by Brian Ball
“They’re shooting!” yelled Ethel. A spent ball hummed nearby. Another plumped into the gondola.
“Oh, no, sir!”
“Best guess?”
“About the meteorite?”
“Just that,” said Spingarn. “To an automaton of your accomplishments, an insightful guess should be easy.”
And, thought Spingarn, you might come up with an answer to the other score of questions that I could ask. About two score of balloons silently drifting into the grotesque scene; about twin moons that kicked over the traces and spun dizzily to herald a change in the physical structure of the Frames; about a dying man who could give up the ghost with a grin at the thought of me, gutted; about giants who knew in their massive bones that whoever decided the fate of the Frames had given the wheel of existence a turn. About all those things. But most of all about the meteorite, because its grim shape had meaning.
“Ah, sir,” said the robot, carefully picking up the spent bullet and letting it drop into the desert below, “well, sir.” Horace stopped and patted the meteorite. “Yes, I think I can tell you now.” It seemed to be scanning its memory banks and interpreting a particularly difficult rule. “It’s a message, sir.”
Hawk interrupted:
“Captain, if we don’t do something, the buggers will have us! Give fire, Spingarn, sir! Stand to your weapon, Froggie! And you, miss, do but throw some more coals on the fire or we’re all taken!”
Already the hot stove had lost its redness; the smoke that issued from the black vent was thin and dull; the canopy under which they rocked was losing its swollen rotundity, and the thryoid giants redoubled their efforts to shoot from long range with their cumbersome fusils. In two or three gondolas, they had even begun to use wide sweeps to give a further impetus to their craft. Spingarn took in this new development and seized a weapon. At the moment, they had a considerable lead over the giants: they were perhaps the height of a low hill above the swaying and ungainly fleet. Again, they could shoot down at the giants’ balloons while they would receive almost unaimed fire in return; the giants could fire only when a gondola swung to the limit of its pendulum arc, and then it was a risky business, for they could easily puncture the silken canopies of their own ships. But the winds were vagrant and unstable. And the escaping ship was steadily losing its advantage as the hot air cooled.
Ethel deftly followed Hawk’s bawled orders; she flicked a few grains of gunpowder into the heart of the dying fire and it soon burst into fresh life. Spingarn glared at the red-furred robot and thrust a fusil into its hands.
“I don’t think, sir——”
“Fire it!”
“Only at the canopy, sir.”
“Fire away, then!”
Three shots rang out, and the balls from each of the ancient weapons tore through the thin fabric. They could see the gashes in the nearer balloons; then Hawk yelled:
“The nearest again, men! Then make your bullets count twice and thrice! Aim at two of the contraptions and send the monsters back to their Master!”
“Horace?” demanded Spingarn as he reloaded.
“Yes, sir.” They both glanced at Hawk’s massy pedestal. “The Alien, sir. If you could reach it——”
“Fire!” bawled Hawk, and three more loads of bullets tore through and through the fabric.
Already two of the balloons were losing height rapidly, and the howls and screams of the giants told them that some at least of their number had been shot.
“Yes?”
“I received contact from the Alien, sir.”
Spingarn was paralyzed. He had known that there must be some presence on the planet, something inexplicable even in the terms of the utterly sophisticated knowledge of the twenty-ninth century. There was too much that was wrong about the Frames of Talisker for it to be the work of human hands. Alien!
Ever since they had been pitched onto its eerie surface, the planet had stunk of an extra-Galactic agency.
“Ah, for a tube to cast Greek Fire!” lamented Hawk. “That, or a rocket! How they’d burn, the devils!” He was hugely excited, and he was enjoying himself thoroughly for the first time since he had come to the planet. “Give me a Serpentine and a mixture of sulfur vivum and pitch and rosin and we’d explode every last one of ’em! God’s bloody boots, Spingarn, take to your fusil!”
Spingarn felt the discipline of a long-dead war take command of him and mechanically he loaded and discharged the weapon again and again. Alien!
The smoke from the rough gunpowder caused its own form of hell, while the pitching of the gondola was increased by the shock of the multiple discharges. Below them they heard the screams, threats, and groans of the giants as ship after ship began the lazy descent to the desert below.
“Alien!” said Spingarn aloud, as he sighted through a dense black cloud at a splendid pink flower on the side of one ship: “A message?”
“It’s in the meteorite, sir.” The robot hefted the weapon in one hand while it loaded another fusil with two of its extra limbs, extended for the purpose.
“In the meteorite! Then how do we get to it!”
“Yes, sir,” agreed the robot.
It was then that a chance shot ignited the balloon over their heads. Ethel saw it first. Maybe a wad from a tube of gunpowder had been blown back and lodged in the elaborate ropework of the balloon’s equipment; possibly a lucky shot had found a place in an already heated piece of silk. It was possible too that the furnace itself was to blame, for it was roaring merrily in the crisp rosy dawn. There was no question about the effect, however; as Ethel screamed a warning, the whole of the fabric on one side of the balloon suddenly flowered into a fierce gust of flame.
The gondola hung for a second, unsupported but still in a state of equilibrium; the rate of its upward ascent had been such that, to the shocked nerves of Spingarn and the others, the fiery contraption seemed to hover as if undecided whether or not to continue rising. It was only a short relief. The huge meteorite tipped the gondola first to one side and then in a complete revolution.
“Gawd!” groaned Hawk. “ ’Orris!”
The desert was a series of yellow pinwheels to the occupants of the spinning ship.
20
Spingarn’s mind was utterly clear as the gondola dropped.
For the first time since he had been ejected onto the planet he began to sense a plan in the crazed maze of events. It was as though the madly whirling ground below answered a corresponding series of lunatic questions he had not been able to phrase.
As he fell, he noted that the air was hot. He was aware of shattered balloons in the distance. He saw a stark white building which turned end over end every second-and-a-half as the only prominent feature of the desert. He heard Ethel yelling that despite his tail she loved him still, and he wondered briefly why she didn’t take to those incredibly beautiful translucent wings instead of clinging in love and despair to his furry legs. He heard Hawk roaring at Horace. And he heard Horace begin a lucid exposition of the Frame-Shift factors involved. Spingarn was busy with his own startling thoughts.
But he sensed—felt rather than knew—the why of the strange events on Talisker. He was inextricably bound into them.
“Oh, yes!” Spingarn said. The ground spun. “Now I know the why of the Probability Man!”
As he said it, they plunged with a sudden soft violence into the great dreaming canopy of the last remaining inflated balloon.
Their descent ceased and pandemonium broke out. Hawk howled with pain as the meteorite jerked at his torso; Ethel was thrown against the robot; Spingarn found himself shouting in relief that he knew what the Genekey was and why he had to remain on the planet; and, below them, a huge and echoing screaming told them that the giants who had been the crew of the ship had suffered disaster.
And so it was. The force of the gondola’s descent had tipped the balloon to one side; the last two of the fearful band to remain airborne had been cheering at the sight of their enemies’ confusion, they had been
leaning out so that they could look upward. What had happened to them was not difficult to assess.
“They’re done for!” bellowed Hawk. “Goners! Down they go! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”
Ethel launched herself from the top of the desperately unbalanced balloon. “Yes!” she called. “The gondola’s empty—the giants have fallen!”
A last thin howling confirmed the report; it was followed by two closely related dull thumps.
“Not what one would have guessed,” said the robot to Spingarn.
Spingarn knew exactly what he meant; all kinds of unrelated incidents took on fresh meaning.
“No,” he said. “We’ve destroyed the whole fleet. There’s another little bit of the Frame-Shift factor to adjust!”
The robot eyed him with something like awe:
“You’ve guessed, sir! What a sense of the laws of Probability! What a mastery of the functions of Uncertainty! What a privilege it is to——”
“What a fall we’ll have if this balloon tips over,” put in Sergeant Hawk. “Now, monkey, help us down into the craft below—and quickly, or we’ll be through the silk and then we’ll fall like the monsters!”
Ethel returned at that moment. She saw that Spingarn was grinning with something more than triumph:
“Spingarn! You’re on to something—can you work out what we’re doing in these mad, mad Frames?”
“Oh, yes,” said Spingarn. He pointed to the meteorite fused to Hawk. “That’s our next clue.”
The robot paused in its preparations for lifting Hawk and his bizarre appendage into the safety of the gondola below; it smiled in affirmation.
“Brilliant deduction, sir!”
“And you really know what this is all about?” said Ethel, her wings almost still as she took advantage of the rising hot air from the furnace below. “Really, this time, Spingarn?”
“Oh, yes,” said Spingarn. “The Alien has sent us a riddle.”
“Steady!” bawled Hawk. “Steady with me pedestal!”
The robot shimmered with power as it projected an anti-gravity screen. Ethel watched the operation until Hawk was lifted into the gondola.
“Can’t you just lower him to the ground?” she said. “Why use the balloon at all?”
Spingarn, who was hauling himself hand over hand, with occasional assistance from his tail, down the rigging of the vast canopy, answered her almost gaily:
“Now that, Ethel, is what it’s all about. He can’t, can you, Horace? It affects the probabilities—you see, Ethel,” Spingarn panted, “it’s us that the Alien watches.”
They had all accepted the presence of the unknown entity, Spingarn noted. Ethel waited.
“It wants to know what we’d do in a totally random situation.”
“Aye,” said Hawk. “You’d best finish off the meat and drink in my pack. And think where our next meal’s to come from, Captain Devil!”
A gust of wind freed the extra gondola from the balloon, and it resumed its interrupted descent to the ground, scattering glowing coals and showers of equipment. They watched it go, and then Ethel folded her wings and began to stoke the fire. Hawk passed the food.
The balloon rose and the air became chill once more. But for the three humans there was a feeling of relief and peace. The sun was higher, and they were entering a thin haze of mist. The planet lost much of its grimness as they munched through the stale bread and the under-cooked beef. There was watered wine in Hawk’s flask too. The feeling of mutual contentment suffused the whole gondola; it seemed that they floated in a silent world of their own making.
21
“Spingarn, do you know what we’re here for? Really?”
Though they were all tired, they wished to share in the new-found certainty of survival; and Spingarn’s calm acceptance of the bizarre situation had produced a quite new sense of purpose about the reason for their being in the Frames of Talisker. Hawk sucked at his pipe, looking over the side of the balloon from time to time at the odd little blockhouse, which was the only feature in an otherwise empty desert. Ethel composed herself with some elegance among the gondola’s supply of cushions and coverings. Even the robot was relaxed. It was sitting in an orthodox position on the brass rail of the gondola, negligently flexing itself against the empty air.
“Aye, Captain.” Hawk was trying to resolve a personal problem of identification. “We’re not deaders, are we? Missy here just told me that to keep me happy, didn’t she?”
“She did,” said Spingarn. He flicked the whiplike tail cautiously. “Think of it as sorcery, Hawk. It’s a devil’s game right enough, but you’re right. We’re not dead. But we’re in the kingdom of a greater devil than any you could think of!”
“And it’s all about this?” said Hawk, pointing to the meteorite. “Is this part of the devil’s game?”
“It is.”
Hawk shivered. “Aye, lad. Aye.”
“So absorbing,” put in the robot. “I’m fascinated to know when you put things together.”
Spingarn wondered how the robot would react if he told him that it was the end-over-end whirling of the falling gondola that had shaken his brain into the right receptive patterns. Instead he said:
“Let’s start with me.” Hawk was examining his own body, checking that he had the normal complement of organs and limbs now that he realized he was still alive. “I was in one of the normal Frames. A Primitive Frame.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed the robot.
“I was on the run. I couldn’t be caught until I called for Time-Out, and even then I could slide into another Frame so long as there was a replacement for me. I was safe so long as I was a function of the Frames. I’d taken the precaution of writing myself in as an element of all the Frames.”
“What’s that got to do with Talisker?” asked Ethel.
“What I did for all the other Frames, I believe the Alien has done for me here.”
“Marvelous!” breathed the robot. “So sure! So direct!”
They ignored Horace.
“Aye,” said Hawk. “I don’t follow it, Captain, but it looks as though you’re the man of the moment.”
“You always wanted to try out your random experiments,” said Ethel. “I remember you getting excited when you found you could take over this deserted series of Frames! You were like a boy who thinks he can play with armies.”
“I felt I was God,” said Spingarn.
That submerged and almost totally eroded personality seemed to give the ghost of a wry grin deep within Spingarn’s brain; it fled as Spingarn went on:
“It was always me and the Frames. Me, the Frames, and the Alien.” Spingarn turned to Horace. “You’re programmed to pass on the comps’ assessment at various points?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Spingarn—has Horace known all the time that there was an Alien here on the planet!”
“Another Frog?” said Hawk.
“He’s guessed,” agreed Spingarn. “Comps guessed for him. And it’s not the sort of alien you’re thinking of, Sergeant. You see, the Director alone had access to the findings of the forecasters. He told me that I was the one element in the Talisker situation which could begin to right matters—the Director wouldn’t allow more than a hint of the Alien’s part in Talisker to reach me. When the Guardians tried to let me in on the forecast, they were inhibited by their own conditioning.”
“But Horace knew?”
“He was given a Probability circuit,” Spingarn told her. “If I could work my way into a position where I could contact the Alien, he was allowed to help us. I had to change the probabilities, somehow.”
“This!”
Ethel shuddered as she looked at the iron pedestal.
“This thing!”
Spingarn shrugged.
“The giants knew it was a magical thing. It was their fetish—they placed Hawk on it as a grim joke. A kind of double sacrifice to their gods. First they’d use him as an ornament, then they’d rip him apart—and us!—to try to f
oretell the future.”
“And they could tell the future!”
“Certainly!” put in Horace. “And with a high degree of probability too! No doubt, sir, you’d like to know that my conjecture is that the Alien has given them an inbuilt facility for adjusting to Frame-Shifts—they would know when a change was coming. And their victims would be keyed in to Frame changes too. My guess is that there’d be a sympathetic chemical reaction in the entrails——”
“No!” shuddered Ethel.
“Leave it,” said Spingarn. “It’s over, Ethel,” he told her “We know what we want to find.”
“How exquisitely wonderful!” said Horace.
“Well, tell us what it is,” said Hawk. “Be damned if it isn’t all double-Dutch to an old soldier, but tell me anyway. And don’t take on so, miss,” he told Ethel. “Worse happens in war!”
“I do apologize!” Horace said. “I lack the nuances of polite conversation! Ah, sir,” the robot said to Spingarn, “if you knew how I’d studied the proper ways of speech——”
“Forget it,” Spingarn ordered. He could be amused now at the robot’s earnestness. “Clear one thing up, if you can.”
“Anything, sir.” It paused. “That is, if my circuits allow.”
“Comp evaded the Talisker problem—right?”
“Like the plague, sir!”
“Plague, Captain?” said Sergeant Hawk, struggling to catch up with the flood of new information. “Burn it out, sir!”
“We may do that,” said Spingarn. Hawk was not far off the mark. “Why?”
Horace was not anxious to please any more. His voice reflected a bitter dilemma, one that the machines which worked out the destinies of almost the total population of the Galaxy had refused to face. One that they had passed over to Spingarn.
“If Talisker, sir,” said Horace, “if Talisker operates in a random way, the Alien may want to try to increase the scope of the experiment.”