by D. F. Jones
The size of the horns staggered him. Even from three or four hundred meters they seemed to loom menacingly over him, nothing like the ancient phonograph trumpets the drawings suggested: these were the antennae of a gigantic insect ….
Slipping and stumbling across tractor tracks ten meters wide and often two deep, he approached, gazing in awe at the strange curves, the convolutions, and the spheres gleaming dully in the leaden light. The legs, dramatically spearing the ground, were supports of immense strength, designed for stresses he, only now, was dimly beginning to comprehend.
It was so vast. The horns, well over a hundred meters in diameter, tapered to a bare meter where they connected with the central group of spheres. Fultone had told him of the problem they’d had, aligning the two opposing horns on a common centerline, how they had worked in microns, overcoming appalling problems of asymmetric thermal movement. Uncompensated sun or rain on one side could wreck the device.
Admittedly it was superb engineering, but Forbin prayed with all his heart that it would not work. For a long time he stared, watching the last of the automated checkers crawling methodically over the structure, themselves insectlike, an illusion heightened by their radio antennae, waving as they moved.
It was getting darker; sunset was still hours away, but the clouds were blacker, lower, and the sullen mutter of the distant thunder seemed louder. Even nature was poised, expectant.
A few big raindrops splashed; he could hear them hitting the greasy chalk, feel them cold on his face, rousing him from his waking nightmare. A checker crawled down a support, its sucker tracks unpleasant to his ears. It dropped to the ground, scuttling off at high speed to the shelter of a concrete bunker.
That was the last straw. It was silly to feel disgust at a simple robot, but Forbin was not prepared to be rational at that moment. He pretended he wasn’t hurrying,
but -
Within ten minutes he was back in the comforting familiarity of his apartment. He tried to cocoon himself in human things; he ordered a meal and poured a glass of sherry, watching a sharp hailstorm sweep across the terrace. That reminded him of the site; he quickly ordered music from the domestic computer. Bach was out, forever associated with the Martian structure, and he did not want to think of anything remotely Martian. He chose Beethoven’s Ninth, perhaps the supreme statement of the world’s most human composer.
He was halfway through a bottle of sherry when the fourth movement began, but it was more than drink that brought tears to his eyes as chorus and orchestra thundered out the “Ode to Joy,” the confident affirmation of the human spirit, come what may.
“Freude!” He tried to sing, but his throat hurt too much. “Joy!” He stood, facing the darkening sky, swept along by the music as it rose to its triumphant conclusion. “Yes,” he whispered, “we must win. With that spirit we cannot lose. …”
But the recording ended; cold silence rushed back, broken only by the lash of heavy rain. His strength failed, and his appetite with it. The food untouched, he went to bed, far short of sober.
Awake not long after dawn, Forbin knew he had slept well. All the hot drinks in the world do not equal a good bottle of burgundy as a nightcap, and when you think - and hope - your days are numbered on the fingers of both hands, who cares about the liver? To get up was pointless; he lay back, thinking of Angela. Was that a bare twenty-four hours ago? He could not recall her face, however hard he concentrated: it all seemed to be a million years away.
After a long, hot shower which removed the suspicion of a headache, he breakfasted on coffee and a biscuit, unknowingly raising his housekeeper to an even higher level of alarm. At eight-fifty-five he reached his office, giving Joan a curt nod and an expressive stare which got her off her knees. He shuffled paper around his desk, then began dictating.
“To the Leader of the Faithful, Osaka. My regrets, I am unable to attend the inauguration of -“
Expecting it, Forbin remained outwardly composed; the fear which sprang into Joan’s eyes faded beneath his calm gaze.
For the first time outside of well-publicized exercises, the high-pitched alarm call sounded and the room momentarily darkened as an armored shade slid across his window. Then the lights compensated.
“Have you got that, girl?” he said sharply.
“Yes, Father.” She repeated his last words, a faint tremor in her voice.
He nodded approvingly. “And there’s another one - same damned nonsense, from Prome … Prome? Where the devil’s that?” He wanted to keep her busy, to give her strength.
“A town on the Irrawaddy, Burma, USEA. Same answer, Father?”
“Good God, yes!” He went on, his tone gentler. “Did you already know that, or did you look it up?” The alarm had stopped, but the tension remained.
“I knew it was in United South East Asia, yes, but I checked the atlas just now.”
“Good, good.” Her attitude forced him into playing the father figure. “Now there’s this tiresome letter from the Glorious Band of the Faithful - can’t read the rest - you’ve referenced in 32/10. Don’t tell me we’ve thirty of these to plough through!”
“There are eighty-five more, but from less important groups. I assumed that they’d get the same answer as you give to these.”
“A perfectly correct assumption,” he said grimly, “and this one, 32/10, they’re angling for special pilgrimage permission for what they regard as privileged people. The answer’s still no.” He went on for half an hour, answering requests, approving appointments, a covert eye on the clock, half his mind apprehensively thinking of the Collector, the other half forcing itself to deal with trivia. At nine-thirty-five he stopped abruptly. “That will do for now, Joan. I’ll sign the top twenty, facsimile the rest.” He took out his pipe and filled it to give the impression he was in no hurry, wasn’t perturbed. “The staff in good shape?”
“Yes, Father.”
Nine-thirty-seven. Forbin got up. “Well, keep ‘em in hand - and don’t worry.” She knew what he meant. Entering the Sanctum, he took a deep breath; now for it, the waiting was over. In ten minutes he would know.
It came as a slight shock to find the room darkened, the armored shade down, and the luminescent ceiling panels below maximum brilliance. Crossing to his desk, he saw why: a sharp sputter of light and, on one wall, a TV projection, three meters long, two meters high, of the Collector. The mere sight of it set his heart thumping. Without looking, he knew the Martians were watching. “I thought you might observe this test from, er, elsewhere.”
“Not this test.”
Nothing could be read into that unemotional voice, but it confirmed his impression that they, too, had no idea what to expect.
A voice said, “Three minutes.”
Forbin managed to light his pipe, breaking two matches in the process. He called Fultone. “Do we have other cameras?”
“Si, Direttore - three.” He demonstrated two. Both gave angled shots from ground level; the third, giving a complete picture of the device, was located on top of a complex building, three miles from the site. The fourth camera was satellite-mounted and had limited cloud-piercing capability.
“One minute.”
Instantly another voice reported, “Reactors going critical-now!”
Forbin forgot the Martians; in tense silence he watched. The picture was superb; despite the poor light, Forbin saw a flock of gulls hopefully inspecting the churned up ground, heard their harsh cries. A light drizzle was falling, and low clouds rolled endlessly in from the southwest. “Fifteen seconds.”
The unearthly monster filled the picture. Rain streamed from the lower lips of the horns.
“Five … four … three … two … one!”
Nothing seemed to happen, but the gulls, far faster than humans, took off, wheeling away, their clamor filling the silence.
It began imperceptibly: a sluggish breath, inaudible except to the birds, became a long sigh as life stirred, changing into a deep, brutish growl, rising slowly, and with infinite
menace.
Forbin glanced at the digital time-presentation in one comer of the screen: ten seconds into the test. The sound was rising more quickly now, climbing exponentially.
Rain pouring from the lower lip of the intake bent sharply up, curved inwards, then vanished into the horn.
At fifteen seconds a full-throated roar, birth cry of the monster. The sound went on rising in scale and intensity. The upper surfaces of the horns were obscured by a cloud of white mist as rain flashed into steam on the friction-heated metal.
Now the monster was screaming, a fearful, tormenting sound. Someone turned down the gain of the microphone array, but even so the intensity of the sound got through, hammering the ears. Another explosive flash and the steam-cloud vanished from the Collector’s surfaces, reforming five, ten meters above it. The scream, ever rising, went on and on. The microphones were cut again until Forbin no longer knew if he heard or imagined he heard, aware only of the pain in his head.
To the scientist in Forbin, what followed was not unexpected, and along with fear he felt wonder. The central core sound had gone beyond audio range, though a roaring, tearing background remained. But the sound was swiftly forgotten: he saw air as first the intake, then the exhaust went transonic.
A supersonic aircraft builds a pressure wave which sweeps the earth beneath, heard as a passing clap of mechanical thunder. The stationary Collector reversed the process, the air moving supersonically. A standing wave was created, at first just beyond the intake rim, a wave visible as sharp, curving lines, extensions of the horns, a natural Schlieren picture.
Microseconds later he heard it without microphones - a continuous thunder, blotting out all other noise. The floor shook and trembled beneath Forbin’s feet; a paperweight on the desk thrummed, then slid as the immensely powerful shock wave hit; the TV picture was blurred, clearing slowly as the camera’s shock absorbers damped its movement.
The hurtling shaft of air, woolly at first, sharpened as it reached the intake. Clutching his chair, Forbin saw that the outer end of the solid bar of air was bending upwards, slowly, majestically. Clouds boiled and vanished as the giant vacuum cleaner sucked in the tattered streamers. Soon it became a twisting funnel of air curved like a cornucopia in reverse, sucking in the goodness of the earth, reaching ever upwards.
But in that mind-blasting minute someone in Condiv HQ kept his head, switching in the satellite picture. Although some definition was lost in cloud-piercing, the picture, taken from forty or fifty kilometers above and to one side, was all too horrifyingly clear. The upward arching intake of air sucked in support on all sides, its whirling vortex stripping the surface off the sea, creating with frightening speed short, steep waves, racing inwards, clashing, smashing.
Parts of the Collector glowed red, and glimpses of the final reduction sphere, shrouded in a local steam-storm, suggested it was white hot.
The exhaust, a vast cone of superheated steam, shot out bar-straight for a hundred yards. Then it, too, curved upwards, more steeply than the intake, and was lost in the chaotic heaving mass of clouds.
Aghast at what he saw, Forbin watched, gripped by the unearthly sight. The satellite picture gave him the first hint: the skyward curving torrents of mangled air would meet like the forcefield of a magnet, a magnet on a vast scale, the field perhaps fifty kilometers in diameter.
The fantastic meteorological conditions, super-hot air and hot steam, smashing into cold cloud three kilometers up created instant, violent thunderstorms. Watching the picture, the silent stabbing of vivid lightning cutting through rising fog of spray, cloud, and steam, Forbin’s self-control snapped. He yelled to the lightning, imploring, “Kill it! Kill it!”
The whole complex shook with the violence of the Collector. Neither armor nor cement walls could keep out the thunderous roar of the standing shock wave.
With difficulty he read the blurred image of the time presentation: three minutes forty-five seconds.
His pipe had gone along with much else on his desk, vibrated onto the floor. Everything, literally, was jumping. He turned a contorted face towards the Martians, only fear keeping him in check. They alone were rock steady, suspended over their table.
“You see,” he screamed at them, pointing, “it can’t work!” The TV picture tilted to a crazy angle, an unfocused shot of a writhing sky, and the screen went black. Only the satellite camera still worked, the rest wrenched from their anchorages. “Stop!” screamed Forbin. “Stop it!”
Strong above the storm came the Martian voice. “No. One minute left. Wait.”
Helplessly Forbin watched the satellite picture. A zoom-shot showed the Isle, assailed on all sides by a sea gone mad. Giant waves smashed against cliffs, hurling great clouds of spray skywards. Downwind of the exhaust, incredibly, the sea had been blown back, exposing the bottom, itself eroding in steam and flying sheets of mud under the terrific thrust. A longer shot revealed the same field force pattern, but it was the sea that held Forbin’s appalled gaze: never in the history of the earth had there been such fantastic waves. He could not guess their height or direction. For certain no man-built vessel could live within kilometers of that lunatic maelstrom.
“Go and look yourselves,” cried Forbin. “Go and see!”
“Conditions are not suitable.”
Forbin was half laughing, half crying.’ ‘Not suitable for you - how about us? Look at it!”
Gigantic swords of lightning stabbed tirelessly down, the ice blue brilliance dimmed by the tropical deluge; but that, however awe-inspiring, was at least familiar to humans. As he stared and prayed, a wild thought crossed his mind: they might belong to Mars, the God of War, but lightning was the weapon of the King of the Gods, Zeus, to whom all gods must bend in .submission. He prayed with all his being that the lightning would strike.
He was too dazed to notice the time click up to minute five. Realization came five seconds later. The continuous explosion stopped sharply; by comparison the crackling, rumbling bangs of the earth-storm were nothing.
Almost as quickly the awful shaking ceased, the room was still. The satellite picture showed small difference, but the immediate crisis had passed. He sagged over his desk, head on arms, too exhausted to see if the Collector was still intact, thankful for the respite, but responsibility soon drove him on. Somehow he found the right button.
“This is the Director.” His gaze, full of hate, rested on the Martians. ‘ “That is the end of the test.” More he could not say.
The two shafts of air had collapsed, but overhead the turbulence they had created went on: black clouds towered fifteen thousand meters above the site, eerily lit from inside by the storm center; the lightning was incessant, the rain endless.
By someone’s technical brilliance the TV camera three kilometers from the site was brought back into operation, and Forbin’s heart sank. As far as he could see the Collector, part shrouded in rain and steam, was untouched by the devastation it had caused. It still stood, unmoved, triumphant.
Forbin finally broke the silence. ” Well,” he said heavily, “I hope you’re satisfied.”
As before, sarcasm meant nothing to the aliens.
“Earth environment is more violent than we had supposed, but subject to evaluation of the test results and our examination, the test is acceptable.”
Forbin stared in complete disbelief, hard put to find words. “You can’t - you just can’t mean it,” he said at last. “I can’t imagine the damage you have caused, and certainly you can’t. That was a disaster!”
“Not so. The Collector appears to be undamaged. Therefore, the disaster you refer to must be in human terms, and even that cannot extend more than a hundred and fifty kilometers from the site.”
“A hundred -! You’ve -” He broke off, shaking his head, completely frustrated. To explain to a hungry anopheline mosquito that her microscopic meal of human blood gave the donor malaria would have been easier.
“You have finished?” Martian manners were not grounded on human conce
pts: they wanted to know.
He shook his head angrily. “There’s nothing I can say.”
“Understood. The final test will be made as soon as the evaluation is complete. Duration, thirty minutes.”
He hardly heard the end of the sentence; they had said “final test.”
140
Chapter XVIII
Two HOURS LATER, apart from occasional stabs of lightning, the scene had reverted to relative normality. True, more of the cliffs before the intake had been eroded in five minutes than in a thousand years, and the lethal exhaust had gouged a furrow twenty meters deep into the clay, but otherwise the site appeared to be much as it had been before the test began, except that there were no birds.
Forbin had spent the time in something very close to a trance, his gaze fixed on the TV image. An hour earlier the gesticulating figure of Fultone, accompanied by an assistant, had emerged from the shuttle terminal. Forbin watched impassively as the little man, frequently falling, cautiously approached the monster. He noticed that both figures kept well clear of the exhaust furrow. The way the continuing rain turned to steam as it hit the hard-baked earth told him why. He drew what comfort he could from that. The Collector would be far too hot for even the robot checkers, let alone humans. A shaft of sunlight sweeping over the machine aroused him from his reverie.
“Observing your need for speed,” he said coldly, “I am surprised you have not conducted your examination.” Heat would be no problem to them.
“Conditions are not suitable.”
He stabbed one finger at the picture. “It’s suitable enough for us humans - why not you?” He paused. “Or do you want the site cleared before you appear?” Beneath his chill manner, he was thinking fast. Technically the Martians were children; perhaps he could get Fultone to rig lights, have relays of men out there day and night, delaying the aliens, giving Blake more time …
“As you have suggested, we do not wish to be seen. That is one reason.”