"We're ready as hell," Gene said.
"Yeah, whatever that means."
"We're ready, Jeremy," Linda said.
"Okay. Remember, no more voice communications once you get started, but my messages will be on the computer screen. The computer will be doing most of the piloting anyway. If contact is broken for some reason, the craft's automatic systems will kick in. So don't be too worried. I programmed it to do just about everything on its own."
"Reassuring," Gene said. "For some reason Chernobyl comes to mind… but, hey, this is an adventure."
Jeremy sounded a bit put out. "A good… you know, like, attitude would help, Gene. A little respect for technology, maybe."
Gene tugged at his collar. "Hey, it's rough bein' a computer, you know? You don't get no respect."
"Very funny, Gene," Linda said sternly. "Does everything have to be a joke with you? Can't you take one thing seriously? I mean, just for once?"
Gene cringed. "Eeep."
"I'm scared! I don't know about you. You always act so goddamned brave and macho. Sometimes… Gene, sometimes you really make me mad."
"Sorry," Gene said in a flat voice. "Okay. Jeremy. Let her rip. Don't bother with a countdown or anything. That'll just make it worse."
"Okay. Good luck, you guys. Be careful."
"Yeah, we will."
It was quiet inside the craft except for Goofus's heavy panting.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you, Gene."
"Forget it. We're all under pressure here."
Gene busied himself with checking instruments, most of which he didn't understand. The computer screen was a confusion of numbers and letters decipherable only to those fluent in hieratic computerese.
Gene turned to say something and bumped into Goofus's enormous head. "Get your dog breath out of my face, Goofus."
As if he understood, Goofus scrunched back in his seat.
"Good boy. God, this is nerve-racking, I'll tell you. Maybe we should have had a count ―"
A high-pitched whine filled the tiny compartment. Then the craft shuddered slightly.
The view out the view window disappeared, replaced by something difficult to apperceive: a murky, swimming nothingness, inchoate and devoid of feature.
"We're off," Gene said. "We're out in the interuniversal medium, I guess. The non-space between the universes. I hope this scheme works."
"I'm not even sure what the scheme is," Linda said.
"Well, I'm not crystal clear on it either, but somehow Jeremy reduced Melanie's old clothes to data and fed them into the computer."
"How'd he do that?"
"He faxed them. I dunno what he did. I think he just took two video shots of them, getting perspective parallax, combined those two signals into a 3-D image, and fed the results into the mainframe. So now the locator spell has something to work with."
"Okay," Linda said, "I think I understand that."
"You're one up on me. Anyway, what we're going to do is this. We're going to riffle through whole bunches of universes and let the spell sniff at each one. If Melanie shows up in any of them an alarm will sound. When that happens, we enter that universe and Goofus tracks her down. Got that?"
"Got it."
"Simple and straightforward. And highly implausible."
The whine of the craft's engines increased in pitch. The Sidewise Voyager's occupants felt a barely perceptible sensation of thrust.
"Okay, here we go."
There appeared outside the viewport a flickering montage of rapidly changing scenes, similar to the effect produced by a motion picture film in which each frame is a discontinuous and separate image ― or by a slide projector gone berserk. Each image appeared only long enough to persist in the human (and probably nonhuman) visual apparatus, a fraction of a second at most.
They sat and watched. Nothing else happened for a good while. At the top of the computer screen an intelligible message appeared ― ALL SYSTEMS GO, GUYS.
Gene gave up trying to make sense of the instruments and sat back. "Well, this could go on forever, since there are an infinite number of universes. Or variations on the same universe."
"Which is it?" Linda asked.
"I dunno. I think the latter. Look at this stuff. Each universe has a world, a planet really, in it, right underneath us. There may be universes in which there isn't a planet, or maybe no planets at all. But if that's true, we haven't run into one yet. I guess what we would be seeing would be empty space."
"It's hard to make anything of that jumble out there," Linda said. "It goes by so fast."
"Yeah. It's like we're skipping across the surface of the big pond of space-time, skipping like a stone, touching but not really entering the water."
"There's not much feeling of motion."
"No. How're you doing, Snowy?"
Snowclaw said, "I'm fine, except I got a cramp in my leg."
Gene shifted a little. "Is that better?"
Snowclaw moved his leg. "Yeah, thanks."
"Well, at least the thing works," Linda said.
"Seems to be working."
Flashing red lights appeared on the control panel.
"What's that?"
Gene peered at the instruments. "I don't know."
More warning lights appeared, flashing ominously. Soon the whole panel looked like an eight-alarm fire.
"Gene, are we in trouble?"
"Uh… yeah. Massive systems failure, it looks like. Either that or there's a sale at Kmart."
"Is Jeremy still in control?"
The computer screen was blank.
"Looks like we lost contact. We're on our own."
Outside the craft, the flickering had stopped. A vast red sky was the main feature. Below was an ocean edged by a thin strip of beach. The whole scene was suffused with red light.
"Are we going to crash?" Linda asked.
The ground was slowly getting closer.
"No, this thing becomes an aircraft when it enters a universe. There's enough left of the control system to land us, it looks like."
The craft settled slowly, but not slowly enough to avoid landing with jarring bump. The whine of the engines died, and there was quiet.
Gene exhaled. "Well. That's that. Unless we can fix this thing, here we stay."
"Where are we?"
They looked out. Something very unusual was in the sky, a great swollen sphere of redness, bathing everything in its dim light.
"A red giant," Gene said.
"What's that?"
"A stage in the evolution of some stars. They get real big, losing brightness and energy. It could be our sun a couple of billion years from now."
"We're billions of years in the future?"
"Some future, somewhere." Gene sat back and folded his arms. "In any event, we're stranded."
"Oh, no."
"Linda?"
"What?"
"I'm scared now."
Nineteen
Castle by the Sea
"I was talking to Baron Delwyn when I heard someone groan behind me," the princess was saying to Tyrene.
"Yes," the baron said. He was a small man in knee breeches and hose. "It was Damik. Actually he was just passing by. I saw him. He walked behind Her Highness, stopped, seemed to be about to go back the way he'd come, then groaned."
"He bumped into me," Dorcas said. "He turned around with this awful look on his face, clutching at his chest. I saw blood where he was touching. Then he collapsed."
"Baron, you saw no one near him?" Tyrene asked.
"Well, there were a dozen people milling about out here after dinner. But I didn't see anyone near him when he fell."
"And you were faced the other way, Your Highness?"
"Yes. I didn't see a thing until Damik backed into me."
"Who was out here at the time?" Tyrene asked the group of lords and ladies in the foyer.
Lord Arl looked around first before answering. "I was one," he volunteered. "Although I went into the library shortly before it happened."