"Come in, Seven."
"Seven to Yard Control. Can"t you do anything about this d.a.m.n weather?" Static lashed the loudspeaker.
"Take it up with the Union," said the Yard-master morosely. "That"s one thing you can"t blame on me.
Look, Pete, I"m re-routing you to the hump to take a load of empties across the main to the East yard.
Unless we get something out of here soon we"re liable to choke the yard completely."
"Right! Give me a time for crossing the main line. The gradient"s slipperier than h.e.l.l and I"d not care to be out there when an express comes through."
The Yard-master grunted. "You worry about the gradient and move out fast when the signal clears. I doubt if I can get more than a minute"s clearance across the main line at this hour of day."
In fact, the main-line controller gave him only a fifty second clearance. It was little enough, but it would have to suffice if Failway yard was to start to clear the specials in the further sidings. He took his cue from the pa.s.sing of the Atlantic President and gunned the signals as soon as the way was clear, overriding the safety trips which rebelled against such hairs-breadth operation. With agonising slowness numberSeven crawled from the gradient and edged on to and then across the main tracks. The Yard-master watched its progress on the illuminated board where the blocks of light traversing tangentially exaggerated its slowness.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the entry of the fast-freight into the sector panel, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the handset.
"Speed it up, Pete. I"ve got twenty seconds to clear the line."
Pete"s reply was unprintable but indicated that his was the major stake in the race to clear the line before the hundred and fifty miles an hour freighter cut his entourage in two.
For a moment it did not look as though number Seven would make it, then the "points cleared" indicator showed and the Yard-master thankfully thumbed home the levers to clear the main line, watching subconsciously for the repeater to confirm his action. The repeater stayed dead. At first the fact failed to register in his mind, and when it did he instantly slammed all signals to danger and leaped for the radio.
"Pete, are you clear?"
"Sure. Now on the down gradient pa.s.sing into the slipway."
"Something"s wrong with the b.l.o.o.d.y board. For Chris"sake see if you can see the main gantry and tell me what it"s reading."
Silence for a second, then: "All the fast down-lines are at clear."
"You sure? My board still gives the main-line routed to siding."
"That"s not what it says out here. Lord! If that fast freight goes down the gradient it"ll either derail or go clean through the other end."
His last words were swamped by the blare of a whistle. The fast-freight was speeding close.
A sudden squall hit the cabin, the pressure of the wind making it vibrate momentarily while the driving hail obscured all other sounds. The Yard-master jumped to his board to ascertain what was happening, and watched with unbelieving eyes as the lights winked out steadily, one by one, until the instrument was dead. In a corner of his shocked mind he had already ascertained the only possible explanation of how the board could fail in that particular way; somebody was below in the switching bay pulling out the fuses!
In the second he took to reach the door, catastrophe arrived. Like dark, solidified thunder, the fast-freight came off the main, down the gradient and thundered through the yard, its whistle sounding a mournful swan-song and its brakes burning uselessly in the face of its terrible momentum. The Yard-master forgot the switching bay and stumbled out into the storm, running with futile panic after the swiftly receding rear lamps as if he imagined he could catch them up and halt the unalterable. He was in time only to watch helplessly as the black thunderbolt disappeared into the solid bulk of Failway.
The freighter was doing over a hundred and thirty when it entered the loading platform. The brief horror of the loaders was pitifully short-lived. The locomotive ran the whole length of the bay and hit the end of the line with a driving crash which shook the whole building. It took away the hydraulic buffers, fifty feet of solid ramp and a considerable portion of the wall before the following rolling-stock hammered it together with a hail of debris into the river beyond. Had the rest of the train followed suit the damage would have been relatively slight, but the sudden check in momentum occasioned by the crash explosively telescoped the first wagons and made a convulsive caterpillar of those directly following.Eighty tons of girder left the sanctuary of a flat truck and took down three roof-supporting columns and a line of offices before it drove to rest. Another hurtling load twisted the huge gantry crane into a weeping, useless metal spider. A fifty-foot low-loader stood on end like a fantastic totem-pole and was shortly demolished by a cable truck whose monstrous drums, like cotton reels on a long jam, began a drunken route down from the moving mountain only to be swallowed by the grinding cataclysm.
The silence which followed was a terrible thing to hear.
The Yard-master overcame his fear. Running back into the signal cabin he paused momentarily at the switch-bay door. The door was open but the room was empty. The floor was littered with fuse cartridges torn from the boards, and much of the wiring had been broken as though with an axe. Only a few circuits still functioned. Long blue wires, which had no right to be there, looped across the interlock banks, feeding the fatal "line clear" signal to the main line and setting the points to crushing death. This was ingenious and planned destruction carried out with split-second timing and an uncanny knowledge of the working of the yard.
Upstairs, only one instrument still functioned - the telephone. Even as he was making the call the Yard-master imagined he saw the figure of a man running from shadow to shadow between the useless shunting lights, heading into Failway.
Dalroi followed hard on the heels of the disaster, intent on entering Failway before the security net had time to close. The grinding catastrophe had stamped its panic deep into the hearts of the Failway staff, and n.o.body was sure what had happened nor what, if anything, was still to follow. This was a situation Dalroi knew well how to play to advantage.
His objective was the bay where the immense cylinders of compressed and liquefied gases were loaded on goods-shuttles for transfer to the various transfinite levels. In the midst of the chaos he had no difficulty in pa.s.sing un.o.bserved. The goods shuttles were crude compared with their pa.s.senger-carrying counterparts, being simply laminated cylindrical hulls with elaborate vacuum-proof hatches. The loading process was automatic. A capsule on a bogie ran to location at the head of the loader, the prepared load was charged into the capsule and the hatches closed.
Dalroi estimated his chances and watched carefully the indicator which showed the programmed destination of the capsule. When Failway Two was signalled on the board he quelled a fleeting instinct to caution, and took the risk. Eight huge gas cylinders comprised the load, about half the capsule"s capacity.
When the charge entered the capsule Dalroi was on top, fighting to prevent his limbs from being crushed as the cylinders settled to the form of the hold. He had scarcely settled when he felt the deadly acceleration as the bogie sped up the outworld track, but the conditions were luxurious compared with the last time he had ridden a Failway bogie. Then: Foimp! Star scatter ... shiver ... inconceivable twisting ...
The copper-nickel hull of the capsule shunted the transfinite field and attenuated the twisting disproportionality into something merely conducive to insanity. There were strange lights in the darkness of the capsule hold and movements where there was nothing there to move. Dalroi watched fascinated as the hold appeared to grow shorter as if to crush him, and then longer, seeming to extend for about a mile.
Yellow-green coruscations sprayed off the metal, and his limbs heaved and jumped as his body bucked the trans-dimensional tides. His legs would grow large and hideous then wither to diminutive stumps; his head would seem to float like a balloon or become so heavy that he feared his skull would crack against the angry iron. He prayed the capsule would not enter a transfinite loop, for such distortions would then a.s.sume a permanence which nothing could reverse.
Once the walls became a mirror, and he lay breathless and perplexed in something which reminded himof the interior of a giant vacuum flask, watching his eyes and chin dissolve into each other and occasionally to wander from his features altogether. Then it was over. There was a check in momentum which almost broke his bones, the gas cylinders shifted dangerously under him, and dark normality swam back. He had arrived. The problem resolved simply to getting out without getting killed.
The capsule canted at an angle and the hatches flew open on a ramp, the gas cylinders sliding out. He stayed with the cylinders until he had formed a split-second idea of the situation, then he kicked himself upward to break the killing momentum and grasped at the nearest stationary object. He was near the head of the ramp, and the cylinders plummeted on below him while the downward movement of his body caused friction burns on his hands as he desperately strove to prevent himself following the iron bottles fifty feet to the foot of the slide. Fortunately he stopped before the burns became intolerable. A swift look over the edge of the slide told him of its trestle construction. He moved over the side quickly and was on the trestles and into the shadowy complexity of the supports before any of the crew below looked in his direction.
Even as he descended he was a.s.sessing the possibilities of sabotage. He had no doubt of his ability to bring the whole installation to ruins in about seven minutes flat, but on a transfinite pleasure level there could be close on a million lives at stake and any acts of sabotage must be so directed that if possible the innocent were permitted to escape.
The problem was how to force the Failway controllers to allow the exodus of the very people whose lives Failway used as a veiled threat for its continued existence. In spite of the bitterness inside him, Dalroi had no intention of becoming a ma.s.s murderer - except in the last extreme.
He stepped cautiously out into the oriental splendour of Failway Two. Tropical sunlight from an artificial sun blazed golden radiance on sandy streets. On all sides splendid architecture rose: palaces and temples, spires, turrets and minarets, domes, towers and terraced walks. Slender oriental water-gardens vied with majestic, ornamented buildings for pride of vista and excellence of spectacle. The best of the entire, old Orient had been delicately blended into a fantastic wilderness of wonder.
The fragile sensitivity of old China and j.a.pan sat serenely side by side with the splendid and the picturesque from Ceylon and the India that was. Myth and marvel; flowers of fable, rare and exotic; orchids and incredible fruits - all conspired with the scents of chianan and aloeswood and spice to fire the imagination with longing for a lost age of adventure.
Dalroi was suitably impressed. This was the fatal attraction of Failway which kept the visitors coming through its doors. Here, with the trade-winds blowing on his face, and the calm warmth of teak and sandalwood and tea, even Dalroi found it hard to concentrate on the anger in his heart. He had to remember objectively that the air came here as a liquefied gas boiling from immense pressure spheres, that the trade-winds were derived from hidden electrostatic jets, and that the broad and wonderful sun was a stabilised tritium plasma furnace. Even the imitation sea, on which plied junk and sampan and catamaran, was but the work of marvellous craftsmen.
He could understand now why public opinion would never support the campaigns to close Failway. This was a place for dreaming, and men do not give up their dreams willingly. Only in the gutter, from which the Failway labour force was conscripted, or in high places, where the political pressures were extreme, was the corroding influence of Failway truly appreciated. It needed a connoisseur of human frailty like Dalroi to know the uttermost depths of human misery and degradation which Failway scattered in its wake.
Dalroi was troubled by a sense of wrongness, something out of phase between the method and the intention, something alien. It seemed almost that the corruption which ensued from Failway practice wasdeliberate, as if the whole facade of Failway existed only to corrupt. In such a completely artificial and controlled environment the individual was more than usually subject to the pressures of deliberate manipulation. Dalroi, to whom individuality was sacred, knew all too well how strong those pressures were.
TWELVE.
The notice board read: STRATEGIC DEFENCE RESERVE.
REHABILITATION CENTRE.
This was fiction, as any who dared attempt to penetrate the defences to a sufficient depth would soon discover. The soldiers were not a fiction. These were battle-trained men on permanent loan from a crack commando unit, and the small carbines which they carried had hair triggers and no safety catches.
Inside the military perimeter was the wire, a broad barrier of barbed malice relieved only by the occasional T.V. pickup and the red warnings of a minefield in the no-man"s-land beyond. The electrified fence gave no such warnings. Only a very shrewd eye would read the green ceramic insulators on the posts as indicative of the violent, twisting electrocution which awaited the incautious hand. There were other devices too. Four towers covering the inner perimeter harboured the A.F.I. projectors, the mere scatter of whose radiation could reduce a brave man to a coward. In the path of the beam circuits the ground was baked to brick, and the blackened gra.s.s at the edge of the tracks sported curious growth mutations under the fierce irradiation. Over all, the pale-lilac ion cloud crackled with expectancy, guarding the reaches exposed only to the radar-watchful sky.
In the centre of the land enclosed by this fearful barricade stood one of the most secret installations in the world. All that was visible at the surface was a squat, white blockhouse giving entry to the many levels deep below the ground. In these deep chambers, shrouded with darkness and with mystery, was the home of the legendary Black Knights.
The emergency conference was convened in the briefing room six hundred feet below. The a.s.sembly at the table was about as varied as one could imagine: Baron Cronstadt, the man of power and authority, whose way of life was chiselled into his commanding features; Professor Hildebrand, whose lean asceticism but emphasised his intellectual prowess; Presley, whose staring eyes and unalterable piety proclaimed his fanaticism in the service of a deity whose name was Obedience and Self-Denial; lastly, the Monitor, whose appearance was deceptively youthful and whose pleasant mien gave little hint of the ruthlessness with which he shattered his enemies and which had carried him swiftly into the top echelon of the Black Knights. Only one man was missing from the group - Gormalu.
The atmosphere was tense. The dark guards around the periphery emphasised the fact that, this time, the members of the Cronstadt committee were not a.s.sembled of their own volition. The Monitor"s eyes were grim.
"For some little time there has been an unusual but fruitful a.s.sociation between the Black Knights and the Cronstadt committee. That a.s.sociation has now ended."
"You have a reason for this about-face?" asked Cronstadt abruptly.
"I do. A Black Knight never accepts anything or anyone at face value. Your own status has been under constant review. I now have sufficient reason to d.a.m.n the lot of you.""Specifically?"
"We"ve been betrayed. Gormalu has sold us out."
There was a stunned silence for several seconds as the others absorbed the impact of the statement.
"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Cronstadt"s brow was a cloud of thunder.
"Where is he now?"
"We think he"s in Failway. He had a brush with Dalroi and went straight over to the other side. In the circ.u.mstances I don"t blame him, but it"s my guess that he always was their man. Cronstadt, I"m holding you responsible for his default."
Cronstadt shrugged. "He always was a bad risk," he said, "but his knowledge of Failway was invaluable.
I don"t see how we could have done otherwise."
"That remains to be seen," said the Monitor, "but right now we"re faced with a pretty desperate situation.
Gormalu helped us to place most of our undercover team in Failway. From the silence which has ensued since Gormalu went, I doubt if many of them still survive. My G.o.d! What a b.l.o.o.d.y rat-trap this is!"
"What do you intend to do?" asked Cronstadt.
"What can we do? It"s criminal to sit still and lunatic to make a move. If I were to throw sufficient men at Failway I might even win - just about. But I doubt if many of the four million visitors now in Failway would come out alive. My hands are tied by this threat of ghastly retribution. Our only hope now is Dalroi, and G.o.d alone knows what"s happened to him. After that trick he pulled at Consedo ... "
"Consedo," said Cronstadt. "I"ve been thinking about that."
"So have I," said the Monitor. "Now I want to go over it again because the facts aren"t in very good agreement with the theory. One of you sons of b.i.t.c.hes is holding-out on me. What happened at Consedo was no ordinary act of destruction. It was something new. No hard radiation, no radioactive contamination, no fall-out - just a pure blaze of energy with the release controlled mainly down into the infra-red and visible bands. SciTech tentatively suggest the reaction was that between normal and contra-terrene molecules. You realise what that implies?"
"Yes," said Cronstadt. "It"s a d.a.m.ned impossibility."
"Precisely. To do it you"d need to be able both to produce and handle c-t material, and to be able to control the mode of energy release. The whole concept of such a reaction is still in the realm of the wildest unknowns."
He paused to lend emphasis to his point. "Frankly, this hints at a knowledge of physical principles far beyond anything dreamt of by our technology. It"s the product of a completely new order of science.
Dalroi was bright, but he was not that sort of genius. So how did he come by that sort of knowledge?
Hildebrand, you"re the expert on Dalroi"s brain. Suppose you start explaining."
Hildebrand clenched and reclenched his exquisite fingers. "What am I supposed to answer? You know the theory as well as I. In prehistory the progenitors of the human animal had a fantastic core of survival energy, which became overlaid by evolving brain processes. Dalroi has a quirk which gives him direct access to this darker side of the mind when facing a survival threat. It raises his natural survival potential from the unusually high to the phenomenal.""Go on!" said the Monitor.
"The rest you know already. It was my prediction that exposure to repeated survival threats would increase Dalroi"s access to the dark-side areas. The more he was. .h.i.t the harder he would bounce until he became the nearest thing to an unstoppable force that human flesh could contain."
"Now I want the part you have not told me," said the Monitor. "I want the part that explains Consedo."
"Nothing explains it. Dalroi"s a remarkable individual even without the dark-side access. He has a streak of hatred a mile wide and such natural level of mental energy that a session of psycho-a.n.a.lysis with him made the a.n.a.lyst feel he"d been in contact with a sheet-rolling mill. Dalroi"s a throwback to the hard core-stock of humanity. As a fighting animal he"s probably a h.e.l.l of a lot tougher and more cunning than most others in the world today, but that shouldn"t give him any advantage over any other mortal save that he could kill you before you could think about going for your gun."
"He came back out of transfinite s.p.a.ce," observed Cronstadt suddenly. "He didn"t do that by conditioned reflex action. There"s a h.e.l.l of a lot we still don"t understand here. What sort of creature is Dalroi, anyway?"
"Don"t ask me to explain," said Hildebrand, in a voice suddenly both quiet and far-away. "I"ve told you all it"s safe for you to know."
The Monitor was on him in a trice. "So you do know something! Tell me now, or I"ll make you sorry you were born. What else did Dalroi find in the dark side of his mind?"
"If I told you," said Hildebrand sadly, "you could not believe it, and even if you believed there is nothing you could do. You"re such little people and even the universe is not quite as you imagine."
"Christ!" said the Monitor. "I"ll give you riddles!" He motioned for a guard. "Take this man away and hold him carefully. I shall need him for interrogation. Have the necessary apparatus prepared."
"Now," he turned triumphantly back to the table, "has anyone else anything to add to that?"
Presley looked up, his staring eyes proclaiming the fanatical fire which haunted his spirit.
"There is a curious correspondence between descriptions of transfinite s.p.a.ce and cla.s.sical ideas on the nature of h.e.l.l; the eternal winds, the torment, the formlessness, the consuming fire which never actually destroys. If this is so then someone at the dawn of legend must also have gone there and returned, in order to leave such a description in our heritage. It is possible there is another way in and out of transfinity without using the Failway apparatus - some special act of faith or resolution or despair."
"It"s an interesting speculation," said the Monitor, "but we haven"t time for games."
"I wasn"t playing. I was thinking of Gormalu. I have never seen a man more surely tainted with the breath of Hades. Where did he come from? What made him blind?"
"You"re wasting time," said the Monitor. "What"s this to do with Dalroi?"
"Dalroi also went to transfinite h.e.l.l, and returned with gifts of devilry. But how did he come back? And if he came alone, how many others have trodden the same paths, and for what reason? I would hazard a guess that we are up against a mystery the answer to which is not to be found in this universe: an answer that lies somewhere at the end of a journey the price of which is madness."
Dalroi"s exploration of Failway Two was rapid and systematic, for he knew a crisis was coming. Therewas no nailing the exact sensation: an electric tension in the air, a tightening of the scalp, the unease of watching eyes which were never really there - whatever it was, it nagged in Dalroi"s bones, an uninformed instinct to beware. Dalroi had more sense than to disregard a hunch, and primed the radiation pistol in his pocket. He sensed trouble, though from what quarter he could not determine.
A moment later he knew. The artificial sun coughed and died and he was thrown into a world of utter darkness; a world of sound without sight, movement without possibility of seeing the mover. Gormalu"s world!
He choked back his first impulse to panic and wondered if blindness had struck him without warning, but a rising tumult from the area around him told of others similarly placed. He drew a boron match and rasped it into life. The flame threw back the shadow in a circle about him, and others swiftly moved forward, attracted like moths to the diminutive flickering flame.
"Listen!" said Dalroi urgently. "The sun has failed. Don"t try to run. Find lights wherever you can: start bonfires and wait patiently. Don"t move too far until it"s light enough to see."
A few more also had matches, and the street began to weave with erratic sparks of fire. Others, less prepared, fought their way from dark places to reach transient flames, which died before the journey was complete. Panic was spreading as the need for light struck home in the hearts of the bewildered a.s.sembly. The murmur of complaint and bewilderment mounted like an ever increasing hymn of fright Soon, to strike a match was to become the centre of a vicious, screaming scrum fighting for possession of the tiny lighted splint.
People began to run in the darkness, blundering into iron and masonry, striking frenziedly at flesh and stone and empty air; running no one knew to where, or from what, or anything except that their souls were terrified of staying in the darkness.
Gormalu"s world! A blind man"s revenge! The idea forced itself into Dalroi"s mind. The absence of lighting in the streets and buildings was itself a sinister suggestion that this was no normal mishap. Even the loudspeakers were mute, yet the power was not wholly dead for the deep throb of the ventilators, so low as to be inaudible except by conscious recognition, continued its sullen grumble.
Gormalu"s world! By now Dalroi was certain. This was a piece of carefully calculated maliciousness.
Gormalu was here in Failway, somewhere on this level. The diabolical doctor, unseen, malignant, was enjoying his mastery. h.e.l.l was at hand and the Devil had come into his own.
Dalroi steeled himself in the darkness, pressed flat against a wall, killing the fear born of eyes that could tell him nothing, forging precise details of the scene from memory. A habit of detailed observation gave him many facets of information an untrained man would miss. Somewhere to his right there should be a service ladder to the roof. He touched the column of steel with his hand and began climbing upward in the darkness.