“What happened?” I demanded. “What happened to those three men?”

  “Three pirates!” gasped old Habibula. “They got what they mortal well deserved.”

  “That may be,” I agreed. “But I am responsible for the safety of this station. I want to know exactly how they got it. Nurse Adams, what have you to say?”

  “A dreadful experience.” Her head lifted proudly in her stiff white cap. Her tawny eyes met mine—alert, searching, somehow tragic. “I can’t talk about it.”

  The desperation in her voice touched my heart—but I was young enough to feel that my new duty at Nowhere Near required the same land of desperation. I looked at old Habibula to recover my severity.

  “You’d better talk about it,” I said, “if you want to come aboard.”

  Neither spoke.

  “Then I suppose that ends our interview.”

  I turned to leave them in the lock.

  “Wait!” old Habibula whined angrily behind me. “We’ve got our rights, even as mortal civilians. The Green Hall guarantees our democratic freedoms. You can’t make us say anything you might take to be incriminating.”

  “True enough.” I paused at the inner valve. “But I can’t afford to let strangers with incriminating secrets inside Nowhere Near.”

  “Strangers?” His gasp was almost a sob. “Captain, don’t you know the history of the precious Legion? Have you never heard of poor old Giles Habibula, who fought in the war against the wicked Medusae, and fought against the invisible Cometeers, and fought against the fearful human monster who called himself the Basilisk?”

  “What if I do?” Reviewing dusty memories of history lectures back at the Legion academy on old Earth, I made a rapid calculation. “Don’t try to tell me you are that Giles Habibula. He’d be dead of old age by now.”

  “I am—almost!” he gasped. “Life knows I’m mortal old—and waging a war to save my precious life!” Sadly, he shook his pink and hairless baby-head. “Perhaps it’s true there’s an evil stain across my past. I must confess that I once picked locks for a living. But all that has been atoned for—a million times atoned for, to the living glory of the Legion, with my precious sweat and blood and brains.”

  He stopped to catch a sobbing breath, his dull-colored eyes squinting at me cunningly.

  “When Ken Star arrives, he’ll tell you who we are,” he whined. “Ken Star will vouch that we are not the miserable criminals you seem to take us for.”

  “Please—C-Captain!”

  The girl’s voice had an anxious little catch. When I looked at her, her young loveliness became an aching throb in my throat and wild magic in my imagination.

  “Commander Star’s—our friend.” She hesitated oddly. “I know he’ll soon be here to assure you that we aren’t criminals of any sort —that we do have legitimate business here.”

  Her bronze eyes were wide and warm, bright as if with tears.

  “Captain, you can’t send us back to Scabbard and his gangster crew.” The quiver hi her voice dissolved my resolution. “At least you’ve got to let Giles tell you why we’re here. You’ve just got to, Captain!”

  Frowning to conceal unsoldierly feelings, I came slowly back to them. The riddles around them had begun to tease my curiosity. I knew that old Habibula was deliberately baiting me, but I couldn’t guess why. I was still convinced I didn’t want them on the station, yet the girl had lit a glowing coal of longing in me.

  “All right.” I swung as coldly as I could to old Habibula. “Why are you here?”

  “Because I like machines.”

  2 North of Nowhere

  The old soldier moved toward me across the lock. His rolling, cautious gait, in the low G-force here near the axis of the spuming station, convinced me that he was at least a veteran spaceman. His pale eyes measured the shining steel valves, caressed the red-painted pumps, read the winking lights of the lock monitor.

  “What machines!” His nasal voice lifted happily. “What divine machines.” He gave the girl a pink baby-grin. “Look at ‘em, Lill Such machines are food and precious drink to me.”

  I too admired fine machines. I had spent three years polishing and tuning and loving the great space machine that was the station. For a moment I wanted to like Giles Habibula.

  “Very well.” I tried to be gruff. “But this is no mechanical museum. If you have any honest reason for visiting Nowhere Near, what is it?”

  “We’re conducting an experiment.” His flat, shallow eyes flickered evasively from me to the girl. “A mortal important experiment! Though I told you I’m retired, the

  Legion has asked another desperate service of me. The Legion medics have made me a miserable human guinea pig, for a research that’s likely to end in my death.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” I thought I saw a glimmer of light. “What is that research?”

  “You know I’m old.” His baby-head shook sadly. “Dreadful death is crowding close upon me—a poor reward for all the hardship and danger I’ve endured to help defend the precious human race. But still I’ve not forgot the spirit of the Legion. I’ve volunteered to give my few last years to this rare and desperate experiment.”

  “Yes?”

  “Lilith Adams is my very special nurse.” He gave her a fond pink smile. “I’m her guinea pig for a new serum the Legion medics have invented. The hazards are unknown, for the serum has never been tested. I fear the research will end in my death.”

  Hunching his thick shoulders in the flame-yellow sweater, he shivered.

  “That’s why I’ve come to Nowhere Near,” he wheezed. “To sweat out these fearful final years among the machines I love. Perhaps to perish here—a precious human sacrifice for the glory of the Legion and the welfare of mankind.”

  “What’s the serum for?”

  “Age!” he gasped. “It’s supposed to immunize me to what the medics call the cumulative biochemicals of senescence. We’ve come to wait here till we discover whether it works. If it does, the medics promise I’ll be immortal. But it’s a frightful gamble!”

  “So you want to live forever?”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.” He shot a murky glance at me. “I’m a veteran of the Legion, and I’ve not forgot our magnificent tradition. I’ve come to devote myself to this desperate experiment, to the brink of death itself—even if it takes a thousand mortal years!”

  I stood for a moment just admiring his bluff.

  Cool and tall and curiously sure in her clean white garb, Lilith Adams looked gravely at him and seriously back at me. I was almost smiling, but her lean and lovely face showed no hint of amusement.

  “I’m afraid you’ve picked an unfortunate spot for this kind of research,” I told them. “No miracle serum is likely to protect either one of you against the hazards of Nowhere. I’ll respect your orders, of course—if Commander Star does bring any orders about you before the Erewhon leaves. But surely you can see that Nowhere Near is no old folks’ home. There’s not a man of us here who wouldn’t give a month’s pay for half an hour of sun and wind and sea and sky, back on Earth. Why can’t you test your serum there?”

  Stubbornly, the old man shook his pink and hairless head.

  “I’ve seen too much of Earth.” His pale eyes fluttered uneasily. “I’ve seen too many human beings—too mortal much of their yelling and crowding and fretting and

  scheming and lying and killing and stinking. That’s why we’ve come to Nowhere Near.”

  “There are new planets enough,” I argued patiently, “if you really don’t like Earth. Virgin worlds, where you can really get back to nature. Seas that men have never sailed, plains that men have never plowed, creatures never hunted, mountains never climbed. When Nowhere gets on my nerves, I like to dream of those new worlds—”

  “I’ve seen new planets.” The old man blinked. “I’ve met raw nature, on the fearful world of the Runaway Star. Monsters in the sea and monsters in the jungle and monsters in the air—dreadful death in every breath we took!”

  He gave me a pink, solemn scowl.

  “I’m looking for my lost youth. If I do find it here, with Lilith’s precious aid, I’ll owe all my thanks to the computers that designed her new serum and the automated factories that made it. I’ll owe no thanks to nature—natural death would have killed me years ago!”

  Shuddering massively, he paused to gasp for air.

  “I don’t like nature and I don’t trust people.” His clay-colored eyes shifted belligerently. “Look at the wicked natural mystery you call Nowhere. Look at Captain Scabbard and his brutal crew. Nature and men—fearful nature and monstrous men!

  “Give me machines—like your great station here.

  “Machines I understand. Take nature. This natural space called Nowhere—so I gather from the miserable men who infest the fringes of it—is a dreadful riddle that the best brains in the Legion have failed to unlock, after endless years of trying. Take men. I’ve seen how even the precious innocence of Lilith Adams can awaken unsuspected evil in the worst or best of men. You take nature and men. I’ll take machines!”

  He dropped his smooth baby-hand on the sleek black case of the lock monitor, with an air of familiar affection.

  “Machines I know and trust. I can see how they work and fix ‘em when they don’t. Machines I love, because they exist to work for men. Left to herself, nature always kills us—unless our wicked fellow men are quicker to the death. But I think machines can save my poor old life, with Lil’s precious serum.”

  Staring at the two of them, I had to shake my head. The riddle was growing queerer. Though I had been amused by old Habibula’s agile loquacity, I couldn’t decide what to believe of his story. The pink glow of his skin and the vigor of his fight on the Erewhon seemed to argue for a real rejuvenation.

  Yet he seemed too cunning, too bold, too eloquent. I couldn’t believe that any normal man would hate his natural world as heartily as he claimed to, or love machines as much. Certainly I couldn’t believe that any sane veteran of the Legion would willingly retire to Nowhere Near.

  Lilith Adams was even more perplexing.

  Though nurses are often beautiful and sometimes virginal, I had never met a nurse— or any girl at all—who looked quite so breathtaking, or seemed so aloofly untouched

  and untouchable, or who possessed her quiet air of absolute command. I couldn’t help thinking that she was far more wonderful than any possible machine. Yet, like Captain Scabbard, I was somehow afraid of her.

  I looked at old Habibula.

  “If you don’t like nature, why’ve you come here to the edge of Nowhere—which is probably the greatest natural peril in the universe?”

  “Because I trust machines,” he droned solemnly. “If some mortal peril does come out of Nowhere, nature will be no blessed help to us. Men cannot defend us. Our precious machines will be our only friends. I know no better machine than this whole station is, made to keep us snug and cozy here in space, trillions of miles from mobs and weather and dirt—”

  The lock phone purred. The watch officer was calling me. Captain Scabbard had finished his unloading—except for the two passengers and their baggage. Anxious to get away from Nowhere, he wanted his flight orders. One of our free companions and three men I couldn’t spare had asked to leave on the Erewhon. The magnetometers showed a dangerous new magnetic flux around a rock near the center of Nowhere. A dozen other problems called for my attention, and I had to end the interview.

  “Sorry.”

  When I saw the quiet desperation that tightened the girl’s perfect face and darkened her tawny eyes, I felt a stab of genuine regret, but I tried to keep my voice crisply firm.

  “My job’s to keep the station safe,” I said. “You’ve failed to explain what happened to those spacemen on the Erewhon. You’ve failed to give me any believable reason for being here. You’ve failed to show me any official permission. I can’t allow you aboard.”

  Old Habibula turned crimson, wheezing and sputtering incoherently. The girl straightened, looking straight at me. Her eyes had a terrible directness.

  “Captain Ulnar,” she asked abruptly, “why are you here?”

  I didn’t want to tell her. I knew I didn’t have to tell her. Yet somehow her searching eyes required the truth.

  “The reason—the reason is my name.” Stumbling awkwardly, I confessed that painful fact. “Lars Ulnar is the wrong name for advancement in the Legion. Ulnar was a great name once—made great by many generations of space pioneers—but it has been disgraced by evil men. I volunteered for Nowhere Near because I had to prove that I was better than my name.”

  Her probing eyes were merciless.

  “So you are kin to Commander Ken Star?”

  “Distantly.” Puzzled, I met her desperate eyes. “He is John Star’s younger son. John Star was John Ulnar, before the Green Hall rewarded his heroism with a better name. But I’ve never met Commander Star—and I’ve no reason to expect him here.”

  “For life’s precious sake!” bellowed old Habibula. “We just told you he’s on his way.”

  I ignored that insolent outburst.

  “My own people come from another branch of the family tree,” I told the girl. “We’ve had our small part in the conquest of space, but we were never great. Never traitors, either. We never shared the glory of the Purple Hall, but we can’t escape its shame.”

  For another cruel moment, her darkened eyes studied me.

  “Perhaps you can,” she whispered. “I hope you can.”

  I waited for another moment, hoping she would show me some genuine reason to let them stay. I thought she was going to speak, but she only caught her breath and turned away. I left them in the lock, the old man whimpering like a punished animal.

  Captain Scabbard looked ugly when I told him that he had to keep his passengers, but he didn’t wait to argue long. Our instruments showed a violent new disturbance raging out in the anomaly. If he feared the old soldier and the girl, he was more afraid of Nowhere.

  I had to let the disenchanted free companion go with htm. Her enlistment had expired, and I failed to persuade her to stay. A pert brunette named Gay Kawai, she had been the life of the station, but now, since I had seen Lilith Adams, she was suddenly old and fat and commonplace.

  With regret, I refused leave to the three men who had asked to go with her. Their Legion enlistments had another year to run, and I had no replacements for them. Along with half a dozen other silent, bitter men, they attended Gay Kawai to the valves. Their morale, I saw, was going to be a problem.

  Captain Scabbard took his flight orders, muttering that he hoped never to see me again. The valves thunked against their seals. The Erewhon was gone, with the soldier and the girl.

  At first I was almost grateful for that new activity out in the anomaly, because it gave Gay Kawai’s unhappy friends something else to think about. By the end of the next shift, however, we had too much to think about. 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 interference 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.”

 

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