Each individual was distinct and separate. Later, they would argue about the form and shape of the vessel, but the exact shape of these golden things was never even mentioned. Nor did they ever agree on a name for them. To Carl they were an army, to April, angels. Moira called them (secretly) “the seraphim,” and to Tod they were masters. Teague never named them.
For measureless time they hung there, with the humans gaping up at them. There was no flutter of wings, no hum of machinery to indicate how they stayed aloft, and if each individual had a device to keep him afloat, it was of a kind the humans could not recognize. They were beautiful, awesome, uncountable.
And nobody was afraid.
Tod looked from side to side, from top to bottom of this incredible formation, and became aware that it did not touch the ground. Its lower edge was exactly horizontal, at his eye level. Since the hill fell away on all sides, he could see under this lower edge, here the jungle, there down across the savannah to the river. In a new amazement he saw eyes, and protruding heads.
In the tall grass at the jungle margin was a scurry and cease, scurry and cease, as newtlike animals scrambled not quite into the open and froze, watching. Up in the lower branches of the fleshy, hook-leaved trees, heavy scaly heads of leaf-eaters showed, and here and there was the armed head of a lizard with catlike tearing tusks.
Leather-winged fliers flapped clumsily to rest in the branches, hung for a moment for all the world like broken umbrellas, then achieved balance and folded their pinions. Something slid through the air, almost caught a branch, missed it and tumbled end-over-end to the ground, resolving itself into a broad-headed scaly thing with wide membranes between fore and hind legs. And Tod saw his acquaintance of the night before, with its serrated tail and needle fangs.
And though there must have been eater and eaten there, hunter and hunted, they all watched silently, turned like living compass-needles to the airborne mystery surrounding the humans. They crowded together like a nightmare parody of the Lion and the Lamb, making a constellation, a galaxy of bright and wondering eyes; their distance from each other being, in its way, cosmic.
Tod turned his face into the strange light, and saw one of the golden beings separate from the mass and drift down and forward and stop. Had this living shell been a segment of curving mirror, this one creature would have been at its focal point. For a moment there was complete stillness, a silent waiting. Then the creature made a deep … gesture. Behind it, all the others did the same.
If ten thousand people stand ten thousand meters away, and if, all at once, they kneel, it is hardly possible to see just what it is they have done; yet the aspect of their mass undergoes a definite change. So it was with the radiant shell—it changed, all of it, without moving. There was no mistaking the nature of the change, though its meaning was beyond knowing. It was an obeisance. It was an expression of profound respect, first to the humans themselves, next, and hugely, to something the humans represented. It was unquestionably an act of worship.
And what, thought Tod, could we symbolize to these shining ones? He was a scarab beetle or an Egyptian cat, a Hindu cow or a Teuton tree, told suddenly that it was sacred.
All the while there flooded down the thing which Carl had tried so ineptly to express: “We’re sorry. But it will be all right. You will be glad. You can be glad now.”
At last there was a change in the mighty formation. The center rose and the wings came in, the left one rising and curling to tighten the curve, the right one bending inward without rising. In a moment the formation was a column, a hollow cylinder. It began to rotate slowly, divided into a series of close-set horizontal rings. Alternate rings slowed and stopped and began a counter-rotation, and with a sudden shift, became two interlocked spirals. Still the over-all formation was a hollow cylinder, but now it was composed of an upward and a downward helix.
The individuals spun and swirled down and down, up and up, and kept this motion within the cylinder, and the cylinder quite discrete, as it began to rise. Up and up it lifted, brilliantly, silently, the living original of that which they had found by Alma’s body … up and up, filling the eye and the mind with its complex and controlled ascent, its perfect continuity; for here was a thing with no beginning and no end, all flux and balance where each rising was matched by a fall and each turn by its counterpart.
High, and higher, and at last it was a glowing spot against the hovering shadow of the ship, which swallowed it up. The ship left then, not moving, but fading away like the streamers of an aurora, but faster. In three heartbeats it was there, perhaps it was there, it was gone.
Tod closed his eyes, seeing that dynamic double helix. The tip of his mind was upon it; he trembled on the edge of revelation. He knew what that form symbolized. He knew it contained the simple answer to his life and their lives, to this planet and its life and the lives which were brought to it. If a cross is more than an instrument of torture, more than the memento of an event; if the crux ansata, the Yin-and-Yang, David’s star and all such crystallizations were but symbols of great systems of philosophy, then this dynamic intertwined spiral, this free-flowing, rigidly choreographed symbol was … was—
Something grunted, something screamed, and the wondrous answer turned and rose spiraling away from him to be gone in three heartbeats. Yet in that moment he knew it was there for him when he had the time, the phasing, the bringing-together of whatever elements were needed. He could not use it yet but he had it. He had it.
Another scream, an immense thrashing all about. The spell was broken and the armistice over. There were chargings and fleeings, cries of death-agony and roaring challenges in and over the jungle, through the grasses to the suddenly boiling river. Life goes on, and death with it, but there must be more death than life when too much life is thrown together.
IV
It may be that their five human lives were saved, in that turbulent reawakening, only by their alienness, for the life around them was cheek-and-jowl with its familiar enemy, its familiar quarry, its familiar food, and there need be no experimenting with the five soft containers of new rich juices standing awestruck with their backs to their intrusive shelter.
Then slowly they met one another’s eyes. They cared enough for each other so that there was a gladness of sharing. They cared enough for themselves so that there was also a sheepishness, a troubled self-analysis: What did I do while I was out of my mind?
They drew together before the door and watched the chase and slaughter around them as it subsided toward its usual balance of hunting and killing, eating and dying. Their hands began to remember the weapons they held, their minds began to reach for reality.
“They were angels,” April said, so softly that no one but Tod heard her. Tod watched her lips tremble and part, and knew that she was about to speak the thing he had almost grasped, but then Teague spoke again, and Tod could see the comprehension fade from her and be gone. “Look! Look there!” said Teague, and moved down the wall to the corner.
What had been an inner compartment of their ship was now an isolated cube, and from its back corner, out of sight until now, stretched another long wall. At regular intervals were doors, each fastened by a simple outside latch of parametal.
Teague stepped to the first door, the others crowding close. Teague listened intently, then stepped back and threw the door open.
Inside was a windowless room, blazing with light. Around the sides, machines were set. Tod instantly recognized their air-cracker, the water-purifiers, the protein-converter and one of the auxiliary power plants. In the center was a generator coupled to a light-metal fusion motor. The output buses were neatly insulated, coupled through fuseboxes and resistance controls to a “Christmas tree” multiple outlet. Cables ran through the wall to the Coffin compartment and to the line of unexplored rooms to their left.
“They’ve left us power, at any rate,” said Teague. “Let’s look down the line.”
Fish, Tod snarled silently. Dead man! After what you’ve just
seen you should be on your knees with the weight of it, you should put out your eyes to remember better. But all you can do is take inventory of your nuts and bolts.
Tod looked at the others, at their strained faces and their continual upward glances, as if the bright memory had magnetism for them. He could see the dream fading under Teague’s untimely urgency. You couldn’t let us live with it quietly, even for a moment. Then another inward voice explained to him, But you see, they killed Alma.
Resentfully he followed Teague.
Their ship had been dismantled, strung out along the hilltop like a row of shacks. They were interconnected, wired up, re-stacked, ready and reeking with efficiency—the lab, the library, six chambers full of mixed cargo, then—then the noise Teague made was as near to a shout of glee as Tod had ever heard from the man. The door he had just opened showed their instruments inside, all the reference tapes and tools and manuals. There was even a dome in the roof, and the refractor was mounted and waiting.
“April?” Tod looked, looked again. She was gone. “April!”
She emerged from the library, three doors back. “Teague!”
Teague pulled himself away from the array of instruments and went to her. “Teague,” she said, “every one of the reels has been read.”
“How do you know?”
“None of them are rewound.”
Teague looked up and down the row of doors. “That doesn’t sound like the way they—” The unfinished sentence was enough. Whoever had built this from their ship’s substance worked according to function and with a fine efficiency.
Teague entered the library and picked a tape-reel from its rack. He inserted the free end of film into a slot and pressed a button. The reel spun and the film disappeared inside the cabinet.
Teague looked up and back. Every single reel was inside out on the clips. “They could have rewound them,” said Teague, irritated.
“Maybe they wanted us to know that they’d read them,” said Moira.
“Maybe they did,” Teague murmured. He picked up a reel, looked at it, picked up another and another. “Music. A play. And here’s our personal stuff—behavior film, training records, everything.”
Carl said, “Whoever read through all this knows a lot about us.”
Teague frowned. “Just us?”
“Who else?”
“Earth,” said Teague. “All of it.”
“You mean we were captured and analyzed so that whoever they are could get a line on Earth? You think they’re going to attack Earth?”
“ ‘You mean … You think …’ ” Teague mimicked coldly. “I mean nothing and I think nothing! Tod, would you be good enough to explain to this impulsive young man what you learned from me earlier? That we need concern ourselves only with evidence?”
Tod shuffled his feet, wishing not to be made an example for anyone, especially Carl, to follow. Carl flushed and tried to smile. Moira took his hand secretly and squeezed it. Tod heard a slight exhalation beside him and looked quickly at April. She was angry. There were times when he wished she would not be angry.
She pointed. “Would you call that evidence, Teague?”
They followed her gesture. One of the tape-readers stood open. On its reelshelf stood the counterpart of the strange object they had seen twice before—once, in miniature, found in Alma’s Coffin; once again, huge in the sky. This was another of the miniatures.
Teague stared at it, then put out his hand. As his fingers touched it, the pilot-jewel on the tape-reader flashed on, and a soft, clear voice filled the room.
Tod’s eyes stung. He had thought he would never hear that voice again. As he listened, he held to the lifeline of April’s presence, and felt his lifeline tremble.
Alma’s voice said:
“They made some adjustments yesterday with the needle-clusters in my Coffin, so I think they will put me back into it … Teague, oh Teague, I’m going to die!
“They brought me the recorder just now. I don’t know whether it’s for their records or for you. If it’s for you, then I must tell you … how can I tell you?
“I’ve watched them all this time … how long? Months … I don’t know. I conceived when I awoke, and the babies are coming very soon now; it’s been long enough for that; and yet—how can I tell you?
“They boarded us, I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, nor where … outside, space is strange, wrong. It’s all misty, without stars, crawling with blurs and patches of light.
“They understand me; I’m sure of that—what I say, what I think. I can’t understand them at all. They radiate feelings—sorrow, curiosity, confidence, respect. When I began to realize I would die, they gave me a kind of regret. When I broke and cried and said I wanted to be with you, Teague, they reassured me, they said I would. I’m sure that’s what they said. But how could that be?
“They are completely dedicated in what they are doing. Their work is a religion to them, and we are part of it. They … value us, Teague. They didn’t just find us. They chose us. It’s as if we were the best part of something even they consider great.
“The best …! Among them I feel like an amoeba. They’re beautiful, Teague. Important. Very sure of what they are doing. It’s that certainty that makes me believe what I have to believe: I am going to die, and you will live, and you and I will be together. How can that be? How can that be?
“Yet it is true, so believe it with me, Teague. But—find out how!
“Teague, every day they have put a machine on me, radiating. It has to do with the babies. It isn’t done to harm them, I’m sure of that. I’m their mother and I’m sure of it. They won’t die.
“I will. I can feel their sorrow.
“And I will be with you, and they are joyous about that …”
“Teague—find out how!”
Tod closed his eyes so that he would not look at Teague, and wished with all his heart that Teague had been alone to hear that ghostly voice. As to what it had said, the words stood as a frame for a picture he could not see, showing him only where it was, not what it meant. Alma’s voice had been tremulous and unsure, but he knew it well enough to know that joy and certitude had lived with her as she spoke. There was wonderment, but no fear.
Knowing that it might be her only message to them, should she not have told them more—facts, figures, measurements?
Then an old, old tale flashed into his mind, an early thing from the ancient Amerenglish, by Hynlen (Henlyne, was it? no matter) about a man who tried to convey to humanity a description of the superbeings who had captured him, with only his body as a tablet and his nails as a stylus. Perhaps he was mad by the time he finished, but his message was clear at least to him: “Creation took eight days.” How would he, Tod, describe an association with the ones he had seen in the sky outside, if he had been with them for nearly three hundred days?
April tugged gently at his arm. He turned toward her, still avoiding the sight of Teague. April inclined her shining white head to the door. Moira and Carl already stood outside. They joined them, and waited wordlessly until Teague came out.
When he did, he was grateful, and he need not say so. He came out, a great calm in his face and voice, passed them and let them follow him to his methodical examination of the other compartments, to finish his inventory.
Food stores, cable and conduit, metal and parametal rod and sheet stock, tools and tool-making matrices and dies. A hangar, in which lay their lifeboat, fully equipped.
But there was no long-range communication device, and no parts for one.
And there was no heavy space-drive mechanism, nor tools to make one, nor fuel if they should make the tools.
Back in the instrument room, Carl grunted. “Somebody means for us to stick around.”
“The boat—”
Teague said, “I don’t think they’d have left us the boat if Earth was in range.”
“We’ll build a beacon,” Tod said suddenly. “We’ll get a rescue ship out to us.”
“Out where?” asked Teague dryly.
They followed his gaze. Bland and silent, merciless, the decay chronometer stared back at them. Built around a standard radioactive, it had two dials—one which measured the amount of energy radiated by the material, and one which measured the loss mass. When they checked, the reading was correct. They checked, and the reading was 64.
“Sixty-four years,” said Teague. “Assuming we averaged as much as one-half light speed, which isn’t likely, we must be thirty light-years away from Earth. Thirty years to get a light-beam there, sixty or more to get a ship back, plus time to make the beacon and time for Earth to understand the signal and prepare a ship …” He shook his head.
“Plus the fact,” Tod said in a strained voice, “that there is no habitable planet in a thirty-year radius from Sol. Except Prime.”
Shocked, they gaped silently at this well-known fact. A thousand years of scrupulous search with the best instruments could not have missed a planet like this at such a distance.
“Then the chronometer’s wrong!”
“I’m afraid not,” said Teague. “It’s sixty-four years since we left Earth, and that’s that.”
“And this planet doesn’t exist,” said Carl with a sour smile, “and I suppose that is also that.”
“Yes, Teague,” said Tod. “One of those two facts can’t exist with the other.”
“They can because they do,” said Teague. “There’s a missing factor. Can a man breathe underwater, Tod?”
“If he has a diving helmet.”
Teague spread his hands. “It took sixty-four years to get to this planet if. We have to find the figurative diving helmet.” He paused. “The evidence in favor of the planet’s existence is fairly impressive,” he said wryly. “Let’s check the other fact.”
“How?”
“The observatory.”
They ran to it. The sky glowed its shimmering green, but through it the stars had begun to twinkle. Carl got to the telescope first, put a big hand on the swing-controls, and said, “Where first?” He tugged at the instrument. “Hey!” He tugged again.
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