by John Rankine
Finally, Menos said, ‘The androids know nothing of this. This is what human life is all about. The love there is between two people. Whatever success they have, without us, Pelorus is a dead world.’
Rama said, ‘Shall we wait for Gregor’s zombies to execute us?’
‘I think not.’
Gently, Menos disengaged his hands and walked to his private desk. He pushed studs, in a sequence known only to himself, and opened a cavity in the flat top. He drew out a fine crystal carafe almost full of a brilliant green liquid and then two slender stemmed glasses.
Rama said, ‘Pouring the wine is a hostess’s privilege. I will serve you for the last time in the tradition of our people.’ She slipped off her sandals and her pleated kilt. When she carried the brimming glasses, head tall, eyes bright, straight as a spear, she was, as he had known her any time, for all the years of their exile.
Menos said, ‘To all that is past and to your part in it.’
Rama said, ‘We do not ask for life, but we find ourselves alive. We do not ask for death, but it cannot be avoided. It is the ultimate mystery. To all that is past and to your part in it.’
Leaned against each other in a rigid dolmen, they neither of them heard the glasses shatter as they fell to the stone floor.
Instinct drove Koenig to go on. He was a fighter by training and temperament. While he could still move, he would push himself to the limit of endurance. The gunner would be taking his time for a final shot that would shatter the wreck. Koenig clawed his way into the passenger module where Paul Morrow was using a piece of tubular ribbing to lever open a buckled hatch.
Carter came through and hurled his extra weight on the bar. The hatch sprang free and Bergman dropped down to take delivery as they posted Sandra and then Helena through the gap. Eagle Nine had made her last landfall close against the side of the rocky barrier that sealed the end of the valley. Koenig had three bad choices. He could go for the valley floor and be hunted by an android pack. He could try to get his party over the hill, or they could lie down where they were and hope the gunner would be content, when he had smashed the remnants of the Eagle.
They were ten paces away from the ship, when the gunner fired again. The ground shook and a hurricane blast threw them in a tangle to the ground.
Anger coursed through Koenig’s head like a red tide. He was no longer planning or leading or taking any long-term decision of any kind. All he wanted to do was to beat a path to the carrier and take the android apart. One-handed, he heaved himself to his feet and set out at a stumbling run for the road.
Carter called ‘Commander!’ There was no answer. Koenig was out of communication. He was well on his way up the short incline and his objective was plain.
Alan Carter looked round the group. Helena and Sandra were still deeply unconscious. Bergman was bleeding from a head wound where a piece of the Eagle’s disintegrating shell had struck like shrapnel. Paul Morrow was trying to stand on what looked like a broken ankle. It was the end of the road. The Alphans were going nowhere. Carter picked up his feet and started after Koenig, catching him as he reached the turn and started up the long straight towards the carrier.
The heroics of it were lost on the android gunner. He saw two moving units separate out from the group on the plateau and make towards him. He had been lining up for a final shot to destroy the whole party and paused to think it out. He had all the time in the world. On balance he reckoned he should deal with the nearer two first and they were obliging enough to set themselves up as a prime target. The turret swung again and the gun pointed down the road. It was only a matter of elevation. Thorough and deliberate, he brought the long barrel to bear.
Koenig was looking up the hill at the flared muzzle and firing his laser as he ran. The range was too great and the handgun was too low in calibre to do any good.
When the whole front of the carrier glowed cherry red and the gun barrel drooped like limp pasta over the melting hood, he stopped dead, looking at the gun in his hand with simple disbelief.
Carter had got it sorted. He was waving like a maniac. What he was shouting finally penetrated Koenig’s closed circuits. ‘Eagles! A squadron. They’ve come to pull us out.’
There were three, in a tight echelon, and the right-hand marker peeled off to circle for the apron, while the other two carried on to range over the valley and give covering fire. When Koenig and Carter reached the landing ground, the rest of the party had been hauled aboard and Rufford, a security detail riding shotgun, was waiting at the hatch.
‘Controller Kano’s compliments, Commander. He gave us one hour on the surface. We’re overdue. We were pulling out, when we picked up a May Day from Eagle Nine.’
‘As quick as you like then. Signal the squadron.’
As Eagle Five thundered into a crash takeoff, Koenig was watching the valley floor. There was more movement in the towering vegetation than could be put down to the blast from the rocket motors. Cycads were swaying like grass. A long ripple seemed to be spreading from the hidden entrance of the Copreon rotunda.
Carter had gone through into the command module and was watching his pilots con the ship.
They were working without navigational aids. Every dial on the instrument spread was going crazy in a magnetic storm that was sweeping over Pelorus. All hands were wearing variants of Bergman’s degaussing helmet and, without them, Eagle Five would be joining the wreck on the clearing below.
Koenig had Helena wedged beside him on a squab and took off his battered helmet to put it on her head. He reckoned that in the situation they were in, a conscious doctor was worth a half dozen military commanders with no campaign to fight. It was a close-run thing, whether he would get it in place, working clumsily with one hand, before the surging field blacked him out.
When she opened her eyes, her first thought was that the weight on her chest was a tombstone. Then she was rolling him gently aside and struggling to her feet. There was plenty to keep her mind on load, now that she had it back. Paul Morrow was flat out in the aisle with Rufford kneeling beside him and cutting away the heavy boot from his bulging ankle. Victor Bergman was holding a pad to his head and Sandra was stretched out on a squab, still as a beautiful, ivory doll.
The three Eagles clawed their way up and out. Nobody in the passenger module of Eagle Five had time to watch the diminishing scene on Pelorus. Carter watched the fertile valley, until the detail melded in the widening field. He kept the rough location, when the whole sphere of the apricot-hued planet was visible in the direct-vision port and could have sworn that there was a red scar that ran briefly over the area and then whited out.
They were equidistant from the moon and Pelorus and the squadron was still working on manual, when the pilot tried his link to Main Mission one more time.
‘Eagle Five to Main Mission. Do you read me? Come in Main Mission.’
Faintly and still heavily laced with static, Kano’s voice came from the panel. ‘Main Mission to Eagle Five. We read you. Report.’
Alan Carter leaned over and took the link. ‘Eagle Commander to Main Mission. You haven’t seen the last of us. Reconnaissance party dented, but all safe.’
Even on a poor line, there was no mistaking the urgency in Kano’s voice, ‘Conditions deteriorating. Make all speed to rejoin. Landing-control beams unreliable. Distrust on-board readings.’
Carter said, ‘Check. Give us all visual indicators you can. We’ll come on manual. Watch your heads.’
‘We’ll do that thing. Out.’
The big screen in Main Mission was swept intermittently by silver rain. For brief, lucid intervals, the squadron could be seen arrowing across the star map, with Peloras as a distant backdrop.
Kano, wholly tired and topped up to his back teeth with black coffee, stuck it out at his command desk. Computer’s last coherent printout had put the maximum disturbance from the Pelorusian force fields at two hours distance. By that time, the squadron should be home and dry and, if the screens held, Moonbase Alpha wou
ld be over the hump. He called Mathias in the Medicentre. ‘Doctor, they may be in poor shape. Have a reception party at Launch Pad Five.’
Koenig was back on stream as Eagle Five manoeuvred to run in. There was still enough interference swilling about to make him feel lightheaded, but the silvery spread of Moonbase Alpha below the jacks of the hovering Eagle was a boost in itself.
The medico had justified his decision. While he could only have worried at problems with no solution in view, she had used the Eagle’s medical stores and worked methodically through the casualty list. Morrow was mobile with his ankle set and fixed in a splint. Victor Bergman’s genial ape face was half covered in a slanted turban that gave him a piratical look. Given a parrot, he would have been a natural for saying, ‘Jim, lad.’
Koenig, himself, found that his left arm had been strapped firmly to his side. He felt stiff and awkward, but most of his tiredness had gone. He heard Sandra’s clear, precise voice asking what was o’clock and what part of the forest she was in this time round.
Helena was repacking the medical kit and filling out a supply blank for replacements. Koenig came up behind her and anchored himself to a roof strap. She saw his hawk face reflected beside her own in the polished curve of the bulkhead.
Eagle Five dropped to her pad in a flurry of moondust and, before the motors cut, a travel tube was running out to home on the entry hatch. Koenig turned away. The mantle of command had dropped back on his shoulders. There was still work to do before he could get down to the personal equation.
Surprisingly, she was on his wavelength. Maybe the outriders of the magnetic storms that were sweeping Pelorus produced conditions that were favourable to ESP. She said, ‘I know you can’t wait to get into Main Mission. I’ll see you if and when . . .’
Main-Mission staff stood to see them in. Kano said formally, ‘Welcome back, Commander. We take it that Pelorus will not be the planetfall we are looking for?’
Koenig said, ‘That’s the understatement of all time. We have to thank you for sending in the squadron. What’s the position?’
‘Calculations are not easy. Computer is affected. I estimate that we are at the closest point to Pelorus in thirty minutes from now.’
‘What protection have we?’
‘All screens are at maximum.’
‘Then all we can do is hold fast and sweat it out.’
For a short, clear spell, the big screen was holding Pelorus dead centre like a ripe apricot on a black showpad. Carter said ‘Holy Cow! What’s happening down there?’
A spreading purple stain was erupting along the equatorial line as though the skin of the fruit was splitting and showing that all was rotten inside. Silver rain swept over the screen and blotted it out.
Bergman said slowly, ‘That’s a fantastic area. Thousands of kilometres. Something triggered a chain reaction. There won’t be any survivors, androids or Copreons.’
Koenig said, ‘If anything does survive it would be an android . . .’ He stopped. The screen had cleared again, but the planet was shifting out of centre and trying to run off the scanner. The operator was swinging the probes to compensate, but was doing no good.
Bergman said suddenly, ‘It’s the moon. We’re changing course.’
Koenig left the operations well and climbed the steps to a direct-vision port. Out over the stark moonscape, the moon’s horizon was wheeling across the star map. The gravisphere of Pelorus was finally squeezing them out. The whole fabric of Moonbase Alpha was taking the strain as centrifugal forces made a bid to tear it off its foundations and fling it out into space.
Koenig forced himself down the steps, hauling forward to reach the communications post. If the pressure kept up, no structure could stand it. There was the remote chance that some could reach the underground bunkers.
He was halfway across the floor and framing the all-sections call he would have to make when the pressure eased as suddenly as it had begun and his body, responding to the effort he was making, accelerated across the gap. He was throwing the switch and preparing to speak when he realised that he could save his breath. It was all over. Pelorus had made its last hostile move. People were sitting up and looking around. The big screen was crystal clear and Pelorus was hardly more than palm sized in the centre.
They were away with a boost in velocity. Wherever they were going they would get there faster.
Helena Russell had taken a shower and zipped herself into a housecoat. Artificial, and dependent on life-support systems, though it might be, there was something to be said for Moonbase Alpha. To fit her mood, she selected the Grieg Piano Concerto and felt the familiar surge of optimism that always came with the great rising sweep of the theme. She made coffee and set two places at a low table.
When Koenig tapped at the hatch, she went to meet him. Once inside, he leaned his back on the door and they stood a pace apart, each conscious of a kind of timeless peace.
Koenig said, ‘There is the universe, too vast to comprehend; there is the moon, lost in it. There is Moonbase Alpha, clinging to the bare rock and there is this room. It is a strange thing that we should be in it and looking out of one pair of eyes at each other."’
‘Everybody has to be somewhere.’
‘True. Or nowhere. Which very nearly happened and may happen yet. Will happen, eventually, however much we may love each other and in spite of that music which would tempt us to think we were immortal.’
‘That’s a sombre line to take.’
‘In here and with you, I don’t have to pretend that I’m sure we’ll find a future.’
‘Why not? Don’t I rate your best public-relations efforts?’
‘You’re determined not to be serious.’
‘True. I don’t feel serious as of now. I’m glad to be home.’
‘Home?’
‘Does that surprise you?’
Koenig considered it. Home was an emotive word. What did it mean? A hearth? A chair and table? A cave, a hut, an expense-account flat with every convenience?
It was none of those. Rightly considered, it was a state of mind. He stretched out his good hand to touch her hair and said, ‘For, me, home is where you are. Is that what you want me to say.’
‘I don’t want you to say anything under duress.’
Gravely and seriously, she moved the half pace which took her close. Knowing him very well, she knew that he did not like to be laughed at too long; but she was working on it. The music was beating up for one of its long, breath-stopping crescendos. Their lips met in a sweet kiss.
Earth’s moon raced on. Pelorus shrank to a dot and winked out beyond the range of the long-distance probes. The endless quest was still on. John Koenig, looking at Helena’s sleeping head, made a sober evaluation. They could not have come so far to be beaten now. Somewhere, they would find a new Earth and build their city.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
ANDROID PLANET
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE