The Overlords of War

Chapter 20

Coolness on his forehead. He awoke. Almost at once—maybe. His head was resting on Antonella’s knees and she was wiping his face with a rag dipped in wine. He brought his hand up to his right eyebrow, which was painful, and saw blood when he withdrew it. Then he met the worried gaze of Touray.

Giddy, he sat up, and with a great effort managed to stand.

“The balloon has plugged the hole,” Touray explained.

Indeed, the gasbag was half sunk in the barrier, a good kilometer above the water, which had ceased to seethe. The underwater breach must have healed as well. The air pressure was returning rapidly to normal. Corson’s ears hurt; he pinched his nose and blew hard.

Then he leaned over the side of the gondola and stared, fascinated, into the void. Above them the sky, below them the ocean, stopped as cleanly as though they had been cut with a knife. The barrier was almost within arm’s reach. Leaning dangerously outboard, he stretched his hand toward it, but without managing to make contact. All he felt was a slight tingling which could simply have been imaginary.

Beyond was free space. But not empty space. There were stars, thousands and thousands of them in unfamiliar constellations, the sort of multicolored stars you only saw in vacuum, through a ship’s viewport or a space-suit helmet. A red splotch shone out which might be a whole galaxy very far away. And there were not only stars and galaxies to be seen.

Among and sometimes in front of them colossal battle cruisers prowled. Naturally, in spite of their size, Corson could not perceive them directly, but they made the stars twinkle, or rather distorted the path of their light. Mass and energy, he thought. A photon being such a tiny thing, so easily turned aside… Under his trained eyes the mad dance of the stars took on a pattern that made sense. Out there two fleets were engaged in desperate combat. In the course of a skirmish one of the cruisers had been disabled and slammed into the barrier so violently that it caused major damage. Doubtless unaware of this cosmic accident, the others kept on with the fight, all-important to them, but reduced on this side of the barrier to a mere abstract weaving back and forth, a shaking of space that made the stars waver like reflections on a rough sea.

Vast greenish lumps were drifting on the other side of the force field. It took Corson a while to identify them. Ice! Bergs of space, the remains of however many millions of tons of water had poured through the breach.

He was aware that he was seeing hardly anything of the battle; it must go on for light-years, and all he was watching was a local dogfight. But the violence of this clash was enough to tell him something important about the nature of this space.

It was not beyond the border of Aergistal. It formed part of Aergistal. That fitted. Space wars too must have their place at Aergistal, along with air wars, sea wars, land wars. A special environment was required, so it had been provided. The model, if this universe was a model, was nearly perfect.

So who could be fighting out there in space? Humans, aliens, humans versus aliens? The wreck of the cruiser against the barrier was nothing like any vessel he was acquainted with, and for all he could tell—distances and sizes being so deceptive in space—might be a kilometer long, or many kilometers. The intact ship must have been at least three times as big. He thought he spotted a human form drifting among the debris like a fetus. But it was so far away that it might easily have been a chunk of metal.

Touray cleared his throat. The vibrations had faded. The air was calm as a stagnant pool. It was no longer necessary to shout to make oneself heard, even though a ghostly rambling continued in their battered ears.

“We’re in a bit of a mess,” the black man said.

“I’m afraid we are,” Corson admitted. He had already reviewed and rejected every possibility open to them. The suspension ropes were not long enough for them to reach the water. If they cut up the gasbag and tried to make parachutes, they might loosen it from the barrier and sink under the waves after a kilometer-long fall. There was almost no chance of the balloon breaking free by itself. And even if somehow they did manage to get down, he had no idea how they might return to solid land, after flying thousands of kilometers at incalculable speed. So here they were, stuck like flies on a wall smeared with glue.

If only one of these Breathers would occur!

At first, when Touray talked about Breathers—a name doubly apt, implying both a respite and a chance for the dead to “get their breath back”I—he had been filled with a confused, animal fear. To go through a Breather must be like dying, or witnessing the end of the world. Now here he was praying for one. But that was pointless. They Could never hope to influence the decisions of the unseen gods who had created—or were administering—this universe.

Another thing that Touray had said came back to his mind. But he was reluctant to draw all the conclusions that it implied.

Yonder in space he saw the darkness break into a kind of foam. The depths seemed to come alive, not with the random agitation of the stars, but as though—very close—a swarm of bees had appeared… or rather mosquitoes, flying about in no perceptible pattern. And, like mosquitoes, they were pestering the nearest of the starships, which were becoming directly visible. They dodged the ships’ fire with devilish skill. One cruiser exploded, then another. The two blasts of light briefly blinded Corson, although he had taken the precaution of shading his eyes. He wondered what would happen if a ship were blown up right against the barrier. Presumably it would withstand the shock, if the repair mechanism had functioned properly, but would it screen enough of the radiation?

Mosquitoes?

All of a sudden Corson realized what they were. Pegasones! His last doubts vanished when one of them materialized just the other side of the barrier. He recognized that girdle of lidless eyes, those six clawed feet spreadeagled on nothing, the mane of tendrils floating like the tentacles of a sea anemone, the harness, and—when the Monster turned around—the uniform which Veran’s forces wore.

Beyond the barrier the rider gave an unheard cry of surprise on spotting the gondola and its occupants. His lips could be seen moving inside his helmet. A moment later a cloud of pegasones pressed against the barrier… and vanished…

And reappeared the other side. Without apparent effort they had penetrated the force field. Encircling the balloon they waited, their guns trained on the gondola. Antonella clutched at Corson’s arm. Touray, wiping his sweaty forehead, demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

There was no time to answer. The idea which had just taken root in Corson’s mind grew into a decision. They could not expect mercy from Veran. But he might try to take them alive. With a woman like Antonella his men could have a lot of fun.

Corson ground his teeth. There was suddenly a taste of blood in his mouth. He looked up at the gasbag. Did it contain hydrogen or helium? There was no time to inquire of Touray. Well, it was a fifty-fifty chance. Hydrogen in contact with air would explode readily, though the temperature of his gun beam was not nearly high enough to initiate a fusion reaction.

Drawing the gun from the holster hidden in his suit, he calmly fired. He had time to see the gasbag rip open and a flame lick up. Then he felt fire engulfing him, and his eyes no longer saw the darkness of space, but an ineffable brilliance. He felt his hands burn, his face, his skin. His broken eardrums spared him the sound of the others screaming—and himself with them.

All he could think was: Yes, hydrogen…

He fell, and felt Antonella’s body against him even though he was no longer corporeal. Oddly, he was not dead. He did not even have the impression of dying. But the light was fading, even as a huge flame rushed toward him. The sky turned purple, then black. As though in the negative of a black-and-white photograph, he could make out pegasones and even their riders, frozen into expressions of amazement like comical statues. He too was struck motionless. The flame ceased to spread a few centimeters from his face… except that he had no face any longer. He felt as though this moment of stasis was universal and would last for ever.

Then the flame went out.