Free The Wind Between the Worlds by Lester del Rey

he started to answer, and his own words disappeared into a soft fog of sleep.
    The harsh rasp of a buzzer woke him, while a light blinked on and off near his head. He shook some of the sleep confusion out of his thoughts, and made out an intercom box. Flavin’s voice came over it harshly and he flipped the switch.
    “Vic, where the hell are you? Never mind. Wilkes just woke me up with a call. Vic, it’s helped, but not enough. The field is about even with the building now. It’s stopped shrinking, but we’re still losing air. There’s too much loss at Ecthinbal and at Ee—the engineer there didn’t get the portals capped right, and Ecthinbal can’t do anything. We’re getting about one-third of our air back. And Wilkes can’t hold the pressure for bombing much longer! Get over here.”
VI
    “W here’s Ptheela?” Vic asked as he came into the transmitter room. She needed no sleep, and should have taken care of things.
    “Gone. Back to Plathgol, I guess,” Flavin said bitterly. “She was flicking out as I woke up. Rats deserting the sinking ship—though I was starting to figure her different. It just shows you can’t trust a plant.”
    Vic swept his attention to the communicator panel. The phones were still busy. They were still patient. Even the doubtful ones were now accepting things; but it couldn’t last forever. Even without the risk, the transmitter banks were needed for regular use. Many did not have inexhaustible power sources, either.
    A new note cut in over the whistling now, and he turned to the Plathgol phone, wondering whether it was Ptheela and what she wanted. The words were English, but the voice was strange.
    “Plathgol calling. This is Thlegaa, Wife of Twelve Husbands, Supreme Plathgol Teleport Engineer, Ruler of the Council of United Plathgol, and hereditary goddess, if you want the whole letterhead. Ptheela just gave me the bad news. Why didn’t you call on us before—or isn’t our air good enough for you?”
    “Hell, do you all speak English?” Vic asked, too surprised to care whether he censored his thoughts. “Your air always smelled good to me. Are you serious?”
    The chuckle this time wasn’t a mere imitation. Thlegaa had her intonation down exactly. “Sonny, up here we speak whatever our cultural neighbors do. You should hear my French nasals and Vromatchkan rough-breathings. And I’m absolutely serious about the offer. We’re pulling the stops off the transmitter housing. We run a trifle higher pressure than you, so we’ll probably make up the whole loss. But I’m not an absolute ruler, so it might be a good idea to speed things up. You can thank me later. Oh—Ptheela’s just been banned for giving you illegal data. She confessed. When you get your Bennington plant working, she’ll probably be your first load from us. She’s packing up now.”
    Flavin’s face held too much relief. Vic hated to disillusion the politician as he babbled happily about always knowing the Plathgolians were swell people. But Vic knew the job was a long way from solved. With Plathgol supplying air, the field would collapse back to the inside of the single transmitter housing, and there should be an even balance of ingoing and outcoming air, which would end the rush of air into the station, and make the circular halls passable, except for eddy currents. But getting into the inner chamber, where the air formed a gale between the two transmitters, was another matter.
    F lavin’s chauffeur was asleep at the wheel of the car as they came out of the Bennington local office, yet instinct seemed to rouse him, and the car cut off wildly for the station. Vic had noticed that the cloud around it was gone, and a mass of people was grouped nearby. The wind that had been sucked in and around it to prevent even a tank getting through was gone now, though the atmosphere would probably show signs of it in freak weather reports for weeks after.
    Pat had obviously figured out the trouble remaining, and