The meeting of the Town Council was louder and more unruly than it usually was, and Mayor Herb Grier was banging the gavel. When he finally got things calmed down, he said, “Gentlemen, gentlemen! We have a visitor, a distinguished visitor, here to talk to us about our, uh, daily occurrence. Gentlemen, Professor Cassidy of Montcalm College.”
Cassidy, a small man in a tweed sports jacket, got up and moved to the microphone. “Good evening, gentlemen. As Mayor Grier has said, I teach at Montcalm College where I hold the Brittany Chair of Antiquities and Medieval Studies. I do research in both traditional historical studies and in our college’s rare occult collection. In other words, part of what I deal with involves Magick, Sorcery, Witchcraft.” He paused to let the buzz that had sprung up die down, then continued. “I have found the Black Knight in several old books, and all agree that he was a very powerful Wizard—a Black Wizard!”
This time the buzz that sprung up forced him to stop completely.
Several months ago, the jousting field had first appeared in the middle of Maple Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, with no warning. There had been cars parked along both curbs, and cars driving down the street. There had even been a few pedestrians crossing the street in various places. All of those had vanished, none had ever returned. The second appearance had been almost as bad since nobody had expected a recurrence of the event. After that, though, there were few losses. The “No Parking” signs had gone up, and Mike’s garage was ready each afternoon to tow the few cars not moved by two thirty. A few families were still mourning people who had vanished, but most had gotten back to their normal lives.
And everyone—almost everyone in town—came out to Maple Street each afternoon to see the show.
Professor Cassidy was present again at the next Town Council meeting. “Professor,” said the Mayor, “I understand you have more information about our situation. What can you tell us about it?”
Cassidy stepped up to the microphone. “There are accounts of this in several books in our collection. The Black Knight was vassal to an evil Baron named Johann, or perhaps Ivan. The Knight would challenge the Baron’s enemies to a joust. As the battle started, the Knight would magickally invoke certain elementals and fog would shroud the field. It would clear minutes later with the opposing knight dead. What we are seeing is the events inside that fog. To stop this, we must kill the Black Knight. A modern assault rifle with armor-piercing ammo should go through his medieval chainmail like it was a jersey T-shirt.”
The local police force was totally lacking in assault rifles, but several days later an ace marksman from the National Guard arrived in town with his weapon. He carefully picked his spot, and the area on the other side of the street was cordoned off—just in case. Three o’clock came, the jousting field appeared, and the horses thundered toward each other. Just before they reached the center the marksman fired three times. There was no effect on either knight, but across the street the alarms in the bank went off. The bullets had completely missed their targets and taken out a large part of the glass front window of the bank, as well as wreaking other havoc within the bank.
That evening’s special Town Council meeting saw Professor Cassidy defending himself against two bank Vice Presidents as well as members of the Council. “Gentlemen, I admit I erred. Apparently the elementals made the twenty-first century bullets go past rather than through the space containing the jousting field. To succeed we will need weapons that can be carried onto the field of battle, and that at least appear to be medieval.”
“And how do you propose to do that, Professor?” asked the Mayor.
“There are groups all over the country who do medieval re-enactments, including jousting. We can get a champion jouster from one of these groups and equip him with weapons that look authentic but are far superior to those of the Black Knight. In other words, we cheat! But this is going to cost a bit of money. Mr. Mayor, can we depend on the town to cover expenses?”
It took two weeks and a lot of squabbling about money among members of the Town Council, but everything was ready. Assembled in front of the hardware store where the Black Knight’s opponent always appeared were the Mayor and Council, Professor Cassidy, and an armored knight on horseback.
“Gentlemen,” said Cassidy, “this is retired Army Sergeant Eagleton, probably the best jouster in the U.S. He fights as ‘The Red Eagle.’”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Eagleton.
“What about the weaponry?” asked the Mayor.
“My sword is made from the best modern steel, the lance has a chrome steel reinforcing rod down the center, and my armor is steel rings instead of wrought iron. Plus I’m wearing a Kevlar vest under it.”
He stopped as the street started to fade into the jousting field, and then moved out as several policemen intercepted the real knight and his squires who had also appeared.
Eagleton took his position. The usual off-key trumpet sounded, and the two warriors started toward each other, lances leveled. They reached the center with the usual crash, but this time it was the Black Knight who was unhorsed as Eagleton’s steel-reinforced lance remained intact. The Black Knight struggled to try to get to his feet as Eagleton swung his horse around to return for the final blow.
“Professor! Professor! You have to stop it! Don’t let him kill the Black Knight!” One of Cassidy’s assistants came running up, out of breath, shouting as loudly as he could.
“I can’t stop him, he’d never be able to hear me. What’s wrong?”
“We just figured out that last book, the one in Latin. If the Black Knight is killed, the elementals will be out of control, we have no idea what they might do. We have to keep the Black Knight alive until the spell fades.”
At that moment Eagleton brought his sword down, and the Black Knight’s head bounced on the ground. For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the stores along either side of Maple Street faded and vanished. Where the bank had been was indeed a reviewing stand, and behind it was a castle. Off to the side was a small village of thatched cottages. The townspeople who had gathered to watch were still there, but they were now wearing peasant garb.
Cassidy looked down and saw that his usual tweed sports jacket had changed, and he was now wearing the academic robes of a medieval professor. “Oops!” he said.
The Spacebum
[Crime doesn’t stop at the limits of the atmosphere]
BY THE TIME BILL HOLDEN saw Kells hailing him, it was too late to duck. Across the street the tiny alleys between the ramshackle buildings might have provided an opportunity, but here the smooth forty-foot high steelplast wall around the port left him totally exposed. Holden had nothing to hide, but Lt. Kells seemed to delight in harassing inhabitants of the port’s Skid Row. As Kells approached, Holden said, “What’s the problem, Lieutenant? Or is this a social call?”
Kells ignored Holden’s remark. “Where were you last night, Holden? Your landlady says you didn’t come home.”
“Snoopy old bitch! Hey, I spent the night with a friend. Any law against that?”
“I’m asking the questions. Who were you with, and when did you arrive and leave?”
“I spent the night with Lida. She didn’t have a john, so she invited me ‘to keep her company.’ It meant a night on the house, so of course I agreed.”
Kells rested his hand on the billy club he carried even in plain clothes. “Holden, one more time. When did you leave your girlfriend’s?”
“Shit, Lieutenant, I don’t know! I do know it was still totally dark, but I don’t have a watch and Lida doesn’t keep a clock, she says it upsets the johns to see how long they’re spending with her. We woke up some time in the middle of the night for a second time around, and then she went back to sleep. I couldn’t, and I got tired of lying there in the dark, so I got up quietly and left.” He ignored the “girlfriend” crack.
“You didn’t go back to your flop?”
“No, the landlady locks up at two in the morning and you can’t get in. I was
pretty sure it was later than that so I didn’t even try. I wandered around until dawn. Lieutenant, what the hell is going on?” Holden felt his old spacer captain habits surfacing and took a tight rein on his temper.
Kells looked at him. “Lida is dead. Murdered. Around seven a.m., we think. Very messy.”
“Lida murdered? Oh, no! Who did it?”
“Well, Holden, you spent last night with her. You were probably the last to see her alive, that makes you a suspect. And she was killed by explosive decompression. You being an ex-spacer captain and familiar with such things, that makes you a prime suspect.”
“You don’t die of explosive decompression on the surface of a planet. What idiot came up with that idea?”
“The coroner, Holden, the coroner. And Doctor Smislov, the space medic from the Imperial Queen. Both of them agree. But of course you’re the expert, so they must be wrong. Why don’t you come along to headquarters and help me tell them?”
“Am I under arrest, Lieutenant?”
“No-o-o-o, not exactly. But you could be, very easily. You get it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I get it. Let’s go.”
At headquarters, a clerk took down Holden’s statement under the Lieutenant’s watchful eye. Then Kells told Holden, “Now your fingerprints. Routine procedure, you understand.”
Holden looked at him and shrugged. “Doesn’t that give you an even dozen sets of my fingerprints, Lieutenant?” Kells glared at him and he shut up.
The fingerprint clerk looked up at Holden, then did a double-take. “Hey, ain’t you that ex-spacer captain they interviewed on video last week?”
Holden mumbled, “Yeah,” and held out his hand.
The clerk took the hand, then persisted, “The one that lost his ship a year ago?”
Holden mumbled, “Yeah,” again, wishing for the hundredth time in a week that he hadn’t granted the interview. The fifty credits had been nice, but he was beginning to regret the notoriety.
Fingerprints done, Kells took Holden down to the morgue. Holden steeled himself as they wheeled Lida’s body out, but he still couldn’t avoid a gasp. “Damn! It sure looks like explosive decompression, Lieutenant. But I don’t understand it, here on the surface.”
Finally Kells led Holden back up to the exit. “You can go now, but don’t leave the city,” he said, then burst into laughter. “As if a bum like you had enough money to leave your own street, let alone the city.”
Holden barely heard him. The sight of the body had awakened the year-old memories of the disaster. He had been Captain of the StellTrans company’s tramp spacer Pisces III, emerging out of dual space into Valerian’s system…
The stars of normal space appeared in the screen, and the ship rang like an enormous bell, resonating with the transition out of dual space. Holden looked at his First Mate. “Well, we’re here, Frank.”
“Yes, sir.” The mate turned as one of the computer terminals beeped. “Position confirmed, ETA Valerian forty-six hours twenty-seven minutes.”
Holden could still hear the ship ringing and checked his watch. “This resonance is persisting too long. May be a problem. Mark it down in the log.”
“Yes sir, Captain. But we can’t get it fixed on Valerian. This dump doesn’t have a resonance engineer.”
“True, but I’ll go check out the recorders. Maybe I’ll see a hotspot and we can shift a few dampers around. You have the con.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The recorder room was about ten feet aft of the control room. Every time Holden squeezed in, he cussed at whoever had placed the recorders in a damned broom closet. He shut the door, the only way to get at the resonance instruments, and started to check the traces. Suddenly there was a jar. The lights went out, and there was a draft toward the door.
Blowout! The extra resonance had blown the ship’s pressure hull! The air pressure was dropping fast, but the closed door slowed the outrush and protected him from the worst effects of decompression.
Holden had never had to breathe vacuum before, but he knew others who had. Hyperventilate to build up reserve oxygen in the blood, then exhale so you don’t explode. When the pressure dropped too low for further breathing, he yanked open the door and dove up the corridor to the control room, ignoring Frank’s body floating there.
He grabbed an emergency vac-suit from its hook and threw on the helmet, twisting the valve. Even unsealed it held enough oxygen to keep him from blacking out. When he got the suit sealed, he checked and saw he’d been in vacuum for about forty-five seconds. The exposed skin on his face and hands felt funny, and his throat was sore, dried out, but his blood hadn’t started to boil in that short time.
He finally had time to take a look at Frank, and wished he hadn’t. Throwing up inside a vac-suit was not the best of ideas, and he barely managed to avoid it. Explosive decompression is not pretty. He picked up an extra oxygen tank and started to check out the ship.
Corpses, ugly corpses, exploded corpses. When he got to the naked girl in the shower he barely missed throwing up again. After that he stopped looking so closely.
He headed for the power room, hoping to get the computers and nav instruments back, but it was hopeless. The converter, its output shorted by a large piece of metal that had fallen across the bus bars, was a heap of slag. The atomic engines were okay, but without the converter they were useless. He could see that the Pisces III was going to hit atmosphere and burn up. Soon. The original forty-seven-hour ETA had assumed the ship would be braking, and that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t have time to check more than a quarter of the ship. He never did find the hull rupture, nor did he see any other survivors.
Valerian’s disk was hanging large in front of the ship when he headed for the lifeboats. Number one was missing. The safety clamps had been torn loose by the resonance, but the seals had held, that wasn’t what had caused the air loss. It was hard to see the full extent of damage. Something looked odd, but he was quickly running out of time.
Lifeboat number two was usable, and he cast off just in time. It was only minutes later he hit the fringes of atmosphere and began to fight the little craft down to the surface.
The next few days passed in a fog, until an invitation to a card game from an acquaintance named Snooker snapped him out of it. The elation didn’t last long. “Damn!” Holden threw his cards on the table in disgust. “Well, guys, I’m busted. I haven’t caught a decent card all night.” He stood up and started to put his leather captain’s jacket on.
“You leaving?” asked Snooker.
“Yeah, this game is no fun to watch. Tonight it wasn’t much fun to play, either. Well, I’ll see you guys around.” He walked toward the door, then stopped. “Anyone know what time it is?”
“About three,” said one of the players.
“Double damn! That means the landlady has locked up already. I guess I sleep on a bench somewhere.”
“You sure you don’t wanna stay here? You sleep on a bench and some mug is likely to roll you,” said Snooker.
“No, thanks. I’ll take my chances, I got no money anyway. Good thing I paid my landlady a week in advance before I came.”
Holden walked out the door, up the stairs and through the door at the top, down the long narrow hall, and through the outer door to the street. It was dark, the city didn’t waste a lot of street lamps on this part of town. A few blocks away toward the port entrance he could see the brightly lit “Joy Street” area with its bars and hook shops, but he turned the other way and started walking.
He was still walking, groggy and half asleep, when he noticed the first lightening of the sky preceding dawn. He turned and headed for his flop, planning to go in and get a few hours sleep when the landlady opened up. Turning the final corner he bumped into someone, and heard the familiar voice of Lt. Kells say, “Holden!”
Holden struggled to wake himself fully when he realized who it was. “Good morning, Lieutenant. Out kind of early, aren’t you? What can I do for you?”
�
�You can tell me about a guy named Snooker and a card game he had going last night.”
“Just a friendly little game, Lieutenant. Penny ante, nothing for the police to worry about.” But even as he said it, Holden had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was wrong, more than just a police crackdown on gambling.
“I know that, none of these games are anything but social events, everyone tells me that.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “But—” he poked a finger at Holden “—you were there last night, and then you left.”
“Yeah, I was there. Then I was suddenly taken broke, and I left. Around three a.m. This time I asked what time it was, just so I could tell you. Okay?”
“Holden, you talk too much. Where did you go when you left the game?”
“Beats me, I just wandered around. What the hell’s the problem this time?”
“Same as last time. Murder. All the guys in the game, a while after you left. Same M.O., explosive decompression. Now, would you care to come down to the station to give a statement, or shall I haul you in?”
“No problem, Lieutenant. And you can have another set of my fingerprints, too, if you want.”
“Shut up!” Kells turned and headed for the police station, confident that Holden would follow him.
Sitting in the police station, Holden began to think about recent events. Both times the murders had occurred at a place where he would have been except for sheer dumb luck. Could they—whoever “they” were—have been aiming at him? And why? But then, why kill Lida? Why kill Snooker and the bunch of other bums in the game?
He was interrupted by the police clerk who had taken his prints a few days earlier. “Say, Captain, can I get your autograph? I was afraid to ask the other day with the Lieutenant there.”
Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird Page 17
