Orbitsville o-1

by Bob Shaw

  Garamond’s mind escaped into irrelevancy. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t able to think of anything to say for the benefit of posterity — there’s no way to communicate. No way.

  A minute endured like an age, and then another.

  “We’ve done our bit,” Napier announced finally. “Let’s go, Vance.”

  Garamond turned thankfully and they walked towards Mason, who backed away from them, still holorecording all that was happening. Not until he had reached the car did Garamond look in the direction of the aliens. One of them was moving away towards its city with a complicated ungainly gait; the other was standing exactly where they had left it.

  “I’ll drive back,” Napier said, climbing into the car first and experimenting with the simplified controls while the others were taking their seats. He got the vehicle moving, swung it round and set off up the hill at an oblique angle. “We’ll go the long way round in case we run into a crowd following our tracks out.”

  Garamond nodded, his thoughts still wholly absorbed by the two creatures on the plain. “There was no arachnid reaction — I suppose that’s something we can feel good about — but I felt totally inadequate. There was no point to it at all. I can’t see us and them ever relating or interacting.”

  “I don’t know about relating, Vance, but there’s going to be plenty of interacting.” Napier pointed out through the windshield to the left, where the curve of the hill was falling away to reveal new expanses of prairie. The pale blue buildings of the alien city, instead of thinning out, were spread across the fresh vistas of grassland like flowers in a meadow, seemingly going on for ever.

  Mason whistled and raised his recorder. “Do you think it makes a circle outside the hills? Right round our base?”

  “It looks that way to me. They must have been here a long time…” Napier allowed his words to tail off, but Garamond knew at once what he was thinking.

  Liz Lindstrom had brought a third of a million settlers with her on the very first load, and the big ships would soon be bringing land-hungry humans in batches of a full million or more. Interaction between the two races was bound to take place in the near future, and on a very large scale.

  eleven

  Rumours of massacre came within a month.

  There had. been a short-term lull while the shallow circular basin centred on Beachhead City absorbed the first waves of settlers. During this brief respite a handful of External Affairs representatives arrived, aware of their inadequacy, and ruled that no humans were to go within five kilometres of the alien community until negotiations had been completed for a corridor through to the free territory beyond. A number of factors combined against their efficacy, however. The Government men had been late on the scene, no broadcasting media were available to them, and — most important — there was a widespread feeling among the settlers that attempting diplomatic communication with the Clowns, as they had been unofficially named, would be an exercise in futility.

  At first the bright-hued aliens had been approached with caution and respect, then it was learned that they possessed no machines beyond the simplest farming implements. Even their houses were woven from a kind of cellulose rope extruded from their own bodies in roughly the same way that a spider produces its web. When it was further discovered that the Clowns were mute, the assumption of their intelligence was called into question by many of the human settlers. One theory advanced was that they were degenerate descendants of the race which had built the fortifications around the Beachhead City aperture; another that they were little more than domestic animals which had outlived their masters and developed a quasiculture of their own.

  Garamond was disturbed by the attitude implicit in the theories, partly because it was a catalyst for certain changes which were taking place in the Earth settlers. The subtle loosening of discipline he had noticed among his own men within minutes of their setting foot on Orbitsville had its counterpart among the immigrants in the form of a growing disregard for authority. Men whose lives had been closely controlled in the tight, compacted society of Earth now regarded themselves as potential owners of continents and were impatient for their new status. All they had to do to transform themselves from clerks to kings was to load up the vehicles provided by the Starflight workshops and set out on their golden journeys. The only directive was that they should travel far, because it was obvious that the further a man went when fanning out from Beachhead City the more land would be available to him.

  As the mood took hold of the settlers even the earliest arrivals, who had staked out their plots of land within the circular hills, became uneasily aware of the incoming hordes at their heels and decided to move onwards and outwards.

  In a normal planetary situation the population pressures would not have been concentrated so fiercely on one point, but Earth technology was geared to the Assumption of Mediocrity. During the development of the total transport system of flickerwing ships and shuttles it had never occurred to anyone to make provision for an environment in which, for, example, it would not be possible for a ship to gather its own reaction mass. It would have been completely illogical to do so, in the universe as it was then understood — but in the context of Orbitsville a deadly mistake had been made.

  Territories of astronomical dimensions were available, but no means of claiming them quickly enough to satisfy the ambitions of men who had crossed space like gods and then found themselves reduced to wheeled transportation. Given time to build or import fleets of wing-borne aircraft, the difficulties could have been lessened but not removed completely. Each family unit or commune had to become self-supporting in the shortest possible time and, even with advanced farming methods and the use of iron cows, this meant claiming possession of large areas without delay.

  It was a situation which, classically, had always resulted in man fighting man. Garamond was not surprised therefore when reports began to reach him that the outermost settlers had forced their way through the Clown city in a number of places and were pouring into the prairie beyond. He did not try to visit any of the trouble spots in person, but had no difficulty in visualizing the course of events at each. Still haunted by the sense of having lost his purpose, he devoted most of his time to his family, making only occasional visits to the Bissendorf in his capacity of chief executive. He deliberately avoided watching the newscasts which were piped into his home along the landlines, but other channels were open.

  One morning, while he was sleeping off the effects of a prolonged drinking session, he was awakened by the sound of a child’s scream. The sound triggered off a synergistic vision of Harald Lindstrom falling away from the blind face of a statue and, almost in the same instant, came the crushing awareness that he had not been sufficiently on his guard against Elizabeth. Garamond sat up in bed, gasping for air, and lurched to the living-room. Aileen had got there before him and was kneeling with her arms around Christopher. The boy was now sobbing gently, his face buried in her shoulder.

  “What happened?” Garamond’s fear was subsiding but his heart was pounding unevenly.

  “It was the projector,” Aileen said. “One of those things appeared on it. I turned it off.”

  “What things?” Garamond glanced at the projection area of the solid-image television where the faint ghost of a tutor in one of the educational programmes was still dissolving into the air.

  Christopher raised a streaked, solemn face. “It was a Crown.”

  “He means a Clown.” Aileen’s eyes were slaty with anger.

  “A Clown? But… I told you to keep the images fairly diffuse when Chris is watching so that he won’t get confused between what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “The image was diffused. The thing still scared him, that’s all.”

  Garamond stared helplessly at his wife. “I don’t get it. Why should he be afraid of a Clown?” He turned his attention to Christopher. “What’s the matter, son? Why were you afraid?”

  “I thought the Crown was coming to get me too.”


  “That was a silly thing to think — they never harmed anybody.”

  The boy’s gaze was steady and reproachful. “What about all the people they froze? All the dead people?”

  Garamond was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t confuse him,” Aileen said quietly. “You know perfectly well what’s been in the newscasts for the last couple of days.”

  “But I don’t! What did they say?”

  “About the outer planet. When they built Lindstromland they shut off all the light and heat to the outer planet and froze it over.”

  “They? Who were they?”

  “The Clowns, of course.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” Garamond began to smile. “The Clowns created Orbitsville!”

  “Their ancestors.”

  “I see. And there were people on the outer planet? People who got frozen to death?”

  “They showed photographs of them.” A stubborn note had crept into Aileen’s voice. “Where did they get these photographs?”

  “A Starflight ship must have gone there, of course.”

  “But, honey, if the planet is frozen over how could anybody take photographs of its surface or anything on it? Just try thinking it over for a while.”

  “I don’t know how they did it — I’m only telling you what Chris and I and everybody else have seen.”

  Garamond sighed and walked to the communicator and called Cliff Napier on board the Bissendorf. The familiar head appeared almost immediately at the projection focus and nodded a greeting.

  “Cliff, I need some information about ship movements within the Pengelly’s Star system.” Garamond spoke quickly, without preamble. “Has there been an expedition to the outer planet?”

  “No.”

  “You’re positive?”

  Napier glanced downwards, looking at an information display. “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks, Cliff. That’s all.” Garamond broke the connection and Napier’s apparently solid features faded into the air just as an expression of puzzlement was appearing on them. “There you are, Aileen — a direct, clear statement of fact. Now, where are the photographs supposed to have come from?”

  “Well, perhaps they weren’t actual photographs. They might have been…”

  “Artists’ impressions? Reconstructions?”

  “What difference does it make? They were shown…”

  “What difference?” Garamond gave a shaky laugh as the mental chasm opened between himself and his wife, but he felt no annoyance with her. Their marriage had always been simple and harmonious, and he knew it was based on deeper attachments than could be achieved through mere similarity in interests or outlook. One of the first things he had learned to accept was the certainty of lasting incompleteness on some levels of their relationship, and usually he knew how to accommodate it.

  “It makes all the difference in the world,” he said softly, almost as if speaking to a child. “Don’t you see how your attitude towards the Clowns has been affected by what you’ve seen or think you’ve seen on the viewers? That’s the way people are manipulated. It used to be more difficult, or at least they had to be more subtle when literacy was considered vital to education…” Even to his own ears the words sounded dry and irrelevant, and he stopped speaking as he noticed Aileen’s predictable loss of interest. His wife absorbed most of her information semi-instinctively, through images, and he had no picture to show her. Garamond felt an obscure sadness.

  “I’m not stupid, Vance.” Aileen touched his hand, her intuition in sure control.

  “I know.”

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  “I just want you to remember the Starflight Corporation is like…” he strove for a suitably vivid image, “…like a snowball rolling down a hill. It keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it keeps going faster, and it can’t slow down. It can’t afford to stop, even when somebody gets in the way… and that’s why it’s going to roll right on over the Clowns.” “You always seem so certain about things.”

  “The signs are all there. The first step is to implant in people’s minds the idea that the Clowns ought to be rolled over. Once that’s been done the rest is easy.”

  “I don’t like the Crowns,” Christopher said, breaking a long silence. His grain-gold face was determined.

  “I’m not asking you to like them, son. Just don’t believe that everything you see on the viewer is real and true. Why, if I went to the outer planet myself I could…” Garamond stopped speaking for a moment as the idea took hold of his mind.

  * * *

  “Why not? After all, that’s the sort of work the S.E.A. ships were designed to do,” Elizabeth, had said, reasonably, and at that point she had smiled. “You’re on indefinite leave, Captain, but if you would prefer to return to active service and visit the outer world I have no objections.”

  “Thank you, My Lady,” Garamond had replied, concealing his surprise.

  Elizabeth’s imperfect smile had grown more secretive, more triumphant. “We will find it very useful to possess some hard data about the planet — in place of all the speculations which are filling the air.”

  * * *

  Garamond reviewed the brief conversation many times during the period in which the Bissendorf was extending its invisible wings and disengaging from fleet formation. It came to him that he had proposed the exploratory flight partly as a challenge to the President, hoping that a duel with her would ease the growing tensions in his mind. Her ready agreement to the mission was the last thing he had expected and, as well as drawing a few pointed comments from Aileen, it had left him feeling both disappointed and uneasy.

  He sat in the control gallery for hours, watching the bright images of the other Starflight ships perform the patient manoeuvres which would bring each one in turn to the entrance of Orbitsville where it could discharge its load of human beings or supplies. When the Bissendorf’s own progression had taken it out through the regulated swarm, and nothing but stars lay in front, Garamond remained on station watching the irregular stabs of the main electron gun, the ghostly blade of energy which flickered through space ahead of the ship. The harvest of reaction mass was not plentiful in the immediate vicinity of Pengelly’s Star and in the early stages of the flight it was necessary to ionize the cosmic dust to help the intake fields do their work. Gradually, however, as the ship spiralled outwards, the night-black plain of Orbitsville’s shell ceased to blank off an entire half of the visible universe. The conditions of space became more normal and speed began to build up. Once again Garamond had difficulty in setting his perceptions to the correct scale. Everything in his past experience conspired to make him think he was in a tiny ship which was painfully struggling to a height of a few hundred kilometres above a normal-sized planet, whereas at a hundred million kilometres out it was still necessary to turn one’s head through ninety degrees to take in both edges of Orbitsville’s disc. The size of the sphere was, in a way, painful to Garamond, causing familiar questions to seethe again in his mind. Was the fact that it was large enough to accommodate every intelligent being in the home galaxy a clue to its purpose? Why was there only one entrance to such a huge edifice? Did the physics of the sphere’s existence dictate of necessity that neither flickerwing ship nor radio communicator could operate inside it? Or were those features designed in by the Creators to preserve the sphere’s effective size, and to prevent ingenious technicians turning it into a global village with their FTL ships and television networks? And where were the Creators now?

  Napier appeared with two bulbs of coffee, one of which he handed to Garamond. “The weather section reports that the local average density of space is increasing according to their predictions. That means we should be able to pick up enough speed to reach the outer planet in not much more than a hundred hours.”

  Garamond nodded his approval. “The probe torpedo should be fitted out by then.”

  “Sammy Yamoto wants to lead a manned descent to the surface.”<
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  “That could be dangerous — we’ll have to get a better report on the surface conditions before authorizing anything like that.” Garamond began to sip his coffee, then frowned. “Why should our Chief Astronomer want to risk his neck out there? I thought he was still wrapped up in his globular filigree of force fields.”

  “He is, but he reckons he can deduce a few things about how Orbitsville was built by examining the outer planet.”

  “Tell him to keep me posted.” Garamond looked at Napier over the mouthpiece of his coffee bulb and saw an uncharacteristic look of hesitancy on the big man’s face. “Anything else coming to the boil?”

  “Shrapnel seems to have gone AWOL.”

  “Shrapnel? The shuttle pilot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he took off. Isn’t that what we expected?”

  “I expected him to do it once, but not twice. He disappeared for the best part of a day soon after the Starflight crowd got here. It was during the time he was on ground detachment so I decided he had gone back to Starflight with a hard luck story, and I wrote him off — but he was back on duty again that night.”

  That surprised you?“

  “It did, especially as he came back without the chip on his shoulder. His whole attitude seemed to have changed for the better, and since then he’s been working like a beaver.”

  “Maybe he discovered he didn’t like the Starflight HQ staff.”

  Napier looked unconvinced. “He didn’t object or try to cry off when orders were posted for this flight, but he isn’t on board.”

  “I’d just forget about him.”