THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY Page 6

  “This surge peaked awfully far out,” he said worriedly. “I should have said it was better for us to make for the other peak—further back though it may be.”

  “Artesha says not,” answered Magwareet, and Arafan nodded acceptance. “I must admit, though, we’re a long way from Sol…”

  “There it is,” Arafan pointed out. “We’ll be hitting it in less than twenty minutes. I’d better match times now.”

  Red looked questioningly at Magwareet.

  “The peak of the surge is about twenty hours earlier than our ‘now,’” was the reply. “We shall have to make a short hop in time—nothing to worry about—”

  Even as he finished speaking the pattern of lights in space altered infinitesimally, and they had a brief sensation of chaos.

  And at the same instant a loudspeaker on the wall came to frantic life.

  “Magwareet! Magwareet! Artesha here! There’s an Enemy raider—a big one—heading for you at top speed!”

  VIII

  Andrevas, High Priest of the most esoteric circle of magicians around the Imperial Presence in the Croceraunian Empire: It is not seemly for any magician to appear awed by a perfectly normal miracle.

  Ezekiel, prophet of the Most High among the people of Israel: Under the firmament were their wings straight… every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters.

  Commander of an Italian air force squadron, North Africa, 1941: Four Savoia-Marchetti biplanes failed to return from reconnaissance flight…

  Magwareet hardly changed externally, but his relaxed attitude tensed indefinably. There was a short pause.

  “I see him now,” he answered. There was nothing but a smear of red on the illuminated plate he was staring at. “Arafan, what’s his course like?”

  “If he carries on as he is,” the pilot reported unemotionally. “he’ll sink right into this end of the temporal surge.”

  “Artesha, we’ll have to get something after him—catch him! We daren’t have an Enemy raider loose in the twentieth century!”

  “Agreed.” Artesha’s voice was unhumanly level. “Magwareet, step up your generators to maximum. I want as much trace instability as possible on the maps. I’ll have a squadron of ships after you as fast as possible.”

  “Right.” Magwareet moved across the room in one easy bound, and his hands began to move like water rippling on a bank of controls. Arafan tensed, watching the viewplate.

  “There he goes!” he said, and pushed a lever home.

  This time the confusion and sense of change was redoubled. Red was aware of Chantal grasping his hand and trembling, but she appeared blurred, and he was able to feel her both now and an instant ago, as if memories were co-existing in the present.

  “Is this—the first time anything like this has happened?” Chantal asked, and Magwareet replied without turning.

  “Yes. As far as I know, the Enemy has never before struck the end of a temporal surge. It’s not surprising—they all peak within the Solar System, and few of the Enemy get so far…”

  He glanced at Arafan’s viewplate. “Anything following us?”

  “Can’t tell! We’re co-existing with the anchor team Burma was with, now. It’ll be impossible to sort out anything else till either we or they drop into normal space again.”

  “Then there’s nothing else we can do,” Magwareet said. He turned on his heel and stared at Red and Chantal. “I suppose you want to be told what’s happening. Well, somewhere ‘behind’ us there ought to be enough ships to take that Enemy raider apart. But—it’s difficult to make it clear—roughly, things go through a temporal surge in the order they enter it in real time, and original relationships are preserved. I think by your time it had been discovered that there are things called operators—actions which have equal reality with the things they affect. Our relationship with the Enemy is unchanged because the operator which has been applied to us—the temporal surge—acts only along the world-line, and not across it.”

  He shrugged. “So until we return to normal space, we don’t know what’s happening to us, or the Enemy, or the ships following us. What’s worse, there has never been a chase like this before.”

  “Why can’t the ships following do what we did—enter the surge at the same moment as us? You can jump in time—”

  “That jump gives a surplus of temporal energy, which is what we use to detect something out of its original time. The more you have, the slower you pass through the surge. The Enemy has none except what it’s getting now; we have twenty hours’ worth and we can’t tell how much the ships behind us have because we don’t know how far they had to jump in time to enter the surge.”

  “Anchor team’s splitting!” reported Arafan.

  “What?”

  “They’ve hit a sort of eddy! It’s tossed some of them back into normal space…”

  “When the fleet gets here, we’ll have to pick up anyone we can.” Magwareet brightened. “Maybe Wymarin or one of his staff will be among them!”

  “We’re going to emerge,” warned Arafan. “And there’s the Enemy!”

  It was beyond imagining vast. It lay across the Milky Way like a black rod, and it was like no ship Red and Chantal had ever imagined. It was pentagonal in section, and the ends of its long shaft were multi-faceted lenses gleaming with cold fire.

  “Do you imagine they know where—when they are?” Chantal breathed.

  Magwareet shot her a glance and spoke dryly. “It took us years to figure out about the Being. If they’ve solved the problem this soon, they’re cleverer than we are.”

  The Enemy raider rolled—so slowly, it seemed. As it turned, something that glinted rushed across the sky—out of control.

  “That must be one of the anchor team’s ships!” said Magwareet. “Will they—?”

  There was no sign from the Enemy except that one facet of one jewelled end blazed like a sun, but the racing ship became a Catherine wheel of incandescence and bloomed into a flower of yellow fire.

  “If Wymarin was aboard—!” said Magwareet, biting his lip. Arafan leaned forward, turning to the viewport as if to confirm what his instruments reported.

  “They know where they are, at any rate,” he said. “Look!”

  Again the huge ship was turning, this time so that its axis lay along a line that intersected a tiny blue-green disc in the sky. Red realised in sick horror what it must be, even as Chantal uttered the words.

  “Red, surely—that’s Earth!”

  A thousand fantasies filled their minds. Were they back in their own time? If so, then they themselves before they met each other were walking about on that tiny planet. If the Enemy struck—if it did damage—what would result?

  Incoherently Red asked the question. Magwareet snapped at Arafan, “Go after them!” and wiped his forehead. “I don’t know,” he confessed to Red. “We think that our interference with the past is already accounted for, but we have never had outside intrusion before. And there’s the fact that we can’t detect what happens in the past as the result of a temporal surge until it’s peaked in real time. We couldn’t tell that Burma’s anchor team was going to be scattered into history, because if we had known we’d have prevented it and it wouldn’t have happened… But this is unique. Where the hell are those ships?”

  The minute disc that was Earth grew larger. He came to a decision. “Arafan, we’ll have to decoy them. Why didn’t I have this ship armed? Oh, what a mess!”

  Red had been wondering why they themselves had not shared the fate of the anchor team’s ship. He had his answer in Magwareet’s next remark.

  “Are you screening out everything, Arafan?”

  The pilot nodded.

  “Can you drop the screens so that they catch sight of us and get them back up before they can fire on us?”

  “No,” said Arafan.

  “I suppose not…” Magwareet
went to the viewport and leaned against it on his outstretched arms, palms flat. He stared at the Enemy, as if working a complex calculation.

  “Arafan, that ship has a blind spot. It’s a belt round the middle of the shaft. The facets only radiate at right angles to their plane surface, don’t they? They can’t fire on anything subtending an angle smaller than—oh, about nine and a quarter degrees is my guess—to the two ends. Could you get that close?”

  “We’d have to creep up,” the pilot answered. “I’m not sure our screens would mask the drive energy at short range. Want me to try?”

  “We’ve got to try!” said Magwareet. “Where are those ships?”

  Arafan’s face was quite composed as he turned the ship. The Enemy grew abruptly larger, until it almost filled the viewport, its faceted ends just touching the edges of the transparent plastic. Then he shut off the power, and they began to drift towards the mid-point of the vast pentagonal shaft.

  “Can’t they—see us?” said Chantal, her voice trembling.

  “No. We’ve proved their detectors can’t register our screens.” Magwareet seemed suddenly to recollect who they were, and spoke with gentleness. “Wouldn’t you rather be below—out of sight? This must be very upsetting for you.”

  Red felt more terrified than he had ever been before. His guts felt as though they were tied in knots and were being pulled tighter as minutes seeped away.

  He hesitated, but Chantal answered with firmness. “No. If we didn’t know what was going on, it might be all right. But just waiting, and not being able to see anything—it would be unbearable.”

  Magwareet nodded, and eyed Red. After a moment more thought, the latter signified agreement also, and together they turned to watch the flat side of the Enemy grow and grow…

  The tension climbed steadily towards the intolerable. Red felt he must scream in another second, or hide his eyes, or—best of all—run. Somewhere. Anywhere.

  Chantal, when he stole a look at her, was gazing through the port with fascination, as if hypnotised. Arafan had somehow managed to lose himself in the symbols on his instruments and forget the reality, but Magwareet knew he was risking their lives on guesswork, and even though he had been trained for years to guess, and guess right, he still suffered that terrifying fear of being mistaken.

  “Arafan,” he said softly. The pilot inclined his head. “When I say now! drop the screens. Wait a moment. Let them get a good sight of us. Then raise the screens again and head directly outwards.”

  Arafan’s head swung round as if jerked by a rope. “Are you crazy, Magwareet? Straight into the full blast of their armament?”

  “Do as I say! All right—now!”

  And an indefinable mist cleared from the viewport, so that they saw the Enemy apparently close enough to touch.

  “They’re nearly within range of Earth,” Red heard Arafan say in that long moment when they lay naked and defenceless. Magwareet gazed at the broad expanse of metal, thinking of the big, five-limbed creatures inhabiting it.

  They came from a planet with a sun, surely, he thought. They breathe air, as we do, and they must eat food and reproduce… What shuts them off from us? Why would they lay waste that world down there?

  He grew aware that they had been dangerously long here. “Arafan!” he rapped. “Screens up! Head outwards!”

  The pilot’s face had gone completely white. His hand reached out towards a control lever, and remained, shaking like a leaf, inches from it.

  “I—I daren’t do it,” he moaned.

  Red glanced at the side of the Enemy ship, and saw with blank despair that it had already begun to change position and bring them within the field of fire of its weapons. If that sun-like power struck them when the screens were down—!

  Magwareet waited the instant necessary to think out and co-ordinate all his movements. Then he leapt across the room and slammed into the control board, falling on to it as on to a floor, face down. His head struck the screen control, one hand found the power and the other the course director. He was barely in time.

  The viewport was suddenly blinding with red light, and a shrill alarm rattled at the edge of hearing. Fatalistically, they waited for disaster. All except Magwareet, who had slumped to the floor with blood crawling down his face.

  Arafan recovered slowly and rose to his feet, looking at the injured Magwareet with awe. “I should have known better than to distrust a co-ordinator,” he said.

  “Why? What’s happening?” Red and Chantal spoke together.

  “The radiation pressure is pushing us back! There’s power equivalent to a small star driving against us. In a moment, we’ll be able to start our own engines and get out of harm’s way.” He dropped back into the pilot’s seat.

  Sure enough, after another few seconds the red against the port faded and vanished, and the Enemy was no more than a stroke against the stars.

  Magwareet stirred and picked himself up. Chantal ran to help him, but he shook his head when she asked if he was badly hurt. He looked meaningfully at Arafan, who bent his head in acknowledgement, and then, wiping blood from the cut on his head, turned to the port.

  “Here they come!” he said with infinite relief.

  Like a chequerboard of multiple suns the ships of Earth sprang into being. They caught their breath at the sight. There were hundreds of them, and they brought an overwhelming impression of power. It was very comforting. But it seemed they had no more than appeared when they returned into nothing.

  “What—?” began Red.

  Again the Enemy had turned, and now it was clear that the blue-green disc aligned with it was really a round planet rolling about the sun. Its polyfaceted end looked like the eye of an evil insect focussed on its prey.

  A transient flicker illumined the interior of the eye.

  And the defending ships were back. But this time they were like novae erupting, and the Enemy glowed.

  It shone like a red-hot wire, except for its ends, which almost instantly began to swing again, but more swiftly, while each of their facets became a piece of a star. One of the novae flared up and winked out.

  But the glow whitened.

  The lensed ends became uniform masses of intolerable light, and Red noticed with a start that the viewport had darkened until the stars were no longer visible—only the greater-than-sunpower of the fighting ships.

  A dozen of the circling attackers passed into nothing, and there was a shift which altered their arrangement. But they had also closed in.

  “How come they are destroyed so far away when we took all they could give us at close range?” Red wanted to know.

  Magwareet answered absently. “We have a lot of delicate equipment on board. The energies in a temporal surge wipe clean the electronic patterns in computer memories unless the insulation is very good indeed. So we’re carrying at least twice as much screening as any of those ships out there.”

  The circling novae were definitely fewer now. Some twenty or thirty of them must have been seared into nothing by the mighty alien. Their pattern changed again. Red felt Chantal shiver as she stood close to him.

  Unexpectedly Magwareet uttered a jubilant cry. “We’ve got them!”

  Almost imperceptibly the balance had shifted, and the central shaft of the Enemy ship was now noticeably brighter than its ends. At the same time a bluish tinge crept into the luminance.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re having to switch their available power from attack to defence. Once they do that, it’s only a matter of time.”

  The blueness spread steadily until it covered even the ends of the Enemy. Blazing, the attackers moved in for the kill.

  Finally, the blue light began to shift back down the spectrum becoming yellower, and at last taking on a hint of red. Last of all, it sank beyond the visible, and the remnants of the mighty ship turned into a cloud of dust.

  There was complete silence in the room.

  “Won’t they have seen that back on Earth?” Chantal said e
ventually, and Magwareet shook his head.

  “There was a ship standing by between us and Earth doing nothing but shift radiant energy up the scale and cover it into high energy particles. All Earth will have detected is a slight increase in cosmic rays.” He went across the cabin, muttering, “Excuse me.”

  There was a blank plate set in the wall, with press-buttons under it. He punched one of them and said, “Commanding officer, please.”

  The plate lit to show a fat woman in a coverall soaked with sweat until it clung to her like a second skin. She gave Magwareet a wry smile.

  “Think I’m the senior surviving officer. That was a hell of a ship, co-ordinator. Must be their biggest and latest design!”

  “It could be. I want you to give a detailed report to Artesha on your return. I also want your ships—when they re-enter the temporal surge—to look out for the other peak we passed shortly before emerging. There’s an eddy close to it, and some of the anchor team Burma got lost with have been thrown out into normal space nearby. Check on them and if Wymarin or one of his assistants is among them, let me know. Okay?”

  “Agreed,” said the fat woman. She gave another wan smile, said, “A hell of a fight!” and disappeared.

  “It was indeed,” said Magwareet to the air. “I hope I never have a closer call. Well, I wonder what the detector teams have come up with. You might as well come down with me, Red and Chantal.”

  “There are other people on board?” Red said haltingly.

  “Eight of them.”

  “Did they know what was going on?”

  “No… They were studying temporal maps, so they’ll have registered the appearance of the Enemy raider and of the fleet, but they don’t have details. This way.”

  The room was directly beneath the pilot’s cabin; its walls were lined with green-glowing time maps. Five women and three men listened quietly as Magwareet recounted the history of the past few minutes, but made no comment. Red remembered that there were people fighting for existence, who had been schooled out of wasting their time.