Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Edgar Pangborn

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СКАЧАТЬ minds which struggle free and lift us up. They have carried us to the threshold of the stars. And the time will come, a thousand years perhaps, when we will be ready to try for our sister Galaxy, Andromeda.” Roberto smiled. “Of course it is certain we will still have our simple folk who will warn us and tell us to beware; that it is not the will of the Almighty that we leave the Milky Way; that we presume too much and we will be struck down. And—” Roberto stopped in mild surprise. He saw in his father’s expression the reflection of his mother’s apprehension.

      Roberto turned away sadly and began to pack away the star projector.

      Someday, he thought, in spite of the little minds, we will have one of these that will show the other space as commonly as our own. And all their phantom angels and devils shall not bar man from the universe.

      *

      Time passed.

      The ship was launched.

      Six long years, Roberto thought. Long years of preparation, testing and training. Hard, bone-wearying hours of familiarization and shakedown with nerve-straining, experimental jumps into the other space. Now at last they were in that other space—that strange, blazing white elsewhere that Korenyik had given to mankind as the trail to the stars—the Horsehead Nebula clear before them.

      Six years of frantic activity ... and now he was launched and there was nothing to do in transit but wait. Six years since he had been to the little sun-faded stone house near Mexico City and felt the warm blood-tug of his parents. Papa now dead and Mama with her dark forebodings of angels and God.

      He gazed at the dark screens in the starship and wondered what he might see if they were on.

      *

      In the intense, brilliant region under the vault of heaven the two great creatures, their golden coruscating substance flung across the white space, sensed their coming. My-Ky-El limned the ship with a golden halo and knew the creatures within. He linked with Ra-Fa-El and they communed in soaring crystal carillions of thought.

      —they are come from the Black Space Hell. The brood of Satan has broken its bonds and penetrated the barrier!

      —how is it so? the Fallen were shrivelled of substance and energy; shorn of motion and thrust down into the Black Space with no memory of their origin....

      —nevertheless they are here in a devious shape and White Space is once again threatened....

      —they must be annulled NOW!

      *

      !!!A-ROORRR-UH!!!A-ROORRR-UH!!!

      The Klaxon howled out the alarm. The control board erupted into a swiftly spreading plague of red warning lights, indicating the Korenyik Matrix Units were being subjected to incredible strain.

      Roberto punched a row of screen tabs. The normal-space view screens showed nothing. He punched in the E-screens. He gasped at the sight, struck with an awful dread. Great golden mists were clustering, bursting, swirling and spiralling in the blinding whiteness. They wreathed the ship, and the KM units sobbed as they strained against the rending golden energies. Roberto fought against odd, thick fear that tried to prostrate him on the deck and make him grovel in utter, abject terror. This icy dread that freezes my blood is not of my making, Roberto thought. With a desperate effort of will he hurled his leaden fingers at the keys and punched in the Omega beams. Eyes burning, he saw ashen whorls spin through the golden mists and crystal screams seemed to splinter in his mind.

      For a fragment of time the KM units ceased their belabored sobbing and the fear drained from Roberto. In the instant he slammed the jump bar and they were in their own Black Space.

      “We’ll never get home this way,” the navigator said. He was trembling with shock.

      Roberto struggled to keep his own body from quivering. “I will take us home. We will dodge in and out of the two spaces. The danger seems unable to follow. Can you navigate such a course?”

      *

      The navigator was trembling violently and he began to sob. “What were they? So ma—magnificent ... and ... terrifying ... like great golden angels....”

      “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Roberto screamed, his control shattering. He leaned to the limit of his pad straps and struck once and again at the navigator. Roberto pulled his hands back and crowded his anger and fear to the back of his mind. “Can you skip us home?” he again demanded of the navigator.

      The man’s voice was steadier. “I’ll need three minutes in black each time to compute position and plot the next jump. But, yes, I can do it.”

      “I make you a gift of three hours right now.” And perhaps more we will need, Roberto thought, to recover the courage for venturing again into the White Space. And my navigator spoke of angels but where were the faces and wings? And why did I also think of angels almost as if I felt a nebulous ancient memory of them? And do the others feel as my navigator and I?

      They did! Roberto had gone around the ship carefully questioning his men. No matter how delicately he inquired, whenever he touched upon what they might have seen on the E-screen the fear would come into their eyes. Some spoke directly of heavenly creatures, others embarrassedly admitted such impressions and a few averted their eyes and denied such thoughts. But the words of them all were edged with terror and awe.

      Roberto and his shaken crew were slowly regaining confidence. They had made a jump into the White Space and remained there for some hours before being frightened back into the Black by a vague alarm. Nothing more than a quivering needle and a lighter patch on an E-screen; but they had remained hidden in Black for many hours and now they were ready to make another jump.

      Roberto pressed the jump bar, throwing them into White Space ... and the golden fury struck!!!! A-ROORRR-UH!!! A ROORRR-UH!!! The board blazed red. There were screams on the intercom. There was heat and savage bucking with a crashing and screeching tear of ultra-steel. The E-screens flared with a terrible molten dancing of golden fire. Roberto punched in the Omega beams in a shell pattern, cut them and snapped on the force shield in full crackling Power. It flared greenly against the golden furies. The reactive thrust slammed hard against the hull and the ship went hurtling end over end. Roberto slapped the jump bar but the ship remained trapped in the White Space. Blue energy licked along the heaving bulkheads and decks. There were more cries and an odor of scorched flesh, and the corpse of his first officer went spinning limply through the control cabin. Something wrenched loose and crunched heavily on Roberto’s leg before bouncing away. Too much red! Roberto cried within, looking from his crimsoning leg to the carmine lights of the board. He pounded his fists on the unresponsive jump bar. “Mama,” he whispered in agony, and suddenly something connected, and the tortured ship tumbled shudderingly into Black Space.

      *

      Mrs. Sanchez sat in the twilight with the darkened house at her back and unmovingly faced the mountains. She heard the jet whine of the taxi helicopter but could not see it because it landed in front of the house. She listened as the whine faded. And in the silence she heard an odd step that she could not recognize.

      “Mama.”

      The voice was different. There was no longer a smile under it. But it was Roberto’s.

      She did not answer, but as she stood the noise of her chair brought him limping toward her. She started to move to him but he stopped abruptly and she suddenly felt a СКАЧАТЬ