Chapter 5: Dancing in the Dark

Jewel threw back the blankets and slid out of bed without even a glance at her bedside clock. She'd been mentally and physically exhausted when she climbed under her covers, but she'd still remembered to set her mental alarm. It had not failed her, and she was beginning to realize just how thoroughly she could rely on it.

Nine o'clock in the morning, and outside of her window the sun was starting to break through the clouds. She'd allowed herself four hours of sleep; nearly as much as she required most nights, anyway. Eager to get back to lab twentythree, she took a quick shower and reached for the nearest set of clean clothes at hand in her closet. Throwing on a pair of artfully faded jeans, Nikes and a deep burgundy blouse, she brushed her hair and fixed herself a quick cup of coffee and a slice of toast, frying a couple of eggs on her tiny hotplate. Nobody seemed to be around as she hastened back to lab twentythree. Of course not! This was Saturday morning. She and Neal should be the only ones in the building, except for the lone security guard who was probably drowsing at his post. She smiled as a thought occurred to her, and made a quick detour past the kitchen of the deserted cafeteria.

"How's it going, Boss?" she asked as Neal looked up from his work, noticing the shadows under his eyes that hinted at more than just one night of lost sleep.

"I'm just finishing up here," he replied with an approving smile for her fresh appearance. He put down the circuit board he was testing, leaning back to stretch his shoulders and scratch at the stubble that roughened his chin. "You look rested and ready for anything. I'll have this thing ready to go in a few minutes, if this part checks out the way it should. Is that tray what I hope it is?"

"It's just a cup of coffee and a couple of apple Danish. You need to take a break before you fall flat on your face. I'll bet you haven't once stopped working since I went off to bed." She studied the hulking machine, whose rough construction and haphazardseeming design proclaimed its status as a prototype. "I didn't notice this second set of controls, before. What does it do?"

"It determines the location and orientation of the portal, in the universe on the other side. Mmph," he answered around a bite of pastry, then took a sip of steaming coffee to clear his throat. "Mmm, that is good. You can use these three knobs to move it up and down, forward and back, or sideways. The other two tilt and rotate it to match the orientation of whatever world you've reached. A lot of what I've done has been the result of trial and error, but at least it works pretty well. I intend to clean up a lot of the rough spots when I build my next model, maybe try using a pair of joy sticks instead of knobs. After all, the main reason I set up Marten Laboratories was to give me a chance to work on my invention."

"Yeah, but how much time have you really had the last couple of years, what with running the labs and all?"

"You're too smart for your own good," he mumbled, smiling somewhat ruefully at her as he stuffed the last bite of jelly Danish into his mouth and returned to the task in front of him. "Not nearly as much as I'd like. There just hasn't been enough of me to go around. I've spent a lot of evenings in this lab when I probably should have been sleeping."

"That's because you've tried to do everything by yourself," she chided gently, moving a test probe to where he could reach it without stretching. "Now that you've got me to help, it should get easier."

"There, that's done." He laid down his soldering pencil, not reacting to her comment, but she thought that he didn't seem displeased. Turning to his workbench, he flipped on several sets of recording instruments. "Now then, let's see if everything's fixed."

There was no sudden flare of light, this time. For a moment or two, nothing much seemed to be happening as its circuits drew power through heavy cables from the banked truck batteries along one wall of the room. Then there was a low, deep hum. It slowly rose in pitch, growing louder until it became a highpitched whine that faded away into silence as it passed beyond even the range of her hearing. The body of the machine was an oblong case about the size of an upright home freezer. The two control panels were set into one side, one above the other. The front of the machine bore an oval framework of metal rods and strangely wound coils, mounted on wooden insulators so that it cleared the front of the case by several inches. As the humming sound rose to a thin whine and died away, a film of bluish light spread across the frame. It quickly thickened to opacity, hiding the face of the machine behind it from their sight.

"Is that the actual portal?"

"That's it, but it's still closed, since all of the dimensional controls are set on zero." Neal turned the first of six knobs, the one on the left, one click and a tiny black dot appeared in the center of the blue. Jewel's sensitive hearing caught the faintest hint of a highpitched whistle. "There, now it's open. I've set it to the 'next universe over'. There's nothing there but empty space, not even any stars, and what you hear is a little bit of our air leaking across through that pinpoint opening. If I opened the portal any farther, everything in this lab could be sucked through, but the way it's set I've used it to provide a good source of highgrade vacuum for my other experiments. That's why I've built in a safety switch that won't allow it to open any farther under these conditions. Now, I'll move the controls to the setting that was automatically recorded when you and Tony broke through into that other world."

He typed in a command on the upper keyboard, and the numbers displayed on the control panel shifted to new values as the knobs beneath them spun. The thin whistle of escaping air died away, and as he turned another knob the tiny dot opened to the full size of the oval framework. Jewel peered through the suddenly opened window, having some trouble at first recognizing the wooded hillside and rough cairn of stones. For one thing, everything was the wrong color. The trees were a purplish brown, while the sky was nearly black. It was almost like looking at a photographic negative, she thought to herself. The turn of another knob, and their viewpoint rose into the air, high above the trees.

"How far can you move it?" Her expression was somewhat dubious as she peered through the metal framework. Spread out before her inquiring gaze was what appeared to be an uncharted wilderness. The ground was a couple of hundred feet below, an expanse of trees and brush that stretched as far as she could see. "Far enough to rescue Tony?"

"I have no idea. It all depends on how far away they took him. That's one of the things I've been experimenting on with this model, but my control setup is still pretty crude. The more power I put into these circuits, the touchier they get. The way that it's set up now, my control is fairly smooth, but I can only move the portal a dozen or so miles in any given direction." He turned a knob through a small arc, and the view through the portal jumped. It was as though the forest floor she was watching had abruptly, unaccountably dropped a couple of hundred feet, and Jewel had to swallow hard to control her stomach's reaction. "Where's that road you mentioned?"

"Over that way, I think." She pointed, and the scene shifted around to the left. "I'm not sure... It's hard to tell, with the colors all wrong and everything. Yes, down there. You can just barely make it out through the trees. Why are they? The colors all wrong, I mean?"

"The different time rates. Time goes almost twice as fast over there, so the light that comes through the portal has all of its colors shifted up the scale more than half an octave. Most of the light you see started out down in the infrared." He carefully manipulated the knobs on the control panel, making their viewpoint drift along a bit jerkily. The air pressure was slightly higher on the other side of the portal, even as high up as they were. The result was a steady breeze blowing through at them, bringing with it a dry warmth and a blend of woodsy odors. The trail was easy to follow as it wound back and forth on the side of a ridge, keeping more or less on one level as it led them along.

"This is about as far as we can go." Neal played with the knobs a moment longer, and the portal danced around but stayed more or less in one place. "I don't see anything but more of the same trees and hills."

"Wait a minute!" Jewel leaned forward, trying to see what lay ahead. "Raise it up a couple of hundred feet, if you can. Yes, see there? No, off to the right a little. Isn't that smoke?"

"It may be. I'll put a little more power into these circuits. It'll make my control even more erratic, but that can't be helped without a complete rebuild. I've got a pair of binoculars in my office, but maybe we won't need them."

A couple of dabs of solder, and he attached short wires with alligator clips on each end of a rheostat. Jewel watched intently as he used it to bypass a tiny resistor. The scene through the portal leaped and bounced crazily, their viewpoint ending up several miles farther along and high in the sky. Air sucked out of the lab in a great screaming gust, and a windowpane shattered, spraying broken glass across the lab floor.

"Goddammitall!" Neal let out a strangled curse, but things quieted down as he jerked the jumper loose, bringing the portal back to where it had been. Jewel hurriedly brought a broom and dustpan from a utility closet, and the two of them cleaned up the worst of the mess before they turned back to the recalcitrant machine.

Neal returned all of the controls to zero before reattaching the jumper. Now his lightest touch on the knobs moved the portal in great leaps, but soon he managed to stabilize it in midair high above what looked like a newly constructed military encampment. A row of tents marked the officers' billets, the common soldiers sleeping out in the open as long as the weather remained fair. Rude breastworks of dirt and logs had been thrown up around the camp, as though in readiness for a sudden attack.

"Looks like drawings I've seen of Roman encampments," Neal commented. "I guess some things are pretty universal."

"Why, it's like watching an old movie," Jewel exclaimed. "Everybody's jumping around so fast!"

"The different time rate, remember? Also, the higher gravity means that people really are moving faster. Look, the sun's almost down. Do you see Tony anywhere?"

"No, and I've been looking for him. I hope he's all right. These soldiers look like the ones who were attacked, back along the trail. The ones who took Tony with them had blue uniforms, but I can't be sure with these crazy colors. I wonder who the other soldiers were."

"We need more information," Neal growled, unconsciously keeping his voice down as though afraid they might be overheard, although the portal was a couple of hundred feet above the ground. "And a military force in hostile territory, if that's what they are, is about the worst place there is to find out anything. We don't know who these people are, even whether they are invaders or defenders. We don't know the language, the customs, or anything else about this world."

"At least they do seem to be human," she countered. "If they weren't, things could be a whole lot rougher for us. How can there be human beings on this planet, if it's really in some other universe?"

"That's a very good question," he answered, wryly, "and it's one that I'd really like to have the answer to, if they really are humans and not just some alien life form that looks a lot like us. I've never run into any kind of intelligent life forms before, on any of the worlds I've visited. We may find out how it could happen someday, or we may not. I'm going to lift us up higher, and turn the portal in circles. See if you can spot anything that might help us."

"Isn't that some more smoke?" She was looking almost back the way they had come. "No, away over to the right, a couple of miles past that bare ridge."

"It's hard to tell, with the sun going down so fast. You're right, it is smoke. If I can just move us over that way... Oops, too far! That's better, now down a little... Yeah, it looks like a village. Not much of one, either. Fifteen or twenty houses, inside of a log palisade. Huts, is more like it, thatch roofs with only one or two rooms each. Damn! I wish it wasn't getting dark so fast, down there. Pull the shades, and turn out these lights. We don't want them to spot our lights through the portal. There, that's better."

In the deepening twilight, a few people moved about, then all was still. Like most preindustrial cultures, the setting of the sun meant that it was time for nearly everyone to go to sleep.

"Let's go back and see if anything's happening back where the soldiers are camped," Jewel suggested. "No, wait. Something's going on down there..."

Amaluetha wasn't quite asleep yet, and the sudden clamor brought her out of her narrow bed. She swung open a shutter and peered out of her room's one small, unglazed window.

"Sojers! Danger! Sojers come!" Hrab's breath came in whistling gasps as he staggered into the drowsing village through the open gate in the log palisade, and he had trouble making himself heard. At first, only a few heads popped out of doors or unglazed windows to see what the shouting was all about. He stopped to catch his breath, then shouted again, louder. "Danger! Sojers!"

"Go back to sleep, Amy," was her father's response. "It's only that fool of a Hrab, making a fuss about nothing again. I'll go out there and help quiet him down."

"Wake up! Sojers come. Come fast! Kill all of us. Must hide! Sojers!"

"What's this about soldiers?" Yarbell, who had been head of the village Council of Elders for as long as Amaluetha could remember, pushed his way to the front of the small crowd that had gathered. Pulling the belt of his ornate tunic together, he grabbed Hrab by one arm. "What are you talking about, man? There aren't any soldiers anywhere around here. We're too far north for any fighting to reach us."

"No, no! Me go chase runaway pack beast of Hannanush the Wise. Find where trail lead. Find big bunch sojers. They roast pack beast over fire. Me hide in bushes. Hear sojer say no want to fight no more. Find village where pack beast come from. Kill all men. Take women far away into woods. Make own village, then not have to be sojers no more."