The Cosmic Snare

Sub-space was a vast nothingness used for instantaneous travel between stellar worlds. It was uncharted, and--Liddell knew--a death trap!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1956 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Liddell stared expectantly at the blank screen of the transfer unit. It had been blank ever since he had arrived with his wife at the doorway, enigmatically, mysteriously, sometimes frighteningly blank.

"See anything?" Linda asked. Liddell's wife of one month was a tall but trimly built girl in the uniform of the Transfer Service. She leaned anxiously over Liddell's shoulder now as he peered at the dazzling white screen.

"Not yet," he said, licking his lips. "It was just a hunch, anyway."

"What was just a hunch, darling?"

"That we'd see anything now."

"But you said--"

"I know what I said, Linda. That we'd had enough time to get used to this transfer station. That we'd read all the instructions and advice left by our predecessor. That we'd--"

"Then where's our first customer?" Linda demanded with a pout.

Liddell grinned and craned his neck to peck a kiss at his young wife's cheek. "Don't tell me you're lonely already!" he gasped, feigning amazement.

"No, but--"

Suddenly, the lines of Liddell's gaunt face went serious. "The lighthouse keepers of last century had nothing on us," he said.

Linda nodded. "They were practically in the middle of things by comparison. That's one thing I can't exactly get straight, sweetheart. Exactly where we are, I mean."

Liddell shrugged and offered an expansive gesture which was meant to take in the round globe of their living quarters and the transfer unit. "We're nowhere," he said. "Or we're everywhere. It depends on what sub-space school you belong to. You see, sub-space is either utterly nowhere, existing below the normal endless but finite, self-contained space-time continuity or else it is potentially everywhere, existing just below the warp and woof of space-time on a thousand thousand worlds...."

"Never mind, Lidd," Linda grinned. "Once you get started on something like that, you'd keep a gal up all night."

"Sleepy?"

"A little. That is, as you would say, if there was such a thing as night here. But there's nothing outside the globe, nothing but that featureless grayness. It doesn't even swirl. If it just swirled a little, like smoke, that would be something. But it doesn't even do that."

"Sub-space," Liddell offered. "Absolute nothingness. It's funny, you always picture nothingness as being black. But it's not. It's gray. Plain, featureless, changeless gray."

"Brother!" Linda said. "Can I ever see why they only take husband-wife teams in the Transfer Service."

"I'll bite. Why?"

"Because a man alone could go off his rocker thinking the things you think. He needs a girl around."

"Does he?" Liddell asked, then waited until Linda had begun to pout before he whirled around and took her in his arms, his back to the blank transfer screen.

"Lidd," Linda said. "Ah, Lidd...." But all at once she stiffened in his arms. He could feel her hands against his chest, trying to thrust him away. Her mouth was open but she couldn't speak. With one hand she managed to point.

At the surface of the transfer screen.

"We're going to have company," Linda finally said.