The magnetometers were running wild. The drift meters showed erratic but intense gravitic fields.
The stars beyond Nowhere were visibly reddened and dimmed.
At the first peak of the disturbance, our laser search gear picked up two uncharted objects.
One appeared north of Nowhere. At a range of half a million miles, it was jaggedly angular, three miles long.
From mass and color and magnetic effects, we identified it as an iron asteroid.
The other object gave us more trouble, because the anomaly was affecting all our instruments.
We first detected a jet of ionized gas, then a tiny solid nucleus moving in our general direction.
When the gas flared again, turning it directly toward the station, I knew that it had to be some piloted craft.
We tried to signal, with radio and ultrawave and laser phone, but no answer came back through the roaring forces of the anomaly.
The station was armed—as we had need to be, against such men as Captain Scabbard.
We manned the proton guns and fired a warning bolt.
The reply was a flickering, reddened laser beam.
“Calling Nowhere Near.”
The words wailed faintly through inter-ference and distortion.
“Corporal Habib… Nurse Lilith Adams… sweet life’s sake, don’t fire on us!… in escape capsule… from Scabbard’s mortal Erewhon… Now you’ll have to take us in!”
3 On the Brink of Anomaly
We held our fire and signalled the escape capsule to the north docks.
When it was sealed station-side, the lock sergeant made it fast, talked through an open hatch, and reported by intercom to me.
“It’s the same windy old soldier, sir. With the same lady nurse.
Acting queer as ever, sir.
They won’t come off the capsule. They won’t let me inspect it.
They won’t even talk to me. They ask to speak to you.”
Old Habibula gave me an innocent baby-grin when he saw me in the dock chamber.
He scrambled out of the capsule, puffing and wheezing even in the low-G field, and came rolling to meet me.
“Impudent puppy!”
His hairless head bobbed toward the lock sergeant.
“My cargo’s my own blessed business.
I won’t have such insolent meddlers filching it away.
I don’t trust people!”
“Giles means most people.” Lilith Adams spoke quietly from the capsule.
“But we’ve come back to place our faith in you, Captain Ulnar.”
“Have you decided to tell me what happened to Captain Scabbard’s mate and those two spacemen?”
She looked down through the hatch at me, her bronze eyes as cool and aloof as the luminous Clouds of Magellan.
When I turned to old Habibula, his brick-colored eyes blinked evasively. Neither said a word.
“You have no rights here—not even as spacemen in distress.” I didn’t try to hide my exasperation.
“Perhaps I can’t leave you out to die in Nowhere, but I’ll have to hold you in the station brig.”
I tried to scowl at the girl.
“Unless you care to tell me why you’re here.”
“For life’s sweet sake!”
The old man reddened with a hurt surprise.
“Lil’s too young and proud and fine for any wicked brig, and something in me never loved confinement—that’s why I learned my precious art with locks!”
His flint-colored eyes squinted at me shrewdly.
“If you want to be a mortal military bureaucrat, I guess we’ll have to tell you why we’ve come back.
I think the blessed truth will make you grant that we do have legitimate business at Nowhere Near.”
“I’m listening.”
“We left here as unwelcome guests on Scabbard’s ugly tub, thanks to your peculiar sense of your duty to the Legion.”
His nasal whine lifted resentfully.
“Scabbard’s crew of hairy cavemen were all cursing Nowhere—whatever that is.
The geodynes were stalled and half the instruments were dead.
We were still on rocket astrogation, eight hours out, when we picked up a laserphone signal.”