Universe 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  “It looks tempting,” Giyani said as they moved back around to their starting point, watching the blackness grow from a vertical line through an ellipse to a full circle. “It would be comforting to think that we have only to jump through that hoop to arrive safely back in our own time—but how can we be sure?”

  Kelvin clapped his hand to his forehead. “But it’s obvious, sir. Why else would it be there?”

  “You’re being emotional, lieutenant. You’re so anxious to get back to the ship that you’re casting the Paladorians as benevolent opponents who clean you out at poker then give you your money back at the end of the game.”

  “Sir?”

  “Why should they hit us with a . . . time-bomb, and then rescue us? How do we know there isn’t a thousand-meter drop on the other side of that hole?”

  “They couldn’t rescue their own female if that was the case.”

  “Who says? After we’ve jumped through and killed ourselves they could refocus it in some way and let the prisoner stroll through safely.”

  Kelvin’s pink face was clouded with doubt. “That’s pretty devious, sir. We could push the prisoner through first!”

  “And perhaps have them close the thing up on us? I’m not trying to be devious, lieutenant. We just can’t afford a wrong assumption in this situation.” He went to the silent Paladorian, pointed at the disc and made an arcing movement towards it with his right hand. She stared at him for a moment, hissed faintly and duplicated his gesture. Her gaze returned to McErlain’s face and the sergeant’s eyes locked with hers in a way which Surgenor found vaguely disturbing.

  “There you are, sir,” Kelvin said. “We’re supposed to go through.”

  “Are you positive, lieutenant? Can you guarantee me that when a Paladorian repeats a gesture it doesn’t mean ‘negative’ or ‘cancel’?”

  Surgenor pulled his eyes away from the sergeant. “We have to make some assumptions, major. Let’s throw something fairly heavy through the circle and find out if it makes a noise when it lands.”

  Giyani nodded. Surgenor went to the shallow crater caused by Module Five’s initial impact with the ground and picked up a football-sized rock. He brought it back and, using both hands, lobbed it up into the circle of blackness. Its disappearance was followed by complete silence.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Surgenor said. “Perhaps sound doesn’t pass through the opening.”

  “Sound is vibration,’’ Giyani said slowly. “Starlight is vibration, too, and we can see stars in there.”

  “But. . .” Surgenor began to lose his temper. “I’m prepared to take my chances, anyway.”

  “I’ve got it,” Kelvin put in. “We can get a downwards view.” Without waiting for permission from the major he swarmed up the silver bole of a tree and inched out on a horizontal bough which extended fairly close to the black circle. When as close as he could get he stood up, balancing precariously by holding onto whippy branches, and shaded his eyes.

  “It’s all right, sir,” he shouted. “I can see the desert floor in there!”

  “How far down?”

  “Only about a meter. It’s at a higher level than the ground here.”

  “That’s what caused the impact when we came through,” Surgenor said. “We’re lucky the ground level had altered so little in a few million years.”

  Unexpectedly, Giyani smiled. “Good work, lieutenant. Come down from there and we’ll build some kind of a ramp up to the lower edge.”

  “Why bother?” Kelvin’s voice was shrill and there was a taut, desperate grin on his smooth face. “I can make it from here.”

  “Lieutenant! Come . . .” Giyani’s voice faded away as Kelvin made an ungainly leap towards the circle. The lieutenant appeared to slip as he was jumping off, losing valuable height, but he tilted himself forward in the air as though diving into water. As his body was disappearing through the lower half of the circle one of his legs intersected the edge of the blackness, just at the ankle. A brown army boot fell into the vegetation below the disc with an unpleasantly heavy thud. Even before he glimpsed the redness of blood, Surgenor knew that Kelvin’s foot was still in the boot.

  “The young fool,” Giyani said in disgust. “He’s finally finished himself.”

  Surgenor gripped his arm. “Never mind that. Look at the circle!”

  The black disc of night was shrinking.

  Surgenor watched in arctic fascination as the circle contracted steadily, like the iris of an eye reacting to light, until its diameter was reduced to roughly two meters. Even when the inward movement had definitely ceased he kept staring at the edge, reassuring himself that the portal to the future was not going to vanish completely.

  “That’s bad,” Giyani whispered. “That’s very bad, David.”

  Surgenor nodded. “It looks as though the power which keeps that hole open partially expends itself when something passes through. And if the shrinkage is proportional to the mass transmitted . . . What diameter would you say it was before Kelvin went through?”

  “About three meters.”

  “And it’s about two now—which means the area has been...halved.”

  The three men stared at each other as they performed the simple piece of mental arithmetic which made them mortal enemies: and slowly, instinctively, they began to move apart.

  * * * *

  “I very much regret this,” Major Giyani said soberly, “but there is no point in continuing this discussion. There can be absolutely no doubt about who has to go through next.” The late afternoon sun, reflecting from the unbroken green of the jungle vegetation, made his face appear paler than usual.

  “That means you, of course.” Surgenor looked down at his hands, which were cut in several places from the work of building a crude ramp up to the lower rim of the circle.

  “Not of course—it so happens that I am the only one here who has had a thorough briefing on the whole Paladorian situation. That fact, coupled with my special training, means that my report on this affair would have the greatest value to Expeditionary Command.”

  “I question that,” Surgenor said. “How do you know I haven’t got an eidetic memory?”

  “How do you know I haven’t got one?” Giyani’s right hand fell, with seeming carelessness, on the butt of his sidearm. “Anyway—with hypno techniques available-it isn’t a question of what can be remembered, but of what one has taken the trouble to observe.”

  “In that case,” McErlain put in, “what have you observed about this jungle?”

  “What do you mean, sergeant?” Giyani spoke impatiently.

  “Simple question. There’s something very unusual about this jungle we’re in. A real hotshot observer like you is bound to have picked it up by this time—so what is it?” McErlain paused. “Sir.”

  Giyani’s eyes shuttled briefly. “This is no time for parlor games.”

  The sergeant’s words had struck a chord in Surgenor’s memory, reminding him that he too had sensed something out of place about their surroundings, something which made them different from any other jungle he had been in. “Go on,” he said.

  McErlain gazed around triumphantly, almost possessively, before he spoke. “There aren’t any flowers.”

  “So what?” Giyani looked baffled.

  “Flowers are designed to attract insects. That’s the way most plants reproduce—through winged bugs getting pollen on their legs and spreading it around. All this stuff”—McErlain waved at the surrounding palisades of foliage—”has been forced to reproduce some other way. Some other way which doesn’t depend on . . .”

  “Animal life!” Surgenor blurted the words out, wondering how he could have failed to make the discovery earlier. This jungle, the ancient green world of Palador, was quiet. No animals moved in its undergrowth, no birds sang, no insects throbbed in the still air. It was a world without mobile life.

  “Quite an interesting observation,” Giyani said coldly, “but hardly relevant to the immediate problem.”
r />   “That’s what you think.” McErlain spoke with a savage exultation which caused Surgenor to look at him more closely. The big sergeant appeared to be standing at ease, but his eyes were locked on Giyani. He had positioned himself strangely close to the silent Paladorian female. It was almost as if (the thought disturbed Surgenor) McErlain and the alien woman had begun to share some kind of bond. He turned his attention to the ramp they had built with trees felled by the module. The base of it was only a few paces away from him, and he could sprint up it to reach the portal in as little as two seconds—but he had a gloomy certainty that the sergeant could burn him down in a fraction of that time. His main hope seemed to lie in Giyani and McErlain becoming so intent on their own conflict that they forgot to keep an eye on him. He edged closer to the ramp and tried to think of a way to steer the two soldiers into a head-on collision.

  “Major,” he said casually. “You say your principal concern is for Expeditionary Command?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well, has it occurred to you that the Paladorians did not set up that tunnel, lifeline, or whatever it is, for our benefit? Their sole concern was probably to rescue the prisoner.”

  “What of it?”

  “In that case you have a chance to make a really important gesture of goodwill. One which might make the Paladorians more cooperative with our forces. The greatest good of the greatest number would be served by sending your prisoner through to her own time. What value have our three lives against. ..”

  Giyani undid the retaining strap of his holster with a single rapid movement. “Don’t try to be clever with me, David. And move away from that ramp.”

  Surgenor experienced a pang of dread, but did not move. “How about it, major? The Paladorian mind is so alien to us that we’ve no idea what that woman over there is thinking. We can’t exchange a single word or idea with her, but there’d be no mistaking our intentions if we sent her through the circle.” He put his foot on the base of the ramp.

  “Get back!” Giyani gripped his sidearm and began to draw it clear of the holster.

  McErlain’s rifle clicked faintly. “Take your hand away from the pistol,” he said quietly.

  Giyani froze. “Don’t be a fool, sergeant. Don’t you see what he’s doing?”

  “Just don’t try to pull that pistol.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Giyani’s face darkened with suppressed fury. “This isn’t the . . .”

  “Go on,” McErlain prompted with dangerous pleasantness. “Make another crack about me and the Georgetown. Accuse me of genocide again.”

  “I wasn’t. ..”

  “You were! That’s all I’ve had from you for the last year, major.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be—it was all true, you see.” McErlain’s gaze traveled slowly from Giyani to the enigmatic figure of the Paladorian, and back again. “I was one of the trigger men in that party. We didn’t know anything about the odd reproductive set-up the natives had; we didn’t know that the handful of males had to preserve the honor of their race by making a ritual attack. All we saw was a bunch of gray gorillas coming at us with spears. So we burned ‘em down.”

  Surgenor shifted his weight in preparation for a dash up the single tree trunk which was the spine of the ramp.

  “They kept coming at us,” McErlain said, his face priestly with sadness. “So we kept on burning ‘em down —and that’s all there was to it. We didn’t find out till afterwards that we had wiped out an entire species of intelligent beings.”

  Giyani spread out his hands. “I’m sorry, McErlain. I didn’t know how it was, but we’ve got to talk about the situation right here, right now.”

  “But that’s what I am talking about, major. Didn’t you know?” McErlain looked puzzled. “I thought you’d have known that.”

  Giyani took a deep breath, walked towards the sergeant and when he spoke his voice was unwavering. “You’re a thirty-year man, McErlain. You and I know what that means to you. Now, listen to me carefully. I am ordering you to hand me that rifle.”

  “You’re ordering me?”

  “I’m ordering you, sergeant.”

  “By what authority?”

  “You already know that, sergeant. I’m an officer in the armed forces of the planet you and I were born on.”

  “An officer!” McErlain’s expression of bafflement grew more pronounced. “But you don’t understand. Not anything. . . . When did you become an officer in the armed forces of the planet you and I were born on?”

  Giyani sighed. “On the tenth of June, 2276.”

  “And because you’re an officer you’re entitled to give me orders?”

  “You’re a thirty-year man, McErlain.”

  “Tell me this . . . sir. Would you have been entitled to give me orders on the ninth of June, 2276?”

  “Of course’ not,” Giyani said soothingly. He extended his hand and grasped the muzzle of the other man’s rifle.

  McErlain did not move. “What date is it now?”

  “How can we tell?”

  “Let me put it another way—is this later than the tenth of June, 2276? Or earlier?”

  Giyani showed the first signs of strain. “Don’t be ridiculous, sergeant. In a situation like this, subjective time is what counts.”

  “That’s a new one on me,” McErlain commented. “Is it part of Regulations, or did you get it from the book which is going to be written by our friend over there who thinks I can’t see him edging onto the ramp?”

  Surgenor took his foot off the silvery trunk and waited, with a growing sense that an inexplicable and dangerous new element had been added to the situation. The Paladorian had drawn the hood over her head, but her eyes seemed to be fixed on McErlain. Surgenor had an odd conviction she understood what the sergeant was saying.

  “It’s like that, is it?” Giyani shrugged, walked away from McErlain and leaned against the base of a large yellow-leaved tree. He turned his attention to Surgenor. “Is it just my imagination, David, or is that circle shrinking a little?”

  Surgenor inspected the black disc with its incongruous sprinkling of stars, and his sense of urgency was intensified. The circle did seem fractionally smaller. “It might be due to the air blowing through there. Humid air has a lot of mass.”

  He stopped speaking as Giyani quickly moved behind the tree against which he had been leaning. From Surgenor’s vantage point he was able to see the major clawing out his sidearm. He threw himself in the lee of the ramp for protection, but at the same instant McErlain’s rifle emitted a blaze of man-made lightning. It must have been set at maximum power, because the ultralaser ray sliced explosively clear through the thickness of the tree trunk—and then through Giyani’s chest. He went clown in a welter of blood and fire. The tree rocked for a few seconds, grinding the ashes in the blackened cross-section, and tilted away to sprawl noisily downwards through other trees.

  Belatedly realizing that the ramp offered him no protection, Surgenor got to his feet and faced McErlain. “My turn now?”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “You’d better climb through that hole before it disappears,” he said.

  “But . . .” Surgenor stared at the incongruous couple —big homely Sergeant McErlain and the small gray figure of the Paladorian woman—and his mind teemed with conjecture. “Aren’t you going?” he asked, inanely.

  “I have things to do.”

  “But. ..”

  “Do me a favor,” McErlain interrupted. “Tell them I put my record straight. I helped kill a planet once—now I’m helping bring another one to life.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  McErlain glanced at the nameless alien. “She’s going to have children soon. They’d never survive without help. Food can’t be all that plentiful.”

  Surgenor walked up the ramp and stood beside the black circle. “Suppose there isn’t any food? How do you know any of you will survive?”

  “We must,” McErlain said sim
ply. “Where do you think the people of this planet came from?”

  “They could have come from anywhere. The chances that the Paladorian race originated here, at this point, are so small that . . .” Surgenor stopped speaking, guiltily, as he saw the desperate need in McErlain’s eyes.

  He took one final look at the sergeant and his enigmatic companion, then dived cleanly through the black circle. There was a moment of fear as he fell into darkness, then he rolled over on cold sand and sat up, shivering. The familiar stars of the Paladorian night sky shone overhead, but his attention was taken up by the circle from which he had emerged. In this age it was a disc of brilliant greenish light—looking from night into day-hovering above the desert floor. He watched as it shrank unsteadily to the size of a sun-blazing golden plate, to an eye-searing diamond. Air whistled through the aperture with a plaintive ascending note as it dwindled to a star and finally vanished.