Barrington Bayley - Empire of Two Worlds

The fissure was a couple of hundred feet deep. Its being there was probably accidental — accidental insofar as it was a by-product of the atomic explosion centuries ago — because the ground thereabouts was considerably broken up and smaller cracks rayed out at various angles.

We went back to the sloop to talk it over. “How do we know it still works?” Grale snapped tensely.

“Have you got any instrument that might test it?” Bec asked Harmen.

The alk shook his head. “Afraid not. The only way is to try it out. The gate is directional, by the way. You have to enter it from the right direction. Going through from this end of the egg, straight between the walls of the valley, will take you to Earth, You get nowhere by trying it from any other angle. Likewise you take the reverse procedure to get from Earth to Killibol.”

Hassmann sighed. “And if it don’t work you go to the bottom of the gulf. That’s pretty!”

“You’ve played crazier games, Hassmann.” Bec settled himself comfortably in the driver’s seat and started the motors.

“You’re not taking us through just like that!” Grale protested. He was sweating slightly. “We ought to send somebody through first! To see if it works! To see what’s on the other side—”

“And if it doesn’t work, Grale, what are you gonna do then? You want to sit here and starve?”

Bec twisted round to look Grale straight in the eyes as he said this. We were all silent.

Grale started to laugh.

Bec backed up the sloop to get a good run. Then we went at the gateway full tilt. The Big Egg loomed up, shimmering — suddenly Grale and Reeth let loose with Jain guns and gave out raucous whoops and laughs to give vent to their nervous energy—

There was an instant of utter darkness. Then we came out into the sunlight — and man! We all knew why they call Killibol the Dark World.

We had to wear eye-filters ever since. The sun seared my eyes like a white-hot iron. The landscape had a million colours which thrust themselves into my eyeballs like knives.

How bright it is! How bright is that place!

Have you ever been in a reactor room when they let the shields down? It was like that. Light: blinding, dazzling light that came pouring through the sloop’s windows. I got a split-second impression of incredible colours and then I could see nothing but glare and I flung my arms across my eyes, gasping with the pain that lanced through them.

All was confusion, with everybody yelling and going crazy. Hassmann fell heavily against me; Grale and Reeth continued firing the Jains, yelling their heads off, even though they were blind.

I knew we’d hit ground on the other side because the sloop bumped and rolled forward, jerking and swaying. Shortly it came to a stop, and I could hear Bec cursing violently, and screaming for silence.

“The shutters! The shutters, you klugs!”

His penetrating voice goaded me into action. I found a lever that brought down a section of the steel shutters that could seal all the windows, afterwards closing the eye-holes. Bec was stumbling about the sloop, grabbing anybody he found and pulling levers. He pulled Grale and Reeth away from their clattering Jains, at which they protested loudly.

Gradually things quietened down. All the shutters were in place and we were in pitch blackness.

Bec switched on the inside lights. We sat staring at one another inside our steel cocoon, sweating and trying to get back the use of our sight.

What was out there? What had we dropped in the middle of? Grale jumped up again and made for one of the Hackers. Bec pushed him back down.

“You think we got all the ammunition in the world?”

“We’re sitting here blind doing nothing!” Grale near-screamed. “Anything could be out there — we could be wiped out!”

“SHUT UP!” Bec bellowed.

It was like Grale to get hysterical when he was scared, but in this case he was speaking for all of us. We were all scared scared of the unknown, or what might lie on the other side of the sloop’s armoured hull. Even Bec, I could see, was far from calm.

“Nothing’s happened yet, has it?” he snapped. He glared at each of us in turn. “You punks handled that like a bunch of knock-kneed virgins.”

There was a long pause.

“In the old days they called Killibol the Dark World,” Bec said at last. “That’s right, isn’t it, Harmen? Maybe they called it that because Earth is so bright.”

Harmen was squatting in a corner, electing himself out of the proceedings as usual. “Undoubtedly,” he replied in a sonorous voice. “It would appear that the light here is so bright as to be unbearable to us. Over the centuries our eyes have presumably become accustomed to Killibol’s dimness.”

“Then we’re as good as blind,” Reeth said.

“Naw.” Bec waved his hand. Harmen rose and disappeared muttering into the storage hold. He returned with a pair of dark goggles I had last seen on his workbench back home.

“Brilliant light is a frequent by-product of alchemical operations,” he said. “These filters provide adequate protection.”

He began to fit the goggles over his lined brow. “Open the shutter and let me view the world of our forebears,” he ordered imperiously.

“Here, gimme those.” Bec charged over and snatched the goggles from him. Quickly he adjusted them to his own head.

“Better hide your eyes, boys. I’m going to take a look.”

We obeyed. I heard a shutter open. There was silence for some moments. Then Bec grunted.

“Come over here, Klein,” he said.

I groped my way forward and met Bec’s outstretched arm. He handed the goggles to me, I put them on, pulling the headband tight. Cautiously I opened my eyes and stared out of the window, ignoring Bec’s turned back.

So there it was. All the fears my imagination had invented, like our having fallen into a furnace, melted away.

The light was so strong that it warmed my skin, a sensation that I found oddly pleasant. A peaceful landscape stretched out before me. Instead of the flat, grey expanse of rock I had been staring at for the past twenty days or so, I saw a terrain that, though flat hereabouts, broke up into undulating hills in the mid-distance and was covered with a carpet of a green growth that at first I thought was some sort of plastic or artificial fibre. Then I told myself that it couldn’t be, and I felt a sense of excitement as I realised what the green growth was.

Further off I saw a clump of column-like structures crowned with masses that moved slightly. They had to be trees, I thought to myself after a while.

Even when wearing the goggles the light was unnaturally brilliant and enhanced the scene with an eerie, dream-like quality. Overhead, the sky was a vivid blue and was studded with clouds of white water-vapour.

I took a careful look at it all, then closed the shutter and removed the goggles. I turned to face the others. Bec was grinning.

“The panic’s over,” I said. “There’s nothing moving out there. We’re alone.”

“What’s it like?” Hassmann asked eagerly. “Is there food?”

“There’s food,” Bec announced proudly. “It’s like I said it would be. Organics growing underfoot.”

Grale began grumbling again. “That’s just fine. But how do we see to pick it up?”

Bec looked at Harmen. “Have you got any more of these goggles? Or can you make any?”

“I think so,” the alk said. “I believe we have the requisite materials.”

Reeth and myself helped Harmen make the light-filters. It didn’t take long. In the hold was a sheet of dark-coloured barely-transparent material which we cut into strips and fastened into rims of foam plastic, fastening on headbands. In an hour we had a set for everybody, even Tone the Taker.