by Colin Kapp
As he spoke, a great, soundless explosion in space picked up the ship and shook it with a series of bone-jerking shocks. For a moment the lights darkened to the dull level of an emergency supply, and then were reestablished. Kasdeya was already on his feet.
“Speaking of enemies, the rabid dog runs at our heels. We’re going to have to kick one of the bitch’s fangs out. This conversation will be continued later.”
Kasdeya and three of the men leaped for the door. Jequn motioned with his gun that Wildheit and Roamer should pass through into a smaller cabin beyond, the door of which he then locked from the outside.
Three more vast, soundless explosions racked the ship, shaking it so extremely that Wildheit feared the hull would fracture. Fortunately, no such disaster took place, and it became obvious that here was a vessel whose construction lay beyond his broad experience. Then the voices of strange weapons began to speak from the ship, and the soundless shakings, though frequent, grew less severe.
The marshall was not surprised to find Roamer’s face ashen white, and he turned to comfort her.
“Take it easy, little frog! I don’t think our new companions are the type to let themselves get into a situation they can’t handle.”
“Oh … the ship?” Roamer shook her head. “That doesn’t worry me. Its patterns continue way into the future. Therefore it won’t be harmed. But the men themselves are old—nearly as old as this ship.”
“How old, Roamer?”
“Six—seven thousand years. Violent patterns that reach right back in time. Dabria was one of their kind, too.”
“Dabria the Guardian?”
“Yes. He too was very old. He thought nobody knew—but I knew because I could read his patterns.”
“And this frightens you?”
“Dabria was a terrible man. Only such a man could have contained the seers. But the men on this ship are even more terrible than Dabria. How can anyone be that old?”
“I’m not even convinced that they are that old. But the galaxy grows remarkably small. Kasdeya was one of the group who triggered a disaster in a place called Edel, on which the Chaos Weapon was operating. Apparently he also knows Saraya of the Terran Chaos-Center, for whom we work. And we also find that Saraya himself has no discernable origins either. With Dabria, we seem to have a total of seven men, none of whom fit properly into the scheme of things as we understand it. Where do they come from, Roamer?”
“I don’t know, but …”
A sudden shiver possessed the whole ship—not the brutal bucking of the previous explosions, but a more subtle, almost sensual movement that entered both the vessel’s fabric and the bodies of its occupants. The sensation lasted for about two minutes. During all that time Coul gripped with tight, intangible talons deep into Wildheit’s shoulder and drew his symbiotic sustenance directly from the marshal’s heart.
“What was that?” asked Roamer.
“They went through some sort of space-jump, probably to escape their pursuers. But it wasn’t a subspace jump. It was … something else …”
If the jump had been intended as an escape maneuver, it was a failure. No sooner had the peculiar sensation ceased than the great, soundless buffeting began again with an increase both in frequency and intensity. To Wildheit it was painfully apparent that no craft, no matter how well constructed, would be able to take that level of punishment for very long. Yet Roamer had predicted the ship’s continued existence. These two facts were irreconcilable, and the appearance of buckling and stress fractures in the bulkheads suggested strongly that Roamer was wrong. Unless the buffeting quickly ceased, the vacuum-integrity of the hull had to fail. Only the appearance of some new factor could preserve the Chaos prediction. And one was suddenly provided.
Jequn, this time without his weapon, burst suddenly into the cabin. “Marshal—we’ve been cleverly ambushed in space. If we can’t fight our way out, it’ll be the end of all of us. And that includes both of you. For the sake of self-preservation, are you prepared to man a weapon for us?”
“Against whom?”
“It would take too long to explain. Suffice it to say they’re the possessors of the Chaos Weapon.”
“If I help, I want my questions answered and no more constraint when the battle’s done.”
“Help us get out of this, and you can dictate your own terms.”
Jequn dashed from the cabin again, leaving the door open. Dragging Roamer by the hand, Wildheit followed fast. Jequn stopped before a weapon cockpit and motioned to the marshal to occupy it. Knowing nothing of the weapon or its capability, Wildheit slipped into the seat and felt the controls fall naturally under his fingers. With very few seconds of exploration of the ranging and direction devices, he gained sufficient insight into the operating principles to feel confident that he could use the device to marginal effect. The fire control was too obvious to be missed.
Roamer wedged herself behind the cockpit seat so that they both had a view of the screen which displayed the range and position of the myriad ships of an enemy space-force ranged in massive ambush. Wildheit selected a target and began to trim the controls to fetch it centrally into the firing sight, but Roamer stopped him.
“Not there—here!”
On a half hunch, the marshal swung to the position indicated by her finger which was near but not coincident with one of the targets on the screen. The co-ordinates located easily within the firing sight, and he pressed the fire control. The strange weapon sounded, and six seconds later the target disappeared from the screen. Wildheit’s eyes opened appreciably. There was no way in which he himself could have found the exact intercept position except by correction after a number of ranging shots. Roamer’s ability to read in advance the entropic change associated with the ship’s destruction had enabled her to predict with the utmost accuracy where the target would be at the instant the weapon-fire reached that point.
He glanced back at Roamer. “That’s something new in space gunnery. Which one now?”
Her finger silently selected a new position near one of the targets. Wildheit swung the firing sight to cover it, and fired. As he watched, the blip representing the target vessel actually moved toward the spot at which he had directed the weapon-fire and then disappeared from the screen as it reached the coincident point. In the back of his mind the thought occurred to him that Roamer herself constituted a Chaos Weapon of no mean potential.
He began a pattern of rapid firing wherever Roamer’s finger rested, without bothering to witness the destruction of one target before sighting on the next. The results were dramatic. Not a single shot was wasted, and the rapid mode of completely effective fire was eating decisively into the great horde of ships that had menaced the screen.
All their knowledge of the targets and results was drawn from the electronic representation on the screen before them, but in his mind’s eye Wildheit had a clear picture of the harder realities of the space battle. The disappearing blips from the screen gave little hint of the gigantic explosions, the short-lived scream of air escaping from fractured hulls, the crucially damaging heat and radiation from super-critical power plants, the mega-blasts from magazines in the process of destruction, and the growing menace of space-debris and lifecraft ever-spreading to impede the progress of the remaining ships.
NINE
AS the battle progressed, so the great, soundless buffetings to which they had been subjected gradually lessened and finally ceased. The screens clearly showed that units of the opposing space-force were beginning to peel away and retreat from the fight. Although the battle was obviously won, Roamer’s fingers continued to indicate fresh targets, and Wildheit continued firing until the last of the stragglers had moved beyond the range of the ship’s weapons.
In the heat of the battle, Wildheit had been so completely dedicated to the problems of maintaining rapid fire to Roamer’s directions that he had spared no thought to the proportions of their mutual success. Now, as the battle faded, his eyes strayed to the counters on the cont
rol panel. The diagrammatic tally, in a base-twelve notation, indicated the equivalent of two hundred and nineteen—and every single shot had taken a ship out of space. Amazing!
Aware suddenly that they had gained an audience, Wildheit turned to find that on the cessation of the battle the five men of the ship had gathered to watch the disposal of the stragglers.
Kasdeya finally spoke. “Such marksmanship’s not only incredible, Marshal, it’s impossible!”
“Just one of my better days,” said Wildheit, with a wry smile.
“I’m not joking, Marshal. We know the potential of that weapon and the limits of human capability with it. You exceeded them both by an unbelievable margin. How?”
Wildheit looked questioningly at Roamer, and she turned to the questioners.
“The patterns of Chaos already bore the traces of their destruction. It was only necessary to resolve the timing and positioning.”
“For a single incident, and with calculations taken from a broad enough baseline, of course it’s possible to run a Chaos calculation of that sort—in about two days.” Kasdeya’s brow was full of earnest speculation. “In no way is it possible to calculate hundreds of Omega points virtually instantaneously.”
“It is possible if you can see the patterns.” Her voice remained perfectly level, but she was obviously aware of the impact of her statement.
The five men of the ship stopped, transfixed by a shaft of disbelief around which a thread of growing hope was joyfully entwined.
“You crazy chicken!” said Kasdeya at last. “Are you telling me you can read the patterns direct?”
“It’s true,” said Wildheit. “Had it not been for that ability we’d still have been on the Rhaqui ship which was destroyed by the Chaos Weapon.”
Kasdeya’s face was filled with a sudden comprehension.
“Ah, that explains a great deal! A while back, we noticed a distortion of the continuum which suggested the Chaos Weapon was at work, but we couldn’t think of a target on the Rim important enough to cause our enemies to expend so much power. According to our instruments, the weapon must have been using energy at the rate of about ten stellar masses per second. We went to investigate—and found nothing but the two of you in a lifecraft. At the time the facts didn’t add up at all.”
“But now it does?” asked Wildheit.
“Very much so. It also accounts for the size of this recent ambush. Finding no catastrophe they could amplify, they sent in a fleet instead. But they weren’t trying to ambush us. It was the two of you they were after.”
“That isn’t credible.”
“To us it is. Marshal, you and this crazy chicken appear to be just about the hottest property in the universe today. Somebody reading the Chaos patterns way into the future doesn’t much care for what he sees. So he’s backtracking down the chain of cause and effect hoping some point in the sequence can be altered so that the final disaster goes past his door instead of through it.”
“How could he track all that back to Roamer and me?”
“He doesn’t need to be specific. You Terrans have a saying something like: … for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost. You don’t have to know much about the nail except that it was present or absent. You and the chicken are the nail, Marshal. And the battle the rider could have won has yet to happen. Yet the connection between the two of you and the battle event is already established in the patterns of Chaos.”
“Is this true, Roamer?”
“Naive but correct. Somebody’s exploring back down a set of coincident axes from some future effect to its past cause. We’re standing at the other end of that same causal chain, catalysts for a series of events that threaten to set the universe afire. To complete Kasdeya’s simile, the recent ambush represents an attempt to destroy the shoe, having failed to prevent the finding of the nail.”
“So what happens next?” asked Wildheit.
“I think next they will try to shoot the horse.” Kasdeya smiled ruefully. “Seems I wronged Saraya. I thought he didn’t know the game. I should have saved my breath. The old fox has invented a game of his own—using a brand new set of rules of his own devising. A master stroke, no less. Marshal, we’ve got to get the ship out of this area before they can send in reinforcements. Then I want a conference with my colleagues. I think later we may have a proposition for you.”
“Have I secured our freedom of the ship?”
“That and a great deal more. Regain your weapons, Marshal, if they give you any comfort. We’re going to get this vessel prepared for a fast trip. When you hear the jump alarm, lay down and bite on something soft. We’re going to take the hard route out.”
While the five crew members busied themselves with various ship-control chores, Wildheit, with Roamer at his side, picked his way toward the craft-lock in which his weapons had been left. Again he was struck by the curious features of the ship’s design. It was as if all the same engineering problems had been ably solved, but by a culture without links or exchange with his own. There was something faintly alien about the ship, yet it was obviously designed by and intended for the use of human beings. The idea of a parallel human space culture was inescapable, yet the possible existence of such a culture was something his instincts and his knowledge both denied. He knew of many completely alien cultures in the universe, but no planet other than Terra had ever been known to spawn the race of man.
He recovered his weapons’ belt and checked the stocks of pellets and capsules with some concern. His somewhat free use of the devices since he had acquired the Chaos Seer had lowered his supply, and replenishments could be obtained only from one of the strategic depots which served the space-marshals’ needs around the galaxy. Nonetheless he still had sufficient arms left to mount a fair battle if required.
They were still in the craft-lock when the jump alarm sounded. Obedient to their instructions, both lay down: Roamer with a folded cloth between her teeth, and Wildheit with a doubled equipment strap clenched between his jaws. The jump began, starting with the same sensual thrill they had experienced earlier, but continuing and ascending to strange heights which invoked both an ecstasy and an agony nearing the limits of endurance. Above Wildheit’s shoulder the symbiotic god hovered in stilled anxiety, extending his ethereal tendrils deep into the marshal’s heart.
While his body endured the sensations of the ordeal, Wildheit’s brain was trying desperately to analyze the peculiar nature of the jump mode itself. The subspace jumps with which he was familiar avoided the relativistic restrictions of the light barrier by application of a tunnel-effect which took a ship through the forbidden velocity of the speed of light and into the tachyon space beyond. In this domain, in which nothing travels slower than the speed of light, a reasonable inverse of known physical laws held true. Providing no alteration in speed was made during the duration of the jump, the effects of relativity upon entering and leaving tachyon space canceled out precisely, and no dilation of time occurred.
The present jump sequence which racked their bodies was an effect of quite a different kind. Wildheit’s silent speculation was that the sensations their bodies were experiencing was an indication of how their senses were trying to adapt to increments of altered time. In some obscure way, the ship was not circumventing the light barrier, but had become enmeshed in it and was dancing through random voids and interstices in the great luxon wall in much the same manner as water seeps through a bed of stones. Nor were the effects constant, but rather continuously varied as waves of heightened intensity began to beat upon an already anguished background.
As he lay there, Wildheit contrived to look at Roamer. Since the emotional turmoil was threatening his own consciousness, he was doubly concerned lest the trial should already have taken the girl past the point of endurance. What he found in her face both reassured and disturbed him. She wore the same look of calm she had shown when he had found her in the cabin of the Rhaqui ship with t
wo dead gypsies at her feet. It was an expression of some dreadful internal strength which far transcended his own and fleetingly reminded him of a phrase from Pilon’s farewell on Mayo: “… treat the stars gently, little one. Perhaps a few of them will survive.”
Reckoning the probable number of lives which had been lost since that phrase was spoken, the marshal began to believe Pilon’s warning that the rest of the universe was not yet ready for contact with the seers.
Then the full impact of a new phase in the jump hit them, and even Roamer cried out with the shock of it. A smashing wave of blackness caught at them as if trying to draw life away and leave only empty husks of what had once been people. Wildheit fought the sensation, then succumbed, feeling his life-force being forcibly stripped from his body and being unable to resist the painful evacuation. Time soon lost all meaning for him. He became conscious some unknown period later to find that all the jump sensations had ended. Roamer seemed to be appraising nothing in particular with a great air of puzzlement.
Wildheit pulled himself up, feeling his head to reassure himself that it was still intact. A greatly-subdued Coul hung low over his shoulder.
“Eeesh!” said Wildheit. “When those boys say they’re going to take the hard route out, they surely can’t be accused of understatement.”
“Those boys, as you call them, have patterns reading back to about the start of Terra’s recorded history.” Something was worrying Roamer. “Where are we?”
“After a jump like that we could be almost anywhere in the galaxy.”
“I wasn’t thinking of star locations. I meant which universe?”
“Hmm! We seem to be having problems with definitions. To me the term universe summarizes the totality of everything. All the stars, all the galaxies, all space—the lot. There’s only one universe, because by definition it encompasses everything.”
