Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

You said you had good news. Zunnunun tinted the words with the mind-colors of growing irritability.

Yes! The same Primitive ship is now ascending towards the datum plane, and those on board believe — or hope — that the lost females have taken refuge within the habitats I found here. This time, Director, there is no doubt at all that I will be able to send them to you, because—as a simple consequence of previous physical contact—the sole purpose of the males in making the new ascent is to retrieve the females. They will come directly to me.

This is quite incredible, Zunnunun said. Are you sure of your facts?

Absolutely.

You bring me good news indeed —I had no idea that such powerful bonding could exist between individuals of any species. I look forward to receiving the Primitive males and to carrying out appropriate experiments.

It is my pleasure to serve you, Divivvidiv said, pleased that he had regained the Director’s approval. While we are in private discourse, may I raise another matter?

Proceed.

The Xa’s consciousness continues to reach new levels, and it has just made an initial enquiry about the Ropes.

Does it have any understanding? Any insight?

No. Divivvidiv paused, qualifying the statement. But I sensed undertones… Has there been a new development?

I have to say — yes. There was a brief silence, and when Director Zunnunun spoke again his words were clouded with strange colors indicative of doubt and apprehension. As you know, a powerful faction in society has forced those in the Palace of Numbers to carry out a new assessment of the local situation, and the latest data have strengthened the opinion that the Ropes really do exist. It also seems highly probable that as many as twelve Ropes once intersected near our galaxy — compared with the original estimate of seven.

And if that is truly the case, not only will our own galaxy cease to exist — as many as a hundred other galaxies in the cosmic region will be annihilated.

I see. The surrounding cold seemed to invade Divivvidiv’s clothing with relentless force as he broke the mental contact. This is strange, he thought. Why should a force which promises to annihilate a million other galaxies be feared more than a force which threatens to destroy only this one — when my personal fate will be exactly the same in either case? And why should I trouble myself over my people’s plan to obliterate a pair of undeveloped and sparsely populated minor worlds when the cosmos itself is bent on such monstrous feats of destruction?

During the last fifty miles of the ascent Toller and Steenameert had turned the ship on its side at frequent intervals. The purpose had been to get an early view of the small line of wooden stations and spaceships so that they could steer directly towards them by countering lateral drift. Even in good viewing conditions the artifacts would have been hard to find, but with a sea of crystal spanning the sky and diffusing the sunlight into a uniform white brilliance Toller had expected his task to be doubly difficult. He had therefore been surprised when, at a range of some thirty miles, he had begun discerning a mote of solid darkness at the center of the translucent disk. As the ship crept closer to it, binoculars revealed that the object—although irregular in its general outline—was bounded by straight lines and square corners. Its silhouette resembled the plan of a very large building to which numerous extensions had been added in quite a haphazard manner.

For a time Toller was able to reject the implication—there simply was no room for it in his scheme of reality—but eventually the painful mental shift took place…

“Whatever that thing is,” he said to Steenameert, “I cannot visualize it growing there by itself like a crystal of ice. It has to be a midpoint station of some kind, but…”

“Not built by the likes of us,” Steenameert supplied.

“You speak truly. The size… We could be looking at a palace in the sky.”

“Or a fortress.” Steenameert’s voice was low, almost furtive, in spite of the fact that he and Toller were alone on the ship in the vast reaches of the weightless zone. “Could it be that the Farlanders have at last decided on conquest?”

“They are going about it in an odd way, if they have,” Toller replied, frowning, instinctively rejecting the idea of a military invasion from the third planet. Bartan Drumme was one of the two men still alive who had been on the single epic voyage to Farland many years ago, and Toller had often heard him declare that its inhabitants were insular in their outlook, totally lacking in the colonial urge. Besides, the enigmatic sea of living crystal and the gigantic midpoint station were obviously connected in some respect, and what military commander—no matter how alien his mind—would set about an invasion in such a pointless manner?

“No, this is something new to us,” Toller went on. “We know there are many other worlds circling distant stars, and we also know that on some of those worlds there are civilizations much further advanced than ours. Perhaps, my friend Baten, what we see above us is… is… but one of many far-flung palaces belonging to some unimaginable king of kings. Perhaps those reaches of ice are his hunting grounds … his deerparks…” Toller paused, lost for the moment in the exotic grandeur of his vision, but was recalled when Steenameert posed a crucial question.

“Sir, do we go on?”

“Of course!” Toller pulled his scarf down from over his nose and mouth so that his words could be heard with perfect clarity. “1 continue to assume that the Countess and her crew have taken refuge in one of our stations, but if we fail to find them there… Why, we now have one other place to look!”

“Yes, sir.”

Steenameert’s eyes, peering from the horizontal slit between his scarf and the edge of his hood, gave no indication that anything out of the ordinary was happening, but Toller was suddenly struck by the fantastic import of his own words. His hand dropped of its own accord to the hilt of his sword as he realized that his entire being was awash with dread.

Even as he was first hearing of Vantara’s disappearance there had been born in him the sickening fear that she was dead. He had refused to acknowledge that fear, driving it out of his mind with manufactured optimism and the demanding activities of the hurriedly-mounted rescue expedition. But new elements had been added to the situation—bizarre, monstrous and inexplicable new elements—and it was impossible to see how they could bode anything but ill.

The six wooden structures were known collectively as the Inner Defense Group—a name which had clung to them since the days of the interplanetary war although it had long since lost all relevance.

Toller and Steenameert had located the group on the Overland side of the ice barrier and about two miles out from the alien station. Taking his ship in a wide curve, Toller had approached the wooden cylinders very cautiously from an outer direction, keeping them between him and the mysterious angular outline. He had chosen the course with a tenuous hope of avoiding detection by alien eyes, although it was purely an assumption that the metallic construct housed living beings. It appeared to be embedded in the crystalline barrier, and when viewed through his powerful glasses had something of the look of a vast and lifeless machine—an incomprehensible engine which had been placed in the weightless zone to carry out some incomprehensible task on behalf of equally incomprehensible builders.