Excerpt from Tunnel in the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

The character Rod finds himself suddenly transported to a strange place. The excerpt is not a complete story in itself, but it is a point of departure.

He fell to his hands and knees; the gravity beyond was something close to Earth-normal and the change had caught him unprepared. But he stayed down, held perfectly still and made no sound while he quickly looked around him. He was in a wide clearing covered with high grass and containing scattered tress and bushes; beyond was dense forest.

He twisted his neck in a hasty survey. Earth-type planet, near normal acceleration, probably a G-type sun in the sky — but that didn’t mean anything; there might be hundreds within hearing. Even a stobar, whatever that was.

The gate was behind him, tall dark-green shutters which were in reality a long way off. They stood unsupported in the tall grass, an anomalism unrelated to the primitive scene. Rod considered wriggling around behind the gate, knowing that the tangency was one-sided and that he would be able to see anyone who came out without himself being seen.

Which reminded him that he himself could be seen from that exceptional point; he decided to move.

Where was Jimmy? Jimmy ought to be behind the gate, watching for him to come out... or watching from some other spy point. The only certain method of rendezvous was for Jimmy to have waited for Rod’s appearance; Rod had no way to find him now.

Rod looked around more slowly and tried to spot anything that might give a hint as to Jimmy’s whereabouts. Nothing... but when his scanning came back to the gate, the gate was no longer there.

Rod felt cold ripple of adrenalin shock trickle down his back and out his finger tips. He forced himself to quiet down and told himself that it was better this way. He had a theory to account for the disappearance of the gate; they were, he decided, refocusing it between each pair of students, scattering them possibly hundreds of kilometres apart.

No, that could not be true — “twenty kilometres toward sunrise” had to relate to a small area.

Or did it? He reminded himself that the orientation given in the sheet handed to him might not be that which appeared in some other student’s information sheet. He relaxed to the fact that he did not really know anything... he did not know where he was, nor where Jimmy was, nor any other member of the class, he did not know what he might find here, save that it was a place where a man might stay alive if he were smart — and lucky.

Just now it was his business to stay alive, for a period he might as well figure as ten Earth days. He wiped Jimmy Throxton out of his mind, wiped out everything but the necessity of remaining unceasingly alert to all of his surroundings. He noted wind direction as shown by the grass plumes and started crawling cautiously down wind.

— from Robert A. Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky