Eden (2 page)

The Captain clung to the wheel; as the flashlight moved, his shadow leaped across the white plastic that covered what was now the ceiling. Suddenly the mountain of books shifted.

"Careful," said the Physicist.

"There's nothing to push against," complained the Captain in a muffled voice. "Damn!" The wheel slipped from his hands. He swayed for a moment, then regained his balance. No one looked up now; the men linked arms and pressed the unstable structure from all sides to keep it from separating. The Captain caught hold of the wheel again. Suddenly there was a scraping sound, and the books tumbled. He hung in midair—but the wheel had made a complete turn.

"Eleven more times," he said, dropping onto the pile of books.

Two hours later, the problem of the inner hatch had been solved. When it began to open, the entire crew cheered.

Suspended halfway up the corridor, the open hatch formed a kind of platform from which the chamber could be entered without much difficulty. The suits turned out to be undamaged. The lockers that contained them were now horizontal. The men walked across the locker doors.

"Do we all leave?" asked the Chemist.

"First let's see if we can open the outer hatch…"

But the thing would not budge, as if the levers had fused with the main body. All six pushed together with their shoulders; then they tried turning the screws in different ways, but the screws would not turn.

"Arriving is easy—the hard thing is to disembark," concluded the Doctor.

"Very clever," muttered the Engineer. The sweat was burning his eyes. They sat down on the locker doors.

"I'm starved," the Cyberneticist said in the general silence.

"We'd better get something to eat," said the Physicist. He offered to go to the storeroom.

"The kitchen would be better. There's food in the freezer…"

"I can't do it by myself. There's a ton of junk in the way. Any volunteers?"

The Doctor agreed to go; then the Chemist reluctantly stood up. When their heads disappeared over the edge of the half-open inner hatch, and the last gleam of the flashlight, which they took with them, was gone, the Captain said in a hushed voice:

"I didn't want to say anything. You understand the situation?"

"Yes," said the Engineer. In the darkness, he touched the Captain's shoe and kept his hand on it. He needed the contact.

"You think we can cut through the outer hatch?"

"With what?" asked the Engineer.

"We have a blowtorch."

"Did you ever hear of a blowtorch that could cut through a foot and a half of ceramite?"

They fell silent. From the depths of the ship came a hollow noise, as if from a vault.

"What's that?" asked the Cyberneticist nervously. He got up.

"Sit down," said the Captain gently but firmly.

"Do you think the door … fused with the hull?"

"I don't know," the Engineer replied.

"Do you have any idea what happened?"

"We ran into atmosphere at cosmic velocity, where atmosphere should not have been. Yet the autopilot could not have made an error."

"The autopilot didn't make the error, we did," said the Captain. "We forgot to correct for the tail."

"What tail?"

"The gas that extends behind every planet with an atmosphere, in the direction opposite to its motion. You didn't know that?"

"Yes, of course. So we fell into such a tail? But it must be extremely attenuated."

"Ten to the minus six," said the Captain. "Or on that order. But we were traveling at more than forty-five miles a second, my friend. It stopped us like a wall. That was the first impact, remember?"

"Yes," said the Engineer, "and when we entered the stratosphere, we were still doing six or seven. We really ought to have smashed to pieces. It's strange that the ship withstood it."

"Strange?"

"She's designed for a load factor of twenty, and before the screen blew, I saw with my own eyes how the arrow jumped off the scale. The scale goes up to thirty."

"And how about us?"

"What do you mean?"

"How were we able to withstand a constant deceleration of thirty
g
's?"

"Not constant. At the maximum, yes. After all, the retarders gave their all. That's what started the pulsation."

"But the autopilot equalized. It was the air compressors…" said the Cyberneticist with annoyance in his voice. In the depths of the ship something began rolling. It sounded like iron wheels on sheet metal. Then it stopped.

"Don't blame the air compressors," said the Engineer. "If we went to the engine room, I could show you that they did five times more than they were supposed to do. Remember, they're only auxiliary units. First of all, their bearings were loosened, and when the pulsation began—"

"You think there was resonance?"

"Resonance is a different matter. The fact is, we should have been smeared across several miles of space, like that freighter on Neptune—remember? You'll believe me when you see the engine room. I can tell you now what's there."

"I'm in no hurry to see the engine room. What's taking them so long? I can't see a thing."

"We'll have light, don't worry," said the Engineer, unaware that he still had his fingertips on the shoe of the Captain, who remained silent and did not move.

"Let's go to the engine room, then. It'll kill time. What else can we do?"

"You really think we won't get out of here?"

"I was just joking. I always joke."

"Enough of that," said the Captain, coming alive. "Anyway, in a pinch, there's the emergency hatch."

"Which happens to be underneath us. The ship must have cut one hell of a trench, and I'm not even sure the outer hatch is above ground."

"We have tools. We can dig a tunnel."

"And the loading bay?" asked the Cyberneticist.

"Submerged," the Engineer said. "I looked into the shaft. One of the main tanks must have burst. There's at least six feet of water there. And probably radioactive."

"How do you know?"

"The reactor cooling system always gives out first—you didn't know that? Forget the loading bay. We'll have to get out this way, unless—"

"Unless we dig a tunnel," the Captain said softly.

"Yes, that is possible," the Engineer agreed, and fell silent. There was the sound of footsteps; sudden light in the corridor beneath them made them blink.

"Ham, crackers, tongue, whatever you like. Everything in cans! There's chocolate, too, and we have thermoses," the Doctor shouted, clambering up first. He shined the flashlight for the others as they entered the chamber and passed out cans and aluminum plates.

"The thermoses are intact," the Cyberneticist observed, pouring coffee into his mug.

"Yes, and the cans held up well, too. But the refrigeration units, the ovens, the small molecular synthesizer, the water filters—they're all smashed."

"And the purifier?"

"That, too. We could repair it if we had the tools. But it's a vicious circle—to get a repair robot going you need current, but you can't get current unless you fix the generator, and to fix the generator you need a repair robot."

"So you've been deliberating, my scientific colleagues? What ray of hope have you to offer us?" asked the Doctor, spreading crackers with butter and laying slices of ham on top. Not waiting for a reply, he continued:

"The science-fiction books I read as a kid must outweigh this poor wreck of ours, yet not once did I come across a story anything like what has happened to us."

"Because it's so prosaic," the Cyberneticist said, grimacing.

"Yes, this is something original—a kind of interplanetary
Robinson Crusoe,"
said the Doctor. He sealed the thermos. "When I get back, I must try to write it, to the best of my ability."

They began gathering the cans. The Physicist suggested throwing them into the lockers with the suits. The men had to press against the wall so the doors—on the floor—could be shut.

"You know, we heard a strange noise while we were rummaging in the storeroom," said the Chemist.

"What kind of noise?"

"As though something were crushing the ship."

"A rock?" asked the Cyberneticist.

"It's something quite different," the Engineer said. "When we hit the atmosphere, the external shield reached a very high temperature. The prow may have begun to melt. And now parts of the frame are cooling and shifting, and internal pressures will develop. Hence the noise. You can hear it even now. Listen…"

They heard a groan in the interior of the craft—then a series of short, diminishing cracks—then silence.

"One of the robots, do you think?" said the Cyberneticist, hope in his voice.

"You saw how it was with the robots."

"But we didn't look into the reserve hold." The Cyberneticist leaned out over the edge of the platform and shouted into the dark corridor, "Reserve robots!"

His voice echoed. Silence was the only reply.

"Come, let's take a good look at this hatch," said the Engineer. He knelt at the slightly concave plate, shone the light along its rim, inch by inch. In the same way he checked the seals, which were covered with a network of tiny cracks.

"Nothing melted from the inside, which isn't surprising, since ceramite conducts heat poorly."

"Maybe we should try once more?" suggested the Doctor, touching the wheel of the outer hatch.

"There's no point," said the Chemist.

The Engineer placed his hand on the hatch, then jumped to his feet.

"We need water! Lots of cold water!"

"Why?"

"Touch the hatch!"

Several outstretched hands felt it simultaneously.

"Very hot," said someone.

"Fortunately for us!"

"How's that?"

"The hull, heated, has expanded, and the hatch, too. If we cool the hatch, it will contract, and we might be able to open it."

"Water won't do it. There might still be some ice—in the refrigeration units," said the Captain.

One after another, they dropped into the corridor, which began to echo with their steps. The Captain remained in the chamber with the Engineer.

"It will open," he said softly, as if to himself.

"If it hasn't fused," the Engineer murmured. He ran a finger along the rim to check its temperature. "Ceramite starts melting over three thousand seven hundred degrees. You didn't notice what the shield registered at the end?"

"At the end the dials were useless. When we threw on the brakes, it was over two and a half, if I'm not mistaken."

"Two and a half thousand degrees is still not much."

"Yes, but later on!"

The Chemist's flushed face appeared over the edge of the platform. He had tied the flashlight around his neck. In its swaying light the pieces of ice in his bucket gleamed. He handed the bucket to the Captain.

"Just a minute. How are we supposed to—" The Engineer broke off. "I'll be back." And he disappeared into the darkness.

More steps could be heard. The Doctor arrived with two buckets of water, ice floating on the top. The Chemist held the light while the Doctor and the Physicist poured water on the hatch. The water flowed across the floor and into the corridor. After dousing the hatch for the tenth time, they heard a faint sound coming from it—a squeaking. They cheered. The Engineer appeared, wearing a reflector (from a suit) taped to his chest. Its glare made everything brighter. He threw an armful of plastic pieces taken from the control room onto the floor. The men began packing the hatch with chunks of ice, keeping them in place with the plastic, with air cushions, and with books that the Physicist kept bringing in. Finally, when their backs ached and little remained of the ice—the hot metal melted it very quickly—the Cyberneticist grabbed the wheel with both hands.

"Not yet!" shouted the Engineer. But the wheel turned with astonishing ease. Everyone jumped up. The wheel rotated more and more rapidly. The Engineer grabbed the center handle of the triple bolt securing the hatch and pulled. There was a sound like thick glass cracking, and the door fell inward, gradually at first, then suddenly striking those who stood closest. A black avalanche rushed in, covering them up to the knees. The Chemist was thrown; the hatch pinned him to the side wall but left him unharmed. The Captain, barely managing to jump free at the last moment, practically knocked the Doctor over. They all froze. The Doctor's flashlight had been hit and went out; the only light came from the reflector on the Engineer's chest.

"What is it?" asked the Cyberneticist in an unsteady voice. He stood behind the others, near the edge of the platform.

"A sample of planet Eden," the Captain replied. He was helping to extricate the Chemist from behind the door that had been pushed open.

"Yes," said the Engineer. "The whole hatchway is underground!"

"Then this must be the first landing
beneath
the surface of an unknown planet," observed the Doctor.

Everyone began to laugh. The Cyberneticist laughed so hard, tears came to his eyes.

"Enough!" said the Captain. "We can't carry on like this until morning. Get your tools, men, we have digging to do."

The Chemist bent down and picked up a heavy, compact lump from the mound on the floor. Earth protruded through the oval opening. Now and then blackish bits trickled down the surface of the heap as far as the corridor. The men withdrew to the corridor; there was no longer room enough on the platform. The Captain and the Engineer were the last to jump down.

"How deep are we, do you think?" the Captain asked the Engineer in a whisper. In the corridor, a patch of light moved far ahead of them. The Engineer had given the reflector to the Chemist.

"It depends on many things. Tagerssen penetrated two hundred and fifty feet."

"Yes, but what remained of him and his ship!"

"Or take the Moon probe. They had to tunnel into rock to get it out. Into rock!"

"On the Moon you have pumice…"

"But who knows what we have here?"

"It looks like marl."

"At the hatchway, yes—but beyond?"

The instruments were a problem. Like all long-range craft, the ship carried a duplicate set of robots and remote-controlled semiautomata for every sort of task, including ground-surface tasks under various planetary conditions. But the machines were dead, and without current there was no chance of repairing them. The only large-scale unit they had, an excavator powered by a micro-reactor, also required electricity to be started. So they would have to make do with primitive tools: shovels and pickaxes. This, too, presented problems. After several hours of toil, the crew went back and got three hoes, flattened and curved at the end, two steel poles, and large sheets of metal—to reinforce the walls of the tunnel. They carried the earth in buckets as well as in large plastic boxes supported litter-fashion by short aluminum tubing.