by W. J. Stuart
It was a hole. Maybe three feet around and a foot or so deep. But you couldn’t really tell about the depth, because the sand was so soft it was trickling down from the rim. It didn’t strike me as anything to write dispatches about, and I said so.
Jerry said, “Wait,” and pointed ahead. About fifteen feet away was another hole, almost identical.
And they went on like that, a chain of them. For three hundred yards. Almost to the nearest group of rocks. We followed them, not talking. Up to a point about fifty feet from the rocks, then they stopped. There weren’t any more of them. Not anywhere.
They had to be footprints. But what of? And where had what had made them gone to? Or come from?
We were standing by the last one. I looked at Jerry, then at Doc. I said, “The Robot?”
Jerry said, “It doesn’t make tracks that big. Not so deep, and not so far apart.”
Doc said, “And it doesn’t move without sound, either.”
I said, “How do we know it couldn’t be altered?” It wasn’t good, but I was thinking of the power. The welded sheeting ripped up like paper. The steel bars twisted like putty.
Jerry shook his head. “For my credits, it was an Altairian.”
Doc said, “Or the Force.” He wasn’t being funny . . .
IV
I held the Inquiry in the Control Area. The Bosun brought two reliefs up for it. Six men. I hammered away at them, but they’d seen nothing, heard nothing. As first Watch Officer, Jerry had made the rounds twice. The Bosun, subbing for Quinn on second watch, had made three rounds. Neither of them had seen or heard anything either.
So I went into the question of beats, and how the men had been walking them. When we got it unscrambled it turned out there might have been three times—or four at the most—when the rig wasn’t in sight of any sentry and there wasn’t one of them within fifty yards of it. But the maximum time this condition could ever have lasted wasn’t more than a couple of minutes and probably less.
A couple of minutes for whatever-it-was to wreck the rig and cover it up again. And go away with those fifteen-foot strides? Stepping in the same footmarks it came by?
That line wouldn’t even get us anywhere. So I went back to the question of sound. Hadn’t anyone heard anything?
I saw one of the men look as if he was going to speak and then seem to change his mind. One of the Cadet hands, a youngster called Grey. I said, “You were going to say something. Out with it.” He was jittery and didn’t want to talk, but I finally got him going. He hadn’t said anything about what he’d heard to anyone. He’d figured it was “just his imagination.” He’d thought the other guys would think he was off grav.
I said, “For God’s sake, man, what was it you heard?” and he said, “Well—it was like—like something breathing, sir.”
That jolted me; and it seemed to make him more nervous still, just remembering. He said, “Something awful big—” His face was white now. “But—but there wasn’t anything there, sir! There wasn’t anything anyplace!”
That was all. But it was enough to make me call off the Inquiry. I didn’t want the men thinking too much, speculating, so I pretended I didn’t put any stock in his story. I told the Bosun the Inquiry was adjourned, the whole business to be logged as ‘Under Investigation.’ I told the six that went for them too.
They trooped out, and I put in a call for Doc on the communicator. While I was waiting for him, I told Jerry he was in command; I was going to see Morbius. I said, “Take Lonnie off the rig right away. Get him to set up a Standard One defense perimeter. EM fence and all.”
Doc came in then, on the run. I didn’t waste any time briefing him, just took him out to the tractor at the double.
I made the desert part of the trip pretty fast. So fast that Doc was holding on. We couldn’t talk until I’d gotten through the rocks and slowed for the roll down into the valley. It wasn’t quite so hot here and the breeze we were making felt good and cool. I pulled open the neck of my suit and told Doc we were going to try and get something out of Morbius.
“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “He knows more about this business than we do.”
Doc said, “You still thinking it might have been the Robot?” and I said, “How the hell do I know?” I told him about my dream and what Grey had said about hearing that breathing.
He said, “Breathing puts Robby right out of the picture.” I thought he sounded relieved, and for some reason that made me mad. I said, “How do we know it does? Maybe there’s a set of valves he uses sometimes. Maybe he wants an oil job. Maybe any damn thing. And maybe that routine he went through with my gun, and not being able to harm anybody, maybe that was all a lot of ether too!”
But Doc wasn’t buying. He said, “I don’t know, Skipper. Logic seems to be on your side, but I don’t see Morbius the way you do.”
I looked at him. He was frowning, chewing at his lip. I said, “So we’re back on the roundabout. You think it was an Altairian, but you don’t believe in Altairians. So that leaves you with this sonofabitching ‘Force.’ Okay?”
And that lasted us through the grove and around to the house-front. Morbius wasn’t on the patio waiting for us this time. No one was on the patio. Not even the Robot. It was very hot again, and very quiet. The big door was standing open, but there wasn’t a sign of anyone inside. And the sled wasn’t anywhere around.
I pulled up and we got out. We looked all over and still saw no sign of life. Not even one of Altaira’s animals. Thinking about them, I had a nasty moment remembering the titi and wondering whether she’d missed it yet.
I shrugged that off and crossed the patio and pushed the door wider and looked in. I called, “Anybody here?” a couple of times. With no result.
I went in, Doc right behind me. There was nobody in the entry. Or in the living room. There was a scarf of Altaira’s over a chair, and on the table in the dining alcove there were two cups that had been used. Doc and I stood there, and listened some more. There still wasn’t a sound. There seemed to be more of the silence inside than there had been out.
I was starting for the door at the back when Doc stopped me. He pointed across to the front of the room, at the far side from the entrance. He said, “What’s that?” and I saw something that hadn’t been there the other times. It looked like a crack in the wall, with light coming through it. But when we went over, it turned out to be a door that wasn’t quite closed. A sliding door, which fitted so well we’d never noticed it before.
I slid it right open. It gave onto a medium-sized room which had to be Morbius’ study. Very plainly furnished. A big writing table, a couple of chairs. The walls lined with cupboards, and racks full of papers and book reels. A reading viewer in one corner, with an arm chair in front of it. Papers on the table and the chair behind it pushed back as if someone had just been working there.
We went in. And saw something that hadn’t been visible from the outside. An ell to the room, running off to the back. And the end of the ell was solid rock surface, worked smoother but not painted. It was the same blue-grey as all the rocks here, the same blue-grey as the mountains themselves.
In the middle was a door. It had to be a door. A door into the rock. Doc and I looked at each other. We didn’t say anything. We went up to the door. It was outlined by some sort of masonry which started out like a triangle with the apex at the top but didn’t finish, the way the human eye expected it to, by using the floor as the base of the triangle. The top was maybe five and a half feet high, the greatest width about ten feet.
“It’s like a conventional diamond,” Doc said. “With the bottom two-thirds sawn off.”
It was a weird, off-beam shape. It gave me an eerie feeling just looking at it. The actual door it framed was the same neutral dun color as the masonry, but when we touched it we found it was metal. But it wouldn’t move. And we couldn’t find a control anywhere.
We wandered over to the writing-table. We looked back at the door and Doc said, “Once behind there a
nd we’d probably find the answers to all our questions.”
I said, “My Altairians? Or your Force?” I tried to make a crack out of it, but Doc didn’t even give me a smile.
“Maybe both,” he said. “And a lot more. A whole lot more.” He pulled a pencil out of his pocket and took a sheet of blank paper from a pile on the table. I wondered what the hell he was at.
He began to sketch something. An ordinary doorway first, then a man coming through it. He said, “Doors are functional. They have to be, however much you disguise ‘em.” He sketched the diamond doorway now, right beside the other. “What sort of a being is this shape for?” he said, and began sketching something.
He shifted as he was doing it, and I couldn’t see. I moved to get a view, but he suddenly crumpled the paper up in a fist. “No,” he said. “No. The hell with it!”
I didn’t care. I had a feeling I didn’t want to see anyway. I began looking at the papers on the table. And I found something.
I held it up. I said, “Take a look at this.” It was a sheet of what looked like paper. Until you touched it and found it was metallic. Which wasn’t surprising, because metal was what it was. It was a sort of yellow-grey, and pliable as paper. But you couldn’t tear it. It was covered with some sort of writing, or figuring, in black characters. Very black.
They looked like hieroglyphics to me. I said so, but Doc shook his head. He took the sheet and studied it, moving nearer the window. He said, “Not if you mean hieroglyphics. These symbols aren’t like anything that ever came from Earth. As Quinn would say, they aren’t terra-shape—”
He never finished. He was interrupted by Morbius’ voice. “Good morning, gentlemen,”—and we whipped around to see him standing there close to us. He must have come through the door in the rock, but it was closed again. It hadn’t made a sound.
His face was dead white and his eyes looked on fire. His mouth was twisted to one side. He said, “My use of the word ‘gentlemen’ was purely satiric. May I ask whether you have been over the rest of the house? Perhaps you would like me to show you where my daughter keeps her jewels—”
I cut in on him. He wasn’t the only one who could get mad. I said, “We’re here on duty, Doctor Morbius. Last night someone—something—got past our sentries. And wrecked our transmitter rig. We came here to find out what you know about it—”
I didn’t get any further. His face got whiter and he’d have folded if he hadn’t grabbed the edge of the table.
Doc got hold of him and put him in a chair. He slumped. His eyes were closed, but when Doc pushed back his sleeve and felt for his pulse, he sat up and pulled the arm away.
He said, “Tell me what happened. Everything that happened.”
I told him. He put a hand over his eyes and mumbled something. It sounded like, “So it’s starting again—”
He looked at me. “And you suspect me?” he said. “Is that why you’re here?”
I said, “Listen, Dr. Morbius—everything we’ve seen since we landed on this planet goes to prove you’re in touch with some native intelligence. You’re either friendly with it, or it’s in charge of you. It stands to reason you must know something about what happened last night.”
He said, “Your logic is faulty, Commander. I know nothing of the invasion . . . However, when you say I am in touch with what you term a native intelligence, you are speaking the truth.”
It came out so quickly I couldn’t believe I’d heard it. I looked at Doc and saw he was gaping like a kid at a launching base.
Morbius put his hands on the chair-arms and pushed himself up. He was stooped a bit, but he seemed all right. He leaned over the table and picked up the sheet of metal paper.
“This,” he said, “and the writing on it, was made by the inhabitants of this planet.” He put it down on the table again. Very carefully. He might have been handling a piece of lunar crystalite. He said, “The date? More than two thousand of our centuries ago . . .”
He let that sink in a minute. His face was still white, like a wax dummy’s. But he was standing straight again. He seemed taller than I’d figured him. He had the damnedest expression on his face—
FIVE
Edward Morbius
I had to tell them—and show them . . .
Perhaps I had withheld too long, but now my hand was forced. Their suspicions, their puerile reasoning, the shape of events, everything made revelation imperative.
My mind still retained vestigial infantilities which, now the moment I had dreaded was here, made it possible for me to take satisfaction in their bewilderment, their childish awe, the inevitable recognition which must come to them of their abysmal inferiority.
I watched them trying to absorb, to comprehend, everything that one speech of mine had implied. The youth Adams maintained his look of militaristic belligerence, but behind it I could sense the undeveloped mind struggling to adjust preconceived ideas. About the man Ostrow I was not so sure. Behind his mask of social understanding I could feel the effort of adjustment, but he seemed to be accepting its necessity. With a calmness which told at least of self-control he said to me, “You’re going to tell us,” in a way which made the words neither a question nor a statement.
I marshaled my thoughts. It was no simple task to convey in a few words, to these circumscribed minds, even a concept of this tremendous history.
I said at last, “This planet was the cradle and habitat of a race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Through the endless web of time they developed to a point at which—ethically, technologically, in fact in every conceivable and inconceivable way—they were uncountable eons ahead of Man as he stands today. And this point they had reached two hundred thousand years ago . . .
“Having outstripped man’s conception of what he terms civilization, having banished from their lives all baseness, the Krell lived for and in the acquisition of knowledge. Turning outward, they sought to unlock not only the secrets of the Universe, but of Nature itself. There is every reason to believe that, in search of the great key, they journeyed across space to other worlds, even to the Solar system and that little planet called Earth, before Man had even begun to emerge from bestiality—”
I checked, interrupted by Adams. Unable to assimilate the total concept, he had seized like a child upon one infinitesimal point which conveyed some meaning to him. He did not speak to me, but to Ostrow. “Maybe that explains the animals,” he said. “Maybe they brought them back—”
“Or their forerunners,” Ostrow said. He was looking at me. “They—the Krells weren’t interested, I suppose, in anything so primitive as Pithecanthropus?”
I went on as if they had not spoken. “Their explorations ended,” I said, “the Krell appear to have achieved the very last pinnacles of knowledge, with only the ultimate peak left to ascend and conquer. But then—” my voice shook uncontrollably—“but then, at this crowning point in their great, their truly miraculous history, this godlike race was destroyed. In one night of unknown, unimaginable disaster they were wiped from existence . . .”
I was holding them now. Their gaze was fixed upon my face; they made no sound nor movement. I said, “And through the endless centuries since that frightful disaster, all trace of the Krell and their works has vanished from the face of this planet. Even the cities, with their cloud-piercing towers of glittering translucent metal—even these have crumbled back into the soil. No remnant of that mighty civilization remains above the ground . . .”
I waited. I knew what I had to say next, and what I had to do. I had gone too far to draw back. But I seemed unable to force myself to the inevitable step. Until I saw questions forming themselves behind the two watching faces; puerile, time-destroying questions.
I moved then. I turned toward the door in the rock. “But beneath the ground, gentlemen,” I said, “carved from the very heart of the mountains, there is left the very heart of those magnificent labors . . .”
They followed me to the door, Adams eagerly, Ostrow more slowly
. I detected a reluctance in him, and I could feel again that he was studying me. It occurred to me that perhaps I had not brought myself down sufficiently near to their level, and I made an effort to remedy this, endeavoring to make my tone and manner more those of friendly exposition.
I slid back the door, pointing out the metal and telling them of its everlasting strength and well-nigh unbelievable molecular density. I led them through and told how the door could be sealed by the Rho-ray lock against all attempt to enter. I led them along the narrow corridor and saw in their faces the dawning of bemazed, incredulous wonder.
Our footsteps echoing, we came to the second archway. Stooping, I led the way through, then stood aside to watch them as they had their first sight of the laboratory chamber.
They stared around, unbelieving, struck silent like children faced by a first glimpse of life’s wonders. I said, “This is one of the Krell laboratories. By no means the largest, my researches show, but infinitely the most important—”
Once more Adams interrupted me. “Not the largest!” he repeated. “But it’s—it’s tremendous!” Again the infantile mind had clutched at the unimportant to steady itself.
I was patient with him. “Size, Commander,” I said, “is purely relative, a matter only of scale. You have not yet adjusted your ideas.”
It was Ostrow’s turn. “You say a Krell laboratory?” he said to me. “But this equipment—the lighting—everything—It all seems new! As if it hadn’t been in existence more than a few years—”
He stopped as he saw my expression. I said to him, with all the deliberation at my command, “Everything that you see here, Major Ostrow, everything that you are going to see—every instrument, every device—has stood unchanged since its construction.” I tried to smile at him. “It is a matter of what human engineers, with their unimaginative nomenclature, would call self-maintenance. Guarded here against all elemental destructiveness, everything has existed in perfection for these two thousand centuries.”