Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars

by William Sloane

  “And if he doesn’t get through?”

  The tall doctor stared angrily for a moment, then burned abruptly and walked over to the bedside. There was hardly a flicker of life in the man who lay there, only the shallowest respiration to indicate that he was alive. With gentle fingers Dr. Schiml inspected the small incision in the man’s skull, checked again the multitude of tiny, glittering wires leading to the light panel by the bedside. He stopped, staring at the panel, and motioned sharply to Connover. “Here’s the first, already,” he whispered.

  For a moment, only the faintest buzz of sound could be heard from the panel; then Connover let out a soft whistle. “A tunnel. That makes sense. But what a device—” He turned wide-eyed to Schiml. “He could kill himself!”

  “Of course he could. We’ve known that from the start.”

  “But he doesn’t know—”

  “He doesn’t know anything.” Schiml pointed to the panel. “A train. Ingenious? It’s amazing. Could you think of anything worse?” He watched for a moment. “No room on either side for escape—he’ll go under it.”

  All three watched, hardly breathing. Suddenly the girl was sobbing uncontrollably, burying her face on the doctor’s shoulder. “It’s horrible,” she choked. “It’s horrible … he’ll never make it, never, he’ll be killed—”

  “No, Mary, not Robert. Not after the training he’s had.” The doctor’s voice was grim. “You’ve got to believe that, Mary. This is the test, the final test. He cant let us down, not now—”

  He could feel danger all about him. It was nothing at all tangible, just a deep, hollow voice in his mind, screaming out the danger. Cox shuddered, and glanced up at the brassy yellow sun, his forehead wet with perspiration. It was hot! Steaming hot, with an unrelenting heat that seemed to melt him down inside like soft wax. Every muscle in his body was tense; he stood poised, tingling, his pale eyes searching the barren yellow dunes of sand for the danger he knew was there—

  Then the Joshua tree moved.

  With a gasp, he threw himself on the sand, ten feet from it, watching it wide-eyed. Just a slight movement of the twisted arms of the thing—he could have been mistaken, his mind could have played tricks. He trembled as he squinted through the shimmering heat at the gaunt, twisted tree.

  And then, quite suddenly, realization struck him. Desert! He had been in a tunnel—yes, that was right, a tunnel, and that light, that roaring thing— what was he doing here? He sat up slowly in the sand, ran his fingers through the hot grains, studying them with infinite curiosity. No doubt about it— it was desert! But how? How had he reached the tunnel in the first place? And what in the rational universe could have transported him to this place? Eagerly his mind searched, striking against the curious, shadowy shield that blocked his memory. There was an answer, he knew; something was wrong, he shouldn’t be there. Deep in his mind he knew he was in terrible danger, but such idiotic danger—if he could only think, somehow remember—

  His shoulders tensed, and he froze, reactively, his eyes on the yellow mound of sand across the ridge from him. Hardly breathing, he watched, his mind screaming danger danger, his eyes focusing on the yellow hillock. Then it moved again, swiftly, in the blinking of an eye, and froze again, ten feet closer—

  It had looked in that fraction of a second, remarkably like a cat—a huge, savage, yellow cat. And then it had frozen into a hillock of sand.

  Swiftly Cox moved, on hands and knees, at angles across the slope of sand from the thing. The sand burned his hands, and he almost cried out as the grit swirled up into his eyes, but he watched, every muscle tense. It moved again, at a tangent, swiftly sliding down the slope parallel to his movement, a huge, yellow, fanged thing, moving with the grace and flowing speed of molten gold, little red eyes fixed on him. Then it froze again, melting into the yellow, shimmering sand.

  Stalking him!

  In blind panic he pulled himself to his feet and ran down the sandy slope away from it, his eyes burning, running with the devil at his heels until a dune lay between him and the creature. Then he threw himself flat on the sand, peering over the rim of the dune.

  There was a swift blur of yellow movement, and the sand-cat was on the slope behind him, twenty yards closer, crouching against the sand, panting hungrily. Frantically, Cox glanced around him. Nothing! Nothing but yellow, undulating sand hills, the scorching sun, and the tall, twisted Joshua trees that moved! He looked back suddenly, and saw the sand-cat creeping toward him, slowly, slowly, not thirty yards away.

  His breath came in panting gasps as he watched the creature. It was eight feet long, with lean, muscular haunches that quivered in the sun, the red eyes gleaming in savage hate. It moved with a sure confidence, a relentless certainty of its kill. Cox tried to think, tried to clear his mind of the fear and panic that gnawed at him, tried to clear away the screaming, incredulous puzzlement that tormented him. He had to get away, but he couldn’t run. The creature was too fast. He knew his presence there was incredible; something in his mind tried to tell him not to believe it, that it wasn’t true—but he felt the gritty sand under his sweating palms, and it was very, very real. And the sand-cat moved closer—

  In a burst of speed he ran zigzagging down the slope and up the next, watching over his shoulder for the flash of yellow movement. With each change in direction, the sand-cat also shifted, stalking faithfully. If only he could get out of its sight for a moment! If it wasn’t too bright, if that savage brain were starved enough, he might force it into a pattern response— He ran ten feet to the right, paused, and rushed on ten feet to the left, heading toward the huge boulder which stood up like a naked sentinel on the dune ahead. The sand-cat followed, moving to the right, then to the left. Again Cox sped, sure now that the pattern would be followed, moving right, then left. A long run away from the rock, then a long run toward it. The cat was closer, just twenty yards away, closing the distance between them with each run. Panting, Cox tried to catch his breath, taking a steel grip on his nerves. He knew that panic could kill him. Swiftly, he scuttled up over the edge of the dune, far to the right of the boulder, then abruptly switched back, keeping the boulder between him and the cat, reaching it, peering cautiously around—

  Warm excitement flooded his mind. Slowly, ever so slowly the sand-cat was edging up over the dune, peering down in the direction he had run, slipping up over the dune on its belly, freezing, peering, a savage, baffled snarl coming from its dripping mouth. Eagerly Cox searched the sand around the boulder, picked up a chunk of sandstone as big as a brick. Then he took a huge breath, and plunged from behind the boulder, toward the cat, moving silently in the soft, hot sand. With a mixture of fury and fear he fell on the beast, raising the stone, bringing it down with all his might on the flat yellow head. The sand-cat snarled and whirled, claws slashing the air; his hot, rank breath caught Cox full, gagging him as he raised the stone again and again, bringing it down on the creature’s skull. Razor claws ripped at his side, until the cat screamed and convulsed, and lay twitching—

  And suddenly there was darkness, and a cold winter breeze in his face, and the stars were twinkling in the frigid night air above him. The sand-cat was gone, the desert, the Joshua trees. He lay in a ditch, half-soaked in icy mud, and his side was bleeding angrily.

  He stared around him, and shivered. He was at the bottom of the ditch, his body lying in an icy rivulet of water. Above him, he could see the embankment, topped by a small iron fence. A road! Painfully he dragged himself up toward the top, peered over. The strip of polished metal gleamed in the starlight, as icy gusts of wind and snow swept down to bite his ears and bring tears to his eyes. The tears froze on his eyelids, and the sharp coldness of the dark air bit into his lungs, bringing pain with every breath.

  In the distance he heard a rumbling sound, felt the road tremble as the gargantuan vehicles approached. Instinctively Cox ducked below the road surface, froze immobile as the long line of grotesque metallic monsters roared by, glimmering within their dull fluorescent f
orce-shields. They showed no sign of life, but rumbled past him, moving steadily down the glittering highway. He could see the curious turrets, the gunlike projections, stark against the bleak night sky. Weapons, he thought, huge, tanklike engines which lumbered and roared along the road on some errand of death. Suddenly the last of the convoy lumbered past, and he eased himself cautiously up onto the road. A burst of thunder roared in his ears, and abruptly it began to pour, huge icy drops that splattered with the force of machine-gun bullets, stinging his skin and soaking his hair and clothes. He shuddered, miserably, his mind groping in confusion. If he could only find a place to think, somewhere to rest and collect himself, somewhere to try to dress the wound in his side. In the gloom across the road he thought he could make out the gaunt ruins of a building standing against the starlight, and with infinite pain and slowness he dragged himself across the frigid steel strip, and down into the ditch on the other side. His feet were growing numb, and the pain in his side had turned to a dull, angry throbbing, but he somehow stumbled and staggered across the field, every ounce of his strength focused on reaching some sort of shelter.

  It was a building—or it had been, once. Two walls had been completely shattered, bombed out, and the roof had fallen in, but one intact wall stood like a gaunt sentinel in the darkness. Inside, the building had been gutted by fire, and Cox was forced to rip rubble and debris away from the door. He forced it open on squeaking, long-neglected hinges. Finally he found a corner that was dry, and located a bit of blanket from the rubble inside. He sank into the corner, shaking his head, trying desperately to orient himself.

  His side had stopped bleeding. A quick examination revealed four shallow, ugly-looking lacerations running down to his thigh. Four claws—the cat! Of course, the sand-cat had clawed him in its last, desperate snarl of rage. Cox leaned back, scratching his black hair with a grimy finger. The sand-cat was in the desert, not here. But before that, it was a tunnel, with a roaring train bearing down on him, a train that moved without tracks. And now, a frigid, war-beaten world—

  It didn’t add up. Desperately he tried to remember what had happened in between. Nothing, it seemed. He had slipped from one to the other in the blinking of an eye. But that was impossible! You just couldn’t shift like that, from one place to another. At least—he didn’t think it was possible.

  He heard his breath, short and shallow, echoing in the silence of the ruined building. He was here. This building was real, the icy coldness and the darkness were very real. But the wound in his side was real, too. That hadn’t happened here, that had happened somewhere else. How had he come here? Had he wanted to come? He shook his head angrily. It was ridiculous. But three different places— there had to be something in common, some common denominator. What had he found in all three places that was the same, what possible connection was there?

  Danger! He sat bolt upright, staring into the blackness. That was it! A tunnel, and danger. A desert, and danger. Now this cold, hostile place, and danger! Not danger to anyone else, just danger to himself. Pure raw, naked danger.

  He pondered for a while, his mind whirling. Somehow, it seemed that danger had been his entire life, that all he could think of, the only thing he had ever known was danger. Could that be true? Instinctively, he knew it wasn’t. There had been peace, before, somewhere, and love, and happy hours. But superimposed in his mind was the acute, barren awareness of imminent death, a sure knowledge that he could die here, abruptly, at any moment, and only his own resourcefulness could save him.

  It was like repeating the well-rehearsed words of a play. Somebody had told him that. It wasn’t original in his own mind. It was propaganda, conditioned information, something he had been taught!

  Could Mary have told him?

  He gasped. Mary! He repeated the name over and over, excitedly. There was the link. Mary, his wife—certainly there had been peace, and warmth, and comfort, and love. Mary was his wife, he had known those things with her, in some remote corner of his memory. He felt himself glow as he suddenly remembered Mary’s lovely face, the depth of love in those dark eyes, the warmth of her arms around him, the consuming peace and contentment in her sweet kisses and soft, happy murmurings—somewhere there had been Mary, who loved him beyond anything in the world.

  The wind stirred through the ruined building, bringing a sifting of damp snow into his face. There was no Mary here. Somehow, he was here, and he was in danger, and there was no warmth nor love here. His mind swept back to reality with a jolt. He hadn’t wanted to come here. It couldn’t have been his will. There was only one other possible answer. He had been put here.

  His mind struck the idea, and trembled. Like the fit of a hand in a glove, the thought settled down in his mind, filling a tremendous gap. Yes, that was it, he had been placed here, for some reason. He wasn’t willfully changing from place to place, he was being changed from place to place, against his will and volition. From danger into danger, he was being shifted, like a chessman in some horrible game of death. But no one was touching him, no one was near him—how could these changes be happening? The answer sent a chill through him, and his hand trembled. It was obvious. The changes were happening in his own mind.

  He rubbed his stubbled chin. If this were true, then these things weren’t really happening. He hadn’t actually been in the tunnel. There hadn’t actually been a sand-cat. He wasn’t really lying here in a cold, damp comer, with deadly frost creeping up his legs. Angrily he rejected the thought. There was no room for doubt, these things were real, all right. The slashes on his side were real. He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there had been a sand-cat. He knew it would have killed him if it could have, and if it had, he would have been quite dead.

  You can die, and only your own resourcefulness will save you—who had said that? There had been a program, training him, somewhere, for something —something vastly important. His mind groped through the darkness, trying to penetrate the fuzzy uncertainty of his memory. Those words—from a small, red-faced man, and a tall, gaunt man in white—Schiml! Schiml had said those words, Schiml had put him here!

  Suddenly he thought he saw the whole thing clearly. He was in danger, he must overcome the danger, he wasn’t supposed to know that it wasn’t really happening! There had been a long training program, with Connover, and Schiml, and all the rest, and now he was on his own. But nothing, nothing could really hurt him, because these things were only figments of his imagination.

  He shivered in the coldness. Somehow, he didn’t quite dare to believe that.

  Dr. Schiml sat down on the chair and wiped drops of perspiration from his brow. His eyes were bright with excitement as he glanced at the pallid form on the bed, and then back at the red-faced Connover. “He’s taken the first step,” he said hoarsely. “I was sure he would.”

  Connover scowled and nodded, his eyes fixed on the panel beside the bed. “Yes, he took the first step all right. He’s figured out the source of his environment. That’s not very much.”

  Schiml’s eyes gleamed. “When we first computed the test, you wouldn’t even concede the possibility of that. Now you see that he’s made it. He’ll make the other steps, too.”

  Connover whirled angrily on the doctor. “How can he? He just doesn’t have the data! Any fool could deduce that these are subjective mental phenomena he’s facing, under the circumstances. But you’re asking for the impossible if you expect him to go any further along that line of reasoning. He just doesn’t have enough memory of reality to work with.”

  “He has Mary, and you, and me,” the doctor snapped. “He knows there’s been a training program, and he knows that he’s being tested. And now he knows that he’s living in the nightmares of his own mind. He’s got to solve the rest.”

  Connover snorted. “And that knowledge itself increases his danger a thousand times. He’ll be reckless, overconfident—”

  The girl stirred. She had been staring blankly at the man on the bed; her face was drawn and pallid, and her eyes were
red. She looked dully at Dr. Schiml. “Connover’s right,” she said. “He has no way of knowing. He may just stand there and let himself—” she broke off with a choked sob.

  “Mary, can’t you see? That’s exactly what we’ve got to know. We’ve got to know if the training was valid. He may get reckless, true, but never too reckless. The cat, remember? It hurt him. It really hurt him. He’ll take the next step, all right. He may be hurt first, but he’ll take it.”

  The girl’s face flushed angrily. “It may kill him! You’re asking too much, he’s not a superman, he’s just an ordinary, helpless human being like anybody else. He doesn’t have any magical powers.”

  The doctor’s face was pale. “That’s right. But he does have some very unmagical powers, powers we’ve been drumming into his mind for the past year. He’ll just have to use them, that’s all. He’ll have to.”

  Mary’s eyes shifted once again to the motionless form on the bed. “How much proof do you need?” she asked softly. “How much more will he have to take before you stop it and bring him back?” The doctor’s eyes drifted warily to Connover, then back to Mary. A little smile crept onto his lips. “Don’t worry,” he said gently, “I’ll stop it soon enough. Just as soon as he’s taken the necessary steps. But not until then.”

  “And if he can’t make them?”

  She didn’t see his hand tremble as he adjusted the panel light gently. “Don’t worry,” he said again. “He can make them.”

  Gradually the numbness crept up Robert Cox’s legs. He lay on the cold, grimy floor of the ruined building, staring into the blackness about him. His realization had brought him great relief; he was breathing more easily now, and he felt his mind relaxing from the strain he had been suffering. He knew, without question, that he was not in the midst of reality—that this cold, hostile place was not real, that it was merely some horrid nightmare dredged from the hidden depths of his own mind, thrust at him for some reason that he could not ponder, but thrust at him as an idiotic, horrible substitute for reality. Deep in his mind something whispered that no harm could really come. The sense of danger which pervaded his mind was false, a figment of the not-real world around him. They were testing him, it was quite obvious, though he couldn’t pierce the murky shield of memory to understand why they were testing him, for what purpose. Still, having realized the unreality, the test must be ended. He couldn’t be fooled any longer. He smiled to himself. Armed with that knowledge, there was no longer any danger. No real danger. Even the wound in his side was imagined, not really there—