Not in Solitude [Revised Edition]

by Kenneth F. Gantz

  “It drops off at night,” Dane said. “Way down.”

  “You mean it did last night,” Cragg corrected him. “At 1800 tonight we still had as many penetrations as we had at the peak yesterday.”

  “Just the same,” Dane said, “we have plenty of time to get out to Dr. Pembroke and back before it gets up to a peak tomorrow.”

  “Knock it off.” Cragg made it an order. “I’m not taking any chance on daylight hours tomorrow. That’s final. This radiation comes through the cosmic-ray shield like cheese. What chance do you think a man outside has got? I’m sorry about Pembroke, but I’m not going to risk the whole expedition for four men. If we get an increase in radiation tomorrow like the one today, we could all be sick to death by tomorrow night. Then Expedition Mars vanishes into space and they never hear of it again.”

  “A party could make it out and back by noon tomorrow. It’s not over ten miles to go. Twenty altogether at the most.”

  Cragg reached for one of his stogies.

  “We’ve got to take a chance,” Dane insisted. “I’m sure Dr. Pembroke’s still alive and in serious danger.”

  “Pembroke is in danger!” Cragg exploded. “What do you think this whole expedition is in? Where do you think we are? On a picnic in Central Park? We are all in serious danger. And with the radio dead between us and Earth ever since we landed. We take off for home at 0600 tomorrow morning.”

  Dane pounded a fist down on the table. “Colonel, will you be kind enough just to listen for one moment!”

  Cragg sat ramrod straight. “So now we have the hardboiled newspaperman! Power of the press and all that! How old are you, Dane? Never mind,” he went on. “About thirty. I’m forty-nine. I’ve had time enough, maybe you haven’t, to learn some things are more important than a man. One man, hell. We’ve got millions of men. Probably a few thousand as useful and important as even your Dr. Pembroke.” His voice grated harshly. “One thing that’s more important is this spacecraft and what it stands for. Even if getting off safe doesn’t make as good a story for your papers as a wild eyed rescue party charging out in the night.”

  Dane felt the rage to smash the arrogant scarred face. “I am not affronting your eagles, Colonel,” he managed to say reasonably. “After all I’m only a civilian, but I have a duty too. To my friend. The least you can do is listen to me.”

  Cragg shrugged. “Okay. But your five minutes is already up.”

  Dane smoothed out his chart. He ran a pencil along the line from the spacecraft to the boundary of the lichen beds. “At 1800 hours yesterday Dr. Pembroke radioed from here that he was about to enter the lichens. Now we prolong the line of his course another thirty-five hundred yards inside them and we are at the exact center of last night’s spark fires, if we plot them by their intensity. But the night after we landed, the spark fires were irregularly distributed all along the lichen beds, as far as our equipment could record them. We recorded no concentrations like the ones I plotted last night and tonight. The first night we observed only a few of the big bolts. Last night I pointed out to you that the spark fires were more intense in the zone where Dr. Pembroke went into the lichen beds. Several extremely large bolts were recorded in that region, an obvious concentration.”

  “How about you coming to the point?”

  At least he was listening. “The concentrations of spark fire are a lot more localized tonight,” Dane went on, refusing to be hurried. “What is significant is that one of the major centers has moved four thousand yards deeper into the lichens, and it has moved exactly along a line prolonged from the course Dr. Pembroke took from the spacecraft to the edge of the lichens. I say it means that he has moved today himself. If he moved today, he was alive today. Radiation or no radiation, he’s alive out there tonight. Whether he signaled us or not.”

  Cragg was staring at the chart. “What’s this?” he demanded.

  Dane followed the thick finger over a number of plottings fanning in from a broad arc.

  “There are lots of concentrations. The significant one is the one I pointed out. It shows the obvious reaction of the spark fires to Dr. Pembroke’s presence.”

  Cragg positioned a ruler on the chart to bisect the fan. He drew a pencil along the edge. The line ran like a handle for the fan, straight through the X-mark that plotted the spacecraft on the arid plain. “What about that?”

  Dane said, “I hadn’t checked that concentration particularly.”

  Cragg scowled. “It’s your business to check it.” He jabbed at the intercom. “This is Colonel Cragg. I want Major Noel. In my office.”

  “Look,” Dane said, “we’re wasting time. The main thing this chart shows is that Dr. Pembroke is alive and that for some reason the fires are reacting violently to his presence in the lichen beds. I propose to organize some men and start out at once to find him.”

  “Maybe you ought to remember this,” Cragg said crisply. “You have other duties than news reporting for Amalgamated Press and giving general advice. You are also supposed to be a physicist.” He gazed briefly at the door. “I’m going to be very busy. You will return to your post. Please attend to it and leave the command of the Far Venture to me.”

  He pushed the panel release. Major Noel’s dark, compressed face came into the opening.

  Cragg said, “Noel, I want to move up take-off to 2200. Can you make it?”

  “Tonight, sir?” Noel’s eyes flicked at Dane. “Has the Colonel heard from Dr. Pembroke?”

  “No,” Cragg told him shortly. “Nor likely to. You didn’t answer my question.”

  Noel stepped farther inside. He hesitated.

  “Well?”

  “If the Colonel orders, the spacecraft can take off at 2200.”

  “Wait just one minute,” Dane demanded. “If Major Noel will excuse me, I have something else you ought to know before you make your final decision.”

  Cragg started to refuse. Finally he said, “Stand by on the intercom, Noel.”

  Dane waited until the door completely closed. “I think you’ve had some previous experience with our Amalgamated’s Mr. Ames. I guess you know he’s still managing editor.”

  Cragg shot him a quick look. “Congratulations.”

  “He has a way with what he calls a ‘controversial theme,’ meaning something somebody doesn’t like to hear about himself but a lot of people like to read about. The way he jumped on your appointment to command Expedition Mars, for example.”

  Cragg swore briefly. “Not to speak of your own mudslinging once upon a time. I haven’t forgotten that either. I suppose you think it wasn’t Amalgamated pull that got you on this flight?”

  Dane said, “I doubt that anything else would have got me on after you were appointed. But that’s past history. Ames has already committed himself and the biggest wire service in the world against you. What do you think he’ll do with the story about how you marooned Dr. Pembroke a hundred million miles from Earth and left him to certain death—in the face of good evidence that he was still alive? He’ll make a real story out of that no matter what you say. You can depend on that. It’ll take care of what you’ve got left of your hero’s halo.”

  He thought Cragg was going to hit him. The man was half out of his chair before he controlled himself. “Between you and me I’m not saying I think you’re physically afraid. That’s what Ames is going to say back on Earth. I’m not even sure what you want out of this trip. Reputation and a general’s star maybe. I do think your vanity means more than your life to you. So I’m going to put you over this barrel. You can take your choice between the danger here that you might not get the Far Venture back to Earth and the certain loss of your reputation when you do get back—if you don’t give a search party a chance to go after Dr. Pembroke.”

  Cragg smashed the straightedge down on the desk. “Look”—his voice deepened—“Dr. Pembroke and his men, I say they’re dead. You’ve got some flimsy evidence they’re not. But I am in command of this spacecraft. That includes responsibility for its safety a
nd the safety of all the crew and passengers. It’s my first duty to get the Far Venture back to Earth. That I’m going to do even if I have to leave half the personnel behind. This business is over your head. Pembroke may be the Director of Science on Expedition Mars. He can be the high priest of the almighty atom, for all I care when it comes to completing our mission. Like I told you, there are millions of men. Quite a few even as valuable as Dr. Pembroke. But this vehicle”—Cragg banged down again—“cost five years’ work and three billion dollars to get it ready. Regardless of science and observations and specimens, regardless of some men’s lives, the Far Venture has to get back to Earth.”

  “And Colonel Cragg is again the great hero. First of the Martian captains. Until Ames gets through with you!”

  “You think that kind of stuff is going to work on me, you’ve got another think coming. Supposing you wait until I finish. I’ve got no way of knowing whether you’re right or wrong about Pembroke, but I don’t intend to close out four men if there’s some chance of saving them.”

  He tossed the straightedge on the scarred table. “You heard what I said about my responsibility. You said noon you could be back. Now let’s see about your guts. I’ll go you one hour better—maybe. Here’s the deal I make you. First, nobody goes but volunteers. You’re personally included as the first volunteer. Second, I wait no longer, regardless, than one hour past noon. If you’re not back by 1300 hours, then I don’t care where you are or how much you signal you’re alive, or what. We take off at 1300 regardless. I will not risk the afternoon radiation peak.”

  Dane heard himself say, “Fair enough.”

  “That’s not all,” Cragg said grimly. “So far it’s been true that both radiation and the spark fires have died down at night and haven’t come back until late in the morning. But we’ve only been here three mornings. Tonight you plotted a spark-fire concentration obviously aimed at the Far Venture. I don’t understand it and neither do you. I know I don’t like it. If either the radiation or any evidence of spark fire picks up intensity in the morning faster than it has been doing, I take off without you. I take off when we register fifteen per cent penetrations, no matter what time it is or where you are.”

  Dane thought that one over. Fifteen hours for twenty miles. Through loose sand and vegetation. Including a search and maybe injured men to get out. Pressure suits.

  He took a deep damn-fool breath. “You have a deal.”

  3

  DANE PUSHED down a clumsy foot. When he felt the ground, he got free and watched the ladder retract. The thick hatch drew up flush with the hull thirty feet overhead.

  He stood solid-footed in a luminescent, wine-red fog. They had already kicked up enough dust to diffuse and obscure the glaring guard lights. Every step of the heavy footgear puffed another explosion up into the dead atmosphere.

  Dane’s spirits sagged. The lurid scene fitted the implausible journey to which he was committed. If he let himself think about it at all, he saw very plainly how right Colonel Cragg had been.

  He moved toward the rim-lit figure of Wertz, a powerful body squatting short in the grotesque pressure suit. At least in Lieutenant McDonald he was fortunate. About the chemist Wertz of large mustache he was less certain. He was assertive and something of a loudmouth, but yet his scientific reputation was solid to back him up. And he had volunteered to come along. Abruptly and definitely he had volunteered, so firmly as to exclude any of the others at once.

  From habit Dane huddled with the two of them, Earth style, in the thin nitrogenous atmosphere while they ran through their final suit, instrument, and communications check.

  When McDonald gave the word to move out, it was 2120. Fifty minutes of their time had already ticked off.

  The course was 39 degrees east of the planet’s magnetic pole, along the direct path across the northern reach of Isidis Regio that Dr. Pembroke had taken to the green-dark vegetation of Syrtis Major. Five miles of dust to the lichen beds.

  McDonald looped the tow cord of the specimen cart over his shoulder. As soon as they left the bright narrow zone, the Martian night plunged over them. At last light the sky had been free from dust clouds and clear, but now only Earth and Jupiter and a handful of stars were picked out above them. The high frost haze was thick. Both moons were down.

  To conserve battery power, they plodded along in the black dark. The air-conditioned pressure suits really worked admirably. But for the constriction of the harness and the swinging gait to accommodate the articulated joints, they were free and easy, like papier-mâché armor. Dane estimated the pace at two miles per hour.

  Not much sounded off in the earphones. A half-hearted joke about sardines out for a stroll without taking off their cans. A guess about how far they had come, with a glance back at the beacon light on top of the spacecraft. Then they settled down to the work of locomotion. After an hour Phoebus rose in the west, a hazy blotch of light.

  McDonald was signaling the spacecraft of the liaison frequency. “McDonald to Baker Home,” he called in the traditional jargon. They were two hours out.

  A crisp reply came at once.

  “How do you read me now?” McDonald queried.

  “Strong and clear.”

  “Roger. What is our location?”

  It took them a couple of minutes to plot. “You are one-zero-five yards right of course. You are approximately one-one-zero-zero yards from the intersection of course with the lichen forest. Your course to the intersection of original course and lichen forest is now three-three degrees, three-two minutes. Repeat: change course to three-three degrees, three-two minutes. Do you read? Over.”

  McDonald repeated the message and went out.

  Wertz came in on the intercom frequency. “Did you hear that slide-rule jockey?”

  McDonald said, “Yeah. That was Major Noel himself. It’s a wonder he didn’t give us the odd seconds. Be mighty handy. Especially with a wristwatch compass. I can hardly even see mine through this fishbowl.”

  “Nothing can stop the United States Air Force,” Wertz said. “Precise. Daring. Glamorous.”

  McDonald said, “I hope nothing stops us from getting us back. I don’t want to think of that take-off tomorrow.”

  “In front of civilians, Lieutenant?”

  Under their talk Dane heard the ground bass of apprehension. The interchange quickly sputtered out and they plodded along again in silence, each so wrapped in his solitude that they came against it unaware, blundering against it in the dark with nerves jarred by a clutching around their legs before they could get their lights switched on.

  The white beams danced over a thicket of waist-high plants. Dane poured his light on the things before him, “God!” he murmured, awed that John Dane, born into the clean, practical little town of New Braunfels, Texas, had come over the horizon of space to stand on another world, face to face with an alien something that lived.

  They rose countless out of the soil ahead. The individual specimens looked like the spiky little cactus trees popular in a Texas florist’s souvenir pots, except that these were three to four feet tall and the crisscrossing, rod-shaped branches were fibrous. They wove themselves closely into dense clumps, but they yielded readily to the pressure of wading against them.

  “Looks like a big weed patch,” McDonald said.

  “Funny-looking weeds,” Wertz said. “They look more like giant crystal lattice.”

  McDonald said, “We’d better get going. We’ve got to be back by 1300. Colonel Cragg meant that. It’s be back or else. I’ll get a fix.”

  They were sixty yards to the right of the point of Dr. Pembroke’s entry. The vegetation zone met the red plain so sharply that its edge might have been laid off with a giant ruler.

  McDonald said, “Dr. Pembroke couldn’t pull his carts through this stuff. It’s too thick. I don’t see why we haven’t spotted them. With these lights. We can see a hundred yards.”

  “Maybe he pulled them in a little way,” Wertz said.

  “Then the
y’d be hard to find when he came out, if he didn’t backtrack his trail exactly.”

  They paced off the sixty yards, but no carts appeared. They penetrated the lichen zone ten yards and turned to look. A broad swath of depressed plants lay behind them.

  “Four men couldn’t come through without leaving a sign,” Wertz said. “Even if it’s elastic enough to spring back, they’d be bound to break a lot of it. I say they didn’t come in here.”

  “Okay,” Dane said, “but we’re exactly on Dr. Pembroke’s course, as nearly as instruments can tell. We could be off several feet, though, and we wouldn’t see a few broken plants. Let’s go on in at 39 degrees. Maybe we’ll pick up their trail.”

  The spacecraft beacon was bright and friendly. A link with air and warmth and Earth. They lined up a bearing on it and ranged out in a front. Dane took the point. The others flanked him at fifty feet. With their lights playing about them, they pushed ahead into the lichens.

  The ground lay flat, but the matted plants cut the advance to a crawl. It didn’t help much to go around the denser clumps or zigzag for the small bare places that they encountered every few yards, as in open jungle.

  “I don’t see how the spark fires come from this kind of stuff,” McDonald said.

  Dane shook off the feeling of isolation. He was glad for someone to say something. “In the first place that’s only the most apparent explanation,” he told him. “That’s just the one you would think of first, plus the fact that you don’t see them anywhere except above the lichens. It’s just a good guess that somehow the sunlight causes them to generate and store up static electricity until it discharges under pressure, like sheet lightning on Earth. After dark the charges don’t build up any more, so they exhaust themselves. In a couple of hours the display is over.”

  “Personally I’m thinking about the radiation,” Wertz said. “That’s not static electricity. Not by a long shot. If it builds up high by noon tomorrow, the insulation in these suits won’t do us much good.”