by E. C. Tubb
‘Helena!’ He saw her turn towards the communication post and said quickly, ‘Just a routine check. There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘At times, John, you are a master of understatement.’
‘Not this time—that I promise.’
A lie, and he wondered why he had said it, wondered, too, why he had felt it necessary to talk to her. It would have been enough simply to scan, but he had a reluctance to spy, to watch without her knowing she was under observation. An invasion of privacy, and yet in the confines of the base it was almost impossible to avoid it. And, when the common security was threatened, there could be no time for minor considerations.
Another button and he looked into the newly opened cavern. Bergman, he knew, had arranged a small party to celebrate the occasion; a matter of small cakes and weak wine, the spirit more important than the actual food and drinks. He stood now in the centre of the throng, a glass in one hand, a cake in the other, his face flushed with pleasure.
An old face, seamed, the hair receding from the domed skull, the ears tight against the bone. His eyebrows were bushy and the figure beneath his uniform was not as it had been. Taut muscle had yielded to soft contours and the firm skin had become crepey; yet, though his body had weakened, there was nothing wrong with his mind. Professor Victor Bergman was a genius who had chosen to live, study and work on the Moon. An honoured guest who had become involved with all the rest; one who had proved his worth a hundred times in the new and frightening circumstances in which they had found themselves.
One with a mechanical heart.
At times he joked about it, resting his hand on his chest where surgeons had implanted the tiny electrical pump that had replaced the natural organ. A miracle of science that had enabled him to live when earlier men would have died. A side effect had been the detachment it had given him, a mind ensured of a regular supply of oxygenated blood, one unaffected by the emotional disturbances of the natural organ. Some hinted that it was a disadvantage, that he lacked human warmth and understanding, his appraisals of any situation too coldly precise and devoid of any trace of human compassion. Koenig didn’t hold that opinion and had little patience with any who did. To him Victor Bergman had a greater depth of humanitarian understanding than most. A dedicated scientist who had earned every prize and award he’d been given and one worthy of the highest respect.
Now he was enjoying himself beneath the sun he had created, at home in the tiny paradise he had planned and helped to build.
‘Eagle One approaching target area, Commander,’ said Morrow from his console. ‘Shall I put it on the main screen?’
‘Yes.’ Koenig knew the value of participation and every man and woman in Main Mission would be curious. ‘Alan?’
Carter was on the screen. His face, behind the open face-plate of his helmet, was bewildered. He said, ‘I’m within visual range, Commander, but you’re not going to believe this.’
‘Why not?’
‘I . . . well, see for yourself.’
His image vanished; another took its place. The vista of space, distant stars, the luminosity of the void, shimmering patches of remote galaxies, the whole awe-inspiring immensity of the universe.
A backdrop to what lay in the foreground. A something which was . . . incredible.
CHAPTER TWO
It was relatively small, the body slightly larger than a pair of Eagles, a thing of intricate facets and oddly set planes, dappled with abstract markings that seemed to shift and turn even as they watched, to adopt new and more disturbing configurations. A mass of rock, perhaps, one that had suffered a series of impacts that had formed and shaped the surface as wind and rain could fashion stone into oddly familiar likenesses. Glass, fused and cooled and rendered opaque with conflicting stresses, patches shearing, planes yielding, normal lines of cleavage distorted by alien forces. A sculptor’s dream—a nightmare.
A mystery.
Koenig studied it, feeling his eyes slip from point to point as if they were fingers trying to hold and examine droplets of mercury. And, if the body was hard enough to accept, the mantle surrounding it was worse.
Not a mantle—more like wings. Not wings as are found on a bird, but sails. Yet not exactly like sails, but as tremendous filigrees of delicate lace. Yet not really like lace, but more like a—
‘A web,’ said Bergman slowly. He had come to Main Mission In response to Koenig’s summons. ‘Not a normal web, but those used by small spiders that use the wind to move them from place to place. They spin clouds of gossamer and use them like sails.’
‘Sails? In space?’
‘Light has pressure, John,’ reminded Bergman. ‘It can be used as a wind.’
‘But not by that thing.’ Koenig was positive. ‘The area is too small and the mass too large. Light pressure alone would never move it. Right, David?’
Kano was busy at his station. ‘Correct, Commander. Computer says that it would be physically impossible for that object to be moved by the normal pressure of light.’ Pausing he added, ‘We have more accurate information on the course. The object will make impact within two miles of Alpha,’
‘No doubt?’
‘None. Two miles is maximum.’
And far too close. Again Koenig examined the odd thing they had found. The image, relayed from the attendant Eagle, moved as Carter made a circuit of the object. The body remained an enigma, the delicate-looking lace-like fabrication surrounding it, the same.
‘How long to impact?’
‘Twenty-one minutes, five seconds, Commander. We should be in direct visual contact within three minutes.’
‘Sandra?’
‘Still no response to our transmissions, Commander. Negative on detected radiation emission. Negative on thermal differential. It’s as dead as before.’
Dead, maybe, but even so, a menace. A missile aimed at the heart of the Moonbase and which would bring total destruction with it. If it hit, they—all of them—would be dead. A decision to be made and Koenig knew what it had to be.
He said, ‘Paul, order three more Eagles to lift and take up position in a line from us to that object. One halfway out from the present positions, the others one third. All to be armed with a full compliment of nuclear missiles. Also alert the ground defences to stand by their launchers. Red Alert!’
Bergman said quietly, ‘John, you can’t destroy it.’
‘Why not? Because it has an intriguing appearance?’ Koenig echoed his impatience. ‘You know I’ve no choice, Victor. There’s nothing else to do. Either we get rid of that thing, or it will get rid of us. You will pardon me for wanting to survive.’
‘But—’
‘Alan! Prime your armament.’
Incredulous, the pilot said, ‘You want me to blast it, Commander?’
‘You’ve an alternative?’
‘No, but—’ Carter broke off, then said, his voice resigned, ‘You’re the boss, Commander, but that thing looks so unusual, so strange. I can’t believe that it’s natural.’
‘And if it isn’t, John, just think of what we could find inside.’ Bergman spoke with a quick intensity. ‘It could be a ship, one with a dead crew or one sent out on automatic control. Something could have gone wrong. It must be drifting, powerless, harmless aside from its course. It could teach us things we’ve never even imagined. A chance, John! How can we refuse to take it?’
From the computer Kano said, ‘Eighteen minutes to impact, Commander.’
‘There’s your answer, Victor,’ said Koenig acidly. ‘That thing is heading straight into our laps. It may not want to, but it is about to kill us. I’m sorry, but we’ve no time for either discussion or investigation. Alan!’
‘Commander?’
‘Adopt a position for offensive action. Nuclear missiles. I want that thing volatised. Aim—’
‘Wait!’ Bergman gestured with the slide rule he had taken from a desk. ‘Give me a couple of minutes, John. Please.’
‘Sandra?’
‘All read
ings still negative, Commander. The object is now on visual scan.’ She nodded towards a screen where the mysterious thing could be seen by direct magnification. The view relayed from Carter’s Eagle was better.
Bergman said, ‘Give me some figures—the mass, velocity, total external area. Quickly, please!’ He pursed his lips as he made notations, his fingers deft as he manipulated the rule.
As he worked Koenig said, ‘Paul, order Alan to fire a low-powered burst from his laser. Have him aim towards one end of that object. If there’s life inside they might respond.’ He added, ‘And tell him to be careful.’
He blinked as light flared from the screens, one bright with a view as seen from the Eagle, the other a wink of brilliance almost lost against the stars.
‘Eagles Two to Four heading for their positions, Commander,’ reported Morrow.
Koenig nodded. ‘Any signs of life, Sandra?’
‘All readings negative.’
From the screen Carter said, ‘Shall I try again, Commander? A heavy burst this time?’
‘No. Adopt position for missile attack. David?’
‘Twelve minutes,’ said Kano.
‘Necessary force to volatise?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Bergman. He smiled as he dropped the slide rule on the desk and waved the paper on which he had made his computations. ‘We don’t have to destroy the object at all, John. Right?’
Koenig frowned. ‘What else can we do?’
‘Divert it.’ Bergman glanced at the screens. ‘We can fire a missile so that the force of its discharge will throw that object off course far enough for it to miss the area of the Moonbase by a safe margin. Will you give me permission to try?’ Then, as Koenig hesitated, he urged, ‘Think of what we could find, John. The Moonbase will be safe, and we have nothing to lose but everything to gain.’
Koenig was not a barbarian. He took no pleasure in destroying for the sake of destruction, and his curiosity had been aroused by the fantastic appearance of the object. If it was a lifeless lump of debris, diverting it would save nuclear missiles. If it was an artifact, as Bergman seemed convinced it was, then, as he said, the gain could be tremendous. A gamble worth taking, yet even so, he hesitated, conscious of a nagging doubt. An elementary caution stemming from the beginnings of his race when primitive man felt that safety lay only in the destruction of the unknown. A thing he recognized for being the heritage of the past, an emotion founded on fear rather than intellect.
‘John?’ Bergman was impatient, and with reason. If the thing was to be tried, it had to be done soon. They had no time to waste.
‘Go ahead,’ said Koenig, but qualified his agreement. ‘One chance only, Victor; we haven’t time for more. Unless Alan can divert the object, the other Eagles will attempt to volatise and, if they fail, the ground defences will take over. You’ve got two minutes—make the most of them.’
Alan Carter touched the controls and saw the target move on the screen, the fantastic shape steadying on the cross-hairs of the sight. Beside him his co-pilot checked the setting of the missile in the launching tube.
‘Primed and ready to go, Alan,’ he reported. ‘Proximity fuse set for twenty—that’s damned close.’
It had to be close. In the void, explosions were limited; without a medium to carry the shock wave, their force was quickly dispersed and their destructive capabilities constrained. The missile in the launching tube had a relatively minor charge as such things went. A direct hit would turn half the target into incandescent vapour and molten ruin—a near miss would, so Bergman had calculated, send a blast of ravening energy against the body and its surrounding, a thrust that would shift the bulk from its line of flight. The difference between success and failure was small. Detonated too far from the target, the blast would be insufficiently powerful to achieve the desired result; too close, and it would destroy what he was trying to save.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ said Kano from the speaker. ‘Computer is tracking.’
Chad Bailey tensed in the co-pilot’s seat. He was young, intense, excited by the adventure even as he was regretful at what had to be done. Rather than fire the missile, he would have preferred to make physical contact with the object, to touch it with his gloved hands and to search for an entry if one existed.
‘Alan—’
‘Stand by to fire.’ Carter dropped a hand to the control. ‘Mark?’
‘Five,’ said Chad obediently as he watched the hand of a chronometer. ‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . fire!’
The Eagle jerked a trifle as the missile spat from its tube, a metal dart tipped with destruction and riding a column of flame. Alan Carter knew his job and had aimed well. He blinked as a gush of blue-white flame filled the screens, a searing release of raw energy born in the heart of exploding atoms. It expanded like a flower to send a hail of photons and atomic particles against the target.
‘God, Alan! Look at that!’
Bailey leaned forward as he stared at the screen. Around the enigmatic body of the strange object the delicate lace-like surrounding was blazing with trapped and reflected radiance. A mesh that had caught the blast of energy, had responded to it as a web would trap and reflect flame, dying in beauty even as it burned.
‘It’s beautiful,’ whispered Chad. ‘Beautiful!’
Carter said nothing, but his hands were shaking a little as he maintained control of the Eagle. The blast, though tremendously diminished, had caught and affected the ship.
‘Alan?’ Bergman spoke from the screen. ‘We saw the flash. Is everything as I hoped?’
‘I think so, Professor. The target is undamaged as far as I can tell. That is, aside from some fusing of the surrounding structure.’ Carter expanded the magnification of his viewing screen. ‘About two-thirds gone, I’d say. Complete volatisation.’
‘The body itself?’
‘Intact and apparently unharmed.’ Carter added, ‘Professor, there’s something else we could try. Now that the surrounding has been burned away, we could try a direct push with the Eagle.’
‘No, Alan, it wouldn’t work.’ Bergman was coldly precise. ‘I’d thought of that, but the mass is too great for you to affect it in any gainful manner. It would be like an ant trying to move a brick. A crude comparison, I admit, but a valid one. That object is far more dense and massive than it seems.’
Material adamantine enough to resist the blast of an atomic missile, strong enough to have survived the vicissitudes of space. How long had it been travelling? What suns had it known, what worlds had it passed? From where had it come and, unless they had found it, where would it have ended?
Questions he knew could have no relevant answers. The thing was here, it had threatened Alpha and, for all he knew, was still threatening it.
Chad Bailey had the same thought.
‘Was it enough, Alan? Should we have used another missile?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would it do any good if we had?’ Bailey was pensive. ‘Could we destroy that thing even if we wanted to? Alan—’
‘I don’t know,’ said Carter again and added grimly, ‘All we can do now is to wait.’
Once years ago David Kano had taken the first step on the road that was to lift him from a deprived area to the heights of Moonbase Alpha. For him at that time it had been far from easy, a matter of endless study after work that had numbed his muscles with physical weariness, poring over books while his contemporaries had been gaining what pleasure they could, relaxing at least, laughing and riding with the tide. To them he was a freak, a bookworm with stars in his eyes.
Only Frank Baker had recognised his idealism.
‘You’ve got ambition,’ he’d said. ‘But that isn’t enough, David. With it you’ve got to have guts. You’ll climb, but never think it’s going to be easy. At times you’ll get tired and want to quit. There’ll be temptations and doubts, but remember always that what’s worth having has to be worked for. You need dedication and application and, above all, patience.’
>
Old Frank Baker, dead now, planted in some ancient ground or burned for his ashes to mingle with the soil he had loved. A gardener at Savannah High. A man who could barely read, but who’d held more wisdom in the tip of a finger than many libraries.
‘Patience,’ he’d said. ‘You have to learn to wait.’
But waiting had never been easy. Not then when he’d sat in a darkened room waiting for the results of his first examination. Nor later when he’d made application to join the personnel of Moonbase Alpha. Not now when he waited for Computer to deliver the answer of whether they were to live or die.
An exaggeration, perhaps. The commander, he knew, had taken precautions, but the thing was alien and it was barely possible that not even the fury of atomic power could volatise it into a harmless, diffusing vapour. Even though fused, shapeless, and an amorphous mass scintillant with radioactive energy, it could still follow the path fate had dictated, to land as previously predicted and kill everyone on the Moon.
Mass, he thought, bleakly. No matter what shape it takes, energy is still mass. A moving body held kinetic energy, which gave it the potential danger of a bomb. He could ask Computer to give him the figures, but what good would they do? It was better, if they were doomed, not to know of the coming end.
‘Kano!’
He blinked and became suddenly aware of the tension reigning in Main Mission, the attention directed towards himself. He had been dreaming, remembering, then he realised that the time that had seemed so long hadn’t been that at all. There was no read-out as yet from the computer. It was merely that Koenig was impatient.
‘Kano,’ he said again. ‘Anything yet?’
‘Give it time, John,’ said Bergman mildly. ‘The new course has to be plotted.’
‘If there is a new course.’
‘There will be if my calculations were correct.’
Bergman was still mild. ‘Try to relax, John. Mathematics is an exact science.’
And one of which he was a master, but always there was the possibility of error, and they were dealing with the unknown. Koenig turned and paced the floor, turning again as he reached the wall to head back towards the main console. A mistake; his movements were causing a distraction and adding to the general tension. He forced himself to halt and appear at ease.
