The Tenth Planet

by Cooper, Edmund

  His lacerated legs and the lower part of his body hung grotesquely in space, while his chest and still helmeted head remained inside the vessel. Then the third bomb—the one that he had known all along would be in the engine room—went off. It broke the Dag Hammarskjold in two. And as the hull distorted under the stress of the explosion, the jagged edges of the fissure in the steel plate of the navigation deck were pressed hard together again, neatly cutting the body of Idris Hamilton in half.

  The legs went dancing crazily off into the void, following Orlando in an endless frozen pilgrimage to nowhere, among the stars.

  By then, there was total vacuum on the navigation deck. But the top half of Idris Hamilton’s body was perfectly sealed inside what remained of his space suit. His sightless eyes gazed incomprehensibly at the ice crystals that had formed inside his visor.

  Suzy Wu, fortunately, never woke up. The first explosion, strangely, did not rouse her. The second destroyed the fresh-air and recycling pipes connected to her cabin. She died tranquilly in her sleep, dreaming of a wonderful spring day on Mars when she and Idris and Leo and Orlando had gone into the Red Hills to look for edelweiss and the abominable snowman.

  The life-support systems for the twenty Earth children of mixed nationalities and of genius-level I.Q., together with the life-support systems of the two teachers, were cut off instantly by the effects of the engine-room explosion. The vacuum of space sucked the air from their chamber. Ice formed slowly in their suspended animation caskets. They, who had been almost dead, soon became clinically dead. There was little change in their condition.

  The engine-room section of the Dag Hammarskjold, given a retrograde impetus by the blast of the explosion, fell astern, to fall eventually into the sun. The forward section of the space-vessel, with its cargo of death, journeyed beyond Mars orbit, beyond to the very limits of the solar system.

  7

  THERE WERE DREAMS, nightmares. Sometimes there was excruciating pain. He wanted to cry out, to utter great shrieks of anguish. But how can you express torment, how can you tell the listeners or the watchers—if there are any—that your sufferings are beyond anything that a man may be expected to endure? How can you communicate if you have no mouth, no face, no body, no limbs? That, too, was part of the recurring nightmares.

  Frequently, he ran away. Not with his legs, because he had no legs. But with his mind.

  He ran into other dimensions; into long-lost pockets of time and space on the far side of existence. He ran down insubstantial tunnels of memory, seeking a world that had once been almost sane.

  He remembered blue skies. Not many, but some. There had once been a clear blue sky for about three hours on his birthday, his seventh birthday. It had seemed like a gift from God—that is, if you believed in God. His mother and father didn’t believe in God; but when he saw the blue sky, he had believed, if only for a short time. Sunlight had turned the world golden; colours had changed subtly, become somehow alive. And he could remember birds singing. How they sang in that brief respite from the fog and the humidity!

  “Daddy, why can’t we have more sunshine?”

  “Because all the factories and all the engines in the world have poured too much dirt into the sky. Because there are too many people, and they use too much energy, and the air gets warmer, then carries more moisture.”

  “Why does it have to be like that?”

  “Because mankind is too greedy, that’s why. Greedy enough to poison the Earth.”

  “When I grow up, I’m going to be a scientist. Then I can learn how to unpoison the Earth.”

  His father’s voice had been hard. “No, son. You will not be a scientist. The scientists have made the world as it is now.”

  “What shall I be, then?”

  “A spaceman, if you can … Go out into space, where it is still clean.”

  “What is it like in space?”

  “Dark and silent and beautiful. And you can see the stars always.”

  “Have I ever seen the stars? I can’t remember.”

  “No, son, you have not. But, with luck, you may. I hope very much that you may.”

  He knew what the stars looked like, though. He had seen them in old picture books, in paintings, on film, in solido-scope. His father was right. It would be a good thing to go into space. It would be very clean. And the stars would be clean also.

  The sunlight was soon gone, and the rains came back, and the earth steamed. As they went back into the house, Mummy took Daddy’s hand and he kissed her.

  “Do you remember that first time we walked beneath the stars?”

  “As clearly as if it were last night.” He kissed her again.

  Inside the house was a birthday cake, and a present—a beautiful scale model of the American space-ship Mayflower, which had taken the first settlers to Mars. That night, he took it to bed with him and, in his mind, made fantastic voyage through a clean, sharp wilderness of stars …

  Like a boomerang, he came back to the nightmare experience that seemed, at least, to be one kind of terrible reality. It had to be real because it hurt so much. There was pain in phantom limbs, pain in a phantom body. He desperately wanted to open his eyes to see something, someone. He desperately wanted to be able to scream. It would have been something.

  He was alone in a black, eternal torment. I have sinned greatly, he told himself reasonably—after all, that could be the only possible explanation for his terrible condition. I have sinned greatly, and this is hell.

  But he did not know the nature of his sin.

  Nor was he sure that the hell he experienced was part of the perverted Christian mythology.

  Nor was he entirely alone.

  “If you can hear me,” boomed the voice, “think that you can hear me. Think that you are saying: Yes I can hear you. Think it very hard.” The words were not in any language he knew, but strangely in a language that he understood. The words hurt him, they hurt him dreadfully. He recoiled in horror. He ran away again.

  He ran away to the moon, to the newly established Lunaport Two in the great crater Copernicus. He was a cadet, and he had just completed his first operational shoot. So now he was a true spaceman, inordinately proud of the tiny, silver star that had recently been sewn on the flap of his left breast pocket.

  He was in the Lunaport astrodome, sipping his first moon beer. Men with twenty stars or more sewn on their pockets smiled at him. Some even raised their glasses. They knew how he was feeling. They could remember the feeling themselves—the first operational shoot, the first star. It was a once-off, like making love for the first time. You never forgot it. Or if you did forget, it was because you were getting very, very old.

  He returned their glances humbly, nervously, with great awe, knowing that he had been accepted into the great fraternity.

  A man with what seemed like a whole galaxy of silver stars sewn to his breast pocket spoke to the barman. The barman smiled hugely and produced a small crystal goblet which he filled with clear fluid from an expensive-looking bottle. Then he came from behind the bar and said gravely: “Sir, Captain James Howard requests the pleasure of your company and wishes to propose a toast.”

  He stood up shakily, left his beer unfinished on the table, marched stiffly to the bar, saluted and remained at attention. His mind was reeling. Howard of the triple crown—Mercury, Venus, Mars! Howard, who had made an impossible rendezvous with the stricken Leonardo da Vinci when her plasma drive folded and a meteor took out the radio and she was falling towards the sun.

  “Cadet, stand easy.”

  “Sir!”

  “You have just made your first shoot, I see. What was the first thing you did when you touched down?”

  He blushed. “Sewed on my star, sir.”

  Howard laughed. “Nothing changes, boy. That is what we all did. We put up the star before we passed through the air-lock—hoping that everyone outside would think we were on the second shoot and hadn’t had time to put up the second star. That is the truth, isn’t it?”<
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, cadet, how much dirt-leave have you got left?”

  “About twenty hours, sir.”

  “More than enough to recover … This goblet—do you know what it is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It is the Gagarin cup, and you will find one like it in every space-port you visit … You know about Yuri Gagarin, of course?”

  “Yes, sir. He was the first man in space. He was a twentieth century Russian cosmonaut, and he lifted off from—”

  “Cadet, I know the story. Legend has it that, upon safe touch-down, Gagarin’s first drink was from such a goblet. As the story goes, he drank chilled vodka. You have made your first shoot, and it is now your privilege to emulate him. You will repeat after me the words I repeated after the son of Neil Armstrong when I had made my first shoot. Then you will drain the goblet in one. Ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In space there are no Russians, no Americans, or any nationalities recognised upon Earth.”

  “In space there are no Russians, no Americans, or any nationalities recognised upon Earth.”

  “In space there are only men, made brothers by danger, united by the desire to carry the seed of man far from the Earth which created it.”

  “In space there are only men, made brothers by danger, united by the desire to carry the seed of man far from the Earth which created it.”

  “In the name of Yuri Gagarin, I pledge myself to this idea.”

  “In the name of Yuri Gagarin, I pledge myself to this idea.”

  “Drink,” said Captain Howard. “Welcome to the brotherhood.”

  He drank. The chilled vodka went down easily. He had never drunk vodka before. It seemed quite a gentle drink.

  Captain Howard said: “Well done, cadet. Now you are one of us. I will give you a word of advice. Go to your table and quietly finish your beer. If any of our brethren should offer you another drink, decline with thanks. If any should insist, say that you have taken the Gagarin cup. They will understand.”

  He was puzzled. “It seemed a real gentle drink, sir. Not like whisky or brandy. I could drink it again.”

  “Laddie, I have no doubt you could, but you would regret it. You have just taken on board eight ounces of one hundred and twenty proof rocket fuel. In rather less than five minutes you will be ready to blast off. I hope you make a good orbit. Remember my name, and remember the pledge. Some day you will offer the Gagarin cup to a young cadet. Tell him that James Howard offered it to you … Dismissed.”

  He saluted smartly. “Sir! Thank you, sir.” Then he walked back to his table, sat down, sipped his beer. He thought that he was very lucky to have been given the cup by Howard of the triple crown. He thought also that Captain Howard had been over-dramatic about the effect of that cool, smooth, almost tasteless drink.

  He wondered why several spacemen seemed to be staring at him strangely, some with broad grins on their faces. Perhaps they thought he had taken too much liquor. Perhaps they were amused by the fact that he was the only spaceman present with a single silver star on his breast pocket.

  Then the vodka hit.

  Later he learned that he had offered to fight two ensigns, a commander and a full captain. No charges were preferred. It was a tradition that any cadet, having taken the Gagarin cup, was entitled to disciplinary immunity for ten hours thereafter.

  He came back to the place that was no place, because it was unending nightmare, with memories of the unreal glow of Earthlight in the vast crater of Copernicus, of the ring of saw-toothed mountains that were two miles high, of the pale soft skin and the large dark eyes of the first moon girl he had ever seen.

  Because there was nowhere else to go, he came back to the place where he could neither wake nor sleep, where darkness sometimes erupted into pain and noise and light, where he was alone, though alien voices sometimes whispered or shouted inside his brain alien words he strangely understood.

  “Be patient,” whispered a voice. “We know that you suffer. But soon you will see and learn, and know that all is well.”

  “BE PATIENT,” screamed the voice, echoing through his brain as if through great canyons. “WE KNOW THAT YOU SUFFER. WE ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU.”

  “Be patient,” it whispered once more. “We have had to make many experiments that hurt you. But now we know how to communicate. Soon you will see us and speak to us. But now we must make you unconscious while the circuits are established and tested. We are your friends. Do not despair.”

  If he had a mouth, he would have shouted, screamed, pleaded, coaxed. But he had nothing, only thought and pain and fear. Then, abruptly, even those were taken away. Everything was dissolved into nothingness.

  Then, almost instantly, it seemed, he existed once more. He could see. He had no eyes—he had known that he had no eyes simply because he could never open or close them—yet he could see. Mistily, at first, as through steamed glass.

  It was better than the insubstantial vision of memories. It was real.

  It was real! He knew it was real. Knowing was the important thing.

  He tried hard to focus (with what?), to concentrate. The mist cleared a little, but there were still patches floating about. When he concentrated very hard, the patches seemed to implode. Vision became more stable.

  He could see a girl. She looked to be rippling or dancing. For one moment, disconcertingly, her head and the top half of her body just disappeared like one of the imploding puffs of mist. But he thought about her very hard, and got her back.

  The vision stabilised. She was standing there, smiling. She had black hair, and she wore a kind of short tunic which looked golden. She was beautiful; but then anything—a rock, a flower, a skeleton—would have looked beautiful after a limbo of darkness.

  She spoke, in the language he understood but did not know. “I think you can see me. I know you can see me. The monitors register your reaction. Please say something. You can speak, you know. But you must try hard.”

  He forgot that he had no mouth. Then he had a bright idea. He imagined a mouth—lips, a tongue, a throat, a larynx.

  “Who are you?” He heard the voice—his voice? It sounded high, falsetto, terrible.

  “A moment, please.” She darted out of vision, then returned again. “Try once more. The simulation was not good. You would prefer a better voice. Try once more.”

  “Who are you?” This time the voice was so low it sounded like metal scraping on wood.

  “Sorry.” She disappeared from vision again. “Now, I think, we will get it right. Again, please. I know it is hard, but help me. We have done much work to give you a voice.”

  “Who are you?” It did not sound too bad. Not his own voice; but, at least, a voice of which he need not be ashamed.

  “Ah, you are satisfied. That is good. I like the sound of your voice … I am called Zylonia. It is the name of a very small flower which can bloom in almost total darkness. Do you like my name?”

  “It is strange, but pretty.” He realised that he was speaking English, yet she was speaking the alien tongue.

  She seemed to divine his thoughts, and tried English—disastrously. “Ay hef stoodeed yor lengwish, bet it is herd, hoord—no, hard. No onny spek it noo. Yo know mi lengwish. Can you spek en it?”

  He found he could speak in it, easily. “How did I learn to speak it? I did not know that I had learned.”

  “You were programmed while you were sleeping—no, waiting is the better term. We had much success with your language areas … Do you remember who you are?”

  Such an innocent question. Yet it seemed to pierce him like a knife. And, like a knife held firmly and twisted, it brought searing, excruciating pain.

  Such an innocent question! He realised now that the answer was one among many dreadful things he had thrust away into some deep recess of the mind …

  “I am Idris Hamilton,” he screamed, “and I died on the Dag Hammarskjold. What have you done to me? What have you done?”


  8

  ONCE MORE HE went hurtling into the dark, running away from everything. Running away with his mind.

  Back to the Dag. Chess with Orlando, about twenty hours before touch-down at Woomera.

  Orlando was two pawns down and would lose a bishop in about three moves. Idris put the bulb of beer to his lips and pressed gently. He pulled a face. Lousy Martian beer. No body in it … Orlando’s strategy was terrifyingly indecisive. No sense of pattern. The boy would never make a good chess player. He didn’t have the killer instinct.

  Orlando said: “Don’t think I’ve lost, skipper. I’m merely giving you a false sense of security.”

  Idris laughed. “I like that false sense of security. I’m a sucker. Incidentally, it is my professional opinion that you are about ten moves from an excellent resigning position.”

  Orlando sighed. “Don’t quote me, but I think you are right … Idris, how do you feel about it—about making this last shoot to Earth?”

  Idris continued to suck beer calmly. “It won’t be my last shoot,” he said. “Earth dies harder than you bloody Martians think. I shall come back. Many of us will come back. There will be a time to start again. You’ll see.”

  Orlando lifted his beer. “I’ll drink to that. I’d like to believe it.”

  “Then do believe it, ensign,” snapped Idris. “And go on believing it until we start again or until every Earthman in the system is dead.” He took the bishop and didn’t give Orlando a chance to resign. He found a way to achieve an elegant checkmate in six moves.

  And that is how it will be with Earth, he thought. The Martians and the Loonies will write us off; but, somehow, we will produce a rabbit from the hat.

  Earth must not die—at least, not permanently.

  But what if no hat? Then, alas, no rabbit.

  It was something he refused to contemplate.

  Orlando and the Dag dissolved.

  There was a girl on Mars. Such a girl! Not just big breasts—beautiful breasts. Living symbols of richness and fertility. She was Earth-born, but shipped to Mars before she could talk. So she was a Martian. Idris met her at a space-port hop. And loved her instantly. Her name was Catherine Howard—a splendid English name.