What had happened, Nicklin wondered, to the descendants of those ancient, alien warriors? A few dozen extraterrestrial species—none related to any of the others—had been found in regions close to portals. The only traits they had in common were passivity and lack of curiosity, a willingness to go on for ever reinventing the steam engine, and Nicklin sometimes suspected that the same destiny was in store for humanity. The Orbitsville syndrome! The big question was: should he laugh or cry? Was it a matter for despair or rejoicing that the future promised to be an eternal Sunday afternoon?
The mood of gentle melancholia which had crept over him was suddenly dispersed by an unexpected event.
There were six vehicles ahead of the camper, and all the time he had been at the wheel they had maintained a fairly steady formation, the configuration of their lights changing only where the road dipped or turned. Now, however, brake warnings were staining the night with crimson and the line was compacting into an irregular group. Nicklin used his heel on the camper’s single control pedal and brought the vehicle to a halt. Less than three hours of his shift had passed, so it was too soon for changeover, and as he descended from the cabin he surmised that somebody up front was having mechanical trouble.
The guess was proved wrong even before he had joined the knot of drivers who were standing by the lead vehicle. They were looking down at what seemed to be a luminous green tape which lay across the road and stretched off into the darkly mysterious grasslands on either side. As Nicklin approached the group he realised that the glowing strip was insubstantial. The surface of the road was giving off the green light, in a band about eight centimetres wide, but there was no evidence of any special pigment having been applied. It was as if the molecules of the rock-hard material had been agitated.
“That can’t be a traffic marking.” The speaker was a man whose name Nicklin had not yet memorised. “Not away out here, at the ass-end of nowhere.”
“Specially as it goes all that way off the road,” a tall woman said. The others in the group turned their heads from side to side, their eyes following the glowing strip until it faded into the distance.
“Perhaps it’s a boundary… some kind of county line,” put in Nibs Affleck. He had not been on a driving stint, but was among several people who had been resting and were now joining the company, holding coats around themselves to ward off the cold. Nicklin found himself scanning the dimly seen figures in search of Danea.
“That’s not too likely, Nibs,” the first speaker said. “Boundaries went out with the ark.”
“Whatever it is, it has killed off the grass.” The tall woman had switched on a flashlamp and was aiming it at the ground where the green strip angled away from the road. All vegetation rooted within the edges of the strip had turned white or pale gold, and was very obviously dead.
Nicklin conjured up an absurd picture of a little man pushing a sports field marker—one that was filled with powerful weedkiller instead of white paint—all the way around the interior of Orbitsville. A kind of Johnny Appleseed in reverse. Interested in having a closer look at the phenomenon, he stepped across the line and was startled to feel himself passing through a plane of spongy resistance. The effect was mild, rather like a momentary conflict of small magnets, but it produced an odd and slightly queasy sensation as it slid through his body. He moved back and forth several times, confirming that the intimate disturbance was real, and that it was limited to a plane which rose vertically from the glowing strip. Others noticed what he was doing and began similar experiments, some of them murmuring with surprise.
“Hey, Jim!” The tall woman with the flashlight—he had seen her with Danea and now remembered her name as Christine McGivern—was standing near him. She was beckoning for him to draw even closer, and as he did so he was aware that she was straddling the green line and slowly moving her hips from side to side.
“This is fun,” she whispered. “You can feel it touching you up.”
“It’s an ill wind,” Nicklin muttered, trying to match Christine’s disconcerting smile. He looked away from her and was relieved to see Corey Montane approaching the group. Montane had wrapped himself in a striped raincloak and his black hair was tousled, but neatly so, like that of an actor portraying a man freshly roused from his bed. Several men moved rowards him to explain what had been found, and Nicklin hastily joined them.
“Would someone kindly fetch a spade?” Montane said, after examining the green strip. A short-handled emergency spade was handed to him almost immediately. He took it and made to lift some earth which was crossed by the luminosity, but red-nosed Nibs Affleck took the implement from him, with gentle insistence, and began to dig at a furious rate. Spectators shuffled back as their feet were bombarded with flying dirt, and within seconds Affleck had created a sizable hole.
“Thank you, Nibs,” Montane said. “I think that’s enough.”
Affleck, who apparently had been prepared to dig until he collapsed, reluctantly moved away from the excavation. Nicklin, still trying to recover his equilibrium after the little encounter with Christine, was able to see into the hole and at once understood why Montane had wanted it dug.
The lime-green strip had not been broken by the digging. It now followed the precise contours of the excavation, glowing on the surface of the raw earth as though projected by a powerful optical device. It’s a cross-section through that weird rubbery field, Nicklin thought. An effect that shows at the ground-air interface. I wonder if the field goes right down to the Orbitsville shell.
“This thing… this manifestation… must extend all the way down to the shell,” Montane proclaimed without hesitation or signs of doubt, raising his voice for the benefit of individuals who were belatedly emerging from their campers to join the group. “My friends, this is a portent! We have been given yet another sign that Orbitsville is entering its final hour. The Devil’s trap is closing!”
“Lord save us!” somebody cried out among the exclamations of alarm which arose from the assembly.
Montane seized on the emotional flux of the moment. “It is still within His power to do exactly that. Although the hour is perilously late, although we stand on the very brink of the abyss, God’s mercy is infinite—and we may yet be saved. Let us bow our heads and pray to Him.” Montane raised his hands, palms facing downwards, and those around him lowered their heads.
Nimble footwork, Corey, Nicklin thought, marvelling at the speed with which the preacher had reacted to and made use of the situation. Any old portent in a storm! While Montane was leading his followers in the improvised prayers, Nicklin renewed his search for Danea and was disappointed not to see her. The thought of Danea reminded him of her friend Christine, who was now standing chastely with the rest of the group. Suddenly he understood why he had been so taken aback by her conversational gambit, which had been somewhat indelicate to say the least of it. The conspiratorial whisper and the use of his first name had linked them together as a pair of freewheelers surrounded by prudes—but what had led her to that presumption about him, a man she had hardly even seen before?
The only explanation he could come up with was that Danea had been talking freely to Christine about matters which he regarded as private. Indeed, the word private came nowhere near to expressing his feelings—sacred would have been more appropriate. The notion of Danea and her friend giggling over confidences, especially if graphic sexual details were involved, brought a warm tingling to Nicklin’s face.