by
John Rankine
Human relationships, especially between man and woman, have not often been handled sympathetically in science fiction—a subject matter which does not lend itself readily to such treatment—but new author John Rankine achieves this successfully in this story of a survey team temporarily stranded on an alien planet.
* * * *
The black oval of the entry port diminished slowly to a dot and even in the thin atmosphere of Omega the definitive click of its closing could be heard from the edge of the clearway. Dag Fletcher, standing outside the main dome of the station, watched the silver arrow angle up for take off and saw the brilliant fan of orange flame build up before the noise and vibration shook the rock platform. Slowly, with a casual grace, Interstellar-Two-Seven began to lift and then flung itself into a streaking trajectory. In just under the ten seconds which Dag had automatically counted out to himself, it had dwindled away and the blue void was vacant and featureless as it had been through an eternity of time.
Even the long conditioning courses and the many previous missions could not prevent his feeling of loss and abandonment in this remote place. There was a tinge of regret too about the combination of chances which had sent him Meryl Wingard as assistant for the three month tour of duty. Not that there was anything wrong with the Wingard to look at. Far from it. She had elected to be moulded on the lines of Botticelli’s Marine Venus and was as lovely as the original, but it seemed a meaningless beauty, since she worked with the inhumanity of a flawless machine. She was a mathematician of outstanding calibre and trained to a fantastic pitch of competence by years of single-minded effort.
The right person in every way for the mission, no doubt about that—with the banks of computers to keep tabs on; but not likely to add much gaiety to the long chore ahead. Moreover, he suspected that she had very little time for his sort of practical flair. As far as could be said of any spaceman reaching his rank, he was an improvisor, a lucky man, and an outside shot statistically speaking to be a Controller at all. Lean, tall, late thirties, with an easy relaxed slouch of a walk, he always stood out as an individual among the correct conservative types of the Senior personnel.
He moved back into the airlock and flipped switches to drop the outer atmosphere shield. A green glow showed the seal complete and he put the regulator to Robot and let the automatic gear carry on.
Meryl was not in the communal living space, so he moved on into the Controller’s suite. He had settled in there in the week that the ship had remained to do those jobs which needed the full crew. Now he shrugged out of his spacesuit and the moulded rubber inner suit and took a shower. Then he dressed for comfort in slacks, sneakers, and a gaudy Tee-shirt.
The suite was built in a sixty-foot pressurized dome divided by two diameter walls into two small and two large arcs. Large-dayroom and bedroom; small-bathroom and store. The dayroom was dominated by a scanner on a platform against the outer wall. Dag stepped up to it and looked without much enthusiasm at the panoramic view of the planet endlessly presented on the flat screen. He tuned for the immediate area of the space station and a tract of some square miles was presented with crystal clarity. Typical of the planet was the mixture of rocky plateau and wide shallow valley filled with thick yellow-green vegetation. The station was set on a half-mile square platform which had been ground to a perfect level. It made one of the best space ports in the galaxy and served a six dome main station. Ten smaller robot stations dotted the planet and must each be visited once in the three month tour. In theory at least nothing could go wrong with them; but their computer programmes had to have a quarterly check since even tiny errors could drift into serious chaos given long enough.
The project on Omega was to produce an earth type atmosphere. Already the oxygen level was one quarter earth and in two years it should be fully habitable. Gravity at 72 earth was an attractive feature and the planet was sure to be high on the list for future colonists. A dull place though, reflected Fletcher, with its never ending ravines and tumbled rock table lands—though its appearance would improve when a balanced atmosphere produced rain and cloud and stretches of water.
He left the scanner and returned to reception. Still no sign of the girl; so he ate alone, pressing labelled switches which delivered heated foods to the service hatch in the dining alcove. As he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette, she came in, still wearing the close-fitting inner skin of her spacesuit—a silver sheath—which stressed every line of a perfect figure. Her fair hair was straight and almost shoulder length and swung as she moved like a pale gold elastic bell. The blue and yellow rank flashes on the right shoulder were only half a bar less than his own; but she was as correct in address as if she were straight from training school and they used speech automatically, where others in this situation might have got down at once to the more intimate thought transfer.
“Controller, there’s a drift in Station 9. I should be glad if we could make that our first visit.”
“Check. You comfortable in your cubby hole?” He had not asked before in the busy days of take over.
“Thank you, yes; but if you don’t mind I’ll use the lounge here to work in. I prefer a large free space when possible.”
He could sympathize with this view and wondered how she had felt in the cramped living-room of the spaceship. But he kept this thought out of the transfer area of his mind.
Dag looked at the model globe of Omega and spun it to find Station 9. It was about 200 earth miles distant—a two hour journey in one of the Centre’s hover cars. Days on Omega were relatively short, being only 15 ˝ earth hours. It was now about two hours to nightfall and although, eventually, earth personnel drifted out of phase with this time scheme, it was still convenient to talk about “today” and “tomorrow”.
“Tomorrow, then? One hour after first light.”
“Check. I’ll say Good night, Controller.”
“Good night.”
Her detachment was complete and there was no pose in it. A cool madame there, he thought—but probably it meant more positive success for the mission, he would have nothing to take his mind off the job. However, he recognized that he was slightly piqued at her lack of interest in him and after serving himself with a small whisky from the bar, he returned to his own rooms.
* * * *
It was brilliantly light when they came out of the airlock and crossed the forecourt. Fletcher decided to take the middle range car and wound back its pressure sealed roof. He made a routine check of the cylinder rack and they climbed in. They fastened seat belts and at zero power the car edged out from the parking canopy. In the open. Dag lifted her in a smooth sharp climb to maximum height and then set the automatic pilot to home on Station 9 at full power. The car hovered and then slowly turned until it was exactly on the beam path and then moved away with effortless acceleration.
The surface of Omega unrolled before them, visible through the wide screen and the transparent floor. Rocky plateau and valley in succession endlessly. Valleys choked to their rocky confines with the crawling yellow-green plant life. It was by the controlled decomposition of this that the atmosphere was being created. The break down would have a two-fold purpose, oxygen and nitrogen given off and the ground cleared for the future settlers. As they neared the sub-station, the effects of the work made a dramatic change in the scenery. There was a succession of completely clear valleys where the bare ground showed deep purple. Then the station itself could be seen. Three large domes and a small port.
They swept down to a perfect landing and climbed out on to the apron. In minutes they were through the airlock and inside the main dome. Meryl only paused to hinge back her helmet and crossed directly to the control console. All such stations were built to a familiar plan and she quickly identified the essential elements. She switched out the robot computer control and took it on manual. With high speed calculations she monitored the system for five minutes, then switched back.
“There’s been a drift in the computer setting. I’ll have to work back on this.”
“How much time do you need ?”
“Two hours certainly. Possibly two and a half.” This would be cutting it fine if they decided to return before dark. They could stay overnight, of course—there was food and accommodation for several months if necessary; but they both preferred to get back to the relative comfort of the main station.
“See how it goes.”
“Right.”
The pale gold head bent over the horizontal presentation table and long detailed equations were pencilled on the ivorine monitoring panels. He followed the processes for a few minutes then she lost him with a piece of mathematical short circuiting which was outside his range. He certainly had a first class assistant and he admitted to himself that the job would have taken him several days.
“I’ll take a look outside.” There was no reply; she was completely absorbed in the work.
The lock for exit was a complete manual and it was ten minutes before he stood beside the car. He took her up to fifty feet and made a sweeping circuit of the immediate area. The nearest valleys were clear of growth and showed like purple lakes. The dark powdery soil was high in fertility and would make ideal farm land. Four valleys were under ray bombardment and beginning to show patches of clear ground. The ray apparatus was set up and moved by a full crew at each visit of the spaceship and monitored in the interval by the computers in the sub-stations.
He set the car down in one of the cleared areas and took a soil sample in a specimen jar from the rack above the landing skid. He read the fix from the car’s navigation table and marked the sample with date, time, and location. The base analysts were assembling a detailed report on every valley and a complete farming plan would be made before one colonist set foot on the planet. It was median time and exactly half the short day had gone. By the time he had re-admitted himself to the dome it was median plus a half and Meryl was drinking coffee.
“How does it go?”
“No problem. The fault wasn’t hard to find; but I’ll need to test run for about half an hour to make sure that the deviation has been cleared.”
“Fine. If we move at five we shall be back before dark.”
He took time to inspect the plant. It was unlikely that they would have time to pay a second visit; so he initialled and dated the check tablets at each section. It was almost three months to the day since the previous Controller had done the same.
At median plus one and a half she signalled “job complete”, and after the routine tests of equipment, they re-entered the waiting car. Fletcher felt that he must give due credit for her success.
“Thank you for that. Not many people could have straightened it out in the time.”
The reply was typical. “Not at all. Any competent mathematician could have done it.” But he sensed that she was pleased to be complimented and he wondered if a better relationship might not be possible between them.
On the return, he took control on manual and pushed the speed above the range of the automatic pilot. This should bring them in in daylight. Navigation would be unaffected by darkness, but even the few moments of transfer from car to dome could be unpleasant in the intense cold of the night temperature on Omega.
They were under two miles from base, with the homing beam filling the scanner with a pathway like a red carpet unrolled in welcome, when the car defied statistical likelihood and broke its maker’s record for complete reliability. It was so quickly done that it was impossible to remember what in fact had happened. Dag eased down to landing speed and switched in the robot pilot. The car lost height and then began to pick up speed in a tearing near vertical dive. There was a splintering crash. Where the screen had been was the scratched face of living rock. This Dag saw before he blacked out and sagged down against the harness which alone had kept his head from the incoming splinters.
He carried into oblivion also a flash picture of the girl strained against the strap with her hair streaming forward like a shining pennant.
* * * *
Minutes later he climbed back into consciousness and the shifting blur settled to hard factual pictures of a situation as bad as it could be. Pain needled him to full awareness and he moved cautiously. Nothing seemed broken, but a rock fragment had torn through his spacesuit below the left knee and the quilted sections above had constricted to form an emergency air seal. There was a slow ooze of blood through the torn fabric. Looking across at the girl, he stabbed, swearing, at the release catch of his harness and heaved himself out of his bucket seat. She was out cold—as he had been; but there was a pallor about her skin which was ominous. A spur of rock had thrust in at head level on her side and had punctured the helmet of her suit. Since the car was no longer pressurized, she was at surface pressure for Omega and was breathing Omega atmosphere. The suit’s cylinders had emptied quickly in a vain effort to build up against the leak. She was in the same state as an almost drowned man and Dag knew that it was a matter of minutes and some luck if he could do anything at all about it.
He jabbed open her harness release and heaved her on to the sloping floor of the rear compartment. Stripping off the broken suit he looked along the rack of spares for something near the size. Even working at speed, he registered the light strength she had, the perfectly modelled knees and ankles and high round breasts. He zipped off his own helmet and clipped in the emergency air line to face mask. He filled his own lungs with an oxygen plus mixture and, using mouth to mouth respiration technique, made her breathe. He worked steadily for two minutes and was beginning to feel the strain of it, when her eyelids moved.
He put the mask over her mouth and nose and pulled forward his own helmet, glad to get air without conscious effort. Grabbing the suit he had earmarked, he set the air flow to its helmet then slipped it over her head. She was fully aware now and had taken in the situation. Quickly he slipped her legs into the new suit and she kneeled forward to help. Within half a minute pressure was normal and a more natural colour had returned to her skin.
Dag picked out a replacement suit for himself and realized how groggy he felt. For himself, he reversed the process and fitted the new helmet first; then as he was peeling off the old trousers he felt the snag in the left leg and remembered why he was changing at all. As he did a complicated jack-knife to keep the supply of gas to the new suit and free the old, he felt her hand on his shoulder—“Let me help.” She had broken out a first aid kit and poured some solvent on the sticky mess below the knee.
“This needs a stitch. I can take care of it.”
She did a quick but careful bit of surgery with the sterile instruments in the pack, and then a dressing. He shrugged into the suit and stood up to inspect the damage.
Time was running badly against them. Very little daylight remained and unless they were to freeze to death something must be done to patch up the car. He moved gingerly back into the pilot seat. The floor was broken and jammed on to a jagged rock splinter and a narrow fracture spread back into the body of the car. The power pack had been crumpled into the cab and fissures crossed the panoramic screen in every direction. There were two plastic spray containers in the repair locker and some sheets of white plastic. It was intended to make a temporary seal when any part of the fabric was punctured by meteoritic fragments. It might just do—used sparingly. She was already stripping the packaging off a container and he realized that they had dropped easily and naturally into thought transfer. He smiled thanks and got to work.
The rock seemed solid and free from porous pumice. He began sealing the broken edges of the car to the floor, making the intrusive splinters an integral part of the skin. The plastic sprayed out under pressure and set on contact. The whole of the front was complete when the first cylinder hissed empty. They were within minutes of the short twilight.
The cabin floor lightened as he turned to work on it and he saw that she had fitted two hand torches by suction clips to the rear bulkhead. Now that there was time to look at each other, she allowed maximum penetration of her mind for some seconds. He was aware of calm acceptance of the likelihood of death, no hint of criticism, concern for himself, and a sense of comradeship. Reciprocally, he dissolved his own thought barrier and she was conscious of his gratitude for her help, and a new element of personal admiration.
The second cylinder completed a seal for the floor and he looked round for other punctures. There were some minor ones which he first plugged and then sprayed. Using a spare suit cylinder he built up pressure inside the wreck and then set up an air conditioning circuit. It was now dark and with the dark the cold began. The surrounding rocks began to cool rapidly, making sharp cracking noises like breaking sticks.
They were able to take off their helmets and make a scratch meal. An inspection of the lockers produced biscuit and self-heating soup. The cars had little food stock, only spare air bottles being regarded as vital.
Now the cold began to be a thing to reckon with. Moved by the logic of circumstances they made one narrow sleeping bag out of every available bit of fabric with the seat cushions as mattress. Still wearing their inner suits, but not needing helmets in the stabilized atmosphere, they squeezed in and lay still. Dag turned her towards him until they were pressed together from knees to shoulders. Her nipples were noticeably firm against his chest and her perfume was exhilarating. If they got out of this he knew he would want to love this girl, but he knew also that this was not the time and he touched her hair with his lips and said good night.
They slept fitfully for six hours before the cold dug down into them. Dag moved stiffly and a gossamer web of ice crystals tinkled and cracked round his head. He squeezed her shoulders gently and as she woke said “Two hours to daylight—we could do with some warmth.”
The air of the cabin was biting cold and their nest of fabric had hardened into an inflexible carapace. Ice ribbed the tubular cross members. Dag levered himself partly out and reached over for the last two cans of soup. He checked an exclamation of pain as he touched the cold metal and found that the tins were anchored to the floor by a rim of ice. She added her grip to his and they wrenched them free. Bashing the strikers against the floor triggered them off. The heat melted the ice near the tins and made a pool of water; but the soup was hot and its warmth spread through their bodies.
It was not easy to sleep again and they began to talk about the careers which had led them to this point of time. He found she had an unexpected fund of humour. This added another dimension to the expert mathematician. They strained close together to keep in every fugitive calory. The cold thrust down into them and it was a race between dawn and a freezing death. They held on.
* * * *
Dawn came on Omega in a dramatic racing flash and filled the cabin with a harsh neon-like glow. The rapidly rising heat turned their bed into a sodden heap as the ice melted away. The walls streamed with released condensation too fast for the balancer to adjust.
Dag pushed her damp hair aside and with a hand on either side of her face kissed her mouth.
“We have eight hours. There will not be another chance.”
She nodded and, copying his gesture, kissed him in the same way. Then she stood up and touched the release studs at the neck of her suit and zipped down the front panel. Then she peeled it off and took a pad of rough cleaning tissues and began a brisk massaging rub. Dag took another pad and scrubbed her back. He did the same himself and with blood circulating freely and feeling ready to tackle the day, they dressed again in complete spacesuits.
Dag broke out the emergency exit and they crawled through on to the rock. The lip of the ravine was about fifty yards away and the domes of the station seemed near enough to touch on the far side of the valley. But eight hours was too small an allowance of time to do a tricky rock climb of eighty feet into the valley, cut through about a mile of tangled vegetation, and climb the opposite cliff. There would have to be another way.
“Get out the spare suits and any rope you can find,” and as she edged back into the wrecked car, he walked quickly to the top of the cliff and looked across. Almost in the centre of the valley was a low outcrop of rock showing like a black stain on the grey-green carpet. Meryl had brought out two lengths of nylon rope and the spare suits and he ran back to help her carry them. Even with reduced gravity it was a good load among the crazy rocks and they were glad to pile it at the edge.
Meryl could see no hope of crossing in time and he could feel her mind reluctantly preparing for defeat. Dag found her work to do.
“Inflate a spare suit and tie a rope to the centre of the front harness.”
As she worked on it he went on, “What do you say is the distance to that black rock and what rocket charge would send an empty suit to it with a trailing rope?”
The variables made it a tricky calculation. He had made his own rough estimate; but he could do with the best approximation that could be made. There was low gravity, the drag effect of the increasing length of rope, the effectiveness of different rocket charges, and the behaviour of an inflated suit to think of. It took five minutes of calculation before she said “Five-eighths charge and a launching angle of thirty-seven degrees.” He accepted this without question though his own effort had produced a higher angle for the launch.
“Right.”
He twisted out one of the two small rocket canisters from his belt. They were for use in zero weight as propulsion for a short trip outside a stationary ship. They would not move a man on Omega even with its reduced gravity. But they might serve to move a balloon. He spread-eagled the inflated suit on the rocks and carefully sighted along the back to line it up with the target, then he raised the head on a cairn of small stones checking to an angle of 37 degrees with his wrist watch. Then he slotted the charge canister into the empty sheath in the centre of the shoulder straps. He turned the charge indicator to five-eighths and stood aside with the firing toggle in his hand. This was it. If it worked they were halfway home. He pulled the cord gently so as not to disturb the setting of the light figure.
The suit took off looking like a man in space and rose swiftly to the height of its trajectory and then began a homing descent to the rock with the thin nylon line snaking out behind. From where they stood it seemed certain that their projectile would overshoot. Then the increasing check of the trailing rope snatched it down from its soaring curve to a straight line drop and the suit disappeared in a tangle of rock. The rope was immensely strong; but could fray and cut. Dag hauled back until he felt it wedge firmly between two craggy projections, then made fast at their end.
He made a tight bundle of their remaining spares and attached it to a short length of line which he looped over the rope and then sent it like a miniature cable car shooting across the valley. It disappeared into the rocks and he began to work out a braking device with a slipping knot which could be jerked to tighten on the leading rope. When he was satisfied, he showed the girl how it worked and said:
“You next—if the line wears through it will be with me and you will have to sort it out for both of us.”
She stood at the edge of the cliff, gripped the two trailing cords and stepped out over the drop. The perfect lieutenant, he thought, as he followed the dizzy speed of her descent. No questions or argument; but maximum efficient help. Even the bulky outer suit could not completely disguise the slim silver figure. The sag of the rope slowed her a little near the rock and she seemed to be managing the improvised brake. Then she was down in a stumbling run and he saw the small distant figure raise an arm in signal.
Unhesitating he swung out himself with the query—third time lucky?—in his mind. Near the rock he saw that his greater weight was sagging the rope below the rim of the rock outcrop and as he used all his strength to brake on the rope, he had to lift his legs in a full knee bend to fend off. The jar of impact almost broke his grip; but she was there lying out along the rope to help him in.
The next stage was clearer now and they looked silently at it for some minutes. Their final objective was higher than the rock they were on and they could not hope to make it in a toiling hand over hand climb. The best they could do would be to repeat their performance and slide down to the scree at the foot of the cliff and work out the next step from there.
She began another careful calculation of distances and velocities and once more they spreadeagled the inflated suit. Direction was not so critical for this shot into a wide target area and they saw it hit the cliff face and drop back into the scree. Dag pulled in cautiously and the suit dragged about twenty yards before it wedged. They went into the same routine and soon they were standing together at the foot of the last barrier.
Even under the low gravity of Omega they were feeling the physical strain, and as they scrambled up the last of the scree to the sheer wall of the cliff. Dag saw no way of beating the clock and getting to the plateau in the two hours of daylight left to them. Any lengthy exploration to left or right for a reasonable climb was out for a start, and in any case the cliff was uniformly sheer as far as could be seen. The spaceport apron had been given a mathematically even surface to the very edge of the cliff and visualizing the surface above, he could think of nothing immediately above them likely to anchor a rope. Some sort of tined grapnel might do—but made with what?
He broke the container of his anti-hostility pack and took out the small laser pistol—reflecting that if they ever got back to the dome this would need an explanatory section to itself in the station log. He beamed it at the cliff edge and small fragments powdered down. Given several days he might have cut steps with the intense narrow beam: but he did not have days.
“What charges are left?”
“Two complete and two part used.”
“Would they do a demolition job?”
“Properly placed it could move this cliff.”
The half formed idea clarified in his mind and he aimed directly at the sheer rock at about shoulder level. The face began to crumble in an area about the size of a cent piece, as the ray burned into it. He shifted an inch and bored again and after thirty minutes he had excavated a hole about eighteen inches deep and about two inches in diameter. Into this he packed one rocket canister with a thin twist of nylon line on its release toggle. Then he tamped home fragments of stone, only leaving movement for the cord.
They went back into the scree paying out line, and selected cover between two heavy boulders. In a single movement he jerked the trigger and flung himself down beside her with his arm over her shoulders. In their silent world, the noise seemed immense and debris crumbled down in a sliding rush. When movement stopped they stood up.
A tall oblong of the cliff face had come away and shattered like a slab of glass hit with a sledge-hammer. Angular fantastic fragments leaned forward to the new level and a jagged rangle led almost to the top. What problem there would be in that last step could only be assessed when they got there and they began to climb.
Some steps could only be gained by team work. Meryl climbed on his shoulders and got a finger-tip hold on a ledge, then he lifted her feet and she heaved herself on to the level. Then she made a belay and he climbed slowly to join her.
The last step was the highest yet and it was only by standing on his fully outstretched hands that she got a finger hold. It was a slow painful grind to bend her weary muscles and finally lever herself over the top. She lay forward, face downwards, sobbing with exhaustion. Waiting for the rope to snake down to him, he saw that they were within minutes of the twilight. Then he was beside her and with one arm across her shoulders they began a clumsy run to the nearest dome.
They were twenty yards from the lock when the light began to go and as he pulled down the opening lever, the blackness was complete. He felt her slipping down beside him and had to hold her as the door swung in to receive them. With one last effort he picked her up and carried her into the light and warmth.
The few minutes’ rest while the robot mechanism adjusted pressures, gave him time to recover and he was able to carry her through into her room when the inner door opened for them. He took off her outer suit and put her on her bed. She was asleep and breathing deeply and easily.
He walked slowly to his own suite and stripped off and took a shower. It seemed a long time since he had last stood there and it was wonderful to feel the sweat and dust sluicing away and taking aches and tiredness with it. He even smoked a cigarette at intervals dodging the deluge. Then he took time to dress and wondered whether or not to wake her for a meal.
Still debating, he went out to the dining area to fix himself a drink. The table was already set for two and the food was ready. She came out from her room. She was wearing the ceremonial tabard of green and gold caught at the sides with bronze clasps. Her hair was combed down almost to her shoulders and swung like an elastic golden bell as she moved.
She said, “Welcome aboard. Controller,” and he knew that the rest of the tour was not going to be any problem at all.