A change which left him un-mystified — all men knew of the magic owned by the ancient keepers of hallowed temples. And gold was gold no matter in what form it came.

  Claire rose as he came forward, feeling her fragile defences begin to crack, the chemical walls splinter so that the world dissolved into a shower of shattered gems which filled the air with a smoking, scintillating kaleidoscope. Shapes became distorted, the desk turned into a crouching, snarling beast carved from obsidian, the walls vanished to be replaced by an endless vista of rolling plains, the roof became an emerald sky.

  Gogol became a nightmare.

  She backed from the squat, hairy, snarling thing which came towards her, hopping like a toad, webbed hands extended, bulging eyes glowing with a killer’s rage. Her back hit something solid and she turned and saw a row of jars each containing a severed human head. Eyes watched her, unblinking, the whites of the balls veined with a tracery of red.

  On them spiders fed.

  ‘No!’ The sight was vile. Disgusting. ‘No!’

  A hand clawed at her side, ripped at her uniform, fingers touching her bared skin. A foetid odour stung her nostrils and slime spattered her hair. Weight pulled at her, threw her to the ground, sent her sprawling, looking into the ridged and mottled face of a repulsive monstrosity.

  ‘No!’

  Pressure flattened her hips, forced apart her thighs, held her shoulders hard against the floor. The stench of rotting teeth filled her nostrils, the odour of suppuration and gangrene wafted about her, slime touched her, filth embraced her.

  ‘No!’

  Once, ages ago, she had been attacked by crazed degenerates while working in a hospital. They had intended rape and murder. She had escaped then and hard-won experience came to her aid now. A scream followed the upward jerk of a knee. Another the stabbing action of her thumbs. A third, followed by a liquid gurgle, the savage chop of her stiffened hand.

  The weight holding her fell away and she rose to run, to stand, to gasp while the universe spun around her.

  The anchors!

  Where were her anchors?

  The light and the sound. The desk on which the instrument sat. The drugs which lay beneath housed in their air-powered hypodermic. Release from the nightmare which held her, the madness in which she was lost.

  Moving she tripped and fell to rise, sobbing, hands extended, groping as if blind. A flash and a high, thin note. A flash, a sound, another flash. An eye winking…winking…winking…

  Something like a dagger which hissed as she thrust it against her throat.

  *

  Maddox stirred, feeling the hardness beneath his cheek, the wetness on face and chin. There was a bitter, acrid taste in his mouth together with something sharp and jagged. He spat it out, stirred sat upright, his head swimming with a momentary nausea. Touching his chin, he found it thick with blood.

  It had come from his nose and from a minor gash on his tongue; the result of the sharp coating of the capsule he had crushed beneath his teeth when, at the end, the battle for his sanity had been lost.

  Sitting, eyes closed, head lowered to rest on his knees, he saw again the parade of nightmare.

  The ship a wreck, rooms shattered, panels splintered, the screens ripped free and hanging blind and dead. As the personnel lay broken and lifeless all around. Like a bereft ghost he had wandered through the ship, seeing nothing but desolation, unable to understand why he alone had remained alive.

  Pictures remained; Frank lying with his spine broken, one hand twitching, blood streaming from his parted lips. Saha, face distorted with the rictus of death, arms clutched around his precious machine. Eric, his stomach spilling intestines, skull pulped, one eyeball resting on his cheek. Claire —

  He didn’t want to remember how she had appeared.

  How she could still appear.

  ‘No!’

  He was dead and damned, alone in the ruin of his command, all he had ever held precious gone for all time, ruined, thrown away by his stubborn refusal to retreat, to withdraw, to return. The tears had stung his eyes even as he had fought the sickness mounting within him. Empty rooms, laboratories, machine rooms, the Hydroponics Section, and living quarters looking like a shambles, red against the white, red against the green, red against blue and yellow and orange. Red, red everywhere, a deluge of blood.

  ‘No!’ Even in memory it was too much and he shivered, fighting the sickness, feeling again the rage which had joined it, the killing fury against whoever or whatever had done this thing to him and to his crew. ‘No!’

  The viewing ports had been shattered, an airlock gaped open to the void, the air gone, but he was still alive. The power had failed and shadows had accentuated the horror, grim shapes limned by the pale glow of the emergencies, yet he could feel the beat of light against his lids. He had been hurt, dying, yet the wetness was only that of sweat and a little blood.

  Maddox opened his eyes.

  Manton stared at him, his skull intact, both eyes in place, forehead bearing a familiar crease.

  ‘Carl!’ he said. ‘Carl! Thank God!’

  Maddox rose. At his console Frank Weight was shaking his head even as his fingers danced over his controls. Saha, looking a peculiar shade of grey beneath his brown skin, was at his position. His eyes were bloodshot and scratches marked his cheeks but his lips were free of the ugly smile Maddox remembered.

  ‘Commander!’ Rose Armstrong, pale, fragile, looked like delicate porcelain. ‘You’re alright. I thought — thank God you’re alright!’

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘It’s over,’ said Manton before Weight could answer. ‘We’ve passed through whatever it was caused those hallucinations. Claire’s drug helped us. Without it I doubt if we could have survived. Even as it was it — well, never mind. Carl?’

  ‘I’m alright.’ Maddox wiped at his face then rubbed his smeared hand against his uniform. He was still a little dazed, still unable to fully grasp that the death and devastation he had seen had only been a nightmare. An illusion. Something born of fear and the disorientation of his sensory apparatus. And something of the horror remained. ‘Claire!’

  ‘She’s alright, Carl.’ Manton was quick with his reassurance. ‘Frank has checked out Medical.’

  ‘I must talk to her.’ His fingers were trembling too much and the communicator fell as he snatched it from his belt. ‘Get her on screen. Get her!’

  A moment and it was done and Maddox felt a sudden relaxation as he looked at the pale face framed by the mass of golden hair. Not dead, then. Not torn and ravaged, ripped and abused, left like a foul obscenity on the sterile floor. Not a ghastly travesty of the human form left in careful array; the art-form of a diseased and degenerate beast.

  ‘Carl?’ Her eyes widened as she searched his face. ‘Carl — what is wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘Get up here.’ Duty overrode inclination; the need to have her close, to reassure himself that what he had seen had truly been an hallucination. ‘Wait. Can Ted manage? He can? Good, then join me at once.’

  ‘But, Carl, I must —’

  ‘Join me!’

  As he blanked the screen Weight said, ‘I can tell you what she wanted to report, Commander. Ivan Gogol went crazy and tried to kill her. She had to defend herself.’

  ‘And?’ Had the attack been the cause of his nightmare? Her fear somehow transmitted to his fevered brain? Sadistic images born of fear or received from her attacker? ‘And what, Frank? Answer me!’

  ‘He was dead when they found him.’

  Killed without intent, a victim of the general distortion — and how many others would have died had they not been locked away and safely drugged? Maddox drew in his breath and shook his head. He still felt dazed, divorced from his surroundings, and he guessed that he had crushed the capsule later than he should have done. The others had obviously recovered before him and appeared to be showing less of the effects of the mind-distorting field through which they had passed.

  ‘Here, Carl. It may help.’

  Silently he took the container of water Manton handed to him, swallowing the pills which accompanied it, washing them down together with the acrid taste of chemicals and blood.

  Claire appeared as the drug began to take effect. Quickly she examined his face, wiped away the blood and gave a tremulous smile.

  ‘Carl, I must tell you. Something dreadful happened and —’

  ‘I know. Frank told me.’ He stared at her, devouring her with his eyes. Tall, whole, clean, unhurt — thank God it had only been an illusion!

  ‘Ship intact, no damage, all systems operational,’ reported Weight from his console. ‘One dead, three with minor injuries — all self-inflicted. Defence screens at optimum.’

  And nothing lay before them.

  Maddox stared at the screens, seeing only what had been visible before, the cold glitter of distant stars, the fuzz of distant nebulae. They had passed through hell and arrived — where?

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Nothing, Commander. All — no, wait! I am receiving positive indications of a strong force-emission lying directly ahead. Magnetic field of incredible density.’ She gave the figures and Manton shook his head.

  ‘Amazing! Such firm control! Do you realise what this means, Carl? A near-total restraining of all leakage. Obviously the outer barrier through which we have passed utilised any seepage of energy to power the psychic force-field which serves as a warning and defence. How far, Rose?’

  ‘Close.’ She looked up, her face strained. ‘We should reach it within two minutes.’

  ‘Full boost on defensive shield!’ snapped Maddox. ‘Sound the red alert. Activate all external scanners.’

  He felt Claire at his side and took her hand in his own, his fingers firm against the warmth of her skin. He caught the scent of her perfume, a delicate floral aroma, and a strand of her golden hair caressed his cheek.

  ‘The transition point,’ murmured Manton. ‘This is where all light and radiation is seized by the enveloping force and rotated in a half-circle. If we were a photon of light or even a minute particle of spatial debris, we too could be so rotated.’

  But the Ad Astra had tremendous mass and any force which could move it so quickly from its destined path would volatise the entire body to incandescent vapour.

  ‘Carl!’ whispered Claire. ‘Carl, I —’

  ‘Now!’

  The screens blurred as Manton called out, stars seeming to flow from the centre to the edges, to wink, to vanish…

  To be replaced by a wall of utter darkness.

  A blank, ebon surface which served as a backdrop to something incredible.

  ‘Carl!’ Claire’s fingers dug into his hand, the nails gouging at his flesh. ‘Carl — it’s a brain! A living, human brain!’

  CHAPTER 6

  It shone with a pulsating greenish glow, a leprous luminescence blotched with the lines of convolutions, divided into sponge-like hemispheres, rounded and soft-looking and incredible.

  ‘A brain!’ Manton’s voice reflected his amazement. ‘But big! So big!’

  The size of the Earth as seen from the Moon, tremendous, dominating. Maddox stared at it, noting details unseen before, the haze-like appearance of the thing, the blurred detail, the pulse of the greenish glow. The image blurred even more as he watched.

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Interference, Commander. The external scanners are being affected by the discharge from our defensive shield.’ His voice rose a little, ‘Discharge far higher than normal. A radiated loss of seven per cent and mounting.’

  Maddox moved his eyes and stared at the external view of the screen. The outer hull was glowing, bright with emitted energy, scintillating with eye-hurting brilliance.’

  ‘Rose — any sign of anything approaching?’

  ‘No, Commander.’

  ‘No attacking vessels, then, and it would do no harm to drop the shield.’ The image in the main screens cleared as Weight collapsed the shield, sharpening in detail, shining with an inner light, an emerald mystery.

  It couldn’t be a brain. Not a human, pulsating, living organ — the size alone was against it being that. Maddox listened as Rose Armstrong reported the findings of her instruments.

  ‘Mass 2.365 Lunar. Volume 5.463. Distance .025 au. Local radiation 7.973 plus normal. Temperature —?’ She broke off then said, unsteadily, ‘Apparently zero.’

  ‘Check!’

  ‘I’ve done that, Commander. Our instruments must be defective in some way. No light-source can have zero temperature and yet that is what we appear to be looking at.’

  A mystery, another to add to the rest, but the solutions could wait. Maddox’s first responsibility was to the ship and he listened as the reports came in.

  ‘All systems operating. No damage. Vessel at optimum.’ Weight turned in his chair. ‘Stand down from red alert. Commander?’

  ‘Yes. Switch to yellow. What do you make of it, Eric?’

  Manton was already at work at his computer terminal and other apparatus.

  ‘A moment, Carl. Saha, will you please check this analogue with the Computer? Thank you.’ He pursed his lips as the technician handed him the readout. ‘As I suspected. Interesting. Most interesting.’

  Maddox said, tightly, ‘No games, Eric. I want answers’.

  ‘We have passed through the outer wall of force isolating this area from the normal universe. Naturally the parameters are dark because no light is being received — all is being rotated around the circumference of this space. We are, fortunately, travelling on a line which will bisect the sphere on a chord towards its lower region. I say “fortunately” because if we had been travelling in a more direct line towards the centre then a collision with the central mass would have been inevitable.’ Manton made a calculation, then: ‘At our velocity and knowing the relative masses of the two bodies, both would have been totally shattered.’

  The death and devastation the warning had meant?

  ‘And?’

  ‘Be a little patient, Carl. We have, in effect, entered a completely new universe and it will take a little time to learn something about it. After all we have taken two million years to learn about our own and still are ignorant.’

  ‘Please, Eric, no lectures. Can you anticipate any immediate danger?’

  ‘Immediate? No.’

  ‘Conclusions?’

  Manton sighed and shook his head. ‘You ask a hard question, Carl, and I can only give the roughest of answers. Basically we should, if conditions are as we know, merely proceed until eventually we will leave this area as we entered it. Imagine a circle. Imagine an object, the tip of a pen, for example. It moves on a straight line, hits one side of the circle, passes on, crosses the area and leaves the ring on the far side. We are the tip of the pen and this space is the circle.’

  One containing the tremendous representation of a human brain. Maddox glanced at it where it hung in the screens, grotesque, monstrous, and knew himself to be the victim of suggestion and illusion. The thing could not be a human brain. It couldn’t be a brain at all.

  The colour was wrong, a brain would have been grey and streaked with red, not a pulsating green. Claire had planted the suggestion, forming an association with a familiar object, turning a vague similarity into a firm depiction. The dark lines of assumed convolutions must be fissures and valleys, the green that of vegetation, the apparent pulsation a fault in the scanners, the glow —?

  ‘Rose — still no temperature?’

  ‘None that we are registering, Commander.’

  Cold light? It was possible — some insects had the facility of producing a glow by chemical means, but Maddox knew that nothing radiating that brightly could possibly do it without emitting energy of some kind. And that energy would register as heat.

  ‘Check on the complete electromagnetic spectrum. Saha, feed all received data into the Computer for the purpose of constructing a local analogue of our present and extrapolated situation. Anything new as yet, Frank?’

  ‘Findings are being correlated, Commander.’ Weight grew busy with his instruments. ‘Additional data on screens now.’ The image of the glowing central mass shifted and something else took its place. ‘This was behind the main body and has just come into view.’

  It was a ball of something which could have been rock but the surface was rounded, smooth, a dull grey illuminated by the green glow and resembling a polished pebble. A natural satellite of the central mass, perhaps, but Maddox didn’t think so. Manton had no alternative answer.

  ‘It could have been trapped sometime in the past. Given enough time other objects beside ourselves must have entered this pocket universe. That could have been a lump of stellar debris at one time, a small planetoid or a large meteor.’

  ‘Trapped,’ said Maddox. ‘How? Why? If it entered, then why didn’t it leave?’

  ‘There could be many reasons,’ said Manton, precisely. ‘It could have had a low relative velocity. It could have bisected this space very near the central mass and have been caught by its gravitational attraction. Or —’

  Maddox snapped, ‘Saha! Have the Computer check on those possibilities.’

  ‘Carl?’ Manton frowned. ‘Is something on your mind?’

  ‘Never take the obvious for granted, Eric. You were one of the first to teach me that. Just because an answer appears to be the logical solution doesn’t mean that it is correct. Saha?’

  ‘The possibilities mentioned by Professor Manton are mutually conflicting.’ Nelson Saha cleared his throat as he studied the display. ‘Assuming the relative masses to be the same as at present observed the difference in relative velocity would have had to be small for the intruder to be trapped into a stable orbit. But if it had been so low then it would have been drawn by gravitational attraction into the main body.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Maddox, grimly, ‘If the intruder was moving slow enough to be trapped then it wouldn’t have been moving fast enough to avoid destruction. So much for logical answers, Eric. Want to try again?’