[Jan Darzek 01] - All the Colors of Darkness

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “Scientific importance or not,” Watkins said, “you people wouldn’t be in such a panic about this if it weren’t for the prestige, and as long as Universal Trans has a valid contribution to make, we might as well share the prestige with you. There’ll be enough for both of us, if we can bring it off. Where are you going, Ted?”

  “I’m going to soak my head, for even suggesting this. Twenty-four hours! How do we pack a transmitter for shipment to the Moon? There’s no point in sending it up there if it’ll arrive smashed. When it does arrive, they can’t just plug it in and start operating. It’ll have to be redesigned to use whatever power source is most effective on the Moon, and God and everyone else may know what that is, but I don’t.”

  “That’s what Major Gorelick is here for. He’ll know, or he’ll know where to find out.”

  “We’ll also have to train some Moon men to operate the thing, since USSA certainly won’t want to take one of our engineers along.”

  “If they can operate it just once,” Watkins said, “we’ll send them an engineer.”

  “In the meantime—but never mind. The first thing in the morning I’ll send Perrin down to the Cape for liaison. If we’re lucky, we might just bring it off. Just barely.”

  * * * *

  Five hours later, with the last error found, and the last objection stilled, and the coffeepot empty, Arnold got up from the drawing board.

  “Build them,” he said.

  And they built them. Every engineer on the far-flung Universal Trans staff, every technician Arnold thought might be of use, labored and perspired along rows of benches set up in an un-partitioned section of the uncompleted Universal Trans terminal. Arnold placed guards at the door, with strict orders: no telephone calls, no messengers, no interruptions of any kind. If there were failures in the Universal Trans passenger network on that day, the traffic managers could route the passengers around them.

  They built two dual-function transmitters, one for the Cape and one for the Moon. They were battery-operated, and they incorporated refinements of design that had been neither necessary nor thought of in the commercial models. The maws were short and broad, sized to take shipping containers of a prescribed shape, rather than passengers, and though the personnel would have to stoop to pass through, Arnold anticipated no complaints. A couple of steps, stooping, were no inconvenience when compared with the long, cramped rocket ride.

  At five-seventeen that evening they conducted their initial test. By six o’clock one Special had been edged through a standard transmitter to the Cape, and they were running tests between the Cape and New York. At the same time a crew of Moon men received an elementary course in operating a transmitter. At eight o’clock, after as meticulous a job of crating as time and materials allowed, Arnold turned one Special over to USSA.

  And at 3 A.M. he stood with a group of distinguished guests watching the long tongue of flame speed the rocket skyward.

  It was dawn in New York when Arnold, drunk with fatigue, staggered into his apartment. A figure twisted in his bed. Ron Walker sat up, and said brightly, “Give with the news!”

  “You!” Arnold exclaimed bitterly.

  “Who else? Your landlady took pity on me, or maybe she thought my sleeping on the doorstep would give the house a bad name.”

  “You took Jean home—”

  “I escorted her modestly and safely to her own front door, though I didn’t for a moment think she needed it. Some of the things she told me about jujitsu—”

  “I was supposed to call her today. Yesterday.”

  “I told her you’d forget all about it. What’s up?”

  “A rocket is up,” Arnold said. “And a transmitter.” He flopped onto the bed, raised up tiredly, and said, “But don’t quote me.”

  CHAPTER 17

  From immediately above Darzek came a sharp cry, instantly drowned in a high-pitched eruption of alien voices. Darzek stirred resentfully, and decided to ignore it. Days, or perhaps even hours, before, such an outburst would have triggered him into a clawing ascent of the ladder. But he had been doggedly attempting to extract nonexistent ideas from his barren cranial lodes, and in addition to feeling disgusted with himself he was mentally exhausted.

  His only firm conclusion was that these aliens had been tracked down by the wrong man. Ted Arnold might have thought of something—but Arnold wouldn’t have smashed the instrument board and blown up the power plant. He would have gleefully analyzed and studied the thing to the exclusion of everything else until the aliens got the drop on him again.

  And never, but never, would Arnold have leaped the turnstile after Miss X. If only the talents of Ted Arnold could get them out of their predicament, Darzek had at least the consolation that only the talents of Jan Darzek could have got them into it.

  Zachary came sliding down the ladder, demonstrating a speed and agility that Darzek had never suspected. He opened a compartment at eye level, and Darzek, standing at his side, found himself looking out onto the bleak glare of moonscape.

  “What do you know?” he breathed, taking in at one glance the dullish gray, flat plain and the distant line of jagged heights beyond. It was not the scenery that impressed him—both the American and the Russian Moon stations had recorded vastly more spectacular views. “I didn’t even know this thing was here,” he said. “Is it a window?”

  “No,” Zachary said. And added, “Until now, there was nothing to see.”

  “There still isn’t much to see,” Darzek said. The view swung slowly along the curving, precipitous rim and lifted to the black sky beyond. Even Darzek’s rudimentary knowledge of the Moon was sufficient for him to identify the place as one of the thousands of much-publicized craters.

  Then he caught his breath again, and grabbed at Zachary’s arm. He had seen the rocket.

  Its flaming descent was caught in the center of their round screen as if a TV camera were following it down. It dropped below the lacerated rim, and an adjustment in magnification took them leaping towards it as it touched down, vanishing in the swelling cloud of vapor.

  Darzek gasped his surprise. The dullish, dead plain had leaped to life as the ship landed, splashing outwards and shimmering in swiftly running ripples. “Water?” he exclaimed incredulously.

  “Dust,” Zachary said.

  The vapor dissipated almost at once, leaving the ship erect on its wide tripod of spindly, jointed legs, its very symmetry making it appear misshapen against the cragged irregularity of the distant rim.

  “It’s ours, I think,” Darzek said. “I mean—it isn’t Russian, is it?”

  “It is a United States design. Your people are at last investigating the explosion of our power plant. We wondered if anyone had noticed it.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Of all the thousands of craters the Moon has, it’d be asking too much of coincidence to think they picked this particular one by accident. Do you suppose they’ll find us?”

  “No. They will not find us.”

  “That explosion must have left quite a hole.”

  “It left no hole at all. It blew the cap from the safety vent, but Alice replaced that while you were unconscious.”

  “I see. I suppose that safety vent is why we survived the explosion. What about this?” He thumped the side of the capsule. “But someone said it’s sunken into a hole. And this isn’t a window?”

  “It is a viewer. There is one on each level, connected with—I do not know exactly how to explain.”

  Darzek thumped the capsule again. “But they might have instruments for detecting metal. There must be a lot of metal in this thing.”

  “Their instruments will not detect this metal,” Zachary said. Darzek looked at him quickly. Had there been a note of laughter in his voice? That was one emotion he’d had little opportunity to classify. Since the moment of Darzek’s unwelcome intrusion, the aliens had had very few occasions for laughter.

  “So they won’t find us,” Darzek said resignedly. “And of course you’re not going to run
up an SOS now, any more readily than when you had to send it all the way to Earth.”

  “We must adhere to the Code. I realize that this is a bitter blow to you, Jan Darzek, to have to die with help so close at hand. Perhaps I have erred in letting you know about this arrival. If we had our instruments intact, and could alter your memory—but even that would not suffice. We should have to implant some explanation for your presence on the Moon, and there is none. So we cannot permit you to save yourself.”

  “Even so, I see this ship as an opportunity.”

  “What sort of opportunity?”

  “Perhaps we could filch a supply of air.”

  “I fear not, Jan Darzek. If the rocket is unmanned it will not contain supplies of air. If it is manned we could not take supplies without risking detection, and the supplies we took would be needed by its crew. We must not condemn others to death in order to futilely extend our own lives. It is manned, I think, because the navigation was very precise. I doubt that your people could have achieved it with instruments alone. Unfortunately this does not alter our circumstances in the least.”

  “It alters them considerably,” Darzek said with a grin. “They’ll be setting up some kind of base, and exploring the crater. At least we’ll have something to watch while we’re dying!”

  For a long time the stubby ship rested motionless, dipping the toes of its slender, protruding legs into the purplish shadow that sprawled beneath it. Darzek regarded that shadow curiously. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder just where on the Moon he was.

  He asked Zachary.

  “We are in the southern part of your Moon, on the side that faces Earth,” the alien said.

  “I was wondering about the shadow,” Darzek told him.

  “It is now afternoon, here. In another of your weeks the crater will be dark.”

  “Then this viewer faces—north?”

  “South. On your Moon the sun sets in the east. If we continue to watch, you will see the shadow of the eastern wall move across the crater. Why do you ask?”

  “Put it down to what I would call curiosity,” Darzek said. “And isn’t it about time…?”

  Abruptly a hatch opened, a flexible ladder unrolled, and a bulky, gleaming figure backed down it, feeling awkwardly for the rungs. A second followed, and a third, and the three slowly circled the ship in heavy, stiff-legged, dragging strides that splashed and stirred manifold ripples in the dust.

  Suddenly one figure leaped high, leaped again and again, like a small child seized by a fit of inexplicable exuberance. Another took long, soaring strides with incongruous grace and ease. The third stood looking on like a disapproving parent.

  Darzek chuckled. “Just a guess,” he told Zachary. “We have two novices on their first Moon landing, and one old hand who is wishing they’d get it out of their systems so they can get down to work.”

  “I was wondering,” Zachary confessed. “Much that your people do surprises me.”

  “Likewise,” Darzek assured him.

  Eventually the cargo hatch was opened, and a bundle of silver fabric was carried some distance toward the nearest crater wall, unrolled, and inflated into a long, low, curved-roof hut. The hatch was emptied, its contents sorted out and placed strategically around the hut or carried inside. The cargo hatch was replaced, and the men vanished into the hut—to have, Darzek thought, with a sudden, stinging hunger for a cup of coffee, their first meal in the new Moon base.

  “They work very efficiently,” Zachary observed.

  “They probably practiced the whole operation back on Earth.”

  “But why do they need such enormous quarters? One would think that twice or three times as many men could be accommodated there.”

  “I thought the same thing when I first saw your installation,” Darzek said. “Perhaps there is another ship on the way.”

  “Another ship would of course account for it. Our bases are planned for many contingencies, and this one has been here for many of your years.”

  “Then at one time there were more of you—policing Earth?”

  “That is correct.”

  The men did not reappear, and Darzek quickly became bored with watching the inert hut. He retired to his sleeping pad to rest and dream of food. Not until that moment had he been aware of his intense craving for his normal diet. For a cup of coffee, for an egg—fried, scrambled, boiled, or raw—for a steak, for pie à la mode. He swam in a conjured-up aroma of food, but his mind persisted in returning to the hut, and its piles of supplies. At long last it had something of substance to work on, and if he could get some sleep, and rid himself of this enfeebling exhaustion—

  “Grilled chops,” he murmured, and slept.

  Abruptly the aroma of food resolved into the sharp, lingering scent of the last synthetic cigarette he had smoked, and Zachary was shaking him awake. The alien was incoherent with excitement. He pointed a trembling hand at the viewer.

  Darzek stared. There were four silver-suited figures engaged in the assembly of a queer-looking land vehicle. Two more men came from the hut’s air lock as he watched, and stood looking on. Others began to pass in and out, stacking crates of supplies around the hut’s perimeter.

  “So the other ship arrived,” Darzek said.

  Zachary spoke in the alien language, and the viewer jerked to a lower magnification and took in a larger slice of the crater. The ship stood as he’d last seen it. One ship.

  “All of those men were in that ship?” Darzek asked incredulously.

  “Only the three you saw,” Zachary said. “This—thing—they build did not come from the ship, and they have brought much more material from the hut than they took in.”

  “They can’t be pulling men and vehicles and supplies out of a hat.”

  “Out of a transmitter,” Zachary said. “I would say that they brought one of your transmitters.”

  “A transmitter?” The casual remark’s significance did not penetrate at once, but when it did Darzek was electrified. “Then—this stuff is coming directly from Earth!”

  “And the men,” Zachary said.

  “Wow! Right about now Ted Arnold is turning handsprings, and Universal Trans stock has gone up another hundred a share. If I ever get back to Earth I can retire.”

  “It will certainly effect some remarkable economies and efficiencies in your Moon exploration. We have wondered how long it would be before your people thought of it.”

  “The possibility never occurred to me,” Darzek said. “No reason why it should. I never gave much thought to the Moon before I got here, and I can’t even claim to have given much thought to it after I arrived.”

  Zachary made no comment. He was listening to the voices on the level above. For the first time since the early hours of Darzek’s invasion of their base, the aliens were talking loquaciously among themselves. Loquaciously and, apparently, with excitement.

  At the new base the greatly augmented force worked with miraculous speed and organization. The Moon vehicle sped away on its inflated rollers to circumnavigate the crater. Groups of men spread out on foot to investigate the crater walls. Supplies continued to arrive. Another hut was inflated, larger than the first one. A radio antenna was erected.

  “They’re planning on a long stay,” Darzek observed.

  “I think it more likely that they do not wholly trust your transmitter.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If the transmitter were to fail, they would have a difficult time supplying so many men. They are building a safe reserve.”

  One group of foot explorers approached the capsule—approached so closely that rock tappings rang out clearly. Zachary was apparently unperturbed.

  “Aren’t you going to haul down your periscope?” Darzek asked.

  “Periscope?” Zachary said blankly. “We have no periscope.”

  “Then how does this thing operate?” Darzek asked, indicating the viewer.

  “Not with a periscope.”

  That was as m
uch as Darzek ever learned about it.

  But already he had noticed a subtle change in the aliens’ attitude, as if their fear had acquired a new veneer of anxiety. At first he attributed this to a natural concern that one of the search parties might stumble onto their position, for it seemed to him that the explosion must have left traces. After several groups had passed around them, and over them, and even scaled the crater wall above them, he was forced to the conclusion that these aliens were supreme geniuses in the art of camouflage.

  It was evident that observers on Earth had pinpointed the location of the explosion, for the exploration teams were concentrating on one short stretch of crater wall. It was equally evident that they were not going to find anything.

  Darzek marked up one more mystery to the Moon, and perhaps a collection of red faces to some alert and highly competent astronomers, and turned his attention to a new mystery of alien psychology.

  Why this added tension, this uneasiness that at times seemed almost volatile?

  They feared Jan Darzek.

  The relaxed friendliness that had grown between him and Zachary was abruptly terminated. His every remark was followed by a flow of alien conversation, as if it were immediately analyzed and its import discussed at length. His movements set off ripples of uneasiness. He was never left alone. Not only did one alien remain on the lower level with him, but there was invariably another watching surreptitiously from the level above. Once, when he went to his bin for a synthetic cigarette, he caught the glitter of the aliens’ strange weapon held in readiness.

  He wondered that they did not take his automatic. Apparently some quirk in their Code prevented them from depriving him of his property or inhibiting his freedom of movement until the precise moment when property or freedom became a threat. But they were watchful, and they were waiting. They valued their Code more highly than their lives, and they feared, they anticipated, they fully expected that he would attempt to betray them.

  Somehow he felt sympathetic towards them rather than resentful. It would not occur to them that all of his scheming was directed at saving their lives.