In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (28 page)
Read In Space No One Can Hear You Scream Online
Authors: Hank Davis
He moved slowly around the hangar, striving to keep the invisible fury too occupied in following him to get in more than an occasional charge. As he walked, his eyes went from one heap of supplies to another in search of a possible means of defense.
There were ordinary weapons in plenty, in racks along the wall. But none of these, he knew, could do material harm to the attacking fury.
He got to the great inner doors of the main airlock in his slow march around the hangar. And here he stopped, eyes glowing thoughtfully.
The huge doors had threatened in the early days to be the weak points in the Spaceways hangars. So the designers, like good engineers, had made the doors so massive that in the end they were stronger than the walls around them.
Bang!
A bulge near the massive hinges told Hartigan that the thing outside was as relentless as ever in its efforts to break through the wall and get at him. But he paid no attention to the new bulge. He was occupied with the doors.
If the invisible giant could be trapped in the main airlock between the outer and inner portals—
“Then what?” Hartigan wondered.
He could not answer his own question. But, anyway, it seemed like a step in the right direction to have the attacking fury penned between the doors rather than to have it loose and able to charge the more vulnerable walls.
“If I can coop it in the airlock, I might be able to think of some way to attack it,” he went on.
He pushed home the control switch which set the broadcast power to opening the outer doors. And that gave him an idea that sent a wild thrill surging through him.
A heavy rumble told him that the motors were swinging open the outer doors.
“Will the thing come in?” he asked himself tensely. “Or has it sense enough to scent a trap?”
Bang!
The inner doors trembled a little on their broad tracks. The invisible monster had entered the trap.
“Trap?” Hartigan smiled mirthlessly. “Not much of a trap! Left to itself, it could probably break out in half an hour. But it won’t be left to itself.”
He reversed the switch to close the outer portals. Then, with the doors closed and the monster penned between, he got to work on the idea that had been born when he pushed the control switch.
Power, oceans of it, flooded from the power unit at the touch of a finger. A docile servant when properly channeled, it could be the deadliest thing on the Moon.
He ran back down the hangar to the stock room, and got out a drum of spare power cable. As quickly as was humanly possible, he rolled the drum back to the doors, unwinding the cable as he went.
It was with grim solemnity that he made his next move. He had to open the inner doors a few inches to go on with his frail plan of defense. And he had to complete that plan before the thing in the airlock could claw them open still more and charge through. For all their weight the doors rolled in perfect balance, and if the unseen terror could make dents in the solid wall, it certainly was strong enough to move the partly opened doors.
Speed! That was the thing that would make or break him. Speed, and hope that the power unit could stand a terrific overload without blowing a tube.
With a hand that inclined to tremble a bit, Hartigan moved the control switch operating the inner doors, and instantly cut the circuit again.
The big doors opened six inches or so, and stopped.
Hartigan cut off the power unit entirely, and dragged the end of the spare power cable to it. With flying fingers he disconnected the cable leading from the control switch to the motors that moved the portals, and connected the spare cable in its space.
He glanced anxiously at the doors, and saw the opening between them had widened to more than a foot. The left door moved a little even as he watched.
“I’ll never make it.”
But he went ahead.
Grabbing up the loose end of the cable, he threw it in a tangled coil as far as he could through the opening and into the airlock. Then he leaped for the power unit—and watched.
The cable lay unmoving on the airlock floor. But the left door moved! It jerked, and rolled open another six inches.
Hartigan clenched his hands as he stared at the inert cable. He had counted on the blind ferocity of the invisible terror, had counted on its attacking, or at least touching, the cable immediately. Had it enough intelligence to realize dimly that it would be best to avoid the cable? Was it going to keep working at those doors till—
The power cable straightened with a jerk. Straightened, and hung still, with the loose end suspended in midair about six feet off the airlock floor.
Hartigan’s hand slammed down. The broadcast power was turned on to the last notch.
With his heart hammering in his throat, Hartigan gazed through the two-foot opening between the doors. Gazed at the cable through which was coursing oceans, Niagaras of power. And out there in the air-lock a thing began to build up from think air into a spectacle that made him cry out in wild horror.
He got a glimpse of a massive block of a head, eyeless and featureless, that joined with no neck whatever to a barrel of a body. He got a glimpse of five legs, like stone pillars, and of a sixth that was only a stump. (“That’s what got caught in the doors a month ago—its leg,” he heard himself babbling with insane calmness.) Over ten feet high and twenty feet long, the thing was a living battering ram, painted in the air in sputtering, shimmering blue sparks that streamed from its massive bulk in all directions.
Just a glimpse, he got, and then the monster began to scream as it had that first day when the door maimed it. Only now it was with a volume that tore at Hartigan’s eardrums till he scremed himself in agony.
As he watched, he saw the huge carcass melt a little, like wax in flame, with the power cable also melting slowly and fusing into the cavernous, rocky jaws that had seized it. Then with a rush the whole bulk disintegrated into a heap of loose mineral matter.
Hartigan turned off the power unit and collapsed, with his face in his hands.
The shining ball of the full Earth floated like a smooth diamond between two vast, angular mountains. The full Earth.
Hartigan turned from the porthole beside the small airlock and strode to the Bliss radio transmitter.
“RC3, RC3, RC3,” he droned out.
There was no answer. As usual, Stacey was taking his time about ansering the Moon’s signal.
“RC3, RC3—”
There he was.
“Hartigan talking. Monthly report.”
“All right, Hartigan.”
A hurried fretful voice. Come on, Moon; report that, as always, nothing has happened.
“Lunar conditions the same,” said Hartigan. “No ships have put in, or have reported themselves as being in distress. The hangar is in good shape, with no leaks.”
“Right,” said Stacey, in the voice of a busy man. “Supplies?”
“You might send up a blonde.”
“Be serious, please. Supplies?”
“I need some new power bulbs.”
“I’ll send them on the next ship. Nothing irregular to report?”
Hartigan hesitated.
On the floor of the main airlock was a mound of burned, bluish mineral substance giving no indication whatever that it had once possessed outlandish, incredible life. In the walls of the hangar, at the base were half a dozen new dents, but ricocheting meteors might have made those. The meteoric shell from which this bizarre animal had come had been devoured, so even that was not left for investigation.
He remembered the report of the board of science on Stuyvesant.
“Therefore, in our judgment, Benjamin Stuyvesant suffered from hallucination—”
He would have liked to help Stuyvesant. But on the other hand Stuyvesant had a job with a second-hand space-suit store now, and was getting along pretty well in spite of Spaceways’ dismissal.
“Nothing irregular to report?” repeated Stacey.
Hartigan stared, with one eyebrow sardonically raised, at the plump brunette on the pin
Radio Gazette
cover pasted to the wall. She stared coyly back over a bare shoulder.
“Nothing irregular to report,” Hartigan said steadily.
Visiting Shadow
Hank Davis
When an editor includes a story of his own in a book (a possibly disreputable but nonetheless common practice), a certain diffidence accompanied by a bit of foot-shuffling is in order, as when one is seen in public doing something legal but not quite respectable. So, I’ll just mention that this turned out as a combination of Keith Laumer and H.P. Lovecraft, two writers who loom huge in my mental landscape. Of course, Laumer would have done it better, at least before his stroke, and while Lovecraft appreciated what he called “the interplanetary story” (as when he heaped praise on C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau”), he never showed any interest in writing such yarns himself. Maybe if his beloved Providence had established a colony on another planet . . .
Hank Davis is an editor emeritus at Baen Books. While a naïve youth in the early 1950s (yes, he’s
old
!), he was led astray by sf comic books, and then by A. E. van Vogt’s
Slan
, which he read in the Summer 1952 issue of
Fantastic Story Quarterly
while in the second grade, sealing his fate. He has had stories published mumble-mumble years ago in
Analog
,
If
,
F&SF
, and Damon Knight’s
Orbit
anthology series. (There was also a story sold to
The Last Dangerous Visions
, but let’s not go there.) A native of Kentucky, he currently lives in North Carolina to avoid a long commute to the Baen office.
VISITING SHADOW
Hank Davis
“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate . . . He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again . . . and why no one can behold Them as They tread. . . . Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.”
—from
The Necronomicon
,
quoted in “The Dunwich Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft
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.
