The Invincible Page 9

  “Nickel, iron, manganese, beryllium, titanium,” the astrogator read the results off the brightly illuminated scale. He stood next to Rohan. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to see with my own eyes what’s going on there.”

  “It’s raining metallic particles,” said Rohan slowly. “They must be quite small to judge by their discharges.”

  “I’d like to get a close look at them,” said the astrogator. “How about it? Shall we risk it?”

  “You mean switch off the energy field?”

  “Yes. For a fraction of a second. We’ll catch a few particles inside the protected zone, the rest will be repelled when we switch our energy field back on.”

  Rohan did not answer for a long time.

  “Well, it’s conceivable…” he finally said.

  But before the commander had time to step over to the instrument panel, the flickering flames died down just as rapidly as they had flared up. Stark darkness reigned again, the kind that is known only on moonless planets that circle far from the star clusters of the galaxy.

  “No luck this time,” muttered Horpach. His hand rested on the main switch. He remained standing for another minute, then nodded briefly in Rohan’s direction and left the room. The all-clear signal sounded throughout all levels of the spaceship.

  Rohan sighed, glanced once again at the videoscreens: there was nothing on the image but pitch black darkness. Then he went back to bed.

  The Cloud

  They were getting used to the planet, its never-changing desert face, the slight shadows cast by its unnaturally light clouds as they drifted apart. Even by daylight one could see them through the light of the bright stars. They came to accept the ever-present sand that crunched under wheel and foot. They even grew accustomed to the dull red sun, whose rays were incomparably softer than those of its terrestrial counterpart. Instead of warmth, one felt its silent presence whenever the back was turned.

  Every morning the work troops set out, each one in a different direction. The energo-robots disappeared among the dunes, rocking like giant boats. Once the dust cloud settled those who remained at the Invincible would try to guess what the day would offer. The men discussed what one of the radar observers had said to one of the communications technicians, or tried to recall the name of the pilot who had lost a leg on the navigational satellite Terra 5 six years ago. They passed the time chatting about little things, perched on empty canisters below the rocket, whose shadow circled like the hand on a gigantic sundial until it grew long enough to touch the ring formed by the energo-robots. Then the men rose and began to look out for their friends, who would return exhausted and hungry.

  Without the novelty which had originally inspired them when they were working in the metallic debris of the “city,” their energy soon dissipated. Hardly a week had gone by when even the Condor work detail failed to bring any more exciting news (like the fact that another corpse had been identified). And the findings that at first had been symbols of sheer horror—the remains of their dead comrades—were now carefully packed inside hermetically sealed containers and stowed down below in the storage rooms of the Invincible. The men whose job it was to continue to search the sand around the Condor, or to rummage through the ship’s interior, experienced boredom rather than a sense of relief. They seemed to have grown oblivious to the fate of the former crew. Their efforts now concentrated on collecting bits of memorabilia, meaningless knick-knacks that had survived their anonymous owners—an old, workworn harmonica or a Chinese puzzle. These objects quickly lost all traces of their origin, and were soon circulated and used as communal property among the Invincible’s crew.

  Rohan would never have believed it possible, but in less than a week he was behaving no differently than the rest of the crew. Only on rare occasions, when he was completely alone would he begin to wonder what he was doing there. All this work, their ant-like activity, the complicated details of their research: the transilluminations, the search for specimens, the rock drillings (which were made even more difficult by the third step routine), the opening and closing of the energy fields, the laser weapons with their exactly prescribed firing range, the unending visual control, the constant calculations—all this, he realized, was nothing but self-deceit. Basically, they were dong nothing more than wait for some new event, another catastrophe. They were simply pretending that they did not know the real reason for all this busywork.

  At first the men would crowd around the ship’s infirmary every morning to wait for news about Kertelen. He seemed to them not so much the victim of a mysterious attack as some creature who no longer resembled a human being, a monster who had nothing in common with them. It was as if they believed they were in some fantastic fairytale, in which an unknown force from a hostile planet had changed one of them into a monster. In reality, of course, the man was nothing but a cripple. Moreover, it soon became apparent that his brain was simply empty, like that of a newborn baby. His mind was able to absorb all the knowledge the doctors would teach it. Gradually, like an infant, he began to talk. Those who passed the hospital no longer heard the strange whining sounds, unlike any produced by human voices, or that senseless baby’s crying that had been so terrible because it came from the mouth of a grown man. One week later, Kertelen formed his first syllables and began to recognize the physicians, although he could not yet pronounce their names.

  By the second week, the men had lost interest in him, especially after the doctors announced that he would never be able to say anything about the circumstances surrounding his accident, not even after he had completed his unusual re-education process and had “returned to his normal self.”

  In the meantime the work continued. The crews continued to map the city and to collect details about the construction of the shrub-like pyramids, although no one could figure out their function. Finally, the astrogator decided that further investigations of the Condor would be useless, and therefore were to be discontinued. The spaceship itself would have to be abandoned. Repairing the outer hull was more than they could manage here, especially since the engineers had much more urgent work to do. Only a large number of energo-robots, transporters, jeeps and all kinds of instruments were transferred to the Invincible. The spaceship itself was reduced to a wreck after this salvaging operation. The Condor was made tight. The crew comforted itself with the thought that either they or the next expedition would eventually bring the cruiser back to its home base. At the conclusion of these operations, Horpach directed the Condor troop to continue its work in the north of the desert. They joined Gallagher’s group, now under the command of Regnar. Rohan advanced to main coordinator of all research activities. He would leave the immediate vicinity of the Invincible for no more than brief periods, and not even every day.

  In an area criss-crossed by many ravines with subterranean springs, the two groups made some peculiar finds. They encountered clay deposits with layers of a reddish-black substance which seemed to be of neither geological nor planetary origin. The specialists were at a loss. It looked as if millions of years earlier vast quantities of metal particles had settled on the surface of the old basalt mantle of the planet’s solid shell. These splinters consisted either of metal or some metalloid matter—perhaps a huge iron-nickel meteor had exploded in the planet’s atmosphere and then melted into the ancient rock during fiery cataclysms. These metallic fragments might have oxidized gradually, followed by chemical reactions with their matrix and other elements present. Finally they would have changed into these black-brown layers with occasional spots of crimson.

  So far excavation had struck no deeper than a shallow level of rock formation, whose complicated geological structure confused even the most experienced of the planetologists. Once they had driven shafts down to the basalt base—itself indubitably more than a billion years old—they discovered that the deposits immediately above contained carbon of organic origin which showed highly advanced stages of recrystallization. At first the scientists believed this layer to have been the origi
nal ocean bed. But then they came upon true coal beds with fossils of a large variety of plant species that could only have existed on the dry land. Little by little they gained a clearer picture of the life forms that had existed at that time on the continent of Regis III. Thus they learned that primitive reptiles had once roamed in the primeval jungle, some three hundred million years earlier. Indeed, they returned in triumph one day with the remains of a reptile’s spinal column and the jawbone, though the crew showed little enthusiasm about these finds. Apparently, evolution had taken place twice in the dry land areas. The first extinction of all life occurred in an epoch about one hundred million years back. At that time all plant and animal life seemed to have died out suddenly; the most probable cause would have been the nearby Nova explosion. However, life had developed again after this catastrophe; new forms, new species had arisen. Unfortunately, no exact system of classification could be established by the scientists; the available data were not sufficiently comprehensive. Yet they were positive that no mammals had ever evolved on this planet. Some ninety million years later, a second star explosion had occurred, but this time at a far greater distance from Regis III. This event could be traced by isotopes. According to the approximate values calculated, the intensity of surface radiation was not strong enough to have caused such enormous losses of life. And yet—even more puzzling—from this point on, plant and animal fossils were less and less frequently seen in the rock formations. Instead, the scientists found pressed “clay,” antimony sulfides, molybdenum and iron oxides, salts of nickel, cobalt and titanium in increasingly larger quantities.

  There were strong centers within the six- to eight-million-year-old metalliferous strata which were found relatively close to the surface; but this radioactivity was comparatively short-lived considering the age of the planet. During that period something seemed to have unchained a series of violent, localized nuclear reactions, whose products were deposited in these “metalline clay-layers.” Besides the hypothesis of the “radioactive iron meteor,” other, most fantastic assumptions were advanced, attempting to establish some connection between the strange centers of radioactive “hot spots” and the annihilation of the planetary system of the Lyre and the extinction of its civilization.

  It was suggested that atomic battles might have taken place on Regis III among the spaceships escaping their threatened planetary home system. Yet this did not explain the extent of the metalliferous strata, which were discovered in other more remote excavation sites as well. From all these various data a mysterious yet plausible picture emerged: life on the planet’s continents had become extinct during the same span of millions of years during which the metalline deposits had been formed. Radioactivity could not have been the cause of the destruction of all living things. They had made calculations and converted the general amount of radiation into equivalents of nuclear explosions. This amounted to twenty to thirty megatons. Distributed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, such explosions—if these had in fact been atomic explosions and not some other kind of nuclear reactions—could not, of course, have seriously endangered the evolution of biological forms.

  Since the scientists suspected some connection between these deposits and the ruins of the “city,” they insisted on continuing with their research, but this required that considerable amounts of debris be cleared away before they could begin prospecting. The only solution was to dig underground shafts; but those who worked below the surface would no longer be able to enjoy the protection of the force fields. The scale was tipped when—at a depth of about twenty yards—a layer rich in iron oxides was found to contain rusty metal parts of a most curious shape that looked like the corroded remnant of tiny mechanisms. At this point the scientists decided to carry on even without the protective energy field.

  On the nineteenth day after they had landed on Regis III, dark, dense cloud formations, unlike any they had observed before, gathered over the area where the excavation unit was working. Toward noon a violent thunderstorm broke out that surpassed any electrical storm ever seen on Earth. Sky and mountain merged in the unceasing blinding flashes of lightning. The brooks turned into torrents that rushed down the winding ravines and flooded the excavation site. The men ran for shelter under the dome of the big energy field. Mile-long lightning bolts repeatedly struck the hull of the protective dome. Finally, the thunderstorm moved slowly off to the west, and the entire horizon above the ocean was soon a single black wall ripped by constant lightning.

  On the way back to the Invincible the prospecting detail discovered vast numbers of tiny black metal drops in the sand. Were these the ill-famed “flies”? The men gathered them up very cautiously and took them along to the spaceship, where they aroused great interest among the scientists. However, there was no possibility whatsoever that the drops were the remains of insects. Again there were consultations among the experts, frequently resulting in violent controversies. In the end it was decided to send an expedition toward the northeast, beyond the labyrinth of ravines and the areas of iron oxide deposits, because some new discoveries had been made on the caterpillar chains of the Condor vehicles: they had found traces of minerals that had not been seen in any of the terrains that had been examined so far.

  The next day, twenty-two men climbed into their vehicles. As soon as sufficient stores of oxygen, food and nuclear fuel had been packed away the column began to move. The group was well equipped energo-robots, the self-mobile mortar from the Condor, transporters and robots (among them twelve Arctanes), automated dredging machines and rock drills. Regnar was in charge of the expedition. Radio and television contact was maintained with the column until the planet’s curved surface made the further use of ultra-short waves impossible. Then the Invincible launched an automatic teleprobe into a stationary orbit, over which communication could be maintained.

  All that day the column continued to advance. At nightfall the vehicles and machines formed a defense circle and surrounded themselves with a force field.

  The following morning they continued on their way. Toward noon, Regnar informed Rohan that he wanted to stop at the foot of some sand-covered ruins inside a shallow crater in order to inspect them at closer range. One hour later, the reception became very bad because of strong static disturbances. The communication crew switched to another wave length for better reception. Soon afterwards the reception suddenly broke off altogether, just as the thunder died away and the storm moved off into the direction the expedition had taken. The breakdown in communication had been preceded by several episodes of fading that increased in length and strength. Most peculiar, however, was the fact that at the same time TV reception had become worse, even though it was independant of conditions in the ionosphere, as it emanated from a satellite circling beyond the atmosphere. It was about one o’clock when all communication ceased. No technician, none of the physicists called in for consultation, could explain this phenomenon. It was as if a metal wall had descended somewhere in the desert to cut off the expedition from the Invincible.

  All this time Rohan had kept close to the astrogator, who seemed quite apprehensive. At first Rohan believed there was no justification for the commander’s attitude. The weather front that had moved off in exactly the same direction as the expedition might have certain definite screening properties. The physicists, however, doubted that such a thick layer of ionized air could possibly come about. When the thunderstorm had completely died down and it was still impossible to re-establish communication, even after sending nonstop call signals, Horpach dispatched two scouting planes of the flying saucer type. It was close to six o’clock in the evening.

  One of the flying saucers flew a few hundred yards above the desert. The other rose to an altitude of two and one-half miles, serving as a television transmitter station to its lower flying companion. Rohan, the astrogator, Gralew and a dozen other men, including Ballmin and Sax, stood in front of the big telescreen in the command center, viewing directly whatever happened inside the visual field of
the first machine’s pilot. Beyond the dark labyrinth of ravines stretched the desert with its endless chains of dunes, now covered by black stripes, for it was close to sunset. The oblique rays of the setting sun cast the landscape in a mournful light. Small craters, filled to the rim with sand, slipped by underneath the low-flying machine from time to time. Some craters had remained visible only because of the central cone of a volcano extinguished for many centuries. The terrain rose gradually and became increasingly diversified. Amid the sandy hills high rocky ridges jutted out, forming an entire system of oddly jagged mountain chains. Lone stone needles resembled the bodies of smashed rockets or of some gigantic figures. Crevices, filled by cone-shaped formations of boulders and rubble, cut the slopes with their sharp outlines. Finally the sand disappeared altogether and gave way to a wilderness of steep rocks and rubble heaps. Here and there tectonic fissures wound through the planet’s crust. From a distance they resembled meandering rivers. The landscape now resembled that on the Earth’s moon. Suddenly the television reception grew worse once again. The image became blurred and synchronization was disrupted. All efforts at correction were in vain.

  Now the whitish coloration of the rocks turned into ever darkening shades. The high-rising rocky ridges that moved away from the immediate view were brownish and covered by a poisonous and metallic glitter. Velvety black spots occurred here and there, as if a dense dead scrub proliferated over the bare stones.

  A call came from the first machine, which had remained silent thus far. The pilot reported that he could hear the automatic position transmitters with which the lead vehicle of the expedition had been equipped. Yet the men assembled in the command center could hear only the pilot’s weak and fading voice, calling Regnar’s group.