Keith Laumer: Assignment in Nowhere

Even inside, there was enough of the eerie light to see my way by. I went forward to the control compartment, slid into the operator’s seat, and tried the main drive warm-up switch.

Nothing happened. I tried other controls, without response. The M-C drive was as dead as the cars abandoned in the city streets. I got up, went back to the entry and eased it open, stepped silently out. I could hear the invaders working away two hundred feet from me, shielded from view by the ranked shuttles. An idea was taking form—an idea I didn’t like very well. The first thing it would require was that I get around to the opposite side of the Terminal. I turned…

He was standing ten feet away, just beyond the rear corner of the shuttle. At close range he looked seven feet tall, wide in proportion, with gloved hands the size of briefcases. He took a step toward me, and I backed away. He followed, almost leisurely. Two more steps and I would be clear of the shelter of the machine, exposed to the view of any of the others who might happen to glance my way. I stopped. The stranger kept on coming, one immense, stubby-fingered hand reaching for me.

My wrist twitched, and the slug gun was in my hand. I aimed for a point just below the center of the chest, and fired. At the muffled slap\ of the gun, the monster-man jacknifed, went down backward with a slam like a horse falling in harness. I jumped past him to the shelter of the next machine, and crouched there, waiting. It seemed impossible that no one had heard the shot or the fall of the victim, but the sounds from the far end of the vast shed went on, uninterrupted. I let out a breath I just realized I had been holding, feeling my heart thumping in my chest like a trapped rabbit’s.

With the gun still in my hand, I stepped out, went back to the man I had shot. He lay on his back, spread-eagled like a bearskin rug—and about the same size. Through his shattered faceplate, I saw a broad, coarse, dead-grey face, with porous skin, and a wide, lipless mouth, half-open now to show square, yellow teeth. Small eyes, pale blue as a winter sky, stared lifelessly under bushy yellow brows that grew in a continuous bar across the forehead. A greasy lock of dull blonde hair fell beside one hollow temple. It was the most appallingly hideous face I had ever seen. I backed off from it, turned and started off into the shadows.

The last in line of the alien shuttles was my target. To get to it, I had to cross an open space of perhaps fifty feet, concealed by nothing but the dimness of the light. I stepped out, started across the exposed stretch as silently as slick leather soles would let me. Every time one of them turned in my direction, I froze until he turned away. I had almost reached shelter when one of the officers tallying men turned to stare toward the other end of the huge shed. Someone had missed the one I had shot. The officer called—a sudden hoarse cry like a bellow of mortal agony. The others paid no attention. The officer snapped an order, started off to investigate.

I had perhaps half a minute before he found his missing crewman. I slipped into the shadow of the supply shuttle, worked my way quickly to the last in line, slid around the end. The coast was clear. I made it to the entry in three quick steps, swung myself up, and stepped inside the enemy machine.

There was a sickish animal odor here, a subtle alien-ness of proportion. I took in the control panels, the operator’s chair, the view-screens, and the chart table in a swift glance. All were recognizable—but in size and shape and detail they differed in a hundred ways from the familiar Imperial patterns, or from any normal scheme of convenience. I hitched myself into the high, wide, hard seat, stared at squares and circles of plastic glowing in clashing shades of brown and violet. Curious symbols embossed on metal strips labelled some of the baroquely curved levers which projected from the dull ochre panel. A pair of prominent foot pedals, set awkwardly wide apart, showed signs of heavy wear.

I stared at the array, feeling the sweat begin to pop out on my forehead. I had only a few seconds to decide—and if my guess were wrong—

A simple knife switch set in the center of the panel drew my attention. There were scratches on the panel around it, and worn spots on the mud-colored plastic grip. It was as good a guess as any. I reached out tentatively—

Outside, a horrific shriek ripped through the silence. I jerked, smashing my knee against a sharp corner of the panel. The pain brought a warm flood of instinctive anger and decision. I ground my teeth together, reached again, slammed the lever down.

At once, the lights dimmed. I heard the entry close with an echoing impact. Heavy vibration started up, rattling ill-fitting panel members. Indicator lights began to wink; curious lines danced on a pair of glowing pinkish screens. I felt a ghostly blow against the side of the hull. One of the boys wanted in, but he was a trifle too late. The screens had cleared to show me a view of black desolation under a starless sky—the familiar devastation of the Blight. The M-C field was operating; the stolen shuttle was carrying me out across the Net of alternate worlds—and at terrific speed, to judge from the quicksilver flow of the scene outside as I flashed across the parallel realities of the A-lines. I had made my escape. The next order of business was to determine how to control the strange machine.

Half an hour’s study of the panel sufficed to give me a general idea of the meanings of the major instruments. I was ready now to attempt to maneuver the stolen shuttle. I gripped the control lever, tugged at it—it didn’t move. I tried again, succeeded only in bending the metal arm. I stood, braced my feet, put my shoulders into it. With a sharp clang, the lever broke off short. I sank back in the chair, tossed the broken handle to the floor. Evidently, the controls were locked. The owners of the strange shuttle had taken precautions against any disgruntled potential deserter who might have an impulse to ride the machine to some idyllic world line of his own choice. Once launched, its course was predetermined, guided by automatic instruments—and I was powerless to stop it.

Two hours passed while the shuttle rushed on into the unexplored and uncharted depths of the Net. I sat watching the fantastic flow of scenes beyond the view screens—the weird phenomenon that Chief Captain Winter of the TNL Service had called A-entropy. At the speed at which I was travelling—far greater than anything ever managed by Imperial technicians—living creatures would not be detectable; a man would flash across the screen and be gone in a fraction of a microsecond. But the fixed features of the scene—the streets, the buildings, the stone and metal and wood—loomed around me. And as I watched, they changed…

The half-familiar structures seemed to flow, to shrink or expand gradually, sprouting outré new elements. I saw doorways widen, or dwindle and disappear; red granite blocks rippled and flowed, changed by degrees to grey polished slabs. The nearly legible lettering on a nearby shop window writhed, reformed itself, the Roman capitals distorting into forms like Cyrillic letters, then changed again, and again, to become lines of meaningless symbols. I saw sheds and shacks appear and swell, crowding among the older structures, burgeoning mightily into blank, forbidding piles that soared up out of sight. Balconies budded as window ledges grew into great cantilevered terraces, then merged, shutting out the sky—and then they, in turn, drew back, and new facades stood revealed: grim, blackish ribbed columns, rearing up a thousand feet into the unchanging sky, linked by narrow bridges that shifted, twitching like nervous fingers, widening, spreading into a vast network that entangled the spires like a spider’s web, then broke, faded back, leaving only a dark bar here and there to join the now ponderous squat towers like chains linking captive monsters. All this is a frozen, eternal instant of time, as the stolen shuttle rushed blindly across the lines of alternate probability toward its unknown destination.