al might, rather
than through technical development. Even with the coming of communist
society our civilization has remained rudimentally technical and only in the
Era of Common Labour did we turn to the perfection of man himself and not
only his machines, houses, food and amusements."
The dance was over. The young red-skinned woman came into the centre of
the hall and the camera of the transmitter focussed on her alone. Her
outstretched arms and her face were turned to the ceiling of the hall.
The eyes of the Earth-dwellers involuntarily followed her glance. There
was no ceiling, or, perhaps, some clever optical illusion created the
impression of a night sky with very large and bright stars. The strange
combinations of constellations did not arouse any association. The girl
waved her hand and a blue ball appeared on the index finger of her left
hand. A silvery ray streamed out of the ball and served her as a gigantic
pointer. A round patch of light at the end of the pointer halted first on
one then on another star in the ceiling. In each case the emerald panel
showed a motionless picture extremely wide in scale. As the pointer ray
moved from star to star the panel demonstrated a series of inhabited and
uninhabited planets. Joyless and sorrowful were the stone or sand deserts
that burned in the rays of red, blue, violet and yellow suns. Sometimes the
rays of a strange leaden-grey star would bring to life on its planets
flattened domes or spirals, permeated with electricity, that swam like
jelly-fish in a dense orange atmosphere or ocean. In the world of the red
sun there grew trees of incredible height with slimy black bark, trees that
stretched their millions of crooked branches heavenwards as though in
despair. Other planets were completely covered with dark water. Huge living
islands, either animal or vegetable, were floating everywhere, their
countless hairy feelers waving over the smooth surface of the water.
"They have no planets near them that possess the higher forms of life,"
said Junius Antus, suddenly, without once taking his eyes off the star map
of the unknown sky.
"Yes they have," said Darr Veter, "although the flattened stellar
system to one side of them is one of the newest formations in the Galaxy, we
know that flattened and globular systems, the old and the new, not
infrequently alternate. In the direction of Eridanus there is a system with
living intelligences that belongs to the Circle."
"VVR 4955 + MO 3529 ... etc.," added Mven Mass, "but why don't they
know of it?"
"The system entered the Great Circle 275 years ago and this
communication was made before that," answered Darr Veter.
The red-skinned girl from the distant world shook the blue ball from
her finger and turned to face her audience, her arms spread out widely as
though to embrace some invisible person standing before her. She threw back
her head and shoulders as a woman of Earth would in a burst of passion. Her
mouth was half open and her lips moved as she repeated inaudible words. So
she stood, immobile, appealing, sending forth into the cold darkness of
interstellar space fiery human words of an entreaty for friendship with
people of other worlds.
Again her enthralling beauty held the Earth-dwellers spellbound. She
had nothing of the bronze severity of the red-skinned people of Earth. Her
round face, small nose and big, widely-placed blue eyes bore more
resemblance to the northern peoples of Earth. Her thick, wavy black hair was
not stiff. Every line of her face and body expressed a light and joyful
confidence that came from a subconscious feeling of great strength.
"Is it possible that they know nothing of the Great Circle?" Veda Kong
almost groaned as though in obeisance before her beautiful sister from the
Cosmos.
"By now they probably know," answered Darr Veter, the scenes we have
witnessed date three hundred years back."
"Eighty-eight parsecs," rumbled Mven Mass's low voice.
"Eighty-eight.... All those people we have just seen have long been dead."
As though in confirmation of his words the scene from the wonderful
world disappeared and the green indicator went out. The transmission around
the Great Circle was over.
For another minute they were all in a trance. The first to recover was
Darr Veter. Biting his lip in chagrin he hurriedly turned the granulated
lever. The column of directed energy switched off with the sound of a gong
that warned power station engineers to re-direct the gigantic stream of
energy into its usual channels. The Director of the Outer Stations turned
back to his companions only when all the necessary manipulations had been
completed.
Junius Antus, with a frown on his face, was looking through pages of
written notes.
"Some of the memory records taken down from the pBtellar map on the
ceiling must be sent to the Southern Sky Institute!" he said, turning to
Darr Veter's young assistant. The latter looked at Junius Antus in amazement
as though he had just awakened from an unusual dream.
The grim scientist looked at him, a smile lurking in his eyes-what they
had seen was indeed a dream of a wonderful world sent out into space three
hundred years before ... a dream that thousands of millions of people on
Earth and in the colonies on the Moon, Mars and Venus would now see so
clearly that it would be almost tangible.
"You were right, Mven Mass," smiled Darr Veter, "when you said before
the transmission began that something unusual was going to happen today. For
the first time in the eight hundred years since we joined the Great Circle a
planet has appeared in the Universe inhabited by beings who are our brothers
not only in intellect but in body as well. You can well imagine my joy at
this discovery. Your tour of duty as Director has begun auspiciously! In the
old days people would have said that it was a lucky sign and our present-day
psychologists would say that coincidental events have occurred that favour
confidence and give you encouragement in your further work."
Darr Veter stopped suddenly: nervous reaction had made him more verbose
than usual. In the Era of the Great Circle verbosity was considered one of
the most disgraceful failings possible in a man-the Director of the Outer
Stations stopped without finishing his sentence.
"Yes, yes ..." responded Mven Mass, absent-mindedly. Junius Antus
noticed the sluggishness in his voice and in his movements; he was
immediately on the alert. Veda Kong quietly ran her finger along Darr
Veter's hand and nodded towards the African.
"Perhaps he is too impressionable?" wondered Darr Veter staring fixedly
at his successor. Mven Mass sensed the concealed surprise of his companions;
he straightened up and became his usual self, an attentive and skilled
performer of the task in hand. An escalator took them to the upper storeys
of the building where there were extensive windows looking out at the starry
sky that was again as far away as it had always been during the whole thirty
thousand years of man's existence-or rather the existence of that species of
hominids known as Homo sapiens. Mven Mass and Darr Veter had to remain
behind.
Veda Kong whispered to Darr Veter that she would never forget that
night.
"It made me feel so insignificant!" she said, in conclusion, her face
beaming despite her sorrowful words. Darr Veter knew what she meant and
shook his head.
"I am sure that if the red woman had seen you she would have been proud
of her sister, Veda. Surely our Earth isn't a bit worse than their planet!''
Darr Veter's face was glowing with the light of love.
"That's seen through your eyes, my friend," smiled Veda, "but ask Mven
Mass what he thinks!" Jokingly she covered his eyes with her hand and then
disappeared round a corner of the wall.
When Mven Mass was, at last, left alone it was already morning. A
greyish light was breaking through the cool, still air and the sky and the
sea were alike in their crystal transparency, the sea silver and the sky
pinkish.
For a long time the African stood on the balcony of the observatory
gazing at the still unfamiliar outlines of the buildings.
On a low plateau in the distance rose a huge aluminium arch crossed by
nine parallel aluminium bars, the spaces between them filled in with
yellowish-cream and silvery plastic glass; this was the building of the
Astronautical Council. Before the building stood a monument to the first
people to enter outer space; the steep slope of a mountain reaching into
clouds and whirlwinds was surmounted by an old-type spaceship, a fish-shaped
rocket that pointed its sharp nose into still unattainable heights.
Cast-metal figures, supporting each other in a chain, were making a
superhuman effort to climb upwards, spiralling their way around the base of
the monument-these were the pilots of the rocket ships, the physicists,
astronomers, biologists and writers with bold imaginations.... The hull of
the old spaceship and the light lattice-work of the Council building were
painted red by the dawn, but still Mven Mass continued pacing up and down
the balcony. Never before had he met with such a shock. He had been brought
up according to the general educational rules of the Great Circle Era, had
had a hard physical training and had successfully performed his Labours of
Hercules- the difficult tasks performed by every young person at the end of
his schooling that had been given this name in honour of ancient Greece. If
a youngster performed these tasks successfully he was considered worthy to
storm the heights of higher education.
Mven Mass had worked on the construction of the water-supply system of
a mine in Western Tibet, on the restoration of the Araucaria pine forests on
the Nahebt Plateau in South America and had taken part in the annihilation
of the sharks that had again appeared off the coasts of Australia. His
training, his heredity and his outstanding abilities enabled him to
undertake many years of persistent study to prepare himself for difficult
and responsible activities. On that day, during the first hour of his new
work, there had been a meeting with a world that was related to our Earth
and that had brought something new to his heart. With alarm Mven Mass felt
that some great depths had opened up within him, something whose existence
he had never even suspected. How he craved for another meeting with the
planet of star Epsilon in the Tucan Constellation! ... That was a world that
seemed to have come into being by power of the best legends known to the
Earth-dwellers. He would never forget the red-skinned girl, her outstretched
alluring arms, her tender, half-open lips!
The fact that two hundred and ninety light years dividing him from that
marvellous world was a distance that could not be covered by any means known
to the technicians of Earth served to strengthen rather than weaken his
dream.
Something new had grown up in Mven's heart, something that lived its
own life and did not submit to the control of the will and cold intellect.
The African had never been in love, he had been absorbed in his work almost
as a hermit would be and had never experienced anything like the alarm and
incomparable joy that had entered his heart during that meeting across the
tremendous barrier of space and time.
CHAPTER THREE. CAPTIVES OF THE DARK
The fat black arrows on the orange-coloured anameson fuel indicators
stood at zero. The spaceship had not escaped the iron star, its speed was
still great and it was being drawn towards that horrible star that human
eyes could not see.
The astronavigator helped Erg Noor, who was trembling from weakness and
from the effort he had made, to sit down at the computing machine. The
planetary motors, disconnected from the robot helmsman, faded out.
"Ingrid, what's an iron star?" asked Kay Bear, softly; all that time he
had been standing motionless behind her back.
"An invisible star, spectral class T, that has become extinguished and
is either in the process of cooling off or of reheating. It emanates the
long infrared waves of the heat end of the spectrum whose rays are black to
us and can only be seen through the electronic inverter. An owl can see the
infrared rays and, therefore, could see the star."
"Why is it called iron?"
"There is a lot of iron in the spectrum of those that have been studied
and it seems there's a lot of it in the star's composition. If the star is a
big one its mass and gravity are enormous. And I'm afraid we're going to
meet one of the big ones." "What comes next?"
"I don't know. You know yourself that we've got no fuel. We're flying
straight towards the star. We must brake Tantra down to a speed
one-thousandth of the absolute, at which speed sufficient angular deviation
will be possible. If the planetary fuel gives out too, the spaceship will
slowly approach the star until it falls on it."
Ingrid jerked her head nervously and Kay gently stroked her bare arm,
all covered with goose-flesh.
The commander of the expedition went over to the control desk and
concentrated on the instruments. Everybody kept silent, almost afraid to
breathe, even Nisa Greet, who, although she had only just woke up, realized
instinctively the danger of their situation. The fuel might be sufficient to
brake the ship; but with loss of velocity it would be more difficult to get
out of the tremendous gravitational field of the iron star without the
ship's motors. If Tantra had not approached so close and if Lynn had
realized in time ... but what consolation was there in those empty "ifs"?
Three hours passed before Erg Noor had made his decision. Tantra
vibrated from the powerful thrust of the trigger motors. Her speed was
reduced. An hour, a second, a third and a fourth, an elusive movement of the
commander's hand, horrible nausea for everybody in the ship and the
terrifying brown star disappeared from the forward screen and reappeared on
the second. Invisible bonds of gravity continued to hold the ship and were
recorded in the measuring instruments. Two red eyes burned over Erg Noor's
head. He pulled a lever towards himself and the motors stopped working.
"We're out!" breathed Pel Lynn in relief. The commander slowly turned
his glance towards him.
"We're not. We have only the iron ration of fuel left, sufficient for
orbital revolution and landing."
"What can we do?"
"Wait! I have diverted the ship a little, but we are passing too close.
A battle is now going on between the star's force of gravity and the reduced
speed of Tantra. It's flying like a lunar rocket at the moment and if it can
get away we shall fly towards the Sun and will be able to call Earth. The
time required for the journey, of course, will he much greater. In about
thirty years we'll send out our call for help and another eight years later
it will come."
"Thirty-eight years!" Bear whispered in scarcely audible tones in
Ingrid's ear. She pulled him sharply by the sleeve and turned away.
Erg Noor leaned back in his chair and dropped his hands on his knees.
Nobody spoke and the instruments continued softly humming. Another melody,
out of tune and, therefore, ominous, was added to the tuned melody of the
navigation instruments. The call of the iron star, the great strength of its
iron mass pulling for the weakened spaceship, was almost physically
tangible.
Nisa Creet's cheeks were burning, her heart was beating wildly. This
inactive waiting had become unbearable.
The hours passed slowly. One after another the awakened members of the
expedition appeared in the control tower. The number of silent people
increased until all fourteen were assembled.
The speed of the ship had been progressively reduced until it reached a
point that was lower than the velocity of escape so that Tantra could not
get away from the iron star. Her crew forgot all about food and sleep and
did not leave the control tower for many miserable hours during which the
ship's course changed more and more to a curve until she was in the fatal
elliptical orbit. Tantra's fate was obvious to the entire crew.
A sudden howl made them all start. Astronomer Pour Hyss jumped up and
waved his hands. His distorted face was unrecognizable, he bore no
resemblance to a man of the Great Circle Era. Fear, self-pity and a craving
for revenge had swept all signs of intellectuality from the face of the
scientist.
"Him, it was him," howled Pour Hyss, pointing to Pel Lynn, "that clot,
that fool, that brainless worm ...." The astronomer choked as he tried to
recall the swear-words of his ancestors that had long before gone out of
use. Nisa, who was standing near him, moved away contemptuously. Erg Noor
stood up.
"The condemnation of a colleague will not help us. The time is past
when such an action could have been intentional. In this case," Noor spun
the handles on the computing machine carelessly, "as you see there was a
thirty per cent probability of error. If we add to that the inevitable
depression that comes at the end of a tour of duty and the disturbance due
to the pitching of the ship I don't doubt that you. Pour Hyss, would have
made the same mistake!"
"And you?" shouted the astronomer, but with less fury than before.
"I should not. I saw a monster like this at close quarters during the
36th Space Expedition. It is mostly my fault-I hoped to pilot the ship
through the unknown region myself, but I did not foresee everything, I
confined myself to giving simple instructions!"
"How could you have known that they would enter this region without
you?" exclaimed Nisa.
"I should have known it," answered Erg Noor, firmly, in this way
refusing the friendly aid of the astronavigator, "but there's no sense in
talking about it until we get bade to Earth."
"To Earth!" whined Pour Hyss and even Pel Lynn frowned in perplexity,
"to say that, when all is lost and only death lies ahead of us!"
"Not death but a gigantic struggle lies ahead of us," answered Erg
Noor, confidently, sitting down in a chair that stood before the table. "Sit
down. There's no need to hurry until Tantra has made one and a half
revolutions."
Those present obeyed him in silence and Nisa gave the biologist a
smile, triumphant, despite the hopelessness of the moment.
"This star undoubtedly has a planet, even two, I imagine, judging by
the curves of the isograve.10 The planets, as you see," the
commander made a rapid but accurate sketch, "should be big ones and,
therefore, should have an atmosphere. We don't need to land, though, we have
enough atomized solid oxygen." " Erg Noor stopped to gather his thoughts.
"We shall become the satellite of the planet and travel in orbit around it.
If the atmosphere of the planet is suitable and we use up our air, we have
sufficient planetary fuel to land and call for help. In six months we can
calculate the direction," he continued, ''transmit to Earth the results
obtained from Zirda and send for a rescue ship and save our ship."
"If we do save it..." Pour Hyss pulled a wry face as he tried to hide
the joy that kindled anew in his heart.
"Yes, if we do," agreed Erg Noor. "That, however, is clearly our goal.
We must muster all our forces to achieve it. You, Pour Hyss and Ingrid
Dietra, make your observations and calculate the size of the planets, Bear
and Nisa. compute the velocity from the mass of the planets and when you
know that compute the orbital velocity of the spaceship and the optimal
radiant12 for its revolutions."
The explorers began to make preparations for a landing should it prove
to be necessary. The biologist, the geologist and the physician prepared a
reconnaissance robot, the mechanics adjusted the landing locators and
searchlights and got ready a rocket satellite that would transmit a message
to Earth.
The work went particularly well after the horror and hopelessness they
had experienced and was only interrupted by the pitching of the ship in
gravitational vortices. Tantra, however, had so reduced her speed that the
pitching no longer caused the people great discomfort.
Pour Hyss and Ingrid established the presence of two planets. They had
to reject the idea of approaching the outer planet--it was huge in size,
cold, encircled by a thick layer of atmosphere that was probably poisonous
and threatened them with death. If they had to make a choice of deaths it
would probably have been better to burn up on the surface of the iron star
than drown in the gloom of an ammonia atmosphere by plunging the ship into a
thousand-kilometre thick layer of ammonia ice. There were similar terrible,
gigantic planets in the solar system- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Tantra continued to approach the star. In nineteen days they determined
the size of the inner planet and it proved to be bigger than Earth. The
planet was quite close to its sun, the iron star, and was carried round its
orbit at frantic speed, its year being no more than two or three terrestrial
months. The invisible star T no doubt made it quite warm with its black rays
and, if there was an atmosphere, life could have emerged there. In the
latter case landing would be particularly dangerous.
Alien forms of life that had developed under conditions of other
planets and by other evolutionary paths and had the albumin cells common to
the whole Cosmos were extremely dangerous to Earth-dwellers. The adaptation
of the organism to protect itself against harmful refuse and disease
bacteria that had been going on for millions of centuries on our planet was
powerless against alien forms of life. To the same degree life from other
planets was in similar danger on Earth.
The basic activity of animal life-in killing to devour and in devouring
to kill-made its appearance with de-pressingly brutal cruelty when the
animal life of different worlds clashed. Fantastic diseases, instantaneous
epidemics, the terrible spreading of pests and horrible injuries beset the
first explorations of habitable hut uninhabited planets. Worlds that were
inhabited by intelligent beings made numerous experiments and preparations
before establishing direct spaceship communications. On our Earth, far
removed from the central parts of the Galaxy where life abounds, there had
been no visitors from the planets of other stars, no representatives of
other civilizations. The Astronautical Council had shortly before completed
preparations for the reception of visitors from the planets of not too
distant stars in the Ophiuchus, Cygnus, Ursa Major and Apus constellations.
Erg Noor, worried by the possibility of meeting with unknown forms of
life, ordered the biological means of defence, that he had taken a big
supply of in the hope of visiting Vega, to be brought out of the distant
store-rooms.
At last Tantra equalized her orbital velocity with that of the planet
and then began to revolve around it. The indefinite, dark-brown surface of
the planet, or rather, of its atmosphere, with reflections of the
bloody-brown sun, could only be seen through the electronic inverter. All
members of the expedition were busy at the instruments.
'"The temperature of the upper layers of the daylight side is 320° on
the Kelvin scale." "
"Rotation about the axis approximately 20 days." "The locators show the
presence of water and land." ''The thickness of the atmosphere is 1,700
kilometres." "The exact mass is 43.2 times Earth's mass." The reports
followed one another continuously and the nature of the planet was becoming
clear.
Erg Noor summarized the figures as they came in and was making
preparations to compute the orbit. The planet was a big one, 43.2 times the
mass of Earth, and its force of gravity would hold the ship pressed down to
the ground. The people would be as helpless as flies on a fly-paper.
The commander recalled the terrible stories he had heard, half legend,
half history, of the old spaceships that had, for various reasons, come into
contact with the huge planets. In those days the slow ships with low-powered
fuel often perished. The end came with a roar of motors and the spasmodic
shuddering of a ship that could not get away but remained stuck to the
surface of the planet. The ship remained intact but the bones of the people
trying to crawl about the ship were broken. The indescribable horror of
great weight had been communicated in the fragmentary cries of last reports,
in the farewell transmissions.
The crew of Tantra were not menaced by that danger as long as they
revolved about the planet. If they had to land on its surface, however, only
the strongest people would be able to drag the weight of their own bodies in
this, the future haven that was to be theirs for many long years .... Could
they keep alive under such conditions- crushed by the great weight, in the
eternal darkness of the infrared rays of the black sun, in a dense
atmosphere?
Whatever the conditions were, it was a hope of salvation, it did not
mean death and, anyway, there was no choice!
Tantra's orbit drew closer to the outer fringe of the atmosphere. The
expedition could not miss the opportunity of investigating a hitherto
unknown planet that was comparatively close to Earth. The lighted, or
rather, heated side of the planet differed from the night side not only by
its much greater temperature but also by the huge agglomerations of
electricity that so interfered with the powerful locators that their
indications were distorted beyond recognition. Erg Noor decided to study the
planet with the help of bomb stations. They sent out a physical research
robot and the automatic recorder reported on an astonishing quantity of free
oxygen in an atmosphere of neon and nitrogen, the presence of water vapour
and a temperature of 12° C. These were conditions that, in general, were
similar to those on Earth. But the pressure of the thick atmosphere was 1.4
times that of normal pressure on Earth and the force of gravity was 2.5
times greater.
"We can live here," said the biologist, smiling feebly as lie reported
the station's findings to the commander.
"If we can live on that gloomy, heavy planet, then something is
probably living there already, something small and harmful."
For the spaceship's fifteenth revolution a bomb beacon with a powerful
transmitter was prepared. This second physical research station, dropped on
the night side when the planet had rotated through 120°, disappeared without
sending out any signals.
"It has fallen into the ocean," said geologist Beena Ledd, biting her
lips in annoyance.
"We must feel our way with the main locator before we put out a TV
robot. We've only got two of them."
Tantra emitted a bunch of directed radio waves as she revolved round
the planet, feeling for the contours of seas and continents that owing to
distortion were unclear. They found the outlines of a huge plain that thrust
out into the ocean, or divided two oceans, almost on the planet's equator.
The spaceship's ray zigzagged across a strip of land two hundred kilometres
wide. Suddenly a bright point flared up on the locator screen. A whistle
that lashed their strained nerves told them that it was no hallucination.
"Metal!" exclaimed the geologist, "an open deposit." Erg Noor shook his
head.
"Although the flash did not last long I managed to note its regular
outline. That was a huge piece of metal, a meteorite or ...."
"A ship!" exclaimed Nisa and the biologist together. "Fantasy!" snapped
Pour Hyss.
"It may be fact," objected Erg Noor. "What does it matter, it's no use
arguing," said Pour Hyss, unwilling to give in. "There's no way of proving
it, we're not going to laud, are we?"
"We'll check up on it in three hours' time when we reach that plain
again. Notice that the metal object is on the plain that I, too, would have
chosen to land on. We'll throw out the TV robot at that very spot. Tune the
locator ray to a six-second warning!"
The commander's plan was successful and Tantra made another three-hour
flight round the dark planet. The next time the ship approached the
continental plain it was met by TV broadcasts from the robot. The people
peered into the light screen. With a click the visible ray was switched on
and peered like a human eye, noting the outlines of things far down below,
in that thousand-kilometre-deep black abyss. Kay Bear could well imagine the
head of the robot station sticking out of the armour plate and revolving
like a lighthouse. The zone that was swept by the instrument's eye appeared
on the screen and was there and then photographed: the view consisted of low
cliffs, hills and the winding black lines of watercourses. Suddenly the
vision of a gleaming, fish-shaped object crossed the screen and again melted
into the darkness as it was abandoned by the light ray to the darkness and
the ledges of the plateau.
"A spaceship!" gasped several voices in unison. Nisa looked at Pour
Hyss with undisguised triumph. The screen went dark as Tantra left the area
of the TV robot's activity and Eon Thai immediately set about developing the
film of the electronic photographs. With fingers that trembled with
impatience he placed the film in the projector of the hemispherical screen
that would give them stereoscopic pictures of what had been photographed.
The inner walls of the hollow hemisphere gave them an enlarged picture.
The familiar cigar-shaped outlines of the ship's hows, the bulge of the
stern, the high ridge of the equilibrium receiver .... No matter how
unbelievable it all was, no matter how utterly impossible they might regard
a meeting here, on the dark planet, the robot could not invent anything, a
terrestrial spaceship lay there! It lay horizontally, in the normal landing
position, supported by its powerful landing struts, undamaged, as though it
had only just alighted on to the planet of the iron star.
Tantra, revolving in a shorter orbit closer to the planet, sent out
signals that were not answered. A few more hours passed. The fourteen
members of the expedition again gathered in the control tower. Erg Noor, who
had been sitting in deep contemplation, stood up.
"I propose to land Tantra. Perhaps our brothers are in need of help,
perhaps their ship is damaged and cannot return to Earth. If so we can take
them, transfer their anameson and save ourselves. There is no sense in
sending out a rescue rocket. It cannot do anything to give us fuel and will
use up so much energy that there will not be enough left to send a signal to
Earth."
"Suppose the ship is here because of a shortage of anameson?" asked Pel
Lynn, cautiously.
"Then it should have ion planetary charges, they could not have used up
everything. As you see the spaceship is in its proper position which means
they landed with the planetary motors. We'll transfer the ion fuel, take off
again and go into orbit; then we can call Earth for help and in case of
success that won't take more than eight years. And if we can get anameson,
then we shall have won out." "Maybe they have photon and not ion charges for
their planetary motors," said one of the engineers.
"We can make use of them in the big motors if we fit them with
auxiliary bowl reflectors."
"I see you've thought of everything.," said the engineer, giving in.
"There is still the risk of landing on a heavy planet and the risk of
living there," muttered Pour Hyss. "It's awful just to think of that world
of darkness!"
"The risk, of course, remains. But there is risk in our very situation
and we shall hardly increase it by landing. The planet on which our
spaceship will land is not a bad one as long as we do not damage the ship."
Erg Noor cast a glance at the dial of the speed regulator and walked
swiftly to the control desk. For a whole minute he stood in front of the
levers and vernier scales of the controls. The fingers of his big hands
moved as though they were selecting chords on some musical instrument, his
back was bent and his face turned to stone.
Nisa Greet went up to him, boldly took his right hand and pressed the
palm to her smooth cheek, hot from excitement. Erg Noor nodded in gratitude,
stroked the girl's mass of hair and straightened himself up.
"We are entering the lower layers of the atmosphere to land," he said
loudly, switching on the warning siren. The howl carried throughout the ship
and the crew hurried to strap themselves into hydraulic floating scats.
Erg Noor dropped into the soft embrace of the landing chair that rose
up from the floor before the control desk. Then came the heavy strokes of
the planetary engines and the spaceship rushed down, howling, towards the
cliffs and oceans of the unknown planet.
The locators and the infrared reflectors felt their way through the
primordial darkness below, red lights glowed on the altimeter scales at
15,000 metres. It was not anticipated that there would be mountains much
over 10,000 metres high on the planet where water and the heat of the black
sun had been working to level out the surface as was the case on Earth.
The first revolution round the planet revealed no mountains, only
insignificant heights, little bigger than those of Mars. It looked as though
the activity of the internal forces that gave rise to mountains had ceased
or had been checked.
Erg Noor placed the altitude governor at 2,000 metres and switched on
the powerful searchlights. A huge ocean stretched below the spaceship, an
ocean of horror, an unbroken mass of black waves that rose and fell over
unfathomable depths.
The biologist wiped away the perspiration caused by his strenuous
efforts; he was trying to catch in his instrument the faint variations in
reflection from the black water to determine its salt and mineral content.
The gleaming black of the water gave way to the dull black of land. The
crossed rays of the searchlights cut a narrow lane between walls of
darkness. Unexpectedly there were patches of colour in this lane, yellow
sands and the greyish-green surface of a flat rocky ridge.
Tantra swept across the continent, obedient to the skilled hand of the
commander.
At last Erg Noor found the plain he was looking for; it proved to be
low-lying country that could not possibly be termed a plateau although it
was obvious that the tides and storms of the black sea would not reach it,
lying, as it did, some hundred metres above the surrounding country.
The locator on the spaceship's port bow whistled. Tantra's searchlights
followed the locator beam and the clear outlines of a first class spaceship
came into view.
The bow armour, made of an isotope of iridium having a reorganized
crystalline structure, shone like new in the rays of the searchlight. There
were no temporary structures anywhere near the ship, there were no lights on
board-it stood dark and lifeless and did not in any way react to the
approach of a sister ship. The searchlight rays moved past the ship and were
reflected from a huge disc with spiral projections as they would have been
from a blue mirror. The disc was standing on edge, leaning slightly to one
side and was partly buried in the black soil. For a moment the observers got
the impression that there were cliffs behind the disc and that beyond them
the darkness was blacker and thicker, probably it was a precipice or a slope
leading down to the lowlands ....
The deafening roar of Tantra's sirens shook the hull of
the ship. Erg Noor intended to land close to the newly-discovered ship
and was giving warning to any people who might be within the danger zone,
that is, within a radius of some thousand metres from the landing place. The
terrific roar of the planetary motors could be heard even inside the ship
and a cloud of red-hot dust appeared in the screens. The ship's floor began
to rise up and then slip backwards. The hydraulic hinges of the landing
seats turned them smoothly and soundlessly, keeping them perpendicular to
the now vertical floors.
The huge jointed landing struts slid out of the ship's hull,
straightened out and took the first shock of the landing on an alien world.
A shock, a recoil and another shock and Tantra, her bows still swaying, came
to a standstill at the same time as the engines cut out. Erg Noor raised his
hand to a lever on the control desk that was now directly over his head and
released the jointed struts. Slowly, with a number of short jerks, the
spaceship's bows sank towards the ground until the hull had assumed its
normal, horizontal position. The landing had been accomplished. As usual,
the landing had shaken the human organism BO strongly that the astronauts
required some time to recover and remained semi-recumbent in their landing
seats.
They were all held down by an awful weight and were scarcely able to
rise to their feet, like patients recovering slowly from a serious illness.
The irrepressible biologist, however, had managed to take a sample of the,
air.
"It's fit to breathe," he said. "I'll take a look at it through the
microscope."
"Don't bother," said Erg Noor, unfastening the cushions of his landing
chair, "we can't go out without a spacesuit. There may be very dangerous
spores and viruses on this planet."
In the air-lock at the exit to the ship biologically shielded
spacesuits and "jumping skeletons" had been prepared in readiness for an
exploring party; the "skeletons" were steel, leather-covered frames that
were worn over the spacesuits and were fitted with electric motors, springs
and shock absorbers to enable the explorers to move about under conditions
of excessive weiglit.
After six years' travelling through interstellar space every one of
them wanted to feel soil, even alien soil, under his feet. Kay Bear, Pour
Hyss, Ingrid, Doctor Louma Lasvy and two engineers had to remain on board
the vessel to man the radio, searchlights and various measuring and
recording instruments.
Nisa stood aside from the party with her space helmet in her hands.
"Why do you hesitate, Nisa?" the commander called to her as he tested
the radio set in the top of his helmet. "Come along to the spaceship!"
"I ... I ..." the girl stammered, "I believe it's dead, it's been
standing here a long time .... Another catastrophe, another victim claimed
by the merciless Cosmos. I know it's inevitable but still it's hard to bear,
especially after Zirda and Algrab ...."
"Perhaps the death of this spaceship will mean life for us," said Pour
Hyss who was busy training a short-focus telescope on the other ship which
still remained unlighted.
Eight members of the expedition climbed into the air-lock and waited.
"Turn on the air!" ordered Erg Noor addressing those who were remaining
on the ship and from whom they were now divided by an air-tight wall.
When the pressure in the air-lock had risen to ten atmospheres and was
higher than that outside, hydraulic jacks opened the hermetically sealed
doors. The air pressure in the lock was so great that it almost hurled the
people out of the chamber and at the same time prevented anything harmful in
the