Balant: A Beginning

by Sam Smith

  As I increased power, so began my juggling with the control column. Now that I had had some experience of handling the shuttle I hadn't bothered manually turning it around to face the desert. In a cloud of sand dust we slowly rose, edging only slightly towards the mountains. When I judged that we had gained enough height to safely manoeuvre, I eased the control column toward me; and, when we were almost vertical to Balant's surface, I blasted the rear engines.

  Up we went. And up. And up. Pressed into our seats by the force of our gravity-defying engines, choking almost.

  I turned the shuttle so that the solar traps faced the sun; and still we rose, passed through a thin vaporous wreath of cloud, and on up into the blue. And still we climbed, until it was blue no more.

  We had returned to the black of space. I stopped the engines. Silence.

  We were weightless. I turned to face my two companions. And again I know not how to relate this, the overbrimming joy we felt at being back in our native environment.

  Malamud rapidly unstrapped himself and, liberated, floated up to the ceiling, where he stood upside down and pulled faces at us. While Dag and I, not because Malamud's faces were that funny, laughed until we were gasping for breath.

  "Now where are these other planets?" I said, and began looking about me.

  I found the next planet out, computed a course to intercept its orbit and told Malamud to strap himself back into his seat. When he had done so, I blasted us towards the planet.

  That power surge used up most of our energy, but we had attained the speed that I had estimated we would need to take us back to civilisation. When that time did come, however, I judged that it would probably be wiser, once we had left Balant’s atmosphere, to remain in orbit until our energy sources were fully replenished.

  No faults showed on the console.

  Our momentum having stabilised, we unstrapped ourselves and, floating around the shuttle, we surveyed our surroundings Beyond the planet towards which we were heading were two other planets. From their spacing I deduced that there were probably two more planets around the other side of the sun. Calling up the charts I tried to find an identifiable configuration in the surrounding firmament I could find none. When, however, I told the shuttle to take bearings, it gave our position as before.

  Dag suggested that I again scan the radio frequencies. But even here, beyond Balant's atmosphere, all that we picked up was cosmic crackle. Two very weak signals possibly, but only hope made us believe so.

  Prior to slowing into orbit around the planet we ate our lunch. The dried fruit crumbled in weightlessness and we had to cram it into our mouths. We also found that it made us extremely thirsty. Dag wondered if we should manufacture pastes instead: the outstanding difficulty being the storage of them.

  This planet was almost twice the size of Balant and wholly grey brown in colour. It had polar ice caps, but what atmosphere it had was probably ninety eight percent carbon dioxide.

  I slowed the shuttle into a high orbit. There was little to be seen.

  "A desert of mud," Malamud described it. Broken here and there by meteor craters, which meant that its atmosphere was much thinner than Balant’s. It also had three moons.

  “That's not a crater there," Dag said as we shot overhead. On our next orbit I looked to where he had pointed. It looked like a hill.

  Slowing the shuttle I took us into a lower orbit. The hill of grey dirt had a hole next to it.

  “A mine," I said.

  "An old one," Dag said.

  On our next orbit we looked for signs of equipment, could see none. Nor could we see anything more on our next three orbits, just the hill and the black entrance to the mine.

  With nothing more to be seen I took the shuttle out of orbit and calculated a course to intercept the planet that lay between Balant and the sun. This time the blast on our engines used up almost all of our energy. That did not perturb me as I knew that our energy would be readily replenished as we closed on the other planet and, subsequently, the sun. By the time we unstrapped ourselves the day was, according to the shuttle clock, almost done.

  While we ate another meal of smoke-dried fruit — Malamud grimacing over the prospect of a year's diet of it — we speculated on that one mine we had seen on the planet, agreed that it was probably the work of prospectors. There are many such who skirt the edges of civilisation, seeking in solitude, like my mother's metallurgist, the wealth that will bring them the approbation of the many. And, naturally, we went on to wonder if the spaceman on Balant had been a prospector; and If so, again, what had happened to his ship?

  "A prospector with a valet?" Malamud dismissed the notion.

  That riddle unresolved we divided the night into two hour watches. For, though Malamud and Dag had the trusting faith of ignorance in the repairs that I had made, I knew too well how botched the job had been, didn’t want the life-support to fail whilst we were all asleep. To keep Malamud amused and awake during his watch I called up one of the games I had devised; and, with Dag taking the next watch, I strapped myself in for my first four hours sleep.

  My first words, when Dag roused me, were, "Where's the fault?" He smiled.

  "No fault," he said. "You've had six hours. Malamud couldn't tear himself away from his game. Then I got hooked on it. So you've had all the sleep you're going to get this night."

  I acquainted myself with our position — we were abreast of Balant — and, being ravenously hungry, I stuffed dried fruit into my mouth. However, although my belly was still rumbling, my mouth soon refused to accept another morsel. Then, when I came to top up my stomach with water, I noticed how little water we had in the recycled tank. It had been full when we had left Balant. That worried me.

  The inner planet was off to the side of the sun. I adjusted our course, watched Balant recede behind us, become a pale disc. Neither Dag nor Malamud awoke until we were in orbit around the inner planet.

  “There's nothing much to see,” I roused them. "But I thought I'd better wake you, or you might not have believed we'd come."

  Blearily they looked down on the planet's coiling mists. Its atmosphere was obviously denser than Balant's, its gravity greater. None of the planet's surface could be seen.

  “That’s it?" Malamud said.

  ''Yes.”

  "Right,” he closed his eyes. "Let's go home."

  "How's our energy?" Dag asked.

  "Topped right up."

  When we arrived back at our blue globe of Balant, with its muddy green girdle, our side of the planet was just creeping into darkness. At Dag's suggestion I put the shuttle into geostationary orbit above the silver trail, and we spent our watches that night searching for Nautili. We none of us saw any.

  When night came to the trail I orbited the planet once, dropped the shuttle back through the atmosphere, and gently coasted down to the desert.

  "How come," Malamud asked me, "we didn't go this slow the first time?"

  "Theory versus practise."

  "We have all of us learnt," Dag came to my defence. "It is to our credit as spacemen that we have.” That was the only time that Dag referred, and then only obliquely, to my scepticism about making the shuttle fly again.

  This time I hovered along the side of our mountains, then landed atop the chocks, facing out towards the desert. When the dust had settled Malamud said,

  "Same question — when do we leave?"

  "Soon as we've got enough food," Dag said.

  I suggested that he take a look at the recycled tank. He unstrapped himself and did so.

  "We're going to have to find a way of taking more water with us," I said.

  "I've thought of that," Dag said. "We could make more flagons, put a bung in them with a straw through it. Then stop up the end of the straw. But I know why the recycled tank is so low — it's because the fruit's been absorbing moisture. Feel this one." He handed a bag to me. “Note how soft it's gone. What we'll need to do is to wrap the bags in green leaves. That should keep them airtight and dry. And th
at's easily tested. We can wrap a couple of bags and leave them in here. All we have to know now is how many bags we'll need."

  I had been making the calculations. In three days we had used up practically all of one bag.

  "A hundred and twenty two," I told him. "How many have we got so far?"

  "About eighty."

  "Forty more," I said. "We've got work to do."

  Chapter Sixteen

  We encounter, all at once, two sets of Balant’s inhabitants; and place ourselves in peril.

  We were busy.

  While Dag stirred his cooking pots and swung on his levers, Malamud and I were out from dawn till dusk gathering food. On those days when we were not staggering homeward under the weight of our harvesting, we went scouting along the desert edge, searching for ever more of the trees with the multipurpose wide long leaves.

  Rather than resurrect our shelter, we laid some of those leaves over the shuttle, removed them only when the energy supplies needed topping up. And, in light of our trip, Dag had experimented with his cooking, had tried squeezing less juice from one batch. After only a few days, however, the bags had become mildewed, had had to be thrown away. So we wrapped untreated leaves around two of the bags and left them in the shuttle for a week. At the end of their week in the shuttle, two unwrapped bags had absorbed moisture, while the two wrapped in green leaves had not.

  "We are going home then Pi?" Malamud asked me one day as we looked at the bags of dried fruit hanging in row upon row in the cave.

  "Why else all this hard work?" I asked him, voicing a confidence I did not feel.

  "It's just that the sight of them all," Malamud grimaced, “quite takes my appetite away."

  Malamud and I were having to travel further and further afield to collect food enough to satisfy Dag’s voracious pots. When our trips began taking us away from the cave for three days at a time, we decided that we should wait until the fruit nearer home began to ripen. In the meantime Dag would show us how to make flagons. He took us out into the desert.

  Our boots on we traipsed about after him over the hot sand while he inspected various plants.

  “This one I think," Dag dropped to his knees beside a plant with tall spindly leaves. Using his hands like shovels he began burrowing down beside it.

  "See this root," he said to us. I recognised the shape of his flagons.

  "You’ve got to test first," he told us, “Some of them haven't grown big enough. And there's no means of telling from the foliage."

  "What's that?” Malamud said. Dag began to repeat what he had just said.

  "No,” Malamud gestured him to silence. "Listen." Someone in the forest above was shouting. Voices answered the shout.

  “There!” Malamud pointed.

  People were moving among the trees.

  "Quick!" Dag was on his feet. "The shuttle!"

  The sand gave under my feet, my ill-fitting boots dug into my ankles, and — for all the effort I put into my running — I did not seem to make any speed.

  “They've seen us," Dag gasped beside me.

  Malamud and I bumped together as Malamud, in alarm, glanced up to the forest. The volume of shouting had increased.

  One moment it seemed that we would never reach the shuttle, that we would be forever running towards it and getting no closer, the next moment we were within the shade of the wing and I was pawing frantically at the door.

  As soon as I had it open Dag and Malamud slipped inside and made for the rear ports. As I closed the door I heard a scream of terror from the mountainside.

  "There!" Malamud said.

  I leapt to the port and, panting, looked over his shoulder.

  "Nautili," Dag said, his voice almost a whisper.

  I then saw my first Nautili ship. It came speeding over the low peak above the settlement, advanced in a long arc along the mountainside, shot something translucent into the forest, and returned across the desert towards the southern ocean. It was followed almost immediately by another ship, which also shot into the forest. Trees were falling.

  A whole stream of Nautili ships was rising — over the low mountain, shooting their shimmering treetoppling load into the forest, and then returning across the desert. The ships were a dark grey, shaped like a crescent moon, but blunt at the forward end.

  "Look!” Malamud directed my gaze to a bare mountain slope above the forest. I could just make out a woman dragging a child after her as she came scrabbling down over the rocks. A Nautili ship shot its shimmering blob at her. It flattened the woman and the child.

  "Take off Pi," Dag said.

  Stunned by the sight of that murder, like a machine I obeyed Dag's order and strapped myself into my seat. Dag had to pull Malamud away from the rear port and thrust him into his seat. I started the engines, began my balancing act with the control column while we gained height.

  "We've lost the covers," Malamud was craning around in his seat to look behind us. I started to speed out over the desert, suddenly came to my senses.

  “What now?" I asked Dag.

  “We've got to stop that slaughter."

  "How?” I looked to him. "We've got no weapons."

  “We've got one — surprise. They won't be expecting us. Circle above the forest.”

  I banked the shuttle and came swiftly back across the desert. The stream of Nautili ships was still pouring over the mountain.

  "We'll be killed,” I told Dag.

  "We've no choice," Dag said. “If we stand by and watch this slaughter we do not deserve to be called civilised. Agreed?”

  "Agreed!” Malamud firmly said behind me.

  "Agreed," I feebly echoed him.

  My hands trembling I began to hover at about ten meters above the treetops, going slowly in a circle to intercept the stream of Nautili ships. My every instinct was against it: it felt so unsafe. Every practical lesson I had received in space had been pointed up to its safeness; and here I was deliberately putting myself into danger.

  A Nautili ship shot past above us. Another beside us. I had to force myself not to shut my eyes.

  "They’ve got no screens," Malamud said. That stirred my curiosity. I studied the next ship as it came hurtling towards us. Just as I was about to shut my eyes it veered aside. The shuttle wobbled.

  "Steady Pi,” Dag said. His voice was calm. “Keep going in the circle. They've stopped firing. We've confused them."

  I completed our slow circle above the forest. Nautili ships still sped past us. Below I made out pale discs of faces looking up to us from beside shattered tree trunks. I could also see the globs of the stuff the Nautili had shot at the savages. It looked like the same slime of which the silver trail had been made. The woman and the child lay motionless under one such glob.

  The stream of ships continued to pass over us. The individual ships were not much larger than the shuttle.

  I suddenly realised that they were making no noise. I tried to listen above the whine of our own engines. But, despite their speed, I could hear nothing.

  We completed our second slow circle.

  "They've stopped," Dag said.

  "What's that mean?” Malamud asked him.

  "Probably having a conflab about us. Decide what to do. Keep circling Pi.”

  I noticed that our energy supply was rapidly dwindling, opened the solar traps. Below us we could see the survivors gathering in groups. By the gesticulations made in our direction, they were obviously discussing us.

  “Here they come again," Malamud said.

  Four Nautili ships came speeding abreast over the low mountain. Again I listened for the sound of their approach, could hear nothing. Of the four ships, two or them passed us on either side and one went above us, while the fourth went below. Even through my terror I found it within me to admire the skill of the pilot who passed below us.

  "Right,” Dag said. “They have now had a good look at us. What they do next will settle the outcome. Take us up higher Pi. Circle there. We can see if they're coming then."

&n
bsp; Up we went. The mountains dwindled below us.

  “Circle here," Dag said.

  I levelled off, put the shuttle into a wider circle; and, not having to concentrate so much, I looked about me.

  "They’ve destroyed the settlement,” Malamud said. Some of the houses had collapsed under the weight of the slime. I glanced over to the blue ocean. A single grey ship emerged from it and rose towards us.

  “This is it," Dag said. We held our breaths.

  The ship passed below us, banked and came back over us, then returned down and down to the ocean. A white plume marked its entry into the sea. We all of us sighed.

  “Why didn’t they attack us?" Malamud asked Dag.

  “Uncertainty. It's one thing to slaughter some savages who happen to be in their way, but we represent a force equal to their own. They're not to know that we are completely isolated here. And, for whatever reason that they’re attacking the savages, they obviously think that attacking us isn't worth the trouble. Let's land Pi."

  I took the shuttle out over the desert, brought it back and, practised now, settled it down upon its chocks facing the mountains. When the dust driven up by our landing began to drift aside we three peered intently up at the forest The savages were coming down the foothills towards us.

  "You stay here Pi,” Dag began unstrapping himself. "Then, if we have to, we can escape. Come on Malamud, let's go and meet them."

  “Don't get too close," I warned them. "Disease."

  Chapter Seventeen

  We think that we learn more — from our neighbours — of the history of Balant; and I render myself ecstatic.

  Sitting in the shuttle I watched Dag and Malamud walk hesitantly across the desert towards the foothills.

  The first of the savages reached the desert floor and awaited their companions.

  Dag and Malamud glanced back to me: they were obviously measuring the distance to the safety of the shuttle. Slowly they walked on, their bearing tense.