Eschaton 01 The Other End of Time Read online

  "I'm earning my way," Rosaleen said grimly. "And I'm not getting paid for my services twice."

  Delasquez looked insulted. "Are you referring to the gems I was given? But those were not for me! They were to make it possible to get clearance on such short notice for this flight."

  The quarrel distracted Pat Adcock from her thoughts of corpse-eating creatures. "Oh, hell," she said, "what are you fighting about? There's plenty to go around, just as we agreed."

  Jimmy Lin cleared his throat. "I think not," he said politely. "You know what I think, Pat? I think we're going to have to re-figure all that."

  "The hell with that!" she said sharply. "We made a deal, and we're sticking to it. Remember, Starlab's my satellite! Well, the observatory's," she qualified, "but as far as you're concerned that's the same thing. Starlab was built and launched with my uncle's money, so it's private property. Mine."

  Lin gave her a long, bland look. Then he shrugged-not in the manner of someone who is convinced, only in the manner of someone who has decided not to pursue the question for the moment.

  However, Dannerman decided as he watched the squabble, Lin was not going to put it off forever. Then there was General Delasquez, silently listening. He was another who was presumably looking forward to renegotiating their arrangements.

  Pat Adcock was taking charge. "Right, then. Rosaleen, what do you think? How long will it take you to get this stuff detached?"

  "First I have to figure out what it is, Pat."

  "Well, damn it, do it!"

  The old lady pursed her lips. "I kind of agree with Jimmy," she said. "Why don't we talk about how we're going to split it up?

  "Rosaleen! Not you, too!" Pat bit her lip, then surrendered. "All right. We can settle this after we land. What we have to do now is pick out the likeliest items and shift them to the Clipper. When we land in California I've got a crew-" Rosaleen interrupted her sharply. "California?" Pat said apologetically, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, Rosie. We couldn't go back to the Cape, though, could we? The vultures would be waiting to snatch it all away. Anyway, it's all arranged. I've got a crew and a chopper waiting in California. We'll offload as fast as we can and get the stuff to a safe place, and then-"

  "We're not landing in California," General Delasquez said.

  "Damn it, Martin! You agreed!"

  "I have reconsidered the question. We will return to the Cape."

  Dannerman sighed softly, because he knew what was coming. The four of them were regarding each other like stray tomcats, paying no attention at all to him.

  Pat gave the general a sour look. "Don't be foolish. The arrangements are all made," she said crossly.

  Delasquez shook his head. "No. I have also made arrangements. The State of Florida can make good use of this technology. We have suffered under Yanqui tyranny long enough; with this we can have full independence at last."

  With the gun in his hand Dannerman spoke up. "And a little something extra for you personally, Martin?" he inquired politely.

  That was when it all got rough. Delasquez fumbled for his own gun, tangled in the incongruous gilt-leather holster. Jimmy Lin was also reaching for something, no doubt a weapon of his own, but he didn't get very far. Rosaleen was perched just behind him, still holding the rod of blue metal; she didn't stop to speak but swung it and caught Lin on the side of the head.

  "Oh, no, you must not," said a new voice.

  Dannerman barely registered the fact that the voice was unfamiliar; he had Delasquez in the sights of his twenty-shot.

  Then there was something like a flash-a tingle-a sudden sense of falling, and the weapon never did get fired.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dan

  A while later-he had no idea quite how long it had been- Dannerman blinked and opened his eyes. The other four were stirring around him, and they all looked bewildered. They were in the Clipper, though Dannerman didn't remember going there. He had a recollection of his gun being in his hand, though he wasn't sure why. He glanced hastily around, in case it was floating in the nearby air. It wasn't. He observed General Delasquez looking around in the same befuddled way, and, beyond him, Jimmy Lin, looking perturbed as he rubbed the side of his head. "What the hell happened?" he asked.

  Rosaleen Artzybachova said shakily, "I think I must have had a touch of micro-G vertigo."

  It looked to Dannerman as though they all had. Everyone seemed dazed, and Pat was weeping softly. "All for nothing," she whimpered. "Hell."

  Jimmy Lin said pensively, "Bad enough there wasn't any of that alien technology; even Starlab's own equipment is ruined."

  "Ruined," Rosaleen Artzybachova echoed. She sounded more than dazed, Dannerman thought; in fact, really ill. It was her age, most likely, he decided. But she kept on doggedly with the litany of loss: "Electronics fused, power supply ruined-there must've been a plasma arc. A big one. There's nothing left worth salvaging. Might as well start back. We can't do any good here."

  Dannerman was scratching the back of his neck-as, for some reason, so were the others-as he was peering into the pilots' screen at Starlab's hull. He pointed at the bulge that had no business being there. "I really thought that was going to be something interesting," he said.

  "Just some kind of sticky space glop, I guess," Jimmy Lin said. "All right, get strapped in. We're ready to undock."

  Despondently, the five of them took their places, ready for the long return flight to Earth…

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dan

  And at the same time, but a very long way away, Dannerman blinked and opened his eyes… and squawked in unbelieving outrage. In a place he had never seen before, he was being held firmly by two people in Hallowe'en trick-or-treat dress-big ones, with a froth of white concealing their faces and an astonishing number of arms-while a smaller one in a different costume was interestedly, but inexpertly, undoing the flaps of his clothing to undress him. Shouting around him made him look about; all four of his companions were similarly held and two of them, Jimmy Lin and Pat, were already naked. He bellowed, "What the hell happened!"

  He wasn't asking anyone in particular, but the goblin who was taking his clothes off gave him an answer-sort of an answer. It seemed to have the body of a large chicken; it gazed up at him out of mournful huge kitten's eyes and worked its slack jaw for a moment, and then it spoke. "Do not struggle. The handlers may damage you."

  And Pat Adcock cried, half laughing, "My God, Dan! It's Dopey!"

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Pat

  Yes, the chicken with the cat's face did look like the Dopey the transmission from space had warned against; and the pale, bearded giant that never spoke was likely enough the Doc; and that was a subject for wonder; but Pat had other things on her mind. Pat Adcock had had fondly held hopes blighted before. Never like this. She had been so close! After all those interminable, exhausting weeks of court battles and conspiracy there had been that one great, exultant moment when it looked as though all her dreams were paying off…

  And then, bam, reality hit her right between the eyes and these bizarre creatures from a nightmare had snatched all the triumphs away.

  But it wasn't a nightmare. Even that consolation was denied her. Improbable as it was, the Dopey was real, the whiskered Doc was real, the space aliens truly did exist and they had taken Pat Adcock prisoner. It was almost more than she could take in-the astonishment, the incredible strangeness of it all-but the wonder was diluted by fear. And diluted again by discomforts of several kinds, including her increasingly urgent need to go to the bathroom.

  It was all more than she could handle, because nothing like this captivity had ever happened to Pat before. She had never been in jail. She had never in her life been restrained against her will in any way at all, unless you counted the times her nanny had made her sit in a corner for some five-year-old's wickedness. She wasn't prepared for it, and she didn't like it at all. She didn't like the six-sided chamber that was their prison, like a scaled-up honeycomb cell th
e size of a backyard swimming pool, or the bright mirrored surfaces that reflected their own naked bodies whichever way they looked. She didn't like being naked, for that matter-at least, not under these circumstances. Pat was not a prude about her body, but she had always been selective about whom she displayed it to. She especially didn't like the fact that there were no private spaces inside the cell, not even a toilet. About that she was, indeed, quite prudish.

  She was not the only one suffering from affronted modesty. That dedicated sexual athlete, Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin, sat with his back against a wall, his bloodied head down in shame, hugging his knees to his chest to conceal as much of his privacy as possible. Dannerman and the general were less obvious in their discomfort, though the general, she saw, had a lot to be discomforted about. Lacking the built-in corsets of his uniform, his body sagged and bulged in unexpected ways. Both men, she observed, did their best to turn away from whomever they were talking to. Only Rosaleen Artzybachova seemed unaffected- very likely, Pat thought with interest, because she stripped down pretty well, for a woman of that age. All that exercise appeared to have paid off. Pat resolved to try a bit more of it for herself when she was back in her real life…

  If she ever was.

  There did not seem to be a very high probability of that. They were well and truly captured, all five of them.

  They were all responding in the same way, too. All five of them-well, all but Jimmy Lin, who was fully occupied in nursing his bashed head and his embarrassed nudity-had immediately begun to check the mirrored wall, centimeter by centimeter, looking for a doorway, perhaps, or at least some sort of gap. There wasn't any. "I guess we're stuck here," Dannerman said at last, and no one disagreed. All they could do was ask each other unanswerable questions and complain-"pissing and moaning" was the term Dannerman had used. It wasn't a good choice of words. Pat was uncomfortably aware that they had so far really done only the moaning part.

  From all the questions a few facts were established early. They certainly were not on Starlab anymore, because gravity pressed them down as it had on Earth. They almost certainly were not on their own Earth, either, because of that same gravity. It was Rosaleen Artzybachova who noticed it first, but then they all agreed. They seemed to weigh a little less, pressed a little less heavily on the soles of their feet when they stood, perhaps could even jump just a bit higher, than they had for all their previous lives.

  "Also," Rosaleen went on, "you will notice that we are breathing quite normally."

  Pat frowned. "Yes?"

  "Which means that the atmosphere here contains approximately an Earth-normal partial pressure of oxygen. I imagine the rest is probably nitrogen. Some inert gas, at any rate; and not helium or carbon dioxide, because we would know it if so, from the effects on our voices or our alertness. All the other inert gases are comparatively rare, so I believe," she said thoughtfully, "that it must be nitrogen." She reflected for a moment, then added, "The temperature is a bit warm-more like North Africa than New York, I would say-but still in a livable range."

  Jimmy Lin looked up at her to make a face. "So, Dr. Artzybachova, put it all together and tell us what we need to know. Where are we?"

  "Not on Earth, of course," she said at once. "Perhaps we are on a planet, I am not sure of that, but in any case not a planet of our own solar system-too much gravity for Mars or Mercury, not enough for any of the gas giants. And, of course, not on Venus, because the heat would have killed us at once. There are other possibilities. Perhaps we could be on a spaceship undergoing constant acceleration, but I doubt that also-I believe we would hear the rockets."

  "If they use rockets," Dannerman offered.

  "A good point," Rosaleen agreed. "But I think I do hear something. Perhaps motors somewhere? It doesn't sound like rocket engines. So we come back to the one clear fact: we are not on Earth."

  Of course, that question was not seriously asked in the first place. They didn't really need much proof that they weren't on Earth, because the proof was right before their eyes. Nothing on Earth was like their cell, and nothing on Earth looked like the creatures who had disrobed them here.

  There was argument about that, too: What were the creatures? Were they really the Seven Ugly Dwarfs from the space message? Rosaleen polled the group. Jimmy Lin had no opinion on that, partly because he was distancing himself from the others with his embarrassment and his sore head, and mostly because, he said, he had spent much of his recent time in a place where they did not pay a great deal of attention to such cartoons, namely at the Jiuquan space center in the People's Republic of China. Martin Delasquez didn't think their captors really resembled the figures from space, either, but there was no doubt in Pat's mind at all. It was simply statistically unlikely, she was sure, that two unrelated sets of such bizarre creatures could turn up at once.

  She noticed that Dannerman took little part in the discussion. He was restlessly checking the cell out, not saying much, until abruptly he announced: "I'm hungry."

  So, Pat realized once he mentioned it, was she. And wanting other creature comforts, too. "And I wish I had something to drink," she said wistfully, thinking of the silver decanter of ice-water always on her desk.

  Rosaleen said, "I'm sure we all feel the same way, but the less fluid you take in the less you will have to discharge. Which we all must do." She looked around at the others, almost smiling. "We do not have a choice, you know. Shall I be the first?"

  She paused for a moment, but no one answered; no one had a useful answer to give. "Very well," she said, and walked purposefully over to one wall, where she squatted down without further remark.

  "Oh, hell," Pat said unhappily. "Hey, guys. At least you could all turn your backs." Jimmy Lin raised his head long enough to laugh sourly, glancing at the mirrored walls. Dannerman paid no attention-very conspicuously and politely paid no attention. He redoubled his study of the mirror wall, but by the sense of touch only, his eyes half closed against any impolite reflection. Martin stood by him, watching.

  "There's nothing to see in the wall," the general pointed out.

  "Nothing I can find so far, anyway," Dannerman said obstinately. "But those goddam bug-eyed monsters walked right through it, so there has to be something."

  Rosaleen finished her task matter-of-factly and stood up. "That wasn't the wall where they came in, anyway. They came through the one next to it, where Pat's standing."

  Which started another argument, even more pointless. Which wall? How could you possibly tell which wall, anyway, when they all were identical? There was no mark of any kind on any of them, not even a seam where two panels joined. Pat ran her fingers wonderingly over the smooth, warm surface herself. It looked as though it should be glass-hard. It wasn't. As she pressed her fingers against it the tips actually entered the wall, faintly dimpling it as they might a surface of modeling clay, but they penetrated no more than, perhaps, a millimeter or so. She tried harder, finally pressing with all her weight. No good. She could get fingernail-deep into the surface and no farther. And she could find no sign at all that it had ever opened up to let the extraterrestrials through. If she hadn't seen the creatures walk right through it she would not have believed it possible.

  Jimmy looked up unhappily. "Tell me something. Suppose you did find a way to get through that thing, even got all the way out of here?" he said. "I don't think you ever will, but what if you did? What would you do then?"

  "Then," Dannerman said, "I'd figure out what to do next, but we'd be that much ahead. As long as we're stuck in here we can't do anything at all."

  Jimmy shrugged, but said nothing. Neither did anyone else; some truths were too obvious to be argued.

  Then, "But this is interesting," Rosaleen called from her place at a far wall, gazing at the floor.

  "What is?"

  Rosaleen gestured to where she had relieved herself. "The urine is disappearing. Look, there is only a trace now, and it is getting less."

  Even Jimmy Lin got up to see that. It was true. The tiny
pool of pale liquid was dwindling, and a moment later it was gone. Martin Delasquez hesitated, then stopped to touch the floor where it had been. "Dry," he reported. He didn't need to. They could all see for themselves that there was no trace of urine, not even a faint stain on the milky-white, slightly resilient flooring.

  "Well," Rosaleen said encouragingly. "At least we seem to have a sewage system."

  Martin scowled at her. "But still no food and nothing to drink."

  She shrugged. "And nothing we can do about it, either, is there? Meanwhile I am quite tired. I think I will try to sleep."

  Pat watched, incredulous and almost admiring, as the old woman lay down on her side, curled in the fetal position, folded her hands under her cheek and closed her eyes. "You know," Pat said, "I could use some sleep myself."

  "We all could," Dannerman said. "But one of us ought to stay awake."

  Jimmy giggled. "Are you talking about setting sentries? To guard against what?"

  "Against I don't know what," Dannerman said, "but that's the exact reason why I think one of us should stay up. I'll take the first turn, if you like."

  Martin Delasquez said heavily, "Yes, I agree we should set a guard and, yes, we might as well sleep, since we have nothing better to do. Perhaps we will think more clearly when we are refreshed, so, very well, let us- Wait! What is that?"

  He didn't have to ask; they all saw what was happening at the same time. A patch of one wall clouded momentarily, then bulged into a pair of figures as the Dopey and a Doc came through. The Doc was carrying small parcels in several of its arms; the Dopey gestured, and the Doc began setting the parcels on the floor as the wall closed seamlessly behind them.

  Dannerman wrinkled up his nose. "That's what I was smelling on Starlab!" he said, staring at the Doc. "It was that thing!"