Passage to Gomorrah
by Robert F. Young
©2020 Positronic Publishing
Passage to Gomorrah is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.
ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4598-2
Table of Contents
Passage to Gomorrah
She was the Galaxy’s most beautiful whore. He knew that if he went to her couch during the time-storm, he, too, would be booking
Even for a lady of the stars, the Lady Berenice was beautiful. Her short blonde hair made Cross think of Martian maize, and her blue eyes, set wide apart in her tanned, oval face, reminded him of the ice lakes of Frigidia. Her tall, Junoesque body put to shame the porno-graphic photographs he had seen of it, cheapened the lurid passages he had read about it; betrayed, as yet, no evidence of her apostasy.
He wondered who her lover was, and why she had refused to reveal him.
When the Jacob’s lift hatched levels with the Pandora’s lock, she stepped lightly into the ship beside him. The corporation officer who had accompanied her, handed him her papers, then signaled to the longstarmen below. After a moment the lift and its sole occupant sank from sight.
“How soon do we blast?” the Lady Berenice asked.
She was looking at Cross intently, as though trying to probe beyond the bleak grayness of his eyes. “In about fifteen minutes, my lady,” he said.
She nodded, stepped into the ship proper. He sealed the lock and escorted her up the spiral companionway to her cabin.
She paused in the doorway. “I’d like my luggage, please.”
“I’ll bring it up as soon as we’re in A Priori, my lady. Right now, I’ll have to insist that you strap yourself on the acceleration couch.”
He watched as she did his bidding. “You can get up as soon as the ‘all clear’ signal sounds,” he said presently.
She nodded again, not in the least perturbed. He wondered if she’d be equally calm if “acceleration couch” was something more than a hand-me-down term from pre-degravitation days; if she’d be equally composed if she had to contend with 3 or 4 g’s, instead of just the temporary instability of blast-off.
She probably would be, he decided. A miscarriage would not affect her banishment to Gomorrah, but it would save her the unpleasantness of having to give birth to a mutant.
He excused himself and headed for the control room.
A Priori drive, once activated, required no supervision except in cases of emergency. The Pandora was only a one-passenger-one-pilot job, but Falcon Lines, Inc., had a reputation throughout the civilized sector of the galaxy for fast, efficient service, and even its smallest ships boasted the latest in automatic equipment.
Cross secured the control-room door behind him, made his way leisurely down the spiral companionway to the hold, where the Wine-Women-and-Song longstarmen had deposited the Lady Berenice’s luggage. Even in the artificial ½ g, the two bags were heavy and he was breathing a little hard when he halted before her door.
He knocked. “Yes?” she answered, her voice muffled by the sound of running water.
“Your luggage, my lady.”
The sound of running water ceased, and presently she opened the door. She had wrapped a ship’s towel deftly around her torso. It was a white towel that enhanced the hue of her clear, tanned skin. Water glistened on her golden shoulders, ran in twinkling rivulets down her coppery thighs and calves. “Set them inside, please.”
Cross complied. She did not move an inch, and his arm, despite his efforts to avoid touching her, brushed her thigh. He withdrew quickly. His arm tingled and his hands were trembling. He kept his eyes averted because he knew what she would read in them. “If you wish anything further, I’ll be in my cabin,” he said. He turned to go.
“Wait,” she said.
“Yes?”
“How—how long will we be in A Priori?”
“A little over four hours, ship’s time.”
“Is—is there any likelihood of a time storm?”
The question surprised him. Passengers, especially passengers of the Lady Berenice’s status, did not usually concern themselves with the exigencies of space travel. They took it for granted, unless otherwise apprised, that such exigencies did not exist. “There is always a chance of a time storm,” he said. “But don’t worry, my lady. If the conditions for one are present, we will be contacted by the port authority in time to avoid it.”
“But suppose something should go wrong. Suppose we weren’t informed in time and did get involved in one. What would happen then?”
He could not keep his eyes averted forever, and he forced himself to meet her gaze. He was mildly shocked to see that a quantity of her composure had left her, that there was a certain diffidence in the expression on her face.
Presently: “As you may know, my lady,” he said, “A Priori is merely the result of the separation of pure space and pure time from the thing-in-itself, or from basic reality. Once separated, pure space can be contracted to the extent where a parsec equals .59 kilometers. Usually pure time contracts accordingly, but sometimes there is a slight discrepancy, and certain phases of A Priori contain more time than space. If we should become involved in one of these phases—or storms if you like—we would lose our awareness of our objective reality and proceed to relive a subjective and sporadic play-back of our pasts. So all that could happen to us, actually, are the things that have already happened to us—with the difference that we would relive not only our own experiences, but one another’s as well; in pure time, individuality does not exist.”
“But wouldn’t our objective reality be affected?”
He nodded. “It could be,” he said, “since, in the absence of any real passage of time, it would be in temporal ratio to our involvement in our pasts, which might force it into a different time plane altogether.”
She dropped her eyes. “Then—then in spite of what you said before, something could happen after all—something that hasn’t happened before.”
“I suppose so, my lady...Will that be all?”
“Yes—for now.”
“I’ll be in my cabin...”
“Cabin” was a euphemism for “cubicle.” The cramped compartment adjoining the control room contained a couch, a desk, a small micro-film library and a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but that was about all. Cross opened the cabinet and poured himself a generous brandy. He drank it fast, then he lay down on the couch and tried to sleep. He always slept out the A Priori phases of his runs if they were under eight hours, but he had a good idea that he was going to have a hard time sleeping this one out. He was right. The minute he closed his eyes he saw a white towel and a golden sunrise of shoulders; two breath-taking colonnades of tanned, glistening flesh—There was no sleeping after that.
He swore aloud. Surely she must realize that an ordinary Pilot like himself couldn’t afford her. Then why had she deliberately exhibited her deluxe charms? Why had she deliberately delayed him at the door