“Got it,” said Jacko. “But that knocking sound you hear is my knees. I admit I’m frightened of this thing, Fritz.”
“I’m not exactly keen on it, either,” said Van Noon. “But this is what we came to see. It’s a pity we can’t see it now we’ve got here. Have you any suggestions, Pederson?”
“I’ve just discovered the Dark is what we ran the crawler into. No wonder it didn’t move.”
An ominous and familiar staccato rattle made them turn. A rogue storm, travelling towards them and parallel to the wall of the Dark, was making its passage known by its peculiarly pinched lightning. Because of attenuation, the lightning and thunder had been undetectable even from a short distance, and the storm was almost upon them before they were aware it existed. There was no time to seek shelter. They flung themselves down on the damp earth at the foot of the Dark and waited for it to pass. It sprayed the area with quenched fire as it went, doing no damage to them, but the intensity of the arcs was such that momentarily they had a clear picture of their situation.
The Dark was just in front of them, a sheer wall of unblemished black-velvet nothingness, impossibly perfect. The crawler had nosed head-on up to the black wall, and its tracks were pressed hard against the exterior. On all other sides of them lay the ghost-suburb of desolate ruins, the reflecting white teeth of broken masonry contrasting with the wet, black, soilstones of the earth.
As soon as the worst of the storm was over, they climbed back to their feet.
“What are you going to do, Fritz? Try the lasers?”
“I don’t know.” Fritz had moved back to the crawler and was examining the tracks in contact with the Dark by the spasmodic light of the rapidly waning storm. “I don’t think we need to, Jacko. I think I’ve got my answer. You see, it did take time for the Dark to analyse and apply a counter-force to stop the crawler. But that fraction of a second was sufficient for something significant to happen. The crawler tracks have penetrated very slightly into the Dark.”
It was impossible for the others to verify Van Noon’s statement since the light from the storm had rapidly become eclipsed by the strength of the contra effects. The combined output of searchlight and torches failed to reestablish the point, and the lasers refused to function from the crawler’s emergency power supply. But Van Noon was sufficiently convinced of what he had seen to regard the expedition as a success.
“All we have to do now is to get back to tell the tale,” said Jacko, unhappily.
They started back by the only means available – they walked. For the first half kilometre they stumbled blindly through the darkness and the nightmare of contra-momentum. The coldness, too, was becoming serious now that they were exposed for a long period without the protection of the crawler cab. But gradually their eyes, accustomed to complete darkness, began to discern light like the first touch of dawn, and with the returning ability to see, they no longer blundered into blind paths in the ruins from which they had to retreat by sense of touch alone. And the contra-effects grew slightly less, so that their pace progressively improved as they made their way out of the deep Pen regions.
Two kilometres away from the Dark they came across the crushed path that their own crawler had made on its way in, and this they followed gratefully. Shortly they found the second crawler, abandoned, and with its engine stalled and cold. The third crawler was patrolling a broad front along a road about three kilometres radius from the Dark perimeter. They were hailed and taken aboard for the last part of the journey through the growing light and finally out into the unbearably bright gold sunset of an Ithican evening.
Courtney was there to greet them. His team had spent the day re-running exploratory tests, but this time with particular reference to the onset-time of negation. His results amply confirmed Van Noon’s experience. There was a time-lag on the introduction of any energy phenomenon to the Dark or the Pen before negation set in. The exact period of the lag varied with the type of phenomenon, but was greatest for applied physical force.
The Ithican government, sensing promise in the issue, had already granted almost unlimited facilities to aid any practical application of the idea. On Van Noon’s behalf Courtney had accepted the challenge, and the party rode with buoyant spirits back to New Bethlem where work on the next phase of Fritz’s plans against the Dark were just about to begin.
“A tunnel?” said Jacko.
“Strictly speaking,” said Van Noon, “I had in mind something more in the nature of a horizontal well, but I think a tunnel is a fair description.”
“And just how do you propose to sink a horizontal well into the Dark?”
“Frankly, I don’t see much difficulty. We take an ordinary iron pipe of sufficient dimension to permit the passage of a man – and just knock it in.”
“Crazy like a fox!” said Jacko. “We’re talking about the Dark – the great energy negator. In the name of Moses, how do you just knock a pipe into that?”
“I thought I’d already demonstrated that,” said Fritz. “There’s a time-lag before the onset of negation. Apply a pile driver or something to your pipe and hit it once and it will penetrate the Dark just a little before the detection, analysis, contra synthesis has a chance to stop it. Then the negation will be applied and stop the tube going in any farther, and the system will reach stasis. The contra-force obviously cannot continue to be applied after the original force has ceased to operate, so the force, contra-force balance will then relax.”
“So?”
“So then you hit your pipe again and drive it in a little more. And so on. And providing you work on a completely random and non-predictable basis there’s no chance of the contra-force being applied in anticipation. I suspect that only if we set up a standard repetition rate will we meet with complete and instantaneous negation of the force that we apply.”
“So we knock in our tube. Then what?”
“It depends on what we find. The Dark may be a solid or it may be a thin-wall phenomenon. If it’s a solid we shall not gain much except for a little knowledge. But if it’s thin-wall, then we might have a chance to look inside.”
“From which you’re assuming that the Dark effect won’t penetrate inside the pipe.”
“I think it may to some extent, but take any physical phenomenon and place an inch of steel in front of it and you always get some modification or attenuation, if not a complete shutoff. I don’t see that the situation should be materially different for contra-physical phenomena. With a bit of luck we should be able to get through.”
“What do you think’s inside there, Fritz?”
“As I see it, Jacko, some form of intelligence, but I wouldn’t like to guess any closer than that. Whether the Dark is some cosmic amoeba or has inside it a complex of little green men is something I intend to find out. Are you with me?”
“I’m right behind you,” said Jacko. “But don’t ask me to be the first man through that ruddy pipe.”
By the time that Courtney returned to the base camp a few days later Van Noon’s plans were fairly well advanced. Fritz described the scheme briefly. Courtney was intrigued but doubtful.
“I don’t see,” he said, “how you’re going to drive a pipe of that diameter into the Dark – remembering that the driving has to be done in the deep Pen area where the contra-momentum is killing. You’d never get a horizontal pile driver to work under those conditions.”
“No. We’ve already taken care of that point by taking a new line entirely. We’re going to fire it in.”
“Fire it?”
“Yes. Attach the free end of the pipe to what is effectively a large-bore gun or reaction chamber with an open muzzle pointing away from the Dark. In the gun we fire a high-explosive charge and let the recoil of the apparatus drive the pipe against the Dark. According to my calculations, a series of explosive shocks should have the right sort of driving characteristics for the job. How does it sound as an idea?”
“It could work,” admitted Courtney. “Unless we’re up against s
omething we don’t know about yet. How far have you got with the project.”
“We’ve managed to get the lengths of pipe into the Dark area, and the gun chamber is there also. There’s trouble keeping handling equipment working so far into the Pen, but we’ve managed somehow. We should be ready to start firing sometime tomorrow. Have you been able to get the extra stuff I asked for?”
“Most of it’s outside on the carriers, and the generators will arrive in the morning. Here’s the radiation monitor, trolley-mounted as specified. I only hope it fits into the pipe.”
“I’ll try it out,” said Van Noon. “I can run it through our test length and if it doesn’t fit we can modify it before it goes into the Pen.”
He wheeled the small apparatus-laden trolley to the length of pipe that ran down the workshop where they had been fabricating the gun chamber. The trolley fitted easily into the interior of the pipe and, to give himself a little practice, he crawled in after it and pushed it before him. The iron confines of the pipe returned the roar of the small casters with a noise like a train speeding through a tunnel. When Van Noon reached the far end he found that Jacko had returned and was peering anxiously down the pipe.
“Why the sound effects, Fritz?”
“Eh? Oh, this? It’s the radiation detector. It’s obvious that even the iron of the pipe can’t do more than attenuate some wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum – and the same presumably applies to the contra spectrum. So just to be on the safe side Courtney has knocked up a combined range monitor which should cover anything likely to be dangerous but not detectable by our own senses. I don’t expect that we’ll encounter any such radiation, but it’s better to be safe than sterile.”
“Agreed,” said Jacko. “We’re taking enough chances with the unknown already. I’ve just come back out of the Pen, and we’re right on schedule. The first firing can take place at mid-day tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there,” said Fritz. “I’m particularly interested in knowing what happens to the core which we leave in the pipe. If the Dark is true radiation-type phenomena, there won’t be any core material. But if it’s something else, we may have to think again.”
The null-pressure suits obtained from Space Command were far more suitable for working under deep Pen conditions than the expeditionary clothing had been. Specifically designed for work on asteroids and similar bodies under a pressure dome but exposed to extremes of stellar heat and cold, the suits were the finest flexibilized radiation foils that had yet been devised. In the Pen, of course, no pressurized dome was needed, but the suits ensured that the searching fingers of contra-heat were no longer a danger or of major discomfort to the U.E. squad.
But the drag of the contra-momentum was not so easily avoided. Close to the wall of the Dark it exhibited an almost treacle-like resistance to movement which was common to both men and machines alike. The adaptations of technique needed for working in an environment possessing such a high quasi-viscosity were numerous, but the combined ingenuity of the Unorthodox Engineering squad was equal to the challenge. Somehow the impossible had been accomplished, and the structural components of Van Noon’s tunnel had been patiently sworn into place ready for the projected penetration of the Dark.
“Ready to fire?”
Jacko nodded. “First shot in thirty seconds.”
They were watching the scene by the light of two large, continuously operating lasers which Courtney had managed to obtain. These were directed on the point where the leading end of the pipe was pressed hard against the Dark perimeter. The illumination, spread slightly by deliberate diffusion with mesh screens, was adequate despite the contra-radiation loss. The backscatter illumination was also quite useful around the working area, but was attenuated sharply and unnaturally with distance. The power for the lasers had to be derived from outside the Pen via cable, and the contra-electrical loss was such that two large generators were needed to drive sufficient energy in to keep the lasers in operation.
The first shot was fired. The sound of the explosion was incredibly muted, and the tongue of flame from the reaction chamber was quickly quenched and drained. Van Noon examined the junction between the pipe and the Dark.
“I think it’s working, Jacko. Only millimetres so far, but it’s definitely going in. Keep firing rapidly but erratically. Let me know when you’re in about a metre. Then I want to go down inside the pipe and see if any sort of core is left.”
By reason of good organization on Jacko’s part they had penetrated a metre by late afternoon. Then the gun chamber was removed to allow access to the free end of the pipe. Van Noon had a line measured to pipe’s length minus one metre, and one end he left clamped to the free end of the pipe while he took the rest of the line inside to give him an indication of his position. Ten minutes later he came out jubilant.
“No core material, Jacko. The pipe is clear to the very end, and then the Dark begins again. That means we’ve got a metre of clear tunnel already and no complications so far. Now I want firings to continue right round the clock, as close-spaced as possible without setting up a standard repetition rate. If you scatter the charges round the area a bit so that each has to be fetched from a slightly different distance, that should be sufficient. But I want the depth of penetration per shot carefully watched, and if it varies very much from the existing rate, cease firing and let me know.”
It took forty hours to drive the first length of pipe into the Dark. By this time a second length had been added to the first and there were indications that the depth of penetration per shot was increasing. The second was driven home in twenty-five hours, partly due to the decreasing resistance it encountered, and partly due to the increasing proficiency of the shot-firers.
The third pipe was inserted in seventeen hours, and the fourth, in twelve. The time for subsequent pipes decreased in rough proportion. The tenth went half way, and then the indications were that no great resistance was being offered to it by the Dark since the assembly of pipes now moved forward the full theoretical distance per shot that they would have moved in the Pen itself. Jacko brought his charts to Van Noon.
“I think we’re through, Fritz. These seem to show that the Dark is a relatively thin-wall phenomenon with its effects decreasing with depth of penetration and reaching virtually zero at about ninety-five metres. God alone knows what’s at the other end.”
“Take the gun chamber off, Jacko, but be careful in case something unexpected comes out of the pipe. If nothing happens in half an hour then I’m going through to have a look.”
Nothing did happen. The end of the pipe protruding from the Dark remained empty, silent and cold; and there was no way of telling what lay at the far end. A laser directed down the pipe returned nothing but light-scatter from walls and motes of dust. The only factor of note was a strong current of air entering the pipe as though to equalize some unexplained deficiency in pressure.
Finally Van Noon hoisted the radiation trolley into the pipe and followed it in.
“I’m going down a bit, Jacko, for a preliminary survey. Stand by with some weapons in case I come out fast with something after me.”
“Nothing doing!” said Jacko. “If you’re going down that pipe, then I’m coming too.”
“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” said Fritz. “Let’s get on with it. The situation won’t improve itself by waiting.”
He crawled into the pipe. With some misgivings, Jacko followed him in. Ahead of Fritz the radiation trolley clattered on the iron and raised a multitude of clamorous echoes which engulfed them in a tide of sound. Inside the pipe the contra-sound attenuation apparently did not operate to anything like the same degree as that encountered in the Pen. The radiation monitor gave no indication of any increase in rate above the slow background count, and they considered it safe to continue.
Occasionally Van Noon stopped and let the echoes die, but nothing else disturbed the silence except their own breathing and their own awkward movements in the confines of the pipe. Then after wh
at seemed an eternity of crawling the clatter of the trolley ceased again and Van Noon stopped and half twisted himself to look back.
“Jacko,” he said urgently, “think very carefully. Are you absolutely sure how many lengths of pipe we drove into the Dark?”
“A ruddy fine time to be concerned about the economics of the project.”
“Hang the economics! Are you sure?”
“Certainly. Ten in all. Why?”
“I’ve been counting the joins. I’m now in the twelfth pipe, that’s why.”
“Don’t make jokes like that, Fritz. You’ll give me heart failure.”
“I wasn’t joking. The casters on the trolley drop into the flange gap at every join, and I have to ease them over. That’s what made me start counting how many joins I’d passed.”
“So you’re now in the twelfth pipe out of the original ten,” said Jacko, still not fully convinced. “That’s quite a trick! How do you explain it, Fritz?”
“Contra-iron pipe,” said Van Noon. “Lord! I thought it was a joke when Courtney suggested that they stopped a projectile with a contra projectile. But it appears it wasn’t. They do just that. They tried to stop our pipe with a length of contra-iron pipe so precisely similar that I’d not have noticed the difference had I not been counting. What type of creatures could do that, Jacko – almost instantaneously?”
“I don’t know,” said Jacko. “But I’m afraid of them.”
“You and me both. To work a trick like that must demand a technology centuries ahead of ours. But even so, I’ve a feeling we’ve got them worried.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if they were still operating at full efficiency there’s something we’d logically have met in this pipe before now – a contra-radiation monitoring trolley pushed by a contra Fritz Van Noon.”
“We’re way out of our depth, Fritz,” said Jacko finally. “Are you still going on?”
The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction Page 35
