The Ways Between Worlds: Peter Cooper

by Larry E. Clarke

  The overall architecture was akin to a sports arena or coliseum. The floor was flat but there were no seats, just row on row of slabs identical to the one on which I sat. These spread out in precise files. Here and there low partitions divided the slabs into smaller groups. In the dim light I saw no sign of any ornamentation in the chamber. It had the strictly business look of an urban bus station.

  After another look around I felt a bit better oriented and slid off the slab. The short drop to the floor rattled my teeth and set my head throbbing again. I felt like an arthritic vampire and briefly considered lying back on the slab. A scurrying sound off in the deeper shadows changed my mind. I'd feel better in the open air. The ragged crack in the dome illuminating the place ended a good five meters above my head and offered neither a view outside nor an exit. I could now see that most of the tunnel exits were clogged with debris. It was hard to tell whether it had gotten there naturally or been placed there intentionally.

  The dust felt cool on my feet but I kept thinking of scorpions, shards of glass, chicken manure and other things one hopes to avoid walking on. I made my way to the nearest tunnel that showed promise of being open. It wasn't, and neither were the next three I checked. When I made my way down the fifth I had better luck. It too contained all sorts of debris but there also was a shaft of fading of amber light. Being trapped in this place overnight was the last thing that I wanted. I began clearing an opening in the debris as quickly as I could manage with bare hands. Fortunately most of the pieces were small and the opening had not been closed off completely. In ten minutes I had thrown enough stuff aside or down the ramp behind me to open a hole. In the process I’d unearthed the skeleton of a small animal about the size of a domestic cat. Couldn't tell much from the remains except that it had a very respectable set of teeth. The thing had been a meat eater not a cud chewer.

  In the rubble I also found several sharp shards of a crystalline substance, glass-like, but much tougher. Recalling the rustlings I'd heard earlier I kept the best of these for a makeshift knife, and tossed some others through the opening for possible later use.

  I tested the strength of the crystalline material by taking an oddly shaped piece and striking it harder and harder with a large grey stone. Even savage blows failed to chip it. The only result was to produce a number of sizeable sparks as the two materials met. I tossed some smaller pieces of the grey stone out as well. As I worked the stiffness and aching faded. Apart from a gnawing appetite I felt remarkably good.

  Dirty, sweaty, and more than a bit scared, I shoved through the opening and walked the remaining ten meters to the tunnel mouth. In dying light I got my first look at a new world. I dubbed the direction of the rosy glow of the just set sun "West”.

  In the East most of the view was blocked by the dark outline of the dome but I could see a few stars and one or two objects were bright enough in the twilight to suggest they might be sister planets. Around the dome in all directions other buildings were scattered. These were mostly low rectangles set some distance apart but there were also a few smaller domes and at least a couple of towers 30-40 meters high. Vines and creepers grew on the sides of most. None of the structures were in good repair. Nor was there the slightest sign of light, activity, or occupants.

  Outlined by the setting sun I could see a range of rugged mountains far to the northwest. The dome and cluster of buildings were set on the crest of a low hill, part of a chain angling off in a generally westward direction. It was too dark to see the nature of the terrain to the south and east.

  Although I've generally considered myself a clear thinker this was not one of my better moments. I hadn't expected the Emerald City at the end of that tunnel but this was still quite a shock. "Be calm". . .Everything will be OK" I told myself without real conviction. Naked, slung by the nuts half way across the galaxy, blasted from all that was familiar less than half an hour ago, looking out on a place whose name even God might not know. I began to weep as I watched the sky grow dark I was definitely not one of your Holo-vid heros who simply shrugs off such small matters and strides off to conquer the rest of the planet. I was one scared Peter Cooper, Science Tech III from Backside station where two hours ago my worst worry was whether the cute redheaded bio-tech would be put off because I'm getting a little thin on top. Now I lacked even the baby fuzz I was born with.

  Down the hill, from the woods beyond the edge of the ruins came small "insect" sounds punctuated occasionally with louder growls and shrieks. In my imagination these latter could have sprung only from the throats of the largest, fiercest of carnivores. "Lions and tigers and bears...oh my". I smiled fleetingly at the thought. What would John Carter do in a situation like this? Why old John would just get a good nights rest and then be off to conquer Mars the next day. Of course, John had the advantage of all that high octane Virginia fighting blood in his veins while I limped along making do with the fighting blood of shoe clerks and librarians. He’d had an unfair advantage.

  I decided to stay awake as long as I could and hope that something with big yellow teeth didn't stumble by and eat me. The puny glass shard that I was clutching didn't reassure me much but it helped a little. Sitting there alone I was cold, and I was thirsty and my mind turned every rustling sound into a monster.

  Most anyone who has ever spent a dark night alone outdoors knows the terrors one's own imagination can produce. I flashed back to a time in late fall when I’d camped alone at a site where bears had sometimes been spotted. About 2:00 in the morning I heard a loud rustling in the leaves moving closer and closer to my tent. Shaking partly from the cold and partly from apprehension I crawled out of my bag, unzipped the tent flap and clicked on my light expecting to confront a bear on the prowl. . . . .to my relief the circle of light was filled by a lone armadillo vigorously flipping over leaves looking for bugs. It was too much to hope the night sounds here turned out to be just as harmless.

  A light breeze had come up at sunset and it was beginning to get cold. I moved to a more sheltered position inside the tunnel mouth. I had to find something to keep occupied. I thought about trying for a fire with a spark from the crystal and gray stone, but there was nothing nearby to use for tinder and wandering around in the dark looking for firewood did not seem a good idea. I moved on to "plan B". No one stays long on the moon (where the nights can last weeks) without getting familiar with the night sky. The heavens were clear and packed with perhaps twice the number of stars I was accustomed to seeing even from the airless vantage point of Backside. None of these stars were familiar even though I could see almost a third of the western sky. This world was nowhere near our solar system. That was sure, but I wasn't enough of an astronomer to say with certainty that at least some of these stars weren't also visible from Earth. I scanned the sky carefully and saw a couple of faint fuzzy spots that might have been nebulae or perhaps distant galaxies. There were a couple of star patterns that looked almost familiar, but nothing that could be firmly identified. By now I was looking so hard for something familiar that I was probably seeing relationships where none existed. I decided instead of looking for constellations to determine how long it might be till dawn.

  A mountain peak outlined in the starlight marked the approximate position at which the sun had set. From the peak I raised my eyes a distance I judged to be about 15 degrees toward zenith. I found a star of at least first magnitude that formed one corner of a group I'd just labeled "the Stop Sign". If I could estimate how long it would take this star to reach the horizon I would have a pretty good idea how long it would be till sunrise.

  I began to count my pulse. In the fitness center last week my resting pulse had been about 70. Not great, but it meant I was keeping in fair shape even for lunar gravity. The gravity here seemed considerable compared to the moon's but perhaps a little less than a full "g". With nothing better for a timepiece I'd use 70 beats to mark off a minute. If it was good enough for Galileo it was good enough for me. Maybe one day I’d also repeat his experiment rolling balls down i
nclined planes to find what the acceleration due to gravity was on this world. I bet myself it would be less than the 32 feet per second per second Mr. G. had found.

  Seventy beats to the minute, seven hundred beasts in ten minutes, roughly four thousand two hundred beats to the hour. I started counting. . . 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . . . . .3,327 3,328 3,329 3,330. Three thousand, three hundred and thirty "Stop Sign alpha" winked out behind the peak. I figured in a slight fudge factor and estimated that my star had traveled the 15 degrees to the horizon in about 47 or 48 minutes. The approximate length of day then should be roughly twenty four times that or somewhere in the neighborhood of nineteen hours plus or minus any error in making the calculations. Assuming equal days and nights the sun could be back up in a bit less than six hours.

  I woke several times during that night. On a trip outside to relieve myself just before dawn I saw a sizeable moon rising from behind the dome. It had distinct striping and cratering on its surface. Just ahead of it was a smaller body barely large enough to show as a definite disk. Meanwhile, on the eastern horizon the first rays of what I hoped was dawn were appearing. I don't know how long I slept after that but I was happy to leave the bad dreams and hard floor of the tunnel and finally wake up to real daylight.

  Behind me the dome of the "receiving" chamber rose to the height of about 20 meters. The chamber floor was set below ground level so that only the dome was visible. In the brightening dawn I got a better look at the ruins I'd briefly seen last night. The broken dome and surrounding buildings in this hilltop location reminded me of an observatory setting. But that wouldn’t explain the rows of "couches" inside. A more likely possibility was that this had been something like an airline terminal, with the surrounding buildings serving support functions like hotels, gift shops, etc.

  Beyond the ruins to the south a wide plain stretched away to the horizon. Belts of vegetation snaked across it following what must have been waterways. Here and there I thought I could see some sort of animals grazing. From this distance they appeared as swarms of moving dots.

  To the west and north rose a range of mountains purple and maroon in the early light. A few minutes later I could see the tallest were capped with snow. The foothills, of which this hill was a part, flowed up in mounting waves toward them. Hard to estimate their distance in the clear morning air, but it would not have surprised me to know the more distant peaks were 150 km or more away.

  I picked my way around to the east of the building across a paved courtyard overgrown with weeds and saw that to the east the land rose and fell in gentle undulations. The "woods" which swept past the station from the mountains spilled out onto the plains here but soon faded out like a spilled bucket of water absorbed by sand.

  CHAPTER 3

  Snapping jaws and the chilling howls drew closer. I bolted for the trees in unthinking terror, not a thinking civilized man, but a rabbit running for his life.

  Sensing my destination the beast moved to cut me off. From the corner of my eye I could see it veer toward an interception just short of the tree roots. With a desperation I've usually felt only in nightmares I dove head first for the opening among the roots, clawed my way inside and drew back as far from the opening as possible.

  The howling ceased. . . Why was the creature not outside the hole? I saw and heard nothing. The silence was nearly as unnerving as the howls had been just a few seconds before. Something wasn't right. It should have been a split second behind me, probing with long claws to pull me out. Instead, half an hour or more passed and there were still no signs of my pursuer. I was cramped and hot, and bleeding from a dozen or more cuts in my feet and legs. I was afraid.. .afraid to breathe. . . afraid to look. . . afraid to put my head out and see what was there. Perhaps the creatures lurked silently outside waiting for me to stick my head out so it could knock it off with one of those massive paws. . . I decided to wait. . . Perhaps another half hour passed.

  I hadn't had a really good look at the thing that was chasing me except to note that it was the general size and build of a grizzly bear. Its howl had been well modulated, shifting between a higher and lower tone like the siren of some insane European emergency vehicle. It was fast. From a start fifty meters behind it had angled across the slope of the hill I'd been descending and been on track to cut me off just as I reached this tree.

  By the time an hour had elapsed discomfort was beginning to outweigh discretion. I took a deep breath and cautiously popped my head out. Nothing. Hyper vigilant, I tried again. Nothing. I crawled stiffly from my hiding place among the roots. No sign of it near the tree so I scanned the slope down which we had just come. There, surrounded by a patch of low plants lay the bear creature. . .motionless. After a long moment I chanced moving three or four steps closer. There were no signs of life, no respiration, no sounds not a twitch.

  I crossed the litter of leaves beneath the blackwood tree for a better view. The creature lay 20 meters up the slope, where it had fallen in a patch of low spiny weeds. Some of the plants had been crushed by the creature's fall.

  After several minutes without any sign of life I moved to within three or four meters. It looked “really, most sincerely, dead”.

  My first thought was that the animal had a sort of stroke or heart attack brought on by the chase. On reflection that didn't seem likely. Drawing nearer I began to see what really happened. Around the body was a dense patch of plants. The small, younger plants each had a slender shoot growing from their center. At the top of this shoot was a clump of about 10-15 slender spikes like the quills of a porcupine or the spines of a cactus.

  The base of each plant was thick and well rooted. The older plants had a somewhat different appearance. Under the increasing weight of the sunburst of quills the stalks bent almost to the point they touched the soil. A thin tentril dropped from the middle of the sunburst to anchor the quill-laden head to the ground. As the plants continued to grow that tendril held the springy stalks bent tightly like a drawn bow. With continued growth the thickening and lengthening stems increased pressure was put on the tendril. .

  The effect was similar to what one gets when a strong springy sapling is staked down to form an animal snare. Here though there was no snare. The bent stems served as catapults. Each tendril was a hair trigger whose release launched a fusillade of quills.

  A careless animal walking through or perhaps even nearby would be enough to activate the living tripwires. At the instant of release the springy stems flung the loosely attached quills in a wide arc. It seemed an effective way to scatter seeds but it was more than that. Although long and sharp, the quills were of small diameter. The wounds they might cause could be painful but would be little more than a nuisance to an animal the size of the bear creature. And yet, it was definitely dead.

  I found a stout stick about two meters long and cautiously approached. The creature had entered the quill plant patch at its upper end. Its momentum had carried it almost completely clear of the lower end.

  I found as few of the quills several meters from the parent plants. Most of the quills were octagonal in shape about 10 to 15cm long and about the diameter of a cocktail straw. A drop of oily yellowish sap glistened near the tip of many of the broken quills. By moving one into position with my stick I could also see that the base of each quill was well sealed and slightly concave. More sap was visible inside each semi-transparent shaft.

  Above the body of the creature a dozen or more quills protruded. More were surely crushed beneath. Here was evidence that these things were a potent poison. It was moving very rapidly when it entered the quill patch. Had it not died almost instantly its momentum would have carried it free.

  I could also see now why these plants had developed in such a fashion. Each plant was joined to one or more others in the colony by a system of hollow stems running along the top of the ground. Some of the tubes nearest the ursoid had already attached themselves to the body. This patch of shrubbery would sustain itself on the decomposing body of the beast. Of course, for the body
of the victim to be of use it had to fall somewhere within reach of the plants. It was no use if is staggered off to die at a distance. This dictated that the poison be extremely fast acting.

  The creature that had chased me was covered in mottled brown and black fur with red highlights on the tips. It's coloring would provide good camouflage in the deep shadows. It had six appendages. The rearmost four of these were powerful and ended in a foot and six clawed toes. Only four of the claws and toes were of any size, however, two higher up on the leg were almost vestigial. A thick walking pad covered the bottom if each foot.

  The uppermost appendages were attached high on the animal's shoulders and were articulated in a manner suggesting they were used for grasping and holding prey. Unlike the rear limbs the front set had only small claws. These were set on four stubby digits. The digit outermost from the body looked as if it might serve as an opposable thumb.

  The "Ursoid's", face was broad and flat. Its large eyes were fixed open in death. They were set so as to give a good forward view and no doubt could work together to provide stereoscopic vision and the depth perception needed to catch prey on the run. The size of the eyes suggested good night vision. Four fangs protruded from each side of its mouth. The longest was the length of my hand. Each successive set was slightly smaller.

  As I turned to leave a flash of metal low in the plants caught my eye. It came from the clasp of a leather bag lying near the ursoid. About the size of a postman's bag the leather was covered with a repeating pattern of elegantly worked geometric designs..