The Invincible Read online

  “I’m going down to get something to eat. Get started with the stereotype, Rohan.” Horpach’s voice sounded very tired as he turned away from the videoscreen.

  “Remote control?”

  “Not necessarily. You can send somebody out. Or even go yourself, if you want to,” said Horpach as he was opening the door and leaving the room. For one more moment Rohan could see the old man’s profile inside the dimly lit elevator as it started to go down. He looked at the field gauge. Zero. We should really begin with the photogrammetry, he thought to himself. Circle the planet and photograph it systematically. Perhaps something might be found that way. Much better than relying only on visual observations. After all, a continent isn’t the same thing as an ocean, where one sailor in the crow’s nest will do the trick. But photogrammetry would take about one month. Too long.

  The elevator had returned. Rohan got in and descended to the sixth deck. A crowd had gathered on the big platform in front of the airlock. The men no longer had any business being there; the dinner gong had been sounded for almost fifteen minutes steadily.

  The men stepped aside to let Rohan pass.

  “Jordan and Blank, come along for a stereotype investigation.”

  “Full protective gear, Navigator?”

  “No. Just the oxygen tanks. And a robot. Let’s take an Arctane. He won’t get stuck in that damned sand.” Rohan turned to the men standing around. “Well, what are you still doing here? Lost your appetite?”

  “We’d like to see what it’s like outside, Navigator.”

  “Why can’t we go ashore?”

  “Just for a few minutes—”

  They all spoke at once.

  “Steady, steady, men. Don’t lose your cool now. We’ll all soon be going sightseeing. For the time being it’s terrestrial procedure, third step routine.”

  The men left reluctantly.

  In the meantime a robot had arrived from the ship’s hold. It stepped off the freight lift. It was at least a head taller than the men. Jordan and Blank returned on an electrocart bringing some oxygen tanks with them. Rohan stood leaning against the railing of the corridor. Now that the spacecraft rested on its stern the corridor had turned into a vertical shaft reaching down all the way to the first engine room. Above and below him were the many storeys of the rocket; somewhere in the depths the conveyor belts ran quietly. He could hear faint smacking sounds coming from the hydraulic system. Cool air blew up the shaft from forty yards below where the air conditioning plant inside the engine room had cleansed the fouled atmosphere.

  The personnel at the airlock opened the door for them. Rohan made a routine check: the straps were tight; the mask fitted properly. Jordan and Blank entered behind him, followed by the robot. The steel floor resounded under the metal monster’s weighty steps. A piercing, constant hissing sound came from the air that was sucked inside the interior of the ship. The outside hatch sprung open, and they could see the engine ramp four storeys below. A small elevator was already waiting for them. (It had been released from inside the hull the moment they had entered the airlock.) The elevator shaft consisted of a wire network which stretched all the way down, touching the rim of the sand dunes. The elevator cage had no walls, and the men could feel the air, but it was hardly cooler than inside the Invincible. As they stepped onto the waiting platform, the magnetic brakes were released. From a height of eleven storeys up, the four glided down gently, passing the various sections of the ship’s hull on the way. Rohan inspected the walls mechanically. You rarely get a chance to look at a spaceship so closely from the outside, he thought to himself. That rocket had a pretty rough time, all these years. Must have been hit by some meteors … looks as if the armored plate has corroded in spots here; no longer looks shiny…

  The elevator reached its destination and came to a complete standstill on top of the soft sand dune. The men jumped out, sinking knee-deep into the shifting sand. The robot waddled ahead with firm strides, like a giant duck. It had been outfitted with absurd-looking monstrous flat feet, reminiscent of snowshoes, for just this purpose. Rohan ordered the robot to stop. Then he and his men examined the outer rim of the jet openings around the stern, approaching as closely as possible.

  “They could stand a good cleaning. Need to be ground and polished again,” he remarked to his companions.

  As they crept out from under the ship’s stern, he noticed the gigantic shadow cast by the Invincible ahead of them, a dark road stretched straight out across the sand dunes, bathed in the light of the setting sun. A strange calm emanated from the monotonously even sandy waves. Blue shadows gathered in the ridges while rosy twilight played on the crests. This warm, delicate pink reminded him of the pastel hues he had seen in picture books as a child. Such incredibly soft colors. His eyes wandered across the dunes, detecting ever new variations of this yellowish-pink glow. Farther away the colors deepened to a rich red interspersed with sickle-shaped black shadows. Far off in the distance where the dunes nestled at the foot of bare, threatening volcanic rocks, the warm colors faded into a uniform yellowish gray.

  While Rohan stood gazing at the landscape, his men carried out their routine measurements. They worked at a deliberate pace, mechanically employing the skills they had acquired over so many years. They filled small containers with samples of the atmosphere, the soil, the rocks. They tested the radioactivity of the ground with the help of a probe manipulated by the Arctane robot.

  Rohan paid no heed to what his men were doing. The oxygen mask covered only his nose and mouth, while his eyes and the rest of his head were exposed to the air. He had removed his protective helmet, and could feel the wind ruffling his hair. Tiny grains of sand were blown against his face and clung to the skin, tickling where they penetrated the gap between the mask and his cheeks. Heavy gusts of wind pulled at the loose trousers of his protective suit. The huge, bloated sun disk was dipping down close to the horizon; it was possible to look straight into the dark red ball for a moment or two. The wind whistled with long drawn-out sighs. Since the energy field around the ship permitted free passage of gases, Rohan could not make out where its invisible wall rose up from the sand.

  The gigantic area that stretched endlessly out before him seemed totally devoid of life, as if no living being had ever set foot on it. Could this be the same planet that had devoured a spaceship as immense as their own? A heavy cruiser with a crew of one hundred men, a mighty experienced sailor of the void, capable of developing energies of several million kilowatts within the fraction of a second which could be transformed into protective screens impenetrable by any matter; energies which might be bunched into destructive rays with the soaring temperatures of a burning star, that would change mountain ranges to dust and ashes, or dry out entire oceans. Yet the Condor had disappeared from this very same planet without a trace. How was it possible to explain the fact that a huge steel structure, built on earth, the fruit of a highly developed technology that had already flourished for centuries, could simply vanish in this red and gray desert without so much as even sending an S O S?

  This is what the whole continent looks like, he thought. He remembered the view from above: crater after crater with their serrated rims. The only noticeable movement came from floating cloud banks that dragged their shadows across the endless desert dunes.

  “Any radioactivity?” he asked without turning around.

  “Zero, zero, two,” replied Jordan while slowly getting off his knees. His face looked flushed, his eyes shiny. The mask distorted his voice.

  That’s negligible, Rohan thought. That couldn’t have done anything to the Condor’s crew. Besides, they’d know better than to commit any gross negligence. Even if they hadn’t carried out the routine stereotype examination, the automatic controls would have sounded the alarm,

  “Atmosphere?”

  “Nitrogen seventy-eight per cent, argon two per cent, carbon dioxide zero, methane four per cent, the rest is oxygen.”

  “Oxygen sixteen per cent? Are you sure?”


  “Absolutely sure.”

  “Any radioactivity in the air?”

  “Practically none.”

  That much oxygen. Strange. Rohan was surprised. He stepped over to the robot who held out a cassette containing all the figures for Rohan’s inspection.

  Maybe they tried to go without oxygen tanks. He dismissed the thought as absurd. Occasionally a crew member would take off his mask against orders and die of poisoning. Maybe one or two men, but no more than that.

  “Are you through with everything?” he wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  “Then get back to the ship.”

  “How about you, Navigator?”

  “I’ll stay a while longer. Just go back now, all of you!” He grew impatient in his desire to be alone. Blank swung the strap over his shoulder. The strap held all the containers together that now dangled down his back. Jordan handed the probe to the robot. The men waded clumsily through the deep sand, the Arctane waddling behind them like a man in disguise.

  Rohan walked some distance until he could see the broad openings of the energy-field emitters sticking out of the sand. In a sudden surge of childish mischief he grabbed a handful of sand and threw it against the spot where the invisible wall was supposed to be. Not that he needed any confirmation; he just obeyed a playful impulse. The sand arched through the air, then trickled down in a straight line as if it had hit an invisible glass vault. Rohan’s fingers were itching to tear off his mask. How well he knew that sensation: spit out the plastimouthpiece, jerk loose the safety straps, then pump his chest full of air, sucking it deeply into his lungs…

  I’m getting emotional, he thought, as he slowly made his way back to the ship. The elevator was waiting for him, empty, the platform nestled softly in the sand. Within a few minutes the wind had already deposited a fine layer of dust upon the entire structure.

  In the main corridor of the fifth deck he glanced at the information panel. The commander was in the forward cabin. He made his way up there.

  “To sum it up, it’s quite idyllic out there,” was Horpach’s comment after listening to the navigator’s report. “No radioactivity, no spores, fungi, viruses … nothing except this oxygen. Be sure you have some cultures made of those samples.”

  “That’s already being taken care of in the lab. Perhaps life has developed on some other continent of this planet.” Rohan’s voice lacked conviction.

  “I’d rather doubt that. Not too much solar irradiation beyond the equatorial zone. Didn’t you notice how thick the polar icecaps seemed to be? They must be some five to six miles deep. More likely we’d find life in the ocean. Maybe some algae or seaweeds. I wonder why no living forms ever left the water and adapted to dry land?”

  “We’ll have to take a closer look at that ocean,” said Rohan.

  “It’s too soon to ask our people for definite data; but the planet seems to be quite old. It must have been around for a good billion years. Even the sun must once have seen better days. Lost all its lustre. It’s almost a red dwarf star. Puzzling that there is no life on land. Perhaps some special evolutionary characteristic that cannot exist outside of water … that would explain the presence of oxygen, but not the mysterious disappearance of the Condor.”

  “Maybe there are aquatic life forms down on the ocean bed, some kind of hidden civilization at the bottom of the sea,” ventured Rohan.

  The two men examined a huge map of the planet. It had been drawn in Mercator projection about a century earlier, according to the data obtained by automatic probes. The map was inexact, showing only the outlines of the most important continents and oceans, the approximate extent of the polar caps and the largest craters. A red dot marked their landing site, below the eighth parallel of the northern latitude. Horpach swept aside the map impatiently,

  “How can you believe such nonsense!” he snapped at the navigator. “Tressor was just as smart as we are. He would never have capitulated to a bunch of fish from the ocean. Besides, let’s assume any intelligent life had evolved in the sea, it would surely have established a foothold on dry land. They could always have used protective suits filled with ocean water. Rubbish. Total nonsense,” he grumbled, not because Rohan’s suggestion was entirely without any merit. His thoughts had already raced ahead to something else.

  “We’ll stay here for a while,” he concluded. He touched the lower rim of the map, which rolled up with a softly rustling noise, then disappeared on one of the horizontal shelves of the big map case. “We’ll just wait and see.”

  “And if nothing happens?” Rohan inquired cautiously. “Won’t we start looking for them?”

  “Be reasonable, Rohan! Such a—” The astrogator tried to find a suitable phrase. But the right word would not come. He replaced it by a disdainful wave of his right hand.

  “This planet is as big as Mars. How can we possibly send out search parties for them? How can we hope to find the Condor?”

  “The soil does contain a lot of iron,” Rohan admitted reluctantly. An analysis of the soil had indeed shown a considerable admixture of iron oxides, so that ferro-induction values would be useless under these circumstances. Rohan did not know what else to say. He was quite convinced that the Commander would find a solution somehow. After all, they could not return home empty-handed. He gazed at Horpach’s heavy eyebrows with their white bristling hairs, and he waited.

  “To be frank with you, I’m not so sure that these forty-eight hours we are supposed to wait will help us in any way; but these are the regulations we have to obey,” suddenly confessed the astrogator. “Sit down, Rohan! You bother my conscience. This Regis III is the most idiotic place in the universe. Sheer idiocy to have sent the Condor here in the first place. I can’t imagine why they did it. But that’s neither here nor there. We just have to face the facts of the situation.”

  Horpach fell silent. He was in a bad mood, which usually made him quite talkative and liable to become almost confidential. This was fraught with danger, though, for he might cut short such brief periods of intimacy with some nasty remark.

  “Let’s come to the point. We must act; we can’t wait. All right then. Place several photographic probes into orbit around the equator. Make sure the orbit will be circular and not too far out. Let’s say about forty miles.”

  “But that would still be inside the ionosphere,” objected Rohan. “They’d burn up after a few times around the globe.”

  “So what? Let them burn up! As long as they get in a lot of photos. I’d even suggest not going beyond thirty-five miles. They’ll probably burn up after the tenth orbit. But we can’t send them any higher than that and still get usable shots. Do you have any idea what a rocket looks like seen from sixty miles altitude, even with the best tele-lens? The head of a pin would be as big as a huge mountain next to it. Start right away… Rohan!”

  The navigator was halfway out of the door when he turned to see Horpach throw a paper on the table. It was the report with the results of the routine stereotype analysis.

  “What is that supposed to mean? What kind of lunacy is that? Who made out that report?”

  “The automatic analyzer. What’s the matter?” asked Rohan making an effort to suppress the anger that was slowly rising in him. Now he’s got to get on my back, he thought walking forward with deliberate slowness.

  “Read that! Here, you see!”

  “Methane: four per cent,” Rohan read out loud. “Four per cent!” he exclaimed in a startled voice.

  “Four per cent methane, that’s what it says here. And sixteen per cent oxygen. Do you realize what that means? An explosive mixture. Can you explain why the whole atmosphere didn’t explode when we landed with diborane as a propellant?”

  “Incredible—I can’t understand it,” stammered Rohan. He hurried over to the control panel, pushed the button of the suction tube which would deliver a sample of the outside atmosphere. While Horpach paced the floor impatiently in ominous silence, Rohan intently observed the analyzers.

 
“Well, any change?”

  “No, the same analysis as before: methane four per cent, oxygen sixteen per cent,” replied Rohan. Although he failed to understand this result, he experienced a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that the astrogator could not put the blame on him.

  “Let me see that, will you,” urged Horpach. “Methane: four per cent. Damn it, you’re right. All right, then. Put the probes into orbit and then come over to the small lab. What do we have our experts for? Let them rack their brains a bit.”

  Rohan took the elevator down, called two rocket experts to join him in the small briefing area, where he gave them the astrogator’s orders. Then he returned to the second storey. Here were the laboratories and cabins of the experts. He passed several narrow doors, each marked by a name plate bearing nothing but initials: Ch. I., Ch. Ph., Ch. T., Ch. B. The door of the small lab stood wide open. He could hear the monotonous voices of the experts. Now and then they were interrupted by the astrogator’s deep bass. Rohan stopped at the threshold. All the “chiefs” were assembled in this room: the engineers, biologists, physicists, physicians, and the technologists from the engine room. The astrogator sat at the farthest end next to the portable computer. Moderon, holding his swarthy hands folded in front of him, was speaking. “I’m no gas expert. In any event, we are not dealing here with ordinary methane. The energy of the chemical bonds is different, even if it is only a difference of one-hundredth. It will react with oxygen only in the presence of some catalytic agent, and then only with great difficulty.”

  “Where does this methane come from?” inquired Horpach, twiddling his thumbs.

  “Its carbon is of organic origin, of course. There is not much of it, but beyond any doubt—”

  “Are there any isotopes? How old are they? How old is this methane?”

  “Anywhere from 2 to 15 million years.”

  “You certainly left yourself a nice amount of leeway!”