The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  Hinch himself was suddenly another demon. Lean as a spider in his own tight yellow airskin, he still wore the black beret, even in the helmet. His gaunt, gray-bearded head seemed too big for it, and his haggard eyes behind the thick-lensed glasses looked blind and hardly human. With the pistol and a long-bladed knife buckled to his belt, he had become un diablo verdadero.

  Mondragon shrank from him, feeling a sudden pang of homesickness for his own native pueblito, the flat-roofed adobe where he was born, the rocky hills where he used to herd his father’s goats, the old church where his mother prayed. The time since he left it seemed suddenly a long nightmare of events stranger that he used to think death could be.

  Un infierno de pesadilla.

  A nightmare world. The ship that reached, in no time at all, this planet of fearful cold, this black sun, these strange stars that never dimmed, this monstrous work of unknown things. Ciertamente this was not the rich new Earth el Señor Stecker and the evangelistas of Mission StarSeed had promised their believers.

  Yet la rubia was here, with el joven Kip. And little Day, una muchachita qué bonita. Terraforming was a magic science he did not understand, but the engineers who built quantum craft had to be respected. As for himself, with the favor of los santos, he would do whatever he could to keep them alive—

  “Chicken?” Hinch’s jeering voice rang in his helmet. “Or have the ice gods frozen you?”

  Anger clenched his fists and faded slowly into shame. He had done nothing for la rubia, found nothing he could even hope to do. He felt helpless in the thin airskin, naked to the cruel cold and el gringo’s crueler scorn. Hinch had become un loco verdadero, urging them on till this demon winter killed them.

  Yet he himself was no polio, no chicken.

  “Hijo de cabrón!” he muttered, and tramped after Hinch toward the tower. The area was level, as if an ancient pavement lay beneath the frost, but that rubble mountain had fallen half across their path, the fallen stone shattered into fragments larger than houses.

  Beyond it, Hinch glanced back at him and pushed ahead into a square tunnel ten meters high. Dim starlight followed them a few dozen meters, then faded into blackness. He stopped to search it with a pale flashlight that soon found the end of the passage, a blank plate that looked like some dull gray metal, scarred with ages of corrosion.

  “La puerta?”

  A door? Flickering unsteadily over it, the little spot of light found no knob or handle or lock, not even any visible seam to outline any kind of door. Door or not, they had no key.

  “No hay problema!” Hinch muttered. “Mr. Andersen has a very useful key.”

  Breathing deeper, relieved to be out of the tower, even here in this never-ending night, he hurried after Hinch back to the spider. Cruzet was on watch in the bubble, but Andersen came down from the nose to meet them at the lock.

  “A bleedin’ wall across the tunnel!” Hinch was still in the airskin, his rusty voice booming loud from the interphone speakers. “The devil-bitten monsters trying to shut us out of their stinkin’ nest. I want you to get us through the way you got us past that ice uplift.”

  “High explosives?” Andersen shook his head. “Inviting them to hit us back?”

  “If the blinkin’ devils can.” Hinch tilted his head to squint through the heavy lenses as if the cabin lights had blinded him. “But if you want my guess, I’d guess they’re dead. Died ten billion years ago. Anything alive would have cleaned up that mess of rocks outside.”

  “Something is alive,” Cruzet protested. “Alive enough to see us coming.”

  Hinch glared at him.

  “Think about it, sir,” Andersen begged him. “They don’t want us here.”

  “Maybe they’ll kill us.” Hinch shrugged. “Maybe they can’t. Maybe they’ve got something we could use.” His gaunt head jerked toward the tower. “I’ll soon see.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Aren’t we all?” His voice went shrill. “And dead already, don’t forget. Nothing left for us to lose. No chance too bad for us to take. God knows what they’ve got in there that we might grab.”

  “You are crazy,” Andersen told him. “You really are.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Andersen.” Hinch’s yellow-gloved claw gripped his gun. “Just let me into their hell-blazin’ tower.”

  Andersen frowned, shifting on his feet.

  “I’ll set the charge.” He shrugged at last. “With a timer to let us get back to where I hope we’re safe.”

  Mondragon went back to the tunnel with them, carrying a pack filled with blocks of something wrapped in bright red foil. The laser drill failed to scar the gray metal plate, but it bit slowly into the stone around it, a jet of silent steam blowing plumes of black dust from the holes.

  “Watch everything,” Andersen muttered to Mondragon. “Warn me if you see anything move.”

  Uneasily watching, all he saw was the soundless dark. Andersen drilled three deep holes at the edge of the barrier, packed them with explosive, and set the timer. Gathering his tools, he led them out of the tunnel.

  Just behind the rubble hill, Hinch stopped to wait.

  “Far enough,” he muttered. “I want to rush the devil-bitten bastards with their pants still down.”

  “If they wear pants.” Andersen grinned and hurried on. “I don’t want to know.”

  Cruzet drove them back down to the old beach, two kilometers below. They waited in the bubble, watching with binoculars. Hinch had crouched out of sight behind the mound. Counting under his breath, Andersen finally whispered, “Now!”

  Mondragon felt the machine shiver. Hinch straightened, stood a moment peering around him, and darted into the tunnel. They waited again, taking turns with the binoculars. Hinch didn’t come out. Neither did anything else.

  Time passed. The stars blazed overhead, as they had blazed forever. The signal light—if it was a signal light—kept its rainbow glow flowing over the frost. Andersen updated the log. Cruzet heated water for syncafe.

  “Coffee it ain’t.” Andersen drained his bitter cup, made a face, and set it down. “Want to go inside to look for Mr. Hinch?”

  “I don’t think so.” Cruzet scowled. “We aren’t idiots.”

  “Creo que no.” Mondragon shook his head. “I think we must return to tell what we have seen.”

  “But not quite yet.” Andersen looked at his watch. “We’ll give him eight more hours. About the limit of his cycler cartridge. Just in case he’s still alive.”

  On watch in the bubble three hours later, Mondragon felt a jolt that left him breathless. The sky seemed to dim. Clutching at his seat, he looked up to see that great disk of flowing fire dim and flicker and die. The tower was left a stark black shadow that spread to the zenith.

  “What was that?” Andersen came muttering up the steps into the bubble. “I was asleep.”

  “Un terremoto? The tower light was extinguished.”

  They stood peering back at the tower and out across the flat whiteness of the frozen sea. Andersen typed a note into the log and shook his head. “I don’t get it. The planet ought to be cold to the core, with no energy left for any kind of quakes—”

  “Alli!” Mondragon caught his breath and pointed. “El senor Hinch.”

  Hinch had come out of the tunnel and dropped flat behind the rubble mound, though nothing seemed to pursue him. He had lost the pistol and the knife. In a moment he was on his feet again, running hard, empty hands beating wildly around his head as if fighting some invisible attacker.

  “Salio!” Mondragon shouted to Cruzet. “Open the lock for him!”

  “Will do.”

  He heard the motors whir and the muffled clang of the opening valve. Hinch came up beside them, beating desperately at nothing. The black beret was gone. The glasses had slid aside in his helmet, hanging on one ear. He ran with his head twisted to look back, darting from side to side as if he hadn’t seen the spider.

  “Señor!” Mondragon gasped into the microphone. “This wa
y! Aquí!”

  Deaf to him, Hinch veered around them and ran on across the ice until they lost him in the starlight.

  “Follow him,” Andersen told Cruzet. “He’ll have to stop when he’s exhausted. We’ll try to pick him up.”

  They traced his footprints, sometimes visible where his boots had crushed the film of frost, more often too dim to see. He had run fast and far. They had come nearly six kilometers out across the frozen sea before Mondragon saw a dark scar ahead, with no tracks beyond it.

  “Alto!” he shouted. “Stop!”

  Cruzet stopped the machine a few meters from a sharp-edged crevasse two meters wide.

  “Opened by that quake.” Andersen stared into it, blankly nodding. “Since we came.”

  It ran almost straight in both directions as far as they could see. Still in their airskins, he and Mondragon went out to look over the edge. The rim was pink in the heat lamp’s glow, but the sheer ice walls looked black a few meters down. Farther down was only darkness. They saw no bottom.

  “The gods of ice were angered by el Señor Hinch,” Mondragon said. “I think they opened the ice to swallow him.”

  Fourteen

  Sweating in the galley, Roak hated the toil, and the heat, and the stink of the garbage digester. Most of all, he hated Jesus Rivera, the foul-mouthed slave driver who stood over him every minute, yelping shrill commands and cursing him for a brain-dead goof-off if he ever let a drop of spilt grease reach the deck. He had to escape. When he heard that Jake Hinch had been lost on the ice, he thought he saw his chance.

  Hinch had carried meals to Captain Stecker, who seldom left his cabin. When Rivera sent a steward in his place, Stecker scowled at the tray, called it filthy garbage, and threw a bowl of hot soya chowder in the steward’s face. When the man refused to go back, Roak asked for the task.

  “Why not?” Rivera wiped a fat hand on his apron and surveyed him with a cross-eyed squint. “I’d better warn you that Stecker’s a crazy drunk half the time and nasty when he isn’t, but take the job if you want it.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Rivera shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  The tray held no soya or syncafe when Roak took it back to Stecker’s cabin. He had filled it himself after Rivera unlocked Stecker’s private stock. Baked ham, fresh asparagus in cheese sauce, hot French rolls, an apple dumpling with cream, genuine coffee with a fragrance that took his breath.

  “Stecker looked ahead,” Rivera muttered. “Shipped a truckload of goodies to the site a week ahead of the launch. Not that he’s happy with where we landed. Don’t be surprised if he spits in your eye.”

  He knocked twice and waited a long time for Stecker’s door to open. Hollow-eyed and unshaven, naked to the waist and reeking of gin, the captain glared at him.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “The launch inspector, sir. Caught aboard when they got the tip-off about the bomb and sealed the ship. My damned luck. We’d dropped into the launch pit before they ever found the device.”

  “Tough break.” Stecker’s tone warmed a little when he caught the coffee scent, but still it had a bitter edge. “If you ain’t happy here, I see why. We’re caught like rats in the same death trap. And no way out.”

  “I’m afraid we are, sir.”

  He cleared dirty cups and glasses off a table and uncovered the tray. Greedily, Stecker fell upon the thick-sliced ham. Roak stood a moment, shaking his head at the clutter on the deck. Soiled clothing, an empty gin bottle, spilt food drying on broken dishes.

  “Excuse me, sir. May I straighten up your cabin?”

  “Huh?” Stecker grunted past a slug of ham. “What the hell do I care?”

  “If I may, sir. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  Sucking down the asparagus spears, Stecker ignored him. He gathered up the soiled laundry, found a broom for the broken dishes, mopped up the food stains, found clean sheets and made up the berth.

  “Anything else, sir?”

  Stecker gulped the last of the coffee and blinked suspiciously.

  “Glengarth sent you?”

  “No sir. My own idea. I’d heard you speak at StarSeed meetings. I always respected you.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Muttering, Stecker pushed the tray at him. “I never trusted the bastards. Not even when they bribed me to push their scam. Peddling pie in the sky! Looking for marks stupid enough to swallow their tomfool tales of the high-tech utopias they were going to build in some future universe. I never believed a word of it. Never thought I’d be trapped in this frozen hellhole.”

  He belched and wiped his greasy mouth.

  “I understand you, sir.” Roak nodded sympathetically. “I’m in the same box, but we’ve got a way out. Glengarth and the engineers. They know their quantum science. They got us here. They could damn sure take us on to some decent planet if they weren’t hell-bent on this lunatic terraforming dream.”

  “Damn Glengarth!” Stecker’s voice grew violent. “Nursing a crazy grudge against me for getting rid of Alt, his old drinking buddy. Jake warned me he’s got some dirty double-dealing scheme to throw me in the brig, or maybe off the ship, and grab command himself.”

  “Hand in glove with ship security.” Roak nodded companionably. “Washburn, that black bitch, tried to pin that Fairshare bomb on me. Tossed me in the brig without a trial and finally set me to slaving like a dog in Rivera’s galley.”

  “Sneaking rats,” Stecker muttered darkly. “All against me.”

  “You can trust me, sir.” Roak thrust out his hand, but Stecker belched again and looked away. “I’ll be back with your dinner,” he promised. “Just ask for anything you want.”

  “All I want is a way off this snowball.”

  “Me too. Trust me, captain. Just remember I’m your man.”

  “You?” Stecker snorted. “What the hell can you do?”

  I’ll show you, he thought, but Stecker wasn’t listening.

  Mondragon felt a chill of fear, and a sadness for el Señor Hinch. Un loco, perhaps more unlucky than evil. Not so bad as Captain Stecker, who had made Hinch a greater thief than he had ever been, and then brought him on the ship to conceal their crimes.

  De nada. Nothing mattered to the ice gods, neither human good nor human evil. They had simply moved with their terrible power to defend themselves from the intruders who violated their ancient dwelling. Por la gracia de Dios, they had not harmed the vehicle.

  Aboard again, he and Andersen found Cruzet in the bubble.

  “Are we trapped?” He nodded anxiously at the fissure in the ice. “Or can we get across?”

  “We must.” Andersen stood a moment staring grimly back at the tower. “We’ve got to get word of this to Glengarth. We may never get another radio contact, and he needs to know. As quick as we can.”

  “I’ll take the wheel.” Andersen studied the crevasse. “It’s hardly two meters wide. With the legs extended to full span, I think I can drive us—”

  The ice had rocked again.

  Andersen stopped, with a hoarse croak. His body jerked and stiffened. Eyes strangely glazed, he stood rigid for half a minute, then toppled sidewise. They caught him, held him upright. Cruzet felt for a pulse.

  “Stiff as rigor mortis,” he whispered. “But there’s still a faint heartbeat. Let’s get him down to the cabin.”

  He was heavy and as hard to move as a stone man, but they dragged him down the narrow stair and laid him on his berth. Cruzet worried over him with the first-aid kit they found in the emergency locker.

  “Blood pressure falling.” Dismally, he shook his head. “Down to forty over twenty. Pulse irregular and faint. But at least he’s alive.”

  They watched him two hours. His temperature sank, but slowly rose again. His pulse rate recovered. The rigor crept out of him. At last he breathed again, wheezing noisily. Moving convulsively, he tried to sit up and fell feebly back. Mondragon raised his head and offered him water, but he knocked the cup away and lay snoring heavily.

 
“Qué lástima!”

  Mondragon shrank away from him, sick with pity and dread. A brave and able man of science, a new friend who had never seemed to care that he was an illegal polizón aboard the ship without rights or place.

  “What maldad struck him?” Shivering, he stared at Cruzet. “What madness killed el Señor Hinch?”

  Silently, Cruzet shrugged and shook his head.

  Something from the black tower, something silent and unseen, some monstrous fantasma of night and ice and killing cold that had lived a billion or ten billion years ago here beneath this dead black sun—if it had ever lived at all.

  He asked again, “What do you think?”

  Cruzet should know. A man of science, one who preferred the signs of mathematics to the speech of words, he had seemed to feel at home in the vast cosmos where worlds were only atoms. Where humankind was only one more animal species struggling against extinction. Yet he stood still, blankly frowning at nothing, till Andersen made a hoarse gasping sound. That startled him into motion. He bent to take Andersen’s pulse again and turned back to Mondragon, blinking against the wetness in his eyes.

  “God—God knows,” he whispered uncertainly. “If He can see this far.”

  Andersen groaned and began shaking violently. They spread a blanket over him. Cruzet took his temperature.

  “Still down,” he said, “but rising.”

  Mondragon brought a mug of hot syncafe and helped Andersen sit up to sip it.

  “The ice got into me.” He shivered again, his eyes still wide and strange. “And something—something else.”

  His hand shook and spilled the syncafe. Mondragon found a towel to wipe it off his blue jumpsuit.

  “If you can tell us …” Cruzet urged him. “What was that something?”

  “Nothing I ever imagined.” He reached for the mug again, and gulped what was left. “Not hostile.” Speaking hoarsely and slowly, he stared blankly at Cruzet. “Nor friendly, either. Just curious, inspecting me like a bug under a lens. If that makes sense.”