LINKS
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The Christa Affair
Chapter Eighteen
Toko's words kept running thru Jashi's head as they left City Hall, closing and locking the door behind them. It was quite obvious that things \could\ be larger on the inside than on the outside; they had already witnessed two graphic examples -- the building they had just vacated, and the booths inside it -- besides the city itself. It was as if the rules of physics didn't apply to this strange underground habitat.
In spite of having earlier tried the doors of many of the buildings in the area at random, Jashi ordered them to try again in a more organized manner; he felt that if any of them \were\ unlocked, that would be the safest place to begin. (.... "Open doors just seem a little friendlier, Kitten....") he replied to Karli's query. He kept remembering the words of his instructor in Offworld Skills, during his last year of formal schooling: Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you understand it. "We don't understand \any\ of this!" he mused silently, shivering a little at the implications of the thought.
They split up and spread out over the immediate area surrounding the Hall of Records, checking each building in turn as they came to it; each was locked tightly, the windows darkened. After only a few minutes Jashi called a halt to the proceedings. "This is a waste of time, guys," he transmitted to his shipmates. "Every door in the place is locked. Meet back at the entrance chamber and we can start from there. We'll take them one at a time and open em up with the sphere. Have you tried it on any of them yet, Rang?"
"Negative, Captain," came Rang's reply over the comm. "Your instructions were very specific."
(.... "When did he start listening to instructions?....") came Karli's voice in Jashi's head. (.... "Think the sphere will work on every door in the place?....")
(.... Chuckle.... "Only one way to find out, My Love....") "Very good, Rang, I salute you! Won't take us long to find out if that thing is a master key."
In a matter of minutes the crew was reassembled in front of the door thru which they had entered only slightly more than an hour earlier. "Which way do we start, left or right?" queried Toko.
"One door to the left," answered Jashi. "We'll work around the square anti-clockwise till we get back here. If we don't find what we're looking for by then, we'll have to re-think the situation."
(.... "What \are\ we looking for, Jash?....")
"Rang, did you see anything that seemed to be what we're looking for? There's gotta be more than what you've remembered. Checking this place one door at a time is gonna take forever!" Jashi's voice sounded a little strained.
"Negative," came his brother's reply. "Sorry. If only we knew why I was sent here..."
"Or who sent us!" said Karli tersely. (.... "If they sent \him\, what are \we\ doing here? I'd just as soon be somewhere where everything works like it's supposed to. This place is spooky!....")
(.... "Watch it, Karli! You're starting to sound like someone else we all know and occasionally manage to love in spite of herself....") "Give me the damn sphere, and let's get started," he said aloud.
Rang handed the sphere to Jashi, who started to place it into the receptacle of the door they had chosen to open first. Karli was standing in front of Jashi, to the right of the door with her back to the wall. Suddenly she reached for his arm, pulling his hand away from the receptacle. (.... Surprise and excitement, almost alarm .... "Wait!... Look! ....")
(....Annoyance.... "What now? ....") Jashi waited for her to explain, fighting the urge to look behind him in spite of the fact that her thoughts conveyed no immediate danger.
Karli spoke aloud as the entire group turned to face her. "All the buildings are red!" she gasped.
As one, the other four members of the little group turned to survey the city. Indeed, the entire city had taken on a soft reddish color; the buildings were now trimmed in yellow where they had been chocolate brown earlier. Toko removed the multiscanner from his belt and adjusted it to analyze the visible light spectrum.
"Checks out just as before," he said after a long moment. "Basically no change since I checked it right after sunup this morning. No shift in the color spectrum. Just a bit more intense."
(.... ???? .... "What's it mean, Jashi? ....")
(.... Annoyance .... "More like, 'how's it done?' if you ask me! ....") "Shit!", he said aloud; Rang looked at him questioningly.
(.... "Don't snap at me, Jashi Abram! \I\ didn't do it! ....")
"What difference does it make?" asked Roi a bit harshly. "Just open the goddamn door and let's get on with this!"
"You don't have to get so nasty about it!" said Jashi, stifling an urge to stuff the sphere down his friend's throat. He turned and inserted the sphere into its receptacle; the door slid open as expected and the sphere popped out and hovered, waiting for him to reclaim it.
The open door was filled with the same inky blackness as that of the building in the square; led by Jashi, they filed thru one by one, Toko bringing up the rear. He was still fiddling with his scanner.
They stood staring at the interior of the building. It was totally featureless, and predictably, several times as large inside as it appeared to be from the outside. One large, open, indoor square, about fifty feet to a side -- no furniture, no partitions, no features of any kind save for the ever-present receptacle next to the door; the walls and ceiling were pale yellow. Jashi felt some of the tension ebb from him. (.... Sigh .... "Better, Love. Sorry ....") Karli said in his mind.
(.... ???? .... "Yeah, me too. What \was\ that? ....")
Toko still held the multiscanner; he pointed it from one member of the group to another, stopping at Jashi. "I am afraid we are in great danger," he said matter-of-factly.
"Explain!" ordered Jashi.
"Did anyone notice when the buildings outside started to change from yellow to red?" he asked.
No one spoke; Toko continued. "This scanner was set to broad life-scan when I turned it on. You used it last night to check for life-forms?" The last was a question.
"Yes," replied Jashi. "Continue!"
"Did it register anything then?"
"No, nothing but low level background from us. We adjusted most of that out."
"When I turned it on, it went off the scale."
"Gods of the Fourteen Planets!" gasped Roi. You mean there's someone here after all?!"
(.... !!!!! ....) Karli turned white. Her fear reverberated thru Jashi's mind.
"Shut up, Karli!" Jashi spat aloud, stuffing the sphere into its receptacle; as expected, the control panel materialized just below it. "Rang! Close the door. Quick!"
Rang was the farthest of the group from the panel. In his haste he stumbled as he approached the wall, falling against the panel; the room was instantly filled with utter chaos. The door slammed shut. The lights went out, plunging them into total darkness that was followed almost immediately by a multitude of intense blue-white strobe lights tracing a pattern of insanity across the walls and ceiling.
The floor under their feet began to crawl, churning itself into a writhing mass of psychedelic colors so intense as to defy description; patterns that formed -- dissolving even as they developed -- whirling back upon themselves to form new ones again and again.
Their ears were assaulted with what could only have been the local equivalent of acerbic music; the lights and the floor began to pulse in time with the beat as the volume level approached that of an Old-Earth chemically powered orbiter at liftoff. Wave after wave of crushing discordant sound -- running the scale from one end to the other -- beat not only against their ears, but against the body itself, such was the intensity.
Interior walls sprang into existence; furniture appeared from nowhere. Karli was brushed aside as a large plush couch materialized out of nothingness, claiming the spot where she was standing. Toko suddenly found himself sitting in a chair; Roi stumbled to the floor from a low table that formed beneath his feet in front of the couch that had pushed Karli away.
The sound level began to recede and a harsh red glow filled the room; the strobe lights ceased their incessant flashing as the brilliance of the red light increased. It seemed to come from everywhere; the eyelids were incapable of shutting it out.
Jashi broke into a cold sweat. His heart pounded and he felt a sudden surge of violent emotion; Karli screamed in his head. He was possessed with an undeniable urge to destroy something -- to hurt someone; Rang became his target.
With a strength he never new he possessed, Jashi picked up his brother and flung him against the opposite wall of the room. The sound died into silence, to be replaced by a near-subsonic rumble that rolled across the room in recurring waves, each more intense that the one before it; the red light began to pulse in sync with the waves.
Jashi hurled himself across the room after his brother, intent on doing more damage; he was intercepted by Roi, who pinned him to the floor. Effortlessly, Jashi tossed the larger man aside and turned again toward Rang. Toko drew his needlegun and fired, striking Jashi above the right knee; Jashi crumbled to the floor, the shock of the wound hurling his already over-stressed system into unconsciousness.
Her head thrown back, Karli screamed -- aloud this time -- again and again with a shriek of insanity. Very carefully, Toko hit her just behind her right ear and she sank to the floor in a crumpled heap. He whirled to cover Roi with the needlegun. Seeing that his crew-mate was trying to help Rang, and appeared to be rational, he holstered the weapon and hurried to assist.
"Help... me," gasped Roi, struggling to hold the unconscious Rang upright against the wall. "Rang... turn... it... off..." His face contorted horribly, as if some raging monster inside was trying to escape. "Knows... how."
Toko's hand hovered between his needlegun and the medical kit on his belt; his head swam and the room whirled around him as his own stressed-out psyche threatened his defeat. With intense mental effort he cleared his head and reached for the medical kit.
The low-frequency roar began to increase rapidly in pitch. The pulses became closer together and shorter in duration; the pulsing of the red light became an incessant intense flashing, synchronizing itself to the rhythm of the rising sound. Toko removed the hypospray of adrenaline from the medical kit, then replaced it; judging from his own condition, the shock would probably kill his unconscious companion. He chose the inhalant instead, and administered it sparingly. Rang struggled painfully to return to consciousness.
Roi released his hold on his semi-conscious shipmate, bent low, and picked him up across his shoulder. Together, he and Toko managed to get Rang across the room to the control panel; another dose of the inhalant and Rang was fully conscious, struggling to focus his vision in the constantly changing light. There was a crash -- the crash of thunder as heard only by the dead -- that last sound, frozen in time, in the final moment of life as the lightning bolt tears through his body. The walls trembled, the floor tilted, and the room was plunged into total darkness and deathly silence.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
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