by E. C. Tubb
Teal in the reactor chamber. Anoux and his rebellion. Teal was dead—a victim of the invader and Volochek had carried out his threat, breaking Anoux’s neck with his bare hands. The remainder of the rebels had run to their posts, all thoughts of violence forgotten in the face of a common enemy.
An enemy which had appeared from nowhere, had attacked without apparent reason and was now darting in an intricate pattern in space.
Kano said, “No data as to point of origin. Commander. There are three stars equidistant to us and the enemy could have come from a world circling any one of them. The meteor-warning field lacks depth enough for a directional fix to be made.”
Something else which would have to be attended to if they were given the chance. Deep-screens, widely flung so as to give early warning of anything approaching the base. They should have been constructed earlier—but other things had taken priority and who was to guess that this strange universe would hold such a threat?
“Sandra?”
“A wide dispersal of energy, Commander. The objects seem to be using some kind of a field-drive. I am getting high concentrations of magnetic flux.”
“Size?”
“Relatively small. Each object is no larger than three metres from nose to tail and about eighty centimetres at its widest diameter. No recognizable signals are being broadcast on the electro-magnetic spectrum but I am getting this . . .”
. . . A thin, background hum came from the speakers as she threw switches, a soft drone against which a series of staccato blips sounded like erratic machine-gun fire. Kano anticipated the obvious question.
“No message-pattern as yet determined by the computer. If there is such a pattern it will take more data than at present available.”
And also more time. To make sense of any language or code certain associations had to be established and meanings identified. It could be done given material and time. But, watching the darting, flashing, colorful shapes Koenig sensed there would be no time.
“Paul, get me Reconnaissance. Alan, how long before you can clear and lift those Eagles?”
Carter’s face registered his defeat. “It’ll take hours yet, Commander. The doors of the egress ports are jammed and a fall cut the cables to the emergency hoists. We’ll have to operate on manual.”
Another mistake, the Eagles should have been scattered, their hangars trimmed for war-efficiency, alternate sources of power available at all times. But, always, it was easy to be wise after the event.
“Do your best, Alan.”
Something which hadn’t needed to be said but Koenig needed to say it. His skin crawled with anticipated danger the more feared because unknown. Why had the aliens attacked? Why had they withdrawn to engage in their peculiar manoeuvrings after the first barrage? Were they trying to communicate? Would they respond if a communication was sent to them?
But what language would aliens understand?
“Mathematical equations of a simple kind would be the best method,” said Bergman when Koenig put the problem to him. “The multiplation tables or, better, a simple series of additions. Once they respond in kind we could move into square roots and more complex constructions. The main thing is to let them know that we are sentient. If they have any intelligence at all they must respect that we display.”
“Must?” Koenig shrugged as Bergman hesitated. “We can only hope, Victor. How long will it take for you to prepare a tape?”
“We already have one. I’d worked out a pattern when we thought Meta might be sending us an intelligent message. If Sandra could retrieve it we could beam it at the aliens.”
She was standing before her instruments, eyes wide as they followed the movements on the screens, the darts and flashes of the slender, torpedo-like shapes. Each shone and glittered before the silver backdrop of the stars, turning, shifting, blazing to fade a little before gleaming afresh in a new color. Twinkling like a shower of colored rain from some tremendous firework, holding the eyes, trapping the concentration with hypnotic beauty.
“Sandra!” Koenig made his voice harsh. “Sandra, get the message tape the professor made.”
She ignored him, eyes bright with the reflected pattern on the screen, head tilted backwards, her lips parted a little, moist, appealing.
“Sandra,” said Morrow, gently. “Wake up, girl! Get the tape now. Hurry!”
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered. “So very beautiful. Like a host of small fish in a tropical aquarium. Perhaps they are fish or, no, they remind me of something else. Of bees. Of a swarm of bees!”
And, like bees, they stung.
Koenig saw the sudden shift of pattern, the twist and shimmer as light flared and died, the loom of something vast appearing behind the darting mass. Then they were attacking, the scream of the siren echoing in his ears as automatics triggered the proximity alarm.
Main Mission jolted as an invisible hand smashed against the Moon. A hand born from the explosions which followed the wink and gleam of ruby fire at the noses of the attacking invaders. Explosions which tore craters from the rock and sent dust rising high to dim the scanners as the base shook and jarred, the air hideous with the crash and fall of structures, the shouts of men and women.
And they had no way to hit back.
Koenig felt the nails drive into his palms as he clenched his hands in baffled anger. The Eagles were trapped and the few missile launchers the base had possessed as defence against external threat had been knocked out of position. They had rifles and lasers but men would have to don suits and go outside to use them and, if they did, they would be sitting targets.
Why had the aliens attacked? Why had they aimed their weapons to blow craters all around the base? Why, after the first attack, had they waited?
“Attack over,” reported Morrow. His voice was shaking. “But I think they’re grouping to hit us again.”
The dance, the pattern, repeated but why? Again Koenig listened to the staccato rush of blips. Were they different this time? As space itself was different?
He looked for the vast bulk he had glimpsed but could see nothing. The only scanner still serviceable did not cover the entire bowl of the heavens.
The scanner?
Had they attacked the scanners?
He stood, watching, his mind spinning with a blur of thought, associations made faster than normal thought-processes would allow, his subconscious taking over and arriving at a decision.
Once he yelled as, again, the sirens screamed their warning of attack.
“Cut power! Cut all power! Kill the base! Kill it!”
The candle had been crudely made; some medical gauze thrust into a bowl of greasy salve, the flame guttering and the thing emitting an acrid stench, but it gave light and Koenig was glad of it.
“A lucky guess,” said Bergman. In the light his face looked older, the seams and lines accentuated, his eyes shadowed by the overhang of his brows. “Or the unconscious workings of genius. But it worked, John. The aliens did not attack once all power had been cut.”
Helena said, “But cut for how long? I have patients in intensive care who need continual monitoring. We can’t maintain life by manual efforts alone.”
“And heat.” Sandra Benes shivered a little, cold only in imagination. “We are radiating heat, Commander, and need to replace it. Also the air-conditioners need power in order to circulate the air. And there are other things.”
The recycling mechanisms to take care of natural waste products, artificial sunlight for the chorella vats, energy to cleanse the air now fouling with smoke, more to provide the oxygen the flames used. Power! Without it the base would die!
But to use it would invite attack.
Koenig said, “Paul, have you any suggestions?”
“The lower levels are shielded, Commander. We could concentrate our efforts there. It could be that a small amount of power would pass notice.”
“Helena?”
“Unless more are to die we had better try something like that. Screened
cables, heterodyning fields—you know more about this than I do, Victor. Can we completely mask our use of power?”
“It depends on the sensitivity of the instruments the aliens possess. Theoretically no power can be wholly masked because the movement of electrons leaves a discernible trace. But we ourselves are generators of radiant energy our heat-emission, for example, is high. And the electrical currents of our brains can be measured with electroencephalographs.”
“Your point, Victor?”
“The alien’s instrumentation must be limited. If not they would pick up our electrical activity and attack until we were dead.”
Inert matter lying without trace of electrical activity. Koenig rose and paced the floor, one foot kicking the globe which had fallen, sending it to fly across the office until it hit a shard of fallen debris. Beyond the open doors Main Mission was a place of ghosts; the bulk of the inactive computer terminal accompanied by the loom of other machines now all little more than metal and plastic and intricate circuitry, screens and dials casting dull gleams from the reflected light of the guttering candle. Would those machines remain as mute testimomals to their inadequacy? His own monument to failure?
He said, still facing the shadowed area, “Just before the attack I saw something behind the swarm. It seemed vast but that could have been an optical illusion caused by relative dimensions. Did you see it, Paul? You, Victor? Anyone?”
“A glimpse only, Commander,” said Morrow. “I was too busy checking the attackers to pay much attention.”
“I saw it too,” said Bergman. “A blaze of color then something which appeared as if from nothingness.” He made a helpless gesture. “That’s all, John. I’m afraid it doesn’t help.”
Helena said, thoughtfully, “Could it have been reinforcements, John? A mother-ship for the alien horde?” Then, as he remained silent, added, “Not that it matters. Our first problem is to restore at least a minimal use of power. Speculations can wait until we are certain we can manage to survive.”
“To do that we have to know what we’re up against,” said Koenig. He turned to face the others, seeing the pale glow of Helena’s face, the gold of hair touched with the dancing light. It was hard to think of her as a protoplasmic machine, a source of electrical power to be eliminated by the aliens. “What do you make of them, Victor?”
Bergman sat, breathing with slow, even deliberation, his right hand resting on his left shoulder, the fingers hard against the flesh. Beads of sweat shone on his face and his lips were dull, blueish in the weak illumination.
“Victor?” Helena was concerned.
“I’m all right, my dear.” He managed to smile. “John, you give me too much credit. I only had a short while to study our friends but, even so, it is possible to arrive at certain conclusions. Their mobility must be due to a field-drive of some kind, a manipulation of magnetic and gravitational energies which manifests itself in the continual interplay of color visible on their surfaces. The weapons they used must also be a form of energy similar to our own lasers. My guess is they discharge an eruptive node of force which detonates on impact and has a disruptive effect in ratio to the density of the matter comprising the target. The blips we heard must be a form of communication which could be of a relatively simple nature. Something like the sonar pulses emitted by a bat in order to aid navigation. Others could hear them and avoid a collision.”
“And?”
“I’m thinking of the background drone,” said Bergman, after a moment. “It sets a level beneath which they could hardly distinguish other radiant emissions—their own ‘noise’ would drown it out. In which case—have you a flashlight handy, John?”
“In the desk. The upper, right-hand drawer.” Koenig listened to the sound of sliding wood, the small rustles, the metallic rap as Bergman rested the flashlight on the desk. “A test, Victor?”
“We have to find out, John. You agree?”
“Yes.”
Bergman switched on the light.
It cut through the air to throw a circle against the ceiling, sharp-edged, a sword of light, the brilliant cone delineated by the smoke from the candle. It shook a little then steadied as Bergman rested the flashlight base-down on the desk. In the umbra their faces were tense, strained, the eyes wide.
“Nothing.” Kano blew out his breath in a gust of relief. “I don’t need a computer to tell me that if those aliens had detected this we’d all be dead by now.”
His relief was premature.
“Wait,” said Bergman. “You remember the space between the attacks? How they weaved and formed patterns and waited for no apparent reason?”
And then had dived in to blast the scanners. The scanners or the wires connecting them to the base? And what had Sandra called them? A swarm of bees?
Bees?
Koenig stood, thinking, eyes half closed remembering a warm, sultry day at the end of spring when the heavy drone of bees had filled the air with its sleepy somnolence. He had visited a farm with a relative and had wandered off on his own, a boy eager to learn all he could about this strange, new world. A lad of six, or was it seven, who had never left the city before. The beasts had amazed him, the scents and smells, the steaming piles of manure, the clucking hens, the sleepy-eyed, watchful dogs, the tiny bodies of field-mice, the prickly hide of a hedgehog. But, most of all, he had been fascinated by the bees.
“Commander,” Morrow broke the silence. “If they were going to attack they would have done it by now.”
“Period?”
“Two minutes over the previous delay.”
“Good. Helena, recommence use of your life-support apparatus. Minimal current and evacuate the area. Use only essential volunteers and only one medical technician. Neither yourself or Mathias to be in attendance.”
“They are our patients, John.”
“And you’re the only doctors we have! Do it my way or it doesn’t get done at all!” Then, as she moved away, he said to Bergman. “Build me a power-emitter, Victor. Something simple which can be operated by remote control. I want it graded from zero to as high as you can get.”
“Electronic emission, only?”
“Yes.”
“No trouble, John. When do you want it?”
“Now.” Koenig dropped his hand to his commlock then changed his mind. “David, go to Security and tell Volochek I want four volunteers for an outside mission. All to be armed with the heaviest weapons he has. No lasers. Victor, make sure there’s a long length of wire on that thing you’re going to make. Paul, have everyone get busy on clearing up the mess. Keep them in small, widely separated units and maintain all seals. Above all don’t let them use any power.”
Morrow said, “You’re going outside with those volunteers. I’d like to be one of them.”
“You’ll stay here,” Koenig snapped off the flashlight and tossed it back into the drawer. “And do the best you can if I don’t come back.”
Those who designed the base had used their imaginations—the air-locks were provided with emergency manual operation. Koenig passed the men through, a long interval between each, then followed last of all. A suit used relatively little power but far more than a flashlight and, in close proximity, the accumulation could rise above the danger level. Just what that was he hoped to discover with the device Bergman had made.
Outside he halted, looking up at the eternal glory of the stars, catching again the glint of moving shapes, the hint of something vast. A blur, misted in some way, fogged as though smoke had stung his eyes and distorted his vision. An impression as if a mirror had been set up in space to reflect the stars, the flash of glowing colors in a twinkling, scintillating brilliance.
Blinking he lowered his eyes searching the terrain for the others. One moved slowly up the side of a dune far to his left. Another, closer, was to his right. The other two, further ahead, would be taking up their positions. He followed them, seeing the trail of their footprints clear in the newly settled dust, conscious of the weight of the machine under his ar
m, the rocket-launcher tugging at his shoulder.
It fired a five centimetre missile capable of penetrating the plating of an Eagle and the magazine held four shots. A weapon which, like the lasers and the armed Eagles, had been provided more for the sake of tradition than anything else. A means to frighten away amateur thieves and to defend the base against overt hostility. A symbol of militarism which would have been useless against the sophisticated armament of a national power.
“Commander?” The voice came like thunder from his radio, “I’m at—”
“Shut your stupid mouth!” Koenig blazed his anger. “You’ve been briefed. You know what to do. Do it and cut your babbling!”
Again he stared up at the sky. Who could tell if alien ears had caught the signals? If, already, one of those shimmering torpedoes was aligning itself ready to blast the area?
Luck was with them, none of the darting, fish-like shapes left its weaving pattern, and again he caught the glimpse of something monstrous ringed and distorted by the flares and glitters. An object in space should not have looked so insubstantial, so vague and yet so overwhelming, yet how could he tell what was normal here and what was not?
He lowered his head and saw the gleam of a suited figure, an upraised arm, the signal the man was in position. Turning he looked for the other and again saw an upraised arm. As it fell he felt, suddenly, alone and vulnerable. A stupidity, he was no more alone now than he had been when leaving the base, no more vulnerable than he would have been if hiding behind the masked windows and solid walls.
And yet, striding over the uneven ground, he sensed eyes watching with a cold detachment as a man might look at an ant crossing a table a centimetre from his hand. A flick and the insect would be destroyed; its existence terminated without purpose. A move and he could be crushed into the dust, his suit ripped, his body torn apart by alien forces. He and the ant—both at the mercy of something they did not wholly understand.