Between the Strokes of Night

Space stations. They were at all heights, some almost grazing the atmosphere, an entire dense ring at synchronous altitude, others wandering out beyond the Moon. And to be visible from this distance, many of them must be kilometers across. Peron and Elissa were looking at the result of twenty-five thousand years of continuous development of Earth orbit. The asteroid-moving and mining operations that began at the dawn of Earth’s space age had yielded a rich harvest. Before Peron and Elissa had more than a minute or two to absorb the scene, they were homing in on one of the larger structures. It was in synchronous orbit, hovering above a great landmass shaped like a broad arrowhead. A shining filament extended downward from the station toward Earth, finally to vanish from sight within the atmosphere.

Their final approach was compressed to an anxious few S-seconds of blurred motion, twisting a way in through a moving labyrinth of other spacecraft and connecting cables and tunnels. All at once they were docked, and the ship motionless. They were trying to release themselves from the cocoons when a man materialized in the cabin and stood looking down at them.

He was short, pudgy, gray-haired, and precisely dressed, with elaborate jewelled rings on most of his fingers. He wore a flower in his lapel — the first blossom of any kind that they had seen since they left Pentecost. The stern look on his face was contradicted by a pattern of laughter lines around his button-bright eyes and small mouth.

“Well,” he said briskly, after a thorough inspection of Peron and Elissa. “You look normal enough. I’ve been waiting for your arrival with some interest. Neither of you appears to be quite the degenerate monster that Sector reports suggest, and Olivia Ferranti speaks well of you. So let us proceed on the basis of that assumption. Command. Remove the cocoons.”

The restraining nets vanished, and the little man calmly extended a hand to help Elissa to her feet.

“My name is Jan de Vries,” he said. “It is my melancholy duty to approve — or veto — all trips to and from Earth by certain persons living in S-space. Do you still wish to visit Earth, as you had requested?”

“Of course we do,” said Elissa. “Will you be going down there with us?” De Vries looked pained. “Hardly. My dear young lady, my duties are various and sometimes odd, but they have not to date included the function of tour guide. I can, however, dispose of certain formalities for you that would normally be handled otherwise. When were you last in normal space?”

“Not since we were on the way to Sector Headquarters,” said Peron. He was becoming increasingly uneasy. He had been preparing himself for a great clash with the secret rulers of the Immortals, and instead here he was chatting with some apparent bureaucrat.

“Very good,” said de Vries. “Then you can be prepared at once for your visit to Earth. By the way, you will find that the robot services ignore your commands until we have your voice patterns keyed into the station’s computer. That is part of a larger data transfer. It will be complete upon your return here, and we will talk again then. But for the moment you will need my assistance. Command: prepare them for the standard Earth visit.”

“But we don’t — “ Peron stopped. De Vries had disappeared. Then the walls spun about Peron and he caught a glimpse of a long corridor. As the scene steadied again he felt a sharp pain in his thigh. Suddenly it was as though he were back on Whirlygig, experiencing that familiar and disquieting fall into blackness. His last thought was an angry one. It wouldn’t happen again, he had sworn — but it was happening now! Things were out of control. And he had no idea what came next.

* * *

Peron and Elissa emerged from the suspense tanks together, into a room filled with a noisy, excited crowd. They knew at once that they were again in normal space — S-space couldn’t offer the sharpness of vision or the bright colors. There was an exhilarating taste to the air, and a feeling of well-being running through their veins. They looked around them curiously.

A loud, metallic voice was booming out directions. “Single file into the cars, please. Take your seats, and don’t overload them — there will be another one along every ten minutes.”

The crowd took little notice, pushing and surging forward down a long broad hall toward a loading area.

“Peron!” Elissa reached out and grabbed hold of his arm. “Keep a grip. We don’t want to be separated now.”

It was like being in a river and swept along by the current. With no effort on their part, they found themselves carried forward into a semicircular chamber and seated on soft benches covered with a warm velvety material. On either side people were grinning at them and staring out of the half-circle of the ports. “Look down!” said a woman next to Elissa. Her accent had peculiar vowel sounds to it, but it was easy to understand. “It’ll give you the shivers. No wonder it’s called Skydown.”