Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  “I know that. But couldn’t they …”

  “No, they couldn’t. Eons ago people could be careless or could deceive each other and themselves. But not today!”

  “That’s not what I wanted to say.” The sharpness of her retort showed that the girl was offended. “I was going to say that Algrab may have deviated from its course looking for us.”

  “It couldn’t have deviated so much. It must have left at the time computed and agreed on. If the improbable had happened and both transmitters had been put out of action it would have had to cross the circle diametrically and we should have heard it on the planetary receiver. There’s no possibility of a mistake—there it is, the rendezvous planet.”

  Erg Noor pointed to the mirror screens in deep niches on all four sides of the control tower. Countless stars burned in the profound blackness. A tiny gray disc, barely illuminated by a sun very far away from them, from the outer edge of the system B-7336-S + 87-A, was crossing the forward port screen.

  “Our beacons are functioning well although we put them up four independent years ago.” Erg Noor pointed to a clear-cut line of light running across a glass panel that stretched the whole length of the left-hand wall. “Algrab should have been here three months ago. That means,” Erg Noor hesitated as though he did not wish to finish the sentence, “Algrab is lost!”

  “But suppose it isn’t, suppose it’s only been damaged by a meteoroid and can’t regain its speed?” objected the auburn-haired girl.

  “Can’t regain its speed!” repeated Erg Noor. “Isn’t that the same thing? If there’s a journey thousands of years long between the ship and its goal, so much the worse—instead of instantaneous death there’ll be years of hopelessness for the doomed. Maybe they’ll signal. If they do, we’ll know … on Earth … in about six years.”

  With one of his impetuous movements Erg Noor pulled a folding armchair from under the table supporting the computer, a small MNU-11; the ITU electronic brain capable of any computation was not fitted in spaceships to pilot them unaided because of its great weight, size and fragility. A navigator had always to be on duty in the control tower, especially as it was impossible to plot an exact course over such terrific distances.

  The commander’s hands danced over the levers and buttons with the rapidity of a pianist’s. The clear-cut features of his pale face were as immobile a statue’s and his lofty brow, inclined stubbornly over the control desk, seemed to be challenging the elemental forces menacing that tiny world of living beings who had dared penetrate into the forbidden depths of space.

  Nisa Creet, a young astronavigator on her first space flight, held her breath and kept silent as she watched Erg Noor, and the commander himself seemed oblivious of everything but his work. How cool and collected, how resourceful and full of energy was the man she loved. And she had loved him for a long time, for all of the past five years. There was no sense concealing it from him, he knew it already, Nisa could feel that. Now that this great misfortune had happened she had the tremendous joy of serving a watch with him, three months alone with him while the other members of the crew lay in deep hypnotic sleep. Another thirteen days and they, too, would be able to sleep for six months while the other two watches—the navigators, astronomers and mechanics—served their turns. The other members of the expedition, the biologists and geologists who would only have work to do when they arrived at their destination, could sleep longer, but the astronomers—theirs was the greatest strain of all!

  Erg Noor rose and Nisa’s train of thought was broken. “I’m going to the chartroom. You’ll be able to sleep in”—he glanced at the clock showing dependent, or ship’s, time—“nine hours. I’ll have time for some sleep before I relieve you.”

  “I’m not tired, I can stay here as long as necessary—you must get some rest!”

  Erg Noor frowned and was about to object but was captivated by the tenderness of her words and by the golden hazel eyes that appealed to him so trustingly; he smiled and went out without another word.

  Nisa sat down in the chair, cast an accustomed glance over the instruments and was soon lost in deep meditation.

  The reflector screens, through which those on the bridge could see what was happening in the surrounding expanses of space, gleamed black overhead. The lights of many-hued stars pierced the eyes like needles of fire. The spaceship was overtaking a planet whose gravity made the ship vacillate in a field of changing intensity. Magnificent but malignant stars also made wild leaps in the reflector screens. The outlines of the constellations changed with a rapidity that memory could not record.

  Planet K2-2N-88, cold, lifeless, far from its sun, was known as a convenient rendezvous for spaceships … for the meeting that had not taken place. The fifth circle—Nisa could visualize her ship traveling with reduced speed around a monster circle with a radius of a billion kilometers, steadily gaining on a planet that crawled along at a snail’s pace. In a hundred and ten hours the ship would complete the fifth circle—and what then? Erg Noor’s tremendous brain was now strained to the utmost to find the best solution. As commander both of the expedition and the ship he could not afford mistakes. If he made a mistake, the First Class Spaceship Tantra with its crew of the world’s most eminent scientists would never return from outer space! But Erg Noor would make no mistake.

  Nisa Creet was suddenly overcome by a feeling of nausea which meant that the spaceship had deviated from its course by a tiny fraction of a degree, something possible only at the reduced speed at which they were traveling: at full speed not one of the ship’s fragile human cargo would have survived. The gray mist before the girl’s eyes had not yet dispersed when the nausea swept over her again, as the ship returned to its course. Delicately sensors had located a meteoroid, the greatest enemy of spaceships, in the black emptiness ahead of them and had automatically made the deviation. The ship’s navigational controls (only they could carry out all adjustments with the necessary speed, since human nerves are unsuited to cosmic velocities) had taken her off her course in a millionth of a second and, the danger past, had returned her with equal speed. < … >

  Cosmic Expedition No. 37 had been sent to the planetary system of the nearest star in The Serpent Holder (the constellation Ophiuchus) whose only inhabited planet, Zirda, had long been in communication with Earth and other worlds throughout the Great Circle. The planet had suddenly gone silent, and for over seventy years nothing more had been heard. It was Earth’s duty, as the Circle planet nearest to Zirda, to find out what had happened. With this aim in view the expedition’s ship had taken on board a large number of instruments and several prominent scientists, those whose nerves, after lengthy testing, had proved capable of withstanding confinement in a spaceship for several years. The ship was fueled with anameson; only the bare minimum had been taken, not because of its weight but because of the tremendous size of the containers in which it was stored. It was expected that supplies could be renewed on Zirda. In case something serious had happened on Zirda, Second Class Spaceship Algrab was to have met Tantra with fuel supplies, in orbit around planet K2-2N-88. < … >

  Nisa’s most vivid memory was that of a blood-red sun that had been steadily growing in their field of vision during the last months of their fourth space year. The fourth year for the inhabitants of the spaceship as it traveled at 83% of the speed of light, but on Earth seven independent years had already passed. The filters on the screens were kind to human eyes; they reduced the composition of the rays of any celestial body to what could have been seen through the dense atmosphere of Earth, with its protective screens of ozone and water vapors. The indescribable ghostly violet light of high temperature bodies was toned down to blue or white and gloomy greet-pink stars took on cheerful golden-yellow hues, like our Sun. A celestial body that burned triumphantly with bright crimson fire took on a deep, blood-red color, the hue that a terrestrial observer sees in Class M stars. The planet was much nearer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, and as the ship drew nearer to Zirda the star
grew into a tremendous crimson disc that radiated massive heat energy. For two months before approaching Zirda Tantra had initiated attempts to contact the planet’s outer space station. There was only one such station—on a small natural satellite with no atmosphere that was much nearer to Zirda than the Moon is to Earth. The spaceship continued calling when the planet was no more than thirty million kilometers away and the terrific speed of Tantra had been reduced to three thousand km/sec. It was Nisa’s watch but all the crew were awake, sitting in anticipation in front of the bridge screens. Nisa kept hailing, increasing the power of the transmissions and sending rays out fanwise ahead of the ship. At last they saw the tiny shining dot of the satellite. The spaceship came into orbit around the planet, approaching it in a spiral and gradually adjusting its speed to that of the satellite. Soon Tantra’s speed was the same as that of the fast-moving little satellite and it seemed as though an invisible hawser held them fast. The ship’s stereo telescope scanned the surface of the satellite until the crew of Tantra were suddenly confronted with an unforgettable sight.

  A huge, flat-topped glass building seemed to be on fire in the rays of the blood-red sun. Directly under the roof was something in the nature of an assembly hall. There a number of beings—unlike terrestrial humans but unmistakably people—were frozen into immobility. Excitedly, Pour Hyss, the astronomer of the expedition, continued to adjust the focus. The vague rows of people visible under the glass roof were absolutely motionless. Pour Hyss increased the instrument’s magnification. Out of the vagueness a dais surrounded by instrument panels appeared, and on it a long table on which a man sat cross-legged facing the audience, his insane, terrifying eyes staring into the distance.

  “They’re dead, frozen,” exclaimed Erg Noor. The spaceship continued to hover over Zirda’s satellite and fourteen pairs of eyes remained fixed on that glass tomb, for such, indeed, it was. How long had the dead been sitting there in their hall of glass? The planet had broken off communication seventy years before; add the six years required for the transmission to reach Earth and three quarters of a century must have passed.

  All eyes were turned on the commander. Erg Noor, his face pale, was staring into the smoky yellow atmosphere of the planet through which the lines of the mountain ranges and the glint of the sea were faintly discernible. But nothing gave the answer they had come for. “The station perished seventy-five years ago and has not been re-established! That can only mean a catastrophe on the planet. We have to enter the atmosphere, maybe even land. Everyone’s here now, so I’ll ask your opinion.”

  The only objection was raised by Pour Hyss, a man on his first space trip flight; he had replaced an experienced worker who had fallen ill just before launch. Nisa looked with indignation at his big, hawk-like nose and the ugly ears set low on his head.

  “If there’s been a catastrophe on the planet there’s no possibility of our getting anameson there. If we circle the planet at low altitude we’ll drain our supply of planetary fuel, and if we land we’ll drain it even more. Apart from that, we don’t know what happened, there could be high-level radiation that would kill us.”

  The other members of the expedition supported their commander. “There’s no planetary radiation that can cause any problems to our shields. Weren’t we sent here to find out what happened? What are we going to tell the Great Circle? It’s not enough to establish the fact, we have to account for it—sorry if this sounds like a high-school lecture!” said Erg Noor and the usual metallic tones in his voice now held a note of ridicule in them. “I don’t think we can get out of doing what’s obviously our duty.”

  The upper layers of the atmosphere have a normal temperature!” exclaimed Nisa, happily, completing rapid measurements. Erg Noor smiled and began to put the ship down in a spiral, each turn slower than the last as they neared the planet surface. Zirda was somewhat smaller than Earth and no great speed was needed for a low-altitude orbit. The astronomers and the geologist checked the maps of the planet against the observations of Tantra’s instruments. There had been no noticeable change in the outlines of continents and the seas gleamed calmly in the red sun. Nor had the mountain ranges altered from the configurations known from former photographs—but the planet was silent. < … > The spaceship was crossing Zirda’s night disc at a speed no greater than that of a terrestrial helicopter. Below them there should have been cities, factories and ports, but not a single light showed in the pitch blackness, no matter how thoroughly the powerful stereotelescopes scanned the surface. The thunder of the spaceship cutting through the atmosphere must have been audible for dozens of miles. Another hour passed and still no light was seen. The anxious wait was becoming unbearable. Noor switched on the warning sirens hoping that their awe-inspiring howl, added to the roar of the spaceship, would be heard by the mysteriously silent inhabitants of Zirda.

  A fiery light wave swept away the ominous darkness as Tantra reached the daylight side of the planet. Below them everything was still black. Rapidly developed and enlarged photographs showed that the surface was covered with a solid carpet of flowers something like the velvety-black poppies that grow on Earth. The masses of black poppies stretched for thousands of miles to the exclusion of all other vegetation—trees and bushes, reeds and grass. The city streets looked like the ribs of giant skeletons lying on a black carpet; metal structures formed gaping rusty wounds. Not a living being, not a tree anywhere, nothing but the black poppies!

  Tantra dropped an observation beacon and again plunged into the night. Six hours later the robot reported the content of the atmosphere, the temperature, pressure and other conditions on the surface. Everything was normal for Zirda with the exception of increased radioactivity.

  “What an awful tragedy!” Eon Thal, the expedition’s biologist, muttered in a dull voice as he recorded the data. “They’ve destroyed themselves and everything on their planet!”

  “How could they?” asked Nisa, hiding tears that were very near the surface. “Is it as bad as that? The ionization really isn’t very high.”

  “It’s been a long time,” answered the biologist glumly. His virile Circassian face with its aquiline nose assumed a stern expression, despite his youth. “Radioactive disintegration is dangerous just because it accumulates unnoticed. For hundreds of years the total radiation could increase corus by corus; then suddenly there’s a qualitative change, the genome implodes, species reproduction ceases, and on top of that you get epidemics of radiation sickness. It’s happened before, more than once. The Circle knows about other disasters like this.”

  “Like the so-called ‘Planet of the Lilac Sun’,” came Erg Noor’s voice from behind them.

  “Whose Spectral-class A° sun, equal to 78 of our suns, provided its inhabitants with very high energy,” added the morose Pour Hyss.

  “Where is that planet?,” asked Eon Thal. “Isn’t it the one the Council intends to colonize?” “That’s the one, Algrab was named after its star.”

  “The star Algrab, that’s Delta Corvi,” exclaimed the biologist. “But it’s such a long way off!”

  “Forty-six parsecs. But we’re constantly increasing the power of our spaceships …”

  The biologist nodded but muttered that it was hardly right to name a spaceship after a dead star.

  “The star didn’t die and the planet is still safe and sound. Before another century’s out we’ll plant vegetation there and settle the planet,” said Erg Noor with confidence.

  He had decided to perform a difficult maneuver—to change the ship’s orbit from latitudinal to meridianal, sending the ship along a north-south line parallel to the planet’s axis of rotation. How could they leave the planet until they were certain there were no survivors? It might be that survivors were unable to communicate with the spaceship because power installations had been wrecked and instruments damaged.

  This was not the first time Nisa had seen her commander at the control panel in a moment of great responsibility. With his impenetrably expressionless face, his abrupt
but always precise movements, he seemed to the astronavigator like the hero of a legend.

  Again Tantra made her futile journey round Zirda, this time from pole to pole. In some places, especially in the temperate latitudes, there were wide belts of bare ground, a yellow haze hung over them and through it, from time to time, appeared rows of gigantic red dunes from which the wind sent up clouds of sand.

  Then again came the funeral pall of black velvet poppies, the only plant that had withstood the radioactivity or had produced a mutation of its species viable under radiation.

  The whole picture was clear. It was not only useless, it was even dangerous to search for the supplies of anameson that had, on the recommendation of the Great Circle, been laid in for visitors from other worlds. Tantra began slowly unwinding the spiral away from the planet. She gained a velocity of 17 km/sec using her ion engines that provided her with the speed necessary for pulling away from the dead planet. Tantra turned her nose towards an uninhabited system known only by its code name where projectile beacons had been thrown out and where Algrab should have awaited. The anameson engines were now switched on and in fifty-two hours they accelerated the spaceship to her normal speed of 900,000,000 km/hour. Fifteen months’ journey would take them to the meeting place—eleven months of the ship-time—and the crew, with the exception of those on watch, could sleep. < … >

  Tantra had been circling the gray planet for many days, and with each passing hour the possibility of encountering Algrab grew less and less likely. Something terrible loomed ahead. Erg Noor stood in the doorway with his eyes on Nisa as she sat there in meditation—her inclined head with its cap of thick hair like a luxuriant golden flower, the mischievous, boyish profile, the slightly slanting eyes that were often crinkled with repressed laughter but which were now wide open, apprehensively but courageously probing the unknown …

  Nisa did not realize what a tremendous moral support her selfless love had become for him. Despite the long years of trial that had steeled his will-power and his senses, he tired of command, of the need to be ready at any moment to shoulder entire responsibility for the crew, the ship, and the success of the expedition. Back there on Earth such single-handed responsibility had long since been abandoned—decisions there were taken collectively by the group who had to carry them out. If anything unusual occurred on Earth you could always get advice, and consultations on the most intricate problems could be arranged. Here there was no one to consult, and spaceship commanders were granted special rights. It would have been easier if this responsibility had been for two or three years rather than the ten to fifteen that were normal for space expeditions! Erg Noor entered the bridge.