The Fury Out of Time (13 page)

Karvel eased himself into the cylinder and tripped the oxygen valve and the radio switch as Haskins lowered the lid. He lay at an angle across the U.O.’s interior, with his feet lower than his head. He had more than ample room to move about, and the foam padding was superbly comfortable.

“Not bad,” he said through the radio. “If it’s a long trip I can snooze a little.”

“There’ll be smaller cylinders for any supplies or equipment you want to take along,” Haskins said. “I’d suggest plenty of food and water and clothing. You might land in a desert or wilderness, where you’d have to use the U.O. as a supply base, and I won’t guarantee any particular kind of climate. What else do you want?”

“A rifle, if there’s room, and a pistol. A knife that can function either as a tool or a weapon. Canteen, flashlight, matches, blankets—the works. Say the equivalent of a B-52 survival kit. Within seconds after the U.O. stops I want to be outside and fully equipped.”

“I agree. We’ll split your supplies two ways—the survival stuff that you can grab and run with, and a large reserve of field rations, water, clothing, and the like in case you need a base of operations for an indefinite period. What will you wear on the trip?”

“It may be warm in here. A cotton flying suit, I think, and I’ll pack winter flight clothing. When do I leave?”

“We’ll need time to get your equipment together, and to arrange with the television and newspaper people to give you a proper send-off. Day after tomorrow? About 10 P.M., I think, so we can get live coverage without disrupting the regular TV schedule. You can have a heavy meal at noon and a light meal in the evening.”

“And with any luck,” Karvel said cheerfully, “I’ll arrive wherever it is I’m going just in time for breakfast. It would spoil my whole day if I was to miss breakfast.”

The U.O. stood somberly in a blaze of light. Cameras ringed it. Karvel shook hands with Haskins, with the scientists, with a phalanx of military brass and distinguished observers. He noticed Whistler, standing disconsolately at one side, and hurried over to give him a farewell hug.

“I wish you were going along,” he said.

“If there ain’t any Air Force where you’re going, I wish I was too.”

Karvel shook his hand and limped toward the U.O.

“How about a wave for Telstar, Major?” someone called.

Karvel turned, and resisted the impulse to thumb his nose. He waved one hand as he dilated the hatch. The interior of the U.O. was illuminated.

“Are we leaving that on?” he asked a hovering scientist

“I think not. Just until you’re ready.”

Karvel climbed through the hatch and studied the instrument panel. The critical capsule was missing; Haskins was taking no chances on another accident.

“I’d like the photos of the original settings,” he said. They were passed through to him, and he checked the instrument settings meticulously. “All right,” he said finally, and handed them back.

“You’re to read this, Major. Scientific descriptions of the U.O. passengers. You haven’t seen them, have you? Mr. Haskins thought not. You should know what sort of animals they are, so you’ll know what to look for.”

Karvel read the two typewritten pages, twice. “I don’t know what some of these words mean,” he said, “but at least this second passenger won’t be difficult to recognize. Do I take this with me?”

“Better not. If the subjects were to get ahold of it, they might not find the descriptions flattering.”

“All right. I’m not planning on dissecting them, so most of the information wouldn’t be of any use to me. How much of this, equipment will arrive in a usable condition?”

“I’ll put it this way,” the scientist said frankly. “If
you
arrive in a usable condition, most of your equipment and supplies should be all right. If you don’t, their condition isn’t likely to worry you.”

“Fair enough. I’m ready. Are you?”

The scientist glanced at his watch, and nodded. Karvel climbed into the cylinder, and the radio clicked twice as the scientist closed the lid. Haskins said, “Are you there?”

“Tell them to throw in my cane.”

“It’s in. Everything is ready.”

“What are you blubbering about?”

“I’m not blubbering. I’m swearing at myself. I know this was originally your idea, but both of us know I maneuvered you into it.”

“I felt the gun in my back all the way over here.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. All six radios are coming in clearly. Do you hear me all right?”

“Fine. Thank the man for tucking me in. Any last-minute instructions?”

“Here’s Colonel Stubbins.”

“Major Karvel? We’re packing in the messages now. They’re in different languages, just like the last time, but with one statement added. We’ve had enough of this nonsense, and if another U.O. hits a population center, even if it’s one farmhouse, we’re sending it back with an atomic warhead. Got that?”

“What’s to prevent them from answering with
two
warheads?” Karvel demanded. “Or two dozen, for that matter. You send the first one, and you’ll put yourself permanently on the receiving end.”

“They wouldn’t dare count on that,” Stubbins said grimly.

“Anything else?”

“We’re going to name an air base after you. Thought you’d like to know.”

“One in Antarctica, I suppose. I’m glad I won’t be there to hear the speeches.”

“One more thing. I won’t say we don’t want you to return. We do—we want it very much, but only if you can be 100 per cent positive of hitting an unpopulated area.”

“I understand that.”

“Unless—” Stubbins chuckled dryly. “Unless you can manage a bull’s-eye on the Kremlin.”

“How about the Pentagon?” Karvel asked.

Stubbins sputtered something about a happy landing, and Haskins’s voice came in crisply. “We’re ready. How about you?”

“Ready.”

“There’s probably a lot I should say, Major, but I won’t even try. We all wish you Godspeed and a safe landing, and Captain Morris has just asked me to tell you he is praying that the direction will be up. Up the mountains, I suppose.”

“Tell him,” Karvel said, “that I hope to leave the whole dratted range in his custody.”

“Will do. Ready for countdown. Ten, nine, eight. . .” Karvel counted with him. At zero he felt a slight jerk. He continued counting. “One, two, three—” Then he broke off. The only voice he heard was his own.

PART TWO

Chapter 1

Silence.

Then, almost imperceptibly, pressure.

Twisting in alarm, Karvel moved his hands across his chest and touched his face. There was nothing to brush away, nothing tangible to fight.

The pressure continued—light, insistent, all-embracing.

As he weighed his chances for survival, a remark echoed hauntingly in his mind. Gerald Haskins’s remark: “Time? Well, you can have a shot at designing a protective device that would keep out time!”

Now
he understood the fallacy that had undermined all of their planning. It was not a question of keeping out time, but of breaching time, of breaking a path through it.

He was moving through time, and time resisted his passage.

And there was pressure—feathery, intangible, but nonetheless, relentless.

He lay quietly, and suppressed an urge to escape from the cylinder, to find out what was happening outside. The limping, time-compressed minutes slipped away, and slowly, tediously, the pressure increased. Karvel began to wonder about the meaning of time when one was passing through time. Was his wristwatch actually marking off seconds and minutes and hours? He lay in the tightening grip of time and pondered its measurement. When finally he decided to perform an experiment, he found the luminous hands of his watch immobilized under a pressure-warped crystal.

Pressure—and then pain. Karvel’s calm resolution faded. He began to struggle, and each movement, each tightening muscle encountered stubbornly unyielding force. In a surge of panic he heaved himself against the cylinder’s lid. The tremendous pressure without had sealed it rigidly. Karvel sank back, muttered, “When I called it a coffin I thought I was joking.”

Still the pressure increased, until it was a swollen, vicious thing that held him in a vise of torment. The slightest movement required a prodigious effort, and he underwent a prolonged and exhausting struggle to bring his hands to his face in an attempt to alleviate the intense pressure on his eyelids.

Each breath became a grim toil to move the overwhelming weight that crushed down upon his chest. He gulped oxygen in shallow gasps, and became dizzily aware that he was suffering a protracted, tortuous suffocation. The convulsive pounding of his pulse wracked his entire body. He may have lost consciousness; afterward he had no recollection of what had happened, or what he experienced, in those final seconds when the pressure moved relentlessly across the excruciating threshold of unendurability.

He remembered only the delightful sensation of release, and his first triumphant, unburdened, life-giving inhalations.

He asked nothing more than to lie there endlessly on the wonderful softness of the foam padding. He had to force himself to move his hands, to raise the lid. The cylinder opened easily. He climbed out, and kicked open a supply cylinder. He glanced through the hatch, and then tossed out his emergency equipment and quickly followed it, leaving the multilingual ultimatums spilling about the U.O.’s interior.

As his feet touched the ground he heard distant crashes and a muffled upwelling of screams of pain and terror. He stood in a broad expanse of park. A small stream tinkled musically almost at his feet, its path as geometrically precise as that of the tree-lined avenue that bordered it. In the opposite direction a city loomed, an enormous complex of which he could see neither beginning nor end. It was shimmering white in color, with angular tiers piled up like precisely arranged boxes, and with a multitude of truncated, slightly conical towers rising above it. The towers looked like misshapen chimneys, and the whole had the appearance of an ultramodern factory.

And Force X was smashing through it.

Walls sagged, swayed, collapsed as their supports were ripped away. Towers teetered crazily and toppled, and flailing bodies momentarily fell or leaped clear of the wreckage. The relentless, widening lashes struck again and again, and each successive blow wrenched simultaneous cries of anguish and fear from additional terrified thousands. The ground level exits and the breaches in the outer walls were quickly jammed with frenzied humanity, which swelled toward Karvel like a mindless tide of ants rushing from a threatened anthill.

Karvel stood watching it, paralyzed with helpless horror.

The mob should have lost its momentum as it fought free of the collapsing city and spilled into the spacious park. It did not. Karvel realized abruptly that its leaders were no longer running away from the city—they were running toward him. Singly and in small groups they detached themselves with bursts of speed and altered course to converge on him.

So heartsick was he at the catastrophe he had precipitated that for a long moment he stood his ground, waiting resignedly to welcome whatever vengeance they chose to wreak on him.

Then he remembered that this same fury might next strike New York, or London, or Moscow, and that nothing would then prevent the military from returning the U.O. with an atomic warhead. He had a mission to perform, and he could settle with his conscience later.

He gathered up his equipment, splashed through the stream, and fled.

But he did not run. He moved with an easy, swinging limp, glancing back frequently. The park was filling with a widening ooze of incoherently screaming humanity. Karvel’s immediate pursuers were now far out in front. They had covered more than a mile, first in headlong flight and then in furious pursuit, and they could not maintain that pace indefinitely.

He lengthened his stride and struck off through the stubble of a harvested grainfield that stretched in flat monotony to the horizon. Another backward glance showed him that his pursuers were still running at top speed. The sunlight gleamed on their bald heads, and their odd-looking, brightly colored garments billowed and flapped in the breeze.

Several strange aircraft had lifted above the city, effectively sealing the hopelessness of Karvel’s flight. In defiance of all logic he began to run in earnest.

His cane was useless on the soft ground, and he tired quickly. He stopped, turned slowly, faced his pursuers. He made no motion to unsling his rifle or draw his pistol. He did not know if the weapons had been damaged by pressure, but in any case he could not bring himself to inflict further harm on these people. The screams he had heard rang hauntingly in his conscience, and in the background the cruelly lacerated city loomed like a monstrous accusation.

He waited. His pursuers ran faster, ran with the churning speed of sprinters taking off on a short dash until, only a few yards from him, they came to a stumbling, indecisive halt. One of the strange aircraft floated to the ground beside Karvel. There was no mistaking the pilot’s gesture, but Karvel stood motionless, staring at the plane. It was a mere circular box on a thick, circular platform, and seeing it land did not wholly convince him that it would fly.