<What about Krisha?> Jimmy asked. <She won’t be able to link.>
</ do not believe that will be a factor, > the Mycohl master replied. </ think we all go the same place. The only important thing is that we go where we want to go.>
After the warmth and humidity of the way-stop world, the interior of the station seemed cold and sterile. Tobrush led the way but did not pause; instead, it was a deliberate pace through the thing with one destination in mind, a destination firm and clear enough that it could not be mistaken and held in its mind in such a manner as one would walk down the block expecting to exit there.
They walked out the other side into an oddly long and winding passage which led to an antechamber that seemed very familiar.
“There’s blood over there,” Modra noted. “It looks like Terran blood.”
“Jimmy,” Grysta said, uncharacteristically nervous, “I don’t like this place. It’s a death place. But, somehow, I’ve been here before. I got some weird kind of memories that give me chills. Like you, bent over, screamin’, while the captain …”
“We did it,” Modra breathed. “Through there is the place where the crystals grow.”
Josef nodded. “You can feel it, a little, even out here. You remember what happened the last time we went through there, though.”
<Yes, but this time we know what to expect,> Tobrush responded. <This time, don’t go with the current. Do not go left towards the city. Go right, no matter what the effort. Go right—and stick together. >
Jimmy turned to Krisha. “I don’t know if you’ll go this time or not. If so, stick with us. If not, keep watch. Grysta, the same goes for you. You went last time, but you might not now that you’re in that syn body.”
“I won’t let you down again, Jimmy,” she promised sincerely.
Still, Modra voiced the question the others were thinking. <Tobrush—what do you expect to find her el>
<At the very least, more information. At best, sufficient amplification on all bands to find out all the answers. >
<I’d settle for the way out,> Josef grumbled, a bit nervous at another run at that strange and bizarre plane.
</ already know the way out, Josef,> Tobrush responded, startling the others as well. <Now that I know how it works, and have proven it, I believe I can use the system as well as they can, at least for destinations I know. >
<Then why don’t we just go?> the former commander asked him. <That’s the idea, isn’t it?>
<The idea, Josef, is to get out with some way to stop them. Come—we waste time, and I assume that this area will be of keen interest to the Quintara princes in not too long a time. Have care—the Quintara have far more experience on that plane than we, and I. expect we will not be able to avoid running into one there.>
“Oh, that’s just what I wanted to hear,” Jimmy muttered glumly, but he followed the Mycohl into the passage and then into the crystal cavern, as did the others. No matter what their nationality or allegiance might be, it was now clearly Tobrush’s party.
They felt it immediately; tremendous vertigo and disorientation, almost as if being in several places at once.
“Pinch yourself!” Modra called out to them. “It helps keep you oriented.”
<That place over there provides good cover, > Tobrush noted. <Where the crystals create almost a natural fort.>
Modra sank down on the floor of the cave, trying to avoid the tiny spikes coming up from it, and, although she felt like she was on a bed of nails, she also felt the accumulated crystal resonances sweeping over her, overwhelming her.
At that moment she felt a horrible, sharp, agonizing pain, and, already dazed by the crystals, she lost all control.
Modra screamed. The scream reverberated around the vast chamber, setting all the crystals in agitated motion.
Green lines … a grid spread before them, two-dimensional, an eerie, flat sort of blackness in between the lines, and they were flying at great speed.
There was no up, no down, no sense of place at all. How could anyone go right in an environment where such concepts were meaningless?
<Hold position!> Tobrush ordered. <Feel the tug, the easy way, the way you want to fly. You can feel it, it is an effortless direction! Resist the easy direction! Wherever it wants, go the opposite way!>
<The way to evil is always easy, > Jimmy thought, not without a little humor. <The way to God is long and hard.>
<What the hell was that I felt?> Modra wanted to know. <It was horrible. The worst pain I ever knew!>
<Sorry,> Tobrush responded. <lt seemed the most efficient way to quickly get the resonance to maximum.>
<You bastard! That really hurt/>
<It is only a memory now. Concentrate on the job at hand! How many are we? Josef?>
<Here!>
<Krisha? Grysta?> Jimmy called.
<It’s just us!> Modra shouted. <Just we four!>
<It will have to do,> the Mycohl master told them. <Feel the resistance, feel the flow. Go the way it hinders you from going! Together! Now!>
Before, they had dived into the grid and sank, gone downward to a constriction of the plane toward that place where the entities of pure evil clung to the sides and hid in its nooks and crannies, beckoning, with the Quintara city at the end. Now they went up instead, through the dark above and around them. . . .
<It’s so hard! Harder than getting back from that place of evil last time!> Modra complained.
<Join with me!> Tobrush called. <Give me your minds! We must punch through!>
They focused on Tobrush and tried to go with him, but all three of them felt themselves slipping, slipping backward. . . .
<Concentrate!> the Mycohl master shouted at them. <Otherwise you will fall—all the way down!>
“You lack faith,” the demon had told Jimmy. “If either of you truly believed . . .”
“Only faith can save you …” Gun Roh Chin’s voice whispered.
“If demons are real, then where are the gods . . . ?”
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee …”
Even Peter failed three times. …
Something flared in the darkness; a brightness as if a star, just gone nova, reached out its waves and washed over them. The brilliance and energy surge were unexpected, engulfing them before any could react, and even Tobrush was caught off guard and puzzled, but the Mycohl was not about to question opportunity. All that was seen, heard, and felt in this place was but illusion, the three-dimensional mind making sense out of things that had no sense within its context, making shapes out of that which had no shape.
The power surge lifted them, brought them up. They burst through the flat black as if tearing a rip in fabric and burst into a universe so vast and so complex none of their minds could handle it, even as illusion.
Golds and silvers and brilliant swashes of color and all of it impossibly bright, woven in a tapestry too complex to understand, stretching out beyond infinity, to places that had no end, no edge. . . .
And yet, they were there, so they had a right to be there. They had earned it.
The pull was still fantastic, and still downward, toward the black below. Burst or not, getting in was not the same as ascending or navigating within the realm.
And yet, somehow, while the shapes and patterns remained too complex, too incomprehensible for such puny minds as they possessed, it nonetheless bore upon them as concepts that they could, feebly, understand.
The Ship was wonderful!
Even as the framing concept entered their minds, there began a clarification, a simplification to a point almost of understanding.
A Ship, a craft of some sort, going from some point to another in a realm that was not their universe, nor any other like it. A ship passing through a cosmos without end, a cosmos where none of ‘the laws and rules applied. . . .
The Ship, carrying . . . universes?
No, that wasn’t right. Not universes, although they were there, an almost infinitesimal dot compared to The Ship’s vastness. Not cargo, though. Not even ballast. . . .
The Captain gives the order. . . . “Cast off! Ignition! Let there be light!”
And in the mighty reactions, in the great blast of power that sets such a Ship as this in motion, an explosion, a series of explosions. . . .
The universes are born. Their universe is born. Energy spews, spins, swirls, some turning to mass, the byproduct of the mighty start. . . .
Vastly limited universes, where only a few of the boundless, unfathomed dimensions are allowed, perceived, used. A pale echo of the infinite realm of the great, true steady-state universe. . . .
Universes, propelled outward in the vast reaction chamber that powers The Ship. Byproducts, bits of debris, swirling before reaching a state of equilibrium that others would one day call physical laws. Galaxies, supergalaxies, megagalaxies—mere bits of debris within a transitory bubble so tiny, so minuscule, that to the Beings of The Ship the whole of the universes so created were as mere molecules to a giant.
Beings so beyond anything that the minds those universes would eventually produce, so alien in every sense of the word, that nothing about them could be comprehended. Beings so incredible, so impossibly beyond anything the Terran mind or even the Mycohl could grasp, that they were interpreted as mere points of light so bright that they could not be looked upon, even in this bizarre mental plane, nor mentally turned into something their minds could handle.
Beings so beyond anything the mind could accept, so powerful, so—omniscient—that they were actually aware of what was inside that byproduct of their main engine start.
To study them, probe them, do experiments, even argue over them.
To create surrogates that could walk, crawl, fly among the tiny new universes.
To debate their own responsibility, and the direction of their own actions.
And for all their powers, all their infinite intelligence and the vastness of their beings, they weren’t the greatest, weren’t even very important in their own domain.
They were simply the Crew of The Ship, doing a job.
Most felt at least a sense of responsibility, but with such vast power and being such journeymen as they were, some playing around was irresistible. Even when the Captain had commanded otherwise, some could not resist playing with their newfound toys, particularly the engine room officer and his black gang down in the bowels of The Ship.
And, when inevitably discovered, they had fled rather than face the charge of mutiny, fled into the main engine area that was their realm.
And there they had locked him in, that officer and his black gang. Locked them in and debated what to do next, with them unable to return to any part of The Ship except through the engine room hold, but still able to play a lot of games. …
Move and counter-move. Surrogate and construct against surrogate and construct, according to the limiting rules of the physics of the engines. …
“You cannot beat them,” something told them, not in words, or even thoughts, as they understood such things. “The best that can be done is a tie, until your universe dies or The Ship reaches port. They know what will become of them when that happens. You cannot win, but they can destroy you all. …”
Despair . . . emptiness. <How can we then hope to even tie them?>
“United you must face Him. United you must drive Him back into the reaction chamber and reaffix the seal to the hatch.”
<Face Him? The four of us against such as Him? How can we face Him?>
“Not you four. The outbreak is currently localized in an area where defenses exist. It must be kept there. Mobilize the defenses. ‘You will face Him and push Him back if you deserve to do so. It has been done before, while many races now ascendant were but primitives scratching upon single balls of dust. Now it is your turn.”
<Are we—we four—capable of such a task?>
“Sixteen began the marathon, by no means chosen at random. You have won the job, whether you want it or not. That is three more than we have had to work with in the past. If you want to win, and have faith that you can, then you can.”