Tales of Ten Worlds Page 6

  The heavy rope fell in coils on the sea bed, stirring up a cloud of silt that drifted like smoke down the slow current. Now that the sun was higher in the sky, the underwater world was no longer wrapped in a gray, twilight gloom. The sea bed was colorless but bright, and the boundary of vision was now almost fifteen feet away. For the first time, Tibor could see the space capsule in its entirety. It was such a peculiar-looking object, being designed for conditions beyond all normal experience, that there was an eye-teasing wrongness about it. One searched in vain for a front or a rear; there was no way of telling in what direction it pointed as it sped along its orbit.

  Tibor pressed his helmet against the metal and shouted.

  "I'm back," he called. "Can you hear me?"

  Tap

  "I've got a rope, and I'm going to tie it on to the parachute cables. We're about three kilometers from an island, and as soon as we've made you fast we'll head toward it. We can't lift you out of the water with the gear on the lugger, so we'll try to get you up on the beach. You understand?"

  Tap

  It took only a few moments to secure the rope; now he had better get clear before the Arafura started to lift. But there was something he had to do first.

  "Hello!" he shouted. "I've fixed the rope. We'll lift in a minute. D'you hear me?"

  Tap

  "Then you can hear this too. You'll never get there alive. I've fixed that as well."

  Tap, tap

  "You've got five hours to die. My brother took longer than that, when he ran into your mine field. You understand? I'm from Budapest. I hate you and your country and everything it stands for. You've taken my home, my family, made my people slaves. I wish I could see your face now—I wish I could watch you die, as I had to watch Theo. When you're halfway to the island, this rope is going to break where I cut it. I'll go down and fix another—and that'll break, too. You can sit in there and wait for the bumps."

  Tibor stopped abruptly, shaken and exhausted by the violence of his emotion. There was no room for logic or reason in this orgasm of hate; he did not pause to think, for he dared not. Yet somewhere far down inside his mind the real truth was burning its way up toward the light of consciousness.

  It was not the Russians he hated, for all that they had done. It was himself, for he had done more. The blood of Theo, and of ten thousand countrymen, was upon his own hands. No one could have been a better Communist than he had been, or have more supinely believed the propaganda from Moscow. At school and college, he had been the first to hunt out and denounce "traitors." (How many had he sent to the labor camps or the AVO torture chambers?) When he had seen the truth, it was far, far too late; and even then, he had not fought —he had run.

  He had run across the world, trying to escape his guilt; and the two drugs of danger and dissipation had helped him to forget the past. The only pleasures life gave him now were the loveless embraces he sought so feverishly when he was on the mainland, and his present mode of existence was proof that these were not enough. If he now had the power to deal out death, it was only because he had come here in search of it himself.

  There was no sound from the capsule; its silence seemed contemptuous, mocking. Angrily, Tibor banged against it with the hilt of his knife.

  "Did you hear me?" he shouted. "Did you hear me?"

  No answer.

  "Damn you! I know you're listening! If you don't answer, I'll hole you and let the water in!"

  He was sure that he could, with the sharp point of his knife. But that was the last thing he wanted to do; that would be too quick, too easy an ending.

  There was still no sound; maybe the Russian had fainted. Tiber hoped not, but there was no point in waiting any longer. He gave a vicious parting bang on the capsule, and signaled to his tender.

  Nick had news for him when he broke the surface.

  "T. I. radio's been squawking," he said. "The Ruskies are asking everyone to look out for one of their rockets. They say it should be floating somewhere off the Queensland coast. Sounds as if they want it badly."

  "Did they say anything else about it?" Tibor asked anxiously.

  "Oh yes—it's been round the moon a couple of times."

  "That all?"

  "Nothing else that I remember. There was a lot of science stuff I didn't get."

  That figured; it was just like the Russians to keep as quiet as they could about an experiment that had gone wrong.

  "You tell T. I. that we'd found it?"

  "Are you crazy? Anyway, the radio's crook; couldn't if we wanted to. Fixed that rope properly?"

  "Yes—see if you can haul her off the bottom."

  The end of the rope had been wound round the mainmast, and in a few seconds it had been drawn taut. Although the sea was calm, there was a slight swell, and the lugger was rolling ten or fifteen degrees. With each roll, the gunwales would rise a couple of feet, then drop again. There was a lift here of several tons, but one had to be careful in using it.

  The rope twanged, the woodwork groaned and creaked, and for a moment Tibor was afraid that the weakened line would part too soon. But it held, and the load lifted. They got a further hoist on the second roll—and on the third. Then the capsule was clear of the sea bed, and the Arafura was listing slightly to port.

  "Let's go," said Nick, taking the wheel. "Should be able to get her half a mile before she bumps again."

  The lugger began to move slowly toward the island, carrying its hidden burden beneath it. As he leaned on the rails, letting the sun steam the moisture from his sodden clothing, Tibor felt at peace for the first time in—how many months? Even his hate had ceased to burn like fire in his brain. Perhaps, like love, it was a passion that could never be satisfied; but for the moment, at least, it was satiated.

  There was no weakening of his resolve; he was implacably set upon the vengeance that had been so strangely—so miraculously—placed within his power. Blood called for blood, and now the ghosts that haunted him might rest at last. Yet he felt a strange sympathy, even pity, toward the unknown man through whom he could now strike back at the enemies who had once been his friends. He was robbing them of much more than a single life—for what was one man, even a highly trained scientist—to the Russians? What he was taking from them was power and prestige and knowledge, the things they valued most.

  He began to worry when they were two thirds of the way to the island, and the rope had not parted. There were still four hours to go, and that was much too long. For the first time it occurred to him that his entire plan might miscarry, and might even recoil on his head. Suppose that, despite everything, Nick managed to get the capsule up on the beach before the deadline?

  With a deep "twang" that set the whole ship vibrating, the rope came snaking out of the water, scattering spray in all directions.

  "Might have guessed," muttered Nick. "She was just starting to bump. You like to go down again, or shall I send one of the boys?"

  "I'll take it," Tibor hastily answered. "I can do it quicker than they can."

  That was perfectly true, but it took him twenty minutes to locate the capsule. The Arafura had drifted well away from it before Nick could stop the engine, and there was a time when Tibor wondered if he would ever find it again. He quartered the sea bed in great arcs, and it was not until he had accidentally tangled in the training parachute that his search was ended. The shrouds lay pulsating slowly in the current like some weird and hideous marine monster—but there was nothing that Tibor feared now except frustration, and his pulse barely quickened as he saw the whitely looming mass ahead.

  The capsule was scratched and stained with mud, but appeared undamaged. It was lying on its side now, looking rather like a giant milk churn that had been tipped over. The passenger must have been bumped around, but if he'd fallen all the way back from the moon, he must have been well padded and was probably still in good shape. Tibor hoped so; it would be a pity if the remaining three hours were wasted.

  Once again he rested the verdigrised copper of his
helmet against the no-longer-quite-so-brightly-gleaming metal of the capsule.

  "Hello!" he shouted. "Can you hear me?"

  Perhaps the Russian would try to balk him by remaining silent—but that, surely, was asking too much of any man's self-control. Tibor was right; almost at once there was the sharp knock of the reply.

  "So glad you're there," he called back. "Things are working out just the way I said, though I guess I'll have to cut the rope a little deeper."

  The capsule did not answer. It never answered again, though Tibor banged and banged on the next dive—and on the next. But he hardly expected it to then, for they'd had to stop for a couple of hours to ride out a squall, and the time limit had expired long before he made his final descent. He was a little annoyed about that, for he had planned a farewell message. He shouted it just the same, though he knew he was wasting his breath.

  By early afternoon, the Arafura had come in as close as she dared. There were only a few feet of water beneath her, and the tide was falling. The capsule broke surface at the bottom of each wave trough, and was now firmly stranded on a sandbank. There was no hope of moving it any farther; it was stuck, until a high sea would dislodge it.

  Nick regarded the situation with an expert eye.

  "There's a six-foot tide tonight," he said. "The way she's lying now, she'll be in only a couple of feet of water at low. We'll be able to get at her with the boats."

  They waited off the sandbank while the sun and the tide went down, and the radio broadcast intermittent reports of a search that was coming closer but was still far away. Late in the afternoon the capsule was almost clear of the water; the crew rowed the small boat toward it with a reluctance which Tibor, to his annoyance, found himself sharing.

  "It's got a door in the side," said Nick suddenly. "Jeeze— think there's anyone in it?"

  "Could be," answered Tibor, his voice not as steady as he thought. Nick glanced at him curiously. His diver had been acting strangely all day, but he knew better than to ask him what was wrong. In this part of the world, you soon learned to mind your own business.

  The boat, rocking slightly in the choppy sea, had now come alongside the capsule. Nick reached out and grabbed one of the twisted antenna stubs; then, with catlike agility, he clambered up the curved metal surface. Tibor made no attempt to follow him, but watched silently from the boat as he examined the entrance hatch.

  "Unless it's jammed," Nick muttered, "there must be some way of opening it from outside. Just our luck if it needs special tools."

  His fears were groundless. The word "Open" had been stenciled in ten languages around the recessed door catch, and it took only seconds to deduce its mode of operation. As the air hissed out, Nick said "Phew!" and turned suddenly pale. He looked at Tibor as if seeking support, but Tibor avoided his eye. Then, reluctantly, Nick lowered himself into the capsule.

  He was gone for a long time. At first, they could hear muffled hangings and bumpings from the inside, followed by a string of bilingual profanity. And then there was a silence that went on and on and on.

  When at last Nick's head appeared above the hatchway, his leathery, wind-tanned face was gray and streaked with tears. As Tibor saw this incredible sight, he felt a sudden ghastly premonition. Something had gone horribly wrong, but his mind was too numb to anticipate the truth. It came soon enough, when Nick handed down his burden, no larger than an oversized doll.

  Blanco took it, as Tibor shrank to the stern of the boat. As he looked at the calm, waxen face, fingers of ice seemed to close not only upon his heart, but around his loins. In the same moment, both hate and desire died forever within him, as he knew the price of his revenge.

  The dead astronaut was perhaps more beautiful in death than she had been in life; tiny though she was, she must have been tough as well as highly trained to qualify for this mission. As she lay at Tibor's feet, she was neither a Russian nor the first human being to have seen the far side of the moon; she was merely the girl that he had killed.

  Nick was talking, from a long way off.

  "She was carrying this," he said, in an unsteady voice. "Had it tight in her hand—took me a long time to get it out."

  Tibor scarcely heard him, and never even glanced at the tiny spool of tape lying in Nick's palm. He could not guess, in this moment beyond all feeling, that the Furies had yet to close in upon his soul—and that soon the whole world would be listening to an accusing voice from beyond the grave, branding him more irrevocably than any man since Cain.

  INTO THE COMET

  "I DON'T KNOW why I'm recording this," said George Takeo Pickett slowly into the hovering microphone. "There's no chance that anyone will ever hear it. They say the comet will bring us back to the neighborhood of Earth in about two million years, when it makes its next turn around the sun. I wonder if mankind will still be in existence then, and whether the comet will put on as good a display for our descendants as it did for us? Maybe they'll launch an expedition, just as we have done, to see what they can find. And they'll find us. . . .

  "For the ship will still be in perfect condition, even after all those ages. There'll be fuel in the tanks, maybe even plenty of air, for our food will give out first, and we'll starve before we suffocate. But I guess we won't wait for that; it will be quicker to open the air lock and get it all over.

  "When I was a kid, I read a book on polar exploration called Winter Amid the Ice. Well, that's what we're facing now. There's ice all around us, floating in great porous bergs. Challenger's in the middle of a cluster, orbiting round one another so slowly that you have to wait several minutes before you're certain they've moved. But no expedition to Earth's poles ever faced our winter. During most of that two million years, the temperature will be four hundred and fifty below zero. We'll be so far away from the sun that it'll give about as much heat as the stars. And who ever tried to warm his hands by Sirius on a cold winter night?"

  That absurd image, coming suddenly into his mind, broke him up completely. He could not speak because of memories of moonlight upon snowfields, of Christmas chimes ringing across a land already fifty million miles away. Suddenly he was weeping like a child, his self-control dissolved by the remembrance of all the familiar, disregarded beauties of the Earth he had forever lost.

  And everything had begun so well, in such a blaze of excitement and adventure. He could recall (was it only six months ago?) the very first time he had gone out to look for the comet, soon after eighteen-year-old Jimmy Randall had found it in his homemade telescope and sent his famous telegram to Mount Stromlo Observatory. In those early days, it had been only a faint polliwog of mist, moving slowly through the constellation of Eridanus, just south of the Equator. It was still far beyond Mars, sweeping sunward along its immensely elongated orbit. When it had last shone in the skies of Earth, there were no men to see it, and there might be none when it appeared again. The human race was seeing Randall's comet for the first and perhaps the only time.

  As it approached the sun, it grew, blasting out plumes and jets, the smallest of which was larger than a hundred Earths. Like a great pennant streaming down some cosmic breeze, the comet's tail was already forty million miles long when it raced past the orbit of Mars. It was then that the astronomers realized that this might be the most spectacular sight ever to appear in the heavens; the display put on by Halley's comet, back in 1986, would be nothing in comparison. And it was then that the administrators of the International Astrophysical Decade decided to send the research ship Challenger chasing after it, if she could be fitted out in time; for here was a chance that might not come again in a thousand years.

  For weeks on end, in the hours before dawn, the comet sprawled across the sky like a second but far brighter Milky Way. As it approached the sun, and felt again the fires it had not known since the mammoths shook the Earth, it became steadily more active. Gouts of luminous gas erupted from its core, forming great fans which turned like slowly swinging searchlights across the stars. The tail, now a hundred million mil
es long, divided into intricate bands and streamers which changed their patterns completely in the course of a single night. Always they pointed away from the sun, as if driven starward by a great wind blowing forever outward from the heart of the solar system.

  When the Challenger assignment had been given to him, George Pickett could hardly believe his luck. Nothing like this had happened to any reporter since William Laurence and the atom bomb. The facts that he had a science degree, was unmarried, in good health, weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds, and had no appendix undoubtedly helped. But there must have been many others equally qualified; well, their envy would soon turn to relief.

  Because the skimpy pay load of Challenger could not accommodate a mere reporter, Pickett had had to double up in his spare time as executive officer. This meant, in practice, .that he had to write up the log, act as captain's secretary, keep track of stores, and balance the accounts. It was very fortunate, he often thought, that one needed only three hours' sleep in every twenty-four, in the weightless world of space.

  Keeping his two duties separate had required a great deal of tact. When he was not writing in his closet-sized office, or checking the thousands of items stacked away in stores, he would go on the prowl with his recorder. He had been careful, at one time or another, to interview every one of the twenty scientists and engineers who manned Challenger. Not all the recordings had been radioed back to Earth; some had been too technical, some too inarticulate, and others too much the reverse. But at least he had played no favorites and, as far as he knew, had trodden on no toes. Not that it mattered now.

  He wondered how Dr. Martens was taking it; the astronomer had been one of his most difficult subjects, yet the one who could give most information. On a sudden impulse, Pickett located the earliest of the Martens tapes, and inserted it in the recorder. He knew that he was trying to escape from the present by retreating into the past, but the only effect of that self-knowledge was to make him hope the experiment would succeed.