The Castaways of Eros

by Theo Varlet

  “She used the famous tradition of the Golden Age, the time when they were free in the forests of Ektrol, and which referred to a woman from the sky. She passed herself off as that woman, and I even wondered whether it was her that had invented the legend...

  “Ten months ago, when you saw us at work, Uncle, she’d yet obtained any real influence over one or two groups of proselytes, the ‘choir.’ Subsequently, those nuclei multiplied, and then, one day, consciousness ‘took hold’ in those brutes, like a spark in tinder, and has gained ground progressively. We began to teach them gymnastic exercises, and then to maneuver them in squads. I was their instructor—but it was still only a matter of so-called hygiene, physical and moral...

  “It was only a month ago that it became necessary for her to tell me what the intention of all that discipline was. Until then, she’d succeeded in hiding the part of the propaganda designed for the workers in the factories, taking advantage of the days when I wasn’t there. You know that when mortality exceeds the birth rate in the barracks where the factory workers lodge, proletarians are recruited from among the savages to fill the gaps. Not being able to go into the factories herself, for fear of awakening suspicion among the red-caped lacertian engineers, she acted by means of recruits. Those emissaries were charged with awakening consciousness in the workers and preparing them for action.

  “That kind of operation attracted my curiosity and she was obliged to explain that she intended to organize a strike of the fruit-pickers in order to make demands on behalf of the bowwows and improve the lot of the proletarians. She told me that in order to obtain their pittance of vegetables, the lacertians would surrender the manufacture of synthetic meat without a blow being struck. She said that she was counting primarily on the Lizards’ surprise, who have long forgotten the use of any weapons other than the police wands.

  “There, I confess, I lacked penetration, because, after all, one could scarcely hope that the Immortals would benevolently allow the slaves to rebel and immediately give in to their demands. But I didn’t see that clearly then; she had also got around me by persuading me that one could obtain a modus vivendi by simple intimidation. Then again, I told myself that these fine projects…which I considered to be dreams…wouldn’t have time to come to fruition before the departure for Earth. In the meantime, she’d taken it into her head to arm her troops, and to that effect she and I started to stockpile arms from the ruins of ancient Khalifur..”

  Aurore uttered a cry of alarm. “With respirators? But you must have used up all of our oxygen reserves!”

  “No, Rette, don’t worry. Ida can be coldly calculating when necessary, and as she still intends to return to Earth, we only used a fraction of the reserves in the rocket. We discovered respiratory masks of lacertian manufacture in the air factory, and the hominine foremen on the night shift recharged the reservoirs for us, so we were able to go into the ruins as often as we wished. She hoped to employ rifles and machine-guns, but the powder in the cartridges, of which enormous stocks remain, has decomposed over time, and not one is usable. We fell back on swords and bayonets. She’s had them fitted to steel tubes, and thus obtained halberds for her entire army. The depot has been established in one of the old Metro tunnels, which opens in the middle of the reservation zone; she’s camouflaged the entrance and established and air supply there.”

  “And what’s the true plan that she revealed to you this morning?” Aurore demanded.

  “Firstly, to take possession of the external factories—the one that distributes air and the power generator. Now that she knows that I won’t cooperate, though, and that the cat’s out of the bag, she knows that we’ll warn Zilgor, and that will change her plans. After what she told me this morning, she might do anything…she might even give up on returning to Earth, with or without you, to announce to the Soviets the triumph of communism on Eros. She’s capable, in a fit of temper, of wrecking the Ad Astra. The first thing we have to do is make the rocket safe.”

  “Better than that!” I exclaimed, in a moment of irrational panic. “Let’s leave the people of this accursed planet to shift for themselves and head back to Earth, at any risk…even if we have to travel for an extra fortnight...”

  Aurore made a gesture of helplessness. “It’s too soon. The distance is still too great. We only have enough fuel in reserve to undertake the journey in a fortnight’s time. If we leave now, not only will the voyage last an extra fortnight, but we’d no longer have enough fuel on arrival to carry out the maneuvers necessary for a safe landing. No, the situation would have to be utterly desperate...”

  I resigned myself, regretfully.

  “If the revolution’s about to break out, then, as Oscar says, the rocket will only be safe here in the Palace. It’s necessary to bring it here. The apparatus weighs two tons, but that’s only the equivalent of a hundred kilos on Eros. The three of us, with the aid of a few policemen, would be able to carry it.”

  “But Ida won’t let us do that,” Oscar objected. Even if we succeed in crossing the bowwow zone on the way out, she’ll have them all mobilized when we come back and launch them at us. No, Rette, let the Rocket transport itself—fly it as far as the terrace of the Observatory.”

  Aurore shook her head, indecisively.

  “Strictly speaking…but the flight would require fuel. However small the expense would be, it’s still too much if we’re obliged to leave without waiting for the most favorable moment.”

  “It doesn’t matter, if it’s the only way—and it’s necessary to do it right away. Even with a police escort, we might already have difficulty getting out of the city. Let’s hurry!”

  “By going out behind the Palace and going around the city outside the zone, we can avoid any attack,” Aurore pointed out, “so we’re not pressed for a quarter of an hour. I don’t want to do anything without consulting Zilgor. He wouldn’t forgive us for acting without his consent.”

  All three of us set out for the Unique’s apartment, but we ran into trouble. It was the first time that Aurore had tried to see the Master of Eros without having been summoned by him, and the wrestlers on guard at his door refused to let us in. We hadn’t anticipated that. It was impossible to negotiate, because no Lacertian, Mortal or Immortal, except Zilgor and Styal understood French. It was therefore necessary first to set out in search of Styal. It was only after three-quarters of an hour of searching and talking to him that we finally got in to see Zilgor.

  He seemed very astonished to see all three of us and listened regretfully to my wife’s explanations. His initial reaction was incredulity.

  “How could this wretched madwoman have changed the nature of the hominines to the point of leading them to revolt? Their slavery is too inveterate...”

  It was necessary for Oscar himself, ashamed of his role and blushing like a schoolboy before the Lizard genius with the golden skull to give him precise details, recounting succinctly all the preparations in which he had cooperated.

  As his conviction increased, the Master of Eros took on a stranger and more redoubtable majesty. His psychic eye deluged us with fluorescence. He spoke, and his slow and mechanical locution, charged with retrospective menace, inspired shivers.

  “This is what I get for having saved you, contrary to the advice of most of my Immortals, when you arrived. I thought I was acting for the good of Science. This Ida, at least, that useless mouth, I should have had put to death. Violence had disappeared from this world, and you have come to import the trouble, revolt and passion of your planet...”

  Outside, in the corridors of the Palace, the baying voices of hominines were approaching, mingled with the exclamations of lacertians. The entire habitual protocol surrounding the Master had been overturned by an enormous event, all the more keenly resented on the asteroid where nothing had happened for centuries.

  A Mortal in a red cape comes in, breathless. He darts a ferocious glance at the Terrans, prostrates himself before Zilgor, and in a sibilant, stuttering, precipitate voice, he speak
s…and Styal translates for us as he goes along, sardonically...

  The savages have rebelled. With the aid of the proletarians, they have taken possession of the external factories, massacred the lacertian engineers and some of the police on duty under the pylons; the survivors are falling back to the city...

  The Master of Eros gives an order: that all lacertians and faithful slaves should take refuge in the Palace. Its armor is solid and the bowwows will never be able to take it by storm, even with bombs.

  Then another order, to Styal: the Terrans are authorized to fetch their apparatus.

  And Styal escorts us to the terraces of the Observatory, situated above the atmosphere-retaining network, to which access is obtained by an airlock. That is the route we take, after donning our masks. Excursions outside the atmosphere by Erotians are rare, but the circumstance has been anticipated nevertheless, for the service of the great telescope, whose upper part plunges into the void, among other functions. At the rear of the Palace, a vertiginous stairway descended along the steel cliff that looms over the ruins.

  But how much time we have already lost! The sun has passed the meridian when we finally set foot in the ruins of ancient Khalifur. Going around the zone of the pylons will be a long journey, circling the hillocks of red sand without the risk of being seen by the revolutionaries, and we have eight or nine kilometers to cover in order to reach the rocket.

  I have forgotten to say that some months before, the original tarpaulin set up to protect the rocket was replaced by a veritable hangar of white-painted sheet metal—a highly visible reference-point in the porphyry desert. It is already in sight after fifteen hundred meters, but Oscar touches my arm. Silhouettes have emerged from the pylon forest and, like us, are advancing toward the rocket. Aurore has seen them too, and passes me the binoculars.

  They are savages—a dozen of them. Masked with respirators, with cylinders of air on their backs, they are brandishing iron bars while progressing at the double, four abreast. And Oscar has been their instructor! It’s lucky for him that the mask prevents me from rebuking him.

  All three of us resume running, making prodigious twenty-meter bounds in nightmare flight in which it seems that we will never touch the ground again…and which make progress deplorably slow. I observe that I’ve lost much of my agility in becoming accustomed to the low gravity of Eros since that first journey with my nephew to the Great Cut, not long after our disembarkation nineteen months ago.

  No matter—we’re gaining ground on the hominines, who are not very nimble. Their squad has broken ranks into an irregular file. The fastest is already three hundred meters away when we arrive at the white hangar. Oscar is the first to dive in. When I join him at the top of the ladder to the man-hole, he is already in the process of unfastening the screws, and the hatchway opens as soon as Aurore has joined us.

  Quickly! Quickly! Through a gap in the sheet metal I perceive the hominine in the lead, fifty meters ahead of his colleagues. With his iron bar, if he strikes hard, he might be able to crack the magnalium walls. Too bad! I draw my revolver, allowing my two companions to leap into the rocket, and when the assailant arrives within ten meters, I shoot him, and then go through the man-hole in my turn. Aurore has already gone down to the engine-room. Oscar closes the hatchway behind me, and refastens the screws.

  “All set? Is it locked?” Aurore shouts.

  I hurl myself to the porthole.

  They’re here!

  “Locked! Go! Now!”

  A first blow of an iron bar, fortunately struck without assurance, resonated against the wall down below...

  A second later, however, the thunder of the engine burst forth, a liberating harmony...

  As I have not taken the precaution of lying down, the vertical take-off, which splits and shatters the metal of the hangar, sends me hurtling into the storage-lockers, with Oscar and I near fall through the hatch.

  The engine only functions for a new seconds, and the spaceship is already leveling off…and almost immediately, the delicate maneuver begins, with short blasts of the engine, for the landing on the terrace of the Observatory.

  The flight lasts less than five minutes, and our absence three-quarters of an hour.

  With the apparatus solidly in place, we go through the airlock and arrive in the dome of the great telescope, empty of occupants, where we take off our masks.

  “They didn’t get us!” cried Oscar, triumphantly, still excited by the escapade. “And what noses they must have had when the engine farted in their faces!”

  But Aurore, her head tiled and a finger on her lips, says: “Shh!”

  We prick up our ears. Muffled but clearly audible, a rumor arrives from outside: a song intoned by hundred of throats. I run to the window and open the soundproof glass. Down below, the plaza is swarming with hominine revolutionaries who are pouring out from the main street, howling an Internationale, to which my memory mechanically fits the words:

  “So comrades come rally…and the last fight we shall face...”

  XXVII. The Final Hours

  25 December, 3rd Erotian day.

  Today the planet Eros crossed the orbit on Mars, heading toward the Earth. Another week and departure will become viable without too many risks, but with a journey time of eleven days. In order to reduce it to seven we would have to wait at least another three weeks...

  Will that be possible?

  For three days we have been besieged in the Palace. The entry of the revolutionaries into the city was so rapid and so unexpected that complete disorder spread among the Lacertians, not all of whom had time to fall back to this refuge. A large number of Mortals, engineers in the factories, were killed at their posts. Other attempted to seal themselves in their dwellings, once fitted out as bunkers against gas attack, but after so many centuries the locking mechanisms had mostly broken down. From the windows of the Observatory, only one house is visible whose armored doors were able to be closed and in which Lacertians are sheltering.

  In addition, the conduits that ought to be distributing air to that entire district, to the interior of the bunkers, from the factory in the Palais, are no longer functioning, and the houses are only receiving the air that circulates in the streets beneath the network. However, there is little chance that the rebels will take it into their heads to cut off the current—would they not asphyxiate too?

  As for the Palace, its steel walls are unbreachable, so long as the besiegers do not have artillery at their disposal—and none remains usable. Air and water supplies are assured, in any case, since one of the three auxiliary stations is situated within the walls, as well as one of the ultra-X stations. What it is necessary to fear in the short term, however, is famine.

  These are the statistics of the situation.

  Lacertians: Fifty red-caped Mortals, refugees, half of whom are women and children. More than forty ushers attached to internal service. Plus the Twenty-One Immortals.

  Hominines: 150 slaves already present. Of the 1,500 loyal hominines of the city—policemen, overseers and servants of the lacertians—only a hundred have succeeded in joining us, making a total of 250 reliable hominines.

  The proletarians in the factories have been massacred by the savages who had enrolled in their ranks. The troops besieging us amount to some 3,000 combatants, armed with iron bars and spears.

  A sortie against them is impossible with such a weak garrison. There is also a lack of weapons, and we do not have the air necessary to go in search of them. Active resistance has been very limited thus far. Our hominines have dropped a few fragments of armor-plating on the crowds cluttering the plaza—result, twenty cracked skulls…and a cannibal banquet that evening around acetylene flames. But that is unlikely to happen again, because the bowwows are now maintaining a respectful distance.

  Aurore, who sees the Master of Eros every day, thinks that he is at a loss. This attack, this subversion of all the principles of non-violence that had always reigned upon the asteroid, seems to have annihilated his cap
ability. He may be an immortal provided with young gray matter, but his unchanging science is old, and his static wisdom is incapable of reacting to novelties. He has lost the instinct of self-defense. His mind is reeling, at bay…a temporary crisis, no doubt, but for the moment, there’s inertia, and during the four days of the siege no one has done anything or attempted anything.

  All three of us feel that we are targets of Lacertian hostility. In the corridors, Immortals and Mortals pass us with fixed expressions. They surely wish that we were dead. But for the omnipotent will of the Unique, we would already have been slaughtered. The hominines are still the same, cheerful and stupid, ready to play their role as good guard-dogs. Ida’s propaganda has not reached them, nor its contagion.

  On the first day, the bowwows demolished our radio antenna, evidently on the Russian’s orders. That demonstrates that she intends to prevent us from returning to our native planet, just as she has renounced doing so. When she appears in the plaza, acclaimed by her troops with the strains of the Internationale, she does not miss the opportunity to taunt us. She is armed with a loudhailer, and hails us every day, one after another, to warn us of the fate that awaits us if we do not desert the Lizards in order to join “our human brethren.” “Within a week, you’ll regret not having listened to me. Come on, Oscar, do the right thing!”

  Oscar does not reply, but from the glances he darts at his ex-fiancée, there is reason to fear that he might not be entirely liberated from her influence.

  Once, after emerging from a long meditation, he said to me: “What if I were to go to meet her, to negotiate? Who knows? A treaty that would ensure the bowwows independence in their own territory...”

  Poor child! He is singularly deluded! I try to convince him of his error. “What do you expect, my lad? At the point we’ve reached, things have to go on to the end. It’s either the extermination of the Lizards or that of the savages—no middle way.”