Night of Light

Fine horizontal and vertical lines appeared on the visor before Carmody.

“Each square of the grid is numbered for your convenience. Square 15, near the center, will contain the luminary of Wildenwooly in a few seconds. It is now in No. 16, drifting at a 45-degree angle across it. Watch it, ladies and gentlemen. It is now becoming brighter, not because it is getting closer but because we have amplified its light for your easier identification.”

A yellow spark passed beneath a larger but ghostly pale blue one, then entered the corner of square fifteen. It slipped across the grid line, stopped in the middle, and bobbed up to the center.

Carmody remembered the first time he had seen this happen, so many years ago. Then he had felt a definite pain in his belly, as if his umbilical cord had been reattached, only to be savagely ripped out and to go trailing away from him through space. He had been lost, lost as never before in his life.

“The location of Wildenwooly’s sun relative to the other point-stars has been determined and stored by the computer. The ship was ready several million microseconds ago to hurl itself on its next leap through the so-called subspace or nonspace. But the captain has delayed the ship because Saxwell Interstellar Lines cares about the enjoyment of its passengers. Saxwell wants its guests to see for themselves what is occurring outside the White Mule.

“The next jump will take us another 50,000 light-years, and we will quote emerge unquote from nonspace or extraspace, a hundred kilometers outside the extreme limits of the atmosphere of our next planetary destination, Mahomet.

“This precision is possible only because of the numerous flights that the White Mule has made between Wildenwooly and Mahomet. Of course, the relative positions of the two have changed since the last trip. But a cesium clock is coordinated with the computer, and the distance and angles traversed by the pertinent planets since the last trip have been calculated and compared to our present position. When the captain activates the proper control, he gives the order for the entire navigational complex of the White Mule to bring the calculations up to the microsecond and then to automatically jump the ship.”

The officer paused, then said, “Are you ready, ladies and gentlemen? I will now count. . .”

Minimum jump, for some reason Carmody did not understand, was the length of the spacecraft. Maximum jump depended on the number of translation generators used and the power available. The White Mule could have passed from the Galaxy to anywhere in Andromeda in one leap. One and a half million light-years could be spa

The blackness and the burning globes flickered. Before Carmody was the great bow of a planet, forever taut with the pull of gravity, sunlight striking off an ocean, the darkness of a tortoise-shaped continent, the whiteness of a cloud mass like an old, huge scar on the shell of the tortoise.

Despite his previous experience, Carmody jerked back. The massy bulk was falling toward him. Then he was lost in admiration, as always, at the seeming ease and sureness of the maneuver. The complex of artificially grown cells, only three times the size of his own brain, had given the White Mule its true course. It had directed the jump so that the vessel popped like a rabbit out of a hat, perilously close to the upper air of Mahomet, tangent to the course of the planet around its sun and moving at the same velocity. Moreover, the White Mule was over the hemisphere on which it was to land.

Carmody blinked. The curve leaped at him. Another flicker of the eyelid. The visor was filled with a large lake, a mountain range, and a few clouds. The ship rocked for a few seconds, then steadied as the compensating drives took over.

A blink. The range was now a dozen mountains and the lake had expanded. On the western shore of the lake was the spiderweb outline of a city’s streets and a number of huge white round spots, like a spider’s eggs—the landing circles—in the center of the web.

Down on the surface, those looking upward would see the White Mule, if they saw it all, only as a glint of light. But in a few seconds they would hear the boom made by the White Mule’s first displacement of air as it had flashed from “nonspace” into the atmosphere. Then, as the ship became visible as a larger disc, another boom would follow the first. And a third.

Presently, the vessel slowed and, lightly as a balloon with a slow leak, matched its flat underside with Landing Circle Six.

Despite the two-hour layover, Carmody did not leave the ship. He did not care to go through the decontamination process on re-entering the ship; he wanted to read the two letters in his bag, and most of all, he wished to be alone. In the cocktail lounge, he ordered a tall bourbon and then shut the door to the cubicle. After several deep swallows of his drink, he took the letters out. For several minutes, he toyed with the cylinders, his normal decisiveness missing. Which to read first, he thought, as if he had a big decision to make. Then his curiosity got the better of him, and he inserted the unidentified letter into the aperture of the ‘ducer, a small box attached to the wall.

There was also a “reader” on a hook—a lightweight plastic hemisphere with a visor. He placed this over his head, lowered the visor over his eyes, and pressed the button that would run off the contents of the letter.

The interior of the visor sprang into a glow. Something appeared on it that made Carmody straighten in a reflex to get away from it. A mask was before him—a mask that looked as if it were meant to portray a face ruined by an accident.

A man’s deep voice spoke. “Carmody, this letter is from Fratt. By now, your wife will be dead. You won’t know why she was killed or who did it, but I will explain why.

“Many years ago you killed Fratt’s son and blinded Fratt. You did it deliberately and maliciously, when it was not necessary, when you could have carried out your evil plans without harming either Fratt or Fratt’s son.

“Now, if you have any humanity or sense of love in you—which is doubtful—you will know exactly how Fratt grieved, how Fratt suffered at the death of his son.

“And you will keep on suffering. Not only because of your wife, but because you will not know when or where you will die. Because you will die at Fratt’s hands.

“But it will not be an easy or quick death, such as your wife was lucky enough to get. You will die slowly and in much pain, and you will pay for what you did. You will experience the same agonies as those which Fratt, your i

“And you will know then who killed your wife and who has been thinking of nothing but your repayment for all these years.

“You will see who has never forgiven you, you foul and loathsome thing!”

The screen went blank, and the voice stopped. Carmody raised the visor with a trembling hand and stared at the mural on the wall. He was breathing heavily. So, his guesses had been right. Some old enemy, someone he had wronged in the old and evil days had not forgotten. And for what he had done then, he had lost his wife and his greatest happiness. A

He lowered the visor and ran the letter through again. Now he understood from the peculiar wording that the speaker might not be Fratt. Nor did he have a clue to the sex of Fratt. The letter had been designed to avoid this, as it had avoided any specifics of the time or place of the crime of which he was accused.