The Space Machine

by Christopher Priest

  “May we go in?” she said, evidently working on the assumption that if he could speak his language to us, we could speak ours to him, but assisting him by pointing towards the site.

  His reply was not understood.

  “Do you think he said yes?” I said.

  “There is only one way to tell.”

  Amelia raised her hand to him, then walked towards the entrance. I followed, and we both glanced back to see if this action provoked a negative response. He appeared to be making no move to stop us, but raised his hand in greeting, and so we walked on.

  Now determined to see this through, we were past the monsters’ observation panels almost before we realized it. However, a few paces further on a screech from one of the positions chilled our blood. We had been spotted.

  We both halted, and at once I found I was trembling. Amelia had paled.

  The screech came again, and was then repeated.

  “Edward…we must walk on!”

  “But we have been challenged!” I cried.

  “We do not know what for. We can only walk on.”

  So, expecting at best another bestial screech, or at worst to be smitten by the heat-beam, we stepped on towards the snow-cannon.

  Miraculously, there was no further challenge.

  vi

  We were now almost running, for our objective was in sight. We passed through the ranks of waiting projectiles, and headed for the breech of the mighty cannon. Amelia, whose first visit to the site this was, could hardly believe what she saw.

  “There are so many!” she said, gasping with the exertion of hurrying up the gradient of the mountain slope.

  “It is to be a full-scale invasion,” I said. “We cannot allow these monsters to attack Earth.”

  During my visit the day before, the activities of the monsters had been confined to the area where the machines were assembled, and this store of gleaming projectiles had been left unattended. Now, though, there were the monsters and their vehicles all about. We hurried on, unchallenged.

  There was no sign of any humans, although I had been told that by the time we entered the projectile our friends would be in charge of the device which fired the cannon. I hoped that word of our arrival had been passed, for I did not wish to wait too long inside the projectile itself.

  The companionway was still in place, and I led Amelia up it to the entrance to the inner chamber. Such was our haste that when one of the monster-creatures by the base of the companionway uttered a series of modulated screeches, we paid no attention to it. We were now so close to our objective, so near to the instrument of our return to Earth, that we felt nothing could bar our way.

  I stood back to allow Amelia to go first, but she pointed out that it would be sensible for me to lead. This I did, heading down that dark, frigid tunnel through the breech-block, away from the wan sunlight of Mars.

  The hatch of the ship was open, and this time Amelia did go in before me. She stepped down the ramp into the heart of the projectile, while I attended to closing the hatch as I’d been shown. Now we were inside, away from the noises and enigmas of the Martian civilization, I suddenly felt very calm and purposeful.

  This spacious interior, quiet, dimly lit, quite empty, was another world from that city and its beleaguered peoples; this craft, product of the most ruthless intellect in the Universe, was our salvation and home.

  Once it would have been in the van of a terrible invasion of Earth; now, in the safe charge of Amelia and myself, it could become our world’s salvation. It was a prize of war, a war of which even now the peoples of Earth were quite unsuspecting.

  I checked the hatch once more, making certain that it was quite secure, then took Amelia in my arms and kissed her lightly.

  She said: “The craft is awfully big, Edward. Are you sure you know what to do?”

  “Leave it to me.”

  For once my confidence was not assumed. Once before I had made a reckless act to avert an evil destiny, and now again I saw destiny as being in my own hands. So much depended on my skills and actions, and the responsibility of my homeworld’s future lay on my shoulders. It could not be that I should fail!

  I led Amelia up the sloping floor of the cabin, and showed her the pressure tubes that would support and protect us during the firing of the cannon. I judged it best that we should enter them at once, for we had no way of telling when our friends outside would fire the craft. In the confused situation, events were unpredictable.

  Amelia stepped into her own tube, and I watched as the eerie substance folded itself about her. “Can you breathe?” I said to her.

  “Yes.” Her voice was muffled, but quite audible. “How do I climb out of this? I feel I am imprisoned.”

  “You simply step forward,” I said. “It will not resist unless we are under acceleration.”

  Inside her transparent tube Amelia smiled to show she understood, and so I moved back to my own tube. Here I squeezed past the controls which were placed within easy reach, then felt the soft fabric closing in on me. When my body was contained I allowed myself to relax, and waited for the launch to begin.

  A long time passed. There was nothing to do but stare across the few feet that separated us, and watch Amelia and smile to her. We could hear each other if we spoke, but the effort was considerable.

  The first hint of vibration, when it came, was so minute as to be attributable to the imagination, but it was followed a few moments later by another. Then there came a sudden jolt, and I felt the folds of fabric tightening about my body.

  “We are moving, Amelia!” I shouted, but needlessly, for there was no mistaking what was happening.

  After the first concussion there followed several more, of increasing severity, but after a while the motion became smooth and the acceleration steady. The fabric tube was clutching me like a giant hand, but even so I could feel the pressure of our speed against me, far greater than I had experienced on the smaller craft. Furthermore, the period of acceleration was much longer, presumably because of the immense length of the barrel. There was now a noise, the like of which was quite unprecedented: a great rushing and roaring, as the enormous craft shot through its tube of ice.

  Just as the acceleration was reaching the point where I felt I could no longer stand it, even inside the protective grasp of the tube, I saw that Amelia’s eyes had closed and that inside her tube she appeared to have fallen unconscious. I shouted out to her, but in the din of our firing there was no hope that she would hear me. The pressure and noise were each now intolerable, and I felt a lightness in my brain and a darkness occluding my sight. As my vision failed, and the roaring became a dull muttering in the background, the pressure abruptly ceased.

  The folds of the fabric loosened, and I stumbled forward out of the tube. Amelia, similarly released, fell unconscious to the metal floor. I leant over her, slapping her cheeks gently…and it was not for several moments that I realized that at last we had been flung headlong into the ether of space.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A HOMEWARD QUEST

  i

  So began the voyage which, in optimism, I had expected to take but a day or two, but which in actuality took nearer sixty days, as near as we could tell. They were two long months; for short periods it was an exciting experience, at other times it became terrifying, but for most of the sixty days it was a journey of the most maddening dullness.

  I will not, then, delay this narrative with an account of our daily lives, but indicate those events which most exercised us at the time.

  Thinking back over the experience, I recall the flight with mixed feelings. It was not an enjoyable journey in any sense of the word, but it was not without its better sides.

  One of these was that Amelia and I were alone together in an environment which provided privacy, intimacy and a certain security, even if it was not the most usual of situations. It is not germane to this narrative to describe what occurred between us—even in these modern times, I feel I should not breach the tr
usts which we then established—but it would be true to say that I came to know her, and she to know me, in ways and to depths I had never before suspected were possible.

  Moreover, the length of the journey itself had a purgatory effect on our outlooks. We had indeed become tainted by Mars, and even I, less involved than Amelia, had felt a conflict of loyalties as we blasted away from the revolution-torn city. But, surrounded as we were by a Martian artifact, and kept alive by Martian food and Martian air, as the days passed and Earth grew nearer, the conflicts faded and we became of single purpose once more. The invasion the monsters schemed was all too real; if we could not help avert such an invasion then we could never again call ourselves human.

  But already my synopsis of this incredible journey through space is once more taking my narrative ahead of its natural order.

  I have mentioned that certain incidents during the voyage were exciting or terrifying, and the first of these occurred shortly after we were released from the pressure-tubes, and found ourselves in command of a space ironclad.

  ii

  When I had revived Amelia from her faint, and ensured that neither she nor I had suffered any ill-effects during the rigours of the blast, I went first to the controls to see where we were headed. Such was the ferocity of our firing that I was sure we were about to hurtle into Earth at any moment!

  I turned the knob that illuminated the main panel—as my guides had shown me—but to my disappointment nothing could be seen except for a few faint points of light. These, I later realized, were stars. After experimenting for several minutes, and achieving no more than marginally increasing the brilliance of the picture, I turned my attention to one of the smaller panels. This displayed the view behind the craft.

  Here the picture was more satisfactory, for it showed a view of the world we had just left. So close to Mars were we still that it filled the entire panel: a chiaroscuro of light and shadow, mottled yellows and reds and browns. When my eyes adjusted to the scale of what I was seeing I found I could pick out certain features of the landscape, the most prominent of which was the immense volcano, standing out from the deserts like a malignant carbuncle. Bulging around its summit was a gigantic white cloud; at first I took this to be the volcano’s own discharge, but later I thought that this must be the cloud of water-vapour that had thrust us on our way.

  The city we had left was invisible—it lay presumably beneath the spreading white cloud—and there were few features I could definitely identify. The canals were clearly visible, or at least they became visible by virtue of the banks of weed that proliferated alongside them.

  I stared at the view for some time, realizing that for all the force of our departure we had neither travelled very far nor were now moving with much velocity. Indeed, the only apparent movement was the image of the land itself, which was rotating slowly in the panel.

  While I was watching this, Amelia called out to me: “Edward, shall we have some food?”

  I turned away from the panel, and said: “Yes, I’m hun…”

  I did not complete my sentence, for Amelia was nowhere in sight.

  “I’m down here, Edward.”

  I stared down the sloping floor of the compartment, but there was no sign of her. Then I heard her laughing, and looked up in the direction of the sound. Amelia was there…upside-down on the ceiling!

  “What are you doing?” I shouted, aghast. “You’ll fall and hurt yourself!”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly safe. Come down here and you’ll see for yourself.”

  To demonstrate, she executed a little jump…and landed, feet first, on the ceiling.

  “I cannot go down if you are above me,” I said pedantically.

  “It is you who is above me,” she said. Then, surprising me, she walked across the ceiling, down the curving wall, and was soon by my side. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  She took my hand, and I went with her. I trod carefully at first, bracing myself against falling, but the gradient did not increase, and after a few moments I glanced back at my controls and saw to my surprise that they now seemed to be against the wall. We walked on, soon coming to the place where the food had been stored, and where Amelia had been. Now when I looked back at the controls they appeared to be on the ceiling above us.

  During the course of our voyage, we grew used to this effect created by the spinning of the ship about its axis, but it was a novel experience. Until this moment we had taken it for granted, so accustomed were we to the lightness of the Martian gravity, and the craft was being rotated so as to simulate this.

  (Later in the voyage, I found a way of increasing the rate of spin, with the intention of readying our bodies for the greater weight of Earth.)

  For the first few days this phenomenon was a considerable novelty to us. The shape of the compartment itself lent peculiar effects. As one moved further up the sloping floor (or ceiling) towards the nose of the craft, so one approached the central axis of the ship and apparent gravity was less. Amelia and I often passed the time by exercising in this strange ambience: by going to the apex of the compartment and kicking oneself away, one could float across much of the space before drifting gently to the floor.

  Still, those first two hours after the firing of the cannon were placid enough, and we ate a little of the Martian food, blissfully unaware of what was in store for us.

  iii

  When I returned to the controls, the view in the rearward-facing panel showed that the horizon of Mars had appeared. This was the first direct evidence I had that the planet was receding from us…or, to be more accurate, that we were receding from it. The forward panel still showed its uninformative display of stars. I had, naturally enough, expected to see our homeworld looming before us. My guides on Mars had informed me that the firing of the cannon would direct the craft towards Earth, but that I should not be able to see it for some time, so there was no immediate concern.

  It did seem strange to me, though, that Earth should not be directly ahead of us.

  I decided that as there would be neither night nor day on the craft, we should have to establish a ship time. My watch was still working, and I took it out. As near as I could estimate it, the snow-cannon had been fired at the height of the Martian day, and that we had been in flight for about two hours. Accordingly, I set my watch at two o’clock, and thenceforward my watch became the ship’s chronometer.

  With this done, and with Amelia content to investigate what provisions had been made for our sojourn in the craft, I decided to explore the rest of the ship.

  So it was that I discovered we were not alone…

  I was moving along one of the passages that ran through the double hull when I passed the hatchway that led to the compartment designed to hold the slaves. I afforded it the merest glance, but then stopped in horror! The hatch had been crudely sealed from the outside, welded closed so that the door was unopenable, either from within or without. I pressed my ear to it, and listened.

  I could hear nothing: if anyone was inside they were very still. There was the faintest sound of movement, but this could well have come from Amelia’s activities in the forward compartment.

  I stood by that hatch for many minutes, full of forebodings and indecision. I had no evidence that anyone was within…but why should that hatch have been sealed, when only the day before I and the others had passed freely through it?

  Could it be that this projectile carried a cargo of human food…?

  If so, just what was in the main hold…?

  Stricken with an awful presentiment, I hastened to the hatch that led to the hold where the monsters’ machines had been stowed. This too had been welded, and I stood before it, my heart thudding. Unlike the other hatch, this was equipped with a sliding metal plate, of the sort that is installed in the doors of prison-cells.

  I moved it to one side, a fraction of an inch at a time, terrified of making a noise and so drawing attention to myself.

  At last it had been opened suffici
ently for me to place my eye against it, and I did this, peering into the dimly lit interior.

  My worst fears were instantly confirmed: there, not a dozen feet from the hatch, was the oblate body of one of the monsters. It lay before one of the protective tubes, evidently having been released from it after the launch.

  I jumped back at once, fearful of being noticed. In the confined space of the passage I waved my arms in despair, cursing silently, dreading the significance of this discovery.

  Eventually, I summoned enough courage to return to my peephole, and looked again at the monster that was there.

  It was lying so that it presented one side of its body and most of its nasty face towards me. It had not noticed me, and indeed it had not moved an inch since I had first looked. Then I recalled what my guides had said…that the monsters took a sleeping-draught for the duration of the flight.

  This monster’s tentacles were folded, and although its eyes were open the flaccid white lids drooped over the pale eyeballs. In sleep it lost none of its beastliness, yet it was now vulnerable. I did not have the steel of rage in me that I had had before, but I knew that were the door not unopenable I would once again have been able to slay the being.

  Reassured that I would not rouse the brute, I slid the plate right open, and looked along as much of the length of the hold I could. There were three other monsters in view, each one similarly unconscious. There was probably the fifth somewhere in the hold, but there was so much equipment lying about that I could not see it.

  So we had not after all stolen the projectile. The craft we commanded was leading the monsters’ invasion of Earth!

  Was this what the Martians had been trying to tell us before we left? Was this what Edwina had been keeping back from us?

  iv

  I decided to say nothing of this to Amelia, remembering her loyalties to the Martian people. If she knew the monsters were aboard, she would realize that they had brought their food with them, and it would become her major preoccupation. I did not care for the knowledge myself—it was unpleasant to realize that beyond the metal wall at the rear of our compartment were imprisoned several men and women who, when needed, would sacrifice themselves to the monsters—but it would not divert my attention from the major tasks.