by Unknown
A dead face in a shroud of vacuum coating, diminishing as it fell to its bed of frozen debris.
Drifting away, drifting down to the ground …
The scalp was nearly bald, the brow wrinkled, the skin white. The eyes were open. They ignored Paul, sitting sheltered in his crawler. Frozen in that hellish place, they stared at the empty sky. Around the mouth the lips curled back to show the teeth, in a fierce, desperate grimace, as if the man still looked down the long tunnel of death and saw no end.
Thorsten Bondevik, who had died nine years ago.
The body touched the rubble. For an instant the face seemed to rise back towards the camera, so that Paul’s heart lurched and he thought the dead man was actually lifting his head as he lay.
And then it burst into a fountain of crystals.
‘Damn!’ whispered Paul. ‘Oh damn!’
The little shimmering cloud cleared slowly, drifting to rest upon the shoulders and mutilated head. The body of the dead man had shattered to icy rubble within its protective sheeting. Where the face had been there was only an indistinct pile of crystals and torn fabric. Brittle in the extreme cold, without even the light pressure of its protective bag, there had been nothing to hold it together any more.
‘Sorry,’ Paul groaned.
Then he said: ‘Sorry, Van. I was wrong.’
‘She’s gone, Paul,’ said Lewis harshly. ‘They both have. They went when you smashed him to pieces.’
Paul swore.
In the little cabin of the crawler, high in the hellish wastes of that world so far from Earth, he put his head in his hands.
‘Paul?’ said Lewis at last. ‘Paul!’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you coming back now? Or are you going to stay out there with him?’
Paul looked at the screen. The camera had wandered a little. It showed a view of scattered rubble, the end of the fallen pylon and the dead man’s feet.
‘Paul!’
‘I’m coming.’
‘Thank God for that much. What’s your power reading?’
Paul looked at it.
‘Thirty-eight per cent,’ he said hollowly.
‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ said Lewis grimly.
Paul looked at the screen again. ‘I can’t just leave him like this.’
‘For God’s sake! Yes, you can! Get yourself back here now!’
Obstinately Paul jabbed at the controls. The grip arm was still holding the flap of coating, like an old man who had taken out a handkerchief and then forgotten what he had in his fingers. He swung it slowly over the corpse and released it. It fell across the dead man’s broken waist. He lowered the arm and dragged the thing clumsily over the remains of the head. He felt he should do better than that, even though nothing he could do would ever make up for what he had already done.
But there was no time. Even as he watched the screen, his battery display dropped again. He must go.
Tune the screen to the main viewer. Fold and lock limbs. Unlock and withdraw legs.
Joystick, and pedals.
Power: 36%.
He turned the crawler. He knew that even this manoeuvre was a waste of energy, and yet he did not dare attempt the narrow cliff track in reverse. He pointed the crawler downhill and nudged it forward. He felt it tilt its nose downwards. The way was steep. It seemed much steeper than he remembered it coming up.
And there was nothing to draw him on now. There was no hunt, because there was no quarry. He had been wrong, wrong all the time. The man lay dead on the horrible waste behind him. There was only the taste of failure.
‘Paul?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take it steadily. If you rush it on that path you’ll tip yourself.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m sending a crawler up to lead you in.’
Paul knew he should say Thank you. But shame made the words stick and he did not speak them.
Down, now. The narrow, gloomy path that wasn’t a path, just a ledge-like crack down the face of the cliff. He could feel his body wanting to fall slowly forward with the slope, held into place only by his seat straps. Ice glowed in his lights just metres ahead of his vehicle. Beyond that was darkness. To his left was the drop. To his right was the ice wall.
He concentrated fiercely on the path, nudging his crawler again and again into the cliff until he could feel and hear the ice scraping along the hubs of his wheels. He was aware from time to time of the shapes of the station below him, glimpsed in the middle distance: a huge mound of frosted curves, unnatural in this jagged landscape, mounted by all kinds of slender structures. He was aware of the flash of a secondary mirror, directing captured sunlight up into its tertiary. But he did not dare look. Nor did he look at the floor of the cavern, gleaming with flows of freezing liquids. He crept on downwards. It was slow. It seemed far slower than his outward journey. The crawler rolled sickeningly and its outer wheels spun and slipped on the edge. Again he nudged it in towards the cliff wall. He felt the inner wheels scrape. Had the path got narrower since he had come up? Had some of it fallen away under his wheels as he climbed?
Power: 25%.
His teeth were set, his lips bared like those of the corpse he had smashed on the clifftop. And still the way led downwards. And still the canyon floor was no nearer. Time to pray, he thought.
Time to pray, but he knew no prayers. Dimly he remembered the voice of Erin Vandamme chanting about waters and green pastures. But that was wrong. Worse, here, than it had been even in the station. He remembered there had been words in her prayer about paths and about the shadow of death. For You are with me, she had written. But there was no one with him. Not here. There couldn’t be. Maybe back in the station she was praying for him. She had said she didn’t stop praying until whoever went out came back. But there was no one with him here.
And more likely she was weeping in her room – weeping over what he had done.
Lights on the path ahead of him!
Gone. But now there they were again. Lights! Two little beady lights, about a hundred metres off. Not the miraculous glow of some angel but the headlights of one of the little utility crawlers, hurrying up the fissure towards him.
‘Paul?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got you on my screen. Can you see me?’
Lewis didn’t mean me. He meant the crawler I have sent out to you. But, yes, suddenly it was like having company on the road.
‘Yes I can.’
He could see its body now, gleaming yellow behind its lights. It had stopped. He braked too. The two crawlers sat on the ledge looking at each other, like insects that had met in a crack in a wall.
‘Right,’ said Lewis’s voice. ‘What’s your power reading?’
Paul had not been looking at the power. Very determinedly, he had not been looking at it. Now he did.
‘Twelve.’
‘Twelve! You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘God!’ Lewis broke off. Then he said: ‘I’m afraid …’
In the silence, Paul heard the coming of his own death.
‘Paul?’
His throat was dry. ‘Yes?’
‘You’ll have to depressurize the cabin.’
‘I’ll freeze!’
‘Not at once. The only conduction will be through the wheels. The suit should keep you safe.’
The suit should keep you safe. Lewis was telling him to let the terrible cold into the crawler, to rely only on his suit, in order to lighten the demand on his power pack. And neither
of them knew how long he could safely do it for. And neither of them knew how much power it would save.
Some, surely.
Fingers trembling, he punched the controls. He watched the figures tumble.
‘Done,’ he said.
‘How do you feel?’
Stupid question! ‘Shit! Like shit!’
‘Follow me, then.’
He did not turn the utility crawler on that narrow ledge. He simpl
y backed it. Paul saw its lights receding and followed them. They were a help. They let him anticipate what the path was going to do: how it was going to twist or narrow, before his own lights picked it out. Anticipation. That was the key. The brain could work so much faster if it could anticipate what was coming. Work faster, go faster.
He wished Lewis would go faster! Surely he could drive his crawlers faster than this! But the little utility was barely creeping down the slope ahead. Maybe Lewis was doing it deliberately – to force Paul to be careful. Speed would make no difference now. With the life-support systems off, the main drain on the crawler’s power pack would be its speed. And the main danger, apart from running out of power, would be if Paul overturned or tumbled down the cliff. It did not matter what happened to the utility. There were other utilities. There was no other manned crawler. And there was no other Paul.
‘I can see the valley floor,’ said Lewis.
Paul said nothing.
‘Paul – are you still all right?’
‘So far.’
He knew he was feeling cold. There was a heaviness in his limbs. His seat hurt. His feet were going numb. But his brain still seemed to be working – for now.
‘Follow me – there’s a flow.’
Paul was still negotiating the last stretch of the descent. But Lewis hadn’t waited. He was already guiding his crawler away, tracking first in towards the canyon wall and then away again, skirting the gleam of liquid that welled from within the moon’s crust. Paul hurried after him. The curved dome of the station loomed ahead. He did not look at the battery reading.
‘I’ve opened the airlock. Can you see it?’
A round hole. It looked the size of a mouse hole in that huge, smooth side. Blackness within.
‘Yes.’
‘Drive straight in. Don’t stop. Don’t wait for my crawler. I’m parking it.’
If he stopped now, he might never start again.
The yellow utility crawler veered abruptly off to his right. As he passed it, its lights died.
In, straight in. The hole of the airlock was ahead of him. Don’t look at the display.
The screen brightened suddenly as the automatic lights came on. The motion of the crawler changed, no longer bumping but smooth with the floor of the station beneath his wheels. Inside the airlock he kept the crawler creeping forward all the time the outer doors were closing, fearing that the strain of starting from standstill would be too much for the depleted battery. He was almost touching the inner doors by the time they opened. And now the exterior temperature had begun to climb, all the way up to 90K. And on the floor of the tunnel compartment lay the shards of May’s light-hearted experiment with the flask of air.
By the time he docked the crawler, the power display read 4%.
‘Lewis? I’m in the hangar.’
‘Good. You can reconnect the thing to charge. And then get yourself back to your quarters. I don’t want to see you. Neither does anyone else.’
The silence after he broke the link was like a corpse tumbling gently in a low gravity field.
XVI
Shortly after his return, his monitor beeped. It showed him Hunter, emerging from a background of savannah grasses. Angrily Paul blanked the screen. He did not want to talk to Hunter.
He was not asked to perform any watches. He was not trusted with anything. He stayed in his quarters. If he ventured out for food, he did so when he thought the others were asleep or busy. If he heard them in the common room, or the kitchen area, he retreated behind his door again. He would rather starve a little than look into their eyes.
He had been wrong. Thorsten was dead. The man was dead and smashed to pieces, up there on the surface of the planet where no life would ever come. It had been crazy to think that he might somehow still be alive, haunting the station and the transmissions to Earth. Paul had known it was crazy, but still he had followed it because it was all he had left. He had wrenched the frozen body from its rest as if it had been a piece of garbage. In the process he had nearly lost himself and the manned crawler too.
How could he have been so wrong?
And how could he have been so stupid?
He had missed something. Somewhere back in his search, something had slipped past him—
‘Paul?’
It was May, calling at his door. He did not want to talk to May. He did not want to talk to anyone. They were not supposed to be talking to him and for the moment that suited him.
‘Paul? May I come in?’
‘No.’
Silence.
He had missed something. What? It was not an accident, it was not a program, whether faulty or deliberate. It was not Lewis, or Vandamme or May. And it was not Thorsten.
What had he missed?
He should go on searching. He could be searching now. But he did not know where to look.
He could look at the Knowledge Store but he did not want to. They would have recorded his excursion. They would have commented on it: undertaken with inadequate supervision or backup, with no planning and to no purpose. Disciplinary action pending. They might even have added some of their own reactions. Paul! Please leave him alone!
He switched on the display of his monitor anyway. There was nothing else to do. And Hunter was still there, looking out of the screen with the blue sky and tall yellow grasses at his back.
‘What do you want?’ Paul snarled at him.
‘I have found a record showing evidence of intelligent interference.’
‘Have you?’ Paul sank into his chair. (On Earth, he would have come down with a bump. But here, of course …) ‘Couldn’t you have told me earlier?’
‘I have been waiting to tell you.’
‘Earlier than yesterday, I mean!’
‘The record was not created before yesterday.’
Paul tensed. Yesterday he had been out on the surface of the planet.
‘Who was the source of interference?’
‘I do not know.’
Useless!
‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘Where was it coming from?’
‘From outside the station.’
‘I meant, which antenna?
The main, or one of the auxiliaries?’
‘None of them.’
Not from an antenna? ‘A crawler, then?’
‘Not from any recognized station equipment.’
‘Show me the record.’
The screen blinked. The face of Hunter was replaced by a jumble of words.
It took Paul a long second to realize what he was looking at.
Who’s in the crawler. Munro. Is that you in the crawler. Yes. Are you going outside. I’m doing an inspection. You should use a utility crawler for inspections outside. This is better for what I have to do. We should have full crew if you are going outside. It’s not necessary for this mission.
Paul do you hear me. Yes. Vandamme says you are going outside. Is that true. Yes. 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 …
‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘What are you saying is intelligent interference?’
He was thinking that if Hunter said ‘Your actions’ or ‘Leaving the station without permission,’ he would tell the thing that no, that had been unintelligent interference. There was no way that a computer program could be made to suffer. But at least he would have confused it.
‘The improving ability to anticipate the target phrase demonstrates that the source has the capacity to learn.’
Target phrase?
He scanned down the passionless lines.
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 ????????? 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. We’ll see. Munro. What are you doing. Leave him alone. Paul that’s Thorsten’s grave. Please leave him alone. He’s not there May. Paul I don’t understand. What do you mean. There has to be someone ?????????????????? 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. I said there has to be ????????????? Paul can you hear me. Paul you are breaking up. What is your battery reading. Fifty-four per cent. Paul your signals aren’t reaching us. Maybe your power is faulty. Maybe the indicator is wrong. You must come back now. Paul.
He wanted to stop reading but he could not. There, spelled out on the screen in silence, was what had happened next.
You understand if you run out of power out there there’s nothing we can do. Nothing. I won’t run out of power. Please. Paul. Stop. Paul. Damn. Oh damn. Sorry. Sorry Van. I was wrong. She’s gone Paul. They both have. They went when you smashed him to pieces.
‘Paul?’
It was May again, back at his door. God! Why now?
‘Paul, are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m all right.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘No!’
Then he added: ‘Sorry, May.’
‘I want to be sure you’re all right.’
‘I’m all right!’
Silence.
He found that he had shut his eyes – screwed them up and hunched his shoulders, like a child weeping in the corner of a room and refusing to be comforted.
He opened them. The words were still there on the screen before him.
… Because there must be someone else. There must be. And it has to be ????????? Paul repeat that last …
And:
What do you mean. There has to be someone ?????????????????? 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. I said there has to be ????????????? Paul can you hear me.
‘That’s it?’ he said. ‘Those three groups?’
‘The improving ability to anticipate the target phrase demonstrates that the source has the capacity to learn,’ said Hunter.
‘You’re a machine all right. That’s exactly what you said a moment ago.’