The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  “Don’t listen!” His own voice was suddenly shrill from something tight in his throat. “She’s crazy! We left her doll back on Earth a billion years—”

  His voice choked off when he felt the spider turning. The starlit frost was always the same, flat and featureless in every direction, but the dome of stars swung around them till the black sun hung low on his left. They were rolling fast toward a constellation of bright golden stars in the shape of a very lean pyramid, or perhaps an arrowhead. He ran down the steps to the main deck and heard Day’s new voice from the control bay.

  “Farther right,” she was saying. “Six degrees, to avoid rough ice around a reef.”

  What could she know about a reef and broken ice?

  For a moment he couldn’t move, but then he caught his breath and tiptoed into the bay. Day sat on the holomonitor, where she was level with Andersen’s head. Her eyes were fixed on him. They had a dull, glassy look, as if she were still asleep.

  Trying to understand, he looked for the black beads that had given her those crazy dreams of Me Me lost on the ice. He saw nothing on her smooth baby face. His mother had said the beads were all safely locked in Reba Washburn’s safe, where they could hurt nobody. Yet she frightened him.

  “Farther,” that hard voice was saying. “Slightly farther.” Andersen moved the wheel. “There! Hold us there.”

  He caught the sleeve of Andersen’s blue jumpsuit.

  “Dr. Andersen—” His voice shook. “Please—listen to me!”

  “Kip?” Andersen turned for a moment, his surprised grin almost normal. “I’d forgotten you were here. What’s your trouble?”

  “My sister.”

  “What’s wrong with your sister?”

  “Don’t listen to her! Can’t you tell she’s walking in her sleep, like she did before? She’s got this crazy notion about her panda doll. She thinks it’s here, lost somewhere out on the ice. It can’t be here.”

  He turned to shout at Day.

  “Wake up, Baby Daby! Don’t you know we left your silly doll back on Earth?”

  Day sat motionless on the monitor, as if she didn’t hear him.

  “Leave her be.” Andersen shrugged and grinned again. “No matter what she thinks, she’s showing us the way.”

  “What way?” His voice had shrunk to a whisper. “Where?”

  “You remember when we were still out in orbit?” Andersen seemed relaxed, almost his natural self. “On our last pass around the planet, we saw a strange light from the middle of the ice cap. It seemed to flash in answer to our radar beam. Remember?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “Tony and I always wanted to know if it was meant to be a signal to us. The captain was afraid to let us try, but your sister is giving us a chance—”

  “A chance?” His teeth were chattering. “What kind of chance?”

  “Your sister seems to have established a mental link with whatever flashed the beacon. Maybe the senders want to establish some kind of contact. If they do, we want to know.”

  “We’re going to the ice cap?”

  “The signal came from what looked like a complex of gigantic structures on the middle of it. We’re headed there. It will be a long and terribly difficult journey. With your sister’s help, we think we can make it.”

  “Dr. Andersen—” His voice was so husky he had to try again. “Dr. Andersen, what about our mother? She’ll be terribly worried. You should have told her.”

  “We couldn’t.” Andersen hardly seemed to care. “Mr. Roak and the captain refused to let us undertake the expedition. We had to make a secret departure.”

  “Don’t we have a radio?” Andersen didn’t answer, but he saw the microphone on the console. “Won’t you let me call?”

  “I’m sorry.” Andersen shook his head. “But we can’t risk any interference.”

  “Please!” His voice quivered again. “She’ll be worried sick. Just let me tell her we’re okay. If we are—”

  He stopped to look at Andersen’s face. His stubble of red beard was still the same. He still looked tired, with dark half-moons under his eyes. But there was a difference, as if his eyes were on something far away.

  “Are we?” he asked. “Are we okay?”

  “We’re doing what we must.” Andersen looked hard at him, shaking his head. “Except maybe for you. We hadn’t planned for you to come. I’m sorry you’re here, and sorry for your mother.” His voice seemed strange, not quite his own. “A misfortune, but I see no remedy. We can’t take you back—”

  Day had made a strangled squeal and then a string of grunts and whistles like something out of another language. Andersen tipped his head to listen as if he understood and answered with the same odd sounds. They weren’t Spanish, or the French he had spoken with Cruzet.

  His hand shaking, Kip pulled at Andersen’s sleeve. He paid no attention. Bent over the wheel, he was steering around a patch of uneven ice. Beyond it, the spider moved suddenly faster, rocking and swaying. He searched Day’s face again, and Andersen’s, and saw no amphibian beads.

  “Andy?” He tugged once more. “Andy, can’t you hear me?”

  Andersen didn’t answer or seem to feel the pull.

  “How long—” he tried to ask. “How long will we be gone?”

  Standing with his eyes fixed on that cluster of yellow stars, Andersen ignored him. Day sat on the monitor, her glazed and sleepy eyes fixed on Andersen. Kip was still watching when she turned her head to make a weird whistling chirp, and he saw the bright black bead hidden in the hair behind her ear. Andersen answered with an odd quick grunt, and he saw another bead stuck close behind his ear.

  Trembling, he caught his breath, but he felt afraid to speak again. He could only stand silently watching as Andersen drove them on toward that golden arrowhead above the starlit frost in the south. Day never moved, except now and then to make sounds that should have come from animals, maybe birds. Afraid even to move, he stood there till he felt stiff and cold. He got sleepy, because he had woken up too early. With breakfast time long past, his stomach was an aching hollow.

  “Andy?” At last he had to speak again. “Dr. Andersen? What has happened to you?”

  Day squeaked to Andersen. He answered with a queer little click, but they still ignored him. He felt weak, with a sour ache in his stomach. Finally he left them and climbed down into the cramped engine bay. The floor had the curve of the hull, with the fusion engine humming very softly at one end and the fans of the air cycler whirring at the other. Cruzet knelt at the control console beside the fusion engine, which fused helium 3 and deuterium to make steam for the turbine.

  “Tony?” Kip spoke softly, hesitant to bother him. “Tony?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t move. Fixed on the dials, his eyes looked as glassy as Day’s. Leaning closer, Kip found the black gleam behind his right ear.

  “Dr. Cruzet?” He raised his voice. “Are you okay?”

  Cruzet stayed as rigid as a frozen man.

  Frightened again, he climbed back into the main cabin. Needing to pee, he found a tiny toilet room at the end of the curtained berth at the rear of the cabin. On his first ride in the spider, Andersen had showed him the pantry locker. The door made a little table when he pulled it down, a water spigot and a little sink beside it. He found plastic cups and soyasweet wafers on the shelves, and a real red apple from Earth.

  He drank a cup of water and ate the hard dry wafers with the apple. The soya stuff was almost good, and he liked the apple’s juicy sweetness. Feeling a little better, he looked into the engine bay again. Cruzet still knelt, as motionless as marble, rigid fingers stretched across the console.

  In the pilot bay, Andersen stood where he had been, steering toward that cluster of bright yellow stars. Day sat watching from the monitor. She wore a strange little smile, and she sat as still as a blue-eyed doll. He shouted at them, but they seemed not to know he was there. Climbing back into the bubble, he found a dim red glow on the frost around them. The heat l
amp had come on. They must have come too far from the ship for anybody to see them.

  Beyond that feeble glow there was nothing else to see, even with the binoculars he found on the navigation desk. Though they seemed forever rolling fast toward that golden arrowhead, they got nowhere. The starlit ice lay smooth and flat and dimly white, just the same in every direction all the way to the star horizon. Nothing ever changed in the dead black sky.

  The black sun never rose or set. When he focused the binoculars on it, it looked like a cracked black plate, or maybe an ugly face. Thin yellow lines like frowning wrinkles ran across it. Cracks, Andersen said, where volcanic lavas shone through the hardened crust. One angry red spot looked like an eye, glaring at him.

  He didn’t like the frown, or the furious eye. He put the binoculars back on the desk. The arrowhead of stars had moved to the right when he looked again, but it crept slowly back till again it hung straight ahead. Andersen must have steered around some obstacle too far off to see.

  Nothing else happened. He got sleepy, but he felt afraid to sleep. Something worse might happen. With nothing else to do, he longed for his Game Box. Captain Cometeer and his crew had thrilling adventures on strange new planets, but nothing this bad had ever happened to them. He was nodding, fighting to stay awake, when he heard Day making those shrill whistles again. Andersen squealed like some hurt animal, but then Kip heard words from Day that he could understand.

  “Turn right. Eighteen degrees.”

  The golden arrowhead crept slowly to the left, till she spoke again.

  “There! Hold us there.”

  Andersen made a squeak and click that must have been a question.

  “Twenty-one kilometers,” Day told him. “We reach the archipelago at the prehistoric crossing. Then due west five thousand six hundred kilometers to the continental ice.”

  How did she know words like archipelago and continental? How did she know the distance to the ice? He felt afraid to wonder. The watch clock chimed, and later chimed again, but nobody paid any attention. He thought it must be night again, ship time. Hungry and thirsty again, he felt sorry for Day. With no breakfast and no lunch, she had even missed her afternoon nap. He thought she should be starving, but when he heard her whistle at Andersen again, she sounded more like some strange bird than anything human.

  The spider still rolled on, the golden arrowhead to the left of them now. Stiff from sitting at the navigator’s shelflike table, he stood up to watch. At last something loomed out of the dark, something that grew into a great square shadow on the stars.

  Andersen drove them toward it, up a wide frosty pavement that looked dimly red under the lamp. They came so close he saw that it was a great square building of some dark stone. The spider’s lights showed huge monsters carved into the walls that Dr. Singh and the engineers had died trying to climb.

  The spider slowed. He heard a tiny cheep from Day, and a hoarse croak from Andersen. He wondered if the madness of the beads was going to kill him and Cruzet the same way. Maybe even his little sister? His fists clenched, but he had no weapon, no way to fight for her.

  Feeling a cold sickness in his middle, he had time to wonder about himself. Would he be safe, since he wore no bead? Would they leave him alone in the spider? Could he drive it himself, to take the news back to his mother? It would be a long way. The dangers frightened him, but at least he could try….

  Day made a little yelp like a hungry puppy. Andersen grunted and drove them around the building. The spider slowed again. Kip searched the foot of the high black wall, looking for the frozen bodies of Singh and the engineers, wondering if he and Day and the men were going to freeze and die here, trying to climb the wall.

  His breathing stopped. The wall was too long for the lights of the spider to reach the end of it, but he couldn’t see the bodies. Looking again he found three blankets on the frost, farther from the wall. They lay very flat, with nothing under them.

  “Andy?” He shuddered, shouting into the interphone. “Weren’t the bodies here? Indra’s? Nik’s and Kobo’s?”

  He heard no reply. After a moment the turbine hummed louder and the spider rolled on across the platform toward another pavement that led down to another frozen ocean. He shivered again, wondering about the bodies. But the beads weren’t killing them, at least not now.

  “West.” Day’s voice had turned sleepy and slow, but she spoke human words. “Toward the Sky Fish.”

  Andersen’s new voice asked a question he didn’t quite hear.

  “Eighteen degrees right,” Day said. “Toward that constellation.”

  The spider turned till the nose faced a tiny cluster of blue-white stars shaped like a cowboy hat. It pitched and swayed a little on broken ice near the beach, but the frost lay smooth beyond. Andersen drove them faster again, toward the continental ice five thousand six hundred kilometers ahead.

  Twenty-three

  Rima held her breath till the knock came again, impatiently louder. Glancing around the room, she found no possible weapon, no way of escape.

  “Who …” Her voice was a husky whisper. She tried to raise it. “Who’s this?”

  All she heard was another sharp knock. Uncertainty became unendurable. She opened the door.

  “Dr. Virili?”

  Carlos Mondragon stepped inside and quickly closed the door. One hand was dripping blood. The other gripped a heavy strip of steel. She saw black tape wrapped around the end he held. The other end was broken to leave a jagged point.

  “Mondragon?” She shrank from the weapon. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not here to frighten you.” He turned to lay the bar on Kip’s empty berth. “Dr. Virili, we have trouble on the ship. I believe you’re in danger. I want to help you if I can.”

  “Thank you.” Breathing again, she motioned for him to sit. “I heard gunshots. A scream. What’s the trouble?”

  “Mutiny—if you ask Captain Stecker.” With an uneasy glance at the door, he sat beside his weapon. “It began in the dining room. Roak and the captain were eating beefsteaks out of Jake Hinch’s hoard. Men from the pit gang wanted the same. Roak called security. They refused to fire. Now …”

  He spread his hands uncertainly and paused to wipe at a drop of blood that had fallen on the sheet.

  “The shots I heard?” she asked.

  “Who knows?” He shrugged. “Stecker’s locked in his cabin with Roak. Threatening to explode their bomb and kill us all. Glengarth is barricaded in the control dome, holding off a mob.”

  “Somebody was fighting in the corridor.”

  “I saw blood on the deck.” He spread his hands in helpless desperation. “Fighting everywhere.”

  “I thank you, Carlos.” Suddenly weak in the knees, she sank down on her berth and frowned at his bleeding hand. “Let me see the wound.”

  “A scratch.” He shrugged again. “A bullet grazed me.”

  A shot crashed in the corridor outside. Hard-heeled boots pounded by the door. Silence followed. She sat listening, fingers to her lips, till he spoke.

  “This is an ugly time, Dr. Virili. I fear for you.”

  “I’m afraid for us all.” She managed a bleak little smile. “What can we do?”

  “Quién sabe?” Pausing a moment, he cocked his head to study her. “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps there is a chance. I believe the Beta spider is still in the hangar.” He paused again, listening. “I doubt that it is guarded—security has other business. We might perhaps steal it—”

  “And follow the Alpha?” She caught her breath. “Could we?”

  “We can try.” He shrugged. “If you wish …”

  “Let me dress. I won’t be long.”

  She drew the curtain around her berth. He sat waiting, frowning at the thickening blood on the back of his hand, till she pulled the curtain aside and stepped out in an orange-yellow jumpsuit, carrying a light bag.

  “Nothing sure.” His voice was hushed. “But we can try.”

  “First, let’s see your
hand.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Only a scratch.”

  But he let her see the bleeding hand.

  “Not too deep.” She nodded. “Let me dress it.”

  Opening the first-aid kit on the wall, she sprayed the wound, swabbed it clean, sealed a dressing over it.

  “Gracias,” he murmured. “Now …”

  He put his ear to the door, drew it ajar enough to let him peer out, and pulled it wide. Rima, her heart pumping hard, followed him into the empty corridor. With a warning head-shake at the elevator, he led her toward the stair and down its endless spiral. She saw a pool of darkening blood and a long smear where a body had been dragged off a landing, but they heard no sound, met nobody until he stopped abruptly at the exit to the main deck.

  “Washburn.” She heard his dismay. “Still on duty.”

  With a warning nod, he shrank back from the doorway.

  “I thought she’d be above,” he whispered. “With Roak and the captain. She’s no friend.”

  “But Kip and Day—” Her voice caught. “We can’t give up.”

  “Quién sabe?” He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  She followed him across the brightly lit deck to the security station. Reba Washburn sat staring fixedly at nothing. Her left eye was dark-rimmed and swollen, with a reddening patch above it and a drying smear below.

  “Lieutenant Washburn?”

  She started at Mondragon’s voice and spun her chair to face him. Her good eye narrowed.

  “What do you want?”

  He cringed from her stare. Suspecting that he brought the bomb aboard, she had urged Glengarth not to trust him.

  “There’s fighting above.” Uncertain what to say, he watched her battered face. “Dr. Virili was afraid—”

  “Reba, I’m desperate.” Rima came up beside him. “My children are gone, I don’t know where. And I’m afraid of Jonas Roak.”

  “You should be!” Her face twitched into a bitter grimace. “He’s slime!”

  “Roak?” Mondragon spoke in astonishment. “I thought—”