Madison said carefully: "There are several areas of thick fog over the region of the plateau and south of there. They were still developing when we got your territory in the sights ten minutes ago. Now they seem to have stopped spreading. I'm watching a white blur the same size and shape as the plateau. I can see five other fog areas along the foothills to the south, none up where you must be. Over."
"I'm taking off." I did, my hands thinking for me. The jets roared and I was climbing.
"I think I see you—sun on the wings. In a valley, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"You'll see the fog from six or seven thousand, then save your fuel. And don't get nerved up—it looks like ordinary fog, milky white. I don't see how it could be smoke, starting in so many different places at once, . What about that geyser you reported? Are there others like it on the plateau?"
I had seen none; there could have been. A few of the open areas on the plateau were blank sand instead of grass. There could have been fissures with no vapor columns to reveal them. I remembered and mentioned the rain of the day before. "Could that have touched off something?"
Madison said: "Dr. Matsumoto thought of it when we saw the fog. He's sweating it out—I'm no geologist, Davy. He says it's reasonable—if a heavy seepage of water reached something hot underground, you might get a vapor cover like that. If it's just water vapor, it ought to dissipate fairly soon in this sunlight. Is there any wind?"
"Hardly any."
Now I could see it in the south, a horror of sluggishly heaving white where I had left my people at work and cheerful in a sparkling morning. And once again I glimpsed my island, far to the left, twenty miles out to sea. No fog there. A fringe of beach was peacefully gleaming; the low hills stood tranquil under the sun.
"You've reported there's never much wind."
"Only day before yesterday, wind and some overcast, the day before the rain. Inshore and offshore breezes night and morning, but at the camp we've hardly noticed them; the trees shut them away… I'm at eight thousand and going down. I've got the landmarks beyond the plateau that show me where the camp is."
"You can't try to land till it clears—hell, what am I saying? You don't need to be told."
I didn't need to be told, but I wanted his voice, or failing that, my own. I reported on the morning's flight, the bushes on the hills, the shift to scarlet and the reason for it. I told him of the lizards' festival, the thing I had killed, the fruit with me in the plane cabin.
"There'll be food," he said, "and ways of growing more. Ways of doing without most of the things we knew on Earth."
"Including war."
"Including war, I hope, though not the causes of it, which were bound to travel with us, Davy. Look, I must say again, I must make sure you understand—there's been nothing in the reports to change my mind. And this fog doesn't, no matter what the reason for it is. This is our planet and we must take it, never mind your damn dinosaurs and cave bears and hair-worms—that's all duck soup. Don't worry about it." He sounded tired, and hoarse. "Where are you now?"
"About five miles to go. It looks like—just fog."
"What matters," he said, "is our people. The ways of living we must find. New problems. What to do about the—30-per-centers. A lot of things not in the Builders' Directives, Davy."
"We make our own, don't we?"
"Of course. And the Builders knew that. All they could give us were sketches—history. You know, Davy, I'm rather ashamed, how ignorant of history I was until three or four years ago, when Andrea began to get through my engineer's crust. Well . With this world we must somehow do better." Then when I most needed to hear him, his voice was cut short by a cough. He spoke two or three more words, blurred as if he had turned his face away from the transmitter. I caught the meaningless hum of other voices near him.
Confusion and then silence from the control room of Galileo. Seething below me, a white nothing of fog.
Down in that sea of blindness, Miranda and the others—I couldn't think. I climbed high with full power and drifted down again. If they were alive they would hear the jets. Why shouldn't they be alive? It was only fog—only fog. If it meant some upheaval from underground, that would have happened before, at other rains—but animals and plants lived on the plateau. Why shouldn't my people be alive?
Meanwhile Galileo was slipping away to the blind side of the world. I called them a few times. Then at last: "Galileo to Leroy." I knew that voice.
"Receiving."
"Del Sentiero, David. The Captain was called away. One of the patches of fog south of you is clearing. Can you find anything yet?"
"Not yet. Thought I saw treetops, but can't be sure. I'm climbing again, to try it from six thousand."
"David, consider this an order, as if Captain Madison were transmitting it. When the fog clears, if you find the worst has happened and the others are lost—though there's no reason I can see to expect it—you will then do everything possible to keep your own self alive, and you will assist the rest of the colony in coming down. Are you hearing me?"
"Yes. The rest of the—"
"We're coming down. Tomorrow or the day after."
"But—"
"Forget the four weeks. I can't give you details—no time, we'll soon be out of range. See anything yet?"
"Treetops—yes—it can't be anything else—yes!" I was babbling. The plane had gone dangerously low. I shot up away from the white confusion, but the spots of darkness I had seen could only be treetops.
Del Sentiero was saying: "You'll find them. Just fog. One place south of you looks almost normal. Did a minute ago, I mean. We're out of sight now." His voice was smooth but faint. I lost some other words in a crackle of static. They would be slipping to the other side, presently watching the depth of Demeter's night.
I rechecked the outer landmarks. The tallest trees near our clearing grew by the pond. I saw those tops rising from the swirl of fog and recognized them, dripping, steaming with a thinner vapor in the sun.
Then at the top of the tallest tree—motion, a flutter of white and blue. Why, on all the world of Demeter I don't suppose there's more than one such bit of color, and that one is a blouse Miranda wears. I was shouting like an idiot as I dipped the plane to let her know I had seen it. Then I swept around and rose—not high this time, no need.
Cottony white smothered the clearing still, but it was dwindling. Soon I made out the upper half of our dome shelter. I could find time now to fret about Galileo, and Captain Madison. He couldn't have been called away by trouble with the ship, could he? My ignorant mind pecked at the notion of an error in the orbit—then I was going down into a rolling ground-fog, knowing that the fog was no more than four or five feet thick on the landing strip. I touched down, and stepped into vapor barely waist-high, walked through it over the invisible grass.
Miranda was still waving her blouse like a flag as we ran to each other in the mist, speaking the same stumbling words and not by chance: "What am I without you?"
The damp air carried a faint reek of sulfur and something unidentifiable; not a sharp irritant, merely unpleasant. Some fog swirled to my nostrils; I breathed it with no apparent harm, as Miranda talked in a roughened, uncomfortable voice.
"The others must be all right. I breathed it, I'm alive. I think they're still in the shelter. I'd gone to the pond for drinking water when it began. I thought, just evaporation from wet ground, then it came thicker, I couldn't see my way back to the shelter. Couldn't see a foot ahead, eyes watered." I saw they were still slightly inflamed; her cute nose was reddened; but she was alive. "I called, I guess they didn't hear—it choked me some, couldn't make much noise. People can't live here, Davy, if this happens."
"No, but I've found a place where they can. Our island—wait till you see—no fog there." I couldn't talk well either.
She was rubbing her face in my shirt. "Couldn't think of anything but that tree."
"Good thinking."
"At the top, it was all around me still, bu
t I knew you'd be coming back. I just hung on—"
I said: "How else would we ever win Demeter ?"
Laurette was in the shelter, in her "room"—we used that word for the plastic-walled compartments that gave us a bit of privacy—and she was alone. I shouted for Paul and heard no answer. Laurette was red-eyed, red-nosed, from the vapor I think, and not from tears. As Miranda hurried in, Laurette looked up from the table where she sat, indifferently, almost as if puzzled by Miranda's urgency.
"Laurette, come out of this! It's clearing outside. Davy's got back." Laurette blinked; Miranda shook her. "What's the matter? Come out into the air, it's much clearer outside."
Laurette stood up then drowsily and left the shelter with us. She gazed about the clearing, where now the fog was no more than a heaving, milky blur over the grass. She said: "We go on living a while?"
"Laurette, what's happened?"
"Why, nothing, Miranda." She was not speaking impatiently. "I understand it now, that's all. We weren't meant to come here."
"Not meant"—for once in my life I saw Miranda angry. She started once or twice to speak, then only said, with too much restraint: "Forgive me if I don't think you're that much wiser than the rest of us."
"Nothing to forgive." Laurette spoke gently, and with the note of forgiveness. "I'm not, dear, it's not my wisdom. You see, we've all been very stupid. The radiation sickness back on Earth—that was the judgment. We should have understood then."
Miranda's brown eyes went incandescent, then quiet. "Well," she said, "maybe you'd still better forgive me, for understanding my own little speck of life rather differently."
I noticed a table outside the shelter, part of Laurette's laboratory equipment, overturned, solutions spilled, glassware broken. No great damage except the loss of several hours of good work. I asked: "Did Paul do that? Where is he, Laurette?"
"No," she said remotely, "I did it. I'm sorry—I guess I got a bit emotional: silly of me. I know you don't look at these things the way I do. Paul—I don't know. He went off somewhere, into the fog." She shrugged, turning more matter-of-fact, more like the girl we had known. "I won't disgrace you again. I can see we're nothing but naughty children fighting against the will of God, but since we're still alive—well, that must be His will too—somehow. I won't say any more about it—you can't see it my way, you don't understand… I couldn't see for sure, David, but I think Paul went—that way." She pointed toward the pond.
"You two stay together while I find him. That's an order…"
I found him soon, by the noise of his footsteps, a small man blundering toward me through misty tree-shadows, halting when he saw me, frowning with folded arms but letting me approach, too unhappy to be absurd. His mouth was tight, his inflamed eyes steady on me and aloof.
"Leroy—did Captain Madison order you to go on that flight this morning?"
"Order me?" I was stupidly puzzled, "No. He suggested it… How do you feel?"
"As you can see, I am still alive." He tapped a foot on the ground, brooding, watching me. "He suggested it—I suppose after a conference with Dr. Matsumoto?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I know—I'm not supposed to be able to figure things out . I dare say, as soon as you reported that vapor coming out of the rock, Matsumoto guessed what might happen after a rain. Then he, and Carey of course, and Madison—oh well, let it go. You're just a sort of—innocent tool, Leroy. You know that, don't you?"
In a way, I blame Paul's paranoid state at that time partly on the fog. I don't know its chemical qualities—I suppose our experts will study it when the colony comes down—but I do know one true name for the thing that rode that mist: Fear. Laurette had retreated, in her fashion. Paul had retreated, into this. Miranda—just hung on. And I was by force of circumstances a pilot. With a Randy's scattered knowledge of everything in general and nothing in particular, I groped after what I ought to do here and now. I said: "Paul, the colony is coming down tomorrow or the day after. Del Sentiero just told me so."
"Del Sentiero!" Something blazed up cleanly in him—courage or hope or common sense—and a great deal of the misery and sour suspicion drained away. I take no credit for it; I hadn't remembered that del Sentiero was one of the few he admired and, more important, trusted. "Well!—that's different! Tomorrow? They're not waiting?"
"No. The ship went out of range before del Sentiero could explain it, but I got that much for sure. And I've found a place where there's no fog, an island. We're going there now, soon as we can pack up—let's get going."
"An island." He liked that too. He rubbed his face, and smiled, and delivered the greatest understatement so far made on the planet Demeter: "I suppose my judgment isn't always too good, Dave, and I've been under a—sort of strain."
"Sure," I said. "Let's move." I bumped his shoulder, and we walked peacefully back to the plane, damn near friends.
Today is the 21st of June, and the sound of ocean beyond our shelter is the music I remember from childhood.
It is not the month of June on the planet Earth. Andrea del Sentiero (whom I shall see tomorrow) suggested we might give that name to our first month here, because in the old world June was a month of beauty and beginnings, an end to the troubling dangerous time of spring.
The orbit of Demeter and the phases of the green moon give us a year of fourteen four-week months. We can name the others as we please, when June is over. Next year, if the bushes grow that quickly from the seed I took, the hills of this island will redden with the harvest of early summer. But this is the 21st of June in the Year One.
The island is quiet. I miss the morning and evening music of the birds I remember. I miss the butterflies and moths, the dragonflies. We shall gradually learn about other creatures of Demeter, and our children—if we can have them—will feel no such nostalgia.
A firm beach two miles long faces the mainland, and two promontories like the horns of a crescent create a bay there; it would be a good harbor for boats of shallow draft. I landed on the beach. The larger landing ships from Galileo can touch down on the water and ride in easily. East of the crescent, the island is an oval block of about thirty square miles, the only level land in small mountain valleys of the interior. I noticed lakes and streams, one large enough to be called a river. No red fruit grows on the slopes. I believe it will.
We flew low over every part of the island before landing. Miranda spotted a few "deer." No larger forms; no lizards. The bears could be living here—if they are they'll have to go the hard way. We have searched samples of the beach sand for hair-worms and found none. They may be here but didn't Captain Madison himself call that sort of thing duck soup?
We had the shelter up, under tree cover at the edge of the beach, when Galileo called in again. It was Andrea del Sentiero. Even that early, I could honestly give him a good report of the island, and he told me once more that the colony would come down without waiting for the four weeks. I asked for three or four days to explore and make sure, and he agreed—I may have spent too much of that time in writing up this sketchy personal account. But we know the island is good. As for shortening the pilot mission—well, those people up there voted so.
In a sense, they voted against the Builders' Directives, or at least against the logic of the pilot mission, which so far as I can see is still perfectly unanswerable—as logic. Against it, our people mount the equally unanswerable logic of love. They said in effect that since we four had come down, they could do nothing but follow.
Del Sentiero said: "David, with regard to Captain Madison…"
The silence hurt. I said: "What?"
"I'm sorry, I was hunting for words, but there are none of the kind I need. I suggest you remember the legend of Moses. It happened very quickly, David. A coronary—he'd been getting warnings; no one else knew of it except Dr. Dana. After that coughing spell—I guess you heard it—he turned to us and said: 'Davy's going down, but the fog is clearing.' Then I think his eyes troubled him, because he stood up and tried to
move nearer the view-plate. I reached him before he fell. He said: 'We'll do better—we must'."
"That was all, David—but I think he was satisfied that we would… You agree?"
"Yes."
And I do. Laurette may see us as the naughty rebellious children of God. Paul may spin visions of a perfect state that can never exist except inside the sanctuary of a lonely mind. Miranda will just hang on. And I think we shall be able to deal with each other in charity, more or less, and mind our campfires.
BIG SWORD BY PAUL ASH
It has been said that our Galaxy is so huge, and contains so many stars with their array of planets, that practically every conceivable—and many inconceivable—variations on the theme of life should exist somewhere in its vastness. Most of the planets will, of course, be empty of any living matter—and, indeed, be completely uninhabitable. Some, though, like Lambda in this story, may have their own individual and probably unique life forms.
The field of science fiction has produced, over the past few decades, a bewilderingly various number of imaginative inventions on the theme of life in the universe; but few as ingenious as the one you will encounter in this tale. It utilizes one of our own Earth's most bizarre methods of achieving the continuity of life that is race immortality, and for the same cause, as you will see. There is no reason on earth or off it why there should not be parallels of that sort between the ways of our own fauna and flora and those of planets millions of light years distant from us, in actual reality as well as in fiction.
By the way, the pseudonymous British author, Paul Ash, has also published two science fiction stories in Analog under the name of "Pauline Ashwell"—which is also a pseudonym! How is that for a "double cover?"
He was taller than the tallest by nearly an inch, because the pod that hatched him had hung on the Tree more than twenty days longer than the rest, kept from ripening by all the arts at the People's command. The flat spike sheathed in his left thigh was, like the rest of him, abnormally large: but it was because he represented their last defense that they gave him the name, if a thought-sign can be called that, of "Big Sword."
Another Part of the Galaxy Page 5