Forbidden Planet (13 page)

I went in, Doc right behind me. There was nobody in the entry. Or in the living room. There was a scarf of Altaira’s over a chair, and on the table in the dining alcove there were two cups that had been used. Doc and I stood there, and listened some more. There still wasn’t a sound. There seemed to be more of the silence inside than there had been out.

I was starting for the door at the back when Doc stopped me. He pointed across to the front of the room, at the far side from the entrance. He said, “What’s that?” and I saw something that hadn’t been there the other times. It looked like a crack in the wall, with light coming through it. But when we went over, it turned out to be a door that wasn’t quite closed. A sliding door, which fitted so well we’d never noticed it before.

I slid it right open. It gave onto a medium-sized room which had to be Morbius’ study. Very plainly furnished. A big writing table, a couple of chairs. The walls lined with cupboards, and racks full of papers and book reels. A reading viewer in one corner, with an arm chair in front of it. Papers on the table and the chair behind it pushed back as if someone had just been working there.

We went in. And saw something that hadn’t been visible from the outside. An ell to the room, running off to the back. And the end of the ell was solid rock surface, worked smoother but not painted. It was the same blue-grey as all the rocks here, the same blue-grey as the mountains themselves.

In the middle was a door. It had to be a door. A door into the rock. Doc and I looked at each other. We didn’t say anything. We went up to the door. It was outlined by some sort of masonry which started out like a triangle with the apex at the top but didn’t finish, the way the human eye expected it to, by using the floor as the base of the triangle. The top was maybe five and a half feet high, the greatest width about ten feet.

“It’s like a conventional diamond,” Doc said. “With the bottom two-thirds sawn off.”

It was a weird, off-beam shape. It gave me an eerie feeling just looking at it. The actual door it framed was the same neutral dun color as the masonry, but when we touched it we found it was metal. But it wouldn’t move. And we couldn’t find a control anywhere.

We wandered over to the writing-table. We looked back at the door and Doc said, “Once behind there and we’d probably find the answers to all our questions.”

I said, “My Altairians? Or your Force?” I tried to make a crack out of it, but Doc didn’t even give me a smile.

“Maybe both,” he said. “And a lot more. A whole lot more.” He pulled a pencil out of his pocket and took a sheet of blank paper from a pile on the table. I wondered what the hell he was at.

He began to sketch something. An ordinary doorway first, then a man coming through it. He said, “Doors are functional. They have to be, however much you disguise ‘em.” He sketched the diamond doorway now, right beside the other. “What sort of a being is this shape for?” he said, and began sketching something.

He shifted as he was doing it, and I couldn’t see. I moved to get a view, but he suddenly crumpled the paper up in a fist. “No,” he said. “No. The hell with it!”

I didn’t care. I had a feeling I didn’t want to see anyway. I began looking at the papers on the table. And I found something.

I held it up. I said, “Take a look at this.” It was a sheet of what looked like paper. Until you touched it and found it was metallic. Which wasn’t surprising, because metal was what it was. It was a sort of yellow-grey, and pliable as paper. But you couldn’t tear it. It was covered with some sort of writing, or figuring, in black characters. Very black.

They looked like hieroglyphics to me. I said so, but Doc shook his head. He took the sheet and studied it, moving nearer the window. He said, “Not if you
mean
hieroglyphics. These symbols aren’t like anything that ever came from Earth. As Quinn would say, they aren’t terra-shape—”

He never finished. He was interrupted by Morbius’ voice. “Good morning, gentlemen,”—and we whipped around to see him standing there close to us. He must have come through the door in the rock, but it was closed again. It hadn’t made a sound.

His face was dead white and his eyes looked on fire. His mouth was twisted to one side. He said, “My use of the word ‘gentlemen’ was purely satiric. May I ask whether you have been over the rest of the house? Perhaps you would like me to show you where my daughter keeps her jewels—”

I cut in on him. He wasn’t the only one who could get mad. I said, “We’re here on duty, Doctor Morbius. Last night someone—something—got past our sentries. And wrecked our transmitter rig. We came here to find out what you know about it—”

I didn’t get any further. His face got whiter and he’d have folded if he hadn’t grabbed the edge of the table.

Doc got hold of him and put him in a chair. He slumped. His eyes were closed, but when Doc pushed back his sleeve and felt for his pulse, he sat up and pulled the arm away.

He said, “Tell me what happened. Everything that happened.”

I told him. He put a hand over his eyes and mumbled something. It sounded like, “So it’s starting again—”

He looked at me. “And you suspect me?” he said. “Is that why you’re here?”

I said, “Listen, Dr. Morbius—everything we’ve seen since we landed on this planet goes to prove you’re in touch with some native intelligence. You’re either friendly with it, or it’s in charge of you. It stands to reason you must know something about what happened last night.”

He said, “Your logic is faulty, Commander. I know nothing of the invasion . . . However, when you say I am in touch with what you term a native intelligence, you are speaking the truth.”

It came out so quickly I couldn’t believe I’d heard it. I looked at Doc and saw he was gaping like a kid at a launching base.

Morbius put his hands on the chair-arms and pushed himself up. He was stooped a bit, but he seemed all right. He leaned over the table and picked up the sheet of metal paper.

“This,” he said, “and the writing on it, was made by the inhabitants of this planet.” He put it down on the table again. Very carefully. He might have been handling a piece of lunar crystalite. He said, “The date? More than two thousand of our centuries ago . . .”

He let that sink in a minute. His face was still white, like a wax dummy’s. But he was standing straight again. He seemed taller than I’d figured him. He had the damnedest expression on his face—

I had to tell them—and show them . . .

Perhaps I had withheld too long, but now my hand was forced. Their suspicions, their puerile reasoning, the shape of events, everything made revelation imperative.

My mind still retained vestigial infantilities which, now the moment I had dreaded was here, made it possible for me to take satisfaction in their bewilderment, their childish awe, the inevitable recognition which must come to them of their abysmal inferiority.

I watched them trying to absorb, to comprehend, everything that one speech of mine had implied. The youth Adams maintained his look of militaristic belligerence, but behind it I could sense the undeveloped mind struggling to adjust preconceived ideas. About the man Ostrow I was not so sure. Behind his mask of social understanding I could feel the effort of adjustment, but he seemed to be accepting its necessity. With a calmness which told at least of self-control he said to me, “You’re going to tell us,” in a way which made the words neither a question nor a statement.

I marshaled my thoughts. It was no simple task to convey in a few words, to these circumscribed minds, even a concept of this tremendous history.

I said at last, “This planet was the cradle and habitat of a race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Through the endless web of time they developed to a point at which—ethically, technologically, in fact in every conceivable and inconceivable way—they were uncountable eons ahead of Man as he stands today. And this point they had reached two hundred thousand years ago . . .

“Having outstripped man’s conception of what he terms civilization, having banished from their lives all baseness, the Krell lived for and in the acquisition of knowledge. Turning outward, they sought to unlock not only the secrets of the Universe, but of Nature itself. There is every reason to believe that, in search of the great key, they journeyed across space to other worlds, even to the Solar system and that little planet called Earth, before Man had even begun to emerge from bestiality—”

I checked, interrupted by Adams. Unable to assimilate the total concept, he had seized like a child upon one infinitesimal point which conveyed some meaning to him. He did not speak to me, but to Ostrow. “Maybe that explains the animals,” he said. “Maybe they brought them back—”

“Or their forerunners,” Ostrow said. He was looking at me. “They—the Krells weren’t interested, I suppose, in anything so primitive as Pithecanthropus?”

I went on as if they had not spoken. “Their explorations ended,” I said, “the Krell appear to have achieved the very last pinnacles of knowledge, with only the ultimate peak left to ascend and conquer. But then—” my voice shook uncontrollably—“but then, at this crowning point in their great, their truly miraculous history, this godlike race was destroyed. In one night of unknown, unimaginable disaster they were wiped from existence . . .”

I was holding them now. Their gaze was fixed upon my face; they made no sound nor movement. I said, “And through the endless centuries since that frightful disaster, all trace of the Krell and their works has vanished from the face of this planet. Even the cities, with their cloud-piercing towers of glittering translucent metal—even these have crumbled back into the soil. No remnant of that mighty civilization remains above the ground . . .”

I waited. I knew what I had to say next, and what I had to do. I had gone too far to draw back. But I seemed unable to force myself to the inevitable step. Until I saw questions forming themselves behind the two watching faces; puerile, time-destroying questions.

I moved then. I turned toward the door in the rock. “But beneath the ground, gentlemen,” I said, “carved from the very heart of the mountains, there is left the very heart of those magnificent labors . . .”

They followed me to the door, Adams eagerly, Ostrow more slowly. I detected a reluctance in him, and I could feel again that he was studying me. It occurred to me that perhaps I had not brought myself down sufficiently near to their level, and I made an effort to remedy this, endeavoring to make my tone and manner more those of friendly exposition.

I slid back the door, pointing out the metal and telling them of its everlasting strength and well-nigh unbelievable molecular density. I led them through and told how the door could be sealed by the Rho-ray lock against all attempt to enter. I led them along the narrow corridor and saw in their faces the dawning of bemazed, incredulous wonder.

Our footsteps echoing, we came to the second archway. Stooping, I led the way through, then stood aside to watch them as they had their first sight of the laboratory chamber.

They stared around, unbelieving, struck silent like children faced by a first glimpse of life’s wonders. I said, “This is one of the Krell laboratories. By no means the largest, my researches show, but infinitely the most important—”

Once more Adams interrupted me. “Not the largest!” he repeated. “But it’s—it’s tremendous!” Again the infantile mind had clutched at the unimportant to steady itself.

I was patient with him. “Size, Commander,” I said, “is purely relative, a matter only of scale. You have not yet adjusted your ideas.”

It was Ostrow’s turn. “You say a Krell laboratory?” he said to me. “But this equipment—the lighting—everything—It all seems new! As if it hadn’t been in existence more than a few years—”

He stopped as he saw my expression. I said to him, with all the deliberation at my command, “Everything that you see here, Major Ostrow, everything that you are going to see—every instrument, every device—has stood unchanged since its construction.” I tried to smile at him. “It is a matter of what human engineers, with their unimaginative nomenclature, would call self-maintenance. Guarded here against all elemental destructiveness, everything has existed in perfection for these two thousand centuries.”

There was no reply. Both of them were too much engaged in using their sense of sight to exercise the power of speech. Watching them, I tried to remember my own impressions upon first seeing the chamber. But they were vague, misty.

I said at last, “In a little while, gentlemen, when you are over the first shock of wonderment, when your minds accept what your eyes are seeing—then you will have a new cause for wonder, I am sure. You will realize that many of the integers of what you are seeing are by no means unfamiliar.” I pointed to illustrate my words. “Although not built for human use, much of the equipment must be familiar to the eye of anyone who has ever been inside a laboratory of electro-physics. Particularly those massive banks of relays with their recurrent and ever-changing flashes . . .”

Again I had to pause. They were still gaping. I saw Adams—once more the infant mind was clutching for non-essential familiarities—glance upward toward the domed roof of rock. I said, “Yes, Commander—the lighting is indirect, and from above. Also—and this would be the one inexplicable point, even to your Chief Devisor—it is permanent.” I saw Ostrow look at me quickly, and realized that, with Adams especially, I must be careful of my tone.

I said quickly, “There are, of course, some devices which will strike no note of familiarity. And those are the outward signs of the Krell superiority—”

This time it was Ostrow who stopped me. He pointed and said, “That, for instance. What is it?”

I had less trouble in smiling at him now. I said, “Perhaps the greatest of all the treasures here. Without it, I would know nothing of the Krells, not even the little I have told you.”

I walked over to the apparatus and they followed me. I demonstrated for them as I talked. I said, “The top of this desk-like protrusion is a screen. Upon it can be projected a written record of the total knowledge of the race, from its primitive beginnings to the tremendous height it had attained by the time of their destruction. A library, in fact; a storehouse of learning the like of which Creation has never seen before . . .”