2061: Odyssey Three (18 page)

What a terrible place, thought Chris Floyd - nothing but driving sleet, flurries of snow, occasional glimpses of landscapes streaked with ice - why, Haven was a tropical paradise by comparison! Yet he knew that the nightside, only a few hundred kilometres further on round the curve of Europa, was even worse.

To his surprise, the weather cleared suddenly and completely just before they reached their goal. The clouds lifted - and there ahead was an immense, black wall, almost a kilometre high, lying directly across Bill Tee’s flight path. It was so huge that it was obviously creating its own microclimate; the prevailing winds were being deflected around it, leaving a local, calm area in its lee.

It was instantly recognizable as the Monolith, and sheltering at its foot were hundreds of hemispherical structures, gleaming a ghostly white in the rays of the low-hanging sun that had once been Jupiter. They looked, thought Floyd, exactly like old-style beehives made of snow; something in their appearance evoked other memories of Earth. Van der Berg was one jump ahead of him.

‘Igloos,’ he said. ‘Same problem - same solution. No other building material around here, except rock - which would be much harder to work. And the low gravity must help - some of those domes are quite large. I wonder what lives in them…’

They were still too far away to see anything moving in the streets of this little city at the edge of the world. And as they came closer, they saw that there were no streets.

‘It’s Venice, made of ice,’ said Floyd. ‘All igloos and canals.’

‘Amphibians,’ answered van der Berg. ‘We should have expected it. I wonder where they are?’

‘We may have scared them. Bill Tee’s much noisier outside than in.’

For a moment, van der Berg was too busy filming and reporting to Galaxy to reply. Then he said: ‘We can’t possibly leave without making some contact. You’re right - this is far bigger than Mount Zeus.’

‘And it could be more dangerous.’

‘I don’t see any sign of advanced technology - correction, that looks like an old twentieth-century radar dish over there! Can you get closer?’

‘And get shot at? No thanks. Besides, we’re using up our hover time. Only another ten minutes - if you want to get home again.’

‘Can we at least land and look around? There’s a patch of clear rock over there. Where the hell is everybody?’

‘Scared, like me. Nine minutes. I’ll do one trip across town - film everything you can - yes, Galaxy - we’re OK - just rather busy at the moment - call you later -’

‘I’ve just realized - that’s not a radar dish, but something almost as interesting. It’s pointing straight at Lucifer - it’s a solar furnace! Makes a lot of sense in a place where the sun never moves - and you can’t light a fire.’

‘Eight minutes. Too bad everyone’s hiding indoors.’

‘Or back in the water. Can we look at that big building with the open space around it? I think it’s the town hall.’

Van der Berg was pointing towards a structure much larger than all the others, and of quite different design; it was a collection of vertical cylinders, like oversized organ-pipes. Moreover, it was not the featureless white of the igloos, but showed a complex mottling over its entire surface.

‘Europan art!’ cried van der Berg. ‘That’s a mural of some kind! Closer, closer! We must get a record!’

Obediently, Floyd dropped lower - and lower - and lower. He seemed to have completely forgotten all his earlier reservations about hover time; and suddenly, with shocked incredulity, van der Berg realized that he was going to land.

The scientist tore his eyes from the rapidly approaching ground, and glanced at his pilot. Though he was obviously still in full control of Bill Tee, Floyd seemed to be hypnotized; he was staring at a fixed point straight ahead of the descending shuttle.

‘What’s the matter, Chris?’ van der Berg cried. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

‘Of course. Can’t you see him?’

‘See who?’

‘That man, standing by the biggest cylinder. And he’s not wearing any breathing gear!’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Chris: there’s no one there.’

‘He’s looking up at us. He’s waving - I think I recog - Oh my God!’

‘There’s no-one - no-one! Pull up!’

Floyd ignored him completely. He was absolutely calm and professional as he brought Bill Tee in to a perfect landing, and cut the motor at exactly the right instant before touchdown.

Very thoroughly, he checked the instrument readings, and set the safety switches. Only when he had completed the landing sequence did he again look out of the observation window, with a puzzled but happy expression on his face.

‘Hello, Grandfather,’ he said softly, to no-one at all that van der Berg could see.

Even in his most horrible nightmares, Dr van der Berg had never imagined being stranded on a hostile world in a tiny space capsule, with only a madman for company. But at least Chris Floyd did not seem to be violent; perhaps he could be humoured into taking off again and flying them safely back to Galaxy…

He was still staring at nothing, and from time to time his lips moved in silent conversation. The alien ‘town’ remained completely deserted, and one could almost imagine that it had been abandoned for centuries. Presently, however, van der Berg noticed some tell-tale signs of recent occupancy. Although Bill Tee’s rockets had blasted away the thin layer of snow immediately around them, the remainder of the little square was still lightly powdered. It was a page torn from a book, covered with signs and hieroglyphics, some of which he could read.

A heavy object had been dragged in that direction - or had made its way clumsily under its own power. Leading from the now closed entrance of one igloo was the unmistakable track of a wheeled vehicle. Too far away to make out details was a small object that could have been a discarded container; perhaps Europans were sometimes as careless as humans…

The presence of life was unmistakable, overwhelming. Van der Berg felt he was being watched by a thousand eyes - or other senses - and there was no way of guessing whether the minds behind them were friendly, or hostile. They might even be indifferent, merely waiting for the intruders to go away, so that they could continue their interrupted and mysterious business.

Then Chris Floyd spoke once again into the empty air.

‘Goodbye, Grandfather,’ he said quietly, with just a trace of sadness. Turning towards van der Berg he added in a normal conversational tone: ‘He says it’s time to leave. I guess you must think I’m crazy.’

It was wisest, decided van der Berg, not to agree. In any event, he soon had something else to worry about.

Floyd was now staring anxiously at the read-outs that Bill Tee’s computer was feeding to him. Presently he said, in an understandable tone of apology:

‘Sorry about this, Van. That landing used up more fuel than I’d intended. We’ll have to change the mission profile.’

That, van der Berg thought bleakly, was a rather roundabout way of saying: ‘We can’t get back to Galaxy.’ With difficulty, he. managed to suppress a ‘Damn your grandfather!’ and merely asked: ‘So what do we do?’

Floyd was studying the chart, and punching in more numbers.

‘We can’t stay here -, (Why not? thought van der Berg. If we’re going to die anyway, we might use our time learning as much as possible.) ‘ - so we should find a place where the shuttle from Universe can pick us up easily.’

Van der Berg breathed a huge mental sigh of relief. Stupid of him not to have thought of that; he felt like a man who had been reprieved just when he was being taken to the gallows. Universe should reach Europa in less than four days; Bill Tee’s accommodation could hardly be called luxurious, but it was infinitely preferable to most of the alternatives he could imagine.

‘Away from this filthy weather - a stable, flat surface - closer to Galaxy, though I’m not sure if that helps much - shouldn’t be any problem. We’ve enough for five hundred kilometres - it’s just that we can’t risk the sea crossing.’

For a moment, van der Berg thought wistfully of Mount Zeus; there was so much that could be done there. But the seismic disturbances - steadily getting worse as lo came into line with Lucifer - ruled that out completely. He wondered if his instruments were still working, and would check them again as soon as they’d dealt with the immediate problem.

‘I’ll fly down the coast to the equator - best place to be anyway for a shuttle landing - the radar map showed some smooth areas just inland round sixty west.’

‘I know. The Masada Plateau.’ (And, van der Berg added to himself, perhaps a chance for a little more exploring. Never miss an unexpected opportunity…)

‘The Plateau it is. Goodbye, Venice. Goodbye, Grandfather…’

* * *

When the muted roar of the braking rockets had died away, Chris Floyd safetied the firing circuits for the last time, released his seat belt, and stretched arms and legs as far as he could in Bill Tee’s confined quarters.

‘Not such a bad view - for Europa,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Now we’ve four days to find out if shuttle rations are as bad as they claim. So - which of us starts talking first?’

I wish I’d studied some psychology, thought van der Berg; then I could explore the parameters of his delusion. Yet now he seems completely sane - except on that one subject.

Though almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity, Floyd had tilted his to the fully reclining position and had clasped his hands behind his head. Van der Berg suddenly recalled that this was the classic position of a patient, in the days of the old and still not entirely discredited Freudian analysis.

He was glad to let the other talk first, partly out of sheer curiosity but chiefly because he hoped that the sooner Floyd got this nonsense out of his system, the sooner he would be cured - or, at least, harmless. But he did not feel too optimistic: there must have been some serious, deep-seated problem in the first place to trigger so powerful an illusion.

It was very disconcerting to find that Floyd agreed with him completely, and had already made his own diagnosis.

‘My crew psych rating is Al plus,’ he said, ‘which means that they’ll even let me look at my own files - only about ten per cent can do this. So I’m as baffled as you are - but I saw Grandfather, and he spoke to me. I’ve never believed in ghosts - who does? - but this must mean that he’s dead. I wish I could have got to know him better - I’d been looking forward to our meeting… Still, now I have something to remember…’

Presently van der Berg asked: ‘Tell me exactly what he said.’

Chris smiled a little wanly and answered: ‘I’ve never had one of those total recall memories, and I was so stunned by the whole thing that I can’t give you many of the actual words.’ He paused, and a look of concentration appeared on his face.

‘That’s strange; now I look back, I don’t think we did use words.’

Even worse, thought van der Berg; telepathy as well as survival after death. But he merely said:

‘Well, give me the general gist of the - er -conversation. I never heard you say anything remember.’

‘Right. He said something like, “I wanted to see you again, and I’m very happy. I’m sure everything is going to work out well, and Universe will soon pick you up.”

Typical bland spirit message, thought van der Berg. They never say anything useful or surprising - merely reflect the hopes and fears of the listener. Zero-information echoes from the subconscious.

‘Go on.’

‘Then I asked him where everyone was - why the place was deserted. He laughed and gave me an answer I still don’t understand. Something like: “I know you didn’t intend any harm - when we saw you coming, we barely had time to give the warning. All the - ” and here he used a word I couldn’t pronounce even if I could remember it - “got into the water - they can move quite quickly when they have to! They won’t come out until you’ve left, and the wind has blown the poison away.” What could he have meant by that? Our exhaust is nice, clean steam - and that’s what most of their atmosphere is, anyway.’

Well, thought van der Berg, I suppose there’s no law that says a delusion - any more than a dream - has to make logical sense. Perhaps the concept of ‘poison’ symbolizes some deep-rooted fear that Chris, despite his excellent psych rating, is unable to face. Whatever it is, I doubt if it’s any concern of mine. Poison, indeed! Bill Tee’s propellant mass is pure, distilled water shipped up to orbit from Ganymede.

But wait a minute. How hot is it when it comes out of the exhaust? Haven’t I read somewhere… ?

‘Chris,’ said van der Berg cautiously, ‘after the water’s gone through the reactor, does it all come out as steam?’

‘What else could it do? Oh, if we run really hot, ten or fifteen per cent gets cracked to hydrogen and oxygen.’

Oxygen! Van der Berg felt a sudden chill, even though the shuttle was at comfortable room temperature. It was most unlikely that Floyd understood the implications of what he had just said; the knowledge was outside his normal sphere of expertise.

‘Did you know, Chris, that to primitive organisms on Earth, and certainly to creatures living in an atmosphere like Europa’s, oxygen is a deadly poison?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not: it’s even poisonous to us, at high pressure.’

‘I did know that; we were taught it in our diving course.’

‘Your - grandfather - was talking sense. It’s as if we’d sprayed that city with mustard gas. Well, not quite as bad as that - it would disperse very quickly.’

‘So now you believe me.’

‘I never said I didn’t.’

‘You would have been crazy if you did!’

That broke the tension, and they had a good laugh together.

‘You never told me what he was wearing.’

‘An old-fashioned dressing gown, just as I remembered when I was a boy. Looked very comfortable.’

‘Any other details?’

‘Now you mention it, he looked much younger, and had more hair than when I saw him last. So I don’t think he was - what can I say? - real. Something like a computer-generated image. Or a synthetic hologram.’

‘The Monolith!’

‘Yes - that’s what I thought. You remember how Dave Bowman appeared to Grandfather on Discovery? Perhaps it’s his turn now. But why? He didn’t give me any warning - not even any particular message. Just wanted to say goodbye and wish me well…’

For a few embarrassing moments Floyd’s face began to crumple; then he regained control, and smiled at van der Berg.

‘I’ve done enough talking. Now it’s your turn to explain just what a million-million-ton diamond is doing - on a world made mostly of ice and sulphur. It had better be good.’

‘It is,’ said Dr Rolf van der Berg.