by Harl Vincent
“Look at the patient’s head,” whispered Standish.
Where the ghastly injury had been there was now only a patch of bare skull a few inches in diameter, where the hair had been removed. No scar or other evidence of the original lesion.
“Fracture and concussion,” the mate told them. “He—Apdar he calls himself—did a miracle of brain surgery, returning the trepanned bone and closing the wound as you’ve seen on the arm. Six broken ribs too, but luckily no internal injury. Not a mark on the chest —see?”
But Apdar was already at work on the patient’s left leg, where he performed another miracle of surgery. In ten minutes he was finished and the leg was good as new. Then he drew a small hose with a glass nozzle from a whirring little pump of some sort that was beneath the tray. A short puff from the glass tube into each of the patient’s nostrils and the man sat up.
“Where am I? What happened?” he demanded, blinking in the bright light from overhead.
The mate was beside him, trying to explain, helping him off the table, then into his clothes. Apdar, stepping out of his white gown and removing the antiseptic mask, proved to be a rugged-appearing human with square jaws and steel-bright eyes set in unusual width beneath a corrugated brow. His expression was gloomy, sad, not at all flushed with success as would be expected.
“You’ve done something wonderful here,” breathed Randall.
“Sure have,” Donley agreed. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw.”
“Apdar likes not to see people suffer,” was his only reply.
“English, you speak!” exulted Donley. “Did you learn it from some survivor of an earlier wreck—the Satumid?”
“Yes, my friend.”
“Then where are they—the survivors?” Donley could not contain his excitement.
“A long story is required. Apdar is tired but will explain as we go along.” The man tottered a bit and raised a hand to his head.
For the first time, Donley noted that he wore a slender chain around his neck and from this depended a medal or locket which he now fondled as if it might be a charm.
Apparently it was just that, because Apdar straightened his back resolutely, color returned to his cheeks and he walked steadily to the door.
“Come, friends,” he said then. “Your companions will be assembled with us in amphitheatre and explanations are to be exchanged. Not?”
What he had called an amphitheatre turned out to be more like a nightclub bowl in Los Angeles—or Oklahoma City for that matter. A small stage with lectern and microphone, set down from a semicircle of seats that were comfortably upholstered and numbered probably one hundred and fifty. The visitors filled the first two rows down front and were exceptionally quiet when Apdar stalked down the center aisle to the microphone. There was no other human of his kind with him or even in sight. His first words told them why.
“I am the last conscious being of my kind,” he told them. “I do not say last alive, you see. Others not dead but what I call living-dead. And for a reason. My planet, Ormin, is doomed. So is everybody here, even you people. Ormin, once outer planet of system Sirius, was dead body many generations since—by total war between east and west. Then flung from orbit into space and now riding a galactic energy beam to collision with another body which destroys both with completion. It is the end of our world, of us all. In vision I told by—how you say it—informant—a means of putting all peoples here into the state of living-death so they not suffer mentally before, neither physically at time of. It is a throbbing force that surrounds us and some have been struck down sooner than others by this. I am the last.”
He drew himself up proudly and continued. “My people descended from powerful eastern territorials of Ormin. Who destroyed the west but had to go down here to escape retaliation, you call it. I say down here means below this dome where many levels hold the living-dead and machines that keep air and provide food if needed. Apdar only one now who needs and he too go soon. Because destruction comes quickly now.”
His alarmed audience burst into bedlam as if on a signal. This simply could not be—the man must be daft. They can’t do this to us. But Donley was putting two and two together; cocking his head, he could feel the lub-dub, lub-dub of the energy pulse. Adpar was giving himself credit for a natural phenomenon. Or was it natural? At least the thing was in space and not humanly controlled. It did seem to act or be manifested differently here than on the Meteoric.
The little hall was in pandemonium now. Some of the visitors were objecting. Others agreed that there was the lub-dub effect in their own consciousness, even if not heard or felt. Others just wanted out.
Apdar stood before them, silent, rather abashed. He looked pleadingly to Donley and Randall where they sat. Help me show them the truth, he seemed to be imploring with those sad eyes.
Donley was on his feet, facing the room. “Quiet, people,” he requested. And there was almost immediate compliance. “Apdar knows his onions,” Donleys continued. Maybe he’s right, maybe wrong, but we owe him respect. And our own Doctor Randall will check what he says. Meanwhile, we’re all hungry, all tired. Let’s ask our host to take care of our bodily needs—now.”
The tone of the assemblage changed entirely and any shouts or remarks were in agreement with what Donley had told them. And Apdar, with a nod of approval, rose to the occasion.
“Your leader speaks truth,” he said. The word “leader” tickled Randall. Amazed Donley. “Apdar will continue later on with discussion. We now go below to sleep quarters and eating place. You will all be provided with the necessities until—” Thinking better of what he was about to conclude with, he left it hang in the air.
As they filed out of the hall in the wake of their host, they were a quieted and thoughtful group. Some whispered of experiencing the feel of the pulsation, others said they had not felt it. Still others spoke hopelessly of the implications of disaster to come. But of all those in the company, the two girls with their newfound boyfriends—not to speak of the honeymoon couples—were least concerned of all. And Donley was thinking more of Mera than of anything else. He fell in step with Apdar, who was leading his guests to a wide double door at the side of the rotunda.
“I’d like most of all to see the living-dead from the Saturnia” he declared, as they passed through and started down a long ramp.
Apdar gazed at him kindly. “You hope to see somebody you know?”
“Someone I love.”
“Oh! I take you as soon as sleep rooms assigned.”
Donley could barely hold back his impatience any longer. As they descended toward a lower level of the dome, he was acutely aware of the beat in his mind and body.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The level below presented a maze of connecting corridors with many adjacent doors set in their metal walls, on the order of a Terran hotel. One after another of the visitors was assigned quarters by Apdar and these proved to be spacious and comfortably furnished. Air-conditioned to a temperature and relative humidity that would surely suit the majority of them, besides which each room had its own controls. The illumination was flush, similar to fluorescent, soft and ample, as bright as the sunlight of Mars and the color of that of Terra. The Underwoods and the Carters found themselves in suites consisting of sitting room, bedroom and bath, in much the tradition of hotel accommodations to which they were accustomed on the solar system planets. Donley and Randall located in adjoining rooms and then the audio system carried Apdar’s voice to all, summoning them to their first meal on Ormin.
Apdar bent his head to Donley’s whisper: “I can’t eat yet. Not until I find the girl. Won’t you take me to the Saturnia survivors?”
Most of the others were now gathering to accept the invitation to eat and their host was occupied for a few minutes getting them in line to enter the automatic cafeteria-type dining room nearby. Randall was fidgeting also—but for a different reason.
Apdar showed the way while Randall trailed alo
ng and started a conversation with Apdar that was a bit too technical for Donley to follow with his mind in its present state regarding Mera. In fact, his impatience was now so great that he found it difficult to keep mum. Had he been of a less tolerant mold he would have voiced objection in no uncertain terms.
Apdar sensed his uneasiness for he interrupted Randall and said to Donley, “Past next comer we come to your way down. Very quick now.”
They came then into another corridor where there was an offset in which appeared an installation with handrails and down-sloping steps that was certainly an escalator. Apdar touched a button and the moving stair began its downward glide, smoothly and silently.
“Everything automated here, Apdar?” breathed Randall.
“Must be, friend, or I not be here alone and alive. Power generation, food production, everything necessary, needs no attendant.” He then turned again to Donley. “Down this and following ones you come to next level, then next and next. In each are living-dead. In third are those from previous ship. Good luck, my friend.”
Donley found the gliding movement of the escalator too slow and he skittered down the first one, two steps -at a time. Turned a comer and stepped on the succeeding one but not before he had seen, in an eerie low-level fighting, a huge area where lay rows of bodies that did not move. Some laid out carefully, others in the uncomfortable position in which they had dropped. In suspended animation. The living-dead. The next level was much the same, excepting that a few of the bodies were laid out in caskets. They must have ran out of coffins at a later time. The third level down was a really solemn place, with row upon row of caskets of the drop-side type, in each of which lay one of the living-dead. Here he would find Mera, Donley’s heart told him.
In the nearest of the caskets lay a man of stalwart build, a compatriot of Apdar, Donley was sure. His features were acquiline, his brow wide and high beneath a mop of curley black hair. The expression on his face was serene and his hands were crossed on his breast. His skin was cool to the touch, but not cold. This was not death; Apdar had aptly described the state of suspended animation as “living-death.”
From bier to bier Donley now shuttled. Here and there were women, some young, some old, some fair, some plain. Their garments were of unfamilar style, not of Terra, Venus, or Mars. The next long row in eluded a few closed caskets; actual death had struck here, Donley realized. Quite likely natural death. Conscious of the pulse that came monotonously through the faintly discernible whine of distant machinery, though not as a sound, Donley went swiftly along this row and still found only those covered with the unfamiliar garments of Ormin. His breath was coming short from nerve strain and exertion, though the cool, circulating air would have been a tonic under ordinary conditions.
What if he had been wrong? What if Mera were not here? Worse yet, what if she were here but in one of the closed caskets? It was a ghastly place, he decided. Like a huge open catacomb but even more fearsome because of the sense of possible sudden reviving, or at least movement of one or more of the corpses that were not corpses. Especially it seemed that way after he had viewed a number of young people, both male and female, who were beautiful to see and so natural in repose that he imagined several times he had seen the rise and fall of a chest, the move of a hand.
And then he came to a man who was clothed in the habiliments of New York or Chicago. A husky American business man, with the hint of a smile on his lips and appearing as if about to rise up and walk. In the next open casket was a beautiful bronze-skinned Martian woman, also seeming about to come fully alive. Donley scurried along from one to another, his heart now pounding with excitement since these were without doubt survivors of the Saturnia. Another closed casket and his heart skipped a beat. Then a dream girl, yes—his dream girl. It must be; it was—Mera!
The curtain had best be drawn on the scene that immediately ensued. Stronger men than Jack had broken down in circumstances less emotionally charged.
Eventually he came to realize that he had lifted the girl partially and was cuddling her head and upper body in his arms. She hadn’t changed much, in fact not at all excepting that her lips did not respond to his own. And they were cold. Not really cold but cool. He guessed wildly that her body temperature was at least twenty degrees below normal. Returning her to the position in which she had lain, he folded the slim hands over her breasts as they had been. There was only a slight stiffness of the idle joints, certainly no rigor mortis. He stroked her soft brown hair with shaking fingers. She was alive but unaware. However, the time would come for her to return to awareness and her former youthful vigor and ebullience. Donley knew that this was so, regardless of Apdar’s gloomy predictions. He just knew it.
Fighting off the feeling that she had moved slightly, he turned away and stumbled blindly along the aisle, suddenly overcome with nameless terror. Every bier held lurking shadows of things that moved or were about to move. The air of the huge golgotha seemed stifling and suddenly filled with whisperings of words better left unsaid.
Through it all, and pressing down on him was the endless rhythm. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. Modifying the faint hum of distant machines.
At the foot of the up escalator, he shook his head to clear it.
He had no pangs of hunger, nor did he yearn for sleep so he went up to the floor of the dome, looking for Randall and Apdar. He recalled a few words of what Randall had been saying and was sure the two would be in a laboratory or observatory of Apdar’s. But where was it? The first four doors he tried were locked, then the fifth opened into a passage that led to a circular stair. Donley bounded up this until he became dizzy and eventually found himself near the dome’s top. Here there was a solid floor against which the stairway ended. Looking for signs of a trap door, he located the line of closure with the ceiling and a curiously shaped handle which he was just able to reach. But the handle couldn’t be turned; the entrance to the room above was locked. That Randall and Apdar were up there, deep in studies of the heavens, he had not the slightest doubt. In fact he distinctly heard movement up there and the song of a variable speed motor such as is used to move a telescope mounting. Well, if they wanted privacy, he supposed that was their privilege and rightly so. They were the scientists, not he.
Back on the dome floor, he saw Jal Tarjen crossing to one of the doors he had previously tried.
“It’s locked, Jal.”
Startled, the Martian turned and a smile wreathed his face at sight of Donley. “So you feel wakeful, also,” he offered, crossing over. “And you did not eat?”
“Didn’t feel like eating,” Donley told him. “But I’ve seen some of the region below the living quarters. Like to see more. What say we go together.” “Nothing better to do. Most everybody asleep in own rooms. Tired. I found library but can not read language. So we go; good idea.”
Using the down escalators, the two visited the halls of the living-dead. It was unexpectedly depressing to the Martian, judging from his silence and grim set of his features. At length—Donley was unable to resist seeing her again—they came to the resting place of Mera. Donley had himself in hand now and stroked the soft hair with steady fingers, then bent down and kissed the cool lips.
“This your lady?” Tarjen asked softly.
“Yes. See why I didn’t feel like eating?”
“I see why, yes.” The Martian’s voice rose slightly. “She can’t be on way to destruction like they say. Too lovely. You need her too much, Donley.”
“Jal Tarjen, you’re a pal. I agree all the way.” Somehow the Martian’s words had inspired Donley. Like restoring his courage and faith. He patted Mera’s hand, leaned over and kissed her once more. “See you later,” he whispered in her ear. And he believed he would—implicitly.
Straightening up, he gripped Jal’s hand. “Let’s see more of this place,” he said. “There’s got to be lots more.”
At the end of the huge chamber opposite the escalators, he thought he saw an arched opening leading into a passage. It turned o
ut to be the entrance to a ramp that curved downward. The lighting here was even more somber than in the upper levels and when they reached the bottom of the ramp they stepped warily into another chamber that was the terminal of a gravity lift. Without hesitation, they entered the lift and were dropped smoothly and swiftly in darkness for what seemed like perhaps fifty feet. The lift stopped and a door opened automatically into another huge repository of the living-dead. The Martian sort of groaned in his throat.
“I know,” said Donley. “Spooky, isn’t it?”
The light was dimmer here than anywhere they had been and there were longer aisles of coffins and more of them. These were open also but not drop-side. Only from the waist up could the occupants, be seen. All appeared to be countrymen of Apdar’s, with wives and children—row after row as far as you could see into the gloom.
Jal Tarjen whistled softly between his teeth, a habit he had when disturbed. “Must be thousands,” he muttered. “At least three—here,” Donley agreed. “These must have been among the earliest to succumb. They ran out of coffins later.”
