by Unknown
‘No. Not for help. I know that …’
He leaned forward because Lewis was leaning forward. He looked into Lewis’s red face.
‘I thought about this during the attack. About the people who made this place and how we depend on what they did. Lewis, you want to cut us off from Earth. To do that you must make everyone who will ever live here think Earth is evil. You will raise your children and say to them Earth is evil, evil, evil! Earth is not evil. Things have changed, yes. But things are always changing. Look at Hunter and see how far we’ve come! Now the “I” is weaker and the “We” is stronger. Is that evil? And Lewis – you said the We was a feral child, because for it there was no one else. If you cut us off from Earth, we will be the same. We will need someone else in the universe. We always have done.’
‘How can you say that?’ cried Lewis. ‘They’ve no moral choice any more. They’re slaves! And if it comes here, we’ll be slaves too!’
‘Lewis … When I woke and found I was without my World Ear, I wept. Didn’t you?’
‘And that was done to you, and you were sent out here. You call that human?’
‘I suppose – yes,’ said Paul. ‘Just now you said “moral choice”. I know what you mean. It’s rules for living with others …’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Erin.
‘I’ve lived on Earth, and with you, and I’ve been alone. There are rules on Earth. They are different from what we have here – very different. But they are still rules, even if everyone follows them without thinking. Only when you are alone are there no rules.’ He grinned sourly. ‘I know that now.’
‘I see,’ said Lewis, watching him. ‘But you agree we have rules here too. Do you mean that if we vote again, you will be bound by whatever we decide?’
Paul hesitated.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And if we cannot agree – if it’s two against two – then we must do nothing. Because doing nothing keeps the option open but sending the message is irrevocable?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul slowly.
‘I agree with Paul,’ said Erin.
‘I thought you would,’ said Lewis irritably. ‘But May and I—’
‘Paul’s right,’ said May.
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she snapped. ‘He’s right. We need more people out here. Set any rules you like for them. Tell them that no one lands with a working World Ear – anything. But they’ve got to come.’
‘We can’t stop them importing the World Ear,’ said Lewis firmly. ‘The first ones might respect the rule but it would quickly get too important—’
‘Then I don’t care. We need more people here.’
‘There will be, May! Before any ship can get out here—’
‘What – from just the four of us? Two of us, even?’
‘It’s the only safe way—’
‘Safe?’ May’s voice rose. ‘How old is Van now? How long are you going to wait for her to come out of herself? Can she have a child? What’ll happen to it? Will she survive? Will I? What if they’re the same sex? Will we have to try again?’
‘Leave me out of this!’ snapped Erin. ‘Leave me and Paul out of this.’
‘We can’t leave you out of this, Van!’ said Lewis – and at the same time May cried, ‘I am leaving them out! And even if I don’t … You heard what she said. It needs thousands!’
‘That’s in the long term,’ said Lewis. ‘This is just a population bottleneck. Humans have had them before—’
‘This won’t work!’
‘You don’t know that!’ cried Lewis.
‘I don’t need to know it! I can look at the chances, can’t I? I don’t want my kid to die alone!’
‘Look, we’ve had a scare,’ said Lewis. ‘Our confidence has been shaken. This is the wrong time—’
‘I want to take the vote now,’ said May. ‘Paul – you said we should contact Earth?’
Paul drew breath. He let it go again. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Van?’
‘Yes,’ said Erin. ‘On that one point, yes.’
‘And so do I,’ said May. She faced Lewis.
‘That’s it, then,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’ll do.’
She skipped away across the common room.
‘May!’ Lewis cried. She did not look back. ‘May!’
She reached the door to her chamber. She opened it. When the seal hissed shut behind her they were left in silence. Lewis’s face was dark. His eyes turned to Paul. Paul shook his head, just slightly. He would not lock anyone out of the communications. Nor would he let Lewis do so – not this time.
For a moment the two men looked at each other. Then Lewis took three long steps down to the other end of the common room. He came to the airlock seal and passed through it. He closed it behind him. Paul let out his breath. No one said anything.
It was five minutes before Paul wondered why Lewis had gone into the outer layers.
By then the pressure in the airlock was already falling.
XX
Now he was in the airlock himself. He was checking the seals on the back of May’s pressure suit. In a moment he would turn and let her check his. Then they would put the helmets on.
‘Where is he?’ asked May.
‘In the main hangar,’ came Erin’s voice over the intercom. She was still in the living quarters, following Lewis’s movements on the screen. ‘Lewis, can you hear me?’
There was no answer.
Paul tapped May on the shoulder. She turned. He turned too, presenting his back to her. He felt her fingers tugging at the seals. This couldn’t be hurried. If just one of them had failed to close properly, the suit would not power.
Come on, he thought. Come on!
All the time, he’s getting further away.
What’s he going to do?
‘You knew what it meant to him!’ Erin exploded.
‘Shut up, Van,’ said May.
‘It’s his life! This place and what it could be. You knew that. And you—’
‘You agreed with me, didn’t you? Just shut up!’
‘He’s your partner!’
He felt May tap his shoulder. He lunged for the helmet, lifted it, closed it on his collar. He powered the suit. The display flickered into life before his eyes. Through his earpiece he heard Erin mutter, ‘We’re going down. I know it.’
‘Ready, Paul?’ came May’s voice.
‘Ready,’ he said.
‘Van, we’re ready. We’re depressurizing the airlock now.’
‘I can’t see him,’ said Erin.
There was a pause. ‘We’ll go to the hangar anyway,’ said May. ‘If you spot him—’
‘Wait!’
There was something urgent in her voice.
‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘You bitch! You stupid bitch!’
‘What’s happening? For God’s sake, Van—’
‘He’s taken the red crawler. He’s taking it – out.’
‘I’ll go after him!’ Paul said. ‘I’ll suit up and ride on a crawler! One of you will have to pilot it.’ And take the chance with the radio transmissions. They would have to. They were taking chances anyway, even now.
‘Lewis,’ Erin was saying. ‘Please answer us! What are you doing?’
‘We can’t do that,’ said May’s voice.
‘As long as I catch him quickly, it should be all right,’ Paul said. ‘When I came down in the red crawler we depressurized the cabin and—’
‘You would fall off,’ said May. ‘The crawlers rock as they go. You would fall. And if you were hurt, we couldn’t reach you. Not without the red crawler.’
‘Hello, Lewis? Please answer!’
‘You can’t take the risk,’ said May.
‘Then we have to stop him leaving the station!’
‘I can’t!’ cried Erin desperately. ‘I need the override codes and only Lewis has those! We’d have to signal Earth—’
‘Won’t he
just bore, like you did?’ said May.
Paul called up the airlock controls and set them spinning. ‘Power a crawler!’ he snarled. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘Paul, don’t be stupid …’
‘He can keep you out,’ said May.
‘What?’
‘Even if you reach the crawler he can keep you out. He keeps the inner door to the airlock open and the cabin pressurized. Then the outer door won’t respond to anything, because of the fail-safe. He could just keep you hanging about out there. Until …’
Paul clenched his fists. Helpless, he sat down.
‘He’s out,’ said Erin in a small, dry voice.
The suited figure of May seemed to wilt a little before Paul’s eyes.
‘You’d better come back in,’ Erin said. ‘He’s out of the station. There’s nothing you can do.’
‘He’ll be back,’ said May, after a moment. ‘If he had been going to …’
If he had been going to kill himself, thought Paul, he would have done – what?
Just opened his helmet in the outer layers?
Lewis was the station manager. If he did not come back …
There would be instructions in the Knowledge Store. Problems could be sent to Earth for diagnosis. But …
But they would have lost a lifetime’s worth of experience of the most vital role in the station. Lewis had been here for ten years, managing tools and interactions that never worked quite as they should. He knew instinctively why condensation in the living quarters might be climbing too high. He knew what mix of feeds brought the best protein levels out of the lichens. He had steered them through the magnetic storm, as systems failed at random. Without him, they would suffer. They might make mistakes. Mistakes would be fatal.
What if they were attacked again?
The airlock had reached the pressure of the next layer. Paul looked at the readings on his display for a moment. He thought how useless it all was. Then, wearily, he sent it spinning back again.
‘Lewis,’ pleaded Erin. ‘Can you hear us?’
Silence.
XXI
Once again they gathered around the console in the main living-quarter common room.
The screen relayed the view from the manned crawler. It showed the cairn and the pylon that marked where Thorsten lay. The cairn had been rebuilt. The remains of the dead man were hidden. Someone must have used a remotely controlled crawler to repair the little monument while Paul had been shut away in his chamber. Now it was almost as it had been when he had first seen it, except that the freshly piled lumps and canisters were no longer covered in frosted ammonia.
‘You try,’ said Erin. ‘He just won’t answer me.’
May shook her head. ‘It’s me he’s mad at,’ she said.
She looked at Paul.
Paul looked at the screen.
Nothing moved. The crawler was stationary. Its arms were not busy. Lewis was not doing anything. He was just sitting there, silent at the grave of his dead colleague.
Or was he? Was he? The crawler might be still, but …
‘Subsystem menus,’ said Paul.
And, ‘Manned crawler.’
He wanted to know if the crawler airlock was still pressurized. If it was, then Lewis was still inside. If it was not, then he must have gone out. And if he had gone out …
He could not find what he needed. The crawler transmitted its display but not its internal readings. The Manual Override was locked. He could not take control. Still he hunted, knowing it was futile. And in his mind he battled with the thought: what if they did lose him?
‘Field readings,’ he said.
They were low, as they should be on this part of the orbit. They were just as they had been when he had first seen them, during his instruction with Vandamme on the use of the communications systems.
He opened the channel to the crawler again.
‘Lewis? Lewis, this is Paul.’
A million-year-old instinct made him keep his voice low.
‘Lewis – what’s your power reading?’
Silence. And nothing changed in the pattern of the field. Could the thing hear him?
Could Lewis?
Was he still there? Was he already lying in a frozen heap by the crawler wheel? There was no answer. But if there was no movement soon, if that crawler did not turn and start back down the slope, then he would be dead. The auxiliary power pack did not last long. How long? It depended what the crawler was doing. At the moment it seemed to be doing nothing.
There was nothing he could do. Around him, the walls were bright cream, filling the room with soft light. But the ceiling was dark. In the centre of the display was the view of the gas giant hanging in space, as it had for billions of years and would for billions more. It was nearly three-quarters full. On its surface was a dark circular shape, a storm system many thousands of kilometres across – large enough to have swallowed the whole of the moon if it had fallen at that moment into the planet’s surface. And now it looked exactly like an eye, peering down upon them.
The light was growing across the disc. He could actually see it move over the face of the planet as the moon swung further and further round to the Sun side. Up there, behind the planet – both behind him and ahead of him on the path of this orbit – was that other presence, silent, invisible, listening to his tiny voice as it squeaked unanswered on the surface of the frozen moon. Did it understand what was happening here? Probably not. Not yet. But it would be listening now. If there was anything in his words that troubled it, there might be another attack. It would be listening to everything that passed between him and the crawler.
If anything did pass. If they had not already said their last words.
He glanced at May. She saw his appeal but shook her head. She could not help. She could not reach Lewis now. It would make it worse if she tried.
He looked at Erin. Her eyes were hollow. Nine years ago she had spoken to a man who was outside the living quarters, and he had said, ‘Goodbye, Erin.’ And now it was happening again. Her prayers, her isolation – it had all changed nothing. Out here everything was the same. Another man was about to die.
‘Right,’ said Lewis’s voice, so suddenly that Paul jumped. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘You can decide what you want. But I don’t have to be part of it. I am resigning. Do you understand me?’
Paul could not speak.
‘Do you understand me, Paul?’
‘Yes,’ he managed.
‘If this colony goes back to the We, then it goes without me. I will not be guilty of that. Do you hear me? I will not be part of what you are doing. If you tell Earth, you lose me. If you do it now, you lose me now. If you do it in the future, the same. Understand?’
With a horrible, hollow feeling Paul called up the communications menus. He looked at the last message out of the station. It was short and clear. It had been sent from May’s workstation out over the laser less than half an hour before.
‘It’s gone, Lewis,’ said Paul.
‘God!’ howled Lewis. ‘You … shit!’
And beside him Paul heard May whisper, ‘Paul!’ as if she were in pain.
‘God!’ cried Lewis again.
And Paul pleaded, ‘Lewis!’
I should have lied, he thought. But he had not dared to try.
‘Lewis,’ he said urgently. ‘We can’t do it all by ourselves—’
He stopped himself. Inbreeding. Madness. Starvation … Why should Lewis listen to any of that?
‘Lewis,’ he tried again. ‘You know Earth already suspects—’
Again he stopped himself. Fearfully he called up the field readings.
‘God!’ Lewis was weeping.
The field readings had not changed.
‘You’ve ruined it!’ groaned Lewis. ‘Our last chance. You’ve ruined it. Why? Why couldn’t we at least wait to see if the child survived? Or if you and Van could—’ He stopped.
Ch
ild, thought Paul. Yes, Lewis. Please think of your child. Please.
‘Stupid,’ said Lewis. ‘To go like this.’
‘Lewis – we need you!’
Silence.
Paul drew breath.
But what could he say? What could he possibly say to Lewis? What could have meaning to him now? He looked at the others. Erin had gone – vanished from behind him. Perhaps she had gone to pray. Perhaps that was the only hope now.
Beside him May was white-faced, watching the screen, which showed only the stillness of Thorsten’s tomb.
‘Lewis,’ he said again. ‘We need you.’
Silence.
He drew breath. But there was nothing more he could say. He had said everything now. There was nothing he could do, except wait.
And wait.
In silence.
And soon – or sometime – he would have to try to reach the crawler. He would have to ride out there, perched precariously on the back of one of the utilities. Taking it as slowly as he could. To reach the place and recover the crawler, whose airlock door would be open now. To do what he could for the body that would be lying on the ice beside it. So frozen that it would shatter at a touch.
Soon. He would have to do it soon – now, even, before all power was lost from the crawler.
And if anything went wrong, the station would be down to two.
Lewis, he thought. We need you!
Lewis groaned. ‘Why don’t we see stars here?’ he said. And ‘Shit.’
Silence.
‘All right,’ Lewis sighed. ‘On one condition.’
‘You’re coming back?’
‘You have to let me talk to Earth myself,’ Lewis said. ‘You don’t try to lock me out of the comms. Ever.’
‘I won’t.’
The screen still showed the cairn where Thorsten lay. Nothing moved. The crawler was not moving either.
Paul said, ‘What’s your power reading?’
‘Forty-two per cent. It’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’
‘Are you coming back now?’