Rocket to Limbo

by Alan Edward Nourse

  “Fox, for one, and Morehouse. Lambert and Lorry, if we have the chance. Ready now? Let’s go.”

  They moved quickly down the stairs. In the great vault room they saw nobody except the rows of men sleeping on the pallets. And yet, as he blinked in the dim light, Lars had a fierce pang of misgiving. It was not right, doing it this way. Even if they succeeded, it meant leaving behind an alien people, the first contact with an alien race that Man had ever known. It meant leaving without understanding anything about these people, running out before the puzzle was solved. And worse, it would be the last chance to contact these strange City-people, for if Earthmen came back to Wolf IV, they would come as enemies.

  What would Walter Fox do? The thought was strong in Lars’ mind. He looked down the row of beds, saw the Commander’s face placid now in sleep, and he seemed to hear his words: Don’t spoil it for us, Lars. Trust them. Offer them friendship. This is no time for hate or fear or mistrust.

  And now, without the least doubt, Lars knew what Fox would do. There is a purpose here for the things that have come about, a reason, a solution to all the strange things that have happened since the Ganymede left Earth in search of the Planetfall. A link is missing, a key is waiting to fit the lock, if you can only find it. There is an answer.

  He hesitated, staring down at the rows of sleeping men as if he were in a dream himself.

  Find the answer while you still can!

  He turned to find Peter staring at him in alarm. “Lars! I heard that,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “You—what?”

  “I heard what you were thinking just then” Peter’s face was white. “It was clear as crystal, as clear as if—they—had been thinking it.”

  Lars was trembling. “It’s no good, Peter. We just can’t do it this way.”

  “We can’t go back now. We’ve got to try!”

  “No, no. There’s something else we have to try first. Like you said, you heard me thinking just then. You heard me before. And I’ve been picking things up from you, just snatches, here and there, but I have. Don’t you see what that means?”

  “I can see that we’re going to be caught cold unless we move fast.”

  “That is what the lessons have been for, Peter. That is what the City-people have been trying to teach us. Only they didn’t mean ‘teach’ the way we think of it, with book tapes and experimental labs. They haven’t been teaching us, they’ve been training us!”

  Peter stood stock-still. “ ‘The Masters who fed us and trained us,’ ” he breathed.

  “Of course! Trained them for what? Look around you at this city, man.”

  From all around them a wash of thought-patterns had been rising like a wave, alarmed, fearful, angry. They realized that they had almost been shouting at each other, and now Peter gave a groan of dismay as figures appeared at the end of the vault, on the stairs. “Too late!” he cried. “Run for it, Lars!”

  But they couldn’t run. The first of the City-people to see them gave a powerful cry of alarm, and they stood rooted, unable to move, as more and more City-people tumbled down the stairs, eyes wide, staring at the boys and at the sleeping figures, a jumble of thoughts rushing from their minds.

  The strangers, down here!

  A forbidden place! What are they doing here?

  They were going to waken the sleeping ones— And fear rose in a bubbling torrent as they stared at the boys in horror.

  And then the woman who had been training Lars was coming through the group, her eyes angry, all trace of gentleness gone from her face. We should never have waited for so long! We were wrong, it was hopeless from the start. And now even they would destroy us.

  Lars faced her, his eyes blazing. You re wrong. We would not destroy you, or harm you.

  You came to waken these who sleep here. It was not accusation; she knew it was true, and thrust it at him as a fact.

  Yes, we did but only when the Masters permit it.

  The woman paused, as though he had caught her off guard. But how could you know that the Masters permit it? The Masters said only when the time was ripe.

  Then now is the time. Lars felt his pulse pounding in his throat as he forced the thought into the woman’s mind.

  Now? So soon?

  Lars’ eyes were bright. Now! There is a place of the Masters here, isn’t that so?

  Yes, yes, of course.

  Then we demand that you take us there. Now.

  And then, suddenly, the City-people were crowding around them, eagerly. The fear was gone from their minds now; they were laughing and cheering as their eagerness overflowed in a powerful wave. From the woman the thought came directly to Lars: If you demand it, we must do it. The Masters are no longer here, but there is a place here where they once were. We will take you there, if you are sure you are ready to go.

  It was an alien place.

  The eerie, intangible alienness of it struck them both as they walked across the platform toward the oval black door before them.

  It was like no other place in the city. The city and its strange people had been mysterious, puzzling, often inexplicable, different, but not alien. The things they had seen in the city at least showed some shadow of human thinking, of human minds at work.

  But no human hands had built this place. Lars knew that as certainly as he knew his own name. It sat on a large circular platform, a building, if you could call it that, like a highly polished hemisphere with an oval black door in one side. Lars glanced helplessly at Peter by his side. “Have you ever seen this place before?”

  “Never,” Peter said. “And I don’t like it.”

  “This is where the Masters are,” Lars said. “This is where we’ll find our answers.”

  “I hope so,” said Peter, but his voice sounded as uncertain as Lars felt.

  The woman had not led them here at once. First they had been taken back to their quarters, where a meal was waiting if they had been able to eat it. Fresh clothing was laid out, a hot running shower.

  “Why, this is like a hanging in the old days back home!” Peter had cried out in dismay. “The last meal, the fancy preparations. You don’t know what you’ve gotten us into!”

  “But this is the answer we’ve been looking for, cant you see that?” Lars said. “I told you there would be a place where these Masters would be found, and there is!”

  “What do you know about the Masters?” Peter’s voice was bitter.

  “No more than you do, but didn’t you see how the people acted? Didn’t you feel the—the expectancy? Peter, this is something we’ve been expected to do ever since we were brought into the city. This is what was supposed to happen—sometime.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” snapped Peter. “We haven’t learned a thing that makes sense since we got here.”

  “But we can make some pretty good guesses,” Lars said. “The ship on the ridge, for instance. It came here, some time a long time ago, and crashed. Now we know that it was a ship from Earth, the old Argonaut, carrying Earthmen. Not the ones that were aboard when it left Earth, of course, but those that were born en route. Right?”

  “All right. So what?”

  “The ship came, and crashed, and now, centuries later, another ship comes from Earth and finds a city on this planet with people living here. Very peculiar people, a very strange city, but people. It isn’t coincidence, Peter. It can’t be. These City-people are Earthmen. Their ancestors were born on Earth, just as certainly as yours were. Their fathers and grandfathers came here on the Argonaut and somehow came through the crash alive, and survived.”

  “But do you think they act like Earthmen?” Peter protested. “Building a city like this, using the powers they have—”

  “Why not?” said Lars. “We know of these powers on Earth. They’re pretty crude, but even the most stick-in-the-mud scientists recognize that they exist now: telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation. We knew about those things back in the twentieth century! Some workers in the field even claim that all Earthmen have th
ose powers, to some very slight extent.”

  Lars changed into fresh clothing as Peter stared at him glumly. “But here we see people with extra-sensory powers magnified a thousand times, so strong their whole civilization is based on ESP. No wonder they don’t know about science or mechanics. They don’t need to. These people not only have ESP, they know how to use it.”

  Peter chewed his lip. “And you think that the Masters, whatever they are, were the ones that trained them to use these powers?”

  “Exactly. Just the way the City-people have been training us!”

  “Then why just us? Why not the rest of the crewmen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lars, “but I think we’re going to find out in this place they’re taking us to.”

  It had seemed logical enough then, in the familiar surroundings of their room in the city, but now, facing the black oval door Lars was no longer so certain. The City-people hung back at the edge of the platform, watching them expectantly as they approached the great hemisphere. At a distance the black oval looked like a yawning hole in the side of the thing, waiting to receive them. Only now they saw that it was a solid door, closed and fit so tightly that only a hairline crack showed around it. There was no knob, no handle. Nothing but polished black.

  Lars and Peter stopped, and looked at each other. They felt the tension rising among the City-people behind them. “What do we do now?” Peter hissed. “This thing looks solid.”

  Lars reached out, pushed at the edge of the door. It didn’t budge. “It is solid,” he muttered.

  “But we can’t stop now. We’ve got to get in there.”

  “I think maybe we can,” said Lars. “The lessons. The thing the City-people have been trying to train us to do.

  Maybe that’s the key we need. Maybe we aren’t supposed to get through this door until that training is completed.”

  “You mean teleportation,” Peter said.

  “They can do it,” said Lars. He stared steadily at the heavy black slab, and suddenly imagined that once again he was staring at the viewscreen outside their quarters. He imagined that the woman from the city was there at his side, urging him on, guiding his mind. He tried to blot out all other thoughts, to concentrate every ounce of his strength on one single purpose:

  To reach the other side of that door.

  He felt the sickening feeling grow in the pit of his stomach; then he felt himself jerk. Then, as though a light had been snapped off, he was through the door. He had not moved a muscle, but he was through it. An instant later Peter appeared by his side—out of nowhere.

  The last barrier was behind them. They were in the place of the Masters.

  At first Lars thought they were standing in the corridor outside their quarters in the city. He was inside, in semi-darkness, and his eyes picked up only the vague form of viewscreens for a moment. Then he accommodated, and saw other details.

  The feeling of alienness remained. The chamber was hemispherical and almost bare, except for two viewscreens and two stools. By each viewscreen was a spindle filled with the flat, disc-like tape spools.

  There was nothing else in the chamber. Lars glanced at Peter. Then there are no Masters here, he thought.

  Peter nodded toward the screens. No, but these tapes were left for us. Together they took places in front of the screens, and fed the tapes onto the reels.

  The first ones were ordinary 3-V tapes. They were poor films, ancient and scratchy, very much like the home 3-V films Lars had often made years before. The images were poor, but they could make them out clearly.

  They saw a Star Ship in its berth deep in the green mountain slopes. They saw cranes carrying up cargo, passengers. There was no question which ship it was. The ancient Argonaut, preparing for the Long Passage to Alpha Centauri.

  The tape clicked, and they were looking through the after-ports, watching the billowing gust of blast-off, watching Earth dwindle and grow small behind. And through the forward ports, only the blackness of space. The crew of the Argonaut knew that they would never reach their destination; they would not live that long. But their children . . . .

  There were many scenes and fragments on the viewscreen then, films collected and stored by the crew of the Earth ship, an attempt to keep a history of the passage. Slowly the picture developed for Lars and Peter, a picture of bravery and frustation and failure.

  The discovery that the course was wrong, that even the finest instruments in the finest laboratories on Earth had not been able to calculate and chart a course accurate enough for such a journey. Alpha Centauri approached, and passed, and dwindled in the distance as men died and babies were born. Not enough fuel to make the correction and hope for a safe landing. Nothing to do but plunge on toward something beyond, a faint star listed on the charts as Wolf.

  Decades later the star-shapes had changed, and the destination star Wolf was near.

  Finally, the approach to the star. A different crew, poorly trained, without adequate fuel, attempting to land the great ship on an alien planet—

  Abruptly the tape flickered off.

  Lars and Peter rested before the next tape. “They couldn’t have landed it safely,” Peter said slowly. “They must have known that, long before they tried it.”

  “Maybe,” said Lars. “But their babies, I remember reading about the cradles that were installed on the Argonaut. To protect the new babies from, almost any disaster.” He filed the new tape on the spindle. “Perhaps there is more here.”

  The tapes were different now. Before, they had been records made by humans, seen through human eyes. Now it was different. There were no clear images on the viewscreen, yet Lars could see the images projected in his mind with perfect clarity. He realized, suddenly, that he was seeing through an alien mind, with alien thoughts, as the images flickered and changed.

  An image of the Star Ship approaching, too fast, too hard, out of control. It came in shallow to the surface of Wolf IV, striking the high mountain ridge, driving down among the rocky crags, turning over in horrible slow motion as flame spurted up.

  But not everyone aboard was dead. The crewmen, yes. But deep in the heart of the ship, the cradles nestled the children of the crewmen in strong steel arms, safe.

  Alien creatures on the surface of Wolf IV saw the crash, searched the wreckage, hoping to learn something of the creatures who had come from so far. They found the records —tapes, films, voices, the library of the ship, the records of the crew and its history. Alien minds pored over them, learning, studying, seeking to see Earth men as Earthmen had been on Earth.

  But most of all they sought for signs that Earthmen had what they knew as the Strength, the universal power of mind that bound intelligent creatures throughout the universe into a union of peace and strength, and raised them above the beasts.

  The alien creatures found only disappointment.

  No trace of the Strength?

  No trace. They were a barren race, to judge from their records. Vocal communication. Physical science and mechanical civilization. No evidence of the Strength anywhere. No sign that they could even recognize it.

  But for a race to reach space without it—incredible!

  You see it here.

  Yes. Bitter disappointment. Yes, we see it here.

  Then they found the cradles.

  The spark of the Strength was there. Excited and eager, the alien creatures tore their way through bulkhead and deck, following the spark until they found the infants. The spark was feeble, barely perceptible, but it was there.

  The records were sporadic then, as Lars and Peter sat by the viewscreens. It took months and years of teaching and training for the alien creatures to nurse the spark of Strength in those Earthling babies into a flame.

  It could not have grown strong by itself. In Earthmen it was not a full-blown power but only a potential. It was weak. It had to be trained. As Earthmen on Earth grew from childhood into manhood, the unused potential faded until it was unrecoverable. To Earthmen, untrained, the spar
k of the Strength brought only confusion and pain, so it was buried deep in his mind, and lost, because he never suspected what it was or how to use it.

  But the infants from the Star Ship were trained. They grew and developed as no human children ever had. There was nothing to quench the strong, cool flame in their minds, and it grew.

  Their Strength, the extra-sensory powers of their heritage, grew strong as they grew.

  When the work was done, the alien creatures left Wolf IV. The city was built, the City-people were safe, but there was still danger. If Earthmen were to come, without knowing of the Strength, they might destroy the aliens’ work.

  Fear and hatred could cripple the City-people. The aliens knew this, and taught the City-people what to do. There could be no contact with Earth, not now. Some day contact could be made, but only when Earthmen from Earth could be taught to use their Strength as the City-people could.

  Sometime an Earthman would come to Wolf IV, an Earthman old enough to understand Earthmen, and the minds of Earthmen, but still young enough for his Strength to be trained.

  Only then could the gulf between the City-people and the men of Earth once more be bridged.

  They finished the tapes, and stared at each other, and sat in silence for a long time. Then Lars felt a flicker of thought in his mind.

  Lars? Can you hear me?

  Yes, Perfectly.

  Did you understand it, Lars? We’re the ones. We of all the crew were still young enough to be trained.

  Yes. And old enough to cross the gulf. We can make Earthmen understand what the Strength is and how to use it. Is that right? Is that what we have to do?

  There was no hesitation in Peter s reply. Yes. That’s what we have to do.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Sleepers Awake

  Commander Walter Fox waited, stamping the floor impatiently as he stared through the window at the city below. The City-people had taken good care of their charges.

  The Commander’s cheeks and arms had filled out somewhat, and the tired lines around his eyes were softer now. He felt the difference, and knew, somehow, that what had seemed like a moment’s deep, dreamless sleep had been far longer than a moment.