Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  Max circled around behind the group of earthmovers and parked the bulldozer with the engine running. The two riggers started to hose water on to the mounds of loose soil.

  The jeep carrying the steel frame pulled up fifty yards to the right of Friday with its rear facing him. The three other jeeps took up similar positions at right angles to one another and all facing away from Friday.

  From a point halfway up to the crest of the Ridge, Wedderkind watched the vehicles move into position. He focused his binoculars on Friday. Friday’s attention still seemed to be focused on his colour TV image. Wedderkind swallowed and nodded to Spencer.

  Spencer spoke into a two-way radio. ‘Okay, all stations, time to commercial break is ten seconds, starting now – ’

  The driver of the TV jeep eased off the hand brake, and selected four-wheel forward drive. The three other drivers selected four-wheel reverse gear and looked back over their shoulders. They’d rehearsed this move throughout the previous day, and had written off two jeeps in the process.

  ‘… Five, four, three, two, one, go!’

  The four jeep drivers clamped a lead foot on to the accelerator and shot backward towards Friday as the TV jeep roared away in a right-hand curve. Max put the bulldozer into top gear and clanked noisily out of hiding.

  The four jeeps braked simultaneously and slid backward to form a neat box around Friday. In a flash, his legs contracted inward and he crouched down in a tight bundle. Four of the eight men seized the steel frame from the jeep – a four-sided pyramid with a flat top and a diagonal mesh of thick bars.

  As they dropped the cage over Friday the second group quickly pinned the cage to the ground by driving in two-foot-long steel stakes with sledgehammers.

  Before the stakes were halfway in, icy condensation started to collect around Friday. The cage began to frost over as his temperature plummeted. The men hurled the sledgehammers into the jeeps and retreated to a safe distance as Max arrived with the bulldozer.

  Aided by hand signals, Max hammered the stakes into the ground with the edge of the bulldozer’s blade. The blade turned white as ground frost formed in a spreading circle around the cage.

  Max backed the bulldozer away and waved the earthmovers forward. The four vehicles fanned out and curved in towards Friday at right angles to one another. The loads of earth in their shovels had been hosed into mud, and as it poured into and over the icy cage, it froze solid.

  Shovels empty, they headed back to the piles of earth, loaded up, and returned to heap it over the freezing mass that had engulfed the cage. An ice-cold mist drifted round them as they tamped the earth down with the flat of their shovels.

  Half an hour later, Friday was buried under a flattened mound of earth twelve feet high and thirty feet wide. The steel cage had been designed to restrict his movements, and to stop him from being crushed. The four bulldozers tidied up the mound, then reversed up the frozen slopes to park back to back on top.

  Connors drove up to view the final result with Allbright and Wedderkind. Max climbed down from his bulldozer and pulled off his furlined parka as he walked over to them. Behind him, the bulldozers started to ice over.

  ‘Do you think it’s going to work?’ asked Connors.

  ‘It should.’ Max pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket. He lit the cigar, then rolled it between his teeth to the corner of his mouth. ‘If he keeps on freezing, he’s locked solid, and if he heats up, he’ll bake himself into a steel-lined brick.’ Max grinned. ‘If he can get out of that, he’s Houdini.’

  It was a great curtain line, but it was Friday who had the last word. As they were driving away, they heard a series of sharp, metallic clinks followed by dull, metallic clunks. They stopped, turned back and circled the frosty mound.

  The sharp clinks had been made by heavy metal castings fracturing in Friday’s sub-sub-zero temperature. The dull clunks had been the sound of the deep-frozen bulldozers collapsing into four untidy lopsided heaps.

  With the aid of Davis’ sketches and some frantic forty-five-second bursts with a measuring tape, Vincent and Hadden obtained enough information to build a frame that could be quickly locked into the eight guide rails inside the hatch.

  Professor Lovell’s non-electric instrument package, which had a quaint eighteenth-century look, was attached to a special mounting inside the frame. If the frame revolved, the mounting would remain horizontal, recording the movement of the inner hatch.

  A wooden platform had been built to fit around the dome and over the foot-frame that opened it. On the platform, two inverted-V uprights supported a crossbeam. A rope and pulley were attached to the beam to lower Milsom in and haul him smoothly out of the hatch.

  Following the swift amputation of the photographer’s tripod by the closing hatch, a tape-recorder alarm system had been installed just outside Crusoe’s skin-deep magnetic field; the system broadcast an amplified voice countdown during the forty-five seconds the hatch was open. The tape was triggered by the opening of the hatch itself. Ten seconds before it was due to close, an alarm bell rang for five seconds, followed by a final five-four-three-two-one voice count to rotation.

  Lovell, Armenez, and Page double-checked the instruments and adjusted the settings. Then Vincent and Hadden lowered the package to arm’s length inside the hatch and locked it into the black crystal guide rails.

  ‘… Five-four-three-two-one-rotation.’

  The instrument package was left inside the hatch for fifteen minutes and then was taken back to the field lab. When Wedderkind saw the results of the test, he asked Lovell to check the instruments and run the test again.

  Wedderkind joined Connors in the operations hut.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘We’ve got some results,’ said Wedderkind. ‘That may not be the same thing.’ He sat down with a sigh. ‘The framework in the inner sphere does contrarotate. That means Friday stays the right way up when the two hatches spin around. The inner sphere rotates through one hundred and eighty degrees. The hatch ends up facing downward.’

  ‘Good. Does the outer sphere rotate so that both hatches are in line again?’

  ‘We think it does. That’s one of the things Milsom will have to confirm.’

  ‘How about air pressure?’

  ‘There isn’t any. The inner sphere makes a quarter turn, there’s a sixty-second depressurization cycle. When the air pressure reaches zero, it makes another quarter turn, presumably to line up with the outer hatch to make an entrance into the hull.’

  ‘But there’s no air at all.’

  ‘No air, no noxious gases, no anything. A total vacuum.’

  Connors frowned. ‘Is that how it should be?’

  Wedderkind shrugged. ‘Machines have no need for air. In fact a sterile, dust-free, airless temperature-controlled environment would permit mechanical devices to function at peak efficiency for – well, forever.’

  ‘So that reinforces our theory that both Friday and Crusoe are machines.’

  ‘Ye-es…’

  ‘How about temperature?’

  ‘Minus two hundred and seventy-one degrees centigrade.’

  Connors looked surprised. ‘Absolute zero?’

  ‘No, but that figure is interesting. It’s the temperature of outer space measured in terms of black body radiation. Absolute zero is two hundred and seventy-three degrees centigrade. Point one five to be exact.’

  ‘Arnold, after minus thirty, cold is cold. Okay, so we’ve got zero pressure and zero temperature. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got zero gravity as well. A condition of weightlessness. Milsom’s going to be able to float around inside that hatch the way the astronauts did inside Skylab.’

  ‘But that’s crazy. How…?’

  ‘Lovell’s running another test right now.’

  ‘But is it possible?’

  Wedderkind tapped back his glasses. ‘Do you remember that idea Phil Brecetti and Lovell had? That in certain situations Friday might utilize antigravity to counteract planeta
ry g-forces? What Crusoe seems to have done is to create an internal field whose strength equals our own force of gravity. The result is zero-g. If it was any more, he’d start to float.’

  ‘But what use is that?’

  ‘Well, not much for any machine function that depends on gravity or friction, but zero-g would improve the overall environment for certain other types of machinery. The mechanical force required to move parts is virtually nil, friction is eliminated. This reduces your power requirements, consequently your power source lasts longer.’

  ‘Except that you’re burning up power generating the antigravity field.’

  ‘Not in outer space,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Only on a planet. And there, Crusoe may simply reverse the existing gravitational field.’

  ‘You mean in the way that Brecetti said he could be using the Earth’s magnetic field to produce the cutoff zone he put around himself when he landed?’

  ‘Yes. He and Lovell now think that the black crystal coating on his hull could be acting as some kind of condenser. The whole idea relates quite well to the Universal Field Theory.’

  ‘Great, but don’t start opening that can of neutrinos. Let’s stick to the hatch. Have you told Milsom about this?’

  ‘No, I’m waiting for the results of the second test.’

  The results of the second test merely confirmed the first. Zero pressure, zero temperature, zero gravity. It did at least solve one thing. There would no longer be a weight problem with the bulky life-support pack. And Milsom didn’t have to worry about accidentally falling out of the hatch, when it turned upside down.

  Tuesday/September 18

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  When Connors arrived at the medical unit, Milsom was already dressed in the space suit. The two NASA technicians who had been flown up with the suits put the helmet over Milsom’s head and locked it into the collar of the suit. He checked the closure of the gold-plated visor, then lifted it up again. Milsom grinned at Connors.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Great. If you’re interested, the autographs are two dollars fifty cents plus tax.’

  Connors shook Milsom’s gloved hand. ‘I’ll buy one when you come back.’

  ‘In that case, I’d better give you the name of my agent,’ said Milsom.

  Connors returned to the command hut and sat down in front of the bank of TV screens that covered the activity around the hatch.

  Waiting like a hanging party on the hull platform were Max and his three biggest roughnecks. They would be hauling Milsom out on the rope. Neame and Gilligan would help guide Milsom down into the hatch, Vincent and Hadden were operating the foot-frame to open it, and Spencer was there to co-ordinate the whole operation.

  The thing that had threatened to stymie Milsom’s trip was the lack of a suitable light source. Crusoe’s skintight cutoff zone made it impossible to use electrical power, and the total vacuum inside the hatch prevented the use of any simple chemical combustion process. The research group finally came up with a light paddle, the size and shape of a table-tennis bat, and coated on both sides with a supercharged luminous compound. It would provide a dim light source by which Milsom could see if there was a way into the hull.

  A parachute harness had been modified to take a chest-mounted ring through which the lifting hook could be clipped. Neame and Gilligan strapped Milsom into it, then guided his arms through the straps of the life-support pack. One of the NASA technicians connected the pack to the suit and checked that all the systems were working.

  Spencer clipped the lifting hook to Milsom’s chest, then patted him on the shoulder. ‘Take it easy. Stay out of trouble.’

  ‘I’ll only be gone five minutes.’

  Spencer grinned. ‘Somehow that doesn’t have the same ring as Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” speech.’

  Milsom pulled down his gold visor. Sunlight flared off the mirrored surface.

  ‘Okay, Max. He’s all yours,’ said Spencer.

  Max’s crew hauled Milsom four feet into the air. Steadied by Neame and Gilligan, Milsom swung out over the top of the dome. Vincent pulled the lever which set the eight ‘feet’ down on the hull pressure points. The dome rotated and the two circular hatches spun into alignment. On Spencer’s wave, Milsom was lowered smoothly into the black crystal well. Spencer, Neame, and Gilligan leaned over and watched Milsom unclip the rope.

  ‘Forty seconds to rotation…’

  They pulled up the rope. Milsom found handholds and footholds on the honeycombed framework that supported the guide rails and leaned back against one side of the well. He looked up at them and gave them a thumbs-up sign. His dark, golden mask made him look like a one-eyed plump white grub.

  The alarm bell jangled from the loudspeaker, then ten seconds later the hatch closed as the two spheres rotated into the hull.

  Connors sat back in his chair and breathed out heavily. He looked at his watch. 11:05. Wedderkind lit a cigarette.

  Connors turned to Allbright. ‘This must be a bit like waiting for a squadron to return from a mission.’

  ‘A bit,’ said Allbright.

  At 11:10, Vincent rotated the hatches. Spencer, Neame, and Gilligan looked down into the well and were relieved to see that Milsom was still in one piece. He was crouching down at the bottom of the well.

  Spencer turned to Max. ‘He’s okay.’ He passed the rope down to Milsom hand over hand.

  Milsom made no move to clip the lifting hook on to his harness.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Neame.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gilligan. ‘Maybe he’s hurt himself.’

  Spencer turned angrily on Gilligan. ‘How the hell could he do that? The guide rails don’t move when the hatch rotates.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said Gilligan. ‘Maybe he lost his grip when normal gravity returned. If he was upside down – ’

  ‘Listen, he didn’t fall on his fucking head. He can see us, for Christ’s sake – look!’ Spencer swung the rope towards Milsom. The hook clacked against the visor of his helmet. Milsom shrank back and pushed the rope away.

  ‘Chris!’ Spencer banged his fist against his chest. ‘Clip on the hook!’

  Milsom waved his arm – not towards the rope, but to them.

  ‘Twenty seconds to rotation…’

  Max, Vincent, and Hadden joined them at the hatch and looked down at Milsom. Milsom seemed to shrink away at the sight of them, but waved his arm again.

  ‘Fifteen seconds to rotation…’

  ‘What the hell is he trying to say?’ asked Max. ‘Does he want us to come in after him?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Neame.

  Max turned to Gilligan. ‘You’re right. He has fallen on his fucking head.’

  The alarm bell sounded. Max yanked the rope out of the well. Milsom was still beckoning to them when the hatch closed.

  Connors watched Spencer run down the hull towards the communications jeep. He stood in front of the TV camera and came into close-up on Screen 5.

  ‘Arnold, we’ve got a little problem here. I don’t know how much of it you were able to get on the overhead camera.’

  ‘We got some of it. Most of the time your heads were in the way.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we were trying to see what was wrong. Something’s happened to him. We don’t know what.’

  ‘Could he have broken his arms?’

  ‘No. His arms move okay, and his reflexes seem normal. He’s waving to us. He just won’t hook up the line so we can pull him out.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’

  ‘Well, we’re going to rotate in five minutes and try again.’

  ‘Okay. What was it that Max said? We didn’t quite catch it.’

  ‘He said it looked as if Chris wanted us to come into the hatch.’

  ‘It could mean he wanted help.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but he actually had the lifting hook in his hand. All he had to do was clip it on but he pushed it away. And when all six of us were roun
d the hatch he kind of backed down away from us, almost as if he were frightened. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Give it another try.’

  ‘Oh, hell, yes,’ said Spencer. ‘We’re not just going to leave him in there.’ He went back up on to the hull platform.

  Wedderkind eyed Connors and Allbright and stuck out a doubtful lip. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Max is up there,’ said Allbright. ‘He’ll figure out something.’

  Max did. At 11:16 the two hatches swung back into line. Milsom was still there, crouching down in the bottom of the well. He beckoned to Spencer. They dropped the rope down to him. Milsom took hold of the rope but made no attempt to clip the hook to his chest. He waved to Spencer again.

  ‘Chris!’ roared Spencer. ‘The hook! Clip on the hook!’ He mimed the action, thumping his fist against his chest.

  Milsom didn’t respond. It was impossible to see his face behind the reflecting surface of the visor. There was nothing but a circle of sky edged by their own bodies and enclosed by the dark interior of the sphere.

  ‘Thirty-five seconds to rotation…’

  ‘Move aside,’ said Max. He grabbed hold of the rope and turned to his crew. ‘Okay, I’m going in to hook up this son of a bitch, so get a good grip on that rope. When I shout, I want to come out of there faster than a cork out of a champagne bottle. Right?’

  ‘Max – ’ began Spencer.

  Max began to slide down the rope. ‘If you want to help, get on the other end of this thing.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll get it,’ said Vincent. He and Hadden joined Max’s three roughnecks on the rope.

  As Max landed beside Milsom, Spencer saw that Milsom had wound the loose end of the rope around the bottom of two of the guide rails and had snapped the hook back on to the line. Max grabbed Milsom, heaved him aside, and began to unravel the rope.

  ‘Max!’ yelled Spencer.