Space 1999 - Earthfall

by E. C. Tubb

Roache was dubious, “Alan, are you sure? Damn it, man, a few days ago you were dying.”

  And now he was alive and filled with the euphoria of it. The blood tingled in his veins and his thoughts raced with sparkling clarity. The feel of the suit against his body, the familiar enclosure of the helmet, the caress of the gloves—all held an enhanced pleasure. But best of all was the waiting Eagle.

  A modern steed waiting to carry him to adventure.

  He said so and the engineer scowled.

  “You’re drunk or drugged.”

  “No, just cheerful.” Carter stretched. “I’m all right, Oliver.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “That’s what I mean. You don’t believe me? Then check with Medical. Ask Bob how I am. He’s given me a clean bill of health and it’s time I got back to work. Have you fitted the new gizmo?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does it work?” A stupid question; it had yet to be tested. “Correction, will it work?”

  “It should.” Roache rubbed a hand over his jaw, scowling. “I don’t know how, mind you, but Victor swears it will. You’ve spoken to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s given you the test-routine?” Roache sighed as Carter nodded. “Then there isn’t much more for me to say. Good luck and get going!”

  Snug in his chair, the hull sealed, the Eagle moving to the launch pad, Carter made his final instrument-checks. Dutifully he reported in to Main Mission, smiling as Morrow frowned.

  “Cheer up, Paul, I’ll let you win the next game.”

  “I’m more interested in your flight-condition than playing chess.”

  “I’ve told you—it’s all in the green. Give me the word and I’ll be on my way. Come on, Paul, quit wasting time!”

  His smile widened as the lights flashed green and the Eagle lifted up and away. It was like a cripple being able to run again, a bird regaining the ability to fly. The Moon fell away beneath him, the upper installations of Alpha shrinking to become little more than a toy. Ahead, above and around blazed the stars, seemingly so close that he could touch them; suns circled by exotic worlds holding fantastic forms of life, planets of romance and adventure.

  And the black hole was a monster threatening to eat them all.

  “Alan!” Morrow spoke from the screen, his face anxious. “Check your vectors!”

  “Checked.”

  “Damn it, man, are you crazy? You’re hitting high boost! Alan, are you ill?”

  “No.” Carter quelled a momentary irritation. He was a trained pilot, the Head of Reconnaissance, so why didn’t they trust him? “Just testing the new installation. Calm down, Paul, and leave things to me. I’m the one with his neck on the block.”

  A thing he should remember—space had no sympathy with the careless and he had been pushing the Eagle hard. Cutting the drive he checked the surrounding area. It was as empty as he’d expected and as good a place as any for him to try out the new installation.

  “Getting ready to test,” he reported. “Victor?”

  “With me in Main Mission.” Paul glanced to one side. “Full monitoring sensors established. Position checked. Course and velocity determined. Set your radio on continual transmission and trigger internal recorders on automatic. And don’t forget the trip-switch.”

  “I won’t. Five seconds.”

  “Correct. Give me synchronating count Mark—now!”

  “Five,” said Carter. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . zero!”

  The universe vanished.

  The stars, the enigmatic blotch of the black hole, the Moon itself all disappeared to be replaced by the scintillating shimmer of a bubble of light.

  “It works!” yelled Carter. “Paul, Victor, it works!”

  There was no answer then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the shimmering bubble vanished to be replaced by the familiar glow of the stars.

  “Alan?”

  “It worked, Paul. I called out but you didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t hear.”

  Naturally, the force screen had provided a total enclosure and barrier against all forms of matter and energy. But, if nothing could get in, then nothing could get out. The reason for the trip-switch incorporated into the design; a precaution against pilot-illness or some other accident.

  “Try again,” said Victor over the radio. “A ten-second period this time. Keep broadcasting.”

  Ten seconds which passed as before but now when Carter looked at the Moon he found it further away than it had been before he’d activated the screen. A fact Bergman had anticipated.

  “You are unaffected by gravity, Alan, and also free of galactic drag. In a sense you stayed in one place while we moved on.”

  “What if I’d been under drive?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t want you to try and find out. There must be some form of direct locomotion built into the screen-generator but, as yet, we don’t know what it is. The recordings might guide us. Now please return to Alpha.” Bergman’s voice sharpened as Carter made no comment. “Alan? Can you hear me? Please answer!”

  Carter swallowed then said, tightly, “Haven’t you noticed it yet?”

  “Noticed what? Alan—”

  “The black hole!” shouted the pilot. “For God’s sake are you blind? It’s moved! The black hole has moved!

  To swell, to jerk sideways, to hang before the Moon like a giant, hungry mouth!

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-Nine

  Once, when a young man, Koenig had gone hang-gliding and had taken off from a high cliff fronting the ocean. A good jump into a strong wind and for a while he had known the three-dimensional freedom of a bird. Then a strut had broken to leave him helplessly falling towards the coast and the jagged rocks which thrust like broken teeth from the waves.

  Luck had saved him; a sudden gust which had blown him out to sea to fall into the only piece of rock-free deep water close by. But never had he forgotten the numb helplessness of the fall. The actual reality of the dread all hang-gliders carried with them—what if something should break?

  A fear they mastered and which rarely materialized but, for him, it had and with it had come a dull resignation. The worst had happened. There was nothing he could do but wait. Nothing at all.

  And now it had happened again.

  “A week,” said Kano. “Based on our present course and velocity we will reach the black hole in a week.”

  Seven days!

  Koenig looked at his hands then deliberately straightened the fingers. This was no time to betray his own fears.

  “Victor?”

  Seated at the table Bergman sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip. The lights shining on the round dome of his skull showed a clearly visible fuzz as if new hair was growing to replace the old. His skin-tone, also, held a healthy bloom and his hands had lost their tendency to quiver as they had only a month earlier.

  Things Koenig subconsciously noted as he waited for the professor to speak.

  “As yet we cannot hope to change either our course or velocity,” he said, finally. “Given a few years and with our knowledge of the mechanism found within the cavern-ship it might, barely, be possible. But not now.”

  “So we can’t dodge it,” said Morrow from his place at the Council table. “What can we do?”

  “Pray,” snapped Carter. “What else?”

  “Evacuate!” Monica Harvey glared from one to the other. “We have Eagles and can use them to save some of the youngsters. They could find a new world and settle and start again.”

  Helena said, dryly, “We aren’t all fools, Monica, and we have thought of the obvious. Unfortunately it is a matter of logistics. We haven’t enough Eagles to move more than a small part of the population and they would have to carry too great a load of supplies.”

  “Why? A new world—”

  “There isn’t one,” interrupted Carter. “Not within feasible range.”

  “But we could do something!”

  “And w
e will,” said Koenig. “But first we must explore all possibilities. Victor?”

  “Everything we are ever likely to know about a black hole can be deduced from three parametres,” said Bergman. “We can specify the mass, the angular momentum and the electric charge. All that remains is the location. Mass, of course, can take the form of energy or matter. The angular momentum comes from the rotation of the original stellar matter before it collapsed. Charge is exactly what it means. If the hole is charged then magnets could be used to move it in the direction we wished.”

  “Move it?” Carter stared. “Move that!”

  “It moves,” said Kano. “We’ve seen it.”

  “Yes, but by some other force, surely. Not by an Eagle riding close and dangling a magnet.”

  Bergman said, sharply, “Why not, Alan?”

  “Because it’s crazy, that’s why. The size for one thing—it’s colossal!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Know? Because I’ve seen the damned thing, that’s how! We’ve all seen it!”

  “No,” said Bergman. “We haven’t. What we’ve seen is the event horizon and no one knows just how far that extends beyond the actual singularity. But let us ignore that for a moment and it really isn’t relevant to the problem at hand. Large or small the black hole threatens our existence. Some of us, a very few, could escape in the Eagles and take a chance on finding a new habitation. The rest of us can either accept approaching destruction or make some attempt to combat it. The hole could even move again as it has before.”

  “It could,” admitted Kano, “but the odds are against it. Movements have been erratic and irregular but always at longer periods than we have to spare.”

  “What made it move this time?” asked Monica. “Do we know?”

  “As yet no correlation between its movement and any observed phenomena has been made.”

  “What about the experimental Eagle? Couldn’t that have had something to do with it?”

  Bergman frowned, sucking at his lip.

  “The possibility is remote but cannot be totally ignored. But I fail to see how there could be any correlation. The shield we established was from a generator copied from the one found within the cavern-ship. It creates an enclosed space which is, in a sense, utterly divorced from the existing continuum. By definition this means it can have no effect on anything around it. And, while the shield was established twice, the hole moved only once.”

  “So there’s nothing we can do,” she said, bleakly. “Twenty years of effort thrown away. God, what a waste!”

  “I didn’t say there was nothing we could do,” corrected Bergman. “Probes have been sent to determine the charge, if any, of the hole. If none is found then we could feed it with Lunar material and—”

  “Move it with a magnet.” Carter echoed his disgust “Victor, that’s crazy. We need something to trigger a jump. Think of it as a cat waiting to pounce. We could tempt it with milk or step on its tail. Either way it would move—but if we trod on it it would move a damned sight faster than if we didn’t.”

  “Agreed. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can achieve the desired result?”

  “Arrange a flicker-field based on a heterodyning harmonic based on the excited frequency of xetal.” Carter blinked then said, slowly, “Why did I say that?”

  Monica flared at him. “Do you know what it means?”

  “No, but—”

  “I do,” said Bergman. “Alan, you may have given me the clue. Now, to work everyone, we only have seven days!”

  Roache straightened, easing his back, his face dour.

  “That should do it. Use X234 alloy and make certain it’s homogenous. Bubbles will ruin the castings. Continue the run until the mould reaches point three zeros five distortion.”

  “Can’t we machine?”

  “No.” Inwardly the engineer sighed. Twain was a good worker but he lacked experience. “Machining will create internal stresses,” he explained. “The whole secret of these components is to cast them of the right alloy at the right temperature and cool them in exactly the right magnetic field. Accuracy is everything. Don’t try to hurry but don’t drag your feet. This batch should run a dozen.”

  Of which, maybe, three would be of use.

  Bergman waited for him at the far bench. He was sitting faced with a litter of papers, graphs, blueprints, scrawled plans, sketches of a dozen kinds. Silvery components rested to one side with young men busy checking them with laser equipment; directed beams of light disclosing any unwanted irregularity.

  “Something new, Victor?”

  “The flicker-switch. I’ve been thinking about it and it would be best to utilize the frequency of vibrated quartz to ensure both speed and accuracy. I’ve drawn a rough plan, you see?”

  Roache stared at the drawing.

  “Why make it so complex? If you incorporate the switch with the drive then you’ll cut out two items and achieve less potential distortion.”

  “True, but if we set the unit too close to the main emitter then we run the danger of accelerated decay.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It could if—” Bergman shrugged. “No, of course not, we don’t have to concern ourselves with life-duration. As long as they last a few minutes that should be enough.”

  “Not like the base-shield,” said Roache, grimly. “Thank God we got that finished in time.”

  “Finished and tested.” Bergman moved one of the drawings. “It should give us a high degree of protection from anything the singularity might emit. But naturally, if it engulfs us we have no chance at all.”

  “We’ll be dead,” said Roache. “All of us. Those crazy kids!”

  “They had the right to make their own decision, Oliver.”

  “Voting to stay no matter what. Taking a stand on it. Practically defying us to do anything about it—well, I guess you can’t blame them. Alpha’s the only home they’ve ever known. I guess I would have done the same.”

  “You would have operated on the basis of heroics,” said Bergman. “They are operating on the level of calculated logic. To escape, or make the attempt to escape, would require the use of all available Eagles. Even so they would have no surety of finding a habitable world. None exist close by and they would have been engaged in a race against time—one limited by their dwindling supplies. And, taking the Eagles would have left us defenceless. This way we sink or swim together.”

  Living or dying as a unit and who was he to say which was the better way? Roache shook his head, glad to be with his children, inwardly pleased at their decision. It gave a man strength to know he was not alone. That others, even though young, were willing to stand beside him. To risk their lives on his skill.

  “Now about those rocks,” he said, getting back to business. “I’ve got men out to bring them in and trim them to shape. Bulk around fifty tonnes. As soon as the first units are ready I’ll install and arrange for testing.” Then, remembering, he swore. “No! That’s out! Either the damned things work or they don’t. But can’t we check at least one?”

  “And waste it?”

  “I know, Victor, but, dammit, I like to be sure!”

  Koenig leaned forward, staring at the face reflected in the mirror, the lines, the creases, the hall-marks of age. His hair—had it grown a little thicker? Had the color deepened and the grey retreated? The skin seemed firmer than it had and the lines, still present, surely were not so heavily scored?

  “John?” He saw Helena approaching from his rear, her face holding a curious expression. “Getting vain in your old age?”

  “No more than you.”

  “That’s different. A woman needs to look her best.”

  “For the benefit of men?”

  “For the benefit of herself. Cosmetics, a smooth skin, all the beauty she can manage—all are her armor. Her mask against the world, John.” And then, changing tone she said, “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”

  “You’ve spotted it?”
<
br />   “Of course. But what gave you the clue?”

  “Victor at the Council meeting. The light caught his scalp and I noticed he seemed to be growing a new fuzz of hair. And Roache, he seemed more lithe than normal. And Alan’s been more buoyant. What is it, Helena? Are we all growing younger?”

  “No, not necessarily.”

  “Then what? It’s a side effect of xetal, of course, it has to be that. Alan was the first to be treated—are we all going to act as if in a drunken euphoria?”

  “No.”

  “Or show sudden flashes of inspired genius?”

  She said, patiently, “John, listen to me. The euphoria was a natural reaction. Alan was close to death and he knew it. Subconsciously, even, he could have accepted it. And then, all at once, he is fit and well again. Naturally his emotional pendulum swung a little too far in the other direction. He would not have been human if it hadn’t.”

  “And the suggestion he made to Victor?”

  “Again the workings of the subconscious. He’d been lying in induced sleep for a long period and must have had dreams. He was closely involved with the alien mechanism. He’s studied physics and atomic engineering. Alan is a clever man who could have made a success in many fields had he not chosen to be a pilot. All that happened was that he’d been mulling over various items and scraps of information and, unconsciously, arrived at an intuitive solution.”

  “And the rest?” Koenig looked towards the mirror and touched his cheek. “We’re not growing younger?”

  “Yes, and no.”

  “A remarkably clear answer.”

  “But the best I can give.” His snap had betrayed the strain he was under, the fatigue. Silently she shook two green tablets from a vial and handed them to him. He, all of them, could spare only the minimum time for sleep-drugs were keeping them going. As he gulped them down she continued, “The young will not get younger and the old will only appear to shed their age. We are running a series of tests to determine the exact parameters if they can be found but what seems to be happening is that we are being restored to a metabolic optimum. Xetal is responsible, of that there can be no doubt, but exactly how is a mystery. Bob thinks that it works on the DNA blueprint so as to adapt and restore cells to what they should be rather than what they have become. A guess, but it seems logical. Certainly it explains the eradication of minor physical imperfections.”