Nomad nodded gloomily, turning to the panel controlling the low-powered ionic jets. He really couldn't understand why he had the feeling of an approaching disaster…
* * *
He was awoken by music.
It was hardly believable. Andrei's mind was still overtaken by traumatic memories, but through the continuous spinning of stars and frenzied flashes of vacuum guns, he was perceiving some other reality: a muffled music, quiet voices and the nauseating odor of antiseptic.
He half-opened his eyes.
Semi-darkness. The odor of disinfectant became more pungent. A dim light was penetrating a polarized wall.
Two vaguely delineated shadows were moving behind the wall.
Abrupt movement. A man's silhouette stopped dead in a strained pose. He raised a long rod that he was holding in his hand. Almost simultaneously, Andrei heard a sharp snap resembling the impact of two ivory balls, then a soft deadened strike and a high-pitched buzzer.
Andrei sat up. The piece of fabric covering him slid down. All this had to be an illusion. His mind suggested an obvious explanation: he had died and his body was drifting in the eternal cold of space, but his dying brain had woven for him this strange, illusory world. These shadows…
The floor was cool. He staggered across the room and opened the door a little.
There was a strong smell of cigarette smoke.
A bright light made him squeeze his eyes shut. When he reopened them, it became quite clear to him that he either had gone mad or had indeed died.
An ordinary billiard-table covered with green cloth was placed in the middle of an octagonal room. At the far-off end of the table, leaning on a cue, stood a speaking likeness of an old space dog from a child's dreams: gray drooping moustache, hair cut close to evenly bronzed skin, and a leather vest concealing the man's bulging muscles.
"Well, to be sure... Watch your step, man," someone chuckled behind Andrei's back.
A thousand ideas whirled through Andrei's mind. 'These men were not ghosts.
They were real!
He'd been rescued!'
He felt cold. It all made sense. Lowering his eyes and realizing he was stark naked, he burst out laughing, hoarsely and light-heartedly. Leaning against a plastic doorway, he sank to the floor, suddenly weak and shaking with sobs.
For some moments they looked at Andrei, dumbfounded. Nomad smiled slightly, then chuckled, joined by Ernie.
"You're too much, guys," he groaned, suppressing laughter, while getting a brand-new flight uniform out. "Here, take it." He held out the package to Andrei and waved his hand in the direction of the other door. "The shower's over there, at the end of the corridor. Sure you can find it?"
Andrei nodded.
"Go ahead, then. We'll strike up an acquaintance at dinner."
* * *
A running robot dexterously moved in the dark warped corridors of the dead spaceships. It was simple and functional. The electronic memory of the machine contained a sole task: to seek out an undamaged jet engine of a given configuration, dismount it and report the fact to the crew.
So far, the search had been unsuccessful. The robot wasn't interested in anything happening around, and even the only video camera attached to its spiderlike body was turned off. And that was a mistake. Its motion was noticed by something hidden inside the sinister gloom of halls and passages, in gaps between spacecraft, on landing decks crumpled by nuclear strikes; its appearance awoke some activity.
Thousands of battle machines had waited in the cold and stillness of the vacuum for their zero hour. The LEDs under the "activation" inscriptions on their control panels had been gleaming red for many months. They were ready to start fighting when the tremendous explosion of the annihilated planet liquidated both space fleets, reducing the powerful interstellar spaceships to scrap. But most battle machines had remained functional.
They had lost their commanders. Since the moment of their activation no instructions had been received from the base spacecraft' computing centers. But every robot was controlled by an autonomous program started automatically after a definite period of time.
The machines were too expensive and sophisticated for people to allow them to stay idle. A huge experience of wars had been used when programming the robots. A risk of loss of the officers or even of the whole sub-unit operating this or that battle machine had been foreseen. Then the autonomous program was run. Its functioning was based on the recognition of the "friend-foe" signal. All objects not signaling "friend" were automatically registered as targets. After that, priorities were determined, depending on the level of their activity. Finally, a standard warning and an offer to surrender were transmitted.
In case the "friend" signal was not detected after those steps, or the activity of the object didn't become nullified — a phase of active operations was actuated, and the battle machine started to fulfill its main function: the destruction of the enemy fighting equipment and men.
This phase could be suspended or interrupted in the following three cases:
After destruction of all targets.
Upon receiving an order from the command post to stop military operations.
After having spent the total of ammunition load and energy resources.
It goes without saying that those who had designed the battle machines had not foreseen such an improbable coincidence of circumstances when all command centers of the belligerents would be entirely destroyed. Thousands of activated battle machines and their quite functional autonomous programs waited for their hour to come.
Any target could serve as the first little stone to provoke an avalanche.
The running robot was that little stone.
* * *
Andrei was in a very bad mood
He had scanned the entire memory of the onboard computer but found nothing similar to the orbital fortress. Neither wreck matched the profile he'd entered in the computer's memory. Consequently, his father was alive. It was the orbital station that had the weapon on board which had destroyed the planet.
At that particular moment Andrei didn't care about the fact that an annihilation installation did exist. All that has been predicted and based on theory was sooner or later implemented. The colonists had created the new weapon and used it at the critical moment of the battle to annihilate the fleet of Earth.
Correction: hundreds of battered colonist's spacecraft then fighting in space had been sacrificed to win the Pyrrhic victory.
Thousands of desperately combating soldiers had been swept away into a nuclear vortex by the decision of a few men among whom was his father. Perhaps Andrei could find enough moral force inside himself to justify that act — if the superior officers had shared a common fate to avoid their planets being bombarded, or if they had at least sent some rescue spaceships here. Nothing of the kind: they'd struck a blow and cleared out through a wormhole saving their skins; they didn't send any spaceships here, as they were afraid of ruining their reputation.
"Dad... How could you do such a thing? How can you now breathe, live, look in mom's eyes? You remember saying to me: 'Son, it's time for you to become a man.' I did become one — what about you? You exposed me, wrote me off as a percentage of losses, while you yourself are alive. What for? How can you defend yourself now, and how will you do so once I return?"
There was only one thing Andrei wanted at the moment: to return and find out that the orbital station had evaporated in the flame of total nuclear decay without any fragment left or, at least, that his father had done what he ought to have done, going on to glory after the pointless Pyrrhic victory.
* * *
Andrei didn't know that none of that was destined to come true.
Having fulfilled its task, the running robot busily radioed that the right jet had been located , but, along its trajectory through the spheroidal agglomeration of wrecks, in the dark interior of battle decks several infrared floodlights had already lit up, and some battle machines followed the spider-like robot.
/> After fifty minutes by the local system timer, a group of machines of the Earth Alliance pursuing the running robot got onto the battle deck of the colonists' cruiser where dozens of weapons at the service of the Free Colonies waited for their hour to come, in a deceptive numbness.
Dante had no idea that it was the oncoming of Inferno.
* * *
Never in his life had Nomad felt his vulnerability so keenly. The jets of his spaceship had been dismounted, and for the first time in many years it was unable to start up directly after an order given by its master.
Hugo's comments on the fact that the ten hours necessary for the delivery and mounting of the new propulsion systems were not a serious delay didn't reassure Nomad much. He was afraid of this place and didn't even try to hide his fear. All around them had become impregnated with suffering and death. Thousands of corpses were floating in the dark corridors and compartments of disabled spacecraft.
Nomad rose from the control panel, casting an angry glance at the straight row of monitors. Everything was prepared for receiving the propulsion system, it only remained to wait, and that was the most painful. Three hours ago Hugo, attended by a group of robots, had disappeared into the bowels of the spheroid.
Annoyed, he lit a cigarette and went out into the central saloon.
Andrei was in an agony of suspense, sitting by the transparent shell of a reanimation chamber that Hugo had arranged for the two-year-old baby. The boy was sleeping with his arms stretched out in a funny way, and his snuffle made the plain and functional space of the compartment more cozy.
Nomad stood still in the doorway. Andrei's hunched figure was sharply dissonant to the kid's placid features, as if there were an invisible partition between them.
He sighed and went to the bar.
"Want a drink?"
Hearing no answer, he filled two glasses and offered one to Andrei.
He took it, indifferently looking down.
"What are you thinking about, soldier?" Nomad asked, trying to dispel the oppressive silence; at the same moment, he regretted his having been ironic. Such a furious madness flared in the young guy's eyes that a cold shiver ran down his spine.
"None of us will survive," Andrei managed.
He was eager to live, but he knew better than anyone that the flame of war had spread over the sliver of space explored by men. Neither he nor anybody else could stop the frenzied dance of death. The avalanche of galactic war would sweep away mankind, sparing only a few men like himself, aged prematurely, seared by battles and perceiving too late the crux of the matter.
"I've never wanted to live so badly," he breathed out.
Nomad was going to object, but stopped short. He realized that he didn't have the right words.
"Stay with us," he said at last. "I understand, you wouldn't like to go to your death again."
Andrei raised his head. "Thanks," bitterness sounded in the word. He drank his glass in one draught and, lighting a cigarette, leaned back in his seat so that the smoke couldn't reach the cradle.
"We're too selfish," he said suddenly, as though expanding on the idea. "We're like a plague. And only having got into a mess, we begin to struggle, comprehending some ancient values discovered thousands of years before us."
Quite unexpectedly, Nomad became angry. "You, philosopher, here you are going a bit too far. Don't forget that you defended your planets. And if you don't believe me, have a look at this baby here. I saw his parents. They had been shot at close range. Pacifism is only good to a certain degree, you know."
Their spaceship shuddered with an impact.
The intensive care chamber gave a lurch. Nomad was knocked down, his curses drowned out by the cry of the awakened child. The deck underfoot was vibrating.
"Spacesuits!" he commanded, jumping to his feet. There was no need to repeat the command. Andrei was the right man for such a situation. The spaceship shuddered again. A siren howled.
When he ran back into the chamber fetching three maximum protection spacesuits, Nomad was out. The baby kept wailing in his cradle. Andrei snatched the cylinder of a personal first aid kit and gave the child an injection of soporific, then began to suit up. While he was busy with the clasps, the child convulsively sobbed one last time and quieted down, sinking to the bottom of the intensive care capsule.
Andrei carefully picked up the little body and put it into another spacesuit. Turning on the self-feeding oxygen, a thermocouple and a pressure transducer, he made sure that everything was functioning properly and only then sealed the suit shut. The spacesuit became slightly inflated. A pale blue indicator blinked on the forearm, signaling the suit's proper functioning.
All over the ship, alarm sirens were now howling.
"Nomad, what's going on around you?" Andrei asked, turning on his communicator.
"Can't understand. There're some flashing lights reflected from the armor of the neighboring ships. Hugo doesn't respond. The radar shows six objects approaching. Shit! They have readings of planetary tanks!"
Andrei began shaking uncontrollably.
Closing the visor of his pressure helmet, he attached the spacesuit with the baby to the chest of his own, taped up its empty sleeves and rushed out of the room.
He was halfway to the chartroom when the ship shuddered again.
Andrei dropped to his back so as not to hurt the child. He felt rather than heard the wailing of the escaping air. The opposite wall began to recede, the floor coming apart at the seams. A lonely star twinkled in the gap.
The old tub of the freelance dealers was cut into two by a laser ray.
Weightlessness came. The artificial gravitation generators had conked out. Repelling himself from the floor, he flew the last several feet and squeezed himself into the half-open door of the chart room.
Nomad's body was floating in a vacuum, surrounded by a halo of scarlet drops. Some impulse rifles had fallen out of the stack and were circling him slowly.
Fury, powerlessness and incomprehension overwhelmed him. His muscles acted on their own accord. He seized a rifle drifting past, floated back into the corridor and started gliding along the wall in the direction of the airlock.
Nomad died of an instant decompression. His lungs had simply burst.
Andrei dove into blackness and turned on his transmitter. "Hugo, where are you?"
"Ah, dammit..." his words could hardly be heard because of interference. "I’m here, by the ship. We are being attacked by battle machines!"
"Get away!" he shouted into the communicator, instantly realizing what was happening. "Keep under cover and don't move. Switch off all suit systems except oxygen supply and heating! The child's with me, I'll find you!"
Silence.
Then something wheezed in the communicator, and a heart-rending cry burst upon his ears.
He emerged from the airlock into the gloom illuminated by flashes of lasers. A combat in the void of a vacuum was in full swing. Six battle machines were fighting to the death, slashing one another with laser rays, and amid this chaos, one could see a broken jet floating and a decapitated body quite close to it.
Andrei was by himself again.
He rushed to the nearest rupture hole and disappeared within the interior of the battered spaceship. Turning round in a narrow deformed corridor, he brushed a bulkhead and felt the helpless lump stir inside the other spacesuit.
There were two of them.
And they were doomed.
PART TWO
THE SPHEROID
4.
Gloom reigned in front of him.
Simeon rose on his elbows and looked around from the top of a heap of crumpled girders. The pale beam of his lantern snatched from the darkness gray armor plates of a listed deck of a spaceship. The boy glanced over them, noticing that some debris of facing plastic remained here and there, a few propulsion systems disabled by an explosion, then riveted his eyes on a piece of starry abyss which was clearly seen through an ugly rupture hole in the side.
Durin
g some minutes' observation no shadow obscured the stars, and he decided that it was possible to move onward.
Abandoning his shelter, Simeon covered in a graceful jump the several feet to the rupture hole, perched at its edge and cautiously looked out.
He became blind for some seconds: the reddish light of a nebula pulsing in the gloom of space was reflected from a metallic plain becoming just bearable for his eyes. He strained, trying to become invisible against the gray background of the armor — at such moments the boy was always helpless because of the jammed light filters of his old pressure helmet. To repair them had proved to be beyond his powers.
Finally Simeon's eyes became adapted to the bright scintillation, and he started recognizing familiar outlines.
It was a sinister, pitiful and, at the same time, bewitching sight. The huge spheroid on the surface of which he was moving shone in the red light of the nebula like a multi-faceted crystal made of hundreds of disabled spacecraft. Simeon didn't understand that, in fact, it was an agglomeration of trash brought together by the force of gravity. The rupture holes in the ship hulls made you imagine they were gnashing their teeth, exposing the frameworks of mutilated mechanisms or a fragile web of broken antennas.
Eternal monument to man's madness.
Very long ago two space fleets had engaged in a frenzied battle here, and the annihilated planet still dying as a curling, bloody nebula, had been a silent witness and one of many victims of that barbarous and insane combat.
Father told him that there had been no winners in that battle, but Simeon couldn't grasp the sense of the words.
Time passed, and the separate debris of spacecraft, obeying the law of gravity, began to agglomerate. The ones that possessed a great kinetic energy left the destroyed planetoid's system forever or became distant satellites of the blood-red nebula, but the greater part of battered spacecraft eventually formed a ball of irregular shape measuring about one hundred miles in diameter.
The Island of Hope Page 4