The Kings of Eternity (20 page)

“
Vee okan-gah... shanath ay rahk!”
Kathan exclaimed, and we gathered around, anxious for the medallion to do its work. Kathan seemed agitated; his eye-lids were blinking rapidly, his hands trembling. I wondered if the apparent healthy state of his wound belied some more fundamental internal injury, which Charles had been unable to repair.

Then the medallion set my mind at ease on that score. “Please, come. Bring the shanath to me!”

Jasper knelt and took the manikin’s hand. “What is the shanath?” he asked. “Can you point?”

The medallion translated. Feebly, Kathan lifted a stubby hand and pointed a finger towards the devices ranged before the star-carriage. I hurried over to them and indicated the blue egg.

“
Tah!”
Kathan cried. Negative.

I pointed next to the circular plinth-like implement, and Kathan dropped his hand. “
Vee,”
he said. I carried the device across to the chesterfield as my friends looked on, as intrigued as I.

Kathan sat up very slowly, taking considerable care not to cause himself undue pain. Charles rushed forward and packed cushions behind his back. Soon the manikin was sitting upright and staring at the shanath.

He spoke, and his medallion translated: “Please check the shanath for damage.”

I inspected the plinth, lifting it and turning it this way and that, not at all sure what I was looking for.

The rim of the circular device had been dented, no doubt during the star-carriage’s crashlanding. A number of the hieroglyphs were buckled and hard to make out.

Kathan spoke again and we had to wait, agonisingly, for the translation. “The damage might affect its efficacy,” he said. “If so, then all is lost.”

“What is it? I asked. “What does it do?”

In due course the medallion relayed his reply. “It is a miniature hathan,” he said. “It annihilates space and time.”

I stared at him, alarmed. Vaughan stepped forward. “It is dangerous?” he asked.

“Not at all,” came Kathan’s eventual answer. He pointed. “Please, place it over there, where there is space.”

I moved the shanath from where it stood on the rug before the fire and positioned it, as instructed, in the middle of the room.

I looked at Kathan expectantly. “Now what?” I said.

He spoke, and his medallion translated. “Touch the green light upon the upper surface of the shanath, and then stand well back.”

Cautiously I approached the device, reached out and touched the green light, and then ducked away like someone lighting a firework.

I rejoined my friends before the fire, and waited. Nothing happened; evidently, this firework was a dud.

Then, just as I was about to quiz Kathan, a blue light sprang from the surface of the shanath with a great crack and fizz of electricity. The whole room was filled with a static charge, and I stared at my friends with a mixture of alarm and amusement. Their hair was standing on end, as was mine. The only person in the room spared this indignity was Kathan, who possessed no hair.

I looked back at the shanath and saw that a tall blue oval - identical in everything but size to the trans-dimensional interface we had witnessed in the clearing - now hung above the plinth. It coruscated with dazzling brilliance, and caused us to cover our eyes. Unlike its larger counterpart, however, this one generated only a modicum of heat.

“A miniature jump gate,” Vaughan exclaimed.

Kathan spoke. The medallion glowed. “I have presumed upon your hospitality long enough. It is time I was leaving you.”

“You’re going?” Jasper cried. “But you said that the Vark were unlikely to follow you. Surely you could stay until you are sufficiently healed? You will only do yourself untold damage if you take flight now. Please, remain here as our guest for a day or two.”

Charles said, “It would be wise if you rested a little longer.”

Kathan looked at each one of us, his gaze lingering. “I must be away from here. I have business to conduct. Again, I thank you.”

Vaughan said, “One thing. Why did you not use this jump gate from the fourth quadrant instead of going through the larger portal and have the Vark follow you?”

At length Kathan replied, and the medallion translated. “This gate jumps only small distances - tens of light years at a time. The larger, industrial gate can jump thousands of light years. Of course, it was a risk using the larger gate, but I wanted to jump into a sector of the galaxy where the Vark did not hold sway.”

“And now?” I asked, marvelling that ten light years should be termed a ‘small distance’. “Where are you going now?”

“Now, I intend to make a random jump to the nearest civilised, star-faring planet, and proceed like this to a world where I hope to rendezvous with fellow opponents of the Vark. There I will plan my next move.”

Vaughan said, “We wish you good luck, and a safe journey.”

Kathan pointed to the shanath. “There is a series of symbols about the base. If you would press them in a certain sequence...”

Jasper stepped forward. “Allow me.” He approached the blue light cautiously, and then knelt at the base of the device. He regarded the hieroglyphs and turned to Kathan. “Precisely which ones?” he asked.

“
Tuh!”
Kathan said, which the medallion translated as, “Damn!”

“Do you have a writing implement?” the alien went on.

Jasper produced a pen from his breast pocket, along with a sheet of paper. He carried them over to the chesterfield and sat down beside the alien.

Kathan took the pen awkwardly, evidently unused to such a primitive implement. He rested the paper upon his lap and proceeded to draw, with painstaking care, a series of twenty complex symbols.

He spoke, and presently we heard, “This is the code that commands the jump gate to locate the most suitable inhabited planet in the locality.”

He passed the code to Jasper, who took the sheet of quarto with reverence and paced over to the shanath.

He knelt, studied the symbols on the base of the plinth for a time, and then proceeded to tap the code into the command console.

Instantly the blue light rippled and seconds later a magical scene appeared from within the oval portal. We approached and stared in wonder. The oval framed a vista of weird alien beauty, at once familiar and at the same time unlike anything I had ever seen before. A plane of what might have been grass stretched away from the jump gate, but it was grass the colour of blood, and dotted about the plane were what I took to be trees, but silver trees with branches that more resembled knife-blades. In the distance, on the far horizon, I made out what might have been a city: a series of diaphanous constructions like domiciles blown from glass, backed by a range of towering purple mountains.

But as we watched, the scene flickered, the effect very much like a reflection seen in water, shimmering and breaking up. One second the alien panorama seemed as solid as the view through the French windows, and the next it was shattered into rippled fragments. Then it vanished altogether, to be replaced by the blue field.

It came again, and then disappeared, phasing in and out of visibility on a regular cycle. “I cannot risk jumping with the gate in this state of disequilibrium,” Kathan said. “I might end up pitched into the hostile vacuum of interstellar space.”

“Can you do anything to stabilise the image?” Vaughan asked.

“I am no technician,” Kathan replied. “I can only wait, and hope that it stabilises long enough to allow me to jump. In the meantime, I must prepare myself.”

“What do you need?” Jasper asked. “Your carriage?”

“It can go with me,” he said. “It will take me to yonder city.”

“And the other implements?” I said, indicating the blue egg and the thing that looked like a bread bin.

Kathan turned his sable eyes towards these devices, then looked at me. “I will take my weapon,” he said. “The others you may keep. Perhaps, in time, they will serve a purpose.”

“And what about the shanath itself,” Vaughan said. “How will you continue your spatial jumps if the base remains here?”

I rather think that Kathan might have smiled at our technological naïvety, had he been capable of such a gesture. At last the medallion translated his reply. “The shanath duplicates its working end at its destination,” he said.

We stared at the flickering portal, alternately showing the image of the bizarre alien panorama, and then the blank blue field.

Kathan gestured with a flung arm. “If you could manoeuvre my vessel towards the gate,” he said.

I placed Kathan’s rifle within the carriage, and then lifted it, amazed again at how light it was, and carried it over to the portal.

“The image comes in cycles,” Kathan observed. “Note, there is a period of ten seconds in which the image of the destination planet is stable, then ten seconds of disturbance, and almost the same again when the transmission is lost and all that is seen is the blue generation field.”

I nodded. “What of it?”

“I think,” he replied at length, “that during the ten seconds of visual stability, it will be safe to effect the jump.”

“But it would be madness to take the risk!” Vaughan said.

“I do not intend to risk anything,” said the alien, “least of all my life.” He looked at me. “If you could lift the car and insert it through the jump gate at the next period of equilibrium,” he said, “then we shall see if my theory is correct.”

With Vaughan, I lifted the star-carriage and approached the portal. We held it at its rear end, as if we were attempting to throw lumber onto a bonfire.

The alien scene broke up, rippled, and then vanished, to be replaced by the cobalt generation field. I counted ten seconds, and then the image of the alien vista materialised and solidified. “After three,” I said. “One, two, three, now!”

We launched the car through the jump gate. There was a momentary ripple in the image as the vehicle passed through, and then we saw it skid across the blood-red grass and career to a halt not five yards distant.

“
Kah rah!”
Kathan said, and the medallion duly relayed, “It worked!”

He leaned forward, eyeing each one of us in turn. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have only my thanks to offer you. Farewell.”

Vaughan said, “You have given us more than your thanks, my friend. You have granted us knowledge unique and marvellous, for which we will be eternally grateful.” He stepped forward and took the alien’s hand, followed by Charles who did the same, and then Jasper and I.

There was something at once comical and touching about the farewell scene, as we four gentlemen approached the dwarfish, semi-naked alien perched primly upon the chesterfield and soberly pumped his hand in a gesture to which he was obviously unaccustomed.

At length we stepped back. I thought that Kathan would attempt to stand upright, but he thought better of it.

“Perhaps,” he said, “one of you gentlemen might...?”

Jasper darted forward, and his alacrity to assist the alien should have alerted me as to his motivations.

He eased his arms beneath Kathan’s childlike body and lifted him gently from the chesterfield. Slowly Jasper, holding his burden like a prize, stepped towards the jump gate. As he passed me, I saw something, a light in his eyes as he stared, hypnotised, at the scene in the portal.

If I had stopped him at that moment, then the destinies of all four of us would have been altered forever and - who knows? - for the worse...

Jasper paused before the plinth. The gate showed the blue generation field; in a matter of seconds, the alien world would appear again. Jasper turned around and looked at each of us, and his gaze lingered on his brother, before he turned again and stared intently at the portal. Only then did the import of his farewell gaze hit me, and I realised what he intended.

I leaped forward, but too late. As soon as the portal cycled around again to the beautiful image of the alien world, Jasper Carnegie, holding Kathan in his arms, stepped through the portal from planet Earth and became the very first human being to set foot upon alien soil.

We cried out as one and approached the jump gate.

Carnegie, carrying Kathan, was striding through the red grass towards the star-carriage. As we watched, aghast, he lowered the alien into the vehicle’s sling, turned and raised his hand in farewell.

At that second the image shimmered, rippled, and then vanished and Charles cried aloud with despair.

“All is not lost,” I said. “The image will appear again.”

“And then what?” Charles exclaimed.

I did not reply, but I knew what I would do when the portal opened again onto the strange alien world.

We stared at the blue generation field, and this time it seemed to remain longer than ten seconds. Then, as we were about to despair, it cleared - and we saw before us the vale of blood-red grass and the twisted blade trees. In the foreground was Jasper, standing beside the star-carriage and staring through the portal at us.

I lost no time, and jumped.

I have often thought about my actions then, the foolhardiness of what I did. In retrospect I can see what a risk I took, how momentous were my actions. In one bound I leaped through light years of space, I left one planet and landed upon the surface of another - but at the time, of course, it was as if I were merely jumping from one room into the next.

I landed in the grass and rolled. I was aware of two things almost at once: the incredible, raging heat of this planet - a massive red sun hung low in the sky to my right - and the increased gravity. It seemed, as I rose to my feet and gained my bearings, that the hands of a strongman were pressing down upon my shoulders.

I staggered forward, to where Jasper was staring at me in disbelief.

“Jasper!” I cried. “You must come back! You cannot leave everything!”

“I have nothing on Earth to keep me,” he replied. “All my life I have craved adventure, and now I have the opportunity to fulfil that craving.”

“But you don’t belong out here,” I protested. “Your home is on Earth.”

“My home,” he replied calmly, “is where I choose to make it.” He looked past me, and stared. He pointed. “Look!”