The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  Once, when Cruzet was at the wheel and Andersen asleep behind the curtain, Mondragon found Rima sitting forlornly on the berth in the cabin. Day was in her lap, hollowed eyes wide, head alertly tipped, silently listening.

  “You look so tired,” he told her. “May I hold the child?”

  “Thank you!” She looked up at him, her lips suddenly trembling. “I’m dead. Dead for sleep. Dead from this everlasting strain. From trying to cope with all this—all this madness I’ll never understand.”

  He sat down with them and held out his arms to Day.

  “Querida …”

  She turned away from him, clinging to her mother.

  Rima shrugged and sighed, looking so worn and hopeless that his arm was suddenly around her. She felt lifeless, neither yielding nor pulling away. He had to gulp at a lump in his throat before he could speak.

  “I—I love you, Rima. Always.” He felt her tremble, and let his voice run on. “Ever since the poor mojado came out of Chihuahua and saw you smiling at the children with you in the taxi.” He gulped again. “Please, Rima! Please let me love you.”

  She caught a long breath, and he saw her dry lips quivering.

  “I’m sorry for you, Carlos.” She looked at him sadly, her voice tired and dull. “I’m sorry for Day. I’m sorry for all of us, caught in this awful trap. It’s all too much for me. I just can’t—can’t think of love.”

  He sat there beside her for a long time, and finally got up to make coffee for them, using the last of Stecker’s precious Kona blend.

  Kip was sitting in the bubble, dreaming that he had found his Game Box safe and opened it to rejoin Captain Cometeer, who was holding off the nanoforms besieging the outpost on the Pygmy Planet. A sharp cry from Day brought him wide awake.

  “Me Me!” Her sharp voice came up from the cabin. “Me Me, we’re almost there!”

  He blinked and looked and found a faint gray glint far ahead of the pavement’s racing glow.

  “Starlight!” he shouted into the interphone. “Starlight ahead.”

  Mondragon was at the wheel. Cruzet and Andersen came rushing up to study that dim gleam, impatiently passing the binoculars back and forth. Cruzet clung to the glasses when Andersen wanted them again, and muttered something under his breath. Kip saw Andersen shake his head, saw a scowl tighten his face. The light ahead grew brighter, till at last they came out of the tunnel into a titanic ruin.

  “My God!” Cruzet whispered. “My God!”

  They were in another pit. Mountains of ice behind them towered to the stars. Mountains of shattered masonry rose all around them. A solitary summit of fused and crumpled metal blocked the road a few kilometers ahead.

  “Something happened here,” Andersen muttered. “The planet was killed by something more than cold and darkness.”

  Thirty-two

  Cruzet and Andersen passed the binoculars back and forth, scanning the monumental ruin around them and the ice behind, sheer white cliffs that climbed to higher whiter cliffs and finally to the blazing blackness of the sky.

  “Actually a city?” Staring at Andersen, Cruzet laid the glasses down. “It must have been magnificent!”

  It had been Skyhold, Kip thought. The mighty fortress of the skylers, designed to survive the death of the planet. He felt a shiver of dread at the piles and ridges of toppled and shattered masonry, the tangles of twisted metal, the mountain of wreckage that blocked the road ahead.

  “What hit it?” Cruzet was reaching for the glasses. “An asteroid?”

  “I see no impact crater.” Andersen shook his head. “There was something hot.”

  “Very hot.” Cruzet nodded. “It melted a hole in the ice cap.”

  “Or vaporized it.” Andersen nodded. “Water wouldn’t stay liquid here.”

  “Metal fused and stone gone to lava.” Cruzet gestured at the nearer rubble piles. “But not from fire. You get no fire without air.”

  A heat ray? Kip remembered the Legion of the Lost’s raid to rescue the trapped galactic ambassador from the Hidden Planet. Captain Cometeer’s space mirror had reflected Killer Kong’s flame ray to crisp the pirate with his own secret weapon.

  “Was it war?” This was no time to speak of his dream, not after he had waited so long, but he thought the question was safe enough. “The amphibians under attack from space?”

  “Could be, Kipper.” Andersen grinned at his excitement. “You want a look?”

  The rubble filled the lenses, so near it seemed to topple over him. He found a towering wall beyond the mountain of ruin on the road. Built of dark enormous blocks, it covered the stars halfway to the zenith. He saw no damage to it, and felt relieved that Skyhold was not entirely gone.

  “I’d like to know—”

  Cruzet had taken the glasses to sweep the wreckage again. Twisted beams and shapeless metal fragments jutted like broken bones from mountains of broken stone.

  “Factories, perhaps? Walls tumbled down on wrecked machinery?”

  “And something else.” Andersen pointed at clustered towers of rough dark rock around the tunnel mouth behind them. “Blocks of raw stone piled where they came from the quarry.”

  The skyler in the dream had worked here, Kip remembered, lifting quarried stone off the transporter, turning it to powder, shaping it into something harder than stone, perhaps to build that sky-high wall ahead.

  “What was that?” Andersen studied the enormous pile of ruined metal that blocked the road ahead, and passed the glasses to Cruzet. “It looks as if it fell there.”

  “Out of space?” Cruzet gave the glasses back with a frown of frustration. “I can’t imagine.”

  “I can,” Kip said. “I think it was a battleship.”

  They stared at him.

  “It looks like the wreck of the Iron Giant’s Battle Moon after Captain Cometeer’s stasis ray knocked it down on the Phantom Planet. I saw it on my Game Box screen.”

  It must have been as round as an orange, but the fall had flattened and split it, spilling its mangled metal guts far around it. Ugly snouts like the muzzles of enormous guns jutted out of its fused and twisted armor.

  “A spacecraft?” Cruzet frowned at Andersen.

  “Could be.” Andersen shrugged. “The place does look like a battlefield.” He took the glasses to study it again. “Whatever it is, the impact dug quite a crater.” He grinned at Kip. “If you’re right, you’ve earned a medal from your Captain Cometeer.”

  The pavement here no longer shone or moved them, but Andersen had Mondragon drive them on toward the wreck till its black shadow hid most of the towering wall beyond. The spider wallowed over shattered rock and broken metal till a house-sized boulder stopped them. Andersen laid the binoculars back on the desk, and Kip followed them down to the cabin.

  Mondragon came out of the pilot bay.

  “Too much rock and wreckage ahead,” he told them. “I think we’ve come as far as we can.”

  “Me Me?” Rima had emerged from the rear compartment. Day clung to her hand, peering anxiously up at Mondragon. “Have we found her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I know she’s close.” Hopefully, Day turned to Andersen. “Can’t we look?”

  “We’re looking,” he told her. “As hard as we can.”

  “Hurry!” Her voice was her own again, and quivering with anxiety. “Me Me needs us really bad.”

  “Andy?” Rima turned to him, frowning. “We were asleep. What has stopped us?”

  “Hard to say.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “The road’s blocked. Ruins all around us. Piles of it too high to climb.”

  “Trapped!” Cruzet muttered. “No way to get much farther.”

  “Please, Dr. Andersen.” Day was shrill with emotion. “We’ve got to go on.”

  “Maybe we can.” Andersen grinned to cheer her. “Not with the spider, but I think we can climb over the wreckage. The road may go on beyond it.” He turned to Cruzet. “Game for that, Tony?”

  “Game enough.” Cruzet nodded grim
ly. “What else?”

  “Don’t ask.” Wry-faced, he turned to Mondragon. “Carlos, you wait for us here with Rima and the kids. Keep in touch with the radio. We’ll try to see where the road went.”

  Mondragon found coils of rope and light hand axes for them to carry. Kip watched them check their breather units, get into their airskins, shut themselves into the lock. He climbed with Mondragon into the bubble, and watched their helmet lights zigzag into the maze of ruin ahead.

  The going got harder when they came to the rim of the crater the falling thing had dug. They roped themselves together. Andersen climbed ahead. Twice he hauled Cruzet back to his feet when he slipped and fell. They stood at last on top of the ridge, looking beyond it.

  Day came up the steps from the cabin.

  “Ask them, Carlos,” she begged. “Have they found Me Me?”

  “Andy?” Carlos called. “What do you see?”

  “The road goes on.” Andersen was breathing hard from the climb. “The pavement looks clear enough out past the crater. It runs straight into that great wall. You’d expect to find some kind of door or gate, but it seems to stop dead against solid rock. Makes you wonder.”

  “Too much wonder!” Cruzet’s bitter mutter. “Ever since we landed.”

  They turned to look ahead.

  Andersen spoke again. “We’re pushing on for a closer look at the wall.”

  “To meet the amphibians?” Cruzet mocked him. “Or your ice gods?”

  “I want to know what they were.” Turning back toward the spider, he raised his voice. “The wall ahead looks two or three kilometers high. Built of some blue-black stuff; blocks the size of four-story houses. No sign of any gate or door, not from here.”

  “Pushing on.” Cruzet jeered him. “Till we kill ourselves—”

  He clutched abruptly at Andersen’s arm. They stood motionless, silently staring.

  “Qué es?” Mondragon whispered. “Qué es?”

  “A light!” Andersen caught his breath and seemed to collect himself. “A bright spot on the wall, down at the end of the pavement. The same expanding circles we’ve seen before.”

  “An invitation?” Cruzet muttered. “To freeze our bodies on the wall, like Singh and the others …”

  “Or maybe something better.” Andersen’s voice rose decisively. “Carlos, hold the fort for us. I don’t know what this means, but we’ll try to get back before our breather units die.”

  The starlight washed all color out, but Kip found their yellow airskins when Mondragon gave him the binoculars. They clambered along the ridge toward that enormous wreck, stopped to scan it again, and finally disappeared down the crater’s farther rim, still roped together, Andersen ahead.

  Waiting in the bubble, Kip and Mondragon watched the ridge and the wall beyond, a black shadow on the sky. Stars shone through gaps along the top. A fortress wall, Kip wondered, with gaps where weapons were placed? Captain Cometeer would look for weapons.

  Time passed. Mondragon looked at his watch, looked again, went down to the cabin and came back with a mug of syncafe. He set it on the desk and forgot to drink it.

  “Call them, Carlos,” Kip urged impatiently.

  Mondragon called. They heard no answer.

  “I think we’re cut off,” Mondragon said. “The metal in the wreckage would be a radio shield.”

  Mondragon said waiting made him nervous. He went down to check the engine and the cycler. Alone in the bubble, Kip watched the ruins and imagined he was here on the dead planet as a secret agent for Captain Cometeer. His mission was to recover the ultratech weapon that could save the universe from the Mind Wipers.

  He imagined the amphibians were dead, wiped out by the surprise attack, but they had struck back before they died. Their ultraweapon had brought down the Wiper raider that lay wrecked on the pavement. His orders were to search the ruins for the weapon, but he couldn’t imagine what it would look like, and he didn’t want to think of what it might do to Day.

  He decided to forget the whole idea. Feeling thirsty, he went down to the cabin. His mother was sitting in the rear compartment with Day in her arms, trying to rock her to sleep. Careful not to bother them, he got a drink of water and climbed back to the bubble.

  He was waiting in the navigator’s seat when Mondragon came back from the engine bay. He got up to offer the chair, but Mondragon shook his head and sat staring at the rubble and the wall. Bored with waiting, Kip asked him to tell about the bruja his father had hired in a dry time to make rain and pasture for the goats.

  The rains had never come, and Mondragon seemed too anxious for talk. Wishing for the Game Box, Kip started to tell him how the Legion had hunted the Iron Giant. He stopped when he saw that Mondragon was looking at his watch, not listening.

  “How long?” Kip asked.

  “Only nine hours,” he said. “It just seems longer.”

  Rima called them down at last for a bowl of tofubeef stew. After they had eaten, Mondragon offered to sit with Day if she wanted to rest.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said. “Not at a time like this. But Day should. If you can get her to relax.”

  Rima went up to the bubble to watch for Cruzet and Andersen, and Mondragon tried to make friends with Day. She was willing to sit on his knee while he told her how he used to herd his father’s goats, and how he shivered when the coyotes howled at night. She smiled at first, but soon slipped off his knee to stand listening for Me Me.

  “It’s the black things,” she said. “They won’t let her call.”

  Mondragon kept frowning at his watch.

  “Their breather cartridges?” Kip asked. “How long do they last?”

  “Rated for twelve hours. They’ve been gone almost eleven. They should have been back …” His voice trailed uneasily off.

  “They still have an hour.” Rima was doggedly hopeful. “And don’t the units have a safety margin?”

  “Maybe—” His voice abruptly lifted. “Trust the saints, my mother would say, but also trust yourself. I think they’re in trouble. I’m going after them.”

  “Carlos—” Rima spoke his name, and paused uncertainly. “If they need help, do anything you can. But don’t—” Her voice trembled. “Don’t go too far. I couldn’t bear to be here alone.”

  He checked his own breather cartridge and got into his airskin. Kip climbed to the bubble with Rima and Day. They shared the binoculars, following him up the rubble ridge. He stood there a long time, gazing all around him, before his voice crackled from the speaker.

  “I’m looking down the crater rim. A steep slope of broken rock and scraps of broken metal. The ground is clear beyond it, a kilometer out. The pavement runs straight on to a dead end at the wall.”

  “Andy?” Rima asked. “And Tony?”

  “Nada. No sign of them. Or anything alive.”

  “The signal light?”

  “Nada,” he said. “Except the light from the stars. I’m going closer.”

  “Why?” Her voice rose sharply. “You don’t know what the danger is.”

  “The slope below me looks like hard going. I’m afraid they had trouble on it.”

  “If they need help—” Her voice caught. “But careful, Carlos! Come back to us.”

  Rima had the binoculars, but Kip saw his helmet light flicker and vanish. They waited in the bubble. Day climbed into her lap to look out into the starlight.

  “That’s where Me Me is.” She pointed over the wreck at the top of the wall, where its crenelations cut notches in the sky. “The black things have her locked up there. She needs us to save her.”

  “Darling, you know we would. If we could.”

  They waited till Kip got tired of waiting. He tried to get Mondragon on the radio. He tried to tell Day how Captain Cometeer had followed the secret tunnel into the Iron Giant’s citadel to recover the stolen codes. She told him to hush. Slipping off Rima’s lap, she stood staring up at the wall, listening silently, till the radio was suddenly alive with Mondragon’s fast breath
.

  “A hard climb down.” Kip saw the helmet light. “But they made it safe. I found their tracks, walking straight on toward the wall.”

  “Toward the signal light?”

  “Nada.” He spread his arms. “There’s no light. No sign of them.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Yo no sé. They’re just gone.”

  Kip watched his helmet light bobble slowly down the ridge. The air lock thumped and wheezed. Back in the cabin, he shrugged unhappily at Rima.

  “Me Me?” Day went anxiously to meet him, tears in her hollowed eyes. “Did you find her?”

  “Not yet. We’ll keep trying.”

  “Me Me’s gone.” She stumbled blindly back to her mother. “I can’t hear her voice. I’m afraid we’ll never find her.”

  Kip saw Mondragon look at his watch.

  “Andy?” He felt afraid to know, but the words came out. “Tony and Andy? Are they dead?”

  Looking gravely at him and then at Rima, Mondragon took a long time to answer.

  “Maybe not,” he said at last. “We just don’t know.”

  “We can hope,” Rima said. “We have to hope.”

  She made syncafe, but Mondragon took only a sip of it. He frowned at his watch, told them to call him if anything happened, and limped wearily into the rear compartment. Rima finished her syncafe and sat down on the berth. Day crawled into her arms and sobbed herself to sleep.

  Back in the bubble, Kip watched the ridge. Watched the ruined spacecraft and the ruins around it. Watched till the binoculars were too heavy to hold. Then watched without them. Finally, too sleepy to watch any longer, he lay down on his foam pad.

  The hiss and clunk of the air lock woke him. Had Andy and Tony come back? He scrambled to his feet. Glancing out as he started for the stairs, he saw a light moving up the ridge. A helmet light? Groggily, he turned back and fumbled to focus the binoculars.

  It was Day!

  Or another nightmare? Dazed with dread, he remembered Dr. Singh and her companions, their naked bodies frozen to the wall of Skygate. He got his breath and tried the binoculars again. It really was Day, out alone in the terrible night, going up the ridge as nimbly as one of Mondragon’s goats. She wore no airskin, only the thin red jumpsuit. Only now it didn’t look red. Her body shone strangely white, lighting the boulders and metal scraps as she climbed them.