servants had enough work) he got up to retrieve it and saw that it had rolled through a doorway — an aspect, in fact — one that he had only half-noticed on entering.
Now he noticed it. This world was very nice, very nice indeed. He poked his head through. There was a clean, bracing wind blowing through a stand of pines to the right. Well, they looked like pines, but they were orange. On second thought they didn’t look
Even with orange non-pine trees, the terrain reminded him of places in Utah or western Colorado. Except for the colors: bright turquoise-blue rocks. Copper compounds? And a sort of pink sky. Airborne dust particles, he guessed.
Actually it didn’t look a hell of a lot like anyplace he’d ever seen or visited. But it did look interesting. Sort of like photographs of a national park in Kodachrome-gone-mad.
He went back and fetched his gear. Wouldn’t hurt to step through and look around. He wouldn’t wander very far, not until he was sure this world was uninhabited. He could usually tell. Unpopulated worlds had a certain feel to them; and populated ones were sometimes all too unmistakable, especially those that succumbed to the temptations of technology (from stone axes to beverage cans). Litter was a trans-universal phenomenon.
He walked through the portal and out into a bright new world.
Yes, it was fairly obvious what he really wanted. Just a few days alone to ruminate and gather some wool. A little retreat to recharge the spiritual batteries. Had he really wanted adventure, he would have opted for an adventurous world, an inhabited one, a choice that would have necessitated research, reconnoitering, and extreme caution. To say nothing of breaching the language barrier, learning the customs, coming up with a convincing identity, and all that sort of undercover stuff. You couldn’t really go traipsing into an inhabited aspect — or any aspect — without adequate preparation. He had violated that rule enough to know how dangerous it could be.
He really liked this world. Snow-hooded peaks to the north, as he reckoned north, an orange forest to the south — aquamarine badlands in between. Vegetation was strange not only in color. He passed a bush with diamond-like nodules depending from thin stalks. Another plant looked like an avant-garde sculpture constructed of clear plastic tubing.
He stopped to take a compass heading. His directional guesses were fairly true. The mountains lay to the magnetic north. He’d head toward them and try to find that crystal mountain lake. He probably wouldn’t be able to eat the fish in the lake, though he had brought tackle and hand-line. This was hardly an Earth-like world, and the plant and animal proteins here probably didn’t match his body chemistry. In other words, most everything that might appear edible would not be. He’d be living out of his backpack for a week. But that he was perfectly willing to do. He’d brought the best in freeze-dried comestibles.
The air was temperate, but it would likely get cold at night. That was no problem, however, as he had a high-tech wonder of a one-man tent and a mylar-lined sleeping bag that was rated down to minus 35 degrees Celsius.
He hiked along for about ten minutes, keeping the sun to his left as he threaded his way around upthrusting strata of greenish-blue. Yellow streaking ran through the rocks.
As he was coming down into a shallow canyon, a loud report shattered the air and made him jump. It was quite unexpected.
He looked up. No thunderclouds, and he was momentarily mystified until he saw the contrail of a fast-moving object in the sky. The noise had been a sonic boom.
“Oh, damn.”
He’d have to head back. Despite his intuitions to the contrary, this world was not only inhabited but technologically sophisticated.
Nevertheless, for the moment he stayed, watching the thing make a harrowing high-g turn away from the sun and head back in his direction. It was an aircraft of some sort, and as it neared it looked rather like a small space shuttle. Silver-colored, compact and delta-winged, it was convincingly futuristic yet appeared eminently practicable.
But how was it going to set down? From his vantage point, Gene surveyed the available landing area. There wasn’t nearly enough. Not unless the thing had vertical-landing capability.
The craft was floating along now, circling the canyon, staying airborne against all aerodynamic odds, when by rights it should have gone plunging groundward in a stall. Its flight path looked wobbly. After making a complete circuit of the canyon, the silvery vehicle began its approach for a landing. The only sound it made was the faint whoosh of air over its gracefully curving surfaces.
At the last second, the craft went out of control and hit the floor of the canyon hard — and flipped over. Gene dove behind a rock. But there was no explosion.
He got up, slapped his pants clean, and looked toward the crash site. The craft was silent and still except for a cloud of dust rising from the wreckage. Nothing else moved in the canyon. He jogged toward the downed craft.
As he neared, he slowed to a cautious walk. No telling who the survivors — if any — were. There was no way of knowing
An oval hatch opened near the craft’s blunt nose, dilating like an iris. A sigh of escaping air came to Gene’s ears. He stopped. No one came out. He edged closer.
He peered into the interior. It was dark, and what was visible looked cramped and crowded with instrumentation. But there was room for him to enter, if he so decided.
He decided. He dropped his backpack and climbed through the hatch. Wires dangled in front of his face. He brushed them aside. Squeezing toward the nose, he walked gingerly over banks of instruments on the inverted overhead bulkhead.
Ahead, a human form hung upside down, snared in a tangle of straps, cables, and tubes. The pilot, he surmised, in a blue-and-silver pressure suit and transparent helmet. He got closer and bent over the still form.
It was a woman. And a very unusual-looking one. The hair, ghostly albino white, was cropped short. Her skin was suntan-dark, a Palm Beach mulatto. Her features were regular and broad, high cheekbones. Quite a striking face. A beautiful one, once you got used to the contrasts. He put his face close to hers and peered through the helmet. Her eyelids opened slightly.
She was no albino. Her eyes were the darkest blue he had ever seen. They were purplish-blue besides, and he thought he detected flecks of green. He looked her over. There was a bloodied rip in her suit along the rib cage.
He didn’t know quite what to do. He could not move her without risk of further serious injury, but he was reluctant to leave her hanging like this. She was obviously bleeding inside that suit. It would take at least twenty minutes to run back to the castle to get help, and a further twenty, minimum, before help arrived. He’d best get her down very gently, somehow, and then see what he could do to stabilize her with the first-aid stuff in the backpack. When he was sure she would last, he’d make a run to the castle.
He struggled out of the cabin, got the backpack, and went back inside, batting the same dangling wires out of the way. He went to her, knelt, and began unpacking.
Presently, he found the first-aid kit. He looked up and froze. He was staring into the business-end of a formidable-looking handgun.
Gene tilted his head to read her face. She was wide-eyed but not fearful. She looked angry. She said something in a language that sounded a cross between German and Latin, with a bit of Spanish thrown in for spice. When he didn’t answer she spoke again, barking some kind of order.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
She scowled. Then her eyelids fluttered. The barrel of the gun dropped, as did her head to the deck. She relapsed into semiconsciousness.
Slowly, he reached for the weapon. She let go of it easily, and he exhaled and put the thing aside after giving it a glance and marveling. It looked like what a laser gun should look like.
He drew his knife and set himself to the task of untangling her. It was a rough job. He resorted to sawing at the hoses with his hunting knife. The straps were made of even tougher material, but he finally managed to clear her of those and had to react quickly when her legs dropped.
He eased her to the deck and straightened up, took a breath. It was hot inside and getter hotter. He worried about spilling fuel and the possibility of a sudden fire, and had a sudden flash of imagining what it would be like to
