Forbidden Planet (12 page)

Cookie said, “just a lot of nuclear, sir. Y’see, we’ve been figuring—arguing like—about whether he thinks or not. So I was sort of testing, you might say. Real interesting, it was. Friendly type, he turned out.”

I cut him off and sent him back to his post. I had to because I wanted to laugh. I went back into the ship and did laugh. It made me feel a whole lot better, and all at once I knew what I was going to do about Jerry. He was in his hutch, on parole. I had put the word around he was sick and might not be on duty. I went in and shut the door. He was lying on his bunk, smoking. He looked at me but didn’t say anything. I said, “For Christ sake snap out of it,” and he sat up. There must have been something about my voice, because he gave me a sickly half-grin.

I said, “I can’t afford to have you on charge. We’re undermanned anyway. So we’ll forget the whole deal, as from now.” I went over and stood by the bunk and looked down at him. “But if you blot your log again, brother, I’ll really give you the works. Full power.” I reached over and took a cigarette from the pack on his pillow.

He said, “Okay,” The grin was itself again. “But keep me away from Doctor Morbius’ family, huh?” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I pulled the cap off the cigarette and didn’t say anything.

He stood up. He said, “Forget it, Skipper. You’re a good jet. In spite of the way you try not to be.”

II

Up till the time I fixed it with Jerry, the day had been sort of busy, with things happening right along. But afterwards it was different. Except for Lonnie and his boys getting three parts through with rigging the transmitter, nothing happened. I mean Nothing. So much of it that all I could to was keep muddling over the whole mess in my mind—without thinking about Altaira.

Which last wasn’t possible. So I worked myself up to a pitch where I had to talk to somebody or get the heaves. Naturally, I picked on Doc. We went out for a walk. Over the hand to the rocks. It was hot today; much hotter than yesterday. We sat on the same rock we’d used when he told me that Unicorn fable. So that didn’t help me either.

We talked for an hour. And ended up where we’d started. So Morbius had delivered the lead, or something better. So I said he must have been in touch, God knows how, with his Altairian pals or keepers. So Doc didn’t agree, although he admitted I was logical. But he kept saying he couldn’t see Morbius as that much of a liar. So then I tried to figure some other way of opening Morbius up about the whole deal, and Doc said it wasn’t possible from what he could judge of the character. He said the last word really. He said maybe it was best after all to talk to Base and get some orders. That way it wouldn’t be my responsibility any more. I said he was probably right, and that was about as far as we got. Or nowhere in other words. We didn’t mention Altaira. I thought Doc was on the verge a couple of times but I managed to head him off.

It was getting hotter all the time—a sort of dead, still heat—and we started back for the ship. On the way Doc raised a point we hadn’t brought up, though maybe we’d both been thinking about it. He said, “You know, Skipper, if you do get Orders, they’ll be to take Morbius back. You said so yourself. And I was wondering how—” He stopped suddenly, as if he’d surprised himself. I said, “You mean you’re wondering how the Altairians’re going to take it,” and grinned at him. “But you don’t believe in ‘em, Doc. Remember?”

He laughed. “Maybe I meant that Force,” he said. And stopped laughing.

We were almost back at the ship by then. We went past the tractor, and I had a bad thought. I said, “Jesus! What about that monkey? If any of the boys see that body, they’ll be asking too many questions—”

Doc said, “It’s all right. I took care of it,” and right then the Bosun came up and wanted a word with me about guard posts for the night . . .

And that was all. The rest of the day was more Nothing. And it kept getting hotter. It cooled off a little when it got dark, but not so much as it had the other nights. And the air was dead still. More so, if that was possible, than it had been the night before. Jerry said he wondered if there was a storm coming up, if they had storms on Altair-4.

I thought I wouldn’t mind a storm. It’d be something happening anyway.

“If only I’d known!” as they always say in reel three of the telaudio stories. If I’d been able to see what was coming, I might have changed my thinking.

III

I had a lousy night. Doc had his eye on me all through dinner, and when I’d taken the early watch and was ready to turn in he insisted on giving me a sedative. But the damn thing didn’t seem to work right. It put me to sleep okay. But I had the most godawful dreams. One after the other. I kept waking up, sweating with terror, but I could never remember what it was that had scared me. There was something after me, that’s all that stayed in my mind. Something I couldn’t put a name to, or a shape. The only thing I seemed sure of was a sound. Which was funny in itself; you don’t generally remember sounds out of dreams. The sound was something breathing. The thing that was chasing me, I could hear it breathing in my head minutes after I’d waked. It was very soft, but it was big. Too big. There was something wrong about it. As if it was impossible but going right on all the same.

Once—it was around zero four—I was so restless after a wake-up that I went out onto the gangway and stood there and looked all around. But everything was in order. The sentries were on the job, walking their beats. There was no sound or sight or hint of anything wrong. So I went back and climbed in my bunk again.

And went to sleep. This time without the dream. I had an hour and a half of it before I heard the general reveille being piped over the communicator.

I was only half dressed when there was a knock at the door. An agitated sort of knock. It was the Bosun. He was breathing hard and looking his grimmest. Mr. Quinn’s compliments, and would I get out to the rig as soon as I could or maybe sooner. There was something in his voice, and I pulled on a shirt and ran out, tucking it into my pants as I went.

There was a little crowd of men around the rig. I went over at the double and the mob dissolved and I was looking at Lonnie. He had a mess of plastic and metal in his hands, and he was so mad he was almost blubbering. He began to shout at me, stammering and cursing that s-some b-blood-stained b-bastard had wrecked the only irre-irreplaceable p-part—

I had to shout at him to get him calmed down. And while he was calming, I ran my eye over the rig. And didn’t believe what I saw.

Somebody—something—had ripped apart the shielding Lonnie’s boys had spent hours welding together. Somebody—something—had torn its way between two steel guard-bars, bending them like pretzels. And then had reached down and pulled out the klystron frequency modulator, leaving the debris Lonnie was crying over. Somebody—or something—must have used incalculable strength . . .

And whoever or whatever it was had done this without the sentries seeing or hearing anything! And then scraped all the wreckage together and put the tarpaulin cover back!

When I thought of that, I was madder than Lonnie. I told the Bosun to put all the night guard under arrest and hold them for an Inquiry. I pulled Lonnie away from the wreckage and dragged him back aboard and into the Mess and got a cup of coffee down him. I said, “That klystron modulator. You said it’s irreplaceable?”

Lonnie said, “It was packed in liquid boron, in a suspended grav field. With our limited facilities, it isn’t reconstructible.” He wasn’t stammering any more. Or cursing.

I said, “So it’s impossible. How long will it take?”

He didn’t think it was funny. He scratched at his chin and said, “I don’t know, Skipper. Suppose I get started right away and talk to you later?”

I said, “That’s the boy, Lonnie,” and told him to get some breakfast. But he said he’d grab a sandwich in the workshop and shot out under full revs.

I was just going to put out a call for the Bosun, to get the Inquiry started, when Doc came in. He was sweating, and puffing some. He said Jerry wanted to know if I’d come out and take a look at something they’d found.

So I went. There were only the sentries outside. Lonnie’s boys were back in the workshop, I figured. Jerry was standing a few yards the other side of the rig. Or the remains of it. He was looking down at something in the sand. When Doc and I got up to him, he pointed at it without saying anything.

It was a hole. Maybe three feet around and a foot or so deep. But you couldn’t really tell about the depth, because the sand was so soft it was trickling down from the rim. It didn’t strike me as anything to write dispatches about, and I said so.

Jerry said, “Wait,” and pointed ahead. About fifteen feet away was another hole, almost identical.

And they went on like that, a chain of them. For three hundred yards. Almost to the nearest group of rocks. We followed them, not talking. Up to a point about fifty feet from the rocks, then they stopped. There weren’t any more of them. Not anywhere.

They had to be footprints. But what of? And where had what had made them gone to? Or come from?

We were standing by the last one. I looked at Jerry, then at Doc. I said, “The Robot?”

Jerry said, “It doesn’t make tracks that big. Not so deep, and not so far apart.”

Doc said, “And it doesn’t move without sound, either.”

I said, “How do we know it couldn’t be altered?” It wasn’t good, but I was thinking of the power. The welded sheeting ripped up like paper. The steel bars twisted like putty.

Jerry shook his head. “For my credits, it was an Altairian.”

Doc said, “Or the Force.” He wasn’t being funny . . .

IV

I held the Inquiry in the Control Area. The Bosun brought two reliefs up for it. Six men. I hammered away at them, but they’d seen nothing, heard nothing. As first Watch Officer, Jerry had made the rounds twice. The Bosun, subbing for Quinn on second watch, had made three rounds. Neither of them had seen or heard anything either.

So I went into the question of beats, and how the men had been walking them. When we got it unscrambled it turned out there might have been three times—or four at the most—when the rig wasn’t in sight of any sentry and there wasn’t one of them within fifty yards of it. But the maximum time this condition could ever have lasted wasn’t more than a couple of minutes and probably less.

A couple of minutes for whatever-it-was to wreck the rig and cover it up again. And go away with those fifteen-foot strides? Stepping in the same footmarks it came by?

That line wouldn’t even get us anywhere. So I went back to the question of sound. Hadn’t anyone heard anything?

I saw one of the men look as if he was going to speak and then seem to change his mind. One of the Cadet hands, a youngster called Grey. I said, “You were going to say something. Out with it.” He was jittery and didn’t want to talk, but I finally got him going. He hadn’t said anything about what he’d heard to anyone. He’d figured it was “just his imagination.” He’d thought the other guys would think he was off grav.

I said, “For God’s sake, man, what was it you heard?” and he said, “Well—it was like—like something breathing, sir.”

That jolted me; and it seemed to make him more nervous still, just remembering. He said, “Something awful big—” His face was white now. “But—but there wasn’t anything there, sir! There wasn’t anything anyplace!”

That was all. But it was enough to make me call off the Inquiry. I didn’t want the men thinking too much, speculating, so I pretended I didn’t put any stock in his story. I told the Bosun the Inquiry was adjourned, the whole business to be logged as ‘Under Investigation.’ I told the six that went for them too.

They trooped out, and I put in a call for Doc on the communicator. While I was waiting for him, I told Jerry he was in command; I was going to see Morbius. I said, “Take Lonnie off the rig right away. Get him to set up a Standard One defense perimeter. EM fence and all.”

Doc came in then, on the run. I didn’t waste any time briefing him, just took him out to the tractor at the double.

I made the desert part of the trip pretty fast. So fast that Doc was holding on. We couldn’t talk until I’d gotten through the rocks and slowed for the roll down into the valley. It wasn’t quite so hot here and the breeze we were making felt good and cool. I pulled open the neck of my suit and told Doc we were going to try and get something out of Morbius.

“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “He knows more about this business than we do.”

Doc said, “You still thinking it might have been the Robot?” and I said, “How the hell do I know?” I told him about my dream and what Grey had said about hearing that breathing.

He said, “Breathing puts Robby right out of the picture.” I thought he sounded relieved, and for some reason that made me mad. I said, “How do we know it does? Maybe there’s a set of valves he uses sometimes. Maybe he wants an oil job. Maybe any damn thing. And maybe that routine he went through with my gun, and not being able to harm anybody, maybe that was all a lot of ether too!”

But Doc wasn’t buying. He said, “I don’t know, Skipper. Logic seems to be on your side, but I don’t see Morbius the way you do.”

I looked at him. He was frowning, chewing at his lip. I said, “So we’re back on the roundabout. You think it was an Altairian, but you don’t believe in Altairians. So that leaves you with this sonofabitching ‘Force.’ Okay?”

And that lasted us through the grove and around to the house-front. Morbius wasn’t on the patio waiting for us this time. No one was on the patio. Not even the Robot. It was very hot again, and very quiet. The big door was standing open, but there wasn’t a sign of anyone inside. And the sled wasn’t anywhere around.

I pulled up and we got out. We looked all over and still saw no sign of life. Not even one of Altaira’s animals. Thinking about them, I had a nasty moment remembering the titi and wondering whether she’d missed it yet.

I shrugged that off and crossed the patio and pushed the door wider and looked in. I called, “Anybody here?” a couple of times. With no result.