"Aye aye, sir. Curium piles on 40 plus."
"Open rear vents."
"Rear vents opened."
"Attention, deck. Close all ports."
Throughout the vessel, shutters descended to screen out the cosmic
radiations that would bathe the hull as light speed approached.
Alarm bells rang. The astrogator's slender hands caressed a set of
blue-sheened knobs, while a dozen dials glowed with sudden green
light. Bulbs dimmed as power from the auxiliaries added their load to
the direct blasters. The Star Rover shuddered violently and bulkheads
screamed as tortured metal leaped forward through the void.
And in the hold, the skags still slept.
* * * * *
On deck, Charlie Guhn sickened briefly as acceleration took hold.
Still, free space takeoffs weren't as tormenting as shaking off six
to eight gravities in a surface departure. More, on some of the big
planets. He wondered vaguely why the skipper preferred a narcol stupor
to reality. Who knew? Perhaps thirty years of probing the black void
and the deeper black of hyperspace would gnaw away any man's defenses.
It took a wife and kids to anchor a man to a world. Guhn, himself, was
grateful for his family on Earth and the days he would spend with his
feet planted firm on terrestrial soil. He was privileged in a way Capt.
Jock Warren could never know.
When the acceleration stress decreased he descended to the hold feeling
suddenly chilled. Close to the beryllium bulkheads heat was lost more
readily than in other sections. Guhn made his way through the dimly
lit, lightly storaged passages, skirting bales of priceless _baka_
silk, hogsheads of delicious platinum-hued wine from grapes grown in
the soil of Rigel IX, and lead-sheathed crates of long-lived curium
isotopes, native to Rigel's fourth planet.
He approached the compartment that contained the skags. Here he halted,
sensitive to the enigma which had baffled the galaxy. The strange
frozen skags constituted the first and only evidence of a non-humanoid
culture yet found.
They were known to have been intelligent. Their cities, lacy things of
steel and plastic, still reached for clouds on the slag-red sands of
Rigel IV, silent and deserted. In vaults beneath cities' surface had
been discovered the last few inhabitants, perfectly preserved in death.
Controlling his repulsion, Charlie Guhn studied the three skags lying
in composed attitudes within their globe-shaped transparent shells.
Blue tentacles stuck out of bulbous heads like medusae. Inhumanly
majestic faces, but lacking nostrils and ears, were supported by strong
granite bodies with abnormally long arms and legs. At first glance,
they appeared to be perverted human mutations. In their repose, they
seemed almost alive.
Unable to look longer, Guhn climbed the nearest ladder. At the top, a
crewman commented to him: "Must've been frightful in life, them skags.
We'd had a battle, then, sir; a real bloody battle."
The ship's speaker vibrated with Mark Caldwell's magnified voice:
"Attention, all hands. We are entering minus point."
In his cabin, Capt. Jock Warren mumbled in his narcol stupor but his
burly body never stirred.
* * * * *
Veteran astrogator though he was, Mark Caldwell always dreaded the
approach of minus point. You never could predict what effect the
Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction might produce just before the jump into
hyperspace when the laws of the Einsteinian universe broke down. But
only at minus point could warper coils take over from blast engines.
At minus point, which set in at 186,100 miles a second, time started
to reverse itself and flow backwards. Bending of the space-time
continuum distorted entropy, causing an indescribably extended vessel
and occupants to actually grow younger. Because human minds were unable
to function during this period of cellular regeneration, robot pilots
took over immediately. Two hours past the barrier, the crew would
awake--at least two hours younger than at the moment of plunge.
Relays shuffled and clutches locked, clamping the Star Rover's
directional controls, while Mark Caldwell fed the ship's heading
figures into the mercury vat memory of the pilot. Then, he prepared for
the big sleep. When consciousness returned, his brain would no longer
be fogged.
The astrogator's sensitive fingers closed the last switch. Around the
plowing freighter, the void strained and twisted in the flux of new
forces, squeezing the vessel out of the universe as a grape is squeezed
from its skin.
* * * * *
It was at that moment of passing the barrier, that the skags--after a
million years in the dream-barren sleep of suspended animation--awoke
from their life in death. The time-reverting effect of minus point
returned their bodies to that instant in the forgotten past when they
had retreated into mass oblivion.
First to be jolted into life in the Star Rover's dim gray hold was the
mind of K'Gol. Tentacles rustled in violent wriggling activity, then
massive eyelids opened to reveal cold purple eyes. As inhuman strength
massed in his limbs, K'Gol stood erect, found the release to his prison
shell and pressed the button. The transparent envelope collapsed,
leaving him free.
Thought vibrations brought perplexed messages from the two other skags.
K'Gol studied his surroundings and said: "We have failed. The gas
nebula penetrated and we are in the realm of the dead."
"We are dead, yet we breathe."
"Let us look around. We must arrive at the truth."
Stumbling along with heavy tread, the skags made their way from
compartment to compartment until they found a ladder, by which they
mounted. Only the faint throb of the auxiliary engines, now supplying
the warpers, was to be heard. On the deck, K'Gol found two erect
bodies in sculptured attitudes, the unconscious shapes of Second
Officer Charles Guhn and a boatswain. All three skags halted, racked by
uncontrollable revulsion at sight of the alien species.
K'Gol's limbs glowed with yellow light and he reached forth to
death-shock the monsters. But the skag behind him warned: "They may be
harmless. Perhaps, we should wait until they awaken."
They explored the ship from bow to stern, stopping only to wonder at
the warper coils which they would have designed differently. "It is
clear. We are prisoners in a vessel-between-the-stars."
Presently, they found a control that opened the starboard view ports.
Their eyes were greeted by the wrenching chaos of hyperspace. "It is
a new dimension. Our captors are highly advanced and their minds are
impervious to our probing. We must take over, before they recover."
The skags hurried through the freighter, gathering up all possible
weapons and locking them in the hold. Then, K'Gol mounted the bridge
and familiarized himself with the instruments and controls.
* * * * *
Mark Caldwell's mind snapped back into full consciousness. For a
moment, he thought that waitress at Arcturus had followed him; then,
the vision suddenly changed into something horrible and he found
himself facing a living skag who stood watching him with curious eyes.
Caldwell's skin crawled and he started to cry out. A muscle jerk caused
his arms to fail and a yellow glow simultaneously exuded from the
skag, bathing the astrogator in needle-like flame that paralyzed.
Skag and human studied each other, unable to communicate directly and
each filled with horror and disgust at the other's sight. Then, having
made his captive helpless, K'Gol examined the star charts on the desk,
only to discover a million years had exploded the constellations like
dust clouds, and the suns were unfamiliar. Again, man and skag faced
each other. Without communication, the skags could not learn the ship's
destination and so, although they were in power, they were as helpless
as their captives.
* * * * *
Charlie Guhn had been thinking of Earth's green fields, a moment before
the Star Rover entered minus point. Now, his mind was snapped back to
terrifying reality with the knowledge that the starboard ports were
unshuttered. No human found it easy to gaze at hyperspace and the
officer rushed to close the ports, wondering who was responsible. He
made his way to the hold and there discovered the collapsed envelopes
of the skags.
His first thought was for the captain. But as he neared Jock Warren's
cabin, his hackles rose as if in warning: there was a new odor in the
air, slimy and deathly ancient. Then at the far end of the passageway,
he saw the back of a tentacled head rise from the steps to the engine
room. Yellow flame seemed to pursue him along the corridor as he fled.
An emergency hatch that led past the fore-castle to the lifeboats
afforded him temporary escape and seconds later he found refuge in a
lifeboat.
When his trembling ceased, he started to formulate plans to regain
the ship. In the lifeboat, he discovered two force band pistols which
he stuck in his belt. If worse came to worse, he could bolt the ship,
risking the unknown dangers of a hyper-universe in preference to the
skags.
* * * * *
As the narcol-induced fantasies faded from Jock Warren's brain, the
skipper became aware his ship had passed minus point. Well, the old
tub was on her way now and he'd have to put in an appearance on the
deck ... show the lads the old man wasn't scuttled. He splashed cold
water on his face, afterwards rubbing his red-blotched skin with a
rough towel. Feeling better, he hummed a vulgar space chantey he had
learned as an Alpha Centauri midshipman, following which he danced a
brief jig that evoked memories of an early cruise to Procyon and a
lovely blackeyed wench.
Now completely spruced up, the captain buckled the triple prongs of
his white belt, donned his gold-braided space cap and stepped out of
the cabin.
A live skag stood at the end of the hall waiting for him.
Doubt and disbelief wrinkled Jock Warren's brow as he stared at the
apparition. He knew he was sober because the Star Rover had passed
minus point. His mind groped for an explanation of the skag. There was
no explanation--but there was a _solution_.
The captain backed into his cabin, locked the door and then searched
through his wardroom locker until he found that most precious of all
liquids, a flask of narcol. Several good strong slugs slushed down his
parched gullet, before his space-hardened nerves approached reasonably
good shape.
His skin flushed and his arteries warmed by the narcol, he became
convinced once more that he had suffered an hallucination. Fantasy or
no fantasy, there remained only one way to learn for certain. Jock
Warren strode into the corridor. There the skag waited. "Blast it!"
the captain rumbled. "You're a balmy hallucination. Out of my way, you
scummy dream of a scummy planet!"
He lurched towards the creature and his arms attempted to brush away
its cobwebby image. Sudden contact with its cold firm flesh electrified
him. "Mister Guhn!" his voice rose. "Avast, Mr. Guhn!"
The echoes rolled through the ship without answer.
When the dead silence renewed itself, Capt. Jock Warren lifted his
narcol flask and drank deeply. The skag watched with impassionate
curiosity.
* * * * *
Failing in his search for Rigel on the star charts, K'Gol tried to
contact his companions who were exploring and making secure the
remainder of the vessel. The skag concluded that the only hope lay
to negotiate a truce with the monsters who had built the ship. His
companions replied:
"That's your task, K'Gol. We must learn the language of these hideous
creatures or teach them ours."
"I have captured one here, who appears to guide the vessel," beamed
K'Gol. "Let me attempt it with him, first."
Blue light flamed from the skag, bathing Mark Caldwell's head and
throat. Discovering the paralysis lifted, the astrogator rotated his
head to exercise stiffened muscles. K'Gol pointed at the individual
white dots on a star chart: "Kuuuh-gu." The tones were like a goat
chewing tin plate.
"Kuuuh-gu," echoed Mark Caldwell. "Oh, you mean stars. Stars."