The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  “Me Me needs us now,” she said. “She says we have to hurry.”

  “I’m starving,” Kip said. “Can’t we take time to eat?”

  Nobody listened. Day caught Andersen’s hand to urge him back to the pilot bay. Cruzet went down to check the engine. The spider lumbered on. Kip ate the cereal Cruzet had fixed for Day, drank the soya milk, and climbed back into the bubble to watch the red-lit frost sliding under them the way it always did. He dozed and woke with a cramp in his leg. He ran up and down the stairs to work it out, and finally went to sleep on the berth in the cabin.

  Endless day after endless day was very much the same—days measured only by his need to eat and sleep, because nobody seemed to hear the watch clock chiming. They came off the open ice at last, into a region where great boulders had rained out of the sky. From an asteroid that had struck the land ahead, Andersen thought.

  Day was always sitting by him on the monitor, her glassy eyes staring into the starlight. Somehow she seemed to see the boulders, and the broken ice around them, many kilometers before he could, even with the binoculars. Somehow she knew the way around them.

  At the controls of an antimatter hornet with a squad of Captain Cometeer’s Green Star Rangers, Kip was diving to save the crew and passengers of a disabled space liner. The Crimson Killer, the notorious space pirate, had wrecked it and left them to be crushed in the gravity well of a great black hole. Waiting near the wreck, the Crimson Killer fired a megaquark space torpedo at the hornet. He swerved to avoid it. Too late. He felt the hornet rock—

  And found himself in the bubble of the spider, about to slide out of the navigator’s chair. It was all a dream, but better than his dream about Watcher, he thought, because the amphibian beads had nothing to do with it.

  The spider rocked again and he heard the turbine slow.

  “Nap time, Kipper?”

  Cruzet and Andersen were coming up the stairwell from the cabin. They snatched the binoculars off the desk and passed them back and forth, peering out into the midnight.

  “We’re stuck right here.” Cruzet frowned, handing the binoculars back to Andersen. “Unless the spider grows wings.”

  “No way to get any farther. None that I see.” Andersen shrugged. “Unless Day can find it.”

  She was asleep again. Kip hoped they would take time to cook, but they were too anxious for that. They stayed in the bubble, staring through the binoculars and shaking their heads. He blinked and squinted into the starlight, but all he could see was scattered chunks of broken ice, far off in the haze.

  “Here, Kipper. Take a look.” Andersen gave him the binoculars. “We’ve come to the cap.”

  In the powerful lenses, the ice was near and bright, an endless line of great sharp-edged masses rising out of the frost. Icebergs, he thought, that had drifted here before the ocean froze. Higher ice mountains rose beyond them, great chunks of ice that had tumbled down from a long white wall that looked too high to climb.

  “The ice continent.” Andersen pointed. “And bergs that caved off the glaciers.”

  The skyler in Far Diver’s dream had flown over this great wall of ice, and on across the wild tangle of bare mountain peaks and enormous glaciers beyond, all the way to the titanic towers of Skyhold, but the spider had no wings and still he felt afraid to talk about the dream.

  Cruzet swung the binoculars back and forth, studying the glacier wall.

  “It runs all along the horizon, as far as I can see.” Discouraged, he laid them back on the desk. “I think we’ve come to the end of the line.”

  “Leave it to Day.” Andersen grinned. “She’ll find us a way.”

  “Maybe.” Cruzet shrugged. “Let’s look for chow.”

  Kip followed them down to the cabin. They scrounged in the locker and found chicken-algae powder and tofusoya noodles that made a stew so good they all scraped their bowls. Yawning before they finished, Andersen was soon snoring softly on the berth. Cruzet put on his airskin and went out to check the tires and drive motors.

  When he had the dishes cleaned, Kip climbed back to the bubble. Searching the awesome barrier towering ahead, he remembered what the skyler had found beyond it. Mountain range beyond mountain range. Desert plains of cracked and hummocked ice. Deep canyons cut by mighty rivers when rivers still ran, filled now with glacial ice.

  He wondered if he should try to warn them of all that lay ahead, but of course nobody would believe him. Nor would any warning stop them, even if they did believe. They’d only shrug and call the trip a wonderful adventure and keep on doing what Day told them.

  With the binoculars, he searched that endless wall again. Searched the ice mountains that had crumbled from it into the frozen sea. Searched till his eyes ached, and still he saw no hint of any way to climb it. He went down to the cabin when he heard Cruzet cycle back through the lock, and found him asleep on the floor, with that plastic bag of amphibian beads for a pillow.

  Tiptoeing away from that, he went back to the navigator’s chair in the bubble and tried the binoculars again, expecting nothing new. Nothing had changed here in all the ages since the skyler in his dream had flown over the ice wilderness to the dead fortress city. Or was the planet just asleep? Had it begun to wake when the ship came down?

  He sat there wondering what lay ahead, wondering where his mother was, till he ached from sitting still. Till he nodded and found himself on the space hornet again. He had been the pilot, but Day pushed him away from the controls. She was diving into the great black hole. Its terrible gravity was going to kill them, to tear their atoms apart. He begged her to turn and try to climb out.

  “It’s Me Me.” Her wide doll-eyes seemed blind to him. “She needs us now.”

  The spider woke him, lurching into motion. He crept uneasily down the stairs to find Cruzet and the bag of lifestones gone from the cabin floor. Andersen was back at the wheel, Day on the monitor beside him, telling him where to steer. Looking in the locker, he found a can of apple-soya powder, mixed a glass of juice, and went back to the bubble.

  Day had turned them away from the glacier. Threading back through the towering bergs to open ice, she took them south along the glacier front. It seemed to have no end. He watched its slow march across the west till his eyes were tired again. He walked down the stairway to stretch and came back to try the binoculars again. The glacier wall looked no lower. Suddenly famished, he went down to the cabin and found a can of tofunut butter in the back of the locker. He ate a few soyamax wafers smeared with that and lay down on the berth.

  “Hola! Kipper.”

  Andersen stood grinning at him. The spider had stopped. Cruzet was busy at the kitchen counter and he smelled coffee brewing.

  “Your sister’s sleeping.” Andersen jerked his thumb at the curtain. “She’s found us a way up the glacier. A rocky ridge we can climb. It’s the tail end of a mountain chain. No ice on it.”

  He sat up and rubbed his sticky eyes. For a second he hoped that Andersen’s amphibian bead was gone, but he found the black glint of it, half buried in the red curls at the nape of his neck.

  “No ice ahead?” Cruzet was pouring coffee. He turned to look at Andersen. “Why?”

  . “Wind,” Andersen said. “Wind that blew when the sun still shone. Warm air flowed off the sea side of the planet. Cold air flowed back, dried and heated by compression when it came down off the high ice. Heated enough to keep the glaciers moving, and dried enough to take the snow off that ridge.”

  Day woke, went to the bathroom, and came out with her puffy face half washed and her tangled hair pushed back, the two black beads still in place. She ate a few bites of an omelet Cruzet had made with powdered eggs and algaham, drained a glass of soya milk, and said Me Me couldn’t wait.

  Andersen followed her to the pilot bay. The turbine purred louder. The spider rolled on. Kip climbed back to the bubble when he had the dishes done. Cruzet was ahead of him there, already searching the starlight. He handed Kip the binoculars without a word, and went below.
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br />   The lenses brought scattered icebergs out of the haze. He heard Day’s strange voice on the interphone, guiding Andersen between the bergs and finally to a rocky slope that climbed steeply toward the midnight sky. Above a boulder-cluttered beach, she led them into a narrow canyon.

  Frost crystals glittered under the heat lamp like scattered rubies, but the rocks here were clear of snow. Slowed to a crawl, the spider lurched and pitched, but they kept it climbing. The canyon swallowed them, towering walls shutting out the stars. It forked again and again, where the streams that cut it had come together.

  The forks were puzzles to Kip and even to Andersen, but Day always knew which one to choose. Or was it the beads that knew? Tired of wondering, tired of watching, Kip went back down to the cabin. He finished Day’s omelet, which he had saved in the cold locker, and lay down again on the berth.

  “Top of the mountain, Kipper!”

  Andersen stood with Cruzet at the little table under the locker. They both looked gaunt and drawn. Cruzet had managed to shave, but Andersen’s face bristled with a curly stubble. Cruzet was filling mugs with Stecker’s precious Kona coffee.

  “We’re on the cap.” Andersen lifted his mug to Kip, grinning jovially. “Your sister got us here before she had to sleep. A great view ahead, if you want to look.”

  He followed them up to the bubble. The spider had stopped on a high ridge. Craggy slopes fell into the narrow canyon behind. Mountain ranges rose ahead, range beyond range, higher and higher till they reached the black sky and the stars, jagged peaks sharp as sawteeth and white with ice and frost.

  “Magnificent!” Andersen swept his arm across those barriers of ancient ice and naked granite. “Just imagine! Half an unknown world still ahead!”

  Kip shrank back, remembering the endless maze of glaciered summits the skyler had flown over in his dream. Nothing he wanted to hope for.

  “We’re going on?”

  “To the middle of the cap.” Andersen lifted his coffee mug as if it were wine. “To find whatever flashed that signal.”

  “We’ll never get there—” Andersen’s sharp look stopped him. He wanted to explain why he thought so, but nobody would believe a dream. “I just think it’s too far,” he muttered. “Too far for the spider.”

  “Just trust your sister,” Andersen said. “She knows the way.”

  “She calls it the sky road.” Cruzet gave him the binoculars. “Take a look.”

  “She says we follow this valley, right under our feet.” He fumbled to focus the glasses, and Andersen was pointing. “It’s U-shaped, because it was scraped out by glacier ice. Rivers cut V-shaped canyons, like the one we climbed.”

  “What became of the glacier?”

  “Warm winds thawed it. The snows ahead fell after it had grown colder.”

  The view took his breath away when he got the lenses into focus. Everything was suddenly bright and close and huge. Clean white snow lay banked deep just ahead, where the last blizzards had carried it over a ridge at the summit crest. Below the snowbank there was nothing—nothing but a vast pit walled with ice-carved cliffs.

  “It’s too steep.” He shook his head at Andersen. “There’s no way down.”

  “Your sister knows a way to take us down.” Andersen reached for the binoculars. “If we’re careful not to start an avalanche.”

  Day woke. Cruzet made a bowl of tofusoya cereal for her, but she came out of the bathroom with no time for it. Back on the holomonitor, she called her orders to Andersen. Very slowly, he eased the spider down the steep slopes of snow. The bare rock below looked even steeper, but she guided them to a narrow ledge that ran across the cliffs, far around the canyon and finally down to the level floor.

  “Another riddle, Kipper,” Andersen told him when Day let the spider stop. “That’s no natural geologic fault. It’s an artificial road. The question is who made it. And why.”

  The skyler farmers, Kip thought, when they lived in the valley and wanted a way to the sea. But the amphibian bead still gleamed through the copper red curls of Andersen’s hair, and he was afraid to speak of skylers.

  “On beyond?” he asked uneasily. “Will the road be open through the mountains? Or has the ice buried it?”

  “Don’t fret.” Andersen shrugged. “Just trust your sister.”

  Cruzet was making sandwiches with slices of algabeef loaf between slabs of toasted tofumax. Day ate part of hers before her head dropped to the table. Andersen carried her back to sleep. Yawning, he collapsed on the berth in the cabin. Cruzet put on his airskin and went out to inspect the wheels.

  With nobody to talk to, Kip climbed to the bubble and picked up the binoculars to scan that path the skylers had cut when the planet was alive. Remembering his dream of Watcher, he wondered how such small creatures had built the island tower, the temple on the isthmus, the fortress city ahead.

  They had been master builders. Clever engineers. Brave enough in their long war with the blackwings. But clever enough to defeat ice and time? Still alive in Skyhold? Able to detect the approaching wavecraft still far out in space and flash that signal to it? To kill Jake Hinch and Indra Singh?

  Andersen and Cruzet were driving hard for answers. Kip wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  The radio crackled.

  “Alpha?” His mother’s voice! It startled him. “Beta calling Alpha. Do you read me?”

  “Mom?” He found the red spark not far behind them, creeping along the line between the starlit snow and the dead black sky. “I see your lamp.”

  “Kip?” He heard her catch her breath. “Are you okay? Is Day all right?”

  “She’s here,” he said. Maybe okay. How could anybody know? “And you?”

  “Fine, since we’ve found you. Just wait for us.”

  He saw the red spark moving faster.

  “Careful!” he shouted. “Careful on the snow! There could be an aval—”

  He heard her scream.

  Twenty-nine

  Mondragon felt a sudden tremor. The spider swayed.

  “Earthquake!”

  Above him in the bubble, Rima screamed the word. But that couldn’t be. This wasn’t Earth; this dead planet shouldn’t be quaking. Yet rocks were toppling off the cliffs above them.

  “Kip was on the radio!” he heard her whisper. “He tried to warn—”

  The spider pitched again, and he felt snow moving. A wide sheet of crusted snow was sliding under them, crumbling over the lip of the glacial col. A jutting granite knob split the flow ahead. He spun the wheel, steering for it. The spider skidded. The tires slipped, caught, and brought them to the knob, a tiny island in the avalanche. He stopped the spider on it and joined Rima in the bubble.

  “My children!” Her cry was almost a moan. “Did we start the slide—”

  Her voice was gone. They watched the broken snow sweep past them, faster, faster. All around the col, masses of age-old ice were tumbling into the chasm. He found the red spark of the Alpha’s heat lamp, far away and far below.

  “They’re running.” He whispered. “Maybe—”

  His breath stopped. Rima clung to him, trembling. The far red point was crawling too slowly ahead of the ice. Far and faint in the dimness of the pit, the front of it was near and bright and dreadful in the binoculars, a rolling flood of broken ice that overtook the Alpha, drowned it, spread far beyond where it had been.

  “They’re dead!” She clung to his arm. “Did we—did we kill them?”

  “I don’t think so.” He stared at her, shuddering. “I felt the tremor before the avalanche began. I think it was los demonios. The demons of the ice. Stopping us the way they stopped Jake Hinch.”

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why? We haven’t dynamited anything.”

  “Yo no sé. We don’t know the powers of the planet. I think we never will.”

  “The Alpha?” Her voice quivering, she stood peering into the col. “Could we get down there to look for them?”

  He reached for the binoculars and stood a long time
searching the naked slopes where the snow had lain and the vertical walls of the glacial trough, cliffs polished smooth by stones the ice had carried.

  “It looks so steep,” she whispered. “I see no way.”

  “They got down.” He shook his head and gave the binoculars to her. “I don’t see how.”

  “Nor I.” She searched and gave them back. “We’d only roll down the way the boulders did.”

  “I was following their wheel tracks.” He spoke almost to himself. “They were turning to the left …”

  He was scanning the canyon walls again.

  “There!” His voice sharpened. “That looks like a road, if you can believe it.”

  “A road?” She frowned at him. “Not here.”

  He gave her the instrument and she found a thin scar in the rock that began on the high slopes near them, where the snow had lain. It ran far around the canyon, sloping toward the floor.

  “If we can reach it …”

  The sliding snow had left bare and steep stone that shone darkly beneath their lamp. Back at the wheel, he pulled the spider gently off their granite island. Another skid took his breath, but he got them to the path, a narrow shelf cut into the ice-polished cliffs. Too narrow, really, for the spider’s big-tired wheels on their sprawling legs, but he found a control on the console that pulled them closer in. Top-heavy on the narrowed wheels, they started down the cliff. Two kilometers down, the shelf widened into a deeper cut. He stopped the spider and climbed into the bubble.

  “Trouble?” Rima asked.

  “A tunnel.” When he pointed into the cut, she made out a narrow archway. “I’m going to look inside.”

  “Have we time to spare? My kids buried—”

  “I’m going out.” Bluntly, he cut her off. “I want to know.”

  She wanted to protest again, but something in his manner almost frightened her. He went below. She heard the lock hiss and clang and saw him come out in his yellow airskin. Helmet light burning, he walked into the tunnel, moving as briskly as if he knew his way. Framed by rough dark walls, his light receded and vanished.