Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

“This way,” Prime said, pointing to the east.

Hugging the cement wall, they ran to the corner of the building. John peeked around, blinking in the bright spotlights of the parking lot. Three security vehicles were sitting at the entrance to Lab One. Men with nasty-looking weapons were entering the front.

He saw a group of three spread out and head toward them.

“Here they come. Everybody down,” John whispered.

They crouched in the darkness near the building. John was ready to shoot, ready to kill if necessary, but through luck the two guards passed within three meters of them and didn’t look in their direction once.

They waited until the two guards disappeared into the greenhouse.

“Let’s try for one of those Jeeps,” John said.

They ran through the grass, and as they approached, a gun barked, sending a bullet zinging off the hood of one of the Jeeps.

The team that had entered the lab was coming back out, joining the search outside the building.

Henry fired his gun wildly at them, his face a mix of horror and glee, and they dropped for cover. Henry helped Grace and John into the back of the Jeep. Henry took the wheel and Prime took the front passenger seat.

Henry dropped it into reverse and backed away from the lab. Prime fired his gun again, then reloaded. John laid down a spray with his pistol.

“I’m out,” he said. Henry tossed him his gun as he bucked the Jeep over a rise and toward the front gate.

“Gate’s closed,” he said.

“Ram it,” Prime yelled.

Henry pressed the accelerator as John saw the spike stripes. The Jeep hit them and seemed to collapse. Smoke rose up from the shredded tires, and the Jeep lost momentum, bouncing weakly against the fence.

“Crap.”

Gunfire from the guard shack shattered the windshield, and Henry cursed, grabbing his hand.

Prime pulled him out of the Jeep on his side, away from the guard shack. Grace slipped to the pavement as well. John fired three rounds into the hut, shattering its windows and sending the guard for cover. Behind them John heard the approach of more Jeeps.

“Pinned down,” Henry said. There was no way through the fence while the guard was there. And the rest of the security force was approaching in Jeeps. John looked around for some avenue of escape.

John said, “I’d hoped we could get out the old-fashioned way. But, Henry, we’re not pinned down.”

Grace understood instantly and said, “John has the device.”

“Well, you can get out of here at least,” Henry said. “What about the rest of us?”

“We’re all going.” John pulled up his shirt, wincing, as he struggled to do it with one arm. He realized his shoulder had been grazed at some point in the escape. John turned the dial that specified the field radius as high as he could. Then he set the device to 7651.

“We need to gather close,” he said.

“Don’t!” Prime yelled. “There’s no way for me to get back to my universe if we do this!”

Lights from the approaching Jeeps lit his face for a second.

“What choice do we have?” John asked.

Prime cursed.

Huddled behind the Jeep, the four hugged one another.

“Here we go,” John said.

John approached the old barn with trepidation. Bill and Janet had said there’d been a break-in. John knew what that meant, but he had to make sure.

They’d been gone six weeks, enough time to convert his gold to local currency in Universe 7651 and build a bridge device from scratch. Luckily, 7651 had been advanced enough in electronics for it to be a relatively easy job. No detailed breadboard soldering. They’d just designed the circuits they wanted and ordered them in bulk.

They’d sent John Prime home first, John and he traveling together to 7533, along with Prime’s huge trunk.

“What have you got in here? A body?” John had asked.

“You promised not to ask,” Prime said.

“Yeah, but…”

“You know me. Books and toys and gimmicks,” Prime had said with a shrug. “I used up all my ideas from my last trip between universes.”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” John said.

“You did it with pinball.”

It was true. John had stolen an idea from one universe and made a lot of cash off it in another. How could he fault Prime? They’d done the same things.

“Fine.”

They’d built the gateway device on the site of the abandoned quarry pit in 7651. The result was that they were only a few hundred yards from the farm when they transferred through.

“You gonna be all right?” John asked. Prime was hyperventilating.

“I hate it,” he said. “Every time.”

“Do you want me to help get this over to the farm?” John said, nodding to the trunk.

“Naw.” Prime pulled out his cell phone. “I got it taken care of. I missed a court date, but I think it’s all going to work out.”

“I can drop you anywhere,” John said. “Any universe. Maybe even back where you came from…”

Prime seemed to think it over. Then he shook his head. “No, thanks. This is where I live now. Unless you want it back.”

“No, not anymore,” John said. “Up till a few weeks ago, I’d have taken it all back, but…”

“It’s a big universe out there.”

“Yeah.”

Prime stepped away, dragging his trunk across the bare stone.

“Get back to your own Casey. I bet she’s worried,” Prime said.

“Yeah, I bet she is.”

“Just do me a favor,” Prime said. “Check in on me in a few months. I might need a ride out of this dump.”

“You think?”

Prime shrugged. He reached out his hand, and John took it. They shook once solemnly.

“Good luck.”

John had then used the portable device to transfer back to 7651, where Henry and Grace waited with the newly built transfer gate.

“Not too bad,” Henry had said. They’d smoked the nearest transformer the first time they’d powered up the transfer gate in 7651. They’d lost a week while the electric company fixed it. “It was the range module, like we thought.”

John glanced at Grace, sitting in the corner of the quarry office. They slept on cots in the same room with the transfer gate, so John knew she’d had nightmares since the death of Visgrath, since her torture. John had broached the subject just once.

“There’s probably, uh, psychiatrists in this universe-”

Grace had shot him a hard look.

“-or, you know, drugs to help you sleep, at least,” John said.

He thought she was going to bark at him or, worse, turn away in silence. Instead, she shook her head and said, “John, I just need time and distance.”

He’d not asked again.

The only times she left Henry’s side were to take a pistol into the shallow quarry and fire at a row of cans she lined up meticulously. John hoped getting her back to 7650 would solve her problems, but there was no telling what Charboric had done while they were gone.

“Ready?” John said.

Grace nodded, standing up. She was dressed in army fatigues they had bought, along with all the electronics, machine guns, dynamite, and bulletproof vests. She hefted a duffel bag full of munitions near the transfer gate.

Just like the gate that John had first built, the transfer gate in 7651 was a fixed structure that transferred anything within a few-meter radius between 7651 and any other universe. A cantilever hung above the transfer area, and duct-taped to it were the electronics that projected the spherical field below. The field was not as subtle as the one from the portable device; it seemed to wrap around whatever it was attached to. But the subtlety of those circuits had been sacrificed in the drive to finish the device in time. The spherical field required them to be careful that nothing was outside the radius of the field when it was activated.