“Damn me for an asshead!” Brazil swore. “We’ve been had!”
“But by whom?” Vardia called out.
Wu Julee screamed.
Then there was nothing but darkness and that weird, blue lightning, now laced, it appeared, with golden sparks. They all felt the sensation of falling and turning and twisting in the air, as if they were dropping down some bottomless pit. There was no up, no down, nothing but that dizzy sensation.
And Wu Julee kept screaming.
Suddenly they were lying on a flat, glassy-smooth black surface. Lights were on around them, and there seemed to be a structure—as if they were in some building, like a great warehouse.
Things didn’t stop spinning around for a while. They were dizzy, and sick. All but Brazil threw up into their helmets, which neatly and efficiently cleared the mess away. A professional spaceman, Brazil was the first to recover his equilibrium. Then he steadied himself, half sitting up on the black, glassy floor.
It was a room, he saw—no, a great chamber, with six sides. The glassy area was also a hexagon, and around it stretched a railing and what appeared to be a walkway. A single great light, also six-sided, was suspended above them in the curved ceiling. The place was huge, Brazil saw, easily large enough to house a small freighter.
The others were there. Vardia, he saw, was already sitting up, but Wu Julee, it appeared, had passed out. Hain just lay on the floor, breathing hard. Brazil struggled to his feet and made his way unsteadily to Wu Julee. He checked and saw that she was in fact still breathing but unconscious.
“Everybody all right?” he called. Vardia nodded and tried to rise. He helped her to her feet, and she managed. Hain groaned, but tried, and was game about it. He finally managed it.
“Just about one gee,” Brazil noted. “That’s interesting.”
“Now what?” asked Datham Hain.
“Looks like some breaks in that railing—the closest one is over there to your right. We might as well make for it.” Taking their silence for assent, he picked up Wu Julee’s limp body and they started off. She weighed hardly anything, he noted, and he wasn’t a particularly strong man.
He looked down at her, sorrow in his eyes. What will happen to you now, Wu Julee? But I tried! God! I tried!
Her eyes opened, and she looked up into his through the tinted helmet faceplates. Perhaps it was the gentle way he carried her, perhaps it was his expression, perhaps it was just the fact that she saw him and not Hain, but she smiled.
She got much heavier about halfway there, he noted, as his body was drained of the adrenalin that had pumped into him during the—fall? Finally he was straining at the weight, although she weighed no more than half what she should. He finally admitted defeat and had to put her down. She didn’t protest, but as they continued to walk she clung tightly to his arm.
No matter what, Hain no longer owned her.
Steps of what looked like polished stone led up to the break in the rail—six of them, they noted. Finally they were all up on some kind of platform from which a conveyor belt stretched out. But it was not moving in either direction.
They all looked to the captain for guidance. For the first time in his life, Nathan Brazil felt the full weight of responsibility. He had gotten them into this—never mind that they had talked him into it, it was his responsibility—and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do next.
“Well,” he began, “if we stay here we starve to death, or run out of air—or both. We may do so anyway, but we at least ought to see what we’re into. There has to be a doorway out of this place.”
“Probably six of them,” Hain said caustically.
Brazil stepped out onto one of the conveyors, and it suddenly started moving. The movement was so unexpected that he found himself carried along farther and farther away from the rest before anyone could say anything.
“Better get on,” he called back, “or you’ll lose me! I don’t know how to stop this thing!”
He was receding farther and farther, when Wu Julee stepped on. The other two immediately did likewise.
The speed wasn’t great, but it was faster than a man would walk briskly. A larger, broader platform loomed ahead before Brazil could see it. So he slid off onto it, stumbled, fell down, and rolled halfway across.
“Watch out! Platform coming up!” he warned. The others saw the platform and him in time to step off, although each one nearly lost his balance in the attempt.
“Apparently you’re supposed to be walking on the belt,” Vardia said. “That way you just walk onto the platform. See? There are actually several belts just before the platform, each one going at a slightly slower speed.”
The belt suddenly stopped.
“No doorway here,” Hain noted. “Shall we press on?”
“I suppose so—whoops!” Brazil exclaimed as he was about to step out. The other belt had started in the reverse direction!
“Looks like somebody’s coming to meet us,” Brazil said jokingly, a tone that didn’t match his inner feelings at all. Even so, he pulled and checked his pistol, noting that Hain was doing the same. Vardia, he saw, still held onto that sword.
They could see a giant figure coming toward them, and all stepped back to the rear edge of the platform. As the figure came closer, they could see that it was like nothing in the known universe.
Start with a chocolate brown human torso, incredibly broad, and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms—in threes, spaced in rows down the torso—extremely muscular but attached, except for the shoulder pair, on ball-type sockets like the claws of a crab. Below, the torso melded into an enormous brown-and-yellow-striped series of scales leading to a huge, serpentine lower half, coiled, but obviously five or more meters in length when outstretched.
As the creature approached the platform, it eyed them with large, human-looking orbs punctuated with jet-black pupils. As it reached the edge of the platform, the lower left arm slapped the rail. The belt stopped just short of the platform. Then, for what seemed like forever, they just stared at each other—these four humans in ghostly white pressure suits and this creature of some incredibly alien spawning.
The alien finally pointed to them, then with its top pair of arms made a motion to remove their helmets. When it saw they made no move, it pointed again to them, then did what appeared to be a deep breathing exercise.
“I think it’s trying to tell us we can breathe in here,” Brazil said cautiously.
“Sure, he thinks so, but what does he breathe?” Hain pointed out.
“No choice,” Brazil replied. “We’re almost out of air anyway. May as well chance it.”
“I do,” came the unexpected voice of Wu Julee, and, with that, she unfastened her helmet—not without some trouble, for her coordination was shot. Finally the helmet fell to her feet, and she breathed in.
And continued breathing.
“Good enough for me,” said Vardia, and she and Brazil did the same. For a short time Hain continued to resist. Then, finally assured that everyone was still breathing, he removed his as well.
The air seemed a bit humid and perhaps a little rich in oxygen—they experienced a slight light-headedness that soon passed—but otherwise fine.
“Now what?” Hain asked.
“Damned if I know,” Brazil replied honestly. “How do you say hello to a giant walrus-snake?”
“Well I’ll be goddamned!” exclaimed the walrus-snake in perfect Confederation plain talk, “if it ain’t Nathan Brazil!”
ZONE
(Enter Ghosts)