by John Rankine
‘No offence. Give me your little embroidered handkerchief and I’ll wear it in the crown.’
Eagle Nine fled on. Moonbase Alpha diminished to a mole on the moon’s ravaged cheek. Pelorus was growing as if in a zoom lens. The nudge of a sixth sense told Koenig that every step of the way they were being monitored by some observer who would not show his hand. He used his link with Main Mission. Whoever was watching might as well have something to fill his ear.
‘Eagle Nine to Main Mission.’
‘Come in Eagle Nine.’
‘Beam a signal to Pelorus, but make it short and take care. Tell them to expect a landing from a peaceful reconnaissance party.’
Kano did them proud. His measured, even tones would have brought tears to the eyes of a Sioux war party. He said, ‘This is Moonbase Alpha calling the people of Pelorus. We are travellers in space. We came from Earth planet. We are peaceful people. We come in peace, seeking a place to make our home. The craft approaching Pelorus carries our leader Commander John Koenig and some of our chief citizens. We ask you to give them a hearing. We ask for your friendship. Please acknowledge.’
The transmission ended. Silence flowed in like a tide. The Pelorusians, if they understood, were giving nothing away.
The blank refusal to talk was beginning to irritate Koenig. He thumped the release stud of his harness, shrugged out of the gear and opened the hatch to the passenger module. Leaning in, he said, ‘What do you make of it, Victor? Is it that they won’t answer or is it that they can’t?’
‘It must be the first. We’ve seen what they can do. Anybody with that technical know-how, would be able to unscramble a signal.’
‘Where does that leave us?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, John. But it has to be on the negative side. Nobody’s saying welcome.’
Eagle Nine took a sheer turn that had Koenig grabbing the hatch coaming for support. Carter called sharply, ‘Commander!’ and Koenig whipped back to the co-pilot seat.
The long instrument spread was going crazy. Every dial was in a frenetic spin and the on-board computer was throwing out course data that would have had the Eagle disappearing up its own tail.
Kano had started a rerun of his friendly, neighbourhood moon talk and a persistent, hammering crackle drowned it out. At the same time Koenig felt a familiar pounding in his temples and a wave of nausea. He hauled himself out of his seat and made the passenger hatch at a stumbling run.
‘Headset! Try it out!’
Bergman was already there to meet him and settled a tubular helmet on his head. For a second the effect was worse and then Koenig got a hand to the control and brought the power up to match. It was incredible. His brain went from confusion to crystal clarity. Only Carter was still unprotected and Eagle Nine was flinging herself about like a demented gnat.
Koenig said, ‘Fix him up for God’s sake!’ and clawed his way to the co-pilot squab. Switching control to his own panel, he cut computer links and took the control on manual. Eagle Nine steadied to even flight and Koenig brought her round on a course with the planet surface dead ahead and filling his direct-vision port.
Sandra Benes, virtually sitting on Carter, had fixed his headset and was tuning his muddled head. Her personal pollen cloud, pleasantly laced with sandalwood, was a disturbing element in itself.
Prodding at him with a slim forefinger she said, ‘Alan! You’re not trying. Say when!’
‘If I say that, you’ll go away and I’m just getting to like it.’
She fended herself off and joined Bergman at the hatch. All watched the planet surface. There was a change in colour. Although there was still an overall hue of yellow orange it was much less strong and other colours were coming into the composition.
Bergman answered the unspoken question. ‘It’s an atmosphere trace. Seen from a distance, it looks all of a piece. But down at ground level, it’s probably hardly noticed.’
Carter had been watching his instrument spread. ‘It’s steadying, Commander. I have readings.’
It was true. Eagle Nine’s computer was back in business. They had a working ship. But there was no signal from Main Mission to say that Kano was still talking.
Koenig flipped to transmit. ‘Eagle Nine to Alpha. Come in Alpha.’
There was no reply. He tried again. ‘Eagle Nine to Alpha. Do you read me? Come in Alpha.’
The communications executive, earning her keep, said, ‘We have passed through a layer of strong magnetic fields. This could blanket our signals. Perhaps signals from Alpha have not reached Pelorus at all. That is why there has been no answer.’
Koenig said, ‘Let’s hope you’re right, Sandra. It still doesn’t explain two unprovoked attacks. But I’ll give them a local call.’
Far below was the long humpback of a chain of hills set in a flat plain which could be a sea or a prairie feature. There was still no sign that human hands had gone to work to engineer the environment for their own purposes.
Koenig said, ‘Greetings to the people of Pelorus. This is Commander John Koenig of Moonbase Alpha. We come in peace and ask for permission to land and to meet you. Let us know your thoughts.’
Helena Russell and Paul Morrow had crowded into the command module. The six Alphans were stock still. The bland surface of the planet gave nothing back. Helena said, ‘It’s no use, John. They just don’t want to know.’
‘Then we’ll have to pick our own spot to land and go find them. One orbit, Alan, and then go for a planetfall.’
Eagle Nine ran from bright day into a spectacular sunset and bore on into black night with a star map of huge stars fixed like chips of orange diamond. Earth’s roving moon was a bland new feature now showing a brilliant orange yellow through the atmosphere filter. Down below, there was nothing to see. If Pelorus boasted any urban centres, they operated a curfew. There was no sign of man-made light.
There was the glint and fret of a long run of a wine-dark sea, hills clothed with vegetation showing black in the low lumen count, empty plains. It was to all intents a virgin planet.
Dawn met them with long bars of rose madder and pale viridian and held them fixed to the direct-observation ports in awe and admiration. Pictorially, they had gotten themselves a winner out of the cosmic hat. Helena Russell, leaning over Koenig’s chair back, breathed warmly in his ear, ‘It’s a beautiful planet, John.’
‘Handsome is as handsome does. I’ll tell better after twenty-four hours on the surface.’
Carter said, ‘Where, Commander? Where shall I put her down?’
They were crossing a gently undulating plain, evenly coloured auburn like a Pre-Raphaelite head. Carter dropped to zero height and cut back forward speed until they were drifting slowly over the surface and Bergman could make a judgement. Using a short-range scanner set up in the passenger module he brought the plant carpet, life size, to his table. It was hair fine, coiled and springy. It fitted no description in his catalogue of Earth-type flora. But it looked A-Okay for holding a picnic on the grass. Nature’s own mohair run.
He said, ‘It looks good. I need samples. If we have time, I’d like to stop and take a look. But, clearly, we need to search for centres of occupation if they exist.’
Sandra had been running a check on the atmosphere. She said, ‘There is breathable air. Slightly oxygen rich. Pressure like Earth’s at four hundred metres. Gravity less than Earth’s. Temperature twenty-two Celsius.’
Paul Morrow said, ‘It all adds up to an idyllic set. You’ll be bounding about like some spring lamb.’
Helena said thoughtfully, ‘Now there’s a thing . . .’
Morrow, recognising a lack of courtesy, added, ‘And, of course, you too, Helena. Two spring lambs.’
But it was pure science that was troubling the medical wing. She said, ‘Conditions seem right for life. But where is it? We haven’t seen any animals. No birds. No herds grazing on what looks like a natural habitat.’
In the command module, Koenig had come to a decision. He said, ‘Set her
down, Alan. Anywhere here. We’ll make some surface checks.’
Eagle Nine drifted down like a feather, flexed gently on her jacks and the motors cut. Carter looked sharply at his co-pilot. It was one thing having the overall commander as a helper, but he liked to be captain in his own ship. Koenig had not moved. Getting it straight he said, ‘Did you switch off, Commander?’
‘No.’
A puzzled man, Alan Carter ran through a firing sequence. There was no joy. The motors stayed dead.
Koenig said, ‘Hold it.’
Belatedly, the auto trouble-shooter had come up with a signal. He read it off. ‘Panel K43. Gone diss. Blown by overload.’
‘What overload?’
‘That’s what the computer says.’
‘No problem, but it’s a bastard to get at. I’ll be an hour. It’s under the tail decking.’
‘Inside or outside?’
‘Easier to reach from outside.’
‘Then we’d better get at it. The tourists can take a walk on the veldt.’
CHAPTER THREE
Eagle Nine’s landing ramp dropped to the oval of scorched earth, blasted clear of lichen by the flare of her rocket motors. Out of spacegear, but still wearing Bergman’s patent degaussing helmets, the six Alphans reached ground level and looked about. It was incredible to be freely in the open, without life-support systems, under the vast bowl of a real sky with a sun standing over the horizon like a bright apricot penny and a tangible movement of warm air against their faces.
Helena Russell had a sampling kit on a shoulder strap. First things first, she wanted a rundown on the local variant of grass. She knelt at the edge of the oval and opened her satchel. At close quarters, the lichen was seen to be about ten centimetres deep, curled like human hair, with filaments a fraction of a millimetre in diameter that were springing individually from the surface of the earth.
She snapped off a single strand and laid it along the back of her hand. Her startled cry brought Koenig to her side at a run.
‘What is it, Helena?’
An angry red line marked the site of the strand of lichen. ‘The grass, John! Tell the others they mustn’t touch it. It’s like an acid burn.’
Koenig hurried her inside and watched her neat economical movements as she worked on her hand at the medical desk. He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry for what? It’s a nothing.’
‘Sorry for your disappointment. Pelorus looked good. I wanted to bring you to a world we could make a life in. All there is out there is a sea of acid.’
‘It’s out there somewhere, John. Well find it.’
Paul Morrow’s shout from the outfield made a period. ‘Commander!’
Head and shoulders out of the hatch, Koenig saw his group at the edge of the clearing. There was no need to ask what was o’clock. The area of the oval was already significantly smaller. The lichen was already showing another feature. Its regenerative capacity was plainly enormous. It was slowly pushing in to win back the lost ground. Helena’s abandoned pack was already just inside the auburn tide. It was settling slowly like any sand castle as the acid ate into its fabric.
Carter said, ‘Holy Cow! Only look at that. What will it do to Eagle Nine?’
The question hung about with no good answer coming up. All eyes tracked round to Koenig. The faint plume of blue gas rising from the half-consumed pack tripped a relay in his computer. He unshipped a fire-fighting canister from the bulkhead of the passenger module and pitched it out for Carter to catch. ‘Try foam.’
Bergman said, ‘Good thinking, John. There’s an alkaline base. It could work.’
Grey foam jetted from the nozzle with a hiss. Carter threw a metre-square blanket around the pack and stood back. For ten seconds there was a digestive pause. Then the lichen erupted.
A quick spasm of heat drove at exposed hands and faces. Morrow had Sandra by the waist and was throwing her back; a column of blue-green flame flared higher than the ship. When it sank away as quickly as it had come, there was a blackened patch the shape of the foam blanket eaten out of the warm brown carpet.
Alan Carter, dusting ash off his chest said, ‘That does it, Commander. It gives us the time we need to fix the fault and get the hell out of here.’
Calculations were racing through Koenig’s head. The man could be right. But it would be a one-off exercise. If for any reason Eagle Nine was still nailed to the pad at the end of the hour, there would be no repeat performance. They would be staked out for a slow, but certain, death. Not all that slow either, the way the lichen reproduced itself.
The only sure way was to move Eagle Nine to a better site. Ducking back inside he fished out his binoculars and then climbed up the superstructure to wedge himself on cross members of the ship’s girder spine. They had come down close to the foothills of a long mountainous feature that closed the horizon to the north. If the motors had not jacked in, it would have been the next obvious step to taxi over and take a look.
The first slant of rising ground was barely two kilometres distant. It was clear rock or baked earth with no visible vegetation of any kind. It rose to a flat plateau which in turn ran back to a mountain face with a deep overhang. All in all, it had the appearance of a vast quarry, though detail was obscured by the angle of vision.
He knew for a truth it was a better bet. He said, ‘Break out the halftracks. We’ll tow the ship out of this crap. Use foam dispensers to clear a path. Then we know we can make the repair we need.’
All hands worked at it. Without power to drop the equipment on a freight loader, it was a physical chore to manhandle the small, but heavy, halftrack excursion trolleys out of store and down to ground level. When it was done and tow lines fixed, Carter and Morrow used manual worm gear to lift Eagle Nine off of her flat plate feet and drop her massive wheels. Stripped to the waist in the rising heat, they worked against a narrowing time gap with the lichen a metre from their feet when all was done.
Koenig had the halftracks in line abreast taking the strain and ready to go. He walked forward with Bergman beside him, both carrying canisters, and they sprayed out a narrow carpet of foam. They counted five and sprinted back to the cover of the trolleys’ curved transparent windshields.
Carter and Morrow heaved themselves onto the leading plate feet, Sandra and Helena prepared to shove in the forward drive. With more area carpeted with foam, the explosive ignition, when it came, rocked the chore buggies on their tracks and temperature gauges surged momentarily to eighty Celsius. Then the way was clear and the clumsy caravan was jolting ahead.
Carter clambered round the angular frame to get into his pilot seat. It occurred to him that any sudden stops by the halftracks would have Eagle Nine bearing down on their backs. Sitting up front, he was well placed to see the action and reckoned soberly that for a primitive piece of horse-and-cart technology it was working very well.
As soon as the tracks bit, Koenig and Bergman were out again and going ahead to the limit of the cleared ground. They shoved out another tongue of foam and beat it back to a safe distance. It was gruelling work. But it was progress. If supplies of foam held out and the human operators blew no personal fuses, it was in the bag.
Morrow dropped from his perch and went forward to relieve Bergman. Alan Carter heaved him into the command module and gave him the braking drill. Then he too went forward to give Koenig a spell. Working it three ways with two operating and one drawing breath, they crept on without a check. Behind them, a charred wake slowly healed and was covered again by the bland auburn lichen as though they had never passed.
Stripped to the waist, streaked with sweat and greasy ash, the three front-runners fell into a rhythm of total effort. For Koenig’s money, as he took a spell on Helena’s halftrack, it would be all one and welcome if Pelorus went into spasm and disintegrated into atomic trash.
Helena, on the footplate, was totally committed to steering a course. There was a single joystick. Forward to feed power equally to both tracks, left or right for d
ifferential speed. It made the small, powerful buggy highly manoeuvrable. But it could spin on a dime and the hint of a careless shift would have them boring across into her partner with the tow lines in a snarl.
As a doctor, she could judge that they were forcing a physical rate that no human frame could keep up. She said, ‘One more stint, John, and I’m calling a halt. Sandra and I will spray round and hold it back, while you take a break. That’s official.’
Koenig wiped sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand and stared ahead. Carter and Morrow had pulled back. There was the thump of one more explosion as a long ribbon of lichen hit the flash point. As the column of flame died away, there was a change in the scene ahead. He steadied himself against the shockwave, hanging on to the transverse hoop that separated the operations platform from the freight deck of the halftrack. A long incline of grey-green rock, smooth as a billiard table was lifting out of the auburn plain.
Carter waited for them to pass and swung himself aboard. When he could speak, he said, ‘That’s it, Commander. Home and dry. As fast as you like, Helena.’
Motors dropped to a growl as the dead weight of Eagle Nine lumbered onto the incline. Koenig was out of programme and Helena waved across to Sandra to go on for a full due and make for level ground on the plateau.
Bergman saw it first and was thumping the direct-vision port to get attention. But three of the five down below were wrapped in a private world of exhaustion and the other two were concentrating on the way ahead. From his lofty perch, Bergman was seeing the first visual evidence that had come their way that some life form had been up and about on Pelorus. The long ramp of rock opened to a level floor set like an oval tarn in the flank of the hill. Blind chance could never have levelled it off. It had all the earmarks of a prepared landing ground. To prove that it was so, the face of the cliff dead ahead, under the overhang which screened it from view from above, was developed like the facade of a tower block.
The halftracks lipped over the brow of the ramp and drove on until the Eagle was on level ground. Working in concert, Sandra and Helena killed the motors and Bergman, brought back to duty with a jolt, heaved on a manual brake.