The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B

by Ben Bova (Ed)

  Then he went into the living room and dumped Towser out of the gold-upholstered chair.

  "Come on, Tows," he said. "We'll go and look things over."

  He checked the gasoline in the pickup and the tank was almost full.

  He and the dog got in and he put the rifle within easy reach. Then he backed the truck and swung it around and headed out, north, across the desert.

  It was easy traveling. The desert was as level as a floor. At times it got a little rough, but no worse than a lot of the back roads he traveled hunting down antiques.

  The scenery didn't change. Here and there were low hills, but the desert itself kept on mostly level, unraveling itself into that far-off horizon. Taine kept on driving north, straight into the sun. He hit some sandy stretches, but the sand was firm and hard and he had no trouble.

  Half an hour out he caught up with the band of things—all sixteen of them—that had left the house. They were still traveling in line at their steady pace.

  Slowing down the truck, Taine traveled parallel with them for a time, but there was no profit in it; they kept on traveling their course, looking neither right nor left.

  Speeding up, Taine left them behind.

  The sun stayed in the north, unmoving, and that certainly was queer. Perhaps, Taine told himself, this world spun on its axis far more slowly than the Earth and the day was longer. From the way the sun appeared to be standing still, perhaps a good deal longer.

  Hunched above the wheel, staring out into the endless stretch of desert, the strangeness of it struck him for the first time with its full impact.

  This was another world—there could be no doubt of that—another planet circling another star, and where it was in actual space no one on Earth could have the least idea. And yet, through some machination of those sixteen things walking straight in line, it also was lying just outside the front door of his house.

  Ahead of him a somewhat larger hill loomed out of the flatness of the desert. As he drew nearer to it, he made out a row of shining objects lined upon its crest. After a time he stopped the truck and got out with the binoculars.

  Through the glasses, he saw that the shining things were the same sort of milk-glass contraptions as had been in the woods. He counted eight of them, shining in the sun, perched upon some sort of rock-gray cradles. And there were other cradles empty.

  He took the binoculars from his eyes and stood there for a moment, considering the advisability of climbing the hill and investigating closely. But he shook his head. There'd be time for that later on. He'd better keep on moving. This was not a real exploring foray, but a quick reconnaissance.

  He climbed into the truck and drove on, keeping watch upon the gas gauge. When it came close to half full he'd have to turn around and go back home again.

  Ahead of him he saw a faint whiteness above the dim horizon line and he watched it narrowly. At times it faded away and then came in again, but whatever it might be was so far off he could make nothing of it.

  He glanced down at the gas gauge and it was close to the halfway mark. He stopped the pickup and got out with the binoculars.

  As he moved around to the front of the machine he was puzzled at how slow and tired his legs were and then remembered—he should have been in bed many hours ago. He looked at his watch and it was two o'clock and that meant, back on Earth, two o'clock in the morning. He had been awake for more than twenty hours and much of that time he had been engaged in the back-breaking work of digging out the strange thing in the woods.

  He put up the binoculars and the elusive white line that he had been seeing turned out to be a range of mountains. The great, blue, craggy mass towered up above the desert with the gleam of snow on its peaks and ridges. They were a long way off, for even the powerful glasses brought them in as little more than a misty blueness.

  He swept the glasses slowly back and forth and the mountains extended for a long distance above the horizon line.

  He brought the glasses down off the mountains and examined the desert that stretched ahead of him. There was more of the same that he had been seeing—the same floorlike levelness, the same occasional mounds, the self-same scraggy vegetation.

  And a house!

  His hands trembled and he lowered the glasses, then put them up to his face again and had another look. It was a house, all right. A funny-looking house standing at the foot of one of the hillocks, still shadowed by the hillock so that one could not pick it out with the naked eye.

  It seemed to be a small house. Its roof was like a blunted cone and it lay tight against the ground, as if it hugged or crouched against the ground. There was an oval opening that probably was a door, but there was no sign of windows.

  He took the binoculars down again and stared at the hillock. Four or five miles away, he thought. The gas would stretch that far and even if it didn't he could walk the last few miles into Willow Bend.

  It was queer, he thought, that a house should be all alone out here. In all the miles he'd traveled in the desert he'd seen no sign of life beyond the sixteen little ratlike things that marched in single file, no sign of artificial structure other than the eight milk-glass contraptions resting in their cradles.

  He climbed into the pickup and put it into gear. Ten minutes later he drew up in front of the house, which still lay within the shadow of the hillock.

  He got out of the pickup and hauled his rifle after him. Towser leaped to the ground and stood with his hackles up, a deep growl in his throat.

  "What's the matter, boy?" asked Taine.

  Towser growled again.

  The house stood silent. It seemed to be deserted.

  The walls were built, Taine saw, of rude, rough masonry crudely set together, with a crumbling, mudlike substance used in lieu of mortar. The roof originally had been of sod and that was queer, indeed, for there was nothing that came close to sod upon this expanse of desert. But now, although one could see the lines where the sod strips had been fitted together, it was nothing more than earth baked hard by the desert sun.

  The house itself was featureless, entirely devoid of any ornament, with no attempt at all to soften the harsh utility of it as a simple shelter. It was the sort of thing that a shepherd people might have put together. It had the look of age about it; the stone had flaked and crumbled in the weather.

  Rifle slung beneath his arm, Taine paced toward it. He reached the door and glanced inside and there was darkness and no movement.

  He glanced back for Towser and saw that the dog had crawled beneath the truck and was peering out and growling.

  "You stick around," said Taine. "Don't go running off."

  With the rifle thrust before him, Taine stepped through the door into the darkness. He stood for a long moment to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

  Finally he could make out the room in which he stood. It was plain and rough, with a rude stone bench along one wall and queer un-functional niches hollowed in another. One rickety piece of wooden furniture stood in a corner, but Taine could not make out what its use might be.

  An old and deserted place, he thought, abandoned long ago. Perhaps a shepherd people might have lived here in some long-gone age, when the desert had been a rich and grassy plain.

  There was a door into another room and as he stepped through it he heard the faint, far-off booming sound and something else as well —the sound of pouring rain! From the open door that led out through the back he caught a whiff of salty breeze and he stood there frozen in the center of that second room.

  Another one!

  Another house that led to another world!

  He walked slowly forward, drawn toward the outer door, and he stepped out into a cloudy, darkling day with the rain streaming down from wildly racing clouds. Half a mile away, across a field of jumbled, broken, iron-gray boulders, lay a pounding sea that raged upon the coast, throwing great spumes of angry spray high into the air.

  He walked out from the door and looked up at the sky, and the rain
drops pounded at his face with a stinging fury. There was a chill and a dampness in the air and the place was eldritch—a world jerked straight from some ancient Gothic tale of goblin and of sprite.

  He glanced around and there was nothing he could see, for the rain blotted out the world beyond this stretch of coast, but behind the rain he could sense or seemed to sense a presence that sent shivers down his spine. Gulping in fright, Taine turned around and stumbled back again through the door into the house.

  One world away, he thought, was far enough; two worlds away was more than one could take. He trembled at the sense of utter loneliness that tumbled in his skull and suddenly this long-forsaken house became unbearable and he dashed out of it.

  Outside the sun was bright and there was welcome warmth. His clothes were damp from rain and little beads of moisture lay on the rifle barrel.

  He looked around for Towser and there was no sign of the dog. He was not underneath the pickup; he was nowhere in sight.

  Taine called and there was no answer. His voice sounded lone and hollow in the emptiness and silence.

  He walked around the house, looking for the dog, and there was no back door to the house. The rough rock walls of the sides of the house pulled in with that funny curvature and there was no back to the house at all.

  But Taine was not interested, he had known how it would be. Right now he was looking for his dog and he felt the panic rising in him. Somehow it felt a long way from home.

  He spent three hours at it. He went back into the house and Towser was not there. He went into the other world again and searched among the tumbled rocks and Towser was not there. He went back to the desert and walked around the hillock and then he climbed to the crest of it and used the binoculars and saw nothing but the lifeless desert, stretching far in all directions.

  Dead-beat with weariness, stumbling, half asleep even as he walked, he went back to the pickup.

  He leaned against it and tried to pull his wits together.

  Continuing as he was would be a useless effort. He had to get some sleep. He had to go back to Willow Bend and fill the tank and get some extra gasoline so that he could range farther afield in his search for Towser.

  He couldn't leave the dog out here—that was unthinkable. But he had to plan, he had to act inteUigently. He would be doing Towser no good by stumbling around in his present shape.

  He pulled himself into the truck and headed back for Willow Bend, following the occasional faint impressions that his tires had made in the sandy places, fighting a half-dead drowsiness that tried to seal his eyes shut.

  Passing the higher hill on which the milk-glass things had stood, he stopped to walk around a bit so he wouldn't fall asleep behind the wheel. And now, he saw, there were only seven of the things resting in their cradles.

  But that meant nothing to him now. All that meant anything was to hold off the fatigue that was closing down upon him, to cling to the wheel and wear off the miles, to get back to Willow Bend and get some sleep and then come back to look for Towser.

  Slightly more than halfway home he saw the other car and watched it in numb befuddlement, for this truck that he was driving and the car at home in his garage were the only two vehicles this side of his house.

  He pulled the pickup to a halt and tumbled out of it.

  The car drew up and Henry Horton and Beasly and a man who wore a star leaped quickly out of it.

  "Thank God we found you, man!" cried Henry, striding over to him.

  "I wasn't lost," protested Taine. "I was coming back."

  "He's all beat out," said the man who wore the star.

  "This is Sheriff Hanson," Henry said. "We were following your tracks."

  "I lost Towser," Taine mumbled. "I had to go and leave him. Just leave me be and go and hunt for Towser. I can make it home."

  He reached out and grabbed the edge of the pickup's door to hold himself erect.

  "You broke down the door," he said to Henry. "You broke into my house and you took my car-"

  "We had to do it, Hiram. We were afraid that something might have happened to you. The way that Beasly told it, it stood your hair on end."

  "You better get him in the car," the sheriff said. "I'll drive the pickup back."

  "But I have to hunt for Towser!"

  "You can't do anything until you've had some rest."

  Henry grabbed him by the arm and led him to the car and Beasly held the rear door open.

  "You got any idea what this place is?" Henry whispered conspira-torially.

  "I don't positively know," Taine mumbled. "Might be some other-"

  Henry chuckled. "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter. Whatever it may be, it's put us on the map. We're on all the newscasts and the papers are plastering us in headlines and the town is swarming with reporters and cameramen and there are big officials coming. Yes, sir, I tell you, Hiram, this will be the making of us—"

  Taine heard no more. He was fast asleep before he hit the seat.

  He came awake and lay quietly in the bed and he saw the shades were drawn and the room was cool and peaceful.

  It was good, he thought, to wake in a room you knew—in a room that one had known for his entire life, in a house that had been the Taine house for almost a hundred years.

  Then memory clouted him and he sat bolt upright.

  And now he heard it—the insistent murmur from outside the window.

  He vaulted from the bed and pulled one shade aside. Peering out, he saw the cordon of troops that held back the crowd that overflowed his back yard and the back yards back of that.

  He let the shade drop back and started hunting for his shoes, for he was fully dressed. Probably Henry and Beasly, he told himself, had dumped him into bed and pulled off his shoes and let it go at that. But he couldn't remember a single thing of it. He must have gone dead to the world the minute Henry had bundled him into the back seat of the car.

  He found the shoes on the floor at the end of the bed and sat down upon the bed to pull them on.

  And his mind was racing on what he had to do.

  He'd have to get some gasoline somehow and fill up the truck and stash an extra can or two into the back and he'd have to take some food and water and perhaps his sleeping bag. For he wasn't coming back until he'd found his dog.

  He got on his shoes and tied them, then went out into the living room. There was no one there, but there were voices in the kitchen.

  He looked out the window and the desert lay outside, unchanged. The sun, he noticed, had climbed higher in the sky, but out in his front yard it was still forenoon.

  He looked at his watch and it was six o'clock and from the way the shadows had been falling when he'd peered out of the bedroom window, he knew that it was 6:00 P.M. He realized with a guilty start that he must have slept almost around the clock. He had not meant to sleep that long. He hadn't meant to leave Towser out there that long.

  He headed for the kitchen and there were three persons there— Abbie and Henry Horton and a man in military garb.

  "There you are," cried Abbie merrily. "We were wondering when you would wake up."

  "You have some coffee cooking, Abbie?"

  "Yes, a whole pot full of it. And I'll cook up something else for you."

  "Just some toast," said Taine. "I haven't got much time. I have to hunt for Towser."

  "Hiram," said Henry, "this is Colonel Ryan. National guard. He has his boys outside."

  "Yes, I saw them through the window."

  "Necessary," said Henry. "Absolutely necessary. The sheriff couldn't handle it. The people came rushing in and they'd have torn the place apart. So I called the governor."

  "Taine," the colonel said, "sit down. I want to talk with you."

  "Certainly," said Taine, taking a chair. "Sorry to be in such a rush, but I lost my dog out there."

  "This business," said the colonel, smugly, "is vastly more important than any dog could be."

  "Well, colonel, that just goes to show that you don't k
now Towser. He's the best dog I ever had and I've had a lot of them. Raised him from a pup and he's been a good friend all these years—"

  "All right," the colonel said, "so he is a friend. But still I have to talk with you."

  "You just sit and talk," Abbie said to Taine. "I'll fix up some cakes and Henry brought over some of that sausage that we get out on the farm."

  The back door opened and Beasly staggered in to the accompaniment of a terrific metallic banging. He was carrying three empty five-gallon gas cans in one hand and two in the other hand and they were bumping and banging together as he moved.

  "Say," yelled Taine, "what's going on here?"

  "Now, just take it easy," Henry said. "You have no idea the problems that we have. We wanted to get a big gas tank moved through here, but we couldn't do it. We tried to rip out the back of the kitchen to get it through, but we couldn't—"

  "You did what!"

  "We tried to rip out the back of the kitchen," Henry told him calmly. "You can't get one of those big storage tanks through an ordinary door. But when we tried, we found that the entire house is boarded up inside with the same kind of material that you used down in the basement. You hit it with an ax and it blunts the steel—"

  "But, Henry, this is my house and there isn't anyone who has the right to start tearing it apart." « "Fat chance," the colonel said. "What I would like to know, Taine, what is that stuff that we couldn't break through?"

  "Now you take it easy, Hiram," cautioned Henry. "We have a big new world waiting for us out there—"

  "It isn't waiting for you or anyone," yelled Taine.

  "And we have to explore it and to explore it we need a stockpile of gasoline. So since we can't have a storage tank, we're getting together as many gas cans as possible and then we'll run a hose through here-"

  "But, Henry-"

  "I wish," said Henry sternly, "that you'd quit interrupting me and let me have my say. You can't even imagine the logistics that we face. We're bottlenecked by the size of a regulation door. We have to get supplies out there and we have to get transport. Cars and trucks won't be so bad. We can disassemble them and lug them through piecemeal, but a plane will be a problem."