by E. C. Tubb
‘They’re no better?’
‘They’re never going to be better. You know that. Those astronauts are as good as dead.’
‘We have to hold that story in, John,’ said Simmonds quickly. ‘The International Lunar-Finance Committee meets on the fifteenth and you know how they are on approbations. Any increase depends on the Meta probe. Any hint of failure and they will chop us dead. Everyone will suffer.’ Hesitating, he added, ‘But, John, if the astronauts can’t man the probe—?’
‘I’ll find a way.’
Volunteers, Carter would accept them if there was no other way. Enthusiastic he would take a chance and, if Koenig had guessed right, he would have men already selected as potential replacements in case of emergency.
‘Good.’ Simmonds was relieved. ‘But remember, John, we’re in this together. Together, you understand?’
The last word—somehow Simmonds always managed to get it, but now it made no difference. The real problem wasn’t the launching of the probe, but what had killed the men.
Koenig activated his commlock.
‘I want an Eagle ready to leave within twenty minutes,’ he ordered. ‘Have Professor Bergman meet me on the pad.’
‘Yes, sir. Anything else?’
‘A rescue ship to stand by over Disposal Area One. And I want a crew briefed to make a complete radiation check. Two men—and ask for volunteers.’
CHAPTER TWO
Even though the scene was familiar it still held a strange eerieness and, looking at the screen, Koenig felt that, as if by some peculiar magic, he had been transported in space and time. That he was not sitting in the passenger module of an Eagle with Bergman at his side, but was somewhere on Earth back in ancient times when great obelisks had reared to the sky, grim and awful in the pale light of the stars.
Then the mood passed and he was himself again, watching the flare of the guiding beacon, the redtopped mounds, the electronic fence surrounding the empty expanse of Disposal Area One.
‘It’s like a graveyard,’ said Bergman, musingly. ‘Have you ever visited Egypt, John? Flown over the pyramids? This always reminds me of that. The mounds aren’t as large, of course, thirty feet as against hundreds, but the perspective is as awesome.’
A graveyard, a good analogy.
Koenig said, ‘How long was it used after I left?’
‘Not long. They use Area Two now, this one’s been closed for five years.’
Five years, a long time, and Koenig wondered what sleeping demons might be stirring in the sealed cans packed too tightly below. Like a trapped genie in a bottle, barely understood energies, melting, changing, growing, new elements forming, perhaps tensing . . .
He shook his head to rid it of fantasies, speculations which served no purpose at this time.
‘We had no synthocrete covers then,’ he said. ‘How’s it holding up?’
‘All right according to the reports,’ said Bergman. ‘It’s constantly being monitored.’
Watched for tell-tale signs of radiation increase which would warn of an emergency. An elementary precaution which had become routine. But nine men had died who had worked on the site. Men who, logically, should still be alive.
The depot was as he expected it to be, clean, bright, smoothly functional. A security guard stood by the door leading to the main compartment, his sleeve purple, a stun-gun holstered at his waist. He snapped to attention as Koenig appeared, Bergman at his side, Collins, the pilot, suited and carrying his helmet. Together they entered the room.
‘Right.’ Koenig switched on the main screen. ‘Let’s get on with it. Rescue ship on stand-by? Fine.’
A clear window faced on the area, but Koenig ignored it, concentrating on the screen. The scene, relayed from scanners, was clear, the suited figures of two men looking grotesque as they climbed from their buggy and set to work.
As Nordstrom had set to work before he died, helmet smashed, lungs ruptured, eyes glazed as they stared at the void.
If radiation hadn’t killed them—then what?
Outside the men worked with trained speed, climbing the mounds, checking, reporting.
‘Point twelve check complete. Radiation normal. No leakage. Proceeding to point thirteen.’
Koenig acknowledged and did his best to relax. There was nothing he could do now, but wait. Bergman, watching the individual physical-monitors of the men outside had at least something to occupy his mind. Collins had nothing at all.
He moved restlessly about the compartment, one hand lifting to touch his face, his eyes, the heavy helmet swinging from his wrist. He crossed to the window and stood looking outside, staring at the stars, the rescue ship which hovered close and low.
‘Point forty-eight check complete.’ The voice from the speaker sounded relieved. ‘Radiation normal. No leakage. That’s it, Commander. All tight out here.’
‘Good, thanks. That will be all.’ Koenig pressed a key as the suited figures piled into their buggy. ‘Rescue ship—stand down. Return to base.’
On the screen the Eagle swooped up and away.
Bergman said, ‘Well, this proves beyond doubt that the radiation count here is within safe limits.’
‘Which doesn’t help Doctor Russell’s theory. Whatever killed those nine men and affected the astronauts it wasn’t radiation.’
‘At least not radiation as we know it,’ said Bergman quietly.
A defence? It was possible—Victor and the doctor must have grown close over the years. And even though negative the findings had been of value. Even, thought Koenig sourly, if it put him right back on square one.
From where he stood before the window Collins said, ‘Commander, I’ve got to get out of here.’
‘In a few minutes.’ Koenig turned back to the screen, not seeing Collins as he turned from the window. He was sweating and his eyes were filmed, almost opaque.
‘Now!’ he screamed. ‘Now! Now!’
He spun, face distorted, a man suddenly berserk. He threw Bergman to one side as if he were a rag doll, snatching up a tradition counter, lifting it to hurl it at the window. Koenig sprang towards him and gripped the raised arm, was thrown back to land with a crash against the wall, the thrown counter smashing just above his head.
Running to the window Collins lifted his helmet and slammed it against the pane.
‘Stop him!’
The guard heard Bergman’s shout. He opened the door and entered, stun-gun in hand. Koenig, on his feet, blocked the line of fire and the guard weaved, waiting for an opening. Again the helmet crashed against the window, the glass yielding to become webbed with fine lines, fracture stresses which could give at any moment.
Koenig, thrown back by a swinging arm, cannoned into the guard, snatched up the fallen stun-gun, lifted it, fired without hesitation. Collins fell as he was about to hit the window for the third time.
‘Get him! Victor!’
Working with desperate haste they dragged the limp figure from the room, Koenig flashing his commlock at the door as they cleared the port.
As it closed the window finally gave and air, splinters of glass, every loose object in the room gusted into the void.
The computer had a female voice, warmly human, almost as if the machine had, somehow, acquired a personality of its own. A ridiculous concept, of course, the vocal accompaniment to the printed data thrown on the screen was an aid to busy workers, no more, the voice itself the result of language broken down into its essential components, fed into the memory banks to be correlated according to need.
Yet, even so, it sounded regretful as the words appeared.
STAGE FIVE CELL MUTATION COMPLETE. ALL BRAIN ACTIVITY TERMINATED. CONCLUSION: ASTRONAUT ERIC SPARKMAN DECEASED.
Frank Warren had preceded him by an hour.
Helena Russell felt her shoulders sag with defeat. For how long had she struggled to keep the man alive? For how many hours, days, fighting against her own conviction that he was doomed, hoping, perhaps, for a miracle. Yet no miracle had come. Steppin
g towards the console she looked at the face, the monitoring equipment, the tiny lights still active, winking like a host of distant stars.
Turning she aimed her commlock at the computer screen.
‘Kano?’
He was dark, with crisp hair like wool, his eyes large, luminously ebon. His left sleeve was the colour of rust, the code of the Technical Section.
‘Doctor?’
‘The computer says that Sparkman is dead, but there are cases on record where brain activity has resumed from the same apparent state. Check the factual basis of its assumption.’
A moment and a caption appeared on the screen:
CELL LIFE SUSTAINED BY MECHANICAL LIFE-SUPPORT SYSTEM ONLY.
Stubbornly Helena lifted her commlock and said, ‘There are many definitions of death, Kano. Which one is the computer using?’
Another caption:
DEFINITION OF DEATH PROGRAMMED 12 JAN 1999
BY DR H. RUSSELL.
She said, bleakly, ‘Would you say the computer was telling me to switch off the life-support system, Kano?’
His voice held a shrug. ‘The computer tells you only the facts, Doctor.’
Facts which she knew too well—why had she hesitated to accept them? Again she looked at the figure beyond the partition, the distorted face, the corpse-like appearance. No, not an appearance, the lights on the monitor showed only a mockery of life. A mockery which must continue no longer.
With steady hands she pressed a series of buttons, watching as the lights died one after the other. Eric Sparkman was dead—let him rest in peace.
Let him join his companion, not on a flight to Meta in the probe, but on the final voyage of discovery all men must take.
As Lee had taken it years ago—the husband she had loved and lost.
When she spoke into her commlock her voice was a little unsteady.
‘Doctor Mathias, the last astronaut has just died. I would appreciate your help on the autopsy—the Commander will be impatient to know what we find.’
The noise was weird, a stream of clicks and pips, squeaks and hums, signals from Meta which seemed to hover on the very brink of words.
Or perhaps, thought Koenig, it was his own fatigue which made him invent associations, to hear a voice in the blur of sound, whispering, crying, pleading, warning . . . Irritably he punched a button and killed the relayed signals.
There was work to be done and he had no time to sit and dream.
Plans lay on his desk, the lay-out of Area One, and he studied the disposition of the waste. Forty-eight mounds covering pits sunk deep into the Luna rock, each pit filled with sealed cans. The contents were, theoretically, harmless aside from the danger of pollution. Radioactive sludge with a long half-life but with no danger of ever reaching critical mass.
According, that was, to the dictates of present scientific knowledge.
But some had rested there for decades and the moon was, in many ways, an alien world. The possibility of the unknown could not be dismissed.
A buzz and he looked at his commlock, recognizing Helena’s face on the tiny screen. She entered the office as he activated the door, a file of papers in her hands, her face composed. It was always composed, he thought, a mask she had set against the world.
‘Commander, here are the autopsy reports on the astronauts. We found nothing unexpected. The brain damage was less acute but finally as severe.’
‘And Collins?’
‘The same as the other workers.’
Koenig nodded, leaning back, looking thoughtfully at her eyes, her hair.
‘Collins went mad,’ he said. ‘Totally and completely insane in a matter of seconds. How, medically, could that happen?’
‘It couldn’t.’
‘I was there. I saw it.’
‘You saw a man in terminal convulsion,’ she corrected. ‘That growth in his skull didn’t just suddenly appear full-blown. It was there before, growing, affecting his motor functions. You saw him reach the critical point but it could have happened earlier. While you were in flight, for example.’
If it had there would have been three dead men instead of one. He and Bergman would have joined Collins in the wreck of the Eagle.
He said, ‘You run routine physicals on all pilots, right?’ At her nod he continued. ‘And nothing was seen at Collins’s last examination? No? When was that?’
‘Eighteen days ago. They have one a month.’
‘So during the past eighteen days something triggered that growth. Fast, Doctor?’
‘Yes, but not unusual. If the stimulation caused the affected cells to commence division the growth would be in geometrical progression. Two—four—eight—sixteen—’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Koenig said dryly, ‘I understand the term.’ Frowning he continued, ‘The astronauts—if their initial stimulation had been relatively small it could account for the prolonged state of their illness. I think I may owe you an apology. On the basis of available evidence it does seem a classic case of radiation-induced cerebral cancer—but how and when could they have been exposed?’
‘Commander, there has to be a connection between the workers, the astronauts and the shuttle pilot.’
‘I agree and I’m working on it. Or rather the computer is. I’m having it checked for any common factor.’ He reached for his commlock. ‘Kano? Have you anything to report yet?’
‘Yes, Commander. I think so.’
‘Coming.’
Koenig left the office and entered Main Mission, Helena close behind. The Computer Chief was studying an involved pattern of lines on a screen. He gestured to them as Koenig approached.
‘The flight record of Collins’s flight of twelve days ago. It’ll happen in a moment.’ He grunted as the pattern of lines broke into a jumbled mess of electronic ‘noise’. ‘See? Everything working perfectly and then this.’
‘Have you plotted the exact location?’
‘Yes, sir. It happened while he was traversing Area One.’
‘Correlation?’
‘Both the astronauts conducted training flights over the same area working dual controls. One of their flight records shows similar interference. We didn’t spot it before because there was no reason to check. No flight was ever in danger and, as you can see, the disturbance is momentary. A solar flare could have caused it, a magnetic eddy, anything.’
‘The training flights were at a relatively high altitude compared to the shuttle?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thank you, David, you’ve done well.’
As Kano returned to his duties Koenig said to Helena: ‘Consider that apology confirmed, Doctor. You were right all the time.’
‘Despite the lack of detectable radioactivity?’
‘Yes.’
‘But—’
‘Scintillation,’ said Koenig. ‘You’ve looked at the radium dial of a watch under a lens? Then you’ve seen what happened. A sudden spurt of energy of a far higher intensity than the normal level. A particle ejected which quickly dies. Something like that must have happened at Area One. Those men were just unlucky. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time.’
She was still doubtful. ‘Particles, Commander? But surely such energy-release would have shown on the monitors.’
He nodded, thinking, reforming his initial hasty theory. It was barely possible that tiny particles which had a half-life of seconds could have done the damage—but would they have blanked out the flight recorders? The effects of any such particle would be strictly local, and yet—
He snapped his fingers.
‘A bad analogy, Doctor. Think, not of a radium dial, but of a condenser. It’s just a coil of wire which holds a charge—and loses it immediately. Now, suppose a field-effect was generated at the area, a pulse which peaked then fell. If it was, for example, strongly magnetic no increase of radiation would have been spotted. But why should it affect the brain?’
‘The cerebrum has an electric potential which differs from normal cells,’ she
explained. ‘And, unlike the rest of the body, it cannot repair itself. Damage is aggravated and the tendency to cancerous growths is high. There are cases of radiographers suffering brain tumours caused by their badly shielded equipment. Commander, if what you suspect is true, then we have the answer.’
‘We’ve got more than that,’ he said tightly. ‘Energy doesn’t come from nowhere. The stuff dumped in those pits should be inert—my guess is that, somehow, it has changed.’
‘Commander?’
‘Scintillation. Sparks thrown by a flint and steel. They die and leave something, the field, behind them. But if they should catch, start a chain reaction—’ He broke off, watching her face, the dawning comprehension in her eyes. ‘That’s right—if it does we’ll have one hell of a big crater on the moon!’
CHAPTER THREE
Another crater, the moon was covered with them, Tycho, Copernicus, Kelper—the list was long. Great hollows scooped in the Luna rock, most of them filled with impalpable dust, the result of meteor impact or volcanic activity which had torn the surface of the moon in ages past. An inner fury which, so some thought, still remained in uneasy quiescence.
Paul Morrow stretched, relaxing as he sat at his console, his eyes drifting over the screens, the monitors, the ranked instruments which kept him in touch with the entire complex. There was little secrecy in Alpha, the personnel was too closely involved, and rumours were not encouraged. The truth was far less dangerous.
Such as the mysterious sickness which had, at one time, been thought to have originated in some space virus, the result of working the void and even, ridiculous though it was, as the product of acceleration strain. Rumour was now dissipated. Area One was the cause and now no one would be at risk. Koenig had isolated it and, if it should blow, then it blew. The map of the terrain would have to be altered and that was all.
Or, at least, so most people thought.
Morrow wasn’t one of them. If the waste had changed the energy it contained need bear no relation to what they knew and, even if it reached normal fission, the explosion would be tremendous. But a lot of garbage had been dumped into those pits.