In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

VISITING SHADOW Hank Davis

If the planet hadn’t reminded me so much of Earth, they might not have gotten me. But it did. And they did. I was being stupid, of course.

The Shadow wasn’t there at the time, or I don’t know what might have happened. Maybe nothing different. But it hadn’t been at the edge of my vision for a couple of days, so I took a chance, docked the Dutchman at the Tucker Station at the L5 point, and stepped through the airlock.

I don’t know where the thing goes when it’s away, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know why it . . . takes . . . other people, but not me. So far.

I wasn’t going down to the planet, of course. Even if it hadn’t been blue with white clouds, like Earth, and the clouds hid the shapes of the continents enough so that, if I didn’t look too close, it might be Earth. I didn’t know what the Shadow might do if it were on a planet. Maybe I shouldn’t have been on the space station. But it was between shifts and all the refreshments and amenities were closed. I saw that nobody else was in the observation dome for tourists and business types passing through, and went on in. It had a striking view of the Earthlike planet the station orbited.

It wasn’t Earth, of course. I never go within a hundred lights of Earth.

It turned out that I shouldn’t have gone within a hundred lights of this station, either. The back of my neck was itching, and I had a feeling somebody was watching me. Of course, I often have that feeling, but this didn’t feel like the Shadow.

I turned around quickly. They had moved very quietly, which meant they were professionals. There were five of them, two women and three men, and they had surrounded me before I got the idea anybody was there. “Nice view,” I said.

“You need to come with us,” the beefiest of the bunch said. “Someone wants to have a talk with you.”

They were wearing ordinary clothes, but I had the feeling they were also used to wearing uniforms. Maybe Terran Fleet uniforms. I had thought that after half a century, the Fleet would have stopped looking for me, but maybe I had underestimated their singlemindedness.

Or they might be cops, investigating a string of mysterious disappearances scattered across this arm of the Galaxy. I hadn’t caused any of the disappearances—directly—but I was always there when they happened.

“Let’s see some I.D.,” I said. “And a warrant, if you’re cops. I’ll enjoy the view some more while you’re looking for them,” I said, and turned back to the planet that wasn’t Earth, hanging in the blackness. And I kept turning, fast, but not fast enough. I got beefy boy, whom I took for the leader, in his midsection, but my hand barely clipped the one to his right on his ear, not what I was aiming for. I must have been out of practice.

Suddenly there was something barely noticeable, barely visible out of the corner of my eye, and then one of the women wasn’t there anymore. Not entirely, anyway. As usual, there were pieces of her, falling to the floor in the low gravity of the station, along with her gun, but most of her had disappeared.

I thought that might distract them long enough for me to get the falling gun. I was wrong. The other three of them shot me, simultaneously as far as I could tell, three stunbeams converging on me while I was diving for the gun. I don’t know how close I came to it, because I didn’t know anything anymore, and that situation lasted for a long time. I was out before I even had time to regret they weren’t shooting anything lethal. But maybe that wouldn’t have worked. I’ve tried suicide and it doesn’t work.

They may have shot me more than once, from the way I felt when I finally came out of it. I can’t really blame them. They didn’t know what had suddenly, terribly happened to one of them, and they were scared. Of course, I knew what had happened, and I was scared, too. Particularly since I didn’t know why it happened, either this time or the many other times . . .

I knew Colonel Oberst didn’t like me, but I didn’t think he disliked me enough to get me killed. That might have been a mistake. He had called me into his office inside the officer’s dome and offered me a smoke and a drink. That should have made me worry; but I wasn’t worrying because I was a shorttimer. One more week, and I’d be heading back to Earth and my discharge from the Fleet. Marrying Angie, with a job as a civilian pilot lined up. Buzzing around the Solar System like an electron in a nanocircuit: nice, safe, routine. What could happen now?

“Kelly, I need a volunteer, and I think you’re the best bet.”

I had turned down the smoke, and now I wished I had turned down the drink. Uh-oh.

“Not the gate, I assume, sir?”

“Actually, it is the gate. The rats came back all right, and so did the monkey yesterday. We need a man to go.”

We? This wasn’t even the Fleet’s job. We were on the outermost moon of a gas giant that didn’t even have a name, just a number, to provide security for the scientists who were investigating the gate. The science guys were working for the Terran government, or else we wouldn’t have been there, but the gate was their problem. Unless somebody ordered us to blow it up—but nobody was sure that was possible. Attempts to get samples from the gate’s material for analysis hadn’t worked. I’d heard one of the scientists saying it was like trying to get a sliver off of a endurosteel wall with only a modeling clay chisel to work with.

“Thank you for your confidence in me, sir, but I respectfully decline. I’m leaving in a week and—”

“I know, going back to Earth and getting married. It’d be a shame if you couldn’t leave because of a problem with paperwork. After all, this has been determined to be a Priority One mission—one of the few signs of a technology of nonhuman origin that’s more advanced than we or any of our e.t. allies have. In a P-1 mission, the commanding officer has considerable leeway in determining when critical personnel can be released. You might be in for the duration.”

“Sir, I still decline, and I’ll make a formal protest—”

“That’s your right. Of course formal protests can take a long time to work through the legal plumbing. And in the meantime, your new job might not be there anymore. In fact, there might not be any other job openings for some time.”

He wasn’t being subtle. His brother was very high up in the Terran government, though nobody in the media or the government seemed to have any idea just exactly what Patrick Oberst’s job was. He was probably the reason that Colonel Oberst was here in a nice safe assignment, no obvious dangers, nobody shooting at him, and if the mystery of the gate was solved on Oberst’s watch it might mean at least one star on his shoulder. It’d look good on his resume when he retired and ran for office, keeping the running of the Terran government in the family. If either of the brothers Oberst wanted to get me blackballed from everywhere I might look for a piloting job . . .

“Let’s hear it, sir.” I wasn’t saying “yes,” yet. “What do I do that a monkey can’t?”

His face had gotten hard, but now it eased up. Except for his eyes. They never eased up. “You know the story here, of course.”

I knew the story. An expedition had found something that looked artificial: an arch about thirty feet high and twenty-five wide made of some white material which they couldn’t identify, with what they thought was a jet black surface on one side, and a flat surface made of the same unidentifiable white material on the other. The black side turned out not to be solid. It was pure ebony blackness, not reflecting anything, and instruments poked into it went through like it was a vacuum, and came back apparently unaffected. Except that no information came back from them while they were on the other side of the black surface. Telemetry didn’t transmit. Cameras and other gizmos on rods were poked through with wires leading back outside, but they didn’t produce any info. Nothing came back on the wires. But the cameras, radars, thermometers, barometers, geigers, and so on, worked fine once they were back on our side of the black surface. And of course, the rods were long enough that they should have been stopped by the solid other side of the gate, but nothing stopped them. They apparently went—somewhere else.

So, they started calling it a “gate,” and more equipment and more scientists were sent to the moon, along with Fleet personnel, including me, fully armed, in case somebody or something unfriendly came out of the gate. The few members of the original expedition had been housed in their ship when they weren’t investigating. Now, the gate had several domes, including separate ones for the officers and the NCOs and enlisted men. So far, the military personnel had nothing much to do.

I wish it had stayed that way.

“You remember that they tried all sorts of recording devices, putting them through the gate, and they came out fine, except that nothing had been recorded. They even tried still photographs. With chemical film. God! I didn’t know such things still existed. Then they tried putting a cage of lab rats through, and they came back perfectly healthy.”

I was beginning to see where this was going . . .

“. . . and the monkey came back fine. So now they have a chair big enough for a human, and they need somebody to sit in it while it’s pushed through the gate. How about it, Lieutenant? It’ll look good on your record. Volunteering for a dangerous mission. Maybe even a medal.”

Nobody ever needs volunteers for a safe mission, I thought. Maybe I’d come through it all right, and be on my way in a week. Looked like I didn’t have much choice.

“Okay, sir. Got any more bourbon?”

No more bourbon, as it happened. The scientists weren’t happy about my having had even one shot. They didn’t know what effect it might have on the other side of the gate. So I put on my pressure suit, and they strapped me into a plastic chair they’d taken out of the day room, removed the legs, added straps, and bolted it to a girder that was welded to the front of a deuce and a half vactrac. I could feel the vibrations of the tractor conducted through the girder behind me, and the gate got closer and closer, and I tried not to think of it as a mouth. A wide open mouth. The unreflecting black surface got closer, and I went through it with no resistance . . .

. . . and the next thing I remember was walking back out through the gate. I was wondering where the chair and the vactrac had gone, then I wondered why troops in pressure suits were running toward me, with their guns aimed in my direction. But I wasn’t the complete center of attention. Several of the scientists were staring past me. So I turned around and saw that the black surface was gone. This side of the gate now looked like the opposite side. Solid. Then, Oberst came bouncing over in the low gravity. My radio was still on and I heard him yelling, “Where the hell were you? What did you do while you were gone?”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I haven’t been gone more than a couple of seconds.”

“How’s your oxygen?” one of the scientists said.

I checked the digital readouts inside the helmet, and said, “It’s fine. Nearly full tanks.”

“You’ve been gone nearly two days,” he said.

All this time, I had been noticing something odd. I once had an eye infection and my right eye had to be bandaged over for a couple of weeks. During that time, I kept looking to my right, because it was like a shadow was on my right side, and I kept reflexively turning to see what was making the shadow.

There was nothing covering either eye right now, but I kept seeing—almost seeing—something like a shadow, at first on my right, then on my left. I kept turning, but couldn’t see anything casting a shadow. Then the part about how long I had been gone sank in: nearly two days. And I only had an eighteen-hour oxygen supply.

I should have been dead. But if the readouts were right, I hadn’t consumed a noticeable amount of oxygen at all.

“Let’s get to my office,” Oberst said, and headed toward the officer’s dome.

I followed, feeling very confused. Again, I thought I saw a shadow on my left side, but when I turned my head in the helmet, there was nothing close enough to me to cast a shadow.

Out of the suit, I needed a drink but decided not to ask Oberst for bourbon.

“That’s ridiculous! You were gone for forty-six hours and thirteen minutes. You must have gotten your tanks refilled somewhere.”

“Sir, I don’t remember being in there for any time at all,” I said. “The chair went through the black whatever-it-is . . .”

“Whatever-it-was. It’s gone now. What did you do to turn it off?”

I was getting very annoyed. A drink probably wouldn’t have helped. At least I was two days’ closer to being a Proud Friggin’ Civilian again. “Once again, sir, the chair put me through it, and the next thing I remember was walking out through it, on my own feet. What happened to the chair?”

“As per the plan, after one minute the tractor pulled you out again. Or pulled the chair out again. You weren’t in it and the straps hadn’t been unbuckled. What are you hiding, Kelly?”

Then his face got a look that told me he had just had an idea. I was was sure I wouldn’t like it. I was right.

“If you are Kelly? Maybe I should put you in the brig until they can give you a full physical.” He stood up, and I stood up, and I don’t know if that’s what caused it. I was very upset, and I still don’t know if that caused it. But suddenly he was staring at my right and his eyes were very wide. And the shadow that was visible out of the corner of my eye was where he was staring as he pulled his gun from its holster. Then he was gone. Most of him.

There were pieces of his uniform scattered around his office, and little pieces of the colonel, and puddles of what looked like blood in unlikely places. But most of the colonel was gone.

They hadn’t let me take a gun on the mission through the gate, so I didn’t have mine, but Oberst’s gun was on the floor. I moved as fast as I could in the low gravity and grabbed it up. Then I turned around. Several times. But I was apparently alone in the office. I didn’t even see the shadow.

I thought about calling for help. Then I wondered which would be worse, being examined, maybe dissected, to see if I was really human—Oberst wouldn’t be the only one to get that idea—or put on trial for Oberst’s murder. There was enough of Oberst left to be identified, and I was the only one with him in his office when it happened. Whatever had happened.

On second thought, I probably wouldn’t get a trial. One of the crown princes of the Oberst family was dead and I was the only fall guy around. I’d probably just disappear, unless I disappeared on my own.

Then I thought I saw the shadow again. Or Shadow—I wasn’t thinking of it as capitalized yet, but I soon would. I turned quickly and aimed the gun, but there was nothing there.

Something had come through the gate with me. It was dangerous. Maybe it would attack me next, but if I went back to Earth—if they let me go back to Earth—it might attack someone else. Angie . . .

I left the office, saw there was nobody in sight, and went to get my pressure suit. On the way, Dr. Haber, one of the scientists, saw me and said, “Lieutenant Kelly, is it true you remember nothing of the time you were on the other side of the gate? We need to talk—”

“Right, Doctor. But I need to get something to eat first,” I brushed him off.

“Hmmm, I don’t know if you should eat anything until we’ve made an examina—”

“Later, please. I also need to use the latrine.”

“Maybe we should have samples—”

I managed to get away from him without either stunning or cold-cocking him. Once I was back in my pressure suit, I headed for the launch pads, and opened the hatch to the ship I had piloted there from Earth. There shouldn’t be anybody aboard, and there wasn’t. Nobody would have any reason to steal a ship.

Except me.

I strapped in and again thought about heading for Earth. If I had left the thing behind—then I saw the Shadow again out of the corner of my eye, in the control room.

Eventually, I would quit turning my head, trying to see it clearly. There was never anything there. And there was nothing causing a shadow this time, either. But it was on the ship with me. Suppose I went back to Earth with the thing on board, and once it got there it reproduced? Maybe it could divide like an amoeba. Lots of little shadow-things swarming across the Earth.

I couldn’t go back to Earth yet—maybe not ever.

I took off and ignored the anxious voices coming from the audio. Once I was far enough away, I’d set a course. My plans were vague, but I had to go somewhere to get supplies. The ship’s atomic generator could run the reactionless drive and the hyperwarp engines for years, but I wasn’t that well-supplied. I didn’t guess then that I would keep needing supplies for a very long time.

Besides, I had to get rid of the Fleet ship. I knew about some independent and not particularly ethical colonies where I could turn it into currency, enough to get a smaller and less conspicuous ship and plenty of supplies. When I needed more currency, I could make some hauling small cargoes. But no passengers. Never any passengers.

Maybe I could get rid of my Shadow somehow. Or maybe it would get rid of me. But I was going to keep it away from Earth. And Angie. Oh, Angie . . .

Selling the Fleet ship turned out to be harder than I had expected. I wasn’t going to land on the planet, and they wouldn’t let me near the space station, but I couldn’t blame them since I was piloting a fully-armed Fleet ship, nuke torpedoes and all. I asked the two in the ship that rendezvoused with me to stay in their ship. “Sure,” one of them said from the vision screen, “we’ll stay here and you’ll come over and join us.”

Somehow the old joke, “Why, are you coming apart?” didn’t seem very funny. We argued for a while, but I finally went across the connecting tube. The two had guns trained on me, of course.

“So, you’ve deserted the Fleet and you want to sell that ship. Selling stolen goods, eh?” said the fat one. “You think we’re pirates, maybe?”

I’d heard they didn’t like to be called pirates. “No,” I said, “just businessmen, trying to make a profit. Like I’m trying to make a deal.”

The tall, bald one said, “Oh, I think you think we’re pirates. You also think pirates are stupid, to believe a story like yours. I think right after we buy the ship, more Fleet ships’ll show up, accuse us of stealing Terran government property and illegal weapons, and use that as an excuse for taking over the colony. Nobody’ll care. After all, we’re just pirates.”

I was wondering if they were going to shoot me. I was a little surprised to find that I didn’t much care. But only a little. I think they saw that and it made them nervous.

“Okay, Fleet boy,” fat said, “let’s take you to the station and find out what you’re really up to.” Then he noticed that the bald one wasn’t there anymore. Most of him wasn’t there.

“What the hell—” was what he said before I slugged him. Maybe I did care if he shot me. But not much.

Back in my stolen ship, I headed for another rogue colony and wondered how big the Shadow was. I had gone from one ship to another through a connecting tube barely big enough for me to stand up in. Maybe it hadn’t needed the tube.

Much the same thing happened at my next stop. Maybe the dialogue was a little different. I had hoped I might have left the Shadow behind in the other ship, but hadn’t hoped very hard.

I eventually found a buyer, then bought a smaller ship, stocked it with supplies, and headed outsystem, not caring where. Before that, the woman I bought the ship from asked me if I wanted a new name on the hull. I was about to say, “No,” but I thought of something. “Name it Dutchman,” I said. As in Flying Dutchman, I thought. I was going to keep flying for a long time, I thought. But I didn’t suspect then how long that would be. And how many other people would disappear at other stops.

After a while, I started feeling sorry for the occasional, ah, businessmen who stopped me and tried to take over Dutchman. There were a lot of them. Maybe they kept the Shadow entertained, if briefly.

There was darkness, and it lasted forever, then it began to fade as I noticed that someone had a major headache. Then I realized it was me. I was in a chair, and almost expected to see that black gate coming toward me, then remembered that was a long time ago, in a different chair. I wasn’t strapped in as before, but I couldn’t move. I was in a flexible but firm cocoon of some kind of foamy-looking material, and I wasn’t wearing any clothes under it. I was looking at another man in a similar cocoon, then I woke up a little more and decided the other man was me. I looked like hell.

I wasn’t looking in a mirror, though. I could see a couple of men with guns watching me through the semi-transparent reflection. I was on the other side of a transparent barrier.

One of them spoke into a wrist buzzer, and the pair quickly had company. I recognized four of them. My pals from the Tucker Station. The survivors from the station.

They stood there pointing guns in my general direction, then a screen I hadn’t noticed until just then lit up, and an old man looked at me. If he was happy to see me, he hid it well. Then his eyes got even harder, and I thought it must be Colonel Oberst’s father from the family resemblance. Another part of my aching brain woke up and I remembered that was over fifty years ago, and the Colonel’s father was elderly even then, judging from newsflash pics of him which I’d seen.

“Pat Oberst?” I was thinking, then realized I’d said it out loud. The Colonel had always referred to his brother as Pat, and I had repeated his example, without thinking. I was coming out of the stunner-induced fog, but not fast enough.

There was a pause, indicating that he was a couple of light seconds away, then, “My father and mother called me Pat,” the man on the screen said, “and they’re dead. My brother also called me Pat, but you murdered him somehow. To everyone still living, I’m Mr. Patrick Oberst, or just Mr. Oberst. But you’re an exception, Mr. Kelly. How many languages do you speak?”

It was a crazy question, but my brain was still trying to come out of the fog, so I answered in detail, “One fluently, two others good enough for conversation, and a little of several more.” Then I thought maybe I should be careful about answering questions.

“You probably know several words for death, then. And several for pain. I’ll answer to all of them. And you’ll have a choice of languages to scream in, Mr. Kelly.” He took another look at me and seemed to find yet another reason to dislike me. “Votara, are you sure this is the right man. He looks like his photograph—too much like his photograph. He looks decades younger than he should be.”

Maybe it was because of the Shadow, but I didn’t seem to be aging much as the years passed. Maybe I wasn’t aging at all, but there was no way I would go to a medtech to find out. I didn’t seem to ever get sick, either. Maybe I’d live forever, just me and my pet monster, oh joy! Or maybe I was the pet.

“Positive, sir,” said one of the women. “Fingerprints, retinas, DNA, brainechoes all match. If he isn’t the right James Kelly, he’s a perfect clone.”

“You become more interesting, Mr. Kelly. I owe you for murdering my brother, but I was going to offer you an easier death than I would otherwise demand if you turned over the alien weapon you brought back through the gate and used to kill him. But if you also have a way of suspending or significantly slowing the aging process, and will share the secret, I might let you depart the world of the living with hardly any screaming at all. An hour or two at most.”

“I wish I could hand them both over to you, but you wouldn’t like the side effects.” Then I woke up enough to realize what the slight time lag meant. “Where are you?” I yelled.

After a pause of two or three seconds, he said, “No need to shout, Mr. Kelly. Save your lungs for what you’ll need them for very soon. Why do you want to know where I am? I’m certainly out of your reach.”

I looked more closely at the screen. He was sitting behind a huge polished desk. “You’re in an office,” I said. “Where is it?”

“A lot of people would give a lot to know that, Mr. Kelly. Just as I want to know where that alien weapon you’ve been using is hidden.”

“Are you on Earth?”

He was not amused. “I suppose it’s safe to tell you that I’m on Earth. Now it’s your turn to answer questions . . .”

I was on the edge of panic. “This ship is in orbit around the Earth, isn’t it? You’ve got to move it! Get it far from Earth immediately!”

The pause before he answered gave the thugs watching me time to look uneasy and grip their weapons more tightly. This time most of the weapons were lethal. I wondered if they could shoot through the transparent barrier.

Oberst spoke again, “Mr. Kelly, why do you want to get away from Earth? I doubt that even your unknown weapon can make the whole planet explode.”

Forget about being on the edge of panic. I was neck-deep in it and trying to stay afloat. If they landed the ship, the Shadow would be loose on Earth. Maybe that was what it had been waiting for.

Then I realized that one of the thugs had left my sight while I was yelling, and was now returning with someone else. A woman. And then I saw her face—

She had a strip of tape over her mouth, but even so she looked like Angie. But it couldn’t be Angie, because she looked like Angie had looked fifty years ago. For a wild second I wondered if the Shadow had somehow kept Angie from aging too. I didn’t know what the thing was capable of doing . . .

Then my memory did a rewind and playback. I realized that Oberst had said, “Please bring in Ms. Maxwell now, Votara.”

I was back in realtime, whatever “real” meant anymore, and Oberst said, “May I introduce Ms. Callie Maxwell? Ms. Maxwell, this is James Kelly, and he is reacting much the way I expected upon noticing your close resemblance to his former fiancée. And, no, Mr. Kelly, I’m not planning on torturing her in hopes that the resemblance would make you disclose your secrets. Instead, I’m betting that if you somehow have the weapon concealed on your person, her resemblance to Angela Graham Hanson will keep you from using it on her. And perhaps the fact that she isn’t here voluntarily will also make you hesitate.”

Hanson! So she had married someone else. After that sank in, I wondered why Callie Maxwell was here . . .

“I’m guessing that you’re wondering why she’s here,” he said.

Check.

“And possibly you’re wondering if your former fiancée is in danger from me.”

Double check.

“It happens that she is beyond my, or anyone’s reach. She died fourteen years ago in a flyer collision. I had people watching her for long before that in case you tried to make contact with her, so they were on the spot quickly to get her out of the wreckage and to a hospital, but she was dead on arrival. I did not cause the accident. She was no use to me dead. Neither is Ms. Maxwell, so I hope you’re not going to wreak carnage in the ship.”

I was beginning to think that I was going to die since I couldn’t give Oberst the secret of a weapon I didn’t have. Or an anti-aging secret. If I died, what would happen to the Shadow. Would it find a new—host, pet, anchor, whatever I was to it? And maybe switch to someone else on the ship. Someone who would go back to Earth. Maybe what I had feared for five decades would happen. I had stayed away from planets because maybe if the Shadow was on a planet it would start a brood of little Shadows. And we were close to Earth . . .

I noticed that Maxwell no longer had handcuffs on, but she still had the tape over her mouth. She was working a little keypad, which must have been on a direct line to Oberst because he suddenly said, “Ms. Maxwell, are you making all this up? An invisible—well. There are plenty of other—ah, you can easily be replaced, and not pleasantly at all. If you thought being abducted was upsetting, understand that much worse can happen.”

I realized what word he had almost said. She was a telepath.

“What you are sending is ridiculous,” Oberst said. “What and where is his weapon?”

And words began to appear to me, as if written on the inside of my eyelids in luminous paint.

HE HAS A BOMB ON THIS SHIP. HE CAN SET IT OFF BY A SWITCH UNDER HIS DESK.

I’d heard about this, but never seen it before. Most telepaths can only receive. A few can send, making the receiver “hear” a silent voice. But others can send pictures—including pictures of words. Which was what she was doing.

I wondered if the bomb could kill the Shadow. I often wondered if anything could kill the Shadow. If the ship were blown up—but was the bomb nuclear or just chemical?

CHEMICAL.

Of course, she was following my thoughts. Which were not happy. A chemical bomb would destroy the ship and kill me and everyone on it—every human on it—but a nuke might have a better chance of destroying the Shadow.

Then I realized why they had put tape over her mouth.

THEY BROUGHT ME ABOARD UNCONSCIOUS.

Because he didn’t want the crew to know— “There’s a bomb on board the ship,” I said, “and Oberst can set it off by a switch under his desk.”

Oberst’s thugs were already uneasy, and that news really stirred them up. “Is that true, Mr. Oberst?” one of them said.

“Be sensible! Why would I blow up Mr. Kelly now that I finally have him?”

BECAUSE HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU COULD DO, EVEN IMMOBILIZED. AND NOW THAT HE’S STARTING TO BELIEVE ABOUT THE SHADOW—

I had been repeating what she had sent to me aloud, as fast as she sent it, but then she stopped and I stopped.

One of the thugs in the back wasn’t there any more, and little unpleasant remnants were falling to the deck. Maxwell had been looking at me, but she had caught my stare and turned around.

“Look behind you,” I yelled. “You’re all in danger.”

They spun around with their guns aimed toward the back of the ship. Of course they saw no possible target.

Long ago, I had wondered if the Shadow knew what guns were. And if guns could hurt it. Maybe they couldn’t, maybe it just didn’t like having the things pointed at it. But it must have known what a gun was.

It didn’t bother with its usual disappearing act. All the bodies were still there, on the deck, but in bloody pieces. Maxwell hadn’t been hurt. Well, she hadn’t been physically injured. Maybe I should have warned her to close her eyes—not because of the carnage—but I didn’t expect what had happened.

I was hoping that Oberst was ready with that switch, and wishing that he had put a nuke on board, but when I looked at the screen, Oberst was gone, except for the usual human blood and confetti. Then the screen went blank.

Other things were gone. I was no longer in a cocoon, and there was no longer a transparent barrier blocking me off from the ship.

I ran forward to the control room, planning to get far away from Earth as quickly as possible, but not expecting that to do any good. Obviously, the Shadow could travel to Earth and back in a fraction of a second, as it had just demonstrated. Then I realized that it could do more than that, when I recognized the blue planet ahead of the ship. It wasn’t Earth. And the Tucker space station was maybe half a kilometer from the ship. I could see where my battered old Dutchman was, docked at the station.

I had thought I was keeping the thing away from Earth. Some protector I had made. It could have gone there anytime, if it had known where to go. And it knew now.

I went back to see about Callie Maxwell, wondering if I ought to find some clothes first. She was sitting on the deck, starting at the bodies, looking as if she needed to cry, but couldn’t, saying softly, repeatedly, “I saw it. I saw it.”

In half a century, I had never seen it. It was just a shadow seen out of the corner of my eye. Even though its victims always reacted as if they had seen something coming at them, something terrifying, still I had wondered if it had any real form. I knew now that it did.

Maxwell had seen it, and she had been sending images to me when she saw it, so I saw it too. I wish I hadn’t.

In the last five decades, I had accessed a lot of databases, even checking fiction, trying to see if something like the Shadow had been encountered before. One of the first things I turned up was a fictional character, from even before the Moon had been reached, called the Shadow, who could hide in darkness, or turn invisible—the text versions differed from the audio versions—but my Shadow didn’t seem to have much else in common with Lamont Cranston. Then another ancient story called “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” turned up, not only pre-spaceflight, but pre-atomic, and that led me to reading other material by the same author. I also found examples of critics ridiculing him for writing stories of things which were not only indescribable, but so horrible that those who saw them went mad.

Mr. Lovecraft, you really knew what you were talking about. I’ve seen it and I wish I could go mad. Or maybe I did a long time ago . . .

The ship had a lifeboat, so I could set the ship’s controls on timer to take it on a long orbit out to the edge of the system, while we left in the lifeboat. No one would find it, or the bodies on board, for a long time.

As we headed for my ship, I asked Callie, “Are you going to be all right?”

She gave me a look that would make liquid helium look warm. “I’ve seen it,” she said again.

I wanted to keep quiet, but I had to find out what she was going to do. “We’re a long way from Earth,” I said. “Do you need funds to get home?”

“He was a fool,” she said. She picked up that I was worried about her mental state, because next she said, “Oberst was a fool. He didn’t know how good I was. How much I picked up from his thoughts. I know his secret account numbers and I.D. codes. With them, I’m a billionaire. I can get home. Even better, I can afford the memory wipe treatment. Wipe out the last few days. I hope it will work.”

Then she started again, saying “I saw it,” a few more times, until she turned to me again and said, “I know what you’re looking for, and I know where it is.”

I hoped I knew what she meant, but I just said, “Where what is?”

“Oberst had people looking for another gate. They found one a week ago. It’s located at—” and she read off numbers which meant nothing to her, but which I memorized. Later, I’d punch them into my ship’s computer.

“Once we dock with my ship, you can go into the station,” I said. Then I almost said, “Will you be all right?” but didn’t because it was a stupid question. But it was also a stupid thought, and of course she had read it without my saying anything.

“Stop saying that!” she said. “Stop thinking it.”

She wouldn’t be all right ever again, unless the memory wipe treatment worked. I hoped it would.

I saw it, too.

I hoped that Oberst didn’t have any more of his thugs guarding the other gate. I hoped it for their sake. It doesn’t seem to want me to be hurt.

And if the gate is there, maybe it would like to go home. If “like” or “want” have any meaning to it. Even if it isn’t homesick, maybe it’ll follow me, as it’s been doing for half a century, when I walk through the gate to whatever’s on the other side.

And stay there.