Beyond the Void

by John E. Muller, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

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

Synopsis

Inexplicable electro-magnetic disturbances threw the Avon's passengers and crew into confusion as their ship was dragged off course. Collision with a huge asteroid seemed inevitable and the Avon was abandoned.
Ferdin escaped in a life capsule and landed - more dead than alive - on the unexpected planetoid. To his surprise, a powerful pseudo-grav generator and a vast atmosphere and humidity plant simulated terrestrial conditions with uncanny accuracy.
The asteroid was inhabited and strangely in-habited at that! There was Rosper - a remote, aloof, scientific genius, whose past held strange secrets. There was his beautiful unbelievably innocent daughter, Darmina, who knew no other home but the strange asteroid; and above all there was a creature called Canbail - apparently some strange life-form indigenous to the asteroid! A particular gestalt involving Ferdin and many others took place under the calculating supervision of the Leira Mark 2, the most frighteningly potent of Rosper's inventions.

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE Avon was a masterpiece of thirtieth century astrogational engineering. A long silver dart, she flicked almost casually, with the power of her great rockets, between one planet and another. The ship was accustomed to travel in smooth, curved ellipses between earth and the colonists who had made a tentative yet purposeful foothold on Mars and Venus. The Avon made the Earth-Venus run with a great deal more comfort and confidence than she moved in the opposite direction. There were occasions—and this was one of them—when the mathematicians and course plotters, together with their vast computers, decided that a long, looping parabola into the asteroid belt beyond Mars, and then back, was the most useful and economical method of travelling from A to B, or more exactly, from E. to M.

The intercom rattled out with sudden violence.

“Number Two!” The captain, a tall, thin, enigmatical astrogator of the remote and unapproachable variety, appeared momentarily on the vision screen of the intercom unit.

“There’s heavy magnetic disturbance. I want all fields out.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain’s face faded from the intercom. Number Two, shorter, squarer, and somehow more human looking than the skipper, began relaying orders to the Avon’s personnel. He flicked the screen on again, saluted smartly and said:

“All fields on, sir. Any response?”

“No, blast it. Thirty-three per cent power transfer; cut all non-essential feeds.”

“Yes, sir.” The screen went dead again, and Number Two moved quickly through the long, beryllium tunnels honeycombing the Avon’s fuselage. Inquisitive glances were turned in his direction as he passed cabins occupied by off-duty crewmen and a number of wealthy, distinguished fare-paying passengers. The intercom came to life again as he rounded a corner in the beryllium labyrinth. The captain’s face, frowning with a concentration that verged on martinetic sternness, knitted his brows together in a thick, dark, wavy line.

“Number Two, if we don’t get that power transfer operating pretty fast there’ll be no point in doing it!”

The second in command looked at the three dimensional screened representation of the captain’s face. He couldn’t remember seeing the skipper looking as grim and as desperate as that since the Avon had developed a sudden fault in the forward braking rockets and almost deposited them all—finally and fatally—into one of the uncharted Venusian swamp jungles. If there was something visible on the control cabin screens which was causing that kind of desperation in the captain, thought Number Two, then things were more than a little adrift. Number One wore neither his heart nor his nerves on his sleeves. The captain was one of the most level headed cosmonauts with whom the second in command had ever sailed. The thoughts brought a mixture of comfort and dismay: comfort because if anybody could get them out of it the captain could, and dismay because if it was bad enough to worry the skipper then it was bad indeed!

Number Two’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a number of subordinate cosmonauts, and suddenly it seemed a great deal more real and worthwhile to issue orders at first hand. His words rattled out in a staccato stream, his hands gesticulated as he pointed to various parts of the slender silver dart which was the Avon.

“The captain wants all surplus power cut and diverted into the shields. We don’t seem to be making much headway against whatever it is that’s …” His sentence was interrupted by a violent lurching. The Avon seemed to be spinning insanely about her own axis. It was as though an enormous, invisible hand had grasped the ship and was endeavouring to turn it into a top. Number Two found himself flung savagely against the central visiport. His padded beryllium helmet rattled against the thick plastoglass, and for a second he wondered whether the pyrotechnic display was in his mind or had some external, objective source. He steadied himself for a moment and then realised that the cascading sparks and weird, incandescent lights were not subjective hallucinations, but seemed to owe their origins to powerful electromagnetic forces. He turned to the fury of the flashing lights, and the invisible power that was twisting the Avon like a twig being borne along on the crest of a mountain stream.

“Flash till you burn yourself out!” he exclaimed angrily. “If we have enough room in this wilderness we call Space.”

He tasted wet salt blood, and realised that the impact of the plastoglass had split his lip. The men who had come into the corridor had taken his orders and gone. He picked himself up and looked around; other men were coming, but the uncertainty of their movement in the bucking space craft, told Number Two that they were certainly not cosmonauts. These men were passengers, and as the nearer of them spoke, Number Two realised just who this man was. There was a kind of imperious, automatic command in the voice, and the listening astronaut knew that it was a voice that had been trained to command. It was the voice of Osnola, director of Selpan.

“Do all you can,” said Osnola, “take every possible precaution. We are relying on you to act like spacemen, to live up to the high traditions of the astronautical service, to be cosmonauts of the best possible kind.”

He paused and then continued.

“Where’s the captain?”

Perhaps it was the storm, perhaps it was some deeper instinct, that made Number Two turn round to the director and snarl:

“Will you kindly remain in your cabin, sir!”

The tall, dignified figure of the director looked curiously at the second in command, but did not speak. Another almost regal looking figure, however, moved forward and placed a hand on the cosmonaut’s shoulder. A pair of dark, penetrating eyes looked into his.

“Where is the captain, cosmonaut?” demanded Anton, grand director of Nalim. The intercom flickered on and the captain’s face appeared momentarily, issuing directions to the forward members of the crew. A rather sardonic smile lit the face of the second in command.

“Don’t you hear him?” he asked sardonically. And then the smile left his face, and he looked straight at Anton.

“You hinder our work. Get to your cabins. You only assist the storm!”

An old man wearing the insignia of an assistant director lurched forward, as the Avon swung again in the hands of the invisible giant that seemed intent on shaking her to pieces.

“I insist that you have a little patience. We wish to discuss things with you,” said Goloz.

“I’ll be patient when that disturbance is!” snapped back Number Two. He waved angrily in the direction of the passengers’ quarters.

“Back to your cabins, gentlemen, back to your cabins!” They appeared to hesitate. “What do you think those fireworks out there care for directors, or assistant directors? Into your cabins and be quiet. The more you interrupt us the less chance we have of bringing this ship safely to its destination, and you know it!”

“Remember who is aboard,” said Goloz, quietly.

“There is no one aboard this ship that I love more than myself!” said Number Two. He looked at the old assistant director. “You’re a professional adviser. See if you can advise those fireworks out there to be silent. See if you can negotiate peace with them. If you can, then I’ll divert no more energy into the screens. Use your authority!”

He laughed. There was little humour in the sound.

“If you can’t, then give thanks that you have lived so long! Go back to your cabin, and prepare yourself for what may well be the end. Get a move on!”

The directors and assistant directors remained motionless.

“Out of our way,” snapped Number Two again, as a pair of cosmonauts hurried along the beryllium labyrinth; He paused for a second in front of the high ranking colonial civil servants. Goloz raised one quizzical eyebrow and turned cynically to Anton.

“I find this cosmonaut a great comfort,” he remarked. “Fate hasn’t stamped him for anything as ordinary as a crash. I would say that he is marked out for the devitalising chambers.” Goloz looked up in mock piety, insofar as there was an ‘up’ in a ship that spun as violently and bucked as wildly as the Avon did.

“Keep him for your original purpose, good destiny,” he said softly. “And make the devitalising chamber that shall ultimately enclose him the envelope of our salvation, for it appears that our present force field is of little use. If he wasn’t born for the devitalising chamber our present situation is grim.”

The second in command ignored the sotto voce cynicism of the old assistant director: he continued shouting orders to the scurrying crew.

There was a cry of heartfelt despair from the passenger area.

“Some of you are making more noise than whatever that is out there,” commented Number Two grimly.

Bastian, Osnola’s brother, looked at Number Two and gave vent to his own fear with a sudden violent oath.

“Blast you!” said Bastian. “You bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog!”

Number Two looked at him coldly.

“Get to work or get out of the way,” he said grimly.

Anton, grand director of Nalim, clenched his teeth, his jaw closed like an iron trap.

“I would personally take a great deal of pleasure in recommending you for compulsory euthanasia,” he said angrily.

“I don’t think any of us are likely to get the chance of that,” retorted Number Two coldly.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said Goloz. His cynical humour had reasserted itself. “I’d be practically prepared to guarantee you for the devitalising chamber, though our forcefield had failed and the Avon was no stronger than a nutshell.

Number Two moved away from them as though unable to think of an appropriate retort to Goloz’s cynical sarcasm. He shouted orders to a number of hurrying cosmonauts nearby.

“It appears.” said Bastian softly, “that we are in imminent danger of collision.”

“Yes, but with what?” asked Anton.

“If we knew that, returned Goloz evenly, and surprisingly calmly, “we would stand a better chance of avoiding it, I have no doubt.”

A cosmonaut staggered past them like a man who had already seen the great black gulf of infinity yawning hungrily at his feet.

“Lost, lost!” he sobbed.

Goloz looked at him. Number Two came back along the corridor to the place where they stood.

“There’s nothing we can do now but pray,” announced the cosmonaut.

“You mean the forcefields have failed?”

“They are just not responding at all, sir.”

“What about the evasive action the captain was taking?” asked another dejected astronaut. The first speaker shook his head.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said again, grimly. “It’s as though the old Avon was in the grip of some sort of external force which ignores rockets and forcefields as though they didn’t exist!”

Goloz looked around.

“The grand director is at prayer,” he said quietly. “I think it might not be a bad idea to assist him. Our extremity is, after all, the same as his.”

Bastian curled his lips superciliously.

“I am out of patience.”

Anton looked viciously at the dejected cosmonauts, and the white strained features of the second officer.

“We are cheated of our lives by incompetence,” he said. His finger rested accusingly on the second officer, and his eyes were pools of angry fire. “This wide-mouthed idiot!”

Number Two made as though to reply, but before he could speak Anton went on, “I’d like to see you ride a crippled ship from one end of infinity to the other.”

Goloz smiled again, that strangely cynical smile.

“I still think he’ll make the devitalising chamber, though every cubic foot of space tends to argue otherwise, and the whole of the void opens its great maw to swallow him.”

From the other side of the beryllium bulkhead there was a sudden cry, a confused noise.

“We’re going to crash!” There were screams and cries of fear. It was a moment of truth.

Anton looked surprisingly calm. His aquiline nostrils dilated a little. He turned to Bastian.

“At least we shall have the pleasure of going down with the grand director.”

“Yes,” agreed Bastian. “We will take our leave of him like gentlemen.”

They moved along the tormented beryllium of the fuselage corridor towards the spot where Osnola still knelt in prayer.

Goloz looked around him, put his eye to the visiport, and studied the gyrating, pyrotechnic, electromagnetics outside.

“Now,” he said softly, “I would give a thousand furlongs of space, a million parsecs of universe, for one half acre of barren planet!”

He looked up towards the bucking beryllium ceiling.

“The wills above be done,” he said softly, “but there is a lot to be said in favour of dying on a planet.”

DARMINA sat in front of the smooth pastel plastic that domed and curved around the front portal of her living quarters. She looked at the tall, slightly stooping figure of her father. Rosper, she decided, not for the first time, was an awesome man. There was power in his eyes, power seemed to flow from his magnificent grey beard. There was power in the old hands, there was something terrible about him. Not because of any great evil that emanated from his mind, but simply because of the power that he controlled. Rosper was dangerous. Being with him, thought Darmina, was like waiting for something to explode and knowing that if it did it would blow the whole of the world to pieces.

“Father,” she said softly.

The deep, dark eyes turned in her direction. He smiled.

“Did you …?”

The voice was deep, a dark brown voice. It, too, was laden with power.

“Did you … cause that electrical storm out there?” asked Darmina. She pointed to where the pyrotechnics and electromagnetic waves still danced and flashed in the sky above them.

“Perhaps,” he answered gently. It seemed that all the forces of Nature were against them,” said the girl. “I felt very sorry for them. It was a brave vessel; no doubt there were some noble men in her. Now it seems that a. . .