“A promise of salvation and everlasting life.”
With the last instrument packages deployed, Harry had time to kill before they must be retrieved, so he set out again after the interlopers.
All three had stuck close to the Avenue … a wise precaution, since conventional starcraft were scarcely built to navigate in E Space. This way there was always a chance of diving back into the real universe if things went suddenly wrong here in the empire of memes.
Of course “diving” into the Avenue held dangers of its own. For instance, you might emerge in one of the Five Galaxies all right, with every atom in the right position compared to its neighbors … only separated by meters instead of angstroms, giving your body the volume of a star and the density of a rarefied vacuum.
Even if your ship and crew held physical cohesion, you could wind up in a portion of space far from any beacon or t-point, lost and virtually stranded.
By comparison, Harry’s vessel was a hardy beast, flexible and far more assured for this quirky kind of travel. Designed specifically for E Space — and piloted by a trained living observer — it could find much safer points of entry and egress than the Avenue.
Of the vessels he was following, the machine entity worried him most, provoking something almost like pity.
It’s really vulnerable here. The poor mech must be feeling its way along, almost blind.
Harry accelerated the station’s bowlegged gait, curious to see what would drive such an entity to invade E Space, following the spoor of two oxy-life vessels. Soon, he began detecting traces of digital cognizance, a sure giveaway that high-level computers were operating, continuously and unshielded, somewhere beyond the haze.
It’s like the thing’s broadcasting to all the carnivorous memes in the neighborhood. Yoo hoo! Beasties! Come and eat me!
Harry peered through the murk to make out a fantastically sheer cliff “ahead — grayish off-white — covered with symmetrical reddish splotches. The abrupt barrier reared vertically, vanishing into the mist some number of meters — or miles — overhead, and the shining, tubelike Avenue seemed headed straight for it!
The red-orange blemishes were arrayed in strict geometrical rows, like endless ranks of fighting ships. Harry eyed them dubiously, till the pilot called them two-dimensional discolorations. Nothing more.
The station marched on, stilt-legs swinging across the fuzzy steppe, and Harry soon realized there was a hole, just wide enough to admit the Avenue, with some room to spare on either side to admit the scout platform or a small starship.
“I believe somebody has used energy weapons here,” the pilot mode murmured speculatively.
Harry saw the cavelike opening had been widened by some tearing force. Cracks ran away from the broken entrance. Crumbled fragments of wall lay among the fuzzy cylinders.
“Fools! Their ship was too bulky to fit. So instead of trying to find a metaphor that’d get them through, they just blasted their way!”
Harry shook his head. It was dangerous to try altering E Space by force. Far better to get your way by following its strange rules.
“This apparently happened a year ago, when the larger vessel tried following the smaller. Do you wish me to engage observer mode to find out what types of weapons were used?”
Harry shook his head. “No time. Clearly we’re dealing with idiots … or fanatics. Either way it means trouble.”
Harry looked into the blackness surrounding the Avenue as it passed within. No doubt this was another transition boundary. Once he moved inside, the metaphorical rules must change again.
Wer’Q’quinn would not like it. There was no absolute guarantee Harry could backtrack once he entered. The instrument packages were supposed to be his first priority.
After a long pause — spent largely scratching himself, neo-chim style — he grunted and decided.
“We’re going in,” Harry ordered. “Prepare for symbol shift!” He took his command seat and buckled in. “Close the blinds and …”
The cursive P whirled faster.
“Warning! Something is coming!”
Harry sat up and looked around. The sheer cliff took up half his field of view. On the other side, the glowing tube of the Avenue stretched back the way he came, across an open plain of fuzzy tubes as far as the haze would let him see.
Yanking on both thumbs, he recalled the first rule of survival in E Space. When in doubt about a stranger, be quiet and find out what it is, before it finds out about you.
“Identification? Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
The pilot program hesitated for only a moment. “The object is unknown. It is approaching from within the transition zone.”
From the dark cave in front of him! That ruled out ducking in there to hide. Harry whirled, looking desperately for an idea.
“We need to get out of sight,” he muttered. “But where?”
“I cannot answer, unless we fly. Have you worked out a way yet, Harvey?”
“No I haven’t, damn you!”
“The bogey is getting closer.”
Harry brought his fists down on the armrests. It was time to try something, anything.
“Go to the wall!”
The station responded with an agile gallop. Thrusting his arms and legs into the manual control sleeves, Harry shouted.
“I’m taking over!”
As the platform reached the sheer cliff, he made two stilt-legs reach out, slapping their broad feet against the smooth surface.
Harry held his breath.…
Then, as naturally as if it had been designed for it, the station reared up and began climbing the wall.
Alvin’s Journal
I MUST HURRY THROUGH THIS JOURNAL ENTRY. no time for polishing. No asking the autoscribe to fix my grammar or suggest fancy words. We’ve already boarded one of Streaker’s salvaged Thennanin boats, and our deadline to cast off comes in less than a midura. I’ve got to get this down fast, so a duplicate can remain behind.
I want Gillian Baskin to keep a copy, you see, because we don’t have any idea if this little trip of ours is going to work. We’re being sent away in hopes the boat will make it to safety while Streaker enters a kind of peril she’s never seen before. But things could turn out the other way around. If we’ve learned anything during our adventures, it’s that you can’t take stuff for granted.
Anyway, Dr. Baskin gave me a promise. If she makes it, and we don’t, she’ll see about getting my journal published on Earth, or somewhere. That way even if I’m dead at least I’ll be a real author. People will read what I wrote, centuries from now, and maybe on lots of worlds.
I think that’s so uttergloss, it almost makes up for this separation, though saying good-bye to the friends we made aboard ship is almost as hard as it was leaving my family behind on Jijo.
Well, one of the crew is going with us, to fly the little ship. Dr. Baskin is giving us her own best pilot, to make sure we get safely to our goal.
“It doesn’t look as if we’ll need a crackerjack space surfer where we’re going,” she told us. “But you kids
