by A. A. Glynn
“Could be a derelict, drifting with a crew dead for God knows how long,” suggested the Skipper. “There can be no other explanation. Unless it isn’t there at all and we’re simply Tunnel-happy and hallucinating.”
Chandos smiled wryly. “We can’t both be having the same hallucination, even if we are Tunnel-happy. And I suppose everyone else is seeing the same thing.” He swiveled his seat to face the curious knot gathered behind the control console. “You can all see it, can’t you—an old-time craft, a mere tub?” There was general agreement. “Surgeon Stanton, you are well versed in psychology. Ever hear of post-Tunnel hallucination affecting groups, causing everyone to experience the same illusion?”
The young woman he addressed did not respond. She stood immobile, with her large gray eyes fixed on the image in the screen. Her air of dreaminess would later cause some of the crew to reflect that she had the look of a woman in love.
“Surgeon Stanton!” called the second officer sharply.
Carla Stanton gave a start and stared at him. He repeated his question.
“No—all the cases in the literature are individual and usually temporary. I know of no record of group hallucination,” she replied.
“He’s real enough,” said the Skipper. He turned and called along the console to the communications chief: “Can this craft be contacted, Uys?”
“I’ll try. We might get a reply—unless all aboard are dead,” responded Uys. Into the mouthpiece of the wave transmitter he said: “Craft ahead. identify yourself. We are the Terran explorer Quest. Who are you?”
The watching group waited through an ensuing silence, then Uys, after some frustrated mutterings of his favorite Afrikaans swearwords, repeated the call. More silence.
“Mastig!” growled Uys. “Everyone aboard that rusted old bucket probably died long before any of us were born.”
Abruptly the receiver crackled, then came a response: “Exploration craft Quest. I am receiving you,” said a gruff voice in heavily accented English.
“My God, there is life there!” exclaimed the Skipper. “Keep on, Uys. Ask who he is and about conditions aboard.”
“Who are you?” called Uys. “How are conditions with you? Any help needed!”
“I am a voyager. No help needed.”
“What the hell does he mean, Second?” said the Skipper. “‘I am a voyager’—what kind of answer is that?”
“Search me,” shrugged the second officer, “but he’s right in our parabola when we’re preparing to fall on this planetoid. Looks like he’s about to make planetfall, too.”
“Ask him what he’s up to, Uys,” snapped the Skipper.
“Are you preparing to land?” called Uys.
“Affirmative. That is my intention.”
“For what purpose?”
“To keep rendezvous of long, long standing. I am here to meet my long-delayed destiny.”
“Damn it! He’s talking in riddles,” spluttered the Skipper. He rose and strode along the front of the console. “Move over, Uys. Let me talk to him.”
He spoke forcibly into the mouthpiece: “Tallis, commander of the Quest, here. Give me your commander.”
“I am the commander.”
“Then give us proper answers. Name yourself and from whence you came. What is your purpose here?”
“My name is Vanderdecker. My homeport existed distantly and long ago. I intend to land on this rock and I have told you my purpose. It is to rendezvous with my destiny. I have been awaiting your arrival.”
The puzzled group standing behind the officers at the console continued to stare at the screen so intently that none noticed Surgeon Carla Stanton’s strangely enrapt and bemused expression. She was a young woman of striking beauty and, had her colleagues taken note, they would have seen a marked increase in her beauty. A romantic soul might feel she was possessed by a veritable otherness.
An emphatic click ended the wave communication. “He’s cut himself off,” snorted Uys.
“Leaving us with nothing but gobbledegook,” said the Skipper.
“And he’s shifting position,” put in Chandos. “He’s definitely going for a landing!”
The Skipper’s usual cool demeanor was badly frayed. “Blast! What’s he playing at landing on a barren rock like this? No one can possibly have any business here except surveyors such as ourselves. We’re going down on his tail!”
Apprehensive glances were exchanged as he then barked the command for positions to be taken for a landing. Old hands aboard the Quest, which he had commanded for almost a decade, could not recall the Skipper losing his temper, but the enigma of the ancient ship had clearly opened a chink in his usual armor of coolness.
There was a hasty but disciplined dispersal of personnel.
In the white-walled clinical suite, the four strong medical staff were belting themselves into their couches to withstand the impact of planetfall when a woman’s sensitivity alerted Greta Chastain, assistant to Carla Stanton, to the otherness apparent in the surgeon. Her slight smile and her dreaminess were alien to a demeanor usually briskly efficient.
From her couch next to Carla’s, she asked: “Are you all right? You look—well—odd.”
“I’m quite all right,” said Carla and the smile became more pronounced and even mystical.
A possible explanation for this change in her chief’s personality came to Greta. She looks, she thought, just like a young girl who’s head-over-heels in love.
Immediately after that thought, Carla Stanton said: “Greta, I want to meet him. I desperately want to meet him.”
“Meet who?”
“The commander of the old ship, this Vanderdecker. I feel destined to meet him.”
Puzzlement showed in Greta Chastain’s face and she recalled the voice of Vanderdecker. Destiny was a word he, too had used.
Then the Quest was making its drop to the craggy face of the planetoid in the wake of the mystery craft out of the far past. It landed, easing down on cushioning jets and the crew unfastened the belts of their couches as the amplified voice of the Skipper sounded: “Analysis shows that this planetoid has no breathable atmosphere. The craft we have followed down has landed and we are close by it. I intend to find out why it is here. How it came here without Tunnel-travel is a mystery. I want to know much more about it and, if her commander allows it, hope to investigate it with a party. Stand by for further information.”
On the command deck, the vision-screen showed the ancient spacecraft slanted against a rocky escarpment, the whole image being electronically enhanced because of the trans-Plutonian darkness outside.
“Try making contact again, Uys,” the Skipper ordered. Uys did so.
“Vanderdecker to Quest. I am receiving you…,” came the reply which then broke off in a storm of crackles.
“Mastig!” snorted Uys, following up with some earthy old Boer expletives. “It’s probably the fault of his verdamdt ancient equipment.” He persevered and received the voice of Vanderdecker again. The Skipper took over. “I wish to have personal contact with you. I’ll meet you with a party of my crew on the ground between our two craft if you agree,” he stipulated.
“I agree,” said Vanderdecker. “I will meet you with some of my hands.”
The Skipper formed a party to accompany him. Later, those who were there felt his choice was haphazard: three officers, including Uys, and half a dozen of the heftiest males in the crew. Uys would recall that he was chosen merely because he mentioned a desire to see the inside of the old craft and examine its communications equipment
Suited and head-domed against the airlessness of the planetoid, and with feet weighted because of its slight gravity, the party issued from the Quest’s airlock, in a cautiously moving string following the Skipper. The exploration ship’s powerful landing lights flooded the harsh, rock-strewn landscape, showing the old spacecraft tilted on its craggy rise ahead of them. Beyond distant gnarled, upward-thrusting rocky hillocks, the sky was a dense black.
A dark
shape emerged from the shadows under the hull of the old craft, moved forward and resolved itself into the form of a man in protective suiting and dome of antique pattern. A heavily accented voice sounded in the dome receivers of the party from the Quest. “I am Vanderdecker.” He walked steadily forward.
“He’s on his own,” commented the voice of the Skipper in the domed helmets of his colleagues. “He said he was bringing a party.” He hailed the approaching figure: “I understood you would bring a party from your crew.”
“My party is at hand, here with me.”
“None of this makes sense,” muttered the frustrated voice of Uys in the helmets of his colleagues. “He’s totally alone but he says he has a party with him.”
The Skipper motioned for his group to fan out across a broad front as they drew nearer to Vanderdecker and, unclipping a torch from his belt he threw farther light on the solitary figure. It emphasized the details of a suit and helmet clearly dating from a couple of hundred years in the past. Behind his plastoid visor, Vanderdecker’s face showed whitely. Although heavily bearded, he was astonishingly youthful and handsome with a fresh appearance hardly to be expected in one who had been lost in the space-time continuum for an unknown period.
The Skipper addressed him again: “I have questions. The Terran authorities will want to know about you and your craft—how you came here and what your mission is.”
“I have told you about my mission,” came the reply. “It is to fulfill my destiny. To keep a long-delayed tryst. To close a book.”
The attention of the group from the Quest was suddenly torn away from Vanderdecker by the realization that one of their number had broken from the line and was trudging forward on weighted boots, making determinedly for the man from the mystery craft. They heard their commander’s voice blowing angrily: “Hey! That man, whoever you are. Who told you to break ranks? What do you think you are doing? And who are you, anyway?”
He swung the beam of his torch on to the figure, still plodding heedlessly towards Vanderdecker. The spear of light touched the space helmet just as its occupant turned to look back and the group from the Quest saw the unmistakable and highly attractive face of Surgeon Carla Stanton.
“What the hell—?” spluttered the voice of the Skipper. “How did you get here, Stanton? I didn’t choose you for this party. We have no need of a surgeon.”
The Quest’s party stood still, fascinated by the way Carla Stanton continued to negotiate the rocky floor on the planetoid, plodding towards Vanderdecker who was now standing motionless obviously waiting for her to reach him. None among them could recall previously seeing the surgeon in the heavily suited and helmeted company before the Skipper cast his torch beam on her, and she was certainly not one of the party he named to leave the ship.
“Come back, Stanton!” hooted the Skipper. “What are you doing?”
Carla Stanton continued her steady progress, lessening the distance between herself and Vanderdecker. Then her voice, strangely dreamy, filtered into the helmets of her colleagues. “I, too, am keeping a tryst.”
“Stanton, return to the party! That’s an order!” The Skipper’s angry roar set the helmets of his colleagues quivering. “I will not have my officers taking things into their own hands. You have no authority to even be off the Quest. Return there!” Then it dropped to a lower note as he grumbled to himself: “Has everyone gone raving mad since we encountered this ancient tub? And what the hell is all this stuff about a tryst?”
Ahead of him, the young woman in her cumbersome suiting continued her steady walk but her voice came back clearly and curiously gentle: “It’s about destiny, Skipper—something none of us can prevent.”
The Skipper’s weakening grip on the last of his usual aplomb slipped and he snorted: “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I’m bringing that girl back if I have to do it by force!” He lumbered forward with ungainly haste while Carla Stanton drew closer to Vanderdecker who was now stepping in her direction, obviously intent on meeting her.
The Skipper had advanced only a few steps when he received a severe shock. With an abrupt jolt, he hit an unseen obstruction, and had the distinct impression that he had collided with a human form. Then he felt himself grabbed by invisible hands, which hurled him backwards. He staggered off his feet and landed on his back on the rocky surface of the planetoid, feeling slightly winded but, due to the negligible gravity and has heavy suiting, uninjured.
He struggled upright but was again grasped by hands he could not see and shoved back with firm restraint which was obviously not intended to harm him.
Now, the rest of the party from the Quest made haste to come to his aid, but they too were suddenly stopped by unseen bodies, each feeling that he was grappled by an invisible man of superior strength. It was as if a line of unseen guardians stood in the party’s path.
On the dark slope ahead, near the bulk of the old spacecraft, the two figures were now closing and Vanderdecker’s voice crackled into the helmet receivers of the Quest party: You asked about my crew, gentlemen. Well, you have just encountered them but you’ll never see them. I understand the literature has for centuries called them a crew of ghosts. Just remain where you are and you will not be harmed, but if you try to interfere, you will be restrained again—and my crew is stronger than yourselves. I regret your rough handling and, insofar as you are able, I invite you to share my greatest joy. More, the moment of my expiation—and my very salvation.”
The party from the Quest, still sprawling on their backs, watched the pair of suited figures ahead of them meet and, in the shadow of the mystery ship, seemingly melt into a single dark form.
The voice of the Skipper came incredulously. “My God, they’re embracing!”
“Yes, embracing. A last embracing—the one I have waited for long, long, and long.…” Vanderdecker’s voice had a broken-edged quality like that of a man almost overwhelmed by emotion. They heard him gulp and then continue: “I have much to thank you for because you have brought me she for whom I always hoped. When you set this down, as some of you certainly will one day, make it plain that I always hoped. Tell all Earth—and all mankind—that there must always be hope.”
Some among the men from the Quest had the feeling that this was a form of spiritual moment, but any sense of the supernatural escaped the Skipper. From behind his visor, he glowered at the shadowy couple, still embracing insofar as a pair in bulky spacesuits could embrace.
“Vanderdecken, what the hell are you doing with my surgeon officer? I don’t know what this is all about, but I want her back here where she belongs. Stanton, cut out these antics and come back here!”
“You’ll understand soon enough, Skipper,” came Carla Stanton’s voice, calm and soft. “I’m saving goodbye to all of you. I will always remember you fondly. Goodbye.”
Vanderdecken’s voice followed: “Yes, It will become plain to you. There is one of you connected with the Low Countries in some way—the one who swears in a way familiar there. I heard him when you first made contact.”
Uys, the communications officer, still sprawled on the ground after his manhandling by the unseen crew, intervened: “You mean me. The Low Countries no longer exist, but I’m from a people culturally linked with them. I’m South African. I speak Afrikaans.”
“Then,” responded Vanderdecken from within his embrace of the Quest’s surgeon officer, “you will know the legend of the Dutchman, for it came out of the wild seas around the Cape of Good Hope.”
“The Dutchman?”
“Yes, the sea-wanderer who was punished either for cursing God for creating such unimaginable storms or for grievously wronging the woman he loved. The more romantic of beings prefer the latter version, which says he was condemned to sail the seas in a ghost-ship with a ghostly crew until he fully repented. Then, the gift of love would be returned to him by a woman who could truly love him. Together, they would journey into eternal happiness.”
“My God!” breathed Uys. “You mean the Flying Dutchma
n!”
“Yes. You obviously know the story—and did you never hear his name was Hendrik Vanderdecken?” As he answered, Vanderdecken moved with Carla Stanton into the shadow under the hull of his craft.
“Skipper, don’t you see it?” said Uys urgently. “The Flying Dutchman wandered the seas of Terra—while Terra still had seas—always in a ship of a time gone by, manned by a crew of ghostly sailors. In the eighteenth century, there were glimpses of him in a sixteenth-century vessel, in the twenty-first, he was seen in a nineteenth-century sloop and, in the twenty-third, in a twentieth-century turbo-cruiser—always a figure of the past, voyaging with his ghosts in an antique vessel.…”
“…And now, with the Terran seas gone, he’s voyaging space in a museum piece!” spluttered the Skipper. “A legend! Are you asking me to believe some damnfool legend about a wandering sailor, Uys?”
“Correction, Skipper,” came the soft voice of Carla Stanton who was now hidden somewhere in the shadows under the ancient ship. “It is now a legend of a sailor who, happily, has ceased his wandering. His tryst has been kept. Goodbye once more.”
The sprawling men from the Quest picked themselves up and, forming a tight knot, watched the dark bulk of the old spacecraft as if hypnotized, all of them somehow rendered incapable of moving. Then they saw it give a sudden shudder and, lifting on vividly flaring jets, it lanced upwards into the jet-black trans-Plutonian sky.
* * * *
On the command deck of the Quest, a huddled conclave attempted to make some sense of the whole affair.
“It was as if she was planted among us,” mused Greta Chastain, sometime deputy to Carla Stanton. “Looking back, I can see I never really knew anything about her. I liked her a lot and got along with her, but never learned anything about her. She never mentioned anything of her background. There was never a word about family or even about her training or her previous history in the service. She was just there and I automatically accepted her. Now, I’m not so sure she really was there. Then there was her behavior before leaving the ship. She talked of being destined to meet Vanderdecken and she looked so strange—with a kind of extra beauty. It all seems, well, sort of—mystic.”