by Bob Shaw
With an obvious effort at diplomacy, Napier began discussing the work being carried out by the Starflight research teams. Despite the use of more sophisticated and more powerful cutting tools than had been available on board the Bissendorf nobody had even managed to scratch the shell material. At the same time, studies of the inner shell were indicating that its movement was not a simple east-west rotation, but that subtle geometries were involved with the object of producing a normal progression of day and night close to the polar areas. Another team had been working continuously on the diaphragm field which prevented the atmosphere from rushing into space through the kilometre-wide aperture in the outer shell. No significant progress had been made there, either. The force field employed was unlike anything ever generated by human engineers in that it reacted equally against the passage of metallic and non-metallic objects. Observations of the field showed that it was lenticular in shape, being several metres thick at the centre. Unlike the shell material, it was transparent to cosmic rays and actually appeared to refract them — a discovery which had led to the suggestion that, as well as being a sealing device, it was intended to disperse cosmic rays in such a way as to produce a small degree of mutation in Orbitsville’s flora and fauna — if the latter existed. In general, the field seemed more amenable than the shell material to investigation because it had proved possible to cause small local alterations in its structure, and to produce temporary leaks by firing beams of electrons through it.
“Interesting stuff, isn’t it?” Napier concluded.
“Fascinating,” Garamond said automatically.
“You don’t sound convinced. I’m going to have a look at the new arrivals.”
Garamond smiled. “Okay, Cliff. We’ll see you for lunch.”
He got to his feet and was walking to the door with Napier when the communicator set, which had been connected to the central exchange by a landline pending a solution of the radio transmission problem, chimed to announce an incoming call. Garamond pressed the ACCEPT button and the solid image of a heavy-shouldered and prematurely grey young man appeared at the projection focus. He was wearing civilian clothing and his face was unknown to Garamond.
“Good morning, Captain,” the stranger said in a slightly breathless voice. “I’m Colbert Mason of the Two Worlds News Agency. Have any other reporters been in touch with you?”
“Other reporters? No.”
“Thank God for that — I’m the first,” Mason said fervently.
“The first? I didn’t know Starflight had authorized transportation for newsmen.”
“They haven’t.” Mason gave a shaky laugh. “I had to emigrate to this place with my wife more or less permanently, and I know other reporters have done the same thing. I’m just lucky my ship disembarked first. If you’ll give me an interview, that is.”
“Have you been off-world before?”
“No, sir. First time, but I’d have gone right round the galaxy for this chance.”
Garamond recognized the flattery but also found himself genuinely impressed by the young newsman. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“What did I…?” Mason spread his hands helplessly. “The lot! Anything and everything. Do you know, sir, that back on Earth you’re regarded as the most famous man ever? Even if you’d answered the tachygrams we sent you we’d still have considered it worth while to try for a face-to-face interview.”
“Tachygrams? I got no signals from Earth. Hold on a minute.” Garamond killed the audio channel and turned to Napier. “Elizabeth?”
Napier’s heavy-lidded eyes were alert. “I’d say so. She didn’t like your views on how Orbitsville should be handled. In fact, I’m surprised this reporter got through the net. He must have been very smart, or lucky.”
“Let’s make him luckier.” Garamond opened the audio circuit again. “I’ve got a good story for you, Mason. Are you prepared to run it exactly as I tell it?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Come straight out to my place.”
“I can’t, sir. I called you because I think I’m being watched, and there may not be much time.”
“All right, then. You can report that in my opinion the potential of Orbitsville is…”
“Orbitsville?”
“The local name for Lindstromland…” Garamond stopped speaking as the image of the reporter broke up into motes of coloured light which swarmed in the air for a second before abruptly vanishing. He waited for the image to re-establish itself but nothing happened.
“I thought it was too good to be true,” Napier commented. “Somebody pulled out the plug on you.”
“I know. Where do you think Mason was speaking from?”
“Must have been from one of the depot stores. Those are the only places where he’d have any access to a communicator set.”
“Let’s get down there right now.” Garamond pulled on a lightweight jacket and, without waiting to explain to Aileen, hurried from the house into Orbitsville’s changeless noon. Christopher looked up from the solitary game he was playing in the grass but did not speak. Garamond waved to the boy and strode out in the direction of the clustered buildings around the aperture.
“It’s bloody hot,” Napier grumbled at his side. “I’m going to buy a parasol for walking about outdoors.”
Garamond was in no mood to respond to small talk. “It’s getting too much like Earth and Terranova.”
“You won’t be able to prove the call was blocked.”
“I’m not even going to try.”
They walked quickly along the brown dirt road which threaded through the scattering of residences and reached the belt of small administrative buildings, research laboratories and windowless storehouses which surrounded the aperture. The black ellipse began to be disjointedly visible through a clutter of docking machinery and L-shaped entry ports. Garamond was no longer able to think of it as a lake of stars — now it was simply a hole in the ground. As they were passing an unusually large anonymous building his attention was caught by sunlight glinting on a moving vehicle — one of the few yet to be seen on Orbitsville. It stopped at the entrance to the building, four men got out and hurried inside. One of them had a youthful build which contrasted with his greying hair.
Napier caught Garamond’s arm. “That looked like our man.”
“We’ll see.” They sprinted across a patch of grass and into the dense shade of the foyer, just in time to see an interior door closing. A doorman wearing Starflight emblems came out of a kiosk and tried to bar their way, but Garamond and Napier went by on each side of him and burst through to the inner room. Garamond’s first glance confirmed that he had found Colbert Mason. The reporter was between two men who were gripping his arms, and three others — one of whom Garamond identified as Silvio Laker, a member of Elizabeth Lindstrom’s personal staff — were standing close by. Mason’s face had a dazed, drugged expression.
“Hands off him,” Garamond commanded.
“Out of here,” Laker said. “You’re outside your territory, Captain.”
“I’m taking Mason with me.”
“Like hell you are,” said one of the men holding Mason, stepping forward confidently.
Garamond gave him a bored look. “I can cripple you ten different ways.” He was lying, never having been interested in even the recreational forms of personal combat, but the man suddenly looked less confident. While he was hesitating, his partner released Mason and tried to snatch something from his pocket, but was dissuaded by Napier who simply moved his three-hundred-pound bulk in a little closer and looked expectant. A ringing silence descended on the sparsely furnished room.
“Are you all right?” Garamond said to Mason.
“My neck,” the reporter said uncertainly, fingering a pink blotch just above his collar. “They used a hypodermic spray on me.”
“It was probably just a sedative to keep you quiet.” Garamond fixed his gaze on Laker. “For your sake, I hope that’s right.”
“I war
ned you to stay out of this,” Laker said in a hoarse voice, his short round body quivering with anger. He extended his right fist, on which was a large gold ring set with a ruby.
“Lasers are messy,” Garamond said.
“I don’t mind cleaning up.”
“You’re getting in over your head, Laker. Have you thought about what Elizabeth would do to you for involving her in my murder?”
“I’ve an idea she’d like to see you put away.”
“In secret, yes — but not like this.” Garamond nodded to Napier. “Let’s go.” They turned the compliant, stupefied reporter around and walked him towards the door.
“I warn you, Garamond,” Laker whispered. “I’m prepared to take the chance.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Garamond spoke without looking back. The door was only a few paces away now and he could feel an intense tingling between his shoulder blades. He put out his hand to grasp the handle, but in the instant of his touching it the door was flung open and three more men exploded into the room. Garamond tensed to withstand an onslaught but the newcomers, two of whom were wearing field technician uniforms, brushed past with unseeing eyes.
“Mr Laker,” shouted the third man, who was wearing the blue uniform of a Starflight engineering officer. “You’ve got to hear this! You’ll never…”
Laker’s voice was ragged with fury. “Get out, Gordino. What the hell’s the idea of bursting in here like… ?” “But you don’t understand! We’ve made contact with outsiders! Two of my technicians went over the hills to the west of here last night and they found an alien community — one that’s still in use!”
Laker’s jaw and threatening fist sagged in unison. “What are you saying, Gordino? What kind of a story is this?”
“These are the two men, Mr Laker. They’ll tell you about it themselves.”
“Two of your drunken gypsies.”
“Please.” The taller of the technicians raised his hand and spoke in an incongruous and strangely dignified voice. “I anticipated a certain degree of scepticism, so instead of returning to base immediately I waited till daylight and took a number of photographs. Here they are.” He produced a sheaf of coloured rectangles and offered them to Laker. Garamond pushed Napier and the still-dazed Mason out through the door and, forgetting all notion of fleeing, strode back to Laker and snatched the photographs. Other hands were going for them as well, but he emerged from the free-for-all with two pictures. The background in each was the limitless prairie of Orbitsville and ranged across the middle distance were pale blue rectangles which could be nothing other than artificial structures. Near the base of some of the buildings were multicoloured specks, so small as to be represented only by pinpricks of pigment beneath the glaze of the photographs.
“These coloured dots,” Garamond said to the tall technician. “Are they… ?”
“All I can say is that they moved. From the distance they look like flowers, but they move around.”
Garamond returned his attention to the pictures, trying to drive his mind down a converging beam at the focus of which were the bright-hued molecules — as if he could reach an atomic level where alien forms would become visible, and beyond it a nuclear level on which he could look into the faces and eyes of the first companions Man had found in all his years of star-searching. The reaction was a natural one, conditioned by centuries during which the sole prospect of contacting others lay in close examination of marks on photographic plates, but it was swept aside almost at once by forces of instinct. Garamond found himself walking towards the door and was out in the sunlight before understanding that he was heading for the Starflight vehicle parked near the entrance. The figures of Napier and Mason were visible a short distance along the road, apparently on their way to Garamond’s house. He got into the crimson vehicle and examined the controls. The car was brand-new, having been manufactured on board one of the spaceships specifically for use on Orbitsville, and no keys were needed to energize the pulse-magnet engine. Garamond pressed the starter button and accelerated away in a cloud of dust as Laker and the others were coming out of the building.
He ignored their shouts, gunned the engine for the few seconds it took to catch up on Napier, brought his heel down on the single control pedal and skidded the car to a halt. He threw open a door. Napier glanced back at the Starflight men who were now in pursuit and, without needing to be told, bundled Mason into the vehicle and climbed in after him. The engine gave a barely perceptible whine as Garamond switched from heel to toe pressure on the pedal, sending the car snaking along the packed earth of the road as the excess of power forced its drive wheels to slide from side to side.
In less than a minute they had cleared the perimeter of the township and were speeding towards the sunlit hills.
* * *
The alien settlement came in view as soon as the car reached the crest of the circular range of hills. It was composed of pale blue rectangles shining in the distance like chips of ceramic. His brief study of the photographs had given Garamond the impression that the buildings were in a single cluster, but in actuality they spanned the entire field of view and extended out across the plain for several kilometres. Garamond realized he was looking at a substantial city. It was a city which appeared to lack a definite centre — but nevertheless large enough to sustain a population of a million or more, judging by human standards. Garamond eased back on the throttle, slowing the car’s descent. He had just picked out the colourful moving specks which he believed were the first contemporaries mankind had ever encountered beyond the biosphere of his birth planet.
“Cliff, didn’t I hear something about the Starflight science teams duplicating our experiment with a reconnaissance torpedo?” Garamond frowned as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the glittering city.
“I think so.”
“I wonder if the cameras were activated?”
“I doubt it. They could hardly have missed seeing this.”
Mason, who had recovered from his shot of sedative, stirred excitedly in the rear seat, panning with his scene recorder. “What are you going to say to these beings, Captain?”
“It doesn’t matter what any of us say — they won’t understand it.”
“They mightn’t even hear it,” Napier said. “Maybe they don’t have ears.”
Garamond felt his mouth go dry. He had visualized this moment many times, with a strength of yearning which could not be comprehended by anyone who had not looked into the blind orbs of a thousand lifeless worlds, but the prospect of coming face to face with a totally alien life form was upsetting his body chemistry. His heart began a slow, powerful pounding as the pale blue city rose higher beyond the nose of the car. Without conscious bidding, his foot eased further back on the throttle and the hum of the engine became completely inaudible at the lower speed. For a long moment there was no sound but that of the tough grasses of Orbitsville whipping at the vehicle’s bodywork.
“What’s the trouble, Vance?” Napier’s eyes were watchful and sympathetic. “Arachnid reaction?”
“I guess so.”
“Don’t worry — I can feel it too.”
“Arachnid reaction?” Mason leaned forward eagerly. “What’s that?”
“Ask us some other time.”
“No, it’s all right,” Garamond said, glad of the opportunity to talk. “Do you like spiders?”
“I can’t stand them,” Mason replied.
“That’s fairly universal. The revulsion that most people get when they see spiders — arachnids — is so strong and widespread it has led to the theory that arachnids are not native to Earth. We have a sense of kinship, no matter how slight, with all creatures which originated on our own world, and this makes them acceptable to us even when they’re as ugly as sin. But if the arachnid reaction is what some people think it is — loathing for something instinctively identified as of extraterrestrial origin — then we might be in trouble when we make the first contact with an alien race.
“The worry is that they m
ight be intelligent and friendly, even beautiful, and yet might trigger off hate-and-kill reactions in us simply because their shape isn’t already registered in a kind of checklist we inherit with our genes.”
“It’s just an idea, of course.”
“Just an idea,” Garamond agreed.
“What’s the probability of it being right?”
“Virtually zero, in my estimation. I wouldn’t…” Garamond stopped speaking as the car lifted over a slight rise and he saw two bright-hued beings only a few hundred paces ahead. The aliens were a long way out from the perimeter of their city, isolated. He brought the car to a gradual halt.
“I guess… I have a feeling we ought to get out and walk the rest of the way.”
Napier nodded and swung open his door. They got out, paused for a moment in the heat of Orbitsville’s constant noon, and began walking towards the two man-sized but unearthly figures. Mason followed with his scene recorder.
As the distance between them narrowed, Garamond began to discern the shape of the aliens and was relieved to discover he was not afraid of them in spite of the fact that they were unlike anything he had ever imagined. The creatures seemed, at first, to be humanoids wrapped in garments which were covered with large patches of pink, yellow and brown. At closer range, however, the garments proved to be varicoloured fronds which partly concealed complex, asymmetrical bodies. The aliens did not have clearly defined heads — merely regions of greater complexity at the tops of their blunt, forward-leaning trunks. From a wealth of tendrils, cavities and protuberances, the only organs Garamond was able to identify with any certainty were the eyes, which resembled twin cabochons of green bloodstone.
“What are they like?” Napier whispered.
“I don’t know.” Garamond felt a similar need to relate the aliens to something from his past experience. “Painted shrimps?”
He became aware that the reporter had fallen behind, and that he and Napier were now only a few paces from the aliens. Both men stopped walking and stood facing the fantastic creatures, which had not moved nor given any indication of being aware of their approach. Silence descended over the tableau like liquid glass, solidifying around them. The plain became a sun-filled lens and they were at the centre of it, immobilized and voiceless. Psychic pressures built up and became intolerable, and yet there was nothing to do or say.