Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  Connors nodded his agreement. Whenever the President used words like ‘democracy’, ‘free society’, and ‘the Constitution’, it meant he was making a speech, not holding a conversation.

  ‘Our effectiveness as a world power and our defensive capacity are already threatened by this open-ended jamming of the radar and radio frequencies. It’s already started to send bad vibrations through the economy, and if it goes on, it will create chaos on an international scale. Have you seen the reports from our embassies in Europe?’

  ‘Yes, it’s tough. But there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘I know,’ said the President. ‘But we may not be able to conceal Crusoe’s presence indefinitely. If word gets out, we’re going to be held responsible for every hour this disruption is allowed to continue.’

  ‘In that case, we have to make doubly sure no one finds out he’s in Montana until we work out how to switch him off.’

  ‘And before the Russians take advantage of the situation.’

  ‘That sounds like one of Fraser’s ideas.’

  ‘You suggested something similar.’

  ‘Yes, but that was specifically related to Crusoe. I don’t think they will make any military moves, not yet anyway. That’s not just because of the time we’ve spent working towards better relations. The risks are too great. The fade-out has left us with one option. Nuclear war. They won’t push for that. Admittedly they’re in better shape on the ground, but the overall effects of the fade-out must still be crippling. There are two things we must remember. First, they have the Chinese along their eastern frontier. In the present situation that’s dynamite. Second, they don’t need to risk a war with us over Europe. If the fade-out lasts several months, Europe might collapse and fall into their hands without a shot being fired. I think the Russians are more worried about what we might do to prevent that happening.’

  ‘Yes… it’s like getting your fingers caught in a meat grinder. Whichever way you turn the handle it hurts. And it’s all due to your friend Crusoe.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Connors. ‘We haven’t even got acquainted yet.’

  ‘Okay, but now that we’ve started, let’s get things quite clear. Your area of responsibility covers the containment and evaluation of the spacecraft. Containment, in this case, is defined as maintaining total security on this whole operation by the isolation of Crow Ridge and its contents from the rest of the United States. That includes any problems, whatever their nature, contamination or infection – and let’s not underestimate the risks of that. Any side effects, harmful or otherwise. The whole circus is to be confined to that immediate geographical area until every part of Crusoe has been carefully examined. It also means the isolation of everyone physically involved in the project on Crow Ridge until they’ve been checked and rechecked.’

  ‘Does that include me too?’

  ‘It could. It depends on what happens when contact is made with whatever is down there.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’ Connors decided against mentioning the icecold tingling he’d felt near the crater. Perhaps, without their knowing, Crusoe had got to them already.

  ‘Evaluation,’ continued the President, ‘is at least straightforward. We need to know what it is, how it works, what its mission is, and, if possible, where it is from.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  ‘Then let’s hope that this encounter will turn out to be as peaceful and harmless as you and Arnold have forecast.’

  ‘That’s not quite accurate,’ said Connors. ‘I’m sympathetic to Arnold’s views, but if you care to check the record, I’ve merely counselled caution. I’ve never opposed any attempt to destroy Crusoe.’

  ‘Good.’ The President sat down and pointed his forefinger at Connors. ‘As soon as Crusoe was located in Montana, Mel Fraser urged me to set up a special defensive capability, to protect the rest of the United States from any threat from Crow Ridge.’

  Connors grinned. ‘What did he tell you to expect – an H.G. Wells-type Martian invasion?’

  The President gave a wry smile. ‘I haven’t succumbed to Mel’s Armageddon complex, but some of his arguments were quite persuasive. It would be foolish not to be prepared for every possibility.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Connors. ‘But I disagree with Fraser. The dangers, if any exist, lie beyond those delineated in the dime novel. Arnold is worried that they may even be beyond our comprehension.’

  ‘That’s an even better reason for not taking any chances. Which is why, for the last seven days, we’ve been ready, at the first sign of trouble, to mount an immediate strike against Crow Ridge.’

  ‘To take out Crusoe?’

  ‘If it proved necessary, the strike would include everything and everybody on the Ridge.’ The President’s voice matched the grimness of the prospect. ‘The code name for the operation is CAMPFIRE.’

  Connors’ eyes met the President’s. The possibility that Arnold and the others – and himself too – might be risking their lives in such a dramatic fashion had not really occurred to him so forcibly before.

  He’d been aware that there were risks, of course, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Crusoe was about to perform like a pulp sci-fi creation. As Wedderkind had said over and over again, the real danger lay in their own ill-considered reactions. Connors knew that whatever the ultimate benefits to science and mankind, the fade-out couldn’t be allowed to continue indefinitely. But they needed time. Time to coax Crusoe to the surface. Time to find out all they could. Time to make the right decisions. Now that Fraser had been given his head, it only needed one crackpot to sound the alarm, and the whole project would go up, literally, in smoke.

  ‘Just how far can we go before we decide we’re in trouble?’ asked Connors.

  ‘I’ve outlined what our priorities are,’ said the President. ‘It will be up to you to make that decision. You will notify me, then take whatever action is necessary to terminate the project.’

  ‘And if, for some reason, I am unable to make that decision?’

  The President swung his chair round to face Connors squarely. ‘If by that you mean incapacitated in some way, then it will be Allbright’s job. He’s there to give you whatever backup you need.’

  It was a shrewd move. Someone had assessed, quite correctly, that Connors might be swayed by reasoned, or even impassioned, scientific argument into keeping the project going beyond the fail-safe point. Then it would be Allbright’s finger on the trigger.

  That was why he’d been picked to help Connors run the Ridge. Allbright was there not only to seal off Crow Ridge from the outside world; he was there to make sure that, if necessary, the people on the Ridge stayed there. Permanently.

  ‘Allbright also has another responsibility,’ said the President. ‘That is to get you and Arnold out fast if you happen to be there when it all goes wrong.’

  Yes, maybe, thought Connors. But don’t count on it. Having looked into those hard blue eyes, Connors had the feeling that, if it came to the crunch, Allbright wouldn’t hesitate to include himself and his big palomino on the casualty list.

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  It was MOODY, one of Allbright’s fourth-year cadets, who, a few hours after Connors had left for Washington, suggested the airport lights. The idea consisted of covering the plateau with a twenty-five-yard-square grid of blue taxi-way lights. The lights, fixed to the tops of wooden stakes, were to be individually powered by car batteries and protected by cutouts.

  Since the circular magnetic field around Crusoe would activate the cutouts – and disconnect the circuit – his position could be easily plotted on the grid by noting the blacked-out lights. Any further movement would be indicated visually by a change in the pattern.

  Assuming the cutout zone was spherical and constant in size, a decrease in the area of blacked-out lights would indicate that Crusoe was going deeper, and an increase would mean he was surfacing.

  The one snag in Moody’s plan was that once the cutout had
disconnected the circuit, the lights would stay out even if they were no longer affected by the cutout zone. The research group mulled over various mechanical devices and finally settled for a ‘cutout patrol’ that would periodically reset the cutouts of the blacked-out lights to check on any change in the size of the field.

  Max was so happy he forced one of his cigars on the nonsmoking Moody and actually got as far as lighting it. The grid of blue lights would give them Crusoe’s new position and thus enable them to avoid hitting him when they drilled the two encircling rings of boreholes. It would also show them that they weren’t going to spend a week setting an elaborate trap in an empty chunk of rock.

  It took a day and a half to get the lights and batteries, but by the time they arrived, the grid of stakes had been planted on a north-south axis.

  Starting on the centrelines that ran through the crater, the four teams each took a quarter of the zone and began to work methodically outward. There were a lot of stakes and it was a long time before any of the lights worked. Then slowly, a neat pattern of blue dots started to surround a circle of darkness under which lay Crusoe.

  While the grid was being wired up, the Air Force technicians produced a black, stylized contour model of the Ridge, complete with crater and miniature prefab huts. Small blue bulbs represented the lights on the grid, each of which had been numbered so that Crusoe’s position could be given as a map reference.

  Wedderkind and the other members of the research group clustered around the model and studied the pattern of blue lights. Crusoe’s new position was about a hundred yards from the original crater. The diameter of the cutoff zone, which could now be measured by counting across the lines of blacked-out lights, was six hundred yards.

  Max, who was standing behind the group, chewed up the end of another cigar. ‘How far is he down now?’

  Brecetti, the physicist, searched in his pockets for a pencil. ‘Has anyone got something to write on?’ Brecetti was renowned for having done most of his best work on the backs of envelopes and paper napkins. Wetherby found a clean page in his spiral-bound notebook and handed it over.

  ‘Let’s accept the idea of a spherical field, with a constant radius of – say five hundred yards,’ said Brecetti. ‘The patrol car broke down about a quarter of a mile from the crater not long after the first sighting, in which case it’s reasonable to assume that the cutoff zone was at its maximum radius. So… if the field now has a surface radius of three hundred yards…’ Brecetti scribbled a series of figures. ‘… That means Crusoe is now about twelve hundred feet down.’

  ‘Jee-zuss,’ growled Max. ‘He’s practically out of sight.’

  ‘You’re going to have to drill those holes a lot deeper,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘And fast,’ growled Max. He relit his stubby cigar, pulled his yellow hard hat down over his eyes, and left.

  While the grid of lights was being set up, Max and his roughnecks had been showing the cadet group leaders how to operate a rig. Under the Texans’ watchful eyes, the raw crews began work at midnight, sinking the first holes in the inner and outer rings ahead of Crusoe’s new position.

  They worked continuously until Sunday morning, then were replaced by the second eight-hour shift. To keep the rigs working around the clock twenty-four hours a day, Max’s crew racked up a solid eighteen hours a day, working, overseeing, cursing, cajoling, and putting in an occasional boot whenever a cadet began dragging his ass.

  Wednesday/August 29

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  Wedderkind telephoned Connors in Washington. Connors had stayed to help the President in his discussions with the Cabinet, Senate leaders and representatives of various business groups on the cumulative effects of the fade-out.

  Wedderkind gave him a situation report. The drilling, which had gone on for five days and nights, had been completed, and each borehole had been primed with an explosive charge. To provide some additional insurance, Max had sunk the inner ring of holes to a depth of two thousand feet and the outer ring down to three. There had been no further change in the pattern of blue lights, and a new overflight by an MRDC survey aircraft with infrared film showed no discernible ‘hot spot’ on Crow Ridge. Crusoe had apparently decided to cool it for a while at twelve hundred feet.

  ‘Okay, now you’ve got him surrounded. What do you plan to do, hit him with the drill again?’

  ‘Yes. With luck, that should get him moving into the first ring of charges. Keep your fingers crossed.’

  ‘I will. How’s Allbright?’

  ‘He’s okay. The latest rumour is he’s offered a week’s leave to the first man who finds a way to put a crease in his horse. There’s only one snag.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Connors obligingly.

  ‘You have to spend it on the Rock.’

  Since the completion of the high chain link and barbed wire fence around the site, Crow Ridge had been wryly christened ‘The Rock’ – once the nickname of the infamous prison island of Alcatraz.

  Allbright’s passion for impeccable dress had inspired a number of jokes. According to Milsom, his trailer had been sited the farthest away from the crater so that, if Crusoe moved, Allbright’s electric iron would be the last thing to cut out.

  After five days of around-the-clock work, the cadet drilling detail were on their knees and rig-happy. Max gathered up his original crew of Texas roughnecks and got them to sink a final shaft in the centre of the blacked-out circle of lights.

  The drill overloaded and burned out at 1,180 feet. As they hurriedly hauled up the string of drill pipes, Crusoe sent a column of boiling mud and steam rocketing up the shaft to confirm the hit.

  Half an hour later, the cutout patrol reported a change in the pattern of lights on the grid. The changes were transferred to the model. It showed Crusoe was on the move.

  Wedderkind went up to join the group of spectators crowded up on the rocky peak of the plateau.

  A little under an hour after contact, smoke and earth funnelled into the air as one of the one-hundred-pound charges in the inner ring exploded ahead of Crusoe’s original line of advance.

  Shortly after the first blast, there was an almost simultaneous explosion as the two charges on either side of the first were detonated.

  Wedderkind gave the bridge of his glasses several nervous taps. ‘He’s moving out, he’s moving out,’ he muttered, half to himself, and although it was not usually considered part of the reasoned, scientific method, he crossed both sets of fingers.

  Crusoe’s dark circle continued to move slowly across the carpet of blue lights, and began to contract as he headed down at a steep angle. One of the five-hundred-pound charges in the outer ring blew. The sound of the explosion came rumbling up from three thousand feet and erupted from the narrow shaft with a tremendous roar.

  Crusoe’s forward movement slowed, then stopped altogether. Wedderkind kept up his vigil on the Ridge until 1:30 A.M., then went to bed. No further movement was recorded that Wednesday night.

  Thursday/August 30

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  There was still nothing to report when Wedderkind sat down for breakfast. He began to worry that they might have damaged Crusoe with the big charge. Maybe he was floundering down there like a wounded whale, surrounded by a ring of explosive harpoons. Maybe they had totally misjudged the strength of his construction. Maybe…

  In the middle of the morning, Crusoe began to move – backward, at a thirty-degree angle to his original line of advance. Wedderkind clapped his hands together exultantly, bounced off his chair with relief and borrowed another cigarette from one of the Air Force technicians manning the hut.

  Crusoe’s new course took him straight back across the rim of the inner circle, and detonated five more of the hundred-pound charges of dynamite. Undeterred, Crusoe continued his steady progress beneath the plateau. The circle of blacked-out lights continued to diminish in size. Just after three o’clock in the afternoon, the cutout patrol rode through the grid to reset the lights. T
his time, none of them went out. It meant Crusoe was over fifteen hundred feet down. From now on, only the exploding charges in the two rings would tell them where Crusoe was.

  Wedderkind turned away from the model and looked at Max. ‘It’s a good thing you drilled that outer ring down to three thousand.’

  ‘We should have gone deeper.’

  ‘There was no time,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Maybe if we’d cut horizontal shafts through from the sides of the ridge…’

  Max shook his head. ‘Ain’t no way we could catch him. He’s burning his way through that rock at the rate of two to three hundred feet an hour. No one can dig a shaft that fast. And even if we could, this son of a bitch cooks up a lot of rock. It would be like digging into the side of a volcano. If we’d got anywhere near him, we’d have ended up with barbecued knees.’

  A little before 5 P.M. one of the five-hundred-pound charges in the deep outer ring exploded. Crusoe had now moved right across the circles they had set around him. It was now make or break. He had turned back once. The big question now was, would he turn back again – or keep on going?

  The answer came within the hour as another of the big charges in the outer ring exploded. It was to the left of the previous blast. By nine o’clock, five more charges in the outer ring had exploded one after the other as Crusoe burned his way through the shafts.

  In the research group’s hut, Wedderkind went into a huddle with the systems engineers from NASA and the Air Force. They looked at a chart showing the two rings around the original crater and the charges that had already exploded.

  Roger Neame, one of the ex-NASA engineers, pointed to the two pencil lines he’d drawn on the chart. ‘I don’t know whether this proves anything, but it’s interesting. If you join up the centre of the crater to this point here – where the first charge exploded – then join that to the first explosion on the far side, the angle between those two lines is thirty degrees and…’ Neame drew a third line which cut the outer circle between the last two charges that had exploded. ‘… See where that puts him? Right in line with his original course.’