by E. C. Tubb
Some hinted that his devotion to scientific study indicated that he lacked human warmth and understanding. That his calm appraisals of any situation were too coldly precise and devoid of any trace of human compassion. Regan didn’t hold that opinion and had little patience with any who did. To him Trevor Boardman had a greater depth of humanitarian understanding than most. A dedicated scientist who had earned every prize and award he’d been given and one worthy of the highest respect.
Now he was enjoying himself beneath the sun he had created, at home in the tiny paradise he had planned and helped to build.
“Pinnace One approaching target area, Commander,” said Versin from his console. “Shall I put it on the main screen?”
“Yes.” Regan knew the value of participation and every man and woman in the Control Room would be curious. “Adam?”
Carver was on the screen. His face behind the open faceplate of his helmet was bewildered. He said, “I’m within visual range, Commander, but you’re not going to believe this.”
“Why not?”
“I—well, see for yourself.”
His image vanished, another took its place. The vista of space, distant stars, the luminosity of the void, shimmering patches of remote galaxies, the whole, awe-inspiring immensity of the universe.
A backdrop to what lay in the foreground. A something that was—incredible.
CHAPTER 2
It was relatively small, the body little larger than a pair of Pinnaces, a thing of intricate facets and oddly-set planes, dappled with abstract markings which seemed to shift and turn even as they watched to adopt new and more disturbing configurations. A mass of rock, perhaps, one that had suffered a series of impacts that had formed and shaped the surface as wind and rain could fashion stone into oddly familiar likenesses. Glass, fused and cooled and rendered opaque with conflicting stresses, patches shearing, planes yielding, normal lines of cleavage distorted by alien forces. A sculptor’s dream—a nightmare.
A mystery.
Regan studied it, feeling his eyes slip from point to point as if they were fingers trying to hold and examine droplets of mercury. And, if the body was hard enough to accept, the mantle surrounding it was worse.
Not a mantle, more like wings. Not wings as are found on a bird but sails. Yet not exactly like sails but as tremendous filigrees of delicate lace. Yet not really like lace but more like a—
“A web,” said Boardman slowly. He had come to the Control Room in response to Regan’s summons. “Not a normal web but those used by small spiders who use the wind to move them from place to place. They spin clouds of gossamer and use them like sails.”
“Sails? In space?”
“Light has pressure, Mark,” reminded Boardman. “It can be used as a wind.”
“But not by that thing.” Regan was positive. “The area is too small and the mass too large. Light pressure alone would never move it. Right, Joshua?”
Kanu was busy at his station. “Correct, Commander. Computer says that it would be physically impossible for that object to be moved by the normal pressure of light.” Pausing he added, “We have more accurate information on the course. The object will make impact within two miles of Moonbase.”
“No doubt?”
“None. Two miles is maximum.”
And far too close. Again Regan examined the odd thing they had found. The image, relayed from the attendant small reconnaissance craft, moved as Carver made a circuit of the object. The body remained an enigma; the delicate-looking, lace-like fabrication surrounding it, the same.
“How long to impact?”
“Twenty-one minutes five seconds, Commander. We should be in direct visual contact within three minutes.”
“Amanda?”
“Still no response to our transmissions, Commander.” She pushed back a strand of black hair, which had edged towards one eye. “Negative on detected radiation emission. Negative on thermal differential. It’s as dead as before.”
Dead, maybe, but even so a menace. A missile aimed at the heart of the base and which would bring total destruction with it. If it hit they, all of them, would be dead. A decision was to be made and Regan knew what it had to be.
He said, “Pierre, order three more Pinnaces to lift and take up position in a line from us to that object. One halfway out from the present positions, the others one third. All to be armed with a full complement of nuclear missiles. Also alert the ground defences to stand by their launchers. Red alert!”
Boardman said, quietly, “Mark, you can’t destroy it.”
“Why not? Because it has an intriguing appearance?” Regan echoed his impatience. “You know I’ve no choice, Trevor. There’s nothing else to do. Either we get rid of that thing or it will get rid of us. You will pardon me for wanting to survive.”
“But—”
“Adam! Prime your armament.”
Incredulous the pilot said, “You want me to blast it, Commander?”
“You’ve an alternative?”
“No, but—” Carver broke off, then said, his voice resigned, “You’re the boss, Commander, but that thing looks so unusual. So strange. I can’t believe that it’s natural.”
“And if it isn’t, Mark, just think of what we could find inside.” Boardman spoke with a quick intensity. “It could be a ship. One with a dead crew or one sent out on automatic control. Something could have gone wrong. It must be drifting, powerless, harmless aside from its course. It could teach us things we’ve never even imagined. A chance, Mark! How can we refuse to take it?”
From the computer Kanu said, “Eighteen minutes to impact, Commander.”
“There’s your answer, Trevor,” said Regan, acidly. “That thing is heading straight into our laps. It may not want to but it is about to kill us. I’m sorry, but we’ve no time for either discussion or investigation. Adam!”
“Commander?”
“Adopt a position for offensive action. Nuclear missiles. I want that thing volatised. Aim—”
“Wait!” Boardman gestured with the microcomputer he had taken from a desk. “Give me a couple of minutes, Mark. Please.”
“Amanda?”
“All readings still negative, Commander. The object is now on visual scan.” She nodded towards a screen where the mysterious thing could be seen by direct magnification. The view relayed from Carver’s Pinnace was better.
Boardman said, “Give me some figures. The mass, velocity, total external area. Quickly, please!” He pursed his lips as he made notations, his fingers deft as he manipulated the tiny keys.
As he worked Regan said, “Pierre, order Adam to fire a low-powered burst from his laser. Have him aim towards one end of that object. If there’s life inside they might respond.” He added, “And tell him to be careful.”
He blinked as light flared from the screens, one bright with a view as seen from the Pinnace, the other a wink of brilliance almost lost against the stars.
“Pinnaces Two to Four heading for their positions, Commander,” reported Versin.
Regan nodded. “Any signs of life, Amanda?”
“All readings negative.”
From the screen Carver said, “Shall I try again, Commander? A heavy burst this time?”
“No. Adopt position for missile attack. Joshua?”
“Twelve minutes,” said Kanu.”
“Necessary force to volatise?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Boardman. He smiled as he dropped the tiny computer on the desk and waved the paper on which he had made his computations. “We don’t have to destroy the object at all, Mark. Right?”
Regan frowned. “What else can we do?”
“Divert it.” Boardman glanced at the screens. “We can fire a missile so that the force of its discharge will throw that object off course far enough for it to miss the area of the base by a safe margin. Will you give me permission to try?” Then, as Regan hesitated, he urged, “Think of what we could find, Mark. The base will be safe and we have nothing to lose bu
t everything to gain.”
Regan was not a barbarian. He had no pleasure in destroying for the sake of destruction and his curiosity had been aroused by the fantastic appearance of the object. If it was a lifeless lump of debris diverting it would save nuclear missiles. If it was an artifact as Boardman seemed convinced it was then, as he said, the gain could be tremendous. A gamble worth taking, yet even so he hesitated, conscious of a nagging doubt. An elementary caution stemming from the beginnings of his race when primitive man felt that safety lay only in the destruction of the unknown. A thing he recognised for being the heritage of the past, an emotion founded on fear rather than intellect.
“Mark?” Boardman was impatient and with reason. If the thing was to be tried it had to be soon. They had no time to waste.
“Go ahead,” said Regan, but qualified his agreement. “One chance only, Trevor, we haven’t time for more. Unless Adam can divert the object, the other Pinnaces will attempt to volatise and, if they fail, the ground defences will take over. You’ve got two minutes—make most of them.” Adam Carver touched the controls and saw the target move on the screen, the fantastic shape steadying on the cross-hairs of the sight. Beside him his co-pilot checked the setting of the missile in the launching tube.
“Primed and ready to go, Adam,” he reported. “Proximity fuse set for 20—that’s damned close.”
It had to be close. In the void explosions were limited; without a medium to carry the shockwave their force was quickly dispersed and their destructive capabilities constrained. The missile in the launching tube had a relatively minor charge as such things went. A direct hit would turn half the target into incandescent vapour and molten ruin—a near miss would, so Boardman had calculated, send a blast of ravening energy against the body and its surround; a thrust which would shift the bulk from its line of flight. The difference between success and failure was small; detonated too far from the target the blast would be insufficiently powerful to achieve the desired result, too close and it would destroy what he was trying to save.
“Fifteen seconds,” said Kanu from the speaker. “Computer is tracking.”
*
Hal Barclay tensed in the co-pilot’s seat. He was young, intense, excited by the adventure even as he was regretful at what had to be done. Rather than fire the missile he would have preferred to make physical contact with the object, to touch it with his gloved hands and to search for an entry if one existed.
“Adam—”
“Stand by to fire.” Carver dropped a hand to the control. “Mark?”
“Five,” said Hal obediently as he watched the hand of a chronometer. “Three…two…one…fire!”
The Pinnace jerked a trifle as the missile spat from its tube, a metal dart tipped with destruction and riding a column of flame. Adam Carver knew his job and had aimed well. He blinked as a gush of blue-white flame filled the screens, a searing release of raw energy born in the heart of exploding atoms. It expanded like a flower to send a hail of photons and atomic particles against the target.
“God, Adam! Look at that!”
Barclay leaned forward as he stared at the screen. Around the enigmatic body of the strange object the delicate lace-like surround was blazing with trapped and reflected radiance. A mesh that had caught the blast of energy, had responded to it as a web would trap and reflect flame, dying in beauty even as it burned.
“It’s beautiful,” whispered Hal. “Beautiful!”
Carver said nothing, but his hands were shaking a little as he maintained control of the craft. The blast, though tremendously diminished, had caught and affected the tiny ship.
“Adam?” Boardman spoke from the screen. “We saw the flash. Is everything as I hoped?”
“I think so, Professor. The target is undamaged as far as I can tell. That is aside from some fusing of the surrounding structure.” Carver expanded the magnification of his viewing screen. “About two-thirds gone, I’d say. Complete volatisation.”
“The body itself?”
“Intact and apparently unharmed.” Carver added, “Professor, there’s something else we could try. Now that the surround has been burned away we could try a direct push with the Pinnace.”
“No, Adam, it wouldn’t work.” Boardman was coldly precise. “I’d thought of that but the mass is too great for you to affect it in any gainful manner. It would be like an ant trying to move a brick. A crude comparison, I admit, but a valid one. That object is far more dense and massive than it seems.”
Material adamantine enough to resist the blast of an atomic missile, strong enough to have survived the vicissitudes of space. How long had it been travelling? What suns had it known, worlds it had passed? From where had it come and, unless they had found it, where would it have ended?
Questions he knew could have no relevant answer. The thing was here, it had threatened Moonbase and, for all he knew, was still threatening it.
Hal Barclay had the same thought.
“Was it enough, Adam? Should we have used another missile?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would it do any good if we had?” Barclay was pensive. “Could we destroy that thing even if we wanted to? Adam—”
“I don’t know,” said Carver again and added, grimly, “All we can do now is to wait.”
*
Once, years ago now, Joshua Kanu had taken the first step on the road that was to lift him from a deprived area to the heights of Moonbase One. For him at that time it had been far from easy, a matter of endless study after work which had numbed his muscles with physical weariness, sitting over books while his contemporaries had been gaining what pleasure they could, relaxing at least, laughing and riding with the tide. To them he was a freak, a swot and a fool. An idiot with stars in his eyes.
Only Hank Barker had recognised his idealism.
“You’ve got ambition,” he’d said. “But that isn’t enough, Joshua. With it you’ve got to have guts. You’ll climb, but never think it’s going to be easy. At times you’ll get tired and want to quit. There’ll be temptations and doubts, but remember, always, that what’s worth having has to be worked for. You need dedication and application and, above all, patience.”
Old Hank Barker, dead now, planted in some ancient ground or burned for his ashes to mingle with the soil he had loved. A gardener at Savannah High. A man who could barely read but who’d held more wisdom in the tip of a finger than many libraries.
“Patience,” he’d said. “You have to learn to wait.”
But waiting had never been easy. Not then when he’d sat in a darkened room waiting for the results of his first examination. Nor later when he’d made application to join the personnel of Moonbase One. Not now when he waited for Computer to deliver the answer of whether they were to live or die.
An exaggeration, perhaps; the Commander, he knew, had taken precautions, but the thing was alien and it was barely possible that not even the fury of atomic power could volatise it into a harmless, diffusing vapour. Even though fused, shapeless, an amorphous mass scintillant with radioactive energy, it could still follow the path fate had dictated, to land as previously predicted, to kill everyone at the base.
Mass, he thought, bleakly. No matter what shape it takes, energy is still mass. A moving body held kinetic energy that gave it the potential danger of a bomb. He could ask computer to give him the figures, but what good would they do? It was better, if they were doomed, not to know of the coming end.
“Kanu!”
He blinked and became suddenly aware of the tension reigning in the Control Room, the attention directed towards himself. He had been dreaming, remembering, then he realised that the time that had seemed so long hadn’t been that at all. There was no extrapolation as yet from the computer. It was merely that Regan was impatient.
“Kanu,” he said again. “Anything yet?”
“Give it time, Mark,” said Boardman mildly. “The new course has to be plotted.”
“If there is a new course.”
/> “There will be if my calculations were correct.” Boardman was still mild. “Try to relax, Mark. Mathematics is an exact science.”
And one of which he was a master, but always there was the possibility of error and they were dealing with the unknown. Regan turned and paced the floor, turning again as he reached the wall to head back towards the main console. A mistake, his movements were causing a distraction and adding to the general tension. He forced himself to halt and appear at ease.
Theoretically they were safe. The mathematics promised that and, yet, how to be certain? A relatively minor force correctly applied to a moving object could divert it from its original path. The touch of a leaf against a rifle bullet as it left the muzzle could send it off-target—if the leaf were strong enough and the bullet light enough. It all depended on relative mass.
“Kanu?” Surely the computer would have the answer by now.
“Nothing as yet, Commander. I—” The technician broke off as a signal light winked and the answer flashed on the screen. “Here it is now; His voice rose as he read the data displayed and activated the printer. “We’ve done it! We’re safe!”
“The figures?”
Kanu glanced at the printout. “The divergence from the previous flight path is almost a tenth of a second of arc. The new point of impact will be about thirty miles from Moonbase in the region of Schemiel.”
A shallow crater thick with accumulated dust. Regan said, sharply, “There is no doubt?”
“None.”
“Make a double check. Pierre, have the Pinnaces stand by ready for emergency action. Have Carver track the object and relay his findings.”
“Yes, Commander. The red alert?”
“To be maintained until impact.”
Which would be in about eight minutes from now. Regan glanced at the big face of the chronometer, a part of his brain wondering at the relative speeds of the passage of time.
Minutes ago he had been watching the delicate play of water from a fountain and yet it seemed like hours since he had stood in the new cavern. And now, he knew, time would seem to slow, each second crawling past, each minute a seeming eternity until the object had landed and he could be sure the base was safe.