Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘In that case, why not just destroy the spacecraft?’ said Wedderkind. ‘If it just disappeared that far from home we would assume it ran into a meteorite or an asteroid.’

  ‘Crusoe and Friday aren’t human, Arnold. They may not like killing other machines. In any case they’ve achieved the same result. Anyone finding Pioneer 10 now will never know where he came from.’ Connors smiled and adopted a lighter tone. ‘Maybe they’re trying to tell us we’re looked upon as undesirable aliens who need a special visa before we can emigrate to the United Galactic States.’

  Wedderkind gave him a long hard look. ‘That may have been meant as a joke but it could be closer to the truth than you think…’

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  At sunrise Crusoe’s black dome rotated. The inner sphere spun around on its opposed axis until the two circular hatches were in alignment. Then Friday rose into view, unfolded his legs, and stood astride the dome. Behind him, the sun cleared the tops of the pines and outlined him briefly with burning gold.

  Nobody was on the Ridge to greet him, but the TV cameras picked him up, and the night crew in the monitor hut alerted the research group.

  Friday spent most of the morning wandering around the plateau, then discovered the collection of prefabs and trailers. It was as he began to explore these that he revealed the unexpected ability to climb up vertical surfaces.

  The research group kept him under close observation as he walked from roof to roof, going up and down walls and peering in windows and open doorways. Everyone had been briefed to go on with what they were doing and pretend he wasn’t there, but it was difficult to remain completely natural when you found yourself being shadowed by a spider nearly seven feet tall and fourteen feet across.

  Friday found his way to the trailer park. There was just enough room for him to walk down between each line. Max was at home, engaged in another interminable round of cards with his off-duty gang. As he studied his hand, he felt someone looking over his shoulder. He turned round to find Friday peering in through the window. Max laid down his hand, got up, switched on the lights, and dropped the blind in Friday’s face.

  Friday completed his tour of the trailers and the other installations, then headed down to the tree line. Most of the pines covering the flanks of the Ridge grew too close together for him to walk between them easily. He turned back on to the plateau and found the extended dirt road. This he explored all the way down to the gate in the high wire fence. He took a long look at the cadets guarding it, the fence and the vehicles parked among the trees by the side of the road, then shifted into reverse gear and went back on to the plateau.

  From there, he moved smoothly over the rocky ground up to the high point of the Ridge. Milsom, Spencer, Wetherby, and Collis, the language scientist, walked up to see what he was doing. They found Friday standing motionless astride the crest from where he had a view of the surrounding country. They sat down some distance away expecting him to swivel around and scan them with his eye pod. Friday didn’t react to their presence. Half an hour later when his head did start to rotate, it wasn’t in their direction. They could only guess he might be scanning the horizon. They left Friday to enjoy the view and returned to the research hut.

  Friday stayed almost motionless on the Ridge till sunset, then he moved gracefully down over the rocks and returned to Crusoe.

  In the research hut, the scientists watched the TV monitor as Friday folded himself up and slid in through the two hatches.

  ‘I wonder why he stayed up on top of the Ridge all day?’ said Milsom. ‘Surely he wasn’t just sunning himself.’

  ‘He just seems to be wandering around aimlessly.’ Page, the biochemist, never did anything aimlessly.

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Spencer. ‘He’s explored everything that’s on the Ridge.’

  ‘Depends what you mean by explore,’ said Page. ‘He spent half the morning going backward and forward over the roofs. There was absolutely nothing systematic about his movements at all.’ Page held up a sheet of paper. ‘Here’s a plot of his tracks that the monitor hut recorded. It looks like a ball of string that’s been got at by a kitten.’

  Collis took the sheet of paper from Page. Friday’s tangled tracks had been superimposed on a simplified map of Crow Ridge and the installations. Page was right, Friday’s movements could hardly be described as systematic. He passed the paper on to the others.

  ‘I don’t see anything wrong with it,’ said Tomkin. ‘It may not be the way you would walk around the ridge, but it is the way an insect would.’

  ‘I thought we were agreed Friday was a machine,’ said Page. He still hadn’t managed to master his disappointment.

  ‘Maybe he was looking for something,’ said Milsom.

  ‘Why?’ asked Page. ‘He didn’t collect any soil or rock samples, or any specimens of flora, or any of the dozens of insects running around those rocks out there.’

  ‘Maybe that comes next,’ said Collis. ‘He obviously wanted to find out more about us first.’

  ‘We couldn’t have been all that interesting,’ said Page. ‘He ignored us for most of the day.’

  Milsom grinned. ‘I sometimes feel that way about people myself.’

  ‘Funny man,’ said Page, peevishly.

  ‘Listen,’ said Spencer. ‘Right now we may have nothing but question marks, but let’s not fall into the trap of attributing superman status to that pair out there. They may be products of a highly advanced technology, but they are still two pieces of machinery. A machine’s function can be analysed, and if it’s been put together, it can be taken apart.’

  ‘How can you talk of taking Crusoe apart?’ said Page. ‘You can’t even dig him up.’

  Spencer didn’t bother to look at Page. He thought he was a prick. ‘Page is right. We haven’t been able to dig him up. But if we could get inside him, we may not need to.’

  ‘Inside?’ Tomkin looked surprised.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked Spencer. ‘Let them fly away without finding out how they work? If we could crack the secrets of their technology, it might help us leapfrog the next two hundred years.’

  ‘Aren’t we in a big enough mess already?’

  Milsom jabbed a finger at Collis. ‘Don’t start hitting us with that classical shtick. Whatever technology has gotten us into, it can get us out of.’

  ‘But do we have the right to take Crusoe or Friday apart?’ insisted Collis.

  ‘Look, let’s forget this ethical crap,’ said Neame. ‘Let’s get down to the practical problems. What are you going to use for a can opener, Dan?’

  ‘Don’t you think you ought to wait till Arnold comes back from Washington?’ said Collis.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Page. And in the meantime, I think you should consult Professor Lovell before you take this any further.’ Lovell was the senior member of the group.

  ‘Page,’ said Spencer. ‘Why don’t you fuck off?’

  Page rose, tight-lipped, and made a prim exit.

  ‘So what’s next?’ asked Milsom.

  ‘The first thing we have to do is to get Neal Zabrodski to run us the tapes of Friday going in and out of the hatch. It opens when he stands astride it, and closes as soon as he’s inside. What we need to check is whether he stands in exactly the same place each time, and whether he follows a sequence of movements. If he does, there’s a chance that he activates the hatch himself. If we can find out how he does it, there’s a chance we may be able to duplicate the operation. The rest is simple.’

  ‘Do you really mean you’re prepared to go in there?’ asked Collis.

  ‘Neil Armstrong and Ed Aldrin landed on the moon without a guaranteed return ticket,’ said Spencer.

  ‘I don’t mind going in,’ said Milsom. He meant it too but, since he was always making jokes, no one took him seriously.

  Sunday/September 9

  WASHINGTON DC

  On Sunday, Wedderkind and his wife Lillian went over to lunch with his eldest daughter, her husband, and their
four-year-old son. Resisting the attempts of his son-in-law to sell him yet another insurance policy, Wedderkind escaped to the master bedroom and called George York in Baltimore. Wedderkind wanted to know what progress he’d made in collecting the latest data on the Earth’s magnetic field.

  ‘It’s coming along, Arnold. It’s coming along.’ That was all York would say on the subject. He did, however, give Wedderkind some information he hadn’t bargained for.

  ‘I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine at the University of Chicago. Lou Corsalero. He knows Al Wetherby.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘Lou told me he’d been picking up some remarkable underground tremors coming from your direction.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, I phoned Riddell in San Francisco. He confirmed that the epicentre was situated some two thousand feet under Crow Ridge.’

  ‘There’s been some movement, but no real boneshakers.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not the strength of the tremors,’ said York. ‘It’s the frequency. Lou and Riddell both picked up regular groups of pulses with varying strengths and numbers of beats. Four, eight, twelve, eight, eight, four – that kind of thing. One could almost imagine it as some kind of seismic Morse code.’

  One could, thought Wedderkind. But from two thousand feet down? ‘Could you follow this up for me, George?’

  ‘On what scale?’

  ‘Well, to be any use it would have to be on a global basis.’

  ‘Arnold, there are two hundred and forty stations.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a data centre here and one in Europe.’

  ‘They’re still processing last year’s records.’

  ‘Well, phone around. You can send me the bill. If this is a message that Crusoe is drumming out, then there has to be someone to receive it. They may send a message back.’

  ‘Which would enable us to get a fix on their position.’

  ‘Right, George. The epicentres might coincide with the centres of the fade-out waves. In which case those figures of yours might make sense.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘I realize that. Ask Riddell to help. He owes me a favour.’

  ‘He owes me one too.’

  ‘Good. That makes one hundred and twenty stations each. If you pull in Corsalero, you’ll only have to check eighty. Less, in fact – you can forget the Russian stations.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘There’s only one problem, George. You have to get them to help without telling them what’s going on.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And think up a good answer about the Crow Ridge tremors. I don’t want anyone sending up a research party.’

  ‘Are you asking me to lie to my colleagues?’

  ‘George,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Isn’t that how you got hold of the computer?’

  Wedderkind took his grandson for a walk in the park, responding to his happy chatter with grown-up noises that left him free to ponder on the significance of York’s latest news. Children, however, are never long denied, and Wedderkind paid for his preoccupation by getting his finger gnawed by a squirrel.

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  Spencer had the edited tapes of Friday screened several times. His hunch had been correct. In both sets of exits and entrances, Friday positioned himself over the hatch with the tips of his legs in exactly the same place each time. He put his two side pairs of legs in position first, followed by the rear, and then the front. When they were all in position, the two spheres rotated, bringing the two hatches into line. To enter, Friday first folded in the front and rear pairs of legs simultaneously, then the two side pairs. As soon as he sank below the level of the inner hatch, it rotated shut.

  When he emerged from Crusoe, he unfolded his legs in the reverse order, the two side pairs first, then the front and rear pairs. When all eight feet were on the points, the inner hatch closed and the dome rotated.

  ‘Let’s go and look at the hull.’ Spencer waylaid four passing cadets and persuaded them to volunteer their services and the use of their two jeeps. He drove off in the lead vehicle with Milsom, Tomkin, and Collis, and waved to the cadets to follow.

  They parked close to Crusoe. Spencer told the four cadets to stay in their jeep, then walked up on to the hull with Milsom, Tomkin, and Collis. Spencer went down on his hands and knees near the dome and took a close look at the smooth black translucent surface. After about ten minutes he found what he was looking for, a small mattblack octagonal patch, almost as big as the palm of his hand and about seven feet from the centre of the domed hatch.

  ‘Here it is. We’ve got to find seven more of these.’

  The others knelt down to examine the patch. It was barely discernible on the black surface.

  ‘If you look at the surface at an angle and get the light reflecting off it, you’ll be able to pick it up more easily,’ said Spencer. ‘There should be one directly opposite me. Spread out around the dome – and be careful not to step on one.’

  Milsom, Tomkin, and Collis backed down the hull and spread out cautiously like men who’d suddenly found themselves on thin ice. Spencer waved to the four cadets. They came up on to the hull and huddled around him.

  ‘I want you four to get between the four of us,’ explained Spencer. He pointed at the black patch. ‘That’s what you’re looking for. You’ll need to look closely, they’re pretty hard to see.’

  ‘I’ve got mine,’ said Tomkin. He was now opposite Spencer.

  ‘Okay,’ said Spencer. ‘Chris, you and Dan should be at right angles to us.’

  Milsom and Collis adjusted their positions.

  ‘And you four guys should be halfway in between.’

  The cadets edged sideways till the distances were about right.

  ‘Okay, everybody should have one of these patches right under their nose.’

  Tomkin sat back on his heels while the others searched for and located their patches.

  ‘Everybody okay?’

  They all nodded. Spencer looked around and saw Page and Lovell walking towards them. Page’s preoccupation with Lovell’s opinion on any matter was not out of deference to Lovell’s seniority. Everyone knew that Page was after Lovell’s recommendation to help land a well-paid and prestigious research post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  ‘Okay,’ said Spencer. ‘Let’s get the sequence right. Dan, you and the guy on your right are the front legs.’

  ‘Right,’ said Collis.

  Spencer turned to the cadet on his left. ‘You and Chris here are the rear legs. Do whatever he does.’ Spencer looked across at Tomkin. ‘We and these two other guys are the side legs, so we go on first.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Tomkin.

  Spencer turned to the cadet on his right. ‘You and I go together, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said CRAWFORD, N.

  ‘Okay,’ said Spencer. ‘It’s the two sides first, then the rear, then the front. Three-second intervals. Get your right foot ready, and when I give you the signal, place it lightly on to the patch.’

  ‘Sir?’ It was the cadet on Spencer’s left, GIBBS, J.K. He looked too young even to buy razor blades. ‘Could you tell us what you’re expecting to happen?’

  ‘Yes, sure. We’re hoping that by exerting the right pressure on these patches, we will activate the two spherical hatches. Have you seen any of this on the screens?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Just relax. If it doesn’t open, I’ll buy you all a drink. If it does, you can all buy me one. Okay, everybody ready?’

  They all nodded and each man slid his right foot forward.

  ‘This is like stepping on a land mine to see if it’s working,’ said Milsom.

  Spencer waited till the second hand on his watch reached twelve. ‘Sides – now! Rear – now! Front – now!’

  The four pairs of feet pressed down on the patches in sequence. Nothing happened.

  ‘Spencer looked across at Collis. �
�Can you see any movement? It should start coming up on your side.’

  Collis shook his head.

  ‘Maybe they work on an electrical contact of some kind,’ suggested Tomkin.

  ‘If they do, we’re screwed,’ said Spencer. ‘Let’s try it again, this time with more weight on your right foot.’

  Page and Lovell arrived at the edge of Crusoe’s hull. ‘Do any of you have any clear idea of what you’re doing?’ asked Lovell.

  ‘Yes, we’re trying to add to the sum total of human knowledge,’ said Spencer. He came from a rich family, so he didn’t need to worry about Lovell’s patronage, now or later. ‘Okay, let’s go!’

  They pressed down hard on the patches in the same sequence. Nothing.

  ‘Keep it up,’ commanded Spencer. ‘Move your whole weight on to it.’

  Almost a minute passed and nothing happened. Spencer’s hopes of a breakthrough started to recede like the picture on a switched-off TV set. Just as he was about to give up, the dome rotated from left to right, exposing the outer hatch, then the second sphere spun around towards him, bringing the inner hatch into line.

  ‘How about that?’ Spencer laughed, his face pink with excitement.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Milsom.

  Lovell and Page hurried up on to the hull.

  ‘Keep your feet on the patches. Keep ‘em hard down,’ said Spencer.

  They all craned their necks forward and looked into the hatch. The dark, complex well that had contained Friday was empty.

  ‘He must be in another compartment,’ said Lovell.

  Spencer grinned. ‘That’s good. It means that when he’s outside, there’ll be room to move around down there. Okay, gang. Let’s see if we can shut this thing. It’s front and rear feet off first.’

  Collis and Milsom and the two cadets on their right got ready.