The Universe Between

by Alan E Nourse

  He reached the top of the hill, wheezing like an old man, grasping at the rock at the top and pulling himself up to peek over the top.

  Below him lay more desert — smooth and glistening in the moonlight, every line and contour remarkably sharp and clear, peaceful in the moonlight. It stretched away for endless miles, hillock upon hillock of glistening sand. The rocks on which he lay were a dull red-black in the moonlight, as if dipped in blood. And far down across the valley floor he saw a canyon, long and straight, running in a flawless line toward the far horizon, and directly beside it, parallel with it, another smaller cleft. Straight and true.

  He stared down at it, his eyes wide with wonder, drinking in the valley and the blood-red sand and the clefts running straight as arrows, and even as he stood watching, a second moon crept slowly up over the horizon.

  22

  TO HANK MERRY and the others it seemed he had been gone only a few seconds, but he reappeared some twenty feet across the torn-up laboratory floor from where he had crossed through. He stood shivering, literally blue with cold, gasping for air and looking so ill and exhausted that Gail stifled a cry and Hank leaped across to catch his arm before he fell. “Robert! What happened? What did they do to you?”

  The boy shook his head numbly as Hank eased him to the floor and loosened his jacket. Robert looked at Gail. “Mom, call Dad right now. Tell him it’s going to be all right.”

  “Easy, fella,” Hank said softly. “Just get your breath and rest a minute.”

  “I told them,” Robert muttered weakly. “I told them everything.”

  Hank looked at McEvoy angrily. “Don’t stand there, man! Get some coffee or something.” He turned back to Robert. “How did you tell them?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. I had to open up for them — my whole mind: just tear it open for them. They got the pattern, the force of my thoughts. They understood.” He gulped eagerly at the steaming coffee, took a shaking breath. “Lord, yes. They read me, all right.”

  McEvoy’s eyes glittered. “And the transmatter?”

  Robert shook his head. “Nothing about the transmatter. I don’t think we ever got that far.”

  McEvoy cursed. “You sound as if you don’t care.”

  “I don’t.” Robert faced McEvoy defiantly. “I don’t care in the least. The transmatter doesn’t count, anyway. We don’t need it, not in the least.” He lifted his clenched fist and let a handful of rusty-colored sand sift to the floor under McEvoy’s nose. “There’s your iron ore, Dr. McEvoy. Your first consignment. I’ve been on Mars.”

  McEvoy’s jaw sagged for a moment as he stared at the sand. He clutched the boy’s hand, peering at the dust still sticking to his palm. Then he flushed with anger and he slapped the boy hard in the face with a heavy hand, jerking his head around. “You’ve got your nerve,” he grated. “Making your jokes, making a fool out of me.”

  “McEvoy, I said I’ve been on Mars. Can’t you understand what I said?”

  The old man stopped, shook his head helplessly, wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t get it,” he said weakly. “Why do you keep joking?”

  “I’m not joking. I meant what I said. You can forget about your transmatter. You don’t need it, now. All the iron on Mars is yours for the asking. All the uranium on the Moon, all the oil on Venus.” The room was silent and Robert held out his hands, almost tearful in his intensity. “I’m not lying, McEvoy. I showed them why we had to have that machine, I showed them why we needed help. They couldn’t understand, before. All they knew was that we were tearing them to shreds, and they had to stop us. But I showed them everything in my mind, I made them understand. And we can forget about the transmatter, we can forget about lifting ore from Mars by cargo ship and trying to land it on Earth. There’s a universe between us, McEvoy, but the people in that universe are good, they’ll help us and work with us, now that they understand.”

  McEvoy blinked, fighting to comprehend as Robert’s voice went on. “They had to make us stop working with that gadget. They literally couldn’t tolerate it. And until they understood why we needed it, all they could do was fight back. But now they know. They know we can build another one if we have to but they showed me that we don’t have to. They’re bargaining, now. They’re offering us free passage through! Guided passage that won’t harm them, easy passage to any place in this universe of ours we want to go. Mars, the Moon, Venus … McEvoy, they’re offering us the stars if we want them!”

  McEvoy stared at Robert Benedict, his face working as he tried to comprehend something that he couldn’t believe. He leaned down, picked up a pinch of rusty sand between his fingers, and blinked at it. Incredibly, tears were streaming down his cheeks and he was snatching up the telephone speaker, his fingers fumbling for the dial. They heard his voice as if from a very great distance saying, “Operator, this is McEvoy. Crash priority. I’ve got to talk to the Joint Conference Chairman, and make it fast!”

  Part Three

  THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

  1

  THE BED alarm had been designed for maximum annoyance with minimum noise. Buried in the pillow, a tiny speaker emitted a perfectly electronically modulated imitation of the irregular and unrelenting howl of a hungry baby, the most totally intolerable and sleep-shattering racket known to man. It was designed to wake up the heaviest of all sleepers from a drugged sleep in ten seconds flat and keep him awake until he fell out of bed and raced across the room to turn the wretched thing off — your money back and all contingent damages guaranteed if it failed. It worked splendidly as Dr. Hank Merry jerked awake in the darkness, muttering unmentionables, and stumbled to the bedroom console to pick up the phone.

  It was Margie at the office, apologetic but insistent. “Dr. Merry, I hate to bother you like this. I suppose it’s the middle of the night there but there’s a very nasty man here to see you, and he’s mad as hops and he won’t leave and he says he’s going to have you fired if you don’t see him this very instant, and lots of other unpleasant things.”

  “His name isn’t Tarbox, by any chance?”

  “Why, yes!” Margie paused. “How did you know?”

  Hank Merry groaned as a picture of a pompous little man with a large fat cigar came to mind. “Red hair?” he asked.

  “That’s the one. And he’s smelling up the place with — ”

  “I know, I know. Someday I’ll get him for aggravated assault because of those cigars.” Frantically, Hank cast about for escape. “Maybe if you get him a cup of Happy-O — ”

  “Oh, I tried that. He said I was trying to poison him. Dr. Merry, he’s very offensive, and he says you know why he’s here, and he wants action right now, whether you’re asleep, awake or in limbo.”

  “I know.” Hank sighed. “We’ve already met.” He thought of half a dozen ways to avoid seeing one Jonathan Tarbox right then, discarding each in turn as either unworkable, inadvisable, or flagrantly illegal. “Okay,” he said resignedly. “Tell him I’ll get there as soon as I can and start a tape going, in case he gets slanderous. Half an hour, maybe.”

  A moment later he was riding the elevator up to the aircar on the roof, getting angrier by the minute. The time-slip you could get used to, an inevitable annoyance you just had to put up with when you rode the Threshold. Your trip was always instantaneous as far as you were concerned, but it could involve up to eight hours gain or loss in Earth time from time of departure to time of arrival. The time-slip was an unavoidable annoyance, but a man like Jonathan Tarbox was something else. Hank set the aircar controls for the Los Angeles Threshold Station and settled back with some coffee. Happy-O was more pleasant for waking up, but he didn’t want to feel pleasant this morning.

  He flipped on a news report, and caught the tail end of an early broadcast: “… said the unexpected agreement of the Chinese delegation makes tri-partisan support of Joint Conference Chairman John McEvoy’s program for Venus development almost certain. And now on the Interplanetary front. Threshold Commissioner Henry Merry
reported today at a news conference at Ironstone, Mars, that mining operations are 23 per cent ahead of predicted schedule, and that full production of steel can be expected within three years. The commissioner reported that mills at Ironstone might later be built to produce finished steel at the site of the mining, but these plans depend on the number of workers who will permanently colonize Ironstone. And here’s a late bulletin: search parties from Titan have returned from the surface of Saturn empty-handed. There is now little hope remaining that the ill-fated exploring party which disappeared on the surface of the ringed planet two weeks ago could have survived, and search efforts have been abandoned. And now we bring you — ”

  Hank made a wry face and snapped off the report. Aside from the glaring inaccuracies of the report (he had said nothing whatever to the reporter about milling steel at Ironstone) he was irritated at the bright and cheerful way commentators had of reporting the most tragic stories. In a world that had expanded in five years from the surface of Earth to cover half the galaxy, a disaster on the surface of Saturn grew more and more remote from the ordinary round of daily living. It could be reported with detachment, a cheery news note on a frosty morning, but that didn’t make the disaster any less tragic for the ones involved. Greedy commentators hungry for news to feed to greedy people….

  His mind came back to the unpleasant interview before him. Speaking of greedy people, and a greedy industry I It seemed to Hank that he was doing nothing but dealing with a succession of greedy men and greedy companies these days, instead of what he really wanted to do: study the Benedict Thresholds and how they actually operated. But there he was, and Jonathan Tarbox was waiting most impatiently.

  At the Los Angeles Station gate he showed his card, took a chamber ticket from the attendant and rode up the moving incline to the station platform, row upon row of small metal cubicles visible down the brightly lit corridor. He found the door with 23 in fluorescent green over it, pressed the ID plate with his palm and heard three short clicks as the steel door swung open.

  The chamber was tiny, hardly big enough for the chair and straps. A blinder-mask grinned at him from the wall; he drew it across his eyes, tightened the straps around his waist (totally functionless, Robert had told him, but it gave a sense of security to the timid) and settled back in the chair. Though he had crossed day after day for years, he couldn’t escape the sudden claustrophobic reaction, the sudden momentary sense of bottomless emptiness that coursed through him at the instant of the passage. He had talked to Ed and Gail about it, the last time they had been out to the Coast, between their behavior-laboratory projects; Gail had claimed the strange sensation never went away. He waited until the soft music from the chamber speaker had relaxed him for a moment, then snapped the activator switch and felt his muscles tense….

  It lasted only a fraction of a second, but beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as the chamber door swung open. He pulled off the blindfold, unstrapped, and walked out onto the passenger platform of the Ironstone Threshhold Station.

  Ironstone, planet Mars.

  Moments later a surface car was whisking him through the odd, spindly city of glass and marble and Concrete to the Administration Building, and he turned his mind again to an angry little man with red hair waiting in his office, and to a puddle of molten and congealed iron lying 850 miles away, somewhere out on the Martian desert.

  2

  HANK MERRY had almost forgotten what an offensive little man Jonathan Tarbox was, by any scale of judgment. Short, fat, pompous, arrogant, belligerent, loud-mouthed, insulting, with a paunch that quivered indignation and a carrot-top of red hair that stood out wildly in all directions — Hank took a grip on himself and forced a smile to his lips as he walked into his office. Tarbox was smoking a huge yellow cigar, obviously made of Venusian swamp moss, scientifically proven to be non-stimulating, non-depressing, non-habit-forming, non-carcinogenic and perfectly delightful for the smoker, but something less than delightful to the non-smoker in the same room, since it smelled like burning horsehair. Hank suppressed a sudden violent urge to sneeze and motioned the little man into his inner office.

  “Nice of you to come so quickly,” Tarbox said with exaggerated sarcasm. “Only a two-hour wait, a mere nothing. It must be nice to be the Big Boss of things, so you can come and go as you please.”

  Hank offered the little man a seat. You are being needled, he thought, and if you respond with anger you will be handing this little vulture his game without any contest. “All right, Jon, something’s gone sour. What’s the trouble?”

  “Trouble!” Tarbox exclaimed. “Trouble! You’re lucky I don’t have the law on you! Invasion of civil rights, personal and corporation damages, illegal use of a Threshold station for personal gain — ”

  “All that in one day? And I’ve hardly gotten out of bed.”

  The man’s face turned red with anger. “Go ahead. Laugh. You won’t laugh long. I had to come all the way from Boston to Los Angeles — by airliner, mind you — to get a Threshold chamber at all! Just because you wouldn’t return my calls on Earth. And then you have me tailed all the way across the country into the bargain.”

  Hank frowned. “Somebody tailing you? That’s news. Do you need to be tailed?”

  “You can joke all you like,” the little man raged, jabbing at Hank with his cigar. “But you seem to forget that I represent Interplanetary Oil, Incorporated. And Interplanetary Oil, Incorporated doesn’t like to have its agents shadowed like common criminals.”

  Merry shifted his weight impatiently. “If somebody was tailing you, that’s your headache. I didn’t assign any shadow.”

  “Then the government did.”

  “I’m not the government,” Hank said. “I’m just Threshold Commissioner for Ironstone Station, that’s all. But if you’ve got government men tailing you, I’d suggest you start watching your p’s and q’s. The government doesn’t care too much for smart operators and their sharp ways.”

  Tarbox looked up malevolently. “But as Commissioner at Ironstone, your job is to handle problems and shoot trouble for companies working out of Ironstone and elsewhere on Mars. Right?”

  “You seem to know,” Hank said.

  “Well, Interplanetary Oil is having trouble. Lots of trouble, and all of it in your range of activity, since the Threshold is to blame.”

  Merry sat silent for a moment. Then: “Really? What do you mean, exactly?”

  “You know what I mean,” Tarbox said. “There’s oil on Mars, lots of it. You and I had a little scrap four years ago when Interplanetary was trying to sign a few oil leases with the government.”

  Hank nodded. “I remember. You have some legal angles that would have given you drilling rights to 85 per cent of the planet’s surface if I hadn’t screamed and pounded the table and made somebody listen to me. Fortunately, somebody did; you only got 25 per cent and a tight throttle on how much drilling yuo could do, and when.”

  Jonathan Tarbox grinned unpleasantly. “Yes, but we drilled all the same, and we struck. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of barrels of prime Martian crude sitting waiting for transport through to Earth. Enough oil to make up for the last ten years’ famine. Interplanetary never thinks small. We were thinking big and planning big, getting ready for big production. All we needed was a pipeline, and again we had to fight the government — and you — before we could get it licensed.”

  The pipeline. That also Hank remembered. A neat scheme, with no legal precedents whatever. Why barrel up oil, they had argued, and then cart the barrels to a Threshold Station, ship them through one at a time and cart them away? Why not just build a pipeline into a permanently leased Threshold chamber, start pumping oil in, throw the switch to perpetual “Go!” and have another pipe Earthside to catch the stuff and carry to straight to the refinery? A splendid argument; not even a question of overload, because the chamber would never be carrying more than the maximum load limit at any given time.

  Hank had fought the scheme tooth and nail, not
knowing exactly why he opposed it except that there was something about it that seemed to be carrying a good thing too far, somehow. The Joint Conference lawyers had wriggled and twisted and stalled as long as they could and finally, reluctantly said yes, mostly because they couldn’t come up with any one specific reason to say no. Of course, there was the revenue from renting the chamber, too, which wasn’t to be ignored. “Okay,” Hank said. “So you and I differed. You won. You got the deal negotiated. So why all the screaming now?”

  “Because we’ve been sabotaged,” Tarbox said. “We signed the papers, legals as could be. Then we bought four hundred miles of ten-inch steel pipe to ship to Ironstone through the heavy-transport chambers at Los Angeles. We hired five hundred men at a king’s ransom per man to come to Ironstone to build the line for us when the pipe got here, and now we have all five hundred men drawing full pay and sitting here on their behinds with nothing to do, because that four hundred miles of ten-inch steel pipe never got through to Ironstone when we shipped it!”

  3

  HANK HAD known it was going to happen, sooner or later. He’d been afraid that this was it, and it was. There had been a routine report from the Threshold Station at Los Angeles that a massive shipment of steel pipe was coming through, just the day before, but no pipe had turned up in Ironstone. He had assumed that there had been some delay on the Earthside end until a suspicious report, a thoroughly mystifying report, had come in from the pilot of one of the scout satellites making regular runs circumnavigating Mars every day, about something extraordinary that had appeared out of nowhere in a remote valley some 850 miles from Ironstone on the Martian equator. Something which had proven, upon closer examination to be an immense puddle of molten iron which half-filled the valley and sat there, slowly congealing. Hank had tried to flag down Robert, hating to do it because it seemed that he had to flag Robert down so often these days, except that this time Robert was somewhere out in the Rigellian system patting monkeys on the head, or some such thing, and couldn’t be reached. The call was still in, but there had been no response as yet.