Brian Stableford - Asgard's Secret

There were thin pinpricks of light inside it.

It was a gargantuan blob of protoplasm: an amoeboid leviathan. It must have been more than sixty metres across, although it probably wasn’t round; it probably wasn’t any easily definable shape.

The pseudopods were already out of the water, flowing at us like giant hands with too many fingers. “Flowing at us” doesn’t sound all that threatening, but I felt well and truly threatened.

So did Serne. He had already opened fire, and he had altered the setting of his flame-pistol, so that it was letting out great gouts, like the gun in Myrlin’s trap, rather than the delicate beam he’d used to kill the spiky predator.

Khalekhan raised his gun again. So did Susarma Lear.

My own instinct was to flee. I danced backwards, away from the groping jelly. It was like trying to jump out of a stream of treacle, but I managed to haul myself away, and once I was free I could move faster than the protoplasm could flow, at least while I was still on the islet.

I’d like to be able to say that I knew that my moment had finally arrived, and that I was boldly and gladly seizing my opportunity, but it wouldn’t be true. The Star Force code compels me to admit that I simply panicked. While three tongues of lethal fire turned substantial—but relatively tiny—parts of the amazing creature to murky steam, I ran like hell.

If the creature had had a brain, Serne would doubtless have picked it out and made his fire-power tell—but it didn’t. It kept on flowing, the coenocytic mass splitting here, there and anywhere in response to the flame-flood, but not dying. The creature didn’t mind being boiled and sliced, and it was very, very big indeed.

I only glanced back the once, to see the glutinous grey gel flowing up and up and up the legs and torsos of the intrepid soldiers of Old Earth; then I concentrated on making my own escape. I plunged into the water on the far side of the islet and kept on going, heading for the next in the chain. I crossed that one, and the next, and the next.

A scream was ringing in my ears. There were probably three voices, but there was only one interminable scream. It wasn’t a scream of agony or anguish, but of pure unadulterated horror. I tolerated it for what seemed like twenty or thirty seconds, and then I switched off the radio. It was easier, then, to keep on going. I was safe, but I kept going anyway. I was alone, and I was free. Their game was over, and the only one left to play was my own.

In the urgency of my flight from the lake monster I had come well away from the trail the four of us had blazed as we followed the fugitive indications of Myrlin’s passage. I wasn’t even sure of the direction I had taken, or which direction we had been facing after all our zigs and zags in the swamp.

I was lost—but after cursing myself briefly, I calmed down. I figured that I had to be heading back in the direction of the edge of the swamp, and that wherever I came out, I’d be able to follow the star-captain’s last plan and make my way around it—partially, at least—before retracing my steps and trying the other direction, until I found the place where we’d gone in. I had plenty of time; there was no problem, provided that I didn’t encounter any more nasty denizens of the swamp.

To keep myself company I tongued in the music tape that I always had set up in my helmet. It helped to steady me, because it restored the familiarity of the situation, to the extent that it could be restored. I was alone, in semi-darkness, beneath the surface of Asgard—and that had become, in the course of the years, the existential situation of the real me.

I began to feel confident, and even slightly cheerful. I had made the great discovery at last. I had found the way to Asgard’s heart.

I put the star-captain and her troopers out of my mind. I blotted them out of my consciousness and memory. They had interrupted the course of my destiny, and now they were gone. I was back on track. I couldn’t afford to dwell on the tragedy that had overtaken them; I had other things to think about, and new plans to make.

Eventually, plan one paid its first dividend. I reached the edge of the swamp. It was only then that I realised how utterly exhausted I was. I put a good ten metres between myself and the water’s edge, and I sank down on to the ground, lying there quite still, listening to the music.

I didn’t really intend to sleep, but I couldn’t help drifting off into a doze.

I didn’t sleep for long—not long enough, in fact. I was still very tired when I forced my eyes open and sat up again. The music was still playing. The pipes in my suit had kept right on pumping nourishment into my bloodstream and carrying my various wastes away. The oxygen/nitrogen mix had continued to flow into my headspace, always carefully refreshed, purged of carbon dioxide. The music had soothed my auditory canals like a drug.

I forced myself to my feet and took stock of my situation. I could see further here than I’d been able to while trekking through the forest earlier. There was a slope, and a ridge that seemed to be skirting the marshland. I went up it, confident that I’d be able to get a much better view from the top.

I found more than I had bargained for. The ridge proved to be an embankment, and there were rails running along it. They hadn’t been used for a very long time—it was difficult to guess exactly how long, given that they weren’t metallic and that the encrustation on them wasn’t rust, but the important thing was that they really were rails. Rails have termini, one at each end. Sometimes, they have stations along the way.

I forgot about skirting the marsh in search of my old trail, and set out to follow the rails.

I was half-entranced, and the rails made it easy to slip into a quasi-mechanical mode. I continued to put one foot in front of the other without giving the matter any conscious thought, and didn’t even bother to look around myself to any considerable extent. The landscape had become tedious in its seeming familiarity: trees and more trees, all thickly clad in cobwebs. Had another predator appeared, I hope I would have been able to react with appropriate alacrity, but none did.

I was between the buildings almost before I realised that they were there. I refocused my eyes abruptly, wondering whether I’d accidentally wandered into a city, but there were only two of them, one to either side of the track. There was no platform, and the buildings were in a very bad state of repair, their roofs collapsed and their walls crumbling. There didn’t seem to be any furniture inside what remained of the rooms that had been exposed by fallen walls—but even so, they were buildings, of an appropriate size and design to have been erected by humanoid hands. They warranted farther investigation.

I picked out the one that seemed to be in a slightly better state of repair, and stepped through the door into a shadowed hallway.

Then one of the shadows moved, extended an impossibly long arm, and pressed the muzzle of a gun to my faceplate.

Unlike the rails, the gun was made of metal, and it wasn’t old. I hadn’t the slightest doubt that if it went off, the faceplate would shatter—and so would my skull.

“Merde,” I said, with feeling. No one could hear me, of course. My suit radio was still switched off.

Having just stepped into the darkness, I couldn’t see the person holding the gun, but I formed the impression of a mass of shadow larger than any man—or larger than any man should have been.

He switched on his headlamp, dazzling me. I felt the pressure of his hand as he removed my flame-pistol from my belt. When my eyes had recovered sufficiently to begin to discern the muzzle of his gun again, it was moving over my faceplate in a very strange manner. I watched it go through the routine twice before I realised that it was writing out a series of numbers. It took me a while longer to work out that he was indicating a channel code. I deduced that he was instructing me to turn on my radio and retune it so that I could talk to him.