Star Fall Read online

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  MIST.

  Not night, not day.

  Mist.

  Mist, fogs of spirit. Ganglia and synapses of gossamer twinkling. Gleaming, bellowing resonance of waterfall music; matrices of will only tenuously attached to lower-leveled Material.

  Flowing membranes of the Ethereal, the flux and flow of intertwined identity, remembering. Being.

  Being and becoming in equal measure, shadow casting into lesser, baser dimensions, yet still rooted in more solid climes.

  Time and space, light and dark intermingle here, lovers all, aspiring to higher skies, basking in the coruscating trembles of breathless ecstasy rinded and cored with the memory of pain. Laced with symphonic texture. Grounded in the past securely, feeling the slow go of onward-spirits, eyes upwards.

  Wanting. Yearning.

  A thunderous tremor suddenly stills the trilling melodies.

  Dims the light.

  The Anchors report instantaneously. Minds mix, confer. Argue. Issue a single thought finally.

  The selected Anchor is notified: The events that portend, that shake the flux fabric cannot be tolerated. It, alone, must venture into the world of flesh/blood once again, into the lands of doubt and despair and melancholy.

  The Anchor complains heartily.

  When the moment of aperture arrives, it must be shoved through like a multicolored butterfly, flutter-breeze creature, squashed back into its cocoon to de-evolve to caterpillar form.

  Once more into the lands of flesh and blood.

  And steel.

  THE VIEW from 2.2 kilometers above the ground was spectacular.

  Below, like a bundle of bizarre toy building blocks carelessly dumped on the planet’s face, the city sprawled in random clumps and clusters of permacrete, plasteel and luminous geltoid. Lights twinkled: hover-sodiurns riding the geometrically plotted rivers of streets like beacon buoys; blob bulbs within the variously shaped windows of the structures seemingly planned in an insane asylum reserved for architects.

  Yes, thought the man. Those lights ... those lights look like a reflection of the haphazard scatter of stars in the cloud flecked, purpled sky above, twenty-five minutes short of dawn.

  Hunched slightly with the chill, the man stood at the Skyshafter Building’s peak, beside an unfenced edge. The wind was fierce at this height. Thirty, maybe thirty-five kph, the man estimated. Airy fingers slapped him, buffeted his face with cold deadness like gusts from the open sky. Steadily it flapped the satin tails of his black evening jacket, waved the ruffles of his French Lemurian cuffs and collar, and tugged the curls of his long dark hair into a streaming medusa of disorganized locks. Any stronger, the man mused, and the wind would simply sweep me away.

  The man stiffened, straightened with resolution, and contemplated the scenery a moment more.

  The landscape was ragged. Mountains, jagged outcrops, and scarred terrain covered this world. The remnants of ancient volcanism, the basalts and igneous rocks lay twisted and pocked by eons of glaciations. The land’s severe ugliness was striking, even in the dark shades of night.

  Well, he was almost done with it, thought the man. He sighed and smiled a little smile. Then he paced forward, away from the edge of the building’s flat roof.

  He fell.

  The Skyshafter loomed like a monolith, brooding over the city of Portown, star port and capital city to the colonial planet Deadrock. A bleak bit of stone and atmosphere some hundred light years from Confederation trade routes, Deadrock floated in one of the gaps of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. A lonely hunk of matter, it was halfway to the Morapn planets from Earth’s settlements, and halfway to nowhere. Limping around a K-type star on an odd, wobbly orbit, it had a twenty-two hour day, and a 25° tilt on its axis. Deadrock was quite dense; indeed, large deposits of ores rare to the Interworld Confederation—the closely linked network of Earth’s owned and operated planets—riddled the jumbled stuff that was Deadrock if the surface was pierced deeply enough. Iridium, tungsten, Uranium, Arthurium: metals, even packed nodes of transuranic like Melanieum could be found here. A geologically enigmatic world; scientists were at a loss to fully explain the circumstances that led to its creation—or the occasional odd spates of phenomenon in the space surrounding it and its five sister planets.

  Deadrock had been settled slightly over three centuries before. Its population had never been large, nor did it promise to become so, ever. What the planet offered in wealth, it more than stole away in substandard living conditions; barely sufficient and notoriously barren and bleak on the general galactic scale.

  The unusual, questionable architectural styles prevalent in the ever-going construction of Portown illustrated a halfhearted attempt to neutralize the austere solemnity of its planet—but age and apathy had rapidly overcome that attempt. In a universe of incredibly tall spires, the tallest that Portown could boast was the one from which the man fell.

  The fall was a pleasant one, while it lasted.

  The man watched the digital frac-sec lights on his wrist computer blur sequentially into one another as the howling wind wrapped him up in its invisible banshee shrouds. It was all rather like null-grav with sensory fans and sound effects. At exactly 9.98 seconds into his plummet, the suspensor-gravs implanted at structurally sound points of his augmented skeleton, aided by strapped on magnetic field generators about his legs, waist, and forearms began to cut in, slowly decelerating him. At 15.6 seconds from Leap, the man drifted to a halt level with the sixty-ninth floor, two short of his destination.

  About the man’s waist like a cummerbund was his control belt, studded with buttons and dials. The man thumbed a redly glowing vernia carefully, lowering himself. Three meters farther down, the wrist computer blipped a yellow dot of warning. He stopped his descent. Just below his black, real-leather boots would be the charged periphery of the force bubble.

  Directing an extending nozzle from the wrist computer downward, the man focused an analysis beam on the force field. Letters and numbers blinked immediately on the miniature readout screen: the force bubble was the latest; a Morapn generator, no doubt, double bonding the sphere of air molecules with controlled electrons. Simple penetration was out of the question; the electron sheath would have to be rerouted in one spot. But which spot? The energy levels were in constant flux. The point of entry would have to be chosen judiciously.

  This was the part of a generally loathsome job he liked best; figuring out a puzzle. The rest was just so much random violence.

  Damn! He realized that although the wind at this height was nothing compared to what had been up aloft farther, it was strong enough to cause him to drift. He compensated by stepping up his magnetic field’s harmonics with the metallic structure of the building. Now he was stationary enough to work.

  A thrill of elation flickered through him as his sense of depth adjusted and communicated just how high up he still was, floating in air like a grav car. He liked heights. He felt just short of death, here, and realization of the proximity of death always increased his appreciation of life.

  From his control belt he pulled a length of duralloy wire, chosen for both its strength and high conductivity. Of this he formed a hoop, joining the ends with a control-ball unit, geared to pulse a cyclic flow of energy that would simultaneously pierce the field below and divert the electron transference from within the hoop’s circumference. A chancy device, hardly perfected, but it, quite simply, was the only way. He had adapted it from a similar device used in his army days ... surprising how useful his war experiences—and indoctrination—came in this grim occupation.

  By pressing an analog code into the computer, a schematic of the force sphere�
��s exterior appeared on the small screen with waves of shifting shades corresponding to its various energy levels. After deftly calculating his best point of entrance, its optimum moment and angle of direction, he bided his time. The entire circumference of the hoop had to pierce the field uniformly at the same instant; an error would jar the synchronization of the field and thus trigger an alarm system inside the apartment.

  The moment arrived. He let the hoop drop.

  It fell, then stopped—caught, as though suspended in a bowl of clear gelatin. Immediately, a shivering arc sparked about the periphery.

  Good.

  Adjusting the magnet resonance keeping him in place, the man essayed a smooth, slow dive through the port-hole like aperture in the bubble, and then guided himself to the window ledge.

  Once the ledge-lip was firmly under his feet, he engaged a force-grip rung to the permacrete face of the skyscraper, through which he threaded a support-web that would hold him in place while he saw to the window.

  There. Just so. He shut down the suspensor gravs and magnet-devices. He fitted a suction device to the glassteel, and then slipped out his molecular torch, which doubled as a powerful gun on full force, when he needed it.

  He would need the full force soon, he knew.

  * * *

  Many kilometers above, the space-liner Star Fall began to slip slowly into a parking orbit. A massive, bloated zeppelin of a spaceship, the Star Fall bellied down softly on retros, tensor beams, and grav-control into the particular orbit that would align at II:34 hours Galactic Standard with Portown’s ascendant shuttle craft—and then, at 13:00 hours to intersect with the planet’s somewhat dilapidated, and certainly outdated, Skyhook.

  This standard tool was exclusively used for transporting the rare ore from the surface. Each day tons of the stuff would be hauled up in huge buckets up a long tethered cable of graphite whiskers bound in Sinclair molecule chains to the connected synchronously orbiting satellite station above. From here, the ore was stashed aboard tankers and cruisers and shipped to the various manufacturing Elfives of the Interworld Confederation. No polluting industry was permitted on Earth or its associated colonies. No longer was the device uncommon ... however, the Star Fall was just that: uncommon.

  To begin with, the ship’s symmetry was quite alien to human aesthetics. Ragged projections coated its hull like mold gone mad. Its blimp like shape was slightly banana-bent, covered with towers, turrets, indeed even starfreighter-sized peninsulas sprouting willy-nilly from the main body. Obviously, it was not a craft intended for planetfall. At all average diameter of close to one kilometer, it was much too big for that.

  A bright, shimmering cloak of coruscating energy cloaked it like electronic fog, rising and falling in the mountains and valleys of projections with the surface’s subtle amoeboid shifting. This was the stasis residue of the vessel’s under space engines. In normal space the monstrosity was pushed along by the usual hydrogen ramjets, and a Morapn nuclear fusion rocket.

  Within a modest-sized observation blister, the owner, manager, and creator of the Star Fall, the Morapn named Ort Eath, sat with its captain. They watched Nautilus, this system’s strange sun (somehow partially submerged in under space) peek warily past the edge of Deadrock, sliding a corona of brilliance through the hazy layer of atmosphere, inventing new colors of brightness.

  Ort Eath thumbed on the glassteel polarizers to dim the light sheeting into his study. “There,” he said to his human captain. “Better.” The voice emanated not from Ort Eath’s vaguely humanoid head, but from a large orgabox to his right, biologically connected to the base of his alien spine. “Not an exciting planet in the usual respects, I think.”

  “Isn’t that what I’ve been telling you?” said Captain MacNeil glumly. “It’s costing us two weeks detour from our run. And for what? To load on a few grubby miners who want to be tourists along with some unnecessary ore. I told you, Eath, we’ve got all kinds of metals on the ship. Why did you plan this useless pit stop? Oh well, too late now. But let me tell you, the expenditures on food for the passengers alone will not be made up in fares from the miners.”

  The alien was quiet a moment. Series of lights flickered along the orgabox, which stood atop three mechanical legs that now supported it like a tripod. On its front face, below the lights, was a screen. A line of numbers materialized on the screen, shuffling a various series of computations. The flowing numbers finally solidified into one figure. Impassively Eath leaned over and looked at the screen. “Hmrn. A good guess, Captain.” He settled his stiff frame back into the padded chair, which wriggled accommodatingly to accept his contour. “But as I’ve told you, there are good reasons for this detour. My own reasons. It was planned from the beginning. Complaints now are useless. And Captain MacNeil—may I remind you that you are a hireling. I value your advice, but only when I request it.”

  “But we’re not even going to let the passengers have a look at the planet’s surface!” The captain had a long, sad face with sunken eyes, the skin permanently depilated and baby-rump smooth with small pores and nary a pockmark or blemish. It was artificially bronzed a “star-glow tan” ... or so he passed the hue off to admiring planet-hugger women. The face itself seemed to fit like a plastic mask beneath a wispish cap of tawny curls. Imprisoned gray pupils, wreathed in a tracery of capillaries, stared out upon a frightening universe.

  A dope-stick was fitted into his headgear by means of a wire holder extended to the side of his mouth. He sucked on the smoke regularly, like an astronaut in a pressure suit sipping at his water supply. When its sensor detected an excess of ash, the wire-arm would raise and shake it off into a tiny compartment in the hat. The contraption, his own invention, was MacNeil’s pride and joy.

  Ort Eath regarded him a while.

  “Need I remind you, sir,” he said finally, “that as principal owner and controller of this enterprise, it is I who make the decisions?” Eath’s voice was deep, precise; a mechanical synthesis of human consonants and phonemes, so perfect it sounded quite inhuman. The face gave not so much as a twitch as he spoke again through the speaker of the orgabox. “The maiden run of the Star Fall was always meant to be a leisurely affair. There is no need for hurry. Old Earth can surely be patient for our arrival. Now, I did not ask you here to bicker.”

  “No. Of course not. Excuse me.” Captain MacNeil took a small plastic folder from his coat pocket, tapped out a computer card. This he slid into a slot on top of the orgabox. The flesh and metal contraption gulped the card down with a click, humming contentedly. “The information you wanted ...” continued MacNeil, explaining, “Along with the names and specifics on the expected passengers.”

  “Twenty-two of them. Not many. But then I will admit that I did not come to the area of Deadrock for them ...”

  The screen proceeded to flash a readout of names, alphabetically.

  The last name on the list was SPIGOT, TODD.

  * * *

  Three items of impending importance sat upon the table siding Todd Spigot’s hydromat. A small folder contained his passport, certain odds and ends of identification, and his ticket for passage aboard the Star Fall.

  Atop this folder in bold magenta-against-green letters was printed:

  THE STAR FALL VOYAGE!

  The Star Fall. A boat through space, time, and romance. The first journey of this astonishing space-liner celebrates the recent solid binding of respect and friendship between the Terran and Morapn empires. Built by Morapn engineers, crewed by both humans and Morapns, the venture will be the ultimate in detente between the two great civilizations of this galaxy. Congratulations for having the foresight and industry to book passage aboard the Star Fall. The point of departure will be a Morapn world, Fingeld. The destination: Old Earth itself. Further information is provided within, along with your magnetically registered ticket, keyed to your brain’s holo-image alone for your protection.

  BON VOYAGE!
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  Neatly paper clipped to the top of the rectangular folder was an appointment card labeled “STEINMETZ BODY PARLOUR—1134 Quartz Avenue—East Quad, Portown.” By TIME. “23 Tunnnelmonth, 8:00 A.M.” was scribbled. “PLEASE BE PROMPT,” it continued. Attached was a receipt for five hundred and ninety Galcreds, the standard Interworld currency.

  A sonic beam alarm clock, funnel like attachment aimed at the bed, perched on the edge of the cheap pink plastoid table, a sentinel of sleep.

  It rang.

  Todd Spigot jerked, startled from a fitful slumber.

  The sonic pulses of the alarm continued, dragging him away from sleep’s fog. He thrust out a pudgy hand, groped, and tapped the alarm off. Then he lay back a moment to recover his sense of self. He breathed deeply amidst the softly waving sheets of the hydromat.

  Today was the day.

  This morning was the morning he had waited for no less than two Deadrock years. Wobbly, drunken butterflies of excitement began to flitter within his rotund abdomen. The familiar stale odor of sleep hanging over him no longer seemed oppressive and confining. With the taste of freedom in his mouth, he could scoff at invisible chains.

  He heaved himself from bed and switched on his light to attend to the last of his luggage. Dawn threatened beyond the smudged, cracked plastic of his window. Todd fancied that he heard birdsong seeping in cheerfully, a spritely daybreak melody just for him. But he knew that no birds sang in Portown, save in the Zoological Gardens. The song was in him.

  His two suitcases worth of packing double-checked, his disheveled dun-colored hair reasonably neatened, his teeth brushed, he felt about as ready to confront his mother as he ever would be.

  After placing his bags beside the front door of the dinky six-room apartment, he entered the kitchen, bracing himself. If only he could just sneak out, without a goodbye, without having to look her in the eyes and see the betrayed look that they would hold. Oh Mother, Mother, he thought. Why is there pain when there should be respect and release?