Frontier of the Dark

by A Bertram Chandler

  The window burned out by Carl in’s laser fire had been covered with a scarlet cloak; as it was on the lee side, the makeshift repair was effective enough. The drained body of the unfortunate Dimilin had been carried outside and laid among the rocks to await burial. Linda was wearing the dead ecologist’s tunic and cloak; they were both too short for her and the tunic was too tight, but they were better than nothing. Of the giant leech there was no trace save for a few smears of yellowish ichor; the thick part of its body must have been jammed in the hatch in the airship’s keel; so, with the breaking away of the gondola, it had been borne aloft with the derelict.

  Working in glum silence, the two radio technicians were trying to put the transceiver together again. The pilot sat slumped in her seat, staring at the now useless controls. She had been sobbing hysterically until Carlin slapped her face sharply. An occasional despondent sniffle still escaped from her. Carlin was still standing, in spite of all that had befallen, very much mistress of herself and of the circumstances. Linda and Falsen sat on the deck, looking up at her.

  “So, the thing was not dead,” said Carlin slowly. “Dimilin should have made sure that it was before it was brought on board. What happened in the passenger space, Linda?”

  “We were all frightened,” said the Terran, “when its sucker came snaking in, feeling about … ” She managed a small laugh. “We were all frightened before then, of course. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but I thought that the ship was breaking up … . Well, the sucker fastened onto one of the women and … sucked. It was over in seconds. The others just huddled there, terrified. I was the only one who tried to fight it … .”

  “So you tried to fight it,” murmured Carlin. “Did you have a weapon of any kind, a knife … ?”

  “What is this?” Falsen demanded. “A court of enquiry? Can’t you see that she’s badly shaken? Give her a chance to recover.”

  “We are all badly shaken, Mr. Falsen. But I think that we should try to sort things out while memories are still fresh.” She returned her attention to Linda. “So you fought it. Did you have a knife?”

  “No,” Linda said at last.

  “No? But the thing, or the part of the thing that got in here, had been wounded. It was gashed, bleeding … .”

  “I was lucky,” said Falsen, “that I was not in the same state when I came in here. There were all sorts of sharp ends of broken metal and plastic flying around inside the ship.”

  “I am not questioning you, Mr. Falsen,” Carl in said coldly. “So you fought it, Linda, without weapons. And then it just gave up the struggle and ran away from you, to find easier prey elsewhere. Odd … very odd.”

  “It had killed all the others first,” Linda told her. “Two by sucking their blood, the others while it was thrashing about.”

  “All right. We know that it can kill and that it can deliver very hard blows. So you frightened it off, all by yourself. And then what did you do?”

  “I tried to get forward to the control car, to warn you all. But it was blocking up the alleyway. I tried to find some other way to get to you. There was an open hatch; it must have blown open. I looked down and out. I could see the control car, a long way down, stuck on the top of the hill. And I saw Nick, standing in what looked like a snowdrift. So I … jumped.”

  “So you jumped. Have you any idea how high the ship was when you jumped?”

  “No … ”

  “Well, I have. I saw it all. The ship must have been all of a thousand verslag — that’s about five hundred of your meters — off the ground.”

  “I think that you’re overestimating. Carlin,” said Falsen.

  “I bow to the superior judgment of a navigator,” she sneered. “But, all the same, it was a long drop.”

  “You should be congratulating her,” flared Falsen, “not interrogating her as though she’s some sort of criminal.”

  “It is I, Mr. Falsen, who will have to submit a written report on this business. I must endeavor to find out just what did happen. But, as Mr. Falsen feels that I should, I do congratulate you, Linda. Most people, falling as you did, would have been smashed to a bloody pulp.”

  “The snow was deep,” Falsen said. “And there could have been some freak updraft.”

  Carlin laughed, “Yes, we’ve had our fill of freak updrafts. And downdrafts. But there’s another thing that puzzles me, Linda. Why were you naked when you jumped out?”

  “I … I was fighting the thing … my uniform … torn … ”

  “As you can see,” Falsen told Carlin, “it took a patch out of the back of my shirt.”

  She said coldly, “I am trying to get the Lady Linda’s story, Mr. Falsen. I shall get it faster if you do not persist in trying to tell it for her. I am still puzzled by her nudity when she abandoned the airship.”

  “My clothing,” said Linda, “was in the creature’s way when it tried to get its sucker on to my skin.”

  “Then why,” asked Carlin, “didn’t it suck you dry, as it did with Dimilin?”

  “I … I don’t know. It … it sort of lost interest.”

  “Perhaps it didn’t care for the flavor of Terrans. It didn’t fasten on to Falsen either, although it could have. But, Linda, surely it didn’t pull your shoes off?”

  “I kicked them off myself, Carlin. The deck was slippery underfoot and the ship was lurching. After I’d fallen a couple of times I thought that I’d get along better with bare feet.”

  “All right. You’re here. You’re alive. So is Pansir. So are Dorral and Lur. So is Falsen. So am I. I think that I’m speaking for all of us when I say that I want to stay that way. We don’t know how long it will be before we’re picked up. My guess is that the Lady Mother will lift ship and come looking for us. The helicopters are too small for a rescue operation and their range is very short. There are the parts for assembling another airship in the stores — a smaller craft than the one we have lost, and nonrigid — but putting the thing together will take time. There is another problem … ” She spoke in her own language to the radio technicians, listened to their reply. “Yes,” she went on to Linda and Falsen, “there is another problem. Dorral and Lur think that the transceiver is back in working order. But the power cell was broken when we crashed. There will be other power cells, hopefully intact, in the airship. But where is the airship?”

  To that rhetorical question there was no answer.

  Carlin continued, “It may be down not far from here. There may be survivors. And there will be the emergency rations and, too, the power cells … .”

  Falsen looked out through a window. The wind had risen again, was bringing with it huge wet flakes of snow.

  He said, “We can’t make a search in this weather.”

  “Of course not,” agreed Carlin. “We shall have to wait until it clears. Sunset is not far off. Perhaps tomorrow it will be better. So, we sleep. The warmth from our bodies will keep away the worst of the chill … .”

  It was, Falsen realised, quite stuffy in the control car. Probably the snow piling up on the weather side was acting as insulation.

  “And we should not be squeamish,” Carlin continued. “We must keep our strength up. We will eat before we rest.”

  Of the other Doralans only Pansir understood Standard English. She expostulated in that language, “What do you say, Lady Carlin? What is it you mean? There is no food in the car.”

  “There is outside,” Carlin said.

  And there is precedent, thought Falsen, ample precedent. But usually survivors of a wreck waited until they were starving before doing the obvious thing.

  “Carlin!” cried the pilot. “Surely you do not intend … ”

  “What else, Pansir?” She squatted down by the radio-women’s tool box, took out from it a short knife, tested the edge of it on her thumb. Carrying it, she went to the sliding door on the lee side of the car. Falsen helped her open it; the panel had been slightly warped by the crash. He looked out after her into the swirling whiteness. After she had
taken no more than three steps he lost sight of her. He wondered how she would find that white corpse among the snow-covered rocks and if, after having found the body and done what she had to do, she would be able to find her way back to the gondola.

  He turned, called to the others, “I’d better go with her.”

  Pansir looked at him with loathing.

  The icy wind eddied about him, seeming to assault him from all directions at once as backdrafts were engendered by the large boulders and by the control car. Yet this was advantageous; his abnormally keen sense of smell was able to pick up both Carlin’s distinctive scent and the odor of dead flesh.

  When he found her she was stooped over the body of the ecologist, was working busily with her knife at the right hip joint. There was very little blood.

  She turned, looked around and up. She did not seem pleased to see him.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “I thought that you might need help.”

  “I don’t.” Then, grudgingly, “Since you are here you might as well lend a hand. Get hold of her leg just above the knee and twist … .”

  Falsen did as he was told. The skin of the corpse was cold and wet and he had to take a very firm grip to prevent his hands from slipping. He assumed — rightly, as it happened — that Doralan skeletal structure was similar to that of Terran humans, that at the hip there would be a ball-and-socket joint. He twisted, first one way and then the other. It seemed to him that Dimilin was resisting this brutal violation of her body. But that could not possibly be. She was dead, very dead, drained of all vital fluids.

  He looked down at Carlin, who was hacking away with the inadequate little knife, sawing through gristle and tendon. The exposed flesh was almost as pale as the peeled-back skin, as the white-gleaming bone. In the swirling gray pallor of the snowstorm the only touch of color was Carlin’s scarlet cloak, although its brightness was fast becoming dimmed by the adherence of the huge wet flakes.

  He wrenched viciously, felt something tear. He twisted the other way and tugged. Something gave. He went over backward, still clutching the severed limb in both hands. There was enough snow on the rocks behind him to cushion his fall.

  Carlin was Standing over him. She stooped, extending a hand. He thought that she was about to help him to his feet but he was wrong. She snatched the severed limb from his relaxed grip. She turned, the grisly trophy clutched to her, vanished into a snow flurry. Falsen scrambled erect, set off after her. He could not see for more than a foot ahead of him. He felt the beginnings of panic. He might well miss the control car and wander into the storm. He deliberately let his mind go blank, allowed instinct to take over.

  He was almost surprised when he stumbled into the metal side of the car. He felt his way along it until he found the sliding door. When he had it open only a crack, the smell of roasting meat assailed his nostrils. Carlin had set the naked, severed limb on the deck, had set her laser pistol to low intensity and was playing the wide beam over the … meat. Linda was watching, the pointed tip of her pink tongue playing over her lips. Pansir was making a major production of not watching. The radiowomen were trying not to watch but could not refrain from ever more frequent and lengthy glances.

  Carlin switched off her laser. The meat was little more than warmed through.

  She said, “All right. We have food. Who wants some?”

  “I do,” said Linda.

  “Then, help yourself. Here’s the knife.”

  Linda took the blade, carved a thick strip from the thigh. Pansir was watching, her face contorted with horror. Dorral and Lur looked on in shocked silence. Linda handed the knife back to Carlin and with her other hand brought the meat to her mouth. She chewed hungrily.

  “Falsen?” asked Carlin.

  “I may as well,” he said. “Thank you for letting us have first go. Or is this just an attempt to blacken us in the eyes of your fellow Doralans?”

  “Are you hungry or aren’t you?” she demanded.

  “I am,” he admitted.

  He accepted the knife, hacked off a large portion of the almost bloodless flesh. It was too dry, he thought. That leech had taken the best of it. While he was eating he watched Carlin, who was slicing the calf muscle away from the bone. She offered this portion first to the pilot, who screamed and averted her face. She held it out to the radiowomen. He could not understand what they were saying, but he could guess. Their expressions were not hard to read.

  “When they are really hungry,” said Carlin, “they will eat.” She bit into the flesh that she was holding, continued talking through a full mouth. “But why wait until you are weakened by starvation before doing the logical thing?”

  You cold-blooded bitch! thought Falsen. It was one thing for Linda and himself to make a meal from the dead body of the ecologist. In their case it was not really cannibalism. But Carlin should not have been putting on such a show of gustatory enjoyment. Perhaps it was intended to persuade her fellow Doralans what she was doing was neither wrong — which, of course, it was not — nor revolting.

  Linda had another portion of almost-raw ecologist. Falsen had his second helping, as did Carlin. By this time it was almost dark in the wrecked control car. Pansir suggested that Carlin use her laser pistol as a torch. Carlin said that the charge must be conserved in case the device should be required as a weapon.

  Falsen and Linda huddled together for warmth. Pansir, Dorral and Lur huddled together, whimpering softly. Falsen realised that, in spite of the circumstances, he would sleep well. (After all, he had a full belly.) In his arms Linda was already snoring softly. But surely there was rather too much of her, too many legs, too many arms … .

  Carlin had joined them, was bedding down with them.

  Presumably, her shipmates would have none of her.

  CHAPTER 19

  Falsen was awakened by the light streaming through the control-car windows. They were clear of their coating of caked snow and ice, afforded a view of a rocky landscape with only a few fast-diminishing patches of white in crevices and hollows. The sky was almost clear, the overcast high and thin.

  He disentangled himself from Carlin and Linda, who protested sleepily. The three other Doralans, he saw, were already awake, were staring at him with hostility. They must have spent a miserable night, tormented by hunger. But had they? Surely there had been much more meat on Dimilin’s leg when he had retired.

  And so what?

  He went to the sliding door, pulled it open. The air outside was quite mild. He found a pool of melted snow among the rocks, drank from cupped hands. In a hollow out of sight from the wrecked cab he relieved himself. He was hungry then, went in search of the dead ecologist’s remains. He found the body — what was left of it. It looked to be no more than a bag of loose skin over dry bones. He stirred it with his foot. Something moved. He stamped, in sudden revulsion. From the hole in the skin where the leg had been removed emerged something long and gray, many-legged, that vanished into a crevice between two boulders.

  That was breakfast, that was, he thought.

  “We should have kept her in the car,” said Carlin.

  “We didn’t,” he said, turning to look at her.

  “We didn’t,” she agreed. “And so we’re hungry. Linda and I had what was left of Dimilin’s leg. It wasn’t much. The others had been at it during the night. They denied it, of course, but … ”

  “But you and Linda had something,” he complained. His belly complained too.

  “More gristle than meat,” she said.

  “But something … .”

  “You’re the mighty hunter, aren’t you? There are animals of some kind around here. Go and catch something.”

  I’d like to catch you, he thought. That’s a pleasure yet to come. But not here, not now. Not until we’re out of this mess.

  He stood there, turning slowly until he was facing the wind, the light, steady breeze that was blowing from the south. He could smell the usual scents — brackish water, rotting veget
ation. And, faintly, faintly, something more. A metallic tang and meat not too long dead, still perfectly edible.

  “Are you coming with me?” he asked. “You’ve a pistol. We might need it.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “And Linda … ”

  “I left her in charge, in the car. Pansir’s quite useless, and the other two are only erks. I told her to make sure that none of them wandered off and got lost.”

  “All right, then. Let’s get going.”

  He led the way, downhill, following his nose. The going was not too hard, the moss-covered ground smooth enough, although slippery between the boulders. The previous day’s snowfall was now almost vanished; around the surviving drifts a funguslike growth, fleshy yellow balls atop slender stems, was sprouting. Already the spheres were swelling, almost visibly, and some of them, disturbed by the eddies generated by their passage, burst, emitting gray clouds of airborne spores.

  They came to the bottom of the valley, waded across a shallow, icy-cold stream. Falsen had lost the scent but thought that if he carried on in a straight line, up to the crest of the ridge, he would find it again. It was heavy going uphill, and the diffused light of the planet’s primary was surprisingly warm. His shirt was damp with perspiration, but he did not pause for a rest, telling himself that he would do so when he got to the crest. Behind him he heard Carlin’s animallike panting.

  He arrived at the top of the ridge.

  There was no need for him to rely any longer upon his sense of smell. Downhill, no more than three kilometers distant, was the wreck of the airship — a tangle of frames and longerons poking up through torn silvery fabric. It did not look like anything that had ever flown; it could have been a huge circus tent demolished by a tornado.

  “Come on,” he said, starting down the boulder-strewn slope.

  They made good time without any pauses for rest. Carlin, Falsen had to admit grudgingly, was as surefooted as he was — more so, perhaps. He could see how it was that she, although an engineer, had been placed in charge of the spaceship’s exploration parties. She could adapt, could revert to the primitive without mental or physical strain.