Frontier of the Dark

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Do we go as we are?”

  “You can dress if you like. But as we are is better for things like crayfish. If it were sheep, now … ” She licked her red lips with a red tongue.

  “Don’t!” said Falsen sharply.

  The girl ignored him.

  “On my last long leave,” she said, “I went to Earth. I already knew then, by the way. I spent a few weeks in the Scottish Highlands, one of those reserves that they have on Terra … ”

  “I know,” interrupted Falsen. “I’m Terran.”

  “One morning,” she went on, “a morning much like this … there were sheep.” She smiled reminiscently. “I often wonder who, or what, that shepherd blamed.”

  “And yet, knowing the risk, you continued in space?”

  “Why not? As a catering officer doubling as nurse, I had access to drugs. And I saw to it that there was a sudden increase in the mortality rate of the ship’s cats. If it hadn’t been for that passenger and her pampered Persian … And now … ” she spat viciously, “Crayfish! There’s more real meat on a cat!”

  Together they made their way down the hillside, toward the pool. The spongy vegetation was soggy underfoot, still saturated with the night’s rain. The rising of the sun had brought a steamy, uncomfortable warmth to the air and Falsen was thankful that he had not bothered to dress, that there was only his skin, hairy as it was, to get muddy, so that the discomfort was no worse.

  They stopped at the horseshoe-shaped pond, and there Linda made a search of the vegetation along its bank. She selected, finally, a long tendril with an elongated, bright yellow berry at its end. Using her left hand, she lowered it gently into the water. Falsen saw that there were tiny fish in the pool, some gold in color, some silver. He supposed that they were fish … at least they filled the same ecological niche as fish did on other worlds. He supposed, too, that something with very weak eyesight might just possibly mistake the berry for one of the little creatures.

  “The thing to do,” explained Linda, “is to keep it moving, just so. And you need hands for this … . Now we’re in business.”

  Carefully, so as not to disturb the water, she lowered herself to a prone position, still angling with her left hand, her right hand poised and ready. Falsen watched the pale-colored berry and saw the tiny fish dart up to investigate it. After only seconds they sheered off with a rather elaborate show of disinterest. Then, suddenly, they were gone, flashing away to the farthest recesses of the pond, while something big and gray scuttled over the muddy bottom. With scarcely a splash, Linda’s free arm flashed down into the water, and then she rolled over onto her back, holding with both hands a thing that could have been an oversize, infuriated Terran spider. Uncertain what to do, Falsen stood by, more than a little sickened by the appearance of the thing that the girl had fished from the pond.

  “Shall I … ?” he began doubtfully.

  “No. All right. There!”

  Something cracked loudly and sharply, and then the crustacean was rolling on the spongy vegetation, dead, a gray, hairy football in size and appearance.

  “We cook him,” said the girl. “I’ve tried them raw, but … ”

  • • •

  The thing, Falsen admitted, wasn’t bad eating. It would have been improved by salt, pepper and vinegar and a melted butter dressing, but it was much better than nothing. Then, after the meal, there was a cigarette from the pack that Linda had carefully dried when she dried his clothes. It was a shared cigarette, for, as Linda pointed out, she had not yet found any kind of vegetable growth whose dried leaves would serve as a tobacco substitute.

  “But you will lose the desire,” she said. “After all, it’s not natural. I’m just having this one with you to be sociable.”

  “Then, let me finish it.”

  “No. It’s funny, but with the smell of it the desire came back. After all, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t try to make the best of two worlds.”

  “The main problem right now,” said Falsen, “is to make the best of one.”

  He got to his feet, walked to the cave entrance to survey the one planet that was left to them after all their years and light-years of interstellar travel. He stiffened suddenly.

  “Linda!” he called. “Come here!”

  “What is it, Nick?”

  “Look! Do you see it?”

  Away over the swamp, twenty kilometers distant, something was moving, something that reflected the crimson rays of the sun. Were there birds on this world, wondered Falsen, or flying reptiles, or giant flying insects? There was no reason why there should not be. But, as it approached, he could see no wings. A flying machine? But he would have heard an inertial-drive unit in operation long before such a craft came into sight.

  Then he heard a faint humming sound, growing louder.

  “An airship,” said Linda. “Some people use them for survey work. The Shaara, for example … .”

  “Even the Shaara,” said Falsen, “are supposed to come to the aid of distressed spacemen. And I doubt if they’ll know about our family scandals. The Federation’s not publicizing our particular one! Quick! Get some damp wood on the fire!”

  “But suppose they’re human?”

  “Even then, they mightn’t know why we’re here. We can cook up some yarn about shipwreck.”

  As he talked he was tearing up armfuls of the brush growing outside the cave, throwing the damp branches onto the fire. The dirty white smoke rose, a trickle at first and then great, rolling billows pouring out of the cave mouth, flowing down the hillside like a heavy liquid. Over the swamp the airship rose slowly from the surface of the pool that it was investigating, turned, made directly for the hill and the cave.

  “Not Shaara,” said Falsen, studying it. “It’s not a blimp. That thing has a skeleton of some kind inside its envelope … .” He searched his memory. “Doralan … could be. But we’d better get dressed.”

  “Why? This is better if we’re going to … ”

  “We’re not going to. Yet. We’ll let them take us to their ship. Hurry!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Falsen came out of the cave coughing and spluttering. The humming of the airship’s motors was loud in the oppressively humid air. He looked up at the thing through watering eyes, was able to make out the big characters painted in black on the metallic-gray envelope, meaningless scrawls to him but indubitably Doralan.

  And what were the Doralans doing here?

  Running a survey, that was what.

  Linda came out and stood beside him. Together they watched the airship as it nosed slowly down, losing altitude. A grapnel trailed from the control car, tangled in the partly exposed roots of a stout bush growing on the level ground at the base of the hill, caught and held. A winch motor throbbed, and gradually the great floating shape, a thick cigar with the control gondola below it and, further aft, two engine pods, was drawn downward until the skids beneath the aircraft were just touching the leathery foliage of the bushes. A short ladder extended from the cab, and three scarlet-cloaked, scarlet-hooded figures clambered nimbly to the ground.

  Linda made a growling noise deep in her throat.

  “Not now, you stupid bitch!” whispered Falsen. “Not now. You’d spoil everything.”

  “But they are so tempting,” she whined. “Little Red Riding Hoods … ”

  “ … with lethal ironmongery trained on us from inside that ship.”

  “That shouldn’t worry us much. Unless … ”

  In single file the Doralans marched up the rough path. Their scarlet, cowled cloaks were brave splashes of color against the somber, ruddy gray of sky and swampland. Within the hoods their faces were like those of very serious little girls, although their leader’s countenance was somehow more mature than those of the others, broader, with wide, sensual lips. Their bodies — what little could be seen of them — seemed human enough in outline.

  “But,” whispered Linda, “they could be Terrans. I always thought that the Doralans were … different … .”<
br />
  “They are,” said Falsen quietly. “Just a case of parallel evolution on an Earth-type planet. Take ‘em apart and they are different. But they’re near enough to human for our purposes.”

  The leader of the Doralans, who wore gold stars on the collar of her cloak, addressed them. Her voice was thin and high, speaking accentless Standard English.

  She said, “You are from Earth?”

  “Yes,” agreed Falsen.

  “Why are you making smoke?”

  “Because we are cast away on this world and we need help.”

  “I already suspected that. But why are you making smoke?”

  “To attract your attention, of course.”

  “But in the course of our survey we were bound to have investigated what appears to be a geological anomaly, the only hill within kilometers. This call for help that was not seriously required has impeded our work. You are not injured. You do not seem to be dying of starvation.”

  Falsen said, “I’m sorry about that.”

  The officer glared at him, then turned to Linda.

  “Lady,” she said, “I will waste no more time in conversation with this inferior being. Tell the man to follow us to the airship. You are both to be taken to the Lady Mother.” Linda looked bewilderedly at Falsen.

  “The Doralans,” he told her, “have a sort of matriarchal setup. The Lady Mother, I suppose, is the captain of their ship.”

  “You suppose correctly,” the Doralan officer said. “And now let us waste no more time.”

  • • •

  Falsen followed the women down the hill to the airship. He was surprised when the Doralan gestured him first up the ladder into the control car. But he was not allowed to stay there. He was jostled up another ladder into a sort of cargo hold, a compartment that was already half full of specimens — rocks, soil, samples of plant life and something that had once been an animal of some kind and that was very dead and beginning to stink.

  He hoped that Linda, riding in comparative luxury, would not be tempted to do something foolish. He knew how it must be for her, sitting in close proximity to tender-fleshed, warmblooded beings. She had been subsisting on a diet of canned foods with all the flavor and goodness cooked out of them, but superior to the so-called crayfish that were the only alternative.

  He realized that the airship was under way, pitching gently as it drove through a slight turbulence. There was a dim electric light set in one of the bulkheads of his prison, and by its light he made an inspection of the specimens.

  A rock is a rock is a rock … he thought. And a jar of mud is a jar of mud. The dead animal was more interesting. It was a huge worm, all of three meters long. There seemed to be no sense organs.

  The stink, he decided, wasn’t too bad was no worse than some of the more exotic cheeses. He knew, somehow, that the meat would be quite edible, and he was suddenly very hungry. He considered shedding his clothing as a necessary preliminary to a satisfying feast, then dismissed the thought. That would be madness. What if the airship landed and the Doralans came in to discover him as he really was?

  He compromised.

  He pulled the knife from his pocket, opened the blade. The tough integument of the worm resisted the keen edge, then yielded suddenly. He cut a rough cube of rubbery flesh, brought it to his mouth and chewed.

  Not bad, he thought, not bad. It was more like real meat than that crustacean had been. Not bad, but not overly good either. Nonetheless, he cut out another cube, and another.

  But wouldn’t questions be asked eventually? Wouldn’t the scientist or specialist officer dissecting this specimen wonder about this too regularly shaped wound in the thing’s body?

  The airship lurched suddenly, dipped and shuddered. There was turbulence again, more severe this time. The pile of geological samples shifted and rattled noisily, some pieces falling onto and around the wormlike carcass. Falsen grinned. He found a suitably sharp-edged piece of rock, used it to enlarge the gap that he had made, placed it so that it looked as though it had caused all the damage.

  The ship steadied, droned on.

  Falsen’s senses registered the change in trim as it began its descent. The loud humming of the main engines ceased, was replaced by the quieter, higher note of winches. There were female voices calling and replying to orders in a language that was unknown to him but which he assumed to be one of the Doralan tongues.

  The hatch in the deck opened and Linda called, “You can come out now!”

  • • •

  He clambered down into the control cab where Linda was waiting for him, where a couple of scarlet-uniformed Doralan women looked at him with dislike and curiosity. He stared out through the wide windows. The terrain here was gently rolling, drier than the swampland from which he and Linda had been picked up but still with pools of water gleaming in every depression. To the east was a range of high hills. And there was the ship, a tall spire of gray metal. A Delta-class liner, thought Falsen, but the lettering on her hull below the control room was the Doralan sprawling scrawl. The big ship had started her life as a unit of the Interstellar Transport Commission’s fleet; the Doralans had no yards of their own and most of their tonnage was Earth-built, much of it secondhand. Many of their space officers were Earth-trained.

  “I am waiting for you!” called an irritated voice from the ground.

  “Coming, Carlin!” replied Linda.

  She jumped down from the control car to where the Doralan officer was standing. Falsen followed her.

  “Come,” ordered Carlin. “The Lady Mother is expecting you.”

  They entered the ship through the after air lock, crowded into an elevator cage, and were rapidly lifted through level after level, finally stopping just abaft, or below, the control room. They left the cage, walked along a short length of alleyway terminating in a door. On this Carlin rapped sharply. Somebody on the other side called out something, and the door slid open. The furniture in the cabin beyond it was designed to suit the build of its present tenant, yet this was still the captain’s dayroom of a Delta-class liner. Sitting behind the big desk was one of the small women who now owned and operated the ship, dressed, as were her crew, in uniform scarlet, in a high-necked tunic that left her smooth-skinned arms bare and displayed three gold stars on each side of the collar. Her hair was short-cut, glossy green with a silver streak. Her well-defined features were lined by experience and authority, yet the mouth was kindly. Sitting on the desk, a little to her right, was a huge ginger cat, a Persian. (And what was this brute doing aboard an alien ship?) The animal got to its feet as the Terrans entered, arched its back and spat viciously.

  “Pondor!” said the Lady Mother reproachfully.

  The cat replied in a mewling voice, and Falsen could almost have sworn that this reply was couched in words.

  Imagination, he thought.

  Carlin made her report to the captain. The Lady Mother heard her story, then spoke a few words of dismissal. To the castaways she said, in Standard English, “Please be seated.”

  “So you speak our language, Lady Mother,” said Falsen.

  He lowered himself to the built-in settee, this being the article of furniture best adaptable to his greater weight and bulk. Linda sat by his side.

  “Yes,” said the captain. “I speak your language. In my younger days I spent some time on Earth. I underwent my initial training in your Antarctic Academy. We have our own schools now, of course, but our space women still avail themselves of your educational facilities. There is always so much that is new, and we are not innovators. We have heard, for example, that there is research being carried out in the field of faster-than-light communications so that ships will be able to talk to each other over the light-years … .”

  “We haven’t got it yet,” said Falsen. Fortunately, he thought.

  He felt a sudden, sharp pain in the calf of his left leg. He looked down. That big ginger cat had inflicted a row of deep scratches, was looking at the-damage it had done with smug satisfaction. Wi
th an effort Falsen restrained himself from kicking out at the brute.

  “Pondor,” said the captain sternly, “that is no way to treat guests.”

  “They don’t like me … ” Was this animal talking, actually talking? wondered Falsen wildly. “They don’t like me, and I don’t like them.”

  “They are my guests.”

  “They are not my guests.”

  “Go. At once. Go.”

  “Oh, all right.” As the arrogant beast, tail in air, sauntered out of the day cabin, they heard one word, uttered in a tone of great contempt, “Females!”

  “What a … what a charming animal,” said Linda faintly. “Do you have any more like him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But … talking cats,” said Falsen. “Are they native to your world, Lady Mother?”

  “They are now. But the original stock was Terran, introduced by the first of your ships to visit us, long before we ventured into space ourselves. Since then there have been controlled mutations, breeding for intelligence. The trouble with Pondor is that somebody once told him that on your world, in some country called Egypt, cats were once worshipped as gods.”

  “A very long time ago,” said Falsen.

  “And now we will take refreshments,” said the Lady Mother.

  A stewardess had come in, a typical child-faced, chubby-legged Doralan woman, clad in a scarlet tunic which came down to mid-thigh. She was carrying a large tray on which were small spouted cups and plates of tiny cakes. She set this down on the desk, bowed to the captain and left.

  At the Lady Mother’s invitation Falsen and Linda each helped themselves to a cup and a plate of cakes. The tea was overly sweet and flavored with something like aniseed. The cakes had almost no flavor save that of sugar. Falsen sipped and nibbled, trying to hide his lack of enthusiasm.

  The Lady Mother brought a box out of a drawer in her desk, set it on the surface. She pushed a switch on its side.