The Wind Between the Worlds (6 page)

“The men evacuated from around the station?” Vic asked.

Flavin nodded. “Some of the bright boys finally convinced them that they were just wasting time, anyhow. Besides, the thing is still spreading, and getting too close to them. Vic, the news gets worse all the time. Can you take it?”

“Now what? Don’t tell me they’ve changed it to tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow, hell! In two hours they’re sending over straight blockbusters, radar-controlled all the way. No atomics—yet—but they’re jumping the gun, anyhow. Some nut convinced Wilkes that an ordinary eight-ton job might just shake things enough to fracture the glass that’s holding the short. And Pan-Asia is going completely wild. I’ve been talking to Wilkes. The people are scared silly, and they’re pressuring for quick war.”

Vic nodded reluctantly and reached for the benzedrine he’d hoped to save for the last possible moment, when it might carry him all the way through. What difference did it make? Even if he had an idea, he’d be unable to use it.

“And yet…” He considered it more carefully, trying to figure percentages. There wasn’t a chance in a million, but they had to take even that one chance. It was better than nothing. “It might just work—if they hit the right spot. I know where the glass is, and the layout of the station. But I’ll need authority to direct the bombs. Flavin, can you get me President Wilkes?”

F
lavin shrugged, reached for the televisor. He managed to get quite a way up by some form of code, but then it began to be a game of nerves and brass. Along his own lines, he apparently knew his business. In less than fifteen minutes, Vic was talking to the President. For a further few minutes, the screen remained blank. Then another face came on, this time in military uniform, asking quick questions, while Vic pointed out the proper targets.

Finally the officer nodded. “Good enough, Peters. We’ll try it. If you care to watch, you can join the observers. Mr. Flavin already knows where they are. How are the chances?”

“Not good. Worth trying.”

The screen darkened again, and Flavin got up. The thing was a wild gamble, but it was better to jar the building than to melt its almost impregnable walls. Even Betz II metal couldn’t take a series of hydrogen bombs, though nothing else could hurt it. And with that fury, the whole station would go.

They picked up Pat, and moved out to Flavin’s car. Vic knew better than to try to bring Ptheela along. As an alien, she was definitely taboo around military affairs. The storm had reached the city now, and dense clouds were pouring down thick gouts of rain, leaving the day as black as night. The car slogged through it, until Flavin opened the door and motioned them out into a temporary metal shelter.

Things were already started. Remote scanners were watching the guided missiles come down, and eyes were operating in the bombs, working on infra-red that cut through the rain and darkness. It seemed to move slowly on the screen at first, but picked up apparent speed as it approached the transmitter buildings. The shielding grew close, and Pat drew back with an involuntary jerk as it hit and the screen went black. Dead center.

But the remote scanners showed no change. The abrupt break in the air-motion where the transmitter field began, outside the shielding, still showed. Another bomb came down, and others, each spaced so as to hit in time for others to be turned back, if it worked. Even through the impossible tornado of rotating fury, it was super-precision bombing.

The field went on working just the same, far beyond the shielding, pulling an impossible number of cubic feet of air from Earth every second. They stopped watching the screen shown by the bomb-eyes at last, and even the Army gave up.

“Funny,” one observer commented. “No sound, no flash when the bombs hit. I’ve been watching the remote scanners every time instead of the eye, and nothing happens. The bombs just disappear.”

P
at shook herself. “They
can’t
hit. They go right through the field, before they can hit. Vic, it won’t matter if we do atom-bomb the station. It can’t be reached.”

But he was already ahead of her. “The Ecthindar will love that. They’ve already been dosed with chemical bombs. Now guess what they’ll do.”

“Simple.” It was the observer who got that. “Start feeding atom bombs into their transmitters back to us.”

Then he shouted hoarsely, pointing through a window. From the direction of the station, a dazzle of light had lanced out sharply, and was now fading down. Vic snapped back to the remote scanner, and scowled. The field was still working; there was no sign of damage to the transmitter. If the Ecthindar had somehow snapped a bomb into the station, it must have been retransmitted before full damage.

The Army men stared sickly at the station, but Vic was already moving toward the door. Pat grabbed his arm, and Flavin was with them by the time they reached the waiting car.

“The Bennington office,” Vic told the driver. “Fast! Somebody has to see the Ecthindar in a hurry, if it’ll do any good.”

“I’m going, too, Vic,” Pat announced. He shook his head. “I’m going,” she repeated stubbornly. “Nobody knows much about Ecthinbal or the Ecthindar. You call in Code messages, get routine Code back. We can’t go there without fancy pressure suits, because we can’t breathe their air. And they never leave. But I told you I was interested in races, and I have been trying to chit-chat with them. I know some things. You’ll need me.”

He shook his head again. “It’s enough for one of us to get killed. If I fail, Amos can try, or Flavin. If they both fail—well, suit yourself. It won’t matter whether they kill me there or send through bombs to kill me here. But if one of us can get a chance to explain, it may make some difference. I don’t know. But it may.”

Her eyes were hurt, but she gave in, going with him silently as he stepped into the local Bennington unit and stepped out in Chicago, heading toward the Chicago Interstellar branch. She waited patiently while the controlmen scouted out a pressure suit for him. Then she began helping him fasten it and checking his oxygen equipment. “Come back, Vic,” she said finally.

H
e chucked a fist under her chin and kissed her quickly, keeping it casual with a sureness he couldn’t feel. “You’re a good kid, Pat. I’ll sure try.”

He pulled the helmet down and clicked it shut before stepping into the capsule and letting the seal snap shut. He could see her swing to the interstellar phone, her lips pursed in whistled code. The sound was muffled, but the lights changed abruptly, and her hand hit the switch.

There was no apparent time involved. He was on Ecthinbal, looking at a faintly greenish atmosphere, noticeable only because of the sudden change, and fifty pounds seemed to have been added to his weight. The transmitter was the usual Betz II design, and everything else was familiar except for the creature standing beside the capsule.

The Ecthindar might have been a creation out of green glass, coated with a soft fur, and blown by a bottlemaker who enjoyed novelty. There were two thin, long legs, multijointed, and something that faintly resembled the pelvis of a skeleton. Above that, two other thin rods ran up, with a double bulb where lungs might have been, and shoulders like the collar pads of a football player, joined together and topped by four hard knobs, each with a single eye and orifice. Double arms ran from each shoulder, almost to the ground.

He expected to hear a tinkle when the creature moved, and was surprised when he did hear it, until he realized the sound was carried through the metal floor, not through the thin air.

The creature swung open the capsule door after some incomprehensible process that probably served to sterilize it. Its Galactic Code whistle came through Vic’s shoes from the floor. “We greet you, Earthman. Our mansions are poor, but they are yours. Our lives are at your disposal.” Then the formal speech ended in a sharp whistle. “Literally, it would seem. We die.”

It didn’t fit with Vic’s expectations, but he tried to take his cue from it. “That’s why I’m here. Do you have some kind of ruler? Umm, good. How do I get to see this ruler?” He had few hopes of getting there, but it never did any harm to try.

The Ecthindar seemed unsurprised. “I shall take you at once. For what other purpose is a ruler but to serve those who wish to see it? But—I trespass on your kindness in the delay. But may I question whether a strange light came forth from your defective transmitter?”

V
ic snapped a look at it, and nodded slowly.

“It did.”

Now the ax would fall. He braced himself for it, but the creature ceremoniously elaborated on his nod.

“I was one who believed it might. It is most comforting to know my science was true. When the bombs came through, we held them in a shield, but, in our error, we believed them radioactive. We tried a negative aspect of space to counteract them. Of course, it failed, since they were only chemical. But I had postulated that some might have escaped from receiver to transmitter, being negative. You are kind. And now, if you will honor my shoulder with the touch of your hand, so that my portable unit will transport us both…”

Vic reached out and the scene shifted at once. There was no apparent transmitter, and the trick beat anything he had heard from other planets. Perhaps it was totally unrelated to the teleport machine.

But he had no time to ask.

A door in the little room opened, and another creature came in, this time single from pelvis to shoulders, but otherwise the same. “The ruler has been requested,” it whistled. “That which the ruler is is yours, and that which the ruler has is nothing. May the ruler somehow serve?”

It was either the most cockeyed bit of naïveté or the fanciest run-around Vic had found, but totally unlike anything he’d been prepared for. He gulped, and began whistling out the general situation on Earth.

The Ecthindar interrupted politely. “That we know. And the converse is true—we too are dying. We are a planet of a thin air, and that little is chlorine. Now from a matter transmitter comes a great rush of oxygen, which we consider poison. Our homes around are burned in it, our plant life is dying of it, and we are forced to remain inside and seal ourselves off. Like you, we can do nothing—the wind from your world is beyond our strength.”

“But your science…”

“Is beyond yours, true. But your race is adaptable, and we are too leisurely for that virtue.”

Vic shook his head, though perhaps it made good sense. “But the bombs…”

A series of graceful gestures took place between the two creatures, and the ruler turned back to Vic.

“The ruler had not known, of course. It was not important. We lost a few thousand people whom we love. We understood, however. There is no anger, though it pleases us to see that your courtesy extends across the spaces to us. May your dead pass well.”

That was at least one good break in the situation. Vic felt some of his worry slide aside to make room for the rest. “And I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how we can take care of this…”

There was a shocked moment, with abrupt movements from the two creatures. Then something came up in the ruler’s hands, vibrating sharply. Vic jumped back—and froze in mid-stride, to fall awkwardly onto the floor. A chunk of ice seemed to form in his backbone and creep along his spine, until it touched his brain. Death or paralysis? It was all the same; he had air for only an hour more. The two creatures were fluttering at each other and moving toward him when he abruptly and painlessly blacked out.

H
is first feeling was the familiar, deadening pull of fatigue as his senses began to come back. Then he saw that he was in a tiny room—and that Pat lay stretched out beside him!

He threw himself up to a sitting position, surprised to find that there were no after-effects to whatever the ruler had used. The damned little fool, coming through after him. And now they had her, too.

Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up beside him. “Darn it, I almost fell asleep waiting for you to revive. It’s a good thing I brought extra oxygen flasks. Your hour is about up. How’d you manage to insult them?”

He puzzled over it while she changed his oxygen flask and he did the same for her. “I didn’t. I just asked whether they didn’t know of some way we could take care of this trouble.”

“Which meant to them that you suspected they weren’t giving all the help they could, after their formal offer when you came over. I convinced them it was just that you were still learning Code, whatever you said. They’re nice, Vic. I never really believed other races were better than we are, but I do now—and it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“It’d bother Flavin. He’d have to prove they were sissies or something. How do we get out?”

She pushed the door open, and they stepped back into the room of the ruler, who was waiting for them. It made no reference to the misunderstanding, but inspected Vic, whistled approval of his condition, and plunged straight to business.

“We have found part of a solution, Earthman. We die, but it will be two weeks before our end. First, we shall set up a transmitter in permanent transmit, equipped with a precipitator to remove our chlorine, and key it to another of your transmitters. Whichever one you with. Ecthinbal is heavy, but small, and a balance will be struck between the air going from you and the air returning. The winds between stations may disturb your weather, but not seriously, we hope. That which the ruler is is yours. A lovely passing.”

It touched their shoulders, and they were back briefly in the transmitter, to be almost instantly in the Chicago Branch. Vic was still shaking his head.

“It won’t work. The ruler didn’t allow for the way our gravity falls off faster and our air thins out higher up. We’d end up with maybe four pounds pressure, which isn’t enough. So both planets die—two worlds on my shoulders instead of one. Hell, we couldn’t take that offer from them, anyhow. Pat, how’d you convince them to let me go?”

She had shucked out of the pressure suit and stood combing her hair. “Common sense, as Amos says. I figured engineers consider each other engineers first, and aliens second, so I went to the head engineer instead of the ruler. He fixed it up somehow. I guess I must have sounded pretty desperate, at that, knowing your air would give out after an hour.”