The Tenth Planet

by Cooper, Edmund

  “Are you married?” he asked her bluntly as they danced. He did not then know why he asked her. The knowledge came later.

  “No, captain. Are you?”

  “No … My name is Idris.”

  “That is Welsh, isn’t it?”

  “My mother was Welsh, my father was Scottish. I am Australian.”

  She smiled. “Soon, I’m afraid, you will be a Martian.”

  He shook his head. “No. Never.” He laughed grimly. “Perhaps I am destined to be the last Earthman … No, not even that. Earth will survive.”

  She shivered. “I hope so. But things look bad, don’t they?”

  “Yes, things look bad … Are you thinking of getting married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  She laughed. “Some nice Martian boy, probably a planetary engineer, with a big future and a dune buggy and a hovercar and a three-roomed apartment.”

  “Let’s sit this one out. I’ll get you a drink … Why not a spaceman? They are the guys with the best health certificates and the best brains.”

  “You wouldn’t be making me an offer, would you?”

  “Given enough time, I might. But why not a spaceman?”

  “The answer is simple. If I really loved him, I couldn’t bear to be separated by such immensities of time and space, not knowing when or if …” She faltered. “Why don’t you get me that drink you promised?”

  “Sorry.” He elbowed his way through the throng at the bar. Cadets, ensigns, engineer officers, a commander or two. Shamelessly he pulled rank.

  He gave her a glass. “The bar is running dry. There was a choice of gin and tonic, gin and coke, gin and ice. I thought you looked like gin and tonic.”

  “You thought right … Why haven’t you married, Idris? After all, you are quite—” She stopped, not knowing how to say it.

  He grinned. “Ancient?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “But you have been counting the grey hairs … Well, I’ll try to give you an honest answer. I have been too damn busy getting where I am.”

  “And where are you?”

  He looked at the gold braid on his sleeve and shrugged. “You are right, of course. Nowhere … I would like to be married, though. It would be something—something permanent. Something to hold on to. Especially if there were a child.”

  “A child.” Catherine gave a faint smile. “Somehow, I cannot see you in the role of Daddy, Idris.”

  “To tell the truth, nor can I. But I don’t believe in God, and I have to have something. I believe our only hope of immortality lies in our actions, in what we do to and for others, and in our children.”

  “A romantic atheist!” She sighed. “This conversation is getting too damned serious… A fine father you’d make … Hush, baby. Daddy is fifty million miles away; and if you are very good, he’ll come and see you some time next year—I hope … No, Idris, spacemen should not marry, and they certainly shouldn’t have children.”

  “I could give it up if I had the right incentive.”

  “What is the right incentive?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” She was surprised at the seriousness, the intensity of this man she had known barely two hours.

  “I love you.” He was amazed that he had actually had the nerve to say it.

  “Isn’t this all happening rather quickly?”

  “Haven’t you noticed? All the serious things, all the important things, all the dangerous things happen quickly. Spacemen are trained to react quickly. That is how they stay alive.”

  “You wouldn’t stay alive very long if you had to ground yourself because some silly woman with a belly full of baby couldn’t bear to see you shoot towards the stars.”

  “Try me.”

  “No. I’m no gambler. I’m afraid to play for high stakes.” There were tears in her eyes. “Damn you! You’re the first man to see me cry.”

  “And you, Catherine, are the first woman to make me say: I love you.” He raised his glass. “I am sorry. Forget everything I have said. Let there be peace between us … I will even drink to that unknown Martian planetary engineer who is destined to give you what you want.”

  “I’ll go to bed with you,” she sniffed, “if that is what you would like.”

  He took her in his arms. “We’ll dance. That is what we came for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that is what we came for.” Catherine dabbed at her eyes, and smiled at him. “You’d better kiss me. Otherwise people might think we were quarrelling.”

  He held her close, then found that he was holding nothing, only darkness. Darkness, anguish, loneliness.

  He kept on running. But wherever he ran, however fast he ran, there was no place where he could stay. No island on which, like a mariner of old, he could find refuge from the dark waters that threatened to engulf him.

  “Father, I’ve passed the medical and the psychiatric. I have an interview with the Board of Space Commissioners.”

  “Well done, sport. To hell with this confounded rain. We’ll go into Sydney, and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Darkness. Cold darkness.

  “What is your name?”

  “Suzy Wu, sir.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Almost twenty-one, Captain Hamilton.”

  “How many space-hours have you logged?”

  “The regulation two hundred.”

  “The shoot to Earth should be routine. But the conditions we find when—and if—we touch-down, well, they are imponderable. It could be a one-way trip. You are sure you want to sign on for the Dag Hammarskjold?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?” Earth to flourish on Mars.”

  “You are a romantic fool, Suzy.”

  She was dejected, anticipating dismissal. “Yes, sir.”

  “But the Dag Hammarskjold is crewed entirely by fools. Sign here.”

  Darkness again. So cold.

  What the hell! If you can’t run any more, then for Christ’s sake stop trying.

  I want to feel wind on my face, he screamed to himself. That I had a hand in bringing back a part of the dying I want to walk on grass. I want to watch some youngster take the Gagarin cup. I want to listen to music, make jokes, very vulnerable. “I want to do something,” she said desperately. “Something worthwhile. I want to help salvage a fragment of Earth I can’t properly explain it. But it would be something to be proud of, something to remember.

  She looked much younger than twenty-one. Very young, kiss a pretty girl. I want to breathe.

  “CAPTAIN HAMILTON, PLEASE RESPOND! I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU!”

  The voice was shattering, the pain dreadful. What the hell! If you can’t run any more, then for Christ’s sake stop trying.

  He didn’t have to open his eyes to see. He only had to want to see, or submit to the ordeal of seeing.

  She was still there, the girl who called herself Zylonia. He found he could control his vision quite easily this time. No ripples. No cloud imploding.

  “If I am not already mad,” he said reasonably, “I am thinking of going mad. It seems a good idea. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Captain Hamilton, you are quite sane, but traumatized. We will not let you retreat into madness.”

  He managed to laugh. The pitch was wrong, but the noise sounded roughly like laughter. “You think you can stop me?”

  “If we have to, yes. But we wish to minimize our interference with your mental processes.”

  “Baby, you are talking to a ghost. I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in immortality, I don’t believe in ghosts. But you are talking to one. So how can you stop a ghost from declaring himself insane?”

  “You are not a ghost, Captain Hamilton.”

  “So? I died on the Dag Hammarskjold. Tell me it was a delusion. That will only prove you have whistled up a mad ghost. Q.E.D.”

  “You did die on the Dag Hammarskjold.” There was a note of exasperation in her voic
e. “But, demonstrably, you are not dead now … You are making matters difficult, Captain Hamilton. It was decided that you should be phased back into reality slowly, so that you would have time to adjust.”

  Again he laughed, dreadfully. “It was decided … Screw that … As far as I am concerned, you are just part of a dead man’s nightmares until you prove otherwise. I know—or think I know—that I haven’t got my own body, my own eyes, my own voice. All I’ve got—all I think I’ve got—are my own memories. Now if you—pretty delusion that you are—don’t give me a very convincing shot of truth, I shall do my damnedest to blow myself into the big dark, where there are no dreams, no nightmares, no memories, no nothing. So talk fast, because I’m listening but for not much longer.”

  “Give me a few moments,” she said. “Your responses are being monitored. I must consult my colleagues.”

  There was darkness and silence. It was as if the girl had suddenly disintegrated.

  “I’m counting to twenty,” he shouted, being now unable to hear the voice he used and not knowing if she heard it either. “If you are not back with some very convincing information by then, I’m going to blow. This I swear.”

  He began to count to himself. One, two, three, four, five …

  She came back at seventeen.

  There was light; and he saw her black hair, her pale face, her golden tunic.

  “It has been decided that you shall have the relevant facts. We hope that you will be able to accept them. You died approximately five thousand three hundred and seventy Earth-years ago, in the manner you recall. Your vessel, the Dag Hammarskjold was reduced to a derelict hulk by three major explosions which we can only assume were caused by people who wished to destroy it and its occupants. The wrecked vessel drifted beyond Mars orbit, even beyond the orbit of Pluto. It settled into an eccentric orbit more than six billion Earth miles from the sun. That is where we found it. By an extraordinary freak of fate, the top half of your body remained frozen and sealed perfectly in vacuum. Even more remarkable was the fact that brain damage was negligible. So you will understand that—”

  “That I am nothing but a colony of cells in a life-support system.” He was amazed at how calm his synthetic voice sounded. He was amazed that he was not hysterical, that he did not weep, that he did not utter a great scream of horror.

  “Is that not what every living creature is?” she countered.

  “Good for you. Score one … The story becomes interesting. I like it. Five thousand three hundred and seventy years … Hey, maybe that’s a record! Tell me it’s a record. Then we can break open a case of booze and celebrate. Sorry, I forgot. I have no mouth … Now, let’s shoot for the big one. Where am I—woman whose lips I shall never touch, whose tits I shall never fondle—where have you and your unseen friends chosen to perform the resurrection-and-the-life trick?”

  “You are on the tenth solar planet, Minerva. Captain Hamilton, do not be cynical. Many courageous and dedicated people have worked hard to restore you to consciousness and to give you the means of communication. Here is one of them.”

  Another person came into his area of vision. An old man with white hair.

  “Greetings, Idris Hamilton. I am your psycho-surgeon and you have been my life’s work. When you were brought to Minerva—no more than a handful of desiccated tissue—I was a young man. I dreamed the impossible dream. I dreamed of restoring you to full consciousness. I have spent my life to that end. It has been a long, hard task. There were many disappointments, many set-backs. It is strange, is it not, that a man should devote his life to bringing another man back from the dead? The ethical problems involved are insoluble. If I have done wrong, forgive me. I can only say that the project seemed worthwhile.”

  Idris was silent for a while. Silent and humble. He tried to comprehend the immensity of nearly fifty-four centuries. He could not. He tried to visualize a young man who would devote decades of his own life to the task of establishing contact with the five-thousand-years-old brain of a dead spaceman.

  At length, he said: “Sir, I am grateful. I am also angry, humiliated, horrified. My existence now is nightmarish, grotesque. Surely, you can understand that?”

  The old man nodded. “It will not always be so. I ask you to be patient, to give us a little more time. If you still believe that we have been wrong, that we have violated your right to oblivion, the project can be terminated.”

  Idris laughed. “An interesting situation! The brain you have spent your life resurrecting is granted the right to suicide. But what if I am morally incapable of suicide? What if I simply continue to endure in anguish or madness. Have you the guts to murder me?”

  The old man sighed. “We have considered all such problems, Idris Hamilton. They weigh heavily upon us. There are no clear-cut answers. I, personally, believe that the project is worthwhile. But I could be wrong … You have been greatly excited—over-extended—by the information we have given you. The monitors indicate abnormal neural activity, and we do not wish to take risks. Therefore, it is my decision that you will rest for a while.”

  Idris tried to say something, but the voice would not carry his words. Then vision faded. He tried desperately to think. But his thoughts seemed to be engulfed in jelly. He slipped rapidly into unconsciousness, almost welcoming it.

  9

  IT LOOKED LIKE the master’s cabin on the Dag, and yet it was not. But it was a good simulation. There were the two chairs, the desk, the bunk, the communications panel, the pictures on the wall, and even what looked like bond-fuzz on the deck.

  The old man sat in one of the chairs, the girl in the other.

  “Greetings, Idris Hamilton,” said the old man. “While you rested, we have made changes. We thought you would appreciate a familiar environment. Also we have made your eye mobile. It is a great technical achievement. By act of will, you can use your eye as you would use a living eye. Also, by act of will, you can take the camera to any position you wish. It will give you an illusion of movement. But I recommend caution until you have learned to completely control your new powers.”

  “Thank you. I like the changes.” Idris ignored the fact that he was a brain in a nutrient tank and willed his head to turn. The eye responded somewhat jerkily, but it enabled him to look all round the cabin. He saw a length of cable that led to a shiny metal cabinet. There had been no such thing in his cabin.

  “What is that?”

  The old man smiled. “That is where you live. The other end of the cable is attached to your mobile eye.”

  “Is it possible for me to see my brain?”

  “Certainly. I do not think it advisable. But it is possible. Do you really wish to see a mass of grey matter in which countless electrodes have been implanted? That, surely, would be the ultimate nakedness. Be guided by me. It would not be a beneficial experience.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” said Idris tightly. “Dammit, I don’t like my voice. Can you modify it?”

  “Easily. Whenever you wish.”

  “I want something that sounds more like me—like I used to sound. But that will wait. First, more questions. What about Suzy Wu? Were you able to resurrect her?”

  “Alas, no. The deterioration of tissue was too great. I do not know how much you understand of physics. But you, fortunately, were in a unique position. The normal evaporative processes were inhibited by the perfect seal of your space suit. You see, in vacuum even a solid will—”

  “Skip that. What of the cargo? We had twenty children and two teachers in suspended animation.”

  Zylonia spoke. “Captain Hamilton, we managed to resuscitate eleven children and one teacher. Five of the children have suffered some brain damage; but the remaining six and the teacher—though they still do not function at optimum performance, perhaps—are in excellent condition. When their suspended animation systems failed they were already at near-zero, as you know. Their air-tight caskets helped to retard evaporation loss, just as in your case. You will meet them presently.”

 
“Let it be soon,” said Idris. “Let it be very soon. They are my only link with the world I have lost. Who knows—they may even manage to keep me sane.” He looked at the old man. “You, sir. You who are my psycho-surgeon. You know all about me, but I know nothing of you—except that you have wasted much of your life trying vainly to reconstruct a human personality out of a lump of cerebral debris. Do I call you Doctor, or do you have a name?”

  “Forgive me. I should have introduced myself earlier.” He smiled. “You may call me Doctor, if you wish. But I also have a name. It is Manfrius de Skun.”

  “So, Doctor Manfrius de Skun. I have learned that I am on the planet Minerva, the tenth solar planet. In my day, its existence was only a theoretical possibility used to explain irregularities in the orbit of Neptune and the terrestrial approach of Halley’s Comet.” He laughed. “But I’ll take your word for its existence—just as I take your word for mine … Now, what of Earth? What has happened in more than five millenia?”

  Manfrius de Skun and Zylonia exchanged glances. The girl gave a faint shrug.

  Dr. de Skun turned to gaze squarely at Idris Hamilton’s eye. “So far as we know, Earth is totally devoid of human life.”

  “And the moon? Earth’s satellite?”

  “Dead also.”

  “What about Mars? We knew the moon colony might not be able to go it alone. But we placed all our hopes in Mars. It must be a very flourishing planet after five thousand years. Earth gave all it could to Mars. There is—was—a planetary engineering programme that would give it a breathable atmosphere, fertile soil, enough water …” He stopped, seeing the look on Manfrius de Skun’s face. “What happened to Mars?”

  “I am sorry, Captain Hamilton. To you the young colony on Mars is like yesterday. To me it is ancient history. Mars is dead. My ancestors were refugees from its internecine wars. They lifted off the planet shortly before the final atomic holocaust.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “I wish I did not believe it, but it is so.”

  “I don’t believe it!” His electronic voice, giving vent to explosive emotion, filled the simulated cabin with thunder, causing its two occupants to put their hands over their ears, while their faces distorted with pain.