The Space Machine

by Christopher Priest

  We were awakened some time later—a glance at my watch revealed that we had slept for about four and a half hours—by a renewed outburst of the monsters’ screeching.

  We lay still, hoping that it would eventually stop again, but after five minutes neither of us could bear it. I left the hammock and went to the controls.

  Earth loomed large in the forwards panel. I checked the positioning of the grid system, and noticed at once that something was amiss. While we had slept our course had wandered yet again: although the fainter grid was still firmly over the British Isles, the main grid had wandered far over to the east, revealing that we were now destined to land somewhere in the Baltic Sea.

  I called Amelia over, and showed her this.

  “Can you correct it?” she said.

  “I think so.”

  Meanwhile, the braying of the monsters continued.

  We braced ourselves as usual, and I swung the lever to correct the course. I achieved a minor correction, but for all my efforts I saw we were going to miss our target by hundreds of miles. Even as we watched I noticed that the brighter grid was drifting slowly towards the east.

  Then Amelia pointed out that a green light was glowing, one that had never before shone. It was beside the one control I had not so far touched: the lever which I knew released the blast of green fire from the nose.

  Instinctively, I understood that our journey was approaching its end, and unthinkingly I applied pressure to the lever.

  The projectile’s response to this action was so violent and sudden that we were both catapulted forward from the controls. Amelia landed awkwardly, and I sprawled helplessly across her. Meanwhile our few possessions, and the pieces of food we had left about the compartment, were sent flying in all directions.

  I was relatively unhurt by the accident, but Amelia had caught her head against a protruding piece of metal, and blood flowed freely down her face. She was barely conscious, and in obvious agony, and I bent anxiously over her.

  She was holding her head in her hands, but she reached towards me and pushed me weakly away.

  “I…I’m all right, Edward,” she said. “Please…I feel a little sick. Leave me. It is not serious…”

  “Dearest, let me see what has happened!” I cried.

  Both her eyes were closed, and she had gone awfully pale, but she repeated that she was not badly hurt.

  “You must attend to driving this craft,” she said.

  I hesitated for a few more seconds, but she pushed me away again, and so I returned to the controls. I was certain that I had not lost consciousness for even a moment, but it now seemed that our destination was much nearer. However, the centre of the main grid had moved so that it lay somewhere in the North Sea, indicating that the green fire had altered our course drastically. The eastwards drift, however, continued.

  I went back to Amelia, and helped her to her feet. She had recovered her poise slightly, but blood continued to flow.

  “My bag,” she said. “There is a towel inside it.”

  I looked around but could see her bag nowhere. It had evidently been thrown by the first concussion, and now lay somewhere in the compartment. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the green light still glowing, and a certainty that the grid was moving relentlessly on towards the east made me feel I should be at the controls.

  “I’ll find it,” Amelia said. She held the sleeve of her black uniform over the wound, trying to staunch the blood. Her movements were clumsy, and she was not articulating clearly.

  I stared at her in worried desperation for a moment, then realized what we must do.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’ll find it for you. You must get into the pressure-tube, otherwise you will be killed. We will be landing at any moment!”

  I took her by the arm and propelled her gently to the flexible tube, which had hung unused for much of the flight. I took off the tunic of my uniform, and gave it to her as a temporary bandage. She held it to her face, and as she went into the tube the fabric closed about her. I entered my own, and laid my hand on the extended controls inside. As I did so, I felt the fabric tightening about my body. I glanced at Amelia to ensure that she was firmly held, then applied pressure to the green lever.

  Watching the panel through the folds of fabric I saw the image become entirely obscured by a blaze of green, I allowed the fire to blast for several seconds, then released the lever.

  The image in the panel cleared, and I saw that the grid had moved back to the west once again. It now lay directly across England, and we were dead on course.

  However, the eastwards drift continued, and as I watched the two grids moved out of alignment. The shape of the British Isles was almost obscured by the night terminator, and I knew that in England some people would be seeing a sunset, little realizing what was to descend into their midst during the night.

  While we were both still safe inside the pressure-tubes I decided to fire the engine again, and so over-compensate for the continual drifting. This time I allowed the green flame to burn for fifteen seconds, and when I looked again at the panel I saw that I had succeeded in shifting the centre of the bright grid to a point in the Atlantic several hundred miles to the west of Land’s End.

  Time for this kind of visual confirmation was short: in a few minutes Britain would have disappeared beyond the night terminator.

  I released myself from the tube, and went to see Amelia. “How do you feel?” I said.

  She made to step forward from the constraint of the tube, but I held her back. “I’ll find your bag. Are you any better?”

  She nodded, and I saw that the bleeding had virtually ceased. She looked a dreadful sight, for her hair had matted over the wound and there were smears of blood all over her face and chest.

  I hastened about the compartment in search of the bag. I found it at last—it had lodged directly above the controls—and took it to her. Amelia reached through the tube and fumbled inside the bag until she found several pieces of white linen, folded neatly together.

  While she pressed one of the pieces of the absorbent material to her wound, and dabbed off most of the blood, I wondered why she had never mentioned the existence of these towels before.

  “I shall be all right now, Edward,” she said indistinctly from within. “It is just a cut. You must concentrate on landing this hateful machine.”

  I stared at her for a few seconds, seeing that she was crying. I realized that our journey was ending none too soon and that she, no less than I, could think of no happier moment than that in which we left this compartment.

  I returned to my pressure-tube, and laid my hand on the lever.

  ix

  As the British Isles were now invisible in the night portion of the world, I had no other guide than the two grids. So long as I kept them in alignment then. I knew that I was on course. This was not as simple as it may sound, for the degree of drift was increasing with every minute. The process was complicated by the fact that whenever I turned on the engine, the panel was deluged in green light, effectively blinding me. Only when I turned off the engine could I see what my last measure had achieved.

  I established a routine of trial and error: first I would examine the panel to see how much drift had occurred, then fire the braking engine for a period. When I turned off the engine, I would look again at the panel and make a further estimate of the drift. Sometimes I would have estimated accurately, but usually I had either over- or under-compensated.

  Each time I fired the engine it was for a longer period, and so I fell into a system whereby I counted slowly under my breath. Soon each blast—which I discovered could be made more or less intense by the degree of pressure on the lever—was lasting for a count of one hundred and more. The mental torment was tremendous, for the concentration it demanded was total; additionally, each time the engine was fired the physical pressures on us were almost intolerable. Around us, the temperature inside the compartment was rising. The air ducted down through the tubes remained cool, but
I could feel the fabric itself becoming hot.

  In the few brief moments between the firings of the engine, when the constraint of the tubes relaxed a little, Amelia and I managed to exchange a few words. She told me that the blood had stopped flowing, but that she had a vile headache and felt faint and sick.

  Then at last the drifting of the two grids became so rapid that I dared not slacken my attention at all. The instant I turned off the engines the grids bounced apart, and I pressed the lever down and held it in place.

  Now given its full throat, the braking engine set up a noise of such immensity that I felt the projectile itself must certainly break into pieces. The entire craft shuddered and rattled, and where my feet touched the metal floor I could feel an intolerable heat. Around us, the pressure-tubes gripped so tightly we could hardly breathe. I could not move even the tiniest muscle, and had no notion of how Amelia was faring. I could feel the tremendous power of the engine as if it were a solid object against which we were ramming, for even in spite of the restraining tubes, I felt myself being pushed forward against the braking. So, in this bedlam of noise and heat and pressure, the projectile blazed across the night sky of England like a green comet.

  The end of our voyage, when it came, was abrupt and violent. There was an almighty explosion outside the craft, accompanied by a stunning impact and concussion. Then, in the sudden silence that immediately followed, we fell forward from the relaxing pressure-tubes, into the blistering heat of the compartment.

  We had arrived on Earth, but we were indeed in a sorry state.

  Chapter Eighteen

  INSIDE THE PIT

  i

  We lay unconscious in the compartment for nine hours, oblivious, for the most part, of the terrible disorder our landing had thrown us into. Perhaps while we lay in this coma of exhaustion we were spared the worst effects of the experience, but what we endured was unpleasant enough.

  The craft had not landed at an angle best suited to our convenience; because of the craft’s axial spin the actual position in relation to the ground had been a matter of chance, and that chance had left both the pressure-tubes and our hammock suspended on what now became the walls. Moreover, the craft had collided with the ground at a sharp angle, so that the force of gravity tumbled us into the nose of the projectile.

  That gravity itself felt immense. My attempts to approximate Earth’s gravity by spinning the craft more quickly had been too conservative by far. After several months on Mars, and in the projectile, our normal weights felt intolerable.

  As I have described, Amelia injured herself shortly before we started our landing, and this new fall had reopened the wound, and blood poured from her face more profusely than before. In addition, I had hit my head as we fell from the pressure-tubes.

  Finally, and most unbearable of all, the interior of the craft was overwhelmingly hot and humid. Perhaps it had been the exhaust of the green fire that slowed our flight, or the friction of the Earth’s atmosphere, or most probably a combination of the two, but the metal of the hull and the air it contained, and everything within were heated to an insupportable level.

  This was the degree of disorder in which we lay unconscious, and this was the kind of squalor to which I awoke.

  ii

  My first action was to turn to Amelia, who lay in a huddle across me. The bleeding from her injury had stopped of its own accord, but she was in a dreadful state; her face, hair and clothes were sticky with congealing blood. So still was she, and so quiet her breathing, that at first I was convinced she had died, and only when in a panic I shook her by the shoulders and slapped her face did she rouse.

  We were lying in a shallow pool of water, which had gathered on the floor under the spray from a fractured pipe. This pool was very warm, for it had taken heat from the metal hull of the projectile, but the spray was as yet cool. I found Amelia’s bag, and took from it two of her towels. These I soaked in the spray, and washed her face and hands, dabbing gently at the open wound. As far as I could see, there was no fracture of her cranium, but the flesh of her forehead, just below her hairline, was torn and bruised.

  She said nothing while I washed her, and seemed not to be in pain. She flinched only when I cleaned the wound.

  “I must get you to a more comfortable position,” I said, gently.

  She simply took my hand, and squeezed it affectionately.

  “Can you talk?” I said.

  She nodded, then said: “Edward, I love you.”

  I kissed her, and she held me fondly against her. In spite of our dire circumstances I felt as if I had been relieved of a great weight; the tensions of the flight had dissipated.

  “Do you feel well enough to move?” I said.

  “I think so. I am a little unsteady.”

  “I will support you,” I said.

  I stood up first, feeling giddy, but I was able to balance myself by holding on to a part of the broken controls which now overhung us, and by extending a hand I helped Amelia to her feet. She was more shaken than I, so I put one arm around her waist. We moved further up the sloping floor of the projectile to a place where, although the gradient was steeper, at least there was somewhere dry and smooth to sit.

  It was then that I took out my watch, and discovered that nine hours had passed since we crash-landed. What had the monsters done in the time we lay unconscious?!

  iii

  Feeling very sorry for ourselves, we sat and rested for several more minutes, but I was obsessed by a sense of urgency. We could not delay leaving the projectile any longer than absolutely necessary. For all we knew, the monsters might even now be marching from their hold and launching their invasion.

  Immediate concerns were still to be considered, though. One was the enervating heat in which we were sitting. The very floor on which we rested was almost hotter than we could bear, and all around us the metal plates radiated suffocating warmth. The air was moist and sticky, and every breath we took seemed devoid of oxygen. Much of the food that had spilled was slowly rotting, and the stench was sickening.

  I had already loosened my clothes, but as the heat showed no sign of abating it seemed wise to undress. Once Amelia had recovered her wits I suggested this, then helped her off with the black uniform. Underneath she still wore the ragged garment I had seen her in at the slave-camp. It was unrecognizable as the crisp white chemise it had once been.

  I was better off, for beneath my uniform I still wore my combination underwear which, in spite of my various adventures, was not at all unpresentable.

  After some consideration we agreed it would be better if I explored the present situation alone. We had no idea how active were the monsters, assuming that they had not been killed by the concussion, and that it would be safer if I were by myself. So, having made absolutely sure that Amelia was comfortable, I let myself out of the compartment and set about the climb through the passages that ran through the hull.

  It will be recalled that the projectile was very long: it was certainly not much less than three hundred feet from stem to stern. During our flight through space, movement about the craft had been relatively simple, because the axial rotation provided one with an artificial floor. Now, however, the craft had buried itself in the soil of Earth, and seemed to be standing on its nose, so that I was forced to climb at a very steep angle. In the heat, which was, if anything, greater in this part of the hull, the only advantage I had was that I knew my way about.

  In due course I came to the hatch that led into the slaves’ compartment. Here I paused to listen, but all was silent within. I climbed on after catching my breath, and eventually arrived at the hatch to the main hold.

  I slid open the metal plate with some trepidation, knowing that the monsters were certainly awake and alert, but my caution was in vain. There was no sign of the beasts within my view, but I knew they were present for I could hear the sound of their horrid, braying voices. Indeed, this noise was quite remarkable in its intensity, and I gathered that much was being discussed betwee
n the nauseous beings.

  At last I moved on, climbing beyond the door to the very stern of the craft itself. Here I had hoped to find some way by which Amelia and I might leave the ship surreptitiously. (I knew that if all else failed I could operate the green blast in the way I had done in the smaller projectile, and so shift it from its landing-place, but it was crucial that the monsters should not suspect that we were not their regular crew.)

  Unfortunately, my way was barred. This was the very end of the craft: the massive hatch by which the monsters themselves would exit. The fact that it was still closed was in itself hopeful: if we could not leave by this way, then at least the monsters too were confined within.

  Here I rested again, before making my descent. For a few moments I speculated about where I had landed the craft. If we had fallen in the centre of a city the violence of our landing would certainly have caused untold damage; this again would be a matter for chance, and here chance would be on our side. Much of England is sparsely built upon, and it was more than likely we would have found open countryside. I could do no more than hope; I had enough on my conscience.

  I could still hear the monsters beyond the inner hull wall, addressing each other in their disagreeable braying voices, and occasionally I could hear the sinister sound of metal being moved. In moments of silence, though, I fancied I could hear other noises, emanating from beyond the hull.

  Our spectacular arrival would almost certainly have brought crowds to the projectile, and as I stood precariously just inside the main rear hatch, my fevered imagination summoned the notion that just a few yards from where I was there would be scores, perhaps hundreds, of people clustered about.

  It was a poignant thought, for of all things I hungered to be reunited with my own kind.

  A little later, when I thought more calmly, I realized that any crowd that might have gathered would be in dire danger from these monsters. How much more grimly optimistic it was to think that the monsters would emerge to a ring of rifle-barrels!