by Chad Oliver
Royce tried not to think, tried to shut off his imagination. He did not look at the snowy monstrous bubble that rested so lightly on the alien earth. He spread out the greasy tarp and arranged the poles at the four corners and the two canvas side loops. One by one, he drove the pointed supports into the yielding ground with the blunt end of the ax head.
The men hoisted the tarp up into position and tied it to the notched poles with the short ropes that were already fastened to the tarp. The heavy canvas sagged a little but the structure held. The tarp was only some four feet off the ground.
Royce went back and got the bag of food from Wathome. He walked around the shelter so that he was in plain view from the blandly featureless sphere. He took the maize cobs and the pineapples from the canvas container, holding them up so they could be seen. He placed the food under the tarp.
“Now,” he said, trying to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Bring the baboons. Put them in there under the tarp. Be very careful with them. Don’t just dump them, understand?”
They got the baboons. All of them were awake now but still confused from the drug. The men handled them gingerly. Royce had a bad moment when the animal he was carrying twisted in his arms and tried to bite him. He was determined to just let the creature bite if he had to, but the baboon-thing was too weak and fuzzy-minded to press home his attack. They placed the twitching animals under the tarp, their heads toward the food.
“Okay,” Royce said. “Back to the edge of the clearing there. Don’t run. Take it easy. Just walk.”
The men withdrew, leaving the crude gray shelter with its strange occupants. The pole-supported tarp stood there in the field, a homely and somehow pitiful contrast to the massive glowing sphere that dominated the earth.
Royce turned to face the Africans. He felt himself trembling with relief. He did not dare to hope yet, but at least no new disaster had struck. He knew that he had been responsible for bringing these men here, and it was not really their fight. It was his child that was in that thing.
“Asante sana,” he said. “Thank you. I won’t forget your help. There may be danger here; I don’t know. There is no need for you to stay. Go on back and help Mutisya. Tell Mrs. Crawford that I am well and that everything is being done that can be done. Leave me the Land Rover. If you go now, you can reach the road before dark.”
Elijah needed no urging. He adjusted his tinted glasses and struck off through the bush without a backward glance. Nzioki and Kisaluwa hesitated only a moment and followed the headman.
Wathome managed a tired smile. “I will stay if you wish,” he said. “Miss Barbara was a friend to me.”
Royce felt a stinging in his eyes. Mutisya, Wathome—they were good men. They had resources that he had not expected. He hated the barriers between them. Their differences were small indeed. Skin color, background, wealth—what did they matter in the perspective of that alien sphere from the depths of space? Men were men, that was all. “If you could help, my friend, I would ask you to stay.” Royce tried to explain, tried to avoid the patronizing words of a bwana to a workman. “I am hoping that the … the people who have taken Barbara will let her go. If they do, I will bring her home. There is nothing to do but wait. If they don’t let her go, I don’t know what will happen. You have a family of your own. I think it is my responsibility to stay here. I think it is yours to go back where it may be safer.”
Wathome nodded. He seemed neither glad nor sorry. He turned and followed the others on the backtrail through the bush.
Royce was alone.
13
The African night fell swiftly. It was as though the sea of thick black clouds had fallen from the sky, shrouding the earth. The air was very damp and Royce shivered in the sudden chill. There were no stars; there was not even a faint luminescence where the moon should be.
A wall of darkness pressed in behind him, a living darkness that stirred with padded footfalls and called with the soft songs of night birds. It was a darkness that seemed to stretch away unbroken to the shores of the Indian Ocean where silver-crested waves washed over the clean white sands. Royce could feel that darkness, but it did not concern him.
He stood at the edge of the clearing, his eyes fixed on the great glowing sphere. He could see no change in it. In the cold radiance of its own steady light it was bland and uncaring, a huge egg of white marble that might have been deposited on the earth by some monstrous bird. There was no sign of activity, no alteration in the pitch of the taut humming that came from somewhere within its depths. It did nothing at all.
He could see the shelter clearly in the eerie glow. The baboon-things were still there; he could see their dark shadows beneath the tarp. The sernyl had long since worn off, of course. Royce figured that the creatures were so sick and weak that they could not move without great effort. In any case, they could probably not enter the ship unaided. Unless there was an atmosphere lock of some kind, they could not go into that alien interior without protection. Something would have to come out and get them …
Royce stood for what seemed an eternity, hardly daring to move. He had rested his rifle against a tree. He stood far enough out into the open to show that his hands were empty.
A light rain began to fall. It was just enough to be visible against the cold glow of the sphere. Royce fancied that he could hear it ticking against the surface of the tarp. The muted rush of the Tsavo seemed louder to him, but that was surely his imagination.
He trembled a little, colder inside than out. Unless he had made a terrible mistake, he was no more than seventy yards from his daughter. Not even the length of a football field. He could run to her in eight or nine seconds if he could just get inside that thing …
He could not shut off his mind forever. Barbara might already be dead. She might have been altered so that another mind was cradled inside her skull. They might be working on her even now, probing that small body that had known only a few short years, that had never known terror …
Royce cursed silently but viciously. He cursed them and he cursed himself. He had made too many mistakes. If he had acted differently, if he had made the right moves, she would not be in there now. He would not be standing here like a fool in the night and the rain, helpless and afraid.
Come on, come on. Do something. Do anything.
He could get his rifle. He could advance into that unearthly glow. He could threaten the baboon-things under that tarp. He could drag one out into the light and put a bullet through that implanted brain behind the animal eyes.
And then—what?
He did not move. He forced himself to stay where he was. He could not afford the luxury of action.
He looked at his watch. It was only ten o’clock.
He groaned aloud. There was nothing he could do, nothing.
He waited between the living darkness and the cold white light of the machine.
It was nearly midnight and the rain was pattering down in heavier drops when the frozen tableau suddenly changed. The change was minor at first, but it was startling in a scene that had been utterly without motion for so long.
Royce held his breath, staring. His knees were so weak that he almost fell.
In the exact center of the surface of the glowing sphere, there was an alteration in the intensity of the cold white light. A circular area about ten feet across shifted from marble white to a dull solid gray. It changed again, seeming to flow from one texture to another. It turned to a metallic glistening black that was sharply outlined against the featureless surrounding white.
It moved.
It bulged outward, a black swelling on the smooth white sphere. A circular black column descended from the bubble. The shaft came down without a sound, seeming to materialize out of the very air. It touched the earth.
The bottom of the column went from jet black to the dull gray that Royce had seen a moment before. For a long minute, nothing happened.
Then, abruptly, there was an opening. There was nothing that opened like a door or a hat
ch. What had been solid was simply transformed into a space that led inside. A cold greenish light spilled like smoke out into the rain.
Something emerged from the column into the clearing.
Royce stood his ground, afraid to move and afraid not to move. The thing that had come out of the ship looked like a strange fat shining worm with legs. It seemed too large to have come out of the shaft. Its swollen, flexible body shimmered with white light. The light was intense; it hurt Royce’s eyes. There were six legs: strong jointed black metallic appendages that blurred where they articulated with the serpentine body. The thing looked cumbersome and poorly designed, but it worked with fluid ease. The legs left sharp round depressions in the damp earth but they did not stick. The shining white body moved above the legs almost independently. Perhaps, Royce thought, the legs were not supports at all but served some other function …
The thing was obviously not alive. It was a machine of some sort, a shell, a container that held life forms that Royce could not even imagine.
He knew that the thing was not empty.
The glaring white caterpillar flowed with an improbable grace through the rain. It gave off a crackling buzzing sound, different from the hum of the looming sphere. It crossed the space to the crude tarp shelter and stopped.
The fat worm’s head seemed to grow longer. It dipped down and probed under the tarp like the questing trunk of an elephant. The shimmering white light illuminated the waiting baboon creatures as though a flare had been stuck in the soft earth.
There was a slow leakage of smoky cloudiness, a blurring of light and form. The four baboons remained motionless. The smudge of smoke-blue vapor surrounded the animals, obscuring them. The baboon-things were absorbed.
The cloudiness disappeared. The head of the shining caterpillar shrank to its former size and lifted in the wet air. The swollen sinuous body turned with precision and flowed back to the sphere, buzzing loudly. It seemed to coil into the cold green light that spilled from the bottom of the black shaft. The green light … stopped. The foot of the column went back to a dull solid gray.
The shelter was empty. There was nothing under the tarp.
The only sounds were the taut humming of the sphere, the distant roar of the Tsavo, and the gentle splashing of the falling rain. It seemed much darker despite the white glow of the sphere.
Royce stood in an agony of fear and indecision. He had played his only card. He had made the only move that was open to him. He had gambled on the psychology of the beings in that ship, hoping against hope that they were not as totally alien as they seemed.
If he had thrown away Barby’s last chance …
If that glistening black column were withdrawn …
He swallowed hard. “Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered.
It seemed to him that hours passed with that great white sphere resting impassively in the clearing. His watch told him that it had been only ten minutes.
The gray area at the bottom of the shaft … disappeared. Smoky green light eddied out into the rain. The shaft was open again.
Royce’s hands were wet with sweat. He could feel cold icy drops dripping from beneath his arms. His heart thudded against his chest with a force that made him sway. He crossed his slippery fingers.
The shining worm-thing came out again, buzzing and clicking. It looked smaller now. It wound its way above its six-legged frame back to the shelter. The swollen head stretched down beneath the sagging tarp. The light almost blinded Royce but he kept his eyes riveted on it. The blurring vapor swirled like blue smoke. He could not see what was happening.
The head withdrew. The strangely graceful caterpillar made no attempt to approach Royce. It turned in a blaze of white light and went back to the sphere. The opening filled in behind it, shutting off the smoky green light. The dull gray color of the bottom of the column shifted to a jet black. The black shaft lifted without a sound into the air, seeming to flow upward into the dark bubble in the center of the glowing sphere. The swelling on the smooth globe collapsed and was gone. The circular area where the bubble had been went from metallic black to dull gray to marble white.
The sphere was as it had been: bland, featureless, an uncaring egg resting on the alien earth.
Royce moved. He could not wait any longer. He walked slowly out into the clearing. He felt the cool raindrops on his face, the ache in his stiff legs, the yielding softness of the wet turf. He kept his eyes fixed on the small, lonely shelter. He thought he could see something under the water-heavy tarp, something still and motionless …
There was no visible reaction from the white sphere.
He ducked under the edge of the tarp, crawled into the shelter on his hands and knees. The animal smell of the baboons was very strong. There was another smell, too: an acrid oily smell that suffused the close air.
The shelter was not empty. There was a form, a bundle, curled up on the flattened grass.
Royce touched it, feeling dry cloth and warm flesh underneath. He turned it over, gently. He stared at a pale drawn face, close-cropped hair, a small still body dressed in wrinkled blue jeans and a smudged yellow T-shirt.
“Barby,” he whispered. “Barby, honey.”
The child stirred at his touch, shivered. She opened her eyes. They seemed blank at first, disoriented. Royce felt a chill of terror when he saw those eyes. But the eyes cleared. There was recognition.
She reached out for him.
“Daddy?” she said weakly. “Daddy?”
Royce scooped her up, pressed her to him. “Everything is okay,” he whispered. “Hang on now.”
He lunged out from under the shelter, his child in his arms.
He ran.
Royce never knew how he got through the dark and dripping bush. He did it mindlessly, never stopping, never hesitating. He made no false moves. He did not give a thought to snakes or wild animals, despite the fact that he had left his rifle back at the edge of the clearing. He simply clutched his child tightly to him and ran.
The Land Rover was waiting. He put Barby in the seat next to him, her eyes wide with excitement now. He kicked the engine into life and churned the vehicle through the trail he had made, following the tracks of his wheels. The path was clear in the bright headlight beams. It was still raining, but the rain had not been hard enough to make new mud a problem.
He skidded out onto the road, spun to the left, and gave it some gas. The tires took hold. The Land Rover whipped and jolted between dark lanes of dripping vegetation. Barby held on tightly to the gray metal shelf that stretched under the instrument panel. Her small body bounced alarmingly on the lightly padded seat but Royce was not about to slow down now. He shouted encouragement and maintained all the speed he dared.
He saw the welcome lights of the Baboonery at last. The men had lit the fires and kept them going somehow. There were paraffin lamps gleaming through the windows.
Royce hit the horn in sheer exuberance. The Land Rover skidded to a stop. There was a sudden silence as he cut the engine. He jerked open the door and almost fell in his haste to get out.
“It’s okay!” he yelled into the shadows. “I’ve got her! Everything is okay!”
Figures, running figures. Laughter, that wonderful long-absent sound. Clutching hands. Faces: Mutisya, Mbali, Wathome, Kathy, Susan …
Kathy almost smothered Barbara as she lifted the child from the Land Rover. Tears were streaming down her haggard face. Susan jumped up and down, half with glee at her sister’s return and half in annoyance at being left out of things.
“We don’t have any electricity,” Susan said, yanking on Barbara’s arm. “We don’t have any water.”
“A baboon almost ate me,” Barby said solemnly, topping Susan’s best effort.
Royce started to follow his family through the breezeway door and then stopped when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned.
“Mr. Royce,” Wathome said, pointing. “Look!”
He could not miss it; it filled the sky. Back there wh
ere he had been, back there in the dark bush between the Mitaboni road and the lost and lonely Tsavo, an intense white light pulsed upward through the blackness and the rain. It grew brighter still as he watched, a miniature sun that transformed night into day.
He could hear it now: a taut throbbing hum that stirred like a keening alien wind out of that distant clearing and whined through the swollen baobabs and the dripping branches of the acacia trees.
He called out to Kathy and she came to stand by his side. He wanted to say something, but no words came. There were no words. They were witnesses to an event that had no parallel on the earth, an ending or a beginning …
He took her hand, knowing that it was a childish gesture. He felt small and powerless and he reached out for comfort, for warmth, for reassurance.
The white light seemed to explode. There was a dull and muffled report, not unlike the detonation of a few sticks of dynamite deep underground. A wave of warm air touched his face and was gone. The explosion of white light … vanished.
There was a whistling roar and an arc of silver mounted into the sky on a column of thunder. The sound was gone in an instant. A silver glow lingered briefly beneath the torn clouds and then it, too, was gone.
There was only the great night and the feeble fires that man had made.
Royce felt a curious mixture of weariness and exultation, joy and a kind of sadness. The tension that had filled him for so long drained away. He felt an unutterable relief, a sense of triumph, a strange awareness of loss.
“They’re gone,” he said softly. “Whoever they were, whatever they wanted, they’re gone.”
And the dark world around him, no longer threatening, seemed to stir and rustle and murmur in the gentle rain that fell from a known and familiar sky: gone, gone, gone.
14
The rains were over. There would be no more rain in Kenya for many months. The golden African sun blazed in a vast and cloudless blue sky. The swollen brown rivers retreated from the ravaged floodplains and flowed clean and fresh between shattered banks. Standing water was absorbed into the earth, finally, and the trails of mud dried and cracked with long fissure lines.
