The Chaos Weapon (2 page)

Omega minus eight …

The dark figure in the cloak ruffled through his sheets of notes like a miserly bat counting his assets.

Omega minus six …

The laser technician monitoring the snows above Edel wore an expression which indicated no significant change in the area of his observations.

Omega minus four …

Captain Rutter’s concentration was disturbed by a recurring flicker of vision which he could only detect with the corners of his eyes and only because all movement in the room had virtually ceased. The image troubled him. He could have sworn that
something
flickered over Space-Marshal Hover’s left shoulder.

Omega minus two …

The pantograph on the tracing plotter broke into a frenzied burst of activity, sketching a large eye-shape with increasing definition. The crossed datum lines in the center of the plot fell precisely at the intersection of the major and minor axes of the eye as the Chaos computers confirmed imminent disaster—the drawn eye filled toward the middle, the center of the sightless pupil being complete at exactly …

Chaos Omega!

The complete lack of any immediate reaction was probably as great a psychological shock as the eruption of violent
activity would have been. All the observers remained frozen and immobile, their attentions welded to their instruments in case they were missing the obvious in the unchanging indications of the static readouts. In the meantime the cat reappeared from behind the rocks and headed back the way it had come.

The dark man, his face painted with disbelief, let his notes drop to the floor as he moved toward the plotting table to examine the errant eye. His examination did nothing to resolve the paradox.

“What do we do now?” Rutter asked after a while. “The only catastrophe appears to be that we all go home with egg on our faces.”

That remark dropped the level of tension immediately. Most of the technicians relaxed and leaned back in their seats; some smiling with relief at the lack of activity, and some frowning because of it. Only Hover remained crouched over his screen, his fingers striving to maintain its failing acuity.

“Hold it!” The marshal’s sudden command brought an almost electric shock to those assembled. “The cat dropped somebody off. He’s heading into town on foot.”

“Are you sure, Cass?” Saraya was at his side in an instant.

“See for yourself.” Hover moved back to one of the more general screens, which was still giving a fairly clear view of the landscape between the point where the cat had rested and the outskirts of Edel. There, a couple of black dots against the mainly featureless background showed plainly where a man was thrusting his way through the deep snow, dragging behind him a bundle attached to the end of a rope.

“Why, in the name of space, should he bother to walk?” Rutter wondered. “The cat hadn’t broken down—it just took off back the way it came.” He looked to Saraya for an answer, then immediately wished he had not. The curious passion on the dark man’s face was a daunting thing to see.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Saraya. “Suddenly the
pieces begin to fit. I think that character down there had some inkling of the Chaos prediction. Somehow he’s bucking the odds.”

“Explain that to me in words of one syllable,” said Rutter.

The dark man drew closer to the screen, and there was a strong undercurrent of emotion in his voice. “Chaos predictions analyze chains of cause and effect by reading the patterns of entropic change which the chains radiate as they unravel. The entropic events can be likened to pearls strung out on a string, with the axes coincident between cause and effect. Given sufficient information, a chain can be read either backward or forward in time.”

“I said one syllable words,” said Rutter plaintively.

Saraya ignored him, an immense enthusiasm glowing rare behind his eyes. “Imagine your string of pearls laid out on a table. Then imagine another string crossing it at right angles, with just one pearl—one entropic event—common to both chains.”

“I get the picture but not the message.”

“Coincidence. Cause begats effect, and effect follows cause. Don’t you see where I’m leading?”

“Hardly!”

“At the pearl which is coincident to both, the sequence of cause and effect in each chain must be complete up to that point, or else the event marked by the entropy cannot happen. It’s a philosophical and actual impossibility for an effect to take place for which the cause is missing, or for a cause to happen without direct association with its effects.”

“If you’re trying to make the point I think you’re making, I don’t wish to hear it,” said Rutter. “The implications give me a headache in the pit of my stomach.”

“The implications are, my military friend, that the chain of cause and effect which controls the fate of Edel is linked at some point with the chain controlling that fellow out there. Somehow he’s already thrown the Chaos prediction adrift by better than eleven
minutes. At his pace it’ll be nearly an hour adrift by the time he reaches Chaos Omega. With that sort of talent you could buckle the universe.”

“Does that mean Chaos Omega won’t now take place?”

“Far from it. The entropy increase which signals this event is part of recorded Chaos. It’s already tomorrow’s absolute history. Nothing can alter the fact that it must occur.”

“Somebody’s already delayed it,” Rutter pointed out reasonably.

“But at what cost? Theoretically, delay can only be achieved by straining the fabric of the whole continuum. I hate to think how much power that might consume. And since we know the continuum is elastic, that precise amount of power is going to be released when the point of coincidence is finally achieved.”

“Which could explain the power difference between the potential energy available in Edel, and the energy needed to satisfy your Chaos equations,” supplied Hover, who had come up from the rear.

“You know, Cass, I think you reached that point ahead of me. Damn, I should have thought of it before! That sort of power isn’t available to that character down there. Somebody or something else with a fantastic control of Chaos technique must be doing the manipulation.”

“I’m still unhappy,” said Rutter, “about the idea of a disaster hanging around waiting for the arrival of a man.” He turned as a messenger approached and began to scan the information he was handed. “The results of our checks on the cat. As I suspected, it was out of New Sark. Chartered from a transit outfit by two men who came in from outspace a few hours earlier. They gave their names as Jequn and Asbeel.”

“Hmm!” said the dark man. “Of all times and places!” Lines of deep speculation spread across his brow. “What else did you find out?”

“The Civil Guard at New Sark ran the immigration
checkouts through the galactic identifile for us. It drew a blank. Their stated planet of origin doesn’t exist, nor, officially, do the men. Their ship is berthed at New Sark spaceport. It came from so far out in deep-space that the spaceport officials can’t even classify the drive.”

“I’ll bet they can’t!” This latter remark was Saraya’s aside to himself. “Captain Rutter, I want the Civil Guard instructed to attempt to arrest the man in the cat if he returns to New Sark. I say attempt advisedly, because they’ll have to be damn clever to succeed. Marshal Hover, you see that fellow down there on the plain. I want him sane and alive and delivered to ChaosCenter on Terra. It doesn’t matter what that assignment costs or how the goal is achieved, just make sure that it happens. You’ve Galactic Override Authority for the mission.”

“You really think he’s that important, Saraya?”

“I know he is. There’s nobody more important in our galaxy right now. Or potentially more dangerous. He’s one of a kind—and where his kind go, that’s where they point the Chaos Weapon.”

“The Chaos Weapon? What in creation is that?”

“I wish to hell I knew.”

“I’ll go get him,” Hover volunteered. “You can explain the whole thing to me later. Somebody break out a flier for me.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Rutter.

“No!” The dark man stepped in decisively. “That character’s going to be well into Edel before the marshal can reach him. Whatever Chaos has waiting for Edel is going to break right then. If we read the energy equation right, there won’t be many survivors left. The marshal has had special preparation for survival in such emergencies—you haven’t.”

Reluctantly the captain watched as Hover pulled on his warm-suit. Against the dark recess of the locker, Rutter could have sworn that something furry flickered above the marshal’s shoulder. Yet when he examined the phenomenon more carefully, no trace of it could
be seen. Puzzled, he checked radio contact with the departing space-marshal, then turned to concentrate on monitoring the progress of the lone figure clearing the plain and now almost at the city’s outer limits. Something curious about the atmosphere made the image strangely double-edged.

WITH the screens studiously refocused, the progress of the man trudging through the snow was followed with agonized concern. Speculation about the nature of the netted package he dragged behind him proved singularly fruitless. The utility of such a burden was an open question. Shortly the man and his bundle topped a rise and appeared to make easier progress along more compacted tracks until at last he entered the outer limits of the city. In the meantime Hover’s flier had landed well clear of the houses, and the marshal could be seen making fast progress after his quarry on foot.

If the fellow was aware of the flier’s arrival, he gave no sign of it, but concentrated instead on dragging his load over the smoothest terrain available. He appeared to be always watching the forbidding snow-mass hanging above the scarp. Rutter had switched on some of the cameras with telephoto lenses that had been trained on the city itself and obtained some close-ups of the back of the man for whom destiny appeared to have such a strange affinity. The pictures yielded no new information, but all were haloed by the same optical fringe that was gradually narrowing the field of view, giving the figure an apparently radiant outline
which under the circumstances was most disconcerting.

Despite this effect, however, it was obvious that the man had both purpose and objective. Although many times the watchers lost his image as he passed behind some of Edel’s buildings, he always came back into view at a predictable point, assuming he was taking the shortest route straight to the city’s center.

“Find me a map of Edel,” the dark man said suddenly. “We keep speaking of Chaos Omega, but I don’t think any of us have looked to see what is actually at epicenter.”

Rutter produced a map and spread it over a console. It showed a city plan typical of many established on planets after the Great Exodus from Terra. The early fathers had attempted a geometrical design radiating from a central focus. Now the centerpoint was ringed by the vast restructured administrative complex for the local government, and the seat of the Council for the Monai Space Confederation. Under the Chaos Omega point, however, Edel’s original government buildings had found a second lease on life through conversion into a commercial interspace trading center.

As he turned back to watch the trudging figure, the breath caught sharply in Rutter’s throat. In the middle of a broad highway not far from the Chaos Omega epicenter and at a point where he was clearly in view, the man turned suddenly and ran back toward the package attached to the end of the rope. For one moment he was looking almost directly into the distant cameras, and although the warm-suit hid most of his features there was no mistaking the level of tension on his face.

“This is it!” said Saraya. “He knows something we don’t.” He seized the radio handset. “Marshal—watch out for yourself. Something’s about to break. Our friend looks as if he’d had a vision of hell itself.”

“Check! I can just see him. But there’s nothing down here which explains …”

The man had dropped to his knees and was tearing urgently at his snow-covered bundle. The purpose of
this maneuver was not apparent, but suddenly something blossomed close to the kneeling man. It looked like a white, expanding ball. The distortion of the picture became almost complete, and the final phase of the action was lost in a muted blur.

All eyes in the lab-ship returned to the monitors checking the physical parameters which might signal the onset of catastrophe. It was not the monitors but their senses, however, that finally revealed the numbing truth. With a burst of subterranean thunder, the whole valley shook so violently that even on the great plateau the stabilizers of the lab-ships had difficulty maintaining the vessels in their vertical position. One of the technicians gave a cry of horrified realization as the nature of the disaster became apparent. With a fantastic heave, the whole valley floor rose and shook itself then settled again to leave a jagged chasm extending east to west approximately along the line previously followed by the Spring River.

With the first recoil of the shock, the interference on the screens had cleared itself. Before their uncomprehending eyes there flowed wave upon wave of subterranean movement which rippled the valley’s surface as if the scene were being moved from below by a succession of gigantic underground rollers. The effect was that of a waterless sea, with dry waves breaking angrily against the foot of Edel scarp and drowning whole sectors of the city with the fall of its mirthless crests. The part of the city that did not sink into the fractured terrain was hopelessly fragmented by the tides of heaving bedrock. The immortal stability of the land on which man had dared to build was now part of a demon conspiracy apparently designed to reduce everything to one flat, featureless plain of scarcely compacted dust.

Nor was this all. With open-mouthed dismay and fascination the watchers saw the huge avalanche gaining momentum as the shockwaves provoked it to move down toward Edel. Even the mountains themselves had been torn apart, and large fragments broke free
and slipped with the mighty mass to pile high and dangerously on the granite backbone behind the inclined face of the scarp. The bruising upheaval had cracked the foundations of the great granite rock itself. Without warning, the entire face began to lean outward under the weight, and to fall with a calamitous slowness, crushing almost a third of the shattered city. This was followed by the full weight of the avalanche, which, now released from its former constraint, proceeded to bury much of what the scarp face had left uncrushed.