Eden Page 15

  "Get to the point!"

  "The point is this. We have the following situation. Strangers from space land on a planet inhabited by intelligent beings. In what possible ways do the inhabitants react?"

  Nobody replied, so the Doctor went on: "Even if the beings of this planet were created in test tubes or made in some stranger manner, I see only three possible types of behavior: to attempt to communicate with the strangers, to attack them, or to flee. It turns out, however, that a fourth type is possible—total indifference!"

  "You told us that they nearly broke your ribs. That's indifference?!" the Cyberneticist sneered. But the Chemist nodded; there was a light in his eyes.

  The Doctor replied: "If you were to find yourself in the path of a herd of cattle running from a fire, you might fare worse than we did. But that wouldn't mean that the herd had noticed you. I tell you, the crowd of doublers didn't see us at all. They took no interest in us. There was fear, yes, but not of us. We were merely in the way."

  Then the Chemist spoke. "Yes," he said slowly. "All this time, it's been bothering me, like reading a text where the sentences are out of order. Now it falls into place. Yes, he's right. They didn't see me. Except for the closest ones, but they were the only ones who weren't in panic—almost as if seeing me had a sobering effect on them. While they were looking at me, they were simply inhabitants of a planet amazed to see an alien creature. They had no wish to harm me. In fact, if I recall correctly, they even helped me extricate myself from the herd…"

  "And what if someone set that herd on you, to drive you into the open?" asked the Engineer.

  The Chemist shook his head. "There was no one there like that, no flying disks, no guards, no organization—there was chaos, confusion. Yes," he added, "it's odd that I see that only now! That those who noticed me appeared to regain their senses, while all the others were berserk with fear!"

  "But in that case," said the Captain, "why were the lights extinguished at precisely the moment of our arrival?"

  "What puzzles me," said the Doctor, "is the panic itself."

  "Yes, what could have caused it?"

  "Perhaps a decline in the planet's civilization," suggested the Cyberneticist after a moment's silence. "A period of regression, disintegration, or a kind of cancer of society."

  "Unconvincing," said the Captain. "On our Earth, which is an average planet, there have been periods of regression, and many civilizations have risen and fallen, but, taking our history as a whole, you get a picture of ever-increasing complexity, and of life's growing value. We call this 'progress.' Progress is a normal phenomenon. Yet, by the law of large numbers, there will be statistical deviations from the norm, in both positive and negative directions. We may have landed on a world at the far negative end of that distributional curve…"

  "Mathematical mysticism," muttered the Engineer.

  "But that factory exists," the Physicist said.

  "The first factory, yes. The existence of the second is a hypothesis only."

  "In other words, we need another expedition," said the Chemist.

  The Engineer looked around. The sun was sinking in the west; the shadows on the sand were growing longer. A light wind blew.

  "Today…?" he asked, looking at the Captain.

  "Today we should go for water—nothing more." The Captain stood up. "An interesting discussion," he said, though obviously thinking about something else. He picked up his suit.

  "This evening," he continued, "we'll drive to the stream, for water. We shouldn't be diverted from that by anything short of a direct threat." He turned to the men sitting on the sand, considered them for a while, then said, "I don't like this."

  "What don't you like?"

  "Their leaving us in peace after that visit two days ago. No community acts like that when an alien spaceship drops out of the sky."

  "Such indifference would support what I said," said the Cyberneticist.

  "About a 'cancer' affecting Eden? Well, from our point of view that wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. Except…"

  "Except what?"

  "Nothing. Listen, let's have a look at Defender. Let's dig it out. Its diodes ought to be intact."

  IX

  For two hours they cleared the lower bay of robot pieces, of almost impossibly interlocked parts that covered Defender's casing like rubble from an avalanche. The heavier objects they lifted with a small hoist, and the Engineer and the Captain took apart whatever wouldn't fit through the door. Two metal plates, which were wedged between Defender's turret and a case of lead weights, finally had to be cut up with an electric arc, for which cables were lowered from the instrument panel in the engine room. The Cyberneticist and the Physicist sorted out the pieces pulled from the heap. What couldn't be repaired was scrapped. The Chemist, in turn, divided up the scrap into metal and plastic. Sometimes they had to drop what they were doing to help move some particularly massive piece. By six o'clock they had gained sufficient access to Defender's flattened head to open its upper hatch.

  The Cyberneticist was the first to jump into the dark interior. A light was lowered to him on a wire. They could hear his shout, muffled as if coming from a well.

  "They're all here!" he cried triumphantly. "Everything's working! You could get in and drive off!"

  "Well, Defender was built to take punishment," said the Engineer, beaming. He had bleeding scratches on his forearms.

  "Gentlemen, it's six. If we're going to get water, we'd better do it now," said the Captain. "The Cyberneticist and the Engineer have their hands full, so I think we should use the same crew as yesterday."

  "I don't agree!"

  "Look…" the Captain began, but the Engineer said, "You can manage here as well as I can. I'm going this time."

  They argued for a while, but finally the Captain gave in. The expedition would consist of the Engineer, the Physicist, and the Doctor. The Doctor insisted on going again.

  "The canisters are ready," said the Captain. "It's about twelve miles to the brook."

  "If we can, we'll make two trips," said the Engineer. "That would give us a hundred gallons."

  "We'll see."

  The Chemist and the Cyberneticist wanted to accompany them out, but the Engineer put up his hand. "We don't need an escort. That's silly."

  "I have to be outside anyway," said the Chemist.

  They went up the steel ladder.

  The sun was low in the sky. After checking the suspension, the steering, and the fuel supply, the Engineer took the driver's seat. But the moment the Doctor got in, the doubler, who had been lying in the shade of the ship, stood up, straightened to its full height, and shuffled toward him. When the jeep began moving, the huge creature whined and set off after it at a speed that amazed the Chemist. The Doctor shouted to the Engineer, and the jeep came to a halt.

  "Now what?" grumbled the Engineer. "We're certainly not taking him with us!"

  The Doctor, not knowing what to do, looked with embarrassment at the head and shoulders towering above him as the doubler, shifting its weight from one foot to the other and making wheezing sounds, stared down into his face.

  "Lock him up in the ship. He'll follow you otherwise," advised the Engineer.

  "Or put him to sleep," said the Chemist. "If he runs after us, he might attract something else."

  That was enough to persuade the Doctor. The jeep turned back to the ship, and the doubler rushed after them, making its peculiar leaps. Then the Doctor coaxed the giant into the tunnel, which was no easy task. He returned a quarter of an hour later, angry and upset.

  "I put him in the first-aid room," he said, "where there's no glass or anything sharp. But he might panic."

  "You sound like a mother hen," said the Engineer.

  The Doctor bit his lip, but said nothing in reply.

  They set off again, circling the ship in a wide arc. The Chemist went on waving even when all that was visible was a high, thinning cloud of dust. Then he paced back and forth near the shallow trench that c
ontained the thrower.

  Two hours later he was still pacing there when a cloud of dust reappeared among the slender calyxes and their long shadows. The red, swollen, egg-shaped solar orb had just touched the horizon, and now there was a bank of bluish clouds in the north. But the coolness that usually came at that time of day was missing; it was still stifling.

  The jeep approached, bouncing over disk-grooves. It was lower to the ground, and the tires were flatter. The Chemist could hear water splashing in all the canisters. There was even a full can on the empty seat. "How was it?" he asked.

  The Engineer removed his dark glasses and wiped the sweat and dust from his face with a handkerchief.

  "Very pleasant."

  "You didn't meet anyone?"

  "There were disks, as usual, but we passed them at a distance. We came out on the other side of that copse with the hollow in it—you know the one. The only problem was filling the canisters. A pump would have come in handy."

  "We're going back," the Physicist said.

  "But first you'll have to put the water into—"

  "Oh, there's no point," said the Physicist. "We have so many empty canisters, we'll take some of them. Afterward we can carry the whole lot down at once."

  He and the Engineer exchanged a look, as though they shared some secret thought. The Chemist failed to notice this, though he was surprised at the haste with which they unloaded the canisters and threw the new ones on the rack. A moment later they were off in a cloud of dust, which, in the light of the setting sun, made a long crimson wall across the plain.

  The Captain stepped out of the tunnel. "Still not here," he said.

  "They were here, exchanged their canisters for empty ones, and left."

  The Captain was more puzzled by this than angry. "That quickly?" He told the Chemist that he would replace him on watch in a moment, then went down to report to the Cyberneticist, who was working on the master robot.

  The Cyberneticist nodded abstractedly, having some twenty transistors in his mouth, which he spat into his hand like pits. Wrapped around his neck and smoothed out over his chest were hundreds of wires of different colors, which had spilled from the robot's entrails. These he was now connecting at such speed that his fingers seemed to be flying. Sometimes he would stop suddenly and, for a full minute or longer, stare in amazement at the diagram spread out before him.

  The Captain returned to the surface, replaced the Chemist (who went off to prepare supper for the crew), and sat down beside the thrower. To kill time, he made notes in the margins of the assembly manual that the Engineer had prepared.

  For two days now they had been racking their brains over what to do with the twenty-five thousand gallons of radioactively contaminated water in the loading bay. In order to purify the water, they needed to get the filters working, but the cable that supplied the filters with power and had to be repaired lay in the flooded area. The ship was equipped with diving gear, though not the type that was radiation-shielded. Nor was there much point in jury-rigging a shield with lead; it would be easier now to wait for the robots to be repaired and have them do the job.

  The Captain sat in the night under the ship's stern, under the blinking light. He made his notes as quickly as possible, because the light, each time, lasted no more than three seconds. Later he would laugh, seeing the scrawl this had made of his handwriting. He glanced at his watch: almost ten.

  He stood up, paced, looked for the jeep's headlights, but could see nothing. He began to walk in the direction from which the jeep would be returning.

  As usual when he was alone, he looked up at the stars. The Milky Way was climbing steeply through the blackness. From Scorpio the Captain moved his eyes left, and suddenly held his breath. Capricorn's brightest stars were barely visible, lost in a pale glow, as though the Milky Way had expanded and absorbed them. Then he understood: it was a reflection in the sky directly above the eastern horizon. His heart began to pound, and he could feel a pressure in his throat. He clenched his teeth. The reflection was whitish, dim, but later brightened, flaring several times in succession. The Captain closed his eyes, listened with the utmost concentration, but all he could hear was the pulsing of his own blood. The constellations were now almost invisible. He stood stock-still, staring at the horizon, which was filling with misty light.

  His first thought was to return to the ship and tell the others. They could bring the thrower to the battle. But on foot that would take at least three hours. Besides the jeep, they had a small helicopter, but it was sitting in radioactive water, wedged between cases. All they had been able to see of it was its broken blade, and the cabin was probably in worse condition. That left Defender. They might simply climb inside Defender, open the loading hatch by remote—there was a transmitter in the engine room—and ride down through the water, which in any case would pour out as soon as the hatch was open. In Defender they would be shielded. But could the hatch be opened? And what would they do later with all the radioactive soil around the ship? It would cover an enormous area…

  He decided to wait ten minutes. If he didn't see the headlights by then, they would go. He looked at his watch: thirteen minutes after ten. The reflection—no, he was not mistaken—was spreading slowly along the horizon, approaching Alpha Phoenix, a strip of pink on top and dull white below. He looked at his watch again. Four minutes to go. He saw the headlights.

  At first they were like a twinkling star; then they divided in two, jumped up and down, and finally grew dazzling. The Captain could now hear the sound of tires. The men were traveling fast, but not at breakneck speed, and the fact that they were in no great hurry set his mind completely at rest. As usual in such circumstances, he now felt anger.

  Without realizing it, he had walked a good three hundred feet from the ship. The jeep braked sharply, and the Doctor shouted, "Get in!"

  The Captain jumped into an empty seat, pushing a canister aside, which he found to be empty. He looked at the men—they appeared to be unhurt—and then leaned over and touched the barrel of the thrower. It was cold.

  A questioning look at the Physicist yielded no response, so the Captain waited, saying nothing. At the ship the Engineer veered sharply, which pushed the Captain back into his seat and made the empty canisters clatter. The jeep came to a halt in front of the tunnel entrance.

  "The water all evaporated?" the Captain asked with irony.

  "We couldn't get the water," said the Engineer. He swung around on his swivel seat. "We couldn't get to the brook."

  No one stepped out of the jeep. The Captain searched the Engineer's face, then the Physicist's.

  "On our first trip we saw something different," said the Physicist, "but we didn't know what it meant. We wanted to check it again."

  "And if you didn't return, what good to us would your circumspection have been?" asked the Captain, no longer able to hide his anger. "I want to hear everything. Now!"

  "They're doing something there, by the brook, on this side of it and beyond it, and in the hills and all the hollows, along the grooves. In a radius of several miles," said the Doctor. The Engineer nodded.

  'The first time, when it was still daylight, we saw a group of those huge tops. They were in a V formation, throwing up earth as if doing some kind of excavation. We only noticed them from the top of the hill on our way back. But I didn't like what I saw."

  "What didn't you like?" the Captain asked.

  "That the vertex of their wedge pointed in our direction."

  "And you went back there without saying a word about this?"

  "All right, it was foolish," said the Engineer. "But we thought that, well, there would be arguments about who should go, who should risk his life, et cetera, so we decided it would be simpler and quicker to go ourselves. I figured that when night fell, the tops would have to light up their workplace."

  "They didn't see you?"

  "No. At least, there was no indication that they did. We weren't attacked."

  "How did you go?"

&nb
sp; "Along the ridges of the hills, not on the ridges themselves but a little lower, so we wouldn't be seen against the sky. Our headlights off, of course. That's why it took so long."

  "So you had no intention of getting water? You took the canisters only to deceive the Chemist?"

  "It wasn't like that," said the Doctor. They sat in the jeep, in the light of the blinker going on, going off. "We wanted to approach the brook farther up, from the other direction. But we couldn't."

  "Why?"

  "They were doing the same thing there. And now, since nightfall, they've been pouring some kind of luminescent liquid into the trenches. It gives off enough light for us to see perfectly."

  "What is it?" the Captain asked the Engineer.

  The Engineer shrugged. "Maybe the trenches are molds. Though the liquid appears too thin to be metallic."

  "How do they carry it?"

  "They don't. They laid something along the grooves—a pipeline, maybe, but I can't say for sure."

  "They run molten metal through pipes?!"

  "I'm telling you what I saw in the darkness, through binoculars. The lighting was poor—the middle of each excavation glowed like a mercury lamp, there was a lot of glare—and we were at least half a mile away."

  The blinker went off; for a moment they sat unable to see one another; then it came on again. "We ought to disconnect that damn thing," said the Captain.

  They saw the Chemist emerging from the tunnel. "Now what?" said the Captain. The Chemist came over to the jeep, and there was a hurried exchange of questions and answers. Meanwhile the Engineer went below and switched off the current to the blinker. In the ensuing darkness, the glow on the horizon was much brighter. It had moved more to the south.