Treasure Of The Stars

Chapter 14

The Menel ship had only one cabin fitted out for humanoid passengers, and that was obviously a hasty job. The mattress on the bed was as hard as concrete and humped in the middle so that anyone on it tended to roll off the bed the minute they fell asleep. The rug on the floor seemed to have bits of broken glass embedded in it. The walls were covered with tiles in putrid greens and browns. Blade got the general impression that whoever fitted out the cabin had heard of humanoid beings and perhaps even seen pictures of them, but no more.

Fortunately the Menel breathed the same kind of air and drank the same kind of water as Kananites and humans. With a case of food and another case of wine Blade and Riyannah expected to stay alive, if not exactly comfortable, all the way to Kanan.

On the wall of the cabin just above the bed was a large square of bronze-tinted glass. «That's the ship's entertainment system,» said Riyannah. «We can leave it off most of the time, unless you really want to watch discussions of the work of a Menel playwright who's been dead for more than a thousand years. I can even ask the captain to leave it off when we make our Transition.»

The Kananites and Menel used a faster-than-light drive that depended on a Zin Field-Pursas Zin being the Kananite scientist who'd discovered it. When the Zin Field reached a critical strength, the ship generating it dropped out of normal space into-somewhere else. For some unguessable time it was nowhere and nowhen in terms of conventional, relativistic space. Then the Transition came to an end and the ship reappeared, four or five light-years from where it had been.

In the early days of interstellar flight, a good many ships turned on their Zin Fields, entered the Transition, and never came out again. Over the centuries both Kananites and Menel refined the process and reduced the risks. Now it was considered cause for alarm if one ship was lost in Transition every ten years out of the thousand or so the Menel and Kananites had shuttling back and forth among the stars.

Blade wanted to see the Transition. «I've been through enough of them in our own ships. I'd like to see how yours compares with ours.»

«Wouldn't they be the same, if the principles of the drive are the same?»

Blade shook his head. «I'm not a power plant engineer, remember? I don't even know if your drive engines look like ours, let alone work the same way.»

«Very well,» said Riyannah. «I thought I'd warn you, because some Transitions are incredibly violent. People have been known to go temporarily insane or be unconscious for several days. At the very least you may get sick to your stomach.»

«We'll put a bucket beside the bed,» said Blade, laughing. «Blast it, Riyannah, anyone would think you didn't want me to watch the Transition.»

He'd said it as a joke, but didn't miss the swift change of expression on her face at the words. She was trying to keep him from watching the Transition, or at least suspected someone else would be happier if he didn't-someone in authority.

He'd have to be careful when the Transition came, hiding any physical reactions as much as he could. Otherwise he might blow his cover story of being an experienced space traveller. Riyannah might become suspicious, and then-well, she'd never let her affection for him drive her to putting her people in danger. He was sure of that.

Even if she didn't become suspicious herself, once more there was the possibility of her saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. If the Kananites played politics the way Riyannah described, many of them would be shrewd, skeptical observers, with a keen eye for flaws in a cover story.

Damn it, though, what did he have to worry about? His brain and body had survived all the numerous transitions from Dimension to Dimension. Surely they wouldn't let him down over a leap across a mere few light-years?

Besides, he was going to be the first man of Home Dimension Earth ever to travel across interstellar space. He wanted to be awake, aware, and watching when the moment came.

Blade and Riyannah went aboard the ship, unpacked their gear, and ate dinner. Two hours later the ship took off. On the screen Blade saw the asteroid shrink slowly. On the half turned toward the sun, light blazed from the polished metal of the buildings on the surface. On the half in shadow, chains of multicolored lights looped and spiraled everywhere. It looked magnificent, and also horribly vulnerable.

The asteroid shrank until it was no more than the brightest of a thousand stars on the screen. Then suddenly the stars turned into ragged globes of light, spreading out until they met and mingled. They were visibly crawling across the screen, and at the same time Blade felt the floor under him vibrating like a giant's drum. Then the screen went blank.

Blade lay back among the pillows and tried to brace himself in a position where he wouldn't roll off the bed. The ship was accelerating now at nearly a quarter the speed of light, racing straight away from Targa's sun. It would travel at this speed until it was about five billion miles from the sun. Any closer and the sun's gravity would distort the Zin Field, endangering the ship.

A quarter of the speed of light. Fast enough to travel from the Earth to the Moon in six seconds. Nothing sent out into space by Home Dimension Earth had ever reached more than a tiny fraction of that speed. Some scientists in Home Dimension said nothing ever could reach it. Yet the Menel ship, a hundred thousand tons of metal, reached that speed as easily as a car accelerating on a freeway.

The ship was on the Menel «day» of about twenty-nine Home Dimension hours. On the morning of the fourth day, Blade woke up to hear a faint chime going ting-ting-ting, not loudly but urgently. The screen was alive with dancing spirals of crimson and green light.

Blade untangled himself from Riyannah and sat up. That woke her. She looked at the screen, then gripped Blade's hand. «That's the Transition warning. If we're going to take any drugs we'd better do it now, to give them time to work.» Blade shook his head. «Very well. What about the screen?» Another shake of the head. Riyannah threw her arms wide in a gesture of comic despair. «All right. Don't say afterward I didn't warn you!»

Blade pulled one of the chairs to where he could see the screen without moving his head. Then he sat down in it and leaned back as far as it would let him. Riyannah lay down on the bed, pulled a blanket over her, and braced herself in place with pillows.

The gong sounded again, the same ting-ting-ting but now much louder, more like a fire alarm. The spirals on the screen froze, then vanished, leaving the screen glowering darkly down at the cabin.

Then the cabin seemed to burst apart in a sudden, utterly silent explosion. Ceiling, tiled walls, carpeted floor, Riyannah on the bed, the screen itself all rushed away from Blade and vanished into a starless space far too black to be natural. Blade was alone in a void where his eyes saw nothing and the only sound was like a distant organ playing inside his head.

He tried to turn his head and could not. He tried to move his limbs and felt them held rigidly, as if space itself was throwing iron bands around all his joints and muscles. He opened his mouth and tried to shout, but his throat and chest were paralyzed.

Then the organ music in his head swelled, and its pitch rose until it was a torturing scream like a jet engine running up. He felt a shuddering and a vibration all over him, increasing until he knew his bones were pulling apart and his flesh was going to pull free of the bones in another moment.

He was flying apart, and the space around him went red with the agony in his disintegrating body. Then the redness faded, the blackness returned for a moment, and after that he could not even feel whether he was alive or dead.

Blade came back to consciousness lying on his stomach on the floor while Riyannah straddled his buttocks, gently massaging his neck and shoulders. He tried to move and discovered why she was massaging him. Every muscle and joint in his body ached as if he'd been pounded with clubs or crippled by arthritis. He decided to lie quietly and let Riyannah finish her work.

Her slim fingers were strong and highly skilled. After a few minutes Blade felt most of the actual pains fading to dull aches. «All right, Riyannah. Enough.» She climbed off him and sat cross-legged on the rug as he rose and tested each arm and leg separately.

«You were unconscious long enough to make me start to worry,» she said. «I didn't know if it was your mind or your body, but I was frightened. Menel ships don't carry doctors to treat other races.»

Blade found that he was horribly thirsty. He went over to the water tap and drank until all the dryness was out of his throat. Then he took Riyannah in his arms and stroked her hair. He could feel her trembling as he held her.

«This Transition wasn't as long as the ones aboard Earth ships, but it was more intense. Different wavelengths of the two fields, I suppose, but there wasn't anything in it that's going to be dangerous. You don't need to worry about me.»

«That's good,» said Riyannah slowly. «I–I thought I might have hurt or killed you by getting you aboard a Menel ship. I don't want to think about-«

«So don't think about it,» said Blade, silencing her with a kiss. «I needed to get to Kanan, and it was certainly too far to walk.»

She laughed, then her hands began moving on him, not massaging but in a different, very familiar way. He picked her up and carried her to the bed, and as he did his lips traveled down her throat to her breasts.

Afterward Riyannah fell asleep as if she'd been stunned. Blade found that once again his mind was working so fast he couldn't have slept if he'd wanted to.

He'd been wired into Lord Leighton's computer and hurled into Dimension X twenty-nine times now. Each time most of the sights and sensations which came to him as his brain twisted were unique. Some of them were identical ones by now, especially the feeling that the fabric of space itself was shaking, tearing, pulling apart, and his own body doing the same. Sometimes that sensation lasted for no more than a few heartbeats, but it was always there, unmistakable and unforgettable.

Now he'd felt the exact same sensation as the Menel ship made its Transition across the light-years. Like the geography of Targa, it was hard to believe this was a coincidence. Never mind that the Transition needed a Zin Field generator and the passage between Dimensions used Lord Leighton's computer linked to Blade's mind. There was something the two had in common.

What? Blade realized that the one little word was perhaps the most important question he'd ever faced in the whole history of Project Dimension X. It was also the one he was least likely to have answered.

Did the shift into Dimension X involve a shift in space as well? Blade had often wondered. Did the Transition through space also involve at least a brief passage through another Dimension? Or was it something else entirely, perhaps simpler, perhaps more complicated, certainly beyond Blade's ability to even guess?

Lord Leighton's computer might not be just a flawed, narrow, irregularly open door to other Dimensions. It could become a door to interstellar space, the settlement of other worlds, contact with other intelligent races, the immortality of humanity as it spread out from Earth-

Blade found himself sweating and stopped letting his mind run so far and so fast ahead of the facts. The questions his experiences here raised were nothing less than awesome. He still couldn't hope to answer any of them without the cooperation of the Kananites, and he wasn't even on Kanan yet. Even after he reached the planet, he suspected that getting Kananite cooperation would be a chancy business. And if all the people who could help him were scientists, whose basic language was some completely alien system of mathematics-

Blade realized that for once he was faced with problems which might simply be more than his mind could grasp. For all his gifts he was a practical man of action, not a theoretical scientist. If Lord Leighton were here, he could undoubtedly draw far more conclusions from the same amount of data than Blade could ever hope to. He'd also probably have less trouble getting more information out of the Kananites. Lord Leighton had been hammering appropriations out of boards and committees for nearly fifty years. He could take the Council of Kanan in his stride!

Except that Lord Leighton was now not only Dimensions but light-years away. Blade would have to do the best he could with what he knew and hope that would be enough.