by E. C. Tubb
Koenig lifted his commlock, listened to the wash of static, then took a chance. His sense of direction was completely disturbed and he had no idea as to where the ship could be, but the direction he was facing could be as right as any other.
‘Move to the end of the line, Victor. We’ll walk a hundred steps then see how things are. Keep them short, neither of us wants to risk a fall and a broken bone.’
‘We could make a rough camp, John. We have solid fuel burners in the packs and some food. A fire could serve as a beacon.’
‘We’ll see. A fire would stand more chance of being spotted at night. Just walk and keep shouting and, remember, a hundred short steps.’
Koenig felt Bergman fall at the eighty-seventh.
The line jerked and went slack to tighten again with a snap which made him fear that it had been broken. Koenig traced it through the mist, followed it as it sloped down and touched the recumbent figure.
‘Victor?’
Bergman was cold. Beneath the ice crusting his mouth his lips were blue and his eyes were glazed. Koenig rubbed at his cheeks, knowing that he was fighting a losing battle. Body-heat, lost, needed time to be regained. The wind sucked the warmth from their bodies and, despite their activity, hypothermia—extreme loss of natural warmth, would kill them.
‘Victor!’ Koenig’s voice became harsh. ‘Are you hurt? No? Then get up, man! Up!’
Bergman climbed shakily to his feet.
‘A fire—’
The materials were held in a box; a few slugs of solid fuel, a burner, heat enough to cook a few meals in case of dire need. Koenig squatted, rasped the igniters over the rough plates, set down the fuel as it broke into flame.
The wind tore at the heat, dissipated it before it could give them its warmth.
‘We must keep moving, Victor.’ Koenig beat his arms across his chest and again tried the commlock. The static had lessened and, faintly, he could hear the signal beacon from the Eagle. Turning the instrument he found the direction in which the ship must be. ‘Come on, Victor!’
Bergman stumbled after the first few steps and fell to lie gasping. His teeth chattered and it was hard for him to speak. His whole body quivered with an uncontrollable ague-like reaction to the cold.
‘Leave me, John. Alone you might make it. I’ve got to rest, to get warm somehow, to sleep . . . sleep . . .’
‘Up!’ Koenig hauled the limp figure to its feet. ‘Move, Victor! Damn you, move!’
He plunged into the mist, one arm supporting the elder man, feeling the shakes which told of hypothermia. Bergman was dying. In minutes he would be past the point where he could be revived.
Koenig checked his commlock, swore as static drowned out the signal. Blindly he pressed on, Bergman a dead weight now which hung over his shoulder. Death, invisible but present, kept him close company.
‘Hello there! Hello! Answer if you can hear me. Hello!’
A voice incredibly near followed by bulky figures which loomed from the mist. Men which clustered around and formed a living wall against the wind.
‘Are you from Alpha?’
‘Yes.’ Koenig peered at the cowled faces, blurred but unmistakably human. ‘There are others—we became separated.’
‘One has been found.’ The deep voice boomed from the hood. ‘There.’
Koenig stared at the almost shapeless bundle some of the men were carrying. It was Helena and she was unconscious, there were thick furs wrapped around her own garments.
‘She was in a bad way when we found her,’ boomed the voice. ‘Like your friend here. We’d better get you all back to the palace.’
‘There’s another,’ said Koenig. ‘Alan Carter, our pilot.’
‘We’ll keep looking, but I’ll be frank with you, his chances are small. Come on, now, let’s get you to where there is warmth and protection from this damned wind.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Helena stirred and opened her eyes and looked at a scene from one of the story books she had read when a very young girl before the cold disciplines of science had ousted the world of fantasy from her life. Above soared the dome of a cavern each fragment covered in glittering crystals, the facets reflecting a rainbow pattern of lights in scintillating brilliance.
More light pulsed from a point below her vision and she lifted her head and saw a great mass of redly glowing crystals lying heaped within a circle of others which shimmered with blues and greens, lambent yellow and smokey violet.
‘Helena!’ Turning she looked at Koenig, saw the anxiety in his eyes, the sudden relief as she moved and smiled. ‘Thank God you’ve recovered!’
‘The others?’
‘Victor is here with us.’ Koenig gestured to where Bergman lay close to the fire on a heap of furs. ‘Alan is still missing. They’re looking for him, but the chance of finding him alive is negligible.’
She remembered the wind, the mist, the numbing cold and, finally, the shapes which had suddenly appeared as if from delirium. The last thing she remembered.
Sitting upright she looked around. The cavern was vast, the walls pierced with openings which, she guessed, led to interconnecting chambers. Men and women sat or sprawled around the strangely glowing fire, all dressed in a variety of skins and furs. More furs lay in scattered piles to form beds. Articles of furniture stood around; tables and benches made of stone, chairs fashioned of metal and plastic.
Space ship furniture of a pattern she knew.
‘John, who are these people?’
‘Survivors, Helena. They call this planet Ultima Thule. Do you remember the Uranus expedition of 1986?’
‘Naturally, but the entire expedition was totally destroyed in a proton storm five days from their objective.’ Helena stared at him with startled understanding. ‘Are you saying that these people are the survivors? John, that’s incredible!’
‘Incredible, but true.’ The deep voice boomed from the massive chest of a man who came towards them. He wore furs as if they had been cloth of gold adorned with purple. He carried a cup which steamed and yielded a pleasing fragrance. ‘As your own eyes should tell you, Doctor Russell.’
‘Doctor Rowland! Cabot!’
‘The same.’ Rowland bowed as he handed her the cup. ‘Try this tisane which I made from the contents of your pack. The years have improved you, Helena. As I remember you were a little too thin and far too serious. You needed a husband or a lover to teach you how to enjoy life. Now, I assume, you have both.’
‘I had both,’ she corrected. ‘My husband died years ago.’
‘And now it’s time for another, perhaps?’ He glanced at Koenig. ‘Well, time for reminiscing later on, now drink and relax. You’ve had a hard time.’
‘Hard,’ said a new voice. ‘Hard? Is a conundrum hard to crack? Is an egg? Read me the riddle of the spheres, my pretty, and I will twine stars in your hair for a crown.’
The voice was high, thin, the man a parody. If Rowland was a king the other was a jester. His fur boots were pointed at the toes, his fur cap cut like that of a fool, his robe slashed and tattered, ragged ends flying as he spun and danced. His eyes were small, shrewd and darting. His face, at times vacuous, at others creased in the wizened likeness of an ape.
As Helena stared at him he began to dance and sing an air she vaguely remembered.
‘Hey de, hey de! Misery me, lackaday de. He sipped no sup and he craved no crumb as he sighed for the love of a lady.’
The Gilbert and Sullivan theme from the Yeoman of the Guard.
Rowland boomed, ‘Shut up, Jack. Come and be introduced properly. Doctor Helena Russell meet Colonel Jack Tanner, Commander of the Uranus Expeditionary probe.’
‘Call me Jack,’ said Tanner quickly before Helena could say anything. ‘Call me Jack—for I am Jack the Fool. And in folly I am not alone, for see? The other of your number wakes and stares with eyes which need the light of suns to show the answers he seeks.’ He danced to where Bergman had sat upright on the heap of furs. ‘I’ll bet we are in this land o
f dreams where nothing is but as it seems.’
‘Colonel Tanner!’ Bergman stared his amazement. ‘And Doctor Rowland!’
‘We are not ghosts,’ said Tanner. ‘Though we wander and howl bitterly into the night. But heed my warning, eat nothing which you have not brought with you. Only the water will prove gentle to your taste.’
‘Professor Bergman, your arrival here has made this the happiest day of my life,’ said Rowland. ‘There is so much to explain, to talk about. Discoveries with tremendous implications and—’
‘Why did the Colonel warn us against the food?’
‘It takes a little getting used to. When we first arrived it made us all violently ill, but we adapted in time.’
Bergman nodded then said, ‘But how did you get here? The last we heard of the Uranus expedition was that your ship was breaking up in a proton storm. That was about fourteen years ago now.’
‘I made the report,’ said Tanner. ‘Once upon a time I spoke simple truth. Time had riddled it a little but it is as it was—true.’
‘We were lucky,’ said Rowland grimly. ‘And something odd happened. The ship went out of control and for a while we were helpless. The instruments gave incredible readings, we had run out of prayers, and all hell had broken loose within the hull. Maybe one of those prayers was answered or perhaps we hit a nexus of opposed forces just when the pile burst and ran wild. We should all have been killed with the wild radiation let alone the heat, but it was a time for miracles. Something happened. A movement in a plane other than the normal three. My guess is that we were nipped in opposed forces like a cherry stone between finger and thumb. When they pressed we were shot somewhere.’
‘A space warp,’ said Bergman thoughtfully. ‘If the forces were strong enough and correctly opposed and you were in the nexus then you would have been rotated into the fourth dimension. Your own power source would have kept you there for an indeterminate period and then, as it waned, you would have reverted back into normal time and space.’
‘Not normal, Professor. You can’t call this universe we’re in normal.’
‘Not as we usually regard normality, no,’ admitted Bergman. ‘But normal in relation to the fourth-dimensional plane into which you must have been thrown. And then?’
‘We broke out or whatever you like to call it. We managed to repair the ship enough to make a landing and we came here.’ Rowland gestured at the cavern. ‘We managed to survive and—’ He turned as a party of fur-clad men came through an opening and wended their way down a ramp towards the fire. ‘Well? Did you find him, Ted?’
‘No.’ The man. was shivering. ‘It’s dark out there now and nothing living could survive. I’m sorry, folks, but there it is. Your friend has to be dead.’
Mathematicians had once said that a bee couldn’t fly, that acceleration pressure would kill anyone moving at more than fifteen miles an hour, that men would never traverse space. They had been experts and had been shown to be wrong.
Ted was an expert and Carter made him a liar.
The pilot was still alive.
He crawled over crusted snow and polished ice, hands extended as he pushed on through the mist and darkness, a living thing driven on by the determination to survive.
Logic had nothing to do with it. Logically his chances were so small as to be non-existent, and neither did sense, a sensible man would have stopped and welcomed death as a friend. Frozen, numbed, dying, Carter fought on, knowing only that to halt was to die, that to keep on moving would be to maintian life a few minutes longer, an extension bought with pain.
Pain which multiplied as his head slammed against something hard.
An ice-covered rock barred his progress and he touched it, moving along it, ankles and knees scraping over the ground. His hands were like wood and told him nothing aside from the fact that he had met a barrier. But there had been no barrier on the way from the Eagle to the location point. Lost, he had wandered in the wrong direction and he had no more strength.
All he could do was to lie against the mound and hope that it would break the force of the wind.
Blearily he stared at the commlock in his hand. The screen was dark but the instalment emitted a regular bleeping sound. The location signal from the Eagle, coming through during a patch of calm. He turned the instrument, frowning as the signal did not vary. It took several moments for him to realize why it stayed the same.
He had found the Eagle! The mount against which he lay had to be the bulk of the vessel itself!
Hope brought him to his feet, the commlock extended pointing at the place where the air-lock should be. Unless the electronic device worked he was dead—his numbed hands could never operate the manual combination lock. Again he clamped his hand on the commlock activating stud and moved it from side to side.
‘Work! Please work! Dear God, make it work!’
He was praying, trembling, knowing that safety lay only inches away, but unless the lock opened it could have been on another world.
A stir in the snow covering the bulk, a splinter of light which grew into an oblong, a gust of relative heat which sent thick streamers of mist to join the other fog all around.
Carter stumbled forward, reached for the edge of the port and was suddenly smashed aside by something big and shaggy.
A beast, as high as his waist, thick with ice-crusted wool, long horns sweeping forward over savage eyes filmed with nictating lids.
The face was long and narrow, the jaw pointed, the lips thin over flat teeth. A creature native to this world, adapted to the bitter climate, attracted by the heat of his body, the nourishment it contained.
A killer.
It came with a rush, a horn catching at Carter’s clothing, ripping it and the flesh beneath so that blood dappled the snow. An attack which would have ripped him open had he not lunged to one side just in time. A lunge which left him sprawling helplessly on the ice, rolling as razor-sharp hooves sent splinters into his face.
Desperately he grabbed at his belt. The laser was gone but he’d opened his pack and wrapped what it contained around himself, stuffing the food and fuel into his pockets. As the beast charged again Carter snatched out a lump of solid fuel, gripped it in his teeth and slashed the end over the igniter.
Flame stung his eyes and crisped his eyebrows, growing as he snatched the fragment from his mouth and threw it directly into the gaping jaws of the attacking beast.
As the thing reared, bellowing, Carter threw himself into the air-lock and slapped his hand against the button triggering the cycle. As the outer door closed he slumped, falling through the portal as the inner door opened to land sprawling on the floor of the Eagle, breath panting, eyes closed, blood forming a pool beneath him where it seeped from his wounded side.
From the panel came Morrow’s voice, thin and anxious with rising urgency.
‘Come in Eagle One. Do you copy? Come in Eagle One. If you hear me answer. Alpha calling Eagle One.’
Carter heaved himself to his feet and fell into the pilot’s chair.
‘Paul . . . can you hear me, Paul?’
‘Alan! What’s happening?’
‘Trouble. We got separated in the storm. I was lucky to make it back. Found the Eagle by accident.’
‘Alan are you hurt? Your voice—’
‘Hurt,’ said Carter. ‘A beast nearly got me. It could have got the others if they survived the cold. You’ll have to handle the Eagle, Paul. Can’t stay conscious much longer.’ Carter sagged, staring at the screen, the face which suddenly appeared.
At his console Morrow said, ‘Dear God, look at him, David! Frostbitten, bleeding, he looks all in.’
‘We’ve got to get him up while the electronic calm allows it,’ said Kano. ‘The computer says we could just have enough time if you start immediately.’
‘But the others? John, Victor, Helena?’
‘Nothing could live unprotected down there, Paul. The temperature’s hit bottom. It’s a miracle that Alan is still alive and he won’t be f
or long unless you bring him up and soon. Do it, Paul. Save one of them at least.’
A moment then Morrow nodded. Lolling in the pilot’s chair Carter didn’t see the panel flare to life or hear the pulse of the engines as they fed power into the drive. Couldn’t tell when the Eagle lifted to start the journey back to base.
The journey which alone could save his life.
Bergman was entranced. He said, ‘Do you mean that you built all this equipment from material salvaged from the Uranus probe? It seems incredible.’ He glanced at the grotto-like chamber crammed with electronic and other devices, recognizing some of the instruments, frowning at others. At his side Ted Foster, the engineer of the Uranus expedition, beamed his pride.
‘We had to do a lot of improvisation, Professor, and stretch what we had. Some of the crystals yield a rare element when fused and we found a vein of heavy metal. Our biggest initial trouble was the food.’
‘You couldn’t eat it,’ said Bergman. ‘But how did you manage to adapt?’
‘The hard way.’ Foster was grim. ‘Rowland will want to tell you that himself, but aside from the food the early days were tough. If we hadn’t found this place we’d never have made it.’
‘But you did.’
‘Yes, we went Robinson Crusoe one better.’ Foster watched as Bergman examined a case. It contained vegetables growing in a bed of snow. ‘Thulian salad.’
‘It looks appetizing enough.’
‘Looks can deceive. It has a harsh, bitter taste which we’re trying to breed out, but in its natural state it provides the sample diet for a species of animal which roams the surface. It grows beneath the snow and they can scent it out.’
‘Animals?’
‘Things like big sheep with long horns like those of an ox.’ Foster hesitated. ‘They are pretty vicious and take a lot of killing. They come out at dusk.’
Bergman knew he was thinking of Carter, but said nothing, the search parties had done their best and it would be wrong to complain especially as they owed their lives to the Thulians.
