He was gone for less than five minutes, though to the astronomers fretting in the tractor it seemed an age. Abruptly he was back, the outer door of the airlock slamming violently behind him. He was in far too much of a hurry to remove his helmet and his voice came muffled through the plastic sphere.
‘I haven’t time for explanation,’ he said, addressing Jamieson, ‘but I’ll keep the promise I made you. This place’—he gestured towards the dome—‘covers the uranium the Federation wants to get. It’s well defended and that’s going to give our greedy friends a bit of a shock. But it has offensive armament as well. I designed it, and I’m here to make the final adjustments before it can go into action. So that answers your question about the importance of the journey.
‘The Earth may owe you a greater debt than it can ever pay. Don’t interrupt—this is more important. The radio was wrong about the twenty hours of safety. Federal ships have been detected a day out—but they’re coming in ten times as fast as anything that’s ever gone into space before. We’ve not much more than an hour left before they get here.
‘You could stay, but for your own safety I advise you to turn round and drive like hell back to the Observatory. If anything starts to happen while you’re still out in the open get under cover as quickly as possible. Go down into a crevasse—anywhere you can find shelter—and stay there until it’s over. Now goodbye and good luck.’
He was gone again before either of the two men could speak. The outer door slammed once more and the Airlock Clear indicator flashed on. They saw the dome entrance snap open and close behind him. Then the tractor was alone in the building’s enormous shadow.
Nowhere else was there any sign of life but suddenly the framework of the machine began to vibrate at a steadily rising frequency. The meters on the control panel wavered madly, the lights dimmed and then it was all over.
Everything was normal again but some tremendous field of force had swept out from the dome and was even now expanding into space. It left the two men with an overpowering impression of energies awaiting the signal for their release. They began to understand the urgency of Fletcher’s warning. The whole deserted landscape seemed tense with expectation.
Swiftly the caterpillar backed away from the dome and spun around on its tracks. Its twin searchlights threw their pools of light across the undulating plain. Then at full speed it tore away into the lunar light. Jamieson realised that the more miles he could put between himself and the mine the greater their chances of ever reaching the Observatory again.
Dr Molton was passing through the gallery of the thousand-inch dome when the first announcement electrified the Observatory. Through all the speakers and over the radio of every space-suit in the station the Director’s voice came roaring.
Attention everybody! The Federation is about to attack the Moon. All members of the staff, with the exception of the telescope crew, are to go to the vaults immediately. I repeat, immediately. The telescope crew will remove the mirror at once and will take it to the resurfacing room. That is all. Move!
For a dozen heartbeats of life of the Observatory came to a standstill. Then with a slow majestic motion the thousand-ton shutters of the dome closed like folding petals. Air began to pour into the building from hundreds of vents as the telescope swung around to the vertical and the work of removing the mirror from its cell began.
When he started to run, Dr Molton found that his legs seemed to have turned to water. His hands were trembling as he opened the nearest emergency locker and chose a space-suit that approximately fitted him. Though he was not one of the telescope crew he had work to do in the dome now that the emergency had arrived. There were the precious auxiliary instruments to be dismantled and removed to safety and that job alone would take hours.
As he began his work with the rest of the team, Molton’s jangling nerves slowly returned to normal. Perhaps, after all, nothing serious would happen. Twenty years ago it had been a false alarm. Surely the Federation would not be so foolish— he checked his thoughts with a wry grimace. It was just such wishful thinking on Wheeler’s part that had opened their discussion a fortnight ago. How he wished that Wheeler had been right!
Swiftly the minutes fled by as one by one the priceless instruments went down into the vaults. The great mirror was now free in its cell and the hoists had been attached to the supporting framework. No one had noticed the passage of time.
Glancing up at the clock Molton was amazed to see that nearly two hours had passed since the first radio warning. He wondered when there would be any further news. The whole thing still seemed a fantastic dream. The thought of danger was inconceivable in this remote and peaceful spot.
The mirror-truck moved soundlessly up the ramp into its position beneath the telescope. Inch by inch the immense disc was lowered until the hoists could be removed. The whole operation had taken two hours and fifteen minutes—a record which was never likely to be surpassed.
The truck was now halfway down the ramp. Molton breathed a sigh of relief—his work also was nearly finished. Only the spectroscope had to be moved and— What was that?
The whole building suddenly trembled violently. A shudder ran through the mighty framework of the telescope. For a moment the space-suited figures swarming round its base stood motionless. Then there was a concerted rush to the observation windows.
It was impossible to look through them. Far out above the Sea of Rains something was blazing with a brilliance beyond all imagination. The Sun itself by comparison would have been scarcely visible.
Again the building trembled and a deep organ note ran through the mighty girders of the telescope. The mirror truck was now safely away, descending deep into the caverns far down in the solid rock. No conceivable danger could harm it there.
And now the hammer-blows were coming thick and fast with scarcely a pause between them. The rectangles of intolerable light cast by the observation windows on the floor and walls of the dome were shifting hither and thither as if their sources were moving swiftly round the sky.
Molton ran to get some sun filters so that he could look out into the glare without wrecking his eyes. But he was not allowed to do so. Once again the Director’s voice came roaring from the speakers. ‘Down into the vaults at once! Everybody!’
As he left the dome Molton risked one backward glance over his shoulder. It seemed as if the great telescope were already on fire, so brilliant was the light flowing through the windows from the inferno outside.
Strangely enough Molton’s last thought as he went down to the vaults was not for his own safety nor that of the priceless telescope. He had suddenly remembered that Wheeler and Jamieson were somewhere in the Sea of Rains. He wondered if they would escape whatever hell was brewing out there on the barren hills.
Quite unaccountably he recalled Wheeler’s ready smile, the fact that it had never been long absent even during those frequent periods when he was officially in disgrace. And Jamieson too, though quieter and more reserved, had been an intelligent and friendly colleague. The Observatory would miss them badly if they never returned.
The storm broke when Jamieson had driven scarcely a dozen miles from the dome, for the speed of the oncoming ships had been grossly underestimated. Earth’s far-flung detector screens had been designed to give warning of meteors only and these machines were infinitely faster than any meteor that had ever entered the Solar System.
The instruments had flickered once and then the ships were through. They had not even started to check their speed until they were a thousand miles from the surface of the Moon. In the last few miles of their trajectory the accelerationless drive had brought them to rest at nearly half a million gravities.
There was no warning of any kind. Suddenly the grey rocks of the Sea of Rains were lit with a brilliance they had never before known in all their history. Paralysed by the glare Jamieson brought the tractor to a grinding halt until his eyes had readjusted themselves.
His first impression was that someone had turne
d a searchlight upon the machine. Then he realised that the source of the light was many miles overhead. High against the stars, which it had dimmed almost to extinction, an enormous rocket flare was guttering and dying. As he watched, it slowly faded and for a little while the stars returned to their own.
‘Well,’ said Wheeler in an awed voice, ‘I guess this is it.’
Hanging motionless against the Milky Way were the three greatest ships that the two astronomers, or indeed most men, had ever seen. It was not possible to judge their distance—one could not tell whether they were ten or twenty miles overhead. They were so huge that the sense of perspective seemed somehow to have failed.
For several minutes the great ships made no attempt to move. Once again, though this time with even more reason, Jamieson felt the sense of brooding expectancy he had known in the shadow of the dome. Then another flare erupted amongst the stars and the world outside the tractor was overwhelmed with light. But as yet the ships had made no hostile move.
The commander of the Phlegethon was still in communication with Earth though he realised now that there was no hope of avoiding conflict. He was bitterly disappointed—he was also more than a little puzzled by the tone of quiet confidence with which Earth had rejected his ultimatum. He still did not know that the building below him was anything other than a mine. A mine it certainly was but it had kept its other secrets well.
The time limit expired—Earth had refused even to reply to the last appeal. The two watchers below knew only that one of the great ships had suddenly spun on its axis so that its prow pointed towards the Moon. Then, soundlessly, four arrows of fire split the darkness and plunged toward the plain.
‘Rocket torpedoes!’ gasped Wheeler. ‘Time we started to move!’
‘Yes—into your space-suit! I’ll drive Ferdy between those rocks but we’ll have to leave him there. We passed a crack just now that will protect us from anything except a direct hit. I made a note of it at the time but didn’t think we’d have to use it so quickly.’
The rock-borne concussion reached them as they were struggling with the fittings of their space-suits. The tractor was jerked off the ground and slammed back with a jar that almost knocked them off their feet.
‘If that scored a hit the mine’s done for!’ exclaimed Wheeler. ‘How can they fight back anyway? I’m sure they’ve got no guns there.’
‘We certainly wouldn’t have seen them if they had,’ grunted Jamieson as he adjusted his helmet. He finished his remarks over the suit radio. ‘Ready now? Okay—out we go!’
Wheeler felt very reluctant to leave the warmth and security of the tractor. Jamieson had left it in the shelter of a group of boulders which would protect it from almost all directions. Only something dropping from above could do it any damage.
Wheeler was suddenly struck by an alarming thought. ‘If Ferdinand gets hit,’ he said, ‘that’s the end of us anyway. So why bother to leave?’
‘There’s air in these suits for two days,’ answered Jamieson as he closed the door of the lock behind him. ‘We can walk back if we have to. Eighty miles sounds like a lot but it isn’t so much on the Moon.’
Wheeler said no more as they hurried to their shelter. An eighty-mile walk over the Sea of Rains was a sombre thought.
‘This would have made a fine fox-hole in the last war,’ he said as he settled himself down among the debris of lava and pulverised rock at the bottom of the little ravine. ‘But I want to see what’s going on over by the mine.’
‘So do I,’ said Jamieson, ‘but I also want to live to a ripe old age.’
‘I’ll risk it,’ exclaimed Wheeler impetuously. ‘Everything seems quiet now anyway. I think those torpedoes must have finished the job.’ He jumped toward the rim of the cleft and hauled himself out.
‘What can you see?’ asked Jamieson. His voice reached Wheeler easily though the suit’s low-powered radio was heavily shielded by the solid rock.
‘Wait a minute—I’m climbing up on this boulder to get a better view.’
There was a short pause. Then Wheeler spoke again with a note of surprise in his voice. ‘The dome doesn’t seem to be touched. Everything’s just the same.’
He was not to know that the first warning shots had landed many miles away from the mine. The second salvo of rockets was launched soon after he had reached his vantage point. This time they were intended to hit. Wheeler saw the long sheafs of flame driving steady and true towards their target. In a moment, he thought, that great dome would collapse like a broken toy.
The rockets never reached the surface of the Moon. They were still many miles up when, simultaneously, they exploded. Four enormous spheres of light blossomed amongst the stars and vanished. Automatically Wheeler braced himself for the concussion that could never come in the vacuum around him.
Something strange had happened to the dome. At first Wheeler thought that it had grown in size. Then he realised that the dome itself had gone and in its place was a wavering hemisphere of light, scarcely visible to the eye. It was like nothing he had ever seen before.
It was equally unfamiliar to the Federation ships. In a matter of seconds they had dwindled into space, shrinking under the drive of an inconceivable acceleration. They were taking no chances while they went into conference and hastily checked the armament they had never imagined they would have to use. Rather late in the day they understood the reason for Earth’s quiet confidence.
They were gone only a brief while. Although they had disappeared together they returned from entirely different directions as if to confuse the defences of the mine. The two cruisers came down at steep angles from opposite corners of the sky and the battleship swept up over the horizon behind the screen of Pico, where it remained for the earlier part of the conflict.
Suddenly the cruisers vanished, as the dome had vanished, behind wavering spheres of light. But these spheres were already brilliant, shining with a strange orange glow. Wheeler realised that they must be radiation screens of some kind and as he looked again towards the mine he knew that the onslaught had begun.
The hemisphere on the plain was blazing with all the colours of the rainbow and its brilliance was increasing second by second. Power was being poured into it from outside, power that was being converted into the harmless rays of the visible spectrum. That at least was clear to Wheeler—he wondered how many millions of horsepower were flowing invisibly through the space between the cruisers and the mine. It was already far brighter than day.
Slowly understanding came to him. The rays which the twentieth century had imagined but never known were a myth no longer. Not like the spaceship, gradually and over many years, had they come upon the world. In secrecy, during the seventy years of peace, they had been conceived and brought to perfection.
The dome on the plain was a fortress, such a one as no earlier man had ever dreamed of before. Its defences must have gone into action immediately the first beams of the enemy reacted upon them but for many minutes it made no attempt at retaliation. Nor yet was it in any position to do so, for under the blazing shield that protected them Fletcher and his colleagues were fighting time as well as the Federation.
Then Wheeler noticed a faint brush discharge on either side of the dome—that was all. But the screens of the cruisers turned cherry-red, then blue-white, then a colour he knew but had never thought to see on any world—the violet-white of the giant suns. So breathtaking was the sight that he gave no second thought to his deadly peril. Only imminent personal danger could move him now—whatever the risk, he must see the battle to its end.
Jamieson’s anxious voice startled him when it came again over the speaker. ‘Hello, Con! What’s happening?’
‘The fight’s started—come up and see.’
For a few seconds Jamieson struggled against his natural caution. Then he emerged from the cleft and side by side the two men watched the greatest of all battles rising to its climax.
VI
Millions of years ago the molten rock had fro
zen to form the Sea of Rains and now the weapons of the ships were turning it once more to lava. Out by the fortress clouds of incandescent vapour were being blasted into the sky as the beams of the attackers spent their fury against the unprotected rocks.
Ever and again a salvo of rocket torpedoes would lance toward the Moon and a mountain would rise slowly from the plain and settle back in fragments. None of the material projectiles ever reached their target, for the fields of the fortress deflected them in great spirals that sent many hurtling back into space.
Not a few were caught in the beams of the defenders and detonated many miles above the ground. The utter silence of their explosions was unnerving. Wheeler found himself continually preparing for the concussion that could never come—not on the atmosphereless Moon.
It was impossible to tell which side was inflicting more damage. Now and again a screen would flare up as a flicker of heat passed over white-hot steel. When that happened to one of the cruisers it would move with an acceleration that could not be followed by the eye and it would be several seconds before the focusing devices of the fort could find it again.
The fort itself had to take all the punishment the ships could give it. After the battle had been on for a very few minutes it was impossible to look toward the south because of the glare. Ever and again the clouds of rock vapour would go sailing up into the sky, falling back to the ground like luminous steam. And all the while a circle of lava was creeping out from the base of the fortress, melting down the hills like lumps of wax.
During the whole of the engagement the two men spoke scarcely a dozen words. This was no time for talk—they knew that they were witnessing a battle of which all the ages to come would speak with awe. Even if they were killed by the stray energies reflected from the screens of the fortress it would have been worth it to have seen so much.
They were watching the cruisers, for it was possible now and then to look at them without being blinded, when suddenly they realised that the glare to the south had doubled its intensity. The battleship, which until now had taken no part in the action, had risen above Pico and was blasting at the fortress with all the weapons she possessed.
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke Page 10
