by E. C. Tubb
‘I warned him,’ said Mathias. ‘I told him of the danger and begged him to use remote control apparatus but he wouldn’t listen. He just wanted to work and forget.’ He added as if in explanation, ‘He left a wife and two young children back on Earth.’
Koenig said, ‘"Was he on the right track? Can the alien metal give protection?’
‘No.’ Mathias picked up a folder and checked the notations. ‘Do you want the details? Over a grand total of twenty-three tests the figures are—’
‘Never mind the figures, Bob. In your opinion to continue working with the metal for that object is to waste time. Right?’
Mathias nodded. ‘Yes, Commander. If the aliens used it to block the aging process, then their metabolism must have been far different from our own.’
Helena said, ‘Are there any other casualties, Bob?’
‘Two, neither fatal.’ He gestured towards the intensive care unit. ‘Nyat Cheng and Brad Marshall. Both outside workers.’
‘Treatment?’
‘Complete blood-changes, massive injections of hormones, drips of saline and glucose, marrow implants to restore red corpuscle production, anti-calcium treatment and wide-range antibiotics injected at frequent intervals.’ Mathias made a helpless gesture. ‘I don’t think anything we can try will work. If it did we’d have made an advance in geriatrics. The most we can hope for is to stave off the inevitable.’
To give a little more life, a greater extension which needn’t be the benefit it seemed. Had Nyat Cheng also lost a wife and children? Had Brad Marshall? Were they, like Zakym Allivare, the victims of an unconscious urge to commit suicide?
Or were they no more than the victims of carelessness?
‘There is to be no further work on the surface,’ said Koenig. ‘All personnel restricted to base and all non-essential workers to be kept confined to the lower levels. Those working close to the outside to be rotated at frequent intervals.’ He snatched the commlock from his belt. ‘Victor?’
Bergman stared from the tiny screen.
‘What is it, John?’
‘An emergency conference in my office in ten minutes. Bring all available data on the present situation, with special emphasis on the rate of energy flow from targets to main body.’ Koenig pressed a button. ‘Channon?’
‘Here, Commander.’
‘Adjust all atomic piles to the maximum production of plutonium.’
‘All?’ The atomic engineer looked startled. ‘Remember the storage problems, Commander.’
‘All,’ said Koenig. ‘Use automation and take risks with the non-essential equipment if you must, but I want top production.’
As he pressed another button, Helena said, ‘What’s in your mind, John?’
‘Survival.’
‘By producing plutonium?’ She blinked as, ignoring the question, he relayed a stream of orders to other sections of the base. ‘John! What are you doing?’
‘Come to the conference,’ he snapped. ‘And find out.’
It was a meeting dominated by one man, and she realised that, subconsciously, he had made his decision long before, taking his place behind his wide desk. The doors were closed but, beyond, in Main Mission, the instruments were watching their common enemy. The green, brain-like mass of the Omphalos. The enigmatic thing which held them trapped, which was sucking away energy and life, which had to be destroyed.
As Koenig emphasised the point, she realised that she had expected it. Had even accepted it.
Bergman alone was dubious.
‘If, as you say, it has rudimentary awareness, John, then destroying it without regard would be in the nature of an immoral act. Have we the right to use violence? Must life always be gamed at the expense of another’s?’
Koenig said slowly, ‘Victor, we have no choice. Men are dead and dying because of it. The aliens were wiped out. No one knows how many other life-forms and races have been destroyed by that thing. It is killing us and, to save ourselves, we must render it harmless. I am willing to listen to any other feasible alternative. You have one?’
‘Can we communicate with it in some way?’ Channon of Atomics ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘Have we tried?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without success?’
‘I’ve been in touch with it as close as I believe any intelligent creature can be.’ Koenig’s face hardened as he remembered the seeming eternity of loneliness, the numbing pressure of all things associated with death, the deaths he had mentally experienced, the hunger he had sensed, the ferocity. ‘I don’t know if we can call it alive as we use the term. Perhaps it is nothing more than a reactive device, the result of an experiment perhaps, something which lies beyond our knowledge and previous experience. But I do know, and know it with every fibre of my being, that unless we destroy it, it will destroy us. To me the choice is simple. Victor?’
‘As you say, John.’
‘Helena?’
‘I agree.’
Channon said, before he asked, ‘The safety of Alpha comes first, Commander—but can we destroy it? Can we even hurt it?’
‘I think we can.’ Koenig glanced at Bergman. ‘You have the figures, Victor. We know the energy potential available to us. If we use it correctly we have a chance.’ He ended bleakly, ‘It’s the only one we have.’
Alan Carter had been the first to volunteer. Now he sat at the controls of the Eagle on the launching pad, watching the brilliant display in his screens. The defence shield arching over him was a dome of scintillant rainbows, sparkling, coruscating, heart-stoppingly beautiful. It would, he hoped, protect him from becoming prematurely old. Bergman had said that it would, that the balance of energies now achieved would, at least, stave off the fate suffered by Ellman and Allivare. That he would not end on a cot as Cheng and Marshall had done. Now they too were dead and three others had taken their place.
The last, he hoped, and had justification. They had worked on the surface. Since the ban no other cases had been reported.
‘Ready, Alan?’
Paul Morrow talking from the screen. Carter nodded, then said, ‘Ready when you are.’
‘Right. On five. Mark!’ His voice held no expression as he gave the count. ‘Zero. Now!’
The screen died and, as it did, the engines of the Eagle flared to full power, the vessel rising to swing out and away from the danger of the cone, the defence shield glowing again as soon as the area was clear. A system designed to gain maximum protection and one, they all hoped, which would do just that.
On the planetoid, Koenig watched as the Eagle landed. He stood on the smooth, curved surface, some distance from the shaft they had found, the ground all around littered with stacked boxes and equipment. Two other Eagles were grounded to one side and, as Carter’s vessel landed, one of them lifted and headed back toward the Moon.
‘Thomson?’ Koenig spoke into his radio. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, Commander.’
‘Remember to hand over to Riddle when you arrive. You’ve done three flights and that’s enough.’
‘I can manage, Commander.’
‘You’ll do as I order!’ Koenig made no attempt to soften his tone. ‘If you want to gain fifty years in a few minutes that’s your concern. I’m worried about the Eagle. If you want to be a hero then do it without risking the ship. Understood?’
‘Commander, I—’
‘You’re a fool,’ Koenig interrupted. Then added more softly, ‘And Alpha needs all the fools like you it can get. I don’t want to waste one. You’ve served your stint, man. Get back, put Riddle in charge of the Eagle and report to Medical for checking. No arguments now. Do it!’
He turned as the Eagle vanished from sight and stepped towards the head of the shaft. On all sides men were busy moving the crates, handling them with exaggerated care, never placing them too close to each other. At the head of the shaft, technicians emptied the boxes and handed their contents down to others who moved them along the tunnels.
They had worked fo
r hours like a horde of busy ants shifting scraps of leaves to form an underground farm. But these things they carried were not leaves and they would build no farm. Down in the chamber which held the dead aliens, buried deep beneath the surface and sealed by the stubborn metal, a tremendous bomb was in process of manufacture.
A fission bomb which would emulate the sun in its fury.
‘John?’ Bergman climbed slowly from the shaft, rising up a metal ladder which had made progress easier than the original hoops. His voice was fatigued, the way he moved betrayed his tiredness, the way he stood.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Well, but—’
‘Follow me. Let’s get into Kendal’s Eagle and take a break. You could do with some coffee.’
‘I can manage.’
‘You too?’ Koenig grunted his irritation. ‘The place is swarming with crazy idiots who want to work themselves to death. Come and get some coffee, Victor. That’s an order.’
One that Bergman was glad to obey. Later, sitting in the Eagle with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, he admitted that he was tired.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Koenig. ‘How long has it been since you last slept?’
‘About as long as you’ve been awake, John.’
‘Which makes us two of a kind.’ Koenig took a sip of his own coffee. ‘How much longer will it be?’
He was talking of the bomb and Bergman knew it. He said, ‘We’ve almost got everything into place down below. The initial fission device is set and now we’re arranging the rest. It’s a big charge, John.’
‘It needs to be.’
‘But not big enough to volatise this planetoid.’
Koenig said impatiently, ‘I know that, Victor, but it doesn’t have to. You worked out the figures and decided on the megaton scale necessary. It’s close but it will have to do.’
‘I’d like another two loads set in place just to make sure.’ Bergman produced his inevitable slide rule and manipulated it, forgetting his coffee in his sudden introspection. ‘Two loads at least,’ he decided. ‘There are too many variables which we haven’t been able to take into full account. The core, for example. It could be of unsuspected density.’
‘We’ll have to use what we’ve got, Victor.’
‘But, John—’
‘We have no choice. Did you know that three more have fallen from age sickness?’
‘I know, but the defence shield will prevent further cases.’
‘As far as we know—but how can we be sure? The power may fail, the energy-beam take more than we can deliver, circumstances may change at any moment. We’ve got to act while we have the chance.’
Rising, Koenig paced the confines of the passenger compartment. How to explain the fear which engulfed him? The conviction that already they were on borrowed time?
‘Commander!’ Kendal called from the command module. ‘The Omphalos—come and look!’
It hung in space as he remembered, greenly glowing, marked with the dark tracery of fines which gave the appearance of convolutions, divided into the resemblance of a human brain.
And then it pulsed.
‘John!’ Bergman leaned towards the screen. ‘It—It—’
How to describe the sudden inflation and deflation of apparently solid matter? The previously noted pulsations had been minor, the product of an interplay of light or the interpretation of a dazzled mind. But this had been no gentle undulation.
‘God!’ Kendal was a big man with no concept of personal fear but now his voice held a strained terror. ‘It moved! Commander—the damn thing’s alive!’
The drugs were bitter to the taste, tablets which he swallowed and washed down with a sickly liquid. Dope to keep him awake and aware, to force tired muscles to respond, eyes to see, his brain to think.
‘John, you shouldn’t take all these things.’ Helena had been reluctant to give them, yielding only to his direct order, his thinly veiled anger at her reluctance to obey. ‘You’ll pay for this later.’
‘Sure—now don’t bother me.’
‘John—’
‘Helena, we’re fighting time. Give what drugs are needed and spare me your lectures. Don’t you understand, woman? We’re fighting for our lives!’
Against a thing which could not exist but, incredibly, did.
Koenig stared at it where it rested in the screens. Around him in Main Mission, everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, standing posed on the brink of extinction.
‘The Omphalos has increased to one-fifth its previous size,’ Morrow reported. ‘Is now pulsing at twice the rate observed at commencement.’
‘Sandra?’
‘Energy loss mounting, Commander. The rate is nearing totality.’
Complete absorption, the energy drained as fast as it was produced, and when the defence shield went down all would be helplessly exposed to the aging action of the alien forces.
Time!
It was running against them, wasted by necessity, precious seconds turning into minutes, into hours.
How much longer did they have?
‘What news from the Eagle, Paul?’
‘On its way, Commander. All remaining personnel aboard together with Professor Bergman.’
‘Have him report here as soon as he docks. Get me ground defence.’ Koenig waited as an auxiliary screen blurred to steady, to picture the taut face of a Security guard.
‘Commander?’
‘Report on readiness for action.’
‘All as ordered. Tubes aimed and ready. Missiles primed and all warheads with treble charges.’ Hesitating, he added, ‘If we fire as ordered we’ll be stripped of all capability.’
‘If you don’t we’ll be dead.’
Koenig shook his head as the screen darkened. Too many drugs taken too quickly had fogged his vision and etched at his self-control, but he’d had no choice and neither had the others. Morrow, red-eyed, face slack with weariness. Sandra, looking like a ghost, Kano a grim and silent figure, Helena reproachful, and yet helpless to do more than what she had done.
And now she could do nothing but wait.
Wait as Carter’s Eagle came into view, darting in to land as the screen lowered, settling as again the shield lifted, the lights dimming, almost dying, restored as Morrow adjusted his instruments.
Close—and the shield had lost its previous brilliance. Even now she could be growing old with accelerated speed, bones becoming brittle, blood thinning, glands withering, life and the lust for life drained and sucked by the alien thing to which this constricted universe belonged.
How long had it traversed space?
A tiny thing at the beginning, perhaps, feeding on energy, growing, developing, aware of food sources, catching them with its beams, reducing them into energy which it stole. Eating them.
A roving parasite of the void.
A danger sealed into a place of its own by some race owning a tremendously high technology, but lacking the inclination to destroy. Instead, they had warped the very fabric of the continuum to form an escape-proof cage and had set it about with warnings of what it contained.
‘Victor!’ Koenig turned as Bergman entered Main Mission and came toward him. ‘Is everything ready?’
‘Yes.’ Bergman glanced at the chronometer. ‘Firing commences in one hour thirty-three minutes.’
‘So long?’
‘The planetoid must be in the right position for the plan to work. Computer gave position and timing. Right, David?’
‘Yes, Professor.’ Kano rubbed at his reddened eyes. ‘Any deviation from the plan will result in lost efficiency.’
A lowering of the already slim margin of potential success, but the odds against them were growing all the time. Koenig glanced at the dials, saw the needles edging toward the red, the warning flash of signal lights.
‘Cut all unessential power to all areas, Paul.’
‘I’ve saved all I can, Commander.’
‘Save more. Switch to emergency battery pow
er if you have to. Just remember that we’ll need full power fed into the shield when we blow.’
Morrow acknowledged with a nod and Koenig moved to where Helena stood watching the screens. The greenish light, now a blazing flame, touched her face and accentuated the strong contours of jaw and cheeks, the wide set of the eyes.
She whispered, ‘That pulsing, John. It’s like the pounding of a heart.’
Or the kick of a child impatient to be born. Yet how could familiar concepts apply? The Omphalos was not a creature giving birth, nor yet a creature being born. It was expanding, growing as an organic thing would grow, and yet it was not organic.
Koenig remembered the sensations he had experienced, when lost in the illusions he had known while in close proximity to the green bulk. Had he experienced the stored knowledge of actual beings? The deaths—had they been actual memories of minds absorbed by the Omphalos?
A germ, he thought, caught in a human bloodstream, drawn to the brain, entrammelled in the cortex, sharing, in part, the stir and process of thought.
Did a man consider the fate of what he ate?
Would he care if it was aware?
‘Thirteen minutes, Commander.’ Sandra Benes was tense, uneasily aware of the superstition connected to the number. Now, if at all, any bad luck would surely become manifest. Despite her resolution not to look she lifted her eyes to where the main screen depicted the Omphalos. It was twice its original size now, pulsating, greenly malevolent. A predator poised and ready to strike. A bomb on the edge of explosion.
‘Sandra!’
Morrow had been watching her and at the sound of his voice she started, dropping her eyes from the hypnotic image, concentrating again on her instruments.
‘Sorry, Paul.’
‘Time?’
‘Eleven minutes.’ At least the unlucky number had been safely passed. ‘Energy loss mounting. Some traces of temperature differential noted from the central body.’
‘High?’ Bergman fired the question.
‘No. It’s varying from zero to twelve degrees Celsius.’
‘Any radiation?’
‘Slight traces, Professor, but our own energy loss is affecting the readings.’
