Lester del Rey - The Wind Between the Worlds

It didn’t fit with Vic’s expectations, but he tried to take his cue from it. “That’s why I’m here. Do you have some kind of ruler? Umm, good. How do I get to see this ruler?” He had few hopes of getting there, but it never did any harm to try.

The Ecthindar seemed unsurprised. “I shall take you at once. For what other purpose is a ruler but to serve those who wish to see it? But—I trespass on your kindness in the delay. But may I question whether a strange light came forth from your defective transmitter?”

Vic snapped a look at it, and nodded slowly.

“It did.”

Now the ax would fall. He braced himself for it, but the creature ceremoniously elaborated on his nod.

“I was one who believed it might. It is most comforting to know my science was true. When the bombs came through, we held them in a shield, but, in our error, we believed them radioactive. We tried a negative aspect of space to counteract them. Of course, it failed, since they were only chemical. But I had postulated that some might have escaped from receiver to transmitter, being negative. You are kind. And now, if you will honor my shoulder with the touch of your hand, so that my portable unit will transport us both…”

Vic reached out and the scene shifted at once. There was no apparent transmitter, and the trick beat anything he had heard from other planets. Perhaps it was totally unrelated to the teleport machine.

But he had no time to ask.

A door in the little room opened, and another creature came in, this time single from pelvis to shoulders, but otherwise the same. “The ruler has been requested,” it whistled. “That which the ruler is is yours, and that which the ruler has is nothing. May the ruler somehow serve?”

It was either the most cockeyed bit of naïveté or the fanciest run-around Vic had found, but totally unlike anything he’d been prepared for. He gulped, and began whistling out the general situation on Earth.

The Ecthindar interrupted politely. “That we know. And the converse is true—we too are dying. We are a planet of a thin air, and that little is chlorine. Now from a matter transmitter comes a great rush of oxygen, which we consider poison. Our homes around are burned in it, our plant life is dying of it, and we are forced to remain inside and seal ourselves off. Like you, we can do nothing—the wind from your world is beyond our strength.”

“But your science…”

“Is beyond yours, true. But your race is adaptable, and we are too leisurely for that virtue.”

Vic shook his head, though perhaps it made good sense. “But the bombs…”

A series of graceful gestures took place between the two creatures, and the ruler turned back to Vic.

“The ruler had not known, of course. It was not important. We lost a few thousand people whom we love. We understood, however. There is no anger, though it pleases us to see that your courtesy extends across the spaces to us. May your dead pass well.”

That was at least one good break in the situation. Vic felt some of his worry slide aside to make room for the rest. “And I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how we can take care of this…”

There was a shocked moment, with abrupt movements from the two creatures. Then something came up in the ruler’s hands, vibrating sharply. Vic jumped back—and froze in mid-stride, to fall awkwardly onto the floor. A chunk of ice seemed to form in his backbone and creep along his spine, until it touched his brain. Death or paralysis? It was all the same; he had air for only an hour more. The two creatures were fluttering at each other and moving toward him when he abruptly and painlessly blacked out.

His first feeling was the familiar, deadening pull of fatigue as his senses began to come back. Then he saw that he was in a tiny room—and that Pat lay stretched out beside him!

He threw himself up to a sitting position, surprised to find that there were no after-effects to whatever the ruler had used. The damned little fool, coming through after him. And now they had her, too.

Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up beside him. “Darn it, I almost fell asleep waiting for you to revive. It’s a good thing I brought extra oxygen flasks. Your hour is about up. How’d you manage to insult them?”

He puzzled over it while she changed his oxygen flask and he did the same for her. “I didn’t. I just asked whether they didn’t know of some way we could take care of this trouble.”

“Which meant to them that you suspected they weren’t giving all the help they could, after their formal offer when you came over. I convinced them it was just that you were still learning Code, whatever you said. They’re nice, Vic. I never really believed other races were better than we are, but I do now—and it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“It’d bother Flavin. He’d have to prove they were sissies or something. How do we get out?”

She pushed the door open, and they stepped back into the room of the ruler, who was waiting for them. It made no reference to the misunderstanding, but inspected Vic, whistled approval of his condition, and plunged straight to business.

“We have found part of a solution, Earthman. We die, but it will be two weeks before our end. First, we shall set up a transmitter in permanent transmit, equipped with a precipitator to remove our chlorine, and key it to another of your transmitters. Whichever one you with. Ecthinbal is heavy, but small, and a balance will be struck between the air going from you and the air returning. The winds between stations may disturb your weather, but not seriously, we hope. That which the ruler is is yours. A lovely passing.”

It touched their shoulders, and they were back briefly in the transmitter, to be almost instantly in the Chicago Branch. Vic was still shaking his head.

“It won’t work. The ruler didn’t allow for the way our gravity falls off faster and our air thins out higher up. We’d end up with maybe four pounds pressure, which isn’t enough. So both planets die—two worlds on my shoulders instead of one. Hell, we couldn’t take that offer from them, anyhow. Pat, how’d you convince them to let me go?”

She had shucked out of the pressure suit and stood combing her hair. “Common sense, as Amos says. I figured engineers consider each other engineers first, and aliens second, so I went to the head engineer instead of the ruler. He fixed it up somehow. I guess I must have sounded pretty desperate, at that, knowing your air would give out after an hour.”

They went through the local intercity teleport to Bennington and on into Vic’s office, where Flavin met them with open relief and a load of questions. Vic let Pat answer, while he mulled over her words. Somewhere, there was an idea—let the rulers alone and go to the engineers. Some obvious solution that the administrators would try and be unable to use? He shoved it around in his floating memory, but it refused to trigger any chain of thought.

Pat was finishing the account of the Ecthindar offer, but Flavin was not impressed. Ptheela came in, and it had to be repeated for her, with much more enthusiastic response.

“So what?” Flavin asked. “They have to die, anyhow. Sure, it’s a shame, but we have our own problems. Hey—wait! Maybe there’s something to it. It’d take some guts and a little risk, but it would work.”

Flavin considered it while Vic sat fidgeting, willing to listen to any scheme. The politician took a cigar out and lit it carefully, his first since the accident; he’d felt that smoking somehow used up air. “Look, if they work their transmitter, we end up with a quarter of what we need. But suppose we had four sources. We connect with several oxygen-atmosphere worlds. Okay, we load our transmitters with atom bombs, and send one capsule to each world. After that, they either open a transmitter to us with air, or we let them have it. They can live—a little poorer, maybe, but still live. And we’re fixed for good. Congress and the President would jump at it.”