Not in Solitude [Revised Edition]

by Kenneth F. Gantz

  So far the “messages” Dane had been able to exchange had been mathematical, the simple equations of addition and sub-traction. Again most of the new signals appeared to have numerical value. Several of the word-like groups, such as 2 plus 3 equals 5, were obviously the same simple equations now sent simultaneously as one signal to replace the halting succession of single-symbol transmission.

  In certain of the equations now before him the number symbols paired like Earth numerals to make higher numbers. For example, “23 plus 32 equals 55” figured out. Other groups, seemingly the same, made no number sense at all. If they were equations, they did not solve by simple addition or subtraction. Certainly “22 plus 36” did not “equal 61.” Or if 22 was read as 4 and “36” as 9, the answer was certainly not 7, as “61” would then consistently have to be read. To complicate it further, many of the equations were interspersed by the nonmathematical symbols.

  For the first time the messages were not transparently meaningful. After an hour he gave up on both the individual signals and his sorted stacks. If there was a clue, he could not discover it in the familiar comparative process of cryptanalysis. He decided to put the signals back into the order of their reception and copy them off as a continuous message, treating each photo print and its group of symbols as if it were a word. Maybe there was a pattern extending beyond the individual signals.

  As he went along, he inserted vertical pencil strokes to separate the individual signals, like bars in a staff of music. When he had copied the entire set of signals, he borrowed another black chamber technique, going through his copy and setting down his tentative decipherings under the corresponding symbols wherever they appeared. He had written in only less than half when he caught the evidence of a pattern. Triumphantly he filled in the remainder, supplying question marks beneath the unknown symbols. At the head of his sheet of paper he wrote, “Message of 27 July.”

  Before the longer groups began, there were 77 prints, starting with those bearing only one symbol and including those bearing two and three symbols. The pattern of these 77 signals was plain.

  The Martians had taught him their numbering system. No wonder the equations had not solved. Sheepishly he admitted the unlikelihood of the Martians using Earth’s decimal system of counting. The Martians counted by sevens. Not a decimal system. A septuple system. Look at their seventh numeral. Like a seven-tipped lichen plant.

  It fitted! It fitted beautifully! He had to be right about the source of the signals. A hoaxing tap of the equipment, for whatever reason, departed the plausible for fantasy. The simple staring-in-the-face fact was that something was trying to communicate with the spacecraft. Not trying to, actually doing it! How the symbols could be transmitted as complex units so that they could be received on a radar oscilloscope was another matter. Sufficient that they had been transmitted.

  He began to devise a table of the 77 simple signals, writing under each symbol its value in a septuple counting system. After a few boggles, including a bout with the symbol he called the “zigzag dumbbell,” which he tumbled to as “zero,” he had it. Laid out in rows of seven, the 77 number signals themselves revealed the system. The Martian symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 corresponded with the Arabic numerals, but Martian symbol 11 was Arabic 8 and 12 was 9, 13 was 10, and 17 was 14. A peculiarity of the Martian system was that it did not use the null or zero sign in numbers under three digits, nor use the seven sign except in the unit position. Then Martian symbol 21 translated to Arabic 15 and 27 to 21; 31 to 22 and 37 to 28. The Martian triad-symbol 101 gave Arabic 50, and 107 gave 56. The four-symbol 1001 gave 344, and 1007 gave 350. The easily filled-in gaps in the transmitted sequence were themselves evidence of economy of thought. The Martians were good instructors!

  At the head of the table he had laid out, Dane printed, “The Martian Table.” He was now ready for the puzzling equations that began with the seventy-eighth signal. From his number table he easily read “22 plus 36 equals 61” as 16 plus 27 equals 43. Other recalcitrants, like “33 minus 22 equals 11,” correctly yielded 24 minus 16 equals 8.

  The Martian Table also permitted him to derive the formula for computing the higher Martian numbers. If in the decimal system “2343” equals

  2(103)+3(102)+4(10)+3

  then the Martian number “2343” equals

  2(73)+3(72)+4(7)+3=864.

  Bafflers like “33062 plus 15311 equals 51403” were now revealed by a quick computation in powers of 7 as 8276 plus 4271 equals 12,547.

  The fiftieth signal after the Martian Table was a triad: the equal sign twice, followed by the 1. Looking ahead for a new pattern, Dane found that the next 22 prints all bore the equal sign as the second symbol, following an initial nonnumber symbol. He isolated another clue when he observed that only number symbols followed the equal sign on all, and that on consecutive prints the indicated numbers ran from 1 to 11 and then repeated the sequence. When he arranged the 22 prints in two columns of eleven, he saw that he had two identical sequences of nonnumerical “equations.”

  He copied one of the columns on a sheet of paper and down its side filled in the translation of the symbols, except for two remaining unknowns. At the head of the column he wrote for a title, “The Eleven Table.” The eleven equations, or rather statements, were obviously the rudiments of a number code. The symbol for “does not equal” was to be signified by “2” and the plus sign by “4.” The pictogram for Mars was asserted to “equal” the number “7.” “Spacecraft” was “8.” “Man,” or “you,” was “9.”

  The next four prints now became statement of the code, if the equal sign could be accepted as a copula to assert identity: Symbol Mars equals Mars (or “Martians”?) Symbol Mars equals Symbol 7. Seven stands for Mars. The fourth again suggested the use of the number 1 for the equal sign or copula.

  The Martians had begun to teach a number code that would permit reply to their pictograms and ideograms. With the “alphabet” of one to seven radar pulses, “men” could encode the symbols the Martians had power to transmit graphically. The numbers “9-3-7” sent as “7,2-3-7” would say Men are not Martians in a nonmathematical context. The lesson in code was concluded by the next print, which bore symbols that read 8-2-7 stands for spacecraft is not Mars.

  Eleven signals now remained, each of which Dane took to be a sentence. Most contained yet unidentified symbols, and the others were obscure, unless possibly one made up of the symbols for “man” and “equals what.” This one he rendered as What is man?

  He shuffled the remaining prints, scrutinizing them one by one, and hoped for inspiration. He dealt them out in solitaire rows and picked them up and dealt them again. Suddenly he stopped all movement. He was not alone in his locked cell.

  It was like autumn-crisp leaves in a dry woods, a faint, persistent rustling of sere vegetation, a snake crawling over dried leaves on a gully floor. His eyes were drawn up, to whatever was above his head. Instead of the buff metal of the ceiling, a dark mass hung over him.

  Dane stared at the trembling, vegetative look of it with amazement.

  Lichens on the ceiling? Inside the spacecraft? He thought of the lichen peninsula. Was it corroding the hull? He jumped up to reach at the quivering bush.

  Even before his hand flamed, he felt urgent alarm. This thing was deadly. Like sight of the coiled snake, it shocked him into reflex recoil.

  He had barely brushed the stuff, but his hand was fire-burned. He shouted loud alarm. While he sniffed at the stinging odor, a slow liquid drop slipped to the floor. The friendly, familiar compartment was all at once invaded by death.

  He snatched the blanket from the bunk and piled it over his head and shoulders, like a poncho without a head hole. With the same movement he grabbed at the metal stool and flailed the door.

  The acid smell was strong. It dug into his nostrils until he had to stop to sneeze. Any minute the searing stuff would eat through the blanket fabric and attack his bare head. Maybe his heavy pounding was shaking acid out of the plants. Q
uick! he thought.

  When interminably later his door opened outward, his wild effort struck a last blow against air. The stool’s weight jerked him ahead sharply against his ankle chain—tripped him flat, face against the hard deck.

  “Whatthehell’s the matter with you, chum?” a rough voice lashed at him.

  It was First Sergeant Peeney. “It drips acid. Get me out!”

  The sergeant gave a startled look at the ceiling. “Jesus!” he said. The departure of his habitual methodism jarred the ascent to the final syllable.

  With head and shoulders outside across the threshold Dane could afford to look too. The lichens had grown down halfway to the floor along the far wall. He had been lucky in their choice of a wall. Any of the others and they would have been on him where he had stood swinging the stool.

  The sergeant wasted no more time. He charged down the passage with as close to a run as he could urge his square-shouldered bulk in gravity boots. “Gotta get the key to the irons,” he trailed behind him.

  This big man was quick and effective. He was back at once. Without fuss he got the right key in the lock on the first try, and Dane rolled the rest of the way out on the riveted deck of the corridor.

  Major Noel came up on the double, two airmen hurrying behind. He was rigged in bulky asbestos coveralls, a flamethrower tank strapped on his back.

  “Whatinhell happened?” Dane demanded.

  Noel took a quick look inside Dane’s room. “Sergeant,” he barked, “have this man strip and throw his clothes in there.” He fiddled with the nozzle of the flame gun. “Then get back through the bulkhead. All of you.”

  “How about you or somebody telling me whatinhell’s going on!”

  “Hurry it up. It’s bad.”

  Like telling a child to wipe his nose. He tore at the offending coveralls.

  Noel pulled the hood over his face. The nozzle spurted fire. He hosed the searing stream rapidly around the walls and floor of Dane’s room, then poured it full into the main lichen mass overhead. A dense white smoke came backing out into the corridor.

  “Socks and shorts too,” Peeney rumbled. “You heard the major. Let’s get out of here.”

  Bootless, Dane edged along the passage, skating each foot ahead in turn, trying to hurry and keep sliding contact with the deck. They retreated past the first meteor-tight division and dogged its door shut behind them.

  “What about Noel? He breathes too.”

  “He’s got a respirator in his hood,” Peeney said.

  “I’ve got to get some boots and some fatigues,” Dane told him. “I feel goofy enough in this strip-tease costume, let alone feeling as if I’m going to beat my brains out against the roof every step.”

  A clap of steely thunder slapped them. The deck quivered. Peeney looked at Dane with wide eyes. “That was a jolt. That did us some damage.” He grabbed the bulkhead phone and punched the command-post button.

  Yes. It sounded as if it blew half the side out. It was a damnable time to be naked and bootless—muscles unfettered.

  Peeney stood listening. Finally he said “Right” into the mouthpiece and hung up. “There’s been a helluvan explosion on 2-high deck. Dr. Wertz’s lab went up.”

  “What’s the bad news?” Dane tried to swallow the dryness.

  “I gotta tell the major.”

  “Tell him! You think he didn’t hear that bang?”

  “He’s needed, and he ain’t here, is he? I gotta report to give him. And he ain’t going to like it.”

  “What’s the damage?” Dane insisted.

  “We issue a report when the commander says so.” Peeney started lifting the door latches.

  “Hey! You can’t go in there,” Dane yelled at him. “Not without a respirator. It’s full of smoke by now. Maybe gas.” Peeney turned and looked at him. “Now where am I going to get a respirator? You got one in your pocket?”

  “All the same, you’d better get one. Or wait till he comes out. It’s too risky without one.”

  “Deck below,” Peeney said. “We stand here jawing, we could have one up here.” He looked at one of the airmen. “No. I’ll go. I can put my hands right on it. You two get back up to 2-high. Make yourselves useful.”

  Dane started to prowl the adjacent quarters. Old Man Judah’s. Maybe he had an extra pair of boots in his locker. Coveralls, anyway. He wondered why a man felt vulnerable to injury without the negligible protection of a flimsy thickness of cloth.

  Boots? No boots, but two or three sets of coveralls. Geologists work in the dirt, he thought. Maybe better luck on the boots next door. Suddenly he caught up short, thinking out the floor plan. Wertz’s lab? It would be right above his own quarters. The explosion had been right over Noel’s head. Right on top of an overhead deck already eaten out with lichen acids.

  That did it. Noel was finished. He would have come out in a hurry if he had been able. Dane skated out into the passage and wrenched at the bulkhead latches. When he cracked the door, wisps of white smoke seeped in around the edge. Ahead the corridor was blind with fog.

  The door swung open hard, catching him sharply on the forehead. A fire-suited figure stepped over the coaming and closed the opening quickly behind him.

  Noel pulled off his hood. “Where’s Peeney? Where Beloit? How come you’re always underfoot?”

  An airman hurried up the passage. He looked blankly at Noel.

  Noel nodded at Dane. “He let me through right after I called you.”

  Beloit arrived. Then Wertz carrying what looked like a bucket of milk.

  “You okay, sir?”

  “I was outside,” Noel told him. “It knocked me down, and I got up. What’s the damage, Major?” he demanded.

  “The hull is intact, sir.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Yessir. Captain Spear is dead. Sergeant Gonzales is dead. Fritts and Lee got hurt. Not much.”

  Noel shucked his gloves. One at a time he carefully handed them to the airman. Abruptly he exploded, “Spear and Gonzales! Goddamnitohell! Pretty expensive experiment,” he snapped at Wertz.

  Wertz bristled. “I’m sorry about Spear and Gonzales. But the experiment was necessary. That why we came here to find out about things. You and I both.”

  Noel wheeled away. “Bring Dane along,” he said. “I want to talk to him after I come back down.”

  17

  DANE WAITED at the command post. He was still in custody. That had been made clear by Sergeant Peeney, assisted by Airman First Class Merrick.

  Both men ignored him. He was physically present and accounted for, and that, it was made obvious, was the extent of their concern. A flow of orders and requirements from the scene of the explosion on 2-high deck had to be entered in the action log. Dane sat back out of their way and listened to Noel come over the monitor speaker. Report and reply, decision and order, step by step he drove up the tempo of operations. Even over the wires he permeated the spacecraft with a definite presence, attending precisely to detail. It was a capable performance, Dane acknowledged.

  Peeney and Merrick were steadily engaged by their duties, he also admitted, but not so much engaged that they couldn’t have included him in their byplay of remarks upon what was going on. From their manner it was not hard to imagine a heightening of the corps feeling among the crew. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to imagine their traditional, half-contemptuous, half-proud appraisal: “They make the trouble, and we have to settle it. We pick up the pieces.”

  Noel appeared at the thick door of the command post, his dark, squeezed features at last showing the strain of red eyes and slackened mouth. He nodded at Dane. “I want to talk to you.”

  Dane followed him around the passage to the commander’s quarters. “How is the colonel today?” he asked, feeling himself an intruder among Cragg’s vacated gadgets.

  Noel pointed at a chair. “I’ll get to that later.” He sat his small body neatly down at the desk. “I want a complete briefing from you on this idea you have about a microscopic civili
zation here.” There was a tint of contempt to his directness.

  “Lieutenant Yudin must have made his report,” Dane commented.

  Noel picked up Cragg’s straightedge and waved it Cragg-like. “I expect prompt reports from my officers and men. Also from the civilians on board concerning anything related to our mission. I know you know that our biologist hasn’t found any microscopic organisms on this planet, not a single kind, except those we brought along ourselves aboard the spacecraft.”

  Noel’s familiar face was suddenly strange. Dane paused, sensing a taut remoteness about the man that struck him all at once with the born authoritarian, the dedicated man. As a commander Colonel Cragg had been tough and hard; this man would be rigid. Undeviating from whatever line he might draw. With full command on his shoulders this was not the same man.

  “I am. I am well aware of it,” he said finally.

  “So you think the biologist is wrong.”

  “I don’t know. I do know there are keenly intelligent beings here. So far they have remained invisible to us. Either by design, or because they are remote, or because our eyesight doesn’t pick them up. I was just speculating about microscopic beings. This is a large planet. We have explored only a tiny part of it firsthand. Forms of life are confined to certain zones on Earth, why not here? I also have other speculations. You must have some yourself. Have you considered the possibility of intelligent forces? Charges and potentials similar to electrical activations, for example? What about the spark fires? They could be something more than static discharges. Maybe in some way we haven’t imagined they are what we call alive.”