The Other Side of Nowhere

by Murray Leinster

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

The RIM STAR seemed to be an ordinary enough spaceship bound for the planet Handel on a routine mission. Then young Braden, a merchant-space officer, discovered that there was something all wrong about the RIM STAR . . . The captain was wrong, the crew mutinous, and there was even something going on with the passengers. The ship was in deadly danger . . . For centuries space travelers had dreaded a place they called the Other Side of Nowhere - a place in the universe where up was down, where right was wrong, and where all direction was lost . . . To save the RIM STAR Braden had to bring the ship to that place of nightmare. . .

Release date: August 1, 2019

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 138

Sample

He wasn’t quite six feet tall, though he looked more than that. Perhaps it was because he was a merchant-space officer of some experience. Perhaps it was because he’d been born and raised on a planet where the gravity was 1.7 normal and he felt light and springy where other people drooped. Or it may have been because he’d been on many ships and many worlds and knew his way about. In any case, he was eating a steak in a warehouse-district restaurant when he heard about the Rim Star. It sounded good, but he made sure it was straight before he acted on it.

It checked, so he headed for the spaceport, though it was well after midnight at the time. His name was Braden and his papers certified that he should be of great value to any ship which secured his services. He didn’t put much faith in documents, himself, and maybe this skipper wouldn’t, either. But papers were necessary.

He ignored other theoretical matters. The best thought on getting a berth, for example. It was said that approaching a skipper at an inconvenient time was unwise. The very best thought held that no skipper would take on a new mate if approached when he was busy loading ship, or asleep, or otherwise fully occupied. But there were angles. For example, unless a ship is going to be aground for a long time its officers and crew will keep to ship-time regardless of local customs. They may sleep while the world around them bustles in bright sunshine. They may breakfast at sundown, or have supper at what the spaceport clocks say is noon. It saves trouble. So the fact that the spaceport was dark and desolate at this hour needn’t mean that it was a bad time to hit the skipper for the vacant mate’s berth.

Braden showed his papers at the spaceport gate and went in. He didn’t have to ask directions. The Rim Star was the biggest ship in several star-clusters, and he could spot her enormous, clumsy bulk by the starlight, half a mile away across the tarmac. In between there were a medium-sized freighter and a toy-sized yacht, and a pile of stacked crates and boxes that had been unloaded, but not yet warehoused, from a ship now gone away. There was a huddle of loading-cranes, their long booms seeming to droop mournfully in the darkness. There was the general atmosphere of gloom that a spaceport has on a slow night when nothing is happening.

Braden went briskly toward the ship. Behind him there was a faint, low, rumbling sound. That was the spaceport city. Even in the small hours a city rumbles to itself. Its inhabitants don’t notice, but it is startling to a spaceman to hear murmurings and rumbles and noises which have no meaning. In space, every sound inside a ship has its significance, and there are no outside sounds at all.

The piled-up cargo cases loomed high. They mounted to a peak in one place, and in others they were heaped on each other in what seemed pure confusion. There were boxes with starlight on them bright enough for their markings to be read, but also there were caverns and places of daunting darkness around the base of the shipload of freight.

As Braden drew near it, two men came out from among the cases. They stood in front of him, waiting. Simultaneously, three other men came out from other hiding places and moved to positions behind him. They didn’t speak. They simply quietly encircled him; those ahead waited for him and those behind him moved to overtake him. This was not an action of the spaceport police. It looked like a holdup, but not entirely, at that. Five men are too many for a holdup. One with a blaster is enough. This looked like something else—a cold-blooded intention to do harm, a purpose which was implacable and had been settled in advance.

Braden took note of the facts. He didn’t look for an explanation now. That could come later. But he estimated the situation. On his home planet the acceleration of gravity was 54 feet the first second, instead of 32. Anybody who grew up there had reflexes keyed to a high-speed environment. Thus Braden had an advantage in both mental and physical reaction time. Also, he knew that if trouble is bound to come, the advantage lies with the man who starts it.

So he went on, his footsteps audible and confident. He moved briskly toward the distant Rim Star. The two men ahead of him closed in. Those behind him moved up. Their actions should have been frightening, but Braden’s footsteps did not change tempo. He went onward as if not noticing. Then, just before the two men in front of him crouched to rush him, he rushed first. Not at both of them, of course. He leaped at the man on his left with a ruthless and calculated ferocity. His full weight knocked the man off balance and he brought his fist up with the strength of all his shoulder muscles behind it. Those muscles had been developed on a heavy planet. The blow landed accurately on the point of the man’s jaw. Braden didn’t wait for him to fall. Keyed to fast action, he seemed to himself to float almost in slow motion as he leaped again, on the man at his right this time, and before any of the three others could realize what was happening. This was no time for sportsmanship. Braden grabbed the second man, kneed him ferociously, and then swung and slung him—part missile and part shield—against the other three. The gasping man took the blow one of his companions aimed at Braden. He blocked for an instant the attack of a second. And Braden, coming around from the side in a specific flank attack, used his peculiar gifts in self-defense as such gifts have to be used—offensively.

No word was spoken. The whole thing happened too fast. The five men had intended to do their work with blackjacks or something similar. They’d assumed the initiative would be theirs. The three in back were ready to attack from the rear someone already attacked from the front. But they were attacked, instead. Braden took them from the side, one after another, with only fractions of a second in between. He was not gentle. His tactics were murderous.

The last man went down and starlight glinted on a knife. Braden kicked, twice. The knife went clanging away after the first kick. The man wailed after the second.

Then it was all over. Braden’s attackers were victims of the technical device known as surprise, and he surveyed them in the starlight. He was breathing hard, but he’d worked scientifically on men who were shocked and surprised by being attacked instead of attacking.

“Now what the hell,” demanded Braden savagely, “what the hell is this all about?”

A voice mumbled, feebly and despairingly:

“It ain’t him! Oh, migawd! It ain’t even him!”

There was a pause. Then Braden said, annoyedly,

“Oh. It was a mistake. I suppose that makes it all right.”

He turned and went on toward the Rim Star. What he had done was not exactly the behavior the authorities would have advised, perhaps. Maybe he should have called the spaceport police and turned the five men over to them, making the distinctly improbable statement that they’d seemed about to attack him so he’d subdued them. The police would be dubious and he, Braden, would waste time arguing with them. Ultimately the five would be dismissed for lack of evidence.

So he went on his way. He passed the toy-sized yacht where a light burned outside the air lock to guide a skimmer-driver bringing the yacht’s owner back to his ship. Braden went on past the freighter, resting quietly on the tarmac with a pool of deep black shadow underneath it. The truly enormous bulk of the Rim Star loomed ahead.

A light showed briefly. It was an exit port on the huge vessel. The light was partly obscured; then it brightened, and then went out again as the exit port closed. A man had come out. Presently Braden heard footsteps. They were heading for the spaceport gate from which Braden had just come. The other man would pass close by. Braden called:

“You from the Rim Star!”

The other man hesitated, and then slowed and stopped. He was a dim figure in the starlight. His voice sounded suspicious.

“What do you want?”

“I had some trouble,” said Braden, “with some characters hiding in that pile of freight. They’re still there. If you want to avoid trouble, I suggest that you steer wide of it. That’s all.”

A pause. The other man said, “Thanks.” Another pause. “You’re heading for the Rim Star?”

“Yes,” Braden answered. “There’s talk she’s short-handed. I just heard it.”

“She is,” said the dim figure. “I just left her.”

“Sign on?” Braden asked.

“No,” said the figure. He sounded amused. “I’m her owner. I was talking to the skipper.”

“How about the stuff that’s going around?” asked Braden. “The story is that she’s going to Handel’s Planet with the girders for a grid among other cargo, and she’ll have to land on rockets. No grid there to let her down. Right?”

“That’s right,” said the dim figure in the darkness. “And they say it can’t be done.” Then his tone went ironic. “The story also says that she’ll crash and I’ll collect insurance on her. Did you hear that?”

“Sure!” said Braden. “I hear she’s shy a mate, too. The last one’s in hospital. Somebody beat him up … I’ve papers for a mate’s berth.”

“She’s waiting for a mate to get clearance,” said the other figure. “Satisfy the skipper and you’re set.”

“Thanks,” said Braden. “I’ll try to satisfy him.”

He started on toward the huge mass of the Rim Star when the other man said curtly:

“Tell me something … About the story that the Rim Star will crash for the insurance. Do people believe it?”

“Some,” said Braden. “I mean, parts of it. You believe stuff about people being crooks when you’re down on your luck. You say you’re honest and they aren’t and that’s why you’re broke. It’s your alibi.”

“True enough,” said the figure in the starlight. He paused again. “The skipper’s my father-in-law. I wouldn’t be likely to send him off to be killed just to collect insurance. He says the ship can land. On rockets. He should be right. … If you satisfy him, you’ve got the mate’s job. But that’s his business, not mine.”

“Naturally,” agreed Braden. “Remember those characters by the pile of freight. They could be nasty. They were waiting for somebody special. I wasn’t him. You might be.”

The man in the starlight said drily:

“I’ve got a blaster in my pocket.” He moved on toward the spaceport gate.

Braden went on toward the big ship. As he drew nearer, her huge size became evident. She was 1500 feet long from her blunt bow to her rounded stern. She was 200-odd feet in diameter—as thick as a twenty-story building is tall. Beneath her there was utter and absolute darkness. No glimmer of light came from anywhere on her hull. She was wholly without grace of line or structure. There is nothing in the galaxy that looks more improbable than a spaceship, either aground or in space. The Rim Star was preposterous. She looked clumsy. There was no beauty in her anywhere.

Braden found the exit port—not a cargo door, but a small opening. He signaled his presence. Half a minute later there was a click, and a voice came out of a speaker over his head.

“Well?” the voice asked.

“My name’s Braden. I was mate on the Cerberus and others. Paid off a month ago. My certificate’s in order. I hear you’re shy a mate. If that’s right, I’m available.” The voice from the speaker rumbled inarticulately for a moment. Then it said:

“Wait. I’ll have the steward let you in.”

There was a click, and silence. Braden waited in the total darkness beneath the Rim Star’s monstrous shape. He looked out at the stars. They were unfamiliar, but unfamiliar constellations are matters of course to a space officer. Forty light-years of distance changes any pattern of nearby stars to the point where no pattern any longer exists. But there is the Milky Way, and certain bright clusters, and more notably those dark nebulae which blot out the star-systems behind them. Braden could have used such skymarkers and by eye located this world of Nelm within a reasonable number of light-centuries. It occurred to him that somebody scanning a sky of strange and unnamed stars might very well come to believe in the fabled Other Side of Nowhere, because anything seemed possible when the sky was new. But it was, of course, pure superstition. It attempted to explain the occasional inexplicable disappearance of ships in emptiness. But Braden didn’t believe in it. It was a tall tale—absurd.

The port door opened and a man with straw-colored hair peered out. His skin seemed normal enough. He might have tried a rejuv job and it hadn’t worked. He looked at Braden.

“Braden?”

“That’s right,” said Braden.

“I’ll take you to the skipper.”

Braden stepped inside. The door closed behind him. He saw that the man with the straw-colored hair was the ship’s steward. The steward led the way up a short flight of stairs and through an opening into a corridor that led both ways. He went on. The floor of the corridor became a ramp. Presently there were steps, then more ramp, then more steps. There was no sign of life anywhere. The two men went through a long, curving, rising tunnel which went round and round without any apparent doors or other openings. There were, of course, hinged plates here and there in the corridor wall. Naturally! There. . .