by John Rankine
Helena Russell saw it through Calder’s eyes as the Probeship halved and quartered the distance. It was a graveyard of space junk, a small Sargasso Sea of lifeless spacers, drifting in a slow spin as though caught in a timeless eddy of interstellar forces. There was no uniformity. They were not from one place or one time. Random chance had brought the collection to the fringes of Ultra’s gravisphere.
The watchers on the Probeship stared out from direct vision ports in silent amazement. They had netted a technological museum. The implications for research into other spacefaring civilisations were enormous.
Olga Vishenskya breathed, ‘Fantastic!’
Sharing the same view port, Juliet Mackie asked, ‘Where have they come from? For that matter, what are they doing here?’
Darwin King rechecked the sensors.
‘Negative. No sign of life from any one of them.’
Olga said, ‘Can they really be empty?’
There was an ominous, brooding quality about the silent ships. Trying to lighten it, Juliet said, ‘There’s a conference on. A space nation conference. This is the vehicle park.’
Calder took her literally. ‘Where’s the conference then? Not on Ultra. We have no life signs from Ultra.’
He was taking the Probeship in. Thrust cut back, they were sliding between the stationary spacers, the only purposeful item in the field. He said, ‘There’s got to be someone around. Check with computer, Darwin. And Juliet, put a booster on every band in the life spectrum. Give me a little information.’
Olga remained with him in the command module. She said slowly, ‘It’s science fiction vindicated on a big scale. Victor Bergman’ll have a field day.’
The Probeship was crossing the centre, dwarfed by a huge spacer almost all power pack with a proton drive dish at its stern. The crew module in the cone was tiny by comparison. Marvin King came through the hatch and Calder said, ‘There are ships here that could make the dream of interstellar travel a reality. We could be liberated from our own solar system—from out own galaxy even.’
‘All we need is an ancient mariner to show us how it works.’
‘Still no signs of life?’ There was an edge of disappointment in Calder’s voice.
‘Absolutely none. It’s like a necropolis.’
‘Well the tombs of the pharaohs taught us all we know about Ancient Egypt—so let’s see if we can break into this one.’
The Probeship was approaching a long wasp-waisted spacer with a green and yellow geometric emblem enamelled on the cone. Calder manoeuvred for a position above a series of plexiglass domes and said, ‘I’ll go in close. Darwin, you and Juliet can take a walk and see what you can find. Back them up, Olga.’
There was a flurry of activity as the three shrugged into space gear and sealed up. Calder sat alone in the command module, drumming his fingers on the console and staring out along the hump back of the spacer below him. It was a discovery that ranked with the mission to Ultra itself. He could imagine the impact in scientific circles when they released the data that could be gathered from any one of these ships.
King broke into his reverie, ‘All set, Captain. Ready to depressurise.’
Calder flipped switches in a row. The air lock between his command module and the main cabin closed with a hiss. Using the intercom, he said, ‘Depressurising as of now. Maintaining normal gravity.’
There was a pause. Olga sat at her desk. Darwin King waited at the hatch with Juliet behind him. Calder’s voice came again, ‘Opening, airlock.’
As the hatch began to slide open, Olga lifted a bulky thumb as a good luck gesture.
It was premature. Instead of the black night of space, the open port was filled from edge to edge with a pulsating glob of flickering light. Writhing across it and already moving to probe into the cabin was a nest of living tentacles. Suction built to a violent storm and loose trash whipped away into the vibrant maw.
Olga’s scream was lost in the outlandish electronic screech of a gale of fire sucking down an endless tunnel.
Darwin King was gripped and held. Arms outstretched, he tried to hang on to the hatch coaming. But he was wrenched away. Juliet’s despairing cry, ‘Close the hatch,’ was seconds late to save him and Calder, hitting the cancelling stud was, anyway, getting no joy. He called, ‘I can’t close it. It’s jammed.’
‘For God’s sake close it.’ Juliet’s agonised plea tailed off in a scream as a shadowy tentacle searched her out.
The Probeship’s power pack shrieked into overload and a rash of red warning lights glared from the console as the straining gear tried to close the hatch. But the phenomenal strength of the obscene arms kept it prised open. Calder was racing to climb into his space suit. Screams from Olga and Juliet lacerated his mind. There was a pause, a momentary lull in the electronic clamour and a panting silence. Darwin King’s body, feather light, jetted from the open hatchway to roll like a thistledown ball to Juliet Mackie’s feet.
Her renewed screams melded in a new surge of racket and a tentacle clamped itself round her waist.
Olga Vishenskya was crouched in the entrance of the hatch to the command module. Reaching overhead she grabbed two lasers from the rack and pitched one to Juliet. They fired through the open door into the burning throat. Noise notched up in an insane crescendo. Then Juliet Mackie was gone, hauled struggling and still firing her laser into the flaming orifice.
Olga’s screams were hysterical and continuous. Calder heard it from his console and again blasting into his head as he slammed on his helmet and snapped down the seals. ‘Help me, Jim! Help! Help!’
‘I’m on my way. Hold on!’
There was another lull and Juliet Mackie’s drained and lifeless husk was flung into the ward room. Olga was facing the closed door, beating on it with clenched gauntlets. ‘Jim!’
A probing, dark rope hit her back. The raging noise increased again. A second tentacle reinforced the first and slid round her throat. When Calder had the hatch open, she was already a metre off as the arms retracted to pull her away.
Calder was in the hatch, striving to see past her, firing again and again at an amorphous black bulk that filled the main cabin. Then a pin point of light separated out and widened and opened like a flower in time lapse to show the brilliant burning maw of the monster.
One arm flung forward to shield his eyes from the glare, Calder fired until the charges ran out. He saw Olga dragged and thrust into the eager throat. Her dying scream was drowned out in the maniacal clatter.
It was no good. There was nothing he or anybody else could do. He backed away, stumbling through the hatch into his command module and shoved the stud to seal it off. The hatch was ten centimetres from a closure when a viridian probe, pitted with suckers and exuding a viscous slime thrust itself into the gap.
Ripping open the crash locker, Calder dumped out every kind of cutting gear and settled for a long shafted, woodman’s axe. Suction was raising a gale wind through the crack and he had to hold himself to one side to operate at all.
Olga’s body skidded over the deck and lodged on the outside of the half open hatch. He swung and struck at the writhing arm like a raving madman.
At first there was no visible progress. He was losing. The tentacle engorged and in its swelling shoved open the panel a few more centimetres. Calder spared a split second to turn up the valve on his oxygen supply and went to work again. He had seen a small break in the tissue. Two out of three, he was hitting the spot. The blade sank in. He wrenched it free and swept down for another blow with every atom of weight and strength he could bring to bear.
When it almost sheared through and the wounded limb whipped away, the hatch slammed shut. He leaned on the axe, weak and shaken, with sweat masking his face and misting his visor.
Driving himself to move, he staggered to the pilot seat and dropped into it. He pressed the stud to re-pressurise and watched the gauge in dull apathy until the indicator moved into the green quadrant. Then he unsealed his helmet with shaking fingers an
d lifted it off.
There was a wrenching and scrabbling at the hatch. The monster had not finished yet. Hands moving desperately slowly, he pressed a sequence of emergency keys on the console. A panel slid open revealing a switch and the words MODULE EJECTION.
As he shoved over the lever, the whole hatch structure was shuddering in its housing. Explosive bursts ran round the hull of the Probeship as retaining bolts were blown out. The small auxiliary motor fired. The command module separated itself from the rest of the ship, rolling like tumble weed through the graveyard.
For a space, Calder sat still, held by his harness, hardly realising that he was still drawing his ration of life’s breath. Then he began to struggle with the controls. The module shuddered as he fired stabilisers. It was through the junkyard, off into eternity. He wiped his face, settled to work again, brought it round on a course that would orbit Ultra. He was, after all, a professional and he had a small viable ship. It was up to him to get back.
Calder had gone still again and seemed more relaxed. Helena recorded, ‘Despite his ordeal, Calder executed a brilliant manoeuvre, which used energy, gathered in a calculated orbit round Ultra, to fling him out on a course for Earth. He survived alone in his small capsule for over eight months.’
There was some truth in Koenig’s estimate that Calder was the outstanding astronaut of the age. She could feel the loneliness and despair of the survivor as the tiny speck fled on through the wastes of space. She could even see Calder, as he had appeared to himself, reflected in the glass of the ports, unshaven, hollow eyed, emaciated, eking out the meagre survival rations, working by manual computation, navigating by an amalgam of instinct and knowledge.
She set it down, ‘Calder’s module was eventually located by John Koenig and he was picked up and brought back to Alpha. His triumph was subdued, because he himself was on the point of death.’
Now she was seeing the very moment of homecoming. It was the embarkation in reverse, with the whole base turning out to see him brought off the relief Eagle. Bob Mathias checked the stretcher party and Calder’s thin face on the pillow could have been a death mask. Mathias said, ‘Straight into the Intensive Care Unit.’
As the trolley rolled on, Koenig spoke to Mathias,
‘Bob?’
‘It’s unbelievable that he’s alive at all.’
‘Has he a chance?’
‘He has the courage.’
‘That’s for sure.’
Helena wrote, ‘But as Calder began to recover his strength, the official attitude to him changed from congratulations to doubt. The story he told of his encounter with the monster was difficult to believe and the recorded data of the black box cast further doubt on his veracity. As a member of the Space Commission Medical Team, I was detailed to enquire into the mental state of the patient.’
With a sense of déja vu, Helena saw herself with another white coated figure walking down a corridor in a base hospital at the Space Centre on Planet Earth. They turned off into a private room and Calder, sitting up in bed tracked them in over the top of a journal. He looked almost back to normal.
She saw herself being introduced. Her guide said, ‘Captain Calder?’
‘That same one.’
‘This is Doctor Helena Russell—from Space Commission Medical Centre.’
Calder’s smile had almost professional charm. He could have been an actor. ‘Welcome Doctor. I expect you’ve come to talk. Please. A chair for Doctor Russell. You have come to hear the story. You’d better be comfortable. It takes some time and with such a beautiful listener I shall be tempted to make it longer.’
‘Thank you, Captain.’
‘I’d say, “Call me Jim”; but in the circumstances you may not want to do that!’
There was something odd about that; but in the gestural fuss of settling her in a chair, it went past. She spoke to her colleague, ‘Thank you.’
‘A pleasure. I’ll leave you to it.’
There was a silence. Helena, trying to minimise the professional status that had brought her there, settled herself like a regular bedside visitor and smiled at him in the interests of good rapport. But Calder was giving her a shrewd look and was still on his ironic tack, ‘It depends, I suppose, on whether you’ve come to confirm a prejudice or listen with an open mind.’
She was not fully tuned in, ‘I’m not sure that I know what you mean?’
‘Come on, Doctor! They don’t believe me. How can they? You see, the green eyed monster from outer space is as fixed a stereotype as in the picture books of childhood fantasy. Like Santa Claus. How can they possibly believe?’
‘Wait a minute. You’re way ahead of me. We seem to have started off on the wrong tack.’
‘Sorry Doctor. But you’re not the first, though I’ll concede you’re the prettiest. I’ve been through this sequence a dozen times. The fact is, if a guy with a red coat and a white beard drove into town with reindeer and a sleigh and started handing out goodies, he’d be arrested on a corruption ticket. Or certified as insane. Kid’s stuff. Unbelievable.’
Helena’s laugh was genuine. He was a good talker with a nice, mocking style. But Calder added seriously, ‘Now be an honest medico. That’s what you’re going to do with me and my monster. Right?’
‘Who brought up the monster? I didn’t mention it.’
‘But that’s what you wanted to talk about, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t have anything specially in mind. Certainly no prejudice. Open to anything. Santa Claus if he interests you.’
Calder was watching her, making judgements of his own and his suspicion took another turn, ‘Just a diplomatic mission to establish good relations?’
‘If you like.’
‘If you like, Doctor. You’re calling the shots. After all you came to see me. And a big improvement on any bunch of grapes or an Arum Lily. Maybe in a while we’d get around to my sex life? Restricted though it is, as of now.’
‘Who knows? You seem pretty keen to talk on a fairly wide range of topics.’
Calder’s eyes narrowed in earnest and he leaned towards her. ‘Cards on the table, Doctor. I want to tell you that everything I put down in my report is the truth as I know it. Tentacles, blood suckers, fiery breath, warts and the whole goddam shooting match. The whole, slimy, fantastic story is true. No cover up to protect my reputation. No wandering of a sick mind bemused by solitary confinement and starvation. I’m absolutely certain of every detail I’ve put down and if the black box data conflicts with my telling of it, then the black box has it wrong.’
He was deadly serious and his eyes never wavered. Helena said mildly, ‘Now that’s a somewhat surprising statement for a rational man.’
He thumped the covers with a balled fist as a substitute, no doubt, for thumping conviction into his visitor. There was a sudden element of real anger in his voice, ‘I am not a rational man.’
‘Yet you claim belief?’
There was a change in Calder. He had gone pale and was breathing hard. His urbane manner was long gone. Speaking quickly and thumping the bed for emphasis, he said, ‘I want all of you, Koenig, Bergman, Gorski and that fool Commissioner Dixon, every one of you to throw out the existing criteria by which you judge what is real. You’ve got to abandon reason. You have to believe that I, Jim Calder, athlete, poet and astronaut from Earth, have been out into the jungle behind Ultra and stood face to face with a dragon. I have fought it single handed and survived. That’s what you’ve got to believe.’
Calder fell back on his pillows. Sweat was running down his face. A muscular tremor had started up and he shivered uncontrollably. His eyes were haunted, almost demented as he stared at Helena.
She was on her feet, ready to call the local staff. But the doctor who had brought her in had been watching on remote vision. He was already coming through the door with a hypo gun and made soothing noises as he took Calder’s trembling arm.
‘Easy, Captain. Easy now.’
Calder was not finished. With a sudden bur
st of fury, he swept the hypo gun away. His voice was an angry shout. ‘Get that rubbish away from me!’
The hypo gun skidded over the polished floor. As the doctor went to retrieve it, Calder went quiet. Almost pathetically, he looked up at Helena, ‘It’s not too much to ask, Doctor? You’ll understand.’
‘I understand.’
Her touch seemed to soothe him and he closed his eyes. She signalled for the hypo gun and shot in a tranquillizing charge.
Then she stood looking at his sleeping face. It was difficult, but he had presented her with a straight-forward clinical picture. He believed what he said. There was no doubt about that. But there could be no positive assurance that what he believed was fact. Only external, objective evidence could prove it one way or another.
She was still looking at Calder’s sleeping face in her own medicentre and she was still sure that her report had been the only thing she could do at the time. It had triggered the detailed enquiry and now in her mind’s eye she could see what neither she nor Calder could have seen as the faint residual traces of that time replayed themselves through Calder’s sensitised receptors and passed by symbiosis to her own head.
On Moonbase Alpha Victor Bergman was examining the Probeship’s Black Box when Koenig burst in on him full of indignation, ‘Victor, there’s going to be a full scale enquiry. Commissioner Dixon has ordered us back to Earth.’
Bergman looked up from his task. He seemed unsurprised. Koenig went on, ‘The angle is that Jim bungled the decompression procedure, prematurely opened the air lock and killed the crew.’
Bergman looked at him calmly, ‘If you want logic, I can only say that it would be a logical explanation.’
Koenig’s shocked look prompted him to go on, ‘You have to concede, John, that’s easier to believe than a monster.’
‘Victor, if the black box didn’t record the monster, it could just conceivably be a life form that our instruments can’t detect; maybe it jammed the black box. I know it’s hard to take. But, just because we haven’t had experience of such a thing, it doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Where would science be on that tack?’