oh, yes, and I'll tell you about it from first-hand accounts! First, however, I'll try to explain how the Gate works. Or I'll describe what happens when it works. The 'skin' of the sphere — its 'surface' as we see it — is in itself a contradiction of physics as we understand that science. Viktor Luchov has likened it to an 'event horizon'. We see things on it after, and even in advance of, any given event! In the former case as a sort of retinal after-image printed in the sphere, and in the latter as a gradual emergence until the — whatever — breaks through.
'They actually saw that thing coming — but they didn't know what they were seeing! Remember, it was the first. They saw it in the sphere: a gradual darkening of part of the surface up near the sphere's dome. The dark patch became a shape, the shape a sort of misty three-dimensional picture, and the image — in a little while — reality. They saw the head and face of a bat four or five feet across: like a hologram but slowly, oh so slowly, changing. It was all in slow motion, a fascinating thing to witness. So they thought. The wrinkling of the convolute snout, which perhaps took half a minute; the leaning forward of the ears — a flicker of motion in real-time — lasting all of five seconds; the baring of the needle teeth, each one of them six inches long, which was accomplished with the speed of a yawn.
'Now think of it: they had guns! There were actually a handful of soldiers down there with weapons — not for any specific purpose, but simply because soldiers sometimes have guns. But who would think to shoot at such a thing, eh? After the fact, maybe — but at the time? Listen to me: do we shoot off guns at pictures on a screen? That was what this was like, a 3-D film.
'Also, Viktor Luchov was there. Do you think he would have let them shoot at it? Not a chance! He didn't even know what the sphere was yet. But… it might well be his redemption! In Franz Ayvaz's absence he had still to answer for the Perchorsk Incident, and now out of nowhere this… phenomenon!
'Its clarity had been improving for about an hour. All the misty edges had firmed up until the image had the brilliance of a TV picture. People had run to fetch cameras and were actually filming it, like tourists filming ancient monuments or views of outstanding beauty! After all, they knew it couldn't be real. What? A bat with a head as huge as an elephant's?
'Then — quite suddenly, without warning — the impossible happened. They realized that the snout had pushed through the 'skin' of the sphere. The monster was no longer just an image on a screen. It sniffed, inhaled sharply several times — and in the next instant the nightmare was upon them!
The event horizon slows things down, Michael. But once the Gate is breached, then all reverts to normal. But 'normal' for that obscenity was total hell for the people face to face with it! I say it sniffed — a huge bat sniffing its prey — and it scented them! And it changed! The face and head that came through the skin were those of a vast wolf. You saw the thing in the tank metamorphose? It was like that, the very same. The giant wolf's head came through, and then its shoulders — but pushing them forward was a leathery bat's body, and great bat wings unfurling as wide as the sphere itself!
'Panic? There was such panic as men rarely experience in a lifetime. And to make it worse, the thing didn't come into this world silently but screaming. Ah, and what a voice it had!
'It came howling its rage at the bright lights, its hunger for the blood it had scented, its fear of an alien environment. And it slew. But while it was doing this, still it continued to emerge from the sphere. Now the rear end of the thing was like a vast centipede, stampeding through the Gate and threshing everywhere. It changed endlessly, became a dozen different hybrids in as many moments, and each and every one of them murderous!
'It snapped cables in its blind blundering — blind, yes, for it couldn't bear the lights. And a mercy it was blind, for if not the carnage would have been that much worse. But as it damaged the power supply many of the lights failed and its vision improved accordingly. Now it picked its victims with more deliberation, and devoured them whole with a deal more dexterity.
'But now, too, the soldiers were shooting at it — those with the nerve for it, anyway. They couldn't tell if their bullets hurt, but the massed gunfire certainly alarmed it. It headed for the darkest place it could find: the dimly lighted shaft, of course. By now it had changed into something very like the squirting squid-thing your AWACS air- crew filmed. Vast — amazingly vast — it squeezed and squirted its way through the magmass levels. Indeed, in the way its plastic body flowed it was not unlike the magmass; and as it went so it put out extrusions with mouths and with eyes and with… oh, appendages for which there is really no description. Imagine a leg sprouting from its side, and then the leg itself becoming a scuttling spider-thing, and you may have some idea of what I'm talking about.
'But finally it was out into the ravine, and in its wake a trail of death and destruction filled with the screams of the dead and the dying, and the empty spaces which were all that remained of those who had vanished forever. For a second time the Perchorsk Projekt was a shambles, and somewhere in the world outside that monstrosity was on the loose and rampaging. And no one had the faintest idea what to do about it.
'If we Russians have faults, Michael, they are these: we tend to be too well regimented in our thinking, and we are not accustomed to failure. So that when things go disastrously wrong we stand stunned, uncomprehending, like small children waiting for Mama to tell us what to do next. It was like that for Khrushchev when Kennedy faced him down, and again for the — shall we say — 'responsible authorities' over that stupid affair of the Korean airliner. If there are any more disasters in the offing, it will doubtless be the same all over again — just as it was here at Perchorsk.
'Eventually the military were alerted, and they in turn told Moscow. But can you imagine the reaction? 'What? Something has got loose from Perchorsk in the Urals? What sort of something? What are you talking about?' But at last Migs were sent up from Kirovsk, and the rest you already know. Indeed, you know more than I do about that part of it! But at least I know why the Russian fighters failed while the USAF planes succeeded. We've learned that much from the other… encounters. It's the reason for the flame-throwers.
That's right: the American aircraft were equipped with experimental Firedevil air-to-air missiles which not only explode on impact but hurl searing flames all about. Less bulky than napalm but ten per cent more effective. That is what stopped that thing over the Hudson Bay — fire! Fire and light — sunlight! Until the American fighters contacted it, the thing had flown through or under fairly dense cloud cover, and the sunlight wasn't strong yet. But as the sun rose so the creature descended, seeking protection for itself. They are cold things, Michael, and they are things of darkness.
'You've described what you saw on that AWACS film: clouds of vile gasses boiling off the creature's surface in the bright sunlight, and the way its vast, flattened, airfoil body shrank from the sun. Ah, yes! It wasn't so much that the Migs failed, but that other, natural forces assisted the Americans in their success. The thing was half- beaten before it met the Americans, and their Firedevils finished it off.
'Well, and that was the end of Encounter One…
'Now a sort of anticlimax: Encounter Two was a wolf!
'It came through in just the same way as the first thing, but by comparison it was so small — and so normal — that it almost went unnoticed. But not quite. A soldier spotted it first, put a bullet in it the moment it came limping through the Gate. That stopped it, but not fatally. It was examined, but oh so cautiously, and found to be… a wolf! It was old, mangy, almost blind and close to starving. They saved its life, caged it, fed and cared for it and subjected it to every test in the book. Because they weren't quite sure they could trust it, do you see? But… it was a wolf. In every respect a brother of the creatures which even today hunt in the great forests of these parts. By the time it died nine months ago, of old age, the animal was quite tame.
'And so they thought: perhaps the world on the other side isn't so very different from this one after all. Or: perhaps this gateway we've opened leads to many other worlds. Viktor Luchov thinks that as a physical phenomenon — or as a phenomenon of physics — it lies somewhere between a black hole and a white hole. Black holes sit out in the deeps of space and gobble up worlds, and not even light can escape from their fantastic gravitational attraction; white holes are the theoretical melting pots that give birth to galaxies; both are gateways to and from other space-times. Likewise our sphere of white light — but not nearly so violent! Which is why Luchov calls it a 'grey hole', a gateway in both directions!'
At this point Khuv had held up a warning hand. 'Don't break the thread now, Michael, for we're doing so well. You can ask your questions later.' And when Jazz had relaxed again:
'Myself, I've no interest in the 'holes' of advanced physics theory — I simply call it a monstrous threat! But that aside…
'You've seen Encounter Three and I've told you about it. As for Four: that was another anticlimax, but not quite so ordinary or acceptable as the wolf. It was a bat, order Chiroptera, genus Desmodus. Strangely, Vampyrum is the false vampire, while Desmodus and Diphylla are the true blood-suckers. This one had a wing-spread of point
