The Gateway to Never

by A Bertram Chandler

  Grimes said goodnight to Clavering then went into his own bedroom. It looked to be very comfortable, with an inflated bed and matching chair, a shower and toilet recess and—the only solid furnishing—a refrigerator. Suddenly he felt thirsty. He looked in the refrigerator, found fruit and several bottles of mineral water, together with plastic tumblers. He opened one of the bottles, poured himself a drink. But he only half finished it. It was deliciously cold but, after the first few swallows, its flavor was . . . wrong. The water from the tap in the shower recess was lukewarm and tasted of sulphur, but it was better. Grimes drank copiously—the dinner had been conducive to thirst—then undressed and got into the soft, resilient bed.

  No sooner had his head hit the pillow than there was an earth tremor, not severe but quite noticeable. He grinned to himself and muttered, "I don't need rocking." Nor did he.

  XVIII

  Like most men who are or who have been in active command Grimes possessed a built-in alarm clock. This woke him promptly at 0500 hours Local, the time at which the domestic devil was supposed to be calling him, with coffee. Although Grimes had awakened he was in a rather confused state and it took him many seconds to work out where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He was on Eblis. He was shut up in a pneumatic plastic igloo. He was supposed to be aboard Sobraon before she lifted off at 0600 hours. He wanted his coffee. Even when there had been no night before the morning after he wanted his coffee to start the day with. He thought about coffee the way that it should be—hot as hell, black as sin and strong as the devil. Talking about devils—where the hell was the lazy devil who should have called him?

  Grimes found a bell push among the inflated padding that backed the bed. He pushed it. He pushed it again. He pushed it a third time. Eventually the plug-like door opened and the chambermaid, if you could call her that, came in. The white frilly cap looked utterly absurd perched on top of her horns. She asked in a well modulated voice, with only the merest hint of croak or hiss, "You rang, sir?"

  "No. My physiotherapist told me that I should exercise my right thumb more."

  "My apologies for the intrusion, sir." She turned to go. The long claws of her kangaroo-like feet indented the padded floor.

  "Wait. I was joking. Word was left for me to be called at five, with coffee. It is now 0515."

  "Nobody told me, sir. Do you wish coffee?"

  "Yes, please."

  "Black, sir, or white? With sugar or without? Or with mintsweet, or lemonsweet, or honey? And do you wish toast, sir, or a hot roll? With butter, or with one or more of our delicious preserves? Or with butter and preserves?"

  "Just coffee. In a pot. A big one. Better bring a cup as well. Sugar. No milk. Nothing to eat."

  "Are you sure that you would not care for the full breakfast, sir? Fruit, a variety of cereals, eggs to order, ham or bacon or sausages. . . ."

  "No!" He softened this to "No, thank you." After all, the demon-girl was doing her best. "Just coffee. Oh, and you might look in the room next door to see if Commander Williams is up. He wanted tea, I think."

  Grimes showered hastily, depilated, then dressed. While he was doing this latter the coffee arrived. It was good coffee. After he had finished his first cup he thought he had better see how Williams was getting on.

  The tray, with its teapot and accessories, was on the, Commander's bedside table. The Commander was still in the bed. He was snoring loudly and unmusically.

  "Commander Williams!" said Grimes. "Commander Williams!" snapped Grimes. "Commander Williams!" roared Grimes.

  In any Service it is an unwritten law that an officer must not be touched in any way to awaken him—even when the toucher is superior in rank to the touchee. Grimes knew this—but he wanted Williams on his feet, now. He took hold of the other man's muscular shoulder, shook it. Williams interrupted his snoring briefly and that was all. Grimes hammered on the headboard of Williams' bed—but it, like everything else except the refrigerator, was pneumatically resilient, emitted no more than a soft, slapping sound.

  Grimes thought of hammering the refrigerator door with something hard and heavy and had his right shoe half off before he thought of a better idea. Presumably this cold box, like the one in his room, would contain a few bottles of mineral water.

  It did. There were six bottles, and five of them were empty, put back after they were finished by Williams, who had a small ship man's necessary tidiness. Grimes pulled the seal of the sixth bottle, inverted it over the Commander's head. The icy fluid gurgled out, splashed over hair and face and bare chest and shoulders.

  Williams' eyes opened. He said, slowly and distinctly, "Mr. Timmins, you will fix the thermostat at once. This is a ship, Mr. Timmins, a ship-not an orbital home for superannuated polar bears. I want her warm as a busty blonde's bottom, not cold as the Commodore's heart."

  "Williams, wake up, damn you!"

  "Brragh."

  It was hopeless. And Williams' sleep was far deeper than could be accounted for by the previous night's drinking. He had taken nothing like as much as Captain Gillings—and, presumably, he was up. Those bottles of mineral water, only one of which Grimes had no more than tasted, five of which Williams had quaffed. . . .

  But who. . . ?

  And why. . . ?

  Grimes looked at his watch. If he hurried he would get to the spaceport before Sobraon lifted. He tried to hurry, but considerable local knowledge was required to find a quick way out of the vast honeycomb that the Lucifer Arms resembled. At last he was clear of the building and running along the path of coarse red sand beside the Styx. It was dark still, it would be some time before Inferno Valley received the benefit of the rising sun. But there was light enough from the luminescent lichenous growths that grew, here and there, on the granite cliffs. Past the Purgatorial Pool he ran, past the Devil's Stewpot, blundering through the white, acrid fog that, at this hour of the morning, shrouded its surface.

  And there were the ships at last—Clavering's Sally Ann in the background, dwarfed by the towering Devil's Phallus, and Sobraon, hiding with her bulk the little Rim Malemute. The TG Clipper's atmosphere running lights were on, and at the very tip of her needle-pointed stem an intensely bright red light was winking, the signal that she was ready for lift off. Loud in the morning calm was the irritable warming-up mumble of her inertial drive. Well clear of her vaned landing gear the mooring gang—the unmooring gang—was standing in little groups. The last airlock door was shut, the boarding ramp in.

  The note of the liner's inertial drive deepened, became throbbingly insistent. A siren howled eerily. Then she was lifting, slowly, carefully. She was lifting, and her drive sounded like the hammers of hell as it dragged her massive tonnage up to the distant ribbon of yellow that was the sky.

  She lifted—then suddenly checked, but there was no change in the beat of her engines, no diminution of the volume of noise. Yet she hung there, motionless, and those on the ground, human and native, started to run along the valley toward Grimes.

  There was a sound like that of a breaking fiddle string—a fiddle string inches in diameter plucked to destruction by a giant, a ship-sized giant, a ship. . . . Sobraon, suddenly freed, surged upwards, and astern of her the broken ends of the mooring cable that had fouled one of her vanes lashed out like whips, striking sparks from the granite rocks.

  And Rim Malemute, whose mooring wire it was that had been snagged, teetered for long seconds on two feet of her tripedal landing gear, teetered—and toppled.

  "Cor!" muttered somebody, "they haven't half made a mess of the poor little bitch."

  Grimes looked at him. It was Rim Malemute's ship-keeping officer, who had turned out to watch the big TG Clipper's lift off.

  The Commodore said, "You're a witness. Come with me to the control tower and we'll slap a complaint on the Duty Controller's desk before he has time to think of suing us for having our lines too close to Sobraon's stern vanes."

  "But he can't, sir. The Port Captain himself saw the moorings set up."

/>   "Port Captains," Grimes told him, "are like the kings in olden days. They can do no wrong."

  XIX

  The Control Tower was a shack on stilts and had little in the way of electronic equipment—just a normal space-time transceiver, a Carlotti transceiver and, logically enough for this planet, a seismograph. The Duty Aerospace Control Officer was little more than a boy, and a badly frightened boy at that. He looked around with a start as Grimes and the Malemute's Third Engineer burst in. He said, in a shaken voice, "Did you see that, sir? Did you see that?"

  "Too right I saw it!" Grimes told him. "Stick a piece of paper in your typewriter and take this down. Ready? I, John Grimes, Commodore, Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, senior officer of the Rim Worlds Navy on Eblis, hereby lodge a complaint, as follows. Got all that? At 0600 hours this morning—put the date in, will you?—the cruise liner Sobraon, under the pilotage of Captain Clavering, Port Captain, Inferno Valley, fouled the moorings of the Rim Worlds Naval Auxiliary Vessel Rim Malemute, as a result of which Rim Malemute sustained severe damage, the extent of which has yet to be determined. I, Commodore John Grimes, hold the Inferno Valley port authorities responsible for this accident. That's all. Give it to me, and I'll sign it. Take copies and let me have three."

  "But, sir, it was an accident. I saw it too. When Sobraon's vane fouled Rim Malemute's moorings Captain Clavering had to keep on going. The ship was off balance. If he'd tried to land there'd have been a shocking disaster."

  "I said it was an accident," stated Grimes. "But that has no bearing at all on the question of legal liability. Somebody will have to pay for the repairs to the Malemute. I suppose that it will be Lloyd's, as usual."

  But was it an accident? Grimes asked himself. This Sobraon was practically a sister ship to Clavering's own Sally Ann, his last space-going command. Too, Clavering had piloted Sobraon inwards. He would know the second/foot/tons developed by her inertial drive. As Port Captain he would know, too, the breaking strain of Rim Malemute's moorings. His motive? Plain enough. He didn't want Grimes ranging far and wide over the surface of Eblis, ostensibly conducting a survey. Deliberately, knowing Gillings' weakness, he had got the TG Clipper's Master drunk the night before lift off. And Gillings, knowing that he was morally as well as legally to blame for the alleged accident, would tend to back up Clavering in any story that did not show him and his pilot in a bad light. After all, insofar as his owners were concerned he was there, and they were not.

  Just then Clavering came through on the transceiver. His face, in the little screen, was surprisingly calm. Behind him, Gillings seemed to have aged years in as many minutes. "Sobraon to Eblis Aero-Space Control . . . I don't think we sustained any damage, but I'm putting the ship in orbit until we're sure. Expect me when you see me. Over."

  "Commodore Grimes is here, sir."

  "Put him on, will you? Good morning, Commodore. I'm afraid we damaged your Malemute. I saw her come a clanger in the rear vision screen. I'm sorry about that."

  "So am I," Grimes said.

  "I'm Lloyd's Agent on Eblis. I'll survey Malemute as soon as I get back."

  "That's uncommonly decent of you," said Grimes.

  "Don't take it so hard, Commodore. Excuse me, please. I've some pilotage to do. Over and out."

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes. After this unsatisfactory conversational exchange he could continue with his thoughts. There was the failure, the deliberate failure, he was sure, to have Grimes and Williams called so that they could be in Sobraon's control room during lift off. There were the bottles of drugged mineral water—very tempting after a thirst inducing meal—in the bedroom refrigerators. Of course, he did not know that the mineral water had been drugged, but it certainly looked that way. He should have kept a sample—but what good would that have been? On this world there were no police, no forensic laboratories. Clavering was the law—such as it was.

  Clavering came back on the NST transceiver. "In orbit," he announced. "The Chief Officer's making an inspection now. Is Commodore Grimes still with you?"

  "Grimes here."

  "For your report, Commodore, the wind caught us just as we were lifting."

  "There wasn't any wind, Captain Clavering. I saw the whole thing happen."

  "Oh, there wouldn't be any wind at ground level. But there are some odd eddies in the higher levels of the canyon."

  "As low as only one hundred meters up?"

  "Yes."

  And you're the expert on this bloody world, thought Grimes. Your word'd be better than mine if I tried to raise any kind of a stink.

  "For the remainder of your stay on Eblis," went on Clavering, "you and your people must stay free of charge at my hotel. I cannot help feeling that I'm to blame for what happened."

  Too right you are, thought Grimes.

  "We'll talk things over as soon as I get back."

  We'll do just that, thought Grimes.

  "I'll be seeing you, then."

  "I'll be seeing you, Captain Clavering," said Grimes, trying to inject the slightest touch of menace into his voice. If he got Clavering worried he might start making mistakes.

  And—Damn it all, thought Grimes, I'm not a policeman!

  He said to the Duty Officer, "Ring the hotel, please, and see if Commander Williams is available."

  Commander Williams, it seemed, was not. When he finally did wake up, thought Grimes, he'd be sorry that he hadn't stayed asleep. He loved his little Malemute as other men loved a woman.

  XX

  Late in the morning Williams broke surface. When he heard what had happened to his ship he snapped from a muzzy semiconsciousness to a state of energetic alertness with amazing rapidity. As soon as he was dressed he hurried to the spaceport to assess the damage.

  Grimes waited for him in the spacious lounge of the Lucifer Arms that now, after the cruise liner's departure, was almost deserted. Sally Clavering found him there. She sat down, facing him over the small table with its coffee service, said. "I heard what happened, Commodore."

  "You probably heard it happen," said Grimes, who was in a bad mood. "There was quite a crash."

  "But Ian's such a good shiphandler."

  Grimes relented slightly. He had always found it hard to speak unkindly to really attractive women. He said, "The best of us have our off days. And, sooner or later, accidents just have to happen."

  "Do you think it was an accident?" she asked.

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes noncommitally.

  She said, "I'm worried, Commodore. I've a feeling-it's more than just a feeling—that Ian's got himself into some sort of trouble. Over the past year or so he's . . . changed. I've asked him, more than once, what it is, but he just laughs it off."

  "Money trouble?" asked Grimes.

  She laughed. "That's the least of our worries. I was, as you know, Sally Ann's Purser—and now I'm ashore I carry on pursering. I keep the books for the hotel and all the rest of it. I hope you don't think that I'm boasting when I say that we're doing very nicely."

  "Income Tax?"

  "No. Really, Commodore, we have it made. Eblis is one of the Rim Worlds, and legally speaking is part of the Confederacy, but we, Sally Ann's crew, were the first settlers, the only permanent settlers. How did our lawyer put it? 'You're of, but not in, the Confederacy.' Sooner or later the Grand Council of the Confederacy will get around to passing laws to bring us in properly, so we have to pay taxes, and duty on everything we import. What's holding up such legislation is the squabbling over which of the Rim Worlds shall take us under its wing—Lorn or Faraway, Ultimo or Thule. Another complicating factor, which we shall drag in if we have to, is that Sally Ann, still in commission, is under Federation registration, and all of us, Sally Ann's original crew, are still Federation citizens."

  "Complicated," admitted Grimes.

  "Yes, isn't it? Of course, if the Navy decides that it must have a base here there's not much that we can do about it." She smiled. "But we have reduced rates at the hotel for legislators. That should help."

  "Y
ou shouldn't have told me that."

  "Everybody knows. Everybody knows, too, that a holiday here would be impossibly expensive if our profits were eaten away by taxes. Our guests from the Rim Worlds aren't in the same financial brackets as those in the cruise liners, from the Federation's planets. The next cruise ship in will be Macedon. While she's still here Ian will be taking Sally Ann to Ultimo to pick up a large party of Rim Worlders. A religious convention, as a matter of fact."

  "Odd," commented Grimes. "This is hardly the sort of world to inspire the fear of hell fire."

  "It is in parts, Commodore, make no mistake about that. But these people who're coming don't belong to any of the old religions. They're members of some new cult or faith or whatever. What do they call themselves? The Gateway? Something like that."