Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

And the club was a two-liter soda bottle, held by the neck-Pel could make out the Pepsi logo on the crumpled label. Smith must have brought it along from the Browns’ basement.

Lieutenant Drummond appeared, limping, with a black creature clinging to his scalp; he snatched it off and flung it away. The creature flapped, tried to fly, but seemed unable to do so. Drummond hauled his blaster from his belt-holster, pointed it at the thing, and squeezed the trigger.

A sharp crack and an electric sizzle sounded, something flashed, and the black thing exploded. The scattered fragments were aflame, and shriveled quickly to black ash.

Half a dozen creatures came spilling through the portal then; Drummond blasted two of them out of the air, rather spectacularly, while Squire Donald skewered a third one with his sword.

Raven was next to emerge, sword drawn and dripping with ichor. Close behind came Captain Cahn, Valadrakul on his heels. More creatures accompanied them, and Drummond, Donald, and Raven disposed of several with blaster and blade.

They didn’t get them all, Pel noticed, but on the other hand, the survivors weren’t attacking; most of them appeared to be wandering aimlessly off across the landscape. A couple of the most gruesome specimens had collapsed, for no apparent reason, to lie twitching on the sands.

Lieutenant Godwin emerged, panting.

“Who’s left?” Smith asked.

Peabody looked up from the improvised bandage Mervyn was binding around his gashed arm. “Where’s Cartwright?” he asked.

“Down,” Godwin said. “We couldn’t get him.”

“Who’s left?” Smith repeated.

“All present but Cartwright, it looks like,” Lampert announced.

“What about the Earth people?” Soorn asked.

“We’re all here,” Amy told him. “Mr. and Mrs. Brown, their little girl, their lawyer, me, Susan-that’s everybody.”

“What about the locals?” Mervyn asked, looking up from the bandage.

A larger creature, roughly the size and shape of a German Shepherd but slick and black and saber-toothed, burst through the portal; Raven impaled it on his sword, where it writhed briefly, and died.

Stoddard appeared close behind it, Elani cradled in his arms; his scabbard flopped about at his side, obviously empty. He staggered out onto the sand and fell to his knees.

A black tentacle reached out, and then abruptly fell to the ground, chopped off where it had emerged from the portal. Pel rose to his feet and moved slowly closer, staring in horrified fascination at the severed limb.

It twitched once, then lay still.

“No more,” Raven announced. “The way is closed.”

“Well, everybody made it, right?” Amy asked.

“Except Pete Cartwright,” Godwin corrected her.

“Where’s Dundry?” Grummetty called. “Has anyone seen him?”

“Who?” someone asked.

“Isn’t he here?” someone else asked at the same moment.

“Be he not here?” Raven asked, frowning.

Grummetty shook his head.

Elani, trying to get to her feet, said, “I’m sorry, Grummetty. I could hold no longer.”

“Perhaps he’ll find refuge somewhere,” Valadrakul suggested. Pel noticed for the first time that Valadrakul had lost the braid in front of his left ear, along with a patch of skin, leaving a red, oozing spot. Something black, like ash, was smeared across his face and his left hand, while his right was still clean.

Grummetty blinked, and drew his lips tight, but said nothing more.

“What about Cartwright?” Soorn asked.

For a moment no one spoke; then Raven cleared his throat. “You have my deepest sympathies, sir,” Raven said, bowing to Captain Cahn, “on the death of your man Cartwright. He fought bravely and well, ‘gainst a foe not his own.”

Susan made a choking noise.

Nancy stood up, still holding Rachel, but said nothing. Rachel buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

“Captain,” Mervyn said, “ where the hell are we? ”

Cahn looked about; so did most of the others, and an uneasy silence fell.

“It sure ain’t my basement,” Pel remarked, trying unsuccessfully to lighten the mood.

“I want to go home!” Rachel shrieked suddenly.

“’Twas Elani’s spell that brought us hither,” Raven said. “Speak, then, lady, and tell us-where are we?”

Elani, finally standing upright, hesitated, and then turned up her palms.

“I don’t know,” she said.

After a moment of general consternation, Susan demanded, “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“’Tis plain enough,” Elani said, somewhat offended. “I know not where this place might be. I had not the time required to complete my incantation. I had called forth a portal to Messire Godwin’s…” She hesitated, groping for a word. “World?”

“Universe,” Godwin suggested.

“As you will, then-universe,” Elani agreed. “But I’d no time to steer it small, and in this… this universe there are many… worlds? Planets?”

“Aye,” Valadrakul said, as he dabbed lightly at the blood that seeped from his cheek. “They do call them by both names.”

Elani nodded. “I had no time, as I said, to find the right one, in so many. So I found one where men dwell-that much, I could do-and cast forth the way, and opened it, and here we are.”

“There are people here?” Amy said, scanning the empty horizon.

“Aye,” Elani said. “Somewhere.”

“It’s not as bad as it might be, then,” Cahn said. “If there really are people somewhere, and it’s in our space, then the odds are that it’s a part of the Galactic Empire-there aren’t more than a dozen rebel worlds in all the galaxy, so far as I know.”

“And how many worlds does your empire hold?” Squire Donald asked.

Cahn shrugged. “Not sure of the exact count just now,” he said. “Something around thirty-one hundred.”

“And how big are these worlds?” Donald asked. “How far must we travel to find whatever people there might be?”

“They come in all sizes,” Cahn answered. “From the gravity, assuming a typical planetary density, I’d guess this one at, oh, six or seven thousand miles in diameter. A little smaller than Terra.”

Donald nodded. “And your mile is, pray, how many feet?”

“Five thousand,” Cahn replied.

Donald accepted that and withdrew to do some calculation.

Pel had listened with mounting discomfort.

This episode-this story, this series of events, whatever it was – - was taking an unpleasant direction. He wanted to get out of it now. “That’s all very interesting,” he said, “but it’s time for us to go home, now. Rachel’s exhausted and terrified.” He grimaced. “So am I, for that matter.”

Raven turned to stare at him. “Friend Pel,” he said, “perhaps you do not understand our situation.”

“I understand it well enough,” Pel said defensively. “I know what’s going on. Shadow sent those things, right? The big monster and all the little ones? It found us somehow…”

“The portals,” Elani said, interrupting. “It sensed the portals. I should have known that it would.”

“Yeah, well,” Pel said, “so it was the portals. Anyway, it found us, and it chased us all away from that place, whatever it was, and we wound up here, which is too bad for you guys, Raven and you others, I guess, because you can’t go home. And it’s not great for you others, Captain Cahn and the rest of you, because it looks like you’re out in the middle of nowhere and it may take awhile to get home, but it’s not bad, really, because at least you’re in the right universe.” He paused for breath, and saw Drummond nod.

“Well, for us Earthpeople,” Pel continued, “I don’t see that it makes any difference. Elani, here, can just open a portal to my basement, and we can go home and Rachel can go to bed and we can just forget any of this ever happened, right?”