The shout was startling—until he heard it, Pel hadn’t realized how quiet this place was. It was as if everything was muffled somehow. Even Donald’s shout seemed thin and weak.
The Squire slashed, and the thing tumbled to the sand, one wing hacked halfway off. Once it was down, Donald stepped up and proceeded to methodically chop it to pieces. His movements seemed oddly sharp, almost jerky; experimentally, Pel lifted his own hand, and found it seemed to almost fly up. It was bouyant, as if he were in water.
Even without Godwin telling him, he guessed that wherever he was now, the gravity was weaker than in Raven’s world, weaker than on Earth.
Mervyn backed out of the stone, followed closely by Lampert.
“Where the hell are we?” Mervyn asked, as he looked around. As with Squire Donald’s shout, his voice was muffled.
Before anyone could answer, Smith appeared, holding up what looked like a plastic club of some kind, and then Peabody. Peabody was holding his right arm in his left, trying to staunch the bleeding of a long gash in his forearm. His uniform sleeve hung in bloodstained tatters, and there were several scratches on his face; blood trickled down one cheek. Pel realized that Mervyn and Lampert and Smith had all been scratched up, as well.
And the club was a two-liter soda bottle, held by the neck—Pel could make out the Pepsi logo on the crumpled label. Smith must have brought it along from the Browns’ basement.
Lieutenant Drummond appeared, limping, with a black creature clinging to his scalp; he snatched it off and flung it away. The creature flapped, tried to fly, but seemed unable to do so. Drummond hauled his blaster from his belt-holster, pointed it at the thing, and squeezed the trigger.
A sharp crack and an electric sizzle sounded, something flashed, and the black thing exploded. The scattered fragments were aflame, and shriveled quickly to black ash.
Half a dozen creatures came spilling through the portal then; Drummond blasted two of them out of the air, rather spectacularly, while Squire Donald skewered a third one with his sword.
Raven was next to emerge, sword drawn and dripping with ichor. Close behind came Captain Cahn, Valadrakul on his heels. More creatures accompanied them, and Drummond, Donald, and Raven disposed of several with blaster and blade.
They didn’t get them all, Pel noticed, but on the other hand, the survivors weren’t attacking; most of them appeared to be wandering aimlessly off across the landscape. A couple of the most gruesome specimens had collapsed, for no apparent reason, to lie twitching on the sands.
Lieutenant Godwin emerged, panting.
“Who’s left?” Smith asked.
Peabody looked up from the improvised bandage Mervyn was binding around his gashed arm. “Where’s Cartwright?” he asked.
“Down,” Godwin said. “We couldn’t get him.”
“Who’s left?” Smith repeated.
“All present but Cartwright, it looks like,” Lampert announced.
“What about the Earth people?” Soorn asked.
“We’re all here,” Amy told him. “Mr. and Mrs. Brown, their little girl, their lawyer, me, Susan—that’s everybody.”
“What about the locals?” Mervyn asked, looking up from the bandage.
A larger creature, roughly the size and shape of a German Shepherd but slick and black and saber-toothed, burst through the portal; Raven impaled it on his sword, where it writhed briefly, and died.
Stoddard appeared close behind it, Elani cradled in his arms; his scabbard flopped about at his side, obviously empty. He staggered out onto the sand and fell to his knees.
A black tentacle reached out, and then abruptly fell to the ground, chopped off where it had emerged from the portal. Pel rose to his feet and moved slowly closer, staring in horrified fascination at the severed limb.
It twitched once, then lay still.
“No more,” Raven announced. “The way is closed.”
“Well, everybody made it, right?” Amy asked.
“Except Pete Cartwright,” Godwin corrected her.
“Where’s Dundry?” Grummetty called. “Has anyone seen him?”
“Who?” someone asked.
“Isn’t he here?” someone else asked at the same moment.
“Be he not here?” Raven asked, frowning.
Grummetty shook his head.
Elani, trying to get to her feet, said, “I’m sorry, Grummetty. I could hold no longer.”
“Perhaps he’ll find refuge somewhere,” Valadrakul suggested. Pel noticed for the first time that Valadrakul had lost the braid in front of his left ear, along with a patch of skin, leaving a red, oozing spot. Something black, like ash, was smeared across his face and his left hand, while his right was still clean.
Grummetty blinked, and drew his lips tight, but said nothing more.
“What about Cartwright?” Soorn asked.
For a moment no one spoke; then Raven cleared his throat. “You have my deepest sympathies, sir,” Raven said, bowing to Captain Cahn, “on the death of your man Cartwright. He fought bravely and well, ‘gainst a foe not his own.”
Susan made a choking noise.
Nancy stood up, still holding Rachel, but said nothing. Rachel buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.
“Captain,” Mervyn said, “where the hell are we?”
Cahn looked about; so did most of the others, and an uneasy silence fell.
“It sure ain’t my basement,” Pel remarked, trying unsuccessfully to lighten the mood.
“I want to go home!” Rachel shrieked suddenly.
“’Twas Elani’s spell that brought us hither,” Raven said. “Speak, then, lady, and tell us—where are we?”
Elani, finally standing upright, hesitated, and then turned up her palms.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
After a moment of general consternation, Susan demanded, “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“’Tis plain enough,” Elani said, somewhat offended. “I know not where this place might be. I had not the time required to complete my incantation. I had called forth a portal to Messire Godwin’s...” She hesitated, groping for a word. “World?”
“Universe,” Godwin suggested.
“As you will, then—universe,” Elani agreed. “But I’d no time to steer it small, and in this... this universe there are many... worlds? Planets?”
“Aye,” Valadrakul said, as he dabbed lightly at the blood that seeped from his cheek. “They do call them by both names.”
Elani nodded. “I had no time, as I said, to find the right one, in so many. So I found one where men dwell—that much, I could do—and cast forth the way, and opened it, and here we are.”
“There are people here?” Amy said, scanning the empty horizon.
“Aye,” Elani said. “Somewhere.”
“It’s not as bad as it might be, then,” Cahn said. “If there really are people somewhere, and it’s in our space, then the odds are that it’s a part of the Galactic Empire—there aren’t more than a dozen rebel worlds in all the galaxy, so far as I know.”
“And how many worlds does your empire hold?” Squire Donald asked.
Cahn shrugged. “Not sure of the exact count just now,” he said. “Something around thirty-one hundred.”
“And how big are these worlds?” Donald asked. “How far must we travel to find whatever people there might be?”
“They come in all sizes,” Cahn answered. “From the gravity, assuming a typical planetary density, I’d guess this one at, oh, six or seven thousand miles in diameter. A little smaller than Terra.”
Donald nodded. “And your mile is, pray, how many feet?”
“Five thousand,” Cahn replied.
Donald accepted that and withdrew to do some calculation.
Pel had listened with mounting discomfort.
This episode—this story, this series of events, whatever it was - - was taking an unpleasant direction. He wanted to get out of it now. “That’s all very
interesting,” he said, “but it’s time for us to go home, now. Rachel’s exhausted and terrified.” He grimaced. “So am I, for that matter.”
Raven turned to stare at him. “Friend Pel,” he said, “perhaps you do not understand our situation.”
“I understand it well enough,” Pel said defensively. “I know what’s going on. Shadow sent those things, right? The big monster and all the little ones? It found us somehow...”
“The portals,” Elani said, interrupting. “It sensed the portals. I should have known that it would.”
“Yeah, well,” Pel said, “so it was the portals. Anyway, it found us, and it chased us all away from that place, whatever it was, and we wound up here, which is too bad for you guys, Raven and you others, I guess, because you can’t go home. And it’s not great for you others, Captain Cahn and the rest of you, because it looks like you’re out in the middle of nowhere and it may take awhile to get home, but it’s not bad, really, because at least you’re in the right universe.” He paused for breath, and saw Drummond nod.
“Well, for us Earthpeople,” Pel continued, “I don’t see that it makes any difference. Elani, here, can just open a portal to my basement, and we can go home and Rachel can go to bed and we can just forget any of this ever happened, right?”
Raven and Elani looked at each other unhappily.
“Friend Pel,” Raven began.
“Stop calling me that!” Pel shouted, his anger sounding weak and futile in the thin air. “Elani, right? You can send us home?”
Silently, Elani shook her head.
“Messire Brown,” Valadrakul said, “we are in another realm now, an alternate reality. In this place, our magic cannot work.”
“I wanna go home!” Rachel cried.
Pel glared angrily.
“We’re stuck here?” he said.
Amy, Nancy, and Susan had inched closer during the conversation; now all the Earth people but Ted were facing Raven, Donald, Stoddard, and the two wizards across a few feet of sand.
Raven nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “I fear you are.”
Pel looked about desperately, and saw the crew of the Ruthless, gathering to one side.
“They got to Earth, didn’t they?” he said. “There’s some way to get back!”
Raven looked at Cahn, who nodded. “If we can get back to Base One,” he agreed, “there’s the equipment there necessary to open a space warp back to your Earth.”
“So how do we get there?” Pel asked. “Where’s this Base One? Is it in this area?” A dreadful thought struck him. “Is it... is it even on this planet?”
“No,” Cahn answered. “I don’t know where the hell we are, but I know that much.”
“We’re on Psi Cassiopeia Two, Captain,” Prossie Thorpe called from atop a distant outcropping.
Startled, everyone turned.
“I’ve made contact,” she said happily. “Locally, I mean.” She pointed eastward. “There’s a small colony town about four hundred miles that way—Imperial, of course. If I can convince the governor there that I’m real, and not just a figment of his imagination, he can send a car or a hopper for us.”
“Psi Cassiopeia Two?” Smith asked quietly.
Drummond shrugged. “I never heard of it,” he muttered. “Must be way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh, it is!” Prossie called.
“Thorpe,” Cahn called back, “watch it!”
“Sorry, Captain,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s so wonderful to have my talent back, though—I can’t help it!”
Peabody saw Pel’s puzzled look, and explained, “She can’t possibly hear us talking, when she’s all the way over there—not in this thin air, she can’t. So she must be listening telepathically, and that’s seriously against regulations, spying on your own people without orders.”
Pel nodded, and asked, “What was that about convincing someone she’s real?”
Peabody shrugged, then winced at what the motion did to his slashed arm. “I guess she’s been calling someone,” he said, “and the local brass never heard a telepath before and isn’t sure he’s hearing one now.”
“Why wouldn’t he have ever heard one before?” Nancy asked. “I thought you people used them all the time.”
“Hey, there are three thousand inhabited planets in the Empire, and only four hundred telepaths,” Peabody explained, “and more than half of those four hundred are serving communications duty in the Imperial Fleet. Hardly anybody outside the fleet’s ever heard a telepath.”
“Why are there so few?” Pel asked. “I mean, can’t you train more?”
Peabody blinked in surprise, and threw Prossie a quick glance. Her attention was focused entirely on the eastern horizon; her crewmate leaned forward and raised his uninjured hand to shield his mouth as he whispered, “’Course you can’t train more! It’s something they’re born with—you either have it or you don’t.” He threw Prossie another glance. “I mean, they’re all mutants, really.”
“Oh,” Pel said.
Peabody nodded, and continued, “In fact, they’re all one family—all descended from one woman. Prossie’s great-great grandmother.”
“Oh,” Pel said. He considered, and then pointed out, “Well, then, they aren’t really mutants—I mean, she was, but her kids weren’t. The trait bred true, that’s all.”
Peabody pulled away slightly. “You making excuses for mutants, Mr. Brown?”
“No,” Pel said, confused, “I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Peabody said.
* * * *
Amy looked about her, then settled down and sat cross-legged on the sands.
That five-minute look at another world had gone wrong, just as she had feared it would. Now they needed to find this space warp thing.
Something would probably go wrong there, too.
Still, if everybody else could handle this, so could she. Her world had been snatched away from her, in an incredibly literal way, but she would just have to deal with it. She was still alive; that poor man Cartwright wasn’t, she’d seen him fall with that thing ripping at his back, tearing away skin and cloth, but she herself was unhurt except for the little scratches that other horrid flying creature had given her—she hoped the scratches wouldn’t get infected. Her skirt was torn up, but the scrapes on her leg hadn’t even broken the skin.
All that blood, those monsters, that was gruesome, traumatic stuff, but she could handle it. She was a healthy, intelligent woman, and she was not going to let all this mess her up.
She’d been through all that. She could take anything the universe—or universes—cared to throw at her.
She glanced at Susan, who was sitting curled up, almost in foetal position.
Susan was Vietnamese, and hadn’t she said something about already having seen enough war? Amy guessed that she must have been through hell as a girl, seen things that made those black monsters look like nothing.
She’d survived, though.
Well, maybe there were some things Amy wouldn’t be able to handle, but she intended to try. She intended to be, like Susan, a survivor.
No matter what path her life was dragged down.
* * * *
“See you, friend Pel,” Raven said, interrupting Pel’s talk with Spaceman Peabody, “think you not, ‘tis just as well that we found ourselves here, and not in your world?”
Pel glared at him. “How do you figure that?” he said.
“Because hence we can go, by means of the ‘space-warp,’ and all of us be sent safely home again. Had we reached your world, then I and mine would be trapped there.”
“Would that be so bad?” Pel asked. “I mean, how can you go back? Those monsters were all over everything!” He kicked at a dead one that lay near his feet.
“Oh, I think they’ll not stay,” Raven said with an airy wave. “Shadow saw us fled, and will surely summon home its creatures, so that they might be dispatched elsewhere as needed.”
; “Maybe,” Pel said, unconvinced.
“Where was that, anyway?” Nancy asked. “I mean, that place where we came out. It wasn’t your castle, because we saw that across the valley.”
“Certes, madam,” Raven agreed. “We made our lodgings in the forester’s cot of my ancestral lands, for my brother holds Stormcrack as vassal to Shadow, and in disgrace of our family’s honor.”
“Your brother?” Nancy threw Pel a worried glance.
“Aye,” Raven said.
Pel decided that a change of subject was called for. “Those monsters that got through, before the portal closed,” he said. “What’s going to happen to them? Should we hunt them down and kill them?”
Peabody shook his head. “Don’t need to,” he said. “They’ll die on their own.”
“Will they?”
“Oh, sure—just ask Soorn. He was on the clean-up crew on Lambda Ceti Four. Those things can’t live for long in normal space.”
Pel glanced around, not at Soorn, but at Grummetty and the little woman. They were sitting side by side on the sand, arms around each other’s shoulders. They looked pale; Pel wasn’t certain whether that might be partly due to the abnormally-white light.
“What about them?” he asked, surreptitiously pointing a thumb.
Peabody and Raven followed his gesture.
Raven looked grim, and Peabody shrugged his good shoulder.
“I wouldn’t make any long-term plans for them,” Peabody said.
“Perchance poor Dundry was the fortunate one,” Raven said. “An he found shelter, he might outlive us all; an he died, at the least it was quick.”
“Dundry was the other one, the one in green?”
“Aye,” Raven said, “Alella’s son, by her first husband.”
“I met Grummetty, but not the others,” Pel said. “That’s Alella, there?”
“Aye,” Raven said. “Grummetty’s wife.”
“So Dundry was—I mean, is Grummetty’s stepson?”
Raven nodded, making no comment on Pel’s initial use of the past tense.
Pel took a surreptitious look at Grummetty.
“You know,” he said, “Grummetty was in my basement for maybe ten minutes before he started getting sick. Really sick. He’s been here longer than that, hasn’t he? And he looks all right so far.”
Out of This World Page 16
