Keith Laumer - Zone Yellow

“They’re starting to look a lot like the Ylokk!” Helm exulted. “We must be close.”

We were. In another few minutes we found ourselves crossing planes of reality where paved roads ran deviously across a peaceful, forested land, with villages in the distance. I slowed our rate of travel, and began fine-tuning the trans-net communicator; all I got was static until a loud, squeaky voice said, in Ylokk, or a close relative:

“Alert! Intruder on Phase One, second level! Slap squads move in!”

I was thinking that over when the shuttle slammed to a halt with a loud bang\ The entropic flux gauge showed that we were in half-phase, neither in nor out of identity with the local A-line. We waited. After five minutes, Helm burst out: “What’s happening? Where are we?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “Nowhere. This is a null-temporal void between A-lines. They can’t detect us here, because we’re nowhere. Think of it as a plane of unrealized possibilities; not quite enough problyon flux-density to boost it through.”

Somehow, that didn’t seem to relieve him any. “What do we do now, sir?” he wanted to know. I wished I could tell him.

It seemed as good a time as any to eat and catch some sleep. I dozed off wondering just what the slap squad had in mind when they dumped us into null-time. Just the impulse to stop us, I decided. Helm was already snoring lightly. A fine and promising young officer, Anders Helm was, and it was entirely my responsibility to get him back home. I’d figure out how, later. Right now, I had to try to ease the traveler back into motion. According to some theorists, that was impossible. I guess I didn’t entirely believe that, or I wouldn’t have done what I had. On the other hand, maybe I was just a damned fool.

The best bet would be to rev up the field generator and build up the greatest flux-density possible, then slam into drive and hope to break through the entropic meniscus by brute force. But first―

This was an unparalleled opportunity to do a little EVA and make observations the technical boys back at HQ would cry hot tears of gratitude for. I thought about that, and then I thought about the fact that if things were such that I never came back, the young lieutenant would be doomed to a slow death, and nobody would do what had to be done about the Ylokk. Dumb idea. Right!

By that time I had buckled on my issue .38 and was cycling the hatch. As it opened, there was a slight whoosh! as air pressure equalized, in or out, I couldn’t tell. Wan daylight showed me a landscape of undulating gray hills, with small and large pools reflecting the gray sky. Nothing moved in that landscape. The sky was a uniform lead-oxide color, with no cloud patterns showing. The air was cold, but fresh.

Somewhere a few light-years away, someone was yelling at me: “Colonel! Breathe! Please, take a deep breath!” I felt the pressure on my chest: the weight of a deep stratum of rock under which I lay buried. I relaxed a little, or tried to, and felt air whoosh! out of me. That reminded me of something. “Out,” I decided. The outside air pressure was low. I had taken a lungful of near vacuum and fallen over. Now Helm’s got me back inside, and is trying to talk me into breathing in. I thought about it. Hard work. To Hell with it. Time to sleep. I felt better, having let myself off the hook so nicely. Then the sediments built up another two hundred feet deep and I could feel my ribs creaking, getting ready to snap. That kind of worried me, so I took a deep breath and yelled, “All right! Lay off!” I started to sit up, but I’d forgotten those layers of limestone, basalt, and clay holding me down. Then there was an earthquake: the deep strata broke and thrust up and I felt my bones breaking now, but what did that matter? They were only petrified fossils buried in black muck. So I let that go, and wondered how a fellow could breathe under all that solid rock. Helm was bending over me, with his mouth hanging open, and it was his hard hands on my rib cage that were crushing me. I tried to take a swing at him, and found I had no arms, no legs, no body, just the awareness of pain and a desperate need to tell somebody.

“Easy,” I heard somebody say. I wondered who it was, and gradually realized it was me. I got in a little more air and tried again:

“You’re crushing my chest, Andy,” I complained. I sounded like “Urriggaba…”

“Try to relax, sir.” He withdrew a few inches. His face looked worried, poor lad. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, sounding like a fellow who was sorry. I wondered what about.

“It’s been about a week since―after you…”

“Died,” I supplied.

That remark made me suddenly aware of a thousand knives stabbing my chest, especially when I inhaled, which I did, just to check. That brought on a cough, which drove all the daggers an inch deeper.

“Sorry about that,” I told him, or tried to. What I got was more coughing until I blanked out again. Then I was trying to curse and cough at the same time, which didn’t work out well. I was furious with myself, first for being weak as American beer, and second for not being able to handle it. After a while I was sitting up and my arm was supporting me, with no aid from Helm.

Smovia’s face hove into view. My ribs hurt, but not as much, and the doc said, “There, you’re feeling better now. I taped your ribs. Breathing better, too. I think you could take nourishment now.”

“How about a small horse, shoes and all?” I suggested and didn’t even cough.

“Ja, da, for all del,” Helm spoke up, which the translator rendered as “Uh, well, OK.” Not much in that, but then the lieutenant was never a very verbal sort of fellow. I knew he meant, “Gosh, sir, glad to see you’re feeling better.

“I tried to stop the doc, here,” he added in English, “but I guess he was right; you started breathing a lot easier once he taped you up. It looked too tight, but―”

“You did fine, Andy,” I told him. “Just what the hell happened?” I was curious to know. “All I remember is opening up, and―zap.”

“It’s the air pressure, sir,” he told me. “Seems on the phase of the Cosmic All, ah, in this A-line, sir…”

“Go on,” I prompted.

“Lots of argon, Colonel,” he blurted. “We’re way off-course, I’m afraid. C.H. date over four billion years. Atmosphere still forming. The planet ran into a gas-cloud, it appears, mostly argon. Breathable, but low pressure. It damn near collapsed your lungs, sir. Lots of blood there, for a while, and the doc here was carping about how foolish you’d been, but…”

Smovia was back. There was some more painful prodding and poking and I took a few deep breaths for the nice doctor-man, and started thinking about how much time was passing while I lay around repenting at leisure. I was draped in my command chair. On the screens I could see an expanse of mud flat.

“Helm,” I called, weakly. He was right behind me. He came around, still looking anxious.

“How long did you say I was out?” I asked him. I tried to sit up and fell back with a flump! that made my head ring, even though it had impacted on a cushion.

“One week, sir,” he told me grimly.

“Is the shuttle OK?” I asked Helm.

He nodded, still looking grim. “Mired in mud, but undamaged, as far as I could determine.”

“Things here seem too normal,” I remarked. In an entropic vacuole they were supposed to be different.

Helm edged close to me, arranging various expressions on his face. “There’s one thing, Colonel,” he told me like a fellow who hated to be the bearer of bad tidings. I waited for the punch line. It was a doozie.