Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundell
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net
NEXT
DOOR,
NEXT
WORLD
By ROBERT
DONALD
LOCKE
_Almost any phenomenon can be
used--or act--for good or ill.
Mutation usually brings ill--but
it also brings greatness. Change
can go any direction._
Illustrated by Douglas
Hungrily, the cradled vessel's great steel nose pointed up to the
distant stars. She was the _Cosmos XII_, newest and sleekest of the
Space Service's rapidly-expanding wing of interstellar scout ships, and
she was now ready for operational work.
Major Lance Cooper, a big man with space-tanned features, stood in the
shadow of the control bunker and watched the swarm of ground crewmen
working at last-minute speed atop the loading tower. Inside him burned a
hunger, too.
Hunger, and another emotion--pride.
The pride swelled Lance's open-collared khaki shirt, as he envisioned
himself at the ship's controls within a few minutes. Finally, after long
years of study, sweat and dedication, he'd made it to the Big League. No
more jockeying those tubby old rocket-pots to Luna! From here on, he was
going to see, taste, feel what the universe was like way, way out--in
Deep Space. The _Cosmos XII_, like her earlier sisters, was designed to
plow through that shuddery nowhere the cookbooks identified as
"hyperspace."
Lance's glance shifted upward, scanning the velvet backdrop of frosty
white points of light against which the slender, silverish, almost
wingless form stood framed. More stars than a man could visit in a
lifetime! And some already within grasp!
His exultant feeling grew, and Lance kept his head tilted backward.
Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this
latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the
other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had
glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north.
Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, evoking strange and demanding dreams!
One day, Man would be able to make landings. Teams of scientists
outfitted to the eyebrows and trained to cope with any environment or
emergency, would explore unknown jungles, _llanos_, steppes; tramp up
and down fertile vales and hills under blue-hot alien suns. Perhaps,
they might even contact native species boasting human intelligence:
mammalian hunters and fishers, city-building lizards, sky-probing
arachnids--who knew what?
But now, of course, all that Headquarters permitted of flights was the
most furtive of reconnoitering. You hoisted your scout ship aloft under
high-gee, cleared the ecliptic, then swung out of normal space and
_jumped_. When you materialized in the new sector, you set your cameras
clicking, toggled all the other instruments into recording radiation,
gravity pressures, spectroscopy, at slam-bang speed. The very instant
your magnetic tapes got crammed to capacity, you pressed six dozen panic
buttons and scooted like a scared jackrabbit for Home, Sweet Home.
Adventure? It wasn't even mentioned on the travel posters, yet.
But, adventure would follow.
Some day.
Meanwhile, at the taxpayers' expense, you--the guardian of the
Peace--had enjoyed the billion-dollar thrill of viewing our Solar System
from light-years and light-years of distance. Or so the manual said,
right here on Insert Page 30-Dash-11-Dash-6.
Lance thought about those veteran hype-pilots who'd already poked around
in the great black Cold out there. How was it they were always
compensating for their frustration?
Now, he remembered.
Having few tall tales to spellbind audiences with when they swooped back
down on Home Base after their missions, the hype-pilots got around it by
bragging up Terra itself, and how at least you could always depend upon
good old Earth to come up with something to relax this Warp-Weary
generation!
"Something, for example, such as we now hold in our hand, brothers!"
Lance could hear them now. "Namely, one of these superbly-programmed
cocktails, as only Casey can turn out."
(Casey was the Officers Club barkeep and much-beribboned mixologist.)
"A real 'Casey Special'--look at its pristine beauty! What better
consolation can a man ask, for not having gotten to land at the apogee
point of his orbit?"
"Besides"--this usually came out after two or three more
tongue-loosening toasts had been quaffed to the beasts of
Headquarters--"what's so blasted special about landing on some
God-forsaken rock _out there_?
"Hell's bells! Earth is a planet too, isn't it? And when you've been
cooped up in a parsec-gobbling pot for a very, very long two weeks, any
planet looming in your viewscope cries to be set down upon. Your own
prosaic hunk of mud is good as any!"
* * * * *
Lance Cooper's rambling thoughts broke off their aimless tracking to
swing one hundred and eighty degrees in midspace and dart right back to
Earth.
Here at this very moment--and less than a hundred yards away--came
Terra's foremost attraction for him. His hammering heartbeat would have
placed him on the "grounded" list immediately, had there been a medico
with a stethoscope hanging about to detect it.
The attraction's name was Carolyn Sagen, and she was hurrying directly
across the concrete apron.
Even under the incandescent work-lamps of the crew scrambling up and
down the ladders, she looked as fetching as a video starlet making her
first personal-appearance tour of the nation. Only the fact she was
Colonel "Hard-Head" Sagen's family pride and joy kept the helmeted and
half-puckered up techs on the rungs from whistling themselves dry in
their enthusiasm.
Now, she had completely bypassed the work area. Here, the lighting did
not reach and the paler illumination of starshine took over. It seemed
to render the girl's soft blond hair and her full warm lips more
intimately something belonging to Lance Cooper alone--and he liked that.
He saw that she had turned up the collar of her tan coat against the
night wind.
While still a step or two distant from him, Carolyn halted. Her
worshiping eyes rested fully upon the big pilot. Lance thought he
detected a troubled expression.
Then, the girl managed a tight smile that conveyed her outward
resignment to all Man's absurd aspirations to own the galaxy:
"Don't worry about 'Security,' Lance. Dad wrote me out an O.K. to
skitter up this close to the Launching Area. You know"--she gestured
self-consciously--"big crucial moment ... lovers' farewell ... I pulled
all the stops, but it worked."
"Matter of fact," she added, in an obvious attempt at facetiousness,
"Dad opined he'd have walloped the daylights out of me, if I hadn't put
up a struggle to get near my man."
Then suddenly, she was not at all brave, anymore.
Suddenly, she had burrowed into his arms. "Oh Lance, had there been no
other way, I'd have clawed right through fence and revetments to get to
you! Men, men! Just because something's _out there_, as you say ... why
is it so important to build ships and go out and look at it?" Her
fingers dug into Lance's shoulders. "Women are saner ... but maybe
that's why men need us." The grip of her fingers shifted, tightened.
"Kiss me, you big baboon."
Lance kissed her. A tender kiss, yet gusty enough that he lifted her
from the ground and her high-heeled shoes kicked in free fall.
The pilot found his girl's breath warm, loving. Yet her cheeks seemed
colder than even the crisp air should account for. And her body was
trembling.
He planted a second kiss, then set her down.
"Hey! This is no way for a Space Service brat to carry on. Why, you're
just about to--"
"To cry, Lance? No, I wasn't. It's just that ... you'll be gone so
long."
He punched her playfully. "Two measly weeks out, two weeks to astrogate
her back home. And once I've got my feet wet at it, it'll be like
shooting ducks in an alley."
Carolyn reached out, brushed a windswept tuft of hair from above the
rock-steady eyes that looked at her.
"I know, Lance. I even realize that just ten years ago, women had to put
up with separations from their sweethearts or husbands that lasted
months. When the old pioneer ships used to limp back and forth to Mars
and Venus. But I'm different, I guess. Weak, maybe. Or just plain
scared--"
This didn't sound like the blithe-spirited girl he'd pursued for a year,
then wooed and subdued. Lance studied her, then said slowly: "You're
scared. About what? My first flight?"
Carolyn's head bobbed timidly.
Lance flashed a reassuring grin. "Everything has to be a brand-new
experience, at some time or other. Me, I prefer to look at hype-flight
from the point of view of the service. A routine thing. Just takes
training. Otherwise," and he shrugged, "it's no more a risk than hauling
groceries upstairs to some weather satellite."
"Is it, Lance? When one or two ships out of every ten never make it back
at all. Just disappear ... somewhere ... while the others--"
"One out of thirty or forty, you mean. So hyperspace is a little
tricky."
"And there's always pilot error to blame, too, I suppose?"
"Now that you mention it."
"Only my man is immune from everything?"
Lance smiled, a little wryly. "Any pilot can make boo-boos, Carolyn. I'm
determined to try awfully hard not to." He added a slight qualification
to his statement. "I've always been pretty lucky up to now, at not
getting lost."
"I thought the guidance systems and the autopilot computers took care of
all the astrogation corrections?"
"On a theoretically perfect flight, yes. It's equally true, however,
that hyperspace's geometry doesn't always resemble the sort of lines and
angles you find in our own universe--"
* * * * *
Lance abruptly stopped, realizing he was quoting text; his mind groped
for a better way to explain. But Carolyn plunged in first:
"You see, there do sometimes develop special situations."
"Sure, sometimes." An exasperation crept into Lance Cooper's voice,
despite his effort to keep it out. Hell, he was just a pilot; not a
rated mathematician. He'd fly hyperspace by the seat of his pants, if he
had to.
"Lance," said Carolyn.
"Yes?"
"You feel it too, don't you?"
"Feel what?"
"That there is danger involved. That something dreadfully, dreadfully
wrong _can_ happen to you while you're out there. No matter what the
eggheads say about it." A paroxysm of sobs suddenly racked the girl's
slender body. "Oh, darling, don't go!"
"Honey, honey!" Lance patted her thin shoulders.
"I love you so much."
"Love you, too, Carolyn. You know that."
"We shouldn't have postponed the wedding. It was wrong to set the date
back."