Out of This World

Chapter Fourteen

After a moment of general consternation, Susan demanded, “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“’Tis plain enough,” Elani said, somewhat offended. “I know not where this place might be. I had not the time required to complete my incantation. I had called forth a portal to Messire Godwin’s…” She hesitated, groping for a word. “World?”

“Universe,” Godwin suggested.

“As you will, then-universe,” Elani agreed. “But I’d no time to steer it small, and in this… this universe there are many… worlds? Planets?”

“Aye,” Valadrakul said, as he dabbed lightly at the blood that seeped from his cheek. “They do call them by both names.”

Elani nodded. “I had no time, as I said, to find the right one, in so many. So I found one where men dwell-that much, I could do-and cast forth the way, and opened it, and here we are.”

“There are people here?” Amy said, scanning the empty horizon.

“Aye,” Elani said. “Somewhere.”

“It’s not as bad as it might be, then,” Cahn said. “If there really are people somewhere, and it’s in our space, then the odds are that it’s a part of the Galactic Empire-there aren’t more than a dozen rebel worlds in all the galaxy, so far as I know.”

“And how many worlds does your empire hold?” Squire Donald asked.

Cahn shrugged. “Not sure of the exact count just now,” he said. “Something around thirty-one hundred.”

“And how big are these worlds?” Donald asked. “How far must we travel to find whatever people there might be?”

“They come in all sizes,” Cahn answered. “From the gravity, assuming a typical planetary density, I’d guess this one at, oh, six or seven thousand miles in diameter. A little smaller than Terra.”

Donald nodded. “And your mile is, pray, how many feet?”

“Five thousand,” Cahn replied.

Donald accepted that and withdrew to do some calculation.

Pel had listened with mounting discomfort.

This episode-this story, this series of events, whatever it was – - was taking an unpleasant direction. He wanted to get out of it now. “That’s all very interesting,” he said, “but it’s time for us to go home, now. Rachel’s exhausted and terrified.” He grimaced. “So am I, for that matter.”

Raven turned to stare at him. “Friend Pel,” he said, “perhaps you do not understand our situation.”

“I understand it well enough,” Pel said defensively. “I know what’s going on. Shadow sent those things, right? The big monster and all the little ones? It found us somehow…”

“The portals,” Elani said, interrupting. “It sensed the portals. I should have known that it would.”

“Yeah, well,” Pel said, “so it was the portals. Anyway, it found us, and it chased us all away from that place, whatever it was, and we wound up here, which is too bad for you guys, Raven and you others, I guess, because you can’t go home. And it’s not great for you others, Captain Cahn and the rest of you, because it looks like you’re out in the middle of nowhere and it may take awhile to get home, but it’s not bad, really, because at least you’re in the right universe.” He paused for breath, and saw Drummond nod.

“Well, for us Earthpeople,” Pel continued, “I don’t see that it makes any difference. Elani, here, can just open a portal to my basement, and we can go home and Rachel can go to bed and we can just forget any of this ever happened, right?”

Raven and Elani looked at each other unhappily.

“Friend Pel,” Raven began.

“Stop calling me that!” Pel shouted, his anger sounding weak and futile in the thin air. “Elani, right? You can send us home?”

Silently, Elani shook her head.

“Messire Brown,” Valadrakul said, “we are in another realm now, an alternate reality. In this place, our magic cannot work.”

“I wanna go home!” Rachel cried.

Pel glared angrily.

“We’re stuck here?” he said.

Amy, Nancy, and Susan had inched closer during the conversation; now all the Earth people but Ted were facing Raven, Donald, Stoddard, and the two wizards across a few feet of sand.

Raven nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “I fear you are.”

Pel looked about desperately, and saw the crew of the Ruthless, gathering to one side.

“They got to Earth, didn’t they?” he said. “There’s some way to get back!”

Raven looked at Cahn, who nodded. “If we can get back to Base One,” he agreed, “there’s the equipment there necessary to open a space warp back to your Earth.”

“So how do we get there?” Pel asked. “Where’s this Base One? Is it in this area?” A dreadful thought struck him. “Is it… is it even on this planet?”

“No,” Cahn answered. “I don’t know where the hell we are, but I know that much.”

“We’re on Psi Cassiopeia Two, Captain,” Prossie Thorpe called from atop a distant outcropping.

Startled, everyone turned.

“I’ve made contact,” she said happily. “Locally, I mean.” She pointed eastward. “There’s a small colony town about four hundred miles that way-Imperial, of course. If I can convince the governor there that I’m real, and not just a figment of his imagination, he can send a car or a hopper for us.”

“Psi Cassiopeia Two?” Smith asked quietly.

Drummond shrugged. “I never heard of it,” he muttered. “Must be way out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh, it is!” Prossie called.

“Thorpe,” Cahn called back, “watch it!”

“Sorry, Captain,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s so wonderful to have my talent back, though-I can’t help it!”

Peabody saw Pel’s puzzled look, and explained, “She can’t possibly hear us talking, when she’s all the way over there-not in this thin air, she can’t. So she must be listening telepathically, and that’s seriously against regulations, spying on your own people without orders.”

Pel nodded, and asked, “What was that about convincing someone she’s real?”

Peabody shrugged, then winced at what the motion did to his slashed arm. “I guess she’s been calling someone,” he said, “and the local brass never heard a telepath before and isn’t sure he’s hearing one now.”

“Why wouldn’t he have ever heard one before?” Nancy asked. “I thought you people used them all the time.”

“Hey, there are three thousand inhabited planets in the Empire, and only four hundred telepaths,” Peabody explained, “and more than half of those four hundred are serving communications duty in the Imperial Fleet. Hardly anybody outside the fleet’s ever heard a telepath.”

“Why are there so few?” Pel asked. “I mean, can’t you train more?”

Peabody blinked in surprise, and threw Prossie a quick glance. Her attention was focused entirely on the eastern horizon; her crewmate leaned forward and raised his uninjured hand to shield his mouth as he whispered, “’Course you can’t train more! It’s something they’re born with-you either have it or you don’t.” He threw Prossie another glance. “I mean, they’re all mutants, really.”

“Oh,” Pel said.

Peabody nodded, and continued, “In fact, they’re all one family-all descended from one woman. Prossie’s great-great grandmother.”

“Oh,” Pel said. He considered, and then pointed out, “Well, then, they aren’t really mutants-I mean, she was, but her kids weren’t. The trait bred true, that’s all.”

Peabody pulled away slightly. “You making excuses for mutants, Mr. Brown?”

“No,” Pel said, confused, “I don’t think so.”

“Good,” Peabody said.

* * * *

Amy looked about her, then settled down and sat cross-legged on the sands.

That five-minute look at another world had gone wrong, just as she had feared it would. Now they needed to find this space warp thing.

Something would probably go wrong there, too.

Still, if everybody else could handle this, so could she. Her world had been snatched away from her, in an incredibly literal way, but she would just have to deal with it. She was still alive; that poor man Cartwright wasn’t, she’d seen him fall with that thing ripping at his back, tearing away skin and cloth, but she herself was unhurt except for the little scratches that other horrid flying creature had given her-she hoped the scratches wouldn’t get infected. Her skirt was torn up, but the scrapes on her leg hadn’t even broken the skin.

All that blood, those monsters, that was gruesome, traumatic stuff, but she could handle it. She was a healthy, intelligent woman, and she was not going to let all this mess her up.

She’d been through all that. She could take anything the universe-or universes-cared to throw at her.

She glanced at Susan, who was sitting curled up, almost in foetal position.

Susan was Vietnamese, and hadn’t she said something about already having seen enough war? Amy guessed that she must have been through hell as a girl, seen things that made those black monsters look like nothing.

She’d survived, though.

Well, maybe there were some things Amy wouldn’t be able to handle, but she intended to try. She intended to be, like Susan, a survivor.

No matter what path her life was dragged down.

* * * *

“See you, friend Pel,” Raven said, interrupting Pel’s talk with Spaceman Peabody, “think you not, ‘tis just as well that we found ourselves here, and not in your world?”

Pel glared at him. “How do you figure that?” he said.

“Because hence we can go, by means of the ‘space-warp,’ and all of us be sent safely home again. Had we reached your world, then I and mine would be trapped there.”

“Would that be so bad?” Pel asked. “I mean, how can you go back? Those monsters were all over everything!” He kicked at a dead one that lay near his feet.

“Oh, I think they’ll not stay,” Raven said with an airy wave. “Shadow saw us fled, and will surely summon home its creatures, so that they might be dispatched elsewhere as needed.”

“Maybe,” Pel said, unconvinced.

“Where was that, anyway?” Nancy asked. “I mean, that place where we came out. It wasn’t your castle, because we saw that across the valley.”

“Certes, madam,” Raven agreed. “We made our lodgings in the forester’s cot of my ancestral lands, for my brother holds Stormcrack as vassal to Shadow, and in disgrace of our family’s honor.”

“Your brother?” Nancy threw Pel a worried glance.

“Aye,” Raven said.

Pel decided that a change of subject was called for. “Those monsters that got through, before the portal closed,” he said. “What’s going to happen to them? Should we hunt them down and kill them?”

Peabody shook his head. “Don’t need to,” he said. “They’ll die on their own.”

“Will they?”

“Oh, sure-just ask Soorn. He was on the clean-up crew on Lambda Ceti Four. Those things can’t live for long in normal space.”

Pel glanced around, not at Soorn, but at Grummetty and the little woman. They were sitting side by side on the sand, arms around each other’s shoulders. They looked pale; Pel wasn’t certain whether that might be partly due to the abnormally-white light.

“What about them?” he asked, surreptitiously pointing a thumb.

Peabody and Raven followed his gesture.

Raven looked grim, and Peabody shrugged his good shoulder.

“I wouldn’t make any long-term plans for them,” Peabody said.

“Perchance poor Dundry was the fortunate one,” Raven said. “An he found shelter, he might outlive us all; an he died, at the least it was quick.”

“Dundry was the other one, the one in green?”

“Aye,” Raven said, “Alella’s son, by her first husband.”

“I met Grummetty, but not the others,” Pel said. “That’s Alella, there?”

“Aye,” Raven said. “Grummetty’s wife.”

“So Dundry was-I mean, is Grummetty’s stepson?”

Raven nodded, making no comment on Pel’s initial use of the past tense.

Pel took a surreptitious look at Grummetty.

“You know,” he said, “Grummetty was in my basement for maybe ten minutes before he started getting sick. Really sick. He’s been here longer than that, hasn’t he? And he looks all right so far.”

“Raise no hopes, friend Pel,” Raven said. “Mayhap the death is slower here, for ‘tis plain truth that this realm is not your own, but death is certain, all the same.”

“Unless you can get them back through the… the warp in time, anyway,” Nancy suggested.

Pel looked at her, and realized that Rachel had fallen asleep in her mother’s arms.

“Do you want me to take her for awhile?” he offered.

“No, that’s all right,” Nancy said. “We’re fine.” She hesitated, then asked, “Can you get them back through the warp in time?”

Raven looked at Captain Cahn; he wasn’t listening. He was discussing something else entirely with some of the others.

Pel looked at Peabody.

“Doubt it,” he said, frowning. “I don’t know just where the hell we are, even with the name, but if I never heard of it, it’s got to be at least a week, probably a lot more, from Base One. If those gnomes could last a week here, we’d probably have caught a few of them alive sometime.”

Pel’s jaw dropped.

“A week?” he shouted.

“Yeah,” Peabody said.

Pel turned and grabbed Raven by the front of his embroidered jacket. “A week? I can’t spend a week here! I didn’t even want to spend an hour! I have a business to run! I left the lights on, and the cat-what’s going to happen to our cat?”

“I’m sorry, Pel Brown,” Raven said, pulling Pel’s hands away from his garments with surprising ease; he was even stronger than he looked.

“Pel,” Nancy said worriedly, watching Grummetty and Alella, “this isn’t our space any more than it’s theirs. Are we going to be all right here?”

Pel glared at Raven.

“I know not, my lady,” the nobleman said. “But I see no reason to fear. My people and Messire Peabody’s have lived in each other’s lands for months, even years, and suffered no ill; likewise, the neither took harm from our stay in your own realm. ‘Tis only the creatures of Hrumph and Shadow and Elfindom, the creatures of magic, that cannot abide here.”

“Sure, lady, don’t worry about that,” Peabody said. “You’ll be fine.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry about your cat, though. Maybe the neighbors’ll do something?”

“Yeah,” Nancy agreed, stroking Rachel’s hair. “Maybe. He’ll have water, at least, if nobody closed the bathroom door.”

For a few seconds they were silent, sunk in gloom; then a joyful shout, audible even in the thin air, roused them.

“Aircar on the way!” Prossie called. “No Imperial ships are available, so they’re sending a car. Be here in a few hours!”

A ragged cheer went up, and quickly faded.

“We need to put up a marker, so it can spot us,” Prossie added. “I’ll tell them what it is.”

That brought on a puzzled silence, followed by disjointed muttering, until finally somebody thought to start collecting the dead monsters, and fragments of monsters, into a heap.

“Should really show up, against all this white,” Peabody remarked, wincing, as he used his injured arm to help steady a mashed spider-thing before heaving it onto the growing mound.

Pel, dragging something resembling a saber-toothed wolf, nodded. He hesitated, and then said, “I’m sorry about that man Cartwright,” he said. “Was he… Did you know him well?”

Peabody turned away from the pile and shrugged. “Well enough,” he said. He sighed. “It’ll probably be me has to tell his wife back on Terra.”

“Wife?” Nancy, still seated holding Rachel, looked up, startled.

Peabody nodded. “Cute little thing. Her name’s Maureen; last I saw she was about seven months pregnant, probably had the kid by now. She and Pete have a place in New Dorset, in North Columbia.”

Pel looked uneasily at Nancy; she stared at Peabody in horror.

“They sent him out there with his wife pregnant?” she demanded.

Peabody shrugged again. “Sure. It didn’t look all that dangerous. It was supposed to be a diplomatic mission, after all-we didn’t know we’d wind up fighting monsters in the middle of nowhere.” He gestured at the surrounding landscape. “And we didn’t expect to wind up here, either, but this doesn’t look too bad.”

Pel glanced around, at the cold white sand, the various people with torn clothing, bloodstains, and improvised bandages, the pale sun and too-close horizon. He stared for a moment at the heap of fanged, clawed, and tentacled horrors, all of them dead. He took a deep breath of the warm, thin, oddly flavorless air.

“Well, no one’s attacking us, anyway,” he said.

Peabody grimaced.

“At the moment,” Pel added.

“Hours,” Nancy said, looking at the corpses. “She said a few hours?”

Pel frowned and nodded.

“I’m going to get some sleep, then,” Nancy said. “It must be after ten back home, and I’m tired.”

Pel looked at his watch, and saw nothing; the display was blank. The light came on when he pushed the appropriate button, but had nothing to illuminate.

He shrugged. “I don’t think it’s really that late,” he said, “but sure, if you like.”

Nancy lowered Rachel gently to the sand, arranged her comfortably, then curled up beside her. Pel watched them silently.

He sat up himself for awhile, but eventually, for lack of anything better to do, he joined her.

He was awakened by Peabody jostling him. He blinked, sat up, and looked where the crewman pointed.

At first he didn’t see anything. The sun had crossed the sky and was descending toward the western horizon; the air had progressed from warm to hot, while the sand on which he lay had also warmed, though far less. He peered out over the sand and rock, and finally spotted it.

A glittering object had appeared over the horizon and was coming quickly nearer.

“Oh, my God,” he said, tensing. “Now what?”

“It’s okay!” someone shouted. “That’s our ride!”

Pel relaxed slightly, but remained wary as the thing neared. Someone-in the dimming light it took Pel a moment to recognize Mervyn-had improvised a small torch, somehow, and was waving it enthusiastically over his head, signalling to the approaching craft.

The vehicle was roughly the size and shape of a car, but had no wheels; instead it cruised along at roughly the height of Pel’s head, with no visible means of support.

“It is just like Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder,” Nancy said, sitting up.

Pel looked at her questioningly. “Prossie said they had cars with anti-gravity-aircars, she called them,” Nancy explained. “And I told Rachel they were like the one in ‘Star Wars.’ And they are, see?”

Pel nodded. The thing certainly traveled like the one in the movie.

It didn’t much resemble it otherwise, though. It wasn’t pink and battered. The cockpit wasn’t open, and the lines were more bulbous than sleek. It was glossy black, with elaborate brass trim and numerous running lights in various colors, and it reminded Pel more of a 1953 Buick Roadmaster his father had once had than it did of anything else-though of course, the Buick had been festooned with chrome, rather than brass.

By this time the entire assorted party was awake, and everyone had noticed the approaching vehicle. They were all watching it, with varying intensity. Susan was frankly staring, her mouth open; Amy was a bit more restrained, while Ted was grinning like an idiot, as if the thing’s appearance were something he had contrived himself that had turned out better than expected. Stoddard was watching other people as much as the aircar itself, judging their reactions to it; Squire Donald’s expression was unreadable; Valadrakul’s gaze seemed coolly appraising.

Most of the crew of the Ruthless seemed mildly relieved and completely unsurprised.

The aircar glided to a standstill and hovered over a slab of white rock, a few yards away. A window whirred open and a white-haired head thrust out.

“Proserpine Thorpe?” the man in the aircar called.

“Here!” Prossie replied, waving cheerfully.

The head swiveled around to peer at the telepath, then turned back to the main party and called, “Captain Cahn?”

“Yes,” Cahn answered.

The man nodded, and pulled his head back inside the vehicle. An instant later, with a high-pitched whine, the aircar settled slowly to the ground.

Pel glanced at Nancy, making sure she and Rachel were all right, and then jogged toward it.

As he drew nearer, he saw that the resemblance to an old Buick was less than he had initially thought. The thing was bigger and far more complex, with exposed tubing in several places, running lights in yellow and green and red, and protuberances that Pel couldn’t identify at all.

It also bore an elaborate gold seal on its side, showing a lion and unicorn rampant against a sunburst. That was not something Pel had expected-a ringed planet or a spaceship would have struck him as more appropriate. The gold-leaf beasts looked positively medieval, and made a curious contrast with the multicolored lights and all the other signs of a fairly high technology.

By the time Pel reached the aircar’s side Captain Cahn had strode the three paces necessary to reach the vehicle and was already bent down, talking quietly with the driver through the open window.

Pel frowned; the vehicle had a pair of bucket seats in front, and two rows of three behind, rather than the two bench seats his father’s car had had, but even so, there was no way the entire party could fit into it at once.

“It’ll take three trips,” the driver said, looking past Cahn, seeing Pel’s expression and guessing the reason.

“Couldn’t you have sent something larger?” Pel asked, struggling not to shout.

The driver grimaced. “Nope,” he said. “This is it. Psi Cass the Deuce isn’t exactly London; this bucket’s about it for official transport. They were trying to scrounge up more, but for the first run, I’m all you get.”

“We’ll take the wounded first,” Captain Cahn said, in a tone that implied argument was flatly impossible.

The driver nodded. “And I take the telepath, of course, right?”

“Of course,” Captain Cahn agreed.

“What about my wife?” Pel asked. “And our daughter?”

“Second trip, probably,” the driver replied, reaching for a lever.

Captain Cahn stepped back and turned, looking the group over and choosing who would go.

“Peabody, you go and get that arm looked at,” he called. “Drummond, you’re in charge, and get the leg taken care of. Wizard…” Elani and Valadrakul both looked up. Valadrakul’s face was bloody, but he was basically intact; Elani was unmarked, but clearly suffering from exhaustion.

Pel was distracted by the driver clearing his throat. He turned, startled.

The driver’s hand was on the polished wood knob atop a black lever, and he was glaring at Pel. Pel blinked.

“Step away, please,” the driver said.

“Oh,” Pel replied. He took a step back.

The driver pulled the lever, and the aircar made a noise like a vacuum cleaner warming up. It stirred, and then hovered, a few inches off the ground.

As the machine rose Pel felt suddenly off-balance, as if he were about to fall toward the aircar; he backed away another step, and the feeling vanished.

Peabody stepped up, apparently untroubled by any falling sensation; he opened a door and climbed in, then turned and held it open. Valadrakul handed in first Grummetty, and then Alella-they were far too small to board without assistance.

The two little people both rode in a single seat, the center one of the back row, with Peabody to one side. Elani went in next, taking the other side.

“Nobody else’s hurt that bad, sir,” Peabody said, leaning forward. “Why not take Mrs. Brown and the girl?”

Cahn frowned. “All right,” he said. “If they want, but there isn’t room for all three of them. If the mother and daughter go, the father waits here. You want to do that, Mr. Brown, or would you rather wait and all go together?”

Pel turned to Nancy.

Nancy looked down at Rachel, who was huddled, sound asleep, in her arms. She looked around at the empty sand, the descending sun, and the gleaming aircar.

“We’ll wait,” she said.

Cahn looked around.

“You two, then,” he said, pointing to Susan and Amy. “I want somebody from your world in this group.”

The two women glanced at each other, then stepped forward together and boarded.

A moment later the aircar was loaded-Prossie Thorpe rode shotgun in the front, Susan, Amy, and Lieutenant Drummond were in the second row, and Peabody, Elani, and the little people rode in back. Doors slammed, the engine sound rose to an ear- piercing shriek and then upward in pitch, into inaudibility, and the vehicle lifted from the ground, swung around, and began to pick up speed, back the direction it had come.

Pel had been standing too close; the backwash of the anti-gravity drive left him dizzy.

“Next load,” Cahn said, “Lieutenant Godwin, you’ll be in charge. You’ll take the Browns, the other wizard, that Squire Donald, and Ben Lampert. The rest of us should all fit in the third.”

There were answering nods, but Pel paid no attention. He was too busy watching the aircar as it disappeared over the horizon.

Despite the hot, dry air, he shivered.

A thought struck him, and he snatched out his camera; it appeared to have survived undamaged, thus far. He pointed it after the aircar, but it was too late; the vehicle was out of sight.

He sighed, and contented himself with snapping a quick shot of the remaining group, scattered on the sands.