by Alan K Baker
Fort turned and looked through the forward windows as something descended into view from above. It looked like a parachute, a vast pale blue circle in the sky, mottled with darker patches and strung with a myriad of branching purple lines, like veins. The edges of the thing undulated slowly, like a jellyfish drifting in a gentle ocean current.
The tendrils that had descended around the airliner were attached to the object – those and many more besides. The craft lurched again, even harder this time. The thickly-carpeted floor heaved upwards, throwing people from their feet and upending tables and chairs. The screams of the women grew louder, the wails of the terrified children more desperate.
Lovecraft and Fort got unsteadily to their feet as the deck pitched to the left. The dining room was filled with the sound of breaking plates and glasses, which momentarily drowned out the cries of the passengers.
‘Charles,’ said Lovecraft, ‘what’s happening?’
‘This isn’t an exploratory nudge, Howard,’ Fort replied, struggling to remain upright on the shifting deck. ‘We’re under attack!’
CHAPTER 18
The Death of a Distant World
Still thinking about what she had read in Aldous Bradlee’s files, Rusty Links made her way to the Main Conference Room in Building A, which was at the far end of a sunlit walkway lined with palm trees. She could have been on any college campus in Florida, she reflected; the Cabo Cañaveral rocket complex had that kind of look and feel to it – apart from the gargantuan Vehicle Assembly Building and launch gantry, of course, which kind of undermined the impression.
She entered the windowless, brightly-lit conference room to find several people already there, sitting around a horseshoe-shaped table of polished teak. One wall of the room was dominated by a large projection screen, and Rusty noted that a movie projector was mounted on the opposite wall. Off to one side stood a table bearing coffeepots, cups and a large platter of donuts and pastries. With a muted ‘Good morning,’ she poured herself a cup of coffee, remembering to add cream and sugar, and took a seat at the table. She looked at the faces around her, matching them to the photographs in the dossier which Crystalman had given to her.
‘Okay,’ said the Chief Administrator, whose name was Troy Martell. ‘Let’s get started. We’ve all seen the images from the Martian transmission, but I think they bear another viewing before we discuss what to do about them. David, would you get the lights, please?’
‘Sure thing,’ said David Kaplan, the Flight Director, who stood up and flipped the switch by the door.
Martell stood up and went to the projector. He switched it on and the brief darkness was broken by the bright white beam, which threw a legend onto the projection screen.
NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON
PLANETARY EXPLORATION
HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL
DO NOT DISSEMINATE
‘This is the enhanced footage from Tesla’s lab?’ asked Kaplan.
‘Yeah,’ said Martell.
‘And you’ve discussed it with him?’
‘I called him yesterday evening,’ Martell nodded. ‘It wasn’t the friendliest of conversations, but in the end I managed to persuade him to hold off on any further revelations to the press until we’ve had a chance to evaluate this material properly.’
Kaplan nodded and returned his attention to the screen, as did all the others. Rusty glanced around the table, putting names to faces: Brian Canning, Deputy Administrator; Monica Quinlan, Chief Scientist; Larry Donahue, Director of Exobiology; Pete Medina, Flight Systems Analyst; Deborah Pellin, Director of Space Medicine…
And Aldous Bradlee, Chief Archivist.
Rusty felt an uncomfortable and irritating twinge of nerves as she realised that Bradlee would be expected to contribute in no small measure to the conversation that would follow the screening of the material. She doubted that feigning a sore throat would be of any help whatsoever. She took a deep breath, sipped her coffee and watched as the video reel began.
From the outset, it was clear that whatever refinements Tesla had made to his receiving equipment had yielded stunning results: these images were orders of magnitude clearer than the ones he had initially received with his Teslascope. As the reel progressed, Rusty found herself wishing they weren’t. She glanced periodically at the other faces around the table, at the expressions of wonder and awe that were gradually transformed into horror and disbelief. They had seen this footage before, but clearly the horror was still fresh, as if they were seeing it for the first time.
Although sympathy was not a trait she possessed in any great measure, Rusty sympathised with them now.
The images seemed to have been spliced together in the manner of a newsreel, telling a story concisely and in apparent sequence. They showed a planet that didn’t look like Mars: it was green, forested, with oceans and lakes of bright, crystalline blue that glittered beneath fronds of milk-white cloud.
Taken from high orbit, thought Rusty. So the ancient Martians were capable of space travel.
The next image was of a vast city of white stone, or perhaps metal – it was difficult to tell. The buildings, huge and eerily beautiful, were highly geometrical in design: there were cubes and tall cylinders, slender pyramids and perfect spheres supported by graceful pylons, star-shaped towers and shallow cones… all punctuated with thousands of circular windows and connected to each other by thin, tube-like structures. Clearly, this was an advanced civilisation, at least on a par with modern humanity.
The next image was of people – the Martians themselves – and Rusty was struck by how human they looked. There were differences, of course: they were incredibly tall and slender, doubtless an evolutionary response to their world’s low gravity; and their faces were alabaster-pale, with no need of melanin to protect them from the weakened rays of a distant sun.
They were standing in a wide plaza beneath a bright blue sky, looking up at a balcony protruding from the lower section of a colossal pyramid. Another Martian, dressed in robes of iridescent prismatic colours, was standing on the balcony and was apparently addressing the throng. His long, slender arms were raised, as if he were delivering a speech of unparalleled importance.
A leader of some kind, thought Rusty. Maybe this was their capital city. No sound… wonder why. Maybe there was no need, or maybe the sound was lost from the transmission…
The point of view switched suddenly. Now they were seeing the pyramid from a great distance – ten miles at least – and from a height of perhaps a thousand feet. The apex of the pyramid had begun to glow – if ‘glow’ was the right word. In fact, it was more like a stain on the air, a dull patch of purple, like meat that had been left hanging for too long.
The camera panned upwards as the purple stain seeped into the sky in a long, thin tendril – a beam of something that was trying to be light.
What the hell is that? thought Rusty with a quick glance around the table. Serious technology… or perhaps something else… She felt something clutch at her stomach with ghostly fingers – something profane… obscene.
The tendril of un-light reached slowly into the blue Martian sky, higher and higher, and then began to open into an inverted cone. It reminded Rusty of a fan vault flowering across the distant ceiling of some vast cathedral. It was made of the same dark purple substance as the tendril that had birthed it. The tendril began to sway and bulge intermittently with a disgusting peristaltic movement, as if something was inside it… something that was making its way with relentless pulsating spasms towards the unseen mouth of the cone.
Rusty glanced at Deborah Pellin, the Director of Space Medicine. She had covered her mouth with a trembling hand. Next to her, Pete Medina, the Flight Systems Analyst, had shut his eyes and was shaking his head. He didn’t want to see what was about to happen next. None of them did.
Rusty returned her attention to the screen in time to see something emerging from
the mouth of the cone. A thing blacker than the depths of space… a thing made of darkness that writhed and whipped and spilled into the air like liquid or a dense, heavy gas.
And then Rusty Links realised what had been attempted on Mars five million years ago. ‘You stupid bastards,’ she whispered.
Troy Martell glanced at her. ‘What was that, Aldous?’
She gave a small start. ‘Nothing,’ she replied quietly. ‘I… this is difficult to watch.’
‘Damn straight,’ said Pete Medina.
Martell gave a small nod. ‘There’s not much more.’
The writhing mass of darkness grew and spread with a rapidity that was stunning, terrifying. It erupted from the mouth of the cone and fell upon the city, flooding streets, smashing buildings to fragments, seizing and absorbing the screaming inhabitants. The thing’s hunger was vast – as vast as Mars itself. Within a few minutes, it had leached the planet of its atmosphere, turning the sky from blue to pale, lifeless pink.
The point of view switched again to Mars as seen from high orbit. A ruddy stain was spreading rapidly out from the region which had been named Cydonia by the humans who had ventured there five million years later. The stain was like fire consuming tissue paper, annihilating everything with which it came into contact: forests, pastures, lakes, oceans… and cities. But it was not fire that smothered Mars and turned it from a living world to a dead husk of oxidised rock. It was something much, much worse.
Rusty knew exactly what it was, and the knowledge made her want to go back to Long Island and tell Crystalman what he could do with his hundred thousand.
Again the point of view shifted. This time the movements of the camera were jerky, as if whoever had been holding it was running or staggering. There was a room in which several Martians were holding the one who wore the iridescent robes. He was on his knees, and appeared to have been badly beaten. It was difficult to see exactly what was happening due to the sudden, erratic movements of the camera; clearly, the catastrophe that had destroyed Mars and its inhabitants was still occurring outside the room.
Another sudden jerk, and the screen was filled with some kind of machine. There was something about the lines of the machine that made the skin crawl; its very shape suggested somehow that it should never have been built, that its design should not have been given form in three dimensions. Its glinting, bulbous flanks split open like misshapen mouths, revealing two chambers within. One chamber was empty save for a complex tracery of dangling, silvery filaments.
The other chamber contained the Martian Falcon.
Kicking, struggling, screaming in eerie silence, the Martian in the iridescent robes was dragged towards the machine and thrust into the empty chamber. The doors closed. The camera jerked again as pieces of masonry began to fall from the ceiling. Another Martian began to manipulate the machine’s controls, which consisted of numerous dials, switches and levers.
Moments later, the doors of the machine opened again. The robed Martian fell to the floor, clearly dead. The others left his body where it lay and took the Martian Falcon from the neighbouring chamber.
Again the point of view changed. Now the Martians were half running, half staggering along a corridor lit intermittently by flickering electric lights. One of them clutched the Falcon to his breast. The building’s power supply was being interrupted, would doubtless soon give out altogether. The effect was like a strobe light, giving rapid, disjointed glimpses of what was happening.
The corridor opened into a large chamber which Rusty immediately recognised from the newsreels she had seen of the X-M expedition. It was the room in which Captain Thorne Smith and his crew had discovered the Martian Falcon two years ago.
A final jerk of the camera, and the screen went dark.
Martell stood up and switched off the projector. Taking his seat again, he said: ‘That’s all she wrote. Thoughts?’
‘The one in the robes,’ said Monica Quinlan. ‘He was clearly a leader, perhaps the leader. And it looks like he was responsible for the destruction of their world.’
‘But how?’ asked Pete Medina. ‘That pyramid was more than a building. But what was it? A machine of some kind? And what did it do? It looks like it projected something into the sky, but what?’
‘It was clearly a technological device,’ said David Kaplan. ‘As to what it was for… a new type of power source? A weapon?’ He shrugged and shook his head.
‘Whatever it was,’ said Larry Donahue, the Director of Exobiology, ‘it produced something that was utterly inimical to all life – and not just life. Did you see how the sky changed colour? It sucked the entire atmosphere off of Mars! It consumed everything – the life of the planet, the very air itself.’
Troy Martell leaned forward. ‘Do you think it could have been some kind of life form, Larry? An alien being of some kind?’
‘It looked that way to me,’ Donahue nodded. ‘It acted almost like… like a single-celled organism, reaching out and absorbing everything it touched, but on a colossal scale, a scale large enough to suck an entire planet dry.’
‘Those poor people,’ said Deborah Pellin. ‘Destroyed… consumed…’ She shook her head.
‘It seems to me we have two questions to answer,’ said David Kaplan. ‘One: did that thing leave once it had consumed everything on Mars, or is it still there, perhaps lying dormant, waiting? And two: what did the Martians do to the guy in the fancy robes?’
‘I’d say they were punishing him,’ said Brian Canning, the Deputy Administrator. ‘Whatever they did, he wound up dead as a result. But where does the Martian Falcon fit into all this?’
‘It was somehow part of the punishment,’ said Monica Quinlan. ‘It had to be. Perhaps the power source for the machine that killed the leader… a battery of some kind?’
Brian Canning shook his head. ‘That can’t be true. We examined the Falcon before we shipped it off to New York. It’s obsidian, nothing more. No internal structure. It’s a piece of art, not a technological device.’
Monica Quinlan gave a snort. ‘Is that why we insisted it be kept in a lead-lined container?’
‘That was just a precaution, Monica,’ Martell replied. ‘And the theory that it adversely affects mental states is just that – a theory. There’s no known mechanism by which it could do that, but, as you know, we decided to err on the side of caution.’
‘But what about the X-M crew?’ Quinlan persisted.
‘Same thing,’ Martell said with an edge of irritation. ‘The psych boys are still working on them. Their state could be put down to the effects of space travel; it could be completely unrelated to Mars or anything they found there. We still don’t know for sure, but there’s no concrete reason to tie it to the Falcon.’
‘Until now,’ said Larry Donahue.
Martell was about to answer, but David Kaplan interrupted him. ‘Perhaps it had some ritual meaning,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t ring true to me,’ said Quinlan. ‘It was definitely a machine that they put him into, and it looks like he sure as hell didn’t want to go. It’s as if he knew what was about to happen to him.’
‘Why was the event filmed?’ asked Pete Medina suddenly. All eyes turned to him. ‘If that transmission was sent as a warning…’ He paused, considering the implications of his own question. ‘I can understand why the initial event was filmed: it was clearly the culmination of some great enterprise. And the catastrophe that followed – it stands to reason that the camera would have captured that as well. But the punishment of the guy in robes… why did they film that? Why did they think they needed to?’
They all thought about this. Martell glanced at Rusty. ‘Aldous,’ he said, ‘you’ve been pretty quiet so far. Any thoughts?’
Damn it! Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and at least she was being asked to speculate rather than show any prior knowledge. ‘Aldous Bradlee’ folded his arms and sat
back in his chair, frowning pensively. ‘An opposing faction,’ he said. ‘A group who knew that what the guy in robes was planning was a bad idea. It looks like they couldn’t stop him – maybe he was too powerful, maybe Monica is right and he was the Martians’ supreme ruler. In any event, when the catastrophe occurred, they were prepared, and they jumped on him immediately. Maybe they thought that by killing him they could put a stop to what was happening…’
‘They were sure as hell wrong about that,’ said Deborah Pellin.
‘And then,’ Rusty continued, now talking more to herself than to anyone else, ‘while the catastrophe was occurring… knowing that they too would be dead soon… they set up the transmission equipment. But they didn’t set it to transmit immediately… no, they didn’t do that. Instead, they set it to transmit only in the event that Mars was visited in the future. Now… why did they do that…?’
The others looked at each other in silence. Then Medina said: ‘Maybe they didn’t want to advertise the fact that something terrible had happened. Warnings can sometimes be lures, you know? For God’s sake don’t come here! Oh, really? Why not? Let’s go there and find out!’
Larry Donahue nodded. ‘That’s possible, I guess. But that leaves us with another question, doesn’t it? What triggered the transmission? Was it the arrival of Rocketship X-M? Or was it the taking of the Falcon? Whatever they did to their leader, the Falcon had something to do with it.’
Rusty looked at Donahue. Yeah, she thought, the Falcon had something to do with it.
‘If that’s really the case,’ said Quinlan, ‘then we have another question and another problem: we don’t know where the Falcon is. It’s been stolen…’
‘The New York police think it was stolen by the mob,’ said Martell. ‘Most likely, Al Capone.’
‘Yeah,’ said Quinlan, ‘but is that true? Or was it stolen by someone else?’
‘What are you getting at, Monica?’ asked Martell.
Quinlan sighed. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that, well, the timing… it strikes me as too close to be coincidence. What if it wasn’t Capone or any other gangster? What if someone else knows something about the Martian Falcon… something we don’t?’
