by E. C. Tubb
‘The trouble with you,’ said Carter, ‘is that you’re a pessimist. Look on the bright side. We are alive, we have air, we have our brains and we have help coming from outside. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘So why am I worried?’
‘I told you, it’s because you’re a pessimist. An optimist now, well, he would say that we’ve a nice, snug place to sit in, interesting things to see, a little problem to solve and so exercise our brains, and a story to tell our grandchildren.’
‘Skipper, you’re a fool,’ said Dale, but his tone was lighter than it had been. The graveyard humour had worked for this time at least, but Carter knew that it wouldn’t continue to dispel the inevitable fear and depression the future would bring. The panic too, perhaps the one thing above all they had to guard against.
He said, ‘Dale, I’ve been thinking. These people must have come in here for safety. The door was sealed—so why isn’t there any air?’
For a moment the co-pilot remained silent, then he granted. ‘No air? Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Think of it now,’ urged Carter. It would be better if Dale could provide the answers. ‘No air—why?’
‘It could have leaked. This place is old and over the years it could have seeped away.’
‘Possible,’ admitted Carter, ‘but this chamber is lined with the same olive metal as the shaft and tunnels. As far as we can see it’s intact. And look at the dust, if there had been a trace of air when we opened the door it would have blown towards us. It didn’t.’
‘So this place was a vacuum when we found it.’ Dale was thoughtful. ‘A fissure maybe? A crack leading outside?’
‘That or another door—an open door.’
‘A way out!’ Dale sucked in his breath. ‘Skipper, you’re a genius. Now tell me where it’s to be found.’
‘Up,’ said Carter. ‘Somewhere up high. It has to be.’
In the mirror the face was smooth, the skin clear, marked only by the thin lines of character, the mould of muscle and bone. How long would it be before age marred the contours, sagged the flesh, turned the present features into a raddled mask?
Thinking of it, Helena Russell lifted a hand and touched the mane of golden hair, soon to turn white, to grow brittle, to hang in stringy tufts from the dome of her scalp. To grow old was nothing given the time to do it. But if she, suddenly, became a thing of senility and decay . . .
The hum of her commlock broke the train of thought and she lifted the instrument from her belt, glad of the interruption, the electronic contact with others of her kind.
Koenig looked at her from the screen. He was worried.
‘Helena, some trouble. Alan and his co-pilot are missing. At least they are out of contact.’
‘Missing?’ She remembered the mission he had led. ‘On the planetoid?’
‘He found a shaft of some kind and investigated it. Radio contact was lost. Kendal waited and then landed to search. He found a maze of tunnels.’
‘And Alan?’
‘No sign of either he or Dale. They might be in need of emergency medical assistance. If you would ask Bob—’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘There’s no need for that. I’ll meet you on the launching pad in five minutes.’
‘Helena—’
‘Don’t waste time arguing, John. Five minutes.’
Bergman was seated in the passenger module when she arrived. He saw her expression and guessed what was in her mind.
‘No one can live forever, Helena.’
‘But this is stupid, Victor. You aren’t needed. You should be staying in the lowest depths of Alpha.’
‘Where I’d be safe?’ He smiled as she made no answer. ‘And what about you?’
‘I’m a doctor. It’s my job.’
‘It could be mine. Kendal reported a strange olive-coloured, metallic-seeming coating lining the shaft and tunnels. It appears to have been placed by an intelligent race. I want to see it, to examine it and learn what I can. As we can’t bring the planetoid to me, then I must go to the planetoid.’ He grunted as the Eagle lifted, Koenig at the controls. ‘And don’t worry about my health. I think that the aging process is a direct result of the beam impinging on the Moon from the Omphalos. We’ll be away from it within seconds.’
A comfort—why had she been so terrified of sudden age? An instinctive rejection of the lost opportunities? Anger at the years lost and never lived? Vanity?
She thought of Koenig and tried to imagine his face seamed and lined and creped as Ellman’s had been. His shoulders stooped, his limbs wasted, his bones grown brittle, his sharp intellect reduced to senseless wanderings.
It would come. Given time it would come—why did life have to be so short?
Bergman shrugged as she put the question. ‘Helena, for some men eternity isn’t long enough, and for others a decade is too long. Who can tell? Personally I hope to live long enough to see we Alphans settled on a new world. Once that has been accomplished, well, we all have to go, and for me that will be as good a time as any.’
To find a new Earth—the hope and dream of them all. To find a world on which they could settle and build and be safe from the perils which menaced them in space. But perhaps they had already left it too late. The doom they had escaped in the past now waited for them here in this alien space. A death from which there seemed to be no escape.
Depressed, she leaned back as the Eagle hurtled through space. From the pilot’s seat Koenig said, ‘Better check your equipment, Helena. Minutes could count.’
His voice was flat, emotionless, but she could guess his concern.
‘It’s been done, John. When do we land?’
‘Soon.’ The throb of the engines at full power underlined his terseness. ‘Kendal will be waiting.’
He stood, suited, his co-pilot beside him on the smooth expanse of the planetoid. Carter’s Eagle was to his rear, the open hold of the shaft at his feet. He gestured towards it as Koenig and the others came towards him.
‘This is it, Commander. I’ve scanned the area and found no other opening. If they came out at all it had to be from here.’
‘And they didn’t?’
‘No.’ Kendal was positive. ‘I’ve been operating continuous scan.’
‘And?’
‘I warned Thomson and went after them. As I reported, there’s a maze down there. The tunnels are lined with metal of some kind which seems to act as a radio-barrier.’ The man realised he was repeating himself, wasting time relaying information which they already knew. ‘Your orders?’
‘We go down. Signal Thomson to hover low and maintain general watch.’ Koenig forced himself to contain his impatience. ‘Then follow us down. But waste no time.’
Hurry before the store of air was exhausted and the need for rescue had passed. Before the men died from lack of oxygen and the base had lost two good workers. Before he lost an old and valued friend.
Bergman grunted as he landed at the foot of the shaft. Metal glinted in his hand as he scratched at the olive surface.
‘This colouring is like a patina, John. Similar to that found on bronze. Beneath the metal is incredibly hard and dense. It would be interesting to discover how it was worked.’
‘Later.’ Koenig was following Kendal’s co-pilot along the passage. ‘Helena, stay close.’
She came after him, her medical bag slung over her shoulder, Koenig carrying the more bulky equipment, the sac which could be sealed around the doctor and her patient inflated, to permit her to remove a suit and give emergency treatment if necessary.
‘We left a trail,’ explained Shaw, the co-pilot. ‘See?’ He pointed to a thin line of white powder which lay on the floor. ‘And we left other marks on the walls ahead. If you want to keep in touch you’d better make wire-connections now.’
A few moments and it was done, Koenig thinning his lips at the essential delay.
‘Did you find anything other than passages? Traps, alcoves, chambers?’
‘No, Commander.’
‘Any upward-leading shafts?’
‘No.’ Shaw grunted as he bumped into a wall. ‘Nothing.’
An answer which made no sense. Men couldn’t simply vanish without cause. The corridors seemed solid, the floor, the roof. The tunnels, branching and forking, formed an intricate maze, but with the white powder tracing their path and marks on the walls, they were covering every foot.
Koenig halted as he saw whiteness in the beam of his light.
‘We’ve covered this part.’
‘There’s another passage to the right,’ said Bergman. He headed towards it, the connecting wire growing taut, slackening as he halted. ‘We’ve covered that too. John, there has to be something we haven’t spotted as yet. A room in which they are trapped, maybe. A chute down which they have fallen. They could be inches from us. On the other side of a wall.’
But without a means of communication they would never know.
And both air and time were running out.
Dale sagged, the sound of his breathing harsh, ragged, a wheeze in his throat and lungs. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Damn it, Skipper, no. There isn’t a door. There isn’t even a hole large enough to pass a cat. You were wrong.’
Wrong, thought Carter bleakly, but not wholly so. He looked at the thin crack in the circle of light thrown by his helmet, the only flaw in the walls and roof they had found. A small thing, barely noticeable, one they would not have discovered at all, if it hadn’t been for the five bodies lying beneath it, the clutter of interwound rods.
A ladder the dead had tried to use in a final attempt to seal the crack.
One which had bled the air from the chamber in a slow but relentless harbinger of death.
His boot hit a heap of dust as he turned and led the way back towards the door. Grit flew and something hard rolled to settle a few feet ahead. Stooping he picked it up and rolled it in his gloved hand. A stone, elaborately carved, set in a curved band of metal. A bracelet or an arm band. An item of jewellery once prized and now less than rubbish.
Carter slipped it over his forearm, the metal hitting the power-pack on his belt as he lowered his hand, a sharp click sounding in his helmet.
Dale said, ‘What was that. Skipper?’
‘What?’
‘A click. I heard it through my phones.’
‘You did?’ Carter frowned, trying to think and finding it difficult. The air, he knew, was too vitiated, too rich in waste and too low in oxygen. The result of deliberately adjusting the valves. Extra life had been gained at the expense of mental alertness.
‘A click.’ Dale was insistent. To him in his low condition it had become a very important problem to be painstakingly solved. ‘In my phones. In my phones, Skipper.’
Carter looked down at his belt. The power pack fitted snugly, the batteries at almost full charge. He hit it again with the metal band and then, with sudden clarity, was jerking at the catches.
‘Skipper?’ Dale caught at his arm. ‘You crazy or something?’
‘No.’
‘Then—’
‘They’re out there looking for us, right? The Commander,’ he yelled as Dale made no answer. ‘Kendal and the others. They can’t be far but they can’t hear us. We’ve no radio.’
‘So?’
‘We’ll make noise. They must be using phones if they’re in the tunnels. Now listen.’ He touched the band to the battery terminals, creating an arc, a minute flare which caused a crackle in his earphones. ‘Old-fashioned radio,’ he said. ‘A spark gap. They can’t pick it up on UHF but it might trigger their phones. All we need is to create noise.’ He manipulated the band, concentrating on his fingers the sounds which buzzed from his phones. Three shorts, three longs, three shorts. S.O.S. The old call for help in a code developed long before he’d been born. ‘Get it, Dale?’
‘I get it.’ The man slumped against the door. His voice was tired, slurred. ‘Morse Code. Can I help, Skipper? Can I—’
‘You can sit, save your breath and hang on. And,’ Carter added grimly, ‘you can pray someone hears us.’
A prayer that was answered.
Koenig frowned as his phones buzzed, the sound repeated to form a pattern.
‘John!’ Helena turned to face him. ‘What—?’
‘Silence!’ He held up one hand. ‘All of you, be quiet and listen.’ He held his breath as the buzzing continued. ‘It’s code.’
‘A call for help, John.’ Bergman threw his light against the walls around them. ‘From the missing men, obviously, but where are they?’
‘A door,’ snapped Koenig. ‘Look for a door.’
Helena found it, spotting the thin lines depicting the octagonal opening, catching the outline in a shift of the light. Koenig dropped to his knees and lowered his helmet to the floor. Staring over the surface, he saw little scuffs in the fine tracery of dust.
‘This is it. Victor, how can we get it open?’
Bergman said dubiously, ‘I’m not sure, John. We’ll need lasers and drills at least. If we try to blow it open we could kill the others. If we could only talk to them perhaps they could tell us how they got inside.’
Shaw had brought a heavy crowbar with him. Koenig took it, lifted it, sent it smashing hard against the door. Three times he repeated the blows, then paused. The impact would be unheard unless one or the other was in direct contact with the metal, but the chance was worth taking. After a moment he repeated the blows, paused, slammed at the metal again.
Inside the chamber Dale stirred and said, ‘Skipper, my head. I keep getting sounds in my head.’
‘Clicks?’
‘No.’ Clumsily Dale moved, his suited figure rolling away from the door against which he had been leaning. ‘Thuds like a hammer was at work. A hammer,’ he muttered and then suddenly retched. ‘Air—I’ve gotta have air!’
He was dying. Had he been deep in water he would have inhaled his lungs full of liquid, compelled by the sheer necessity to breathe, a reflex over which he would no longer have control. As it was, in the suit, he could do nothing but gasp and flounder like a landed fish, inhaling stale poison, trying to rid himself of it, in danger of strangling on his own vomit.
Kneeling, Carter spun the valves, flushing out the air cylinder and feeding the last puff of precious oxygen to the helpless man.
It was impossible to do more. His own supply was exhausted; only a difference in metabolism had enabled him to last a little longer. Tiredly he leaned back against the door, the crude signals forgotten as he rested his helmet against the metal.
And heard the repeated thud of blows.
‘Dale! They’re here! They’re outside! Hold on, man! Hold on!’
The band slipped in his fingers, almost fell, lifted as if it weighed a ton to touch the terminals and to flash its spark and electronic noise. Not to call for help—that had arrived—but to relay the most important information of all.
‘Door . . . wheel . . . combolock,’ he muttered as his fingers spelled out the words. ‘Wriggle . . . coil . . . stars. Sequence . . . helix . . . twist . . . stars. Door . . . wheel . . . lock—for God’s sake hurry!’
The thud of blows signalling what? Agreement, understanding, mystification? Had they heard at all? Could they hear? Would the door open if they could?
The band fell and he picked it up, darkness edged his vision, the sour taste of acid in his throat, pain growing in his lungs. He retched, spattering the interior of his helmet with a thin wetness, then retched again, dry heaves which tore at his lungs and sent stars to flame in ruby dartings against the growing darkness.
Dying.
He was dying!
And then suddenly there was peace.
CHAPTER TEN
Helena said sharply, ‘The tanks, quickly!’
Bergman was already at work, kneeling beside one of the sprawled figures, his hands deft as he undid the connection and fitted the new container of air. A twist of the valve and oxygen gusted into the suit, chilling but carrying with it the essence
of life. To one side Helena was doing the same, checking, probing, her fingers searching for signs of life as her eyes checked monitors.
‘Victor?’
‘Nothing.’ He stared through the soiled face-plate and saw the staring eyes, the tongue, the distorted features. ‘This is Dale. He’s dead.’
‘And Alan?’ Koenig stood by the open door, cursing the delay it had caused. A few minutes earlier and both would have been safe. A little faster in solving the crude message—but to regret was useless, time could not be reversed, what had happened was done. ‘Helena?’
‘The sac,’ she snapped. ‘Quickly!’
In such matters she was to be obeyed. Koenig ripped open the emergency pack, wrapped the thin but tough membrane around both Helena and the still figure at her side, threw in her medical bag and a spare tank of air. Sealing the bag, he twisted the valve of the cylinder, pressure rounding the sac as it filled with air.
Inside Helena set to work.
The suit had been flushed but Alan hadn’t responded. He was, she decided, medically dead. His lungs had ceased to work and his heart to beat—unless the flow of blood could be restored to his brain within minutes he would, if he lived at all, be a mental cripple, the lack of oxygen having caused irremediable damage.
Minutes—and he had been dead for how long?
The helmet came free and was thrown to one side. Quickly she wiped the mouth and chin and held the nozzle of the air tank to the flaccid lips. Propping it into position she moved to straddle the supine figure and, stiffening her arms, threw her weight against the torso in the region of the heart. The suit hampered her and made it difficult to hit the right spot, but practice had given her skill and the heels of her hands slammed up beneath the ribs as she massaged the heart.
As he made no response, she paused and took a hypodermic from her bag. It was loaded with a heavy dose of adrenaline and ready to fire its charge into the blood stream. She triggered it, sending the drug into the great veins of the neck and again thrust her hands against the torso.
