He had been wrong in his pursuit of the wonderful planets of the blue sun and he had been teaching Nisa wrongly! They should not fly to new worlds in search of some uninhabited planet that chance made suitable for life, but man should advance deliberately, step by step, through his own arm of the Galaxy in a triumphal march of knowledge and the beauty of life. Such as Nisa….
In a sudden burst of deep sorrow Erg Noor dropped to his knees in front of the astronavigator’s silicolloid sarcophagus. The girl’s breathing was not perceptible, her eyelashes cast blue shadows on her cheeks and her white teeth were just visible through her slightly parted lips. On her left shoulder, at the base of her neck and near the elbow there were pale, bluish marks — the places where the injurious currents had struck her.
“Can you see me, do you remember anything in your sleep?” asked Erg Noor in agony, in an outburst of grief; he felt his own will-power becoming softer than wax, it was difficult for him to breathe and there was a catch in his throat. The commander strained his interlocked fingers until they turned blue in his effort to transmit his thoughts to Nisa, to make her hear his impassioned call to life and happiness. But the girl with the auburn curls lay as immobile as a statue of pink marble carved to perfection from a living model.
Dr. Louma Lasvy entered the sick bay softly and sensed the presence of somebody else in the silent room. Cautiously withdrawing the curtain she saw the kneeling figure of the commander as motionless as a memorial to the millions of men who have mourned their loved ones. This was not the first time she had found Erg Noor there and her heart was moved with pity for him. He rose gloomily to his feet. Louma went over to him and whispered in anxious tones:
“I want to speak to you.”
Erg Noor nodded and went out, blinking as he entered the lighted part of the sick bay. He did not sit down on the chair Louma offered him but remained leaning against the upright of a mushroom-shaped irradiation apparatus. Louma Lasvy stood up in front of him to her full, lint not very great, height, trying to make herself look taller and more important for the impending talk. The commander’s looks gave her no time for preparations.
“You know,” she began uncertainly, “that present-day neurology has discovered the process by which emotions emerge in the conscious and subconscious divisions of the psyche. The subconscious yields to the influence of inhibiting drugs administered through the ancient spheres of the brain that control the chemical regulation of the organism, including the nervous system and, to some extent, higher nervous activity….”
Erg Noor raised his brows. Louma Lasvy felt that she was speaking in too great detail and too long.
“I want to say that medicine is able to affect those brain centres that control the strong emotions. I could….” Understanding flashed up in Erg Noor’s eyes and developed into a slight smile.
"You propose affecting my love for Nisa and relieving me of suffering?” he asked brusquely.
The doctor nodded in affirmation, afraid to spoil the tenderness of her sympathy with words that would inevitably be schematic.
Erg Noor stretched out his hand gratefully but shook his head in refusal.
“I would not give up the wealth of my emotions, no matter how much suffering they cause me. Suffering, so long as it is not beyond one’s strength, leads to understanding, understanding leads to love and the circle is complete. You’re very kind, Louma, but it isn’t necessary!”
And the commander disappeared through the door with his usual swift gait.
Hurrying, as they would have done in an emergency, the electronic and mechanical engineers erected the televisophone screen for the reception of terrestrial transmissions. After thirteen years the screen was being erected in the library of the central control tower as the ship was now in a zone where radio waves, dispersed by Earth’s atmosphere could be received.
The voices, sounds, forms and colours of their native Earth cheered the travellers up and also served to increase their impatience — the great length of the Cosmic journey was becoming intolerable.
The spaceship sent out a call to Artificial Earth Satellite No. 57 on the usual wavelength used for long-distance Cosmic journeys and impatiently awaited an answer from this powerful station that served as a link between Earth and the Cosmos.
At last the call signals from the spaceship reached Earth.
The whole crew of the ship were awake and did not leave the receivers. They were returning to life after thirteen terrestrial and nine dependent years in which there had been no contact with their native planet! They listened eagerly to reports from Earth, and they took part in the discussion of important questions raised on the world radio network by anybody who wished to do so.
Quite by chance they picked up a proposal from the soil scientist Heb Uhr that gave them material for a six-weeks’ discussion and very intricate calculations.
“Discuss Heb Uhr’s proposal!” thundered the voice of Earth. “Let everybody who is working in that field; who has any similar ideas or objections, say his word!”
This, the usual formula, had a pleasant sound for the travellers. Heb Uhr had proposed to the Astronautical Council a plan for the systematic exploration of the reachable planets of the blue and green stars. He believed these to be special worlds with extraordinarily strong power emanations that might chemically stimulate mineral compounds that are inert under terrestrial conditions to struggle against entropy, that is, give them life. Special forms of life from minerals that are heavier than gas would be active in high temperatures and in the intense radiation of stars in the higher spectral classes. Heb Uhr was of the opinion that the failure of the Sirius expedition, the failure to find life there, was to be expected since that rapidly rotating star was a binary that did not possess a powerful magnetic field. Nobody disputed with Heb Uhr the fact that binary stars could not be regarded as the originators of planetary systems in the Cosmos, but the essence of the proposal called forth very lively opposition from Tantra’s crew.
The astronomers, headed by Erg Noor, compiled a report which was transmitted as being the opinion of the first people who had seen Vega in the film taken by Parus.
People on Earth listened with delight and admiration to the voice from the approaching spaceship.
Tantra opposed the dispatch of the expeditions suggested by Heb Uhr. The blue stars really did emanate tremendous energy per unit of their planets’ surfaces, sufficient to ensure the life of heavy compounds. Any living organism, however, was at once both an energy filter and a dam which, in its struggle against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, functioned only by means of the creation of a complex, by means of the great complication of simple mineral and gas molecules. Such complications could only occur in a process of tremendously active development, which, in turn, entailed the lengthy stability of physical Conditions. Stable conditions did not exist on the planets of high-temperature stars which rapidly destroyed complicated compounds in bursts and vortices of powerful radiation. Nothing there could exist for long despite the fact that minerals acquired the most stable crystal structure with a cubic atomic pattern.
Tantra was of the opinion that Heb Uhr was merely repeating the one-sided assertions of the ancient astronomers who had not understood the dynamics of planet development. Every planet lost the lighter substances that were carried away into space and dispersed. The loss of light elements was especially great in cases where there was great heat and great light pressure from the blue suns.
Tantra gave a long string of examples and concluded that the process of “increasing weight” on the planets of the blue stars did not permit the emergence of living forms.
Satellite 57 transmitted Tantra’s objections direct to the Council observatory.
At last the moment came that Ingrid Dietra and Kay Bear, like all other members of the expedition, had been awaiting so impatiently. Tnntra began to reduce her speed from her subphotonic velocity, had passed the ice belt of the solar system and was approaching the spaceship station on Triton. High veloc
ity was no longer necessary: travelling at a speed of 900 million kilometres an hour, they would have reached Earth from Neptune’s satellite. Triton, in less than five hours. The acceleration of the spaceship, however, took so long that she would have overshot the Sun and travelled far away from it into space if she had set out from Triton.
In order to economize the precious anameson and save the ship from carrying unwieldy equipment, communications inside the solar system were effected by ion planet-ships. Their speed did not exceed 800,000 kilometres an hour for the inner planets and 2,500,000 kilometres an hour for the most distant outer planets. The usual trip from Neptune to Earth took two and a half to three months.
Triton was a very big satellite, only a little smaller than the huge third and fourth satellites of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto, or the planet Mercury. It therefore possessed a thin atmosphere consisting mainly of nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
Erg Noor lauded the spaceship at the appointed place at the satellite’s pole, far from the broad domes of the station buildings. On a ledge of the plateau, near a cliff that was honeycombed with underground premises, stood the gleaming glass building of the quarantine sanatorium.
Here the travellers were subjected to a five-week quarantine in complete isolation from all other people. In the course of this time skilled doctors would study their bodies to make sure that no new infection had taken root. The danger was too great to be ignored: every person who had landed on another planet, even on an uninhabited one, had to submit to this inspection no matter how long he had afterwards been confined to the spaceship. The interior of the ship itself was also inspected by the sanatorium’s scientists before the station gave permission for the journey to Earth. Those planets that had been studied long before and had been colonized by man, such as Venus and Mars, as well as some of the asteroids, had their own quarantine stations where travellers were examined before the ships left.
Confinement in the sanatorium was easier than in the spaceship. There were laboratories in which to work, concert halls, combined baths using electric currents, music, water and wave oscillations, daily walks in light protective suits in the hills near the sanatorium, and, lastly, there was contact with Earth, not always regular, but, still, Earth was only five hours away!
Nisa’s silicolloid sarcophagus was carried into the sanatorium with every possible precaution. Erg Noor and the biologist Eon Thal were the last to leave Tantra. They moved easily even though wearing weights to prevent their making sudden leaps in the low gravitation on the satellite.
The floodlights around the landing fieldwere extinguished. Triton was moving across Neptune’s daylight side. Dull as the greyish light reflected by Neptune was, the giant mirror of the planet, only 35,000 kilometres away from Triton, dispelled the gloom and gave the satellite a bright twilight like that of a spring evening in the northern latitudes of Earth. Triton revolved about Neptune in the opposite direction to the planet’s revolution, that is, from east to west, once in about six terrestrial days so that the “daytime” twilight lasted about seventy hours. In that time Neptune revolved about its own axis four times and at the moment of their arrival the shadow of the satellite was noticeable as it crossed the nebulous disc.
Almost simultaneously the commander and the biologist noticed a small ship standing near the edge of the plateau. This was not a spaceship with its stern half broader than the bows and with high stabilizer ribs. Judging by the sharp bows and slim hull it must have been a planetship but its contours differed in the thick ring at the stern and the long, distaff-shaped structure on top.
“There’s another ship here in quarantine?” half asked, half asserted Eon. “Can the Council have changed its rules?”
“Not to send out stellar expeditions before a previous one has returned?” asked Erg Noor in his turn. “We have kept to our schedule but the report we should have sent to Earth from Zirda was two years late.”
“Perhaps it is an expedition to Neptune,” suggested the biologist. They soon covered the two kilometres to the sanatorium and climbed up to a wide terrace faced with red basalt. The tiny disc of the Sun, easily visible from the pole of the non-rotating satellite, shone brighter than any other star in the black sky. The bitter frost, — 170 °C., felt like the ordinary cold of a northern winter on Earth through their heated protective suits. Huge flakes of snow, frozen ammonia or carbon monoxide, fell slowly through the still atmosphere, giving their surroundings the serene appearance of Earth during a snow-fall.
Erg Noor and Eon Thal stared hypnotized at the falling snow-flakes as did their distant ancestors in the northern lands for whom the first snow-fall meant the end of the farm year. And this unusual snow also meant the end of their journey and their labours.
The biologist, in response to a subconscious impulse, held out his hand to the commander.
“Our adventures are over and we are still alive and well — thanks to you!”
Erg Noor made an abrupt gesture repelling his hand. “Are we all well? And thanks to whom am I alive?” Eon Thal was not put out.
“I’m sure Nisa will be saved! The doctors here want to begin treatment immediately. Instructions have been received from Grimm Schar himself, you know, the head of the General Paralysis Laboratory.”
“Do they know what it is?”
“Not yet. But Nisa has obviously been struck by some sort of current that condenses in the nerve nodes of the autonomous systems. When we find out how to put a stop to its extraordinarily long action the girl will be cured. We have discovered the functioning of persistent psychic paralysis that was considered incurable for centuries, haven’t we? This is something similar caused by an outside exciter. We’ll carry out some experiments on my prisoners, whether they are dead or alive, then… my arm will also begin to function again!”
The commander felt ashamed and frowned; in his great sorrow he had forgotten how much the biologist had done for him. Not at all decent in a grown man! He took the biologist’s hand and they expressed their warm friendship in man’s age-old handshake.
“Do you think the lethal organs of the black jelly-fish and that — that cross-shaped abomination are of the same order?” asked Erg Noor.
“I don’t doubt it, my arm tells me that. Adaptation to life in these black creatures, inhabitants of a planet rich in electricity, has taken the form of the accumulation and transformation of electric energy. They are obviously beasts of prey but we still don’t know whom they prey on.”
“But do you remember what happened to us all when Nisa….”
“That’s another thing. I have thought a lot about that. When that awful cross appeared it radiated infrasonic waves of tremendous strength that broke down our willpower. Sounds in that black world are also black and we cannot hear them. This monster dulls the consciousness with infrasonic effects, and then uses a sort of hypnosis much stronger than that once used by the now extinct big terrestrial snakes, like the anaconda, for example. That was what nearly finished us — if it had not been for Nisa….”
Erg Noor looked at the distant Sun that was at that moment also shining on Earth. The Sun is man’s eternal hope, has been since the prehistoric days when man dragged out a pitiful existence in the teeth of ruthless nature. The Sun is the incarnation of the bright forces of the intellect driving away the darkness and the monsters of the night. And a joyful spark of hope went with him for the rest of his journey.
The Director of the Triton Station came to see Erg Noor at the sanatorium to tell him that Earth wanted to speak to him. The Director’s appearance in a building that was in strict quarantine meant that their isolation was over and that Tantra would be able to complete her thirteen-year journey. Erg Noor came back looking more business-like than ever.
“We are leaving today. I have been asked to take six people from the planetship Amat with us; the ship is remaining here to organize the mining of new mineral deposits on Pluto. We are taking back the expedition and the material they collected on Pluto.
“T
hese six people re-equipped an ordinary planetship for the performance of a deed of great valour. They dived into the depths of hell, down through Pluto’s thick atmosphere of neon and methane, they flew through blizzards of ammonia snow, every second bringing fresh risks of collision with gigantic needles of frozen water as hard as steel. They managed to find a region where there are mountains.
“The mystery of Pluto has been solved at last — it is a planet that does not belong to our solar system but one that was captured by the Sun during its passage through the Galaxy. This accounts for Pluto’s density being much greater than that of any other planet. The explorers discovered strange minerals on this alien world but more important still, on one ridge they found an almost completely ruined structure that told of an inconceivably ancient civilization. The research data must, of course, be checked. The intelligent working of building materials has still to be proved. But still, an amazingly valorous deed has been done. I am proud that our spaceship will carry the heroes back to Earth and I am all impatience to hear their stories. Their quarantine was over three days ago.”
Erg Noor stopped, exhausted by such a lengthy speech.
“But there is a serious contradiction in this!” shouted Pour Hyss.
“Contradiction is the mother of truth!” Erg Noor answered calmly, making use of an old proverb. “It’s time to get Tantra ready.”
The tried and tested spaceship got away from Triton very easily and described a huge arc perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. It was impossible to get directly to Earth — any ship would have been destroyed in the wide asteroid and meteoroid belt, a zone filled with the fragments of the burst planet Phaeton that once existed between Mars and Jupiter and was exploded by the gravitation of the giant of the solar system.
Erg Noor increased acceleration. He did not intend to take his expedition back to Earth by the normal seventy-two day route but to use the colossal power of the spaceship to make the journey in fifty hours with a minimum expenditure of anameson.
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