Child of Space

by E. C. Tubb

  “Report from Pinnace One confirms the new impact point,” said Kanu from his station at the main computer. “A one-mile circle centered on Schemiel.”

  “Probable results?”

  “Some minor tremors. The dust should soften the impact and it’s a long way from Moonbase.”

  Regan felt himself relax, the muscles easing in arms and stomach, the tension dissolving from the nape of his skull. He caught Boardman’s eye and smiled and said. “You’ve done it again, Trevor.”

  “I had time to think, Mark,” said the professor. “You had to take care of the base. I could have been wrong in which case your precautions would have saved us.” He looked at the screen on which the object was now clearly visible, the following Pinnace a watchful guardian. “A visitor,” he mused. “Something made and sent into space.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “No, but those vanes, that tracery, the shape itself—how could it be rock? There is a symmetry about it, a design. Form, Mark, is the result of function, as you well know. Certain products have to be the shape they are in order to fulfill their function—they couldn’t operate if shaped any other way. A wheel is a classic example. What else could it be but round? And a hammer—no matter how crude the construction the basic design is the same, a weight on the end of a shaft. A shape inevitable to the function of the tool and one that tells the use to which it is put. Logically, from the shape and size of that object, we should be able to tell what it is and from where it came.” He added, anxiously, “Photographs have been taken?”

  “Of course.” Regan smiled. “More than enough for you to use at your lecture.”

  “What lecture?” Boardman frowned, then, smiling, shrugged. “Sorry, Mark, but I was getting carried away. Old too, I guess, and forgetful. It’s a bad sign when anyone teaches their grandmother to suck eggs. It—”

  “Could mean that the old lady’s grown senile,” said Regan. He glanced again at the chronometer. “Just over a minute to go now, Trevor.” And, to Versin, said, “Recall all Pinnaces. Have them hover over base until after the impact.”

  “No observation?”

  “None.” The thing could detonate on landing, assumed machines yielding beneath the force of impact, any hovering craft caught in a gush of fire like a moth trapped in a flame. “Void the area.”

  “It’s coming,” said a girl. “Look!”

  It showed now in the direct vision screens, a small mass dimly lit by starlight, turning a little as it slanted across the sky. From her instruments Amanda Barnes began counting seconds.

  “Fifty-two, one, fifty…no sign of any emitted radiation. No differential in temperature. Some residual radioactivity.”

  From the blast of the atomic missile, naturally, but it could only be negligible.

  “Impact point ten yards from northern lip of Schemiel,” said Kanu, quietly.

  Boardman was sharp, “On the rock?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “Mark! It’ll be wrecked!”

  “That or lost,” agreed Regan. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Twenty-three,” said Amanda. “Twenty-two, one, twenty, nineteen…”

  “Sound impact warning,” snapped Regan and, as Versin obeyed and the siren echoed throughout the base, he leaned forward as if actual closeness to the window could give him better vision. One that was blocked as thick steel plates rose to protect the glass, to seal The Control Room against all danger of breakage and resultant air-loss.

  “Seven.” Amanda’s voice was tense as was the atmosphere in the Control Room. “Three, two, one—now!”

  A moment of frozen stillness and then, on her instruments, lights flashed, signals followed almost immediately by a dull rumble, the slight shifting of the floor beneath their feet.

  A moment Reagan ignored. “Pierre?”

  Versin was already busy, hands darting over his console as screen after screen lit up, each section reporting a total lack of any damage.

  “Base secure, Commander,” he finally reported. “All systems at optimum. No damage, no casualties. Normal procedure?”

  Regan nodded, sensing the relief of tension as the red alert was terminated, the life of Moonbase resuming its normal path. The threat from space had been faced, dealt with, averted without damage as had been reported.

  But Pierre had been wrong when he’d stated there had been no casualties.

  Liz Caffrey had gone insane.

  CHAPTER 3

  SHE lay on the bed, writhing, snarling, her face like that of an animal. Regan stared down at her; a young and attractive girl who had suddenly turned into a beast. Froth edged her lips and her body arched beneath the straps holding her firm. Her hands, curved, drove her nails into the palms. Beside her Elna checked a hypodermic and touched it to the corded throat.

  As the girl quieted he said, “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were running a series of experiments to determine the strength of her paraphysical attributes. I had just sedated her to achieve full relaxation when you warned me about the yellow alert. She was asleep, apparently harmless and I just didn’t worry any more about her.” Elna’s hand lifted to touch her throat. Against the smooth pearl of her skin bruises showed in ugly blotches. “As it turned out that was a mistake.”

  “She attacked you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Shortly after the red alert. I was at my desk when I heard a soft noise behind me. Or maybe I just sensed something. As I rose she grabbed me. If it hadn’t been for my training—” Elna broke off and shook her head. “She was tremendously strong, but that I can understand. Hysteria can cause that and the more so when coupled with mania, but she was resting, sedated and asleep. And there is no previous history of any kind of aberration. She is just a normal, typical, level-headed girl.”

  Once, perhaps, but not now. Regan leaned forward and eased the fingers from where they dug into the palms. Little crescents of red showed, wounds that quickly filled with blood.

  “You’ll have to trim her nails,” he said, absently. “Could your experiments have had anything to do with her breakdown?”

  “No.” Elna saw his expression and elaborated. “We were running through a series of tests with the five cards; those devised by Doctor Rhine in the last century. Her scores were high at times, low at others, and it was obvious that her talent lay in telepathy. Only when I looked at the cards could she gain a high score. It seemed plain that she was reading the image from my mind. I checked her out on a few other runs; making sure I didn’t see the designs, for example, turning the cards after a certain interval, but only when I looked at them before she gave the answer did she make a high score. To me it was a clear indication of mental rapport.”

  “And?”

  “I’d only touched the surface and wanted to probe deeper. With her permission I intended to record her brainwave pattern before, during and after a test.”

  “You told me she’d been sedated,” reminded Regan. “Asleep, you said.”

  “Technically, yes,” she admitted. “But there are different varieties of sleep, Mark. I had her on the upper level of the first stage of hypnotic trance. She would have been able to hear my voice and to respond to instruction but, at the same time, being totally relaxed. After you’d given the yellow alert I let her slide into unconsciousness—as I said I couldn’t see it doing any harm.”

  A sleep from that the girl had woken in a killing frenzy. “But why?” Doctor Mandela shrugged as Regan asked the question. He had come to join the Commander and Elna.

  “There’s no clear-cut textbook answer, Commander. If pressed I’d say that the possibility of someone waking from sleep in a maniacal state of murderous frenzy is so remote as to be negligible. For a normal person to make such a sudden switch is, I would say, impossible. Not without some form of external influence.”

  “Such as?”

  “Drugs, hypnotic suggestion, induced hallucination, extensive
cranial manipulation—”

  “Surgery?”

  “In one form or another, yes. The human animal is a very tough character, Commander. It doesn’t go from sanity to insanity in a flash without a very good reason.”

  One they would have to find—what could affect one person could affect another and, in the close confines of Moonbase, such mysteries could not be ignored.

  Elna said, quietly, “I’ve already taken full precautionary measures, Mark. And tests are being made on the girl to determine if any virus or bacteria could have been responsible for her mental breakdown. As yet all findings are negative.” Pausing she added, “Physical ones at least.”

  “And mental?”

  For answer she wheeled forward a machine that stood against the wall at the head of the couch. Wires ran from it each tipped with a small, adhesive pad. Deftly she attached them to various points on the limp girl’s skull.

  “I told you that I’d been about to make brainwave recordings of Liz’s mind during the tests I’d devised. I’d attached her to the machine as I have now and everything was ready to go when I received your yellow alert. Now something must have happened. A convulsion of some kind, perhaps, or a natural movement, in either case Liz must have accidentally switched on the machine. She could have done it like this.” Elna lifted one of the limp hands, swung it from the bed, let it fall. A finger hit a switch and threw it with a soft click. “See?”

  Regan looked at the blank screen. “It isn’t working.”

  “Because I haven’t engaged the visual, but it was on then and will be in a moment. First I want you to watch this.” An adjustment and the screen flared to life, an intricate pattern of lines rippling across the surface. “Liz Caffrey’s brainwave pattern as recorded a month ago. Normal, Rob, you agree?”

  Mandela said, dryly, “If it hadn’t been normal the girl would have been hospitalized long ago.”

  “Exactly. Now, Mark, look at this.” The screen flickered as Elna adjusted a control, took on the familiar pattern then flickered again to reveal one distorted almost beyond recognition. “The recording made while Liz was attached to the machine during the alert. At first normal then a sudden change. It shifts, varies, holds steady then shifts again to finally settle into this.” The distortion held, lines writhing across the screen then, abruptly, the screen went blank. “That was when she rose and broke the connection. Now look at this. A direct recording this time, one taken at this very moment from her brain.”

  Regan looked at the distorted pattern. The array of intricate lines seemed to hold a disquieting menace, a disturbing implication that he lacked the skill to understand.

  Mandela came to his aid.

  “It’s alien,” he said, bleakly. “A combination I’ve never seen originating in a human brain before this moment. The alpha rhythm is all wrong, the beta—it’s a mess. And look at this.” His finger lifted to rest on the screen. “This line here. I’ve only seen it once before when we were doing research into animal behaviour at the Institute at Nairobi. We were using monkeys with implanted electrodes to determine the various motor-regions of the cortex. Old stuff, but always there are new students and the Director had his own ideas of how to teach them. Some of us grew bored and tried an experiment of our own. We had an old encephalograph and an electronic genius who souped it up to use direct-beam contact. He managed to focus it on an insect, a spider.”

  “And?”

  “That’s when I saw that pattern.” Mandela touched it again.

  “It was a freak, we could never repeat it, but I don’t think any of us there ever forgot it.”

  “And the line?” Elna glanced at it then back to Mandela.

  “Did you determine what it signified?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “Hunger.”

  *

  One day, thought Boardman, they would invent a mobile capsule of air so that they could sit within it and be wafted like bubbles over the Lunar plain. But that day hadn’t yet arrived and survival still depended on encompassing suits that clung to body and limbs making each step an effort despite the lower gravity. Within the confines of his helmet he could hear the soft hiss of air, an irritation at times, but one designed to save life. While he could hear the air he was safe, when he couldn’t death was coming close. A stuck valve, an empty tank, a small tear in the suit, any of a dozen things which would terminate the existence of a creature which had ventured too far from the warmth and comfort of it own domain.

  “Professor?” Adam Carver was speaking from the Pinnace that he and the others of the party had just left. “You sure that you don’t want me to drop you all right smack on the spot?”

  “And have your rockets blast dust over everything?” Boardman shook his head, forgetting that the other couldn’t see the gesture, could only hear his voice over the inter-suit radio. He and the others, naturally, and those back at Moonbase who would be monitoring the little expedition. “Thanks, Adam, but no. We’ve been over this before.”

  A battle that he had won as, logically, he had to win. Insisting on all care being taken that nothing should be lost, that every scrap of the wrecked object be found for later examination. If it was wrecked, of course—could a mass of rock be wrecked? A point Regan had made when, shrugging, he had let Boardman have his own way.

  “Just be careful, Trevor,” he’d warned. “And watch the dust.”

  The fine, so very fine dust which could swallow a man as if it had been water—the reason he and the others were roped together as if they had been mountaineers.

  A dozen more steps and he stood on a rising edge to halt and stare over the Lunar terrain. To all sides the surface was pocked and seamed, torn by ancient eruptions or savaged by celestial rain; the impact of meteorites which had left their traces in gaping craters, the internal strains which had cracked the surface as if it had been glass struck with a gigantic hammer.

  A scene of stark, awesome beauty. Cold, hostile, grey and white and silver beneath the starlight, shadows thick like solid masses where no light could reach.

  Boardman’s home for the rest of his life.

  “Which way, Professor?” A figure raised an arm and pointed. “I can see something over there.” The voice hesitated. “Something spined, I think.”

  A trick of the starlight, it had to be, the lace-like surround of the enigmatic body could never have withstood the shock of impact, but even so Boardman felt a rising hope. Too often, he’d found, the old, safe, familiar laws no longer applied. Here, in the depths of space, away from the planet of his birth, waited odd surprises.

  “Professor?”

  “No.” He must remain logical. “Head more to the west. We should see a gap in the rim-wall of Schemiel soon and, when we do, head towards it.”

  The little party moved on, ants crawling over the face of creation, reaching the broken rim-wall and climbing to halt and stare at what lay below.

  “Look at that!” The voice was incredulous. “Just look at it!”

  “Luck!” Another sucked in his breath. “Well, we’ve found it.”

  Or what was left of it. Boardman stared at the sloping wall of the crater, the shattered stone, the twisted mass lying in the cold light of the stars. A ship, he thought dully, no mass of rock could ever have broken in such a fashion. And yet, even while he stared, he knew that it wasn’t a ship. That it could never have been a vessel fashioned by intelligence for traversing space.

  “This is crazy,” said a voice from the radio. “What the hell is it?”

  A mystery that lay sprawled and broken in the silver glow thrown by remote suns. The delicate, lace-like fabrication of the surround had gone, ripped and torn, shattered and broken, scraps and fragments spread over the entire area. The body itself had struck the rim-wall, smashing stone, lunging through to come to rest on the far side.

  Not a ship and not a mass of stone or mineral. Not solid at all.

  “It’s like a shell,” said a man, wonderingly. “A pod of some kind. Split open and twisted.”
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  And empty—if it had ever been filled.

  Boardman walked alongside of it as technicians busied themselves taking photographs and measurements. They worked with an easy casualness, now that it had landed the thing wouldn’t leave and, in a century, a millennia, it would still be as they saw it now. Without wind or rain or the abrasion of weather things, left on the surface, were eternal.

  Boardman kicked at a fragment of oddly-shaped material and held it close to his faceplate. His helmet light shone on a peculiar, crystalline structure, little glints showing in a field of ebon. A part of the shattered surround, perhaps? A portion of that enigmatic lattice, which must have served a purpose but if so one that would probably never be known.

  Tucking the fragment into a sack he moved on. A rise of debris rested against the shattered side of the split object and he climbed it to reach the lip and to stare inside. The speaker who had likened it to a pod had been correct, the thing gave that impression and added to it with the subtle curves of the interior. Even allowing for the distortion that could have been caused by the landing it was obvious that the inside of the object had been hollow and that no line had been straight.

  A hull tough enough to withstand the blast of an atomic missile. Vanes like lace, which had served no apparent purpose. A hollow interior that defied all rational explanation. Material that lay beyond his knowledge.

  “Professor?” One of the men called over the radio. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Spread out,” said Boardman. “And look.”

  *

  A technician was the first to find one. He tripped and fell to rise, cursing, rubbing at an elbow even as he checked his suit.

  Then his voice broke, to rise, to echo from Boardman’s radio. “Professor! Come and take a look at this!”

  It was lying half-buried in dust, rolled free by the impact of a boot to lie in a patch of shadow cast by a fret of stone. Something that glinted as if made of silver, which coruscated with a brilliant profusion of light as he held it in the beam of his helmet. Something that looked like a ball.