World in Eclipse

by William Dexter

  The expedition was named "Project Adam" by the Grand Council, who thus betrayed something of that artificial wit which sometimes shone out through their otherwise mechanical relations with us. And to continue the parallel of the expedition's title, "Project Eve" was to follow after a given time.

  I must not speak of the Grand Council beyond oblique reference such as I have made here. And indeed, I could say little, even if I were minded, for no human ever saw the Grand Council. Our communication with its members was conducted under a brilliant light, with the Grand Council sitting in complete darkness beyond the edge of the light which illuminated us.

  So much for the official statement I have to make.

  Now I may tell of what happened after our orders had been given to us. We were all three schooled in the handling of the Vulcanid Discs, a course of tuition which took long weary years, for the conception of mechanics to which the Vulcanid mind has applied itself is completely and utterly alien to anything resembling Terrestrial mechanics.

  The tuition involved an exhaustive schooling in Vulcanid mathematics, and the effort to forget the Terrestrial decimal system of calculation and learn an entirely new scheme wherein irregular repetitions of a series of fourteen digits occurred was colossal.

  Even now, we have only a parrot-like knowledge of the system, having assimilated only enough for the purpose of gaining an elementary knowledge of Vulcanid physics. And even the laws of those physics, on the planet Vulcan, vary slightly from time to time, and case to case, from similar laws of Terrestrial physics.

  The introduction of magnetic fields of force into every branch of calculation adds a dimension never introduced into comparable subjects on Earth.

  However, after our years of instruction, we developed a fair knowledge of handling the Vulcanid Discs, although we were never out of radio communication with our tutor Discs at any time. The essential instructions were always transmitted to us automatically at the right moment, otherwise we should have been disintegrated, together with our Discs, within a few seconds of starting to operate the controls.

  I am as certain that humans could never operate the Vulcanid Discs, as they are constructed now, as I am of the fact that a crew of monkeys could never have flown a Terrestrial aircraft of my time.

  Our long course of instruction in these matters was brought to a close shortly before Denis Grafton was brought to Vulcan. After studying him privately for some months (we still retained the old Terrestrial method of calculation of time) I decided that he, as one of the most recent "annexations," should be a member of Project Adam. He was never told of this decision, of course, until the time arrived.

  Some two years after Denis Grafton's arrival among us, I was summoned again before the Grand Council, together with Ludlam and Karim.

  Before us, on our illuminated dais, we saw that a stereo-link had been set up, with its viewing cavity illuminated with the faint violet haze that is projected before the action is switched in.

  Out of the darkness where the Grand Council sat (or stood or reclined — how were we to know?) came a voice — a Vulcanid voice, but with a note of urgency that seldom crept into the habitually mechanical Vulcanid mode of human speech.

  "Leo Arabin!"

  I replied with the customary "I am Leo Arabin."

  The voice called the names of the other two humans, and they replied.

  "You are to watch, and to remember," the voice went on.

  The cavity of the stereo-link suddenly became filled with irregular shapes as the hidden operator in the darkness adjusted the controls. We watched closely, for the use of the stereo-link, coupled as the system is with the thought processes of the Vulcanids themselves, and themselves only, was forbidden to Terrestrials, whether human or non-human. On rare occasions some of us, under Vulcanid supervision, had been allowed to view some short demonstration of Vulcanid activity on the stereo-link, but here was a wider opportunity.

  As the shapes evolved and dissolved, we saw vague nebulous forms, unintelligible to human thought.

  The shapes twisted and writhed, and were in turn tuned out, much as a Terrestrial human might tune in a radio programme and pass through the whistles and tuning notes of a dozen or so carrier waves as he turns the dial.

  Then we saw a familiar shape take form and stand out in the cavity. There could be no mistaking it: the Terrestrial Moon. We saw the craters and "seas" of that side of the Moon with which every human on Earth was once so familiar. Then the Moon started to turn in the cavity, and we knew we were seeing what no human eye had seen before — the remote side of the Moon. What would the revolving globe in the stereo-link cavity show us?

  The image darkened slightly, and then brightened, and we saw the strange landscape of the remote side.

  Around the edges, the familiar crater-landscape showed plainly, and then merged, towards the middle, with a more geometrical formation. Here was obvious evidence of intelligent planning — evidence that had been bidden from humanity for how long? The thought was a frightening one.

  Then the image expanded, and quickly the geometrical centre section grew and grew. A change of focus, repeated again and again, brought into our view a monstrous flattish building with sloping walls.

  The roof was almost hidden by a mass of cables, projections, regular loops like the line drawn by a designing machine, and complicated detail which was completely unintelligible to any of us: Vulcanid construction typical of the aboriginal species of Vulcan's inhabitants.

  Nearer and nearer the image seemed to come, and then the roof gave way to the interior of the structure, and was dimmed out for a few seconds. Not before we had seen, however, that the occupants were indeed aboriginal Vulcanids. I may not speak of the nature of what we saw in that second.

  The image in the cavity then brightened and we saw that yet another stereo-link cavity was before us.

  We were, in fact, seeing in our own cavity what a Vulcanid was seeing in his cavity on the Moon.

  We saw a long-shot of our own Earth, turning slowly in the sunlight — much brighter sunlight than any of us had seen on Vulcan. The image swept towards us, and again shifting focus brought us nearer and nearer to Earth.

  Soon, we were able to see dark patches here and there on the continent of Europe, and the continual shifts of focus slowly resolved them into perceptible things. We were looking at a bright patch of ocean, bordered by land. Still the image grew, until a checker-board of streets filled the cavity. Then the image seemed to wander uncertainly in the cavity, and new views took form there, showing us the sea, buildings on the shore, green fields inland, and dark lines criss-crossing the image.

  Then the operator seemed to make up his mind, and the image settled and grew again until we seemed to hover above a few streets. At that stage it stopped. We struggled with our thoughts to try and tell ourselves what was wrong with the image, and then we knew.

  There was no movement.

  Everything was still.

  The middle of a bright, sunny day on Earth, and nothing moved.

  The image vanished, and another took its place. Again we were above a city — a city with a river running through it.

  Again it swept towards us, and the cavity became filled with towering buildings above which we seemed to skim. We saw a great triangle of structures, with a large dome-capped edifice at the apex.

  The image turned on its axis a little, and we saw the dome a little obliquely, and then I recognised it.

  We were looking at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, and at the great triangle of white buildings that had replaced the bomb-scarred legacy of the 1939 war.

  And again, all was stillness and silence.

  Not a vehicle moved, although there were plenty visible. Nowhere could we see any trace of a human being or even a prowling cat.

  The image blurred again, and another city came into the cavity. A sweep of sea (so close, apparently, that we could see the white-capped waves driving against the shore) gave way to a tangled mass of streets and squ
ares.

  "Inshallah!" murmured Karim, "Iskanderia!" And indeed it was Alexandria, with its long curving Corniche fronting the sea, and its hodge-podge of narrow streets behind the great main thoroughfares.

  Again, save for the regular sweep of the waves in the upper part of the stereo cavity, there was no movement.

  In the dim light around us, I looked at Karim and Ludlam. Karim was sitting with head bent, and in his fingers was a Moslem rosary. On it, he was telling the nine-and-ninety attributes of Allah, the all-knowing, the all-merciful, the generous, the protecting...

  Ludlam watched the cavity silently, his lips moving without speaking. There was a look on his face such as I have seen on that of a child looking in a toy-shop window. What could the image show him of any England he would recognise? His time on earth had preceded great changes which had altered the whole face of his country.

  I touched his arm, and then stood.

  "Councillors!" I called.

  "Leo Arabin!"

  "Will you show us Thomas Ludlam's country?"

  The cavity swirled with shapes as the operator attempted to cover an unfamiliar countryside.

  Then we were looking down on a village, with white walls and thatched roofs. Here and there red brick houses came into view as the focus carried us, at rooftop level, over the scene. But the older houses predominated, and finally we saw a narrow lane leading from a road. On the corner stood a square building with dormer windows, and we were so close that a signboard showed us that this was an inn called the Crosskeys.

  Down the lane a thin thread of water meandered into and out of the image as a stream dodged beneath trees.

  Ludlam nodded and sighed.

  "Aye," he breathed. "That is my Oxted. And the brook still runs there..."

  The brook moved, but that was all the movement there was. And the image showed us city after city, waste after wilderness, with not a trace of human movement. Trees bent in the wind, waves dashed upon the rocks, and here and there fragments of debris blew along deserted streets, but no man or animal moved. The changing image faded out of the cavity, and the violet glow took its place as the lights shining upon us increased their intensity.

  The machine-like voice came again out of the darkness. "You have seen?" "We have seen," I replied.

  "That is as your world is today. Man has crushed himself. It is empty… Are you ready to return?"

  The other two nodded, as I turned to them. There was infinite sadness on the faces of Karim and Ludlam. "We are ready to return."

  "In fourteen days you shall return, then. All will be ready for you then. By that time you will have received your instructions. Have you anything to ask of us?"

  What could a man ask? It did not seem to matter whether we returned or not, whether we started out and failed to reach our world, or whether we stayed as we were. One thing was certain: although none of us had ever held any hope of return, we had lived more or less happily together. Now that we knew we were the only survivors of our kind, life for us, too, seemed at an end.

  It was a stagnant life we had led there on Vulcan, in any case. It could lead nowhere, and now it meant nothing.

  We were ushered out of the Council Chamber and back to our own quarters. Fourteen days lay before us. What then?

  CHAPTER SIX

  I am Denis Grafton, and I resume the record, for those who come after.

  I now learn, from the words of Leo Arabin, that the Return, in which I was to take part, was planned before — long before — I was told of it. Indeed, I am not surprised, and I have no doubt that as this record is unfolded by the different hands that write it I shall learn much more that has been hidden.

  There was no previous warning for any of us who were to make up the first party to return to Earth. I believe that, had our Colony on Vulcan not been so small and compact, the other members of it would never have known when we left, but our absence from among them must have told its own tale.

  Although no Terrestrial human had ever left Vulcan before, the ambition to leave was so strong that it sustained a secret hope among us all that one day we should go back.

  I could tell a long story of our life on the alien planet Hafna, but the main portion of this narrative is concerned with the story of our return, and the other story must wait.

  When the time came for us at last to leave, I was told of it casually, almost. Arabin and Casimir were with me in my quarters, and we had been talking of the Earth we had left behind.

  Arabin suddenly asked me what seemed a needless question. "Are you particularly grieved at the thought of never returning?" he asked.

  This was the sort of question that each of us had always avoided asking of another, for there could only be one answer. I am not a particularly demonstrative type, so I had to consider how I should frame the answer. And then I seemed to understand that the question was not asked for the sake of curiosity, or to gain an answer, but to lead to something else.

  I challenged Arabin about the reason for his asking.

  He looked at the ground for some moments and then drew a deep breath.

  "Grafton," he said, "you're going back."

  I had been on Vulcan for long enough to be completely stunned by this statement. But I could not doubt its truth when he went on.

  "You're going back — with us. The four of us — Karim, you, Thomas Ludlam, and I — are to be guinea pigs. The Vulcanids are sending us to see if they could survive there."

  And then he told me, though not in the fullness of detail with which he has written the previous chapter, something of what we might expect on arrival. We might not even survive the first impact of Terrestrial atmosphere, he explained, for not even the apparently omniscient Vulcanids knew what had caused the desolation on Earth, nor whether some lingering remnants of the catastrophe might not remain to destroy us when we landed.

  I expected him to ask me whether I was willing to go, though there again there could only have been one answer — a positive "yes." But instead of asking, he made it clear that I would go under orders, as he and our other friends were going.

  There was no time for fears or hopes, no time for farewells or last words, for we were to start at once.

  Arabin had timed his approach to me to coincide within minutes of our departure.

  There was nothing, after all, that I needed to do. All our belongings were provided by the Vulcanid hosts, and everything we should require would be already installed in the craft that was to return us.

  Weapons?

  But why should we need weapons? That was our reasoning, and we were satisfied that if weapons were needed they, too, would be provided. We were so completely in the hands of the people — the word comes easier than "creatures" — of Vulcan that we had come to rely upon them for everything. If we wanted anything that they could make or devise, we had but to ask for it and it was ours.

  And so, dressed as we were, carrying only what was in our pockets, we left my rooms for the last time.

  There was no time for reluctance. As when a man goes — or I should say, went — to the dentist's, it was better to go at once. After all, what could harm us any more than we had been harmed already? The strong sense of euphoria resulting from our initial treatment on Vulcan was always with us, even at that moment.

  We embarked in semi-darkness in a great globe that stood in a sort of underground hangar. We could see nothing of the shape or dimensions of our craft, and save that it was constructed of some brilliant metal I could not even now describe it more accurately. But it is not my duty to describe the Spheres of Light; my task is to tell of our return.

  Krill Hvensor and a score or so of Vulcanids, most of them well known to us, were with us. Whether they were to accompany us to Earth itself we did not then know. In the few moments between Arabin's telling me of the exodus, and entering the globe, I was roughly briefed on the course our journey was to take.

  Inside the globe, we were led to a long chamber fitted with thickly cushioned reclining seats. Ther
e was no sign of pilot or crew here, and each of us, Vulcanids and all, strapped himself into a seat.

  Soon the atmosphere in the room — for it was more like a room than a cabin of any description — became warm. Then by noticeable and distressing degrees the temperature rose until the humans there were panting in the almost unbearable heat. Still the temperature rose, and I saw Krill Hvensor, who had been eyeing us closely, drop his arm to a small control panel beside his seat. After some minutes the temperature seemed to stop rising, and we found that we were able to breathe steadily, if still uncomfortably, for a time. For what seemed several hours we reclined there, and we suffered considerably. I have since learned that the great increase in temperature is caused by the Sphere's take-off, but I must say that apart from this we felt no indication of movement, no sudden impetus such as one would expect.