Into the Alternate Universe

by A. Bertram Chandler

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

Rim ghosts are real! Intruders from alternate universes appearing where the fabric of space is thin. Sonya and John Grimes find themselves in an alternate universe.

Release date: November 26, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 107

Sample

THE INEVITABLE freezing wind whistled thinly across the Port Forlorn landing field, bringing with it eddies of gritty dust and flurries of dirty snow. From his office, on the top floor of the Port Administration Building, Commodore Grimes stared out at what, over the long years, he had come to regard as his private kingdom. On a day such as this there was not much to see. Save for Faraway Quest, the Rim Worlds Government survey ship, the spaceport was deserted, a state of affairs that occurred but rarely. Soon it would resume its usual activity, with units of the Rim Runners’ fleet dropping down through the overcast, from Faraway, Ultimo and Thule, from the planets of the Eastern Circuit, from the anti-matter systems to the Galactic West. But now there was only the old Quest in port, although a scurry of activity around her battered hull did a little to detract from the desolation of the scene.

Grimes stepped back from the window to the pedestal on which the big binoculars swiveled on their universal mount. He swung the instrument until Faraway Quest was centered in the field of view. He noted with satisfaction that the bitter weather had done little to slow down the work of refitting. The flare of welding torches around the sharp stem told him that the new Mass Proximity Indicator was being installed. The ship’s original instrument had been loaned to Captain Calver for use in his Outsider; and the Outsider, her Mannschenn Drive unit having been rebuilt rather than merely modified, was now falling across the incredibly wide and deep gulf of light years between the island universes.

And I, thought Grimes sullenly, am stuck here. How long ago was my last expedition, when I took out the old Quest and surveyed the inhabited planets of what is now the Eastern Circuit, and the anti-matter worlds to the Galactic West? But they say that I’m too valuable in an administrative capacity for any further gallivanting, and so younger men, like Calver and Listowel, have all the fun, while I just keep the seat of my office chair warm …

“Commodore Grimes!”

Grimes started as the sharp female voice broke into his thoughts, then stepped back from the instrument, turning to face his secretary. “Yes, Miss Willoughby?”

“Port Control called through to say that they’ve just given landing clearance to Star Roamer.”

“Star Roamer?” repeated the Commodore slowly. “Oh, yes. Survey Service.”

“Interstellar Federation Survey Service,” she corrected him.

He smiled briefly, the flash of white teeth momentarily taking all the harshness from his seamed, pitted face. “That’s the only Survey Service that piles on any gees.” He sighed. “Oh, well, I suppose I’d better wash behind the ears and put on a clean shirt …”

“But your shirts are always clean, Commodore Grimes,” the girl told him.

He thought, I wish you wouldn’t take things so literally, and said, “Merely a figure of speech, my dear.”

“E.T.A. fifteen minutes from now,” she went on.

“And that’s the Survey Service for you,” he said. “Come in at damn nearly escape velocity, and fire the braking jets with one-and-a-half seconds to spare. But it’s the Federation’s tax payers that foot the fuel bills, so why should we worry?”

“You were in the Survey Service yourself, weren’t you?” she asked.

“Many, many years ago. But I regard myself as a Rim Worlder, even though I wasn’t born out here.” He smiled again as he said, “After all, home is where the heart is …” And silently he asked himself, But where is the heart?

He wished that it was night and that the sky was clear so that he could see the stars, even if they were only the faint, far luminosities of the Galactic Rim.

Star Roamer came in with the usual Survey Service éclat, her exhaust flare a dazzling star in the gray sky long before the bellowing thunder of her descent reverberated among the spaceport buildings, among cranes and gantries and conveyer belts. Then the long tongue of incandescence licked the sparse drifts and frozen puddles into an explosion of dirty steam that billowed up to conceal her shining hull, that was swept from the needle of bright metal by the impatient wind, fogging the wide window of Grimes’ office with a fine drizzle of condensation.

She sat there on the scarred concrete—only a little ship, and yet with a certain air of arrogance. Already the beetle-like vehicles of the port officials were scurrying out to her. Grimes thought sourly, I wish that they’d give our own ships the same prompt attention. Remembering his own Survey Service days he felt a certain nostalgia. Damn it all, he thought, I piled on more gees as a snotty-nosed Ensign than as Astronautical Superintendent of a shipping line and Commodore of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve …

He stood by the window, from which the mist had now cleared, and watched the activity around Star Roamer. The ground vehicles were withdrawing from her sleek hull, and at the very point of her needle-sharp prow, the red light, almost painfully bright against the all-surrounding grayness, was blinking. He heard Miss Willoughby say, “She’s blasting off again.” He muttered in reply, “So I see.” Then, in a louder voice, “That was a brief call. It must have been on some matter of Survey Service business. In that case, I should have been included in the boarding party. As soon as she’s up and away, my dear, send word to the Port Captain that I wish to see him. At once.”

There was a flicker of blue incandescence under Star Roamer’s stern and then, as though fired from some invisible cannon, she was gone, and the sudden vacuum of her own creation was filled with peal after crashing peal of deafening thunder. Grimes was aware that the speaker of the intercom was squawking, but could not make out the words. His secretary did. Shouting to be heard over the dying reverberations she cried, “Commander Verrill to see you, sir!”

“I should have washed behind the ears,” replied Grimes. “But it’s too late now.”

She hasn’t changed much, thought Grimes, as she strode into his office. She was wearing civilian clothes—a swirling, high-collared cloak in dark blue, tapered black slacks, a white jersey of a material so lustrous that it seemed almost luminous. And that outfit, went on the Commodore to himself, would make a nasty hole in a year’s salary. Rob Roy tweed and Altairian crystal silk … The Survey Service looks after its own. Even so, he looked at her with appreciation. She was a beautiful woman, and on her an old flour sack would have looked almost as glamorous as the luxurious materials that adorned her fine body. In her pale blonde hair the slowly melting snow crystals sparkled like diamonds.

“Welcome aboard, Commander,” said Grimes.

“Glad to be aboard, Commodore,” she replied softly.

She allowed him to take the cloak from her, accepted the chair that Miss Willoughby ushered her towards. She sat down gracefully, watching Grimes as he carefully hung up her outer garment.

“Coffee, Commander Verrill? Or something stronger?”

“Something stronger.” A smile flickered over her full lips. “As long as it’s not your local rot-gut, that is.”

“It’s not. I have my sources of supply. Nova Caledon Scotch-on-the-rocks?”

“That will do nicely. But please omit the rocks.” She shivered a little theatrically, “What a vile climate you have here, Commodore.”

“It’s the only one we have. Say when.”

“Right up, please. I need some central heating.”

And so you do, thought Grimes, studying her face. So you do. And it’s more than our weather that’s to blame. You did what had to be done insofar as that mess involving you and Jane and Derek Calver was concerned, but to every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction—especially once the glow of conscious nobility has worn off.

She said, “Down the hatch.”

“Down the hatch,” he replied. “A refill?”

“Thank you.”

He took his time about pouring the drinks, asking as he busied himself with glasses and ice cubes and bottle, “You must be here on important business, Commander. A courier ship all to yourself.”

“Very important,” she replied, looking rather pointedly towards Miss Willoughby, who was busying herself with the papers on her desk in a somewhat ostentatious manner.

“H’m. Yes. Oh, Miss Willoughby, I’d like you to run along to the Stores Superintendent, if you wouldn’t mind, to straighten up the mess about Rim Falcon’s requisition sheets.”

“But I still have to run through Rim Kestrel’s repair list, sir.”

“Rim Kestrel’s not due in for a week yet, Miss Willoughby.”

“Very well, sir.”

The girl straightened the litter on her desk, got up and walked slowly and with dignity from the office.

Sonya Verrill chuckled. “Such sticky-beaking would never be tolerated in the Service, Commodore.”

“But you don’t have to put up with civilian secretarial staff, Commander. Come to that, I well recall that when I was in the Service myself an occasional gift of some out-world luxury to a certain Lieutenant Masson—she was old Admiral Hall’s secretary—could result in the premature release of all sorts of interesting information regarding promotions, transfers and the like.”

“Things are different now, Commodore.”

“Like hell they are. Anyhow, Sonya, you can talk freely now. This office is regularly debugged.”

“Debugged, John?”

“Yes. Every now and again high-ups in the various Ministries decide that they aren’t told enough of Rim Runners’ affairs—of course, the Aeriel business made me very unpopular, and if Ralph Listowel hadn’t got results, serendipitous ones at that, I’d have been out on my arse. And then your people manage to plant an occasional bug themselves.”

“Come off it, John.”

“Still playing the little, woolly lamb, Sonya?”

She grinned. “It’s part of my job. Perhaps the most important part.”

“And what’s the job this time?”

“There won’t be any job unless our Ambassador to the Rim Confederation manages to talk your President into supplying help. But I think that he will. Relations have been fairly friendly since your autonomy was recognized.”

“If you want a ship,” said Grimes, “the charter rates will be favorable to ourselves. But surely the Federation has tonnage to spare. There are all the Commission’s vessels as well as your own Survey Service wagons.”

“Yes, we’ve plenty of ships,” she admitted. “And plenty of personnel. But it’s know-how that we’re after. You hardly need to be told that your people have converted this sector of Space into your own backyard, and put up a big sign, No Trespassing. Even so, we hear things. Such as Rim Ghosts, and the winds of it that blew your pet Aeriel through about half a dozen alternative time tracks. And there was that business of the wet paint on Kinsolving’s Planet years ago—but that, of course, was before you became autonomous, so we had the job of handling it …”

“And the Outsiders’ ship …” . . .