Whatever Gods May Be (16 page)

"Can we still get into the Hall?"

"No problem there, Zolan.  Our troubles will begin when we attempt to pilot ourselves without Scanner assistance.  And, of course, we will be unable to effect a closure as required -"

"I don't care about that," Zolan snapped, rubbing his hand through his hair angrily, "Do you still have enough control on the HS to know where you're going once we enter?"

The ship shuddered once violently, as the second shock wave from the Barstow blast reverberated against the hull.  Zolan was thrown forward, but he caught himself against the pilot seat.

"That's a difficult projection to make, Zolan.  As I was unable to exercise even minimal influence on the sub access you created earlier, I see no reason to expect further success in any other area of Hall control.  Since you failed recover the bicarbonate -"

The Rover discontinued its transmission as it watched Zolan shake his head in pain.

"You should experience only minimal discomfort for the next few hours, Zolan.  The kind of exposure you just endured would have scorched an Earthman’s retina."

"I'll try to remind myself how lucky I am, Rover," Zolan replied sarcastically.  "You'd better get us out of here.  We'll worry about what to do once we're Hall Safe."

The Rover responded immediately, igniting its powerful boosters and rocketing upwards.  Zolan was only vaguely aware of the steep ascension, thanks to the fine balance the Rover perpetuated within its internal compartments.  Zolan took his seat, and squinted into his gauges.

All at once the world around him went black.  "We have a Hall entry, Zolan," the Rover said quietly.

"Do we have navigation?" the man asked, staring into the foreboding void.

"Affirmative, however -"

And those were the very last words Zolan Rzzdik heard before an even more engulfing blackness than the Hall cloaked over him.

SIXTEEN

The Thelerick Stingers agreed that it was an impressive world to behold.  A diverse topography even included vast deserts waving over the surface, most of them occupying regions at or below the equatorial plane.  As they had earlier deduced, it was primarily an aquatic planet flooded with monstrous salt oceans that made the heavy atmosphere wet and oppressive.  Yet, the Stingers assumed that most of the arid wastelands were probably quite pleasant and mild, with a low humidity factor.

Conjecture on the pros and cons of the blue world was enjoyable, but the Stingers realized that it could go no farther than that.  The planet was teeming with life forms on all four hemispheres.  One race in particular held sovereign sway over all other species and the Stingers guessed that it was this superior creature that had constructed the wonderful machines they were now studying on the blue planet's only moon.  It would be an exciting first civilization to contact, but aside from this, the beautiful aqua world would have to be bypassed as a possible encampment.

As they had done with the artifacts and extant machinery of the red world's perished civilization, the Stingers disseminated and analyzed all they could from the abandoned assortment of relics belonging to the blue world's space faring race.  Some of these devices were discovered to be still functioning on an automatic frequency, presumably to relay and accept various messages from the planet that created them.  The blue world obviously possessed an appreciable technology, though it was nowhere near as advanced as the red world had once been.  A quick calculation by the Stingers determined that the red planet had probably buried its unfortunate race beneath its sands millions of years before the blue world's civilization even appeared.

This hypothesis caused the Thelerick Stingers to regard the blue world with a queer sense of kinship.  Like their own world had been, the blue planet in this solar system was totally alone.  Perhaps, the same curious race that had reached out to leave its machines on this moon, was asking the same questions the Thelericks had asked for ten billion years: are we alone?

The eternally magnanimous Stingers considered what a joy it would be to reach out to another civilization and provide answers for it that had been tragically elusive for their own race.  Without further hesitation the Ten pulled free of the blue planet's satellite and raced towards the striking world ahead.

The leader of the Stinger party was the first to feel the difference in the space they were traveling.  The odd, tugging sensation had begun almost immediately after leaving the blue planet's large moon, and at first, the lead Stinger assumed that the impressive force was due to the natural tug-of-war flux between the blue world and its satellite.  But as the force became more constricting, until the Stingers were actually brought to a dead halt in space, it was clear that another explanation was needed to account for the bizarre occurrence.

As the mystified and space logged Thelericks looked behind themselves, they could see that the source of their restriction was far from invisible.  The black entity gyrating gracefully only a few thousand kilometers from them flamed at the edges with some kind of unidentifiable fire.  Fear was an alien emotion for the Thelerick Stingers, but they did feel a definitely unpleasant sensation within their bowels as they were swallowed up by the powerful darkness.

Seconds later they found themselves plunging through heavy clouds.

And suddenly, Thalick, the Sentinel Stinger, realized that this was the beginning.

As the Ten pummeled softly to a sandy surface, an astonished, shocked hiss choked every single Stinger at the same time.  The black kidnapping monster had vanished, but not before first delivering them to a desert that looked eerily similar to the one on their own home world nearly two hundred thousand light years away.

SEVENTEEN

The initial series of explosions John and Cathy Phillips witnessed were from the submarine based missiles.  Later, within the interminable span of ten minutes, they would see the much larger ICBM and MIRV warheads leap out of the atmosphere like spawning salmon, to deliver their payloads of hell to specified enemy targets.  One of these giant missiles would be directed at Challenger, and though John and Cathy could have isolated the particular trajectory of the warhead meant for them, they preferred to simply watch the mesmerizing fire show transpire below.  Both astronauts understood that their destruction was certain; they certainly had no wish to conduct a countdown to its dismal conclusion.

John had left the audiocom open, just in case - by some stretch of the imagination - anyone would try to get through.  The thought was almost laughable; for no one would ever call them from Earth again.  Bud Scott was dead or dying, as was most of Houston, the United States and the rest of the world.  The only voice that would come across Challenger's radio from now on would be the twisted sputtering of radioactive interference.  Fortunately, John thought sickeningly to himself, it would be a sound he would not have to listen to much longer.

Cathy was leaning forward on her instrument panel, her mouth open in wonder.  John snatched a glance at his wife beholding the horror below with childlike fascination.  He was vaguely grateful that she was not in any pain at the moment, though he had the feeling that she was simply distracted.

That didn't matter either, John realized grimly.  In a few more minutes, neither he nor his beautiful wife would ever feel anything again.

Rather quickly, the land masses disappeared beneath a thick grey-brown blanket of cloudy filth.  A hundred million cubic tons of exhumed dirt and rock were about to start their lengthy journey across the face of the Earth.

John watched the ghastly hue of poison spread out across the landscapes.  Author of several arguments supporting the validity and dangers of a possible 'nuclear winter' resulting from a massive atomic exchange, he was not terribly surprised at what he was witnessing.  There was still the numb disbelief, and choking realization that his world was ending, but the scientific mind of John Phillips was watching the horror below with another eye of keen predictability.

Perhaps a billion people would die alone from the initial blast effects; the resulting fireballs and subsequent flame storms from industrial centers hit and forest debris would kill this many in the first half hour of the war.  As soon as a day later, most of the short-term fallout generated by the more than thirty million cubic tons of skyrocketed earth and rock would kill another fifty million worldwide.  Within forty-eight hours, Earth could be expected to suffer almost total darkness from the atomized smoke accumulated, blocking out all but one percent of normal sunlight.  It would be at this point, John thought through a painful gulp, that the truly dreadful debacle would just begin.

Inside of a month, all hemispheres would have a general temperature drop to near freezing.  Crops would die, cattle would perish, the weakened survivors of Warday would endure further casualties.  Millions more would succumb to the frosty conditions prevailing, enhanced by month-long exposure to radiation-poisoning, pestilence, and starvation.  No doubt, the ozone layer would suffer partial or total collapse, which in the long run would assure further poisonous influence over the land by dousing the planet with devastating increments of ultraviolet and cosmic radiation.  This, hand in hand with the long-term fallout that would remain in the atmosphere for years to come, promised any fistful of survivors below generations of cataracts, skin cancer, and genetic mutation.

John's interest in the nightmare below subsided before Cathy's did, even with the spectacular flashes produced by the intercontinental missiles now littering space around them.  The few, laser satellites that existed rifled their concentrated beams of light into the forest of rockets, but surprisingly few hits were achieved.  John watched these sophisticated deterrents work, recalling how much fuss had been involved in their creation, and how much faith had been affirmed in their performance credibility.  Once again, John allowed himself to be morbidly amused; the famous 'star wars' lasers were a shocking failure, but there would be no one to tell after today, how much time and money had been wasted in their development.

At last, John let his eyes rest on ALC-117, now taking up most of the space above and around the shuttle.  He was sure Cathy was unaware of the barely perceptible shudder that was beginning to affect the ship as ALC-117 drew nearer.  He closed his eyes and counted a few seconds, wondering when the blast would come that would vaporize the Challenger.  He was already passed amazement that they had not already been blown away.

Well, he thought gratefully, perhaps I have time to do one last thing.  John reached out for Cathy's hand and squeezed it.  As she turned towards him, he leaned over slowly and kissed her deeply, all the time half wishing that the inevitable explosion would take place during this last, wonderful moment.

"I love you," he said smiling, putting his fingertips to Cathy's lips after the kiss.  She couldn't manage a smile, but one large tear-drop lighted up her face that needed no translation.

"I love you," she said hoarsely.

As ALC-117 darkened their world, John and Cathy Phillips hugged each other and waited to die.

Pale, without name or number,

In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber,

All night till light is born; And like a soul belated,

In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.

EIGHTEEN

A few insightful races sprinkled across the ocean of galaxies had learned to use the Halls for a myriad of purposes.  Star travel was the most common employment for the space warps; the great century gaps that nature had provided wrinkled the distances between stars enough so that ingenious creatures could explore neighboring worlds (celestially speaking) that were impossibly far away to do so without Hall assistance.  Many of these civilizations that used the Hall warps benevolently for the simple benefits of shortened star flight, understood that they contained mysteries which were boundless and unexplored.  Even such preposterous notions that the Halls were extensions or pathways to countless other dimensions could not be totally dismissed; for the unknown recesses of the space warps were manifold - like death, they were a fact of nature, but little understood.  Consequently, experimentation with the Hall for purposes outside of simple star-hopping had been avoided.

Now, however, in one of millions of galaxies, a universal rule was about to be broken.

The Hall appeared sporadically throughout the universe, pulsating in rhythm with all other warps no matter how great the distances involved.  They usually appeared for only a day or two without warning, though delicate instrumentation could detect an odd power drain in the approximate vicinity of a warp sighting.  Now, though the Hall in one section of space was not yet ready to appear, it was being forcibly ripped from the heavens ahead of schedule.  Like some confused animal (though it was by no means conscious - or alive) the warp gave a yelp of protest, and attempted to withdraw into its cosmic shell.

If it were released immediately, the Hall would quietly retreat back into the mysterious dimensions of its origins for a later emergence.  But since no reprieve was in sight, the Hall growled with painful fury.