When the Five Moons Rise

by Jack Vance

  They dashed through the dark, up the rungs welded to the hull, and the cold steel felt like a caress to Welstead’s hot hands. Into the cabin he thudded the port shut, slammed home the dogs.

  Welstead vaulted to the controls, powered the reactors. Dangerous business—but once clear of the atmosphere they could take time to let them warm properly. The ship rose, the darkness and lights of Mytilene fell below. Welstead sighed, suddenly tired, but warm and relaxed.

  Up, up—and the planet became a ball, and Eridanus two thousand nine hundred and thirty-two peered around the edge and suddenly, without any noticeable sense of boundary passed, they were out in space.

  Welstead sighed. “Lord, what a relief! I never knew how good empty space could look.”

  “It looks beautiful to me also,” said Alexander Clay. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  Welstead whirled, jumped to his feet.

  Clay came forward from the reaction chamber, watching with a peculiar expression Welstead took to be deadly fury. Betty stood by the bulkhead, looking from one to the other, her face blank as a mirror.

  Welstead came slowly down from the controls. “Well—you’ve caught us in the act. I suppose you think we’re treating you pretty rough. Maybe we are. But my conscience is clear. And we’re not going back. Looks like you asked for a ride, and you’re going to get one. If necessary—” He paused meaningfully.

  Then, “How’d you get aboard?” and after an instant of narrow-eyed speculation, “And why? Why tonight?”

  Clay shook his head slowly. “Ralph—you don’t give us any credit for ordinary intelligence, let alone ordinary courage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I understand your motives—and I admire you for them. Although I think you’ve been bull-headed putting them into action without discussing it with the people most directly concerned.”

  Welstead lowered his head, stared with hard eyes. “It’s basically my responsibility. I don’t like it but I’m not afraid of it.”

  “It does you credit,” said Clay mildly. “On Haven we’re used to sharing responsibility. Not diluting it, you understand, but putting a dozen—a hundred—a thousand minds on a problem that might be too much for one. You don’t appreciate us, Ralph. You think we’re soft, spiritless.”

  “No,” said Welstead. “Not exactly—”

  “Our civilization is built on adaptability, on growth, on flexibility,” continued Clay. “We—”

  “You don’t understand just what you’d have to adapt to,” said

  Welstead harshly. “It’s nothing nice. It’s graft, scheming sharp-shooters, tourists by the million, who’ll leave your planet the way a platoon of invading soldiers leaves the first pretty girl they find.”

  “There’ll be problems,” said Clay. His voice took on power. “But that’s what we want, Ralph—problems. We’re hungry for them, for the problems of ordinary human existence. We want to get back into the stream of life. And if it means grunting and sweating we want it. We’re flesh and blood, just like you are.

  “We don’t want Nirvana—we want to test our strength. We want to fight along with the rest of decent humanity. Don’t you fight what you think is unjust?”

  Welstead slowly shook his head. “Not any more. It’s too big for me. I tried when I was young, then I gave up. Maybe that’s why Betty and I roam around the outer edges.”

  “No,” said Betty. “That’s not it at all, Ralph, and you know it. You explore because you like exploring. You like the rough and tumble of human contact just as much as anyone else.”

  “Rough and tumble,” said Clay, savoring the words. “That’s what we need on Haven. They had it in the old days. They gave themselves to it, beating the new world into submission. It’s ours now. Another hundred years of nowhere to go and we’d be drugged, lethargic, decadent.”

  Welstead was silent.

  “The thing to remember, Ralph,” said Clay, “is that we’re part of humanity. If there are problems we want to help solve them. You said you’d given up because it was too big for you. Do you think it would be too big for a whole planet? Three hundred million hard honest brains?”

  Welstead stared, his imagination kindled. “I don’t see how—”

  Clay smiled. “I don’t either. It’s a problem for three hundred million minds. Thinking about it that way it doesn’t seem so big. If it takes three hundred brains three days to figure out a dodecahedron of quartz—

  Welstead jerked, looked accusingly at his wife. “Betty!”

  She shook her head. “Ralph, I told Clay about our conversation, our argument. We discussed it all around, Ralph, and I told him everything—and I told him I’d give a signal whenever we started to leave. But I never mentioned space-drive. If they discovered it they did it by themselves.”

  Welstead turned slowly back to Clay. “Discovered it? But—that’s impossible.”

  Said Clay, “Nothing’s impossible. You yourself gave me the hint when you told me human reason was useless because the space-drive worked out of a different environment. So we concentrated not on the drive itself but on the environment. The first results came at us in terms of twelve directions—hence the dodecahedron. Just a hunch, an experiment and it worked.”

  Welstead sighed. “I’m licked. I give in. Clay, the headache is yours. You’ve made it yours. What do you want to do? Go back to Haven?”

  Clay smiled, almost with affection. “We’re this far. I’d like to see Earth. For a month, incognito. Then we’ll come back to Haven and make a report to the world. There’s three hundred million of us, waiting for the signal to start.”

  The Masquerade on Dicantropus

  Two puzzles dominated the life of Jim Root. The first, the pyramid out in the desert, tickled and prodded his curiosity, while the second, the problem of getting along with his wife, kept him keyed to a high pitch of anxiety and apprehension. At the moment the problem had crowded the mystery of the pyramid into a lost alley of his brain.

  Eyeing his wife uneasily, Root decided that she was in for another of her fits. The symptoms were familiar—a jerking over of the pages of an old magazine, her tense back and boltmpright posture, her pointed silence, the compression at the comers of her mouth.

  With no preliminary motion she threw the magazine across the room, jumped to her feet. She walked to the doorway, stood looking out across the plain, fingers tapping on the sill. Root heard her voice, low, as if not meant for him to hear.

  “Another day of this and I’ll lose what little’s left of my mind.”

  Root approached warily. If he could be compared to a Labrador retriever, then his wife was a black panther—a woman tall and welhcov- ered with sumptuous flesh. She had black flowing hair and black flashing eyes. She lacquered her fingernails and wore black lounge pajamas even on desiccated deserted inhospitable Dicantropus.

  “Now, dear,” said Root, “take it easy. Certainly it’s not as bad as all that.”

  She whirled and Root was surprised by the intensity in her eyes. “It’s not bad, you say? Very well for you to talk —you don’t care for anything human to begin with. I’m sick of it. Do you hear? I want to go back to Earth! 1 never want to see another planet in my whole life. I never want to hear the word archaeology, I never want to see a rock or a bone or a microscope—”

  She flung a wild gesture around the room that included a number of rocks, bones, microscopes, as well as books, specimens in bottles, photo- graphic equipment, a number of native artifacts.

  Root tried to soothe her with logic. “Very few people are privileged to live on an outside planet, dear.”

  “They’re in their right minds. If I’d known what it was like, I’d never have come out here.” Her voice dropped once more. “Same old dirt every day, same stinking natives, same vile canned food, nobody to talk to—”

  Root uncertainly picked up and laid down his pipe. “Lie down, dear,” he said with unconvincing confidence. “Take a nap! Things will look different when you wa
ke up.”

  Stabbing him with a look, she turned and strode out into the blue-white glare of the sun. Root followed more slowly, bringing Barbara’s sun-helmet and adjusting his own. Automatically he cocked an eye up the antenna, the reason for the station and his own presence, Dicantropus being a relay point for ULR messages between Clave II and Polaris. The antenna stood as usual, polished metal tubing four hundred feet high.

  Barbara halted by the shore of the lake, a brackish pond in the neck of an old volcano, one of the few natural bodies of water on the planet. Root silently joined her, handed her her sun-helmet. She jammed it on her head, walked away.

  Root shrugged, watched her as she circled the pond to a clump of feather-fronded cycads. She flung herself down, relaxed into a sulky lassitude, her back to a big gray-green trunk, and seemed intent on the antics of the natives—owlish leather-gray little creatures popping back and forth into holes in their mound.

  This was a hillock a quarter-mile long, covered with spinescrub and a rusty black creeper. With one exception it was the only eminence as far as the eye could reach, horizon to horizon, across the baked helpless expanse of the desert.

  The exception was the stepped pyramid, the mystery of which irked Root. It was built of massive granite blocks, set without mortar but cut so carefully that hardly a crack could be seen. Early on his arrival Root had climbed all over the pyramid, unsuccessfully seeking entrance.

  When finally he brought out his atomite torch to melt a hole in the granite a sudden swarm of natives pushed him back and in the pidgin of Dicantropus gave him to understand that entrance was forbidden. Root

  desisted with reluctance, and had been consumed by curiosity ever since....

  Who had built the pyramid? In style it resembled the ziggurats of ancient Assyria. The granite had been set with a skill unknown, so far as Root could see, to the natives. But if not the natives—who? A thousand times Root had chased the question through his brain. Were the natives debased relics of a once-civilized race? If so, why were there no other ruins? And what was the purpose of the pyramid? A temple? A mausoleum? A treasure-hunt? Perhaps it was entered from below by a tunnel.

  As Root stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the desert, the questions flicked automatically through his mind though without their usual pungency. At the moment the problem of soothing his wife lay heavy on his mind. He debated a few moments whether or not to join her; perhaps she had cooled off and might like some company. He circled the pond and stood looking down at her glossy black hair.

  “I came over here to be alone,” she said without accent and the indifference chilled him more than an insult.

  “I thought—that maybe you might like to talk,” said Root. “I’m very sorry, Barbara, that you’re unhappy.”

  Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.

  “We’ll go home on the next supply ship,” Root said. “Let’s see, there should be one—”

  “Three months and three days,” said Barbara flatly.

  Root shifted his weight, watched her from the comer of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger—there had been plenty of these before.

  “We’ll try to keep amused till then,” he said desperately. “Let’s think up some games to play. Maybe badminton—or we could do more swimming.”

  Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. “With things like that popping up around you?” She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”

  Root peered. “Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything

  else.”

  “My Lord!” whispered Barbara.

  Root walked down to the water’s edge. “Hey, boy!” The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. “Come here!”

  Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got there,” said Root, leaning close to the necklace.

  “Why, those are beautifuir breathed his wife.

  Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. “They certainly look like dia-

  The Masquerade on Dicantropus

  monds. The setting might be platinum or iridium. Hey, boy where did you get these? 5 ’

  The Dicantrop paddled backward. “We find.”

  “Where?”

  The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath^holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.

  “You find in big pile of rock?”

  “No,” said the native and sank below the surface.

  Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, “That pyramid must be full of things like that!”

  Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. “Oh—I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Why don’t you go out and see?”

  “I’d like to—but you know it would make trouble.”

  “You could go out at night.”

  “No,” said Root uncomfortably. “It’s really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it’s their business. After all it belongs to them.”

  “How do you know it does?” his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. “They didn’t build it and probably never put those diamonds there.” Scorn crept into her voice. “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes,” said Root. Tm afraid. There’s an awful lot of them and only two of us. That’s one objection. But the other, most important—”

  Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, “It’s no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us. I made a mistake bringing you out here and I’m sorry. I thought you’d enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet—”

  Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.

  “ Barbara!”

  “ Shh /” she snapped. “Be still! Listen!”

  He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far thrum-m-m'm. Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.

  Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator—but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.

  It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private

  yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.

  The dogs on the port began to turn, the port swung open. A man stood in the opening. For a moment he teetered on loose legs, then fell headlong.

  Root, springing forward, caught him before he struck ground. “Bar- bara!” Root called. His wife approached. “Take his feet. We’ll carry him inside. He’s sick.”

  They laid him on the couch and his eyes opened halfway.

  “What’s the trouble?” asked Root. “Where do you feel sick?”

  “My legs are like ice,” husked the man. “My shoulders ache. I can’t breathe.”

  “Wait till I look in the book,” muttered Root. He pulled out the Official Spaceman’s Self-Help Guide, traced down the symptoms. He looked across to the sick man. “You been anywhere near Alphard?”

  “Just came from there,” panted the man.

  “Looks like you got a dose of Lyma’s Virus. A shot of mycosetin should fix you up, according to the book.”

  He inserted an ampule into the hypo-spray, pressed the tip to his patient’s arm, pushed the plunger home. “That should do it—according to the Guide”

  “Thanks,” said his patient. “I feel better already.” He closed his eyes. Root stood up, glanced
at Barbara She was scrutinizing the man with a peculiar calculation. Root looked down again, seeing the man for the first time. He was young, perhaps thirty, thin but strong with a tight nervous muscularity. His face was lean, almost gaunt, his skin very bronzed. He had short black hair, heavy black eyebrows, a long jaw, a thin high nose.

  Root turned away. Glancing at his wife he foresaw the future with a sick certainty.

  He washed out the hypospray, returned the Guide to the rack, with sudden self-conscious awkwardness. When he turned around, Barbara was staring at him with wide thoughtful eyes. Root slowly left the room.

  A day later Marville Landry was on his feet and when he had shaved and changed his clothes there was no sign of the illness. He was by profession a mining engineer, so he revealed to Root, en route to a contract on Thuban XIV.

  The virus had struck swiftly and only by luck had he noticed the proximity of Dicantropus on his charts. Rapidly weakening, he had been forced to decelerate so swiftly and land so uncertainly that he feared his fuel was low. And indeed, when they went out to check, they found only enough fuel to throw the ship a hundred feet into the air.

  Landry shook his head ruefully, “And there’s a ten-million-munit contract waiting for me on Thuban Fourteen.”

  Said Root dismally, “The supply packet’s due in three months.”

  Landry winced. “Three months—in this hell-hole? That’s murder.” They returned to the station. “How do you stand it here?”

  Barbara heard him. “We don’t. I’ve been on the verge of hysterics every minute the last six months. Jim”—she made a wry grimace toward her husband—“he’s got his bones and rocks and the antenna. He’s not too much company.”

  “Maybe I can help out,” Landry offered airily.

  “Maybe,” she said with a cool blank glance at Root. Presently she left the room, walking more gracefully now, with an air of mysterious gaiety.

  Dinner that evening was a gala event. As soon as the sun took its blue glare past the horizon Barbara and Landry carried a table down to the lake and there they set it with all the splendor the station could afford. With no word to Root she pulled the cork on the gallon of brandy he had been nursing for a year and served generous highballs with canned lime juice, Maraschino cherries and ice.