The Chaos Weapon (15 page)

“Where are we?” Wildheit asked, as the agonies of the fast flight died away.

“In the trans-continuum junction itself—a theoretical nowhere.” Penemue, on whose shoulders fell most of the mathematical chores, appeared to be the only one who felt qualified to answer the question. “At this point we are included in neither one universe nor the other. We’re in the junction which separates the two continua. It’s a domain unique in itself, being starless, massless, theoretically infinite, and with only a negative set of physical principles of its own. It’s boundaries are defined only by the velocity of light, yet it is neither tardyon nor tachyon space nor anything else that has a definition. It is nothing at all, in the most literal sense of the term.”

“Yet things can exist here?” Wildheit was fighting to comprehend Penemue’s concepts.

“Certainly. But don’t become confused by the apparent simplicity of that fact, Marshal. The mathematics of the continuum septum are quite horrendous. Basically, any artifact which exists in this domain is relative only where it is contained by itself. Simply, it is the hull containing this ship that enables the principles of ordinary physics to be maintained inside it. Outside that containment, no unifying physical principles apply.”

“I thought you said that was simple,” Wildheit complained. “What does that jargon mean in practical terms?”

“It makes this the one place where the Chaos Weapon could be built. With respect to the junction domain, mass has no mass, momentum nor gravitational interaction. A man could manhandle a planet as if it were a bubble, and it would move where he pushed it and stop where he stopped it. Even black holes can be handled from outside their event-horizons,
because no matter how crucial their internal gravitational fields may be, once outside the sphere of containment, gravity, by definition, ceases to exist. It’s these conditions, Marshal, which make it possible for
that
to be built and operated.”

With a gesture of pure drama Penemue pressed a switch, whereupon one of the major viewscreens livened to reveal a breathtaking structure set against the background of absolute nothing. To the left of the picture, a shining metal cage like a gigantic roller bearing minus the rollers, turned endlessly about an unseen center. Toward the middle of the screen—and aligned on the same axis as the spinning cage—was a vast assembly that reminded Wildheit of nothing so much as the internal structure of some ancient cathode-ray tube. Sets of deflector plates and toroidal rings plainly controlled some central shaft of phenomena, the nature of which was not obvious.

To the right of the picture, and still axially aligned, was a vast, broad disk which spun in unison with the cage, and from the center of the disk emerged a great golden funnel the open end of which was vastly flared like some unique cosmic trumpet. Nor was this all. In low orbit around the whole structure, little satellite space-stations twinkled as they spun in furious attendance to their fantastic charge. Illuminating the whole scene, four small suns were stationed motionless as if tethered by invisible wires.

“And that’s the Chaos Weapon?” Wildheit asked at last.

“That’s it, Marshal, but let’s give you some points of scale. Although you can’t see them, the cage contains ten black holes, each about two kilometers in diameter and about twice the mass of your own terrestrial sun. The cage itself is about twenty-five kilometers in diameter. The accelerating section in the center is over a hundred and fifty kilometers long, and the spinning reactor to the right is thirty kilometers diameter by fifteen wide. The horn is the collector. Into it they spin filamentary star-stuff from the old
universe at rates of up to ten star masses per second.”

“Ouch!”

“The beam from the cage end of the weapon is composed of pure entropy, from which all extraneous phenomena have been stripped. Its power is such that it can stand a ten-millionfold attenuation on breaking through the continuum septum, and still have enough power to modify events anywhere in the new universe.”

“It doesn’t compute,” protested Wildheit. “All that equipment and power for so little actual effect.”

“The effects are relative to your viewpoint and your needs, Marshal. You see, out here they aren’t looking at individual events. They’re looking at sets of Chaos calculations, and tuning the device to try and modify event chains which appear dangerous to them either now or in the future. The scale of physical realities at the receiving end are irrelevant. It’s the amount of change which they can manipulate that counts.”

Kasdeya, who had been listening quietly in the background, came forward.

“Don’t you see, Marshal, the destruction of a planet or the loss of a horseshoe nail can both be equivalent in terms of winning or losing the final battle. In fact, the mammoth catastrophes in which the weapon has been involved have largely been due to the backlash of an over-stressed continuum rather than part of the original design. But as you so rightly point out, with ships on the other side of the continuum, they have a new dimension of attack. They can create their own small disasters and deliberately amplify them by the backlash effect.”

“Marshal!” Gadreel had been examining the screen closely. “I think we’re about to get a demonstration.”

They crowded back to the screen, and Gadreel’s fingers traced the path of a fast, fine, filamentary thread, which, as if controlled by a blind whirlwind, was randomly feeling for the entrance to the mighty horn. As the entry was found, the filament twisted into a tight spiral which thickened to become a skein and then a rope of vibrant energy reaching out from the
farther limits of nothingness, weaving its magnificent plasma with a hectic compulsion to drive into the bell of the golden trumpet. Soon the great fire-thread began pulsing, as pearl-like beads of sheer coherent energy began to slide with ever-increasing frequency into the implacable maw of the ever-spinning reactor.

“Looks like a major project.” Penemue was impressed. “That’s fast-rate feeding if ever I saw it. I wonder what’s afoot? If they release all that energy in a single burst, somebody’ll get a jolt which’ll transfer them to the far side of reality.”

“They’re coming round to new bearings,” said Kasdeya. “See how the whole assembly swings in unison. Only out here in the junction could you achieve a maneuverability like that.”

But Wildheit was not listening. On his shoulder, Coul was uneasily tensed, and the marshal turned to look at Roamer. With a shock, he found her face a mask of terror. Although her hands moved spasmodically, attempting to convey some expression, her vocal cords must have been paralyzed by a level of fear too great to permit even a scream.

In trying to make a frenzied summary of the situation, Wildheit turned back to the screen. There, the reason for Roamer’s distress seemed only too apparent. He found himself looking straight down the operating end of the Chaos Weapon itself …

KASDEYA had seen the same thing and rushed for the controls, frenetically intent on getting the ship out of range before the weapon could fire. Inexplicably, however, Roamer broke out of her shock-state and,
giving vent to an anguished screech of protest, hurled herself between Kasdeya and the instrument panel. He pushed her away and grasped the controls, but she returned in a frenzy and tore at his hands so viciously that her nails cut strips of skin from his wrists.

“Don’t take the ship away!” She was nearly crying with the intensity of her emotion.

“Get out of it, you crazy chicken!” Kasdeya threw her bodily aside and secured his place at the panel. The next instant she was back upon him, but this time even more purposefully. A single, unexpected blow with the side of her delicate hand toppled him unconscious on to the deck.

Gadreel had watched the Chaos Weapon swinging toward them with hypnotic fascination. The rumpus behind him, however, caused him to turn, and he immediately leaped to the position from which Kasdeya had fallen.

“What are you doing, chicken? Trying to get us killed?” His pose was that of an habitual fighter and he turned on her, fully prepared to counter any manner of attack. There was no doubt he was prepared to kill if necessary. She circled him warily, but as he turned to touch the controls she shouted in alarm.

“No—don’t touch those!”

Gadreel made a mock attack to drive her away, calling on Penemue for support. The repeater screens on the instrument panel showed the Chaos Weapon now pointed squarely at the ship and still taking on energy at a prodigious rate. There was no way of telling how many seconds were left before it fired.

A moment’s diversion of attention was the break that Roamer was seeking. She got in one deft blow on Gadreel’s shoulder, which caused him to counter. As he moved, he was off-balance on the turn, and her follow-through, more rapid than the eye could follow, dropped him like a stone. The angle of his neck as he slid along the floor left no doubt that he was dead.

At that instant, one of Wildheit’s microshock pellets
burst near the ceiling, and Roamer spiraled uncertainly to the floor. In so confined a space the rest of them also suffered momentary stun effects, but it was Penemue who reached the controls first. As his hands thrashed across the panel, Roamer sat up again dazedly and made a last ineffectual attempt to reach his legs. Then she slumped back weeping. But against the rising song of the engines Wildheit could discern her words and was speared with a sudden doubt about his wisdom in supporting Kasdeya’s attempted flight.

“You stupid fools! Don’t you see, they can’t touch us here. It isn’t written in the patterns.”

It was, however, too late to abort the flight. In the same instant the ship passed out of the region in which Chaos logic had prohibited any reaction. As the vessel leaped out of the strange space between the continua, Wildheit’s last view on the screens showed a beam of bright energy spearing from the Chaos Weapon towards them. Somewhere on the fringes of the speed of light, a bolt of sheer, unattenuated energy picked up the ship and smashed it against the elastic walls of the continuum itself. Even Coul whimpered with a new kind of fright.

The following period of time beggared description. Added to the pervading and agonizing thrill of their trans-light passage was a new dimension of vibration in several planes simultaneously. Wildheit assumed this was some form of resonance set up in the continuum barrier against which the ship was sliding. Whatever its actual nature, its potential to destroy the occupants of the craft was very convincing. The floors, walls, and every part of the ship’s structure oscillated with energetic excursions that could painfully bruise at the merest touch; moreover, a low harmonic gave birth to broader, deeper waves of inertia which flung the occupants into contact with the vibrant and damaging walls and items of equipment to an extent that made it certain that human survival would soon become impossible.

Nor was this the only circumstance to be feared. The
reciprocating stresses set up in the structure and fittings began literally to tear the ship apart. Joints cracked open ominously, and fractured metal pins popped like bullets from over-stressed bulkheads. Equipment racks broke free from clamps and fastenings and began to lurch drunkenly about the decks on strange waltzing paths of their own devising. Fractured connections begat sparks and smoke, and the smell of ozone and the acrid stench of overheated insulation began to clog the air, that caused breathing to become extraordinarily painful.

In the midst of this nightmare, Wildheit felt Roamer touch his arm.

“Help me, Marshal Jym. Over there …” She gestured toward the control panel.

Without understanding her intention, he helped her cross the painfully vibrating floor, forcing away heavy items of equipment with feet that already cried for mercy and badly bruising his knuckles by merely brushing against the control panel housing.

Roamer closed her eyes in concentration, and her fingers sought the control keys randomly until her Chaos insight gave her an idea of what response she could gain from a particular operation. Nevertheless her hands were sorely beaten by the vicious vibration of the very keys she was trying to manipulate.

Finally she began to win. Searching out the quieter eddies in the swirling patterns of Chaos, she edged the craft slowly into a more passive stream and finally to complete rest in some spatial backwater sheltered from the storms and winds of entropy. For the last part of the operation, Kasdeya had recovered and come to her side, but was taking instructions obediently from Roamer’s movements, only gradually assuming complete control as the harmonic shaking lessened and died.

“Marshal,” Kasdeya mopped his brow, “I owe the chicken an apology. If I’d listened to her we wouldn’t have hit this mess in the first place. And without her, we would not have gotten out of it. I don’t know how
she did it, but she’s saved our lives.” On a sudden impulse he knelt and kissed Roamer’s swollen fingers.

“I also made the same mistake,” said Wildheit. “But it was you who threw me, Roamer. Are you certain we would have been safe had we stayed?”

“Of course! The Chaos Weapon without an impending disaster to act upon, is no weapon at all. Only when we fled into a situation of potential danger could it act.”

“Then what frightened you so much when it turned toward us?”

“I saw a sudden burst of Chaos as Kasdeya panicked. But I also saw past that—into the future.”

“And what did you see there?”

“The ultimate catastrophe. There are no words to describe it, Marshal Jym.”

Penemue was examining Gadreel’s body on the deck.

“He’s dead,” he said, and his voice contained a mixture of speculation and admiration. “I thought that nobody could ever best Gadreel in a fight, least of all kill him. What dreadful mentors teach the chickens on Mayo, Marshal? That is a terrifying girl you’ve unleashed on the universe.”

“Of that I was forewarned,” said Wildheit. “But I suspect what we’ve seen her do is only a foretaste of what’s to come. If I was of the Ra, I’d be very much afraid.”

Kasdeya had finally closed down the controls and was running what checks he could with the ruins of his instruments. His final summary was discouraging.