Universe 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  The pilot was already waiting in the blue-and-gray police transit vehicle, which looked strangely unreal against the background of powdery green that was the Langer Line’s house color. The vehicle was smaller than the company transits, too, making the cylindrical transfer port seem exceptionally roomy. Aware of the curious stares of the lock technicians in the control chamber, Hobart climbed aboard the shuttle and strapped himself into a deep chair in the midsection passenger compartment. When he looked out through the transparencies at his side he found he was now on a level with the lock crew, all of whom were gazing back at him with undisguised interest. Hobart’s cheeks began to tingle. Suddenly angry, he turned to Shimming, who was hauling himself down into the next seat.

  “This is an imposition,” he said. “It’s too much! I ought to have a lawyer here.”

  Shimming frowned at the buckle on his seat belt. “You’re not being denied access to a lawyer—but think of the expense of bringing one up here. And the delay.”

  “The company should take care of the expense— they’re supposed to look after the contract officers. I should have spoken to Colonel Langer.”

  Shimming looked up from the buckle, which he seemed to find as tricky as a Chinese puzzle, and an odd expression appeared briefly on his long face. “How in hell do these things go together?”

  “Like that.” Hobart slid the metal connectors home across the other man’s stomach. He thought about the reaction his mention of Colonel Langer had produced, and it crossed his mind that he might benefit by showing he had friends in high places.

  “Yes,” he said reflectively, striving for maximum effect, “I should have spoken to the colonel. I’ll call him as soon as we touch down.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time,” Shimming said. “Colonel Langer died four years ago.’

  “But that’s im—” Hobart broke off in the middle of the word, gagging on his first real taste of what space travelers called time-slip. As far as he was concerned, he had been away on a voyage lasting thirteen months—but during that period a total of eighteen years had elapsed on Earth, and the effect of those years was real. No longer was it an abstract idea in Hobart’s mind, a textbook paradox to be marveled at and dismissed from his thoughts. His world had run the gamut of eighteen winters, been warmed by eighteen summers, and there had been lots of time for old men to grow older still, and then to die....

  “...how you guys do it,” Shimming was saying. “Skipping ten or twenty years at a time would cut the feet out from under me—I’d be lost, if you know what I mean—but you can take it in your stride, calm as you like. Something I really admire, that.”

  “How did the colonel die?”

  “Some say it was Bourbon, some say it was gin.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about that,” Hobart said, deciding to pursue his original intent. “He was a good friend.”

  Shimming snorted. “Some friend!”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shimming placed his finger tips together and lowered his chin to his chest a couple of times as a preliminary to speaking. “It would be best for you, Dennis, if you didn’t try to palm off some story about you and old man Langer belonging to the same social set, playing polo together, and that sort of thing. You were one of the bunch of young rams that Mrs. Langer used to invite up to the house to keep her amused, and I doubt if the colonel ever did more than say hello and good-bye to you. Am I right?”

  “Certainly not,” Hobart snapped, appalled. “Colonel Langer invited me to his place personally, several times, and although we weren’t all that close we had a good ...”

  “Dennis,” Shimming cut in, smiling apologetically, “it was Langer who started this whole thing off. He was the one who said you killed Craven.”

  Hobart was unable to prevent his jaw from sagging as a partial understanding of his predicament seared itself into his mind like a spark tracing a message on chemically treated paper. The colonel must have known what Wolf and I did, he thought in sudden panic. He must have seen us, or been told—and this is his revenge.

  He became aware that Investigator Shimming was scanning his face with eyes as intent as those of a gambler watching the wheels of a chance machine shudder to a halt, and it came to him that he needed to protect himself. No doubt Shimming was highly skilled at reading expressions and interpreting instinctive verbal responses—so what was he to say in his own defense?

  He composed his features with an effort- and retreated into youthful pomposity. “This is too ridiculous for words.”

  “That’s unfortunate, because words are the only tools I can use,” Shimming replied. “There’s nothing . . .” He stopped speaking and glanced around him as the shuttle’s door sprang together with a pneumatic gasp. There was a diminishing hiss as the transfer dock was bled of air, and a few seconds later the outer door slid open to reveal the blackness of space. Because of the brightness within the dock the stars appeared sparse and dim. The shuttle wallowed slightly as the berthing clamps were released. Maneuvering jets sounded faintly and the vehicle began to slide out into a boundless ocean of emptiness, forsaking the homely environment of beams, panels, and pipe runs for one in which the mind was lost for visual anchors.

  Shimming gave a wan smile, and Hobart realized the investigator was highly nervous. He repressed the sympathetic grimace with which he would normally have reassured anyone who was new to space and stared straight ahead, trying to assess the likelihood of his ending up in the death chamber. A chill descended over him as he considered the proposition that his life might terminate on Earth in a few months’ time, in the year 2131, instead of at some vague and postponable date centuries ahead.

  The transit vehicle was moving clear of the immense bulk of the Longer Willow now, and the sunlit Earth came into view, looking huge and mysterious as it curved away on all sides, comprising almost half of the visible universe. Powerful jets began to hammer up front, reducing the transit’s orbital speed and putting it into a controlled fall. Hobart watched the milky blue immensities tilt and turn, dismayed at the contrast between actuality and his imagined homecoming at the end of his first voyage. The only crumb of comfort he could find was that Shimming was too overawed and wrapped up in space tyro’s misgivings to continue the interrogation for the present. He had time to get his thoughts in order....

  Colonel Langer’s age and failing health had forced him to give up active participation in space flight, but he had liked the company of junior officers who, because of their lowly positions, made an ideal captive audience for his reminiscing. For the most part he had kept himself occupied with his menagerie of frost animals, but there had been days when that pursuit had proved too passive and he had turned to other pastimes. One of them had been going into the strip of rough terrain at the rear of his estate to blast at snakes with antique firearms. Hobart, who had listed shooting as one of his interests, had been brought along mainly as gun-bearer on a number of the mini-expeditions.

  The farewell party at the Langer house had been a rambling, multicentered affair which he had attended for a number of ill-defined reasons. He had been flattered at receiving the invitation from Colonel Langer, and inexperienced enough to entertain hopes that it could bode well for his future in the company; he had been lonely and scared on the eve of the departure for Sirius; and, underlying and coloring all other considerations, had been the possibility of sexual adventure.

  The fables about Dorcie Langer had inflamed Hobart’s imagination, filling him with a curious blend of contempt and yearning. He had scarcely dared meet her gaze during his previous visits to the house, and yet he had nourished a conviction—one he would not have voiced—that she had been specially aware of him, that she had singled him out as a prospect. For an unworldly and slightly repressed youngster of twenty-two, those ambiguous glances had been sufficient to trigger off lurid fantasies—none of which had correctly anticipated the event. Even after a lapse of thirteen months, he could remember the exact words with which Wolf Craven had g
reeted him in an upstairs corridor at the rear of the house.

  I don’t know how you did it, young Denny, but you’ve connected with our good lady—she sent me to get you.

  The peremptory nature of the summons had shaken Hobart, as had the use of Craven as a messenger, but his initial shock had been swamped by the discovery of what Dorcie Langer had in mind for him.

  Come on, Denny, Craven had pleaded, sinking his fingers into each of Hobart’s biceps. I’m not going to let you blow this out on me, not after I’ve worked on her for weeks. What does it matter if she wants both of us at once? Don’t be such a kid, for Christ’s sake—it all adds to the fun.

  “Fun,” Hobart heard himself muttering as the shuttle began to sway, to come alive as it dipped into the tenuous upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.

  Shimming leaned closer. “What was that7”

  “Nothing,” Hobart said, shaking his head, wresting his mind away from the recurrent vision of three bodies twined together, straining, sweating, laboring; of the languorous opening and closing of the woman’s mouth; of Craven’s eyes, watchful and derisive. The subsequent events were what he had to think about and try to understand, because in them lay the source of his present danger. Hobart reviewed the rest of the fateful night and found he had nothing to work on, no memories of incidents which through hindsight had acquired new significance: The trouble was that he simply did not have enough information—while appearing to be friendly and communicative Investigator Shimming had, in fact, told him very little.

  For the remainder of the brief flight Hobart forced himself to relax into his seat, trying to synthesize the feelings of pleasure and nostalgia he should have experienced on seeing familiar green horizons arise to enfold him.

  It was early in the afternoon when the shuttle dropped solidly onto a runway at Langer Field. Instead of rolling the vehicle into one of the company’s operations bays, the pilot swung south and taxied into the section which the city of Corona Falls rented for use as an airport. They came to a halt beside a police car which was parked at a discreet distance from the passenger terminal and the doors swung open even before the turbines had growled into silence. Hobart had time for one glimpse of sharply etched snowy peaks far beyond a line of curved hangar roofs, then he was in the rear seat of the car beside Shimming, and the airport gates were looming ahead. The uniformed driver, without speaking or being spoken to, accelerated toward the city and in a few minutes they were entering the suburbs.

  Hobart studied the procession of store fronts and small business premises, backed here and there by dwellings and tree-shaded streets, looking for signs of change. He had only a sketchy knowledge of Corona Falls, acquired during his period of training at the Langer Center, and to him the lapse of eighteen years had created no striking differences in the place. Even the automobiles seemed very much as he remembered them, the designers having long ago surrendered to the dictates of aerodynamic efficiency. He strove to reorient himself as they neared the city center, but the car abruptly swerved down a ramp and stopped in an underground parking area. Shimming escorted him from the car to an elevator, through a warren of corridors, and suddenly the two men were alone in a windowless office whose walls were painted the indeterminate green favored by bureaucrats everywhere. The furniture consisted of a desk and four upright chairs. Hobart felt as though he had been cornered and driven into a pen.

  “You’ll have to advise me what to do next,” he said firmly. “How do I contact a lawyer?”

  Shimming sat down at the desk. “I told you there’s no need for that, Dennis. You’re not under arrest.”

  “It feels like it.”

  “I hustled you down here in case there’d be any embarrassment with reporters.”

  “Reporters?” Hobart selected a chair and sat down. “I didn’t think there’d be...”

  “Local TV, radio, and the Corona Falls Chronicle,” Shimming said. “The Langers had controlling interests in the lot. Old man Langer died about four years ago, but this is still very much his show.”

  “But why did he start gunning for me?” Hobart examined his hands as he spoke, knowing the answer to his own question.

  “That’s what I want to find out. I’ve just had this case dumped in my lap, long after the whole thing has gone cold, but I’ll sort it out even if I have to read microrecords in bed.” Shimming continued ducking his chin, suppressing belches.

  “The Langer Line is the principal employer in this area, and the city couldn’t get on very well without it, but I’m damned if I’m going to be used as an instrument for settling any of the Langers’ personal grievances. Now, if it turned out that Dorcie Langer had given you a grapple or two . . . and that the colonel had found out . . . that would incline me to suspect his motives . . . and it would incline me to backpedal on this investigation.”

  “There was nothing like that,” Hobart said heatedly. “I hardly knew either of them.”

  Shimming’s lips twitched. “At least we’re getting that much straight. Eh, Dennis?”

  Hobart met his gaze squarely. “I demand to know why I’m here. For God’s sake, I don’t even know how Wolf Craven was killed.”

  “That’s just the point—neither do I.”

  “But the body...”

  “We haven’t got a body.”

  Hobart shifted in his chair and gave an incredulous laugh. “Then what’s going on? Why did you send a transit vehicle up specially for me?”

  “That wasn’t my idea. Somebody upstairs is putting on a bit of a show for the benefit of the Langer board.” Shimming put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward with a look of concern. “Listen, Dennis, think it over carefully before you answer—are you sure there was nothing between you and Mrs. Langer?”

  Hobart thought about his career ending in a single blaze of sensationalism. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Okay, okay.” Shimming touched a button on the desk. “I’m going to record the rest of this interview, for your benefit as well as mine. You’ll be given a copy of the tape on request.”

  “Suits me.” Hobart crossed his legs, making a show of relaxing. “Perhaps now you’ll tell me why I’m here.”

  Shimming nodded. “On the night of May 12, 2113, you—Dennis Hobart—were present at a party in Colonel Nolan Langer’s house on Silverstream Heights. Also present was Wolf B. Craven, a junior engineering officer on a ship of the Langer Line. During the course of the party, at approximately midnight, you were seen by a number of witnesses having a heated argument with Craven, following which the two of you withdrew from the rest of the guests. Colonel Langer and other witnesses stated that you returned after approximately one hour, and that you were pale and uncommunicative, as though under mental stress.”

  “That’s wrong,” Hobart put in. “That last bit is wrong—I talked to lots of people.”

  “None of them remembers it. Anyway, do you admit to having an argument with Craven?”

  “Yes, but it was nothing much. He was a bit drunk.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “Well, he wanted me to go out to the freezer house at the back and look at Colonel Langer’s collection of frost animals, and I didn’t care for the idea.” Hobart heard the improvisation as though it were coming from a stranger and he felt a pang of unease. Lies, he sensed, should be kept simple and easy to manage.

  “Were you afraid of the animals?”

  “No—as far as I know they’re harmless. It was just that I had seen them before and wasn’t interested in seeing them again.”

  “But you went with Craven anyway?”

  “Only part of the way, to humor him. As soon as we got outside in the dark I slipped away from him.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I walked in the gardens for about an hour—it was a fine night—then I returned to the house.”

  “Was Wolf Craven there?”

  “No. Not that I remember.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”
<
br />   “No.” It occurred to Hobart, for the first time, that it was strange that he had not seen Craven during the rest of that night. He had noticed Dorcie Langer more than once—drinking with friends, laughing a lot—but of Craven there had been no sign. Hobart experienced a momentary coldness, small but very real, like a single snow-flake dissolving on his skin.

  “You’ll be interested to hear that two days after the party Colonel Langer visited the public prosecutor’s office and made a deposition,” Shimming said carefully. “In it he said that he went outside for a short time to check on his frost animals, at about thirty minutes after midnight, and that on his way to the freezer house he overheard you and Craven, still out in the garden, still arguing and apparently having a fist fight.”

  “That’s wrong,” Hobart countered, shocked. “That’s a lie.”