Not in Solitude [Revised Edition]

by Kenneth F. Gantz

  Humphries said, “Jesus!”

  “That’s a point I tried to make with Colonel Cragg,” Dane said. “But if they’re really intelligent, they’re curious. They will want to find out about us. Study us. Like we came to study things here. If they’re intelligent enough to try to communicate with us, very likely they wouldn’t want to destroy us. At least at first. It would be half-intelligent things, like primitive tribes on Earth, that would be dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, ‘at first’?” Yudin demanded.

  “They might decide we are dangerous to them.” When he had said it, the little room contracted to a point of conspicuous light in the black darkness that peered into the ports. The expanse of red dust and drab green lichens was no longer the monotonous scenery of a barren, dead landscape but alive with watchful eyes. A place to be gone from.

  Dane pushed the thought away. “There is one language that’s universal. We’ll try them in mathematics. Let’s see if they can add.”

  He began to send again. He sent one dot, then another dot, and after a pause two dots. He followed with two dots, then two dots, then after a pause, four dots. Finally he sent four dots, four dots, then after the pause eight dots.

  An answer came back at once, an exact repetition of the dots and pauses.

  “E-E I. 1-1 H. H-H. And a string of dots. That doesn’t make sense,” Yudin complained.

  “I wasn’t sending code. Something Martian wouldn’t know code numerals. I’m using one dot for the number one. Not for E. Two dots is for the number two. Four dots is the number four. I sent three equations. One plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four. Four plus four equals eight.” He rested his hand on the switch. “Now we’ll see if they get the idea. Their first signals showed us they could count. Now we’ll see if they can add.”

  He sent, One, one...two. Two, two...four. He waited a few seconds and sent, Three, three...then stopped. “Let’s see if they get the idea and add three and three.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t stand there and talk like a professor lecturing,” Yudin broke out. “You’ve got me believing this thing! Not that it’s possible.”

  “I’m surprised at myself,” Dane told him. “Considering what we have discovered, I don’t see how I can stand still at all. Wait!” he exclaimed suddenly. “We forgot all about it!”

  Yudin jumped. “What!”

  “The camera. We should have been recording——There it goes!”

  “One, one...two,” they counted. “Two, two...four. Three, three...six.”

  “Six!” Humphries shouted. “They added it!”

  He knew then. “They’re there!” he exclaimed. “Whatever they are, they’re there. There’s something alive and intelligent on this planet, and they’re trying to communicate with us.”

  Full realization stabbed him with wild pride of accomplishment. He had done it! For the first time in the history of mankind, a man had established a mental union with a being from another world and had exchanged intelligible information. He had been that man!

  Yudin clutched at his sleeve. “They’re still sending!”

  “Four, one...three,” they counted. “Four, two...two. Four, three...”

  “They’re subtracting!” Dane exulted. “They left the last equation incomplete. Now they’re testing us!” Quickly he sent back the answer, Four, three...one, and got confirmation in reply, Four, three...one.

  “One more test,” Dane told them, “then we send for Colonel Cragg.”

  Yudin was reminded of his duty. “I’ll have to tell him now. He’d better know right away.”

  “Better not use the intercom,” Dane advised. “With the engines dead it might be smart to keep this quiet.”

  Yudin decided to polish his glasses once again. “I had forgotten about the drive. This thing drove it out of my mind. If we’re really getting signals from the Martians, we could be in a helluva fix. We could if they take a notion to be mean.”

  “You thinking ‘be mean’ like Earth people?” Dane was surprised at how he resented the man’s remark. After Yudin left, he called again across the tenuous bond of the radar waves. He tested the unknown signaler in multiplication and division and was exuberant when it sent him like problems in return. Then the winking responses became uncertain. They flashed on a time or two again but made no sense, then ceased.

  Dane sat on the observer’s stool and spun out his dream. His friend, his mind friend, had got the confirmation it wanted. The strange visitors from space were intellectual and rational. They seemed to be friendly. At least they had tried to exchange identification. Perhaps when this good news was digested, the unseen would show themselves. What the morrow might not reveal! Maybe yet tonight. It was unfortunate that the expert in the patterns of languages was lying unconscious in the hospital.

  The rasp of heavy boots on the ladder broke his reverie. He thought of the difficulty of explaining all this to Colonel Cragg. If Dane knew his man, Cragg would call for battle stations.

  When the hinged cover of the manhole pushed up, it was followed by the curly blond head and athletic shoulders of Captain Spear.

  Half emerged, Spear held the cover back and ran his eyes once around the observation deck. “Dane,” he said abruptly, “follow me. You’re wanted.”

  Some more of Cragg’s officiousness. Nobody, particularly the scientists, was going to forget who was boss. Well, it wasn’t Spear’s fault. Dane put his foot on the ladder and swung through the deck, wondering a little at Cragg’s sending an officer as messenger. “Yudin tell you anything more?” he called down to Spear treading just below him. He rather liked the guy, for all his everlasting physical exercises. The American girl’s dream, he thought. And in an Air Force uniform too. That took away the extra ten years, even for the junior misses.

  Spear didn’t say anything, running on down the rungs with the familiarity of an acrobat, or if he did, it wasn’t audible over the noise of his boots. When Dane set foot on main deck and turned around, Major Noel stepped stock in front of him. Behind him on the open deck with Captain Spear, Dane saw Lieutenant Yudin and behind him an airman named Jerves.

  They’re jittery, Dane thought. They know. Yudin must have told them.

  Noel’s arm shot up. Dane felt the hard slash of the palm edge at his neck. Lights showered. Something hard drove into him. Then he realized that he was sitting on the metal deck and that Jerves was holding his arms. He felt a little sick from the neuralgia that streaked down his shoulder. When he cleared a little more, he found that chain-linked steel cuffs bound his wrists.

  “Lock him up,” Major Noel ordered. “And strip him clean of any metal he’s got on him.”

  Dane stared up at him. “What the hell goes on with you!” He tried to make sense out of things, wondering at the hard plates he sat upon.

  When he remembered the blow, he got up on his feet and surged at Noel, fighting against the weight of the two heavy men hanging onto him.

  “I don’t like a damn murderer,” Noel snarled. “Especially when he tries to murder my own commander.”

  Through his hurting temper to beat the man down, Dane saw him dimly. “Colonel Cragg?” he heard himself say thickly. “You mean Colonel Cragg? He dead?” he added ungrammatically.

  “You ought to know, damn you!” Noel shouted. He shoved at Dane’s shoulder. “Get the hell to your bunk. I want to see you tied down and out from underfoot.”

  Dane conquered the urge to strike at him with the chain they had strung between his wrists. “How did I do all this?” he demanded. “Who made you the judge and jury?”

  Noel turned on his heel and began to mount the ladder. Captain Spear and Jerves shoved at Dane, pushing him along the narrow corridor to his bedroom, thrusting him against his bunk while Jerves pulled the gravity boot off his right foot and snapped a leg shackle around the ankle and then around the rod that anchored one corner of the bunk to the deck. Then they took off the wrist irons and locked him behind his own door, doubly bound within the four-foot rad
ius of his chains.

  His weariness was sudden and refused to cope with it, riding even over the indignity of the restraint. He was leg-weary, arm-weary, back-weary, and mind-weary. The hours since he had lain on the bunk stretched behind him into far memory. He counted them vaguely while he got out of his clothes, momentarily wondering what they had expected to find on his person. Since 0600 Wednesday to 1930 Friday. Not counting the long sleep in the lichens and the shorter one on the red sands, it was nearly seventy-two hours. Six dozen hours. He grimaced. Sounded like a crate of eggs. A lot of eggs.

  He put it off, all of it, until tomorrow. Except maybe signals. In two minutes he was asleep.

  11

  LIEUTENANT YUDIN didn’t like to mull over his experience on the observation deck, but he couldn’t dismiss it. Even if he had been tricked.

  It was 2100 hours. Throughout the Far Venture the Air Force crew stood their posts sharply, but under the ordered discipline, Lieutenant Yudin knew, things were in an uproar. The civilians, he observed with a faint distaste, knotted in gossiping all-civilian huddles with even more than their usual gregariousness. Still he would have joined one of their groups that flowed together, then dispersed in favor of a new combination, if it were fitting for him to discuss the casualty, his commander, with them. Though he scarcely knew any of the men, he would not really mind a word or two about the colonel, if he might in turn talk about Dane and find out what they really thought of him and his signals. The civilians were important in their fields, most of them, and he would like to tell them about the phony signals and get their reactions. They were an aloof and casual bunch, though, not concise and mannerly like the military. He felt that they looked upon the crew with supercilious and secret amusement. Civil but always smiling about it.

  After a while he packed his small hand tools with neat order and took them out of his little workroom. He climbed with some difficulty up the ladders to the observation deck. There he stood for a long time, looking at the photo plane table and trying to make up his mind. Finally he laid out his tools and began laboriously to disassemble the apparatus. For an hour he took down tubes, condensers, transistors, and impedances. He traced wiring and hunted for inductive taps. He searched the cabinet, the stand, the surrounding deck, the backboard. He went below to the next deck and painstakingly examined every inch of the ceiling. He found nothing. But somewhere was the source of the interference. It had to be somewhere, but on his own he couldn’t go over the entire spacecraft, crammed with apparatus and each instrument zealously watched by someone or other of the specialists.

  It was a foggy mess. One way or the other he had a duty. If Dane had gulled him, he had done it for a reason. If he could figure it out, it would all tie in with the stalled drive and the attempt to kill Colonel Cragg. If they really were Martian signals, that was a hell of a big thing, too, requiring the full and careful attention of the commander and his staff. He grimaced at the thought of going even to Major Noel with an unsupported story of signals from an uninhabited planet. But it was plain that he had a duty and a responsibility that now ran far beyond his assignment as electronics engineer of the Far Venture.

  He thought of getting them to let him in on Dane for a little quizzing, but then he was unable to think of anything he might get out of him if he did. He went down to the main deck to his own bunk and lay across it, dozing a little, not thinking things out as he had intended to do, until he was brought wide awake by the three long buzzes and the three short of officers call on the intercom speaker. It was immediate assembly.

  He hurried around the circular main deck and climbed up to 1-high deck and the command post. Captain Spear and Major Isbell, the astronavigator, were ahead of him.

  Major Noel looked at him coldly. “Where’s your sidearm, Lieutenant?”

  Yudin was not quick enough to prevent his hand from straying ineptly toward where his shoulder holster should have hung.

  “You are aware that officers and crew are to wear sidearms at all times while the spacecraft is at rest on this planet, aren’t you?” Noel prodded.

  “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, realizing that he had not answered smartly. “I was asleep.” He should not have added the excuse; he knew that, too, as soon as he had uttered it.

  Noel turned from him contemptuously.

  Major Beloit, the engineering officer, came up the ladders with his assistant, Captain Schofield, followed by Lieutenant McDonald and Captain Finerty, the supply officer.

  When the officers had assembled, Noel led off. “Finerty, what did you find?”

  “One’s gone, sir.”

  Noel pursed his lips, nodding as if the reply were laden with profound wisdom. The conceited ass is play-acting, Yudin told himself. Now the airmen get blamed for it again. Why doesn’t he accuse the civilians? They can get at the stores as well as the crew.

  “Pembroke has disappeared from the medical room,” Noel said deliberately, dwelling on each word and waiting for his effect. “Captain Spear and Major Isbell have made a preliminary search of the ship without success. Captain Finerty now reports that a pressure suit is missing. It looks as if Pembroke has slipped outside. On the other hand, maybe he removed the suit and hid it to fool us.” His look sharpened. “I want a thorough search of this entire ship. I want every locker and storage space looked into and all stores and equipment searched through. In other words, if he is aboard, find him. Watch yourselves and caution the crew. He may be dangerous.”

  They all waited to see if he had anything to add. He’s got them, Yudin thought. He not only assumed command as senior officer, he really is the commander.

  Major Beloit spoke up. “He must be off his beam. How about the others?”

  “Still unconscious,” Noel said. “Still in the hospital.”

  “You think maybe...?”

  “I don’t know,” Noel interrupted him. “It’s possible. We don’t know for sure how long he’s been gone. Captain King checked on his condition at 1600. He was there then. Still out, according to King.”

  Yudin looked at the flight surgeon. King was the assertive sort he had no confidence in. Pembroke could easily have fooled him. Chances are he looked in, felt his pulse, and went back to a drink and a nap. Trust a medic to provide for himself.

  “He’s undoubtedly a suspect,” Noel went on. “We don’t know the exact time the attack on Colonel Cragg took place, except that it had to be after 1800. Captain Spear relieved him at the command post at 1800.”

  “He couldn’t get more than a few yards away from the spacecraft without the beacon and the lookout picking him up, Lieutenant McDonald objected. “He must be hiding on board. It’s as light as day when that thing sweeps over you.”

  Yudin thought how Dane had made a point of distracting the airman from the searchlight to witness the signals. The time could have been prearranged and Pembroke could have made it away then. Something was very definitely peculiar about those signals. Maybe a plot to take over the Far Venture. Dane and Pembroke and the civilians. Why? What could they get out of it? Unless they had found something out on the face of the planet. Precious metal? Gold? Diamonds? That could explain why they wanted to delay the return. While they found some more and brought them inside without anybody knowing it. When Colonel Cragg refused to stay, they tried to kill him. Maybe he found out how they had jammed the drive. And why. Yet they couldn’t really want to take over the ship. They had to have the crew to get them back to Earth. They could only have wanted to delay the return. Noel was a fool. An officious little fool. He’d better be careful or he’d have a knife sticking in his own back.

  “Let’s find him first and talk about it later. Alert all crew on the search,” Major Noel ordered. “Let’s go. I want Pembroke in fifteen minutes, or I want to know he’s outside.”

  Yudin hesitated after the others had gone. Major Noel had pulled out the swinging stool and sat at the bank of command instruments, drumming his fingers against the writing desk. He was given to quick, bitter sarcasm, as Yudin well kn
ew. Still, later would be too late. He had better tell him now.

  “Sir, I have a report to make,” he essayed. He told about the signals. He decided he had better work in some detail about his own thorough check for hocus-pocus with the equipment.

  Noel heard him without interruption, waiting perceptibly after he had finished. Then he looked at him as if he were something crawling into sight. “Thanks for the information.” He stressed the last word unpleasantly. “Captain Spear reported Dane’s actions to me the minute he learned about them.” He pointed at the watch on his wrist. “That was shortly after 1830. It is now almost 2300. Promptness is one of the elementary military virtues. How do you think I happened to find Colonel Cragg unconscious? I went to report to him that Dane was active again. Now go on about your duties.”

  The dogmatic fool! Yudin went up the ladders to the observation deck. He ran over his sure knowledge of every item of communications equipment in the whole damned Air Force. Ten years a first lieutenant, yet whom did they tap when they wanted a real specialist for a tough assignment? Like this Mars flight. Men like Noel could bluster commands over an intercom. They got all the promotions, the few there were after Congress slashed the appropriations, but the specialists did the work. Not that Noel wasn’t a technical man himself, but he had convinced the powers that he was also the command type. So he played soldier worse than an Air Academy colonel.

  Dr. Pembroke wasn’t hiding on the observation deck. Who would expect him to be? Where? Under the radar stool? He went down to 3-high deck and peeked into his own parts lockers. Three-high deck in the collision area near the top of the big sphere was principally a ring of food storage bins. Under the secondary meteor shield the bins were individually sealed off by airtight doors for tertiary protection. He plodded methodically out and back the five passages radiating from the central core that held the ladder wells. Most of the lockers were packed tight, a solid mass of cartons flush against the bin doors. Just as certainly Dr. Pembroke was not in any of the others. Yudin called Major Noel and gave his negative report, learning that he was to stand by for the 2400 watch, which would be doubled. Noel wasn’t taking any chances.