Gateway to Never (John Grimes)

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Then you had better get cracking,” Grimes told him without much sympathy. To him a menace to navigation was just that. “At last report there’s probably only one of the things left.”

  “Moebius Dick,” murmured Haab.

  They watched the remainder of the films of Operation Rimhunt, which could as well have been called Operation Search and Destroy. The use of fission weapons, stumbled upon by Captain Laverton, remained effective, but it had to be improved upon. The energy eaters were intelligent—just how intelligent no one knew, probably no one ever would know. After the almost complete wiping out of that first cluster they tended to run from the Confederacy’s warships. Magnetic fields, set up by two or more vessels, were an invisible net from which not all of the entities escaped—and those that did so made their getaway by desynchronization. Time-space-twisting Carlotti beams were employed by the hunters and this technique seemed to inhibit temporal precession.

  “Butchers,” muttered Haab at last. “Butchers.”

  “Exterminators,” corrected Grimes. “But both butchers and exterminators are essential to civilization. What about all the animals you have killed in your profession? Can you afford to talk?”

  “I can, Commodore. In the first place, I’ve gone after living specimens far more than I have dead ones. In the second place, the odds have never been stacked against the quarry in my hunts—as they have been in this operation of yours.”

  Grimes grunted. “I’m not a hunter. If I really wanted a dinner of grilled trout I’d be quite capable of tossing a hand grenade into the stream. If I have an infestation of rats or mice I go out and buy the most effective poison on the market.”

  “I seem to recall,” said Haab, “that you once used a fusion bomb to destroy a rat-infested ship.”

  “Yes. I did. It was necessary.”

  “Necessity,” murmured Haab, “what sins are committed in thy name? But let’s agree to shelve our differences. Do you think I could see the charts of sightings and—ah—victorious naval actions?”

  “Let’s have them, please, Miss Walton,” said Grimes.

  Grimes later entertained Haab in his home. After the captain had returned to his ship, Grimes’ wife, Sonya, said “So that’s the great hunter.”

  “I hope you were impressed,” said Grimes.

  “Impressed? Oh, I suppose I was in a way. But the man’s a monomaniac. Hunting is his whole life.”

  “But you can say in his favor that he’s more concerned with capturing than killing.”

  “Is that so much better?” she demanded. “Have you ever seen The Hummel Foundation’s zoo?”

  Grimes had seen it many years ago when he had been a very junior officer in the Survey Service. He had thought at the time that those animals from Earth-type planets had been comparatively lucky, they had been allowed a limited freedom in the open air. The beings from worlds utterly unlike Earth had been confined in transparent domes, inside which the conditions of their natural habitats had been faithfully reproduced in all respects but one—room to run, fly or slither.

  He said, “I think I know what you mean.”

  “I should hope you do,” she replied. “I’d sooner be dead than in a cage.”

  “Haab’s only doing his job.”

  “But he needn’t enjoy it so much.”

  “Are we so much better?” he queried. “Here are these creatures, drifting in from the Odd-Gods-of-the-Galaxy-know where. They may be intelligent, but have we tried to find out? Oh, no—not us. All we did find out is how to destroy them.”

  “Don’t come over all virtuous, John. You were the first to start screaming about menaces to navigation on the Lorn-Llanith route. Now your precious lightjammers can come and go as they please. And that’s what you wanted.”

  The following morning he received a call from Admiral Kravitz. “I’m putting you back on the Active List, Grimes.”

  “Again, sir? My paperwork piled up when I made the voyage in Pamir and I’m still trying to shovel my way through the worst of the drifts.”

  “I want one of our people along in New Bedford as an observer. You are the obvious choice for the assignment.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not you? You were keen enough to make a voyage in Pamir when it suited you. Now you can make a voyage in Haab’s ship when it suits me.”

  “Does Captain Haab know I’ll be along?”

  “He has been told that he will have to have a representative of our navy aboard when he lifts from Port Forlorn. He has only one spare cabin in his ship—a dogbox—so you’ll not be able to have Sonya along. Still, it should be an interesting trip.”

  “I hope so,” said Grimes.

  “With you among those present, it will be.” The admiral chuckled. “But I have to ring off. I’ll leave you to fix everything up with Haab. Let me know later what’s been arranged. Over and out.”

  Grimes rose from his desk. “Miss Walton,” he said to his secretary, “I shall be aboard New Bedford if anybody wants me. Meanwhile, you can call Captain Macindoe at his home—he’s due back from leave, as you know—and ask him to come in to see me after lunch. He’ll be acting superintendent in my absence.”

  “Not B—Not Commander Williams again?” asked the girl disappointedly.

  “No. Billy Williams, as you almost called him, is better at looking after his precious Rim Malemute than keeping my chair warm. What the pair of you were doing when I was away in Pamir and on Llanith I hate to think.” He grinned, then made his way out of the office.

  He looked with fresh interest at New Bedford as he walked briskly across the apron. His earlier curiosity about her had been academic rather than otherwise, but now that he would be shipping out in her he was beginning to feel almost a proprietorial concern.

  He stared up at the dully gleaming tower that was her hull, at the sponsons and turrets that housed her weaponry, at the antennae indicative of sophisticated electronic equipment of a nature usually found only in warships and survey ships. But she was both, of course. Her normal employment could be classed as warfare of a sort and as survey work—also of a sort.

  Grimes marched up the ramp to the after airlock. His way into the compartment was barred by an officer who asked curtly, “Your business, sir?”

  Grimes’ prominent ears started to redden. Surely everybody in Port Forlorn knew who he was. But this ship, of course, was not a regular visitor and her personnel were not Rimworlders.

  He said gruffly, “Commodore Grimes to see Captain Haab.”

  The young man went to a telephone. “Fourth mate here, Captain. A Commodore Grimes to see you . . . Yes, sir. Right away.” Then to Grimes: “Follow me, sir.”

  The elevator carried them swiftly up the axial shaft. Haab’s quarters were just below and abaft the control room. The master rose from his desk as Grimes was ushered into his day cabin. “Welcome aboard, Commodore. Thank you, Mr. Timon, you may carry on.” When the officer had left Haab asked, “And what can I do for you, Commodore Grimes?”

  “I believe, Captain, that you’ve already heard from our admiralty.”

  “Indeed I have. They’re insisting that I carry some snot-nosed ensign or junior lieutenant with me as an observer—”

  “Not an ensign or a lieutenant, Captain.”

  “Who, then?”

  Grimes grinned. “Me.”

  Haab did not grin in return. “But you’re not—”

  “But I am. I’m a reserve officer back on the Active List as and from this morning.”

  “Oh?” Haab managed a frosty smile. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you much in the way of accommodation, Commodore. This is a working ship. There’s a spare cabin the mate has been using as a storeroom—he’s getting it cleaned out now.”

  “As long as there’s a bunk—”

  “There is—but not much else.” Haab’s grin was a little warmer. “But I am neglecting my duties as a host.” He walked to the little bar that stood against the bulkhead under the mounted head of some horrendously
horned and tusked beast Grimes could not identify. “Perhaps you will join me in a sip of mayrenroth?”

  “It will be my pleasure.” Haab filled small glasses with viscous, dark-brown fluid and Grimes accepted his, raised it. “Your very good health, sir.”

  “And yours, Commodore.”

  The drink was potent, although Grimes did not much care for its flavor. He said, “This is an unusual—ah—spirit.”

  “Yes. I laid in a supply when I was on Pinkenbah. The natives ferment it from the blood of the mayren, a big, carnivorous lizard.”

  “Fascinating,” said Grimes, swallowing manfully. “I suppose your ship is well stocked with all manner of foods and drinks.”

  “She is,” Haab told him.

  Chapter 3

  NEW BEDFORD lifted from Port Forlorn on a cold, drizzly morning, driving into and through the gray overcast. Grimes was a guest in her control room and, he was made to feel, a very unwelcome guest. Haab was coldly courteous, but his officers managed to convey the impression that they resented the presence of the outsider and were demanding silently of each other, What is this old bastard doing here?

  New Bedford went upstairs in a hurry. Word had come through to Port Forlorn that Rim Arquebus was not only tracking what was believed to be the last of the energy eaters but had already made two unsuccessful attempts to destroy the creature. Haab had protested and had been told this sector of space was under the jurisdiction of the Rim Worlds’ Confederacy and that he, his ship and his people were only there on sufferance. The attitude adopted by his government did not make things any more pleasant for Grimes.

  Haab wasted little time setting trajectory once he was clear of Lorn’s Van Alens. He lined his ship up on an invisible point in space some light years in from the Llanith sun, then put his inertial drive on maximum acceleration, with his Mannschenn Drive developing a temporal precession rate that Grimes considered foolhardy. Foolhardy or not, the discomfort was extreme—the erasing weight of three gravities acceleration combined with the eerie sensation of always being almost at the point of living backward.

  Apart from these discomforts she was not a happy ship. Her people, from the master down, were too dedicated. They lived hunting, talked hunting, thought hunting and, presumably, dreamed hunting. Grimes was allowed into a conversation only when it was assumed that he would make some contribution to the success of the expedition—and this was not often.

  One night, at dinner, Haab did ask him for his views on the energy eaters.

  “How intelligent do you think they are, Commodore?”

  Grimes put down the fork with which he had been eating some vaguely fish-tasting mess, about which he had not dared to inquire. The implement clattered loudly on the surface of the plate—the high acceleration took some getting used to. He said, “You’ve seen all the reports, Captain Haab?”

  “Yes, Commodore Grimes. But you must have formed an opinion. After all, the energy eaters are in your back garden.”

  Grimes decided that he might as well talk as eat—he would not be missing much. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you about the Terran shark, Captain. He has, however, been described as a mobile appetite. He just eats and eats without discrimination, often to his own undoing. He just hasn’t the sense to consider the consequences. Right?”

  Haab looked to Dr. Wayne, his biologist. Wayne grinned and said, “The commodore hasn’t put it in very scientific language, but he’s not far off the beam.”

  “Then,” Grimes went on, “we have human beings who are compulsive eaters. They often are far from being unintelligent—yet they cannot control themselves, even though they know that they are digging their graves with knives and forks. The energy eaters are more intelligent than sharks. They may be as intelligent as we are but we don’t know. Intelligent or not, they are handicapped.”

  “Handicapped? Just how?” demanded Haab.

  “Unlike human compulsive eaters they have no control over their intake. If there is raw energy around they absorb it, whether they want to or not. They know, I think, that the absorption of the energy generated by a nuclear explosion will be fatal—but if they are in the vicinity of such a blast they cannot help themselves. Sorry—they can help themselves, but only by exercising their power of temporal precession. And by the time they found this out they were almost extinct.”

  “Then Moebius Dick will give us a good fight,” commented the mate. “He has survived in spite of everything that the navy has thrown at him.”

  “The commodore isn’t very interested in lighting fish,” said Haab. “He told me that he fishes for trout with hand grenades.”

  “I believe in getting results,” said Grimes, conscious that the officers and specialists around the table were looking at him coldly.

  New Bedford sped through the warped continuum, homing on the continuous Carlotti signal that Grimes had persuaded the captain of Rim Arquebus to transmit. The warship was remaining in the vicinity of the last sighting of Moebius Dick and had received orders from the admiralty to cooperate with Haab. Coded signals had been made to Grimes and, reading them, he had gained the impression that Captain Welldean of the Arquebus was far from happy. But Grimes’ heart did not bleed for Welldean. Welldean was in his own ship with his own people as shipmates and his own cook turning out meals to his own taste. No doubt his feelings had been hurt when he had been ordered to abandon his own hunt and to put himself under the command of a reserve officer. But he was not an unwelcome guest aboard somebody else’s vessel.

  At last the tiny spark that was Rim Arquebus showed up just inside the screen of the Mass Proximity Indicator. Speed was reduced and eventually both drive units were shut down. Rim Arquebus hung there, five kilometers from New Bedford, a minor but bright constellation in the blackness.

  Welldean’s fat, surly face looked out from the screen of the NST transceiver at Grimes and the others in New Bedford’s control room.

  “Have you any further information, Captain?” asked Haab.

  Welldean replied in a flat voice, “The EE emerges into NST at regular half-hourly intervals, remaining for ten minutes each time, presumably to feed on the radiation emitted by my ship. Pursuant to instructions—” he seemed to be glaring directly at Grimes—“I have made no hostile moves. Would the commodore have any further orders for me?”

  “None at the moment, Captain,” Grimes told him. “Just stand by.”

  “Rim Arquebus standing by,” acknowledged Welldean sulkily.

  “When will Moebius Dick—” Haab was interrupted by a shout from his mate.

  “There she blows!”

  The energy eater had appeared midway between the two ships. It was huge, brilliantly luminous, lazily rotating. Grimes paraphrased wryly, He who eats and runs away will live to eat some other day . . . This thing had eaten and run away, eaten and run away and it had grown, was a vortex of forces all of a kilometer across. It would never fit into New Bedford’s capacious hold, a compartment designed for the carriage of alien life forms, some of them gigantic. But this did not matter. The cage of beams and fields would be set up outside the ship, but still within the temporal precession field of the Mannschenn Drive.

  Grimes, a mere observer aboard a vessel that was not his own, felt superfluous, useless, as Haab and his officers went into the drill that had been worked out to the last detail. The mate, Murgatroyd, would remain on board in charge of the ship—and Haab, with the second, third and fourth mates, would go out in the one-man chasers. Haab was already in his spacesuit—the small craft were no more than flying framework, unpressurized—and his prosthetic leg, through some freak of sound conductivity, clicked loudly as he moved. In his armor, with that mechanical noise accompanying every motion of his legs, he was more like a robot than a man, even though his chin beard was jutting through the open face-plate of his helmet.

  “Good hunting, Captain,” said Grimes.

  “Thank you, Commodore.” Haab turned to his mate. “You’re in charge of the ship, Mr. Murgatroyd. D
on’t interfere with the hunt.” Then, to Grimes: “Will you tell Captain Welldean to keep his guns and torpedoes to himself?” Welldean’s heavy face scowled at them from the screen of the NST transceiver.

  “Moebius Dick has gone,” announced Murgatroyd.

  “When he surfaces again, we shall be in position,” Haab told him as he left the control room.

  Murgatroyd looked at Grimes. There’s nobody else to talk to, he seemed to be thinking, so I may as well pass the time of day with you. He said, “The Old Man always brings ’em back.”

  “Alive?” queried Grimes.

  “When he wants to,” replied the mate.

  Then he laughed. “He hasn’t much choice as far as that thing’s concerned. If it’s dead it’s—nothing.” Even in free fall he contrived to give the impression of being slumped in his seat. An incongruous wistfulness softened the rough, scarred, big-featured face under the coarse, yellow hair.

  “You wish you were out in one of the chasers,” Grimes stated rather than asked.

  “I do. But somebody has to mind the shop—and it always seems to be me. There they go, Commodore.”

  Four bright sparks darted into the emptiness between New Bedford and Rim Arquebus. As they reached a predetermined position they slowed, stopped, then slid into a square formation. Moebius Dick should reappear at the center of the quadrangle and then, at Haab’s signal, each of the little crafts would become a fantastically powerful electromagnet and each would emit the beamed Carlotti transmissions, effectively netting the energy eater in time and space.

  Murgatroyd and Grimes stared into the screen of the Mass Proximity Indicator. Four little points of light marked the positions of the chasers, a much fainter one denoting the presence of the energy eater.

  “Master to New Bedford?” crackled from the speaker. “Check position, please.”