Robert Coulson & Gene DeWeese - Gates of the Universe

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Gates of the Universe

by Robert Coulson and Gene DeWeese

CHAPTER ONE

Ross Allen lowered the bulldozer blade and began another pass at the diminishing hillside.

Another half day, he thought, and we'll have it licked. Provided, of course, that we don't run

into any more boulders like the one last week. Hitting a ton of firmly embedded rock

unexpectedly does nothing at all for the effectiveness of a bulldozer blade. But it wasn't likely

that he would run into two rocks that size on one job, and besides, the chewing out he'd

received from construction boss Joe Kujawa had speeded up his reflexes considerably.

Fastest shift in the midwest, he mused a trifle smugly as he tilted the blade to match the

changing contour of the hill.

A screech like a million pieces of chalk on a giant blackboard—or a bulldozer blade on a

large rock—split the air and set Ross's teeth painfully on edge. The ear-piercing shriek stopped

a fraction of a second later as Ross's hands flew over the controls; the blade lifted and the treads

stopped.

After giving his ears and teeth a moment to recover, Ross stood up and peered over the

blade as best he could. All he could see was that the pile of dirt he had been shoving had

tumbled back and covered whatever the blade had grated against. He glanced over his

shoulder and saw that Kujawa, who had been supervising the compacting machines a hundred

yards away, had heard the screech and was galloping to investigate.

Ross locked the brakes and climbed down over one of the treads. He was squatting in front

of the blade, tossing lumps of dirt aside, when Kujawa came pounding up. After a quick

inspection of the blade, the construction boss turned on Ross.

Ross sighed inwardly. As usual during his conversations with Ross, Joe Kujawa's craggy face

was twisted into a scowl, making him look even meaner than the broken nose and malformed

jaw—the results of a long-ago accident—made him look normally. Joe was actually a couple of

inches shorter than Ross, but somehow his stocky body always seemed to loom over Ross's

six-foot height. With his hard hat pushed to the back of his wiry greying hair, he looked like a

cross between a cigarette ad and the villain of a TV detective show.

"Okay, let's see what you managed to ram into this time," Kujawa growled as he looked

past Ross at the small patch of rock that Ross had uncovered.

"It's flat," Ross said, frowning as he poked at the area with his finger. "And smooth. Really

smooth, like glass."

"So? You never seen a flat rock before? Lucky for you it was flat; if it had been an ordinary

old rock like the one you creamed into last week, you'd be in trouble. You're just lucky, you

know it? Well, don't just sit there with your mouth open; you're not catching flies. Get that

thing scraped off. I'll go get some dynamite, just in case; we ain't got time to fool around."

Kujawa straightened up and started back across the muddy field.

"Wait a minute!" Ross yelled over the rumble of the idling bulldozer motor. "This isn't just a

rock! It's too smooth; it feels like a finished surface of some kind." The construction boss swung

around irritably. One hand jerked the yellow hard hat off while the other ran through his hair,

leaving it with the appearance of a grey haystack.

"Big deal!" he roared. "So it's smooth; so you polished it some with the blade! Fifteen feet

below the surface makes it a rock. I suppose you think you struck one of them

archeo-whatchacallits in the middle of Indiana? Or do you think it's a petrified flying saucer?

Get it outta there!"

"But…" Ross began.

"And another thing," Kujawa non-sequitered, "tell that pal of yours to quit calling you at

work. I got enough problems without taking your phone calls; I ain't your secretary."

Ross looked totally blank for a moment while his mind strove to follow the abrupt change

of subject. Then a grin started across his features as he realized who the caller must have been,

and was hastily suppressed before Kujawa could ask him what he was laughing at.

"You mean Roehm?" he shouted after Kujawa, who was spun about and was slogging

purposefully away.

"Yeah, that's the one," Kujawa shouted back over his shoulder. "If you get that rock cleared

out of there by the time I get back, I might tell you what he said."

Ross watched Kujawa's retreating back for several seconds, feeling his stomach beginning

to twitch expectantly. It was probably premature, but Ed Roehm knew better than to call Ross

on the job unless it was for something pretty important. Maybe the little literary agent had

finally found a publisher for Ross's projected adventures series. That would be great; if

Commander Freff, Interstellar Agent had been sold, even if it was only the first three, then Ross

could afford to quit driving a bulldozer and begin full-time writing. In fact, he would have to.

The one contract he already had was due in a couple of months, and if the Freff series was

sold…

With an effort, Ross pulled himself back to earth. He had no real idea why Roehm had

called. Maybe it wasn't a sale. Maybe, he thought suddenly, the little coward was throwing in

the towel! Maybe…

Well, he'd better not risk antagonizing Kujawa any more than his mere presence seemed to

do, at least until he found out for sure what was going on.

Five minutes later, Ross sat on the bulldozer's seat, staring in fascination at the area he had

uncovered. It was, he decided, highly unlikely if not totally impossible. He had seen slabs of

natural rock before, and they just did not come like this. There were no such things in nature

as perfectly flat, glassy, twenty-foot squares of rock. This was the sort of nonsense that

Commander Freff was likely to run into, not a reasonably sane and respectable Ross Allen.

Ross shook his head. Come on; he thought. You're letting your imagination take over again.

This is just a big, flat, glassy rock. Obsidian, maybe; or is it some other kind of rock that's flat and

glassy? Anyway, what else could it be? Flat smooth rocks are much more likely than. … Than

what?

Not knowing what else it might be, Ross decided to tackle it from another angle.

Obviously, if it had been discovered by Commander Freff instead of Ross Allen, it would be a

diabolical machine of some kind. That was the way the Commander's adventures operated. A

diabolical machine here, a sinister nemesis there; it all added up. This would undoubtedly be

something left behind by the Naissur Empire when the Naissur had retreated from this sector

of space a hundred centuries before. Now, then, exactly what would this diabolical alien

machine do?

Plotting happily, Ross raised the bulldozer blade and absently started forward. Better make

one last pass to clear off the far corner of the square and then get the machine out of the way

before Kujawa arrived with the dynamite. This thing wasn't going to be shoved out of the way

by any mere bulldozer.

While Ross started the machine across the rock, most of his mind was intent on

Commander Freff, who continued to examine the enigmatic surface in an effort to enucleate

the kernel of its awesome potentiality.

I wonder if that's a bit much for the readers? Ross thought. Oh well, science fiction is supposed

to be educational; let them look up the hard words. Now, where was I?

Commander Freff leaned down, his nose almost touching the slab, and peered closely at the

milky surface. Was that a faint swirling motion he descried in the depths? What did it all mean?

This primitive planet was at the very fringe of galactic civilization; could the ancient Naissur have

penetrated this far? Their home world was…

Commander Freff and his speculations vanished abruptly as a cold wind suddenly struck

Ross in the face and he was plunged into sudden and total darkness. At the same instant, his

ears popped, as though he had just shot down several floors in a fast elevator. For a moment he

froze, but his reflexes took over and quickly threw the transmission into neutral and locked the

brakes.

I've gone blind! he thought. But why? What happened? I wasn't doing anything!

He blinked strenuously, rolled his eyes, and finally twisted around on the seat and peered

into the blackness all around him in a vain attempt to see something—anything. His right hand

still clutched the gear shift and the bulldozer's powerful diesel engine rumbled and shook,

informing him that he was still on the machine, but his vision provided no information at all.

He brought his left hand up to rub at his eyes—and heaved a sigh of relief.

He wasn't blind, after all! The luminous dial of his watch glowed at him comfortingly.

But if he wasn't blind, then what was he? Where was he?

A few seconds ago he had been in the middle of a ten-acre construction site, in broad

daylight. But if nothing had happened to his eyes, then had suddenly something happened to

the sun? Or was he now in a different location? Now that the initial horror of possible

blindness had been removed, he felt almost calm. Certainly calm enough to think and observe;

but what was there to observe, aside from the dial of his watch?

Sounds? He brought the watch to his ear, verifying that it was still running, and that very

little time had elapsed since he last checked it. The only other sound was the rumble of the

bulldozer as it idled, the loud, echoing rumble of…

Echoing? It not only echoed, but reverberated. Which meant that he was now inside of

something? Some kind of cave? The slab had been the roof of a huge cavern of some kind, and

the bulldozer had fallen through? But then why hadn't both he and the bulldozer been

smashed to bits? A bulldozer produces disastrous effects if it falls very far.

Ross looked upward hopefully, but the blackness overhead was just as thick as it was

everywhere else. No open hole above him that he had fallen through, then.

What else? A land mine of some kind? The slab had exploded when the bulldozer had

driven over it, and he had been killed instantly? But that would mean that the bulldozer had

died, too, and gone with him to wherever he was. Scratch that theory.

Amnesia? He had blacked out mentally and driven the bulldozer some place where he

could black out physically? That's a ridiculous idea even for your imagination, he told himself

sternly. Besides, no time has passed.

And there was the wind, a soft wind blowing lightly on him from all directions. What could

be causing that?

Something thumped against the back of the bulldozer. Ross jerked around in the seat as a

familiar voice crackled up out of the darkness.

"What's going on around here?" It was Joe Kujawa, and he sounded very irritated, even for

Joe.

"Joe?" Ross's voice barely carried over the sound of the diesel.

"That you, Allen? What dumb stunt have you pulled now?" The irritation was giving way to

panic around the edges. The voice was a full octave higher at the end of the question.

Ross throttled down the engine and the resulting alteration of sound brought another

outburst from Kujawa.

"Dammit, Allen, say something! Is that you or not, you clown? And if it is you, why don't

you turn on your lights?"

Lights!

So much for the calm and rational Ross Allen. How long had he been sitting here,

wondering where he was, while the switch to turn on all four lamps had been only inches from

his hands? He reached for the switch, wondering if perhaps his subconscious had wanted to

stay in the dark. He blinked as the lamps on the four corners of the machine flared to life.

A huge, windowless, doorless room stretched around him. It was at least twenty feet high

and fifty yards across. The floor was bare, and the forward lights shone directly on a gigantic

mural that completely covered one wall. It was a magnificent view of a lush, green valley, but

with something oddly wrong about the foliage, something that Ross couldn't quite place. On

the far side of the valley, a brilliantly colored needle of a building towered elegantly above the

surrounding greenery. Across the top of the mural, near the twenty-foot high ceiling, was a

slogan: "During your stopover, visit the Tower Restaurant."

Looking around, Ross saw Kujawa standing just behind the bulldozer. His mouth was

slightly ajar and he was clutching a dozen or so sticks of dynamite in both hands. He was

staring blankly at another billboard-like mural, this one featuring a harsh sun beating down on

endless vista of sand, grotesque lava flows, a few scraggly bushes, and several unpleasantly

reptilian animals. Letters across a cloudless, not-quite-blue sky announced: "Something

different for the hardy traveler."

"Joe?" Ross spoke weakly.

At the sound of the voice, Kujawa's jaw snapped shut and he spun around, squinting into

the glare of the lights.

"Ross, you idiot!" he exploded. "Nobody else would be fool enough to sit here with the

lights off for half an hour. Well, you really did it this time. How did you manage to get us in

here?"

Ross's calm, which had totally deserted him at the sight of the huge room and the murals,

was partly restored by Kujawa's familiar voice. It was exactly the same as it had sounded for

weeks at the construction site; even in the open air that bull roar had seemed to echo a bit.

"More to the point," he answered, "would be to find out where 'here' is."

"What? Whaddaya mean? You got us here! If you don't know where we are, who does?"

"I got us here?" Ross replied, aggrieved. "I suppose I must have got myself here, though I

don't know how. But as for you…"

"Yes, you got us here. You and your dozer just disappeared into thin air. Naturally, I run

over to see what happened, and…"

"Disappeared? Literally?"

"Yeah, disappeared. Literally or any other way you want to call it." Kujawa gestured with

the dynamite in what Ross considered a reckless manner. "I run over to see where you'd got to,

and all of a sudden everything goes black and I fetch up against the back of the dozer."

The glimmer of an idea entered Ross's mind, and was rejected instantly. To a science fiction

writer it was an obvious answer, but not one that he wanted to believe could happen to him.

To Commander Freff, maybe, but not to Ross Allen. Obviously he had disappeared from the

construction site, and obviously he had appeared here, wherever "here" was. Thus the slab had

to be some kind of transportation device, and it had transported Ross, the bulldozer, and

Kujawa somewhere. Or perhaps somewhen. Unfortunately, this explanation was utterly

impossible and ridiculous. There must be a rational, logical explanation somewhere. But what

could it be?

Ross shook his head. What he needed now was some of Commander Freff's amazing but

fictional acumen. If the Commander got involved in something like this, what would he do?

"The Commander!" Ross exclaimed aloud, suddenly recalling that when last sighted, the

Commander had been busily examining the slab. Of course. He leaped down from the

bulldozer, dropped to his knees and began examining the floor, while Kujawa watched with

the gloomy expression of someone who has just watched a friend carted off to a home for the

mentally bewildered. Ignoring the construction boss, Ross ran his hands over the floor, almost

immediately discovering a hairline crack running parallel to the bulldozer tread. A few feet

behind the machine, the crack, almost imperceptible, to the eye, intersected a second crack

perpendicular to the first. Following the cracks with his fingers, Ross traced a large square on

the floor of the building. He couldn't be positive, but it looked to be of identical size and

material to the original slab back on the construction site.

So the Commander—and Ross's sudden intuition—had been right after all! Impossible as it

seemed, that innocent-appearing slab had been a matter transmitter of some kind. It was the

only possible way of getting from there to here with no loss of time in the transition.

"I told you that rock was too smooth to be natural," Ross said.

"Rock? What's a rock got to do with…"

"It was a machine!" Ross explained. "Probably a matter transmitter. Or I suppose it could

have been a time machine. Anyway, it acted like a sort of gate between the construction site

and wherever we are now. Or whenever."

It was amazing, he thought, how the words rolled off his tongue, as if he actually knew

what they meant. It gave him the same sense of euphoria he had felt a few years ago, when he

had watched two men hopping around on the Moon. Until that moment, space travel had

never seemed quite real; it was something to read about. But that night he had watched it all

happening. Now he was calmly explaining to his boss that they had just gone through a matter

transmitter. He had never really believed in matter transmitters before, even while he was

writing about them. Now they had become real.

Or at least, they had become real to him. Kujawa was still having a little trouble. "If this is

some kind of joke…" he began.

"No joke," Ross reassured him. "Or if it is, it's on both of us." Ross privately complimented

himself on that line. The Commander himself couldn't have done better.

"I haven't the faintest idea where we are, but I think the main problem is to get back," he

continued.

"Sure," Kujawa said. "We're already behind schedule, mainly because you like to hit rocks.

Okay; you got us here, you get us out. I keep telling you that, and you keep sitting there like a

dummy."

"Couldn't we look around a little, first?" Ross said. "After all, we're the first people to set

foot on this world." (Then who built the transmitter? said a nagging little voice inside his head.

Ross told it to shut up.) "What fun would it have been to watch the Moon landing if the

astronauts had jumped out of the rocket, said a few words, and then turned around and left

right away?"

"Them astronauts didn't have no building site to get leveled off by next Friday," Joe said.

"You ain't doing no joy-riding on a company bulldozer, so just get us back where we come

from."

Ross thought resentfully that people like Kujawa had probably told Columbus to forget the

whole thing because they were behind schedule at the shipyard. But Kujawa was the boss, so

Ross reluctantly climbed back on the bulldozer.

"As I see it," he said, "this slab we're on got us here, so probably it can take us back. Driving

the bulldozer over it must have triggered it somehow, so driving over it again should get us

back. Climb on and we'll get started."

"Now you're talking," Kujawa said. "Here, take some of these so I can have a hand free." He

casually tossed most of the dynamite, with caps and fuses already attached, up to Ross, who

clutched them frantically. Stuffing the rest of the explosive casually into his belt, Kujawa

clambered up over the tread and stood on the fender back of the massive tool box. Ross stowed

his share of the dynamite more cautiously, unlocked the brakes, put the bulldozer in gear, and

backed across the square.

Nothing happened.

"Well?" Kujawa's voice was loud in his ear.

Ross shifted to forward and the machine clanked across the square again. The soft wind still

blew. They were still inside the huge building.

Braking the left tread, Ross swung the dozer around and tried again. There was only the

wind as they drove across.

He was maneuvering to come at the square from another side when he heard a voice. It was

faint over the roar of the diesel, and he shifted to neutral.

The voice was coming from the square.

Ross set the brakes and jumped down, with Kujawa following him dubiously. The wind felt

stranger to Ross as he stood directly in the center of the square, straining his ears.

The voice came sharp and clear. "Where could they go, anyway? Joe said he was going to

get this thing dynamited."

"That's Sam!" Ross exclaimed, recognizing the voice of Sam Southworth, the other

bulldozer operator. "Sam, we're right here! Can't you hear me?"

Apparently Sam couldn't. His voice continued, presumably aimed at someone standing

some distance away. Then another, softer voice answered, gradually becoming louder as its

owner approached what Ross was beginning to think of as "The Gate". The new voice was also

familiar, and finally Ross identified it as that of Hal Sanders, the construction company owner.

Kujawa recognized it at about the same time. "What's he doing out here?" he muttered

resentfully. "Checking up on me, I bet. That…"

"You don't know where old Joe went to, then?" The second voice came through again.

"Nossir. He went and got some dynamite from the shack a good ten minutes ago. Said

Allen had rammed another rock. This one, I reckon."

"Yeah. Big old thing. Wonder how it got that polish on it? I surely do hope it's not going to

hold us up. Sam, you better go pick up some more dynamite. If you see old Joe, tell him I want

to talk to him, but don't waste any time looking for him. Better pick up a drill, too. We'll want

one charge right in the middle of it, to break it up. Ask Jaeger if he's seen that other bulldozer,

too."

"Okay. Last time I saw it, Allen had it. It was right over here someplace. You know, that's

kind of funny. Like I was just saying to Rivera last night…"

"Yeah, yeah. Well, two men and a bulldozer can't just vanish off the face of the earth.

They'll turn up. And when they do," Sanders' voice took on a grim note, "I want to see them!"

As the voices began to fade, the euphoria which had been sustaining Ross suddenly

vanished. This wasn't just watching a couple of trained astronauts on TV; this was happening to

him. Those voices, coming from out of thin air, were coming from Earth. From an Earth that

they would never be able to return to unless they did something fast.

"Hal!" he yelled frantically, "we're right here! Don't blow that rock!" Kujawa joined him in

shouting. There was no reply; no indication that they could be heard. After a minute or so the

futility of yelling dawned on Ross; the bulldozer could make more racket than he and Kujawa

combined, and if nobody had heard that… Anyway, his throat was getting sore.

"Whatever it is," he said, "it looks like it only works one way. All we can do is hope that

somebody comes through while somebody else is watching. If they blow that rock before we

figure out how to reverse it, we'll never get back."

Kujawa was looking rather nervously around the huge room. "I think maybe you got

something there," he said. "If this thing's a machine like you said, it's got to have a set of

controls somewhere. Stands to reason. All we got to do is find them."

"Don't bet on it," Ross said, but he began looking at the surrounding area anyway. It gave

him something to do besides think about what would happen if Sanders blew up that rock.

The floor, he saw, was perfectly smooth except for the square in the center. Something odd

about that; the dividing line had been all but invisible earlier, but now it was plainly marked.

The entire floor looked like grey marble, dusty but totally unmarked. Even the bulldozer treads

had only made trails in the dust; they had not scratched that floor. Each wall was devoted to a

huge mural. The views had a startlingly three-dimensional effect, and he wondered briefly why

he hadn't noticed that before. Too confused by the strange surroundings, maybe. Each mural

showed a magnificent but somewhat alien landscape, with what was apparently an

advertisement printed across the top. And wonder of wonders, Ross thought, the messages

were all in English. Which meant…

He blinked and looked at the messages again, and abruptly felt numb. Shock, he told

himself. He was going into shock.

"Joe," he said after a few seconds of staring at the messages, "can you read that writing on

the wall?"

"Sure I can," Kujawa said without pausing in his inspection of a small shelf in a corner of

the room. "It ain't just you college kids know how to read. They ain't control labels, so quit

sightseeing on company time and look for something useful."

"What language are they in?" Ross persisted.

"English, of course! What do they look like?"

"Like nothing I've ever seen before. Take another look, Joe. A good one."

Kujawa snorted derisively, but turned to look at the desert scene. "Just a bunch of ads," he

muttered. "Like that one, for…" His voice trailed off and he blinked and squinted at the

characters. His eyes darted at Ross for a moment, then went to a second wall.

"But it's got to be English!" he insisted. "It's the only language I know!"

Oddly, Ross felt relief, now that he was sure that he and Kujawa were seeing the same

thing. He wasn't insane after all, or if he was, he wasn't alone.

"Obviously it isn't English," he said. "And equally obviously, we can both read it."

"What's the difference?" Kujawa retorted suddenly, a shutter clicking down in his mind.

"All it means is that we can read the control directions when we find them."

He was right, of course, Ross realized. Even standing around talking about it was simply

wasting time; time that they didn't have to waste. Hurriedly, he followed Kujawa's lead and

began moving around the, walls, examining every minor irregularity that might indicate a

control panel or a doorway to a separate control room. But even as he searched, a detached part

of his mind continued to occupy itself with other things, such as Commander Freff.

If only he had a camera! Nobody was ever going to believe this. He probably wouldn't

believe it himself, once he got back home. Besides, there were times when Commander Freff

could use an authentic looking alien language, and the insane hieroglyphics on the walls would

be perfect, if he could find a publisher willing to set them in type. In fact, this whole episode

would make a good beginning for one of the Commander's adventures.

If he ever got back home to write it.

By now, Ross and Kujawa had inspected, poked at, and felt all four walls and the floor and

found nothing but a lot of dust and two completely barren shelves set into opposite corners.

The only breaks in either walls or floor were the lines outlining the square in the center of the

floor. Ross returned to the square, panic and frustration growing by the second. The wind still

blew softly out of nowhere, and as he was about to start on a second useless search of the walls,

a voice filtered through.

"It's about time!" It was Sanders again. "Here, give me that stuff."

Moments later, there were clanking sounds, and then the whine of an electric drill. Then

Southworth, some distance away, announced that the detonator was ready. Ross felt as if the

world was closing in on him, collapsing and suffocating him. They really were going to blow

up that slab before he and Joe could get back.

"Hal!" Ross screamed. "You blow that thing up and you'll never get your bulldozer back!"

There was no reaction, except that Kujawa abandoned his disconsolate inspection of a wall

and ran toward the bulldozer.

"It's got to be the bulldozer!" Ross said. "It's our only chance; somehow that's got to be the

key." He leaped for the machine as he spoke, with Kujawa following. Ross climbed into the seat

and put the machine into gear as Kujawa clambered aboard behind him, gripping the back of

the seat.

"Think about Earth!" Ross yelled over the roar of the machine. "Maybe it works on

telepathy. I was thinking about an alien planet when I drove over it the first time."

"I wasn't!" Kujawa snapped, but he gritted his teeth and appeared to be concentrating.

Ross did his best to banish all thoughts of the Commander and visualise the vast muddy

construction site as he had last seen it. There were the remains of the hill he had been cutting

away, the already flattened areas were the compacting machines had been working, the trees a

hundred yards away to the west, and the busy highway an equal distance to the east. The blue,

almost cloudless sky…

The bulldozer nosed into the square. The wind hit them, and Sanders' voice drifted

through. Nothing else happened.

Leaving the machine in high gear, Ross put the brakes to one tread as soon as they cleared

the square. Kujawa tightened his grip on the seat as the machine spun like a mammoth top

and started back over the square again. Ross shifted down to first gear, and they moved with

agonizing slowness. Nothing. There was only the wind, and the ominous sound of a drill. They

must be nearly ready to place the charge by now, Ross thought frantically. Why couldn't just

one of them walk through? Why hadn't the transmitter worked when Sanders walked out on

the slab to start drilling?

He threw the bulldozer back into high gear and spun it again. This time he crossed the

square from corner to corner. Nothing. Off the other side, another spin, another pass. He

lowered the blade until it screamed as it scraped across the floor. A different angle, a different

speed. Nothing happened.

Robert Coulson & Gene DeWeese - Gates of the Universe

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