Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

by Bob Shaw

  Several cautious footsteps sounded as Dermott approached.

  Garnett held his breath and hoped there was enough blood distributed over his head and chest to convince Dermott a coup de grace was unnecessary. After a few seconds he heard him pick up his televu from the desk and punch out a number.

  “Hello, Bill.”

  “Hello, Ian. Has it happened?” Garnett recognised the voice of his chief test pilot, Bill Makin.

  “Yes—he came here, as we expected. I had to take certain steps. You know what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “There’ll be trouble, of course. This is as far as we can go. You’d better deliver the unit right away.”

  “I thought there still were difficulties with dimensional stability.”

  “Only a centimetre or so at maximum chord. It’s acceptable. Anyway, we’ve run out of time.”

  “What will you do with the … ah … waste products?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just deliver the goods.”

  “I’m already plotting the flight profile. See you.”

  Dermott set the televu down, stood for a moment then came round the desk and grabbed a fistful of Garnett’s jacket. He screamed in terror as Garnett brought up his legs and kicked, then he went down clutching his belly. Garnett propelled himself upwards, grunting with the effort. The televu set almost flew out of his fingers as he lifted and swung, but it connected with Dermott’s head. The screaming stopped. Garnett lifted the pistol purposively, hesitated, then worked it into his belt—Dermott had just tried to murder him but he had not been responsible for his own actions. Nor was he the one responsible for what had happened to Janice.

  He dragged the unconscious man all the way into the kitchen, tied his wrists with the silk dressing gown cord and locked him in a cupboard. By the time he had finished he was drenched with perspiration and was leaving bloody footprints on the floor. He cleaned himself up in the bathroom as best he could, taped a clean towel across his ribs and put patches of skin-coloured medical plastic on his cheeks. Blood from the ruptured gums kept trickling into his throat so he made two plugs of cotton and bit down on them. The whole operation took only a matter of minutes, at the end of which his image in the full-length mirror appeared almost normal. There was a certain spiky look, like that of a sick bird, but that was pretty good considering the way he felt.

  Garnett carefully locked the door behind him and limped out to his car which greeted him like an old friend as he settled into the seat. He slid it meticulously through the Sunday evening traffic, not risking an encounter with the police, and reached the works in reddish evening sunlight. A patrol officer saluted as he drove through the main gates and threaded among the silent workshops on his way to the field. The square-finned shape of a T.6 crouched outside the flight shed, impassively drinking in the contents of a mustard-coloured fuel bowser. Garnett was too far from the men who moved around it to decide if they were the regular ground crew or Xoanon-controlled draftees. Scanning the line of parked vehicles he found what he wanted—the white sports car belonging to Bill Makin.

  Garnett slipped into the test pilots’ building by the rear entrance, went along the corridor and stopped outside Makin’s office. There was the question of how much feedback was built into Xoanon’s control system—if the spacecraft acted as a sort of clearing house for sense impressions then every man under control might know what was happening to all the others, in which case Makin could be expecting him. He extricated the heavy weapon from his belt, thankful there had been no necessity for a quick draw, and gently opened the door. Makin was already in his silver pressure skin and was bent over his personal computer, waiting tensely. Beyond the Venetian blinds the evening sky was turning peacock green.

  Garnett levelled the automatic.

  “Don’t move, Bill. Don’t make a sound. You’ve got a passenger on this trip.”

  Makin remained hunched over the machine, but he shook his head without turning round. “I have—but not you, Tony. The wing unit is strapped into the second seat. Even you couldn’t get in there with it.”

  “I don’t think you understand—I’m not permitting delivery of the unit. You’re taking me in its place.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  The task of thinking up a direct verbal reply which did not sound like something out of an old film was too much for Garnett’s patience and imagination. He stepped forward and gently laid the gun muzzle against Makin’s neck, but the time for words or any other sort of reply had already passed. Makin slid down on to the floor and lay, like a doll, with both arms reaching blindly into the air. As Garnett stared down at him, remembering Elkin, the fitter who had also been ‘switched off’, the computer chimed softly and rolled out a curling tongue of grey paper. Garnett snatched it and ran his eye down the printed figures—they were a complete set of parameters defining the flight profile for a maximum altitude T.6 sortie.

  A few minutes later Garnett limped out of the test pilots’ building, doing his best to imitate Makin’s careful walk. The pressure skin was several sizes too large for him but none of the ground crew seemed to notice anything wrong. Garnett discovered that the loneliness of the astronaut, the age’s solitary hero figure, began from the moment he donned his egg-shell head and silver limbs. The T.6 waited for him, its belly replete with fuel, and the late sunlight splayed across the sky, masking everything that lay beyond.

  6

  Garnett had never actually flown a T.6 before and the fact that he was able to consider doing so, even with his experience in the aircraft’s simulator, was a tribute to the way in which the aircraft industry had tackled one of its oldest problems. Even before the end of the era of the reciprocating engine the demands upon the pilot of the large, fast transport were nearing the theoretical maximum capacity of the human nervous system. A limiting factor had been the sheer quantity of eye movements the pilot was called upon to make as he gathered discrete information from his instrument array and processed it into control movements. The answer had lain in a new philosophy of cockpit design which ushered in the age of the black box, starting with the first autoland systems. Its culmination was the fully automated cockpit which was the most valuable part of the machine and which could be lifted bodily out of any aircraft and installed in any other type, allowing the pilot to concentrate on where he was going and not on the mechanics of getting there.

  The ground crew stood around disinterestedly as Garnett walked to the aircraft and worked his way up the spring-loaded hand and toe holds to reach the open cockpit. Actually, due to the fact that the T.6 was a true self-starter, there was nothing for the crew to do once the fuelling operation was completed. Now that he was about to take its controls into his own hands Garnett was impressed as never before by the machine’s sheer power. The huge cylinder was literally nothing but an engine and fuel system, with a contrived niche on top for two men and an assortment of mountings below for weapons. It was not armed, being still in final development, but it was one of the most fantastically extravagant products of a society with the arm-bearing mentality.

  As he slid into the front seat Garnett realised, with a keen sense of shock, that he disliked the T.6 and all it stood for. Thoughts like that had never crossed his mind until now but then, as Dermott had explained, an outsider had been ‘nudging’ his ideas towards a certain end. It was difficult to comprehend that the whole twenty-metre wing project had been brought into being at the instigation of an alien figure known as Xoanon. Men’s lives had been twisted to meet that end and a girl called Janice had died. Garnett felt the gnawing bitterness of regret for everything that might have been. Up there, up in the lofty three-hundred kilometre orbit, Janice’s death probably seemed an infinitesimal event, but it had been an important one in his life. Soon he would be up there himself, though, and then he was going to make Janice important to Xoanon as well. The automatic in his belt was a pretty insignificant payload for the T.6 but, properly used, it should be sufficient.

&nb
sp; Garnett wanted to unload the crated twenty-metre wing unit but doing it might have attracted too much suspicion, so he sealed the cockpit and checked over the flight plan. It called for a takeoff at seventeen-fifty hours, gradual climb to twenty thousand metres to clear the denser air strata, and then a fully boosted ballistic-style climb to engine shutdown at 250 kilometres. This would give enough momentum for the ship to coast the remaining fifty kilometres to what presumably was rendezvous altitude. He was more than ten minutes too early and was tempted to blast off anyway then adjust the flight path to suit, but there was the danger of alerting the whole of Regional Command. The flight was bound to be illegal—Makin had not had time even to file a flight plan—but as long as he did not loiter around at medium altitudes there was little anybody could do to stop him. They were unlikely to loose one of their robotic nimrods on an unidentified aircraft flying out of the country. There was also the danger of alerting the spacecraft but he had a feeling Xoanon already knew what was going on—the precious wing unit would be his guarantee of safe conduct.

  At zero minus five he flicked over a series of toggles and the great engine, which extended from the ship’s nose, under his seat and all the way back to the tail, cleared its throat and gave voice, an indefinitely prolonged explosion even at minimum power. Keeping the radio switched off to eliminate distracting queries from the tower he released the brakes and steered the T.6 out to the end of the main runway. The configuration scope showed that the machine’s invisible wings were spread to their full extent.

  Poised at the end of the runway, staring into the flame-coloured feathers of the sunset, Garnett was suddenly afraid to make the flight. The feeling was something like the one which had followed Dermott’s first grazing shot across his chest. He wanted to get away, escape into normal life, not project himself into the inhuman, anti-human coldness of the three-hundred kilometre orbit. But when his chronometer said it was time to go he kicked off the brakes and let the machine do all his thinking and worrying. The sound of the engine faded out a few seconds later as the T.6 went supersonic. He barely had time to get it on to the south-easterly bearing specified in the flight plan, and check his course, when the altimeter registered twenty thousand metres. At that point he surrendered all authority to the black boxes.

  The T.6’s nose lifted higher as the built-in computers, unhampered by fears or regrets, drove it up beyond the atmosphere in a clean, pure curve. Garnett grunted with pain as the ion-boost came on and the high gravities tore at his wounds. The boost worked by seeding the jet stream with calcium particles which were ionised and accelerated by an engine-driven oscillator. To prevent the aircraft building up a huge electrical potential, negative and positive ions were blasted out alternately, recombining in a long reddish flare behind the jet pipe. When the atmosphere became too tenuous for turbine efficiency the fuel flow was terminated and the T.6 continued upwards on ion propulsion alone. Finally that too was shut down and the machine coasted on to find its orbit.

  Inside the cockpit Garnett felt small, lonely and cold. With the T.6 in free fall and everything switched off, except for life-sustaining equipment, there was nothing for him to do but wait. In good health and different circumstances he might have been able to enjoy his first look at the unshielded stars, great cities wheeling in the blackness, but he could think only of hot coffee, a yellow-lit book-lined room, a good chair … and rest….

  The spacecraft took him swiftly and easily, before he realised what was happening.

  It came from behind and Garnett only became aware of its arrival when the stars progressively vanished until only a handful shone in a circle ahead of him. The circle was filled in abruptly and he knew the T.6, large as it was, had been engulfed the way a swooping bird takes a gnat. Lights suddenly shone from above to reveal a grey metal cavern, the walls and ceiling of which were criss-crossed with frames and braces of surprisingly Earth-like design. The silence which surrounded him was gradually replaced by faint sounds and he guessed air was being pumped into the compartment. His guess was confirmed as the T.6, which had been hanging contentedly a few metres above the floor, began to wallow gently and drift to one side in the currents. At the same time the cockpit canopy turned white as a coating of frost materialised on the aircraft. Flexible metal hoses tipped with suction cups snaked put from half a dozen wall panels and the T.6 became steady, held fast.

  Garnett took a deep breath. He had known from the start there would be no chance of escape after he shot Xoanon—this simply confirmed it. He opened the cockpit, stood up and launched himelf upwards with his legs. The roof was higher than he had estimated in the dim light and for several long seconds he felt vulnerable and helpless, drifting up into the interlaced structure of beams, cables and pipes. Finally he connected with a truss and worked himself through it into a reasonably secure position, feeling like a bird in the roof of a barn.

  While he waited for someone to appear down below Garnett partially unzipped the pressure skin and withdrew the automatic. It was almost a certainty that the aliens knew who had delivered the wing unit so there was little point in trying anything but the the most direct tactics. Besides, with the weapon in his hands he might be in a position to find the answer to his big question—why did the builders of this tremendous ship want the wing of a relatively primitive aircraft? Why did they want it so badly they were prepared to hang in orbit for several years while their puppets carried out the construction? Why … ?

  A large section of the wall slid away and Garnett found himself looking down at a group of five aliens silhouetted against powerful blue-white light which streamed into his metal cave.

  They appeared to be human, as Dermott had predicted, but humans who floated assuredly in the air like fish, controlling their altitudes with little arm and leg movements which caused disproportionately large shadow plays in the mingling light rays. He had time for a few fleeting impressions—almost childishly small bodies, silt-coloured skin, wispy hair, darkly lambent eyes—then the alients were swimming towards his empty craft. As he took aim it occurred to Garnett that he had completely forgotten to allow for zero gravity conditions when he brought the automatic pistol. Under these circumstances its fierce recoil would make it less effective than a bow and arrow, but it was too late to worry about it—the aliens must not be allowed to get their hands on the wing unit. Pain arced across his chest from the recoil as he fired. The aliens tumbled in panic and dived back through the doorway while thunderous multiple reverberations battered against the metal walls. Knowing he had deliberately aimed to miss, Garnett for the first time understood that a pistol’s sound is one of the most important factors in its potency as a weapon.

  He opened the faceplate of his helmet, hardly noticing the smell of the alien air. “Where is Xoanon?” he shouted. “I want Xoanon.”

  The aliens remained out of sight but their shadows moved anxiously across the glittering, frosty whiteness of the trapped T.6. Garnett waited with his eyes fixed on the brilliant trapezoid of the doorway, wondering if Xoanon would dare to appear. He watched tensely, aware of his own heart beats, yet when the movement finally came it took him completely by surprise—for it was inside his helmet!

  Something cold brushed against his eyebrow and, from close up, a flash of brightness stabbed into his eye.

  Sobbing with fear, Garnett scrabbled frantically at the helmet with his free hand, then abruptly he held still. It had been only the tiny flip-down television screen which formed part of the suit’s communications system. The fact that it had dropped into place in front of his left eye meant someone on the alien ship had begun to broadcast on his personal frequency.

  Garnett moved his eye forward to the little screen and found himself peering into a large room with pale green lighting and what appeared to be clusters of silver threads running vertically between its floor and ceiling. The room was circular and its walls were banked with what was obviously a tremendously complex instrument array. Several aliens in black coveralls appeared to be entangl
ed in the silver strands at different heights, but as each was positioned close to groups of controls Garnett realised the threads took the place of conventional furniture.

  In the centre of the room a single, almost normal, chair held a white-haired man who had one arm missing from just below the shoulder. The slight figure of an alien woman floated behind the chair but Garnett’s attention was fixed on its occupant. There was an authoritative look about the time-scarred face and intent, unflinching eyes which told him….

  “You are Xoanon?”

  “Yes. And you are Mr. Garnett.”

  A violent shuddering fit seized Garnett and pain radiated from different centres in his body. Anything I do, he thought, had better be done soon.

  “I’m going to kill you, Xoanon.” At his words several aliens high up in the silver skeins twisted away from their control panels but Xoanon dismissed them with a rapid wave ofhis single arm. He leaned forward in his chair, dark eyes like gun muzzles.