Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

Max half-turned and threw up an arm to protect himself as Milsom dropped a loop of the rope around his arm and neck, yanked it tight, then fell on top of him like an ungainly white bear. Max hit out with his fists, knees and feet, but the multi-layered insulation of the suit absorbed the force of his blows.

  ‘Twenty seconds to rotation…’

  Max hurled Milsom away from him and managed to loosen the rope around his throat and arm before Milsom came back at him. Max had unclipped the hook from the rope, but the rope itself was still twisted around the guide rails. Milsom fell against him, arms outstretched. It was clear he wasn’t trying to hit Max, he was just trying to hold him down to keep him from leaving the hatch.

  ‘Fifteen seconds to rotation…’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ yelled Max. ‘Doesn’t anyone have a knife or a gun up there! Why don’t you shoot this son of a bitch!’ Max sent Milsom crashing against the other side of the well. Without his space helmet, Milsom’s skull would have been fractured.

  With the rope still locked around the guide rails, the only thing Max could do was climb out hand over hand. Max jumped at the rope and as his hands closed round it, he swung his legs up and booted Milsom in the chest.

  In the same split second that Max’s feet connected, the alarm bell began to ring and the rope party made their fatal mistake. As they felt Max’s weight on the rope, they hauled in on the other end. Instead of hanging straight down into the centre of the well, the rope snapped taut and kinked around the edge of the hatch to where Milsom had fastened it at the bottom of the guide rails.

  With the last ten seconds ticking away in slow motion, Spencer saw Milsom fall back from the blow and Max twist around on the rope and lose his foothold.

  ‘Down a bit!’ yelled Spencer.

  The rope crew let out two feet of rope. It was one foot too many. That extra twelve inches put Max back within Milsom’s reach. As Max reached up to haul himself out by his hands alone, Milsom flung both arms round Max’s legs and hung on. Milsom, plus the suit, plus the life-support pack was too much even for Max’s muscles. He hung on to the rope but couldn’t bend his arm to get any higher. The veins knotted under the skin of his head and neck.

  Spencer stood paralysed with the alarm bell jangling in his ears. Max’s hands were clenched around the rope just below the bottom rim of the hatch – just an arm’s length away. Spencer did not dare reach down and grab Max’s hand. If the hatches closed, the twelve-inch-thick crystal rims would cut through his arm like an electric meat slicer. The alarm bell stopped ringing.

  ‘Five-’

  Spencer saw Max’s left hand scrabble over the smooth rim of the inner hatch.

  ‘Four-’

  The fingernails tried to find a hold in the impossibly fine joint between the inner and outer spheres.

  ‘Three – ’

  Max’s hands began to slip backward on the rope.

  ‘Two – ’

  His face contorted with rage as he launched himself upward, flexing his body back and forth like a marlin on a line in one last desperate effort to shake himself free of Milsom.

  ‘One-’

  Max got one hand on top of the other.

  ‘Rotation…’

  ‘You stupid mother – ’

  The two circular hatches slid across each other eclipsing the rest of Max’s curse at the same time as they cut the rope.

  Connors sat staring at the monitors, unable to accept that he had just witnessed the last thirty-five seconds of Max’s life. It was just not possible. On Screen 3 Spencer was on his knees pounding on the dome with his fist.

  Connors knew what the answer would be but he had to ask. ‘Does Max have a chance?’

  Wedderkind shook his head silently. He took off his glasses and began to wipe the lenses, head bowed.

  ‘What will happen? Will it be – ?’

  ‘Quick?’ Allbright eyed Connors. ‘That hatch depressurizes in sixty seconds. As the air is exhausted he’ll suffocate, and as the pressure drops to zero, the blood in his veins will boil.’

  Connors winced. ‘Jesus…’

  ‘I think Max knew the risk he was taking,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘Yes,’ said Allbright. ‘The one thing he didn’t foresee was that Milsom would try and keep him in there.’

  ‘And anchor the rope to keep us from pulling Max out.’ Connors cursed sharply under his breath. ‘It’s stupid. He should have had a safety rope around him.’

  ‘Yes, he should have. It’s easy to think of what could have been done. Someone on the platform could have gone in to help Max with Milsom. They might have ended up getting killed as well.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Wedderkind. He put his glasses back on. ‘Why would Milsom want to do such a thing? He must have known what would happen to Max.’ He lifted his hands. ‘It just doesn’t make sense. Milsom was…’

  I know what you mean, thought Connors. Always making jokes. This one had turned sour.

  Spencer came back on Screen 5. His face was pale, his voice tense but controlled. ‘Arnold, we’re going to rotate again at eleven twenty-two just to see what the situation is.’

  ‘Max doesn’t have a chance, Dan.’

  ‘I know, but we just can’t leave Chris in there. If he’s gone crazy, it’s our fault. Maybe if two people had gone in on separate ropes – ’

  ‘Dan, now it’s happened, all of us have got a dozen better ways of doing it. Believe me, we feel just as bad about it as you do.’

  Connors took over the mike. ‘Let’s just get one thing clear, Dan. Next time, if Chris won’t come out on his own, nobody goes in or tries to help in any way. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Spencer. Clear but unwelcome.

  The hatches were rotated at 11:22. The inner sphere was empty. The only trace that remained of Max and Milsom was the severed length of rope still attached to the bottom end of the guide rails.

  The hatch party returned from the plateau and came over with the rest of the research group to the operations room. They sat behind Connors, Allbright, and Wedderkind and gloomily watched the taped replay of Milsom’s entry into the hatch and Max’s rescue attempt. Spencer sat with his head in his hands during the last part.

  Connors swung his chair around to face the hatch party. ‘Okay, let’s talk this through and see what we can come up with. Milsom is shut inside the hatch. For five minutes, he is in a zero-pressure, zero-gravity situation. He’s protected by his space suit so nothing can happen to him physically. But something happened, obviously. He experienced something that made him frightened to come out – made him frightened of you.’

  Connors held up a hand to forestall Wedderkind. ‘Okay, let’s allow for the fact that we might have misinterpreted his feelings. Perhaps he wasn’t frightened. He didn’t want to come out. At least there’s no argument about that. Yet he wanted you to go in and join him – even though without suits, that was impossible. Fatal.’

  ‘He may have meant only me,’ said Spencer. ‘We had planned to go in together.’

  ‘In that case, why did he hang on to Max?’ asked Wedderkind. ‘Chris must have known what would happen if Max was trapped inside the hatch.’

  ‘I can’t explain why Chris did that.’

  ‘Somebody or something must have got to him,’ said Connors. ‘If it was bad news, the natural reaction would be to get out and warn us. But he stayed inside. That could be because he’d become part of that bad news himself. Infected, contaminated in some way. He may have thought that if he stayed inside, he could stop it spreading to us.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t Milsom we saw,’ said Page.

  Oh, Mel Fraser would love you, thought Connors. He held back a smile but Page sensed his scepticism.

  ‘You did suggest he might have been got at.’

  ‘I did, but if Crusoe was going to use Chris for some kind of takeover bid, he would be no use stuck inside the hatch.’

  ‘Except as bait,’ said Spencer. ‘That backpack will keep him alive for eight hours. As long
as there’s a chance of rescuing him, we have to keep trying.’

  ‘But Crusoe had no way of knowing that,’ said Connors. ‘We could just leave Chris in there.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ said Spencer.

  ‘We will, if I decide that’s the best thing to do,’ said Connors. He felt the chill, negative vibrations of the group.

  ‘Could I come in with a comment?’ It was Ray Collis, the language scientist. ‘What we haven’t considered is the possibility that what Chris Milsom discovered was not bad news, but good news.’

  Good news? Connors found the idea faintly ridiculous.

  Collis seemed to share his opinion. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘If Milsom wouldn’t leave Crusoe, it might have been because being inside was infinitely preferable to being outside. It would also explain why he beckoned to the others in an effort to get them to join him.’

  ‘If it was that fantastic, why didn’t he come out and tell us all about it?’ asked Connors.

  ‘There could be two reasons. The first is that Milsom may have been unsure he would be able to get back inside – it’s possible we might have tried to prevent him. The second is that perhaps whatever he experienced is something impossible to communicate in words. It may be something that has to be experienced in order to be understood.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Connors. ‘Why couldn’t he come out and tell us that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Collis. ‘Maybe the hatch is like a turnstile. You can only go through it one way. He may have undergone an irreversible mental process that makes a return to our world impossible.’

  ‘Are you also saying that this – process – was so good Milsom was prepared to share it with Max even if it killed him?’

  ‘That is a problem,’ admitted Collis. ‘I’m not dodging the question. I can only imagine that in relation to the benefits conferred by the experience, Max’s physical death was probably irrelevant.’

  ‘I doubt if it was to Max,’ said Allbright.

  ‘Nor to any of us, General, on this side of the hatch.’

  Connors exchanged a long look with Wedderkind and wondered why he hadn’t said anything. Did he agree? He turned back to Collis. ‘That’s quite a hefty spiritual kite you’re flying, Ray.’

  Collis shrugged. ‘The physical sciences can’t provide all the answers. If you find the word “spiritual” upsetting, consider it as a metaphysical experience.’

  ‘It doesn’t make much difference,’ said Connors. ‘The only way we can verify your theory is for us to follow Chris through the hatch – in the way the children of Hamelin followed the Pied Piper into the mountain. When do we stop, when there are none of us left?’

  ‘That could be the reason why we were allowed to open the hatch in the first place,’ said Collis. ‘But how many of us are prepared to risk losing this uncertain life in search of good news in the next?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Connors. ‘It’s a nice idea, Ray, but I don’t think it gets us any nearer to solving our immediate problem – which is what to do about Chris.’ He looked at his watch. ‘He’s got enough oxygen till seven – is that right?’

  ‘Yes. But seven is the absolute limit,’ said Spencer.

  ‘Okay, I suggest the best thing for you to do is to rotate the hatch every fifteen minutes starting at twelve-thirty, just in case Chris reappears. Anything to add, Arnold?’

  ‘No, that’s fine.’

  Connors patted Spencer on the shoulder and walked with him to the door. ‘I know how you feel, but don’t take the whole thing on yourself.’ He dropped his voice. ‘One other thing. If you’d been on that rope with ten seconds to go and Milsom around your feet, I wouldn’t have stuck my arm in that hatch – and Max wouldn’t have either.’

  Spencer bit his lip on what he was going to say and nodded instead.

  The meeting broke up, leaving Connors alone with Allbright and Wedderkind. Connors called the monitor hut and got them to pipe in a second replay of the whole disastrous sequence. As he watched Max’s life end for a third time, Connors thought about Collis’ idea. It was interesting, but not the kind of thing he could take to the President. He swung his chair away from the screens and found Wedderkind watching him.

  ‘Had any more thoughts?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Connors. ‘I was thinking that if I was asked to describe our progress on this project, I’d say that every time we open one can of beans, all we find inside it is another can.’

  ‘We have two decisions to make,’ said Connors. ‘One, do we go for a second insertion, and two, should we tie the next candidate down to keep him from leaving the hatch?’ Connors sat back while Allbright and Wedderkind mulled over their answers.

  ‘Number Two is easier,’ said Wedderkind. ‘We could lock our man into a safety harness anchored to the guide rails.’

  ‘It sounds like a real ball and chain job.’

  ‘It would have to be.’

  ‘I think we’re getting a little off course,’ said Allbright. ‘If whoever goes into the hatch becomes so deranged as to require this treatment then it may be safer for us to leave him there.’

  ‘Does that mean you think we shouldn’t try to find out what happened to Milsom?’

  ‘It would cut down our casualty rate – and it might save us a lot of problems,’ said Allbright.

  ‘General, Milsom’s disappearance means that there is a way into Crusoe. It means there is a chance for us to try and unlock some of its secrets. For a scientist, that prospect is irresistible. That hatch is like the doorway to a twentieth-century version of Aladdin’s cave. A treasure house of technology. Why, just the power unit alone might provide the answer to our energy problems. And think what it would mean to the Air Force if we could discover how Crusoe causes the radar fade-out.’

  ‘I’m glad you finally agree with me, Arnold.’ Connors tried not to smile at Wedderkind’s political somersault. ‘Let’s get back to basics. Do we go for a second insertion?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll go.’

  ‘Arnold, you’re not going anywhere. If you had to carry that backpack you’d need an armour-plated truss.’

  Wedderkind’s mouth turned sour.

  ‘General?’

  ‘You have one more space suit and two volunteers.’

  ‘That was yesterday.’

  ‘Then let’s check them out.’

  Checking out the backup men took hardly any time at all. Neither Vincent nor Gilligan wanted to try out the hatch. Since Vincent was a civilian Air Force employee, Allbright couldn’t make it an order even if he had wanted to, and Gilligan wasn’t even on the payroll. That left the USAF technicians and the five squads of cadets. Connors was mulling over Allbright’s offer to call for volunteers when Spencer arrived and got him off the hook.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not a snap decision. Chris and I planned to go in together way before you started picking names out of a hat.’

  ‘It wasn’t that haphazard. You have a family.’

  ‘So had Max.’

  ‘You need a better reason than that for volunteering.’

  ‘I’m not volunteering, I’m laying it on the line. The other three only had six months’ astronaut training. I had a full year.’

  ‘That was three years ago,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘The project owes me this trip. I was the one who opened the hatch.’

  ‘No one can argue with that.’

  ‘Besides which, I know Chris better than anyone else here. If he needs handling, I’m the best person to do it.’

  ‘Arnold?’

  Spencer didn’t give him a chance. ‘Arnold knows ‘I’ve got the qualifications and the medics can tell you I’m fit enough.’

  And pushy, too. Connors turned to Allbright. ‘Would you like to try and get a word in edgeways?’

  Allbright looked at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock. ‘How are things out there?’

  ‘There’s no sign of Chris. We’ve decided to rotate the hatch every
half hour instead of every fifteen minutes. We don’t want to jam up the works. Those two spheres have probably spun round more times this morning than they have in the last ten years.’

  Allbright looked at Connors. His eyes said it all.

  ‘Okay, Dan. Stand by. We’ll let you know.’

  ‘If I’m going to go, I’d better start getting into that suit. It takes time.’

  ‘I’m not making any promises,’ said Connors. ‘But if you want to try it on for size, go ahead.’

  ‘I’ll need Arnold’s authorization.’

  ‘And he’ll need mine,’ said Connors. ‘Tell them to phone me.’

  Spencer left.

  ‘What do you think, General? Should we go again?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question. If you lose Spencer, will you try a third insertion, and after that a fourth, fifth, and sixth?’

  ‘No. I think I’d probably stop right there. How would the Air Force evaluate this kind of situation?’

  ‘Well, in the planning of any operation, you establish what we call an acceptable loss rate of men and aeroplanes. It usually bears a direct relationship to the strategic or tactical value of the operation. On this project, we don’t know how much there is to discover, so it’s difficult to assess the value of any particular mission. In that kind of situation, one has to set an arbitrary figure. You appear to feel that, in this case, the acceptable loss rate is three. In the circumstances I’ve described, it might be argued that even that is one too many. I’m sure Mr Wedderkind understands what I mean.’

  ‘I know we could draw a blank or hit a bonanza,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Whether either is worth another life, I can’t say. If one is going to be coldly scientific, one can’t draw any firm conclusions from Milsom’s reactions. A sample of one is useless. The experiment has to be repeated. What happened to Max, regrettably, doesn’t count. We have to try again.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ said Connors. ‘General?’

  Before Allbright could answer, the phone rang. It was the medical unit. They wanted to know whether they should put Spencer in the space suit.

  ‘Yes,’ said Connors.

  Wedderkind put the phone back on the hook. ‘Do you think we’ve made the right decision?’