Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Aton already knew that his own life was lost, but that hardly seemed to matter. It was his duty, now, to see that everyone still alive aboard the Smasher of Enemies made it to a life raft.

Before the ortho field failed. An almost impossible job.

The party advanced through the warped corridors, exploring the various departments and pulling survivors from the wreckage. The wounded they helped along or else carried on improvised stretchers. Aton knew that time was fast running out – even discounting yet a third torpedo strike, which, considering the evident helplessness of the vessel, seemed all too distinct a possibility.

When they came near to one of the ship’s six life-raft stations Aton took Lieutenant Krish with him and set off towards the stern. There was no certainty that his order to abandon ship had reached all sections; he decided he would make one swift reconnaissance to ensure that the order was being carried out in a disciplined fashion, then return to the drive-room and take over there, giving the engineer a chance to reach the nearest raft.

Near Section 3 they heard a commotion that sounded even over the loud creaking of the tortured girder frame. Aton drew his beamer, signalling to Krish to do the same. They rounded a corner.

Sergeant Quelle, wearing one of the ship’s only two protective suits, strode resolutely along the corridor. Behind him, like a swarm of bubbles in his wake, the heretics of the Traumatic sect ran in a chattering, terrified crowd.

Even through the suit’s obscuring visor, designed to opaque itself once in the strat, Quelle’s bulbous face displayed his determination to live at all costs. The gleaming brass armour totally encased his body; even if the ship field failed altogether the suit would keep him safe for a short while, maintaining a weak ortho field while its power pack lasted – long enough, in fact, to enable him to reach a life raft.

Aton and Krish straddled the corridor, blocking the Traumatic’s path. ‘Where are you going, Sergeant?’ Aton demanded harshly.

Quelle’s answer was a muffled growl. His followers, of whom he clearly did not regard himself as any kind of leader, clustered around him, eyeing Aton speculatively.

Quelle carried a crowbar with which, Aton guessed, he intended to smash the cage where the raft was kept. Aton fired a warning shot over their heads.

‘Sergeant Quelle deserted his post and has stolen a protective suit. Get out of that suit, Sergeant. You’ll take your turn like all the rest.’

And then, for the third, terrible time, an explosion smashed into the destroyer, hurling them all sideways. An ear-splitting rending noise told Aton that the stern of the ship was breaking away entirely.

Quelle, with what must have been desperate strength, was the first to recover, brass suit or not. His crowbar swung down on Aton’s head. Encumbered as he was, the blow was clumsy and partly absorbed by Aton’s uniform hat; nevertheless Aton slumped to the floor, barely conscious. Quelle aimed another blow at Lieutenant Krish, missed, then swept hastily on, followed by the mob.

Krish draped his captain’s arm around his own shoulders and hauled him to his feet. ‘Get to the drive-room, Lieutenant,’ Aton mumbled. ‘Relieve the engineer.’

‘It’s too late, sir. Can’t you see what’s happening? The field is already breaking up.’

Aton, fighting to remain aware, saw that he was right. A fog-like flickering was in the air. An almost overpowering vertigo assailed them both, and the walls – in fact everything solid – seemed to spin on themselves endlessly. All these signs were sure indications of an ortho field going bust.

Krish half-carried Aton along the corridor. The lights went out as the power finally failed, then the emergency lighting faithfully came on to replace them, each strip drawing on its own power pack to provide a dimmer, yellow glow.

And then, through everything, Aton heard horrifying screams. His ship was foundering, sinking into the depths of the strat. He was hearing the screams of men who were drowning in the Gulf of Lost Souls.

Like men plunged from air into the sea, these men were being plunged from their natural, rational time and into a medium that no man could experience and stay sane.

After a few yards Aton steadied himself and, though still groggy, disengaged himself from Krish’s support. He leaned weakly against the wall.

‘Leave me here, Lieutenant. Continue… do what you can.’

Krish took his arm again, but Aton drew away.

‘You must let me help you, sir. There may be only seconds—’

‘Surely you realise that I cannot leave the ship. Save yourself… and whomever else you can.’ Seeing Krish’s indecision, his tone hardened. ‘That’s an order, Lieutenant.’ He waved his pistol. ‘I have my own protection… against the strat.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Krish stiffened. He stepped back, clearly affected then snapped off a salute that Aton returned perfunctorily.

Then he turned on his heel and strode away.

Moments after he had gone the wavering ortho field deserted the stretch of corridor where Captain Aton was standing. The pistol, with which he had been meaning to shoot himself, dropped from his fingers. In a little over a second the field swayed back again, but in that second Aton saw it .

The strat. The temporal substratum.

The Gulf of Potential Time.

It was only a glimpse, but even a glimpse is too much. Fortunately, or perhaps not so, the returning ortho field saved him – saved him, among other things, from remaining conscious, for exposure to the strat does not bring merciful oblivion. With the return of passing time the glimpse of eternity became a mental shock of pathological proportions. Aton instantly fell unconscious.

At almost the same time two noncom chronmen, running desperately for the life raft, saw their captain lying there in the corridor. Without even thinking about it they each seized an arm and lugged him at speed towards Station 3.

When a field of orthogonal time (that is, of time as it can be understood by the human intellect) breaks down, it does not collapse all at once. Bubbles and fragments of it cling, eddying and drifting, for anything up to ten minutes.

One such bubble had attached itself to Station 3.

The scene at Station 3 was one of turmoil. Discipline had broken down in the face of horror, and about thirty men were fighting to get aboard the raft – even though, with an orderly embarkation, room could have been found for them all. On his arrival Lieutenant Krish tried to impose a sense of command. He was cut down by Sergeant Quelle, who had found a pistol beamer and held it awkwardly in his brass suit’s mechanical claw.

Quelle had good reason for shooting the lieutenant. He was anxious that no one who knew his guilty secret, apart from his fellow Traumatics, should board the raft with him. He ensured that the Traumatics went aboard first, then entered the raft himself preparatory to casting off.

But among those who boarded in the final rush were the two noncoms carrying the unconscious form of Captain Aton. They themselves were not so lucky. They dropped Aton to the floor then bravely left the raft to assist some wounded men. Quelle indignantly clanked forward to rid himself of his potential accuser, but he was too late. In that moment others in the raft decided that they had lingered long enough and activated the escape sequence. The gates closed and the hum of the raft’s own emergency ortho field filled the dim interior.

The last wisps of the ship field were now dissipating, and the shattered destroyer was wholly saturated by the strat. It ceased, in one sense, to have any material existence at all: matter cannot retain its properties without the vector of time to give it substance. As such, the life raft magically passed unimpeded through several walls and floated free.