His eyes no longer saw. His feet made headway only with the greatest effort and kept sinking into the soil. In a last fit of despair, he raised his head and realized in a flash that he had reached the desert. He saw the stars on the horizon, and as his legs began to give way under him, his eyes sought the dial of the radiation counter, but in vain: it was dark and silent, he had left the invisible death behind him in the congealed lava bed. That was his last thought, for as he felt the rough, cool sand on his face, he did not fall asleep, but into a kind of stupor, while his body kept laboring desperately, his ribs twitched, his heart beat wildly. Then, from the twilight zone of total exhaustion, he slipped into another, even deeper state of semi-trance, until, finally, he lost consciousness.
With a start he regained his senses again, though he had no idea where he was. He moved his hands, felt the cool sand, which trickled through his fingers, sat up and moaned involuntarily. He felt hot. Slowly he returned to a state of complete consciousness. The phosphorescent hand of the manometer pointed to zero. There were still eighteen atmospheres left in the second container. He opened the valve and got to his feet. It was one o’clock. The stars stood out sharply against the black backdrop of the nocturnal sky. With the help of his compass he found the direction he had to follow and started out. At three o’clock he took the last stimulant tablet. Shortly before four the last of the oxygen was depleted. Resolutely he threw away the container and walked on, at first breathing almost reluctantly. But soon the fresh air of the approaching dawn filled his lungs; he quickened his steps, straining to think of nothing but this march through the sand dunes, where at times his legs would sink in up to the knees. He felt slightly intoxicated, but he could not tell whether this was due to the gases in the atmosphere or simply lack of sleep. He had figured out that he would need to do between two and three miles per hour in order to arrive at the space cruiser by eleven o’clock.
He tried to regulate his speed with the pedometer then, but it was no use. The firmament was divided into two uneven parts by the immense whitish streak of the Milky Way. By now he had adjusted so well to the sparse light of the stars that he was able to steer around the biggest dunes. He trudged along, wading through the sand until he suddenly noticed on the horizon a strangely even patch without stars, an angular silhouette. Without knowing what it might be, he ran toward it, paying no attention to the fact that he was sinking deeper and deeper into the sand. Then, as he plunged forward like a blind man, his outstretched hands hit against some hard metal. It was an overland vehicle, vacant and deserted. Maybe it was one of those that Horpach had sent out the previous morning, or perhaps a different one, one from Regnar’s group. Rohan did not stop to think about the car’s origin. There he stood, panting, and embraced the machine with both arms. His fatigue drew him towards the ground. Just to sink down next to the vehicle, to fall asleep and march on after sunrise…
He climbed slowly onto the armored hull, hand over hand, his fingers searching for the handle, and opened the hatch. The lights went on. He slid down onto the seat. Yes, now he knew that he was in a state of intoxication—poisoned by the gas in the atmosphere, no doubt—for he was unable to find the switches. He could not remember where they were located, he no longer knew anything… Finally his groping hand accidentally bumped into the worn-out knob and pushed it to one side. The engine emitted a slight noise and started. He unclasped the lid of the gyro-compass. The one number he still remembered clearly was the direction for the return trip. For some time, the vehicle rolled along in the dark; Rohan had forgotten that there were headlights.
It was still dark at five o’clock, when suddenly in the distance, between the white and bluish stars, he perceived a ruby-red star, quite low above the horizon. Rohan blinked his eyes in confusion. A red star? Unthinkable… He imagined that someone was sitting next to him—Jarg, of course—and he wanted to ask him what kind of star it was. Suddenly he came to with a start. He was thunderstruck. It was the headlight of the Invincible. He traveled straight toward the ruby droplet in the darkness. The light gradually climbed higher and finally turned into a bright sphere, in whose reflection the spaceship’s hull gleamed softly in the dark. The red eye between the clock dials flared up; the buzzer rang, indicating the vicinity of an energy field. The vehicle rolled down a sandy slope and came to a halt. He was not certain that he would have enough strength to climb back into the car once he had left it, so he reached into the tool compartment, pulled out a Very pistol and—since his hand was trembling—leaned his elbow on the steering wheel while he steadied his right hand with his left and pulled the trigger. An orange-red streak raced through the dark. The short trajectory of the flare ended suddenly in a burst of stars—it struck the barrier of the energy field like an invisible glass wall. He shot again and again, until the magazine rattled drily. The ammunition had been all used up. But he had been spotted. The first to sound the alarm were most likely the personnel on duty in the control center, for almost simultaneously two giant kleig lights flared up under the nose of the spacecruiser; the white tongues of the kleig lights licked at the sand and their beams crossed above the vehicle. At the same time, the ramp was lit up by a powerful floodlight and the entire shaft of the outside elevator glowed like a cold flame in the splendor of the neon tubes. Within seconds, the gangways were swarming with men, the sand dunes around the Invincible flared up in the glaring cones of the rotating searchlights; soon the lane of blue beacons indicated that passage through the protective barrier was clear.
The Very pistol had dropped from Rohan’s hand, and he did not register the moment when he had slid down to the ground over the vehicle’s side. With unsteady, exaggerated strides, stiffly drawn up to his full height, his fists clenched in order to suppress the unbearable trembling of his fingers, he strode straight towards the twenty-storey-high spaceship that, bathed in a blaze of light, stood outlined before the paling sky. There it towered, majestic as ever in its motionless grandeur—as if it were indeed invincible.
The Invincible Page 21