by Mike Ashley
The renewed colors seemed not quite so sharp this time, perhaps because they had each retained a little more sense of awareness after their previous psychedelic experience. But then they began to find themselves able to make things melt and change form before their eyes, simply by willing it – or even by suggestion from another. For some minutes (that might have been hours or seconds) they stared at each other. Eric was possessed by the knowledge that he had only to look into Karen’s eyes to plumb the depths of her soul: all would be known to him. As he stared at her, and she at him, they saw a succession of demons and angels, age and youth, good and evil forms sliding across their faces. For a moment, Eric’s heart froze as he saw on Karen’s face the ugly vision of Evil Incarnate, then she shifted her position, the shadows changed, and it was gone, to be replaced by a look of loving acceptance.
At first they’d stayed with the others, participating in part in the group gestalt, finding ecstasies of meaning in the paintings and music. But as each of the six fell deeper into the experience, there was less communication between them and the others.
Eric had a vision then, of an unparted, fourth-dimensional figure of himself stretching back through adolescence, childhood, and early infancy to birth. He had always been alone, he realized. Man is born alone. Now each of them was experiencing this aloneness, each had withdrawn into himself.
But he was not lonely. As he grappled with this, he became aware of Karen again, aware of the depth of being which they shared. He found himself growing absorbed in her – and found her returning his response. Soon they quietly left the group to return to their room.
There they lost all consciousness of time or space, but became simply two spirits floating in a great sea of sensations – colors, sounds, feelings, smells, all heightened to a new and marvelous beauty. In the midst of maithuna lovemaking, they suddenly lost all awareness of having come from two bodies. Their heightened rapture seemed to transcend the physical, and there was between them only one great spirit occupying the entire room, even the entire universe. Eric was conscious of a wisp of thought, whose he did not know: “When this is all over, I wonder if we’ll ever get sorted out into our own bodies again?”
They didn’t. At first the somewhat uncomfortable insights into their own mental processes that the drug had given them left them with what Dr Tompkins assured them was a common sort of psychological hangover: for some days they were rather touchy and jumpy, their thoughts bound up in the problem of integrating all the new things they had learned about themselves.
But this initial period of reorientation passed, and they found a new awareness of each other. Most of their conversations were constantly being punctuated with the phrase, “I know.” They found much less need for talking then – a simple look into each others’ eyes could convey more than an hour’s talking. Whether making love, or quietly strolling through the stunted sage under the close high clouds, they were startled to find that each could feel both the physical and emotional sensations in the other. If LSD was supposed to simulate conditions in hyperspace, they could hardly see why the concern; this was a new sort of heaven – not a hell of insanity.
“I never knew that schizophrenia was supposed to be like that,” Karen confessed, puzzled, to Dr Tompkins.
“For you, apparently it wasn’t a schizophrenic condition at all,” replied Tompkins. “At least, not as we clinically define it. You found higher realities, while classically the schizophrenic condition represents a withdrawal from reality, or at least a retreat into a personal sort of reality which hasn’t much in common with external reality.
“The difference seems to be in the way you approached the experience, the way in which you two had prepared yourselves emotionally.”
“I understand one of the others had a bad time of it,” said Eric.
“Yes, Reynolds. He had what we call ‘the horrors’. When he got in deep enough he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t take the loneliness. Every man is an island – you know that now. We are each unique beings, born alone, living alone, dying alone. In one sense we will never cease being alone. This makes many lonely. There’s a difference . . .”
“Yes,” they chorused, and then looked at each other and laughed.
“The experience you went through strips away all the defenses. Most of us have sought to hide our aloneness from ourselves. Many simply can’t face it. You did, and you transcended it. You accepted it, you affirmed it. You used it as a starting point, a jumping-off place.
“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with the jump – and I’ve selected you to make it.”
They had been so wrapped up in exploring their new mutual personality that they were almost startled at Tompkins’ reminder of the project’s ulterior purpose. They gazed into each others’ eyes, hands tightly clasped, probing their emotions and intuition. Then Eric laughed delightedly. “Yes,” he said, “we will go.”
That had been just the beginning. They were given every opportunity to develop their growing love, living now in the apartment buried deep in the government complex, but the major part of this second phase of the project was a rigorous training program, spending so many hours in the mockup of the space ship cabin that it became – as intended – practically an extension of their bodies.
They were to pilot a unique kind of ship, for it could travel everywhere simply by translation into hyperspace. It had no need for rockets, no need to fly. But at the same time, it had to be equipped for space conditions, since their first jump would be a preliminary one to the edge of the solar system, and from there the big jump, across stars. Once in the Alpha Centauri system, they would have to hedgehop, looking each planet over before making any landings. And, once landed, they would not disembark, but would return immediately, directly to Earth. Computers would have carefully recorded and compilated the data from each of their jumps, carefully tracking their path. They would be able to backtrack automatically to any point they’d already touched upon; it was only the path ahead which needed to be picked out.
Once they’d recorded the way, it could be followed, automatically, in one direct jump, from Earth. Future trips would be closer to the old ideal of teleportation than space travel, and could be accomplished automatically. But for the initial exploration a great deal more was needed.
The controls would not be operated by their hands – although some auxiliary systems could be – but rather by direct mental impulse, transmitted through a maze of fine electrodes fitted to their shaven heads with a cybernetic helmet. By removing the gap in muscular reaction time in this fashion, a far more positive control could be assured.
During one of their brief vacations they had asked for the chance to travel to Japan for a visit to some of the temples and monasteries of the Buddhist religion, for they now considered themselves to represent a new synthesis of Buddhism. Its complex, yet simple rituals seemed to bring the mind to just that state of calmness needed for their mental unity. The government had acceded to the trip, after successfully arranging to conceal it as a public relations tour.
Now they were ready to board the Peacock for the trip that might bring mankind to the stars, or might end their lives within the next hour. The announcer beside them finished his speech with a smooth transition to the pair: “. . . and so mankind’s dreams of stellar travel ride today with this fine young couple who are standing here at my side. How do you feel today, Eric and Karen?”
They looked at each other, tried to suppress a grin and failed, and then Karen said to the announcer, “We’ll go.”
He was somewhat startled, but managed a well-modulated appreciative chuckle. “Well, I’m sure everyone is relieved to hear that. Do you anticipate any trouble?”
This time Eric answered quickly. “Well, as a matter of fact, yes. We might get killed.”
This was beyond the announcer’s experience, and after an insistent signal from his director off camera he brought the interview to an end. “Well, Karen and Eric, the best wishes of the whole world ride wi
th you today. We’ll be praying for you.”
Eric answered, suddenly serious. “We thank you,” he said, nodding. Then he reached for Karen’s hand just as she extended it, and they walked through the newsmen and were followed by their anonymous government escorts down another corridor.
The ship was nestled in the center of the great underground complex, a large sphere, the entrance port of which seemed simply another door at the end of the corridor. They clambered into the small control capsule, and for the next few minutes were completely engaged in the details of attaching the control helmets to their graphite-smeared heads, the sensors which monitored their physical reactions for ground control, and reading and checking over the instruments before them. The capsule did not smell quite as the mockup had; otherwise Eric could tell no difference. Eric reached out and met Karen’s hand, and their fingers locked. Tests had borne out their insistence that physical touch was necessary for the optimum functioning of their mental-empathetic contact.
As the last minutes were counted off Eric reached over for a last hasty kiss, and they become so involved that they were only recalled to reality by the overhead speaker which insisted, “Peacock Control, signify ready!”
“Ready and willing,” Karen snapped back with mock efficiency, and then with a laugh they settled into place.
The vacuum pumps outside the hull were rapidly fading in their monotonous throb as the air between the ship and the walls of the pocket it nested in was exhausted. The vacuum was necessary; otherwise their departure would create a sizeable implosion. It would be maintained until their return, for the same reasons.
As the last seconds ticked away, Eric and Karen found themselves fully alert, every sense tensed to the slightest reaction of the ship. They did not glance at each other, yet knew each others’ feelings and fears completely.
“God bless you. Four. Three, Two. One. Jump,” came the voice from Ground Control, and with the last word came a sudden wrench which threw the Peacock into hyperspace.
Something had thrown them back out again; something had precipitated them into normal space before it had been time. Naked of the Ship, they would die in minutes. Eric felt a cold tingling in his eyes, then noticed Karen’s were shut. Quickly he closed his own.
That was better. That’s better, he thought. Or was that his thought?
He felt a hand-squeeze. Mine. With his eyes closed, swinging in complete weightlessness, holding even his lungs motionless, he could feel the same special disorientation stealing over him again. His lungs seemed ready to burst, and he panicked. He exhaled with a shudder, and convulsively grabbed Karen’s hand with crushing force. They were in space! Alone, alone, alone.
He would never again know true aloneness. In his mind’s eye he still saw the cold unwinking stars wheeling about them. He was falling! – and there was no bottom!
Was this to be their fate, to perish alone and insignificant among the empty stars? Was this the meaning of the prophesy from the I Ching?
No. He felt Karen’s reassuring grip. She squeezed, gently. ‘His future shall be to go into the earth.’ Believe, Eric, believe.
There is a way, Karen tried to show him, pulling him, leading him. Let yourself go free.
Then he understood. Deliberately, he recalled into his mind the disciplines, carefully he began to relax himself, loose himself from the panicking fear. Slowly, he began to disassociate himself from physical sensation.
As a boy he’d sometimes laid upon a bed as motionless as possible. He used to call it “floating”. After a time it would seem as though he was indeed floating; he’d no longer be able to feel his body, no longer even be able to tell the position of his limbs. He would spin in that narrow void until finally he became frightened and convulsively started, opened his eyes, and reasserted himself in the world of sensation.
It was like that now. They had to get out, out of physical reality – back into that otherwhen of hyperreality. Disassociation: that was the key. While he let himself spin out of his body, he tried to recall, to recreate the way they had done it before, with the LSD, and he let his spirit grope outwards, linking with Karen’s, knowing and understanding – elsewards.
Their two bodies hung, dust motes in the vast starscape, for a long moment. Then they were gone.
There was no sensation of time. As soon as they’d re-established that transcendent contact, time ceased for them and they floated in an unbracketed infinity. For Eric it was also a period of insight and understanding; now he knew.
There was never any way of telling how long they’d hung together out there in space – much later the medicos told them that it could have been only a matter of a few seconds, but for Eric those had been long seconds indeed, even after he’d cut himself off from his body with its screaming lungs and frostbitten skin. And if they’d been, even for only a moment, alive in normal space, it had been for a finite amount of time, while afterwards, in non-space – call it hyperspace, another dimension, or nowhere – there was only infinity . . .
Then they, and the ship, were through, the jump completed. Eric was aware again of the touch of the electrodes clamped to his aching skull, his numbed feet and hands, his ringing ears and bleeding nose, and – most of all – the rasping breath shuddering up into his body.
He opened bloodshot eyes and stared into Karen’s. Then they were laughing together.
“You’re the Lost Weekend personified,” she said.
“Hey, we did it!” he said at the same time. Then he reached overhead for the small gray mike, and pulled it down, the cord tense against its return spring, and repeated his words, this time for Earth.
His arm ached while he held the mike and waited. Finally the small speaker behind them spat twice and then crackled, “Congratulations on making the first leg. How was it?”
“A little bigger than we expected,” Eric said, and exchanged a knowing grin with Karen.
They were still waiting for the reply to that one when, shifting his weight, Eric suddenly felt a sharp pain over the mass of lesser aches and pains in his left leg. There was a smooth furrow cutting a shallow groove through suit and skin. Blood still oozed into the
gap-After a moment of surprise, he realized the only possible explanation. “I must’ve been grazed by a tiny meteor or something while we were – out there,” he told Karen. A cool chill blew through his mind as he momentarily recalled the vast majesty of the lost and fearfully empty space in which they’d hung. He shuddered. Then he was secure and confident again, nested in his awareness of Karen and the control capsule.
Karen looked startled, and then quoted softly: “‘He is wounded in the left thigh. He saves himself by the strength of a swift horse. He is fortunate.’”
For Eric a laugh came quickly with his release of breath. “And the rest of it, then. It’s not ominous at all. ‘There is no light, only obscurity.’ That was hyperspace. And, ‘He had at first ascended to the top of the sky. His future shall be to go into the earth.’ I think that augurs well for our safe return.”
Karen paused, then said, “I wish I understood why that happened to us – I mean, our getting thrown back out into normal space like that. But at least now we know what happened to the other man who disappeared.”
“There seems to be a lot more to the jump than just a matter of mechanics,” Eric said, musing. “Once human beings are involved, an act of will seems to be involved. Hyperspace isn’t another physical place; it’s sort of like a state of mind – and our minds can apparently interact with it. Our mistake seems to have been in assuming that because we’d experienced something similar with drugs that we could expect the same sort of thing. We must not have handled it just right – because hyperspace is not an LSD experience, and once in it it appears we do have some measure of control over it. The others – who knows? Apparently the experience was beyond their capabilities. Some went crazy, others got halfway through, as we did, and came out too soon, without their ships. But we – ”
Karen nodded. “We pulle
d ourselves through, we went from normal space back into hyperspace by ourselves. An ‘act of will’ . . . Do you suppose – ?”
“It’s possible. I seemed to understand about that, after we went back in. It felt as though I was regaining something . . . some past knowledge. I felt a familiarity. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with our jumps, and – who knows? Perhaps in time, with experience, we won’t need the ship at all.”
“Teleportation – ?” Karen’s eyes glistened.
Then the radio sputtered again and Ground Control asked, “Are you two sure you’re ready? Everything ready for the big jump?”
“More than ready,” Eric replied. And, maintaining firmness and correctness, mankind reached for the stars.
BRIDGE
James Blish
This is the oldest story in the anthology. It was first published in Astounding Science Fiction (the forerunner of today’s Analog) in February 1952. Yet, apart from some small points, I don’t think it shows its age. In later years, James Blish (1921-75) would become better known for his adaptations and novelizations of Star Trek episodes, but in the 1950s he was one of the giants of science fiction. “Bridge” was one of a number of stories that were loosely bonded together by what became known as the “Okie” or “Spindizzy” series, the latter referring to a device that negated gravity and thus allowed whole cities (suitably protected, of course) to venture into space. The early stories were amalgamated in the book They Shall Have Stars in 1956, and the whole series was subsequently combined in the omnibus Cities in Flight (1970), one of the classic masterworks of science fiction. Among Blish’s other classic works are The Seedling Stars (1957) and A Case of Conscience (1958). This story, which comes early in the series when they’re still testing the invention, may not be quite so uplifting as others in this anthology, but the sheer scale of the concept – and remember this was written in 1951 – can’t help but trigger that sense of wonder.
