The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  Impatiently waiting, she tried the radio, tried it again, searched the valley floor once more. The sliding ice had spread a broad white fan where the Alpha had been. Its pale red spark was gone.

  Mondragon came back at last, striding down the tunnel. The lock hissed and wheezed and clanged. He hung up his helmet and came out to meet her in the cabin, still in his airskin.

  “A copper mine.” He was crisply matter-of-fact. “The reason for the road. I found an amphibian’s skeleton a few hundred meters back. Killed by a rockfall. Nuggets of green malachite scattered around him. Beautiful specimens, but I got something better.”

  He unzipped his breast pocket and showed her a black amphibian bead.

  “Perfect.”

  He studied it briefly, nodded approval, and put it to his forehead. It stuck there. She saw his body stiffen. His face went blank for a moment, and firmed with purpose.

  “The other spider vehicle has severe trouble.”

  His voice was suddenly cold and flat.

  “Carlos—” She shrank back from him, trembling. “Are you all right?”

  “We must get on at once,” he said. “We must render assistance.”

  “If we can!” She caught her breath. “If we can help—”

  “You will go up to lookout bay.” He gestured stiffly at the stair to the bubble. “Use binoculars. Locate spider vehicle.”

  He drove them on.

  “Spider vehicle?” he called on the intercom, and called again. “Do you discover spider vehicle?”

  “I don’t. Not yet.”

  “Continue.” A sharp command. “Imperative!”

  He pushed on. Twice they came to ancient rock slides where he had to ease the spider over fallen stones, tilting it till she held her breath. The road widened as they reached gentler slopes, until they lost it beneath the avalanche. Shattered and crumbled ice lay spread to the farther cliffs.

  “Spider vehicle?” he barked again. “Do you discover vehicle?”

  “Not yet. I’m looking.”

  They jolted out across the ice.

  “Stop!” she gasped at last. “I’ve found it!”

  They had gone past the mast, sticking at an angle out of broken ice. The heat lamp was dead. He came up to the bubble and took the binoculars to study it.

  “Mast protruding.” His voice was an emotionless staccato. “Inclined at sixty degrees. Hull covered by three meters of ice.”

  “Three meters!” She stared at the leaning mast. “Can we dig—”

  Her voice caught, and she cringed again from his hard, unfeeling face.

  “The being called Day,” he said. “She is needed.”

  “Both! Both children!” She searched his face for the human he had been. “They must be frantic. With the lamp dead, the power must be out. The cycler, too. They’re likely hurt. Suffocating in the dark.” She shivered. “Can we dig three meters—”

  “Rescue effort essential,” he barked. “We proceed.”

  He drove them toward the buried spider. Anxious to do whatever she could, she went down to get into her own airskin and climbed back to the bubble. She saw their two front wheels moving, thrusting ahead on their shining legs. She heard the lock and saw him emerge with a box of tools. Wondering, she watched him remove the wheels and bolt the ends of the legs together.

  “What are you doing?” she called on the interphone when he came back aboard. “If I can help—”

  Ignoring her, he backed the spider away from the mast. Dropping the bolted legs to the ice, he used them to plow a long furrow beside the slanted mast. He backed and plowed again, bulldozing ice away from the buried machine. The black curve of a tire came into view, finally the bright curve of the hull.

  “Body of vehicle exposed.” His voice on the interphone might have been a robot’s. “Condition of occupants unknown. You will attempt sonic contact.”

  Grateful for anything to do, she found a hammer in his tool box and cycled through the lock. The bright side of the tipped spider was almost bare, though shattered ice still covered most of the lock. She tapped on the hull, stooped to put her helmet against it, and tapped again. Faintly, through the insulated wall, she heard answering taps, then the whine of the salvage pumps.

  “They’re alive,” she told him when she got back inside. “They’re trying to get out, but there’s ice over the lock. I don’t think it can open.”

  “Ice will be removed.”

  He plowed more ice away. She saw the exterior valve slide open. Andersen climbed out. He stood there half a minute, shading his eyes even from the starlight, peering around him at the field of broken ice and the towering canyon walls, before he staggered toward their lock. She heard it cycling and came down to help him unseal his helmet.

  “Rima?” He shook his head in a dazed way, his sunken eyes widened as if in dazed astonishment. “Where are we?”

  Staring at him, as baffled as he was, she found no answer.

  “Sorry.” He peered around the cabin. “I’m just—just out. Can’t remember anything.”

  He stood there blinking at her, rubbing at a swelling bruise on his forehead. His beard had grown into tawny stubble, and drying blood from a gash on his temple streaked the side of his face.

  “Kip? Little Day?” She found her voice. “Are they alive?”

  “Alive,” he mumbled dully. “Alive.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think” He shook his head. “Don’t know anything.”

  Mondragon came back from the wheel, brushing by Andersen as if he were a stranger.

  “Air lock open,” he said. “I will go into Alpha vehicle.”

  He seemed clumsy with his helmet. She helped him seal it and reached for her own. Before she could follow, however, he was cycling through the lock. She had to wait with Andersen.

  “Trying to remember.” His haggard head shook with frustration. “Something—something like a dream. We were climbing the cap in the Alpha. Your little daughter was our guide.” He spread his hands in bewilderment. “A small child from Earth! How could she show the way across this dead planet? Where no human being had ever been?”

  Trembling and terrified, she didn’t try to answer.

  “The dream—” He stared around the cabin. “I thought you were following in the Beta. This is the Beta?”

  “The Beta,” she whispered. “But this is no dream. It’s a nightmare.”

  Muttering under his breath, he stumbled back to the little closet inside the lock, peeled his airskin off, and came out in his blue jumpsuit. He sat down on the edge of the berth and squinted sharply at her.

  “It’s true? We’re actually on the cap?”

  “It’s true.”

  He sat there, looking groggy and lost in himself, muttering under his breath. She climbed back to the bubble. The Alpha’s lock was opening again. Mondragon came out carrying an inflated airskin that looked empty. Cruzet followed. She ran down to meet them in the cabin.

  “The infant.”

  Mondragon gave her the inflated suit. She unsealed the empty helmet and heard a whimper. Trembling, she unzipped the suit.

  “Mommy?” Day reached out. “Mommy, is it you?”

  “Darling!” She gathered her into her arms. “My poor little darling!”

  “Mom, hi.” Kip came out of the lock in his own neat yellow airskin, his helmet under one arm and his other arm lifted to wave his greeting. “You got here just in time.”

  A very casual greeting, but she felt the sobs that shook him when he dropped the helmet to throw his arms around her.

  Cruzet fumbled his helmet off and gazed around him, as dazed as Andersen had been.

  “Dr. Virili?” He took a moment to recognize her. “I don’t know how you got here, but you’ve bailed us out of hell.”

  “There’s coffee,” she told him. “If you want it.”

  “I’m dying for it.”

  “Task incomplete.” Mondragon stood squinting out of his helmet as if they were strangers, the amphibi
an bead shining strangely on his vacant face. “Urgent necessity to salvage supplies and equipment from spider vehicle Alpha.”

  Rima was sitting on the edge of the berth, Day sobbing in her arms.

  “I’ll help.” She moved to rise.

  “Mommy, no!” Desperately, Day clung to her. “Stay here with me. I need you bad.”

  “You better stay.” Grinning at her, Kip picked his helmet off the floor. “I’ll go.”

  She sat crooning to Day while he followed the others into the lock. Day was asleep before they began bringing back cartons and crates and bags of food, boxes of tools, replacement cartridges for the cycler. There was even a case of Stecker’s Kentucky bourbon.

  “That does it.”

  Andersen was moving to unseal his helmet. Mondragon raised a hand to stop him, and stooped to inspect the stacks as if making a mental inventory.

  “Item missing.” His radio voice rang hard. “Urgently required.”

  He cycled back through the lock and returned with a yellow plastic bag.

  Thirty

  Day wriggled suddenly out of Rima’s arms and ran to snatch the yellow plastic bag from Mondragon. She upended it to dump the contents. Kip expected the honeycomb-shaped mass of black amphibian beads. What he saw instead was a shower of small gray stones that rattled across the floor.

  Day picked one of them up and scowled in disgust.

  “Dead.” She tossed it back. “Killed.”

  “Darling—” Staring at her, Rima started to rise and sank weakly back. “What has got into you?”

  “That stone—” Day pointed at the bead on Mondragon’s forehead. “Give it to me.”

  He pulled it off and she stuck it behind her ear. Her body stiffened. Her small arm lifted in a gesture of command.

  “Hear this.” She turned back to her mother with an empty doll-smile. Her eyes had widened strangely, no recognition in them. “Me Me requires us urgently.” Her loud flat voice was not her own. “We will move forward without additional delay. Virili and Mondragon will resume operation of spider vehicle.”

  “My child!” Stunned, Rima shook her head. “My baby—baby girl.”

  Kip put his arm around her.

  “She’s like this,” he said. “She has been ever since we left the ship. Just look at her now.”

  Walking with a stiffly awkward gait—like a mechanical doll, he thought—Day had started toward the control bay. She turned back to Cruzet and Andersen.

  “You will eat and sleep. Prepare yourselves for further service to Me Me.”

  “Okay.” Andersen nodded, with a nervous shrug. “Okay.”

  “Señor Mondragon.” She beckoned. “You will operate spider vehicle.”

  Huddled miserably on the edge of the berth, Rima stared blankly after them. The turbine whined louder. The spider lurched forward.

  “Accelerate.” Day’s sharp voice came back from the control bay. “Steer left twenty degrees.”

  “My poor baby!” Blinking at her tears, Rima turned imploringly to Andersen. “What has happened to her?”

  “That amphibian stone,” he said. “It controls her. The rest of us, too, whenever it likes. If you want to know why—” His lips twisted wryly. “It’s all because Me Me needs us.”

  “Me Me?” She shook her head in disbelief. “You say we’ve really come halfway around the planet to look for the doll she had to leave on Earth?”

  “She thinks it’s here, lost and in trouble.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Not exactly.” Andersen shrugged. “But we do obey when the beads take control.”

  “Andy?” Her gaze sharpened. “Are you insane?”

  “Could be. Nothing I can explain.” Silent for a moment, he spoke again. “We do obey. Not that I fret. In fact I’m glad to have her help.”

  “Help?” She shuddered. “You are insane!”

  “We’re marooned here, remember.”

  “Marooned?” Bitterly, she mocked him. “The word is condemned. Condemned to die here!”

  “Could be.” He waved his hand in protest. “But there’s a brighter side—”

  “What’s bright?” Her face twisted. “Here in this damned dark?”

  “Rima, just remember how we got here,” he urged her. “StarSeed never promised we’d land in any kind of paradise. We came to make the best of what we found. This planet is a pretty stiff challenge. A million exciting questions to answer. Never mind what your little girl thinks about her doll—” He shrugged. “Tony and I are happy enough to be pushing on.”

  “Happy? When you look at Day and those damned beads?”

  “They did frighten me at first.” He shook his head at her concern. “But they’re pretty wonderful, whatever they are. Or were.”

  He bent to gather a few of the small gray stones off the floor. He stirred them on his palm, tried to fit them together, peered at them through a pocket magnifier, scratched one with a penknife.

  “Look at these.”

  He held them toward her.

  “A fascinating riddle?” He ignored her horrified recoil. “We’ve no notion what they were to the amphibians. Or how they’ve endured since the planet died. They seemed indestructible when I studied them, but these have gone soft. Lost their shine. Your daughter says they’re dead.”

  “What does she know?”

  “More than I do.”

  “The damned things have taken your own mind,” she told him hotly, “like they did Day’s.”

  “So what?” His shoulders tossed. “So long as we’re moving on.” He scowled at the beads in his hand. “I want to know what destroyed them. How? Why?”

  Listening, Kip remembered his dream of Watcher. The beads had been the precious lifestones that stored amphibian memories and let them leave the sea. He wanted to tell what he knew, but he felt chilled again with Watcher’s terror and despair. He knew no way to explain the power of the stones, no good answers to the questions they would ask.

  He leaned to look at those in Andersen’s hand. Their black shine was gone, with the force that had stuck them together. And the memories, he thought, of beings dead almost forever. He felt sad for Watcher, for all of them, and felt a tingle of dread at the nape of his neck.

  Cruzet had been storing the tools and cycler cartridges they brought off the Alpha. Back in the cabin, he sank wearily down on the end of the berth and grinned at Rima.

  “Day promised us food,” he reminded her. “We need it.”

  “You’ve earned it.” She gave him a smile of tired gratitude. “Since I have my children back.”

  She filled coffee mugs for him and Andersen.

  Kip asked, “And we can eat?”

  When she nodded, he opened the locker and found a can of Stecker’s hoarded Vermont maple syrup. She made pancakes out of soyamax flour and alga-egg powder, and served them with strips of betabacon. When it was ready, she wanted Mondragon to stop the spider so that he and Day could join them.

  “Day won’t let him stop,” Kip told her. He was right.

  Grateful for his mother’s cooking, Kip ate his fill. Andersen and Cruzet were soon snoring gently behind the curtain. With no appetite, Rima went to the pilot bay doorway and stood watching Day in sad silence as she sat on the monitor, her hard inhuman voice telling Mondragon where to drive.

  “Mom, you look awful tired.” Kip caught her hand to pull her away. “You ought to sleep.”

  “I can’t.” Her face was pinched and bitter. “Not with little Day like that.”

  She came with him up to the bubble, and slumped down at the desk, looking at nothing. He pointed at a long, boulder-strewn ridge that lay across the canyon floor.

  “A funny-looking hill.”

  With a wan little smile, she roused herself to answer. “Dr. Andersen would call it a glacial moraine.”

  “What’s a moraine?”

  “The ridge of rocks and gravel that a glacier leaves when it retreats.”

  She sank back into herself and he stood
looking ahead. Climbing the moraine, the spider came back to the ancient road. It twisted so far along the foot of the canyon wall that he reached for the binoculars. The lenses made it near and bright, exciting with the promise of surprises to come.

  “Mom, look!” Trying to lift her spirits, he offered her the binoculars. “Look where we’re headed! Through the narrow space between those two high cliffs. They look like a gate. Don’t you want to see what we’ll find beyond?”

  “I don’t care.” Her voice was tired and dull. She didn’t take the binoculars. “Why should I care?”

  “Please, Mom!” He caught her lifeless arm. “You can’t say that.”

  She frowned so sharply at him that he thought she wondered if the beads had seized him.

  “Just look where we are!” he begged her. “Exploring a strange new world.”

  He heard her breath catch.

  “I know where we are.” Her face worked, and he thought she was going to cry. “All alone and waiting to die here on the ice, since the ship’s gone—”

  “The ship?” He blinked at her.

  “I didn’t mean to tell you, but Stecker blew it up.”

  The frost came into the bubble. Shivering, he felt so weak and sick that he caught the edge of the deck. His throat hurt when he thought of Jim Cheng, who had made his airskin, and Roy Eisen, who had taught him how the spiders worked. Even his Game Box was gone, Captain Cometeer and all his friends in the Legion.

  When he looked at Rima again, she was asleep with her head on the desk. He jogged her arm till she was half awake and made her come down to sleep on the berth in the cabin. She almost stumbled on the steps, and he felt a shock at the thinness of her arm when he tried to steady her. Lying on the berth, breathing softly, she looked so small and weak that a surge of pity filled him.

  She had endured too many hard knocks. When his father left them. When the trust fund ran out and they lost the house. When she got the notice that her Mission job was terminated. So much more now, since the black sun stopped the ship. He stood with a lump in his throat, wishing he had done more to help her, till he felt the spider lurch and jolt.