Keith Laumer: Assignment in Nowhere

I stepped to the desk, my legs as sluggish as lead castings. I picked up the paperweight—strangely heavy—

It was hot! I dropped it, watched it slam to the desk top. I dragged in another breath—with a sensation of drowning. The air was as thick as water, hot as live steam…

I exhaled a frosty plume of ice crystals. The sleeve of the suit caught my eye. It was glazed over with a dull white coating. I touched it with a finger, felt the heat of it, the slickness. It was ice—hot ice, forming on my suit! Even as I watched, it thickened, coating my sleeve, building up on my faceplate. I bent my arm to wipe it clear, saw crusts break, leap toward the floor with frantic speed. I managed to get one finger-swipe across the plastic visor. Through the clear strip, I saw a mirror across the room. I started for it—my legs strained uselessly. I was rooted to the spot, enchased in ice as rigid as armor!

My faceplate was frosted over solidly now. I tried to move an arm; it was rigid too. And suddenly, I understood. My tinkering with the suit’s circuits had been less than perfect. I had re-established my normal direction of temporal progression—but my entropic rate was only a fraction of normal. I was an ice statue—an interesting find for the owner of the office when he broke the door down in the morning, unless I could break free fast!

I tensed my legs, threw my weight sideways—and felt myself toppling, whipping over to slam stunningly against the floor. My ice-armor smashed as I hit, and I moved quickly, brought one numbed arm up, groped for the control knob, fumbled at it with half-frozen fingers, twisted—

There was a sudden release of pressure. The faceplate cleared, dotted over with water droplets that bubbled, danced, disappeared. A blinding cloud was boiling up from me as the ice melted, flashed away as steam. I thrust against the floor, felt myself bound clear, rise halfway to the ceiling, then fall back as leisurely as an inflated balloon. I landed on one leg, felt the pressure build as the ankle twisted. I got my other foot under me, staggered, regained my balance, cursing between clenched teeth at the agony in the strained joint. I grabbed for the control, fumbled over the cold surface—

The control knob was gone. The twist I had given with numbed fingers had broken if off short!

I limped to the door, caught the knob, twisted—

The metal tore; pain shot through my hand. I looked at my palm, saw ripped skin. I had the strength of a Gargantua without the toughness of hide to handle it. I had overcontrolled. Now my entropic rate was double or triple the normal one. My body heat was enough to boil water. The friction of my touch bubbled paint! Carefully I twisted the door’s lock, pulled at the crushed knob. The door moved sluggishly, heavy as a vault. I pushed it into the hall—and lurched to a stop.

A seven-foot specimen of the Hagroon species stood glowering from a dark doorway ten feet across the corridor.

I backed away, flattened myself against the wall. This boy was a factor I hadn’t counted on. He was a scout, probably, sent through hours ahead of the main column. I had seen the last of his fellows leave, and watched the portal blink out. On the strength or that, I had assumed they were all gone. But if the portal had been activated briefly, an hour earlier, as a test…

Another academic question. He was here, as big as a grizzly and twice as ugly, a broad, thick troll in a baggy atmosphere suit, raising an arm slowly, putting a foot forward, heading my way—

I jumped aside, almost fell, as the Hagroon slammed heavily against the wall where I’d been standing—a wall charred black by the heat of my body. I moved back again, carefully this time. I had the speed on him, but if he caught me in that bonecrusher grip…

He was mad—and scared. It showed in the snarling expression I could dimly see through the dark faceplate. Maybe he’d already been down to the portal room, and found his escape hatch missing. Or maybe the follow-up invasion force was behind schedule now…

I felt my heart take a sudden leap as I realized that I’d succeeded. I had worked over the suit for an hour, and perhaps another half-hour had gone by while I floundered in my slow-time state, building up a personal icecap—and they hadn’t appeared on the scene. I could answer the theorists on one point now: a visitor to the past could modify the already-seen future, eliminate it from existence!

But the Hagroon before me was unaware of the highly abnormal aspects of his presence here. He was a fighter, trained to catch small hairless anthropos and squeeze their necks, and I fitted the description. He jumped again—a curiously graceless, slow-motion leap—hit and skidded, whirling ponderously to grab again—

I misjudged my distance, felt his hand catch at my sleeve. He was fast, this hulking monster. I pulled away, tore free—and stumbled as I skidded back, felt my feet go out from under me—

He was after me, while I flailed the air helplessly. One huge hand caught my arm, hauled me in, gathered me to his vast bosom. I felt the crushing pressure, almost heard the creak of my ribs as blood rushed blindingly to my face—

The fabric of his suit was bubbling, curling, blackening. His grip relaxed. I saw his face, his mouth open, and distantly, through his helmet and mine, I heard his scream of agony. His hands came up, fingers outspread, blistered raw by the terrible heat of my body. Even so, he ripped with them at his suit, tearing the molten plastic from his shaggy chest, exposing a bleeding second degree burn from chin to navel.

I continued my fall, took the shock on my outstretched hands, felt the floor come up and grind against my chin, felt the skin break, the spatter of hot blood. Then there was only the blaze of stars and a soft bottomless blackness…

I lay on my back, feeling an Arctic chill that gripped my chest like a cold iron vise. I drew a wheezing breath, pressed my hands against the floor. They were numb, as dead as a pair of iceman’s tongs, but I managed to get my feet under me, stagger upright. There were blackened footprints burned against the polished wood of the floor, and a larger black area where I had lain—and even as I burned the surfaces I touched, they bled away my heat, freezing me.

The Hagroon was gone. I saw a bloody hand-print on the wall, another farther along. He had headed for the service stair, bound no doubt for the storage room where the portal had been. He’d have a long wait…

I leaned against the wall, racked with shivering, my teeth clamped together like a corpse in rigor. I had had enough of lone world-saving missions. It was time for someone else to join the party, share the honor—and incidentally, perform a delicate operation on my mal-functioning S-suit before I froze solid, fell on my face, and burned my way through to the basement.

I turned toward the front hall with a vague idea of finding someone—Richthofen, maybe. He was here tonight. Sure, good old Manfred, sitting at his desk upstairs, giving the third degree to a poor slob named Bayard, hauled on the carpet because some other poor slob of the same name was in jail a few miles away, claiming he was Bayard, and that the end of the world was nigh!

I reached the corner, staggered, feeling the hot flush of lever burning my face, while the strength drained from my legs, sucked away by the terrible entropic gradient between my runaway E-field and the normal space around me.

Bad stuff, Mr. B, tinkering with machines you don’t understand. Machines made by a tribe of smart monkey-men who regard us sapiens as little better than homicidal maniacs—and with good reason, good reason…

I had fallen, and was on hands and knees watching the smoke curl up from between my numbed fingers. It was funny, that. Worth a laugh in anybody’s joke book. I clawed at the wall, bubbling paint, got to my feet, made another yard toward the stair…