by Tony Attwood
‘Yes I did notice that too,’ Vila told her. ‘I also notice that I am still alive to argue with Avon. Don’t tell me you’ll support this idea of going back.’
‘It seems logical to me.’
‘Logical? That’s the craziest form of logic I ever heard. You arrive in an unprotected unarmed ship, you get shot at and then you go back for more.’
‘This time,’ Avon explained, ‘We make it harder for them. We go in without power.’
Korell as the pilot who would have to take them in seemed unmoved, but Vila was nervous. ‘How close?’ he asked.
‘One spacial,’ Avon told him, his teeth gritted. ‘At that distance we switch on and still have time to make a safe landing.’
‘We’ll burn up,’ Vila said.
‘Then you won’t have to use the thermal control on your spacesuit too often, will you?’ Avon told him uncompromisingly.
‘Space suit? Have you seen the space suits these ships carry? Primitive is not the word.’
Avon got up from his position. ‘I should seriously consider putting a suit on if I were you, because if you don’t you’re likely to asphyxiate. We’re really turning all the power off. If the things on Skat can read our equipment so well that they can launch an attack at the very moment we turn the shield off, maybe they won’t be too clever at spotting a ship burning up in the atmosphere without any power. Let’s go.’
‘It will be a belly flop,’ said Korell.
‘Which means we’ll be side on, on an alien planet, with no chance of taking off again,’ Vila added.
‘We’ll worry about that later,’ said Avon.
The order had been enough for Korell, and she was already climbing into the basic survival suits the ship carried. They were silvery-white, two-piece affairs which offered a minimal amount of possibilities for any movement other than operating the controls. Even walking back across the cabin seemed a mammoth task. Designed only for the direst emergencies, such as depressurisation of the entire ship, they were built so that the wearer could sit tight for days, manoeuvring the ship whilst protected from the cascades of flying debris that accompanied every accident in space. The designs had been superseded thirty years before, but the Federation had never shown the highest regard for the comfort of its freighter crews. Getting the cargo into port in one piece, on the other hand, was always given alpha priority – and that is exactly what the suits allowed.
Climbing into his own suit Vila knew that once again he had lost. What dismayed him most, though, was the apparent support given by Korell. He had been counting on her to act as a restraint upon Avon. Now it seemed he would be permanently outvoted.
As soon as they were all seated Korell tilted the ship gently towards the planet, gave it the slightest nudge with the auxiliary boosters, and let the Revenge, now apparently little more than a dead dark hulk, move towards Skat for the second time.
On their slow journey, edged on only by the force of Skat’s weak gravity, and occasional minimal bursts of fusion power, the three sat in darkness. Only the screens were on line, enabling the crew to watch the planet for any possible signs of attack.
It was an hour before they spotted the satellite, and two hours before they passed it. Ten minutes later they started to encounter the atmosphere. With no stabilisers to help them the ship started to be knocked around. At the same time it started to pick up heat. Vila was the first, and in fact only member of the crew to complain. He complained of the heat, the vibration, of feelings of sickness, of gravity drag, of de-orientation, blindness (he had his eyes closed) and a variety of diseases he invented for the occasion. He stopped complaining at twelve spacials as Avon caught sight of the bolts.
‘Damn them,’ he shouted. ‘Korell, let’s move.’
In what seemed to be one move, Korell returned power to the ship, and began the rapid rise back out through the atmosphere.
‘The bolts are gaining on us,’ called Vila.
‘Keep the screens down until they are right there. We need to try and outrun them.’
‘Still gaining,’ called Vila.
‘Five four three...’
‘Screens!’ replied Avon. But his voice was drowned by the noises generated by the vibrations that accompanied the attack and the ramjet howl as Korell took the ship through its paces.
Vila’s comment that whatever it was on Skat was trying to vibrate the crew of Revenge to death was ignored. The request by KAT for a drop of adrenalin and soma had a more dramatic effect. Avon turned on the small box with eyes filled with malice. Only the continuing vibration stopped him making it to the analyser. But then suddenly all was quiet. The screens were clear: Revenge was once more alone. Avon moved straight to KAT. He picked it up, turned it over and took it across to the main computer, placing it on a plate to the right of the master machine. ‘Analysis print-out,’ he ordered.
The print-out came up on the screen at Avon’s position. He studied it carefully, but eradicated the print-out before Korell had a chance to look across. Vila felt the attention his machine was being given was unnecessary. He spoke rapidly, changing the subject. ‘That’s two attempts on Skat. Is that enough? It’s enough for me. What about you Korell? How do you feel? Ready to leave? Time to visit the eighth sector? Other side of the galaxy. No Federation inhabited planets. In fact no planets...’
‘They missed twice.’
‘Be thankful. Maybe they are just bad shots.’
‘As I said last time, not with that sort of sophistication.’
‘So what do you want to do? Give them shooting lessons? Maybe we should offer ourselves as target practice.’
Korell tried to broaden the discussion. ‘Vila, we can be quite certain that whatever they are firing at us is not plasma. The plasma wouldn’t have given us the sort of jolts that we suffered each time. If it is something else the chances are that our screens will be able to stand the attack. And since we know we can’t outrun their bolts – whatever they are – we might as well use the screens once the attack starts. The power they take isn’t much use to us in any other way.’
‘OK OK I give in. Avon gets to everyone like this. You should have dealt with him when you had him in prison. You let him talk to you; now he has your brain twisted. It’s a disease and contact with Avon means you get it.’
‘Except you didn’t,’ said Avon. ‘Presumably because it only affects brains.’
Vila gave up. ‘Come on, let’s go down there and land. If they miss again we can step outside the ship and wave a flag so they can go taking pot shots. There’s just one thing I ask.’
‘What’s that?’ said Korell with a smile.
‘You watch the screens. I’ll keep my eyes closed.’
‘You were doing that anyway,’ said Avon.
Despite his protestations, Vila watched intently this time, and when the attack came shortly after they passed the satellite on their third run in, he was the first to shout.
The third attack was a replica of the previous two. Only this time Revenge kept going. At fifteen spacials the Skat ships fired. But there was no bang, no vibration. Five bolts were launched, they ran and stayed at fifteen spacials. Vila reported. Avon watched the controls. Korell flew the ship.
‘Take us down,’ Avon said. There was a slight bump.
‘I just have,’ said Korell.
The ground had approached Vila faster than he would have liked. At one moment the whole ship had seemed to be surrounded by bolts, flare attacks, space liquid and several other forms of death, disease and destruction that he had not even heard of. Even with the expertly soft landing of Korell Vila felt decidedly sick.
Nothing disastrous happened. Korell stayed at the controls, cool, calm, smiling, looking beautiful. In between feeling he was about to throw up Vila wondered how she did it. After a few moments he realised they were down. Avon put the outside view on everyone’s screen. They had landed in what appeared to be a vast green park. Behind them deep tracks dug into the rich grassland where they had slithered to
a halt. The neatly mown lawn continued away from them in all directions, broken only by a crazed blaze of colour about half a mile away so bizarre in appearance that it was impossible to take in at one glance. There was a blue brick wall, crumbling, cracked, twisted. It stretched from horizon to horizon, at times reaching up into the misty sky, at times falling to the ground, but never quite disappearing into the grass. Sometimes it was solid and in other places huge holes appeared through which could be seen flashing lights, waving tentacles, peering eyes, distant suns, spreading oceans. At the approaches to the wall the grasslands gave way to something more than grass. Shrubs and bushes rose up and became more animal-like than plant-like. It was as if the grass was throwing up mutations of itself in an attempt to deal with the wall; as if in its pure form it could not face the wall.
As the crew of Revenge looked, the patterns seemed to change. Not just behind and in front of the wall, but in the very wall itself. Parts which had been tall were reduced to rubble. Rubble rose and reached the sky. Holes disappeared and re-formed somewhere else. And all the time in the background there was a murmuring. The sound of all this endless inexplicable activity was no more than a handful of decibels above silence.
Avon tore his eyes away from the screen and touched controls. They all registered a lack of animal life. In fact they registered nothing more than grass. The computers still showed zero readings for electro-magnetic activity, sentient life activity – in fact all activity.
Back on the screens deep lakes had formed in front of the wall and huge lizard-like creatures appeared, only to walk towards the wall and vanish into the ever-changing structure.
‘The air is clean,’ said Korell.
‘I find it hard to believe,’ Vila told her, but she was not to be deterred from making her report.
‘Less than 0.61 gravity, and nothing to worry about, no nasty radiation, healthy sunlight, warm temperature, the grass does not appear to be covered in a plague or virus of any kind, and there seem to be few wild animals. All in all it is safe.’
‘This is insane,’ said Vila. ‘Just look out there.’
‘I tell you what my instruments say.’
‘Then either the screens or the instruments are lying,’ said Avon, rising. ‘And the only way to find out is to go outside and take a look. Unless our eyes are going to play tricks on us too. Get your suit off, get your walking boots on and get outside. Or would you like to stay inside the ship on your own, on watch?’
Vila’s natural inclination was to stay in the ship. On the other hand he knew that if the past were anything to go by, contact with Avon and Korell could easily be broken, and he would find himself sitting in a vehicle he couldn’t fly watching a wall that broke all the laws of science. At least if he joined the others outside he would not be alone. But on the other hand he would be closer to the wall. He asked if it was safe. He protested about his badly damaged right leg, injured in some now forgotten previous adventure. He complained about the headaches he was getting. But he refused to take up the option of isolation inside Revenge.
Just as everyone was ready to move Avon did the unexpected. He picked up KAT and held it in his hands for a moment. He turned the box over several times before finally putting it down on the contact pads set in front of the computer. Nothing happened, except that Avon grinned, put the box in his pocket and turned to the door.
Vila felt moved to protest that KAT was his. He had found the little machine, he claimed, which gave him the right of ownership. What gave Avon his special interest in it now, he wanted to know. Without speaking Avon took the box out of his pocket and threw it across to Vila. ‘OK you carry it,’ he said, and started towards the ladders that led to the main airlock. Looking grim Vila took the machine between his thumb and forefinger, holding it tight, turning to follow Avon. But before he could move there was a bang, a hiss and a flash of lights on every control panel in the control room.
‘It’s the main entry lock,’ said Korell. ‘Opening.’ Even now her voice lacked alarm. It was calm, clear; as if she were announcing to friends that dinner was ready. It made Vila nervous having someone that cool next to him.
Avon touched several controls, flicking through a variety of positions on the monitors until he picked up a figure making his way along the final short corridor towards the control room. As Avon spotted him the figure reached the entry hatch for the main deck. The door slid to one side and revealed a short, fragile, darkly-tanned young man with wild white hair, wearing a plain white smock over plain white trousers. His face seemed locked into an awkward grin, his ears stuck out more than they should, his nose was a little too long for his face, his hands held at strange angles. With no weapon to pull Avon sat back in his chair giving out an air of nonchalance that Vila for one certainly did not feel. Everyone waited for the uninvited guest to speak, but he didn’t. He grinned, opened and closed his mouth, and regularly changed his weight from one foot to another.
Eventually it was Vila who broke the silence, with the not wholly original question ‘Who are you?’
If the creature before them heard he gave no sign of acknowledgement. He continued to stand, shifting his weight. Vila repeated the question. Korell stood up. The stranger seemed surprised, and rapidly moved backwards. Before Korell had fully risen he was out into the corridor, and pushing his way down the steps into the main air lock and out onto the planet’s surface.
‘Presumably,’ said Korell, ‘we should follow.’ She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, waiting for Avon’s opinion.
‘Why not?’ said Avon. ‘He’s heading for the wall. Vila –give me KAT.’
Vila looked down and found he was gripping the box tighter than ever. He was too shaken by the experience of the stranger to complain. He handed it over and finally found his voice. ‘I suppose neither of you has thought that this might be a trap.’
‘We’ve got to leave the ship to get the crystals. We don’t know where the crystals are, but I can tell you there is no record of them being found under lawns of well-mown grass. So we have to go somewhere.’
‘No, we never thought of that, Vila,’ said the thief to himself. ‘What an idea. Who’d ever want to spring a trap on us on an unknown uncharted planet?...’ He was still talking as he stepped onto the grass, and gave himself an even bigger shock than he’d had so far. The air was fresh, but then that was what the instrumentation had said. The grass felt like grass, but no one had suggested otherwise. The problem was that the wall had gone. In its place was a perfectly stable, normal (if rather huge) building. The white stranger was nowhere to be seen.
Each of the three carried a bag – but only Vila’s was full – it was his tool kit. And he spent much of the walk across the grass reminding the other two of the unequalness of the distribution, alternating this only with comments on the foolishness of staying on the planet at all. Korell did point out the obvious once – that their bags were for sygnum, and would later be heavier than Vila’s kit, but it had no effect. Vila was in complaining mood and no one was going to stop him. By and large no one tried.
As they approached the building it became clear that it was an edifice on an enormous scale. Not only was it imposing in terms of height and width but it had a depth which the crew of Revenge had not appreciated from their ground position. Lacking any other landmark, they headed for the lofty pillars that marked out one of many entrances around the building into which the stranger could have disappeared. As they approached they saw a number of points where broad stone steps came out of the grass leading up to a wide walkway, made of the same grey stone. It gave the place the air of a museum, with recesses set into the towering walls.
As the trio approached it became clear that there were two types of break in the building. At regular intervals there were what could have been doorways, twenty feet high and six feet wide. Between them, more irregularly spaced, were lighter regions where it almost seemed as if something had been set into the stone: something that was more than just a change in texture or
colour. Something that might once have been alive.
‘About ten miles long at a rough estimate,’ said Korell to no one in particular.
‘And a couple of miles wide,’ added Vila, glad to have something to talk about. He was plagued by a nasty feeling that at any second the ever-changing wall would return, the grass would become carnivorous and he would be buried under a hail of bricks. ‘So what do you need to keep in a building with that sort of area? And why surround it by mile after mile of grass?’ He sat down, only to instantly remember his past fears. He shot to his feet and checked his backside for teeth marks.
Avon turned to Korell. ‘What made you land here? Why choose this spot?’
‘Not chosen so much as given: this is where we ended up. That buffeting took the ship all over the place. I redefined my job as keeping Revenge the right way up and in one piece.’
‘So this is the place we are supposed to be,’ said Avon. ‘There’s a door, Vila.’
There was no sign of how the thing opened, but Vila, back on his home territory mentally if not physically, got to work in as business like way as possible: listening, watching gauges on the long tube that he placed against the door, first vertical then horizontal, and finally at 45 degrees. He next attached three microprobes to the door and stood back. After a moment waiting, with no developments that would have had any significance to a non-thief, he packed everything back into his box. Turning, he found Korell and Avon sitting on the stone steps looking back over the grassland towards their ship – now tiny but reassuringly still there in the far distance. Determined to prove his value to Korell he turned back to the door. Careful not to make the slightest sound he gave it the most gentle push he could contrive. Despite its enormous apparent weight the door gave immediately. It wasn’t, he recalled later, as if it swung open. It was rather as if it gave way; as if it simply ceased to exist.
Vila’s desperate shout had Avon and Korell on their feet within a second, but by the time they reached the opening Vila had gone. The door remained ajar; inside there appeared to be no inside at all. All that could be seen was the same grasslands they had just crossed. The same except for one thing. On the grasslands that appeared to be ‘inside’ the building there was no Revenge. There was also no Vila.