We had to take a hypnocourse in that language. Ditto the script, one of several forgotten phonetic shorthands. (Designed to enable the tongues of Aliens to be written down; but the Aliens have never been met. It is plausible enough that some colony might have kept the script alive; after all Thasia uses something of the sort to this day.)
The final result of our work looks pretty small. Twenty-three "Personal Background Sets"--a few letters, a diary in some, an assortment of artifacts. Whoever stocked this ship we are on supplied wood, of the half-dozen kinds that have been taken wherever men have gone; stocks of a few plastics--known at the time of the Exodus, or easily developed from those known, and not associated with any particular planet. Also books on Design, a Form-writer for translating drawings into materials, and so on. Someone put in a lot of work before this voyage began.
Most of the time it is like being back on Russet doing a group Project. What we are working on has no more and no less reality than that. Our work is all read into a computer and checked against everybody else's. At first we keep clashing. Gradually a consistent picture builds up and gets translated finally into the Personal Background Kits. The Lost Kafoozalum start to exist like people in a History book.
Fifteen days hard work and we have just about finished; then we reach--call it Planet Gilgamesh.
I wake in my bunk to hear that there will be brief cessation of weight; strap down, please.
We are coming off Mass-Time to go on planetary drive.
Colonel Delano-Smith is in charge of operations on the planet, with Ram and Peter to assist. None of the rest of us see the melting out of fifty years' accumulation of ice, the pumping away of the water, the fitting and testing of the holds for the grappling-beams. We stay inside the ship, on five-eighths gee which we do not have time to get used to, and try to work, and discard the results before the computer can do so. There is hardly any work left to do, anyway.
It takes nearly twelve hours to get the ship free, and caulked, and ready to lift. (Her hull has to be patched because of Mr. Yardo's operations which make use of several sorts of vapors). Then there is a queer blind period with Up now one way, now another, and sudden jerks and tugs that upset everything not in gimbals or tied down; interspersed with periods when weightlessness supervenes with no warning at all. After an hour or two of this it would be hard to say whether Mental or physical discomfort is more acute; B consulted, however, says my autonomic system must be quite something, after five minutes her thoughts were with her viscera entirely.
Then, suddenly, we are back on Mass-Time again.
Two days to go.
At first being on Mass-Time makes everything seem normal again. By sleep time there is a strain, and next day it is everywhere. I know as well as any that on Mass-Time the greater the mass the faster the shift; all the same I cannot help feeling we are being slowed, dragged back by the dead ship coupled to our live one.
When you stand by the hull Gilgamesh is only ten feet away.
I should have kept something to work on like B and Kirsty who have not done their Letters for Home in Case of Accidents; mine is signed and sealed long ago. I am making a good start on a Neurosis when Delano-Smith announces a Meeting for one hour ahead.
Hurrah! now there is a time-mark fixed I think of all sorts of things I should have done before; for instance taking a look at the controls of the Hoppers.
I have been in one of them half an hour and figured out most of the dials--Up down and sideways are controlled much as in a helicar, but here a big viewscreen has been hooked in to the autopilot--when across the hold I see the air lock start to move.
Gilgamesh is on the other side.
It takes forever to open. When at last it swings wide on the dark tunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating on antigrav.
What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modern type, but the windows of the hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face inside the bubble top.
He slings the rack upon the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangs that up, too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enough sense to wonder why when he comes slowly across the hold.
Reaching the doorway he says: "Oh it's you, Lizzie. You'll have to help me out of this. I'm stuck."
M'Clare.
The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what has jammed the fastening. After a few minutes tugging it suddenly gives away. M'Clare climbs out of the suit, leaving it standing, and says, "Help me count these, will you?"
These are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at one side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which we put what are referred to as Personal Background Sets.
I say, "There ought to be twenty-three."
"No," says M'Clare dreamily, "twenty-two, we're saving one of them."
"What on earth is the use of an extra set of faked documents and oddments--"
He seems to wake up suddenly and says: "What are you doing here, Lizzie?"
I explain and he wanders over to the hopper and starts to explain the controls.
There is something odd about all this. M'Clare is obviously dead tired, but kind of relaxed; seeing that the hour of Danger is only thirty-six hours off I don't understand it. Probably several of his students are going to have to risk their lives--
I am on the point of seeing something important when the speaker announces in the colonel's voice that Professor M'Clare and Miss Lee will report to the Conference Room at once please.
M'Clare looks at me and grins. "Come along, Lizzie. Here's where we take orders for once, you and I."
It is the colonel's Hour. I suppose that having to work with Undergraduates is something he could never quite forget, but from the way he looks at us we might almost be Space Force personnel,--low-grade of course but respectable.
Everything is at last worked out and he has it on paper in front of him; he puts the paper four square on the table, gazes into the middle distance and proceeds to recite.
"One. This ship will go off Mass-Time on 2nd August at 11.27 hours ship's time....
"Thirty-six hours from now.
"... At a point one thousand miles vertically above Co-ordinates 165OE, 7320S, on Planet Incognita, approximately one hour before midnight local time.
"Going on planetary drive as close as that will indicate that something is badly wrong to begin with.
"Two. This ship will descend, coupled to Gilgamesh as at present, to a point seventy miles above the planetary surface. It will then uncouple, discharge one hopper, and go back on Mass-Time. Estimated time for this stage of descent forty minutes.
"Three. The hopper will then descend on its own engines at the maximum speed allowed by the heat-disposal system; estimated at thirty-seven minutes. Gilgamesh will complete descent in thirty-three minutes. Engines of Gilgamesh will not be used except for the heat-disposal and gyro auxiliaries. The following installations have been made to allow for the control of the descent; a ring of eight rockets in peltathene mounts around the tail and, and one outsize antigrav unit inside the nose. "Sympathizer" controls hooked up with a visiscreen and a computer have also been installed in the nose.
"Four. Gilgamesh will carry one man only. The hopper will carry a crew of three. The pilot of Gilgamesh will establish the ship on the edge of the cliff, supported on antigrav a foot or so above the ground and leaning towards the sea at an angle of approximately 20° with the vertical. Except for this landing will be automatic.
"Five."
The colonel's voice has lulled us into passive acceptance; now we are jerked into sharper attention by the faintest possible check in it.
"The greatest danger attaching to the expedition is that the Incognitans may discover that the crash has been faked. This would be inevitable if they were to capture (a) the hopper; (b) any of the new installations in Gilgamesh, especially the antigrav; (c) any member of the crew.
"The function of the hopper is to pick up the pilot of Gilgamesh and also to check that ground appearances are consistent. If not, they will produce a landslip on the cliff edge, using power tools and explosives carried for the purpose. That is why the hopper has a crew of three, but the chance of their having to do this is slight."
So I should think; ground appearances are supposed to show that Gilgamesh landed using emergency rockets and then toppled over the cliff and this will be exactly what happened.
"The pilot will carry a one-frequency low-power transmitter activated by the change in magnetic field on leaving the ship. The hopper will remain at five hundred feet until this signal is received. It will then pick up the pilot, check ground appearances, and rendezvous with this ship at two hundred miles up at 18.27 hours."
The ship and the hopper both being radar-absorbent will not register on alarm systems, and by keeping to planetary nighttime they should be safe from being seen.
"Danger (b) will be dealt with as follows. The rocket-mounts being of peltathene will be destroyed by half an hour's immersion in water. The installations in the nose will be destroyed with Andite."
Andite produces complete colecular disruption in a very short range, hardly any damage outside it; the effect will be as though the nose broke off on impact; I suppose the Incognitans will waste a lot of time looking for it on the bed of the sea.
"Four ten-centimeter cartridges will be inserted within the nose installations. The fuse will have two alternative settings. The first will be timed to act at 12.50 hours, seven minutes after the estimated time of landing. It will not be possible to deactivate it before 12.45 hours. This takes care of the possibility of the pilot's becoming incapacitated during the descent.
"Having switched off the first fuse the pilot will get the ship into position and then activate a second, timed to blow in ten minutes. He will then leave the ship. When the antigrav is destroyed the ship will, of course, fall into the sea.
"Six. The pilot of Gilgamesh will wear a spacesuit of the pattern used by the original crew and will carry Personal Background Set number 23. Should he fail to escape from the ship the crew of the hopper will on no account attempt to rescue him."
The colonel takes up the paper, folds it in half and puts it down one inch further away.
"The hopper's crew," he says, "will give the whole game away should one of them fall into Incognitan hands, alive or dead. Therefore they don't take any risks of it."
He lifts his gaze ceilingwards. "I'm asking for three volunteers."
Silence. Manning the hopper is definitely second best. Then light suddenly bursts on me and I lift my hand and hack B on the ankle.
"I volunteer," I say.
B gives me a most dubious glance and then lifts her hand, too.
Cray on the other side of the table is slowly opening his mouth when there is an outburst of waving on the far side of B.
"Me too, colonel! I volunteer!"
Mr. Yardo proceeds to explain that his special job is over and done, he can be more easily spared than anybody, he may be too old to take charge of Gilgamesh but will back himself as a hopper pilot against anybody.
The colonel cuts this short by accepting all three. He then unfolds his paper again.
"Piloting Gilgamesh," he says. "I'm not asking for volunteers now. You'll go to your cabins in four hours' time and those who want to will volunteer, secretly. To a computer hookup, Computer will select on a random basis and notify the one chosen. Give him his final instructions, too. No one need know who it was till it's all over. He can tell anyone he likes, of course."
A very slight note of triumph creeps into the next remark. "One point. Only men need volunteer."
Instant outcry from Kirsty and Dilly: B turns to me with a look of awe.
"Nothing to do with prejudice," says the colonel testily. "Just facts. The crew of Gilgamesh were all men. Can't risk one solitary woman being found on board. Besides--spacesuits, personal background sets--all designed for men."
Kirsty and Dilly turn on me looks designed to shrivel and B whispers "Lizzie how wonderful you are."
The session dissolves. We three get an intensive session course of instruction on our duties and are ordered off to sleep. After breakfast next morning I run into Cray who says, Before I continue about what is evidently pressing business would I care to kick him, hard?
Not right now I reply, what for anyway?
"Miss Lee," says Cray, dragging it out longer than ever, "although I have long realized that your brain functions in a way much superior to logic I had not sense enough yesterday to follow my own instinct and do what you do as soon as you did it; therefore that dessicated meat handler got in first."
I say: "So you weren't picked for pilot? It was only one chance in ten."
"Oh," says Cray, "did you really think so?" He gives me a long look and goes away.
I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarks about No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any.
Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we just might have to venture out on the planet's surface and therefore we get white one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture, dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quite becoming, really.
B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit while Time crawls asymptotically towards the hour.
Then the speaker calls us to go.
We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for the hold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historical movie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting glass where the face should be--stepping through the air lock.
The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us into the hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know what he is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this ship who could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Mass-Time at one particular defined spot of Space.
Then he leaves us; half an hour to go.
The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softly diffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting and crisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is being pumped into store.
Fifteen minutes.
The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that the black of Space looks through; it closes again.
Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it back again.
Testing; five minutes to go.
I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling through glue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go off Mass-Time.
No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagus back into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so often comes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel using ship's drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall.
The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over the hatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreen and the instrument board.
One minute thirty seconds to go.
The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath.
I am still holding it when the colonel's voice comes over the speaker: "Calling Gilgamesh. Calling the hopper. Good-by and Good luck. You're on your own."
The ship is gone.
Yet another stretch of time has been marked off for us. Thirty-seven minutes, the least time allowable if we are not to get overheated by friction with the air. Mr. Yardo is a good pilot; he is concentrating wholly on the visiscreen and the thermometer. B and I are free to look around.
I see nothing and say so.
I did not know or have forgotten that Incognita has many small satellites; from here there are four in sight.
I am still looking at them when B seizes my arm painfully and points below us.
I see nothing and say so.
B whispers it was there a moment ago, it is pretty cloudy down there--Yes Lizzie there it is look.
And I see it. Over to the left, very faint and far below, a pin-prick of light.
Light in the polar wastes of a sparsely inhabited planet, and since we are still five miles up it is a very powerful light too.
No doubt about it, as we descend farther; about fifty miles from our objective there are men, quite a lot of them.
I think it is just then that I understand, really understand, the hazard of what we are doing. This is not an exercise. This is in dead earnest, and if we have missed an essential factor or calculated something wrong the result will be not a bad mark or a failed exam, or even our personal deaths, but incalculable harm and misery to millions of people we never even heard of.
Dead earnest. How in Space did we ever have cheek enough for this?
The lights might be the essential factor we have missed, but there is nothing we can do about them now.
Mr. Yardo suddenly chuckles and points to the screen.
"There you are, girlies! He's down!"
There, grayly dim, is the map the colonel showed us; and right on the faint line of the cliff-edge is a small brilliant dot.
The map is expanding rapidly, great lengths of coastline shooting out of sight at the edge of the screen. Mr. Yardo has the cross-hairs centered on the dot which is Gilgamesh. The dot is changing shape; it is turning into a short ellipse, a longer one. The gyros are leaning her out over the sea.
I look at my chronometer; 12.50 hours exactly. B looks, too, and grips my hand.
Thirty seconds later the Andite has not blown; first fuse safety turned off. Surely she is leaning far enough out by now?
We are hovering at five hundred feet. I can actually see the white edge of the sea beating at the cliff. Mr. Yardo keeps making small corrections; there is a wind out there trying to blow us away. It is cloudy here: I can see neither moons nor stars.
Mr. Yardo checks the radio. Nothing yet.
I stare downwards and fancy I can see a metallic gleam.
Then there is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally downwards a hundred feet away.
The hopper shudders to a flat concussion in the air, we are all thrown off balance, and when I claw my way back to the screen the moving dot is gone.
So is Gilgamesh.
B says numbly, "But it wasn't a meteor. It can't have been."
"It doesn't matter what it was," I say. "It was some sort of missile, I think. They must be even nearer to war than we thought."
We wait. What for, I don't know. Another missile, perhaps. No more come.
At last Mr. Yardo stirs. His voice sounds creaky.
"I guess," he says, then clears his throat, and tries again. "I guess we have to go back up."
B says, "Lizzie, who was it? Do you know?"
Of course I do. "Do you think M'Clare was going to risk one of us on that job? The volunteering was a fake. He went himself."
B whispers, "You're just guessing."
"Maybe," says Mr. Yardo, "but I happened to see through that face plate of his. It was the professor all right."
He has his hand on the controls when my brain starts working again. I utter a strangled noise and dive for the hatch into the cargo hold. B tries to grab me but I get it open and switch on the light.
Fifty-fifty chance--I've lost.
No, this is the one we came in and the people who put in the new cargo did not clear out my fish-boat, they just clamped it neatly to the wall.
I dive in and start to pass up the package. B shakes her head.
"No, Lizzie. We can't. Don't you remember? If we got caught, it would give everything away. Besides ... there isn't any chance--"
"Take a look at the screen," I tell her.
Sharp exclamation from Mr. Yardo. B turns to look, then takes the package and helps me back.
Mr. Yardo maneuvers out over the sea till the thing is in the middle of the screen; then drops to a hundred feet. It is sticking out of the water at a fantastic angle and the waves are hardly moving it. The nose of a ship.
"The antigrav," whispers B. "The Andite hasn't blown yet."
"Ten minutes," says Mr. Yardo thoughtfully. He turns to me with sudden briskness. "What's that, Lizzie girl? A fish-boat? Good. We may need it. Let's have a look."
"It's mine," I tell him.
"Now look--"
"Tailor made," I say. "You might get into it, though I doubt it. You couldn't work the controls."
It takes him fifteen seconds to realize there is no way round it; he is six foot three and I am five foot one. Even B would find it hard.
His face goes grayish and he stares at me helplessly. Finally he nods.
"All right, Lizzie. I guess we have to try it. Things certainly can't be much worse than they are. We'll go over to the beach there."
On the beach there is wind and spray and breakers but nothing unmanageable; the cliffs on either side keep off the worst of the force. It is queer to feel moving air after eighteen days in a ship. It takes six minutes to unpack and expand the boat and by that time it is ten minutes since the missile hit and the Andite has not blown.
I crawl into the boat. In my protective clothing it is a fairly tight fit. We agree that I will return to this same point and they will start looking for me in fifty minutes' time and will give up if I have not returned in two hours. I take two Andite cartridges to deal with all eventualities and snap the nose of the boat into place. At first I am very conscious of the two little white cigars in the pouch of my suit, but presently I have other things to think about.
I use the "limbs" to crawl the last few yards of shingle into the water and on across the sea bottom till I am beyond the line of breakers; then I turn on the motor. I have already set the controls to "home" on Gilgamesh and the radar will steer me off any obstructions. This journey in the dark is as safe as my trip around the reefs before all this started--though it doesn't feel that way.
It takes twelve minutes to reach Gilgamesh, or rather the fragment that antigrav is supporting; it is about half a mile from the beach.
The radar stops me six feet from her and I switch it off and turn to Manual and inch closer in.
Lights, a very small close beam. The missile struck her about one third of her length behind the nose. I know, because I can see the whole of that length. It is hanging just above the water, sloping at about 30° to the horizontal. The ragged edge where it was torn from the rest is just dipping into the sea.
If anyone sees this, I don't know what they will make of it but no one could possibly think an ordinary spaceship suffered an ordinary crash, and very little investigation would show up the truth.
I reach up with the forward set of "limbs" and grapple on to the break. I now have somehow to get the hind set of "limbs" up without losing my grip. I can't.
It takes several minutes to realize that I can just open the nose and crawl out.
Immediately a wave hits me in the face and does its best to drag me into the sea. However the interior of the ship is relatively sheltered and presently I am inside and dragging the boat up out of reach.
I need light. Presently I manage to detach one of the two from the boat. I turn it down to minimum close beam and hang it round my neck; then I start up the black jag-edged tunnel of the ship.
I have to get to the nose, find the fuse, change the setting to twenty minutes--maximum possible--and get out before it blows--out of the water I mean. The fish-boat is not constructed to take explosions even half a mile away. But the first thing is to find the fuse and I cannot make out how Gilgamesh is lying and therefore cannot find the door through this bulkhead; everything is ripped and twisted. In the end I find a gap between the bulkhead itself and the hull, and squeeze through that.
In the next compartment things are more recognizable and I eventually find the door. Fortunately ships are designed so that you can get through doors even when they are in the ceiling; actually here I have to climb up an overhang, but the surface is provided with rungs which make it not too bad. Finally I reach the door. I shall have to use antigrav to get down ... why didn't I just turn it on and jump? I forgot I had it.
The door was a little way open when the missile struck; it buckled in its grooves and is jammed fast. I can get an arm through. No more. I switch on antigrav and hang there directing the light round the compartment. No rents anywhere, just buckling. This compartment is divided by a partition and the door through that is open. There will be another door into the nose on the other side.
I bring back my feet ready to kick off on a dive through that doorway.
Behind me, something stirs.
My muscles go into a spasm like the one that causes a falling dream, my hold tears loose and I go tumbling through the air, rebound from a wall, twist, and manage to hook one foot in the frame of the door I was aiming for. I pull myself down and turn off the antigrav; then I just shake for a bit.
The sound was--
This is stupid, with everything torn to pieces in this ship there is no wonder if bits shake loose and drop around--
But it was not a metallic noise, it was a kind of soft dragging, very soft, that ended in a little thump.
Like a--
Like a loose piece of plastic dislodged from its angle of rest and slithering down, pull yourself together Lizzie Lee.
I look through the door into the other half of this level. Shambles. Smashed machinery every which way, blocking the door, blocking everything. No way through at all.
Suddenly I remember the tools. Mr. Yardo loaded the fish-boat with all it would take. I crawl back and return with a fifteen inch expanding beam-lever, and overuse it; the jammed trap door does not slide back in its grooves but flips right out of them, bent double; it flies off into the dark and clangs its way to rest.
I am halfway through the opening when I hear the sound again. A soft slithering; a faint defeated thump.
I freeze where I am, and then I hear the sigh; a long, long weary sound, almost musical.
An air leak somewhere in the hull and wind or waves altering the air pressure below.
All the same I do not seem able to come any farther through this door.
Light might help; I turn the beam up and play it cautiously around. This is the last compartment, right in the nose; a sawn-off cone-shape. No breaks here, though the hull is buckled to my left and the "floor"--the partition, horizontal when the ship is in the normal operating position, which holds my trap door--is torn up; some large heavy object was welded to a thin surface skin which has ripped away leaving jagged edges and a pattern of girders below.
There is no dust here; it has all been sucked out when the ship was open to space; nothing to show the beam except the sliding yellow ellipse where it touches the wall. It glides and turns, spiraling down, deformed every so often where it crosses a projection or a dent, till it halts suddenly on a spoked disk, four feet across and standing nearly eighteen inches out from the wall. The antigrav.
I never saw one this size, it is like the little personal affairs as a giant is like a pigmy, not only bigger but a bit different in proportion. I can see an Andite cartridge fastened among the spokes.
The fuse is a "sympathizer" but it is probably somewhere close. The ellipse moves again. There is no feeling that I control it; it is hunting on its own. To and fro around the giant wheel. Lower. It halts on a small flat box, also bolted to the wall, a little way below. This is it, I can see the dial.
The ellipse stands still, surrounding the fuse. There is something at the very edge of it.
When Gilgamesh was right way up the antigrav was bolted to one wall, about three feet above the floor. Now the lowest point is the place where this wall joins what used to be the floor. Something has fallen down to that point and is huddled there in the dark.
The beam jerks suddenly up and the breath whoops out of me; a round thing sticking out of the wall--then I realize it is an archaic space-helmet, clamped to the wall for safety when the wearer took it off.
I take charge of the ellipse of light and move it slowly down, past the fuse, to the thing below. A little dark scalloping of the edge of the light. The tips of fingers. A hand.
I turn up the light.
When the missile struck the big computer was wrenched loose from the floor. It careened down as the floor tilted, taking with it anything that stood in its way.
M'Clare was just stooping to the fuse, I think. The computer smashed against his legs and pinned him down in the angle between the wall and the floor. His legs are hidden by it.
Because of the spacesuit he does not looked crushed; the thick clumsy joints have kept their roundness, so far as they are visible; only his hands and head are bare and vulnerable looking.
I am halfway down, floating on minimum gravity, before it really occurs to me that he may be still alive.
I switch to half and drop beside him. His face is colorless but he is breathing all right.
First-aid kit. I will never make fun of Space Force thoroughness again. Rows and rows of small plastic ampoules. Needles.
Pain-killer, first. I read the directions twice, sweating. Emergencies only--this is. One dose only to be given and if patient is not in good health use--never mind that. I fit on the longest needle and jab it through the suit, at the back of the thigh, as far towards the knee-joint as I can get because the suit is thinner. Half one side, half the other.
Now to get the computer off. At a guess it weighs about five hundred pounds. The beam-lever would do it but it would probably fall back.
Antigrav; the personal size is supposed to take up to three times the weight of the average man. I take mine off and buckle the straps through a convenient gap. I have my hands under the thing when M'Clare sighs again.
He is lying on his belly but his head is turned to one side, towards me. Slowly his eyelids open. He catches the sight of my hand; his head moves a little, and he says, "Lizzie. Golden Liz."
I say not to worry, we will soon be out of here.
His body jumps convulsively and he cries out. His hand reaches my sleeve and feels. He says, "Liz! Oh, God, I thought ... what--"
I say things are under control and just keep quiet a bit.
His eyes close. After a moment he whispers, "Something hit the ship."
"A homing missile, I think."
I ought not to have said that; but it seems to make no particular impression, maybe he guessed as much.
I was wrong in wanting to shift the computer straight away, the release of pressure might start a hemorrhage; I dig out ampoules of blood-seal and inject them into the space between the suit and the flesh, as close to the damage as I can.
M'Clare asks how the ship is lying and I explain, also how I got here. I dig out the six-by-two-inch packet of expanding stretcher and read the directions. He is quiet for a minute or two, gathering strength; then he says sharply: "Lizzie. Stop that and listen.
"The fuse for the Andite is just under the antigrav. Go and find it. Go now. There's a dial with twenty divisions. Marked in black--you see it. Turn the pointer to the last division. Is that done?
"Now you see the switch under the pointer? Is your boat ready? I beg your pardon, of course you left it that way. Then turn the switch and get out."
I come back and see by my chrono that the blood-seal should be set; I get my hands under the computer. M'Clare bangs his hand on the floor.
"Lizzie, you little idiot, don't you realize that even if you get me out of this ship, which is next to impossible, you'll be delayed all the way--and if the Incognitans find either of us the whole plan's ruined? Much worse than ruined, once they see it's a hoax--"
I tell him I have two Andite sticks and they won't find us and on a night like this any story of explosions will be put down to sudden gusts or to lightning.
He is silent for a moment while I start lifting the computer, carefully; its effective weight with the antigrav full on is only about twenty pounds but is has all its inertia. Then he says quietly, "Please, Lizzie--can't you understand that the worst nightmare in the whole affair has been the fear that one of you might get injured? Or even killed? When I realized that only one person was needed to pilot Gilgamesh--it was the greatest relief I ever experienced. Now you say...." His voice picks up suddenly. "Lizzie, you're beaten anyway. The ... I'm losing all feeling. Even pain. I can't feel anything behind my shoulders ... it's creeping up--"
I say that means the pain-killer I shot him with is acting as advertised, and he makes a sound as much like an explosive chuckle as anything and it's quiet again.
The curvature between floor and wall is not helpful, I am trying to find a place to wedge the computer so it cannot fall back when I take off the antigrav. Presently I get it pushed on to a sort of ledge formed by a dent in the floor, which I think will hold it. I ease off the antigrav and the computer stays put, I don't like the looks of it so let's get out of here.
I push the packaged stretcher under his middle and pull the tape before I turn the light on to his legs to see the damage. I cannot make out very much; the joints of the suit are smashed some, but as far as I can see the inner lining is not broken which means it is still air-and-water-tight.
I put a hand under his chest to feel how the stretcher is going; it is now expanded to eighteen inches by six and I can feel it pushing out, but it is slow, what else have I to do--oh yes, get the helmet.
I am standing up to reach for it when M'Clare says, "What are you doing? Yes ... well, don't put it on for a minute. There's something I would like to tell you, and with all respect for your obstinacy I doubt very much whether I shall have another chance. Keep that light off me, will you? It hurts my eyes.
"You know, Lizzie, I dislike risking the lives of any of the students for whom I am responsible, but as it happens I find the idea of you--blowing yourself to atoms particularly objectionable because ... I happen to be in love with you. You're also one of my best students, I used to think that ... was why I'd been so insistent on your coming to Russett, but I rather think ... my motives were mixed even then. I meant to tell you this after you graduated, and to ask you to marry me, not that ... I thought you would, I know quite well ... you never quite forgave me, but I don't-want-to-have to remember ... I didn't ... have the guts to--"
His voice trails off, I get a belated rush of sense to the head and turn the light on his face. His head is turned sideways and his fist is clenched against the side of his neck. When I touch it his hand falls open and five discharged ampoules fall out.
Pain-killer.
Maximum dose, one ampoule.
All that talk was just to hold my attention while he fixed the needles and--
I left the kit spread out right next to him.
While I am taking this in some small cold corner of my mind is remembering the instructions that are on the pain-killer ampoule; it does not say, outright, that it is the last refuge for men in the extremity of pain and despair; therefore it cannot say, outright, that they sometimes despair too soon; but it does tell you the name of the antidote.
There are only three ampoules of this and they also say, maximum dose one ampoule. I try to work it out but lacking all other information the best I can do is inject two and keep one till later. I put that one in my pocket.
The stretcher is all expanded now; a very thin but quite rigid grid, six feet by two; I lash him on it without changing his position and fasten the helmet over his head.
Antigrav; the straps just go round him and the stretcher.
I point the thing up towards the trap door and give it a gentle push; then I scramble up the rungs and get there just in time to guide it through. It takes a knock then and some more while I am getting it down to the next partition, but he can't feel it.
This time I find the door, because the roar of noise behind it acts as a guide. The sea is getting up and is dashing halfway to the door as I crawl through. My boat is awash, pivoting to and fro on the grips of the front "limbs."
I grab it, release the limbs and pull it as far back as the door. I maneuver the stretcher on top and realize there is nothing to fasten it with ... except the antigrav, I get that undone, holding the stretcher in balance, and manage to put it under the stretcher and pass the straps between the bars of the grid ... then round the little boat, and the buckle just grips the last inch. It will hold, though.
I set the boat to face the broken end of the ship, but I daren't put it farther back than the doorway; I turn the antigrav to half, fasten the limb-grips and rush back towards the nose of the ship. Silver knob under the dial. I turn it down, hear the thing begin a fast, steady ticking, and turn and run.
Twenty minutes.
One and a half to get back to the boat, four to get inside it without overturning. Nearly two to get down to the sea--balance difficult. One and a half to lower myself in.
Thirty seconds' tossing before I sink below the wave layer; then I turn the motor as high as I dare and head for the shore.
In a minute I have to turn it down; at this speed the radar is bothered by water currents and keeps steering me away from them as though they were rocks; I finally find the maximum safe speed but it is achingly slow. What happens if you are in water when Andite blows half a mile away? A moment's panic as I find the ship being forced up, then I realize I have reached the point where the beach starts to shelve, turn off radar and motor and start crawling. Eternal slow reach out, grab, shove, haul, with my heart in my mouth; then suddenly the nose breaks water and I am hauling myself out with a last wave doing its best to overbalance me.
I am halfway out of the boat when the Andite blows behind me. There is a flat slapping sound; then an instant roar of wind as the air receives the binding energies of several tons of matter; then a long wave comes pelting up the beach and snatches at the boat.
I huddle into the shingle and hold the boat; I have just got the antigrav turned off, otherwise I think it would have been carried away. There are two or three more big waves and a patter of spray; then it is over.
The outlet valve of the helmet is working, so M'Clare is still breathing; very deep, very slow.
I unfasten the belt of the antigrav, having turned it on again, and pull the belt through the buckle. No time to take it off and rearrange it; anyway it will work as well under the stretcher as on top of it. I drag the boat down to the water, put in an Andite cartridge with the longest fuse I have, set the controls to take it straight out to sea at maximum depth the radar control will allow--six feet above bottom--and push it off. The other Andite cartridge starts burning a hole in my pocket; I would have liked to put that in too, but I must keep it, in case.
I look at my chrono and see that in five minutes the hopper will come.
Five minutes.
I am halfway back to the stretcher when I hear a noise further up the beach. Unmistakable. Shingle under a booted foot.
I stand frozen in mid-stride. I turned the light out after launching the boat but my eyes have not recovered yet; it is murkily black. Even my white suit is only the faintest degree paler than my surroundings.
Silence for a couple of minutes. I stand still. But it can't have gone away. What happens when the hopper comes? They will see whoever it is on the infrared vision screen. They won't come--
Footsteps again. Several.
Then the clouds part and one of those superfluous little moons shines straight through the gap.
The bay is not like the stereo the colonel showed because that was taken in winter; now the snow is melted, leaving bare shingle and mud and a tumble of rocks; more desolate than the snow. Fifty feet off is a man.
He is huddled up in a mass of garments but his head is bare, rising out of a hood which he has pushed back, maybe so as to listen better; he looks young, hardly older than me. He is holding a long thin object which I never saw before, but it must be a weapon of some sort.
This is the end of it. All the evidence of faking is destroyed; except M'Clare and me. Even if I use the Andite he has seen me--and that leaves M'Clare.
I am standing here on one foot like a dancer in a jammed movie, waiting for Time to start again or the world to end--
Like the little figure in the dance-instruction kit Dad got when I was seven, when you switched her off in the middle.
Like a dancer--
My weight shifts on to the forward foot. My arms swing up, forwards, back. I take one step, another.
Swing. Turn. Kick. Sideways.
Like the silly little dancer who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout for every one in advance.
Called the Dance of the Little Robot, for about three months Dad thought it was no end cute, till he caught on I was thinking so, too.
It is just about the only kind of dance you could do on shingle, I guess.
When this started I thought I might be going crazy, but I just had not had time to work it out. In terms of Psychology it goes like this; to shoot off a weapon a man needs a certain type of Stimulus like the sight of an enemy over the end of it. So if I do my best not to look like an enemy he will not get that Stimulus. Or put it another way most men think twice before shooting a girl in the middle of a dance. If I should happen to get away with this, nobody will believe his story, he won't believe it himself.
As for the chance of getting away with it, i.e., getting close enough to grab the gun or hit him with a rock or something, I know I would become a Stimulus to shooting before I did that but there are always the clouds, if one will only come back over the moon again.
I have covered half the distance.
Twenty feet from him, and he takes a quick step back.
Turn, kick, out, step. I am swinging round away from him, let's hope he finds it reassuring. I dare not look up but I think the light is dimming. Turn, kick, out, step. Boxing the compass. Coming round again.
And the cloud is coming over the moon, out of the corner of my eye I see darkness sweeping towards us--and I see his face of sheer horror as he sees it, too; he jumps back, swings up the weapon, and fires straight in my face.
And it is dark. So much for Psychology.
There is a clatter and other sounds--
Well, quite a lot for Psychology maybe, because at twenty feet he seems to have missed me.
I pick myself up and touch something which apparently is his weapon, gun or whatever. I leave it and hare back to the stretcher, next-to fall over it but stop just in time, and switch on the antigrav. Up; level it; now where to? The cliffs enclosing the bay are about thirty yards off to my left and they offer the only cover.
The shingle is relatively level; I make good time till I stumble against a rock and nearly lose the stretcher. I step up on to the rock and see the cliff as a blacker mass in the general darkness, only a yard away. I edge the stretcher round it.
It is almost snatched out of my hand by a gust of wind. I pull it back and realize that in the bay I have been sheltered; there is pretty near half a gale blowing across the face of the cliff.
Voices and footsteps, away back among the rocks where the man came from.
If the clouds part again they will see me, sure as shooting.
I take a hard grip on the stretcher and scramble round the edge of the cliff.
After the first gust the wind is not so bad; for the most part it is trying to press me back into the cliff. The trouble is that I can't see. I have to shuffle my foot forward, rubbing one shoulder against the cliff to feel where it is because I have no hand free.
After a few yards I come to an impasse; something more than knee high; boulder, ridge, I can't tell.
I weigh on the edge of the stretcher and tilt it up to get it over the obstacle. With the antigrav full on it keeps its momentum and goes on moving up. I try to check it, but the wind gets underneath.
It is tugging to get away; I step blindly upwards in the effort to keep up with it. One foot goes on a narrow ledge, barely a toe hold. I am being hauled upwards. I bring the other foot up and find the top of a boulder, just within reach. Now the first foot--
And now I am on top of the boulder, but I have lost touch with the cliff and the full force of the wind is pulling the stretcher upwards. I get one arm over it and fumble underneath for the control of the antigrav; I must give it weight and put it down on this boulder and wait for the wind to drop.
Suddenly I realize that my weight is going; bending over the stretcher puts me in the field of the antigrav. A moment later another gust comes, and I realize I am rising into the air.
Gripping the edge of the stretcher with one hand I reach out the other, trying to grasp some projection on the face of the cliff. Not being able to see I simply push farther away till it is out of reach.
We are still rising.
I pull myself up on the stretcher; there is just room for my toes on either side of M'Clare's legs. The wind roaring in my ears makes it difficult to think.
Rods of light slash down at me from the edge of the cliff. For a moment all I can do is duck; then I realize we are still well below them, but rising every moment. The cliff-face is about six feet away; the wind reflecting from it keeps us from being blown closer.
I must get the antigrav off. I let myself over the side of the stretcher, hanging by one hand, and fumble for the controls. I can just reach. Then I realize this is no use. Antigrav controls are not meant to go off with a click of the finger; they might get switched off accidentally. To work the switch and the safety you must have two hands, or one hand in the optimum position. My position is about as bad as it could be. I can stroke the switch with one finger; no more.
I haul myself back on to the stretcher and realize we are only about six feet under the beam of light. Only one thing left. I feel in my pocket for the Andite. Stupidly, I am still also bending over the outlet valve of the helmet, trying to see whether M'Clare is still breathing or not.
The little white cigar is not fused. I have to hold on with one hand. In the end I manage to stick the Andite between thumb and finger-roots of that hand while I use the other to find the fuse and stick it over the Andite. The shortest; three minutes.
I think the valve is still moving--
Then something drops round me; I am hauled tight against the stretcher; we are pulled strongly downwards with the wind buffeting and snatching, banged against the edge of something, and pulled through into silence and the dark.
For a moment I do not understand; then I recognize the feel of Fragile Cargo, still clamping me to the stretcher, and I open my mouth and scream and scream.
Clatter of feet. Hatch opens. Fragile Cargo goes limp.
I stagger to my feet. Faint light through the hatch; B's head. I hold out the Andite stick and she turns and shouts; and a panel slides open in the wall so that the wind comes roaring in.
I push the stick through and the wind snatches it away and it is gone.
After that--
After that, for a while, nothing, I suppose, though I have no recollection of losing consciousness; only without any sense of break I find I am flat on my back on one of the seats in the cabin of the hopper.
I sit up and say "How--"
B who is sitting on the floor beside me says that when the broadcaster was activated of course they came at once, only while they were waiting for the boat to reach land whole squads of land cars arrived and started combing the area, and some came up on top of the cliff and shone their headlights out over the sea so Mr. Yardo had to lurk against the cliff face and wait till I got into a position where he could pick me up and it was frightfully clever of me to think of floating up on antigrav--
I forgot about the broadcaster.
I forgot about the hopper come to that, there seemed to be nothing in the world except me and the stretcher and the enemy.
Stretcher.
I say, "Is M'Clare--"
At which moment Mr. Yardo turns from the controls with a wide smile of triumph and says "Eighteen twenty-seven, girls!" and the world goes weightless and swings upside down.
Then still with no sense of any time-lapse I am lying in the big lighted hold, with the sound of trampling all round: it is somehow filtered and far off and despite the lights there seems to be a globe of darkness around my head. I hear my own voice repeating, "M'Clare? How's M'Clare?"
A voice says distantly, without emphasis, "M'Clare? He's dead."
The next time I come round it is dark. I am vaguely aware of having been unconscious for quite a while.
There is a single thread of knowledge connecting this moment with the last: M'Clare's dead.
This is the central factor: I seem to have been debating it with myself for a very long time.
I suppose the truth is simply that the Universe never guarantees anything; life, or permanence, or that your best will be good enough.
The rule is that you have to pick yourself up and go on; and lying here in the dark is not doing it.
I turn on my side and see a cluster of self-luminous objects including a light switch. I reach for it.
How did I get into a hospital?
On second thoughts it is a cabin in the ship, or rather two of them with the partition torn out, I can see the ragged edge of it. There is a lot of paraphernalia around; I climb out to have a look.
Holy horrors what's happened? Someone borrowed my legs and put them back wrong; my eyes also are not functioning well, the light is set at Minimum and I am still dazzled. I see a door and make for it to get Explanations from somebody.
Arrived, I miss my footing and stumble against the door and on the other side someone says "Hello, Lizzie. Awake at last?"
I think my heart stops for a moment. I can't find the latch. I am vaguely aware of beating something with my fists, and then the door gives, sticks, gives again and I stumble through and land on all fours the other side of it.
Someone is calling: "Lizzie! Are you hurt? Where the devil have they all got to? Liz!"
I sit up and say, "They said you were dead!"
"Who did?"
"I ... I ... someone in the hold. I said How's M'Clare? and they said you were dead."
M'Clare frowns and says gently, "Come over here and sit down quietly for a bit. You've been dreaming."
Have I? Maybe the whole thing was a dream--but if so how far does it go? Going down in the heli? The missile? The boat? Crawling through the black tunnel of a broken ship?
No, because he is sitting in a sort of improvised chaise longue and his legs are evidently strapped in place under the blanket; he is fumbling with the fastening or something.
I say "Hey! Cut that out!"
He straightens up irritably.
"Don't you start that, Lysistrata. I've been suffering the attentions of the damnedest collection of amateur nurses who ever handled a thermocouple, for over a week. I don't deny they've been very efficient, but when it comes to--"
Over a week?
He nods. "My dear Lizzie, we left Incognita ten days ago. Amateur nursing again! They have some unholy book of rules which says that for Exposure, Exhaustion and Shock the best therapy is sleep. I don't doubt it, but it goes on to say that in extreme cases the patient has been known to benefit by as much as two weeks of it. I didn't find out that they were trying it on you until about thirty-six hours ago when I began inquiring why you weren't around. They kept me under for three days--in fact until their infernal Handbook said it was time for my leg muscles to have some exercise. Miss Lammergaw was the ring-leader."
No wonder my legs feel as though someone exchanged the muscles for cotton wool, just wait till I get hold of Kirsty.
If it hadn't been for her, I shouldn't have spent ten days remembering, even in my sleep, that--
I say, "Hell's feathers, it was you!"
M'Clare makes motions as though to start getting out of his chair, looking seriously alarmed. I say, "It was your voice! When I asked--"
M'Clare, quite definitely, starts to blush. Not much, but some.
"Lizzie, I believe you're right. I have a sort of vague memory of someone asking how I was--and I gave what I took to be a truthful answer. I remember it seemed quite inconceivable that I could be alive. In fact I still don't understand it. Neither Yardo nor Miss Laydon could tell me. How did you get me out of that ship?"
Well, I do my best to explain, glossing over one or two points; at the finish he closes his eyes and says nothing for a while.
Then he says, "So except for this one man who saw you, you left no traces at all?"
Not that I know of, but--
"Do you know, five minutes later there were at least twenty men in that bay, most of them scientists? They don't seem to have found anything suspicious. Visibility was bad, of course, and you can't leave foot-prints in shingle--"
Hold on, what is all this?
M'Clare says, "We've had two couriers while you were asleep. Yes, I know it's not ordinarily possible for a ship on Mass-Time to get news. One of these days someone will have an interesting problem in Cultural Engineering, working out how to integrate some of these Space Force secrets into our economic and social structure without upsetting the whole of the known volume. Though courier boats make their crews so infernally sick I doubt whether the present type will ever come into common use. Anyway, we've had transcripts of a good many broadcasts from Incognita, the last dated four days ago; and as far as we can tell they're interpreting Gilgamesh just as we meant them to.
"The missile, by the way, was experimental, waiting to be test-fired the next day. The man in charge saw Gilgamesh on the alarm screens and got trigger-happy. The newscasters were divided as to whether he should be blamed or praised; they all seem to feel he averted a menace, at least temporarily, but some of them think the invaders could have been captured alive.
"The first people on the scene came from a scientific camp; you and Miss Laydon saw their lights on the way down. You remember that area is geophysically interesting? Well, by extraordinary good luck an international group was there studying it. They rushed straight off to the site of the landing--they actually saw Gilgamesh, and she registered on some of their astronomical instruments, too. They must be a reckless lot. What's more, they started trying to locate her on the sea bottom the next day. Found both pieces; they're still trying to locate the nose. They were all set to try raising the smaller piece when their governments both announced in some haste that they were sending a properly equipped expedition. Jointly.
"There's been no mention in any newscast of anyone seeing fairies or sea maidens--I expect the poor devil thinks you were a hallucination."
So we brought it off.
I am very thankful in a distant sort of way, but right now the Incognitans have no more reality for me than the Lost Kafoozalum.
M'Clare came through alive.
I could spend a good deal of time just getting used to that fact, but there is something I ought to say and I don't know how.
I inquire after his injuries and learn they are healing nicely.
I look at him and he is frowning.
He says, "Lizzie. Just before my well-meant but ineffective attempt at suicide--"
Here it comes.
I say quick If he is worrying about all that nonsense he talked in order to distract my attention, forget it; I have.
Silence, then he says wearily, "I talked nonsense, did I?"
I say there is no need to worry, under the circumstances anyone would have a perfect right to be raving off his Nut.
I then find I cannot bear this conversation any longer so I get up saying I expect he is tired and I will call someone.
I get nearly to the door when
"No, Lizzie! you can't let that crew loose on me just in order to change the conversation. Come back here. I appreciate your wish to spare my feelings, but it's wasted. We'll have this out here and now.
"I remember quite well what I said, and so do you: I said that I loved you. I also said that I had intended to ask you to marry me as soon as you ceased to be one of my pupils. Well, the results of Finals were officially announced three days ago.
"Oh, I suppose I always knew what the answer would be, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life wondering, because I never had the guts to ask you.
"You don't dislike me as you used to--you've forgiven me for making you come to Russett--but you still think I'm a cold-blooded manipulator of other people's minds and emotions. So I am; it's part of the job.
"You're quite right to distrust me for that, though. It is the danger of this profession, that we end up by looking on everybody and everything as a subject for manipulation. Even in our personal lives. I always knew that: I didn't begin to be afraid of it until I realized I was in love with you.
"I could have made you love me, Lizzie. I could! I didn't try. Not that I didn't want love on those terms, or any terms. But to use professional ... tricks ... in private life, ends by destroying all reality. I always treated you exactly as I treated my other students--I think. But I could have made you think you loved me ... even if I am twice your age--"
This I cannot let pass, I say "Hi! According to College rumor you cannot be more than thirty-six; I'm twenty-three."
M'Clare says in a bemused sort of way He will be thirty-seven in a couple of months.
I say, "I will be twenty-four next week and your arithmetic is still screwy; and here is another datum you got wrong. I do love you. Very much."
He says, "Golden Liz."
Then other things which I remember all right, I shall keep them to remember any time I am tired, sick, cold, hungry Hundred-and-ninety--; but they are not for writing down.
Then I suppose at some point we agreed it is time for me to go, because I find myself outside the cabin and there is Colonel Delano-Smith.
He makes me a small speech about various matters ending that he hears he has to congratulate me.
Huh?
Oh, Space and Time did one of those unimitigated so-and-sos, my dear classmates, leave M'Clare's communicator on?
The colonel says he heard I did very well in my Examinations.
Sweet splitting photons I forgot all about Finals.
It is just as well my Education has come to an honorable end, because ... well, shades of ... well, Goodness gracious and likewise Dear me, I am going to marry a Professor.
Better just stick to it I am going to marry M'Clare, it makes better sense that way.
But Gosh we are going to have to do some re-adjusting to a changed Environment. Both of us.
Oh, well, M'Clare is a Professor of Cultural Engineering and I just past my Final Exams in same; surely if anyone can we should be able to work out how you live Happily Ever After?
