APPOINTMENT AT BLOODSTAR
Volume five of The classic Family d’Alembert series
By E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
With Stephen Goldin
CHAPTER 1
The Thousand-Point Test
The man stood in the darkened room, nervously awaiting the events to come. His
compact body, product of a high-gravity world, was clad in a skintight bodysuit that
allowed maximum freedom of movement. He had spent the past four months preparing
for this moment, and now all his acquired knowledge would be put to the ultimate test.
For better or worse, the outcome of this trial would affect the rest of his career. His lips
were dry, no matter how often he extended his tongue to moisten them.
Suddenly a bright light shone straight into his eyes. Even as he blinked, some instinct
told him he was an easy target standing up in the glare. Without even knowing where
he was going, he crouched and sprang forward in the direction of the light. As he did so,
he heard the buzzing sound of a stun-gun, but felt none of the effects. Had he remained
where he was, the test would have been over the instant it had begun.
Now that he was moving, he realized that his only hope of passing was to remain in
motion. There would be more traps ahead to overcome, and he dared not slow down to
let them reach him. Safety, he had been taught, lay in speed. But not blind speed; his
reflexes had to be in complete linkage with his brain to achieve the finesse that many
delicate situations required. He had to think as he moved, so that thought and deed
could be accomplished as close to simultaneously as possible.
He knew of only one thing in this darkness besides himself-the light that was still
shining almost directly into his eyes. As long as that light was on him he would be in
constant danger. It made sense, therefore, to move toward the light and put it out of
commission before the stun-gun’s owner put him out of commission.
His leap forward brought him down on his right shoulder. He rolled as he’d been taught
and came up in a low crouch, prepared to move again. He took a few quick steps to his
right, then zigzagged back to his left. The short buzzes of the stunner kept sounding
out, proving that he was far from home free; but by keeping his movements in a random
pattern, he rendered his would-be destroyer unable to hit him.
The light was much closer now. One more small leap took him to a point just beside it.
It turned out to be a small spotlight some thirty centimeters in diameter. Lifting his foot
in an arc that would have made a ballet dancer jealous, he gave the bulb a vicious kick.
The plastic covering shattered and the light burned out instantly, leaving him once more
in darkness broken only by the blue spot before his eyes, the afterimage of the
spotlight.
The sound of the stunner ceased with the extinguishing of the light. The man on trial
moved away from the spotlight once more and paused for a few deep breaths, waiting
for the next development. He did not have to wait long.
Lights came on all around him-not the blinding glare of a spotlight, but a diffuse glow
that illuminated all the surroundings. The man blinked and looked suspiciously around.
To his left, the room he had just traversed in order to reach the spotlight was still dark.
Before him was a corridor three meters wide and about forty long; at the far end was a
doorway to another room. The walls on either side of the corridor were six meters high
too tall for him to jump over even in this gravity that was forty percent of what he
considered normal. There were only two directions in which he could move: either back
the way he had come or down this new corridor.
The decision was made for him by a blaster bolt that sizzled the air and burned into the
ground at his feet. It came out of the blackness he had just left; flying into the face of
that kind of armament when another course presented itself would be tantamount to
suicide. Without hesitation, the man chose to proceed down the corridor.
This path was scarcely safe either, though. He had hardly begun down it when he found
objects springing up in his way. First a pile of boxes rose from the floor, completely
blocking the path. There was no way to go around them, so he began climbing over the
pile. To complicate matters still further, light beams seared out at him. They were
intended to simulate blaster bolts, and the man got the message instantly. There was to
be no tarrying in this corridor, either.
His climb became a scramble as he finally reached the top of the pile of boxes. Not
standing on ceremony, he jumped down to the ground again, narrowly missing the row
of sharp knives that sprang up from the ground just as he leaped. More of the light
beams were firing at him, making realistic crackling sounds as they passed by.
He ran at top speed, his eyes surveying the path before him in a series of darting
glances. He’d gone nearly ten meters without further incident when he noticed that one
patch of flooring was a slightly different color than the rest. In midstride just before he
reached it, his back foot kicked out, lifting him in an off-balance leap over the one-meter
patch of discoloration. He landed awkwardly on the other side, scrambled to his feet,
and continued on before the light beams had a chance to zero in on him. In one
desperate dash he made it the rest of the way down the corridor and turned to the right
through the doorway into the next room.
Without warning he felt the ground go out from under him. As he fell, he hit water with
an enormous splash. He submerged for an instant, then came up gasping for air. The
water was icy, a cold shock to his tensed nervous system. It left a briny taste on his
tongue and stung his eyes as he tried to look around and get his bearings in this new
environment.
The room was dimmer than the corridor had been, but still had light enough to see by.
The door through which he had entered had slid automatically shut, and the ceiling had
lowered to just half a meter above the surface of the water, barely room for him to lift
his head and breathe. The walls were perfectly smooth, without a break or a handhold
in them. There was no sign of an exit anywhere.
The man continued treading water as he puzzled out this dilemma. There had to be
some way out of here; if it wasn’t above water, then it must be below. Taking a deep
breath, he dipped below the surface to search for the exit.
The salt water stung his eyes, so he had to proceed by feel. The room was small,
basically a cube three meters on a side, and all but filled with water. But the water could
not occur here naturally; it had to come in from somewhere. He searched with his
fingers for the vent.
There! His hands had been passing over the smooth surface of the walls when
suddenly they encountered an empty space. Taking his time to explore the opening
fully, he ran his fingers around the edge. The hole was not quite a meter wide and less
than half of that high. It would be a tight squeeze, but he could manage to get out of
there. He surfaced once more for a gasp of air, then dived and pushed himself through
the opening.
At first, this narrow passageway continued level, and he despaired of its going
anywhere; but, after a couple of meters, it started sloping upward. Finally his head
broke the surface once more and he could breathe sweet, fresh air. Feeling both
mentally and physically exhausted, he dragged himself up the ramp onto a dry floor,
dreading whatever ordeal might be next in store for him.
There was only one door in the room, twenty meters away; unless he chose to return to
the water he would have to go through it. With a sigh he set out but, though the room
was bare of furnishings, it was not as easy to cross as it first appeared.
An ultragrav unit had been planted under the floor, causing a gravity gradient as he
approached the door. Where he had emerged from the water the force was only one
Earth gravity, but it rose quickly as he moved. Within only a couple of meters it was up
to two and a half gravities. That in itself would not have been too bad, because that was
the gravitational strength on his own native world; but it went up still further as he