New Writings in SF 26 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘They had a mess of satellite retrieval gear about four kilometres south ...’ said Erikson. ‘Place ain’t much bigger than a satellite itself.’

  Morris was jumpy. ‘If we can’t make contact with Mars-port we’ll rot here.’

  ‘We’ll make contact.’

  ‘Some rescue mission...’ Morris peered into the oily darkness. ‘Why the hell did we have to draw shuttle duty!’

  ‘Quit griping!’ growled Erikson. ‘Start checking for that fuel blockage. I’ll see to Johnny.’

  Morris ran a hand over his forehead and over the bristles of his crewcut in a gesture that Erikson had seen a hundred times. He choked down his unreasoning dislike of the man; Morris worked well, he was a first-class maintenance engineer even if he beefed all the time. Erikson edged past the grey hump of the LSS housing and slid open the cabin door.

  Johnny was quiet. Erikson felt a surge of helpless anxiety when he saw the kid flat out on the steel cot but he told himself firmly that Johnny would make it. There was a fairly heavy routine sedation for shock that held him comatose. Liz Marshall, the MO, had sent Johnny on the shuttle to avoid foul air, but the real danger was still shock. ‘Relatively minor injuries sustained during distant service,’ whispered the manual, ‘may result in death from delayed shock ...’ Erikson himself had seen a Lieutenant Navigator on one of the Russian ships die at his console in minutes three weeks after he suffered a broken wrist.

  John Gale’s colour seemed better, his breathing more normal in the clear air of the shuttle. His right arm and shoulder were in a casein sling and now Erikson saw that be had freed his left hand from the restraining straps on the cot. His fingers rested easily on the communication panel as if he had been calling them on the intercom. Strange lights winked from the panel; Johnny’s fumbling fingers had locked into a weird range of frequencies, plus voice transmission and record. Erikson smiled as he switched off.

  Yet the idea of a sick man talking at random to the depths of space made him queasy. Erikson squeezed his eyes shut for a second: this was no time to show strain; Trant and Liz and the others were waiting back there ... he had to complete the mission. He flexed his muscles and stared around at the tiny cabin, looking for comfort, for hope where there was none, only the walls of regulation aqua. He saw that Johnny had opened his eyes.

  ‘Hey there!’ he said cheerily. ‘Johnny?’

  Johnny was not himself, Erikson could see that, but his eyes were alert.

  ‘Where?’ the whisper was clear.

  ‘In the shuttle, man...’ explained Erikson. ‘We’re taking you in to Marsport.’

  ‘What do you call this place?’ Johnny stared fixedly at Erikson.

  ‘Phobos.’ Erikson admitted. He filled him in a little about Theta, the rescue mission, and added: ‘So we’re down on Phobos, one of the moons, with a fuel link problem.’

  ‘Is that a Greek word?

  ‘What? Oh sure. Phobos is a Greek word, I guess.’

  ‘What fuel does this craft use?’

  ‘Lithium!’ replied Erikson, surprised. Johnny had certainly drawn a blank with the fall and the sedation.

  Then his suit speaker crackled and the voice of Morris whispered urgently:

  ‘Erikson? Paul? Get back in here, will ya ...’

  ‘Coming.’

  Erikson was not sure Gale should be left alone. The kid was staring around the cabin, taking everything in as if he were seeing it for the first time.

  ‘Take it easy.’ said Erikson. ‘Liz ordered more medication for 15.30 hours. Do you have any pain?’ ‘Pain?’ Johnny considered. ‘Yes. No. Discomfort would describe it better.’

  Another screwy answer.

  ‘Hang in there...’ said Erikson, lamely. ‘I’ll be back.’ Johnny closed his eyes and lay still. His left hand moved through a tentative five-finger exercise on his chest. Erikson had the insane idea that Johnny was faking somehow, playing possum. The moment he was out of the cabin that hand would move across and lock into that curious range of frequencies ...

  Erikson shook his head to drive away the absurd image—this emergency was affecting him more than he realized. There was a time, he told himself ruefully, when he was convinced that Morris was some kind of a psycho. He went forward.

  ‘How’s the kid?’ asked Morris.

  ‘Spooky!’ said Erikson.

  ‘What?’

  Morris was tense and irritable. He had been checking the fuel system and now he was moving the scanner slowly across their landing area.

  Erikson slid into his seat and activated all his broadcast channels.

  ‘Did you find the trouble?’

  He was about to give the call to Marsport when the interior of the control room was plunged into darkness. It took him a second to realize that Morris had thrown the switches.

  ‘What the hell...?’

  ‘Ssh!’

  Morris was straining across the panel as if he wanted to press his nose against the forward plexiglass. The beam of the scanner inched over rocks and sand.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ growled Erikson.

  Morris said in a shaking voice:

  ‘There is something out there.’

  ‘What...?’

  Erikson didn’t believe it; but the desolation of the place was working on him. He didn’t need Morris’s horrified explanation:

  ‘Something that moves, Paul. Some creature. Something alive.’

  They stared in silence at their own beam of light. The blackness that lay beyond it was impenetrable.

  ‘It’s not possible!’ said Erikson. ‘That’s a lunar surface out there. Airless. About the size of the Pentagon but moving a helluva lot faster. You called it a hunk of rock. Glen!’

  ‘I saw something...’ whispered Morris. ‘A shadow. Something. I know it’s out there.’

  Erikson began to feel a twinge of sympathy for the man. They were all past breaking point... why not admit it?

  ‘Hey now ...’ he said. ‘Take it easy. We have to make Marsport, remember.’

  ‘You don’t believe me!’

  Erikson did not reply directly. He switched on the console lights and began working on his transmitting bands again. He left the cabin dark so Morris could keep an eye open for his ‘creature’.

  He gave the call signal to Marsport and the whole range of space distress calls. He switched in all his frequencies in turn; he called every place in the Universe; he called Armstrong Base and Houston and the Pentagon and Greenwich and Woomera and Khabarovsk. He called SOS and Mayday. He spoke, bleeped, pulsed whistled, echoed, pinged and wowed for twenty minutes: part of the time he listened, desperately fading the static.

  Space was a noisy place; there was nothing dead about it. There seemed to be eddies of sound close by, right in the corner of his ear. Once he snatched off the head-set ready to tell Morris to shut up, but Morris was not saying a word.

  * * * *

  O Enclata, Thorss and Marilurian, old time companions, friends of the Four Worlds, lost and most dear, closest, indivisible, hear again the voice of Triclamadan, the wanderer, who knows not day or night but only star space, exile, the deeps of time. Assure me in turn of the perfection of our choice the beauty of our equations. I am embodied. I am impressed, borne in upon all sides, walled in flesh. Yet it is workable and the nervous system highly developed. This fellow must bear with my indulgence; at worst he will be left with a sense too many.

  I begin to feel in the tips of these fingers the sense of my former incarnations. And I recall that furthest time, time of first youth. Look back, Triclamadan, along these endless spirals to the helix blossom beside the lake; thin darkness of the equinoctial dawn; warmth of the air. O lost, O Marilurian, Daughter of Light...’

  * * * *

  Erikson let out his breath sharply, slid the quivering needle of light back across the dial and locked on to the wavering signal. It came again; letters grouped in the printout slot; there was no doubt about it.

  ‘Marsport.’ he said. ‘Glen, we ha
ve Marsport.’ Morris reacted cautiously. They bent over the print-out like doctors monitoring a renewed heartbeat. Then with smooth precision Erikson took the frequency and repeated his brief distress call. Marsport answered again, still using international code.

  ‘What about it?’ whispered Erikson. ‘I might try voice contact. It’s really no distance. A transatlantic call.’

  ‘No!’ Morris gripped his arm. ‘You could lose them. Use code.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  Erikson was already sending the expanded distress call. Position of Theta, nature of the emergency. Marsport responded after a longer interval. Erikson reckoned there was an operator on the other end by this time; space distress calls weren’t handled automatically after the first few seconds. The guy in Marsport was undoubtedly trying voice contact and wondering what in hell was going on ... the discrepancy in distance would have him puzzled. He continued to send: ‘SDPUS-T1074, Theta Nebraska, all systems failing. Theta shuttle grounded Phobos. Assist mothership soonest.’ He gave the bearings of Theta for the fourth or was it the fifth time, and then their own. Marsport replied bluntly ‘Wilco’, then creaked into a long repetition of the ship’s bearings.

  Erikson felt dizzy with relief; he sagged in his chair.

  ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘We got through. Glen, old buddy, we got through! You heard the man ... Wilco. Most beautiful non-word in the language!’

  ‘Quiet!’ said Morris. ‘You think I’m crazy? Well, you’re acting crazy yourself. You don’t believe a thing I’ve told you. We have an alien out there. Some creature. I saw something.’

  ‘Again?’ said Erikson, warily. ‘Where?’

  Morris pointed to a shadowy corner between two rocks and for a moment Erikson’s heart thumped. A movement? Then he shook his head; it had been the reflection of his own shoulder in the plexiglass.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t buy it, Glen. You’re jumping at shadows. Relax, man! We can call the ship now... tell ‘em help is on the way.’

  Morris passed a hand over his face; he brought up the lights again.

  ‘Okay, sure.’ he said. ‘Sorry, Paul!’

  ‘How’s the fuel linkage coming?

  ‘Fine. It was simple... coupla gas bubbles.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Erikson was ashamed to have doubted Morris; he wondered if he had been riding the poor guy too hard.

  ‘Before you call the ship,’ continued Morris, ‘help me do one thing. Help me through the lock. I have to check the exterior fuel coupling.’

  ‘You’re going out there?’

  ‘I have to make this one check.’

  ‘Okay.’ said Erikson. ‘Take a look at the damaged strut while you’re out. I’m doubtful if it will retract when we move this barge out.’

  He watched Morris going through the exit procedures with some sort of admiration. No doubt about it the man had guts. He insisted on going out on to the lunar surface just as strongly as he had insisted that there was a creature out there. Was the man testing his own delusion? He spun the taps on the lock and Morris, suited up, crawled into the pressure chamber. Presently there came the unmistakable resonance of the hatchway.

  Erikson turned to the scanner and watched Morris descending the ladder with traditionally small and weighty steps.

  ‘Glen?’ he tuned in.

  ‘This is really something, Paul!’ exclaimed Morris. ‘Like a ride on a ferris wheel. Mars is near enough to touch.’

  ‘Temperature?’

  ‘Rising.’ said Morris. ‘You should come out here Paul.’ He was out of range of the scanner; Erikson could see one silver boot hard up against the base of the ladder.

  ‘Glen,’ he said, ‘it’s 15.30. I have to give Johnny his medication.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Morris came into view again. ‘Go ahead Paul. This place is deserted, like you said.’

  ‘Do you have good visibility?’

  ‘Sure. Dawn light. You should come and see for yourself.’

  Erikson made his way back to the cabin and found Johnny wide awake. His colour was normal and he struggled to sit up, but his smile was not working too well.

  ‘Cheer up!’ said Erikson. ‘All systems go. And stop bouncing around... Doc Marshall’s orders.’

  ‘You communicated with Marsport?’

  ‘We raised ‘em!’ said Erikson happily, counting out capsules. ‘Here ... this one is for the pain, I guess. These are antibiotic and the green one is the stabilizer.’

  ‘The man called Glen Morris...’

  Johnny’s voice had hardened and deepened.

  ‘Morris is along ...’ soothed Erikson. ‘He’s doing a walk, checking a couple of things.’

  ‘He is insane!’

  The tones of the voice were so strange that the hackles began to stir on the back of Erikson’s neck.

  ‘Johnny?’

  ‘Glen Morris is insane. He is planning to kill you.’

  ‘Aw, come on!’ shouted Erikson in sheer exasperation. ‘Who’s crazy around here? I reckon Phobos has spooked every man on this shuttle!’

  ‘You may be right.’

  Erikson went to the locker where the rations were kept and sucked down a whole pack of orange concentrate with supavite.

  ‘Johnny,’ he said, gently, ‘you’re a sick man.’ The answer was equally gentle:

  ‘I’m trying to help you, Paul Erikson.’

  Erikson stared at Johnny Gale.

  ‘Against my better judgment.’

  Johnny lay still on the cot and the words rolled out of his mouth.

  ‘This man has remarkable powers of recovery and the drugs you gave him are already taking effect. Neither he nor I feel any pain or even the discomfort I mentioned earlier.’

  ‘This man...?’ Erikson sat down.

  ‘John Gale.’

  ‘Johnny... please. Take it easy, man!’

  ‘I am not a man.’

  ‘You’re sure as hell not a woman!’ cracked Erikson feebly.

  ‘Semantics! I am not human.’

  Erikson spread his hand and gave a helpless laugh.

  ‘What can I say? You’re confused in your mind!’

  ‘His mind!’

  ‘Okay,’ said Erikson. ‘I’ll buy it. Who are you?’

  ‘It is difficult to tell you.’

  There was a dull sound directly under Erikson’s feet and he jumped. Someone, something outside had bumped or scraped the hull of the shuttle.

  ‘Jesus ...’ exclaimed Erikson. ‘If that’s Morris what is he playing at?’

  He dived out of the cabin and Johnny’s voice, his new voice, came after him.

  ‘Take care... Take great care...’

  Erikson reached the scanner; the light was brighter now, an echo of the magnificent Martian dawn: amber and deep rose. There was no sign of Morris... but wait!

  Erikson bent closer. In the foreground were a series of small objects, black against the buff coloured rock. Erikson enlarged the picture...yes, a spanner, a Yamada tension tool; the contents of Glen Morris’s tool kit lay scattered on the surface of Phobos.

  ‘Glen? Glen?’

  Erikson scanned steadily through the whole ninety degree field.

  ‘I have no visual. Glen. Get in the field. Glen ...’ He suddenly hated the sound of his own voice, pleading and frightened. He scanned in silence. Even the red light of dawn left shadows, places in the rock big enough to hide ... what? An alien, a man’s body, something bigger than a breadbox. ‘I have to go out there,’ thought Erikson, ‘and I’m scared.’

  He reached out and for the first time since the emergency landing he called the mothership. Who would be on duty? Tracy maybe, or the Skipper ... probably not Liz. After a long four minutes there came a weak and flickering burst of the old international code. He spoke and was acknowledged. They could hear his voice.

  ‘Help coming.’ He said. ‘Marsport alert. Hang on you guys.’

  And the best answer was tapped out feebly over the gulfs of space: ‘Do our best’. Er
ikson swallowed hard and recognized the symptom. He was choking with compassion and grief, with mother-to-child anxiety for the human beings on the dark ship, saving their breath. His duty was to lift morale, not to be comforted.

  ‘We’re all fine. Johnny is in good hands.’ he said. ‘Repeating ... Help summoned 5.13, Theta time. Acknowledge.’ For acknowledgment there was only a fading identification ‘... Theta...’; then Erikson was alone again.