In a bookstore not far from Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Station, she’d spotted Robert Heinlein’s name on a paperback. On the book’s cover was a futuristic city bisected by a broad trafficway with a rocket ship swooping above. Grace bought the book, and discovered it was a collection of stories.
She read Heinlein’s story with interest, pleasantly surprised to discover that it contained neither mad scientists nor tentacled monsters. It was a mathematically intriguing tale about a fellow in California who built a house in the shape of a tesseract. When a quake shook the house, it folded into itself, providing pathways into other dimensions. Far-fetched, but entertaining, she had thought at the time. Impossible, of course. As, of course, it was impossible for a solid steel deck to suddenly evaporate into mist.
She turned to face the two men who specialized in writing about such impossible things. They were still shouting, though the buzzing of the deck had ceased and there was no real need to yell. Asimov was lamenting having ever listened to Heinlein, and Heinlein was ranting about military discipline. She’d teach them a thing or two about military discipline.
“Gentlemen,” she said sharply. They looked up, startled. “No need to bellow. Mr. Heinlein, could you describe what you felt when you stepped into that…stuff?”
“A tingling sensation. Like a low level electric shock. Something pushing against me, as if the deck had become elastic. I could feel it pulsing beneath my foot.”
“Maybe a high intensity magnetic field,” Asimov said. “A force field generated by a sudden discharge of the Tesla coils, in combination with….”
“With whatever the hell that stuff is,” Heinlein continued. “It’s possible that….”
She cut them short. “Any number of things are possible at this point. We’ll report to the bridge first and speculate later.”
Easier said than done. The squawk box was dead; the ship’s power was screwed up and the internal phone system wasn’t working. She tried the nearby sound-powered phone, the communication system used in combat situations or anytime the ship’s power was down. The sailor who picked it up was gasping for breath.
“You gotta help them,” he whispered hoarsely. “They’re in the walls. I can’t get them out. You gotta help.”
“Who is this?” she asked sharply. “Pull yourself together. This is Ensign Hopper.”
“They’re in the walls, Ensign Hopper. You gotta help. Everything’s all fucked up.”
“Who else is there? Is the Captain there?”
“They’re all here, but they’re in the walls.”
“Stay where you are, sailor. I’ll come up and help.” She cut the connection. “We’re needed on the bridge.”
They hurried through the empty passageways, keeping a suspicious eye on the steel ahead, looking for signs of impermanence.
Just below the main deck they found a sailor who hadn’t been as fortunate as Heinlein. His body had sunk into the steel. He looked like a man standing in waist-deep water. He was thoroughly dead.
“The deck solidified after the pulse passed,” Asimov said weakly.
Heinlein stared down at the body. His voice was flat. “I’m lucky you pulled me out in time.”
“That’s what the sailor on the bridge meant,” Grace said with a vertiginous touch of unreality. “They’re in the walls. The Captain. The others. They’re in the walls and he can’t get them out.”
She shifted her attention from the corpse to the two writers. Both were pale. “We’re wasting time.” She stepped around the body and climbed out onto the main deck.
There she paused, momentarily disoriented. Where on earth were they? A hazy September sunset was smeared over the land when she had gone down below decks to check the equipment, just four hours after Eldridge left the port of Philadelphia, heading south along the coast. By now, it ought to be night.
It was bright daylight. To the west lay, not land, but thunderous storm clouds. There was a smell of ozone in the air. When she reached up to brush back a lock of unruly hair, static electricity crackled against her hand. The air was warm, thick with tropical humidity.
She saw an island just off the port bow, an island with a white sand beach rimmed with palm trees. Heading directly toward them from the island was a sailing ship, a two-masted schooner straight out of an Errol Flynn movie.
“Pirates,” Asimov said softly, and she didn’t disagree.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
Mandakusala
When she saw the green fire dancing over the ocean, Mandakusala turned the Bloody Victory directly toward it. As a warrior and an officer, directly interfaced with the Navy’s navigation banks, she knew that this exact spot off Bermuda was a phase point nexus. If a ship equipped to travel between worlds were to appear anywhere, it would be here.
The Southern Matriarch had been waiting for this day a long, long time.
Her mother, standing beside her, whistled as the ship materialized. “Look at all that iron!”
“Obviously a pre-Scarcity culture,” Mandakusala said. “Late industrial capitalism, right on the cusp of an information economy.”
“They’re primitives, then,” Ayapasara said slyly. Her mother was too old to hold a command, but she still made a cunning strategist. “And primitives are easily convinced of their own superiority.”
Mandakusala caught her thought. Without putting down the glasses, she began issuing orders: “Go aloft and take down the satellite dish. Tell Cook we need a fat roast as soon as she can heat one up. There are two crates of wine down there somewhere — find them! But first, break open that shipment of hibiscus for the Queen Governor’s coronation and distribute them among the crew. I want them to have flowers in their hair and garlands around their necks by the time we close with our target.”
Puzzled, her mother said, “Flowers in their hair? Why?”
At last she lowered her glasses. “They’re all men.”
It didn’t take long for the crew to catch on to this fact. They were young women all — rough-and-tumble adventurers, hoping for enough prize money to buy their first husbands. And they’d been at sea for weeks.
They crowded the prow, staring at the men, and calling out to them lewdly.
“That one — I want the slutty-looking boy with the long legs.”
“Sweet Goddess, I want them all!”
“Stick your tongue out, little redhead, so I can see how long it is.”
“Cease that talk!” Mandakusala snapped. “The next woman who speaks out of turn will be flayed alive!”
The crew fell silent. They knew she meant it.
“As you may be aware, the war with the North has been stalemated for the last forty years. No supplies, that’s the nub of it. The iron, the coal, the oil — all used up centuries ago! Yet here before us is exactly such a ship as our scientists have told us must someday inevitably come. One with an engine capable of carrying us to other worlds. Rich worlds. Fat and peaceful worlds. You are all warriors. You have all been blooded in the service of the Matriarch. You know how to kill — now I’m counting on you to do something a little more difficult.” They hung on her words.
“Smile and wave to the nice boys. Don’t frighten the dears. Make them think you’re proper gentlewomen, so they’ll let us on board.”
They were coming in hailing distance now. Mandakusala counted. Thirty men along the rail. Not many for such a large vessel. One of them called out something unintelligible.
“What language is that?” Mandakusala demanded. “Can anyone speak it?”
“It’s Ænglish,” someone replied. “They speak it in the Cold Isles. I helped burn a village there once.”