by John Kippax
'Raft ready to leave, sir.' That was Lindstrom, her voice depersonalized.
'Carry on.'
A screen spun in wild colour, then settled down to show him a picture of the raft leaving, with apparently painful slowness, towards the golden mystery ahead.
Records reported. 'Recording sound and vision sir.'
'Right.'
Then, despite the personnel on duty along the bridge below his chair and his repeaters, despite the thrum of the , ship, despite the knowledge that a whole, wonder-complex of humans and machines was there at his command, Bruce felt grim, and cold, and alone. He remembered Bob Prince: 'Why not finish with the Corps, Tom, and be a Fleet Director? For Excelsior.' He thought of MacGuiness, that fine man who had been done to death when one could almost have bet that he would recover from his multiple hurts. He
thought of Paul Sharva, the big Persian of JAG's department, who wanted to marry Helen, and whom she had refused.
And all the while the picture was kept right for him, so that he followed the raft until the gold ball beyond it obliterated all the blackness of space. By the time the raft was within one hundred metres of its objective, he was praying.
Chapter 8
There is nothing tidy about the universe. We know - the Space Corps know especially well - what wild, furiously unpredictable planets can exist within one system. We know that space is curved, and time, a dimension, is curved with it. We know for certain that there are holes - paths of emptiness - in space, and that the name for a theoretical particle of empty space, 'geon', is a good one, because the empty paths of space respond to gravitational pulls of stars and galaxies. How, then, can we expect the space-time structure to be regular? This is wishful thinking taken far beyond reason.
PROFESSOR HANS KONINBURGER
Panos slowed the raft; forty metres, thirty, twenty, ten. Here he stopped, the raft seesawing easily. 'Suggest we search for an entry point, ma'am.'
'Yes.'
In the slightly-sickmaking weightlessness, they travelled round the globe in eight paths; Balakirev, whose job it would be to open an entry point, scanned the surface.
'Hold it, sir!'
Panos stilled the raft. Balakirev, heavily suited, checked his safety line and, picking up his powered hammer, launched himself towards the surface of the artifact. Whatever the material, his mag boots held him firmly. An oval shape, a mere line, two metres by one, could now be discerned. Panos extended grapples, and the raft held on to the surface, with Balakirev about to tackle the opening.
Lindstrom reported to ship. 'May have found entry point. Engineer now working on it.'
Balakirev began to thump around the line with the hammer. The noise of his breathing over the helmet radios became harsh. He paused, disengaged the plunger attachment and withdrew it, placed it in his belt, and fitted another, like a half-disc spade. With this he continued the attack, his grunting audible, and then an occasional Russian word to help him on.
'Da, da, da!' he shouted; 'it's giving way, ma'am.'
Balakirev knew his business. He worked around, making a couple of cross chops with the blade. 'Hinge, maybe, there.' He continued round the oval. 'It's going to spring...' He chopped twice and then the bright oval lifted, and swung out from the surface.
'Entry point now open,' Lindstrom reported. She gave her orders so that Vee Twelve could check and comment, if necessary. 'Mr Panos, stay. CPO Balakirev stay also; you may be needed again. Dr Creighton and CPO Caiola bring that bag of yours. I'll lead.'
She was calm, her fears pushed out of mind by her sense of duty. The line behind her paid out; Creighton and Caiola, bearing the outsize life-support bag, came after; and so, all three stood inside the artifact. There was light, but its general source seemed to come from the walls, an irradiated glow which seemed almost friendly. They were confronted by what she judged to be an outer lock. It opened when she tested a sliding button, and a gust blew. Caiola, his eye on a test instrument on the back of the glove of his suit saw that it glowed. He shouted, even though he had told himself that he must not. 'Air, ma'am! Oxygen, nitrogen as near as makes no difference!'
Lindstrom said: 'All right. Let's see if this lock will take all three of us.'
If they had wanted to kill us, she thought, they could have done it by now; they could have done it while we were still in Vee Twelve, or when we were crossing, or...
The inner lock-door opened, Lindstrom entered, Creighton and Caiola close after.
'Atmosphere still like Earth,' Caiola read out, 'pressure approx same...'
It was a circular chamber without any sign of a control instrument In the centre was a padded chair, feet rests, head rest, full arms, and in it sat a figure, thin, large-headed, slim-bodied and limbed, six-fingered, broad-footed, of a pinker skin colour than Earth humans. In the soft reddish light, the deep socketed eyes were closed.
Creighton made up his mind in five seconds. 'Come on, let's bag it. This is what we've come for. Check your air mixture...'
There was no gravity in the ship, if ship it was. Lindstrom left the medics to their task, and began to inspect, to report back on what she saw. 'Vee Twelve, do you read me?'
Her helmet radio seemed dead. 'Vee Twelve do you read me?'
Clearly there was a hundred per cent blockage made by the alien ship. When she turned she realized, with something of a shock, that Creighton and Caiola had bagged their precious find and were gone out into the raft With an effort she held down the wild spasm which crossed her mind. Duty. She still had another duty to do, as a qualified engineer. She had everything to learn, and little time in which to learn it.
Brace's heart seemed almost to have stopped, Lindstrom, that thing is beginning to - to glow - to pulsate - get out of there!'
'Reckon she can't hear, sir. I'll go in and—'
'Panos! Come back with that raft, now!' He pressed a button, ordered through another mike: 'I'll be down for ready scout ship in one minute!'
'One minute it is, sir.'
Bruce watched the picture with a breathless intensity, saw, in magnification, the grapples switched off, and drawing inboard as Panos turned the raft and swept round towards Vee Twelve. Bruce saw the globe's pulsation increase, a barely perceptible degree at about ten seconds intervals. He felt himself racked by a great trembling; he suppressed it, and did what he had to do.
The suited crew in the scoutship hangar had the main hatch open; Bruce took a deep breath as he came through the rear hangar lock, and plunged himself into the waiting suit held ready by two crewmen. They closed him in, linked up the air supply with a twist of the tap on the loaded chest of the suit. He almost threw himself through the scout- ship's lock; the padded seat enclosed him just as he fired out. If the crewmen hadn't stood clear... well, they had their orders and they knew the penalties.
He chose an arrow-straight path to the pulsating globe, missing the incoming raft by about five metres, and scaring even Panos. Regardless of wastage, he gunned up to the maximum safe speed; he knew he'd need a deceleration that could pull his guts out. The scout arrived at the gaping lock of the artifact, clamped on, and was at the point of leaving his seat when Lindstrom's suited figure appeared at the opening. She took a dive at the scoutship's lock, thumbed open instantly by Bruce. She slipped down into the scout, and Bruce, his heart thumping and his whole hard body pouring sweat, left the fiery globe and headed out, and away from Vee Twelve.
'Keep your suit air on!' he snapped.
'Yes. All right."
'Dammit, couldn't you hear me? That bloody thing's going to blow—'
Behind them, it blew. Golden fire surrounded them at the same moment that the scout received a massive kick which turned it over and over, like an ember blown high from the flames of an open hearth.
And of what followed that first blow, they knew nothing.
* * *
Bruce opened his eyes; the first thing he saw was the brown- flecked eyeball, much magnified, of George Tamba Maseba, Lt Cdr (S). Maseba took away the
glass from his own eye and stepped back. Caiola was there in the background, polite, quiet, efficient as ever.
'Welcome back,' Maseba said, 'I was beginning to wonder.'
Bruce blew air. He could not properly focus his eyes, so he closed them. 'Have I been out?'
'Ask a stupid question,' Maseba said, 'and you'll get... Yeah, you've been out.'
Bruce struggled to lean on one elbow; Maseba snapped: 'Lie still!' Bruce obeyed.
Maseba sat on the bed. 'Listening?'
'Yeah.'
'Good. You are going to lie quietly, there, for the next forty-eight hours at least And if you try to get up, I shall have you tied down. I have to examine you from top to bottom; that is my duty. If I can do it with your cooperation, so much the better, but in any case, I'm going to do it. You, Captain, are under my orders, my orders. Do you read me?'
'Read you, George.'
'The work on you will be done by Caiola and me. Doctors de Witt and Creighton are otherwise engaged. De Witt is sleeping - when she sleeps - by Helen's bed, and Creighton is sleeping in the same place as the creature they brought back—'
It felt to Bruce as though something had exploded inside his head. Everything came back to him. 'Christ!' He jerked his head, and Maseba was there with a calming voice and outspread, negative hands.
'I'll do the talking. If ever I doubted that this was the finest ship and the finest crew in the Corps, I know it now. Big Bear Sergei took command, sent out two more scouts, working a search pattern until they got a bleep from you, and they homed in, grappled you, and brought you back to
Vee Twelve, as neatly as if it had been a demonstration drill. They got you at five hundred and ten thousand kilometres. And when Kusnetzov came back, piloting one of the scouts, he took a Duty One Pill and went top to bottom through the ship checking on damage and organizing repair schedules. I had to order him to bed.' He glanced at the time numerals. 'Time for the bulletin, or else the whole damned crew will be hammering at the door.' He moved away to a small switchboard, unhitched a microphone. 'Attention. Medical Officer speaking. Five minutes ago, Captain Bruce recovered consciousness, but he is staying put until I have checked him out. Commander Lindstrom remains deeply unconscious; I do not yet know for certain how to treat her condition. She is watched over day and night, but remains in what seems to be a deep sleep, which term I prefer to use rather than the word "coma", which has sorry connotations. That is all.'
Bruce cried: 'Helen, how is she? Is she still—'
Maseba came swiftly to his side. 'You heard me, Tom. She is still asleep. Three cracked ribs and a smashed left kneecap are easily handled. But the mental state she's in - I mean, within her "unconscious-to-us mind" - is something I'm taking very carefully. I have to.'
'When she comes out of it—'
'If she comes out of it.'
'I want to see her.'
Maseba said sadly: 'Don't you remember what she looks like when she's asleep?'
Bruce understood, 'Yeah.' He sighed quietly. 'I remember. .. You know, if I'd thought - if I'd only thought to go down to the hangar and be ready in that scout, I could have saved a minute, and the way you can gun a scout out of trouble... that might have saved her... got her clear.' His lips tightened as he lay, eyes closed. 'If I'd thought... I ought to be court-martialled for dereliction of duty...'
'Balls,' Maseba commented briefly, 'you did what was right, in the right sequence. You had to make a switch from concern for five to concern for one. Correct?'
Bruce's eyes remained closed. 'I hope so.'
Maseba said to Caiola: 'Pete, how long have I been on duty?'
'Eighteen hours I guess, sir.'
Maseba stretched. 'It feels like sixty.'
'Take out your catnaps, and it is about sixty.'
'In that case,' said the senior MO, 'I'm going to take off all my clothes, have a hot shower and go to bed. What a novelty... And you see that your relief is on time too. If he's not, peg him.'
Bruce heard it all.
Creighton was now in a state of scientific euphoria. The alien was not male, not female; it was a hermaphroditic marsupial, so close to the humanoid strain from earth, and yet so different. It accepted the ship's protein cakes as food, drank water, and its excretion was a few dryish pellets a day...
But Creighton decided that he must not seem to keep the creature to himself. It was, to begin with, well understood that he was the ET life specialist. Creighton said he would like to do a formal examination of the creature, cooperating with Maseba. And CPO Dockridge had come up quite deferentially with a report of a situation which would never have occurred to Creighton himself.
'Shark fever?' Creighton had said, taken somewhat off balance.
'Yes, sir. You see, if this what you've got is what the crew have been calling a Kilroy, well, seventy-five per cent of 'em have seen the bastards at work, and they don't like 'em. And here we've got one, all closed up and kept secret, like.'
Creighton was determined to understand the CPO. 'Shark fever, you said.'
'That's right, sir. As a lad, fifteen to nineteen, I was in the Merchant Navy, or what was left of it. Well, sharks are hated by sailors; they're mindless killers, you see, and when there are sharks about, near a ship, and someone ups with a rifle and shoots at one and wounds it, then other sharks gather round the wounded one, and start to tear it to pieces. That gets more blood in the water, and more sharks come, and more sailors start grabbing rifles and shooting into the water, yelling all sorts of language at the tops of their voices, in hatred of the sharks. I've seen sea water boiling red with shark blood; maybe a hundred of the brutes threshing about, and sailors firing into the mess until they'd used all their ammo. For the time the killing went on, I swear that those men were mad with hate... You see what I mean, sir?'
'I hope so, CPO.'
'There's a creepy feeling about shark fever sir, however wrong that name may be. I'm not telling you your business, but I know the way the crew on this ship feel, and they feel - or they're beginning to feel - just like that. I'm not suggesting that you should do anything; I'm just keeping you up with the facts. You can judge what's to be done, or if you take a risk, or risks' - Dockridge shrugged, - 'hope I've made myself clear, sir.'
'Thank you, Dockridge.'
'Er - sir.'
'Yes?'
'Got the odd feeling I've seen you before, somewhere.'
Creighton said: 'I think perhaps I've got the sort of face you see around quite a lot. Thank you, CPO.'
Dockridge saluted and left. A second later, Maseba appeared, fresh, and full of interest. 'Now, Dr Creighton, what the hell do you want me to do that you can't do a lot better on your own?' He was looking with professional interest at the alien, as it lay, pink and naked, goggled, on the bed.
'I'd like you to do with me an examination of this humanoid creature. I've studied these at second hand so
much and so intensely that I feel that I'd like another highly trained mind to rub against. And there's another reason.' He told Maseba about what Dockridge had said
Maseba rubbed his chin. 'Hmm. Well, now you see why Dockridge is sometimes called "the oil". His psychology's sound.'
'So what do I do?'
'Get a guard. Ask Panos; he'll fix it.'
'Thanks,' Creighton said, 'I'll do that.' He drew a mike down within a metre of the alien. 'We'll fill a tape with first comments, eh?' He pressed a switch over the cassette, then waved his hand rhythmically and gently at the goggled creature.
Maseba said: 'What do we do when this thing starts to speak?'
'Then,' Creighton said, 'I think maybe we have a treat in store - or else the biggest setback ever.' He turned to position a couple of lamps. 'Don't you think that if we had this red light, we might take off its goggles?'
'Yeah...' Maseba's voice tailed off.
'What is it?'
Maseba said: 'Look, I'm jumping ahead where I know I shouldn't... but eyes suited to that kind of light might mean they come from a red dw
arf system; and another clue might be in the menstrual cycle... All right, just the physical, take it from the top, otherwise, I shall get fascinated with that fold across the stomach...'
'Skull, human proportions... callipers... agreed?'
'Yes.'
'Pronounced frontal lobes.'
'Makes the eyes seem deeper set,' Maseba said.
'True.' Creighton waved a hand over the face, but the eyes only followed the hand for a limited distance. 'I wondered about the mobility of the eyes.'
'Does it occur to you, Dr Creighton, that the eyes could well be only one of the means of self-location?'
'Yes. But I've not pursued the point.'
'I was wondering about the tomograph... sorry, the isocentric chair routine will have to be later. Ears full and round, omni-directional, ear apertures about—' with a small red-bulbed flash he inspected '—about twice as large as human. Probably much more sensitive. See the way they're dished.'
Creighton switched on an oscilloscope; it was registering noise inaudible to either medics. 'Seventeen Khz. What do you make of it?'
'Not being a bat or a dog, I don't make anything. Yet.'
'Nose - vestigial,' Creighton observed. 'There's a vibration, here. Maybe that's your ultrasonic sound. Vibrating top palate, maybe another and more human kind beneath.'
Maseba stroked the warm, pink flesh. 'You know, that reminds me of a lung membrane. What do you think makes the creature lie so quietly?'
'It's caught, it doesn't know its way about with us, so it's playing things very carefully. Wouldn't you do the same, especially if you were not offered violence?'
'You're right, I'm sure.'
In Creighton's mind was bounding triumph.
Maseba's eyes went to the fold across the stomach, and he was puzzled by what should have been the pubis.
Creighton was absorbed. 'Neck longer than human, greater mobility, no doubt. Clavicle exactly like human. External appearances show that skeleton is much like human.' His face was near the alien's chest.
