“Traveller’s Rest” is his first story, although he has published a number of literary-linguistic articles in learned journals in Britain, Europe and the United States.
TRAVELLER’S REST
DAVID I. MASSON
It was an apocalyptic sector. Out of the red-black curtain of the forward sight-barrier, which at this distance from the Frontier shut down a mere twenty meters north, came every sort of meteoric horror: fission and fusion explosions, chemical detonations, a super-hail of projectiles of all sizes and basic velocities, sprays of nerve-paralysants and thalamic dopes. The impact devices burst on the barren rock of the slopes or the concrete of the forward stations, some of which were disintegrated or eviscerated every other minute. The surviving installations kept up an equally intense and nearly vertical fire of rockets and shells. Here and there a protectivized figure could be seen “sprinting” up, down or along the slopes on its mechanical “walker” like a frantic ant from an anthill attacked by flamethrowers. Some of the visible oncoming trajectories could be seen snaking overhead into the indigo gloom of the rear sight-curtain, perhaps fifty meters south, which met the steep-falling rock surface forty-odd meters below the observer’s eye. East and west, as far as the eye could see, perhaps some forty miles in this clear mountain air despite the debris of explosion (but cut off to west by a spur from the range), the visibility-corridor witnessed a continual onslaught and counter-onslaught of devices. The audibility-corridor was vastly wider than that of sight; the many-pitched din, even through left ear in helm, was considerable.
“Computer-sent, must be,” said H’s transceiver into his right ear. No sigil preceded this statement, but H knew the tones of B, his next-up, who in any case could be seen a meter away saying it, in the large concrete bubble whence they watched, using a plaspex window and an infrared northviewer with a range of some hundreds of meters forward. His next-up had been in the bunker for three minutes, apparently overchecking, probably for an appreciation to two-up who might be in station VV now.
“Else how can they get minutely impacts here, you mean?” said H.
“Well, of course it could be longrange low-frequency— we don’t really know how Time works over There.”
“But if the conceleration runs asymptotically to the Frontier, as it should if Their Time works in mirror-image, would anything ever have got over?”
“Doesn’t have to, far’s I can see—maybe it steepens a lot, then just falls back at the same angle the other Side,” said B’s voice, “anyway, I didn’t come to talk science: I’ve news for you, if we hold out the next few seconds here: you’re Relieved.”
H felt a black inner sight-barrier beginning to engulf him, and a roaring in his ears swallowed up the noise of the bombardment. He bent double as his knees began to buckle, and regained full consciousness. He could see his replacement now, an uncertain-looking figure in prot-suit (like everybody else up here) at the far side of the bunker.
“XN 3, what orders then?” he said crisply, his pulse accelerating.
“XN 2: pick em-kit now, repeat now, rocket 3333 to W, present tag—” holding out a luminous orange label printed with a few coarse black characters—”and proceed as ordered thence.”
H stuck up his right thumb from his fist held sideways at elbow length, in salute. It was no situation for facial gestures or unnecessary speech. “XN 3, yes, em-kit, 3333 rocket, tag” (he had taken it in his left glove) “and W orders; parting!”
He missed B’s nod as he skimmed on soles to the exit, grabbed a small bundle hanging (one of fifteen) from the fourth hook along, slid down the greasy slide under ground ten metres to a fuel-cell-lit cavern, pressed a luminous button in the wall, watched a lit symbol passing a series of marks, jumped into the low “car” as it ground round the corner, and curled up foetus wise. His weight having set off the cardoor mechanism, the car shut, slipped down and (its clamps settling on H’s body) roared off down the chute.
Twenty-five seconds after his “parting” word H uncurled at the forward receiver cell of station W nearly half a mile downslope. He crawled out as the rocket ground off again, walked ten steps onward in this larger version of his northward habitat, saluted thumb-up and presented his tag to two-up (recognized from helm-tint and helm-sign), saying simultaneously, “XN 3 rep, Relieved.”
“XN 1 to XN 3: take this” (holding out a similar orange tag plucked from his pocket) “and take rocktrain down, in—seventy seconds. By the way, ever seen a prehis?”
“No, sir.”
“Spot through here, then; look like pteros but more primitive.”
The infrared telescopic viewer looking northwest passed through the forward sight-barrier which due north was about forty meters away here; well upslope yet still well clear of the dark infrared-radiation barrier could be seen, soundlessly screaming and yammering, two scaly animals about the size of large dogs, but with two legs and heavy wings, flopping around a hump or boulder on the rock. They might have been hit on their way along, and could hardly have had any business on that barren spot, H thought.
“Thanks; odd,” he said. Eleven seconds of the seventy had gone. He pulled out a squirter-cup from the wall and took a drink from the machine, through his helm. Seventeen seconds gone, fifty-three to go.
“XN 1 to XN 3: how are things up there?”
Naturally a report was called for: XN 2 might never return, and communication up-time and down-time was nearly impossible at these latitudes over more than a few meters.
“XN 3. Things have been hotting up all day; I’m afraid a burst through may be attempted in the next hour or so— only my guess, of course. But I’ve never seen anything like it all this time up here. I suppose you’ll have noticed it in W too?”
“XN 1, thanks for report,” was all the answer he got. But he could hear for himself that the blitz was much more intense than any he had known at this level either.
Only twenty-seven seconds remained. He saluted and strode off across the bunker with his em-kit and the new tag. He showed the tag to the guard, who stamped it and pointed wordlessly down a corridor. H ran down this, arriving many meters down the far end at a little gallery. An underslung railguided vehicle with slide-doors opening into cubicles glided quietly alongside. A gallery-guard waved as H and two others waiting opened doors whose indicators were unlit, the doors slid to, and H found himself gently clamped in on a back-tilted seat as the rock train accelerated downhill. After ten seconds it stopped at the next checkhalt, a panel in the cubicle ceiling lit up to state “diversion, left,” presumably because the direct route had been destroyed. The train now appeared to accelerate but more gently, swung away to left (as H could feel), and stopped at two more checkhalts before swinging back to right and finally decelerating, coming to rest and opening some four hundred eighty seconds after its start, by Had’s personal chronograph, instead of the two hundred he had expected.
At this point daylight could again be seen. From the top bunker where XN 2 had discharged him, Had had now gone some ten miles south and nearly three thousand meters down, not counting detours. The forward sight-barrier here was hidden by a shoulder of mountain covered in giant lichen, but the southern barrier was evident as a violet-black fog-wall a quarter of a mile off. Lichens and some sort of grass-like vegetation covered much of the neighboring landscape, a series of hollows and ravines. Noise of war was still audible, mingled with that of a storm, but nearby crashes were not frequent and comparatively little damage could be seen. The sky overhead was turbulent. Some very odd-looking animals, perhaps between a lizard and a stoat in general appearance, were swarming up and down a tree-fern near by. Six men in all got out of the rocktrain, besides Had. Two and three marched off in two groups down a track eastward. One (not one of those who had got in at W) stayed with Had.