Alternate Orbits

by A Bertram Chandler

  Not a very suitable topic of conversation for the breakfast table, thought Grimes, sipping his fruit juice. "So?" asked Sonya interestedly.

  "So there's been a plague running its course in the 'farm.' It's just been the tissue culture vats that have been affected, luckily. We could make do indefinitely on yeasts and algae—but who wants to?" He grinned at Grimes, who was lifting a forkload of yolk-coated ham to his mouth. "Who wants to?"

  "Not me, Captain," admitted Grimes.

  "Or me, Commodore. The beef's dead, and the pork, and the chicken. The quack says that the lamb's not fit for human consumption. So far the mutton seems to be unaffected, but we can't even be sure of that."

  "You'll be able to stock up when we get to Port Forlorn," said Grimes.

  "That's a long way off." Farrell looked steadily at Grimes as he buttered a piece of toast. "I've a job for you, Commodore."

  "A job for me, Commander Farrell?"

  "Yes, you, Commodore Grimes. By virtue of your rank you represent the Rim Worlds Confederacy aboard this vessel. Kinsolving's Planet, although no longer colonized, is one of the Rim Worlds. I want to put down there."

  "Why?" asked Grimes.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Commodore, but I understand that the original settlers introduced Earth-type flora and fauna, some of which have not only survived, but flourished. It's not the flora that I'm interested in, of course—but I've heard that there are the descendants of the original rabbits, pigs, cattle and hens running wild there."

  "No cattle," Grimes told him. "And no hens. Probably the pigs did for 'em before they could become established."

  "Rabbit's a good substitute for chicken," said Farrell.

  "Jimmy," reproved Sonya, "I do believe that you like your tummy."

  "I do, Sonya, I do," said the young man.

  "And so do I," said Lieutenant Commander Malleson, who until now had been eating in dedicated silence.

  "But I don't like Kinsolving," grumbled Grimes. "And, in any case, we shall have to get permission to land."

  "You will get it, John," said Sonya firmly.

  * * *

  Later that ship's morning, Farrell discussed the proposed landing on Kinsolving with Grimes and Sonya.

  "Frankly," he told them, "I'm glad of an excuse to visit the planet. Not so long ago the Survey Service released a report on the three expeditions, starting off with that odd wet paint affair . . ."

  "That was over a hundred and fifty years ago," said Grimes.

  "Yes. I know. And I know, too, that you've been twice to Kinsolving—the first time as an observer with the neo-Calvinists, the second time in command of your own show . . ."

  "And both times," admitted Grimes, "I was scared. Badly."

  "You don't frighten easily, Commodore, as well I know. But what actually did happen? The official reports that have been released to the likes of us don't give much away. It was hinted—no more, just hinted—that the neo-Calvinists tried to call up the God of the Old Testament, and raised the entire Greek pantheon instead. And you, sir, attempted to repeat the experiment, and got tangled with a Mephistopheles straight out of Gounod's Faust."

  "Cutting extraneous cackle," said Grimes, "that's just what did happen."

  "What I'm getting at, Commodore, is this. Were your experiences objective or subjective?"

  "That first time, Commander, the neo-Calvinists' ship, Piety, was destroyed, as well as her pinnaces. Their leaders—the Presbyter, the Rector, the Deaconess and thirteen others, men and women—completely vanished. That was objective enough for anybody. The second time—I vanished."

  "I can vouch for that," stated Sonya.

  "But you came back. Obviously."

  "More by luck than judgment." Grimes laughed, without humor. "When you do a deal with the Devil it's as well to read the small print."

  "But at no time was there any actual physical harm to anybody."

  "There could have been. And we don't know what happened to the neo-Calvinist boss cockies . . ."

  "Probably being converted to hedonism on Mount Olympus," said Sonya.

  "But we don't know."

  Farrell grinned. "And aren't those very words a challenge to any officer in the Survey Service? You used to be one of us yourself, sir, and Sonya is still on our Reserve list. Kinsolving is almost directly on the track from Tallis to Lorn. I have a perfectly valid excuse to make a landing. And even in these decadent days . . ." He grinned again at the Commodore . . . "my Lords Commissioners do not discourage initiative and zeal on the part of their captains."

  Reluctantly, Grimes grinned back. It was becoming evident that Farrell possessed depths of character not apparent on first acquaintance. True, he worked by the book—and had Grimes done so he would have risen to the rank of Admiral in the Survey Service—but he was also capable of reading between the lines. A deviation from his original cruise pattern—the evacuation of the King and his supporters from Esquel—had brought him to within easy reach of Kinsolving; he was making the most of the new circumstances. Fleetingly Grimes wondered if the destruction of the ship's fresh meat supply had been intentional rather than accidental, but dismissed the thought. Not even he, Grimes, had ever done a thing like that.

  "Later," said Farrell, "if it's all right with you, sir, we'll go over the official reports, and you can fill in the gaps. But what is it that makes Kinsolving the way it is?"

  "Your guess is as good as anybody's, Commander. It's just that the atmosphere is . . . odd. Psychologically odd, not chemically or physically. A terrifying queerness. A sense of impending doom . . . Kinsolving was settled at the same time as the other Rim Worlds. Physically speaking, it's a far more desirable piece of real estate than any of them. But the colonists lost heart. Their suicide rate rose to an abnormal level. Their mental institutions were soon overcrowded. And so on. So they pulled out.

  "The reason for it all? There have been many theories. One of the latest is that the Kinsolving system lies at some intersection of . . . of stress lines. Stress lines in what? Don't ask me. But the very fabric of the continuum is thin, ragged, and the dividing lines between then and now, here and there, what is and what might be are virtually nonexistent . . ."

  "Quite a place," commented Farrell. "But you're willing to visit it a third time, sir?"

  "Yes," agreed Grimes after a long pause. "But I'm not prepared to make a third attempt at awakening ancient deities from their well-earned rest. In any case, we lack the . . . I suppose you could call her the medium. She's on Lorn, and even if she were here I doubt if she'd play."

  "Good. I'll adjust trajectory for Kinsolving, and then we'll send Carlottigrams to our respective lords and masters requesting permission to land. I don't think that they'll turn it down."

  "Unfortunately," said Grimes, but the faint smile that lightened his craggy features belied the word.

  * * *

  Slowly, cautiously Farrell eased Star Pioneer down to the sunlit hemisphere of Kinsolving, to a position a little to the west of the morning terminator. Grimes had advised a landing at the site used by the Confederacy's Rim Sword and, later, by his own Faraway Quest. The destruction of the neo-Calvinists' Piety had made the spaceport unusable. This landing place was hard by the deserted city of Enderston, on the shore of the Darkling Tarn. It had been the Sports Stadium.

  Conditions were ideal for the landing. The sounding rockets, fired when the ship was descending through the first tenuous fringes of the atmosphere, had revealed a remarkable absence of turbulence. The parachute flares discharged by them at varying altitudes were falling straight down, each trailing its long, unwavering streamer of white smoke.

  Grimes and Sonya were in the control room. "There's Enderston," the Commodore said, "on the east bank of the Weary River. We can't see much from this altitude; everything's overgrown. That's the Darkling Tarn . . ." With a ruler that he had picked up he pointed to the amoebalike glimmer of water among the dull green that now was showing up clearly on the big approach screen. "You can't miss it.
That fairly well-defined oval of paler green is the Stadium . . ."

  The inertial drive throbbed more loudly as Farrell made minor adjustments and then, when the Stadium was in the exact center of the screen, settled down again to its almost inaudible muttering.

  At Farrell's curt order they all went to their acceleration chairs, strapped themselves in. Grimes, with the others, watched the expanding picture on the screen. It was all so familiar, too familiar, even to the minor brush fire started by the last of the parachute flares. And, as on the previous two occasions, there was the feeling that supernatural forces were mustering to resist the landing of the ship, to destroy her and all aboard her.

  He looked at Farrell. The young Captain's face was pale, strained—and this, after all, was a setting down in almost ideal conditions. There were not, it is true, any ground approach aids. But neither was there wind, or cloud, or clear air turbulence. And Survey Service officers were trained to bring their ships down on worlds with no spaceport facilities.

  So Farrell was feeling it too. The knowledge made Grimes less unhappy. Now you begin to know what it's like, Jimmy boy, he thought smugly.

  But she was down at last.

  There was almost no shock at all, and only an almost inaudible complaint from the ship's structure, and a faint sighing of shock absorbers as the great mass of the vessel settled in the cradle of her tripodal landing gear. She was down. "Secure main engines," ordered Farrell at last. Telegraph bells jangled sharply, and the inertial drive generators muttered to themselves and then were still. She was down, and the silence was intensified by the soft soughing of the ventilation fans.

  Grimes swiveled in his chair, gazed out through the viewport toward the distant mountain peak, the black, truncated cone hard and sharp against the pale blue sky. "Sinai," Presbyter Cannon had named it. "Olympus," Grimes had labeled it on his new charts of the planetary surface. But that name was no longer apt. On its summit the neo-Calvinists had attempted to invoke Jehovah—and Zeus had answered their call. On its summit Grimes had tried to invoke the gods of the Greek pantheon—and had been snatched into an oddly peopled Limbo by Mephistopheles himself.

  This time on Kinsolving the Commodore was going to be cautious. Wild horses—assuming that there were any on this planet, and assuming that they should be possessed by such a strange ambition—would not be able to drag him up to the top of the mountain.

  * * *

  Nonetheless, Grimes did revisit the mountaintop, taken there by the tamed horsepower of Star Pioneer's pinnace rather than by wild horses. Nothing happened. Nothing could happen unless Clarisse, descendant of the long dead artist-magicians, was there to make it happen. There was nothing to see, except the view. All that remained of the two disastrous experiments was a weathered spattering of pigments where the witch girl's easel had stood.

  Everybody visited the famous caves, of course, and stared at and photographed the rock paintings, the startlingly lifelike depiction of beasts and their hunters. And the paint was dry, and the paintings were old, old, even though some faint hint of their original magic still lingered.

  Even so, this was an uneasy world. Men and women never walked alone, were always conscious of something lurking in the greenery, in the ruins. Farrell, reluctant as he was to break the Survey Service's uniform regulations, issued strict orders that everybody ashore on any business whatsoever was to wear a bright, scarlet jacket over his other clothing. This was after two hunting parties had opened fire upon each other; luckily nobody was killed, but four men and three women would be in the sick bay for days with bullet wounds.

  Grimes said to Farrell, "Don't you think it's time that we were lifting ship, Captain?"

  "Not for a while, Commodore. We have to be sure that the new tissue cultures will be successful."

  "That's just an excuse."

  "All right, it's just an excuse."

  "You're waiting for something to happen."

  "Yes. Damn it all, Commodore, this sensation of brooding menace is getting me down; it's getting all of us down. But I want to have something definite to report to my Lords Commissioners . . ."

  "Don't pay too high a price for that fourth ring on your sleeve, James."

  "It's more than promotion that's at stake, sir, although I shall welcome it. It's just that I hate being up against an enemy that I can't see, can't touch. It's just that I want to accomplish something. It's just that I don't want to go slinking off like a dog with his tail between his legs."

  "The original colony did just that."

  "But they . . ." Farrell stopped abruptly.

  "I'll finish it for you, James. But they were only civilians. They weren't wearing the Survey Service badge on their caps, Survey Service braid on their sleeves or shoulders. They weren't disciplined. And how long do you think your ship's discipline is going to stand up to the strain, gold braid and brass buttons notwithstanding?"

  "For long enough."

  Sonya broke in. "This is Jimmy's show, John. He makes the decisions. And I agree with him that we should stay on Kinsolving until we have something to show for our visit."

  "Thank you, Sonya," said Farrell. Then, "You must excuse me. I have things to attend to."

  When the young man had left their cabin, Sonya turned to her husband. "You're getting too old and cautious, John. Or are you sulking because you're not running things?"

  "I don't like this world, my dear. I've reasons not to."

  "You're letting it get you down. You look as though you haven't slept for a week."

  "I haven't. Not to speak of."

  "Why didn't you let me know?"

  "It's so damned silly. It's that bloody nightmare of mine—you know the one. Every time I shut my eyes it recurs."

  "You should have told me."

  "I should have done." He got slowly to his feet. "Probably some good, healthy exercise will make me sleep better. A long walk . . ."

  "I'll come with you."

  She fetched from the wardrobe the scarlet jackets that they had been given. Grimes took from a drawer his deadly little Minetti, put it in one pocket, a spare clip of cartridges in the other. Heavier handguns and miniaturized transceivers they would collect from the duty officer at the airlock.

  Within a few minutes they were walking down the ramp to the path that had been hacked and burned and trodden through the encroaching greenery, the trail that led to the ruined city.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon. The sun was still high in the pale sky, but the breeze, what there was of it, was chilly. And the shadows, surely, were darker here than on any other world that Grimes had ever visited, and seemed to possess a life of their own. But that was only imagination.

  They walked steadily but carefully, watching where they put their feet, avoiding the vines and brambles that seemed deliberately to try to trip them. On either side of the rough track the vegetation was locked in silent, bitter warfare: indigenous trees and shrubs, importations from Earth and other worlds, and parasites upon parasites. In spite of the overly luxuriant growth the overweening impression was of death rather than of life, and the most readily identifiable scent on the chill air was that of decay.

  They came to the outskirts of the city, picking their way over the tilted slabs of concrete, thrust up and aside by root and trunk, that had once been a road. Once the buildings between which it ran had been drably utilitarian; now the madly proliferating and destructive ivy clothed them in somber, Gothic splendor. An abandoned ground car, the glass of its headlights by some freak of circumstances unobscured, glared at them like a crouching, green-furred beast.

  Grimes tried to imagine what this place had been like before its evacuation. Probably it had been very similar to any sizable town on Lorn or Faraway, Ultimo or Thule—architecturally. But there had been one difference, and a very important one. There had been the uncanny atmosphere, that omnipresent premonition of . . . Of . . . ? That fear of the cold and the dark, of the Ultimate Night. Other cities on other worlds had their h
aunted houses; here every house had been haunted.

  He said, "The sooner young Farrell lifts ship off this deserted graveyard, the better."

  "At least it's not raining," Sonya told him, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

  "Thank the odd gods of the galaxy for one small mercy," grumbled Grimes.

  "Talking of odd gods . . ." she said.

  "What about them?"

  "Sally Veerhausen, the Biochemist, told me that there's a very odd church on a side street that runs off the main drag."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. It's to the right, and it's little more than an alley, and you turn into it just before you get to a tall tower with a latticework radio mast still standing on top of it. . ."

  "That it there, to the right?"