Through The Barrier

by Pel Torro, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

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

Synopsis

The engines died first, then the ship. Hope died. Men lived on. Then men died one by one... Accidents... quarrels... illness... age. One man remained. One man sat in the quietness of the drifting ship and wondered why Death didn't want him.
The Others found the incredible derelict and approached her cautiously. The last spaceman watched them come and went to greet them. He was too old and tired to have any emotions left. Then they went to work on him. One by one his feelings came to life again. He took an interest in the New World on which he found himself. There was something strangely worrying about the planet. Things looked vaguely reminiscent of other things from long ago... A mountain range reminded him of Earth. A vast stretch of water looked like an ocean he had once crossed. Could the impossible have happened?
Could the incredible be reality?

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE Asterlink was moving through hyperspace. She was a massive ship, a gleaming beryllium palace. She was the finest intergalactic passenger liner which 25th century engineering science could produce. Charlie Danes was her captain, and he was speaking now over her beautifully modulated hi-fi address system. The screen was set conveniently in front of each luxurious antigrav chair; it showed the captain’s head and shoulders and the background of the control cabin.

Charlie Danes was a natural comedian. He was a round, red-faced man in his early forties. Yet, behind the façade of natural bonhomie and tomfoolery, there was a brilliant mind. Charlie Danes didn’t look as if he was capable of piloting a winkle barge, let alone an Asterlink hyperspace cruiser.

But appearances were very deceptive indeed. Charlie Danes was as fine a captain as the service had ever thrown up, and there was a tradition of fine captains in the service.

“I am pleased to tell you, gentlemen, that everything is perfectly in accordance with schedule, other than the fact that seven little green Martians, and two purple-spotted Venusians, are boring holes in the fuselage, everything is just fine.” Charlie Danes broke into a broad grin. “If you look in the storage lockers under your chairs you won’t find parachutes. It was too late to bail out after we left the Earth’s atmosphere.” He was laughing again.

Keith Lynton adjusted the controls of his set just a fraction. Keith Lynton was a big, loose-limbed, friendly looking coloured man, whose parents had originally been Jamaicans. Lynton was an intergalactic entertainer, which was what he was doing on board the Asterlink, anyway. He had taken on a contract on a fabulously wealthy outworld planet. Lynton was the kind of entertainer who could name his own fees and have them paid gladly. He also did a great deal of charity work, cheering up the hardy pioneers who tamed the outworlds; it was a mixture of business and charity as far as Keith was concerned. The fee they were paying him was good, but it was not good compared to some of the fees he could earn on some of the inworlds.

He turned to the man sitting near by. Quince Rogers was an intergalactic mineral concessioneer. He dressed like a Texas cowboy and spoke like one. The Rogers’ fortune had been founded on oil, and in Quince’s mind oil and Texas were synonymous.

“That fella Danes could have been a professional entertainer himself,” commented Lynton.

“Yeah, he’s got quite a sense of humour,” agreed Rogers.

“Sometimes,” said Lynton, “I begin to get worried; a man with all Danes’ talent—suppose he’s so busy thinking up the next gag that he forgets to press the right button.”

“I don’t think he’ll do that!” replied Rogers. “I’ve flown with Charlie Danes maybe twenty—thirty—forty times, and he’s never let us down yet. We’ve had some narrow squeaks, but they haven’t been his fault!”

Keith Lynton nodded.

The astrogator, Eric Foster, a thin, moody looking man with burning eyes and a lock of untidy hair that flopped continually on his forehead, walked quietly from the control cabin through the passenger section and back towards the crew’s quarters.

“Somehow or other, there’s something about that man I don’t like,” murmured Rogers.

“I should think he’s all right,” said Lynton.

“Looks moody,” said Quince. “I wouldn’t employ a man like that.”

Keith Lynton grinned. “Do you know what he looks like to me, Mr. Rogers?”

Quince shook his head.

“Looks like an unsuccessful variety agent! Or a script writer who’s had his work hacked about by the commercial boys.”

Quince Rogers grinned. “The commercial boys have their place, you know; you can’t have a world of pure talent. There’d be nobody to pay for it. Can’t have a galaxy of pure talent, either.”

“I sometimes wonder whether you could,” mused Lynton. “Be a kind of interesting place, wouldn’t it, Mr. Rogers?”

“Take the places where there’s no need to work,” said Rogers. “People in those places just turn into vegetables. When fruit falls off the trees and fish come jumping out of the sea to give themselves up, what do you get?”

“You’d get what I’d call Paradise!” laughed Keith Lynton. He began to sing softly: “This is My Island in the Sun.”

“That’s an old one,” said Quince Rogers.

“Getting on for five hundred years old … traditional. Best song in the twentieth century.”

“That’s a long time ago,” said the Texas oil man.

“Must have been strange times to live in,” said Samuel Tomlinson, leaning forward and addressing Rogers and Lynton. Keith and Quince turned and looked at Samuel Tomlinson.

He was a quiet, solid sort of man who looked rather like the unromantic hero of a domestic drama. Keith Lynton, who was well versed in classic literature, would have described Tomlinson as a J. B. Priestley-type hero. He had something of the look of Priestley’s immortal character, “Professor Lynden.”

Tomlinson had a quiet, friendly smile; there was nothing insincere about it at all. Tomlinson smiled because he liked smiling, because he was a man who had a great deal of inner peace and happiness.

“What are you doing on the Asterlink?” asked Quince Rogers, and the way that he said it did not sound in the least discourteous. Said in the wrong tone of voice, the recipient could have felt that his right to be aboard was being questioned. Tomlinson kept on smiling.

“You’re Quince Rogers, the mineral concessionaire, aren’t you?” he said.

“I certainly am,” replied Quince, “concessionaire or concessioneer.”

“And I recognise your friend,” said Tomlinson. “I suppose everybody who watches a video programme knows Mr. Lynton.”

“You have the advantage of us, sir,” replied Quince Rogers. He tilted his Stetson back on his head.

“My name’s Tomlinson, Samuel Tomlinson,” said the quiet man.

“It still doesn’t say what you’re doing on board this ship,” said Quince.

“Oh, you mean my business—or lack of it?”

“Gentleman of leisure doing some sight-seeing?” suggested Rogers.

“No,” answered Tomlinson.

“Let me guess,” said Lynton. “You’re a salesman of some kind, are you? From one of the big companies? Maybe you’re with the Radioactive Mining Corporation, or Intergalactic Radium, perhaps?”

“I am a salesman of a kind,” said Tomlinson.

“Come on, out with it; you’re keeping me in suspense,” said Rogers.

“Don’t you like being kept in suspense?” asked Samuel.

“Well, it helps to pass the time, I guess,” said Rogers.

Keith Lynton smiled; he looked at the other two.

“There was an old television game they used to play on those classic television shows in the very early pioneering days, in the first twenty years of television.”

“Oh, you mean ‘Twenty Questions’,” said Quince Rogers, who was also versed in the history of classic entertainment. A man as rich as Rogers could afford all the entertainment he wanted, either historical or modern.

“That’s it,” said Lynton, “Twenty Questions.”

“I suggest we play Twenty Questions with Mr. Tomlinson. There isn’t much to see at the moment,” said Quince Rogers, as he looked out into the greyness of hyperspace.

Samuel Tomlinson nodded his head and smiled again.

“I shall be very happy to play Twenty Questions with you, gentlemen,” he said. “My remark that I’m a kind of salesman was only meant half-seriously. Don’t let that put you off.”

“Well, do you get paid for what you’re doing?” asked Quince Rogers.

“Yes,” said Tomlinson.

“Is it a well-paid job?”

“Well, I think it’s the most rewarding job there is, otherwise I wouldn’t do it; but in terms of Intergalactic credits the pay is negligible.”

“If the pay is so low, how come you can afford to be travelling on an Asterlink?”

“All my expenses are paid for me. Such small wage as I get is a subsistence allowance,” answered Tomlinson.

“It must be an odd kind of job,” said Lynton.

“Are there many people who do this?” asked Rogers.

“There are a number of us,” replied Tomlinson, “yes.”

“It’s a highly competitive field, is it?”

“’Fraid not,” answered Tomlinson. “I only wish it was! We’d like a lot more men in it.”

“Why don’t you up the pay, if you want a lot more men?”

“Because upping the pay wouldn’t attract the kind of men we want,” said Tomlinson.

Lynton frowned in thoughtful concentration.

“Are you a politician of some kind?”

“Well, I’m as much a politician as I am a salesman,” said Tomlinson.

“Wait a minute,” said Rogers. “I’m beginning to get somewhere with you. This job that you do is a job that you do because you believe in it. It’s a vocation rather than a profession. Am I right.”

“I believe it to be a vocation,” answered Tomlinson.

“Perhaps,” said Lynton, “you’re a doctor of some kind, or a medical research man?”

“I’m as much a healer as I am a salesman, or a politician,” came back Tomlinson, “but I’m not a doctor in the accepted sense.”

“Are you a poor man’s lawyer of some kind? Do you go around defending hopeless cases for free?”

“There is another sense,” said Tomlinson, looking out into the greyness beyond the observation port, “in which I do perform a kind of semi-legal function.” He stretched his long legs under the seat in front of him “I think you’ve had about fifteen,” he went on. “I’ve lost count.”

“So have I,” smiled Lynton.

“LET me try another question,” said Quince Rogers. “Is it anything to do with religion?”

“You’re very close now,” said Tomlinson.

“Are you a parson of some kind, a priest?”

“Of a kind,” agreed Tomlinson.

“Well, have we won?” asked Quince Rogers. He said it in the tone of voice which made him sound the kind of man to whom it was important to wi. . .