A large anthology of sci.., p.492
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 492
IV
It was a long, blurred time, about which later Jim had no clear memory. The sun marched up the long arc of the heavens and crossed the nooning point and headed down again. On the torn-up sandy soil of the plain he and the ogre turned and feinted, smashed and tore at each other. Sometimes he was in the air, sometimes on the ground. Once he had the ogre down on one knee, but could not press his advantage. At another time they had fought up the long slope of the hill almost to the Tower and the ogre had him pinned in the cleft between two huge boulders and had hefted its club back for the final blow that would smash Jim’s skull. And then he had wriggled free between the monster’s very legs and the battle was on again.
Now and then throughout the fight he would catch brief kaleidoscopic glimpses of the combats being waged about him: Nevile-Smythe now wrapped about by the blind body of the Worm, its eye-stalks hacked away—and striving in silence to draw free his sword-arm, which was pinned to his side by the Worm’s encircling body. Or there would roll briefly into Jim’s vision a tangled roaring tumble of flailing leathery wings and serpentine bodies that was Secoh, Anark and old Smrgol. Once or twice he had a momentary view of Carolinus, still standing erect, his staff upright in his hand, his long white beard blowing forward over his blue gown with the cabalistic golden signs upon it, like some old seer in the hour of Armageddon. Then the gross body of the ogre would blot out his vision and he would forget all but the enemy before him.
The day faded. A dank mist came rolling in from the sea and fled in little wisps and tatters across the plain of battle. Jim’s body ached and slowed, and his wings felt leaden. But the ever-grinning face and sweeping club of the ogre seemed neither to weaken nor to tire. Jim drew back for a moment to catch his breath; and in that second, he heard a voice cry out.
“Time is short!” it cried, in cracked tones. “We are running out of time. The day is nearly gone!”
It was the voice of Carolinus. Jim had never heard him raise it before with just such a desperate accent. And even as Jim identified the voice, he realized that it came clearly to his ears—and that for sometime now upon the battlefield, except for the ogre and himself, there had been silence.
He shook his head to clear it and risked a quick glance about him. He had been driven back almost to the neck of the Causeway itself, where it entered onto the plain. To one side of him, the snapped strands of Clarivaux’s bridle dangled limply where the terrified horse had broken loose from the earth-thrust spear to which Nevile-Smythe had tethered it before advancing against the Worm on foot. A little off from it stood Carolinus, upheld now only by his staff, his old face shrunken and almost mummified in appearance, as if the life had been all but drained from it. There was nowhere else to retreat to; and Jim was alone.
He turned back his gaze to see the ogre almost upon him. The heavy club swung high, looking gray and enormous in the mist. Jim felt in his limbs and wings a weakness that would not let him dodge in time; and, with all his strength, he gathered himself, and sprang instead, up under the monster’s guard and inside the grasp of those cannon-thick arms.
The club glanced off Jim’s spine. He felt the arms go around him, the double triad of bone-thick fingers searching for his neck. He was caught, but his rush had knocked the ogre off his feet. Together they went over and rolled on the sandy earth, the ogre gnawing with his jagged teeth at Jim’s chest and striving to break a spine or twist a neck, while Jim’s tail lashed futilely about.
They rolled against the spear and snapped it in half. The ogre found its hold and Jim felt his neck begin to be slowly twisted, as if it were a chicken’s neck being wrung in slow motion. A wild despair flooded through him. He had been warned by Smrgol never to let the ogre get him pinned. He had disregarded that advice and now he was lost, the battle was lost. Stay away, Smrgol had warned, use your brains . . .
The hope of a wild chance sprang suddenly to life in him. His head was twisted back over his shoulder. He could see only the gray mist above him, but he stopped fighting the ogre and groped about with both forelimbs. For a slow moment of eternity, he felt nothing, and then something hard nudged against his right foreclaw, a glint of bright metal flashed for a second before his eyes. He changed his grip on what he held, clamping down on it as firmly as his clumsy foreclaws would allow—
—and with every ounce of strength that was left to him, he drove the fore-part of the broken spear deep into the middle of the ogre that sprawled above him.
The great body bucked and shuddered. A wild scream burst from the idiot mouth alongside Jim’s ear. The ogre let go, staggered back and up, tottering to its feet, looming like the Tower itself above him. Again, the ogre screamed, staggering about like a drunken man, fumbling at the shaft of the spear sticking from him. It jerked at the shaft, screamed again, and, lowering its unnatural head, bit at the wood like a wounded animal. The tough ash splintered between its teeth. It screamed once more and fell to its knees. Then slowly, like a bad actor in an old-fashioned movie, it went over on its side, and drew up its legs like a man with the cramp. A final scream was drowned in bubbling. Black blood trickled from its mouth and it lay still.
Jim crawled slowly to his feet and looked about him.
The mists were drawing back from the plain and the first thin light of late afternoon stretching long across the slope. In its rusty illumination, Jim made out what was to be seen there.
The Worm was dead, literally hacked in two. Nevile-Smythe, in bloody, dinted armor, leaned wearily on a twisted sword not more than a few feet off from Carolinus. A little farther off, Secoh raised a torn neck and head above the intertwined, locked-together bodies of Anark and Smrgol. He stared dazedly at Jim. Jim moved slowly, painfully over to the mere-dragon.
Jim came up and looked down at the two big dragons. Smrgol lay with his eyes closed and his jaws locked in Anark’s throat. The neck of the younger dragon had been broken like the stem of a weed.
“Smrgol . . .” croaked Jim.
“No—” gasped Secoh. “No good. He’s gone . . . I led the other one to him. He got his grip—and then he never let go . . .” The mere-dragon choked and lowered his head.
“He fought well,” creaked a strange harsh voice which Jim did not at first recognize. He turned and saw the Knight standing at his shoulder. Nevile-Smythe’s face was white as sea-foam inside his helmet and the flesh of it seemed fallen in to the bones, like an old man’s. He swayed as he stood.
“We have won,” said Carolinus, solemnly, coming up with the aid of his staff. “Not again in our lifetimes will evil gather enough strength in this spot to break out.” He looked at Jim. “And now,” he said, “the balance of Chance and History inclines in your favor. It’s time to send you back.”
“Back?” said Nevile-Smythe.
“Back to his own land, Knight,” replied the magician. “Fear not, the dragon left in this body of his will remember all that happened and be your friend.”
“Fear!” said Nevile-Smythe, somehow digging up a final spark of energy to expend on hauteur. “I fear no dragon, dammit. Besides, in respect to the old boy here”—he nodded at the dead Smrgol—“I’m going to see what can be done about this dragon-alliance business.”
“He was great!” burst out Secoh, suddenly, almost with a sob. “He—he made me strong again. Whatever he wanted, I’ll do it.” And the mere-dragon bowed his head.
“You come along with me then, to vouch for the dragon end of it,” said Nevile-Smythe. “Well,” he turned to Jim, “it’s goodby, I suppose, Sir James.”
“I suppose so,” said Jim. “Goodby to you, too. I—” Suddenly he remembered.
“Angie!” he cried out, spinning around. “I’ve got to go get Angie out of that Tower!”
Carolinus put his staff out to halt Jim.
“Wait,” he said. “Listen . . .”
“Listen?” echoed Jim. But just at that moment, he heard it, a woman’s voice calling, high and clear, from the mists that still hid the Tower.
“Jim! Jim, where are you?”
A slight figure emerged from the mist, running down the slope toward them.
“Here I am!” bellowed Jim. And for once he was glad of the capabilities of his dragon-voice. “Here I am, Angie—”
—but Carolinus was chanting in a strange, singing voice, words without meaning, but which seemed to shake the very air about them. The mist swirled, the world rocked and swung. Jim and Angie were caught up, were swirled about, were spun away and away down an echoing corridor of nothingness . . .
. . . and then they were back in the Grille, seated together on one side of the table in the booth. Hanson, across from them, was goggling like a bewildered accident victim.
“Where—where am I?” he stammered. His eyes suddenly focused on them across the table and he gave a startled croak. “Help!” he cried, huddling away from them. “Humans!”
“What did you expect?” snapped Jim. “Dragons?”
“No!” shrieked Hanson. “Watch-beetles—like me!” And, turning about, he tried desperately to burrow his way through the wood seat of the booth to safety.
V
It was the next day after that Jim and Angie stood in the third floor corridor of Chumley Hall, outside the door leading to the office of the English Department.
“Well, are you going in or aren’t you?” demanded Angie.
“In a second, in a second,” said Jim, adjusting his tie with nervous fingers. “Just don’t rush me.”
“Do you suppose he’s heard about Grottwold?” Angie asked.
“I doubt it,” said Jim. The Student Health Service says Hanson’s already starting to come out of it—except that he’ll probably always have a touch of amnesia about the whole afternoon. Angie!” said Jim, turning on her. “Do you suppose, all the time we were there, Hanson was actually being a watch-beetle underground?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter,” interrupted Angie, firmly. “Honestly, Jim, now you’ve finally promised to get an answer out of Dr. Howells about a job, I’d think you’d want to get it over and done with, instead of hesitating like this. I just can’t understand a man who can go about consorting with dragons and fighting ogres and then—”
“—still not want to put his boss on the spot for a yes-or-no answer,” said Jim. “Hah! Let me tell you something.” He waggled a finger in front of her nose. “Do you know what all this dragon-ogre business actually taught me? It wasn’t not to be scared, either.”
“All right,” said Angie, with a sigh. “What was it then?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jim. “What I found out . . .” He paused. “What I found out was not, not to be scared. It was that scared or not doesn’t matter; because you just go ahead, anyway.”
Angie blinked at him.
“And that,” concluded Jim, “is why I agreed to have it out with Howells, after all. Now you know.”
He yanked Angie to him, kissed her grimly upon her startled lips, and, letting go of her, turned about. Giving a final jerk to his tie, he turned the knob of the office door, opened it, and strode valiantly within.
THE GATES OF PEARL
David Mason
A space station, of all places, should he off limits to unauthorized personnel—especially when they’re dead!
HENRY GORDON closed the rubber-gasketed door marked Astrophysics Section 22 behind him, and went to the panel. He checked the clock settings that drove the telescope and changed the plate holder. For a moment he stopped to look out through the tiny viewport at the deep black of space outside, spangled with unblinking stars. Henry was still a little new to life on the Orbit Station; it would be a long time before he could look at the outside view without excitement.
He turned away, and started for the safety door.
At that moment, Athalie Gordon (1919-1972) entered through the solid steel bulkhead at Henry Gordon’s right elbow, and walked through the other wall, outward, in the general direction of the constellation of Bootes. Henry had been only a child in 1972, but he remembered his aunt quite well. He also remembered that she was definitely dead.
She was wearing her good dark serge, the one she had worn often before that unfortunate attack of flu. Her expression was much more relaxed than Henry Gordon ever remembered it to have been, and she appeared to be consulting a road map as she walked through.
Henry Gordon, shuddering slightly, kept a firm grip on the star plates as he closed the door behind him. He walked down the passage, his magnetic shoes clanking firmly on the floor, to the Developing Section, where he left the plates. He then proceeded to Personnel, where he filed an immediate request for return to Earth and a resignation on account of ill health, forms 2234 and 7166, in triplicate.
After this, Henry Gordon had a fit of shrieking nerves, and managed, in spite of Service Rule 22, to get disgustingly drunk.
“NOW, sergeant, I’m not trying to refuse you your permanent transfer if you really want it that way.” Doctor Vanderdecken smiled in a paternal manner. “Everybody wants you boys in our most difficult branch of service to be happy. If it’s a little too tough for you out there . . .”
“I didn’t say that, doctor.” The bulldog face of the sergeant showed some irritation.
Thought that would get a rise out of you, the doctor thought. He said aloud, “Well, you say right here on your request form that you feel you might get sick if you continued to remain on Orbit Station duty.”
“That’s what I meant, doctor,” the sergeant repeated doggedly. “Sick. You know, funny in the head. I feel fine right now, and I’m gonna stay that way. That’s why I put in for a transfer. That’s why I ain’t gonna go up again if I can help it.”
The doctor exhaled slowly, tapping his teeth with a pencil. He increased the fatherly tone a little.
“Sergeant, what it amounts to is this. We need men like you, men that we’ve had to train for this special duty. That’s the first space station in history up there; you men are making history. Some day there will be more stations, there’ll be rockets going to other worlds, and we’ll need you for that job too. Now, if a good man like yourself is going to give up before the job’s even properly started, what do you expect the Army’s going to think about that?”
The sergeant remained silent.
“What I’d like to know, sergeant,” the doctor resumed, “is simply this: have you got any really good reason for wanting to transfer? You can trust me; believe me, you’ll get your transfer anyway, and we need to know.”
The sergeant pulled very thoughtfully at his slightly cauliflowered ear. He knitted his brows. Then he shook his head.
“I just don’t want to get sick in the head. And I ain’t got no other reason. If I had, I’d be really buckin’ for a Section 8, so let’s leave it that way, hey, doc?”
Dr. Vanderdecken shrugged, and reached for the pen. He scrawled “Approved for transfer” on the sergeant’s form, and silently waved him out.
“THAT was the fourth one this month,” Vanderdecken said, slumping further down in the big chair. Young Dr. Prior, the newest man in the Center, had been listening as respectfully as became his junior status. He had also been losing his fourth chess game to Dr. Vanderdecken. Prior was an excellent psychologist in more ways than one, and he was also a very good chess player.
“Ghosts?” Prior said. “Your move, incidentally, doctor.”
“Ghosts,” Dr. Vanderdecken said, studying the board. “They keep walking through the space station. Certainly, I know it’s nonsense. So do the station personnel. So, when they ask to be transferred out, they give every reason but that one. That’s the reason, though.”
Vanderdecken moved, and Prior carefully placed a rook in mortal danger. Then he asked, “If that’s the reason, but they don’t mention it, how do you know? Have you been there, up on the station?”
“No, no, of course not. I don’t have to go up there to know. The first five or six that asked for transfers gave that as their reason. We had to have a couple of them committed, and the others got psycho discharges, of course.” Vanderdecken moved, obstinately missing the rook. “But of course, that’s made the rest of the station personnel a little suspicious of us, of course.”
“Foolish of them,” Prior commented, absently. He regarded the board, realizing regretfully that he would have to win this one. “But what’s your theory, doctor?”
“Oh, it’s easy enough to understand. The cultural complex contains the basic idea of Heaven being in the sky, and the dead going there. And, in addition, there’s the lack of normal gravity, the unusual environment . . . all that sort of thing. It’s a neurosis. But stopping it’s the big problem. We need a full crew on duty up there, all the time. We’ve tried sending professed atheists up, but we stopped that. The first four of those went completely out of phase with reality after they saw their first ghosts.”
Vanderdecken moved, exposing his king from three different directions. Prior studied the board, and decided to stretch it out one more move or two.
“Saw ghosts, doctor?” Prior asked. “I should think an atheist wouldn’t have that particular delusion.”
“Cultural syndrome, my boy,” Vanderdecken said. “Read Jung. Common undermind. Of course, trained scientific men like ourselves wouldn’t be likely to see anything. If we did, it wouldn’t mean that these superstitious notions had any basis. Just that we had—well, weakened a bit.”
“What do these ghosts do, anyway, that disturbs the men so much?” Prior asked.
“Nothing, nothing at all. They don’t even seem to notice the men or the station itself. They just walk straight through it.”
