Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

Some time before dawn, when heating the rock didn’t seem to be doing much good any more, and maybe in part just because he was bored, Cahn set fire to the heap of dead monstrosities-that not only provided some warmth, but served as a beacon for any approaching rescue vehicles to home in on.

Unfortunately, it also stank horribly, making further sleep almost impossible.

The night seemed to drag on forever, but Pel suspected that it was really only five or six hours before Psi Cassiopeia again appeared on the eastern horizon. The star in question seemed to move considerably faster than Earth’s sun.

Or rather, he corrected himself, the planet he was on rotated more swiftly than Earth.

The planet he was on-somehow, the concept of being on another planet was more mind-boggling than being in an entirely different universe.

Were those stars up there really more numerous than what he’d seen from Earth? He had no way of being sure. He was quite certain, though, that he saw no familiar constellations. The familiar planets, Venus and Jupiter and Saturn, were nowhere to be seen; if the Psi Cassiopeia system had other planets, he didn’t see them, or at any rate he didn’t recognize them as planets.

(There had to be at least one other, he told himself, or this place couldn’t be Psi Cassiopeia Two , could it?)

The sun had only just cleared the horizon when its light glittered from something moving; Pel happened to be looking in the right direction, and let out a shriek at the sight.

Half a dozen drowsing people started, and a sudden babble arose.

Rachel screamed in terror, and Pel and Nancy rushed to comfort her.

“She was asleep before,” Nancy pointed out. “She didn’t see it.”

“It’s okay, Rae,” Pel told her. “That’s the magic car that’s going to get us out of here and take us back…” He stopped. He didn’t want to lie about that, to get her hopes up too high. “…And take us somewhere we can maybe get a ship that will take us home.”

“I wanna go home,” Rachel agreed. “I want Harvey.”

“Well, then, behave yourself, and we’ll do everything we can to get you home. It’s a long ride, I’m afraid…”

“Anything’s better than sitting out here freezing,” Nancy interrupted.

“Oh, for sure,” Pel agreed. “But three or four hours, or whatever it is, sitting in a car isn’t going to be much fun, either.”

A moment later, as the aircar slowed to a stop, he added, “And it isn’t that cold out here, anyway.”

“You’re wearing heavier clothes than I am,” Nancy retorted-accurately, Pel had to admit. His shirt was definitely warmer than the flimsy blouse Nancy had on.

He had also been willing to sit closer to the smoldering signal-fire than Nancy had-she had always been more sensitive to smells than he, and close in the stench was unbearable.

“Daddy,” Rachel asked, “are there more magic cars?” She pointed.

Pel turned, and saw that two more aircars were approaching, a blue one and another black one. His attention had been so focused on the first that he hadn’t noticed them before.

“I guess so, Rae,” he said.

Nancy frowned. “If they have more than one,” she said, “then why didn’t they send them all out here the first time? Why did we all have to spend the whole damn night out here freezing?”

Pel shrugged. “Ask him,” he said, pointing to the driver-who was not, Pel noticed, the same man who had picked up the first group.

Nancy did just that.

“Didn’t think of it, ma’am,” he replied. “Or, well, actually, you see, the first time we weren’t all that sure that the call was genuine, so we didn’t want to send everything we had out on a rabbit hunt. We didn’t have anything to go on but that telepath’s say-so, and we don’t have much truck with mutants out here, so we wanted to see she was on the level first. And then we needed Lennie to give us directions, so we had to wait until he got back…”

“There must have been something ,” Nancy insisted.

The driver just shrugged. “I guess Lennie couldn’t think of anything, ma’am.”

The blue aircar was pulling up-it was smaller and sleeker, with a sort of central nosecone that made it resemble a Studebaker or an Edsel, rather than a Buick. Its color was a sort of robin’s-egg blue that really didn’t seem appropriate at all.

The other black one didn’t look like anything Pel had ever seen before. Unlike the first two, it had no brasswork; its trim was painted matte black. Its lines were simpler than the others, and its running lights were few and simple and all yellow. It had a rather nasty air about it that Pel didn’t care for; he hurried to load Nancy and Rachel into the back seat of the big one.

Lieutenant Godwin herded Valadrakul, Lampert, and Squire Donald into the middle seat, then took the front passenger seat himself.

Captain Cahn, Ted, and Raven boarded the little black aircar; the blue one took the others.

Pel saw the captain swig down the last trace of Pepsi, hardly more than a few drops, and then toss the empty onto the floor of the aircar before he climbed in.

“No luggage?” the driver of the Browns’ car called back. “You folks got everything?”

His answer was a muttered chorus of assent.

“All right, then,” the driver said. Engines whined, and one by one the three aircars lifted off, turned, and sped away. Pel took a final glance back at the faint column of smoke rising from the burning pile of dead Shadow-creatures, the odd bits of litter they had dropped here and there, and the endless rocks and sand.

That was one campsite he would remember, but would never miss.

Once they were airborne, the driver announced, “I heard the other bunch came in real hungry, so I figured you didn’t have any food out here, and I brought shrewsburies.”

Godwin and Lampert brightened visibly; the others looked at each other, puzzled.

It must be food of some sort, obviously, but Pel had no idea what a shrewsbury might be.

Not that he and the others cared very much. They were ravenous, having had nothing to eat for at least half a day.

“They’re in the map box,” the driver said, pointing to what Pel would have called a glove compartment.

Godwin opened the indicated container and pulled out a stack of objects wrapped in foil-not, Pel noted, in plastic, the way most foods were back home. From the size and shape, Pel guessed that they were sandwiches of some kind.

Godwin took the top one off the pile, then turned around, stretching, and passed the rest to Lampert. Lampert gave one each to Valadrakul and Donald, kept one himself, and passed the remaining four to Pel.

“Last one’s mine,” the driver called.

Pel took a moment to peel back a corner of the foil on each packet and look the contents over. They were, indeed, sandwiches; he guessed that for some reason the Imperials called sandwiches “shrewsburies” instead. Maybe there hadn’t been an Earl of Sandwich in the Galactic Empire.

Or maybe this particular sort of sandwich was called a shrewsbury. The sandwiches, or shrewsburies, all appeared to be the same-white bread, yellow cheese, and a slab of pink lunchmeat, the exact nature of which was not clear.

The exact nature of the foil wasn’t clear, either, Pel realized; at first glance he had assumed it was aluminum, but it didn’t feel quite right.

Could it be tinfoil, perhaps? Some other details of the Galactic Empire seemed oddly old-fashioned; perhaps they still used tin, rather than aluminum, here. Or was their aluminum just processed differently, somehow? Could aluminum be different? Metallurgy wasn’t something Pel knew about.

Well, it didn’t matter. This was another universe, so why should the aluminum foil be the same?