Eden (20 page)

He decided to wait ten minutes. If he didn't see the headlights by then, they would go. He looked at his watch: thirteen minutes after ten. The reflection—no, he was not mistaken—was spreading slowly along the horizon, approaching Alpha Phoenix, a strip of pink on top and dull white below. He looked at his watch again. Four minutes to go. He saw the headlights.

At first they were like a twinkling star; then they divided in two, jumped up and down, and finally grew dazzling. The Captain could now hear the sound of tires. The men were traveling fast, but not at breakneck speed, and the fact that they were in no great hurry set his mind completely at rest. As usual in such circumstances, he now felt anger.

Without realizing it, he had walked a good three hundred feet from the ship. The jeep braked sharply, and the Doctor shouted, "Get in!"

The Captain jumped into an empty seat, pushing a canister aside, which he found to be empty. He looked at the men—they appeared to be unhurt—and then leaned over and touched the barrel of the thrower. It was cold.

A questioning look at the Physicist yielded no response, so the Captain waited, saying nothing. At the ship the Engineer veered sharply, which pushed the Captain back into his seat and made the empty canisters clatter. The jeep came to a halt in front of the tunnel entrance.

"The water all evaporated?" the Captain asked with irony.

"We couldn't get the water," said the Engineer. He swung around on his swivel seat. "We couldn't get to the brook."

No one stepped out of the jeep. The Captain searched the Engineer's face, then the Physicist's.

"On our first trip we saw something different," said the Physicist, "but we didn't know what it meant. We wanted to check it again."

"And if you didn't return, what good to us would your circumspection have been?" asked the Captain, no longer able to hide his anger. "I want to hear everything. Now!"

"They're doing something there, by the brook, on this side of it and beyond it, and in the hills and all the hollows, along the grooves. In a radius of several miles," said the Doctor. The Engineer nodded.

'The first time, when it was still daylight, we saw a group of those huge tops. They were in a V formation, throwing up earth as if doing some kind of excavation. We only noticed them from the top of the hill on our way back. But I didn't like what I saw."

"What didn't you like?" the Captain asked.

"That the vertex of their wedge pointed in our direction."

"And you went back there without saying a word about this?"

"All right, it was foolish," said the Engineer. "But we thought that, well, there would be arguments about who should go, who should risk his life, et cetera, so we decided it would be simpler and quicker to go ourselves. I figured that when night fell, the tops would have to light up their workplace."

"They didn't see you?"

"No. At least, there was no indication that they did. We weren't attacked."

"How did you go?"

"Along the ridges of the hills, not on the ridges themselves but a little lower, so we wouldn't be seen against the sky. Our headlights off, of course. That's why it took so long."

"So you had no intention of getting water? You took the canisters only to deceive the Chemist?"

"It wasn't like that," said the Doctor. They sat in the jeep, in the light of the blinker going on, going off. "We wanted to approach the brook farther up, from the other direction. But we couldn't."

"Why?"

"They were doing the same thing there. And now, since nightfall, they've been pouring some kind of luminescent liquid into the trenches. It gives off enough light for us to see perfectly."

"What is it?" the Captain asked the Engineer.

The Engineer shrugged. "Maybe the trenches are molds. Though the liquid appears too thin to be metallic."

"How do they carry it?"

"They don't. They laid something along the grooves—a pipeline, maybe, but I can't say for sure."

"They run molten metal through pipes?!"

"I'm telling you what I saw in the darkness, through binoculars. The lighting was poor—the middle of each excavation glowed like a mercury lamp, there was a lot of glare—and we were at least half a mile away."

The blinker went off; for a moment they sat unable to see one another; then it came on again. "We ought to disconnect that damn thing," said the Captain.

They saw the Chemist emerging from the tunnel. "Now what?" said the Captain. The Chemist came over to the jeep, and there was a hurried exchange of questions and answers. Meanwhile the Engineer went below and switched off the current to the blinker. In the ensuing darkness, the glow on the horizon was much brighter. It had moved more to the south.

"There were hundreds of them," said the Engineer, who had come back up and was now standing beside the ship and looking toward the glow, his face gray in the light.

"Those huge tops?"

"No, doublers. You could see their silhouettes against the liquid. They were working quickly—evidently the stuff thickens—and were shoring it up with gratings of some sort, on the sides, in the back. But the front, the part facing us, was left open."

"What do we do? Sit and wait, twiddling our thumbs?" the Chemist asked, his voice shrill.

"No," said the Captain. "Let's check Defender's systems."

For a moment they watched the glow in silence. At times it seemed to intensify.

"Do you want to release the water?" the Engineer asked doubtfully.

"For the time being, no. I've been thinking about that. We'll try the hatch. If the lock mechanism is working and the hatch opens, we'll shut it immediately. At worst, a few dozen gallons will spill out, but that won't present a problem—we can clear that up. And we'll know that in an emergency we can use Defender."

"What good will Defender be if there's a nuclear attack?" asked the Chemist.

"Ceramite can withstand a blast at a thousand feet from ground zero."

"And at three hundred feet?"

"Defender can withstand a blast at three hundred feet."

"Only in earthwork," the Physicist corrected him.

"If we have to, we'll dig ourselves in."

"But even at fifteen hundred feet the hatch will melt shut, we won't be able to get out. We'll cook like lobsters!"

"This is silly. At the moment there are no bombs falling. Besides, let's admit it, we can't abandon ship. If the ship is destroyed, what do we make another one out of?" The Engineer's question was greeted by silence.

A thought came to the Physicist. "But wait—Defender isn't complete. The Cyberneticist removed its diodes."

"Only from the sighting system. We can aim without them. Anyway, if antiprotons are used, you don't need a direct hit…"

"I'd like to ask something," the Doctor said. Everyone turned to him. "It's not important. I just wanted to know how the doubler's doing…"

There was silence, then laughter, as if suddenly all danger had disappeared.

"He's sleeping," said the Captain. "Or at least he was sleeping at eight, when I looked in on him. Almost all he seems to do is sleep. Does he ever eat?" he asked the Doctor.

"Not anything here. He hasn't touched a thing I offered him."

"Yes, we all have our problems," mock-sighed the Engineer, grinning in the darkness.

"Hello!" The voice came from below. "Attention, please!"

They turned around quickly as a large dark form crawled from the tunnel and with a slight grating sound stood erect. The Cyberneticist appeared behind it with a glowing light on his chest.

"Our first universal!" he said proudly. But then he looked at his colleagues' faces. "Something's happened?"

"Not yet," replied the Chemist. "But more might happen than we've bargained for."

"Well … we have this robot," said the Cyberneticist, somewhat lamely.

"Wonderful. You can tell it to get to work right away."

"Doing what?"

"Digging our graves!" And the Chemist pushed his colleagues aside and walked off. The Captain stood watching him, then went in the same direction.

"What's wrong with him?" asked the Cyberneticist, stupefied.

The Engineer explained. "They're making preparations against us in the valleys east of here. We discovered this on our excursion to the brook. They'll probably attack, but we don't know what form it will take."

"Attack?"

The Cyberneticist had been so absorbed in his work that he seemed not to understand what the Engineer was saying. He stared at the men, then turned toward the plain. Two figures silhouetted against the glow were slowly making their way back. The Cyberneticist looked up at his robot, which was motionless, as though hewn from stone.

"We must do something…" he whispered.

"We're activating Defender," said the Physicist. "Whether that helps or not, at least it gives us something to do. Tell the Captain to send the Chemist down. We'll be repairing the filters. The robot can do the electrical work. Let's go, gentlemen."

The Physicist and the Cyberneticist entered the tunnel, and the universal robot turned and followed them.

The Engineer looked with admiration at the machine and said to the Doctor, "You know, Blackie will come in handy. It can work underwater."

"But how will you give it orders? Sound won't carry," the Doctor asked abstractedly, speaking only to keep the conversation going. He was watching the two men in the night. They were turning away again. It looked like a pleasant stroll beneath the stars.

"With a microtransmitter. You know that," said the Engineer, following the Doctor's gaze. Then he continued in a different tone: "It's because he knew we'd succeed…"

"Yes," the Doctor said, nodding. "That's why he didn't want to leave Eden too soon…"

"It doesn't matter." The Engineer was already making for the tunnel. "I know him. It'll pass when the action starts."

"Yes," agreed the Doctor, following him.

After about a quarter of an hour, the Captain and the Chemist returned to the ship. Before the work began, Blackie was sent up to erect a six-foot embankment around the tunnel entrance, packing down the earth, and then to bring everything below—except for the entrenched thrower and the jeep. Dismantling the jeep would have taken too much time; anyway, they needed the robot.

At midnight they got down to work in earnest. The Cyberneticist inspected all Defender's circuits, the Physicist and the Engineer repaired and adjusted the radiation niters, and the Captain, in protective clothing, monitored the well in the lower level of the engine room. The robot was at the bottom, six feet underwater, working on the cables.

It turned out that the filters, even after they were repaired, did not work at full capacity, because several of the units were not functioning; the men solved this problem by accelerating the pumps. The purification proceeded under fairly primitive conditions: every ten minutes the Chemist took samples from the tank for analysis, because the automatic radiation gauge was broken, and its repair would have required time they did not have.

At three in the morning the water was almost completely clean. They didn't bother to weld the tank from which it had burst when the front plate struck one of the main ribs. Instead, they simply pumped the water into an empty reserve tank on the side. In normal circumstances, such an unbalanced load would have been unthinkable, but for the moment the ship was not going anywhere. After pumping the water out, they blew compressed air through the lower chamber. A little radiation remained on the walls, but no one had any reason to go in there for the time being. Next they worked on the hatch. According to the indicators, the mechanism was in perfect order, but on the first try the hatch refused to open. After they debated whether or not to use the hydraulics, the Engineer decided finally that it would be safer to inspect the hatch from outside, so they went out to the surface.

It was not easy to reach the hatch, which, located near the bottom of the hull, was now more than twelve feet in the air. Hurriedly they threw up a scaffold and a platform, using scrap metal (this was no problem now, with the robot doing the welding), and brought their lights to bear on the place.

The sky in the east had become gray; the glow was no longer visible. Above, the stars were slowly going out. Large drops of dew trickled down the ceramite plates of the hull.

"Curious," said the Physicist. "The mechanism is working. Nothing wrong with the hatch, except that it won't open."

"I don't like things that are curious," remarked the Cyberneticist.

"Well," said the Captain, "what about applying an age-old method?" And he raised a twenty-pound hammer.

"You can tap the rim, but not too hard," agreed the Engineer reluctantly. He disliked that "method."

The Captain, with a look at the black robot, which stood like a square statue in the gray dawn as it steadied the scaffold with its chest, hefted the hammer in his hands, swung it a little—not too much—and struck. He struck again, steadily, and again, each time a few inches higher, which was awkward at the angle he stood, but the physical activity felt good. The rhythm of the tapping was broken by a different sound, a groaning that seemed to come from the very ground beneath them. Then they heard a piercing, rising whistle, and the scaffold began to shake.

"Down!" cried the Physicist. They leaped off the platform one by one; only the robot didn't move. Dawn was already breaking; both the plain and the sky were the color of ash. The groaning increased, and so did the whistle, and the men instinctively crouched and covered their heads with their arms as they took cover under the ship. A quarter of a mile away, soil shot up like a geyser. The sound that accompanied it was strangely faint and muffled.

They ran for the tunnel, and the robot followed. The Captain and the Engineer stopped behind the protection of the embankment and looked east, where the thunder was. The whole plain shook. The whistling intensified, and the sky filled with organlike squeals, as though squadrons of invisible aircraft were diving straight at them. In the foreground, jets of sand and earth rose black against the lead sky.

"A normal civilization, wouldn't you say?" said the Physicist from below, in the tunnel.