The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  ‘We shall see if that will be necessary. Hurry!’

  Reluctantly, the man dropped onto hands and knees, pulled up the hatch, and instantly fell onto his face. Nothing happened. He picked himself up sheepishly and dangled one leg into the aperture. It remained attached to his body, and encouraged by an expletive from Scott he lowered himself down. From above, his unkempt head could be seen to bob down and disappear. Then it reappeared, he tilted his face up and called, ‘He’s not here. This is a sort of corridor, about two feet high. Now can I come up?’

  At Scott’s signal, the fellow’s companions hauled him roughly out. Unhooking a flat torch from his belt, Scott looked briefly at his companions.

  ‘Coming?’ he asked, with a crooked smile, and climbed down into the bolt-hole.

  This spot was actually a kind of crossroads for two of the inspection walks which were concealed beneath every floor of the ship. Sandwiched here, between deck and deck, were the vessel’s vital parts, the countless miles of wire and cable and pipe and air channel which made life possible. Sealed away, these shallow, essential areas had escaped the spreading menace of the ponics; and so a sort of survival had been possible.

  Scrutinising the four low walks stretching away from him, Scott instantly determined the way Crooner had taken: only one walk had its thin layer of dust disturbed by a pattern of hands, knees and feet created by a hurrying man. Dim lights lit each walk. Scott sheathed his torch and started off on all fours, without bothering to wait for the others. Viann followed him, then Brandyholm, then Carappa, who slipped in nimbly enough when he looked like being left behind.

  Progress, being on hands and knees, was not rapid; but Scott forged grimly ahead, ignoring the colour codes painted on the various bulky casing which hemmed their route. The scuffled pattern in the dust stretched encouragingly before him. Once, following this trail, they turned through ninety degrees and still proceeded.

  ‘I never realised before how confoundedly big this ship was,’ grumbled Carappa.

  The trail ended at last, in a dead end – at the outer skin of the ship, although they could not realise that. Feeling above his head, Scott located another trap door. This was a more complicated affair than the one by which they had entered the system of subterranean walks, possessing a double, self-closing hatch.

  ‘Well?’ Scott asked Viann, sliding round to face her. ‘Do we go up?’

  ‘Wait!’ she gasped. ‘I’m exhausted. No stomach or breath to fight!’

  ‘You do well for a woman,’ he said harshly, and kissed her shining face in a gesture which held more encouragement than tenderness.

  It felt to Brandyholm as if a knife had been twisted in his heart. He was suddenly swamped with jealousy and hatred of this man Scott.

  ‘Let’s get on with the work!’ he said thickly.

  ‘Hark, the yokel!’ Viann said amusedly, but slid to one side as Brandyholm wriggled past her. He pushed past Scott and, reaching up his arms, flung back first the lower then the upper hatch. Then he thrust his head up.

  They heard him give an inarticulate cry, and then he slithered back among them, gasping. Viann caught his shoulders and held his head in the crook of her arm.

  ‘Dazers!’ snapped Scott. ‘Come on, or they’ll murder us down here!’

  With a bound, he was out of the walk, his weapon thrust before him. He too gave a strangled cry. As they scrambled out to him, they heard his dazer drop from a suddenly limp hand and clang on the metal floor. Then they too saw what he saw, and knew.

  The ship’s starboard emergency escape lock was empty but for the four of them. Large enough to house a half-dozen lorries, it was furnished only with escape equipment stored along one wall. Dominating everything, compelling their owed gaze, was the window by the outer door: beyond it, plumbless, eternal, stars tossed into it like pebbles into an immeasurable sack, was space.

  They were the first inhabitants of the ship for many generations to look into that mighty void. Together, they sank to their knees and stared. Everything was forgotten but that spectacle.

  To one side of the window from where they were, riding majestically in space, was a bright crescent. Upon its surface, although sheathed under a veil of silver, continents and sea were visible. To their unaccustomed eyes, it was a thing of magnificent terror – yet in the terror was a wild gong beat of hope.

  For a lifetime of seconds, the four absorbed that panorama together. Viann was the first to recover. She walked slowly over to the window and said, ‘So we have, after all, arrived somewhere!’

  Looking at her proud head outlined against the brilliant sweep of that crescent, Brandyholm thought feverishly to himself that both contained a magic he desired: woman and world, for a moment both were the same thing, a joy unattainable, a hope out of reach, symbols merely of all opportunities denied.

  ‘Our man went out there somewhere,’ the practical Scott said, pointing to the line of Crooner’s footprints which went right up to the outer door. ‘If we want to follow him, we have to go out there too. What say you, Viann?’

  ‘Why did they not construct more ports in this ship? This is the first to be found, except for the shuttered ports in the control room.’

  ‘Let’s cope with one problem at a time,’ Scott said testily. ‘Do we or do we not go out after Crooner?’

  ‘Of course we go out, Master Scott,’ she answered. ‘Who could think of staying with that to lure them?’

  Carappa was rummaging in the escape equipment. This emergency lock had been designed to cope with people much like themselves: veritable novices who had never seen a space suit before. Consequently full instructions were given for the precautions to be taken before the outer door was opened. Carappa read everything carefully out.

  ‘Let me put on a suit and go out first,’ he said shakily. ‘If it’s alright, you can follow. This is the moment foretold in the Teaching: “That this unnatural life may be delivered down to journey’s end. And sanity propagated. And the ship brought home.” It is fitting a priest should go first.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Brandyholm said suddenly. ‘I’ll be by your side, priest. Nobody shall stop me!’

  ‘Nobody intends to,’ Scott said coolly. ‘I was about to suggest myself that our two most expendable members should lead the way.’

  ‘May your ego die on you,’ offered Carappa insultingly. ‘Here Tom, help me into this suit. It is heavy for a poor old man.’

  Getting the suits properly adjusted was a slow and irritating business. Long before it was over, Brandyholm cursed the false bravado which had made him thrust himself forward. At last, however, they were ready. With a final repetition of his instructions to reconnoitre and then hurry back, Master Scott ushered Viann through the manhole in the deck, retreating after her. The self-sealing double lid closed down over his head. Carappa instantly stomped over to the air valve and activated it according to instructions.

  Then he clapped Brandyholm on the back, and his voice over the suit-to-suit R/T crackled with triumph. ‘Well, Tom, boy, we’ve won through. This fellow Scott is a fool! – He’s played right into my hands. Once this outer lock door is open, none of them can reach us – they’ll be killed. Space is lethal! The non-stop voyage is over for us at least.’

  ‘What about the aliens?’ Brandyholm asked.

  ‘Faint heart hath never won foul fiend,’ the priest quoted. He waved a dazer before Brandyholm’s eyes. ‘I took the opportunity of removing this from our lady friend’s holster. I can deal with Crooner well enough. Trust me, boy!’

  An amber light winked over the outer door; the air was exhausted. Without another word, Carappa depressed the exit switch. A red light flicked on and burnt steadily, and all space lay open before them. With a mounting sense of awe, they moved to the brink of the aperture. They looked out.

  The great cylinder of the ship stretched to either side of them, lustreless and solid. Before them, the planet rode mysteriously, its dark side cutting a black semi-circle from the brocade of stars.
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  From where they stood, the sun was hidden by the flanks of the ship.

  Stretching out a gloved hand, Carappa pointed. To their left, the smooth expanse of metal was broken by an ungainly accretion; even to their inexperienced eyes, it was obviously no integral part of the ship. Square and cumbrous, it was attached by metal braces and bore an air of improvisation. A circular port set in its near side emitted light.

  ‘The aliens must be there,’ Carappa said. A hawser stretching from the lock towards this strange construction reinforced his opinion.

  Grasping the hawser, Carappa pulled himself out over the edge of the lock and climbed onto the outside of the ship. He waited patiently until Brandyholm had hauled himself up too. For a moment they stood silent, side by side. The lock door slid to behind them. Then, holding tightly to the hawser, they moved along towards the square outbuilding.

  ‘Stop!’ Brandyholm gasped. He stood, slumped in his suit, while the universe wheeled about him. He wondered crazily what it would sound like to Carappa if he were sick in his suit. Then the moment of dizziness passed, and they moved on again.

  They stood at last among the stanchions of the outbuilding, which towered some fourteen feet over their heads. The simplicity of the structure was now apparent: it consisted simply of a room from which an air lock protruded like a porch. Peering cautiously through the small window, Brandyholm saw that the room was mainly occupied with a variety of equipment, although it obviously served too as an at least temporary living quarter, for in a hammock stretched across one corner lay Crooner. He was alone.

  Obeying Brandyholm’s gesture, Carappa also looked in.

  ‘How do we get in without disturbing him? It’s hopeless,’ Brandyholm said.

  ‘The human predicament apart,’ said the priest decisively, ‘Nothing is hopeless. Obviously, we must use guile. It is against my principles, but we must use guile. We must get in under pretence of friendship; once we’re in, he’s ours. Leave it to me.’

  With that, he hammered on the thick glass before him. Crooner looked up, and climbed slowly out of his hammock; he still wore his heavy space suit, although he had removed his helmet. Carappa made frantic and unmistakeable signs towards the airlock. Crooner nodded.

  ‘Gullible fool!’ the priest exclaimed with relish.

  VI

  They were in the air lock when Crooner’s voice, from a speaker overhead, said, ‘What on earth are you two doing outside the ship?’

  ‘We managed to escape just after you did.’

  ‘How did you find your way here?’

  ‘We’ll give you the details when we get inside,’ Carappa retorted, holding the stolen dazer ready and winking at Brandyholm.

  Air sighed in about them, double doors began slowly to open, Carappa moved forward, and a steel bar descended sharply onto the barrel of the dazer, sending it flying from Carappa’s grasp. Then Crooner appeared from behind the lock doors, the bar in one hand, and in the other a sharp and dangerous looking weapon they did not recognise; it pointed without waver at the priest’s heart.

  ‘Come out,’ Crooner said grimly, his face as lined and motionless as a tree trunk. ‘There’s no room for a scuffle in here. If I so much as suspect you of being about to rush me, I shall shoot you dead with this revolver.’

  ‘Bob, Bob,’ Carappa said, trying to force a note of reproach into his voice, ‘Why turn on your old friends like this? We mean you no harm. As a priest I’m bound to say – ’

  ‘Say nothing, Carappa. From your point of view it is unfortunate that these ship’s suit radios were so devised that unwary novices could not shut themselves off from contact with each other – they’re always at Transmit. In other words, I’ve heard every word you both said since you put the suits on. You always talked too much, Carappa, it’s a sort of poetic justice.’

  ‘Justice!’ Carappa growled, ‘I loathe its very name. Shoot me if you must, but don’t babble of justice!’

  These words came indistinctly to Brandyholm. Uncertainty, danger and fear were having a cumulative effect on him. A kind of palsy took him, and without warning he collapsed. Crooner let him fall.

  When Brandyholm’s brain cleared and he opened his eyes again, he was lying prone on the floor. Crooner stood over him. He could see enough of Carappa to observe that the big priest now had his hands lashed firmly behind his back. The two were talking, and did not notice Brandyholm’s recovery.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the priest was saying – words rarely heard on his lips – ‘You are not an alien or you are? Which?’

  ‘The term “alien” is subjective,’ Crooner said patiently. ‘As I say, I am from Earth, just as your ancestors were, generations ago. Earth is only a couple of thousand miles away – you saw it outside, a gleaming crescent.’

  ‘Then the ship got back after all?’

  ‘The ship got back after all. Yes. It was watched for and sighted long before it reached the skirts of the solar system. When it radiated answers to Earth’s signals, a fast pilot was sent out with a boarding party. The party found the ship’s controls partially ruined, but managed to pull it into an orbit round Earth. That was three of your generations ago. They then completely destroyed the controls – you say you saw their wreckage – and left the ship.’

  ‘But why, why – ’ Carappa sounded as if he were choking, ‘ – what form of warped cruelty made you leave us there? You could see how things were – all out of hand, death stalking us, the ponic tangle threatening to overwhelm us …’

  His voice died. He saw too vividly the heroism of that terrible flight across the light years and back. The survivors, if only for the sake of the generations who had died, should have been saved and honoured.

  ‘Why were we left?’ Carappa asked brokenly.

  ‘There was a reason,’ Crooner said. His voice, suddenly full of compassion, became lost on Brandyholm for a moment. Brandyholm’s eye, when he turned his head only slightly on the hard floor, rested on an object he could not at first identify. With a shock, he realised it was the priest’s dazer, about a foot from his face. When Crooner knocked it flying, it had wedged between two cased pieces of equipment and he had not bothered to retrieve it. Brandyholm had only to lift his hand to grasp it.

  ‘… Procyon V was the only possible planet,’ Crooner was saying. ‘And surface gravity there was one and a half Gs. So there was not as much trouble as had been feared to get volunteers to start the home run. As I’ve said, the outer journey nearly ended in famine and asphyxiation. But they took off again with a stock of new carbohydrates and amino acids. That was where the trouble began. And it began almost at once, as far as we can tell.

  ‘Giantism began in the hydroponic tanks. It spread rapidly. A virus-borne infection swept through the crew like wild fire. Few died, but almost all were prostrated for weeks. When they recovered strength, the ship was rapidly becoming as you know it – bulging from stem to stern with the giant hydroponics, ponics as you call them.

  ‘You might almost suspect them of possessing intelligence, so rapidly did they adapt. Low gravity had suddenly given them a tremendous fillip. They destroyed everything, they created their own humus, partly by a rapid fruition cycle, partly by an almost symbiotic use of tiny insects, whose bodies paved the way for further growth.

  ‘The people of the ship lived in isolated groups among this entanglement. And they too changed. Some of the domestic animals – the ship’s piggery for instance – escaped the tangle and became wild. Others died. Soon almost the only source of food was the ponics themselves. And then men, too, began to speed up. Their life expectation eventually became not eighty years, but twenty.’

  ‘You mean – you live four times as long as we in the ship?’ said Carappa.

  ‘It is so. Which is why I always appeared slow to you. Which is why, too, one sleep-wake in four was dim. You see – ’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Carappa said. ‘The daily six-hour dim-down of lighting,’ he quoted. ‘Six hours has become a whole day to us! We thought
we were human beings, and we’re not. We’re – monsters, pigmies, things out of order, mechanical toys which flail their arms and legs too fast …’

  He broke off, subsiding into mountainous sobs which were more impressive than his spoken outburst. Unable to raise his hands to his face, he sat shaking with internal strife while the tears burst down his crumpled countenance.

  The sight roused Brandyholm to action. With one continuous, flowing movement, he seized the dazer and was on his feet. Fast as he was, Crooner could have shot him before he was on his knees: but a fatal hesitancy delayed the Earthman, a sense of compunction the others would neither have understood nor appreciated, and next moment he dropped the gun and nursed his paralysed arm to his side.

  Brandyholm blew on his warm dazer triumphantly; he felt better again, more a man. The effect of the action on Carappa, too, was swift. His tears dried and he was again in command.

  ‘Expansion to your ego, Tom,’ he shouted. ‘I didn’t guess you had it in you! Come and undo me quickly, and we’ll settle for this fellow.’

  When he was free, he grunted in satisfaction and lumbered over to Crooner, who leant, deathly white, against a radio panel.

  Seizing him by the armpits, and propping him roughly up until his head rattled against the metal, Carappa said, ‘Now, Crooner, we want some information from you before Tom and I leave for Earth. You must instruct us how to get there. But first I want to know what you were doing on the ship at all.’

  ‘You can’t get back to Earth, Carappa,’ Crooner said. Then, as the priest’s grip tightened, he said hurriedly, ‘I’m an anthropologist. Although you are human, you people have become – owing to your environment – a completely separate race. It is doubtful if you could even inter-marry with Earthmen. When the ship first returned, it was decided you were all unfit to leave your environment: you would have died. You had already adapted to the ship’s nightmare conditions. It was decided we should not interfere with you, that your journey should continue non-stop until further speeding up and degeneration in the metabolism of your descendants brought the inevitable end.’