by E. C. Tubb
The interior was dark aside from starlight and he stood just within the door looking up at the roof, the glitter of stars beyond. Billions of stars, a shimmering mass of icy points overlaid with sheets and curtains of luminescence, the opaque clouds of interstellar dust, the fuzz of distant nebulae. Among them somewhere, was Earth already too small to see as a disc with the naked eye. The sun and Terra Nova were beyond the horizon—the explosion had kicked the moon a little on its axis, but later the planet would come into view.
At their closest point it would dominate the sky.
Koenig moved forward into the room a little, freezing as he heard a sigh, a rustle, the sound of gentle movement. Lovers taking advantage of off-duty hours to snatch a little privacy. Or perhaps they had come to watch the stars and had yielded to sudden impulse. He couldn’t blame them—life went on.
Turning he caught a glimpse of their faces in a beam of reflected light. Ted Clifford and Professor Aretha Robinson. A good man and a fine girl, young despite her achievement. Young enough, at least, to enjoy the pressure of loving arms, the warm intimacy of a kiss, the thrill of woken passion.
Quietly Koenig backed from the room, wondering at his sudden envy, half inclined to go back to Main Mission and take over the operation. An impulse he resisted. He had left for a reason, to give Morrow the confidence of authority, to return now would be to diminish the man a little. Himself too—a commander had to be able to delegate authority and to trust those beneath him.
Bergman was hard at work. A mess of apparatus littered his work-bench, wires, coils, a lattice of silvery strands surrounding a dark mass which was roughly-shaped like an Eagle. As Koenig watched the lattice glowed with a lambent fire and the mass rose a little.
‘Victor?’
‘John!’ Bergman turned, smiling. ‘You’re the first to see this.’
‘An honour, no doubt—if I knew just what it was.’
‘My antigrave force shield. John, I’ve got it! The data we won from the disposal areas finally gave me the clue. It’s based on heterodying, of course, a pattern of electromagnetic waves which actually cancel out the effects of gravity. I won’t go into the math now but, briefly, it creates a barrier and, at the same time, forms a shield which is proof against all forms of energy.’
‘Self-contained?’
‘Yes. Once I’ve ironed out the bugs we should be able to equip an Eagle with the device. It’ll extend the range enormously and give full protection against any external dangers.’
‘Such as Terra Nova?’
‘You think we’ll need protection?’ Bergman cut the power to his apparatus and frowned. ‘I heard the initial reports and the long-range scan was optimistic.’
‘Does nothing bother you? The lack of ice, for example?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Bergman. ‘Logically the world should be frozen—apparently logic is wrong. We’re basing our assumptions on known factors and they need not apply in other parts of the universe. For example, there could be a high level of internal heat which—’
‘Would have been noted,’ interrupted Koenig. ‘It wasn’t spotted.’
‘Radiation then which could be confined by the planet’s magnetic field. We know that it has a highly dense magnetic envelope. Or’—Bergman shrugged. ‘We’re speculating, John. The reconnaissance team will give us the answers soon enough. And you know the old saying?’
‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘Especially when it’s the only one you’ve got.’
‘There’s another saying, Victor—don’t buy a pig in a poke. That’s what we’re doing. Everyone is sure that we’ve found a new home. That we’re going to move to Terra Nova and enjoy the paradise it seems to represent. The reports confirm it. Those pilots sounded as if they were on holiday.’
‘You can’t blame them, John.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘The personnel either—to them it must seem like a reprieve from certain death.’
A reprieve, but one which needn’t be all that it seemed. And Koenig couldn’t forget that an earlier paradise had contained a snake in the garden.
There could be a new snake on the new world—one which could bite.
He said, ‘Show me your apparatus, Victor. The quicker we get it installed the better I’ll like it.’
Helena Russell was restless. She moved with mounting impatience through the medical section, adjusting machines which needed no adjustment, checking cases which had been cleared, finally staring at the file belonging to Koenig.
A stubborn man, his inner lesions must cause pain and yet he had not come for the treatment which would eliminate it. At first, after his initial processing, there had been no time. There had been too many injured people, men and women with internal injuries which, in some cases had proved fatal. Others who had fallen awkwardly and had suffered broken bones, ripped muscles, torn sinews. But they had all been taken care of now.
Why didn’t he come?
She had been annoyed at first, she admitted it, but Koenig had been right. Perhaps she should tell him that, heal the breach between them, yet if she did would he take it as a sign of weakness? Of yielding to—
She frowned, shaking her head, irritated at the line her thoughts were taking.
The buzz of her commlock saved her from starting another.
‘Doctor Russell, emergency!’ Morrow’s face was anxious on the screen. ‘Please join the Commander and Professor Bergman on the pad.’
‘Details?’
‘Total failure of reconnaissance Eagle. I’m bringing it in on slave-control.’
Koenig filled her in on the rest. He waited, with Bergman, in the travel-tube, his face anxious.
‘Morrow reported as soon as it happened. The team had left Terra Nova and was returning with all systems go. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, everything went dead. Communications, monitors, the lot. It took Paul three minutes to establish control. Once he had the Eagle on its way he called you.’
‘Physical malfunction?’
‘As I said, everything went. We’ve no idea as yet what happened.’
‘A local life-form?’ She answered her own question. ‘No. If they followed the established landing procedure they would have been suited and all air in the command module evacuated when reaching space. Tanked air would be clean. In any case no virus would have knocked out the communications.’
As a signal light flashed Koenig said, ‘The Eagle’s landed. Let’s go.’
The tube had locked on the command module. He opened the outer port, swung it back then operated the inner door. Parks and Bannion sat slumped in their chairs, faces lax, eyes closed. They were suited, their helmets open.
‘They’re alive, at least,’ Helena reported. ‘But they show all the signs of having suffered a violent shock.’
‘Electrical?’
‘It could have been, but that’s ridiculous. There is no possibility of contact.’
‘An energy storm?’ Koenig frowned, thinking. ‘Any signs of burnt components, Victor? A quick check will do for now. Any possibility that static, for example, could have reached a flash-potential?’
‘No, John, but look at this.’ Bergman operated the switch of an emergency light. The bulb remained dark. Opening the case he checked the instrument. The bulb lit as he touched it to the terminals of an instrument he carried. ‘It has to be the battery. It’s completely drained.’
‘So?’
‘It could account for what happened. If the Eagle ran into a force-flux of some kind all the electrical energy could have been drained. Momentum would have carried it past the node and the engines would have restored navigational power.’
‘And the men?’
‘Such a drain could have affected the cerebral neurone flow,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Or the currents could have affected the sleep centre. It could have been a combination of both—I’ll know more when I have the chance to make a thorough examination. But Victor could be right, they show every sign of having
been drained of life.’
Koenig looked thoughtfully about the command module. It contained nothing it shouldn’t, the atmospheric sample bottle was in its container, the radiation recorder in its clip. Its battery was dead but the graph it had made was intact. A high level, but within the limits of tolerance.
A door led to the passenger module and he opened it.
‘There’s no one in there,’ said Bergman. ‘The pilots were alone.’
Probably, but someone could have gone along for the ride despite his orders. Such things had happened and appeared to have happened again. Far back in the compartment he saw a slumped figure.
‘Doctor!’
She was already on her way. As she neared the figure she slowed.
There was something odd about it. The face was turned and the features unseen, but the uniform was strange. Not that worn by the base personnel and yet, at the same time, vaguely familiar. Helena felt a sudden quickening of her heart, a sense of something unusual tensing her stomach, her nerves.
The uniform—she had seen one like it before. Years ago when—
She stooped beside the figure, rested her hands on the head and turned it so as to see the face.
Koenig heard her sudden gasp, her shocked exclamation.
‘What is it?’ He ran towards her. ‘Doctor?’
He looked past her head at the face she held in her hands. A pale face, sensitive, the eyes closed.
The face of a total stranger.
‘It’s Lee,’ she said. ‘Lee—my husband!’
CHAPTER SIX
He looked very small lying in bed, the eyebrows like wings, the cheeks unlined, the lips like those of a sleeping boy. An illusion, Koenig knew, the man was of average height and weight, his age, his physical characteristics—all were a matter of historical record.
Lee Russell had died five years ago on the Astro Seven Mission to Jupiter.
Now here he was, alive, on Moonbase Alpha.
He—or something which looked exactly like him.
Helena had no doubt.
‘It’s Lee.’ She was positive. ‘I know it’s Lee.’
‘He died—’
‘He was presumed to have died,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘Only presumed. Obviously that presumption was wrong.’
Koenig said, mildly, ‘Doctor, Jupiter was 500,000,000 miles from Earth at the time of the mission. We know Lee was there and that something went wrong with his ship. It simply isn’t possible that he could have survived. It was five years ago, remember. Five years!’
She didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to entertain the thought that the man could be other than what he seemed. And she could be right, thought Koenig bleakly. A woman should know her own husband. The contours of his body were an area she must have often explored. A map she carried in her mind. Each little blemish, every minor scar, all the little personal attributes—none would have been forgotten.
She had loved him very much—still loved him. The knuckles of her hand showed white as she gripped the lax fingers.
‘We have to know, Doctor.’
‘Know what?’
‘How he managed to survive. How he came to be in the Eagle. There are questions we must ask, answers we must have. Surely you can see that?’
She spoke without turning her eyes from the still face on the pillow.
‘Later.’
‘Now.’
‘No! He’s ill, hurt you can’t—’
‘I can and must.’ Koenig’s voice was hard. ‘The evacuation of Alpha will take days even if we can commence operations at the most favourable time. That will depend on whether or not Terra Nova is safe. We still have to make the preliminary landing now that we know the atmosphere is suitable to support life, and there could be unsuspected dangers. Lee might know something about them. We have to know.’
‘We will—when he recovers.’
‘We can’t wait.’ She was stubborn, but he was the commander. ‘I’ll tell Doctor Mathias to prepare an injection of metrazine.’
She rose and turned so quickly that he had no chance to step back, her body hitting his own, throwing him off balance so that he caught her arms to steady himself. A contact quickly broken, but the memory remained, the softness, the warmth.
‘Commander, do you want to kill him?’
An accusation disturbing in its implication. If the apparent man was a thing—then the answer could be in the affirmative. But, to her, he was Lee, her husband—and she would hate his murderer for the rest of her life.
Illusion, he thought, self-deception, and perhaps with womanly intuition she had sensed something which he was reluctant to admit. Jealousy?
He said, ‘I want Lee alive, Doctor. But we have to know.’
‘Then I’ll give the injection.’
‘No.’ That he would not allow—she at least, must be spared the potential guilt. ‘Mathias will do it. I insist.’
Metrazine was dangerous, in some circumstances a little could kill, in others it could trigger life in an apparent corpse. Always it was a gamble.
Koenig watched as the injection was made. For long moments nothing happened and then, suddenly, the man stirred in the bed, eyelids flickering, hands lifted.
‘Hel . . . Helena?’
Immediately she was at his side, her hands on his own. ‘I’m here, Lee. I’m here, darling.’
‘Helena!’
Koenig said, ‘Lee, listen, this is important to all of us. How did you get into the Eagle?’
‘I . . . can’t remember.’
‘Try. Were you on the planet?’
‘The planet . . . yes . . . where am I?’
Helena said, quickly, ‘It’s all right, darling. You’re perfectly safe now. We just want to know a few things. Please help.’
He looked at her, his eyes vacant, suddenly becoming filled with alarm.
‘Helena?’
‘I’m here, Lee. I’m right beside you.’ Turning she said to Koenig. ‘He’s suffering from disorientation. It would be best if we were left alone.’
‘The questions?’
‘I’ll ask them. He can’t correlate as yet. Just give him a little time.’ Her voice rose a little. ‘Give him time.’
Not just him—the pair of them. She would want to talk to him in privacy, mentioning little intimacies, use words of love which no stranger should hear. Use the magic of her body, perhaps, to reinforce the power of the drug, her nearness to soothe, to remind, to strengthen the will to live.
An old, old therapy and one of proven value.
Koenig had no choice but to agree.
The computer’s voice seemed to hold a trace of amusement as it accompanied the words flashed on the screen.
POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN SURVIVAL IN CIRCUMSTANCES GIVEN: NIL
The answer Koenig had expected and to probe deeper would be to compound the initial error in asking it at all.
No man could live for five years on the supplies carried by an astro-ship.
No man could have moved, unaided, from the region of Jupiter to where Terra Nova had been then. And, even admitting the impossible had happened, no man could have entered an Eagle while in flight. A man without a suit.
QED, Lee Russell could not be a man.
And yet, Helena was positive that not only was he a man but the husband she had loved.
Koenig scowled at the screen on his desk, the furnishings of his office. A mystery, and he hated mysteries, especially when they threatened the welfare of his command. A mistake now and more than three hundred men and women would lose their lives. People who, at this very moment, were busy making plans as to what they should do once they had landed on the new world.
He remembered the couple he had seen by starlight. They would be anticipating the future now, planning where to site their house, what crops to grow, how many children to have—dreams natural enough, but the food for cruel disappointment if he forbade the evacuation.
If he could forbid it.
A list lay to hand a
nd he studied it, his eye running over remembered figures. The entire stocks of Alpha and, when they were gone, what then? Economy could only go so far and even with yeast vats already in operation the supplies would not last forever.
The supplies, power, water which could be recycled, material which could not be replaced—waste now was a crime against the entire community.
Bergman could have a part of the answer—his force shield would enable them to delve deep and tap the residual volcanic power left in the moon. Minerals could be mined, conversion process set up, food grown in underground chambers.
Food from the seeds held in the laboratories which had conducted irradiation experiments. A lucky chance which gave them a measure of hope. Soil could be made from lunar rock, chemicals obtained, parts of the base turned over to industrial complexes. It would take hard, unremitting work, but it could be done. But no one would think of doing it while a new world lay to hand. Who would choose to live in a bleak hell when they could have a paradise?
A touch and it was on the screen, a lambent globe, cloud drifting, contours hidden by distance, a world so much like distant Earth that it was easy to confuse the two.
But, still, an enigma.
A buzz broke his introspection. Mathias was on the commlock screen.
‘Commander, Doctor Russell was found unconscious in the care unit.’
‘Hurt?’
‘No. She is now in her quarters.’
They were touched with her personality, small things which betrayed her woman’s grace. Framed pictures, a fluffy ball of multi-coloured wool, a souvenir from some Alpine resort, a flower held in eternal bloom in a block of clear plastic. A music box yielded a tinkling chime which ceased as Koenig entered at her invitation. A prop to memory, perhaps, the reminder of happier days. Once he had kept such things.
‘Commander.’
‘How are you?’ He crossed quickly to the bed in which she sat upright. Her face was paler than usual, otherwise she appeared normal.
‘Fine.’
‘You were found unconscious. What happened?’
‘I guess I must have fainted.’ She lifted a hand to move the lock of hair from over her eye. ‘I’ve never done that before. And it was odd. One moment I was talking to Lee and then—’ She broke off, shrugging. ‘It must have been the strain.’