“He’s right, Fabrini,” Cushing said. “That alien was working on this thing. Elizabeth says she saw that glow for the past few days. Maybe it was fine-tuning this or something. You just can’t step through there. You could end up just about anywhere… on some planet a million light years from earth or somewhere with a poisonous atmosphere. Shit, your atoms might get scattered like rice at a wedding. You really want to take that chance?”
He smiled. “Damn straight.”
Saks started laughing. “You got to hand it to Fabrini. He ain’t much in the smarts department, but he’s got some serious balls.”
That was about as close to a compliment as Fabrini had ever gotten from Saks and he practically beamed.
Menhaus kept shaking his head. “You can’t, Fabrini. Listen to what Cushing is saying, it’s death in there. Don’t do it, okay?” He went over to Fabrini, laid his hands on his arms. “C’mon, please don’t do this. I don’t want to lose you.”
Fabrini was touched. He patted Menhaus on the back. “Don’t worry, Olly. I’ll be okay. I’m fucking Italian here. We got a great sense of self-preservation, us Italians.”
“Yeah, tell that to Mussolini,” George said.
But that went over his head like a high-flying bird. “I’m going through,” he said defiantly. “If I don’t come back, it’s my own stupid fault. But I’m telling you right now, all of you right now, that I’ve had it right up to here with this bullshit. This sitting around. This waiting. This hoping something don’t chew up our asses so we can make it maybe one more shitty day and find a way out. I can’t handle any more of that. Way I see it, it’s time for action and that’s that. Time to take a chance.”
George didn’t bother arguing: his mind was made up. That much was obvious. But what he was thinking was, Fabrini, you stupid shit! Quit flexing your dick already, that testosterone is going to kill you. This isn’t about who’s got the biggest balls, it’s about using your fucking brain and staying alive.
And, yeah, that’s exactly what he was thinking.
But he didn’t say it and he wished later that he had.
“He wants to go,” Saks said. “Let him go. Guy’s got nuts on him. Can’t say that for the rest of you pussies.”
That was it, then.
Fabrini was going.
Cushing said, “All right, all right. But at least let us tie a rope to you or something. Shit hits the fan, we can yank you back out.” That was what he said and it seemed perfectly reasonable, but there was doubt in his eyes. Bad doubt.
“There’s rope upstairs,” Saks said. “I saw it on our way down.”
“Get it,” Fabrini said.
Saks and Menhaus grabbed a lantern and went topside. They came back two minutes later with two coils of rope. Each had a hundred feet of line on them. They knotted the two ends together, figuring two-hundred feet would be plenty for Fabrini to see what was on the other side. Then they looped another end around his waist. Saks tied the knots. Square-knots strong enough to tow a car with.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Elizabeth said, “to reconsider. Please, please don’t do this.”
Fabrini was unmoved and she turned away and stood in the doorway, her back to what she was certain was calculated madness.
“Just go in gradually,” Cushing said. “An arm or leg first, then just a peek. And hold your breath when you look in there. You inhale a lungful of ammonia or methane, not much we can do for you. Just go in easy.”
They tied the other end of the rope off to an iron bench across the room that was bolted to the floor. It would have taken a couple bull elephants to yank it free. Fabrini stood near the glowing blue wall, looking pale and tense. Maybe he wanted then to turn back, maybe he wanted to do the sensible thing, but his manhood was at stake now. He couldn’t back down, not in front of Saks.
“Good luck, Fabrini,” Saks said.
And George raised an eyebrow. There was something he didn’t like there. Saks was too… what? Too anxious? Too eager? Definitely, too something. Like he knew what was about to happen, had been waiting for it, and was about to see it all come together. If George had to put a name to that smarmy little smile on his face he would have said, contented.
That sonofabitch is up to something, George found himself thinking. He’s up to no fucking good.
George looked over at Cushing and Cushing seemed to be thinking something along those lines, too.
“Listen,” he said to Fabrini. “You back out, nobody’s gonna think less of you. This isn’t worth the risk. Just stay here. We’ll go up to that ship and-”
“Ah, don’t let em dick you around,” Saks said. “They don’t have any guts, Fabrini. Not like you. You’re the only real man here.”
“Take up that rope,” Fabrini said. “Play it out slow.”
He turned to that glowing blue field.
George heard something like cymbals crash in his head. His heart skipped a beat and the flesh at the back of his neck got very, very tight.
Fabrini stepped into the beam. He instantly looked liked he’d been dyed blue, those particles in there making him look like a man in a sandstorm. “Funny,” he said, his voice oddly muffled by the energy flow. “Yeah… like it’s crawling all over you.” He was running his fingers through it and those effervescing particles cycled around him in a sort of loose helix like bubbles in a glass of champagne. “Weird
… feels like I’m in a storm of tiny snowflakes or something. They kind of tickle.”
“Do you feel all right?” Cushing asked him. “Not dizzy or nauseous or anything?”
He shook his head in the flow and his movements were jerky like he was caught in a strobe light. Flickering, irregular, not a solid and smooth motion like a person in normal space.
Fabrini stepped forward, put his hand through and pulled back out. “Feels okay, I guess. Kind of chilly or thick or something.”
Saks was standing just outside the flow, a few feet away from him.
George and Menhaus had taken up the rope. Were gripping it very tightly like they were hanging on for dear life. Except it wasn’t their life that they were worried about.
Fabrini put both arms through the field and just stood there, maybe waiting for something to happen. But there was nothing. He turned his head to look at them with that same jerking, surreal animation like a TV cartoon with every other frame cut out. “Okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
Cushing was standing there, breathing very hard. His hands bunching in and out of fists, the knuckles popping white as moons. Under his breath, he said, “That flow cuts out, it cuts out and he’ll be trapped in that bulkhead, he’ll become part of it…”
George heard him, some crazy picture in his mind of the teleporter clicking off like a light switch and Fabrini trapped there, his atoms mixed with those of the bulkhead, arms stuck in one side of the wall and out the other.
Fabrini stuck his face through and kept it there for a few moments. “It’s dark on the other side… real dark… but I think I see some lights in the distance.”
“Go easy with it,” Cushing said between clenched teeth.
Fabrini nodded, stepped through that blue and thrumming field. He created black, ghostly ripples as he broached it. Then he was gone and they waited for him to say something, but there was only silence. Yet, he was there, somewhere… both George and Menhaus could feel the tension on the rope.
“Why doesn’t he say something?” Menhaus said, sounding alarmed.
“Sound… sound might not carry through the field,” Cushing said.
Then, out of the field, Fabrini’s voice: “I’m… all right, all right.” But that voice was odd and wavering, tinny like it was coming through a distant transistor radio and not a very good one. His words were drawn out, then compressed, echoing with an unearthly and spectral sound. “… okay… I… it’s dark… I can see the dark… lights ahead, funny lights and… and… weird. .. weird shapes… blobs and bubbles… no they’re square or triangles… no they’re blobs… crystals, building crystals blowing and shining and what’s that? The rope is cut! The rope is cut! I can’t see it!”
“We have the rope!” George called out. “We can feel you on it!”
