The Edge of Forever Read online

  They were climbing now, he knew. Climbing into the Hills of the Dead where the natives buried their lifeless friends and the wind whistled through the mountains. Torrents of rain water gushed in mighty rivers down the hillsides and lightning hissed in the sky. Jonston held on.

  Suddenly, it was over. They were out of it and Dale Jonston could only stand numbly and wait for feeling to return to his battered body. He stood there, soaked to the skin, and looked out at the raging storm. Gradually, he became aware of the fact that he was in a cave. Someone put a bowl of hot liquid in his cold hands and he drank it mechanically.

  Lkani thought ahead and they were waiting.

  The fluid was strong and warm and good, like a cross between a heavy soup and a sweet liquor. It picked him up amazingly and he began to feel almost human again.

  “We haven’t much time,” Lkani said.

  “I’m O.K.—let’s go.”

  They started into the cave and Dale Jonston noted with surprise that the air was dry and warm. There must be some sort of a force field across the cave entrance, he reasoned. Simple natives indeed! And yet the smooth floor of the cave seemed to be completely free from mechanical contrivances of any sort; the blue-skinned people cooked over roaring wood fires and evidently made their homes in smaller, branching caves. Force fields and caves, mind reading and a primitive social structure—Dale Jonston shook his head at the mounting paradoxes.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Can’t explain,” Lkani answered shortly. “Trying to keep the man from pulling the rods on that pile.”

  Coercive thought projection, Jonston’s mind observed.

  He followed Lkani without comment through the cave. The sounds of the storm were muted by distance now, but far ahead of him he could hear the muffled roar of a swollen underground river. He tried not to think of Moreland at the Post—face too pale, eyes too bright, with his finger on the trigger of eternity. If that pile cut loose—

  It was all up to Lkani now. Dale Jonston accepted the situation as it was, without trying to assert a meaningless authority of his own. He knew superior intelligence when he saw it and he was ready to cooperate. He followed the native tensely and kept his eyes open. Lkani, he noticed, had picked up a tubular device of some sort that looked like an uncommonly thick flashlight with a pistol grip attached.

  * * *

  Primitive man, Jonston thought, laughing at himself.

  The sound of the river was closer now and they quickened their steps. Why are we going alone? Jonston wondered. Why don’t the rest of them come with us? A part of his mind sensed the truth: I’ve got to be the one who does the job. Lkani will make it possible, but I’ve got to do it. Why?

  They passed a branching cave that was larger than the others and Jonston looked inside. It was brightly lighted from within and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a slim tower of silver that strained toward the dark heavens above.

  A spaceship—in a cave!

  Lkani went on and Jonston stayed right behind him. Abruptly, the air turned cold and moist; there was no gradation from warm to cold—it was just suddenly and precisely cold. There was still light in the cave, coming from a faint mineral glow in the rocks.

  Jonston shivered and kept on going, his mind beginning to stagger under the strange import of the things that he had seen. The churning roar of the river washed chillingly through the damp cave and phantom echoes shuddered among the rocks.

  Time, he knew, was running out.

  The river hissed by like a great serpent below them, fat and swollen with tons of rain and hurling itself angrily at the walls of its rock prison. Dale Jonston stood with Lkani and looked uneasily at the narrow ledge of sharp rock that wound along above the boiling torrent.

  “That the way?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance.

  Lkani nodded and swung down to the ledge, holding carefully to the metal tube. Jonston trembled in his wet clothes and followed him

  “You’ve got me all wrong, friend,” he panted, “I’m an ETS man—not the Human Fly.”

  Lkani smiled and kept on going. Jonston took a deep breath and tried to cling to the slippery rocks. The churning river tumbled wickedly below them, filling the cavern with booming spray. He was cold and afraid and he felt very small. He tried to joke to himself, as men always do when they feel death at their throat. But nothing is very funny when you’re walking the Last Mile.

  Time ceased to be as they clawed and fought their way along the treacherous ledge. Their fingers were cut and bleeding and their exhausted muscles were numb with fatigue. The world was the next rock, the next curve, the next inch. Below them, the black river chanted its song of hate—and waited.

  Jonston gasped with relief as Lkani turned off into a cave that branched away from the river. He stood gratefully still for a long minute, getting his wind and listening to the roar of the cheated torrent. His chest ached with strain and his torn clothes were streaked with blood where he had touched them with his hands.

  “Come on,” Lkani said.

  They ran through the comparatively dry cave, forcing their bodies as if they were something apart from them, like automatons in which their minds temporarily resided. Lkani still carried the tube in his hand and he set a murderous pace. Jonston kept up with difficulty, breathing in short, painful jerks of air. His mind was a spotty screen of black and white upon which Moreland’s face was stamped in livid flame. Time—there couldn’t be any more time.

  * * *

  Lkani stopped, his chest heaving. He stood rigidly with his eyes closed. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Jonston watched silently, fighting to get his breath. The great river was a dark murmur behind them.

  “All right,” Lkani whispered. “We’re directly under the pile room, and he’s up there. I’ll open a hole and you get him—and don’t miss.”

  Jonston set himself, his heart beating wildly. Lkani aimed the metal tube at an angle toward the upper part of the cave wall. He set two dials very carefully and pressed the switch.

  There wasn’t a sound—but a spherical section of rock ceased to be. It simply wasn’t there any more. Dale Jonston hurled himself into the hole and hoisted himself through.

  * * *

  The scene that confronted him was like a picture that he had seen many times before. He had imagined it so intensely that every detail was familiar to him. The indicators set in the lead shield were gyrating feverishly and the very air in the glaringly white room was tensely charged. Moreland crouched at the door, his too bright eyes staring out of his too white face.

  He screamed when he saw Jonston and threw himself crazily at the lead shield, clawing for the damping rods. Jonston caught him with a flying tackle—and Moreland exploded like a wild thing in his arms. He shrieked and tore and lashed out with superhuman strength. Something hit Jonston on the side of the head and white lights danced in his brain.

  Jonston wrenched loose somehow and fell to the floor. He rolled and got up again, sick and dizzy. Moreland was rushing in, screaming his hate, his fingers tensed like white claws. Jonston backed away, calling on reserves of power he wasn’t sure he possessed.

  One punch, he thought desperately. One punch is all I’ve got.

  Moreland loomed up in front of him and Jonston threw his punch from the heels up. It smacked into Moreland’s face with a sickening crunch. The shock of the blow traveled back through Jonston’s arms and went off with a white puff in his brain.

  That was the last thing he remembered.

  “You’ve been out for thirty-six hours,” Lin Carlson said.

  Dale Jonston looked around shakily. He was in his own bed in the Post and his body ached dully. The light from the floor lamp splashed whitely across Lin Carlson’s face.

  “Lkani,” he said, not recognizing his own voice. “Where’s Lkani?”

  “He went back across the swamp after he unlocked the door of the pile room—that tunnel the natives dug caved in.”

  “I see,” Jonston said, n
ot seeing at all. Tunnel caved in? That was nonsense—

  “Sure glad to see you awake again,” Carlson smiled. “You really saved our necks, Dale. If you hadn’t fixed those damping rods, we’d all be in the unhappy hunting ground for sure.”

  I never touched those rods, Jonston thought.

  “The credit belongs to Lkani,” he said.

  “He’s some native, I’ll say.”

  “Yeah—some native.”

  “He left a note for you,” Carlson said, handing him a sealed envelope. “And we’ve got Moreland doped to the gills—we’ll send him back on the first ship to Earth. Maybe they can do something for him.”

  “Everything else O.K.?”

  “Guess so—except that none of us quite understands what happened. Lkani didn’t do much explaining and—”

  “Tell you all about it some day, Lin. Right now, I wonder if you’d go tell the cook to scare up some breakfast for me? I’m half starved.”

  “Will do,” Carlson said, getting to his feet. “See you later.”

  He left the room and Dale Jonston was alone. He twisted his bruised body over in the bed and tore open the letter. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. There were two sentences on the paper:

  “There was no atomic explosion—that is what counts. Stop and think and you will understand.”

  Dale Jonston fumbled for his pipe, filled it with fragrant tobacco, and lit it. He closed his eyes and relaxed, inhaling the smoke slowly. Lkani, he sensed instantly, had somehow planted a message in his brain. Or perhaps he was in contact now from across the swamp—

  No matter. It came softly into his mind—softly but with bell-like clearness.

  You are an intelligent man, the voice spoke in his mind. You cannot see two and two and fail to put them together to make four. We have gambled on your intelligence and your discretion—and we know that you will act accordingly, both for our people and for your own.

  You saw force fields and spaceships, telepathy and a tool that realigns the dimensional plane of atoms. You must have guessed that we are a part of that civilisation which you know only as the Others. Much that may seem mysterious to you is not strange at all; like so many things, it is relatively simple once you know the facts.

  You have had difficulty in associating what appears to be a primitive culture with an advanced civilization, but that is only because you have confused complexity with progress. Your own anthropologists have known for many years that simple cultures are often better integrated than your own, and better serve the needs of the individual. It has been a truism of your people that you have knowledge and refuse to apply it.

  If you will stop and think about it, the “Time of the Terror” is quite as graphic a term as “A Psychological State of Tension Induced by Periodic Storms”—but I will not trouble you with an analysis of why we live as we do. We are happy and that, after all, is the only valid test.

  We are but a tiny part of a tremendous civilization that spans the galaxy. Cultural maturity must be attained before a people can become a part of such an association—and there are many different types of civilizations involved. For example, we do not manufacture our own spaceships; our contributions are along other lines.

  We have been watching Earth for centuries, waiting. Your presence here on Rohan is not entirely your own doing—it is one of a series of tests. You see the problem: a tense conflict situation with atomic energy readily available. There was no atomic catastrophe—and it was prevented by your own efforts. You asked for help and got it—and that, too, showed intelligence on your part.

  You will understand, Dale Jonston, why this knowledge must stop with you. Your people are not yet ready to face the situation that exists, and unless they work their problems out for themselves they can never attain the stability that is essential for galactic co-operation. But the time is rapidly approaching—and you will live to see the day when mankind sets forth on an adventure beyond its wildest dreams.

  For we are not the only civilisation in the universe.

  That was all.

  Dale Jonston opened his eyes. His pipe had gone out and he put it aside. It was too much to assimilate all at once. He looked around his room. The floor lamp threw dark shadows on the log walls. He thrilled with knowledge.

  Not the only civilization in the universe—

  Beyond the Others—what?

  He shook his head, suddenly conscious of a strangeness in the air.

  Something was wrong.

  He got out of bed and stood still, listening. There wasn’t a sound. That was it. Silence.

  He walked shakily over to the window and pressed the button that changed the glass from opaque to clear. Mottled sunlight splashed into the room. He looked up into the sky where the massed black clouds were splitting and being forced apart by slanting rays of flame that transformed the sky into a brilliant mass of color—red and yellow and green, cold silver and warm gold, the clouds rolled by and the light came through. He opened the window and drank in the fresh, clean smell of the breeze that murmured in from the marshes.

  It had been a tough climb up from Earth to the edge of forever, he thought—but it was a climb that had to be made.

  He heard laughter drift up from around the Post and somewhere a guitar began to play. A rhythmic voice started an old, old song:

  “Oh, I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow,

  Where the sleet don’t fall and the wind don’t blow,

  In the Big Rock Candy Mountains—”

  Dale Jonston smiled happily.

  “There’s a lake of stew and of whisky, too,

  You can paddle all around in a big canoe,

  In the Big Rock Candy Mountains—”

  The storm was over.

  The End.

 

 

  Chad Oliver, The Edge of Forever

 

 

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