by John Rankine
‘We’re not likely to know for sure unless we go back for a second look.’
‘There’s no doubt on that one. We must go back. Those spacers could save the Space Programme billions. And not just the money. Time. Hundreds of years of progress. We know Jim wasn’t fantasising about them. The contacts are there—on record.’
‘Contacts, John. That’s all they are. There’s no indication that they’re spaceships.’
Koenig was nettled, ‘Come on, Victor. You know Jim. Do we have to disbelieve everything he says?’
There was real sympathy in Bergman’s voice as he said, ‘He’s virtually come back from the dead. It’s natural for him to have nightmares. It would be unnatural if he didn’t.’
‘You’re saying that he can’t distinguish fact from fantasy in his own head. We can’t let them dismiss it like that, Victor.’
Bergman sighed wearily, ‘There’s another factor you know, John. Our probe was a failure from the politicians’ point of view. Someone’s head has to roll.’
‘So they want a scapegoat and they’ve picked Jim?’
‘While the balance of his mind is disturbed and I have to say he’s not giving his friends much help.’
‘His mind’s far from disturbed. At least not in the way they think.’
‘Unfortunately, Commissioner Dixon will have to rule on that and he’s the last one to understand Jim Calder.’
The truth of Bergman’s judgement was obvious when they were assembled in Dixon’s office in the Space Commission ziggurat. He was the last man to see eye to eye with a romantic adventurer. Smooth and polished and adept at political double talk, he had one foot in the space enterprise and one in the corridors of power. To be fair, he had the job of squeezing funds out of the appropriations committee and many a man would have got less. But finance was clearly on his mind as he bustled importantly to his desk and waved to them to be seated. His manner was professionally genial and frank.
‘Gentleman, there’s nothing like the failure of a mission for giving the backers cold feet. Money dries up faster than a desert in drought. I hope you’ve all got sound ideas for limiting the lean time.’
Koenig looked at Calder, who was sitting with his arms folded and his mouth set in an ironic twist. Bergman was composed and serious. Neither seemed ready to speak. He decided to open the account himself, ‘There were successful aspects of the mission, Commissioner. It would help if we could concentrate public attention on the potential of planet Ultra. It was established that it has Earth-like qualities.’
Dixon listened, head slightly to one side as though all attention. ‘That doesn’t have the PR power of a thumping, dramatic failure—at tremendous cost.’
Still batting, Koenig said, ‘Then we should be positive. Launch the second probe right away. With the knowledge we have its success is assured. Put our experience to good use and get back out there.’
Dixon’s half smile never wavered, ‘Before we get carried away by the future, Koenig . . . ,’ His eyes flicked to Calder and then back, ‘. . . We must dispose of the past. I want to know what you really think happened out there.’
He widened his range of vision to include Bergman. Both hesitated. Calder was in with a rush, ‘I’m the only one who can answer that, Commissioner.’
There was no move from the other two. Reluctantly, Dixon fixed on Calder, ‘And?’
‘Nothing fresh. It’s all in my report which you’ve had.’
The PR mask slipped a little. Dixon sounded genuinely angry, ‘The whole world’s had your report. That’s my problem.’
‘It’s also the truth.’
There was silence. Dixon recognised he was cast for examining magistrate and had little taste for it, usually he delegated the hatchet work. But he had to make progress. ‘So you say. So you say, repeatedly. Another plausible interpretation of the few facts, we have, is that you have put up an elaborate smoke screen as cover-up for an error of judgement you haven’t the guts to admit. What would you say to that one?’
‘That it isn’t true.’
‘And the recorded deaths by decompression?’
‘The way the beast sucked the life out of them could possibly record that way on the log.’
‘So it’s your word against the flight box and I don’t have to tell you that no technical investigator has ever faulted the record of that piece of equipment.’
He turned away abruptly and addressed the other two. ‘I need to hear what you two have to say. Do you believe in monsters?’
The sneer in the tail did him no good, but they had to concede his right to ask.
Bergman looked unhappy, ‘I believe that whatever happened affected Jim’s mind in some way he doesn’t recognise and we can’t even guess at.’
‘Koenig?’
‘I’m inclined to believe in the existence of the spaceships. At least we have evidence for them.’
Dixon put his elbows on his desk top and rested his forehead on the tips of his lingers as though checking that the roof of his brain was not lifting off. He said slowly and clearly, ‘We have a group of unidentified and unidentifiable blips recorded from the scanner. That’s what we have. So far as I’m concerned, the vision of a spaceship grayeyard is as much a product of a sick mind as a ghoulish monster. Let’s keep with the facts.’
He lifted his head and stared hard and straight at Bergman, ‘Tell me straight, Professor. What caused the interference on that tape?’
Bergman shifted uncomfortably, ‘Impossible to say. It could be any one of . . .’
Dixon leaned forward and stubbed a finger at Calder, ‘Could it have been done by Captain Calder?’
It was a question Victor Bergman would have liked to duck, but silence would be more damaging. He said slowly, ‘Technically, Jim could have done it—but I don’t know why he should.’
Dixon found no problem there, ‘As a cover-up.’
Koenig came in hotly, Then why in god’s name should he restart normal recording four minutes and forty-five seconds later?’
Deliberately obtuse Dixon said, ‘Are you going to suggest the monster did it, Koenig?’
‘It has to be considered as a possibility. In a negative sense. Whatever interference the alien force was exerting ceased to be exerted.’
The Commissioner’s face was all mock sympathy, ‘You surprise me, John.’
Koenig rejected the implied appeal.
‘Commissioner, the decompression bit just doesn’t hold water. If that’s what happened, why didn’t he simply reclose the air lock and re-pressurise. Why spend three minutes getting into a space suit?’
Bergman backed him, ‘Also it has to be admitted that Jim’s return to Alpha was a brilliant space manoeuvre. I put his chances of survival to computer. They were less than a million to one. I don’t believe any man would deliberately put himself at that kind of risk just to save his reputation.’
Dixon sat back in his chair. It was clear to him he would get nowhere. He sounded disappointed.
‘Quite obviously, you two are careless of your own reputations, but mine is bound up with the future of the Space Programme. You idealists have no regard for the political realities. I have to save what can be saved for the sake of future appropriations. And I’ll do that. I’m afraid I shall have to be seen to discredit this whole adventure. Human error, we can reasonably accept. Imaginative crap won’t go with the sort of committees I have to work through.’
Koenig interjected, ‘But the planet? What about Ultra?’
The pained look from Dixon ought to have shut him up, but he went on urgently, ‘Commissioner, we’ve had a lot of success with the Space Programme. We understand more and more of the physical nature of our solar system. We expect danger from radiation, neutron storms, black suns and the like, but we make a terrible mistake if we think we know it all. Investigation has to go on and in this project, the pathfinding has been done and brilliantly done.’
Climbing to his feet, as a signal that he had heard all he was prepared t
o hear, Dixon put a cold edge on his voice for the crunch lines.
‘Koenig, the reality of Space adventuring is that it is terribly expensive. The chances to do something big come infrequently—and only one at a time. This one has been loused up. I very much regret it; but I shall have to relieve you all of your posts.’ Directly to Calder, he went on, ‘You for some appropriate mental analysis, as a voluntary patient . . .’
Calder’s mouth opened to voice an objection, but Dixon turned to the other two . . . ‘And you two to remind you what it’s like to have your feet on the ground.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Helena Russell looked at the bulky file on her knee and at her pencilled notes. Around her, the medicentre was quiet and familiar. Calder was in peaceful and undisturbed sleep. She stood up, stretched, walked to a direct vision port and looked out at the velvet starmap.
She had the story outlined in her head as she would write it, vivid and detailed in some strange way. But she was no nearer the truth. She felt that she understood Koenig better and wished they had not parted in anger.
Instead of returning to the bedside, she went to her desk, took a fresh sheet of paper and brought the record up to date in her neat precise hand, ‘By September 13th, 1999, the day the Moon blasted out of Earth’s orbit, Dixon had been replaced and John Koenig was back on Alpha as Commander of the base. Victor Bergman was there as Scientific Adviser and Jim Calder was in the Eagle Section working as a pilot under Alan Carter’s command.’
She left the desk and ran a check on Calder’s monitors. He was still unconscious, but life signs were stronger. It was strange. The record had come alive for her. She felt she had lived through the action from Calder’s point of view. But how far was that due to the vivid prose in which he himself had written his reports? Thoughtfully, she returned to her desk and took up her pen, ‘I was there, too, as head of the Medical Section. Memory of the Probeship disaster was dimmed in our fight for survival until this lunatic attempt of Calder’s to escape from Alpha. The old argument started again. Who could truly say what was fact and what was fiction?’
A buzz from her commlock interrupted. Surprised to have such a late visitor, she shoved the pen in its clip and took her commlock from her belt. Koenig’s face was in the palm of her hand.
‘Helena, I want to apologise. Are you alone?’
That was an easy one to answer. Except for Calder, locked in his cloud of unknowing, she might have been the only sentient object in the vacant, interstellar spaces. Not letting him have it too smooth, she settled for the simple fact, ‘Yes, I am.’
She put down the commlock and busied herself at the desk. She would be found unconcerned and professional. The hatch opened and Koenig was in, carrying a small hydroponic tank with a blue solution slopping around and a spectacular, blue hyacinth growing from a rooting basket.
Reservations melted. She was out of her swivel seat with a rush, her blonde hair surging as she ran to meet him. ‘John!’
‘What about that, then! I could never get cress to grow on blotting paper as a kid . . . but, for you, the gods of horticulture, whoever they may be, took a hand. It’s doing pretty well eh?’
She took it from him and it was suddenly awkward between them. Command trains its users to make snap decisions. He took it from her and put it carefully on the desk. Hands free, she could lace them behind his head. Her lips were soft as moss and a total encouragement to any amateur gardener.
Helena said, ‘But where did you get it?’
‘Must have been left behind by my predecessor, Commander Gorski. I found this pack in a locker. It looked as though it had growing potential, so I thought I’d give it a go . . .’
‘John, it’s a wonderful present. Thank you!’
Honesty drove him to admit, ‘I . . . er . . . did get a little advice from the boffins in hydroponics. But I can claim resolution and a sense of purpose. Anyway, sorry for chewing your head off. It’s a beautiful head. How’s the patient?’
She could have done without the switch, but he had paid his dues for any information that was going. She picked up her hyacinth and said, ‘No change, John. He’s not giving me much help.’
‘What baffles me is why he should crack now. It’s years since Ultra. Why should he break now?’
‘He’ll never get over it. That’s why I thought Alpha would be better off without him.’
It was an invitation for him to leave his entrenched position and come some way to common ground. Support for it came from an unexpected quarter. Calder himself said, ‘Perhaps she’s right, John.’
Guilt apart, Helena Russell was the more surprised of the two. Calder had struggled to raise himself to his elbows and she fairly ran to the monitors.
Koenig went to the man and put an arm round his shoulders, ‘Steady now, Jim. Take it easy.’
Satisfied that he was not registering any dangerous surge on the monitors, Helena joined Koenig and nodded in response to his unspoken question.
Koenig said, ‘Where were you trying to go, Jim? It’s an empty quarter. There’s nothing in any direction you could reach.’
Calder shuddered. His nightmare was still vivid. ‘I felt it . . . I felt there was something . . . near.’
‘What was it, Jim?’
Calder’s eyes were not seeing them. He was staring at something in the depths of his own mind. Helena prompted him, ‘The nightmare . . .’ he turned his head to look at her and she went on, ‘At 0347 last night. Medical Computer raised the alarm.’
‘Yes. It was a dream. Just a dream. It was nothing.’
Koenig lowered him to his pillow. ‘Some dream. Do you know what we found? There was that showpiece tomahawk buried in the Communications Post in your quarters.’
Calder made no reply, but his quick look at Koenig showed that he was very much aware of what was implied.
‘Was it the monster, Jim?’
Calder grabbed the top bar of his hospital bed and heaved himself into a sitting position. Except that he looked tense, he was back to normal. He said, ‘I don’t understand it. I’d put that episode out of my mind. At least, it was under control. I haven’t had a nightmare like that in years.’
‘Then why now? And what did you aim to do about it? In the Eagle? Were you trying to get away from it?’
The answer was unexpected. Calder was surface calm. He looked every centimetre a rational man. The impression was that he knew what he had to do, though the mission was infinitely dangerous. Hard voiced, he said, ‘I was going to face it.’
Helena looked at Koenig. He was finding it no easier than she was to make any sense out of it. A buzz from the Communications Post broke the impasse. Paul Morrow was on the screen, ‘Commander, we have a contact. Could you come to Main Mission please?’
Koenig said, ‘Check. Be with you, Paul.’
The screen blanked and Koenig turned to Helena, ‘Take care of him, Helena. I’ll be right back.’
Calder watched him go. There was a kind of serenity and assurance about him, which was in contrast to his behaviour over the last days. Watching him, Helena would have said that he had come together in his mind as though at last he knew for a truth he would be vindicated.
Every operator in Main Mission was watching the big screen. Victor Bergman saw Koenig come through the hatch and called ‘John, something quite extraordinary . . .’
It needed no footnote. It was all there. Sandra Benes had it tuned up in a spectacular display. They were looking at a spaceship graveyard, a clearing in the forest where elephants came to die. Prominent in the foreground was an immense battle cruiser of utterly alien technology.
Alan Carter said, ‘It’s a kind of space motor show. No models giving a winsome writhe on the hoods though.’
Koenig ignored it. Eyes fixed on the screen, he said quietly, ‘Well, Victor?’
Bergman understood. ‘All right, John. It’s the same kind of thing that Calder described from the far side of Ultra.’
Koenig turned from the screen and fa
ced him, ‘Last night, Calder had a violent nightmare. He was fighting his monster.’
‘So?’
‘After the nightmare or maybe in continuation of it, he tried to steal an Eagle. I had to stun him.’
‘John, I don’t see . . .’
‘He’s just come round. He said he was on his way to face it.’
‘The monster?’
‘Those could be the same ships he saw beyond Ultra. If they are, we could be facing the danger he faced.’
Koenig turned to Sandra Benes, ‘Increase magnification. Search around.’
Bergman was silent. The rest, reacting to Koenig’s seriousness watched the scanner zoom and search among the silent ships.
Bergman found an objection, ‘But we’re light years away from Ultra.’
‘Nothing’s static. They didn’t come from Ultra. They moved there and could move again. This Moon’s a living proof. We moved. They could move.’
‘But the coincidence?’
‘If we never knew it before, we know now that nothing’s impossible. Something triggered Calder. Something we have to take very seriously. Kano?’
‘Commander?’
‘Have Computer search the record of the Ultra Probe 1996. The flight recorder picked up contacts similar to those. I want to know if they’re the same. Sandra?’
This time there was no reply. Totally committed to a delicate tuning ploy, she was on the edge of a discovery. Excitedly she called, ‘Commander, it’s here. I’ve found it!’
In two strides, Koenig was behind her chair watching the tiny image clarify on her ranging screen. Then she was pressing buttons to make the transfer and the big screen had a blow-up. Awed by her own act, she said, The Ultra Probeship!’
There was no area of doubt. It was there, silent and lifeless, with the emblem of the Space Commission at the waist. A piece of Earth in a foreign field.