by Sam Smith
That one cut, however, did not free the two blocks. Not until the sixth cut did the lower block drop onto its seating and the upper block swing free on its vines.
Tying two more pieces of vine rope widthways under the upper block, and by tying each of the four ropes a little tighter, I gradually raised the block up until it was level with its seating. Then I removed the two widthways ropes and slid the block home.
“So far so good," I told the minder.
I checked the connections, knew that I now had to try, without much hope of success, to start the console. I pressed the power on button. It flashed up ‘Fault!’ and died.
The location of the fault had been in the propulsion block. From the tool kit I took out the repair program for the propulsion block, slotted it home in the minder.
I had worried that the minder, being an old model, the program would not have been compatible; but, no sooner had I slotted it home, then the minder wheeled about, advanced on the console and, sprouting equipment, investigated the block.
I watched smiling as it whirred and clicked and cut and burnt.
"Repairs complete," it announced.
Leaning over it I pressed the power-on button. Again the console flashed up ‘Fault!' and died.
This time it had identified the lifesupport block. I slotted that programme home; and, while the minder went to work, I ate and drank. The minder stopped, announced that it needed a component.
"Show me where it goes,” I told it. A tool pointed to an empty space on a circuit board. The shuttle carried no spares. I sighed, stood and walked to the door.
The day was almost gone. The minder had been working under its own lights all afternoon. I didn't want to exhaust its energy working into the night, have to sit idly by while it topped itself up from the morning sun. I decided to stop there, approach this new problem with a fresh mind in the morning.
Closing the shuttle door to retain the day's heat I removed the minder's repair program, stood him sentinel by the door and finished my meal. Then I lowered a seat, unwrapped my bedding cloth, wondered how my two friends were faring, and before night fell I was asleep.
Despite Dag’s bedding cloth the shuttle was nowhere near as warm as a cave. I awoke shivering before dawn; and, curling inside the cloth, I began mapping my plan of action for that day. At the first whimper of day I breakfasted, opened the shuttle door, did my toilet and, as the sun rose, I had the valet lying on its front and — with the minder's help — I was removing its inspection panel.
The interior was as badly corroded as the exterior. It was beyond repair. Brushing aside the dust, I removed several circuit boards, laid them on the seats. I then slotted the repair programme into the minder. It advanced on the lower block, immediately stated that it needed the component that it had asked for the previous day.
I told it to examine the boards I had laid out, remove the necessary component from them. It seemed to take an age scrutinising and measuring. Eventually it cut out a small solenoid, returned to the block and continued with its repairs. Next the rninder asked for a complete circuit board.
“Repair incumbent," I told it. The minder buzzed and clicked, asked for three more components, took its time selecting them; and, each time, declared itself satisfied. Not till long after noon, though, did it pronounce,
“Repairs complete.”
By which time I was trembling. The possibility of failure made me delay attempting to power on again. I removed the repair program from the minder, lifted it outside into the sun. Its solar trap immediately opened. Then I had a drink of water; and, wiping my palms on my tunic, I sat myself before the console.
Taking a deep breath I leant over and pressed the power on button.
The console flashed up a string or faults. And stayed on.
The screen adjusters dimmed the day beyond and I was told that the door was open.
Again I find it difficult to relate the joy with which I looked over that dusty console, at its familiar and banal lights. I was as good as home — that was my feeling. And my smile must have reached from ear to ear when I heard the slight whirring of the life-support.
I sat back in my seat well and truly pleased with my innovations, and secure in the knowledge that my mother would have been proud of me.
Now I had much to do. First I had to clear the wing roof of debris so that the shuttle could take on energy.
I positively leapt up and bounced out of the shuttle, pausing only to pat the minder on its round top. I hesitated about closing the shuttle door — wanting the life-support to cool the shuttle interior for my return, but afraid that one of the faults might lock the door and shut me outside. So, leaving the door open, I hurriedly clambered up onto the roof and threw off the dead branches.
Jumping as recklessly as madcap Malamud down to the sand, I lifted the minder back into the shuttle and closed the door behind me. Within minutes the shuttle was appreciably cooler. Now I had to discover which of the shuttle's functions the faults impaired.
First I told it to open the solar traps.
"Instruction not understood," the minder said. I redesignated the minder as Two. Meanwhile the shuttle had opened the solar traps. Next I told it to transmit a Mayday. That worked. So that this mayday would not be confused with any of our earlier Maydays, I told it to add that Dag Olvess, Malamud Bey and Pi Pandy were marooned on the planet Balant. The shuttle repeated the message. Next I asked for the charts. That function did not work.
I examined the list of faults. In every single block, even in the two I had repaired, there was at least one fault. The faults in the blocks I had repaired were probably due to the wrong components having been used. I asked the shuttle to identify the fault that was impeding the charts. It was in one of the other blocks. This time I told the minder to first identify the physical fault and show it to me. It was a broken wire. The minder repaired it. The fault disappeared from the console.
When this time I called up the charts it reacted positively. I asked for the charts of the planet Balant. It had no knowledge of Balant. I spelt it. Still no inkling. I asked for the charts of our position. The same large scale chart that I had used on landing was displayed. I studied it, asked for charts of the adjacent space. And so I lost myself in computations.
When next I looked up it was night outside and I had no idea how long it had been with me. All I knew was that I was tired and, after the elation of earlier in the day, a little dispirited. My computations had shown me that, should I be able to repair the shuttle sufficiently and, supposing that we found some way to take off, at its maximum speed the shuttle would take a year to reach the nearest supply station. And again I marvelled at the colossal speed with which we must have travelled to this far system.
Yet it was all perfectly feasible. When I had looked out of the shuttle's rear ports at the Yilan the flickering stars behind it had meant that we had been leaving the Yilan faster than the speed of light. Add to that the blast from the explosion and you came up with a freak velocity.
Nor were my other computations of much comfort. Our new Mayday would take twenty two, possibly twenty three years to reach civilisation. The Mayday from the Yilan would have taken a week or more to reach the nearest tracking station, three weeks to the closest supply station. Following the explosion they would then have picked up the shuttle’s first signals, have tracked its course. Until Dag had altered course for that helium/hydrogen star.
Although the radio would probably prove our saviour, I cursed it as a primitive means of communication, travelling only at the speed of light. Effective over short distances, bt, so far as space is concerned, radio is little better than shouting. Within civilisation, as you well know, it is quicker by far to send messages by ship.
My only hope was that a rescue ship had already been dispatched to follow up those first Maydays, was within a year’s transmission of us. Our only other hope lay in passing ships; and the spaceman's skeleton was testimony that ships had indeed passed this way. If there was such a
ship in the vicinity then we could be rescued in a matter of months, possibly weeks.
Trying to imagine what Dag and Malamud would make of my news I prepared myself for a comfortable night’s sleep; and, as I drifted off to the slight susurration of the life-support, I wondered what success they had had in their search for the spacernan’s ship.
Chapter Eleven
Preparations for our departure.
Dag and Malamud did not return the following day.
Leaving the shuttle I went up to the orchard to collect some fruit, climbed on up into the woods for some cake-fruit. With my stores thus replenished, I set about trying to correct all the remaining faults.
I regretted now having let the minder choose the first replacement part for the propulsion block — that part itself was now causing a fault to be registered. So I spent the rest of that day, and part of the night, getting the shuttle to isolate and describe to me in detail the precise function of the replacement part required. It was a long slog. I then dismantled the interior of the valet in search of the necessary part. Finding two possibles I had the minder install them. The second one cured the fault.
That left seven outstanding faults.
Waking late the following morning I immediately began tracing another fault. That took me all day. Dag and Malamud did not return.
So the days passed.
By the tenth day of their absence I had cured all but two of the faults. For those two the valet contained no equivalent parts — one fault being in the propulsion, the other in the navigation system.
Worried by my friends' continued absence, and wanting to distract my mind from its preoccupation with the two faults, I climbed up to our cave. All was as we had left it, yet it had an air of desertion about it.
Standing in one of the upper caves I looked down over the treetops to the desert edge. Though I gazed long and hard, I saw no sign of Dag and Malamud. Had they met with an accident? Had they chanced upon the inhabitants? My imagination dwelt on any number of dire fates for my friends.
Realising that such morbid speculations could only be debilitating I gathered some food and returned to the shuttle. That evening, to take my mind off my worries, I programmed the shuttle to play chess. Tiredness overtook me at the console and I fell asleep upon it; awaking in the morning with an idea for curing the two remaining faults. My subconscious had done its work.
Again I plodded through the laborious process of getting the shuttle to detail the fault, and then to describe the composition of the faulty component. I then searched through the valet’s bits and pieces, and from four of them cobbled together an equivalent of the part. Although clumsy, it worked. By then it was night. I went to sleep confident that on the morrow I would complete the repairs to the shuttle. My one anxiety was Dag and Malamud’s whereabouts.
The following morning I began to trace back the last of the faults. I was analysing the character of the part when I happened to glance up. Grinning at me through the screen were the upside-down shining faces of Dag and Malamud.
All the worries that I had clamped down within me were unlocked and fled. In my then sixteen years I had never experienced joy such as I felt at that moment. While they slid off the nose of the shuttle I hastened to the door and, opening it, tumbled out into the midday heat.
Whether I stumbled, or I was overcome with pleasure at seeing them again, I do not know; but I found myself hugging them both to me and repeatedly asking them what had kept them so long.
"Do you know what Malamud said just now?" Dag asked me. “He said, 'Look at old calm and collected in there.' Look at him now Malamud."
"What is that abominable stench?" Malamud asked me.
“Oh that," I had become used to it, "Soon as I got the power on, the shuttle automatically emptied its soil tank. Come in out of the heat."
Dag noticed first the dismembered valet,
"So it could tell you nothing?"
“Beyond repair. But, as you can see, I've almost got the shuttle back in working order. Did you find the ship?"
They had seen not a sign of it. And in case it had lain further on, or further on again, they had ended up going right down to the sea.
“If it hasn't been destroyed," Dag said, "the only place it can be is under the sea or on the other side of the mountains. And I have no intention of going over there."
Beside the sea they had found the half-rotted carcass of a huge animal.
"Bones. Bones. I've dreamt of nothing but bones for the last twelve nights," Malamud complained, “That is, when I could get to sleep." He claimed that for the last three nights — they had slept out in the desert — the lights from the shuttle had kept him awake.
"Like a midnight sun," Malamud said. So they had already known that I had made some progress with my repairs.
I told them exactly what I had achieved so far, of the new Mayday that I was transmitting.
"Have you listened in?" Dag asked me.
"No," I said, surprised at myself for not having considered such an obvious step. Telling the shuttle to hold on my researches, I had it scan the wavelengths. Apart from our own forlorn plea for help, we could hear only galactic crackle.
“Worth a try," Dag said. "What other news?"
I informed them of my computations — that our only hope of an early rescue lay in a ship having been already dispatched to search for us. If not our Mayday would not reach civilisation for another twenty two years.
"Why can't we fly the shuttle back?” Dag asked.
I reminded him of the virtual impossibility of taking off; and, that aside, detailed the state of my makeshift repairs.
"If I were an examiner, I doubt very much that I'd warrant this craft a certificate of spaceworthiness. That is if we could get it launched. And, even should we manage to take off without crashing, the journey would take us a year.”
At that they both expressed their disbelief. So, again, I called up the charts, showed them where the Yilan had exploded, where Balant was, took them stage by stage through my calculations.
"It makes sense," Dag sombrely admitted, "We left the Yilan at a hell of a lick. We couldn't get out of our seats for an hour or more. Even so, supposing we could somehow take off, what's to stop us going back under our own power?"
"Food," I said. “Where, in here, could we store enough food for a year?"
"Couldn't we boost the engines?”
"Even if we could, we wouldn't have enough energy."
"Add to the cells. We've got the minder."
I sighed and sat down.
"All the components," I said, "are manufactured in space. The plasma alone requires exceptional electrical forces. And the cell walls are three times the density of the heaviest metals likely to be found on this planet. Even were it possible, I wouldn't want to push the shuttle too hard. My repairs are theoretically sound, but there's no telling what will happen in practise."
“Twenty two years," Malamud said, "I'll be thirty seven, have whiskers longer than you two."
“Suppose we can take off,” Dag had been absorbing my news, "food is the only real problem? Unless," he asked of me, "you want to spend the next twenty two years here?"
"No. I simply thought that you ought to know how I view our situation."
While they mulled over our new circumstances, I returned to my study of the last faulty part. This one piece, I eventually concluded, I could manufacture with seven of the valet's components. While I was rummaging among the heap of the valet's innards I became aware of Malamud mumbling to himself a list of all that he would miss in the next twenty two years.
“...Fudge sticks. Cream cakes. Cheese. Wine..." Silly, harmless things, so easily taken for granted. "...Clothes. Soap. Beds."
"Malamud,” I inyerrupted him. "I've got a present for you." I had the shuttle display the chess game.
"Pi,” Malamud gripped my beard, “I take back everything I ever thought about you."
He was soon engrossed in his game. The minder and I assembled the co
mponents. By the time I had installed them it was night. The last fault light disappeared.
“Gentlemen,” I turned to them, "We are theoretically sound."
"Well done,” Dag roused himself from his position by the door, where he had been sitting since our conversation earlier. "I vote that tomorrow we all take a bath and discuss what's to be done. Now let's sleep."
“Just let me finish this game,” Malamud said.
On our climb to the bath the following morning Dag described to me his emotions at finding the skeleton of the spaceman.
"When I saw that minder I have to admit that, in part, I was disappointed. I had truly been looking forward to working through all the stages to reach civilisation. History at first hand. At the same time I saw that the minder, possibly the ship, was the only realistic chance we had of escaping. But still... it was a dream, a challenge, denied me."
At the pool we lathered ourselves with mud, and we considered our future. Dag asked if I could make cooking pots from the valet’s casing. I thought it probable.
"We'll have to boil the toxins out of the food, then compress it. We could squeeze it with levers, couldn't we Pi?" I thought it possible. That way, Dag continued, we could manufacture ourselves enough food for a year's journey. If, in the meantime we were rescued... all well and good. But we couldn’t depend on that for another twenty two years.
"What about taking off?" I reminded him.
"One step at a time," Dag said.
"How will we know when we've got enough food?" Malamud shook his hair in the water.
"When we've made a fair size amount then we'll live off that alone for a few days, calculate how much we've eaten, how much we'll need for a year. Agreed?” Who could disagree with Dag?