Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

Bartan waited only a few seconds and said, “What is the verdict?”

“She wants to send a fleet.”

“Did you tell her there aren’t any ships available?”

“She told me not to vex her with minor details.” Cassyll gave a humorless laugh. “Details!”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have promised to find out exactly how many ships can be made airworthy, by cannibalizing others if necessary, and report the situation to her. Many engine parts will need to be repaired or replaced, and there is a dearth of balloon fabric. It could take as long as twenty days before we can send anybody aloft, and…” Cassyll fell silent, twisting the gold ring he wore on the sixth finger of his left hand.

“And you were hoping Toller would have returned long before then,” Bartan said sympathetically. “He probably will be back… with that countess hanging around his neck… It takes a lot to deflect that young man from his course.”

“Excellent choice of words—I took some fresh readings early this foreday and I’d say that the barrier is now almost a hundred miles across. It means that no ship could possibly fly around it.”

“There you are then!” Bartan said with a display of cheerfulness. “Toller has to come back soon!”

“You’re a good friend,” Cassyll replied, trying to smile. “I love you, Bartan, but I would love you even more if you could tell me why that blue world appeared in our system and caused a crystal wall to be built between us and our ancestral planet.”

“You think the two are related?”

“I’m sure they are related.” Cassyll glanced up at the sky, at the enigmatic disk of white light which hovered at the zenith. “Just as I’m sure that neither bodes us any good.”

“I am going to have much to occupy my mind in the hours to come,” Toller said to Divivvidiv, omitting the now-ritual insult about the color of the alien’s face as a sign that he was speaking unemotionally, dealing in cold facts.

“Therefore I take this opportunity to make your position absolutely clear to you,” he went on. “it is incumbent on you to preserve your own life, and you can best do that by giving me your full support in our venture. If I find you lying to me, or giving me tricky answers to questions, or allowing me to blunder into a danger of which you could have given me a warning—I will kill you. Your execution may not be instantaneous—because you are valuable to me—but, if I believe that you have gone against me in any of the ways I have just mentioned… and if subsequently there is a move against us from any quarter… you will die immediately.

“You know how readily I act in such matters. At all times I will keep myself prepared to lop your head from your shoulders, and may be so keyed up to do so that any sudden disturbance—even as little as a sneeze from you—could precipitate your demise. I know how great the odds are against me. As far as I am concerned I am practically dead already, so do not delude yourself that you can exert leverage on me in any circumstance. If you want to remain alive you must make yourself an unquestioning instrument of my will.

“Have I made myself clear?”

Very clear, Divivvidiv replied. Your tendency to belabor the point shows no sign of fading.

Toller frowned at the alien, wondering if such a craven creature could summon up the nerve to be insolent while in a position of extreme danger. He finished tying all the thongs on his own skysuit, then took the pistol from Steenameert to allow him to do likewise. Divivvidiv had already encased himself in his silver garment, making his general appearance more acceptable to human eyes, and now there was nothing to prevent the small group setting out on the journey to the alien’s home planet. Toller tried not to think about what lay ahead. The future he had engineered for himself was filled with inconceivable menace, but he dared not try to anticipate the dangers in case he should become prey to self-doubts which might weaken his hold over Divivvidiv.

“A question before we leave, and before you reply think of the warnings I gave you,” he said to the alien, glancing around the strange and inhospitable room. “Will the very fact of your quitting this place alert or in any way give advantage to those who will oppose us?”

II is most unlikely, the alien replied. The entire facility is operating automatically. It is most unlikely, at this stage, that anybody on Dussarra will try to communicate with me in person.

“Most unlikely? Is that all the assurance you can give?”

You demanded the truth.

“Fair enough.” Toller nodded to Steenameert and the trio moved towards the door by which they had entered the room. The alien progressed confidently, sliding his feet on the perforated floor, while Toller and Steenameert walked with a top-heavy roll as though balancing on narrow beams. When they reached the pressure lock Divivvidiv unclipped the grey metallic box of his personal propulsion unit from the wall. He began to fasten it to his waist with gleaming clamps.

“Leave that,” Toller ordered.

But you have seen it before. Divivvidiv spread his hands in an oddly human gesture. It is only my transporter.

“A device which gives you the speed of an arrow—I seem to remember that you approached with uncanny speed when Baten and I were trapped in your glass cage.” Toller prodded the box with his sword, sending it drifting away from the alien. “It would be quite pointless for you to burden yourself with the temptation to try escaping—especially as I intend to escort you to my ship in regal style.”

Toller unfastened a coil of thin rope from his belt, passed the free end around Divivvidiv’s body and tied it with a hard-drawn knot. He pulled Divivvidiv into the pressure lock with him and Steenameert, and signaled the alien to operate the controls, which resembled blue tablets set in the seamless grey wall. The inner door slid shut in magical silence, and a few seconds later the outer hatch opened to give a view of the metallic grey plain and glittering crystal sea beyond it. Icy air billowed inwards. Toller drew his scarf up over his mouth and nose, glad to be escaping from the oppressive architecture of the station’s interior, and went forward into the familiar skyscapes of the weightless zone.

The sun had moved closer to Overland, and in doing so had crossed the datum plane, rising above the artificial horizon created by the vast disk which Toller now knew to be an incomprehensible machine. Rays of sunlight, striking billions of crystals at a shallow angle, created barricades of prismatic fire which dazzled the eye. So great was the brilliance that even Overland, a hemicircle of luminance which spanned the sky directly above, was dim and ghostly in comparison.

Toller paid out his line a short distance, activated his propulsion unit and set off for the Inner Defense Group with Divivvidiv being dragged in an undignified slow spin in his wake. The trio flew out over the rim of the alien station, the sound of their exhausts greedily absorbed by the surrounding void. Toller kept silent during the flight and concentrated on remembering all the steps involved in taking a spaceship outside the air bridge. During his two obligatory training sessions everything had seemed very simple and obvious, but that had been years in the past and now the complexities appeared enormous.

The group of wooden vessels eventually showed up in the brilliance ahead as small yellow, orange and tan silhouettes which did not assume any proper coloration until Toller had swung in a curve past them and got the sun behind him. Close by was the skyship in which he had made the ascent, its balloon beginning to look puffy and wrinkled as the gas inside it contracted through loss of heat. At the planetary surface the weight of the collapsing envelope would have expelled the gas, but in the absence of gravity the balloon simply puckered like the skin of some moribund creature of the deeps.