THE FLIGHT IN THE BALLISTIC-ORBIT SST did not take very long at all. Plenty of G's at each end, acceleration and deceleration, with free fall in between. I slept when we were weightless, found it to be very relaxing indeed. And I had plenty of sleep to catch up with. Ground transportation, and another marine officer, a lieutenant this time, were waiting for us. There was a lot of snapping of stiff salutes, so dear to the military heart. I waited impatiently until all thumbs were back on seams on trouser legs.
“Tell me, Lieutenant, has anything changed since the last report?”
“Negative, sir. The detectors are keeping track of the two individuals just as before. They have not moved again and we have kept our distance from them. Neither of them is in the vicinity of the machine.”
“Do they have any idea they are being tracked?”
“Negative. We have never approached themânever even seen them in fact. Our orders were to keep distant observation until you had secured the machine.”
“I'll do that now. Lead the way.”
I was keeping this operation as simple as possible since I
didn't want a third goof-up. The front door to the building was already open and secured; more marines were keeping out of sight inside. My armed guard trotted behind me when I trotted, stopped when I stopped.
“Tell me again,” I whispered. The lieutenant pointed to high, double doors at the end of the hall.
“That's it, where they meet. It is a conference room, circular, about twenty meters across.” He handed me a small metal box with a collection of dials on it. “Your detector, sir.”
“Give it to the captain to carry. Is the door unlocked?”
“Don't know, we haven't been near it. But I have the key here.”
“Good. Here's what we do. We walk
quietly
up to the door. You put the key into the lock. You try it. If it is locked then you unlock it. As soon as you are sure it is unlocked you give the nodâand pull the door open.” I held up the TI. “This is not a flashlight but is a temporal inhibitor. You open the door and I turn it on. Everything in that room will be fixed in time. Nothing there, human or mechanical, will be able to move until I turn it off again. Which I will not do until the machine is secured. Do you all understand?” Their eyes were glazedâand with good reasons. I shrugged.
“You don't have to. Are you all ready?” They nodded enthusiastically. “Then let's do it.”
They all saluted again and at least they were quiet about it with no stamping boots this time. Grissle and his two sergeants were breathing on my neck as we crept forward. I readied the TI. The lieutenant put the key in the keyhole, turned it slowlyâthen pulled hard and the door flew open.
“Zapped!” I shouted as I switched on the TI. It was pitch dark inside and I couldn't see a thing.
“Can you turn on the lights?” I asked. There was no answer. Frozen in time. The lieutenant was strangely off balance and still pulling on the door handle. My glassy-eyed squad were as still as statues. I stepped back a bit and as soon as the field enveloped them they could move.
“We're going in there,” I said. “But I can't see a thingâand I don't dare turn this device off to find a light switch. Suggestions?”
“Battle torches,” Captain Grissle said, shifting the detector to his left hand and unclicking his torch from his belt. A bright beam flared out, followed by the others.
“Stay close,” I said. “Hold hands, hold my armsâor you'll look like him.” I pointed to the crouching and immobile lieutenant; they all cuddled together. We shuffled forward slowly like competitors in an eight-legged sack race, towards the far end of the room.
“Reading steady,” Grissle said, “and the needle is pointing at that door over there.”
The door was open so at least I didn't have to worry about that. Shuffle-shuffle we went, lighting up the interior of the adjoining room.
Revealing the rack of electronics. A duplicate of the last one I had seenâexcept that this one was intact.
“There!” I pointed. “That's what I want. Cuddle, clutch and shuffle. All right, stop here. Because we have a problem. I will have to turn this TI off if we are going to disconnect this thing.” I pointed at a glowing light on the control panel. “We'll have to turn its power supply off as well if we are going to take it away with us. Any suggestions?”
“The sergeants will draw their weapons to protect us,” Grissle said. “You and I grab the machine, move it, look for any switches, power lines, whatever. There's nothing else we can do.”
I thought about it for a bit and could not think of any alternatives.
“Let's do it. Get your guns out. Shout if you see anything. Or better yetâtry to shoot first. I'll turn the time-freezer off and restore the status quo. Ready?”
Grim nods of agreement; the sergeants with guns pointed, the captain taking a firm grip on the machine.
“Here goes ⦔
I touched the switch.
And everything happened at once.
The machine burst into life, lights flickering in quick patterns. With a terrible shriek someone appeared next to me, seized me and pulled me off balance. I grabbed him with my free hand ⦠.
We were going. Going someplace, somewhere, the sensations that weren't sensations again. Going.
All I was aware of was my heart thudding louder and louder in an empty silence. Fear? Why not? Back to Hell? Or Heaven â¦
White light, strong, warmer air. And the tinkling, clanking, crash of broken glass.
I was on the ground, sharpness under my back, with a fat and older version of Slakey stumbling away from me. The temporal inhibitor was still in my hand.
“Got you, Slakey,” I called out, pointed and pressed the switch.
He ran on, stopped and turned, swaying dizzily, laughing.
“That weapon, whatever it is, won't work here. No imported machine will. You fool, haven't you learned that yet?”
I was learning, but very slowly. And my punctured legs hurt. I put the inoperable TI against the broken crystal on the ground, used it to push against the sharp shards as I stood up. I pulled a sliver of glass from my leg and watched blood stain the fabric.
“We're not in Hell,” I said, looking around me. “Is this your Heaven?”
It might very well have been because it wasâincredible. I gaped, very much in awe. But not so much that I didn't keep Fat Slakey inside my field of vision. What I saw was like, well, like nothing I had ever seen or imagined before.
A world of transparent beauty, crystalline, exuberant, colored and transparent and rising up around me. Shrubbery of glass, analogs of trees and leaves, transparent and veined, reaching out on all sides.
But not where I was standing I realized. Here it was all broken shards, a circular area of destruction. Broken and fragmented.
“No, not Heaven,” Slakey said.
“Where then?”
When he did not answer I took a step towards him and he raised his hands.
“Stop there! No closer. If you stay where you are I'll answer your question. Agreed?”
“For the moment.” I was making no promises. But I knew so little that anything that kept him talking would be of help. “If not Heavenâthen where are we?”
“Another place. I don't come here often. It is of little or no use. Whimsically I used to call it Silicon Valley. NowâI call it Glass, just Glass.”
“You're Professor Slakey. And perhaps you might also be the one who runs the operation we just leftâBaron Krümmung.”
“If you like.” Surly, looking around. I took a tentative step which got his attention. “No!”
“I'm not moving, relax. And tell me what this is all about ⦔
“I tell you nothing.”
“Not even about yourself in Hell?”
He slumped when I said that. “A tragic mistake. I won't make that kind of mistake again. I can't leave of course, too long in Hell. Too long. Certain death if I left now.”
“The gun? Why the gun?”
“Why? What a stupid question. To live of course, to eat. The colimicon contains little or no nutrition. A slow death that way. A gun to hunt with, a gun for a hunter.”
It was a sickening thought, for there was only one other food source in Hell. I was in the company of a madmanâand I understood so little of what was happening. But he was talking and I had kept the important question aside, spoke it now as casually as I could.
“That woman on Lussuoso. Where did you send her?”
“That woman?” He laughed, a laugh devoid of humor. “Come now, diGriz, do I look that stupid? Your wife? Your Angelinaâand you call her That Woman.”
He saw the expression on my face, turned and ran. Down a path of broken crystal through the magic forest. And I was right behind him and gaining.
But he knew where he was going. Runningâthen stopping, looking down, shuffling sideways. I reached for him. Just as he vanished. Saved by himself, pulled out of this universe.
I was very much alone. Stranded on an alien planet in an alien universe. And not for the first time. I tried to cheer myself up with the thought that I had been in Hell and had come back.
“You'll do it again, Jim. You always win. You're the original good guy and good guys always win.”
Thus cheered, I looked around. The crystal forest glinted in the sunlight; nothing moved in the warm silence. The path of broken shards led away from the clearing. Where it went to I had no idea. I walked slowly down the path beneath the glass foliage. It turned and skirted the edge of the cliff now. There was water below, stretching away to the horizon. Off to the left, in the direction the path led, there were some offshore islands. Above me crystalline branches reached out over the water; waves were breaking over the rocks below. There was scud on the water, foam roiling and surging.
I stopped. Slakey was gone and I was very much alone. This was not a very nice thought and I rejected it. It would just be a matter of time, that's all. Captain Grissle and his marines would have the machine disconnected by now and rushed to that dear genius Coypu. Who would analyze and measure and operate the thing to come and find me. I hoped.
What next? Alone in this crystalline universe was very alone indeed. I smiled at the thought and started to laugh. At what? Nothing was funny. I shook my head, suddenly dizzy.
“Oxygenâlots of it,” I said aloud to reassure myself.
There was no reason at all that the atmosphere on this alien planet should match the atmospheres of the terraformed and settled planets. Quite the opposite, if anything. Slakey was obviously seeking out and visiting worlds where humans could live and breathe. I held my breath for a bit, then breathed shallowly.
The oxygen high died away and I looked around at the glass forestâwith the trampled path through it. The path that now led along the cliff edge. Should I really follow it? I was not used to indecision, so was undecided about it.
But it really was decision time. My trip to Hell had proven that there was a cartographic coordination between leaving and arriving positions when flitting between universes. Sybil and I had arrived in that caveâand gone back from it. So should I go back to the place where I had arrived? Or try to find out more about Glass?
“The answer to that one is obvious, diGriz,” I said to myself. I believed in taking advice from someone very intelligent whom I trusted. “Sit on your chunk and wait to be rescued. And quietly die of thirst and/or starvation. Get moving and find out more about this place. For openersâis that ocean fresh water or is it loaded with chemicals? Or is the liquid really water? Go forth and investigate.”
I went. Along the glass-sharded path. Happy that the soles of my shoes were made of seringera, an elastic compound that is supposed to be as strong as steel. It had better be.
The crystalline trees were higher along the coast, with mead-owlike areas of bluish grass between them. I came around a bend in the path and in the middle of the next meadow was the statue of a glass animal.
Up to this point I had just accepted the presence of crystalline growths. Too much had happened since I arrived here to question the landscape. I did not query their existence; they just were. Maybe natural mineral structures, or perhaps some living creature like coral had secreted them.
Or had all of this been made by some incredible artist? The orange and yellow little creature in the field certainly was a work of art. Glassy fur covered it, each hair separate and clear. The open mouth had two rows of tiny and precisely formed teeth. I looked beneath the tree next to it and jumped back.
An animal, twice as big as I was, stood poised to jump. Unmoving. I relaxed. Admired the knifelike teeth with their serrated edges; giant claws stretched out from each foot. Glass
grass crunched underfoot when I walked closer to it. Looked up and admired the artistic construction. The thing's eyes were on a level with mine and were certainly most realistically formed.