by John Rankine
He drained the last from the container and supported her while she drank deeply. Then she looked at the cup sensing something different. ‘Has it rained?’
‘Yes. Drink up. It has rained.’
She lay back, suddenly cold in spite of the wraps they had found for her. Her eyes closed. Morrow stood up slowly, stripped off his space suit and added it to the pile. The movement disturbed her and she was awake again, ‘Paul?’
He put his finger to his lips in a mime for quiet, picked up the empty container and pointed to the hatch. She smiled vaguely as though she hardly understood, but whatever he did was A-Okay in her book.
As the hatch opened, wind and dust jetted in. He turned to look at her again and she lifted a hand to wave. Then he was through and the hatched closed.
Sensing something unusual, Helena Russell woke suddenly and saw Sandra looking across at her. She sat up aching in every limb and noticed Morrow’s empty berth.
‘Sandra? Where’s Paul?’
‘Gone to fetch water.’
Helena pulled herself to her feet and struggled with the hatch, blown dust needled her skin as she looked out into swirling darkness.
She called twice, ‘Paul? Paul?’ But there was only the everlasting moan of the wind to answer. There was nothing she could do and she set her back to the hatch to heave it shut.
Sandra, out of reach of reason, was suddenly enthusiastic, ‘Paul said it rained again.’
‘Did he? Oh, yes . . .’
‘Was it a heavy fall?’
‘Oh, not a lot. More a promise of things to come, really.’
Outside, Paul Morrow was moving in random circles. He looked at the water carrier in his hand and pitched it away into darkness. Stumbling on, he reached a rock outcrop, turned and set his back to it. Then allowed himself to slide down. It was the butt and seamark of his utmost sail. It would serve as a headstone as well as the next thing. As his hands reached ground level they were digging into something soft and moist as moss and he brought a handful up to his eyes. It was white, mushroom like in texture. He smelled it. It seemed wholesome. Squeezing it, he had drops of moisture running on the back of his hand and he licked them off. He pushed a piece in his dry mouth and began to chew.
Strength and resolution were flooding back like a tide. The wind dropped, dust settled. He had a minimum of light to work by. Slowly at first and then gathering momentum, he began to shift the scattered empty containers and build them round as the foundation footings of a hut. When Carter joined him at first light, he was up to shoulder level and between them they ripped out lengths of cladding for a pitched roof. It was a Heath Robinson structure at best, but Morrow was inordinately proud of it, as though he was seeing it as a Winter Palace.
Helena was dubious about it as any improvement on what they had but she could not withstand Morrow’s new found enthusiasm. In any event, it was activity and a boost to morale. She helped fix a bed for Sandra and made no objection when he went to carry her out.
Sandra was conscious, though very weak and asked, ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Home. The new city of Alpha.’
Whether she saw it as it was or whether some mental link helped her to share his vision, she made no comment.
He carried her over his threshold, saying, ‘At least we’ve made a start. You’ll be cooler here when the sun gets up. Not cooped away in that rat hole out of the air.’
‘Thank you, Paul.’
He kissed her gently and set her down. ‘We have found our new home. We just have to make the best of it. We’re the first New Earthmen. This is the Garden of Eden.’
‘It’s a lovely thought, Paul. To begin the saga of the human race all over again.’
Helena and Carter had tactfully given them a time alone and finally came in. Morrow had another surprise. On a clean sheet of plexiglass, he had dumped a mound of his white mushroom material and quickly split it into four portions.
He said simply, ‘Breakfast?’
Helena said, ‘What is it, Paul?’
‘Manna, if you like. Food from heaven. Or maybe from the people of planet Ariel, if you prefer.’
‘Wait a minute. Where has it come from?’
‘It’s growing. Out there under the rocks. Like mushrooms.’
‘We have no means of analysing it, running a test. We can’t eat it until we know the composition.’
Paul Morrow was impatient, ‘You have your test. I’ve eaten it.’
Helena looked at him closely, noticing the febrile glitter in his eyes and his quicker, nervous movements. ‘You’ve eaten it?’
He nodded, looking insanely pleased with himself and she flared angrily, ‘Sandra?’
‘Not yet. I was waiting until we were all together.’ He stood by Sandra defensively and went on, ‘The change in Sandra’s condition is born of hope. But man does not live on hope alone.’
He took a portion of the mushroom growth and knelt beside the bed. Helena was quick to intercept and took it from his hand before Sandra could open her mouth. She said, ‘Paul, you must see we have to take care.’
Carter was suddenly in Morrow’s corner, ‘It doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. He put most of this together single handed. He’s got the strength from somewhere.’
At the same time, Paul Morrow seemed to have found a persuasive tongue, ‘The way I see it, this is no accident. The moment I lie down to die, this stuff appears literally at my side. Be reasonable. They could be months finding us here. Every time we clear a signal area on the ground, dust drifts over it. Maybe we’ll never see another Eagle. Yesterday we had no hope. Let’s not kid ourselves. We were in a terminal situation. Today we have hope and something to sustain it.’
Carter at least was a convinced man, ‘I say don’t knock it, Doc.’
Morrow restated the brutal fact. ‘We have no alternative. We either eat it or die.’
Medical training fought a rearguard. Reluctantly, Helena Russell said, ‘All right. But I insist we stick to the ration while I do what tests I can. If I can’t find any positive harm and Paul is still okay, then I’ll give it clearance.’
Morrow was disappointed. ‘How long will you take?’
‘Will you give me to midday?’
She got a grudging nod. Carter said, ‘Just in case it’s okay, I’m going mushrooming.’
John Koenig was becoming a solitary. Staff in Main Mission drew lots to take any message into the command office where he was keeping a vigil like a captain in a homebound clipper driving his ship in a half gale.
Even Victor Bergman came in with reservations. Carrying a restricted read-out from Computer, he found Koenig at a direct vision port, using binoculars to look at the remaining satellite, now half buried in dust. It made a starting point, away from the unwelcome news he had and he tried to take a light tone, ‘If you wanted a close scan, you should have left it where it was in the Tech lab.’
Nerves at a stretch, Koenig could pick up vibrations. He turned round slowly, ‘This sudden “cheerfulness” tells me you came in to say something else. We’re not going into orbit?’
Bergman’s face told him he had guessed right, even before he said, ‘No,’ and went on, ‘We should have gone to the planet after all.’
Koenig crossed his desk and sat heavily in the command chair. Making it easier for Bergman, he said, ‘Somehow I don’t think I’d like the people.’
‘They gave us air.’
‘Which will shrink into an ice cap when we leave the warmth of Ariel’s sun. Alpha could be crushed.’ He stopped. There was no need to spell it out to the scientific adviser. ‘What about the corrosion proofing on the Eagle?’
‘They’ve worked round the clock. It’s ready.’
Koenig was out of his chair and away through Main Mission. Before Bergman reached a direct vision port, the Eagle’s motors were rising to a howl.
Midday brought a tropical sun to Morrow’s ragged shack, heat, if anything, was marginally higher than in the wrecked cabin under
its insulating dust. Paul Morrow squatted beside Sandra and fanned her with a piece of thin panelling and talked all the time, ‘First we organise a farm spread, mushroom farms, manna farms. Later there’ll be roads and slowly, very slowly at first, the community will have a centre, an urban heart of great buildings. This will be the capital city of the new civilisation.’
Helena Russell heard it as she came in carrying specimens of the manna she had tested.
‘I still can’t be sure about it, Paul. On the other hand I can’t find any positive reaction to make it unsafe. But you’re right. It’s the only chance we have. On balance, I think maybe we should risk it.’
‘I never had any doubt.’
‘When we get back, I can give it a thorough going over, but . . .’ Morrow cut in, ‘We’re not going back. This is our home. This is where we stay. Here we begin our new life.’
There was a nervous intensity about his voice that surprised Helena. She stood still watching him and his tone became more shrill as he went on, ‘None of this has happened by chance. Think of it! We are given an atmosphere. There is a freak electric storm and we lose contact. There is a freak dust storm and we are buried. We are close to starvation and manna is sent from the heavens. The people on that planet have a purpose and I believe we too have one now.’
Sandra felt his strangeness and struggled to sit up and touch him. Carter, on the way in with a bundle of the manna, stopped in the doorway taking in the implications. Morrow went on, close to hysteria, ‘This land will flow with milk and honey. We will build and settle and bring up children. We will multiply. Like the ancient peoples of Peru, who spread the human family across the Pacific in their fragile rafts, we also will launch out into space and spread humanity from one solar system to another.’
Alan Carter had heard enough. There was no need to look at the dawning knowledge on Helena’s face. He made a practical expression of opinion, turning in the doorway and taking a drop kick at his bundle to boot it out into the dust.
Morrow was on to him like a fanatic, grabbing him from behind, twisting him round to face him with a madman’s strength. ‘That was sacred bread, Alan. That was sent to us in our time of need. You don’t kick a gift horse in the teeth.’ The voice notched to a scream, ‘Down on your knees. Crawl to it. Pick it up.’
Struggling to break the grip, Carter said, ‘Go pick your teeth.’ He got an arm free and tried to fend off from Morrow’s chest. But Morrow took it as a blow, sent in a savage jab that had Carter reeling back against the doorpost. Carter came on again, roused now and aiming to make a fight of it. But he was no match for Morrow’s fortified strength.
Sandra called, ‘Paul!’—but he was outside the reach of any appeal. He slammed Carter to the deck and jumped in for the kill.
Helena Russell saw how it would be and put herself in the way, ‘Paul! Stop!’
He swept her aside, knelt down over Carter, lifted his head for a hammer blow.
Scrabbling to her feet, Helena grabbed for a hypo pack beside Sandra’s bed. She had the gun out and was behind Morrow when his now hyper-sensitive nerves alerted him to the danger. Dropping Carter back to the deck, he was round in a flash, seizing her wrist before she could fire, forcing her fingers to open and drop the gun.
Voice full of menace, he said, ‘Did you want to put me out?’
‘No. It was for Alan. He’s hurt.’
Inexorably, Morrow backed her to the wall, hands crawling up her chest and closing round the smooth column of her throat, eyes insane and murderous.
‘You lie. It was for me. You would come between me and my destiny. No one stops me. No one.’
Outside, there was a high pitched scream and another, then a succession, until the noise was unbearable. Morrow paused, took away his hands, looked at them and ran outside. Helena followed massaging her throat. The moonscape had gotten a return visit. Ariel’s gleaming satellites were dotted about like a minefield. They had gone into reverse. Faint streamers leading to the frill of fine tubes, showed what they were at. They had come to take the atmosphere back.
Morrow was beyond understanding. He ran to the nearest, touched it with reverence, called out, ‘Here is your sign, Doctor. Look about you. The people of the planet Ariel are come again. It is the second coming.’
But he had lost his audience. Helena Russell had a sign of her own. Flying low in the distance, she could see something bulkier than a satellite. It was a searching Eagle coming across the horizon. For a moment she thought of alerting Morrow, then realised he might prevent her making any signal. Without a word, she turned away and ran for the crashed Eagle.
Koenig was flying at zero height. He had guessed that Eagle Two Eight must be well hidden in some dust bowl. Mathias in the pilot seat said, ‘Atmospheric pressure’s falling rapidly now, Commander. We’re running out of time.’
Bergman called from Mission Control with the same story, ‘We’re losing atmosphere, John. The satellites are back in force.’
It was certainly true of the terrain they were crossing. Koenig said shortly, ‘I can see them.’
On the surface, the effect of thinning air was hitting Helena Russell as she thrashed about in the passenger module for gas cylinders which had been restacked after the crash. Mouth open, she was drawing long quivering breaths as she hauled them out and used her last strength to open the valves.
Liquid gas hissing out and vapourising added to her problems and she had to stop, grabbing up a laser from the rack over the hatch as she stumbled out and moved her leaden limbs in a heroic jog trot. Ten paces off, she turned, aimed for the open hatch and sent a thin searing beam into the interior.
The Eagle made its last contribution to Moonbase Alpha, opening like a flower in time lapse with a dull muffled roar and sending a column of flame and debris into the failing sky. The blast hurled Helena Russell on her back in the dust and she saw nothing of the spectacular.
Mathias scanning round one eighty degrees of arc picked up the marker and thumped Koenig’s arm, ‘Commander! Fifteen degrees right.’
Koenig veered in a virtuoso turn that had them strained in their harness and got it dead ahead.
He said, ‘Good, Bob,’ and threw in every erg of reserve power so that the Eagle sprang forward as though booted up the stern.
Helena was crawling, trying to stand and falling again, face bleeding from a blast wound, tunic in flapping shreds, lungs labouring to get a working ration of air.
In the hut, Carter was shaking his head from side to side like a dog and on his knees beside Sandra’s bed. She was gasping for breath, ‘Alan, what’s happening to us?’
He hauled himself to the door. There was a column of smoke still rising from the wreck. Morrow was waving his arms, talking wildly to the satellites, his words lost in their continuing screams. Helena Russell had fallen again and Carter saw the movement. He stumbled out, reached her and tried to lift her. But he was too weak and fell across her legs.
The Eagle touched down in a whirlwind of dust and Mathias said urgently, ‘Spacesuits, Commander. The atmosphere’s thinning fast.’
Koenig was already in the hatch. ‘No time.’
Carter, finding strength he should not have had, was on his feet and had Helena across his arms. Koenig tried to take her, but Carter was programmed to move and would not stop. He jerked out, ‘Sandra. In the hut. She needs help.’
Mathias took Helena’s shoulders. Koenig knew they would reach the Eagle and raced on. He was inside the hut and bending to pick up Sandra when hands grabbed him from behind and swung him round.
‘Paul!’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘Paul. We don’t have much time.’ He turned again to lift her and Morrow’s voice rose to a scream, ‘I said leave her alone!’
Once more he grabbed Koenig and hurled him aside. Off balance, Koenig fell heavily gasping for breath and Morrow, panting now and holding his throat, shouted, ‘We have laid the foundation stone of Mankind’s future . . . The struggle will be long and hard
. . .’
Koenig was on his feet, knowing there was no time at all, aiming to make a quick finish but Morrow had a maniac’s strength and cunning. He dodged, struck hard and Koenig was flung back.
Rhetoric beat him. Instead of going in for the kill, he delivered another communique from his wandering, mind, ‘Faint hearts . . . will not survive. But the blade of human endeavour . . . is tempered in the fire of the Universe.’
Koenig had time to pick his spot and was in with a punch that sent Morrow reeling against Sandra’s bed. Her sudden scream penetrated the mists in his mind and he turned to look at her. Koenig was on him again, with a blow to the chin that split his knuckles and dropped Morrow like a log.
Bergman, working hard to find some profit in a situation that had gone sour, was glad to take his box into Main Mission. Grinning like a pleased gnome, he held it up for all to see. Morrow’s mushrooms were doing well. He said, ‘It’s food. Good food. Fantastically rich in second class protein and many essential vitamins. There’s no limit to the crop we can get, once we’ve ironed out all the hallucinogenic traces.’
Helena said, ‘Sorry I didn’t isolate them sooner, Paul.’
Morrow, still looking haggard, managed his normal cheerful smile. He put an arm carefully round Sandra’s bulky strapping, ‘Not to worry. It wasn’t a bad trip. Except for the ending.’
Koenig said sententiously, ‘In situations like that you discover who your friends are.’
A bleep from a monitor broke across their talk. Tanya called, ‘The satellite, Commander. It’s moving!’
She threw a picture on the main scanner. It was true. The first and last visitor from Ariel was stirring in its dust bed.
Carter said, ‘It’s leaving us.’
Koenig for one, was glad to see it go. He began, ‘The sooner the—’ but he was interrupted.
A sing song, electronic voice was making the first direct communication they had been given, ‘We are neither benevolent nor malevolent, Commander Koenig . . .’
The satellite was hovering above Alpha and a beam of light was streaming down to Main Mission, pulsing as the voice went on, ‘Our absolute need was to prevent you from penetrating the atmosphere of our planet. We were fearful that fate would put you in orbit round our sun. So we created conditions you wanted, so that you would not further disturb us.’
