Shock Wave. Walt Richmond
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SHOCK WAVE
Copyright ©, 1967, by Walt & Leigh Richmond
All Rights Reserved
To
The Scott
. . . the choice and the responsibility.
I
TERRY FERMAN rolled and twisted in the confines of his sleeping bag, then restrained himself from sitting up, realizing just in time that the camper was too small for such a hasty action.
Turning, he glanced out the small porthole. The huge trees beyond the tiny riverside clearing he’d chosen for his campsite were outlined, smoky gray against a dawn sky. As rapidly as possible in such a cramped space he struggled into the warm clothing necessary to this climate and made his way into the open to survey the tumbling waters of the Feather River and the green olivene cliffs beyond.
It would be a good day for fishing, he decided, and he had been allowing his studies at Berkeley to keep him far too long away from the mountain streams that were his first love; a priority that electronics should not be allowed to assume. But first there was the project for which he had come on this field trip.
He glanced again at the tall green cliffs. It would be quite a trick to get a signal out of this valley with his tiny transistorized transmitter, though he ought to be able to manage it with a long enough transmitting wire.
The project, for all that Cal had tried to make it mysterious, was simple enough—to pinpoint by radio direction the source of anomalous signals that had originated somewhere in this area at irregular intervals and for irregular lengths of time over many years.
The signals had all been on the twenty-one megacycle band and had been detected and triangulated variously by various groups over the years. During the war quite intense efforts had been made to locate the “illegal transmitter,” without success. Then peace came and the project had been dropped when someone decided that the signals predated the war sufficiently to indicate an unmilitary aspect and had reinforced the decision by saying that they probably had a natural source.
The matter had rested there until Cal had found the records while digging through University files. Cal was a radio ham, but a political sciences major, and given more to political than scientific thinking, Terry decided wryly. He’d acted as though he thought the signals were part of some tremendous plot, a gambit unnecessary either to the facts or to Terry’s immediate interest.
Since the signals were sporadic they were very difficult to locate exactly, especially when adding in the reflections that could occur in mountains such as these. It was, in fact, impossible to triangulate precisely by the normal methods, and it had been Terry’s idea to work the triangulation system backward. By using his small portable transmitter, he planned to broadcast prearranged signals from various locations up and down the canyon until he found the exact area that duplicated the original recordings. Cal and some of his friends at Berkeley would be receiving the signals and directing changes.
Terry busied himself with the camp stove, but let most of his attention range in a methodical search of the nearby possibilities for setting up a wire. The bright green cliffs on the far side of the river were practically straight up and down, and there were thin bright shards at the bottom indicating that they were crumbly as well.
It should be quite a challenge to get a signal through from here on the twenty-one megacycle band, though perhaps not if he took advantage of the natural resonance of the canyon itself; but that long antenna would be a necessity. Eating with one hand he switched on the regular broadcast band and relaxed, leaning against the camper while it warmed up. His eyes again sought the nearly straight-up green cliffs.
Flipping the now warmed receiver through the broadcast band he was relieved to find that both Salt Lake City and Chicago were coming in with booming signals here, in the daylight. If he could put the wire up just right, those natural resonance effects of the canyon could quite possibly get him very good distance with his miniaturized rig. What a shame, he reflected, that with all the miniaturization of today no one had ever miniaturized a good transmitting wire. In the long run nothing beat the straight, long wire.
Terry caught the faint tracery of a ledge perhaps 120 feet above the river on the far side, and it looked as if there might be easy access. Using the large tree near the camper, a wire stretched straight across the river to that ledge should be just right. By the time he could cross the river and get up there, there should be warm sunlight. If he simply took the transmitter with him, he could set up the station on the far side.
Terry glanced down at the river. Swift current, tumbling between boulders, but not deep, blocked his way. If he were careful he wouldn’t even get his feet wet . . . but by the time he’d gotten to the other side he’d discovered that being careful wasn’t quite enough to keep himself dry crossing the Feather River.
More than slightly soaked, but triumphant, with the little waterproof field transmitter clipped to his belt and the wire trailing back to the tree across the river, he had made it to the base of the far cliff.
The cliff, close up, was a crumbling, scaly green, bright but brittle. Climbing it would definitely be dangerous. But the ledge had seemed to descend. Terry made his way upriver, seeking the access, and eventually found it.
The way up was a well-worn but not recently used ascent, clearly a footpath, with haphazardly strewn small boulders that might possibly have been placed as steps for all their irregularity. Terry paused and studied. Yes, they really were clumsily disguised steps. Cliff-climbing for once would be a stroll.
The ledge when he reached it was considerably larger than it had looked, seen from the gorge—a broad, flat expanse, large enough to have accommodated a small cabin; clear despite the green, friable rock that hung from the cliff overhead; and the edge was a sheer drop, a hundred feet, to the river blow.
The bright copper of the antenna wire stretched down in a long catenary loop toward the tree in the canyon below. Sort of an upside down antenna, he decided. Pictures always showed antennas stretching up towards the sky from the transmitting station, but there was no real reason for that except normal usage. This would probably do.
With gaze fixed on the meter, he touched the key. The needle swung over and in the same instant Terry felt the world sway with it.
Earthquake? Terry turned to stare at the cliff behind him, his body tensed to jump from under the inevitable slash of rock.
There was no cliff, no rocks. Instead he was facing a broad marble façade, not so high as the cliff but as perpendicular.
He turned toward the canyon. There was no canyon either—a desert stretched before him, well below the slab of rock on which he stood.
He whirled back to the cliff—to the marble façade. It was there. But—the light was wrong. Greenish. Slowly his eyes traveled up the side of the marble building to the skyline above, to a sickly green sky.
The color of a neon sign, he thought, then automatically corrected himself in a corner of his mind that still seemed to function, though he himself felt numb. It’s mercury vapor, not neon, that produces that garish green, the corner of his mind told him.
II
THE FEEL OF THE transmitter key under his fingers brought Terry’s gaze back to it, and from there it wandered down the short length of copper antenna wire, now trailing on the ground; only about twenty-five feet of it before it was cut off abruptly.
With a real effort he stifled the impulse to touch the key again. Perhaps it would mean instant return, but perhaps it might bring about any of a dozen other transformations. “Check your premises before you act on them,” he seemed to hear Cal’s voice saying, an axiom that had brought Terry up abruptly more than once in mutual experimental work.
Terry moved well back from the edge of the slab of stone and turned to survey the building behind him again. Just as he focused fully on it, a crack appeared in the solid gray wall and expanded rapidly in a doorway. The voice that