by John Rankine
There was no opposition. No problem. At the dock, Koenig ignored the strike craft already launched and brought down the two left on the conveyor. On visual check, there had been no sabotage. They slipped into water, warm from the day’s heat. Victor Bergman said, ‘Good luck, John. Take care. Don’t push too hard. If there are snags, leave it. There’s always another day.’
Beyond the channel, they surfaced below the night sky of Megaron, with Earth’s errant moon throwing a silver streak on the wine-dark sea. As they rounded the point, there was a pale aureole over the land to mark out the site of Caster itself. The strike craft ghosted through a flat calm, the human cargo feeling the strangeness of their isolation after the domestic comfort of the enclave.
Helena Russell thought of the Eagles touching down on Moonbase Alpha and the Alphans filing back into the empty rooms. There would be a reshuffle in the command chain. Mathias would have taken her slot as head of the medical services. Life would go on. It was like a foretaste of death and they were here in a fair mock-up of the traditional idea of limbo. They had to work their passage to a rebirth. In those terms, what Koenig was doing made a kind of sense.
The man himself had enough navigational problems to keep his mind on load. The gaunt sentinel of the tower block and the arc of Caster’s lights gave him a fix. He had memorised the line of the coast and could visualise where the wreck of Eagle Seven was stuck in the dunes and the location from there of the hydroponic farm spread.
He had a moment’s self-doubt. Here he was, fresh on the scene, where men had been living out their time for untold centuries, taking a hand in a social engineering job which they could have done for themselves if they had wanted it. This was the sin of arrogance that the gods slapped down.
Then he remembered the air cars streaking in to destroy Eagle Seven. It had to be done. Every man wanted to see progress in his own time. They could not wait in the wings and hope for a miracle.
He twisted in the saddle and looked at Helena. What he could see of her face was pale as marble. ‘All right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Here we go, then.’ He changed course and the strike craft began to dip and lift through a long swell as they bored in for the distant beach.
Closer in, there was the suck and slide of shingle and they beached the strike craft, one at a time, on a flat, stony strip that pushed out into the sea in a long tongue. Further up the beach, they discarded life-support gear, replaced flippers with black foam-soled sneakers and climbed the first dune, four dark shadows melding into darkness.
At the top, they lay flat in a row. It was all there. Eyes adjusted to a low lumen count, they could see the farm spread stretching away in all directions. Close at hand, it looked huge.
At the bottom of the slope, there was a two-metre-high chain-link fence that surrounded the complex. Inside, the culture tanks were set out as long, shallow concrete throughs, each about three metres wide and thirty metres long. The long sides carried rails, and a trolley, with a seat and operating gear, straddled the trough. It could be pumped along the track by a hand lever and the farmer could go along dumping nutrients in the growing medium or harvesting his crop.
Dotted about on a regular plan were white-painted silos. In the centre was a squat, hexagonal tower; three floors; dark below and with lights from two windows at the top. Mineral tracks from the silos led to it like spokes to the hub of a wheel. Rhoda pointed and breathed, ‘That’s the control centre. Final processing will be done there. We do this on a small scale. The end product is a protein pellet. That’s the staple. All the food’s made from that. Except fruit. Fruit we grow by itself. There’s a kind of fruit we use to make bread—’
Koenig held up his hand. It was all good, interesting stuff, but better at another time. He said, ‘Alan. Go down and take a look at that fence.’
Carter was away, hardly visible until he appeared again as a dark shape against the mesh. He was less than a minute before he came back up the dune. ‘No problem, Commander. I tried one strand. This vibrator goes through like a hot knife in butter. No electrification.’
They took out a metre-long panel and rolled it back. One by one, they slipped through. Koenig meticulously refixed the wire, so that only the most careful check would locate the break. Between the troughs, there was a paved strip and they went along in single file, Koenig in the lead with his laser set for a stun beam and Carter bringing up the rear.
They were halfway to the centre, when Koenig stopped and went down on one knee. A moving light had separated out from the pale glow of Caster and was coming towards them on a course that would cross the farm. Behind it was the familiar shadow of an air car.
As it came nearer, a pencil of light probed out from the cone and lit up the distant area of the farm beyond the tower. Koenig said, ‘Down,’ and flattened himself against the side of the trough. His mind raced through the possibilities. It could be a routine patrol, or it could be that there had been a signal from the Outfarers. If the last, there was only Karl with precise information. Unless there was electronic monitoring that even Karl was not aware of.
There was action from the tower. A light went on in the ground floor and then the whole area turned to bright day. Floods on a high gantry made a brilliant line. Seen clear, there was a paved apron on two sides of the tower and a parking lot with half a dozen freight carriers in line. The final delivery from the farm to Caster itself was made by an air-shuttle service.
The incoming car swept into the pool of light, hovered and dropped on its hydraulic jacks close to the building. It was a personnel carrier. Its lights went out, the hatch opened and a black-coated Megaronian climbed onto the pad. It was the farmer, home from a night out in the big city. His progress was slow and erratic. He had done well to steer a course for home.
As he opened a door, the outside lights snapped out and he was silhouetted in the opening. Koenig was on his feet and padding forward at a run. They reached the wall of the control centre as the downstairs lights went out.
The door was flush fitting, with no visible means of opening it from the outside. Koenig moved off to circle the building. In the centre of the face, there was a hinged flap where the track from a silo made its entry. Dumper trucks would push their way through. He went on hands and knees in the centre of the track and shoved. It was open. He said, ‘Very carefully. There’s no prize for ending up as a protein pellet.’
The warning was timely. They were moving from dim light into the blackness of a pit. On hands and knees, Koenig checked out the ground by touch. The rails on either side were continuous. He tried to visualize what would be happening to a truck shunted in through the hatch. There would be some mechanism for emptying it. There would be a self-tipping device. Hands sliding along the rails, he identified holding clips and then another set about half a metre farther on. Why two sets? One would be enough to stop the incoming carrier. What would happen to the load? Not tipped on the deck between the tracks, for a sure thing. There was a slight trembling in the floor and even as it began to tilt away, he had arrived at a theoretical answer. The truck would hit the spring-loaded stops. Its construction would be asymmetrical, so that weight distribution would give it a turning moment round the centre of a pivot. The whole section of floor would swivel and the contents would be dumped on a conveyor or into a tank.
It was nice to have it clear, but he was falling forward. Close behind him, Helena Russell had sensed that he was in trouble and flicked on her lamp. She could see the floor lifting in front of her and Koenig’s heels going up. She grabbed for the rising edge and hung on. There was a halt and a moment of stability as mechanical laws tried to sort it out. Koenig himself arched his back and grabbed for the solid floor ahead, shifting his grip a fraction of a second before Helena’s weight turned the scale and the revolving flap slammed back in place.
The rising stench from the pit was enough to numb the brain and was still lingering about as he wormed forward in a closed box-section conduit. There was no need to worr
y about showing a light. The operating principles were clear. Once having dumped its load, the truck would go on and pass out of the factory without seeing the light of day.
Koenig crawled on, looking up at the roof. There had to be an inspection trap for maintenance. He found it, ten metres farther on, and waited for the others to join him. There was a round plate, dropped in a seating, with lugs to engage in a couple of slots. Lights switched out, he moved it a quarter turn and lifted slowly.
Seen from the inside, the ground floor of the control centre looked much bigger. There were low-power courtesy lights dotted about, giving only a faint glow, but enough to see by.
Koenig lowered the lid to the housing of the conduit, pulled himself through and leaned in to heave Helena through. The conduits themselves divided the floor space into areas and the tops had been developed as work heads. In the centre was a recognisable command island with flow diagrams on freestanding display boards and a whole raft of electronic hardware.
Far over, against an outside wall, there was a long supply bay with labelled bins and hoppers. Nutrients to be issued to the growing tanks. It was not that much different from the supply department for the hydroponics section on Moonbase Alpha, except that it was on a bigger scale. Helena Russell took her time, identifying departments, and then pointed. ‘Over there, I think, John.’
‘Take the flasks, then, and see what you can do. Alan, cover down here. I’ll take the stairway. Stun beams if anybody shows. With a bit of luck they might not remember what it was all about.’
It was surprising to Koenig that the operation was not mounted round the clock. Production must be streamlined during the day to feed Caster’s population from this one centre. There was room for a higher yield. Moving silently, he climbed the spiral stairway to the first floor. It was a duplicate of the floor below except that there was no provision for incoming trucks. It was divided two ways. Half was stacked with the plastic sacks beside a gravity conveyor belt. This was the supply reservoir. Perhaps a month in hand? It would be a fair time before the neutralised food began to pass into the supply chain. The rest of the space was reserved for machinery spares and back-up stocks of nutrients.
The spiral stairway went on to the top floor. There was a murmur of voices coming down the well. Koenig crossed to a window and looked out. The bowl of light over Caster had dimmed down. By his time disk, it was 0130. A dark ribbon ran from the perimeter fence of the farm in the direction of the town. Inside the fence, it connected with a broad paved strip coming all the way to the apron of the control centre. So there was a surface road in addition to the air-car link. He was turning away, when a movement caught his eye. Night glasses would have made it clear. As it was, he could not be sure. He padded over to the head of the stairs, dropped down halfway and signalled for Alan Carter to join him. Helena was working with Rhoda at a long preparation trough with carboys on an overhead rack.
Carter put his forehead to the glass and went still as death. There was a slow count of five before he would commit himself. ‘It’s a company on the march. Classic camouflage. No bright metal. Hands and faces black. For us?’
There was no doubt in Koenig’s mind. ‘Surely for us. They’ve been tipped off.’
Even as he spoke, there was a change. The moving shadow on the road was dividing left and right and melding into the darkness. A task force was being deployed to surround the farm. At the same time, there was a melodic pinger sounding on the floor above. It was still going as Koenig appeared head and shoulders out of the well to check the set.
This floor had been developed as a living area for farm staff. The head of the stairs came up into a lounge, with club chairs, small tables, what looked like a bar across one corner and half a dozen archways leading off. A light was winking on a wall console behind the bar and it was from there that the audio signal had its source.
Nobody was keen to answer. Then, close at hand, a woman’s voice, sounding surly, said, ‘What can they want at this time, in the Devil’s name? Answer it, Yatpan. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Do you want everybody out of their bed? You can stir yourself quick enough to get into Caster to see that vixen, Hella.’
‘Peace, Zarah. Hold your tongue or I’ll still it for you.’
Other doors were opening in the distant reaches of the floor. The same voice was lifted in a growl. ‘All right. I’ll see to it!’
It was probably the man who had arrived home late by air car. He emerged barefoot and wearing only a green towel tucked round his waist, his hair wet and plastered to his skull. He had been freshening up in a shower and was now able to walk a straight course.
It was an interesting sidelight on the system. Neither the drug nor the subliminal suggestion—if that was on stream—could guarantee fidelity or make for universal goodwill. He shoved a stud on the box and the pinger shut itself off. His voice was no more friendly as he said, ‘Tylon is it? What fool trick is this? Can’t it wait until morning? All the lights . . . all round the boundary? . . . You’ve got me out of my bed to switch on all the lights? . . . Whose crazy idea was that?’
There was a pause as the questioner turned listener for a spell, and when Yatpan spoke again, there was a marked difference in his voice. It was still rough, but it was willing. ‘Spadec directive two four for this day. Very well. At once, Tylon. I’ll see to that. Outfarers attacking the farm, you say? They must have gone out of their minds. We have tolerated them long enough. It’s time Spadec cleared them out. We should drive them into the sea. I have it clear. Spadec directive two four for this day.’
It occurred to Koenig that he might be getting an insight into how the system worked. Given a predisposition to follow instructions and a carrier wave going out continuously to reinforce it, the directing genius would only need to put in a cue word to trigger complete hypnotic response. At some stage, the people of Caster could be given individual preparation. After that, they could be turned loose without strings attached. The code phrase would be ‘Spadec directive,’ followed by the serial number of the order on a daily basis.
Yatpan was now on official business. He looked at his towel, as if debating whether it would be right to throw switches on the master console while in boudoir rig. There was a Spadec directive on file that personnel should be dressed at all times in a manner suited to the activity on hand.
He was still debating it when Koenig shot a stun beam with mathematical precision at the centre of his forehead. Black night filled his eyes and he pitched forward on the thick pile carpet.
There was the sound of light, quick footsteps. Zarah was pushing her luck and coming to investigate. Koenig ducked below floor level. He heard her say, ‘Yatpan? What did they want? Yatpan . . .’ Another voice asked, ‘What is it, Zarah?’
‘There was a call from Caster. Yatpan answered it and was coming back. The drunken fool’s fallen over his own feet. Help me get him to his bed.’
There was the light slap of a hand striking skin and Zarah went on. ‘That’s you all over, Alcon. Never miss a trick. Don’t mess about. Take his shoulders.’
‘I’d just as soon dump him down the stairwell. Why don’t we do that?’
‘Because we wouldn’t get away with it, that’s why.’
Koenig withdrew. Even with a thought-control system, the human scene had its unresolved problems. He met Carter’s enquiring eye and pointed down to the lower level. When they were well out of earshot, he said, ‘It was a call from Caster to light up the complex. We have a temporary holdfast on that, but there’s not a doubt they’ll call again when they see it isn’t being done. It’s time to move out.’
Helena Russell had fixed every carboy on the rack. She had been right in her theory about how the additive was put into the food chain. A thick slurry from the supply tanks below was sucked by vacuum to the work tops and mixed with a calculated ration of the liquid from the carboys. Then it was processed and progressed through the system to leave at the far end as convenient-sized pellets of protein material for use in Caster. There
it would be textured and flavoured to make a variety of different foods. In essence, it was the same system that had served them well on Moonbase Alpha and was probably the most efficient method of converting solar energy into human fuel that could be devised.
Koenig said, ‘Leave it now, Helena. Time to go and we have to make it quick.’
‘I’ve finished.’
‘Can anybody tell that you’ve done it.’
‘Not without sampling and analysis.’
‘Let’s hope they think we never got this far.’
‘The flasks are full of liquid we had to take out to make room for our neutraliser.’
‘As soon as we get outside, empty them.’
The return leg through the conduit was no problem. Koenig hurried them along. Outside in the starlight, with Earth’s withdrawing moon still a feature of the night sky, he put himself in the place of the Megaronian commander. He would know that the intruders had come by sea and would send a detachment ahead to close that escape route. Very likely, they were already in place. The one direction he would be least concerned about would be the very road he had marched along from Caster. So that was the way to go. Out towards Caster and then in a flanking move behind the troops, who would be all looking in towards the farm.
He said, ‘This way,’ and led off at a jog trot along the throughway to the main gate.
CHAPTER SIX
The double-leaf gate of the farm complex opened outwards to the Caster road. There was no visible locking mechanism. Koenig had his hand on a cross beam to push it open, when the nudge of a sixth sense stopped him dead. He said, ‘Check the hinge posts. There could be a signal to the house.
Rhoda found it on the king post of the principal leaf. There was a spring-loaded stud, held back by the hanging stile of the gate. As the gate opened, it would act as a circuit breaker. Koenig took the pressure with the flat of his knife until the others were through, then Carter took over.