Gateway to Never (John Grimes)

by A Bertram Chandler

  Grimes said, speaking around his pipe, “It knows that we’re here. It doesn’t mean to let us go . . .”

  It was the world of Kinsolving itself, a planetary intelligence that, somehow, had survived cycle after cycle, that had retained Its identity through death after death, rebirth after rebirth of the universe. Or so Grimes’ psionic communications officer, Mayhew, the highly trained and qualified telepath, had told us.

  And what was I, no longer a Rim Worlder, doing in the middle of this essentially Rim Worlds mess, I asked myself. It was all right for the commodore and his people to get mixed up in these affairs, but not for Basset and her crew. If the Rim Worlds survey ship, Faraway Quest, hadn’t been laid up . . . If the Dog Star Line’s Basset hadn’t come out to the Rim on a tramping voyage and then found herself temporarily unemployed . . . If she hadn’t been chartered to do the job that, normally, would have been handled by Faraway Quest, carrying Grimes and his small expedition to Kinsolving . . . If, if, if . . .

  But we had been so chartered. Then, very shortly after our landing on Kinsolving, investigations had been initiated in and about the weird Temple of the Principle, the “only building in Enderston that, somehow, had remained immune to the general decay. Mayhew had fallen into (?), through (?) the . . . altar (?), plunging to . . . somewhere (?), somewhen (?). Clarisse, Mayhew’s wife and fellow psionicist, had followed him. We had rescued them, using two deep sea sounding machines—essentially winches with many metres of piano wire on their drums—that were items of overcarried cargo, originally consigned to Atlantia. We had rescued them but, in the process, seemed to have dredged up the remote Past. Or had we dragged ourselves back in Time?

  Bassett was, of course, equipped with Carlotti radio. Our transceiver was powerful enough to put us into direct communication, given favourable conditions, with our home office in Canis Major, let alone any of the Rim Worlds. But our signals, although being beamed with extreme accuracy, did not seem to be getting through. Certainly nothing was coming through to us. And we should not be able to keep up our attempts at electronic communication for much longer. What energy remained in our power cells would have to be carefully conserved.

  The Carlotti system has, to a great extent, replaced psionic communications but on most planets there are still trained telepaths, most of them in the employ of the armed forces of their worlds. Mayhew had remained in touch with his colleagues in the Rim Worlds Navy until the landing on Kinsolving. Now, he had reported to Grimes, it was as though he had suddenly become a deaf mute. But it was selective deafness and dumbness. He could still communicate wordlessly with Clarisse. He could still pick up the thoughts of the rest of us—although, in accordance with the Rhine Institute’s Code of Ethics, he was not supposed to. And he was still conscious of the alien intelligence that brooded somewhere in the heart of the planet.

  Meanwhile we were stranded. We would have lifted, run for home—assuming that home was still there—but we were . . . stuck. There was nothing at all wrong with our hydrogen fusion generator but, according to my engineers, Canvey and Terrigal, no power was getting through to the inertial drive unit or to the firing chambers of the reaction drive, or even to the ship’s auxiliary machinery. They had talked learnedly of induction and more abstruse matters—but all that it boiled down to was that we were being drained of every last erg produced by the generator. As I have said, we still had the power cells—but their endurance was limited.

  “It doesn’t mean to let us go,” said Grimes again.

  “And what are Its reasons?” I asked.

  “I’ve only a human mind,” he said, with a wry grin. “I can only guess how a planetary intelligence would think. From what Mayhew has told us it seems to be a machine of some sort, a super-robot. Perhaps it was built, originally, by beings not unlike ourselves. Then it got . . . uppity. I’ve had experience with uppity robots in the past—but never such an enormous and enormously powerful one. But It’s not a god.”

  “Perhaps not, sir,” I agreed dubiously. “But it’ll do until a real god happens along.”

  “Mphm,” he grunted. “You know, Clarisse did raise real gods once, on this very planet, the deities of the ancient Greek pantheon. Or were they real? I’m not so sure now. Could they have been manifestations of It, built up from data extracted from our memories? If that was the way of it, then It has a sense of humour, and that makes It all the more dangerous . . .”

  “Dangerous?” I asked.

  “Too right. Even we have a weakness for black humour, and sick humour. And practical jokes can be very malicious. Practical jokes perpetrated by a being with godlike powers might be wildly funny to It, but fatal to us.”

  “Pratfalls can be fatal,” I agreed.

  “You’ve hit the nail on the thumb, George.” He looked at his watch. “Your efficient purser should have the afternoon tea laid on by now. Shall we go down, or ask her to send ours up here?”

  “We’ll go down,” I said. “Just to show the flag . . .”

  Afternoon tea was on in the officers’ wardroom, a compartment large enough to accommodate, with not too much crowding, both ship’s personnel and passengers. Everybody was there. Porky Terrigal, the reaction drive engineer, was working out his frustrations on a huge tray of the sweet and savoury pastries that Sara had produced. Nobody else was eating much and I gained the impression that most of those present would have preferred something much stronger to drink than the hot, innocuous brew from the big silver pot. But we could not afford the risk of taking anything that would dull our perceptions, slow our reaction times. Kinsolving was a world on which anything might happen and probably would.

  Dr. Thorne—bulky, bearded—heaved himself up from his deep chair as we entered. “Ah, Commodore Grimes, Captain Rule . . .” He waved his cup vaguely in our direction and drops of tea spattered onto the already-stained shirt bulging above his belt. “And may I—we—ask if anything of consequence has emerged from your deliberations?”

  “You may ask, Doctor,” replied Grimes mildly. He accepted the cup of tea that Sara Taine poured for him, thanked her. He went to the small settee on which Sonya, his wife, was already seated, took his place beside her.

  “Well?” demanded Thorne.

  “You asked if you might ask,” Grimes told him. “I gave my permission. So ask.”

  The scientist glared at him, then said, “Has anything of consequence emerged from your deliberations?”

  “No,” said Grimes. “Meanwhile, have any of you ladies and gentlemen anything to contribute?”

  “We’ve tried rigging bypass circuits,” said Terrigal through a minor blizzard of pastry crumbs, “but the wires might as well have been solid insulation.”

  “And I’ve taken the Carlotti transceiver down, checked every part, and reassembled it,” stated Betty Boops, the radio officer. “It should be working perfectly. But there just don’t seem to be any stations to send to or receive from.”

  “Tonight, if the sky is clear,” said Loran, second officer and navigator, “I shall be able to observe the stars, such as they are out here on the Rim. Then I shall be able to determine if there has been any shift in Space.”

  “Or Space-Time,” said Sonya somberly. “John and I have been on this world before. We’ve had . . . experiences.”

  Time travel yet, I thought glumly. Oh, I know that every time we use the Mannschenn Drive to make an interstellar passage it’s time travel of a sort—but, at least, we don’t arrive before we’ve started . . .

  “Ken?” asked Grimes, addressing Mayhew.

  The tall, wispy telepath started. His thoughts had obviously been very far away. “Oh. Yes. I was trying to get some idea of the local fauna. This place should be overrun with the descendants of the Terran animals brought here by the original colonists. It was, when we landed yesterday. Terran life forms. Our relations, not too distant ones. I could . . . hear them without any trouble. I know what it feels like to be a rabbit. But they aren’t here now. No pigs. No rabbits. No hens. The life
that is here now I can’t get into. I can pick up . . . feelings, primitive, on the lowest level, but they’re too alien. Fear, hunger, lust . . . But which is which?”

  “And It?” asked Grimes.

  “It has closed Its mind to me. But I know that It’s watching us.”

  “Mphm,” Grimes grunted thoughtfully. Then he addressed Sara Taine. “Miss Taine, is this ship habitable?”

  From the very start she had made it obvious that Grimes was one of her pets, but she flared angrily. “Of course, Commodore.”

  “Dr. Forbes?”

  “As, among my other duties, biochemist I must reply in the affirmative, sir.” Forbes looked so miserable that I should not have been surprised if he had said that Basset was no more than an anteroom to the grave—but Forbes always looked miserable.

  “Mr. Canvey? Mr. Terrigal?”

  Porky Terrigal answered, “All of our auxiliary machinery is working perfectly, Commodore, even if the drives aren’t.”

  “From the power cells, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  It was Bindle, the chief officer, who realized suddenly what Grimes was driving at. He said, “And once the cells are dead, so is the ship.”

  “So,” stated Grimes, “we must do our utmost to conserve electricity. To begin with, ventilation. I’m afraid I must ask you, Captain Rule, to have a few holes cut in the skin of your ship.” He read my expression without difficulty. “Don’t worry. The charterers will make good any and all damage.”

  I said stiffly, “I don’t see the necessity for piercing the shell, Commodore Grimes. With the airlock door open and the cargo ports we shall have through ventilation.”

  “Shall we?” he asked. “The way I see it, none at all through the forward part of the ship, where we need it most. We don’t sleep in the storerooms, cargo holds and engine spaces, you know. Too, open cargo ports would be an invitation to anything large and nasty to walk, crawl or fly in.”

  “An electric defense and alarm system . . .” began Bindle.

  “Power-consuming,” said Grimes. He turned back to me. “I suggest a conventional, trimmable cowl-type ventilator at control-room level. It will have to be so designed that the shaft can be sealed quickly if and when we are able to get upstairs.”

  “Cutting holes in the shell plating will consume power,” I told him, enjoying my feeble triumph, although not for long.

  “Yes, Captain, it will. But sooner or later the cells are going to be drained, anyhow, and we might well be stuck on this world for a very long time.” Then he asked suddenly, addressing Basset’s ship’s company in general, “Do you Sirians go in for barbecues?”

  “Of course,” answered at least four people, not quite achieving synchronization.”

  “Good. As and from breakfast tomorrow all meals, with the exception of dinner, will be cooked outside. The evening meal will be a cold one, starting tonight if Miss Taine has the materials.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t want a fire after sunset that might attract nocturnal predators. Come to that, I don’t want any lights showing outside the ship, for the same reason.” He got to his feet and addressed us all. “We’ll spend the remaining hours of daylight preparing ourselves for a long stay. And we’ll start conserving power right now, by switching off every nonessential light strip. With a bit of luck we shall have the back of the job broken before dark, and in the morning we’ll go to the city and see if that temple is still there.”

  “I was afraid that you were going to suggest that,” said Sonya.

  I didn’t sleep at all well that night. The ship was too quiet. I missed the sussurus of the forced ventilation, the occasional sob and whine of a pump. And I was conscious of the alien smells—of night-blooming flowers, of rotting vegetation—that drifted through our alleyways, eddied through the open doors of our cabins. In one way the unfamiliar aromas were reassuring, however. They were evidence that the officer of the watch was alert and, in addition to keeping a lookout, was trimming the ventilator on to the shifting breeze. The main cause of my insomnia, however, was worry. I had allowed my ship to be made unspaceworthy. Her shell had been pierced, was no longer airtight. I had been assured by my engineers that an hour’s work, at the outside, would suffice to restore the integrity of the hull, but I still didn’t like it. Apart from anything else, such work should be carried out to the requirements and satisfaction of a Lloyd’s surveyor—and where was such an official to be found on Kinsolving?

  Sometime in the small hours, I took a long, hard look at myself and found the spectacle amusing. Often in the past, before I attained command, I had laughed at shipmasters whose main exercise of the imagination was to find something to worry about. And there was enough to worry about without dragging Lloyd’s of London into it.

  I dropped off then, and it seemed that I was almost immediately awakened by Sara. She was bearing not the usual tea tray but a glass of some fruit juice, unchilled. She told me, “The kettle’s boiling outside, George. If you want tea you’ll have to take your place in the queue by the fire.”

  I said, “This will do. But it could be colder.”

  She said, “The refrigerator consumes power. It must be used as little as possible.”

  The refrigerator was not the only power-consuming equipment in the ship. My morning shower was cold. I like a cold shower when I happen to want one, which is rarely. This was not one of those occasions. I was in a rather bad temper when I joined the others by the fire a few metres from the airlock. But I enjoyed my breakfast—a slab of steak grilled on a steel plate over the hot coals, a mug of tea that had acquired a pleasantly unfamiliar smoky tang. This sort of living would be very nice until the novelty wore off.

  Both boats—our own lifeboat and the pinnace that was on loan from the Rim Worlds Navy—were inoperative. Each of the small craft had its own hydrogen fusion power unit, and each of these units behaved in the same inexplicable manner as the big one in the ship. Power was being generated but just wasn’t getting as far as the boats’ inertial drive or even, in the case of the Rim Worlds Navy pinnace, as far as the laser cannon.

  So, if we wished to revisit the city, we should have to walk. To revisit the city? As I have said, it didn’t look the same as it had done. It looked further away than it had been. Unluckily, the night had been overcast, so Loran had been unable to make any astronomical observations. We knew only that we were on Kinsolving. We did not know where or when Kinsolving was now. Perhaps, in the city, we should find out.

  A party was organized. Grimes, of course, was the leader. Sonya was with him. Reluctantly Dr. Thorne and his wife decided to stay with the ship. The scientist was a realist and knew that he was not fit enough for the march through the jungle. I thought myself that Rose Thorne could have coped—she was one of those wispy little women who’re fantastically tough under their seemingly frail exteriors—but she was loyal to her husband. Bill Smith and Susan Howard were to represent the scientists. They looked fit enough, both of them, in their mousy way. Ken Mayhew was in the party but Clarisse was staying aboard Basset. This would ensure that we were in psionic contact at all times with our base. I was going along, much to Bindle’s disgust. He complained that he had been confined to the ship ever since the landing. I told him that there must be somebody there capable and qualified to take command during my absence. Finally Sara, our weapons expert, completed the party. Her accurate shooting had saved us all when, with one short burst, she had severed the wire that tethered us to a dimension where we did not belong.

  (As a matter of fact, she had told me, in confidence, that her shooting had not been all that marvelous. “Imagine a pistol range,” she said. “Imagine a standard target, complete with bull’s eye. You’re trying to hit the bull. To use big gun phraeology you’re having to both lay and train. Then you have the card set up edgewise to you. You split it. Everybody thinks it’s marvelous shooting. But it’s not—because you don’t have to worry about gunlaying. Training is all that co
unts . . .”)

  So we set out. Luckily, we had laid in a stock, as recommended by Grimes, of tough drill clothing and heavy boots before lifting off from Port Forlorn. Luckily, we had loaded all sorts of other equipment that I, in my innocence, had thought that we should never need. But I’m a merchant spaceman, pure and simple, whereas Grimes had been brought up in the Federation Survey Service. The FSS, in spite of its name, is more of a fighting navy than anything else but its personnel are, now and again, required to do actual survey work such as exploration. So we had machetes for hacking our way through the jungle and magnetic compasses to ensure that we hacked away in the right direction.

  Before starting out we took a careful bearing of the city from the control room. Grimes noted that a prominent tree that we should be able to see from ground level was on this line of sight. Then, standing directly below the ship, he took another bearing of this tree. I asked him why he was doing this.

  He replied, “There’s such a thing as magnetic deviation, George. In the control room our compasses were affected by all manner of fields, some permanent, some residual. Outside the ship the effect is not so great—although I hope that it’s not enough to throw us out too badly . . .”

  We set off, Grimes in the lead, holding his compass, Bill Smith and Susan Howard, wielding machetes almost expertly. Now and again he would pause to let the two young scientists go ahead to clear a way. Sonya and myself, submachine guns cocked and ready, followed. Then came Ken Mayhew—armed, but with his weapon slung—and Sara Taine, her automatic carbine in her capable hands. We had one laser pistol, carried by Grimes in a holster, but it was not to be used unless it was absolutely essential. We did not know when, if ever, we should be able to recharge its power cell. (Come to that, when our ammunition for the projectile weapons was exhausted there would be no way of replacing it. The commodore had already suggested to the engineers that they might try to manufacture some arbalests . . .)