Appointment at Bloodstar

Book 392: Gateway Essentials

by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Stephen Goldin, Stephen Goldin

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

The Empire's boldest agents - Jules and Yvette d'Alembert - blast off against the most dangerous conspiracy in the Galaxy. But even the lightning-powers inherited from their triple-gravity planet are no match for their adversary, the beautiful and ruthless star-warrior called...Lady A.

Release date: June 24, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 152

Sample

The man stood in the darkened room, nervously awaiting the events to come. His compact body, product of a high-gravity world, was clad in a skin-tight bodysuit that allowed maximum freedom of movement. He had spent the past four months preparing for this moment, and now all his acquired knowledge would be put to the ultimate test. For better or worse, the outcome of this trial would affect the rest of his career. His lips were dry, no matter how often he extended his tongue to moisten them.

Suddenly a bright light shone straight into his eyes. Even as he blinked, some instinct told him he was an easy target standing up here in the glare. Without even knowing where he was going, he crouched and sprang forward in the direction of the light. As he did so, he heard the buzzing sound of a stun-gun, but felt none of the effects. Had he remained where he was, the test would have been over the instant it had begun.

Now that he was moving, he realized that his only hope of passing was to remain in motion. There would be more traps ahead to overcome, and he dared not slow down to let them reach him. Safety, he had been taught, lay in speed. But not blind speed; his reflexes had to be in a complete linkage with his brain to achieve the finesse that many delicate situations required. He had to think as he moved, so that thought and deed could be accomplished as close to simultaneously as possible.

He knew of only one thing in this darkness besides himself – the light that was still shining almost directly into his eyes. As long as that light was on him he would be in constant danger. It made sense, therefore, to move toward the light and put it out of commission before the stun-gun’s owner put him out of commission.

His leap forward brought him down on his right shoulder. He rolled as he’d been taught and came up in a low crouch, prepared to move again. He took a few quick steps to his right, then zigzagged back to his left. The short buzzes of the stunner kept sounding out, proving that he was far from home free; but by keeping his movements in a random pattern, his would-be destroyer was unable to hit him.

The light was much closer now. One more small leap took him to a point just beside it. It turned out to be a small spotlight some thirty centimeters in diameter. Lifting his foot in an arc that would have made a ballet dancer jealous, he gave the bulb a vicious kick. The plastic covering shattered and the light burned out instantly, leaving him once more in a darkness broken only by the blue spot before his eyes – the after image of the spotlight.

The sound of the stunner ceased with the extinguishing of the light. The man on trial moved away from the spotlight once more and paused for a few deep breaths, waiting for the next development to break. He did not have to wait long.

Lights came on all around him – not the blinding glare of a spotlight, but a diffuse glow that illuminated all the surroundings. The man blinked and looked suspiciously around.

To his left, the room he had just traversed in order to reach the spotlight was still dark. Before him was a corridor three meters wide and about forty long; at the far end was a doorway to another room. The walls on either side of the corridor were six meters high – too tall for him to jump over even in this gravity that was forty percent of what he considered normal. There were only two directions in which he could move: either back the way he had come or down this new corridor.

The decision was made for him by a blaster bolt that sizzled the air and burned into the ground at his feet. It came out of the blackness he had just left; flying into the face of that kind of armament when another course presented itself would be tantamount to suicide. Without hesitation, the man chose to proceed down the corridor.

This path was scarcely safe either, though. He had hardly begun to traverse it when he found objects springing up in his way. First a pile of boxes rose from the floor, completely blocking the path. There was no way to go around them, so he began climbing over the pile. To complicate matters still further, light beams seared out at him. They were intended to stimulate blaster bolts, and the man got the message instantly. There was to be no tarrying in this corridor, either.

His climb became a scramble as he finally reached the top of the pile of boxes. Not standing on ceremony, he jumped down to the ground again, narrowly missing the row of sharp knives that sprang up from the ground just as he leaped. More of the light beams were firing at him, making a realistic crackling sound as they passed by.

He ran at top speed, his eyes surveying the path before him in a series of darting glances. He’d gone nearly ten meters without further incident when he noticed that one patch of flooring was a slightly different color than the rest. In midstride just before he reached it, his back foot kicked out, lifting him in an off-balance leap over the one-meter patch of discoloration. He landed awkwardly on the other side, scrambled to his feet and continued on before the light beams had a chance to zero in on him. In one desperate dash he made it the rest of the way down the corridor and turned to the right through the doorway into the next room.

Without warning he felt the ground go out from under him. As he fell, he hit a body of water with an enormous splash. He submerged for an instant, then came up gasping for air. The water was icy, a cold shock to his tensed nervous system; it left a briny taste on his tongue and stung at his eyes as he tried to look around and get his bearings in this new environment.

The room was dimmer than the corridor had been, but still light enough to see by. The door through which he had entered had slid automatically shut, and the ceiling had lowered to just half a meter above the surface of the water, barely room for him to lift his head out and breathe. The walls were perfectly smooth, without a break or a handhold in them. There was no sign of an exit anywhere.

The man continued treading water as he puzzled out this dilemma. There had to be some way out of here; if it wasn’t above water, then it must be below. Taking a deep breath, he dipped below the surface to search for the exit.

The salt water stung at his eyes, so he had to proceed by feel. The room was small, basically a cube three meters on a side and all but filled with water. But the water could not occur here naturally; it had to come in from somewhere. He searched with his fingers for the vent.

There! His hands had been passing over the smooth surface of the walls when suddenly they encountered an empty space. Taking his time to explore the opening fully, he ran his fingers around the edge. The hole was not quite a meter wide and less than half of that high. It would be a tight squeeze, but he could manage to get out of there. He surfaced once more for another gasp of air, then dived and pushed himself through the opening.

At first, this narrow passageway continued level, and he despaired of its going anywhere; but, after a couple of meters, it started sloping upward. Finally his head broke the surface once more and he could breathe sweet, fresh air. Feeling both mentally and physically exhausted, he dragged himself up the ramp onto a dry floor, dreading whatever ordeal might be next in store for him.

There was only one door in the room, twenty meters away; unless he chose to return to the water he would have to go that way. With a sigh he set out – but, though the room was bare of furnishings, it was not as easy to cross as it first appeared.

An ultragrav unit had been planted under the floor, causing a gravity gradient as he approached the door. Where he had emerged from the water the force was only one Earth gravity, but it rose quickly as he moved. Within only a couple of meters it was up to two and a half gravities. That in itself would not have been too bad, because that was the gravitational strength on his own native world; but it went up still further as he progressed. Within another few meters it was up to five gees, and the doorway looked no nearer than it had before.

He felt as though he had a twin brother riding on his back. Coming on top of all his previous exertions, this was an added torture. Keeping his head up was a major effort; moving his limbs was a near miracle. He moved with a relentless determination to reach the portal. Once there, he was sure, the ultragrav would shut off and he would return to Earth standard gravity. He didn’t care what other traps might await him there; they couldn’t be any worse than this.

Still the gravity increased, and he sank slowly to his knees to crawl forward. Although the floor looked perfectly level, it felt uphill all the way.

At seven gravities his eyes were refusing to focus. He continued forward out of habit and willpower, rather than by any conscious plan. Even holding himself up on his hands and knees seemed too much of an effort. He slid down on his belly and pulled himself along. Sometimes he felt he was barely making any progress at all – but he did move forward, however slowly.

After a dozen eons the force on his body suddenly eased. Startled, he looked around and found that he had passed through the doorway into a well-lit room beyond. There were two chairs and a desk there; the desktop was littered with papers. Before him stood his teacher, George Wilson, in uniform, looking down on him with a smile on his face. ‘Congratulations,’ Wilson said. ‘You seem to have made it in relatively one piece.’ He extended a hand to the man’s prostrate form. ‘Would you like some help up?’

‘No, thanks. I can manage.’ The testee pulled himself shakily to his feet and, at his teacher’s nod, walked over to one of the chairs and sat down.

Wilson took the other chair and started shuffling through the papers. ‘Now for the evaluation,’ he said. ‘You didn’t do too badly, actually. You made very good time against the spotlight. You were a bit clumsy jumping over the electrified plate in lap two, but results are more important than form in something like that. You were quick to find your way out of the water chamber, and you had the stamina to pull your way through the grav room. Which leaves only …’

And before he had said another word he was pulling a blaster from a concealed holster. He was still smiling, but now the smile seemed cold and heartless. Wilson would have loved nothing better than to direct a blaster beam straight through his student’s heart.

Tired though he was, the testee reacted to this new and totally unexpected threat. All through his training, his teachers had warned him against complacency. ‘Expect anything at any time,’ they told him. ‘In our business, you won’t go far wrong that way.’

From a totally relaxed position, the testee quickly pushed his chair backwards and slid under the desk. Arching his back upwards, he lifted the entire desk off the floor and slammed it into his instructor. Wilson was prepared for the trouble and knew how to fall. The blaster flew from his hand and landed on the far side of the room. Both men scrambled for it, but the student got there first. Picking up the weapon, he aimed it squarely at his teacher. ‘Khorosho,’ he said between pants, ‘maybe now you’ll tell me what’s going on.’

In the control center, a host of technicians kept a careful watch on the events of the test, making sure everything started when it should and that nothing, no matter how dangerous it seemed, would cause any serious harm to the participant. The purpose was not to kill him, but to discover exactly what his capabilities were in field action. The Service of the Empire had to know what its agents could do before it sent them out on their assignments. With the safety and security of the entire Empire at stake, it could hardly afford any miscalculations.

Overlooking the rows of technicians monitoring their instruments was a VIP booth, where special visitors could also witness the proceedings. At present there were three very interested spectators: two women and a man.

One of the women was a tall, slender aristocrat with long black hair and a handsome face. Helena von Wilmenhorst was the daughter of, and chief assistant to, the Head of the Service of the Empire. Despite the fact that she was only twenty-one years old, she was rapidly maturing into one of the most capable planners and administrators the Service had ever seen – thanks to the able tutelage of her father. Helena owed her life to the man now being tested, and no power in the Universe would have kept her away from observing his final tests.

The other two people in the booth were similarly indebted to the young man and likewise had a great deal of interest in the outcome. Jules and Yvette d’Alembert, the brother-sister team from the heavy gravity planet DesPlaines, were the top two agents in SOTE’s mighty arsenal. Not only were they naturally strong and quick, as people from high-grav worlds tended to be, but they’d had a rigorous training almost from the moment of their births that few people in the Galaxy were privileged to undergo. The d’Alembert family were the owners of, and principal performers in, the Circus of the Galaxy.

In addition to being the top entertainment attraction on any planet it played, the Circus had another attribute: almost since its inception centuries ago, it had been the ultra-top secret right arm of SOTE. Jules and Yvette had been the star aerialists for years before leaving to move up to their true jobs as agents of the Emperor.

They did not look physically imposing. Jules d’Alembert stood only a hundred and seventy-three centimeters tall, though he massed a respectable hundred kilograms; his sister Yvette was ten centimeters shorter and thirty kilos lighter. But the two of them were in a more superb condition, both mentally and physically, than any mere mortal had a right to expect. On the thousand-point test, Jules was the only person living to have scored a perfect thousand. Yvette was only an eyelash behind him at 999.

Now they watched eagerly as their friend, Pias Bavol, went through the final stages of that same test. Although they had met him less than five months ago, the young man had won their friendship and, indeed, saved their lives in a couple of situations on their last assignment. Though he had not had the lifetime background in undercover work that they had, he showed such a proclivity for it that induction into the Service was a logical result. The fact that he and Yvette had fallen in love and were going to be married made it a necessary result as well.

The three spectators watched anxiously on their trivision monitors as Pias Bavol began his ordeal. Each of the three had undergone this on his own, and knew exactly how harrowing it could be. There was no passing or failing mark on the thousand-point test, particularly this final section. Pias Bavol had already done well enough on the written and aptitude tests to qualify for a good job with the Service. This test, though, would be crucial to his ultimate placement. If he ranked low in field skills, he would be assigned to some less demanding job in administration. Only the select few who could handle themselves well under such arduous conditions could be allowed to undertake field assignments that might put their lives in peril.

Helena laid a hand gently on Yvette’s shoulder. ‘I hope he makes it,’ she said. ‘I know you’d like to have him working with you in the field rather than staying at a desk job while you go out on assignments.’

Yvette nodded. ‘He’ll b. . .