The Invincible

by Stanisław Lem

  The scouter robot floated along. Now they passed over an uneven, torn area full of sharp, jagged metal peaks that were occasionally covered by triangular plates. These plates were arranged in an irregular fashion, jutting out at various angles, sometimes bent aside, sometimes turned upwards. This permitted occasional glances into the dark interior. Yet the tangle of rods, intersections and honeycombed walls was so dense that the sun’s rays could not penetrate to the bottom. Even the bright cones of their searchlights were swallowed up by the gloomy abyss.

  “Tell me, Ballmin, what is that damned jungle supposed to be?” asked Rohan once more. He was furious. He had kept rubbing the sand off his face and now his forehead was reddened, his skin smarted, his eyes were burning. On top of it all he would shortly have to make his next report to the crew back at the spacecraft. He had no idea how he could describe what they had encountered here.

  “I’m not a clairvoyant,” replied the scientist. “I’m not even an archeologist. Not that an archeologist could tell you a great deal here either. It seems to me—” Suddenly he fell silent.

  “Go on. Finish what you were going to say.”

  “This doesn’t look like any dwelling or the destroyed houses of any humanoid creatures. Do you see what I mean? The only thing I could compare it to would be a machine of some kind.”

  “A machine? What type of a machine? A computer, maybe?”

  “What gives you that idea?” countered the planetologist laconically. The robot made a left turn. It was flying close to the metal poles which were jutting out from the bent slabs. Several times the robot almost touched the crazy black network.

  “No, no electric circuits to be seen. Or did you notice any switches? Insulators? Anything that might be part of an electronic brain?”

  “Maybe they weren’t fireproof. There could have been a fire here. After all, this is nothing but ruins,” replied Rohan. But his voice lacked conviction.

  “Who knows? Maybe you’re right,” admitted Ballmin unexpectedly.

  “But what should I tell the astrogator?”

  “Why don’t you let him see for himself and transmit the whole deal here by television?”

  “That can’t have been a city,” said Rohan, suddenly summarizing his thoughts about what he had seen here.

  “Most likely not,” agreed Ballmin. “At least not the kind of city we know. Nothing that corresponds to our notion of what a city should be like. No human beings, nothing resembling us could have dwelled here. And since the life forms we found in the ocean here were similar to those back home on Earth, it would be logical to assume the same thing for any living organisms on the mainland.”

  “Yes, I keep racking my brains. None of the biologists will commit himself to make a statement. What do you think about that?”

  “They don’t want to talk about it, because it simply seems too improbable, as if something had prevented life from becoming established on land; as if the aquatic creatures had never been permitted to leave the water.”

  “There might have been some reason for that—a nearby supernova explosion, for example. The Zeta of the Lyre constellation is known to have been a nova several million years ago. Organic life on the continents may have been annihilated by radiation, while life survived in the deeper regions of the ocean.”

  “If there had ever been radiation, we would still be able to find traces of it, but there is practically no radioactivity in the soil of this part of the galaxy. Aside from the fact that evolution would have moved ahead during the several million years since. You wouldn’t expect any vertebrates on land, of course, but the more primitive forms should be present. Didn’t you notice the total absence of any life forms in the littoral zone?”

  “Yes, I did. But what does that mean?”

  “A great deal. Life usually originates in the shore regions of the oceans, and migrates to deeper waters only afterwards. It can’t have been any different here. Only something must have chased it away from the edge of the sea. Something must be preventing it from going on land.”

  “What basis do you have for your conclusions?”

  “The fact that the fish were frightened by our probes. On all the other planets I have known, animals were never afraid of machines. They are not afraid of things they have never seen before.”

  “Do you mean to say the fish have seen some probes before ours?”

  “I couldn’t tell you what they have encountered. But why else would they need a magnetic detector sense?”

  “I really wouldn’t know, damn it!” grumbled Rohan. He regarded the tom metal garlands and leaned over the railing. The bent ends of the black metal rods trembled slightly in the robot’s slipstream. Ballmin used long pliers to pinch off some wires sticking out from a tunnel-shaped opening.

  “Let me tell you,” he continued, “there could never have been very high temperatures around here; otherwise you would find traces of oxidation on these metal surfaces. So much for your hypothesis about a fire having caused this destruction.”

  “Any hypotheses would fail the test here,” muttered Rohan. “You know, I just can’t see the connection between this maze and the fact that the Condor has vanished somewhere on this planet. Everything is dead here.”

  “That can’t always have been the case.”

  “Maybe it was alive a thousand years ago, but not just a few years back. There is nothing else for us to do here. Let’s return to the convoy down there.”

  They did not exchange another word until the robot landed in front of the green signal lights, Rohan ordered the technician to let the television cameras roll and transmit a report to the Invincible.

  He and the scientists withdrew to the cabin of the lead vehicle. They released additional oxygen into the air supply of the tiny room, then they ate and drank coffee from their thermos bottles. The white light of the overhead fluorescent lamp felt pleasant to Rohan’s eyes after the red daylight of this planet. Ballmin spat into a paper napkin; it was some sand that had insinuated its way into the mouthpiece of his breathing mask and gritted between his teeth.

  “That reminds me of something,” said Gralew unexpectedly, as he screwed down the top of his thermos bottle. His thick black hair glistened in the light of the fluorescent lamp. “I’ll tell you about it, but don’t take it too seriously.”

  “If it reminds you of anything at all, that means something,” replied Rohan with his mouth full. “Shoot!”

  “It’s nothing special, really, I heard a story a long time ago, almost a fairy tale, about the inhabitants of the Lyre constellation.”

  “Why a fairy tale? They did exist. Achramian even published a treatise about it,” remarked Rohan. A small bulb began to flicker behind them on the dashboard, a sign that contact had been established with the Invincible.

  “Yes. Payne suspected some of the inhabitants may have succeeded in saving themselves in time. I’m not so sure that he is right there. They must have all perished when the nova exploded.”

  “That took place sixteen light years from this planet,” said Gralew. “I don’t know the book. But I did hear somewhere that these people tried to escape. They presumably sent spaceships to all the planets of the other stars in their vicinity. They were well acquainted with the principle of space flight close to the speed of light.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s all I heard. Sixteen light years is not such an enormous distance. Why shouldn’t one of their spaceships have landed here?”

  “Then you think they might still be somewhere around?”

  “I couldn’t say. I was just reminded of them when I saw these ruins. They might have been their buildings, who knows?”

  “What did they look like?” asked Rohan. “Did they resemble us?”

  “According to Achramian, they did,” replied Ballmin. “But that is just another hypothesis. Practically no trace of them has survived, not even as much as from our own Pithecanthropus.”

  “Strange.”

  “Not at all. Their
planet submerged for thousands of years in the chromosphere of the nova. Sometimes its surface temperature exceeded ten thousand degrees. Even the rocky foundation of the planetary crust underwent a complete metamorphosis. No trace remained of the oceans. The entire planet was thoroughly cooked. Just think of it, ten thousand years in the middle of the fires of a nova!”

  “Then you really think it’s conceivable that some of these people might have survived here on Regis III? But why should they hide? And where could they be?”

  “Perhaps they’ve died since then. I don’t know the answers. I simply voiced what crossed my mind when I saw these ruins.”

  The men fell silent. Suddenly an alarm signal flared up on the dashboard.

  Rohan jumped up and grabbed the headphones.

  “Rohan here. What did you say? Oh, it’s you! Yes! Yes! I’m listening! All right, we’ll return at once!”

  His face had turned pale. He turned to the rest and said: “Group II has found the Condor. About 180 miles from here.”

  The Condor

  From a distance the rocket looked like a leaning tower. This impression was strengthened by the sand massed around it. Since the wind came from the west the sand wall had piled up much higher than in the east. Several tractors near the rocket had been almost totally buried by the sand. Even the antimatter mortar had been put out of action. It stood there with its hood raised, half filled with sand. But one could still see the jet openings at the ship’s nose which rested in an unobstructed depression in the ground. One had only to remove a thin layer of sand in order to reach the objects that lay strewn around the ramp.

  The group stopped at the edge of the western dune wall. The vehicles they had brought along from the Invincible already ringed the area in a wide circle and the bunched rays of the emitters formed a protective energy screen. The men had left their transport vehicles and the info-robots about one hundred yards from the spot where the sand wall encircled Condor’s base. Now the men looked down onto the ridge of the dune.

  The ramp was suspended about five yards above the ground, as if it had been suddenly stopped in midair while it was lowered downwards. The elevator, however, was untouched and its open door beckoned the men to enter. Nearby oxygen bottles stuck out from the sand. Their aluminum sheaths glistened brightly as if somebody had left them lying there just a few minutes earlier. Several steps further on, a blue object rested gleaming on the sandy ground. It was a plastic container, as they noticed on closer inspection. Everywhere inside the hollow around the foot of the spaceship was scattered a vast quantity of all kinds of things: cans of food, some full, some empty; theodolites, cameras, tripods, canisters, some still intact, others badly damaged.

  As if someone had thrown the whole mess helter skelter out of the rocket, thought Rohan, and looked up at the darkened hole through which the crew would usually leave or enter the spaceship. The hatch was halfway open.

  The small flying scouter robot that accompanied deVries’ expedition had found the dead spaceship quite by accident. DeVries had not tried to enter the Condor, but had immediately informed Horpach of his discovery. It had been decided that Rohan’s group would be the one to uncover the mystery that shrouded the Invincible’s sister ship. Now the technicians came running from their engines, lugging their toolboxes with them.

  Rohan noticed something round on the ground, thinly covered by sand. With his foot he scraped away the fine sand, assuming he would dig up a small globe. Not suspecting anything, he kept on raking until he brought to daylight a pale yellow vault-like form. He recoiled rapidly, stifling a startled outcry. Alarmed, his companions turned around, looking at him. He held a human skull in his hand.

  They found more bones and even a complete skeleton in a spacesuit. Between the dropping jaw and the upper teeth stuck the mouthpiece of the oxygen apparatus. The manometer had stopped at 46 atmospheres. Jarg knelt down and slowly turned the valve. The gas escaped with a hissing noise. Because of the dry desert air no trace of rust had formed on the metal parts of the reduction valve; it worked easily.

  They entered the elevator but pushed the buttons in vain: there was no electrical current. It would be quite difficult to climb up the scaffolding of the elevator shaft and Rohan began deliberating whether to send up some of the men in a flying saucer robot. But in the meantime two men of the crew had already started their upward climb; they had secured themselves to each other by ropes as if they were mountain climbers. The rest of the group silently watched their ascent.

  The Condor, a spacecruiser of the same class as the Invincible, had been built a few years earlier; externally, the two crafts could not be distinguished. The men were silent. Although none of them expressed the thought out loud, they all would have preferred to find the wreckage of a crash or even the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. They were all shaken by the sight of this ship in the sand, listing lifelessly to one side as if the ground had given way under the weight of the support pillars of the stern. There the apparently undamaged craft leaned in the midst of a confusion of objects and human bones; the men shuddered.

  In the meantime the climbers had reached the entrance hatch, opened it fully and quickly disappeared from view. They remained there for a long while. Rohan was growing restless, when suddenly the elevator jerked upward for about one yard and then descended smoothly to the ground. At the same time the figure of one of the technicians became visible in the open door, beckoning to them to get in.

  There were four of them going up in the elevator: Rohan, Ballmin, the biologist Hagerup and Kralik, one of the technicians. Out of habit, Rohan examined the mighty, rounded body of the ship that was gliding by behind the moving elevator. He was numbed with fear for the first time this day. The armored plates had been scratched and pitted by some incredibly hard tool. The marks were not especially deep, but so close together all over that the entire hull seemed to be dotted with smallpox scars.

  Rohan seized Ballmin’s arm but he had already become aware of this strange phenomenon. Both men tried to get a good look at the nicks and indentations. They were quite small, as if they had been chiseled out with a fine instrument. But Rohan knew for a fact that there was no chisel capable of piercing the cruiser’s hull for even the fraction of a millimeter. The titanium-molybdenum skin was of such hardness that it could be affected only by chemical corrosives. Before he could come to any conclusion about this problem, the elevator had reached its destination. They entered the airlock.

  The interior of the ship was lit up. The technicians had already switched on the auxiliary generators powered by compressed air. The dustlike sand had accumulated in a heavy layer only at the threshold where the wind had driven it through the open hatch door. But there was none in the corridors. They proceeded to the third floor and found clean and neat, brightly lit rooms. Here and there they saw an oxygen mask, a plastic plate, a book or part of some protective suit. But farther down, the cartographers’ cabins, the mess halls, the dormitories, the radar rooms, all the main corridors and side passages, were in a state of indescribable disarray.

  The worst was the command center. Not one single dial of the many instruments, clocks and screens had remained in one piece. Those disks had been made of a tough shatterproof glass that now covered tables, chairs, wires, plugs and sockets in the form of a fine silvery powder. Next door, in the library, were heaps of microfilms, partially unrolled and twisted into wild tangles and coils. Torn books, broken sliderules, compasses, shattered spectroscopes had been wildly thrown all over the floor. There were stacks of Cameron’s big star catalogs shredded to pieces. Somebody must have vented special fury on these thick volumes; they had ripped out the heavy, stiff folio-size pages in big bundles. The impression was one of frenzied rage combined with unbelievable patience.

  Inside the club room and in the neighboring auditorium, the passages had been blocked by heaps of clothing and leather pieces cut from the upholstered seats of the chairs. According to one of the technicians, it looked as if the place had been invaded
by a herd of rampaging apes.

  The men were speechless at this senseless destruction. They went from deck to deck: in a small cabin, lying arched over in a heap near the wall, they found the corpse of a man clad in a dirty shirt and linen trousers. Now he was covered by a ground sheet that the technician who had been the first to enter the room had thrown over him. The dead man was mummified.

  Rohan was one of the last to leave the Condor. He felt dizzy. Nausea overcame him in spurts and it took all his will power to fight off the recurring attacks. He felt as if he had just awakened from some incredibly horrible dream. But one look at the men’s faces told him that the whole thing had been real.

  They sent brief radio messages to the Invincible. Part of their expedition remained on board the Condor to restore some measure of order. But before they began this gigantic task, Rohan arranged to have each room photographed and carefully described.

  Together with Ballmin and Gaarb, one of the biophysicists, Rohan started on the way back. Jarg was driving. His broad and usually smiling face seemed now to have shrunk, bearing a grim expression. He was driving rather recklessly, quite unlike his customary highly disciplined self. The heavy vehicle, weighing several tons, was raked by sudden jolts and hobbled across the dunes, throwing out sandy fountains on either side. One of the energo-robots moved ahead of them at an even pace, shielding the men in the truck with its energy field. All were silent, each man busy with his own thoughts.

  Rohan was almost afraid to face the astrogator; he did not know what to tell him. He had kept to himself one of the discoveries he had made, one which seemed particularly incomprehensible and insane, and thus chilling. In one of the bathrooms on the eighth floor he had found several soap bars pierced with tooth marks. Famine? There had certainly been no dearth of food on board the Condor. The storerooms were filled with all kinds of provisions. Even the milk in the freezer rooms had not spoiled.