Rocket to Limbo

by Alan Edward Nourse

  He felt a wave of relief as he heard Peter’s voice, saw him walking in through the door, which had become thin and gauzy, barely concealing the study room beyond. “About time you were stirring,” Peter was saying.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Having my lessons.”

  “What lessons?”

  “You’ll see, I think.” Peter glanced through the window. “Oh, they’re still here,” he said, nodding to the ships. “They’re not going anywhere.”

  “But where are the crews?” A horrible thought struck Lars. “These people haven’t assimilated them somehow, have they? I mean, dug around in their minds until they were picked clean, and then—”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” said Peter. “The crew of the Planetfall is in the same place as the crew of the Ganymede, with the sole exceptions of you and me.” There was a note of resignation and hopelessness in Peter’s voice.

  “Where is that?”

  “In a special vault they’ve built for them in the depths of the city.”

  “You mean they’ve killed them?”

  “Oh, no, they’re not dead. They’re asleep. They’ve been fed and cared for ever so carefully, but they’re kept sleeping, and as far as I can determine, these City-people have no intention in the world of waking them up, ever. That’s why I warned you to go easy until we saw how they received you, because I’ve got a hunch that if they decide to put us to sleep, nobody is ever going to wake us up.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lars said, confused. “I left Fox and Lambert and the others up on the hillside. They couldn’t even get close to this place.”

  “They’re here now. I doubt if they ever got a look at the inside of the city. I think they were put to sleep before the City-people brought them in. But I don’t know any way to tell that for sure.”

  Lars stared at Peter, then walked over to the window again. “You still haven’t told me how you got here, or how the ship got here, for that matter.”

  Peter shrugged. “They brought us here. Don’t ask me how, because I can’t tell you.”

  “But you bolted that night with Salter and Leeds!” Lars accused.

  “Not because I wanted to, believe me. I never dreamed that Salter would try to make a break for it so soon.”

  “Then it was planned in advance.”

  “Of course it was planned in advance,” Peter said irritably.

  “You people went around that ship after the showdown with Fox acting as though you thought if you didn’t look at it, maybe it would just go away. Salter and his pals were planning a break with the ship from the minute the mutiny fell through. They didn’t cut me in on it until we were actually organizing the landing party, and then they only told me to be on my toes when the time came. They had no intention of running into any aliens on Wolf IV. They thought that the landing parties would leave the ship under a light guard, and that they could break away and seize it, and then head out. Which was what they did, up to a point.”

  “And when they got back to Earth?”

  “No problem. Who’d be there to argue any story they told? The Colonial Service would have to believe them.”

  “So they planned to murder or maroon anyone that didn’t go along with them,” said Lars bitterly.

  “Now you’re getting the picture,” said Peter. “I got just an inkling of it. Salter was still sore that I didn’t vote with him before, and I hoped I could spot the trouble and tip off the rest of you when the time came. Trouble was, it came too soon. Salter moved as soon as the rest of you were asleep, and I had the choice of going along quietly or taking a bullet in the head. I chose the former. I thought even at that I—might be able to break away and warn the men on the ship.”

  “So that was how it was,” Lars said slowly. Suddenly, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had not realized how much Peter’s desertion had hurt, not because of treachery to the ship and its crew, but very personally. He couldn’t believe that Peter had done what he had done willfully. “I’m glad it was that way,” he said. “I’m really glad.”

  “You thought something else, maybe?”

  “I—didn’t know what to think.”

  “I suppose it must have looked pretty mean. Oh, I know

  I’ve acted like a fool about some things on this trip, but I wasn’t ready to join this scheme, believe me. I felt pretty dirty helping Salter and Leeds get those boats across the river, and then cutting them loose. And of course, when we got back to where the Ganymede had landed, it was gone, and I didn’t have a chance to sound an alarm after all.”

  “Gone!” said Lars. “You mean you didn’t move it at all?”

  “It wasn’t there to be moved. You should have seen Jeff Salter’s face! It would have made you feel lots better about that trip over the mountain. He’d figured it was all smooth as oiled silk from then on out, and then whammo, no ship. We were in as bad shape as the ones we’d run out on. Only Salter wasn’t exactly the leader type. It scared him silly when we came down and found that ship gone. He was all over the place, sending us out to scour the area, he thought we might have missed the way, but scared to wait by himself for fear something would jump on him from the woods.”

  “But what did happen?” asked Lars.

  “We went over to the place where the ship had been, and began looking around for it, and then, just like that, we weren’t there, any more, but here. In the city. In a room with a dozen aliens, stripped of our weapons. I still haven’t found out what they did with our machine pistols. And every single one of the men dead asleep except me.”

  “Except you,” Lars repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “First you, then me. What’s so special about usF*

  “You find me the answer for that, and we’d be on our way out of here,” Peter said grimly. “I don’t know why, and the City-people here either can’t or won’t tell me why.”

  “Coincidence?” said Lars.

  Peter snorted. “Do you think so?”

  “But what else? What have they been doing with you?”

  “Giving me lessons.”

  “Look, lessons mean teaching something,” Lars protested.

  “What are they trying to teach you?”

  “I’ve been trying to find that out every since they started. I haven’t an inkling. But I know one thing. From the minute I turned up in this city, the City-people have been trying to teach me something, with every technique and resource at their disposal.” Peter gave him a grin. “So chew on that for a while.”

  “Can you show me around this place, or are we locked in?”

  “We’re free as the wind except at lesson-time,” said Peter wryly.

  “Then show me around a bit.”

  They left the quarters and started out on a tour of the remarkable city, Peter with a firm step, Lars walking in fear and trembling lest the airy structure of the place should suddenly tumble down upon them like a house of cards. They walked across a high bridge from their building (which Lars could have sworn was not there when they had first come) and around a long circular staircase down toward the ground. The end of the staircase was twenty feet up, so that it appeared that they must turn around and come back, but as they neared the end, the building, staircase and all, obligingly drifted down to firm ground for them.

  Lars shook his head uneasily. “This is what I can’t understand,” he said, pointing to the staircase, which was rising up again. “This business of now-it’s-one-place-now-another. I see it happening, but I can’t quite get myself to believe it. Things don’t just up and vanish.”

  “It’s the way they live,” Peter said. “Your bed last night, was it comfortable?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good and steady? It didn’t lurch around when you crawled in?”

  “No, it was steady enough.”

  “Well, have you figured out what held it up, yet?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think you’re going
to, either, because nothing was holding it up. These City-people have almost complete telepathic control of everything around them. Just the way the telep on 3-V back home can control the ball in the box.”

  “Then these things are a result of extra-sensory perception?” Lars asked incredulously. “That’s impossible! Nobody has ever learned how to control extra-sensory powers like this, not even the most skillful telep on Earth.”

  “The City-people do,” said Peter. “It’s what we think of as extra-sensory power, but with them it’s refined beyond anything we’ve ever seen on Earth. With these people it’s completely unconscious: telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, anything you want to call it. They control it. Their whole culture and civilization is based on it.”

  Lars shook his head in confusion. “Our scientists on Earth have been working with ESP for centuries and they’ve never learned how to control it,” he said. “Some of them even claim it never can be controlled or useful for anything.”

  “Well, these people can certainly use it,” Peter said. “You notice what a hodge-podge this city is?”

  Lars nodded. “It looks as though the city planners were out to lunch when the plans were drawn up.”

  “There weren’t any city planners. These people arrange things strictly to suit themselves. They can move a single molecule or the side of a mountain, individually or collectively, just by deciding that they want it moved. Their houses float when they want them to, or sit on the ground when they want them to. If they get bored with one kind of house they rearrange it into another kind. Since they travel around almost entirely by teleportation, the doors and windows are ninety per cent decoration. That’s why you see doorways like that.” Peter pointed to an oval-shaped building they were passing. It had pale orange doorways shaped like tall slender triangles.

  “But what do they live on?” Lars asked. “They do eat, don’t they? How do they grow crops on a barren place like this?”

  “That’s just it, they don’t need to grow crops! There’s plenty of plant and animal life on the planet, with plenty of protein, and fat, and carbohydrate molecules on hand. They simply rearrange them into palatable combinations when they get hungry. I suppose they could start with sub-atomic particles and work themselves up a genuine Montana beef steak, if they knew what one was.”

  “By ESP,” said Lars.

  “By ESP.” Peter grinned. “There’s nothing magical or fantastic about it. You’ve seen enough of our own teleps to know extra-sensory powers exist. These people just know how to control those powers.”

  They moved on through the maze of buildings. “Can you show me the ships?” Lars wanted to know.

  “Afraid not. They’re forbidden. The City-people don’t want us near them.”

  “How about the place where the men are—sleeping?”

  “That’s even worse. The City-people themselves don’t like to go there. You might talk them into taking you there later, but right now I don’t think we should do anything to ruffle our hosts.”

  “I suppose not.” Lars shook his head. “The thing that bothers me the most about this whole thing is how much these City-people look like humans. They’ve got fingerprints, did you notice? And their skin, and their hair, their musculature—I couldn’t tell the difference, unless I looked at their faces, and then I couldn’t be sure.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Peter said grimly. “The resemblance is more striking every time you see them close up. In fact, for my money, the resemblance is too striking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’d swear by everything I believe in that these people are Earthmen.” Peter made an angry gesture. “It’s just about driving me crazy. They look like Earthmen, but they don’t begin to act like them. They’re like children. Their whole life revolves on this extra-sensory control of things. They use ESP just as naturally as they breathe, and yet they have no sense of logic whatever. Their minds are totally alien. They have no concept of science, or of machinery, or anything else. They don’t know about anything outside this city and this planet, and they don’t care, or didn’t until now. I’m certain that they honestly don’t know what we mean when we tell them we come from another planet of another star. But who are they? Where do they come from?”

  “Have you asked them?” Lars said.

  “I’ve asked them until I was black in the face. I might as well not have bothered. They didn’t even understand the question.”

  They moved about the city until the sky began to darken, and then turned back to their quarters. As they walked through the corridor with the viewscreens, Lars stopped short. “Hold it,” he said. “I thought you told me they had no concept of science or mechanics. How did they get those things?”

  “That’s a good question,” Peter said. “Try one once, and see what you think.”

  Lars sat down before one of the gray screens. “How do you work it?”

  Peter opened a wall slot and withdrew a small, flat cartridge. He fit this onto a spool at the side of the screen. Abruptly the screen leaped into life with the pale blue color Lars had seen before. There was a flickering geometric pattern, but no image that Lars could recognize. “Now what?”

  “It’s a little tricky,” Peter conceded. “That’s not a 3-V screen, and the tape on that cartridge doesn’t work quite like a 3-V tape. You’ve got to—well, sort of tune in on it yourself. Watch it for a minute.”

  Lars watched the screen. At first there was nothing. Then, gradually, he noticed a tingling in his fingers and toes. Images began to form on the screen, or in his mind, he couldn’t tell which for sure. Not a story, just a series of impressions drifting through his mind as he stared. He felt his scalp crawl. “Say, what is this thing doing?” he said, jumping up from it angrily.

  The images on the screen blinked out.

  “It’s projecting,” said Peter. “Our 3-Vs depend on visual images and audible sounds to get through to us. This little gadget by-passes the eyes and ears and goes right straight in. It projects mental images instead of visual images. That’s what you were picking up. The thing can be reversed so that you project to it and it records like a tape recorder.”

  “But what was I seeing?”

  Peter shrugged. “To the City-people what you just saw was a “history text.”

  “It didn’t look like a history text to me. It didn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Well, it’s the closest to recorded history that they have. Oh, they have a word-of-mouth sort of history. Maybe I should say ‘word-of-mind.’ You know, legends and superstitions. But as for recording history—” Peter scowled at the viewscreen. “I’m dead sure these people never made these screens. They couldn’t have. They couldn’t know how. They don’t know enough about science in general, or electronics in particular, to have done it.”

  They walked through the filmy door into their quarters. “But who did make the screens, then?” asked Lars.

  “I don’t know,” said Peter. “But I’ve got an idea. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d swear that there is another land of creature on Wolf IV. A creature completely different from these City-people. I don’t know where, but I’m sure of it. The City-people know about them, and have been in contact with them, somehow.”

  Lars chewed his lip. “Wait a minute, you mean the ones they call the Masters?”

  “That’s right. I get the impression that these other creatures, these Masters, used to be right here among the City-people. These people keep referring to them as ‘the Masters that fed us and taught us.’ I think the Masters built these viewscreens.”

  “But where are they now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Peter, “and I don’t seem to find out. The City-people aren’t afraid of them, exactly. They seem to be in awe of them. The ‘Masters’ keep coming up whenever you talk to the City-people, but you can’t pin them down to just what they are, or where they are.”

  “But there must be something we can get hold of,” Lars said in exasperation
.

  Peter was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What did you find up on the mountain ridge? What was the wreck that we saw in Kennedy’s pictures?”

  Lars told him. Peter stared. “The Argonaut! You mean the Earth ship that took the Long Passage?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But it’s been lost for centuries.”

  “It isn’t lost any more. It crashed up there.”

  “That’s very strange,” said Peter, “because one of the few things I am sure of about these people is that they know about that wreck up there, and they’re afraid of it.”

  “Afraid of it?”

  “They never go there. It’s a ‘forbidden place.’ They can’t say why, or won’t. They don’t even want to talk about it. Which is particularly odd when you consider that they haven’t the least fear or interest in the two ships here in the city. They don’t want us to go near them, but they aren’t afraid of them.”

  “Anything else that you’re sure about?” Lars asked. “I mean, we might as well cover the board while we’re at it.”

  “Just one thing,” said Peter. “The City-people are desperately afraid of the crewmen of both ships!”

  “But I thought you said they were asleep.”

  “They are, but the people are still afraid of them. They take care of them as if they were fusion bombs approaching critical. The thought of wakening them literally scares the City-people out of their wits.”

  Lars thought that over. “But they aren’t afraid of us!” he protested. “I mean you and me. Or at least, if they are, they hide it pretty well. This gets crazier and crazier every minute, and we always seem to slam up against the same brick wall: * exactly what is so special about you and me?”

  But they had no answer to that question. Food had appeared as they were talking, and they settled down glumly to eat. “They’ll be coming to give you your first lesson when we’re finished,” Peter said. “Maybe you’ll have some brilliant ideas along the way. I sure haven’t had any.”