Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier

Standing there in the confined space of the shadow-egg, Naismith was abruptly aware of something that had been at the edge of his consciousness: the smell. It was cheap perfume, with an undertone, almost masked, that he recognized: the same cold, musky odor that he had smelled in Churan’s office.

Looking at the two of them now with renewed attention, he realized again how quite astoundingly ugly they were when seen together. What might have been an accidental cast of features in Lall—the flat, wide-nostriled nose, the long amber eyes, the thin mouth—became, in this doubled image, the pure stuff of ugliness. They were like two painted frogs, there in the shadow-egg, both staring at him with unwinking amber eyes—

frogs, obscenely vivisected to stand erect and wear human clothing. And remembering the cold touch of Lall, Naismith shivered.

The foothills were sliding away beneath them now, yellow-brown and bare in the sunlight, then the mountains rose slowly into view. Naismith glimpsed sunlight winking from the win-dows of a canyon-perched house, tiny with distance. As they crossed the mountains, still gaining altitude, he could see the whole circle of the horizon, misty blue, with flecks of cirrus floating high in the pale vault. Something else caught his eye, a bright glint above the clouds, rapidly coming nearer. Now he could almost make it out; now it grew plain—a blue and silver Trans Am airliner. They were going to pass it almost on the same level. As it swelled nearer, brilliant and solid in the sunlight, Naismith flinched involuntarily; he could see every rivet in its polished skin. He could see, too, that it was hanging absolutely motionless in the air, as if embedded in gelatin.

Behind the windshield, the pilot and copilot were stiff wax dummies; faint spears of flame were frozen in the jets. It whipped past and dwindled behind them, still hanging immov-able.

The two aliens were watching him with intent, unreadable expressions. Naismith’s lips were dry. He said, more harshly than he had intended, “Where are we going?”

“Not so far now, Mr. Naismith,” said Churan. Below, the round world was rolling back at an incredible speed; there was a glint of silver that Naismith recognized as Boulder Dam; then the mighty scar of the Grand Canyon, filled with shadow, passed beneath. Then there were more mountains, and a threadlike river that must be the Colorado. Down on the plain beyond the mountains, Naismith caught sight of a city sprawled like a scattering of silver dominoes. It glittered in the parched land. “Denver,” he said.

“Not the city itself,” said Churan, glancing down at the machine in his lap. “We use it for a landmark.” Now his pudgy brown fingers were dancing over the machine, and Naismith saw the odd-shaped inlays depress one after another, glimpsed a shimmer of light that floated briefly over the machine. Then there was a spot of angry red light that pulsed slowly and regularly; then more rapidly as they crossed the city, slowing now, then more rapidly still as the shadow-egg drifted to a stop; and after a moment the red light shone steadily, with the faintest suggestion of a shimmering motion.

The shadow-egg came to rest.

“From Los Angeles to Denver,” said Naismith, “in—what?

Five minutes? Four?”

“In one sense, no time at all,” said Lall. “You realize, this is still the same instant as when we left the tube station. No time has elapsed.”

Churan grinned up at him, showing yellow stubs of teeth.

“Now we have reached the right position in space,” he said.

“Therefore we shall begin to move in time. Are you ready, Mr. Naismith?”

Without waiting for an answer, he touched the machine again, and as if in response, the whole vast landscape beneath them dimmed, went dark, glowed to light again. Looking up, Naismith was in time to see the sun arching overhead like a fireball. It plunged into the western horizon with a flicker of red; then all was dark again. Light! The sun sprang up in the east, hurled itself overhead, plunged, and the world was dark.

Light! Dark! Light! In the shadow-egg, Naismith saw the faces of Lall and Churan lit by the flickering alternation of days and nights. The landscape below, trembling in the swift waves of darkness and light, was tortured, changing, shaking itself into new forms. Naismith saw the city put out new tentacles, under-go writhing transformations, sprout taller buildings. It was like a grotesque animated film: the city had a rhythm of growth, rest, growth again.

Then, abruptly, there was a gigantic crater where the eastern half of the city had been. The growth cycle stopped. Naismith, rigid with fascination, saw areas of the city darken slowly, saw parts of it collapse into black ruin. “What year?” he asked hoarsely.

“Toward the end of the nineties, I think,” said Lall’s indifferent voice. “It’s not important.”

“Not important!” said Naismith automatically, but his voice died away as he watched the landscape below. The dead metropolis sank. It went down as if into quicksand; the earth visibly swallowed it. Then there was only a featureless plain, shimmering in the ghostly twilight. For what seemed like hours, there was no change.

Again Churan touched the machine. The flickering alternation of days and nights abruptly stopped. It was early evening, the clear sky darkening to a steely blue in which one or two stars were visible. The whole landscape, as Naismith looked around from his elevated position, was unearthly vacant and still. Not a roof, or a wall, or the trace of a road in the whole immense plain; not a light anywhere.

“What year?” he asked again.

No one answered. Churan touched the machine again, and the shadow-egg began to drift down in a long slant. They were skimming along at ground level now, through the knee-high grasses, toward a long, low mound that was just visible against the sky. The rest of the landscape was empty and dark.

As they drifted nearer, Naismith felt his body trembling with the shock of visceral realization: this was real—this earth and its wet grass, this dark sky overhead. He was here, physically and inescapably.

Back in Los Angeles, Klemperer was taking his classes; someone else would be living in his Beverly Hills apartment…

No: they were all dead, dead and forgotten. The thought gave Naismith an extraordinary feeling of release and pleasure.

Whatever was going to happen to him now, at least it would not be the safe, dull middle age he had looked forward to….

The mound they were approaching was both larger and nearer than it had appeared at first: perhaps thirty feet high, it was immensely long and straight, like one of the long barrows of Wiltshire. There were faint, earthy and woody smells in the cold air; but the black hulk of the mound hung silent and still.

It was covered with the grasses that grew on the plain; on the skyline, against the moonlit clouds, Naismith could make out an occasional small shrub or tree.

They drifted into the blackness of the mound, which closed like a stifling curtain about their heads: then, with shocking suddenness, they were dazzled by golden light.

The room in which the shadow-egg now floated was a gigantic hall, paved with some gleaming, hard substance that was at once like marble and like metal. The golden light surrounded them only in a circle a few yards wide; but in the darkness beyond, Naismith could make out the gleam of a pillar, a distant wall, the shapes of furniture. Here was the future: and it was a deserted marble hall, buried under a mound of earth.

“What is this place?” Naismith demanded.

“A ship. A buried ship.” The echoes of Churan’s voice whispered away into emptiness.

Naismith thought, A ship. What kind of a ship?