That shot—a few milligrams of matter fired perhaps at one tenth the speed of light—had pierced the armored hollow of the ice asteroid and wrecked our main power plant.
For a few seconds, Nowhere Near was dead.
The only light was the cold blaze of the stars beyond the transite dome.
The only sound was the far roar of our air escaping. But then the emergency reactors came on. Automatic valves began to thud, sealing off that deadly rush of air. The instrument lights shone again. The green image of that terrible machine swam into the screen again.
“Hurry, Lil!” old Habibula was puffing.
“They may fire again!
What you promised me was precious immortality—not that I’d be shot like a trapped rat!”
“Quiet, Giles!” Ken Star whispered.
“Don’t bother her.”
But Lilith seemed unaware of any of us.
Working very deftly and quickly, she was assembling her weapon. The parts of it were oddly small and simple.
She used a worn iron nail and a twist of wire that old Habibula produced, two or three pins from her hair, and her platinum ring—the red-eyed grin of that dull black skull gave me an unpleasant start, but now at last I thought I understood what it meant.
In a few seconds, the thing was done.
Holding it in one steady hand, she pointed it toward that blot on the stars. She moved her thumb, pressing the end of a bent hairpin against that platinum band.
The death’s-head leered redly at me.
Shivering, I turned from her to watch that iron asteroid, which was brighter now, a tiny yellow star.
Waiting for I didn’t know exactly what—perhaps for some spectacular explosion—I swung again to the electron telescope.
The greenish shadow of the invader was brighter now, but otherwise unchanged.
A low, wordless moan came from old Habibula.
“It doesn’t work—”
Lilith’s voice was broken, quivering.
Her aloof serenity had been shattered. That air of power was gone.
She was sobbing like a hurt child.
“I—I don’t—know why—”
9 Back Door to Nowhere
Cold fear caught me.
For one sick instant I thought the transite dome had somehow turned transparent to heat, draining off our warmth of life.
In the ghastly glow of the instruments, old Habibula and Lilith and Ken Star were faint frozen ghosts, floating motionless around me.
Implacable hostility glared down through the dome.
The natural universe, the mist and frost and dust of stars, was suddenly as dreadful as that unnatural midnight funnel in the anomaly.
Hanging to the hard chrome rail, I shrank from the pitiless, bottomless mystery of infinite space.
We were terribly alone.
“Oh!” Beside me, Lilith made a small, frightened gasp.
“No—”
Working with both hands to aim and try her absurd little weapon, she had let herself drift away into that null-G space.
Now, flailing out in a sudden unthinking panic, she snatched at the railing.
She couldn’t reach it. With a gentle thrust of my fan-jet, I overtook her. Her hand quivered in mine. She stared at me as we flew back together, her eyes black and strange and stricken in that deathly light. She gave me a faint, pale smile.
“Thank you, Lars!” Her cold hand clung to me.
“I need you now!”
For a moment we clutched the cold rail, staring at the green and monstrous image of that enemy machine.
I still hoped somehow to see her weapon take effect, still feared some grim retaliation.
But nothing changed that glowing shadow.
“They aren’t even shooting back!”
Lilith swung in the air to face Ken Star.
“I can’t understand it,” she whispered bitterly.
“Why did my weapon fail?”
“Because of the anomaly, I suppose.” His voice was dull and dry, broken with defeat.
“Space is different there.
The difference affects the transmission of light and radio and gravity.
Perhaps it also affects your weapon.”