The Hub: Dangerous Territory by James H. Schmitz

Two devices had appeared in the screen about midway between the two ships, and Keth’s description slid over to them, quickening. Telecontrolled projectile guns, each balancing a detached four-inch steel sphere in its launching field, spheres and guns both shielded by the Marsar effect, of course . . . and now one had veered about, his voice announced, rising in excitement, had aimed at the doomed siege boat, and the sphere was launched.

Close-up of a steel ball seemingly motionless against the frozen pink and white of pseudospace, then the armored flank of the siege boat swinging into view, swinging in toward it. The four-inch missile struck and adhered.

The close-up flowed out, became the previous picture, now including the projected image of a huge transparent time dial, a second hand sweeping around through its ten marked sections. As the hand touched the tenth mark, the dial vanished, the other projectile gun swerved, and the second steel ball was launched. Keth abruptly stopped speaking.

This time, there was no close-up. A moment passed; and then the siege boat shattered.

It was not a violent process but an awesomely quiet one. Cracks flicked about the massively armored hull, joined and deepened. The boat began to drift apart in sections, each section splitting again and again as it came separate. For an instant, the shift engine showed, protected by its own Marsar and pressor fields from the debacle around it, then vanished, on its way back to normspace. Keth felt a stab of annoyance. The Navy had insisted on salvaging the engine, and its intact appearance meant a fractional loss in overall effect.

But otherwise the picture of absolute destruction was complete. Chunks of battle-armor capable of resisting the pounding of ultrabeams continued to crack into fragments, fragments splintered into dust, Keth’s voice quietly accompanying the siege boat’s destruction. For a moment, a glittering fog, which still retained a suggestion of the vessel’s outlines, was visible; then Space Three was clear again. Probably not one in a million of Adacee’s viewers had noticed the simultaneous dissolution of the projectile guns, triggered off from the pseudospace ship.

And this was the explanation for the dual protection given the personnel section, Keth continued. If, for any reason, their ship’s outer Marsar Field should fail . . . and Marsar Fields had been known to fail for reasons never explained . . . the rest of the ship would, within seconds, become a homogenous, brittle-frozen mass. But the personnel section would remain intact within its own field, and since it contained the shift engine, it could be brought back by itself to normal space to await the arrival of rescue ships.

In spite of such precautions, one pseudospace ship not too long ago had simply stopped communicating and disappeared during a shift. Space Three remained a medium of both unfathomed opportunities and unfathomed dangers, and until . . .

Keth again stopped listening to what he was saying. It was familiar ground: a pitch for money. The Navy was getting what it had paid for by providing the stage for a Deboll newscast while Keth moved toward the instrument room at the far end of the section. There he would introduce several scientists, question them individually about their specialties, then switch back to a few minor demonstrations . . . and, blessedly, the gruesome hour would be over.

A sharp whisper suddenly beside his left ear. “Keth! Get back here!”

What did Furnay want? Keth turned, started back toward the technician, not too hurriedly, mind racing. His commentary veered off from the interviews toward which it had been leading, took a new tack which would provide an opening for whatever had caught Furnay’s attention. Whatever had caused that interruption could be no minor matter.

As he slid into his seat before the screen, Furnay’s filtered voice said hurriedly on his left, “That dot in the upper right corner! It appeared just a moment ago and it’s getting larger fast—”

Keth’s eyes flicked over the screen, found the dot. More than a dot . . . an irregular little dark blotch against the blazing white of Space Three, changing shape constantly and expanding visibly as he stared at it. For an instant, he felt cold fury. They hadn’t mentioned anything like this in yesterday’s briefing, and in seconds he’d have to be talking about it, explaining it glibly! His hand already had pressed a button on the little intercom rod in his pocket which would connect him with one of the observers at the big screen, the man who was standing by to fill in if Keth felt unable to interpret what the screens showed.

He hadn’t expected to use that button . . . and now the fool didn’t respond! He pressed again, repeatedly, ragingly.

A loud voice announced:

“Emergency stations! Repeat—emergency stations! Unidentified object approaching . . . ”

Keth drew a sharp breath. They didn’t know what it was! A new Space Three phenomenon in the middle of the newscast—what a break! WHAT a break! He swung into the situation instantly, opening the pickup filters, which had been blurring out irrelevant sounds, and every intercom, catching commands and responses crossing the personnel section his voice running along with them, expanding, improvising . . . The drive engines came on with a muted roar; the pseudospace ship moved away, out of the course of the unknown object which had been headed directly towards them—and which, thirty seconds later, again was headed directly towards them. The ship suddenly picked up speed in dead earnest.

They had turned on the shift engine, Keth announced to Adacee’s viewers, voice shaking with excitement; but of course, it would take five minutes for the engine to develop enough power to permit their return to normal space. Meanwhile the blob, the blotch—the unidentified object—now four or five inches across in the screen—was sliding sideways out of sight as the ship turned away from it. It was still vague . . . objects more than two miles apart in normspace terms could not be clearly defined in pseudospace; but there was a suggestion, more than a suggestion, of bunched tentacles trailing from that shifting shape. It definitely, almost definitely, was following them—

Furnay was stabbing buttons desperately, as the object vanished from the screen, to get them switched over to another one where it would be visible again. The Adacee feedback tinkle sounded in Keth’s left ear; a jubilant voice whispered, “Terrific, Deboll! Terrific! None of us can imagine how you did it, but keep the thing running! The interest indicator jumped to absolute top in less than thirty seconds and is staying right there. You sound scared to death!”

He was scared to death, Keth discovered. His knees rattled together whenever they came within four inches of each other . . . And now the screen blinked twice and shifted to a slightly different view of pseudospace.

“AWK!” Furnay said hoarsely.

The pursuing object couldn’t be much more than two miles behind them now because its details were trembling on the verge of becoming discernible. Only two miles, Keth repeated, stunned, to himself—with the ship roaring along on its space drive!

And with that, the personnel section went black.

* * *

Keth heard a thump beside him, put out his hand and found Furnay collapsed forward on the control console. He wasn’t sure whether the technician had fainted or not, and he started shaking him by the shoulder. The intercom was still full of voices and his own voice was continuing automatically. “We have begun the Marsar Shift! Apparently, we escaped with only seconds to spare! What this . . . ”

“Mr. Deboll,” the intercom told him sharply, “the newscast was cut off twenty seconds ago! Communications is pre-empting all channels until we have completed the shift to normspace and established our new location there.”

Twenty seconds ago would have been the instant they entered the shift. Oh, not bad, Keth thought giddily. Not bad at all! The last impression Adacee’s viewers had been given was of that horrific unknown pursuer closing in. And now minutes of silence before the ship’s escape was confirmed—it would be the sensation of the month!

“Shift ending,” the intercom said. “Remain at your stations . . . ”

The lights came on. The screen before Keth remained black for an instant. Then something flickered in it, and he was looking out at clouds and rivers of blazing stars.

Somebody cheered. After that, there was a dead stillness for perhaps half a second . . .

Somebody else yelled hoarsely. Keth shot up half out of his seat, stayed crouched, bent forward, staring at the screen.

The stars on the right were being obscured by a darkness which came flowing out over them . . . a darkness which extended broad, whipping tendrils and grew, covering half the screen, two thirds of it. Voices were shouting, and at the last moment, before the screen was completely blanked out, Keth glimpsed something like a section of a huge, rubbery tube swinging down toward him through space.

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