269,” he ordered. “Readjust when passed.”

  “At once, sir.” The gamma ducked back and did things to his instrument panel. Preston watched, learning nothing but that the man obviously controlled the operation of the Gate. He looked at the clear arch. It flickered. “1269, sir.”

  Maddule waved and sent the hover car forward. Again the faint tingle. Preston wrinkled his nose as they glided down the ramp and away from the building. The air held a strong scent of seaweed and brine. Somewhere he could hear the sullen murmur of waves.

  “If you’re fond of seafood this is the place to be,” said Maddule. “The continents never developed as they did elsewhere. It’s a sea-based ecology. I’ve seen crabs twenty feet wide and clams ten. I can recommend it for fishing.” The car breasted a slight rise and Preston looked down at a wide beach, wave-capped shallows, an ocean dotted with massive clumps of weed. Manlike figures, tiny in the distance, dived and swam like a school of mermaids. “Gilled,” said Maddule. “They have to be. Even the young are born beneath the water. Sometimes it’s hard to think of them as human.”

  “Are they?”

  “So the scientists say.” Maddule sent the car in a wide circle heading back towards the Gate. “They’re mammalian, anyway. Let’s try 803.”

  803 was a world of volcanoes, red glares at the horizon, drifting clouds of burning ash, and salamanderlike creatures which seemed impervious to flame. Preston studied a giant complex of what could only have been mining machinery attended by gnomish creatures disfigured by protective clothing.

  “A meteor strike,” explained Maddule. “A small asteroid must have split the surface and released the molten core. A long time ago now, of course. We find it handy for the extraction of selected metals. A worldwide smelting furnace,” he chuckled. “Tough on those who work here but, well, you can’t have everything.”

  Which, thought Preston, couldn’t be honestly said of the alpha. Maddule acted with the unconscious arrogance of a man who had never considered the possibility of being denied anything he wished. Not even the oldtime kings who had forced their subjects to treat them as if they had been divine could have dreamed of such absolute power. Worlds, for Maddule, were things to be seen as items of interest. At the Gates his word was law. In the caste system of the Kaltich the alphas were supreme.

  “Well, my boy,” he said after a half-dozen more samplings, “what now?”

  Plans for the manufacture of the Gates, thought Preston. That and the secret of the longevity treatment. Those and a quick trip back to Earth. Instead he said, “Well, sir, I’ll leave that to you.”

  “Nothing special that you’d like to see?”

  Preston shook his head.

  “No?” The alpha sent the car towards the opening of a Gate. “Well,” he said as they halted. “There’s no place like home.”

  “That’s right,” said Preston.

  “Sir?” The operator looked from his cubicle.

  “One,” said Maddule curtly.

  One, thought Preston. The home world of the Kaltich, it could be nothing else. He was impatient to get away from his guide. I need a library, he thought. A place where I can find information on all these worlds. And details of the Gates. Then all I have to do is to walk in and ask for them. There’s nothing an alpha can’t have. As long as I’m in this uniform I can get away with anything. Simple, he told himself. It’s going to be a piece of cake.

  “Here we are,” said Maddule, and stepped from the car. Preston followed, staring at what he saw.

  A wall pierced with doors. No opening or ramp or unloading bays. Nothing but a long row of Gates stretching to either side into and from which poured a steady stream of Kaltich. The terminus, he thought. The main junction. The heart of a transportation system which must be as complex as a city telephone exchange. But this is home, he reminded himself. You’re supposed to be used to all this. Just thank the man and walk away as if you knew where you were going.

  He smiled at Maddule and
held out his hand. “Thank you for showing me around, sir,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it.”

  “I’m sure that you did,” said Maddule, returning the smile. “Going back on duty now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Maybe we’ll meet again. Where are you stationed?”

  “1492,” said Preston quickly. “Well, sir, thank you again.” He turned and walked away. The prickle between his shoulders warned him a split second before he heard the voice.

  “Tulan! Halt or I’ll drop you!”

  Preston sprang to one side, running as he landed, heading for one of the openings opposite the Gates. He heard cries, a shout of warning, saw the startled eyes of a young girl dressed in blazing yellow. He tripped, fell, doubled with the searing agony of his left leg. Desperately he pounded at the knotted muscles in an effort to ease the cramp. Sweating, he looked up at Maddule. The alpha, no longer smiling, stared down at him. He held a thin tube in his left hand. He slipped it into his belt as two nulls came to stand at his side.

  “I warned you,” he said. “You should have obeyed.”

  “Go to hell!” Preston gritted his teeth as he climbed to his feet. It was an effort to stand. “Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do that?”

  “Did you really think,” Maddule asked coldly, “that it was so easy to impersonate one of my class?”

  NINE

  There was a thin, high-pitched singing which ground at his bones like a dentist’s drill, a sonic vibration which turned the world into a universe red with pain. It died and Preston saw again, felt the sweat running down his face and neck, the trembling of his hands. He took a deep breath, another, dragging air deep into his lungs. It was cool, sweet, smelling faintly of roses.

  “That,” said the interrogator softly, “was in the nature of a demonstration.” He was a gamma-alpha-null, a tall man, smooth with expressionless eyes and an implacable mouth. His hands were long, slender, sensitive instruemts of his will. They rested on the surface of his desk close to a panel of buttons and tiny signal lights. As Preston watched a light changed from red to yellow to white. Dultar nodded as if with satisfaction. “Let us understand each other,” he said. “Here there can be no thought of resistance to the questions I may ask. Cooperation will gain you freedom from pain. And truth,” he added. “I shall deal most severely with any attempt to lie.”

  Preston didn’t comment. He was still shaking from the sheer unexpectedness of the attack. He wiped the palms of his hands on the dull gray robe they had given him in exchange for his alpha uniform. His feet were bare. His hands were loosely manacled by a thin chain attached to cuffs on either wrist. The chain seemed fragile enough to snap at a jerk. He had tried it. The chain had not snapped but he had fallen groaning to the floor. The cuffs held electrical energy — disturbed, they grounded through the musculature of the body.

  “Now,” said Dultar, “I think we can progress. Your name?”

  “Jay Tulan.”

  “Please let us not waste time.” Dultar didn’t raise his voice. He seemed, thought Preston, like a headmaster talking to a wayward pupil who didn’t understand the power he was trying to defy. An Inquisitor faced with a heretic would have had the same unshakable conviction of superiority. “I do not wish to hurt you more than is essential,” he said. “I will ask you again. Your name?”

  Preston scowled. “I told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  Jay Tulan.”

  A long, slender finger hovered over a button, then withdrew. “I see that I must convince you that it is useless to lie,” said Dultar mildly. “That is not your name and I know it.” He rose, crossed to a shelf, returned with a heavy volume bound in red. The cover bore the single initial J. “This,” said Dultar, “is a complete record of the Jay family. No Tulan is listed. It is obvious, therefore, that the name you give is an invention.”

  Preston looked down at his hands. Luck, he thought. A man can only have so much luck. I used the last of mine when I picked on a name. How was I to know that, like the Chinese, the alphas and betas too, probably, put the surname first?

  “You do not belong to the family of Jay,” continued the interrogator. “Dee Maddule tells me that your ignorance was appalling. That, together with the fact that you carried a delta whip, made him suspicious. The clothes you were wearing, while genuine alpha garments, belonged to Zee Wayne. Where did you get them?”

  Preston shook his head. This time the thin, high-pitched bone-aching sound drove him to the edge of consciousness. He hates me, he thought as it died away. To him, to all of the Kaltich, I’ve done the unforgivable. I’ve impersonated an alpha. A Catholic, he thought, would have felt much the same if I’d spat on the Pope.

  Shaking, he stared about the room. Aside from the interrogator he was alone. The room itself was large, gleaming with surrogate marble, the floor of the same substance, rounded at the corners, rising to meet the walls. No place for dust. No place for mercy either.

  “We are checking every Gate to discover the whereabouts of Alpha Zee Wayne,” said Dultar evenly. “However, there are many Gates. It would help us both if you were to tell me where you obtained the garments.”

  “I found them,” said Preston. A lamp on the panel winked red.

  “Will you never learn that it is useless to lie?” Dultar rested his finger on a button. The sonic vibration focused on the chair in which Preston sat climbed higher up the scale. “I could rupture every capillary in your body,” said Dultar emotionlessly. “I could disintegrate your muscular coordination. I could burst you internally as I would a paper bag filled with water. Now, for the last time, where is Zee Wayne?”

  “I don’t know,” groaned Preston.

  The lamp winked green.

  The pain eased a little, faded completely as Dultar looked thoughtfully at his victim. “I think you are dissembling,” he said. “But I give you the benefit of the doubt. “You met Zee Wayne?”

  “No.” Preston had killed a stranger.

  “You obtained the clothes from an alpha?”

  Preston nodded.

  “His name was Zee Wayne. I tell you this so you will understand the question. Where is Zee Wayne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The lamp winked green.

  “Your name?”

  “Preston. Martin Preston.”

  “Where is Zee Wayne?”

  “I don’t know.” It was still the truth. I don’t know where he is, thought Preston. Where does a man go when he dies? To Heaven? To Hell? Is he still in the Gate or buried outside? Canned for later use or hung out to dry. Tell the truth, he told himself. But don’t tell all of it. Save yourself pain and answer the questions — and hope that this cold-blooded bastard doesn’t ask the important one.

  “Let us put the question in a different form,” said Dultar. He seemed blind to the obvious or, thought Preston, the concept that a man could actually kill one of the precious alphas for him simply did not exist. “Where did you obtain the clothes?”

  “On Earth,” said Preston.

  And doubled in screaming agony.

  He moved and discovered that his body obeyed his commands. He opened his eyes and stared at a low ceiling in which was set a glowing plate of luminous material. He raised his head and looked around. The shape of a cell, he thought, was always the same. Walls, bars, the bare necessities. A faucet protruded from one wall. He rose, crossed to it, drank greedily before he considered the prospect of drugged water. It didn’t matter. It was too late for that.

  “You must have had it bad, chum.”

  Preston turned. He was not alone. A man sprawled in one corner of the cell. Like Preston he was dressed in grey, his wrists shackled by the thin chain. His face was sallow, gaunt with deprivation. Acid or some other corrosive had apparently eaten a livid scar into the side of his neck. The backs of his hands showed the same blotches.

  “You had it bad,” he repeated, “but not as bad as it could have been.” He gestured to the side of his n
eck. “What you do? Bump into a gamma?”

  Preston shook his head.

  “I’m an epsilon,” volunteered the man. “Name’s Hughen.” He held out his hand. “You?”

  “Preston.” He ignored the outstretched hand. “What are you in for?”

  “I had a girl. A nice girl. We was going to get married. Had permission and everything. A delta saw her and wanted to use her. I didn’t like the idea.” Hughen sucked in his cheeks. “I knocked his hand off her arm,” he said. “When he gave me the whip I kicked him where it hurt most. Stupidest damn thing I ever did,” he said. “I lost the girl, most of my neck, everything. You?” Preston told him. Hughen whistled. “Man, are you in trouble! An alpha! Where did you get the gear?”

  Preston didn’t answer. A stoolie, he thought. A pigeon. They must think I’m green putting me in here with him. Do they really expect me to spill all I know? If you do you’re dead, he warned himself. As yet they don’t know I killed that alpha. They can’t think that way. To them a man wearing red is the next thing to God.

  “You know the best thing to do in a case like yours?” said Hughen. “Tell them everything they want to know. Cooperate all along the line. That’s what I’d do,” he said. “That’s what I did. Now I’m all fixed. They got me a job,” he explained. “Another chance to make good. Tough, maybe, but it’s more than I deserve. Not after kicking that delta. You play along with them and you’ll be all right,” he summed up. “Take my tip and tell them all they want to know.”

  “Go to hell,” said Preston.

  “They’ll get it anyway,” his cell mate pointed out. “They can use drugs to spread you wide open. They can take out your brain and put it in a case …” He shuddered. “It makes me feel sick when I think of all the things they can do.

  “Yes,” said Preston.

  “I’m telling you, that’s all. Just telling you.”

  Shut up, damn you, thought Preston. I don’t need you to tell me the spot I’m in. So far I’ve been lucky. Somehow I got Dultar’s goat. He lost his head and went too far. But it isn’t over yet.

  Irritably he began to pace the cell. It was solid, broken only by the barred door. He went to it, leaned against it, tried to look down the corridor to either side. The bars were too close; he could see nothing but a short extension of the concrete wall. He examined the ceiling. Aside from the glowing plate it was as solid as the walls, the floor. He returned to the door and looked at the lock. It was, he guessed, electronically operated, controlled from a central point.