Out of This World

Chapter Seventeen

As had been obvious from the first glance at its interior, Emerald Princess was a luxury vessel; that it had stopped at Psi Cassiopeia Two was, Amy later learned, merely a lucky chance. Psi Cass the Deuce, as it was known, happened to lie along the route between Omicron Cygnus Three, better known as Avalon, and Alpha Ophiuchus Three, better known as Ishmael. Noticing that fact on the charts, the party of Avalonian tourists who had chartered Emerald Princess, bored by the long flight, had decided to stop in at Psi Cass, unaware that the planet was home to nothing more interesting than a small and rather dismal mining colony.

Amy hadn’t noticed any mines, but she was assured that Psi Cass the Deuce was a mining colony.

From the point of view of the Avalonians their timing had been absolutely abominable. Pleas of injustice, threats of punitive action, and attempted bribery were all insufficient to prevent Captain Cahn and the local governor from using their authority, as agents of the Empire, to seize the ship temporarily, in order to transport the crew of Ruthless, along with people from two other universes, to Base One with all possible haste.

A suggestion that the freighter, or the battered little scout, be used instead was rejected; the freighter had no room for passengers and was too slow, and the scout was simply too small for the entire group.

The Princess was perfect.

Getting the entire group safely from Psi Cass the Deuce to Base One was obviously a matter of importance. If there had been any doubt of that, orders authorizing the seizure had come through, by way of Registered Telepath Thorpe, even before Captain Cahn had added his voice to the Governor’s in suggesting it.

That the Governor had hesitated when Prossie relayed orders, and had only paid heed when Cahn showed up and started talking, was not mentioned in Amy’s hearing.

Nor did anyone mention that the more desperate charter passengers had tried to throw doubt on Thorpe’s reliability and trustworthiness. Once convinced, however, the Governor had been unyielding, and when word reached the Captain he was seriously offended. While it might be true that Thorpe, being a telepath, was a damnable mutant bitch, as one man had called her, she was his damnable mutant bitch, and no mere civilians were going to impugn her honesty and get away with it.

Cahn had made no explicit threats, but he did calmly point out that interfering with a ranking Imperial military officer in the performance of assigned duties could draw the death penalty. This remark was passed aboard by the same Town guards who had first informed Captain Gifford that his ship was being claimed by the Empire.

That ended the debate, and the frustrated passengers and crew of Emerald Princess had mostly huddled in the control room or the aft salon, complaining bitterly to each other, while the first batch of refugees, as they were now called, came aboard and sorted themselves out in the forward lounge.

This was the party that had been put aboard the first aircar, under the command of the limping but still mobile Lieutenant Alster Drummond; his second in command was Spaceman James Peabody, with his chewed-up arm. Prossie Thorpe was undamaged, and they had in tow Susan, Elani, Grummetty, and Alella, in addition to Amy.

This group, led by an armed and wary Lieutenant Drummond, came aboard while the later groups were still eating. They were greeted in the forward lounge by Captain Gifford and his chief steward.

Both sides seemed nervous, as if expecting a nasty confrontation; the sight of Drummond’s hand on the butt of his blaster didn’t help any. Blasters were not subtle little things, either; nobody would fail to notice the hardware.

Peabody, with his injured arm, made no move toward his own weapon. Prossie Thorpe, as a Special, carried no sidearm. Elani was carrying the two little people, who were both now seriously ill, and none of that threesome was very clear on just what was going on; they were also unarmed.

Still, that blaster was there, ready to draw.

And Amy noticed not just Drummond’s weapon, but also that Susan’s hand had strayed into her big black purse, as if fiddling with something; they were both stepping out of the airlock into the lounge before Amy realized what Susan was doing.

Susan had a gun of her own in that handbag, the pistol she’d fired at the monsters back in Raven’s place-Raven’s world, though Amy really didn’t like thinking in terms of multiple worlds.

Did that mean Susan was ready to get into a firefight with these people? Amy couldn’t really imagine that; she was glad that she had left her own gun safely at home. Using it to defend her house against Captain Cahn’s men would have been one thing, and she thought she might have done that, but getting into a battle here, with all these people who presumably knew far more than she did about what was going on-no. No way.

But Susan was Susan; if she wanted to have her gun ready, Amy wasn’t going to try to stop her.

And maybe she was right.

The spaceship’s captain was eyeing his unwanted guests cautiously, very much aware of Lieutenant Drummond’s blaster, but probably with no idea at all that Susan was armed.

For a moment they all stood there, not speaking.

Oddly, what finally broke the silence and settled the situation peacefully was Amy-to be precise, her appearance. When the chief steward finally looked past the tall threatening blond man in the rumpled, worn, and bloodstained Imperial uniform and saw the deep, half-cleaned scratches on Amy’s forehead, the tattered condition of her flowered dress, his protective instincts took over. Here was a female in distress, and one who was to be a passenger aboard his ship, at that.

“Come in, my dear,” he said, beckoning, “and we’ll get you fixed up and find you something to wear!”

Susan made a small, wordless noise, and tugged at the jacket of her suit. Her hand was no longer in her purse, and Amy felt a definite relief upon seeing that.

“You, too,” the steward said.

“If that’s all right,” the captain said, glaring at Drummond.

“Absolutely,” Drummond said, smiling. “Excellent idea. We’re going to be stuck with each other for awhile; I don’t suppose anyone’s going to like it, but there’s no reason we can’t make it as comfortable as possible.”

The captain thawed slightly.

“I’m not going to interfere with the way you run your ship, Captain,” Drummond continued, “and I’m sure Captain Cahn won’t, either, just so long as you get us all to Base One as quickly as possible.”

Captain Gifford nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

* * * *

Pel and most of the others were blithely unaware of any prior conflict as they trickled in through the airlock. It didn’t even occur to Pel to wonder whose ship he was on, or where the crew was, until someone else brought the subject up.

The earlier arrivals, once aboard and with Drummond’s authority accepted, had sorted out the accommodations. Despite the complaints, the refugees posed no serious hardship to anyone. In fact, the ship wasn’t even crowded; all the original complement had to do was double up, so that the unmarried passengers were two to a stateroom instead of one, and that provided enough space to fit the twenty-two refugees in at three or four to a room. Crew quarters, far less luxurious to begin with, were not disturbed at all.

The Browns were given a cabin for the three of them, with a double bed for Pel and Nancy a folding cot for Rachel.

Susan, Amy, Elani, and Prossie, the four unmarried women in the group, took the largest cabin aboard-a suite, actually, with a tiny sitting room and miniscule bedroom, one of two suites aboard the vessel.

Raven, Stoddard, and Drummond were grouped together, as were Godwin, Ted, and Valadrakul. Peabody, Lampert, and Squire Donald were assigned to a single room. The more observant noticed that this put at least one Imperial in each group of men-either one lieutenant or two spacemen-but nobody bothered to comment on the fact.

The other suite, opposite the one the unmarried women shared, went to Captain Cahn, who claimed the bedroom for himself, and left Smith, Soorn, and Mervyn occupying the sitting room.

The little people, Grummetty and Alella, were given an unused storage locker; since the ship’s furnishings weren’t suited to them, nobody saw any point in giving them a stateroom. They made no objection; the locker suited them just fine.

Besides, they were really too sick by then to care very much.

While these assignments were being made up forward, the twenty original passengers divided themselves into pairs for the ten remaining staterooms. Since that happened to work out to a nice even two to a room, there were no serious accusations of added unfairness or injustice.

By the time these arrangements were settled and explained Pel was thoroughly bored with the whole affair. He had begun to tune out the chatter and wonder how much time this group would waste before getting under way.

Nine days to Base One, they said, and there were bound to be delays there, as well-the Galactic Empire seemed to be full of delays. They did some things quickly and well-Prossie had made the original telepathic contact with Town within minutes-but others they seemed to dawdle on. It had taken forever, it seemed, to actually pick everyone up.

He probably wouldn’t be home for another two weeks, at this rate. He worried about Silly Cat. He was pretty sure he had left the lid up on the upstairs toilet, so even if someone had closed the downstairs bathroom the animal could reach water, but the food in his bowl wouldn’t last more than a day or two. The poor beast might well starve before Pel and Nancy and Rachel got home to feed him.

And God only knew what would become of Pel’s business after more than a week of missed appointments. He had a report to write up for that computer dealer in Rockville, explaining why their radio ads weren’t working-that wasn’t getting done while he was here, instead of home.

“Mr. Brown,” a steward said, startling him out of his gloomy thoughts.

“Yes?” Pel turned and found himself facing a young man in a white jacket and dark pants, with his crewcut and bristling mustache looking oddly mismatched.

“This way.” The steward gestured toward a brightly-lit passageway.

“To where?”

“Your cabin, sir.”

“Oh,” Pel replied, feeling foolish. He brushed Nancy’s arm to make sure she was paying attention, then followed the young crewman. Nancy and Rachel came close on his heels.

Their cabin was the fourth door on the left; it was moderate in size, perhaps ten feet square, with its own miniature bathroom and a more generous closet, all of it decorated in shades of blue. A square of royal blue velvet drapery hung above the bed.

The steward bowed and left, closing the door gently.

While Nancy and Rachel were examining the closet, Pel kneeled on the bed and pulled the curtain aside, revealing, as he had expected, a porthole.

At least, it looked like a porthole, but then he reconsidered. Perhaps it was a backlit painting on glass.

He shifted his angle of view slightly, and decided no, it was definitely a real window.

Beyond the porthole the sky was black and full of stars; the ship had taken off.

Pel had felt no jarring, no acceleration, but with anti-gravity that didn’t seem to mean much. He stopped to listen, and could hear a faint, steady, high-pitched hum, but nothing like the roar of jet engines or rockets.

But then, with anti-gravity drive, why would you need rockets?

And there wasn’t any weightlessness, but presumably, if the Empire had anti- gravity, they could also provide artificial gravity.

That took some of the fun out of a trip among the stars.

Then he paused in his chain of thought. Were those stars? Something looked wrong. They looked fake, somehow.

Was this a video screen, rather than a real porthole, perhaps? Or was it a glass painting after all, done with some unfamiliar technique?

If it was video, it was some kind he’d never seen before, something that made the best HDTV stuff he’d seen look primitive. It was not video. And he couldn’t imagine any technique that would give a painting such a flawless illusion of depth. Was it a hologram, perhaps?

No, it had to be a real porthole. But then, what was it that looked wrong? He stared out at the star-spattered darkness for a moment, and finally figured it out.

The stars weren’t twinkling. They burned as sharp and clear as tiny headlights, out there in the emptiness.

No air, he realized. There was no atmosphere blocking his view.

He had never really thought of stars on a clear night as “twinkling,” despite the popular descriptions-not the way Christmas lights twinkled, or those spinning mirror balls. Stars didn’t blink on and off, or anything even remotely similar to blinking.

He had to admit, however, that in comparison with the steady, sharp brilliance he saw now, stars back on Earth were dim, fidgety things. The intense points of light beyond the port looked quite unstarlike in their stability, their unchanging blaze.

Tearing his gaze away, he turned his attention back to the others. Nancy was bent over, bouncing her hands, stiff-armed, on the cot’s mattress to show Rachel that the cot was sturdy enough to hold her.

“We’re moving,” Pel said.

Nancy looked up, startled; first she looked at Pel’s face, and then past him at the porthole.

“Oh,” she said.

“You stay here,” Pel said. “I’m going back to the lounge.”

Nancy nodded.

* * * *

The stars of the Galactic Empire, Raven noted, did not shine as the stars of home, but instead with a clear, hard light that was not particularly pleasant to look upon. He closed the little drapery.

A ship that sailed above the sky, and yet they disdained all talk of magic. Incomprehensible, these Imperials. The reports he had received had never fully conveyed their strangeness.

Consider, he thought to himself, that their lord Governor’s palace, just departed, was built of bare stone, ugly and harsh-not even a fine stone like marble, nor any polished thing, but that unpleasant substance they called “concrete.” Consider that it was, insofar as he had seen, furnished in the rudest fashion, almost unadorned, and lit everywhere in harsh and discomforting manner.

And then compare this vessel upon which they now rode, this mere transport, that by rights might be cramped and malodorous, bare of all luxuries, as had been every ship Raven had heretofore sailed upon.

Instead, though the chambers were small, it was rich in comforts, with the finest of fabrics and woods, with polished brasses and the warm glow of artificial fires. There was no rocking or sway, no stench; the ceilings rose well clear of even Stoddard’s head. The beds were fine and soft.

What sort of people were these, who made their vehicles finer than the homes of their lords?

It was wisely said that men devote their most thoughts to that which is to them most important, and lavish the most care upon that they value most highly. Did then the Imperials place the transport of goods more highly than the administration of their colonies? An it were so, it spoke ill of them.

Or might it be perhaps that attention was paid to such craft as this because the distances in this realm were so great that more time was spent upon the journey than at the end thereof? This passage was to be nine days, which was no great time-but was this place just departed the most far-flung of the Imperial possessions?

It was all a mystery; indeed, the minds of all those around him, save his own handful of faithful allies, were as inscrutable as cats. Further, worrying at such a knot did nothing to aid him in all that mattered, to wit, the defeat of Shadow and the liberation of Stormcrack Keep.

He would, he swore, worry it no more. He flung himself upon the bed and closed his eyes, resolved to rest whilst the opportunity availed itself.

* * * *

Pel made his way back up the passageway, moving carefully-somehow, the knowledge that the ship was under way made the floor seem less steady than it had a few moments earlier.

He reached the lounge without incident. Amy and Susan were there, on one of the sofas, and Smith was leaning against a wall nearby, chatting with them-and trying to pick Amy up, Pel decided. A white-jacketed, brown-haired man Pel didn’t recognize was standing quietly in one corner, observing.

Maybe he had designs on Susan, Pel mused, and was waiting for Smith and Amy to leave. He was presumably a crewman-another steward, perhaps.

Pel wandered in his direction, and the steward, or whatever he was, spotted his approach and quirked his eyebrows upward questioningly.

“Hi,” Pel said.

“Hello,” the other replied. “Was there something you wanted, sir?”

“I was wondering about our departure.” He deliberately phrased this question with a certain ambiguity.

“It went quite smoothly, sir-all things considered. Captain Gifford piloted the ship himself.”

Pel nodded.

“Are there any, um… viewports?”

“Yes, sir, of course-isn’t there a port in your stateroom?”

Pel admitted there was. “But what I wanted,” he explained, “was to get a look back at the planet.”

The steward pursed his lips thoughtfully, then pulled a gold pocket-watch from his jacket and glanced at it.

“Come with me, sir,” he said, as he put the watch away.

Pel followed as the steward led the way aft, explaining, “You won’t be able to see much, sir; that military officer, Captain Cahn, has insisted on maximum acceleration, so we’ve already come a long way.”

Pel nodded. He wasn’t all that interested in seeing the close-up details, but he did want a look at the planet. He had never seen a planet from space.

He had never been in space before.

He was now, though. He supposed he should be impressed, or awed, or something, but he wasn’t. Somehow, the mere fact that he was on a real starship, flying through outer space, didn’t seem all that mind-boggling any more.

Maybe, he thought wryly, he was all boggled out. The shock at Grummetty’s appearance, at Raven, at the crew of the Ruthless, at stepping through into Raven’s world, at the attack of the monsters, at finding himself on some strange planet he’d never heard of-he was having real trouble being boggled any more.

The steward opened a door, and the two of them stepped into the aft salon.

Though still compact, it was a good deal more elaborate than the forward lounge; the crystal chandelier was the most obvious exemplar. The room was decorated in several shades of green, with gold and silver trim, and was inhabited by perhaps a dozen people, most of whom Pel did not recognize.

Before Pel had had a chance to look at any of the details, however, a familiar voice cried, “Ah, two more figments of my imagination!”

“Ted?” Pel turned, and saw his lawyer grinning maniacally at him.

“This one,” Ted announced to everyone present, “is a simulacrum of a client of mine, one Pellinore Brown, freelance marketing consultant. It was he who supposedly got me involved in all this.”

Pel glanced at the steward, who discreetly shrugged.

“He’s been trying to tell us,” an elegant redhead in a green evening gown explained, “that we’re all just part of a dream he’s having. I haven’t decided if he’s serious or not, and if he is serious, I haven’t decided if he’s crazy or just confused.”

“Ted,” Pel said, “what are you talking about?”

Ted leaned forward, still grinning. “I’m talking,” he said, “about this interminable, boring, complicated dream I’m having. I’ve never had one quite like this before-at least, not that I can remember. This one just seems to go on and on.”

“Have you been drinking?” Pel asked, uneasily.

“I don’t know,” Ted replied. “Have I? I really don’t remember just when I went to sleep. Maybe I was drinking. That might have something to do with it.”

“No,” Pel said, “I meant here, now.”

“In the dream? No, I haven’t been dreaming about booze, oh figment of mine. Odd thing to ask-are you a subconscious worry that I might wind up an alcoholic, maybe? I’ve heard that alcoholics dream about booze, but as far as I recall, I’ve never done that. Maybe I’ve been suppressing it, eh? Maybe you’re some little bit of my mind trying to break through a wall of denial and suppression, to warn me off the sauce before it’s too late. But hell, figment, it’s nowhere near that late, is it?”

“Ted, I’m not a figment. You’re not dreaming. This is real.” Pel hesitated, then added, “At least, I think it is.”

“Well, if you’re not a figment, what are you doing in my dream?” He smiled a humorless, challenging smile. “Are you a telepath, Brown? Sending psychic messages to me while I sleep? Is that why there are telepaths in this dream? I never thought about telepathy much before, that I can recall. So are you sending this to me?”

Pel glanced uneasily about; everyone else in the room, save the steward and the bartender at the far end, was staring at the two of them. The steward was carefully not looking anywhere; the bartender was polishing glasses.

“No, Ted,” Pel said. “This is real. You are not dreaming. I swear you aren’t. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

Ted shook his head vigorously and held up his hands as if pushing the very thought away.

“No, no, Pel,” he said, “or figment, or alter ego, or whatever the hell you really are. This is a dream. It has to be.”

Desperately, Pel said, “No, Ted! I know it’s all strange, but it’s real!”

“Nope,” Ted replied. “Can’t be. You think I don’t know a dream when I see it? A bunch of bad swipes from Tolkien and Buck Rogers, all twisted around? Gotta be a dream.”

“It isn’t, Ted…”

“Pel, look,” Ted interrupted, “I’m open-minded and all that, and if a spaceship landed on the White House lawn tomorrow I’d accept that-though I’d be amazed as hell, believe me. But this stuff is all too much. I mean, you hire me to bail a bunch of spacemen out on behalf of some guy out of Shakespeare by way of Brooklyn, and then we all eat pizza together and walk through your basement wall into somebody’s back yard in Appalachia, except there’s a castle on the next ridge, and then a bunch of El Greco monsters jump out at us and chase us through the wall into a bleached-out desert where the horizon’s too close so it looks like a cheap Hollywood set, and we sit around for a few minutes except that dream time can stretch all out of shape so it seems like hours, and we get picked up by a flying Oldsmobile…”

“Buick,” Pel corrected him. “I thought it looked more like a Buick.”

“No,” Ted said, shaking his head. “You went in the Buick. I was in the other one, the little one. But you’re right, it wasn’t much like an Oldsmobile. Reminded me a little of this primer-black Camaro my nephew has, actually.”

“Ted…”

“Anyway. So I fly off in this car with the Shakespearean guy and the spaceship captain and a driver who thinks he’s CIA, and halfway there the captain starts getting psychic flashes or something and talking to the air and telling us stuff, and none of it makes any sense, so then we land at what looks like the Pittsburgh Greyhound station and eat a dinner that all tastes like tofu, and then we get aboard a spaceship that looks like the Emerald City turned sideways on the outside, and like a French whorehouse inside, and here we are.”

“That’s right, here we…” Pel began, soothingly.

Ted paid no attention to Pel’s interruption; he demanded, “And you’re trying to tell me all this crap is real?”

“Yes, dammit!” Pel glared at Ted. “Yes, it’s real, and I’m telling you that!”

Ted stared back, his expression merely mild surprise-no anger, no doubt at all.

“But, figment,” he said, “it’s silly.”

“Life is silly, Ted,” Pel told him. “I mean, think about it-isn’t it all a bit ridiculous? But it’s real. And all this is real, too.”

Ted simply grinned foolishly at him.

“Sir,” the steward suggested quietly, “if you want to see Psi Cassiopeia Two…”

“Right,” Pel said, turning away from the silent Ted. “Lead the way.”

The steward led the way to the curved rear wall, where a window, perhaps two feet high and six feet wide, was centered.

This gave a view looking back over the tail assembly; Pel stretched up, peering out the topmost part of the glass, trying to see the planet. The tail of the ship was apparently hiding it.

All he could see was stars.

And the stars were mostly various shades of orange; they covered a range from pale yellow to deep red. Pel supposed the glass was tinted, though the green paint on the ship’s tail looked its natural color.

“Where is it?” he asked.

The steward pointed. “Right there,” he said. “That big faint one.”

“Big one?” Pel followed the pointing finger, and found a pale orange dot of light, virtually indistinguishable from all the others, save that it seemed marginally larger and not very bright.

It did have one odd feature, he realized after staring for a few seconds. It was shrinking, while all the other stars remained constant.

“I didn’t realize we’d come so far,” he said at last.

“Oh, yes, sir,” the steward said, beaming modestly. “Emerald Princess is a very fast ship.”

“How fast?” Pel asked, looking away from the window. “Nine days to Base One-how fast is that?”

“Oh, our top speed is around point three.”

“Of C?”

“No, sir-I don’t know that term. I mean, point three light-years per hour.”

Pel turned to stare at him. “Light-years per hour? It’s faster than light?”

The steward smiled at him, almost smirking. “Well, of course it is, sir,” he said. “How else is interstellar travel possible?”

“You don’t use space warps or something like that?” Pel asked.

The steward looked puzzled. “No, sir,” he said.

Pel turned back to the glass. “Is that… the color out there…”

The steward glanced at the window. “Yes, sir, the red shift is quite visible now, isn’t it? You’ll see a bit more of that, but then in a little while, when we pass the speed of light, you won’t be able to see anything at all looking out in this direction.”

“So what happens then, do we pop into hyperspace or something?”

“Hyperspace?”

Pel turned, exasperated. “Look, I don’t know your terminology! I mean, you can’t go faster than light in normal space, right?”

“You can’t?” The steward looked baffled. “Why not? What other kind of space is there?”

“I don’t know,” Pel snarled. His grasp of the theory of relativity was sufficiently weak that he had no intention of trying to explain it to someone-and most particularly, someone who worked on a spaceship and ought to know all that stuff. He glanced out the window again, and an unpleasant thought struck him.

Maybe this wasn’t normal space, as he understood the term. It certainly wasn’t his space.

Maybe this universe had entirely different rules.

Maybe here, everything he knew was wrong. Everything he had learned in a lifetime of dealing with his own world was open to question.

He had been thinking of his situation in terms of having stumbled into a science fiction story of some sort-something with spaceships and rayguns and monsters, but still grounded in logic and common sense. But if the laws of physics were different, then anything might be possible.

It wasn’t science fiction at all, it was fantasy. He might as well be in the twilight zone.

Or in a dream.

He backed away, then turned, all his confusion and frustration boiling up in him at once.

He found the elegant redhead standing there waiting for him. “Mr. Brown, is it?” she asked.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing past her. Right now he did not want to talk to some stranger from another universe, no matter what she looked like.

She turned to stare, and the other strangers made way for him as he stamped across the room to Ted.

Ted, bemused, watched him come.

Pel grabbed the lawyer by his lapels.

“Listen,” he said, “what would it take to convince you that this is real, and not a dream? Would a punch in the nose do it? I mean, if it hurt, just like real life?”

Ted considered this quite seriously. He looked around the room, at the oddly but splendidly dressed passengers, at the dimming orange stars beyond the window, at the crystal chandelier and the brass railings.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’d probably just mean I fell out of bed. It might wake me up, though.”

Pel nodded.

“Let’s see,” he said, as he swung.

The steward was almost in time to stop him, and his restraining arm, flung up in front of Pel’s, slowed the impact; Ted staggered, nose red and starting to bleed, but he didn’t fall, and nothing broke. He made no protest, no defense, and no counter-attack. After the blow had landed he simply stood, staring blankly at Pel.

“Sir,” the steward began, shocked.

“Oh, shut up,” Pel replied, as he stalked off toward his cabin.