by John Rankine
Half a kilometre away, windows in the bas-relief caught the sun. The scale was humanoid. Koenig said, ‘I guess we need to clean up. If there’s anybody home, they know we’re here. This is the programme. All hands back up Alan to clear the fault. Without power, we have no defences. When the ship’s fixed, we can go in with the argument of a laser to back up diplomacy. Let’s go to work.’
If there were any observers in the rock-bound tower, they gave no sign. At a time when only Alan Carter could work in the confined limits of the compartment under the tail section, Koenig used binoculars for a close scan of the frontage. No interested row of heads, humanoid or otherwise, lined the windows to watch the visitors.
He passed the glasses to Helena Russell. After a long silence, she said, ‘Allowing for technical differences, it’s like Petra.’
‘Petra?’
‘In Jordan, isn’t it? The rose-red city of the Nabataeans. Once a big centre for caravan routes. Then it was a lost city for over a thousand years until it was rediscovered in the nineteenth century.’
‘This isn’t rose red.’
‘No. Cut out of rock, I mean. This Petra was a kind of hidden city, only reached through a network of narrow ravines. They had everything, temples, tombs, houses, a big theatre. All cut out of solid rock.’
Koenig recognised that in spite of their recent past on Alpha, there was a lot about Helena Russell that he knew nothing about. He said, ‘That interests you?’
‘Surely it interests me. I guess if I hadn’t opted for medicine, I’d have wanted to do archaeology. It’s the same thing in one way.’
‘How?’
‘Trying to find out what makes people tick. You look back over the years and strip away all the technological trappings and see what basic needs people have and how they organised themselves to meet them.’
‘The lowest common denominator.’
‘You can think of it like that, but I like to see the highest common factor.’
‘The realist and the optimist.’
‘It’s not being an optimist. You can’t practice medicine and stay starry-eyed.’
‘You just look starry-eyed most of the time.’
‘A compliment. If it is a compliment. I don’t often get them from you. It must be this mellow light.’
Sandra Benes swung herself lithely through the hatch. ‘Commander. Alan says he’s all set for a trial run. He’ll leave the bay open until he’s sure.’
Koenig settled himself in the pilot chair and went deliberately through the preignition checks. Eagle Nine fired sweet as a nut. From a collection of scrap metal, she was back on stream as a viable strike craft. He said formally, ‘My compliments to Captain Carter. Tell him to close the lid and come aboard.’
To Helena he said, ‘Ask Paul to prepare the halftracks for loading. I’ll drop the freight hoist.’
With all hands aboard and crowding into the command module, Eagle Nine trundled forward over the arena to within fifty metres of the rock face. Seen close, the frontage of the tower block was impressive. At ground level, there was a terrace tiled with hexagonal green slabs and a long canopy at the height of the first floor.
Koenig gave protocol a last fling. Using 1420, he sent out a call on the ship’s transmitter and at the same time shoved it out on a repeater from the cone. His voice reverberated hollowly from the enclosing cliffs.
‘This is Commander John Koenig. We come from the moon which has appeared in your gravisphere. We come in peace and goodwill. We are seeking a place to live. We will do nothing without your help and cooperation. We await your answer.’
He ceased. ‘Your answer. Your answer,’ echoed in from the external pickups. Like latter-day Petra, they had gotten a ghost town.
Carter said, ‘Maybe a laser beam through the front door would stir them up. We owe them that for what they tried to do to Alpha.’
Bergman said slowly, ‘It isn’t possible that they wouldn’t show an interest. I don’t believe there’s anybody there. But now we know there has been occupation. There must be other centres and one or more must be still operating. We could look elsewhere.’
Morrow said, ‘But time’s not on our side. We saw nothing in one orbit. No cities. No signs of life. That isn’t conclusive, but do we have time to make an extensive search? And, for that matter, do we still want to know? If that lichen’s typical vegetation, it’s no good. Graze a cow on that and you’d have the shortest legged ruminant in agricultural history.’
Koenig said, ‘I think I have to agree with that. But having come this far, we can’t leave without trying to contact the people. Also, they might continue their attacks on Alpha. We have to put our case and get them to hold their hand while we drift clear. First of all, we’ll look inside this building and see if it tells us anything. For this trip, Alan, stay aboard with a watching brief. We’ll keep in touch on the half-hour every hour. Ration packs. Side arms. Stick with these fancy helmets. Spruce up in case we meet their president.’
Helena and Sandra exchanged glances. Helena said, ‘Now he tells us. There isn’t so much as a yellow ribbon in the stores.’
The shore party assembled on the apron and Carter retracted the ramp. He lined up the main armament to fire over their heads and took a firing grip in either hand. The Alphans crossed the gap and reached the terrace. Koenig set the pace, neither slow, which might mean that they expected trouble, nor fast, which might be interpreted as a threat.
It was all strictly for the absent birds. Nothing moved. Ground level was sealed by long transparent screens that felt like glass to the touch. Inside, the centre section could well have been a big reception lobby. There was a long desk over left, with a free-standing wall feature behind it made up of yellow uprights and pale green shelving. There was none of the detritus about that would point to a sudden evacuation. All evidence of occupation was swept bare and tidied away. Walls were uniform in fluted cladding, coloured dove grey.
The only decorative feature was a long frieze on the right-hand wall, which was difficult to see at this angle, but looked like a full-colour job of people and places. There were some stone settles, low backed, missing the soft furnishing that might once have made them comfortable. Paul Morrow hammered the glass with a balled fist. There was no obvious way to get inside.
Koenig flipped open his commlock. ‘Alan. Do you read me?’
Carter’s face appeared in the palm of his hand. ‘Loud and clear, Commander.’
‘We’ll move aside. Line up on where I am now. A short burst. Not too much power. We have to break a way through.’
‘Check, Commander.’
Koenig drew them away beyond the next support pillar. There was a crackling hiss and a thread of eye-aching light jetted from below the Eagle’s cone. A white asterisk flowered briefly on the glass. Then the whole panel shivered and became opaque as it was crazed by a million hair-fracture lines.
At the point of impact, there was a fist-sized hole and air gushed from the interior in a long exhalation.
After all the years spent in medicentres, it carried a familiar bouquet to Helena Russell’s sensitive nose. It was clinical, aseptic, slightly tinged with formaldehyde. Whatever else, the Pelorusian outpost was germ free.
Koenig enlarged the hole, tapping around with the butt of his handgun. The glass had shivered into splinter-free nodules about the size of walnuts. With a half-metre wide panel clear, Koenig edged through, laser on first pressure. Bergman followed, Paul Morrow brought up the rear with a valedictory wave to the watcher in the Eagle.
They stood in a row facing the frieze. It ran the whole length of the wall, a good thirty metres. Brilliantly coloured and as fresh as the day it was painted, it set out a slice of everyday life for a humanoid species not greatly different in physical type from the Minoans of ancient Crete.
They walked the length of it in silence, each one absorbed in the detail of an alien culture. There was a highly mechanised farm spread with domed silos and a control tower. A long moving gantry ran o
n shuttle-shaped feet along two metal rails. Below it was a strip of cultivated land. Clearly, they had gotten well past the days of grubbing about with a hoe or a digging stick. The food chain was all buttoned up with nobody in sight to test the grain with a spatulate thumb and cast an eye on the weather.
It was the same tale with a still from factory life. Rows of sleek machines spun thread from hoppers of green candy floss, passed it to weaving frames, stretched it, dyed it, turned it out in a stack of bales from deep indigo to tomato red.
The time saved by all the automation seemed to be spent in pleasures of the flesh. Two thirds of the long record was devoted to a spirited search for ways and means to tap joy at its root.
As a medico with varied practice and an insight into the wilder shores of the human, it seemed frank, but not surprising to Helena Russell. If anything, it pointed to areas of similarity in culture patterns between these aliens and their distant cousins on Earth planet. Except that on Earth the scene might have been featured by Hieronymus Bosch as a terrible warning of actions likely to lead to hell fire. There would have been a frieze of demons waiting to punish the revellers. Here, it was clearly A-Okay and as good a way as the next to get through three score years and ten. If you could stand the pace.
It showed plainly enough that on the physiological plane, at least, evolution had come up with the same answers to vision, locomotion, the principle of the opposed thumb and reproduction of the species. Paul Morrow said, ‘They’d like a print of this in the pilot’s duty room. Save all the sweat of working a rota. They’d all be on standby.’
It earned him a slow burn from Sandra Benes, who was a simple girl at heart and took the view that sex was a private exercise between two interested parties. She said, ‘I think it’s all a big turnoff. And for that matter, if you look at their faces, it’s all very sad. They’ve left themselves with nothing else to do and the artist who painted it has understood that.’
Morrow put an arm round her shoulders, taking care not to be misunderstood, and said slowly, ‘I think you have the right of it, Sandra. I don’t think our working community in Alpha would fit there too well.’
Interest in the frieze had made them insensitive to aural clues. The whine of a motor and the faint rattle of some power drive was well over the threshold before Koenig got the message and whipped round with his laser ready to fire.
The noise came from an open-ended corridor beyond the reception desk and they waited in a line, backs to the pictorial strip.
The noise was in the room itself. There was nothing to see. The source point was moving steadily behind the rear wall of the reception desk. All heads turned slowly as they tracked it along. It could have been a mechanical rat.
When it finally appeared in the open on a straight course for the broken window, it was revealed as a squat, metre high, mobile bollard with a revolving receptor dome glowing a nice shade of purple. It was mounted on a square plinth with black, caterpillar tracks and had flexible antennae coiled in loops and hooked tidily on storage cleats.
Morrow, on Koenig’s left, had taken first pressure and was prepared to go to work on the military principle: ‘If it moves shoot it.’
Koenig’s hand clamped on Paul’s wrist. The move was either not seen by the robot can, or was discounted as not concerned with the job in hand. It rolled on until it was positioned in front of the broken pane. Antennae uncurled themselves from store and felt delicately around the frame. The purple dome turned green for thought and there was a metallic mutter as it talked busily to itself and passed data into a memory bank.
Once satisfied that it had it right, it spun neatly on its tracks and began to withdraw. It was the ultimate in a maintenance crew. No chatting up the householder about who threw that vase then? No worried shake of the head and a beef about glass prices and how it would be a one-off job and the account would be subject to an inflation clause. It was off to draw a piece from store and get it fixed before the autumn leaves blew in.
Koenig signed for the others to follow. It was a lead. Maybe somewhere in the back rooms there was a janitor who could answer a few questions.
The corridor was tiled like the reception area and lit by white ceiling ports. The bollard trundled itself along to an intersection, turned right like a parade-drill instructor and moved into another open area with a choice of three elevators set in the facing wall. Two were small and a pictograph on the lintel made it clear they were intended for a maximum load of six persons. The six stylised human figures were three male and three female. Equality could go no further. Morrow said admiringly, ‘You have to hand it to them. They never miss a trick.’
The right-hand opening was much larger and was marked up with the picture of a forklift truck. It was the freight hoist and the bollard rolled into it as of right.
Koenig made a decision. ‘It isn’t interested in us. We’ll go with it. Otherwise we wouldn’t know when to get off.’
One disadvantage was plain when the hatch sliced shut. Freight, having no feelings, got no light. Except for the corpse glow of the purple dome, which turned flesh to a tortured El Greco tint, there was nothing to see by.
The cage dropped. Bergman counted to himself. Not intended for personnel, deceleration was savage. By the time they had sorted themselves out of a confused heap, the hatch was open and the bollard was on its way.
Bergman said, ‘Five seconds. I’d say we’re down all of fifty metres.’
The bollard had almost reached journey’s end. They were in a huge, natural cavern. The floor had been levelled, true, but the walls were rough-hewn. Lights slung on gantries disappeared into the distance. Storage bays, coded for reference by winking light panels, lined the sides. Robot workers of all shapes and sizes stood around waiting for the good word to swing into action and make any repair required up top.
Sandra said, ‘Where have they all gone? Where are all the people?’
The questions hung about unanswered. The only movement was from their guide who had gone along the line to a control point and plugged himself in to tell his tale. It triggered a reaction down the line. A glazing detail swung itself into action. A small convoy, led by a bollard with a yellow dome, made for the elevator landing. There was a purpose-built carrier holding a new glass unit and two backup bollards with specialist tools and a coil of sealing strip.
Bergman, who had accepted all the details along with the principle of an automated repair service, had wandered off through a connecting arch to another part of the forest. His voice came to them in a muffled shout. ‘Through here! This could lead somewhere.’
They found him standing beside a long silver shuttle suspended on a monorail set below the roof. There was a platform with stone seats like the settles in reception. Lights were still burning in roof ports. It was clean and tidy and, except for any software, looked all ready for the next commuter rush.
Koenig said, ‘I don’t come anywhere near to understanding what goes on. What do you make of it, Victor?’
Victor Bergman ticked points off on his fingers, ‘Item: Whoever built this place intended to go on using it. Item: The withdrawal was planned and orderly. Item: They set it up so that it would be in working order when they wanted to use it again. Item: They’re so advanced that communications would be no problem. If they wanted to talk to us, here or on Alpha, I’d say they could do it.’
Paul Morrow took up the count. ‘Item: They don’t want to know and they tried to destroy Alpha.’
It was like a game, but Sandra put her finger on the key question that stopped it dead. As a communications expert she was used to having somebody at the other end of the channel. ‘Item: Where are they and are they watching us?’
Koenig walked to the front of the shuttle, found a stud beside the entry hatch and shoved it down. The panel slid away. He said, ‘This goes somewhere. Maybe their main centre is at the other end of the line. Having come this far, we should check it out.’
He looked at his time disc. ‘Time to call Alan. See if
you can raise him, Sandra.’
It was not easy and the picture, when she had it on the miniature screen of her commlock, was distorted, giving Alan Carter a maniacal lopsided twist. ‘Commander to Eagle Nine. Do you read me?’
‘Eagle Nine to Commander, strength two. Go ahead, slowly.’
Koenig took the commlock. ‘Anything going on, Alan?’
‘Not a thing. Except that some bean cans have started fixing that glass.’
‘We’re still searching. Stand by.’
‘Check, Commander.’
The five Alphans climbed aboard the shuttle and Bergman, earning his keep as scientific adviser, sat himself at the operating console. The switchgear was minimal. He had a choice of two controls. There was a red knobbed lever with left-to-right movement in a narrow slot. It was pushed over to the far right where there was a pictograph of a shuttle at rest at a platform like the one where they were. The other had a green grab handle and moved in a slot at right angles to the first one. There were five marked positions. The centre option was marked with a zero and the lever was set there. Above it, the two stops had yellow symbols; below were the same symbols in the same order but coloured red.
Thinking aloud, with his balding head thrust forward in a characteristic pose, Bergman said, ‘It moves. It has to stop. It has to go forward or backward. One of these is a brake or a holding device. One regulates speed and direction. So the red one has to be the brake. It could also switch on the power. Then a natural move would be to shove the other lever up and forward to move off. Are we sure we want to go?’
Koenig said, ‘We have to try to find who’s behind the attacks on Alpha. We have to convince them that we’re no threat and get them to hold off. Surely we have to go.’
Bergman slid the red knobbed lever over left for a full due. A low humming filled the car and settled to a quiet, powerful throb. Lights came on from ceiling ports. There was a definitive click from the hatch as it locked itself. Some forward thinker had decided that there should be safeguards against absent-minded citizens trying to leave at an unscheduled stop.
