The Barrier

                            By Bryce Walton

               If Stevens could cross the high velocity
            barrier at the edge of space he would receive a
            pardon on Earth. But would he live to claim it?

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                             February 1951
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



[Illustration: His features were twisted by the acceleration, and his
sanity seemed to have gone.]

There were maybe ten or fifteen people to see him off. They weren't
cheering. They stood in the gray curtain of rain, hunched over with
their hands in their storm-coat pockets. Behind them was the vague bulk
of the Experimental Station. And beyond that, invisible in the night,
were the mountains he would never see again.

"O.K., Stevens. This is it."

So what? Stevens clanked as he turned toward the "Coffin." He was
encased in a bulging metal pressure suit and his head was a big alloy
bubble. No one smiled. No one raised a hand to say goodbye.

Doris would, of course, say goodbye, if she were here. She wasn't here.
She didn't even know about his volunteering.

Major Kanin nodded stiffly. His gray eyes wrinkled. "Good luck,
Stevens," he said dutifully. It was meaningless. Kanin had sent too
many poor guys out on a one-way trip. He knew Stevens wouldn't come
down. Not in any recognizable form.

A couple of gray-suited mechanics moved around behind Stevens. Stevens
leaned over and thrust his head into the tubular opening of the
torpedo-like plane. The two mechanics lifted his legs, shoved him in
headfirst like he was ammunition being crammed into an ancient cannon.
The metal hatch slid down past his feet. He was bound tightly by the
cockpit which was only an air-conditioned tube but slightly larger than
his body. When the canopy over his head closed, he had only two inches
between the plate in his helmet and the control and instrument panel.

For one agonizing moment, long and terrifying, Stevens felt an awful
compressing suffocation and entrapment. The claustrophobia went away,
in part, and left the plexglas plate in his helmet dewed with his
sweat.

He tried to relax. He stared at the controls. He twisted his head
carefully then so as not to bump his helmet against the side--the noise
was numbing inside when he did bump anything--and looked through the
tiny peep-hole in the tubular wall which would soon close too, leaving
him completely sealed. He looked out and waited for the signal. Major
Kanin had turned his back and was discussing something with a Doctor
and a Lieutenant. The mechanics were around preparing the kick-off
rockets.

The "Coffin" was light, and it was new. A slight improvement over the
last one. But the so-called improvement was a farce, Stevens knew,
because no one had any idea why none of the others had ever come back.
None of them expected him to come back either, and they showed it
plainly. Also, none of them cared particularly, from any human point of
view. The Military cared of course, from another view-point.

This was another velocity test run. Once around the Earth to this
take-off spot on the desert. The Military wanted to get to the Moon
if they had to walk there over a suspension bridge of human dead.
The first Sovereign State to get a military base on the Moon would,
in theory, be the all-time victor in what certain kinds of humorists
called the "game" of war. So far, no one had been able to stand the
velocity.

Stevens felt his skin stretch in a dry, tight grin. He carefully and
slowly moistened his lips and watched the light that would blink
yellow. A minute after that the job would kick-off before rockets
delivering a 3000-pound thrust for twelve seconds.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stevens guessed that the brain-boys up in some hidden bureau had an
idea that sooner or later they would find somebody who could stand it,
then they could make tests, find out why. Stevens had no idea how many
had already been sacrificed. The boys upstairs knew but they weren't
giving out statistics these days. Stevens would increase the unknown
number by one more.

So it meant nothing, he thought. He wasn't one of the superboys, the
jet-jyrenes, the hero lads who never came back and had statues and
plaques stuck all over the place for being permanently en absentia. Not
anymore, he wasn't.

He was one of the new volunteers from the West Coast branch of the
Military Prison. Big-hearted Kanin had even promised him a pardon if he
brought the ship back. It was a new high in irony, but that was about
all.

He wouldn't come back, and he knew it. But he would be free, and Doris
would be free to live her own life. He had been stupid, hot-headed,
once--and this was a preferable way, he had decided, to pay up the debt.

Doris had resigned herself to waiting for him. It was a manslaughter
charge, and he would have gotten out maybe in fifteen years. They
didn't parole anybody from a Military Prison, at least not on anything
as heavy as manslaughter. It wasn't fair to Doris, nor to himself.

All right. He was in a shiny "Coffin" and he would soon be on his way
to wherever the others had gone--into nowhere. Where was nowhere? That
was a question. It was way up, higher than anyone had returned from to
answer--still within the bounds of gravity but--_high_. A lot of guys
had found it, but they weren't sending back any ESP messages from the
Beyond.

It was up there where the Earth lost its face behind thick vapor veils
and began to look like a fancy balloon, that was where you found out
the location of nowhere. Inside a beautifully stream-lined "Coffin"
you found out--hurtling way beyond the speed of sound, shattering the
supersonic barriers, and faster and faster still....

What happened to them? Nobody had figured it out. All the best brains
in the world working on it might figure it out. But the brains were
split up, divided into little camps here and there, getting a lot of
atomic spitballs ready to throw at one another, when teacher's back
was turned.

So it wasn't figured out, what happened to them. They had come a
long way since they first broke the barrier. Faster and faster and
faster--but they'd hit a limit somewhere up there. And until they wiped
out that limitation, the Moon was as far away as it had ever been back
when man thought the canoe was a great discovery.

They just went faster and faster and faster--and then they disappeared.
A curtain parted. A curtain closed. And wherever man wanted to get to
so fast--he got there.

The yellow light blinked at Stevens like a jaundiced eye. Stevens
winked back with a mock gesture that was hardly genuine. The world
rocked, and his head seemed to drain suddenly as though by a suction
pump.

       *       *       *       *       *

His task was simple enough. The controls were automatic until the
signal came for bringing the ship in, and then manual controls would be
used. Until then, he served as only a slightly necessary human element.
A voice. There was the radio, and his voice. He was to keep them
informed down there. Keep talking right up to the point when whatever
happened--happened.

Stevens talked. He reported the altitude, the velocity, the
temperature. He kept reporting as the three of them increased. His
eyes watched the light that might blink red. The "panic-light." When
that blinked, it meant curtains. It meant fire in the "Coffin." It
meant that if you were in a position to do it, you could use the
automatic pilot ejector and get hurled into the screaming currents by a
37 mm cartridge that shot the pilot and cockpit straight up at 60 ft.
per second.

At this altitude and this velocity, the ejector was useless.

He whispered, "Velocity--five thousand--" He spoke again.
"Velocity--fifteen thousand--"

It was frightening. He flicked on the observation screen. It was a
blur. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn't hear anything. If he could
only lift his legs, bend his knees. If he could only turn over on his
side--

He opened his mouth to scream, and somehow prevented the burst that
frothed to soundless bubbles on his lips. His body seemed to swell,
seeking to burst the Coffin's walls like a swelling mummy. The terror
remained in him, icy and deep.

He watched the gauges creeping up and up. He was speaking. He knew he
was reporting but he couldn't hear himself saying anything. He watched
the "panic-light" that would glow red and that would be curtain time.
There was no sound. No sound at all. There was no vision. No awareness
of motion. At this incredible height, at this frightening velocity,
there was no awareness of anything at all.

He was in a Coffin all right, and he was buried--as certainly as though
he were six feet under and as stationary as only the dead can be when
they are buried and forgotten down under the clean Earth where they
belong when they're tired.

They didn't belong up here, not this way.

"The cooling system's clogging," he heard himself whisper. "Crystals of
ice ... cockpit's like a miniature snow storm...."

He heard the unemotional voice come clearly to him. "The emergency
trigger--"

He used it. He felt a freezing grin rip across his face as he reached
out and used it. The icy spray died away and he heard himself saying
something else.

"It's the velocity. I don't have any reason for saying it--I just feel
it--you could feel it up here too--I can't explain it, but it's the
velocity. I know it. Maybe they crashed on the Earth somewhere. There's
lots of places on Earth a ship could crash and no one would know it,
especially when it would be taken for a meteor. But this feels like
it's the velocity that does it up here. Listen, what about this? Anyone
thought of this--what if the velocity breaks a man through into another
dimension?"

No one commented on that. It happened to him right then, and he felt
it coming. Reflexes tried to move his body, and his head and feet
drummed on the restricting tubular walls. There was a wrenching blur
and a slipping spinning vertigo.

       *       *       *       *       *

... there was darkness and he floated in it, but he was conscious. It
wasn't any familiar kind of consciousness. Lights began glimmering
here and there like fireflies. But it was no dream, he knew that.
He didn't know what it was. The music that was something far and
incomprehensively beyond music sounded, and he seemed to float on
a broad tape of sound to float on a road, a path, a curvature that
broadened into unlimited vistas.

It was brief. It was like peeking through a tiny hole and seeing
something beautiful, unworldly, very nearly incomprehensible, drift by.
He heard a voice that had no body, but he knew it was real, very real.
More real than anything he had called real before.

"Another is coming through. Check the matrix."

       *       *       *       *       *

He tried to understand. Vaporous curtains seemed to draw back one by
one and a kind of clarity flowed over his mind like cool ocean up a
white beach. A first faint tingling thrill moved in his blood, and
became pleasure that mounted through ecstasy and then became something
else for which he had no name.

He had called it--nowhere. This wasn't anything like that. This was
really _some_where. Soft lights bathed him like water. Shadows seemed
to shift and sway and there was silver in the light, dusted with golden
motes.

He thought desperately. "Where is this? What has happened?"

"This is Death," the voice that had no face or form answered. "That is
what you term it, in the lower stage reality from which you have come.
There are other ways of going through the barrier, but death is the
sure and the ordinary one. Many come through, in many ways--"

Stevens tried to understand, and he knew that he could not. He tried to
see his present form, his present meaning. There was nothing tangible.
He drifted. He was light and sound perhaps, movement perhaps. He was
part of something greater and far more complex than his undeveloped
powers of perception could absorb.

Stevens thought. "You mean--I'm--Dead. I mean--that I'm not living now?"

The thought answered him. It wasn't a sequence of words, phrases,
forming meaning. The entire answer was a part of him, immediately. "You
call it death. Actually you are more alive, you have come through the
barrier into what you call the fourth dimension. It is really but a
broader awareness of a higher reality--"

It didn't mean much to Stevens. The unknown, the intangible--it sent a
chill through his consciousness. Pain hit him. He winced. Light roiled,
irritation eddied like muddy streaks in a clear stream. A bluish haze
spread like staining ink through the clouds of brilliance. Dark cracks
spread like lines through colored glass.

Stevens felt an icy wind. He seemed to swirl inchoate through a forest
of wildly irritated leaves and branches.

The thought came to him, weakly, through distance that was more than
mere distance, through barriers of space and realms of time. It came to
him weakly, and it began to fade.

"Everything that was, that is, or will be, we are conscious of here in
this higher stage of reality. All must come through, and there is never
again contact with the lower stage, the third dimension of perception.
The matrix is universal, eternal, and it is set and unchanging."

Stevens' mind screamed. "But I'm returning--help me, I don't want to go
back. I want to stay, to stay--"

"You are John Stevens--" the voice, the thought, drifted to him from
what seemed infinite spaces.

"Yes, yes--"

"There is a distortion, you do not understand. Someday you will. You
are premature. The pattern is rigid, and everything has its set moment
of alteration. This distortion, I cannot explain. We are not perfect
here. There is yet a higher reality, and a higher one still, and the
stages are infinite. But you will be back, John Stevens. Soon. Very
soon."

"When--when?"

A column of sound arose and shattered in glittering spray. "The matrix
has the answer. John Stevens--no this is not your time. You call it
a week. Seven days. Such terms are meaningless here. To us, it is
happening now. We can see it happening. We can see you coming through
the barrier--to stay--to learn--to live as we live--"

"When?" he screamed at the fading thought.

"Soon. A week. Seven days. It is here. The Matrix has the answer...."

"Now. Let me stay," Stevens screamed. "I don't want to go back."

"You are not really here, or you could not go back. This is a glimpse.
Many have had it. Someday you will understand. But in seven days--"

       *       *       *       *       *

The radio voice was shrill. "Can you hear? Can you hear? There has been
five seconds of unexplainable static! Can you hear?"

"Sure, I can hear," he said hoarsely. He blinked, stared at the blurred
instruments against his eyes. Suddenly he shouted. "I'm still alive,
you get that? I've passed the velocity apex, and I'm still alive!"

He heard Major Kanin's voice. Some of the fatuousness was lost in the
emotion of triumph. "Great! Great, you've done it! Now you've got to
bring her in! That pardon--"

All right. He would do that. He had been a super-boy, a jet-gyrene
himself, once. A big-shot, a wonder boy jet-hero, before he got that
jealous quirk that had turned out to be baseless. A feud that had gone
on for years and culminated in a fight, and Bill Carson had died from
concussion. There had been nothing between Doris and Carson, but it was
too late to think about that now.

The Military had been harsh, and he'd known he couldn't bear the
confinement. And he hadn't wanted Doris to suffer for his psychological
blowup either. He had volunteered for what should have been
suicide--but he still lived. He couldn't understand that. He should be
Dead. He knew that. But he wasn't, and he knew he would bring her in. A
pardon--

The world was small for Stevens. A coffin, a cannon-barrel. And he was
stuffed in it. His hands alone could move over the simple controls,
and his eyes could move over the gauges. A jet-pilot had to learn
a special feel to bring in a jet-ship. And Stevens had learned that
"feel" rapidly, years ago. It seemed a long time ago when he had taken
that harsh training: a few hours in a conventional flyer, a few more
in a Mustang 60. Then that rending day when he had "checked out" in a
jet-trainer.

Stevens' eyes bulged in sudden terror. Sweat blurred his vision. The
red light was glowing. The _Panic-Light_. It meant bad trouble at this
speed. Fire--

"But I'll bring it in," he whispered. Smoke curled through the Coffin.
The heat expanded around him rapidly. He thought of the ejector, but he
was too low now, coming in. He tried to scream. The crackling wavering
heat inside his helmet was intolerable. The controls were jammed.
His hands fell away and he dropped his head helplessly and the world
exploded....

       *       *       *       *       *

This time there was a crowd, and they acted differently. They were
enthusiastic. There were doctors and nurses. Their faces were twisted
with admiration. Stronger than the admiration was a fearful kind of
disbelief. The Doctor touched his lips with his tongue and coughed
uneasily as he stared at Stevens.

Major Kanin was beaming. "Man," his voice boomed through the hospital
room. "Man! You're alive. No one knows how you can be alive, but you
are! We've licked it. It's a miracle!"

Voices agreed with that in a chorus of incredulous whispers. Miracle....

The Major said, "I've already got that pardon coming through, Stevens.
It'll be probational of course, but that will all be forgotten now,
Stevens. You're something special."

The doctors and nurses stared at him with unbelieving eyes.

"You've been examined thoroughly, Stevens, and you're all right, not
a scratch! It's impossible, but it's true. Every doctor here, every
mechanic, says it's impossible. Your ship's just a pile of melting
metal, Stevens, but you crawled out of it absolutely uninjured. Nobody
understands it, but everybody's glad!"

The Doctor whispered. "Miracles like this sometimes happen, but no one
can explain them. His body should be torn to pieces, burned. Well, he
certainly had to have had some unique physical quality to have gotten
through the high velocity peak."

"Yes, you hear that, Stevens?" the Major boomed.

Stevens was staring at the ceiling. He was trying to think, to remember.

"Now listen to this, Stevens. You went up a convict, and now you're a
hero. You're in perfect physical condition, so we're going right ahead
with Project Ultimo. And you'll handle the rocket, Stevens! If anyone
can get to the Moon, you can, from this exhibition today!"

"What's that," Stevens said. He looked at their faces.

"It'll take a week to get the rocket ready," the Major said. "It's the
Moon now, Stevens! The Moon!"

"The Moon," Stevens repeated.

"This will be no secret, Stevens!" Major Kanin stood up, his chest out,
his heavy-jowled face glowing with triumph. "The world will know about
it when you take off, this time. This won't be secret. The Enemy will
know then that they've lost! Lost, utterly and unquestionably. With
military bases on the Moon, they'll be helpless and they'll know it
when you make that successful flight! One week, Stevens!"

Stevens looked out the window at the gray curtain of rain. "What was
that? One week--" Something stirred in his memory. He grappled for it,
lost it. He closed his eyes.

"Seven days, Stevens, that's all!"

He didn't answer. For an instant, behind the bottomless darkness of his
closed lids, he saw something--something intangible and shimmering,
beyond the grayness and rain. And then it was gone.