The 35th Golden Age of Science Fiction: Keith Laumer

by Keith Laumer

  “It’s approaching us very rapidly,” Foster said. “The distance we could run in the next few minutes would be trivial by comparison with the killing radius of a modern bomb. We’ll be safer sheltered in the cleft than on the open.”

  “We could slide down the tunnel,” I said.

  “And be buried?”

  “You’re right; I’d rather fry on the surface.”

  We crouched, watching the blue glare directly overhead, growing larger, brighter. I could see Foster’s face by its light now.

  “That’s no bomb,” Foster said. “It’s not falling; it’s coming down slowly…like a—”

  “Like a slowly falling bomb,” I said. “And it’s coming right down on top of us. Goodbye, Foster. I can’t claim it’s been fun knowing you, but it’s been different. We’ll feel the heat at any second now. I hope it’s fast.”

  The glaring disc was the size of the full moon now, unbearably bright. It lit the plain like a pale blue sun. There was no sound. As it dropped lower, the disc foreshortened and I could see a dark shape above it, dimly lit by the glare thrown back from the ground.

  “The thing is the size of a ferry boat,” I said.

  “It’s going to miss us,” Foster said. “It will come to ground several hundred feet to the east of us.”

  We watched the slender shape float down with dreamlike slowness, now five hundred feet above, now three hundred, then hovering just above the giant stones.

  “It’s coming down smack on top of Stonehenge,” I yelled.

  We watched as the vessel settled into place dead center on the ancient ring of stones. For a moment they were vividly silhouetted against the flood of blue radiance; then abruptly, the glare faded and died.

  “Foster,” I said. “Do you think it’s barely possible—”

  A slit of yellow light appeared on the side of the hull, then it widened to a square. A ladder extended itself, dropping down to touch the ground.

  “If somebody with tentacles starts down that ladder,” I said, in an unnaturally shrill voice, “I’m getting out of here.”

  “No one will emerge,” Foster said quietly. “I think we’ll find, Legion, that this ship of space is at our disposal.”

  * * * *

  “I’m not going aboard that thing,” I said for the fifth time. “I’m not sure of much in this world, but I’m sure of that.”

  “Legion,” Foster said, “This is no twentieth century military vessel. It obviously homed on the transmitter in the underground station, which appears to be directly under the old monument—which is several thousand years old—”

  “And I’m supposed to believe the ship has been orbiting the earth for the last few thousand years, waiting for someone to push the red button? You call that logical?”

  “Given permanent materials, such as those the notebook is made of, it’s not impossible—or even difficult.”

  “We got out of the tunnel alive. Let’s settle for that.”

  “We’re on the verge of solving a mystery that goes back through the centuries,” said Foster, “a mystery that I’ve pursued, if I understand the journal, through many lifetimes—”

  “One thing about losing your memory: you don’t have any fixed ideas to get in the way of your theories.”

  Foster smiled grimly. “The trail has brought us here. We must follow it—wherever it leads.”

  I lay on the ground, staring up at the unbelievable shape across the field, the beckoning square of light. “This ship—or whatever it is,” I said; “it drops down out of nowhere and opens its doors. And you want to walk right into the cosy interior.”

  “Listen!” Foster cut in.

  I heard a low rumbling then, a sound that rolled ominously, like distant guns.

  “More ships—” I started.

  “Jet aircraft,” Foster said. “From the bases in East Anglia probably. Of course, they’ll have tracked our ship in—”

  “That’s all for me,” I yelled, getting to my feet. “The secret’s out—”

  “Get down, Legion,” Foster shouted. The engines were a blanketing roar now.

  “What for? They—”

  Two long lines of fire traced themselves across the sky, curving down—

  I hit the dirt behind the stone in the same instant the rockets struck. The shock wave slammed at the earth like a monster thunderclap, and I saw the tunnel mouth collapse. I twisted, saw the red interior of the jet tailpipe as the fighter hurtled past, rolling into a climbing turn.

  “They’re crazy,” I yelled. “Firing on—”

  A second barrage blasted across my indignation. I hugged the muck and waited while nine salvoes shook the earth. Then the rumble died, reluctantly. The air reeked of high explosives.

  “We’d have been dead now if we’d tried the tunnel,” I gasped spitting dirt. “It caved at the first rocket. And if the ship was what you thought, Foster, they’ve destroyed something—”

  The sentence died unnoticed. The dust was settling and through it the shape of the ship reared up, unchanged except that the square of light was gone. As I watched, the door opened again and the ladder ran out once more, invitingly.

  “They’ll try next time with nukes,” I said. “That may be too much for the ship’s defenses—and it will sure be too much for us—”

  “Listen,” Foster cut in. A deeper rumble was building in the distance.

  “To the ship!” Foster called. He was up and running, and I hesitated just long enough to think about trying for the highway and being caught in the open—and then I was running, too. Ahead, Foster stumbled crossing the ground that had been ripped up by the rocket bursts, made it to the ladder, and went up it fast. The growl of the approaching bombers grew, a snarl of deadly hatred. I leaped a still-smoking stone fragment, took the ladder in two jumps, plunged into the yellow-lit interior. Behind me, the door smacked shut.

  I was standing in a luxuriously fitted circular room. There was a pedestal in the center of the floor, from which a polished bar projected. The bones of a man lay beside it. While I stared, Foster sprang forward, seized the bar, and pulled. It slid back easily. The lights flickered and I had a moment of vertigo. Nothing else happened.

  “Try it the other way,” I yelled. “The bombs will fall any second—” I went for it, hand outstretched. Foster thrust in front of me. “Look!”

  I stared at the glowing panel he was pointing to—a duplicate of the one in the underground chamber. It showed a curved white line, with a red point ascending from it.

  “We’re clear,” Foster said. “We’ve made a successful take-off.”

  “But we can’t be moving—there’s no acceleration. There must be soundproofing—that’s why we can’t hear the bombers—”

  “No soundproofing would help if we were at ground zero,” Foster said. “This ship is the product of an advanced science. We’ve left the bombers far behind.”

  “Where are we going? Who’s steering this thing?”

  “It steers itself, I would judge,” Foster said. “I don’t know where we’re going, but we’re well on the way.”

  I looked at him in amazement. “You like this, don’t you, Foster? You’re having the time of your life.”

  “I can’t deny that I’m delighted at this turn of events,” Foster said. “Don’t you see? This vessel is a launch, or lifeboat, under automatic control. And it’s taking us to the mother ship.”

  “Okay, Foster,” I said. I looked at the skeleton on the floor behind him. “But I hope we have better luck than the last passenger.”

  CHAPTER VII

  It was two hours later, and Foster and I stood silent before a ten-foot screen that had glowed into life when I touched a silver button beside it. It showed us a vast emptiness of bottomless black, set thick with corruscating points of polychrome brilliance that hurt to look at. And against that
backdrop: a ship, vast beyond imagining, blotting out half the titanic vista with its bulk—

  But dead.

  Even from the distance of miles, I could sense it. The great black torpedo shape, dull moonlight glinting along the unbelievable length of its sleek flank, drifted: a derelict. I wondered for how many centuries it had waited here—and for what?

  “I feel,” said Foster, “somehow—I’m coming home.” I tried to say something, croaked, cleared my throat.

  “If this is your jitney,” I said, “I hope they didn’t leave the meter ticking on you. We’re broke.”

  “We’re closing rapidly,” said Foster. “Another ten minutes, I’d guess.…”

  “How do we go about heaving to, alongside? You didn’t come across a book of instructions, did you?”

  “I think I can predict that the approach will be automatic.”

  “This is your big moment, isn’t it?” I said. “I’ve got to hand it to you, pal; you’ve won out by pluck, just like the Rover Boys.”

  The ship appeared to move smoothly closer, looming over us, fine golden lines of decorative filigree work visible now against the black. A tiny square of pale light appeared, grew into a huge bay door that swallowed us.

  The screen went dark, there was a gentle jar, then motionlessness. The port opened, silently.

  “We’ve arrived,” Foster said. “Shall we step out and have a look?”

  “I wouldn’t think of going back without one,” I said. I followed him out and stopped dead, gaping. I had expected an empty hold, bare metal walls. Instead, I found a vaulted cavern, shadowed, mysterious, rich with a thousand colors. There was a hint of strange perfume in the air, and I heard low music that muttered among stalagmite-like buttresses. There were pools, playing fountains, waterfalls, dim vistas stretching away, lit by slanting rays of muted sunlight.

  “What kind of place is it?” I asked. “It’s like a fairyland, or a dream.”

  “It’s not an earthly scheme of decoration,” Foster said, “but I find it strangely pleasing.”

  “Hey, look over there,” I yelped suddenly, pointing. An empty-eyed skull stared past me from the shadows at the base of a column.

  Foster went over to the skull, stood looking down at it. “There was a disaster here,” he said. “That much is plain.”

  “It’s creepy,” I said. “Let’s go back; I forgot to get film for my Brownie.”

  “The long-dead pose no threat,” said Foster. He was kneeling, looking at the white bones. He picked up something, stared at it. “Look, Legion.”

  I went over. Foster held up a ring.

  “We’re onto something hot, pal,” I said. “It’s the twin to yours.”

  “I wonder…who he was.”

  I shook my head. “If we knew that—and who killed him—or what—”

  “Let’s go on. The answers must be here somewhere.” Foster moved off toward a corridor that reminded me of a sunny avenue lined with chestnut trees—though there were no trees, and no sun. I followed, gaping.

  For hours we wandered, looking, touching, not saying much but saturated in wonder, like kids in a toy factory. We came across another skeleton, lying among towering engines. Finally we paused in a giant storeroom stacked high with supplies.

  “Have you stopped to think, Foster,” I said, fingering a length of rose-violet cloth as thin as woven spider webs. “This boat’s a treasure-house of salable items. Talk about the wealth of the Indies—”

  “I seek only one thing here, my friend,” Foster said; “my past.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But just in case you don’t find it, you might consider the business angle. We can set up a regular shuttle run, hauling stuff down—”

  “You earthmen,” sighed Foster. “For you every new experience is immediately assessed in terms of its merchandising possibilities. Well, I leave that to you.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You go on ahead and scout around down that way, if you want—where the technical-looking stuff is. I want to browse around here for a while.”

  “As you wish.”

  “We’ll meet at this end of the big hall we passed back there. Okay?”

  Foster nodded and went on. I turned to a bin filled with what looked like unset emeralds the size of walnuts. I picked up a handful, juggled them lovingly.

  “Anyone for marbles?” I murmured to myself.

  Hours later, I came along a corridor that was like a path through a garden that was a forest, crossed a ballroom like a meadow floored in fine-grained rust-red wood and shaded by giant ferns, and went under an arch into the hall where Foster sat at a long table cut from yellow marble. A light the color of sunrise gleamed through tall pseudo-windows.

  I dumped an armload of books on the table. “Look at these,” I said. “All made from the same stuff as the journal. And the pictures.…”

  I flipped open one of the books, a heavy folio-sized volume, to a double-page spread in color showing a group of bearded Arabs in dingy white djellabas staring toward the camera, a flock of thin goats in the background. It looked like the kind of picture the National Geographic runs, except that the quality of the color and detail was equal to the best color transparencies.

  “I can’t read the print,” I said, “but I’m a whiz at looking at pictures. Most of the books showed scenes like I hope I never see in the flesh, but I found a few that were made on earth—God knows how long ago.”

  “Travel books, perhaps,” Foster said.

  “Travel books that you could sell to any university on earth for their next year’s budget,” I said, shuffling pages. “Take a look at this one.”

  Foster looked across at the panoramic shot of a procession of shaven-headed men in white sarongs, carrying a miniature golden boat on their shoulders, descending a long of white stone steps leading from a colonnade of heroic human figures with folded arms and painted faces. In the background, brick-red cliffs loomed up, baked in desert heat.

  “That’s the temple of Hat-Shepsut in its prime,” I said. “Which makes this print close to four thousand years old. Here’s another I recognize.” I turned to a smaller, aerial view, showing a gigantic pyramid, its polished stone facing chipped in places and with a few panels missing from the lower levels, revealing the cruder structure of massive blocks beneath.

  “That’s one of the major pyramids, maybe Khufu’s,” I said. “It was already a couple thousand years old, and falling into disrepair. And look at this—” I opened another volume, showed Foster a vivid photograph of a great shaggy elephant with a pinkish trunk upraised between wide-curving yellow tusks.

  “A mastodon,” I said. “And there’s a woolly rhino, and an ugly-looking critter that must be a sabre-tooth. This book is old.…”

  “A lifetime of rummaging wouldn’t exhaust the treasures aboard this ship,” said Foster.

  “How about bones? Did you find any more?”

  Foster nodded. “There was a disaster of some sort. Perhaps disease. None of the bones was broken.”

  “I can’t figure the one in the lifeboat,” I said. “Why was he wearing a necklace of bear’s teeth?” I sat down across from Foster. “We’ve got plenty of mysteries to solve, all right, but there are some other items we’d better talk about. For instance: where’s the kitchen? I’m getting hungry.”

  Foster handed me a black rod from among several that lay on the table. “I think this may be important,” he said.

  “What is it, a chop stick?”

  “Touch it to your head, above the ear.”

  “What does it do—give you a massage?”

  I pressed it to my temple.…

  I was in a grey-walled room, facing a towering surface of ribbed metal. I reached out, placed my hands over the proper perforations. The housings opened. For apparent malfunction in the quaternary field amplifiers, I knew, auto-inspection circuit o
verride was necessary before activation—

  I blinked, looked around at the yellow table, and piled books, the rod in my hand.

  “I was in some kind of powerhouse,” I said. “There was something wrong with—with.…”

  “The quaternary field amplifiers,” Foster said.

  “I seemed to be right there,” I said. “I understood exactly what it was all about.”

  “These are technical manuals,” Foster said. “They’ll tell us everything we need to know about the ship.”

  “I was thinking about what I was getting ready to do,” I said, “the way you do when you’re starting into a job; I was trouble-shooting the quaternary whatzits—and I knew how…!”

  Foster got to his feet and moved toward the doorway. “We’ll have to start at one end of the library and work our way through,” he said. “It will take us a while, but we’ll get the facts we need. Then we can plan.”

  * * * *

  Foster picked a handful of briefing rods from the racks in the comfortably furnished library and started in. The first thing we needed was a clue as to where to look for food and beds, or for operating instructions for the ship itself. I hoped we might find the equivalent of a library card-catalog; then we could put our hands on what we wanted in a hurry.

  I went to the far end of the first rack and spotted a short row of red rods that stood out vividly among the black ones. I took one out, thought it over, decided it was unlikely that it was any more dangerous than the others, and put it against my temple.…

  As the bells rang, I applied neuro-vascular tension, suppressed cortical areas upsilon-zeta and iota, and stood by for—

  I jerked the rod from my head, my ears still ringing with the shrill alarm. The effect of the rods was like reality itself, but intensified, all attention focused single-mindedly on the experience at hand. I thought of the entertainment potentialities of the idea. You could kill a tiger, ride an airplane down in flames, face the heavyweight champion— I wondered about the stronger sensations, like pain and fear. Would they seem as real as the impulse to check the whatchamacallits or tighten up your cortical thingamajigs?

  I tried another rod.