by Sam Smith
“Believe me,” he said, “I have no antagonism towards Space. I simply prefer to live here. But I am duty bound to put to you all the arguments voiced at the Senate. So let’s be reasonable. If the moon had exploded, or, as you say, had abruptly disintegrated, someone down here would have seen it happen, one of our machines would have registered it. Nor is it, whatever it is that is blocking our transmissions to you, natural interference. All our planetary communications are working; and some of those use the same satellites that relay transmissions into Space. Those satellites are above the ionosphere. This is selective interference. So, no matter which way I look at it, and I’m not a power paranoiac — I do not see conspiracies on all sides of me — but someone Out There is plotting all this. Who or what I don’t know. For the moment all that I want to find out is what has happened to our moon and to the five people who have disappeared en route to XE2.”
Munred acknowledged his reasonableness, and proceeded to scoff at an earlier suggestion that the whole business was caused by some rich city types having fun at the expense of their planet.
“To come to the here and now,” the Spokesman interrupted Munred’s sport. “We have only three spaceworthy ships left. Two of those, by law, have to stay here. So we have only one ship at our immediate disposal. Unless the Senate chooses to declare a State of Emergency. And that is a distinct possibility....”
A State of Emergency within his Department would not allow Munred to attend his interview.
“And what will the nature of this Emergency be?” Munred asked him. “Under what category will it come? Planetary paranoia? Mass hysteria? Use that and this planet will recruit no more settlers. Within two generations the only people coming here will be anthropologists — to study a ghost planet. You’ll be a gold mine for thesis writers. So, before any State of Emergency is declared, let us wait until we have some hard and fast evidence and not hysterical conjecture.”
After three hours, the planet’s night having made of the office window a black mirror, they had said everything at least twice. Feeling that he had adequately acquitted himself Munred closed the interview and, an hour sooner than he had anticipated, he jauntily returned to his ship.
The Spokesman stood outside his office door and watched the ship lift towards the wispy white clouds of night. He felt that the interview had been a tiresome formality, a waste of time and breath, albeit a necessary part of the process.
Munred let the beacon take him up to the stratosphere. While it was so doing he laid in a course to take him to XE2 by the shortest and quickest route. No sooner did the ship reach its station in the stratosphere than Munred told it to proceed.
As the accelerating ship passed out through the ionosphere Munred saw a black shape between him and the stars. Frowning he reached for the control column. Something large hit his ship and a massive electrical discharge caused it to explode.
Chapter Eleven
For all of Munred Danporr’s ‘let’s be reasonable’ browbeating of Happiness’s Spokesman, an off-the-record doubt, an unadmitted fear, had had him leave a confidentially tabbed instruction on XE2. That confidential tab was timed. Allowing himself two days travel either way, and with a six hour stopover on Happiness, should he have failed to return that confidential tab was to be lifted two hours after his ETA on XE2.
So it was, 4 days 8 hours after Munred’s departure from XE2, that a message was flashed to his Sub and to the police that he was to be officially considered missing. Of all Munred’s sorry efforts in this affair that was his one indisputably sensible action.
Thus it was that, on reporting back for duty after their four day leave, Sergeant Alger Deaver and Constable Drin Ligure found themselves once more dispatched to the planet Happiness.
Neither of the two policemen were pleased. Both were disconcerted, suspecting that they may have failed in their duty the last time. Coincidences were fast overtaking them. And for the Director to disappear...
“Of course,” Alger tried to console himself, “he could’ve done a bunk. Given his shrewish woman the slip.”
“And give up his career?” Drin had once seen the Director at a formal function; moreover they had his faultless record with them.
“It’s been known.”
But even Alger wasn’t convinced. Not one freighter that had left Happiness in the last 50 days had turned up elsewhere. Something was happening, but what?
On their arrival at Happiness they made a seven hundred kilometre high orbit. No ground transmissions, no other ships, no moon. They descended slowly through the ionosphere, picked up the ground transmissions in the stratosphere.
As before.
Coasting down on the Spokesman’s beacon they arrived at his grain farm in his blue dawn. Having docked Alger checked the planet’s records before leaving the ship. He saw that the Director had indeed been here and when he had left — with time aplenty to spare to reach XE2 before their own departure.
They were crossing the apron when the Spokesman came wandering out of his farmhouse. He was still fuzzy with sleep. Even taking that into account he seemed singularly unsurprised to see them.
“Director not come back?” he greeted them.
“No.”
“I suppose,” the Spokesman, yawning, resigned himself to the inevitable, “you think he’s run off on some rare adventure of his own.”
“It is a possibility Sir.”
“You don’t seem so sure?”
“Something odd does seem to be happening here,” Alger admitted.
“At last,”‘ the Spokesman said, and led them into his office.
Wearily lowering himself onto a chair the Spokesman asked Alger if he wished to see the record of his and Munred’s meeting.
“We can study that later Sir,” Alger and Drin remained standing, “Did you track the Director’s ship when he left?”
“Manually. All channels open. And we had him on our screens, heard him give course and speed for XE2. He seemed in a hurry. It’s on record. Check for yourself.”
“And then?”
“Then he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“I’ve told you the whole planet is blanked out. The odd thing is we can bounce signals off our radio satellites, but we can’t detect them from here. That’s why I believe it’s not a natural phenomena.”
“I see Sir. Then what do you think is causing it?”
“I don’t know.” A hopeless, defeated shrug, “What ideas we’ve had are all on record.”
Policemen are not scientists. If they are expert in any field it is in applied psychology. But here, not knowing the culprits, they could question only the rationale of the victims. Nor could they make one satisfactory guess at the identity of the culprits while their motives remained so obscure. However the police are also, knowingly, symbols of all-knowing authority and unrelenting order. They are therefore aware of the danger of not being taken seriously, of subsequently appearing foolish. They are also aware that, rather than hold to an untenable opinion, then an admission of ignorance, of humanity, will endear them to the public and not, as one might expect, estrange them. Hence in police circles the popularity of the saying — when all else fails, confess your fallibility.
“What would you like us to do Sir?” Alger asked the Spokesman. “I’ve never come across anything like this before.”
“Nor I,” the Spokesman grimaced. “Sometimes I think your Director could’ve been right.”
“How Sir?”
“Mass hysteria. No,” he drew himself erect in immediate denial of that, a reprimand to himself for ever having considered such a possibility. “Our moon has gone,” he said. “Ships are disappearing. You could try and find out what’s happening to them.”
“The Director’s was the last ship to leave here?”
“No. A freighter left North Three yesterday.”
“Was it tracked?”
“I assume so. We’re all of us naturally interested in what’s going on. It’s not a goo
d feeling knowing you’re isolated.”
“We’re here Sir.”
“And that doesn’t make sense either. There’s no logic to any of it.”
Back within the ship Alger told Drin to look through the record of the Director’s and Spokesman’s meeting for their ideas on what might be happening. As they took off Drin said,
“Hey! The Director’s put us both down for commendations.”
“No fool that Director,” Alger grinned at him.
Travelling into the night towards North Three, Drin related the various theories to Alger. Some they laughed at.
“Bent mining consortium seems the best bet,” Alger decided.
“Except the planet’s been mined out.”
“Unless they’ve found something new here.”
“How could they blank out a whole planet?”
“Beats me.”
It was raining, when they arrived among the date palms in North Three.
Rain is like being inside a vast condensation chamber. Drops of water shattered and splashed off the illuminated nose of the ship, tiny rivulets ran down the screens.
The farmer had been in bed an hour, but not asleep. He sent a canopy out to the apron so that Drin and Alger could enter his farmhouse without getting drenched. The rain drummed on the canopy, ran off it to bubble and trickle in gutters and drains. Alger, his voice raised, introduced himself and Drin.
“How do you put up with this much noise?” Drin shouted at the farmer as they hurried after Alger to the farmhouse.
“You soon get used to it,” the farmer said.
“Yea?” Drin said disbelievingly.
They entered the insulated stillness of the house. Before Alger could inform the farmer of the purpose of their visit a woman, in her night-clothes, came rushing into the room.
“They found Hal?” she asked the farmer.
“Hal?” Alger looked to the man.
“Halk Fint. Our son.”
“Ah... The boy who was first to leave. I’m afraid not.” Before Alger had finished speaking the woman had turned and had gone. The three men stood in uncomfortable silence.
“What have you come for?” the farmer asked them.
“About the freighter you had here yesterday. Did you track it when it left?”
“As far as we could.”
“And it left safely?”
“Far as we could tell.”
“Where was it bound?”
“Processing plant.”
“Where?”
“City limits.”
“What was it you sent?”
“Dates.”
“And they’ll convert them to food there?”
“No. They’ll auction them, package them, and sell them for treble the price.” Although it was said in a tone of complaint there was no heat in it: a ritual grouse as ancient as the profession of farming.
“Did you hear him give the destination?” Alger asked the farmer.
“They usually do it on the ground here. Pre-program. It’ll be on record. Don’t you think she made it?”
“Won’t know until we check the processing plant.”
The farmer remained impassive.
“Doesn’t that concern you?” Alger asked him.
“Concern? Of course. After a while, though, you get it beaten out of you. The skipper was a friendly woman. Been here before. I was pleased to see her. Get my crops off.”
Drin had been studying the farmer. The man seemed empty to him, a lack of anger, of petulance even. He looked as if he had no energy, no will, that he would have preferred to sit down only he couldn’t be bothered, so he had remained standing where he had stopped on entering the room.
“Doesn’t it bother you that those crops may have been destroyed?” Alger tried to prick the farmer’s apathy.
“Once they’re aboard the ship that’s the company’s concern. Their insurance will cover it.”
The farmer realised the impression he was making. He endeavoured to explain,
“I’m not being callous Sergeant. It’s just that... How much grief can anyone take? My youngest son has disappeared, we don’t know where. My two eldest children are somewhere Out There. They don’t write. Not that I can blame them after the way I treated them. But I can’t feel anymore. I’m sorry.” He apologised, not for his emotions, but for talking so much, for telling so much: planetary dwellers take a pride in being undemonstrative.
“I understand Sir,” Alger softly said, but knew that he didn’t.
“You tell yourself that it won’t happen to you,” the farmer looked down at the floor. “Not your children. Now all three have gone.”
Once back in the ship Drin and Alger studied the record of the freighter’s departure. Both men had been subdued by the Senate Member for North Three’s undoubted despair.
“What we’ll do is this,” Alger told Drin. “We’ll repeat the freighter’s departure to the letter. Instruct the ground here to track us. And see what happens.”
Drin laid in the course to the processing plant.
“But we’ll be on the alert for any contingency,” Alger said as they lifted off. “I’ll be ready to go to manual immediately. You be ready with the guns.”
“We not going to give them another fireworks display?”
“No. No testing this time. Maybe that’s what scared ‘em off last time.”
“Them?” Drin said.
Alger didn’t answer.
The ship’s ascent was smooth and gradual, and unimpeded. They were 800 kilometers out and accelerating on their predetermined course when Alger called for manual control. They had met nothing, seen nothing.
Turning the ship, Alger headed back to North Three.
At the farm they checked the ground tracking with their ship’s log. The ground scanners had lost contact with them at the same place, in the ionosphere, that they had lost contact with the ground; and the ship had been far below light speed.
“Suppose,” Drin said, “that girl, Belid Keal, was telling the truth. Such an explosion would normally have been visible on the planet. Wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
“What I’m trying to say is that if they can block the other electromagnetic frequencies, like radio and radar, why not light?”
“Fine theory college boy. Now tell me how. And who.”
They tried again. This time they had their ship follow the flight path of Halk Fint’s ship. A thousand kilometres out Alger again took manual control, again returned to the planet.
“Maybe they did all abscond,” Drin said.
“I don’t see what else it can be. Not on this evidence.”
“Either way I can’t help feeling sorry for him,” Drin referred to the farmer. “If his son has done a bunk, or if something’s happened to him, either way he’s gone.”
Back at the farm it was dawn, the same dawn that had been with them at the Spokesman’s farm, but here was a wet gleaming blue. The ground records again showed that contact had been lost at the same point and place that it had with Halk Fint.
“Machine error?” Drin said.
“Yea, but what happened to their moon?” Alger was now determined in his state of ignorance, a firm holder of no opinions. While Drin, denied an easy solution, gave vent to his frustration and slapped a bulkhead.
“Dammit,” he said. “Nothing fits.”
They sighed awhile.
“So what now?” Drin finally asked Alger.
“Leave a report of our investigations here,” Alger said, “and go home. What else do we do?”
Chapter Twelve
Sub-director Nero Porsnin has previously been described as a small, bald and anxious man. Nero Porsnin’s most dominant characteristic was, however, that he was puzzled. And he was profoundly puzzled because he couldn’t understand why his career hadn’t followed a path similar to that of Munred Danporr’s.
Five years Munred’s senior, Nero had latterly arrived at XE2, had not yet been given a Departmental Directorsh
ip. The powers-that-be seemed to have decided that Sub-director was the highest Service rank that Nero would attain. Not that Nero was overly aggrieved by that realisation, merely puzzled.
Scholastically Nero had more qualifications than Munred, had five years more experience, yet on his last three applications for vacant Directorships he had not been accorded an interview. Only once, four years before, had he been interviewed for a Departmental Directorship; and, having failed that interview, he had not been granted another. Many of his off-duty hours, and on duty, had subsequently been spent wondering what gaffe he could have made at that interview that had sentenced him to Sub-Directorships for life.
The fact was that Nero had made no gaffe at that interview; but, that one interviewing board having preferred someone with six years less experience than him, an indelible question mark had been placed beside Nero Porsnin’s name. His subsequent failure to attain even an interview had given him an ineradicable stigma. To any interviewing board now, glancing over his record, there was obviously something doubtful about him, and they didn’t intend wasting their time finding out what.
Nero Porsnin was simply unfortunate. His rival for that first vacancy had been a charming personable young man of somewhat the same stamp as Munred Danporr. While Nero Porsnin, although he tried hard to make himself liked, possibly because he tried so hard to make himself liked, he could not, even by those few who called themselves his friends, be described as charming, nor personable.
Too eager to please, too anxious to do the right thing, laughing too quickly and too loudly at his colleagues’ quips, Nero offered friendship promiscuously. Even his subordinates thought him obsequious to them. And as a Service delegator there were few his equal. Possibly the interviewing board had divined, with a rare perspicacity, that Nero would not lightly carry responsibility; because, even where improvisation was only notionally expected of a Director, Nero always went strictly by the book.