“That’s just what Mitch told us, remember?” I said.
“Leave your own ship and come into ours.”
“Look,” said Jet politely, “will you give us a few minutes to talk this thing over?”
“Certainly.”
“Can we call you back?”
“There is really no need, I cannot go away.”
“Then you don’t mind if we switch off our radios. We have to conserve power.”
“When you call, I will answer.”
Jet turned to address all of us. “Switch off your sets,” he commanded. We did so. “Well,” he went on, “what do you make of it?”
“We must go out there,” said Mitch eagerly. “Just think of what we could learn from those--whatever they are. Why, just to have the secret of their motive power alone would be worth the risk.”
“In many ways I agree,” I told him, “but if they can help us, as they say they can, why can’t they do it here and now? Why do we have to go into their ship and, if we do, where will they take us?”
“That’s what worries me,” put in Lemmy quickly.
“Well, it’s something we can ask him,” said Jet.
“Go on then,” prompted Lemmy, “see what he says.”
“Right,” said Jet. “Switch on the radio.”
Lemmy did. “Hullo, hullo--can you hear me?”
“Yes,” said the Voice.
“If we enter that thing,” asked Jet, “what will happen to us?”
“The ship will take off.”
“Where to?”
“Not very far.”
“Then why can’t you come to us?” asked Jet.
“It is safer this way. You are in great danger where you are.”
“What kind of danger?”
“Look,” broke in Mitch impatiently, “why bother with all this? If we’re going, let’s go.”
“Quiet, Mitch,” ordered Jet. “We’ll go when we’re good and ready.”
“All right,” said Mitch disagreeably, “have your natter, but hurry up.”
Jet ignored him and again addressed the Voice. “Tell me one thing more.”
“Yes?”
“This danger you speak of; is it a threat to us personally or to our ship?”
“I don’t think your ship is likely to come to harm, but you probably will, and very soon.”
“Come on, Jet,” said Mitch. “He couldn’t say much more, could he?”
The Voice was obviously listening to our conversation and, for the first time, he interrupted it. “If you don’t like where we shall take you, you can always return,” it said
“All right. Give us a few minutes to get ready and we’ll come.”
“And bring your radios with you. They are our only means of communication at the moment.”
“Very well,” said Jet. “I’ll call you again when we’re outside.”
We entered the airlock and, by means of the remote-control button, closed the cabin hatch. From outside there was no way of closing the main door or of stowing the ladder which led down from it, but we felt fairly confident that no normal person could penetrate our ship farther than the airlock because of its strong, hermetically-sealed door.
We climbed down to the ground and, rather slowly I must admit, made our way towards the circular-shaped ship where it stood, silent and forbidding, between us and the river.
Chapter 12 - SPACE CRAFT
Three minutes later we were standing before the strange space craft and the first thing Lemmy did was to kick it. “Just want to make sure this thing is solid,” he said, “and that the whole thing isn’t just a dream.”
“I’d better go first,” said Jet. “Keep your radios on and I’ll tell you if it’s OK to follow.”
Jet climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, he paused for a few moments and then entered the door of the dome. “Hullo, can you hear me?” “Yes, Jet,” said Mitch. “What’s it like in there?” asked Lemmy. “Seems to be exactly the same kind of ship Mitch went into. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about here.”
For a moment my mind went back to that time on the Moon when, in an identical situation, Mitch had used almost the same words. On that occasion plenty had transpired to worry us.
“You’d better come up,” said Jet. So, hoping for the best, I followed Mitch and Lemmy up the ladder. A few moments later the four of us were standing in the cabin of the strange ship.
We had hardly time to glance around us before we felt the ship trembling slightly. We looked at each other anxiously, except for Mitch, to whom this was no new experience. “This is it,” he exclaimed. “This is the same vibration I felt when I said the ship came to life, just before the dome closed.”
“That’s just what it is doing,” said Lemmy, pointing towards the shutter which was now rapidly blocking out the daylight.
For a moment we were in total darkness and then, like e crescent of a new moon, an arc of light appeared at our feet. Rapidly the arc widened and I realised a sliding hatch was opening in the floor. The light came from a compartment below ours. The arc became a circle, about three feet in diameter, and we saw a ladder leading below.
“Why do you stand there?” we heard the Voice say suddenly. “Why don’t you go down? Until you do the ship won’t take off.”
“Why can’t it take off with us up here?” asked Lemmy.
“It can if you wish, but you would find it most uncomfortable. Do you prefer to stay where you are?”
“I prefer to get out altogether.”
“No, Lemmy,” said Jet. “Come along,” he indicated the rest of us, “I’ll lead the way.” And with that he began to descend the ladder.
Mitch, who was behind me, had not got half way down before the hatch closed above his head, sealing us off completely. Even if we wished to go back, we no longer had any choice in the matter.
The lower cabin was part of a large sphere, the upper half being the dome from which we had just descended. It was lit by diffused lighting, as though the very walls were aglow. Apart from the ladder, the only other visible object was a pedestal which stood on a black, shining globe, which might have been made of glass. Set in one wall was another large, octagonal-shaped panel with the now familiar series of buttons situated above it.
Mitch walked over to the panel. “Some kind of control table,” he said.
“But why have control panels in a ship that’s remote controlled?” asked Jet.
“Maybe it isn’t all the time,” said Mitch. “Our own ship was remote controlled during take-off from Earth, but we’ve handled it ourselves ever since.”
“Well, don’t get too inquisitive,” said Jet.
By this time Mitch was looking at the black, shiny sphere on the pedestal. None of us had a clue what it was for. It occurred to me that with the exception of the ladder and the octagonal-shaped panels set in the wall, everything about this strange craft was on a circular pattern; the ship itself was round, shaped like a doughnut, the roof was a dome, the hatch circular and the cabin spherical. The ship was of a most unusual design.
There were no windows and yet the air seemed fresh and clean. We concluded that there must be some kind of air-conditioner but could find no trace of it. “Well, at least that means whoever built this ship needs to breathe, same as we do,” Lemmy remarked.
“I don’t think they can be all that different from us,” I suggested, “or they couldn’t exist on Earth at all.”
“We haven’t seen anybody yet, Doc,” said Mitch, “only heard a voice.”
“That’s a point,” said Jet. “They may be very different from us--exist in quite a different way. Look at this place. No seats, no couches, no food, no water, nothing.”
“Here,” said Lemmy, “perhaps they don’t exist physically at all.”
“Then how come they need physical ships?” asked Mitch.
“Just because they build them, it doesn’t mean to say they’ve got to fly in them, any more than a meteorologist flies in a weather balloon.”
“But always supposing that they do have some kind of physical shape,” I suggested, “they’re probably much tougher than us. Maybe that’s why their ships can fly so fast, and manoeuvre so easily. If they start throwing this thing around, they’ll probably kill us all.”
“Yes, but do they realise that?” asked Lemmy anxiously. “Do they know exactly how much the human body can stand?”
The possibilities suggested by Lemmy’s remark were all too clear. “You’d better try and contact them, Jet.”
“Tell them to take it easy,” said Lemmy. “Tell them we’re weak, very weak.”
Jet switched on his radio. “Hullo, hullo, can you hear me? Hullo.”
There was no reply.
“Try him again.”
“Hullo, Luna calling. Can you hear me?” He paused. “The set’s dead, I can’t hear a thing.”
“Maybe not,” Lemmy said quickly, “but I can feel something.”
“And so can I,” said Mitch. “The ship’s on the move-- in a vertical climb.”
“Hullo, Hullo,” shouted Jet.
“Oh,” moaned Lemmy, “we’ll be squashed flat.”
“Hullo. Hullo.”
“We’d better lie down,” said Mitch urgently, “all of us.”
The pressure was increasing rapidly now and Jet joined the rest of us on the floor. After a while the ship ceased to climb and the pressure ended. But we hadn’t stopped moving. Our course had merely changed from a vertical to a horizontal one. We had panicked over nothing and all felt rather foolish.
“Well, do we lie here all day?” asked Lemmy.
Jet was trying to call the Voice again but without success. “Somebody else had better have a go,” he said.
“I’ll try,” I told him. “Hullo, hullo--come in please,” I said, with an unusual tone of politeness. But it made no difference. There was still no reply.
“My set’s dead, too,” said Mitch. “I don’t think any of them are working.”
“Then it can’t be the batteries, can it?” said Lemmy. “They wouldn’t all run down at the same time.”
“I’ve got it,” said Jet. “Whatever power drives this ship must neutralise all the electronic equipment we’re carrying.”
“You mean,” asked Lemmy, “that whenever the radio cut it was because one of these ships was around?”
“It’s as likely an explanation as any.”
“Then that would account for the fact that nothing worked before take-off on the Moon. Ships like this must have been all round us,” I said.
“What else could it have been? I bet the minute this ship stops, the radios will work again.”
“I don’t know about that, but something’s working over here,” said Mitch. “This darned goldfish bowl is beginning to flow. There’s a picture taking shape.”
‘Picture’ was hardly the right word, for there, inside the bowl, we could see the river, the forest and the cultivated fields of the country we had just left, in three dimensions, and full colour. Slowly the scene rolled by, trees, river and other objects disappearing through the glass wall on one side, while fresh objects moved into view, apparently, through the other. We watched the contraption in silence, fascinated.
“Good heavens, a three dimensional televiewer. This is a reproduction of the country we’re flying over. That’s why it’s moving. I don’t know what kind of beings they are that built this ship,” Jet went on, “but they’re way ahead of our time--streets ahead.”
Very soon the forest gave way to a large, open plain. And then below us appeared a host of dome-shaped buildings. Quite suddenly there was a sensation in my stomach that told me we were falling towards the ground and falling very rapidly. Our knees buckled and we all collapsed in a heap. A few seconds later the gentlest of bumps told us we had landed. Mitch was sick. Lemmy, in spite of his pale face, still tried to joke.”This must be where we change,” he said.
We must have lain on the floor for fully fifteen minutes before we felt well enough to take an interest in what was happening to us. Then the hatch in the ceiling opened and a shaft of daylight shining through it told us the dome had opened, too.
“This is obviously where we’re expected to get out,” I said. “Wait a minute; don’t be in such a hurry.” It was the Voice.
“Oh, there you are,” said Lemmy. “We’ve been trying to call you.”
“I’m sorry. Your radios don’t function while our ship is in operation.”
“We discovered that for ourselves, thanks,” said Lemmy perkily.
“If they did, we would have been able to contact you before,” the Voice went on. “We tried constantly. Even while you were out in space. When you were on the Moon we sent a ship to communicate with you, but you didn’t respond.”
“Is that what all that tapping was?”
“We were trying to decide what your ship was made of and how it operated.”
“You have plenty of things we wish to know about, too,” said Jet, “your ships and the power that drives them, and, above all, your apparent ability to travel through Time. That is still no more than a theory where we come from in the twentieth century.”
“You cannot travel through Time?”
“Well, no, not wittingly.”
“Then how do you travel from one part of the Universe to another?”
“We don’t. The farthest we ever got was from the Earth to the Moon. And we got back again, but, due to you, with disastrous results. We don’t belong here, this is not our world.”
“It is not ours either.”
“Then what are you doing here?” asked Jet.
“Thousands of earth years ago we began to colonise this globe.”
“Colonise it?” asked Mitch. “Why?”
“Our own planet is dead. We can never return to it.”
“Why not?”
“Its sun blew up.”
“Eh?” interjected Lemmy.
“Once,” went on the Voice, “it was a star like your sun, with planets--life-supporting planets--revolving round it. And then it began to expand, became a giant red star of such colossal size that it extended far beyond the orbits of the planets and consumed them. Our home was roasted out of existence.”
“Then how did you get away?” queried Jet.
“Long before our world was threatened we had learned how to travel through space, but only to planets within our own system. As the day of destruction drew nearer, we were compelled to find a means of escaping from our sun altogether. It was then that we learned to travel through Time.”
“Then why didn’t you travel backwards?” I asked, “back to the time before your sun began to expand?”
“We did.”
“Didn’t that solve your problem?”
“How would you like to live yesterday all over again, do exactly the same things in exactly the same way, and be denied the knowledge and experience that the future has to offer?”
“It could get very dull,” I admitted.
“It’s abominable. We soon learned the only way was forward, so forward we went, across the Universe, looking for a new planet, a place to live, a pleasant place, with a young sun and all the elements necessary to life.”
“And you found it?” asked Jet.
“Yes, here, the Earth. When we arrived life was already firmly established. This was the most beautiful, the most hospitable planet we had ever discovered.”
“So you settled here?” suggested Jet.
“Yes.”
“How do you like it?” asked Lemmy.
“At first, very much, but now the time has come for us to leave once again, to find another planet like Earth, but one that doesn’t contain the threat of its own destruction as this does.”
“You mean our sun’s expanding?” asked Lemmy anxiously.
“No. The danger that exists on Earth now, that is about to drive us away, wasn’t here when we first came.”
“What is it?” Jet asked.
“It must be very pow
erful to drive you away,” I added.
“It is very powerful,” replied the Voice, “something we cannot fight against.”
“Then what is it?” persisted Jet.
“You will know soon enough. But now it’s time for you to come outside and meet us, or what is left of us.”
“Eh?” said Lemmy.
“And don’t be too surprised by what you see. We are very unlike you. We are not of this Earth. Life on our own planet was different and we have developed differently. You can have no idea of how we look.”
“Er--now wait a minute“ Lemmy turned to Jet.
“Can’t he give us some idea of what he looks like first?”
“It might be as well,” I said.
“Call him,” said Lemmy. “Ask him to show himself on the televiewer at least.”
Jet called but could get no reply. For fully five minutes we tried to raise the Voice, but to no avail.
“He should be hearing us,” said Jet, “there’s no music on. Perhaps he doesn’t intend to answer.”
“Maybe,” said Lemmy, “he’s probably afraid the sight of him will horrify us so much we’ll want to go back.”
“Then why bring us here in the first place?” queried Mitch.
“That’s what’s bothering me,” said Lemmy. “For all we know the minute we step outside we’ll be pounced on and locked up in a cage.”
“Why in a cage?” asked Jet.
“Because we’re different from him, that’s why. We interest him. I expect his local zoo will make a lot of money with us shut up in it, like a lot of apes. Can’t you see them, gathering round and poking us with sticks?”
“We don’t know if they realise what a zoo is, Lemmy, least of all money,” I said.
“All right, as scientific specimens then. What would our scientists say if they found some kind of animal they had never seen before? They wouldn’t give it a banana and send it home, would they? They’d have it all nicely locked up in no time. It wouldn’t matter what the animal felt about it.”
“Well,” suggested Jet, “we could at least go as far as the door and see if we fancy going any further.” And with that, he began to climb the ladder to the upper cabin.
What we saw when we reached the opening was no horrible monster. In fact we saw no living creature of any kind, except a flight of birds flapping its way across the sky. Stretched out before us as far as the eye could see was the great array of domes. If each were a complete sphere then exactly half of it was below the ground.
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