Sydney J. Bounds
When the early lunar explorers returned to Earth they were subjected to a rigorous programme of quarantine checks. Nowadays, with the remainder of the series of Apollo lunar-landings, the returning crews are allowed immediate contact with the terrestrial biosphere. When Homo sapiens reaches out to the stars for how long will quarantine checks need to be applied? And—what form will they take?
* * * *
Arthur Saxon paused on his way to the death chamber. It was not an official name, but he thought of the outermost satellite that way; perhaps because, no matter how he tried, he could never forget the airless void on the other side of the hull. Living on Starport scared him.
He paused to look out through an observation panel at the hard unwinking specks of colour that were the stars, searching for the sun. It was not hard to find. Even this far out it had the aspect of an arc lamp, small and brilliant but without heat.
Saxon had one compensation for having been co-opted to Starport Authority. At forty, he was grossly overweight and it was nice not to have to drag mounds of surplus fat around in a one-G environment.
He continued to an airlock and punched a wall button to summon a cab. A light flashed green and he cycled the lock and went directly through to the cab’s seat. Only one satellite concerned Saxon and the pilot recognised him.
‘R. I., Mr. Saxon?’
He nodded, chins shaking like jelly. The cab broke connection and jetted away.
Starport lost its fleeting illusion of safety when viewed from outside. It looked fragile and, even a short way off, its city-size dwindled to the aspect of a child’s toy seen against interstellar gulfs. Orbiting beyond Pluto, the original doughnut was obscured by a galaxy of satellites built on to and around it; an orbital city of cylinders and spheres, bristling with antennae and armament.
The cab jetted through the complex, passing a dockyard where lights blazed over a starship being fitted out, a fusion generator, space-suited construction men building yet another extension. Starport would never be complete. Men were forever changing and enlarging it.
R. I. loomed across his horizon. Reception Investigation. The death chamber. The outermost satellite was isolated; spy-eyes recorded and relayed every detail that went on inside. In an emergency it was programmed to open to space at an instant’s notice, and no known life form could take that. Saxon felt sick with fear; would the controllers give him time to get clear?
His pilot matched course and velocity, latched on. Saxon went through the lock to the guardhouse, showed his pass. Two security men checked it as if they’d never seen him before.
‘Okay, Mr. Saxon—go ahead.’
He moved easily in the artificial half-G. A dossier waited on a desk and Saxon sat down and read it carefully. He’d found it didn’t pay to skip routine. The name on the cover:
Eric Drummond
Drummond, astronaut, three weeks returned from the furthest out trip yet, hunting (as men always hunted) planets suitable for colonising. He’d gone alone on a fast one-man scoutship. He had a wife, two children and a sizable fortune waiting for him back on Earth (pilot’s pay mounted astronomically). There were photographs, fingerprints and retina patterns for identification. Medical had cleared him. A note (in red) informed that part of the scoutship’s tape had been destroyed; accidentally Drummond claimed—but it left a gap that only the astronaut could fill. And if it were not an accident... ?
Saxon pushed the dossier aside and reviewed its content in his mind. He sat back and stared thoughtfully at the viewing screens giving a permanent and recorded scene of what went on inside the inner chamber.
It was a laboratory. Eric Drummond—alone—sat in a reclining chair, eyes closed, listening to Hoist’s suite The Planets. He appeared relaxed; jockey-sized with nut-brown wrinkled skin, wearing only a pyjama suit.
Saxon glanced at the wall chronometer, decided there was nothing to wait for. He crossed to the lock and a security man operated it for him. He entered a corridor. At the far end was another lock which opened automatically and he passed through.
The single room was circular, domed, small for the size of the satellite; a lot of equipment had been built into its double walls. There was a bed and an EEG console. It was warm, discreetly lighted, with continuously cleaned air.
Drummond rose casually, switching off the music. ‘What now ? They’ve practically taken me apart already.’
Saxon smiled a fat disarming smile, seated himself in an outsize chair. ‘I’m your night nurse, Eric. Call me Art, if you like. Feeling sleepy?’
Drummond stared at him, measuring him. ‘No, not yet.’ A pause. ‘You play chess, Art?’
‘I can move the pieces around. I’m not good, but I’ll play if you want.’
The dossier had mentioned that Drummond was a good player, that much of his time aboard the scoutship was spent studying tactics.
The astronaut set out the pieces. ‘Chess helps me relax, Art. I’ll sleep like a baby afterwards. You take white.’
Saxon moved a pawn to king four. Drummond countered; for a man who claimed chess helped him relax, he had total concentration and it was not many moves before Saxon was in trouble.
‘Check,’ Drummond called.
Saxon wriggled out of it, knowing his opponent had the edge; knowing too that spy-eyes relayed every move to the control satellite, that experts would be evaluating Drummond’s game.
Drummond finished it quickly with a trick ending; promoting a pawn and unexpectedly naming it a knight. ‘Mate,’ he said, yawning. ‘Guess I might as well turn in, let you earn your money. What are you testing for?’
‘Routine stuff.’
Smiling, Drummond nodded acceptance and stretched out on the bed.
Saxon rose, trailing a bunch of wires from the EEG, and taped the electrodes in place on the astronaut’s skull, face and chest, tested out. The ink needle traced an alpha rhythm.
Drummond’s voice came, uneasy. ‘Brain washing? Sleep deprivation?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Saxon put warmth into his voice, reassurance. ‘This gadget is simply an electroencephalograph.
‘It writes out your brain waves and tells us when you’re dreaming.’
‘You could watch just as well outside.’
‘True.’ Saxon moved back to his chair across the console and settled himself comfortably, his attitude making clear he had no intention of giving any explanation.
‘Okay Art, I suppose you know what you’re doing. G’night.’
‘Pleasant dreams, Eric.’
Drummond became drowsy and the pen jiggled irregular slow Waves. As he slept they turned into big slow waves. His eyes remained still, throat muscles tense, heart regular.
Saxon waited for a dream to start, no longer concentrating on the steadily moving pens; they were watched from outside. He had another job, one that only his unique talent could perform: And as no-one else with his talent had yet been located, it looked as if he might be on Starport some time.
Starport Authority held every returned starman until he’d been cleared down to the last test men could devise. No-one was allowed through to Earth till it was proved he was harmless. The station was more than a staging post to the stars; it was a barrier between Earth and the unknown. There were many risks; a new germ that could cause plague; an apparently innocuous plant might turn out to be a habit-forming drug. A new idea. Thinking could change out there; values and morals changed. Starport checked ruthlessly for anything which might upset the status quo.
Arthur Saxon was Earth’s ultimate monitor, the final check on what had come back from the stars. His word could turn Reception Investigation into a death chamber.
Saxon had the strange ability of sharing other people’s dreams. Not telepathy, not strictly empathy; though possibly related to the last, experts claimed. It was more than just listening in—he became the dreamer, experienced every illogical detail that welled up from the dreamer’s unconscious. Starport Authority had snapped him up as the ultimate monitor; to check the dreams of returned astronauts for deviation from human.
He glanced at the EEG chart. Drummond’s throat muscles relaxed, rapid eye movements begun. The astronaut was moving into paradoxical sleep. Saxon closed his eyes, waited .. then he was dreaming Drummond’s dream with him.
He felt a sudden bodily jerk. He was falling, falling endlessly through deep space illumed by flaming suns. The suns were abruptly blotted out as though he were plunging down a well, into darkness. With a splash he hit water and submerged and began to swim, a slow rhythmical breast-stroke. He sank down and down into the depths, experiencing no difficulty in breathing. The deeper he went, the lighter it became. The water had a translucent glassy look and waves surged against him. He had no sensation of gravity; his body floated. Presently he touched bottom, sand and pebbles, and stopped swimming and began walking. Coloured weeds danced in unseen eddies; fish came to investigate him. He moved between fantastic rock shapes, apparently carved, to a coral grotto where a dark cave loomed. The water grew ice-cold and an open shell cut his foot. It stung...
The dream-scene faded slowly and Saxon opened his eyes and stirred himself in the chair. He studied the EEG charts, now recording normal dreamless sleep. On the bed, Drummond lay still, eyes closed lips parted in a faint smile.
Saxon decided the dream could be normal and made a note to that effect, his note instantly relayed to the watchers in the control satellite. Normal ? It took fine judgment to decide what was normal in dreams...
Saxon had previously been employed in a mental hospital, sharing the dreams of patients for the doctors. He’d had a lot of experience and believed he could tell normal from abnormal now. His talent he had been born with; and it came as the biggest shock of his life to learn that other people could not share dreams as he could.
As a boy he had been fascinated by the simple dreams of dogs and cats. He had learnt to be wary of city traffic when he was in danger of sharing another’s day-dream. He had learnt to shun cities and crowds.
So ... normal? He began to wonder about a married man returned from a lone voyage—and no sex dream. Perhaps that would follow. Perhaps. Added to the scoutship’s missing tape it built a stronger suspicion in his mind. He made a fresh note, instantly relayed outside.
The EEG recorded an irregular heart beat. Drummond dreamt and Saxon was traversing a maze.
The maze baffled him completely at first; until he began to appreciate its spiral form and listened to the voice in his head that told him repeatedly to keep turning to the right to reach the centre. It was important, for a reason he couldn’t grasp, to reach the centre of the maze. The walls had colour yet he could not name that colour. There was no obvious source of light and yet he saw. The walls were solid, fashioned from stone slabs, slotted one into another; the space between them narrow so that he brushed against sides, found them hard and unyielding. The roof was low and he was forced to stoop. His back ached. His feet slap-slapped on the bare stone floor, echoing through the labyrinthine corridors, the echo vanishing and reappearing at each turn, multiplying. The spiral seemed to wind tighter. The walls flowed on endlessly...
The dream dissolved and Saxon blinked and stretched and studied Drummond’s EEG pattern. It seemed normal. But a maze symbol ? He racked his memory but could not recall encountering a dream precisely like this one before. There was an odd, almost ritual quality about it.
He reported a feeling that something lay hidden in the dream. Rising, he waddled over to the bed and stared down at Drummond. The astronaut slept peacefully. Saxon returned to his chair, looked round the quiet domed room. He thought of the Controller, finger alongside a button that would open the shutters to airless space, and shivered.
Drummond dreamt again. And Saxon was back in the maze. He continued to turn right, as if he’d been programmed. It was the same maze, a continuation of the previous dream. Stone walls hemmed him, forced him to stoop. He followed the serpentine passages as they wound inward, turning right at each junction. Time had no meaning. He kept on, feeling he must soon reach the mystery at the dead centre of the labyrinth.
Drummond moved out of his dream into orthodox sleep. Uneasy, Saxon reported his return to the dream maze, apparently at the same point he had left it. There was something disturbing about that.
A red light flashed on the console, making him jump. It was rare for anyone to interrupt him. He answered the call.
‘Controller here. Are you all right, Saxon?’
‘I’m all right so far.’ He puzzled over the maze symbol. What could it signify ? Death and rebirth ?
‘We’re unhappy with this subject. Do you want to pull out?’
Saxon studied the readings again. Nothing had changed; everything appeared normal. He looked across to the bed where Drummond slept innocently.
‘I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.’
The chart changed, registering rapid eye movements.
‘Well, give yourself time to get clear-’
The Controller’s voice faded as Saxon was sucked into the astronaut’s dream world. He was back in the maze and turning right at a corner, right again. The roof pressed lower and his back ached. The stone walls moved closer together so that he had to squeeze his way through. He sensed it was important to reach the centre, vitally important. Pressure built up inside him, driving him forward.
He was close to the centre now and his excitement grew. He was drawn relentlessly into the heart of the spiral maze as if in the powerful current of a whirlpool. Deeper and deeper he was drawn in.
There was an image in his head, like a second dream; an image of himself in yet another maze that went on for eternity. And perhaps that dreamer had an image of a maze in his head also. In this double-dream, he pursued miles and miles of tortuous corridors and his legs ached and his feet were sore. It was as if he looked down from a height on a toy labyrinth, watching himself follow the spiral; penetrate to the dead centre and crawl bug-like into one small empty room at its heart.
His heart pulsed, reverberating in the enclosed space, echoing through stone passages. It was a drumbeat, growing louder. He reached the centre of the maze, crawling on hands and knees, and squeezed through a narrow aperture to arrive in a small room.
But this room was not quite empty. It contained one artifact, a highly polished mirror.
He stared at the blank walls, the solid floor, the low roof. There was nothing else, only the glittering mirror, and so he looked at it. Despite the lack of any obvious source of light he saw his reflection there...
Something was wrong. It took him a moment to realise what it was and, in that moment, something wrenched at his mind. Then he was being sucked down in a whirlpool of darkness with the memory of that mirror reflection impressed on his mind. It had not been Drummond’s reflection, but his own.
Light.
His limbs trembled and his mind grappled with shock. He was back in the lab, looking across at Drummond. Only it wasn’t Drummond. Shock turned to horror as he realised he was looking up at the console and the man on the other side was too fat to be the astronaut. This man sat in an armchair, watching him, pudgy lips curved in a faint smile.
The fat man rose and waddled towards the door.
Desperately Saxon tried to rise. Wires hampered him. There were electrodes fastened to his skull, face and chest. As he tore at them to free himself he learnt that he was now wearing a pyjama suit.
The dream had turned to nightmare.
He babbled incoherently as the fat man calmly pushed a wall button and waited. The door of the lock opened, closed again, and Saxon was alone.
Trailing wires, he staggered upright as a voice echoed over the intercom, a voice that could only be his own:
‘Drummond is alien. Destroy it.’