Somehow, he got over the hills. He was lucky. He found a small, narrow pass and trudged up a glacier towards it. Then the snow came. But it did not stick to his vizor.
And when he had negotiated the pass, he saw Talbot Field below him, about two kilometres away, its atomic lamp shining as bright as that goddammed star over Bethlehem.
34
NOW HE STOOD by the field itself, an immense apron of smooth, heat-blasted rock, gazing at the small ferry rockets and the sleek, towering shape of the Amazonia that pointed like a vast phallic symbol to the stars. There was a considerable dusting of hydrogen snow on the ground; but the atmosphere was clear again. Which was unfortunate. Under the light of the atomic lamp, he could be seen clearly. So could his tracks in the snow, where he had wandered round the ferry rockets, looking hopefully and in vain for an unsealed air-lock. He had even tried the Amazonia. Its service ramp was down; but the air-lock mechanism was evidently designed only to open when some kind of identification tab or key was inserted in a slot.
Well, he had not expected them to make him a present of their only space ship. It was something to have got this far and to have seen the vessel that, one day, would lift off for Earth. That was something he had to believe. He didn’t believe in God, but he had to believe in something. The unquenchable spirit of man was as good an abstraction as any. Some day, maybe not for hundreds of M-years, but some day, some bright Minervan young men would get fed up with living like moles. They would take the Amazonia and blast off for Earth or even Mars. It was a consoling thought. The one thing the Triple-T party could not do would be to make their sterile culture utterly and absolutely stable. One day, then …
He was tired. He was very tired. And time was running out. He was on his second life-support pack. The first had failed in the hills and in a short snow storm. Fortunately, the snow had not been so thick that he could not see the warning red light that flashed on his arm panel. Changing a life-support pack was easy if you had a friend to help you. You just closed the umbilicus valve, lived patiently on your suit air and waited while your friend unhooked the dead pack, put the new one on your back and placed the fat cord in your hand so that you could snap it into position, check the seal, open the umbilicus valve once more and breathe freely.
To do it yourself in darkness in a hydrogen snow storm was rather more exciting. He had almost passed out before he could get the cord to the umbilicus. He was too far gone even to check the seal. Fortunately, it was perfect.
Then he had had to scramble down another bloody hydro-glacier, over an assortment of oxygen and nitrogen rocks as well as some bloody great igneous rocks. And, before he made the field, he had fallen head first into a fairly deep hydrogen pool. Despite the vacuum cells in the space suit and the heat provided by the overworked micro-pile, he had felt the cold. By the Lord Harry, he had felt the cold! It was so bloody cold he knew he would die within a few seconds. But somehow, blind and totally immersed in liquid hydrogen, he found his feet and started walking. Or wading. He walked out of the pool, a steaming bloody miracle, numb in his arms and legs and with hydrogen vapour wreathing about him like ghostly fingers of death.
It only took a short time for his visor to clear; and then, once more, his head lamp showed him the way forward.
And now here he was at Talbot Field, the end of the road. Well, it had been an interesting journey, worth making. He had seen the ship that would one day go back to Earth. Amen.
He judged he had about four hours of air left in the tank. Why didn’t those bastards in the control tower come out and slap him on the back? It had been one hell of a journey. He doubted if it could have been made by a Minervan. Only an Earth man would have been so stupid …
Why the hell hadn’t they noticed him? Why had they let him prowl about the ferry rockets and try to get into the Amazonia? He was plainly visible. Why didn’t they just come out and put a hole in his space suit and let him die like a gent?
Idris was angry. Unreasonably angry. He realised he was being unreasonable and automatically checked the oxygen-nitrogen mix. Normal. So it wasn’t oxygen narcosis again. It was just the frustration of a man doomed to die. Hell, the least they could do would be to give him some small assistance. But, then, he reminded himself, the sentence had not been death. It had only been exile. Ha, ha! The Minervans made a fine distinction.
He looked at the control tower, and felt even more angry. He wondered if he could do any damage to those complacent zombies who were now, doubtless, observing him with clinical detachment.
He looked at the control tower and saw a light flashing.
He looked at it incredulously.
The sequence of flashes was regular. He understood it instantly. And didn’t believe it. But the sequence was repeated again, and again.
It was a signal that was more than five thousand years old and that had been used and understood by seamen, airmen and spacemen of every nationality.
S.O.S.
35
IDRIS BEGAN TO run towards the control tower—which was a damn silly thing to do, he realised, over hydrogen snow. He fell twice and almost cracked his vizor. But he managed to get to the air-lock without killing himself. It was open and waiting.
He stepped inside. The manual controls were easy to operate. He closed the door, waited for the signal that indicated a perfect seal, then set the controls to pump out the deadly cold helium that was the surface atmosphere of Minerva. When that was accomplished, he punched the button that would fill the chamber with the standard oxygen/nitrogen mix and waited impatiently while the needle of the pressure meter rose.
With frantic haste, he unclipped his helmet and tore off his space suit. Suppose it was all a trick, some kind of sick joke, a misunderstanding, an illusion. Maybe on the other side of the internal door, there was a reception committee of fanatical Triple-T men, determined to finish him off before he could get up to any serious mischief with the space-craft.
He didn’t care greatly. The only thing he was sure of was that the S.O.S. signal had not been an illusion.
What he found when he opened the door was the last thing he would have expected to find.
Mary—with an anaesthetising gun in her hand.
As soon as she saw him, she dropped the gun and rushed to him, holding him fiercely, sobbing.
“Oh, Idris, Idris! I was so afraid you wouldn’t make it.” Then, despite the tears, she managed to smile. “But I knew you would, really. I had to believe you would … Otherwise, I couldn’t have done it.”
Bit by bit, he got the story out of her. She told it as they ran up a spiral stair-case to the control room. He hoped to live long enough to marvel at the sheer audacity of it all. But, for the time being, he could only register the facts.
She had managed to steal the anaesthetic gun from the woman who had been assigned to stay with her and keep her confined in her apartment until the sentence of exile had been carried out. She had put the woman guard to sleep, left the apartment and locked the door behind her. Then she had gone to Talbot station in the hope that she could find a monorail car that would take her up the branch line to Talbot Field. None seemed to be running. She waited till the platform was clear, then jumped down into the track pit and made her way along the tunnel to Talbot Field on foot. An empty car came when she was half-way up the tunnel. She lay in the pit and let it pass above.
The car stayed for a time at the Field terminus. When she arrived, she climbed on board, waited until it had started the return journey, then managed to wreck its auto-control system, which meant that it could not complete its journey down the tunnel and, consequently, that it would block any other car.
Then she had gone back to Talbot Field, taken the lift up to the control tower and had then wrecked that simply by breaking open the manual control panel and hammering the circuits with the butt of the anaesthetising gun. She got one hell of an electric shock in the process, but it had only stunned her momentarily.
She had not known how many men would be
on duty in the tower; and, by that time, she was past caring.
She burst into the room, saw three men, and fired anaesthetic darts into each of them. Then there was nothing else to do but wait. And that had been the worst ordeal of all.
She had almost given up hope, and was resigning herself to the probability of her own exile, when she saw a white space-suit indistinctly against the hydrogen snow.
“I knew you would try to get here, Idris. You wouldn’t just walk about until you died. You are not that kind of man. You would try to take the space-ship. I knew it … Did I do the right thing. I didn’t think it all out. It just sort of happened.”
“My love,” said Idris, “you are magnificent. We may not beat these bastards, but we will give them a hell of a run.”
In the control room, he found the three men. One was slumped by a computer console. The other two lay sprawled on the floor.
He examined the room carefully. He found three items of interest. The first, hanging on the wall, was the panel holding the electronic keys that would open the air-locks of the Amazonia and the ferry rockets. The second was a button behind a glass panel. There was a bronze plaque above the stud, which bore the following words: “If the existence of the Five Cities of Minerva is ever threatened, from whatever cause, I, Garfield Talbot, enjoin any Minervan present at Talbot Field to press this stud.” And the third item was a hot-line to the office of the President of Talbot City.
“Mary, is there any other way to get up to the control tower from the monorail tunnel, apart from the lift?”
“I don’t think so. There is a service ladder in the lift shaft, but I couldn’t find any stair-case.”
Idris gave a great laugh and kissed her. “Then it is going to take them some time to get to us. If they have to track over the surface from Talbot City, it will take hours and hours.”
“They have jet sleds,” said Mary. “They work on a hovercraft principle and can get over very rough terrain.”
“Never mind. We’ll see them coming. We can seal the air-lock if we have to. Then they would probably need laser equipment to break in … Mary, there is just a chance—not much of one, but still a chance—that you may yet see the green hills of Earth. Keep your fingers crossed.”
He read the words on the bronze plaque once more and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder what Garfield Talbot was up to when he had this thing installed? Whatever else he was, he was a very practical character. A good commander, I’d say. And a good commander plans for the safety of his troops and tries to foresee all possible threats. This panic button must be pretty damned important for it to be kept operational for three thousand years.”
“If it is operational,” said Mary. “It could just be maintained for sentimental reasons.”
“I wish I knew what it was designed to do.” He broke the glass and gazed silently at the stud as if sheer concentration would reveal its secret.
“You are not going to press it?” said Mary apprehensively.
He held her shoulders. “My dear, consider our situation. Sooner or later the Minervans are going either to force their way into here or to force us to get out. What can we do? Well, we have the key to the Amazonia air lock. We can take possession of the vessel. But I am damned sure that even if it is fully fuelled and provisioned, you and I can’t crew it to Earth orbit; and even if we could there wouldn’t be a hope in hell of making a soft touch-down. But let’s suppose, by some miracle, we did make a soft touch-down. What do we do—become the latter-day Adam and Eve? We can’t hope to accomplish much by ourselves, sweet. Genetics, accident, the laws of chance and every damn thing you can think of are against us. We need people.”
“The Triple-T people won’t ever allow any Minervans to leave,” said Mary positively, “even if anyone wanted to.”
“They might—given the right stimulus … Do the Minervans have any kind of game roughly similar to poker, Mary?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. I imagined they didn’t. Poker is a game of bluff. It requires low cunning, deceit, an iron nerve—and a bit of luck … I used to be quite good at poker. … I didn’t always win. But if you don’t ever gamble you don’t ever win. I want to gamble on Talbot’s panic button, Mary. He was a tough old bird, hard as nails, crazy like a fox. But he was a practical man. Clearly, he knew that sooner or later, Minerva would face some kind of crisis, some kind of threat. I want to know what he has or had arranged to be done about it. Are you with me?”
She smiled. “Of course I am with you, Earth man. That is all that really matters.” She read the plaque once more. “If the existence of the Five Cities of Minerva is ever threatened, from whatever cause, I, Garfield Talbot, enjoin any Minervan present at Talbot Field to press this stud.” She was no wiser.
“I bet there are similar panic buttons in the Council chambers of the Five Cities,” said Idris. “Talbot wouldn’t have relied on having just one.”
“Not that it really matters,” sighed Mary. “There is no threat to the existence of the Five Cities.”
Idris gave a grim laugh. “Oh, yes, there is. Me—plus poker.”
He pressed the button.
36
THE ACCENT WAS strange but the voice of Garfield Talbot sounded loud and clear, though it must have been recorded thirty centuries ago.
“Citizens of Minerva, greetings. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, my voice comes to you over a secondary communications network that was established for this very purpose. When we came to Minerva from Mars, we came as refugees from the social violence that destroyed two great civilisations. Our ideal was to create a stable society where violence of any kind would be abhorred. In my lifetime, I have seen that we are well on the way to realising that ideal; and I am content.
“As I speak these words, I cannot possibly foresee if you will be listening to them a few years from now, a few decades from now, a few hundred years from now, or, perhaps even longer. But I do know that you should not be hearing them at all unless the very existence of the Five Cities is threatened. It may be that you are facing some natural disaster or that social conflict is attacking the very stability we sought to achieve. It may even be, for reasons I cannot possibly anticipate, that you or some of you will find it necessary to leave this planet, perhaps seeking another refuge in the solar system.
“Therefore, know that the Amazonia is not the last spaceship on Minerva. It was said, and I have found it prudent never to deny it, that, with the exception of the Amazonia, the fleet that brought us here was destroyed by my orders. I have encouraged that belief so that my generation and its descendants would strive to make a success of life on this world rather than dream of journeying to another.
“But four of the original space vessels were not destroyed. They are the Hellas, the Elysium, the Arcadia and the Utopia. All are, of course, nuclear powered, deriving their fuel from the liquid hydrogen that is so abundant upon this planet. The vessels are stationed at the south polar region. Make such use of them as you need. If the time has come for some or all of you to leave this planet, go with the knowledge that Garfield Talbot realised that humanity would not be confined to Minerva for ever.
“But I say to you, whatever the threat that now faces Minerva, it is your duty to ensure that the race of man shall not perish and that it shall flourish to ultimately reclaim the glories that were lost. Now I, Garfield Talbot, bid you farewell.”
Idris gazed at Mary. There was a glint of triumph in his eyes. “I told you I was a pretty good poker player. That was the ace I needed—Garfield Talbot!”
He grabbed the V-phone, the hot-line to the office of the President of Talbot City. The screen lit up. He saw the President’s face.
“This is Captain Idris Hamilton. You have heard the voice of Garfield Talbot?”
“We have.” The President looked tired, frightened, strangely shrunken. “What are you trying to do?”
“In the name of the people of Earth,” said Idris, “I have assumed comman
d of Talbot Field and of the Amazonia. Can you hook this line to the V-phones, screens and public address systems of the Five Cities?”
“We can—but why should we, Captain Hamilton? In a short time, your escapade will be terminated.”
“Unless you do so, sir, in a short time Talbot City and quite probably the other four cities will be destroyed. You have five minutes.”
“Captain Hamilton, you can accomplish this?”
“I can and will. You have four and a half minutes.”
“Very well. We will take you at your word. We can hardly afford to do otherwise.”
Idris glanced at the standard V-phone and the tri-di. “Get those things working, Mary. I don’t think he will cheat, but let’s be sure,” He stood squarely in front of the hot-line lens so that his image would be clear.
“The connections are being made,” said the President of Talbot City.
“You now have three and three quarter minutes,” snapped Idris.
He waited.
Presently, the V-phone and tri-di both relayed his image.
“The link is complete,” said the President.
“Thank you.” Idris cleared his throat. “Citizens of Minerva, you have heard the voice of Garfield Talbot, whom you revere. Now hear what Idris Hamilton, man of Earth, has to say. I have command of the control tower at Talbot Field. In the name of the people of Earth, I have also assumed command of the Amazonia which I shall shortly board. There are two of us—myself and my wife, Mary. We cannot crew the Amazonia to take it to Earth, though we would dearly love to do so.
“However, we can and will lift off and set the ship down on top of Talbot City, and let the atomic engine go critical if we are attacked or if our demands are not met. Our demands are simple. We ask only for the freedom to seek a volunteer crew—a crew who, willingly, will help us to return to Earth and see if the planet is habitable once more. I believe it may be. Certainly, we should try to find out.
The Tenth Planet Page 17