CHAPTER FOURTEEN

INFINITY—AND BEYOND

“There’s only one thing,” Jane said. “I don’t know what will happen.”

Pete had returned to the control cabin. He limped on a wrenched thigh, and a sprained wrist throbbed. But the pain was almost pleasant when he considered his miraculous luck. A lot of bruises, but no bones broken.

He’d given Jane the picture—Rachel in charge back there; the crippled pirate’s agony alleviated by the drugs from the medicine kit he’d brought in from the monocar; Homer Deeds also patched up, his condition far less serious. He mentioned Homer’s role as a melodramatic hero but left the rest of it for later, other things being more important at the moment. Not the least of these was to reassure Jane that the pressure was off—the crisis ended.

“I’ll go out and kill that scrambler and we’ll call for help,” he’d said.

Jane took the news quite calmly and Pete realized her complete preoccupation with the task she’d set for herself—solving the mystery of the cybernetic brain.

She already had it open. A switch controlled a lifting device that came down through a hole in the ceiling. It gripped the globe and lifted the top half of the shell away, and when Pete re-entered the control cabin he was brought to a flat-footed halt by what lay revealed. The interior of the globe looked like a huge treasure chest. It was a fantastic mass of wires, modules, gauges, stabilizers, and parts Pete could not even begin to identify.

But the most arresting aspect was the materials used. The glitter, the glow, the aura of absolute purity, told of precious stones and metals of fabulous value. Evidently, the science that created this cybernetic brain tolerated only the finest of materials with which to work.

Jane had been studying the complex maze and Pete had watched. Her pattern of operation was strange. She would touch a part and pause as though asking a silent question. Then, as though the answer were in the negative, she would withdraw her hand and place it on another part.

The thing’s talking to her, Pete marveled—telling her where it hurts. Then he was ashamed of his own wonder. After all, he’d been the one who’d persuaded Jane that the metaphysical and the higher mental reaches were practical areas for her to move around in.

“I found a book,” she said.

“A book? Where?”

“It was in a cabinet up front. It’s on the shelf there.” She pointed without taking her eyes or her attention off the brain.

Pete went over and picked up the book and began studying it.

“You’re getting in my way again,” Jane said.

He knew what she meant and moved toward the door. “I’ll go outside and look this over.” In the doorway, he stopped. “One thing—you said you don’t know what will happen. What did you mean?”

“I’ll find what’s wrong, I think. I’ll probably be able to fix it. But I don’t know what will happen afterwards.”

Pete shrugged. “When you fix the thing, it will work again. That’s logical, isn’t it?”

“You’re getting in the way.”

Pete left the cabin and went to his favorite place of seclusion, the first empty loft on that level. He felt that he should go down and help Rachel Barry, but the urge wasn’t great enough to overpower his curiosity concerning the book.

It was an interesting object, an example of how comparative but widely separated cultures cleave to the same basic functional principles. It was a book that opened from the left and had a hard binding. But it was different. There were pages inside. The pages were of paper, but the paper too was different. And the symbols—the language in which the symbols were inscribed was the most different thing of all. Pete knew he didn’t have a chance of even beginning to comprehend them. But somehow he thrilled at the touch of an object so old he could scarcely conceive of the time span—one that had probably come to him from a distance too great to even contemplate.

For a time he became lost in his sheer inability to understand the writing that he studied.

He was not aware of how long he was lost to the time and the place, but it seemed that he was projected, almost immediately into the weirdest, most unreal experience of his life.

It began with the entrance into the hold of the four Barrys. He noted first that Jane had reverted completely. This, he sensed rather than saw, and the previous Jane—the one he associated with the cybernetic brain—seemed never to have existed.

Another thing about Jane confused him. Her beauty had increased in his eyes. Yet, in this sense, she had not changed. In recollection, he realized that the beauty had been there from the first. How had he been so blind as to miss it?

He knew also, that another surprise was in store for him, but one of a different nature than Colleen’s hysteria-heralded discovery down below. This one, whatever it was, had stunned them all to speechlessness, rocked them into something unique—a condition of total dependence upon him. They approached him and stood mute as though waiting for permission to speak.

“How is Uncle Homer?” he asked.

“He will be all right,” Rachel said, dully. “That is, he has no pain. And he’s very sorry for what he did.”

“For saving my life?”

“For what went before. As I told you, Homer is weak.”

“I’m willing to forgive him everything.”

Ellen spoke up, her voice small and awed and deeply frightened. “We came to tell you something.”

“What?”

It was Colleen who broke the restraint that gripped them. “We came to tell you we don’t know where we are!” she shrieked, and broke into a torrent of tears.

Pete turned to Jane. “What’s she talking about?”

“Look out the port.”

Pete turned and saw, not the normal twilight of the Belt illuminating the circular cluster of jagged rocks in the Badlands, but a portful of velvet black glittering with gorgeous stars.

He turned back, confused. “What does this mean? I don’t get it. We haven’t gone anywhere. But—”

“Yes, we have,” Jane said.

“But we were fused to an asteroid. How could we…?”

“I don’t know, but we did. I found a series of connections jarred loose in the cybernetic brain. I put them back and the ship wrenched herself loose from the asteroid quite easily.”

Pete looked out the port again. He turned back and spoke doubtfully. “Then everything’s all right.”

“I’m afraid not. Something else happened. I don’t know how or even when. All I know is it had to happen instantly. We aren’t in the Badlands any more. We’re somewhere else, but I don’t know where.”

Pete didn’t have the least idea what to do, so he laughed and spoke briskly. “I’ll go outside and have a look. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Colleen had fallen silent while Jane spoke. Now she exploded again. “I’m afraid! I want to go home to the Snapdragon. And I can’t find Omaha, either!”

“Omaha will turn up,” Pete assured her cheerfully. “There’s an old saying. A cat has nine lives.”

“Omaha’s only got one—and I’m scared.”

They were moving out of the hold and down the ladder to the lower companionway. Rachel was shepherding Colleen while Ellen had thrust her hand into Pete’s and walked close beside him. Without thinking, he extended the other hand to Jane and they moved after, a touching picture of togetherness.

“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Pete assured them. “All the problems are solved and the trouble is over. And we’re all as rich as Earth industrialists. We can go and live there now if we want to.”

Pete was talking to raise their spirits, but those spirits were very heavy and the lifting was difficult.

“That’s fine,” Jane said with only a shade of the old spark in her voice. “Fine except for one thing. It’s dark out there and we don’t know where we are.”

Pete laughed. “You talk as though we can’t travel without headlights. I’ll go out and see where we are.”

He donned his air equipment, lashed the belt buckle tight and stepped into the air lock. They said nothing as the door closed.

A few moments later he stepped out on the hull of the ship.

His first impression had a double nature: A cold so intense it chilled him to the bone even as he automatically snapped his heat unit to High, an emergency level that was almost never used in the Belt. And a black darkness so thick and heavy that it was like a living cloud of pure hostility attempting to devour him.

Cold and dark in combination. And so intense it reached through his body and mind to his very spirit and dragged it down to a level of despair he had never before known.

The despair was akin to panic; enough so that he fought back instinctively. This was ridiculous! Something had happened, sure, but they were still alive and had a solid ship around them and they had defeated their enemies.

But had they?

Jerking sternly at his mind, Pete began scanning the heavens. He knew them well. They had been a major part of his life. The major stars, the flaming suns millions of light years distant. The great sprawling galaxies. The heavens were a great Constant to those who spent their lives in the Belt.

But not these heavens. They had changed to become a new and totally different aspect of infinity.

Pete shivered.

He stayed outside until the living cold had burrowed deep into his bones. Then he went inside.

As he stood in the air lock he made a firm resolution. The truth, of course. They had to know the truth. But not with overtones of doom.

So when he stepped inside and stripped off his gear, he managed a light, casual tone. “As near as I can figure,” he said, “we’re about four miles this side of Orion.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” Rachel Barry cried. “We must get to a hospital. We have sick people aboard.”

That sparked Pete’s laugh—made it sound real because it was real. He wanted to snatch Rachel into his arms and kiss her. Strictly out of orbit, perhaps, running against the stream most of the time, maybe, but she was still the solidest human being he’d ever met.

“Jane and I will check the mechanism,” he said. “While we’re doing it, I suggest you look into the food situation. There are boxes and boxes up forward. See if you can whip up a banquet.”

That reminded Colleen. “I’m starved!” she howled, and led the way forward.