by Unknown
There was a small scattering of something on the floor to one side of the seal. Fragments of a glass-like material, he thought: the remains of May’s ill-advised experiment. She was showered with shards. It would not have been glass. May would have known better than to use glass. There probably wasn’t a single item made of glass in the whole of the station. Even so, the material had shattered under the stress of unequal interior and exterior pressures. If one of those shards had punctured her suit, she would have died as Thorsten was supposed to have died.
He had one more step to go.
The seal opened. He piloted the crawler forward and waited. The seal before him was the door to the surface.
A voice spoke in his helmet. It was Lewis.
‘Paul, do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Vandamme says you are going outside. Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
He heard Lewis’s intake of breath.
‘I can’t permit you to go outside. You are not properly crewed and neither are we. It isn’t safe.’
‘I’m going outside, Lewis. Don’t try to stop me.’
‘I will certainly stop you. You’ve given no justification for your actions. You’re putting yourself at risk and also the station. We can’t afford to lose you or the crawler. You must return at once.’
‘I am not going far, Lewis.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to see Thorsten.’
There was a slight pause. Paul rotated the view. The airlock seal behind him was still closing. Come on!
‘Thorsten is dead, Paul,’ said Lewis slowly. ‘You can’t see him.’
‘Yes I can.’
A faint clicking of keys came over his earpiece.
‘I’m overriding the systems, Paul. The outer door will not open. You must return and explain yourself.’
‘No.’
‘You can’t go out, Paul!’
The airlock had closed. The numbers began to tumble once more.
‘Open the door, Lewis.’
‘I am not going to—’
‘Open it!’
‘I’ll damn well do nothing of the sort. You’re acting irrationally …’
‘Open it, damn you!’
‘… danger to yourself and to us. You can sit there as long as you like—’
‘Lewis!’
Furiously Paul punched the key marked Bore. Something clicked faintly above his head. His screen showed another view – the outer door again, but this time looking down a long mechanical arm.
‘Open it – or I’ll break it down!’
There was a pause.
‘You can’t do that,’ said Lewis. ‘You’ll break the bore, more likely.’
‘Shall we see?’
He jerked the joystick. Clumsily the arm reached forward, like a long finger.
‘Paul, if you touch that door we’ll restrain you when you get back in.’
‘You’re going to open it, Lewis! You’re going to open it now!’
Through the fabric of the crawler, through the layer of his suit, he felt the clunk as the bore-nose came to rest against the rim of the door. There would be four bolts, he calculated. Maybe five.
He pressed Start. Slowly the bore began to turn. In utter silence dust began to fly.
There was a muttered curse in his ear. Other voices, more distant, were speaking in alarm. They must all have gathered around the console … When Lewis called us into his work-chamber … He had Thorsten on his monitor … There was something odd about Thorsten’s answers …
A thin stream of shavings was dropping to the floor.
‘All right! Paul, all right! Stop the bore! I’m releasing it!’
Paul jerked the joystick backwards. The arm recoiled. The drill was still spinning. He stopped it.
The last door was opening. He pressed the pedal. The crawler rolled forward, out onto the permanent ice.
The first thing was the gleam of something like water in the crawler lights. Like water? It probably was water, mixed with liquid nitrogen and ammonia, which kept it from freezing even as it seeped through the appalling cold of the crust and broke out through some vent in the surface. He could not see the vent itself. It might even be under the station. The station was designed to float on such flows.
The second thing was the change in the crawler’s motion. Its wheels were on an uneven surface. After the smooth floors of the station it was juddering, even bouncing in a slow, uneasy rhythm that reminded him of being in a boat. The engine was powerful, the gravity low. The wheels were splayed wide to prevent it from overturning. Even so, it would not be difficult to roll it. And that would be disaster.
If the crawler rolled he would be stuck, even if the hatch would still open. The temperature stood at 36K. Thirty-six degrees above absolute zero. The ground out there is trying to suck your heat out through your boots.
His foot had lifted automatically from the accelerator. The bouncing motion eased. The crawler came to a halt just short of the pool’s edge. How deep would it be? No knowing.
He rotated the screen.
The floor of the canyon gleamed faintly with ice and pools, all bathed in a faint light like the last half-hour of twilight back on Earth, before the true night set in. The light would be coming from overhead, from the distant, star-like Sun. There would be more light once he got out of the canyon. Here, everything was enveloped in the shadowy walls of ice that rose above him.
The screen did not seem to do an upward view. Without it he felt very blind.
His lights showed him tracks in the ice, leading away to his left along the edge of the liquid flow. They would have been made by the utility crawlers. Crawlers went out from the station on various missions, but most involved climbing up the side of the canyon, up the natural ledge towards Thorsten’s cairn.
He moved the joystick and pressed gingerly on the pedal. The crawler lurched forward, swinging to follow the tracks. As long as he stayed in the tracks his chances of getting stuck or overturning were far less.
And his chance of coming back safely was far greater.
‘Paul?’
It was May’s voice.
‘Hello.’
‘Paul, what are you doing? Please tell us.’
You talk to him, they would have said to her. Maybe he’ll listen to you. You try.
‘I’m going to see Thorsten.’
‘Paul, we don’t understand! Why?’
‘Because there must be someone else!’
Pause. He could imagine the crew members looking at one another down in the station. Wondering, frightened … He’s mad, they would be thinking. He’s gone mad.
And Lewis? Had he understood yet what it was that Paul had guessed? What was he thinking now? And what would he say to the others?
Would he give in, as he had given in at the door?
But even if he did, Paul would not believe him. He could confess the truth now, then later he would claim he had only said it to get Paul back inside the station. There was just one way to be sure.
‘Paul?’
It was May again. There was a tremble in her voice.
‘Paul – please. Whatever you are going to do, you have to come back. You understand? Please.’
She thought he was going to kill himself.
‘I’ll come back.’
‘Paul. Please come back now. If you have an accident we’ll lose you, and the crawler as well!’
‘I’m going to see Thorsten.’
Silence.
The crawler had begun to climb. To his left was the ice wall. To his right, a drop. The way was narrow – comfortable enough for utility crawlers but not for the big red crawler. He was hugging the cliff as closely as possible.
It was steep too. It was far steeper than such a road on Earth would have been. Of course there was less gravity to combat, but at the same time it made the risk of overturning seem greater. It was mostly natural, the crew had said. The constructors had only
had to improve it. Improve it? What did that mean? Pile rubble into the cracks, he supposed. They hadn’t had much choice about its course – or its width.
‘Damn!’
‘Paul, what happened?’ That was Lewis, tense. They must be following his every move down there.
‘It’s just narrow!’
‘Paul, you mustn’t take this kind of risk! Come back now. If you like we’ll pilot a utility up there—’
‘The hell with that!’
He had never used the word hell before. He had an idea that it was supposed to be a very hot place. Bitterly, he laughed aloud.
‘Paul. We do not understand. Tell us why you are doing this!’
‘Because there must be someone else! There must be! And it has to be Thorsten.’
There was silence for a moment. Paul supposed they were digesting what he had said, absorbing it, understanding his accusation. And then they would deny it.
But what Lewis said was: ‘Paul, repeat that last, please. You broke up. It has to be …?’
‘Get out of my ear, Lewis!’
‘Paul, you must help us!’
‘Get out of my ear and let me drive this thing! Damn!’
For one horrible moment he thought a wheel was spinning in empty space. But the crawler lurched onwards, upwards. He could see the rim of the canyon, ahead and above him. Two, three hundred metres? Impossible to tell. The sky was nearly as black as the ice. Only the gleam on the canyon rim showed him where it might be. And the shape of a spar, catching the light.
The way was widening. It was becoming a slope of ice – luminous, fissured ice. The big wheels bounced but maintained their grip. He was getting more used to this. His power indicator read 67%.
The cairn was a little way ahead of him, set back from the natural line of advance, just as if it were an old roadside shrine on Earth. It was built of debris from the station, coated over the years with thin layers of frost. If it had not been for the spar planted in its cone it would have been just one more icy hummock in all that waste of ice, silvered with the thin ammonia frost that fell from the sky.
The crawler heaved itself up to the ridge beside the cairn.
Brake. Lower and lock the legs.
Legs locked, said the screen.
And look around, because he might never come out here again. Slowly he rotated the camera. The images traversed his screen.
He was looking across ridge after ridge of ice, dark where it fell steeply and silver-purple where the light fell upon it. The sky was a dull blue-black, streaked here and there with thin greys. As the camera turned, Paul saw a man-made radio antenna, sited about half a kilometre away. That was one of the auxiliaries. Its dish was pointed to the sky.
And now other things were coming into view: the edge of the canyon, frighteningly close and deep, it seemed. The screen would not look down into it, just as it would not show him the planet overhead. And what was that? Another man-made structure, a little along the canyon edge. It stood like a radio antenna, with some kind of dish pointing to the sky. But it was not an antenna. And the angle of the dish was curious.
There was another one beyond it. And another. There was a long row of them on the lip of the canyon. And there were more on the far side, again with their angled dishes … Yes, those were the outer ring of the Sun-gathering system, tilting their mirrors to spill the weak rays down into the bottom of the canyon where the secondary and tertiary mirrors would focus them onto the baths of algae below the insulating layers of the station. Plus twelve Celsius, the temperature had been down there, in the glare gathered from forty-eight huge mirrors combined.
The display on his screen read 37K.
Now the screen was completing its tour, looking up the length of the canyon along another line of standing mirrors to where the cone of ‘Humperdinck’ heaved itself into view in the background. And here, sliding into view again before him, was the cairn of rubble with the pylon poking up out of the top of it. The feature the station crew called ‘Thorsten’.
That’s Thorsten, he had heard one of them say. Who had it been? He remembered it as May’s voice. Did May really believe that Thorsten lay out here?
Paul did not believe it.
‘We’ll see,’ he said. And he began to pick at the controls.
Down in the station he had studied the crawler plans carefully. It was equipped with all the main instruments available on a utility – arm camera for close inspections, deicer, grips and a bore. He switched the display to the arm camera and inspected the rubble of which the cairn was made.
The shapes were small and mostly regular. They must have been waste containers and debris left over from the construction, carted up here by patient utilities to make this pile. That had been nine years ago. The layer of frost on them was far thinner than on the landscape. Even so, it was enough to have fused them together in a single lump. He had been expecting that.
He selected the de-icer and guided it forward, pulling back the camera at the same time to watch what he was doing. The nozzle hovered centimetres from one of the boulders. He pressed Activate.
The de-icer was loaded with nitrogen, heated within the crawler to a few degrees below zero Celsius. The frost melted instantly under the blast of gas. A puff of fine granules flew silently in all directions – that was the nitrogen, rebounding from its target and freezing even as it flew. On the display the battery indicator was falling faster: 63 … 62 … 61. Paul kept the blast of gas aimed on one irregular piece, which might have been a lump of old foam covered in ice.
And it split. A piece rolled gently down the side of the cairn. Around it, the other fragments stayed where they were, still frozen into place.
Paul shifted his target.
‘Munro!’ It was Vandamme’s voice, urgent and upset. ‘What are you doing? Leave him alone!’
He frowned and looked at the controls in front of him. Down in the station they must have tuned their screens to his. They could see everything he could. They could see him violating their shrine. He looked for a way of blocking them out, but he did not know how.
On the other hand, they could do nothing to stop him. Not now.
He moved the de-icer to another piece. ‘Paul – that’s Thorsten’s grave! Please leave him alone!’
‘He’s not there, May.’ It was a shrine but it was also a lie. Soon he would prove that.
‘Paul, I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
‘There has to be someone else! In the station. If he’s in the station, he can’t be here.’
‘Paul, I can’t hear you. I can’t hear what you are saying! But if you can hear me, please, please leave him alone!’
He could hear her perfectly clearly. What was the matter?
‘I said there has to be someone else!’
No answer. On the screen, rubble fell from the side of the cairn in a long, silent cascade. Fragments bounced lazily outwards and disappeared from view. The pylon was leaning drunkenly. At its foot he glimpsed some sort of wrapping.
He clenched his teeth. Could he be wrong, after all?
But if Lewis had been acting alone, he would have to have buried something. The others would have seen him doing it. There would have to have been something that was ‘Thorsten’ to lay at the foot of the pylon.
In his ear, Lewis spoke.
‘Paul, can you hear me?’
Paul ignored him. He activated the grip and brought it in to prise a lump free. More lumps tumbled, hiding whatever it had been from view. The pylon tipped and fell lazily to the surface.
‘Paul – you are breaking up. What is your battery reading?’
Paul checked it.
‘Fifty-four per cent.’
There was a pause.
‘Paul, your signals aren’t reaching us. Maybe your power is faulty. Maybe the indicator is wrong. You must come back now.’
(A last, desperate effort, Lewis! But how calm you keep your voice.)
‘Paul! You understand – if you run out of power up
there, there’s nothing we can do. Nothing.’
‘I won’t run out of power.’
Although it was getting close. He had used half of what he had. He still had the journey back to come. And the cairn was being awkward. The lumps of material kept getting in the way – falling and lying where he didn’t want them to. It was incredibly slow and clumsy, to pick them up one at a time, swing the grip arm and drop them somewhere to one side. He could see the wrapping. It looked like a standard vacuum coating sealed around a long, indistinct object that might have been the body of a man. He had nothing to cut the wrapping with. For a moment he thought he was going to have to pick it up in the grips and carry the thing all the way back down to the station. But he hunted along the length of it with the camera, and at one end – it might have been the head – he found a flap where the coating had been sealed together. He brought the grip arm over.
‘Please,’ whispered Erin Vandamme.
He almost stopped then. He almost stopped for her, because of the pity and distress in her voice. He gritted his teeth. Remorselessly, the arm took hold of the flap in the vacuum coating.
‘Paul! Stop!’
He lifted the arm, dragging the wrapped object with it. It came all of a piece and for a moment he knew a fierce rush of triumph. Then he realized that even if it was a human body it would be frozen absolutely stiff and would not bend at the waist or anywhere.
‘Paul!’ May, still pleading. But it was too late. The coating was tearing even before he was ready for it. Slowly, silently, it ripped away like a mask. A voice – either May or Vandamme – cried aloud in Paul’s ear.
And his screen was filled with a face.