The Black Sun

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The Black Sun Page 14

by Jack Williamson


  “Perhaps we die in a nuclear blast.” Grim-faced, Krasov nodded. “Perhaps our best way out.”

  “No sweat.” Roak turned to Kellick. “Wyatt, tell ’em why.”

  “Remember the bomb? No matter who set it.” Kellick grinned unpleasantly at Mondragon. “The captain and Mr. Hinch needed an expert to disarm it. I’m the expert. Trained in high explosives, military and civilian. You can call me a pro.”

  His eyes were a dull slate blue. One of them, with a deep scar above it, seemed slightly out of focus. He fixed the other on Reba Washburn for a moment, and then on Glengarth.

  “We did disarm and examine the device. A professional high-tech job, with nothing left to identify the maker or the planter. Mr. Hinch had us lock it in the ship security safe when we were through. Lieutenant Washburn found us a brown soyasweet carton that happened to fit it.”

  Reba gasped.

  “Your box is still there.” He leered at her. “But it happens that I’m an old pro on both sides of the security racket. I made contacts on the crew that installed your safe. I’ve got the know-how to look inside. We’ve removed the device.”

  His seeing eye swept Glengarth and his companions.

  “We’ve set it again, this time more professionally. Naturally I can’t tell you much about the location, except to say that it’s where nobody is likely to run across it by accident. And it’s set to detonate if anybody touches it.”

  He finished with a small smug nod for Roak and Stecker.

  “Thanks, Wyatt.” Blandly, Roak turned back to Glengarth. “That’s the reason, sir, that you’ll call no election. Wyatt is a pro. You can trust his expertise. The ship is in no danger, not as long as you take your orders from me and Captain Stecker. If you balk …”

  He shrugged.

  “Your move, Glengarth,” Stecker growled. “Think about it.”

  “Let’s all think about it.” Glengarth paused, urgently scanning the hostile faces across the table. “We’re on our own, here forever. Under the covenant, we agreed to set up a new democracy wherever we landed. Free elections, equal rights for all—”

  “Huh?” Stecker grunted. “Get back to duty, or we’ll blow you to hell.”

  “Threats can’t help anybody now,” Glengarth said. “But let’s be reasonable.”

  “We’ve gone past reason.” Kellick squinted defiantly with his one working eye. “The bomb can blow us up. A problem at the pit can blow us up. An accident in quantum flight. A neutron star, if we happen to hit it. We’ll take our chances.” His hard face worked and his voice rose scratchily. “What we won’t do is dig our own graves here in this black hell.”

  “Gentlemen—” Glengarth turned to Krasov and Fujiwara. “Can’t you see—”

  “We’ve seen the alien signals flashing at us.” Fujiwara frowned uneasily at Andersen and Cruzet, his restless fingers twisting and untwisting the yellow handkerchief. “That black tower. The queer quake that killed Mr. Hinch. We aren’t wanted. I don’t want to sit here till they decide how to kill us.”

  All silent for a moment, they sat face-to-face across the table. Fujiwara’s nervous fingers froze. Stecker belched. Krasov raised his head to stare at the starlit frost and the dead black sun on the holoscreens.

  “You asked to talk.” Stecker’s puffy eyes squinted at Glengarth. “Now what?”

  Glengarth turned to Rima. Her face stiff and pale, she shook her head.

  “Here’s what.” Roak’s chin thrust out. “We’ve heard your case. What’s your answer?”

  Glengarth frowned at Andersen and Cruzet. Stonily, they shrugged.

  “If you’re all insane—,” Roak began.

  Not listening, they rose to leave.

  “One moment more.” Roak raised his hand. “Mr. Glengarth will remain as first officer.” He glanced at Stecker. “Right, Captain?”

  “Right.” Stecker nodded, with an uneasy smile. “Carry on.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Roak turned back to Glengarth, assuming a tone of brusque command. “You will continue to keep the ship and crew in order. You will support our effort to complete a new launch facility and get us back into quantum drive. Understand?”

  “We do.” He spoke with bitter emphasis. “We certainly understand.”

  “You’re all a pack of cowards!” Rima burst out bitterly. “Fools, too, throwing our only real chance away.”

  “Sorry, my dear.” Roak grinned at her. “If you’re disappointed.”

  “We are.” Bleakly, Andersen nodded. “You’ve sentenced us to death.”

  “Think so?” A sardonic inquiry. “I’d like to remind you that we all got the same sentence when we left Earth. The flight was simply our appeal for reprieve. This dead planet is no reprieve. Another takeoff will be a new appeal—”

  “A new appeal?” Mocking him, Andersen looked at Fujiwara. “Let’s ask Kobo.”

  Fujiwara dropped the yellow handkerchief, staring blankly back.

  “Speak up,” Roak snapped at him. “You and Nikolai said you could get us back in space.”

  “Not exactly.” He shook his head. “We only promised to try. Promised because we see no choice. We told you it all depends. If we get the breaks. If we can really do useful work in this vacuum and darkness and cold. If we can dig an adequate pit and find bedrock under us strong enough to absorb the recoil effects. If we can rig all the gear we need …”

  His voice trailed unhappily off.

  “Nik and I—” Stammering uncertainly, he began again. “We’re certified quantum engineers, but we don’t know all we should.” He turned, appealing to Roak. “Sir, you know we’re not sure of our skills. We need help—”

  “You’ll get it.” Roak turned dictatorial. “Dr. Andersen. Dr. Cruzet. You have the know-how we need. You will join the launch team, under Dr. Fujiwara. Understand?”

  “We do,” Andersen muttered. “I’m afraid we do.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” Roak pushed back his chair. “That concludes our business.”

  Seeming relieved that it was over, Stecker led the group into the elevator. The last to go, Roak stopped to look back at Rima. She faced him defiantly for a moment before she flushed and dropped her eyes from his bold stare.

  “That pretty bitch.” His words came faintly back through the closing door. “She’s mine….”

  Seventeen

  Dismally, they followed Glengarth back to his cabin on the deck above.

  “I heard him.” Mondragon spoke to Rima in a hot undertone as they left the elevator. “If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”

  “No!” Her voice was husky with emotion. “Not that.”

  “Carlos, please!” Close behind them, Glengarth caught his arm. “Don’t think of killing. I wish we were rid of him, but that could turn us into a mob. Without some sort of order, we’re all dead.”

  “My mother prayed to los santos, but we’ve found no saints here.” He shrugged unhappily. “We must help ourselves.”

  “If we can.” Glengarth gave him a grim little nod. “In any way we can. Any civilized way.”

  Rima stood looking around the cabin. It seemed small, because the ship tapered toward the bow, but Glengarth had made it a home. Its familiar comfort cheered her for a moment. The holowall glowed softly white, shutting out the frigid dark. The sofa against the wall was also his berth. There were good chairs, a library table, shelves filled with books and tapes.

  Her glance lingered wistfully on the small bits of his past on Earth. A framed photo of an elderly couple standing in a farmhouse door, a tall white silo in the background. His parents? A small Kurdistan carpet on the floor. A glass case that held a pair of Chinese ceramic vases, a worn family Bible, a toy locomotive with a broken wheel, a conch shell, a fossil trilobite, the bronze figure of a rider on a bucking horse.

  Her despair came back when she turned. The others were seating themselves around the room, looking silently at Glengarth. He stood staring bleakly at a signed holoshot of Gerald Alt till Reba Washburn came out of
the elevator, her mouth set in a bitter line.

  Glengarth turned to her, silently inquiring.

  “The soyasweet carton is still in my safe.” Her heavy body sagged. “Empty. They do have the bomb.”

  “Kellick!” He mouthed the name like a dirty word. “Obviously, the pro he said he is.”

  “So.” Jim Cheng nodded. “What can we do?”

  “Play their game, at least for now.” He shrugged in dull resignation. “They’re desperate enough to kill us all.”

  “Do they have any chance?” Rima asked. “To get us back into quantum flight?”

  In silent inquiry, Glengarth turned to Cruzet and Andersen.

  Cruzet shook his head. “None I can see.”

  “Nor I.” Andersen nodded somberly. “We aren’t equipped for it. We don’t know what to expect from the locals. Maybe they’ll tolerate us. Maybe they won’t. We don’t have a clue.”

  Indra Singh came to Glengarth the next afternoon, asking to continue the dig in the cliff.

  “A remarkable site,” she said. “It was on the shore of an ancient lake or shallow sea, where floods buried their victims. I’ve protected it, and all I need is permission to keep on digging.”

  He called Stecker’s cabin. Roak answered and listened impatiently.

  “Request denied.” He was sharply curt. “She’d need a vehicle. We’re using both spiders at the pit.”

  She went to Roak himself.

  “We ought to learn more about the natives,” she urged him. “The amphibian skeleton is exciting evidence of advanced life that once existed here. Even if you hold up the habitat, I think we ought to explore the peninsula.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Fossil remains. Artifacts. Ruins. Perhaps another tower.”

  “Sorry, my dear.” His smirk made her flush. “The pit takes all our resources.”

  She appealed to Cruzet and Andersen, who were working with Krasov and Fujiwara to survey and clear a site for the pit.

  “I’ll make a pitch,” Andersen agreed. “First to Fujiwara. He lives in terror, convinced that the aliens are hiding in the dark all around us, somehow watching every move we make. He might relax and do better work after a look at the lower peninsula.”

  Singh brought Krasov and Fujiwara with her to Glengarth’s cabin. Fujiwara was jittery about undertaking any search, afraid of what might be discovered. Krasov didn’t care.

  “What if the aliens do decide to slaughter us?” He laughed. “Likely more interesting than a blowup in the pit or a collision with a black hole a billion years from now in another universe.”

  They called Roak, who balked at first. Captain Stecker, he said, would allow no delays. When Krasov assured him that Cruzet and Andersen were ready to lay out the launcher, with no more to do till the excavation was complete, he agreed to let them go.

  “Take a few days,” he muttered, “if that will pacify you. Run down the peninsula and get back to work.”

  Singh could go along to drive them, he said, so long as she didn’t squander time digging for petrified bones.

  Rima volunteered to monitor the radio. She left Day with Alma Sternberg, who was a nurse as well as a hydroponics engineer. Day was sometimes happy with the Sternberg children, but grieving more often for Me Me.

  Kip came to the control room with her. The lights were dimmed to let them see the starlit world outside. He had brought his Game Box, but he laid it aside to watch the sledge loads of heavy equipment creeping south to the pit from the abandoned habitat and the ship itself. He followed the red spark of the heat lamp bobbing and weaving over the frost-dusted ice and the frozen beaches. It was visible a long time after the machine itself had sunk below the ice horizon.

  “Call them,” Kip urged her. “Ask what they’ve found.”

  Static crackled in the radio, until Singh’s Oxford accent boomed suddenly.

  “A surprise that the ice is so smooth. Nik says it’s because the planet’s rotation had stopped and the cooling sun gave too little energy for wind or waves. Expansion did fracture the ice in spots, but we can steer around them.”

  “Miss Indra?” Kip asked. “What do you see on the land?”

  “Frozen rocks and gravel on the beaches,” she said. “Barren cliffs beyond, getting lower as we go. No sign of anything alive, now or ever.”

  Her loud voice stopped, and the radio thumped.

  “What are they looking for?” Kip asked his mother. “What could they possibly find that would do us any good?”

  “If we knew,” she said, “they wouldn’t need to go. What I hope—” Pausing for a moment, she decided he was old enough for the truth. “I hope for something that might help us stay alive.”

  “So you think Roak’s scheme will kill us?”

  She had to nod. “I think it would.”

  Nodding quietly, he reached for his Game Box, then laid it down again.

  “I want to help,” he told her. “Show me how to work the telescope and the radio.”

  She showed him, and asked if he understood.

  “No problem,” he told her brightly. “They’re simpler than the Game Box.”

  He sat with her, watching the lamp’s red dot dim and flicker and slowly sink. Singh called again. She had left the ice for the old beaches, wider and smoother toward the tip of the peninsula. The cliffs had sunk into eroded ridges. They had seen no ruins, no beacons, no hint of active intelligence. Rima left Kip at the radio while she went down to check on Day.

  He met her with an uneasy frown when she got back.

  “The lamp and the radio went out,” he said. “Both together. Dr. Singh was talking. She seemed excited about something they were finding, but her voice stopped before she could say what it was. I kept calling back, but nobody answers. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t fret,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing except listen for a signal and hope they’re okay.”

  They hoped and waited, until at last the red point did flicker again.

  “Alpha to ship,” Singh’s voice came back. “Alpha to ship.”

  “Ship to Alpha.” Just like Captain Cometeer calling the Legion, Kip thought. “Alpha come in.”

  “If you lost our signal, it was because we’d entered a gap in the cliffs. A remarkable feature, though hard to explore by searchlight. At first we took it for a high-walled natural fjord, though the walls were oddly straight and vertical. I don’t think the glaciers ever came this far. We drove a dozen kilometers into it, till a rock slide stopped us.

  “Nik has a theory….”

  A moment of silence, and they heard Krasov, his stolid Ukrainian tones quickened with wonder.

  “It’s a straight cut across the peninsula. A canal, most certainly. Which has to imply the existence of a very considerable native population here before the oceans froze. An advanced technological culture and a busy maritime commerce.”

  “Commerce?” Rima asked. “In what?”

  “Not much basis for a guess. The sun was probably never high here, but perpetual daylight would have reached across several thousand kilometers of ocean beyond the ridge. Maybe the natives fished. Maybe they opened mines along ice-free coasts.”

  Singh’s voice murmured something they didn’t hear.

  “Geology?” Krasov spoke to her and raised his voice again. “The walls of the cut do tell an interesting story. The ridge was formed by a seismic upthrust and worn down by erosion long before the ice came. No sign of any change since the rock slide closed the canal. Which means, I think, that the end came pretty suddenly, put in relative terms.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “The sun’s a dwarf. The hydrogen fusion that lit it for a time must have depended on the fission of unstable elements. When they were used up, fusion ceased. Rather abruptly—abruptly in geologic time—the dwarf went black. The planet died. I can’t imagine that anything survived.”

  “We’re pushing on,” Singh’s voice came in. “Looking f
or clues. The tip of the peninsula is still ahead. If the creatures were actually seamen, they could have had a lighthouse there. I want to see.”

  Mondragon had worked all day with Cruzet and Andersen, driving the Beta to drag their sledgeloads of equipment to the pit. Off duty, he came to relieve Rima at the radio. Kip went down with her to pick up Day and the Sternberg children for dinner. When they had eaten, he went back to the dome with two lemon rolls for Mondragon.

  The rolls were made from mutant kelp, with no natural lemon in them, but they were tart and sweet. He had almost learned to like them, and Mondragon said they were poco bueno. They sat together in the dim twilight of the dome, watching the faint red point of the Alpha’s faraway lamp.

  “Your mother?” Mondragon asked. “Does she speak of me?”

  “Only when I ask her. She knows I like you. She doesn’t—” Awkwardly, he hesitated. “She doesn’t say much about it, because she knows how much I like you, but she can’t forget how you got aboard. I know you didn’t bring the bomb, but she’s still not sure.”

  “I’m sorry.” He shrugged in the Mexican way, and slowly shook his head. “Very sorry, because I admire her greatly.”

  “She knows you do.” Kip’s tone grew solemn. “But I think she’s afraid.”

  “How can I show her …”

  He didn’t have to answer. Mondragon turned to adjust the telescope again, and they sat searching the dark horizon where the red search lamp had been. They never found it, but Singh’s voice came with a brief blast of static.

  “… near the end of the ridge. We’ll soon turn back, unless …”

  Her signal died.

  They listened together till Rima called on the intercom for Kip to come down to bed. She took turns with Sternberg in the dome the next day. Andersen and Cruzet took their own turns when they came off duty at the pit. They heard no signal. On the third day they begged Glengarth to authorize a rescue expedition.

  “I’ve already spoken to the captain,” he told them. “Or at least to Mr. Roak. They say forget it. I told them we’d better find out what happened to Singh and her people in the Alpha. I think they’re afraid to know. Afraid we’d lose the Beta.”

 

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