In the Ocean of Night (37 page)

Nigel studied the screen for a moment. An image flickered on. It seemed to show a dark red image of a passageway in the ship. There was a bend in the corridor visible and as he watched some of the Persian-like script appeared on the screen, pulsed from yellow to blue and then disappeared. He waited and the pattern repeated.

“Mysterious,” he said.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen that passageway,” Nikka said.

“This must be something like the three photos Team One reported from the last shift. They are from unrecognizable parts of the ship.”

“We should check with the engineers,” Nikka said. “But my guess would be that all these show part of the ship that was pulverized on landing.”

Nigel pursed his lips. “You know, it just occurred to me that we can deduce something from the fact that this script goes on and off with a period of several seconds. Our friends the aliens must have been able to resolve time patterns faster than a second or so, if they could read this.”

“Any animal can do that.”

“Just so. But whoever built this ship might not be just any animal. For example, the little switches on the console imply something finger-sized to manipulate them. True enough, we know animals must be able to see things moving faster than on a one-second time scale, or else they’ll be overrun and gobbled up pretty quickly. It’s interesting to note the aliens were similar to us in at least that way. Anyway, let’s go on. I’ll log that”—he punched a few buttons—“for Team One to check.”

He chose a few sequences which differed from earlier ones only in the last “digit” and the screen showed no response at all. “Are you sure that switch is still working?” Nigel asked.

“As far as I can tell. The meters here show no loss of power.”

“Very well. Try this.” He read off a number.

This time the screen immediately sprang to life: a confused red jumble of nearly circular objects.

A long black line traced across the screen. It penetrated one of the odd-shaped blobs; there were small details of dark shading inside this blob alone. The others did not show it.

“Odd,” Nigel said. “Looks to me like a photomicro-graph. Reminds me of something from my student days, biology laboratory or something. I’ll send it to Kardensky.”

He dialed for the direct line through Site Seven to Alphonsus, obtained a confirmation and transmitted directly on the links to Earth. This took several minutes. Simultaneously the signal was logged into tape storage at Site Seven; Alphonsus served only as a communication vertex. Nigel made some notes and gave Nikka another sequence.

“Hey!” Nikka’s voice made him look up from his writing. On the screen something in a slick, rubbery suit stood against a backdrop of low ferns. It did not appear to have legs, but rather a semicircular base. There were two arms and some blunt protrusions below them, with a helmet on top opaqued partially. Through it a vague outline of a head could be seen. Nigel had a conviction that the site was Earth. The pattern of the fronds was simple and somehow familiar.

The figure in the suit showed no more detail, but he was not what attracted Nigel’s attention. There was something else, taller and obviously not wearing a suit. It was covered with thick dark fur and stood partially concealed in the ferns. It held something like a large rock in massive, stubby hands.

Nikka and Nigel spoke about it for several moments. The suited figure seemed strange, as though it violated the way a creature should stand upright against gravity. But the tall creature, heavy and hairy and threatening, made Nigel feel a vague unease.

Try as he might, he could not shake the conviction that it was human.

Nigel had opened his mouth to say something more when an excited male voice spoke into the circuit. “Everyone in the ship, out! Engineering has just reported an arc discharge in passage eleven. There are power surges registered on another level. We’re afraid it might be a revival of the defense system. Evacuate at once.”

“Better get out, old girl,” Nigel said ineffectually. He was safe, buried beneath meters of lunar dust near the living quarters. Nikka agreed and broke the circuit.

Nigel sat for long moments looking at the creature on the screen. It was partially turned away, one leg slightly raised. Somehow, though, he had the sensation that it was looking directly at him.

NINE

Peter Graves’s fever abated through the day and he awoke in the night. He babbled at first and Mr. Ichino fed him a broth heavy with the warm tang of brandy. It seemed to give the man energy.

Graves stared at the ceiling, not seeming to know where he was, and rambled without making sense. After a few minutes he suddenly blinked and focused on Mr. Ichino’s weathered face for the first time.

“I had ’em, you see?” he muttered imploringly. “They were
that
close. I could have
touched
’em, almost. Too quiet, though, even with that singing they were doing. Couldn’t run the camera. Makes a clicking sound.”

“Fine,” Mr. Ichino said. “Don’t roll onto your side.” “Yeah, that,” Graves murmured, staring mechanically down at his shirt. “The big one did that. Bastard. Thought he’d never drop. The guide and me kept pumpin’ the slugs into him and that flamethrower they had was goin’ off in all directions. Orange. Blew the guide right over and he didn’t get up. The flash lit up every… every…”

Graves’s dry, rasping voice trailed off. The sedatives in the broth were taking effect. In a moment the man breathed easily. When he was sure Graves was asleep Mr. Ichino pulled on his coat and went outside. The snow was at least a meter deep now, a white blanket that dulled the usually sharp outline of horizon on the opposite hill. Flakes fell in the soft silence, stirred by the breeze. It was impossible to reach the road.

Mr. Ichino struggled across the clearing, glad of the exercise. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to get help now. The worst was probably over. If infection didn’t set in—with all the antibiotics he had, it wasn’t likely—Graves could recover without professional care.

He wondered what all the babble had meant. “The big one” might be anybody. Something had made the wound, for certain, but Mr. Ichino knew of no weapon that could cause that large a burn, not even a laser.

Mr. Ichino shook his head to clear it, black curls falling into his eyes. He would have to cut his hair soon. One forgot things like that, living away from people.

He looked upward and found Orion immediately. He could just barely make out the diffuse patch of light that was the great nebula. Across the dark bowl of the sky he found Andromeda. It had always seemed incredible to him that in one glance he could see three hundred billion stars, an entire galaxy that seemed a sprinkle of light far fainter than the adjacent stars. Stars like grains of sand, infinite and immortal.

In the face of such infinity, why did man’s attempts at worship seem so comic? Or horrible.

Tonight on the news there had been a report about one of the tattooed New Sons who had finally covered his entire body with design work. The plan had been that the work would be done slowly, so that the last lines would be completed near the time of the man’s death. But this one had hurried the job and then cut his throat, willing his body to be skinned, tanned and presented in a frame to the Bishop as a sacrifice to the truth of the New Revelation.

Mr. Ichino shuddered and turned back to the cabin. A man was standing with his back toward Mr. Ichino, looking through the cabin window. Mr. Ichino stepped forward. Amid the falling snow it was hard to see him clearly, but the man was big and did not move. He seemed bent over in order to see something on the side wall of the cabin. Yes, that would be Graves. The bed was not on a direct line of sight through the window.

Mr. Ichino came closer and something must have given him away. The man turned swiftly, saw him and moved with startling speed around the cabin corner. The figure moved smoothly despite the thick drifted snow. In an instant he had melted into the shadows.

When Mr. Ichino reached the ground outside the window the snow had already begun to obscure the man’s tracks. If they were boot marks they were of an odd sort—strangely shaped, unusually deep and at least sixty centimeters long.

Mr. Ichino followed them a way into the woods and then gave up. The man could easily get away in the blackness. Mr. Ichino shivered and went back to the cabin.

TEN

“When did the pressure fail?” Nigel said into his throat microphone. Nikka had just resumed contact.

“About forty minutes ago. I got a warning from Engineering that the plastiform had ruptured while they were rigging emergency power in the passage above this one. There was enough time, so I crawled out to the lock, got some air bottles and dragged them back in here. There’s an emergency pressure seat under the console but somebody forgot to issue bottles for it.”

“Are you in the seat now?”

“No, they found the leak. Pressure is rising again.” Nigel shook his head and then realized she couldn’t see the gesture. “
Merde du jour.
I’ve got some bad news about some of our stored data. Several days of our logged material, the stuff we’ve been transmitting to Alphonsus for links to Earth, is gone.”

“What?”

“While you were off the line I got a polite little call from Communications. Seems they fouled some of their programming. The subroutine which transmits stored tape data to Alphonsus was defective—it erases everything before it transmits. Alphonsus was wondering why they were getting long transmissions with no signal.”

“That’s ridiculous. Everything from Site Seven has been lost?”

“No, only ours. Each team has its own file number and something happened to ours alone. We’ve lost quite a bit of material, but not all of it.”

It was the first time Nigel had ever heard Nikka sound genuinely angry. “When we get off this watch I want to go see Valiera.”

“Agreed. As far as I can figure out we’ve lost those pictures of what looked like molecular chains and most of everything from yesterday. But look, those can be recovered. Let’s have a go at the photograph you found just before Engineering called.”

Nigel studied the image when it formed on the screen before him. The alien photograph showed land of a dark, mottled brown, the oceans almost jet black. Somber pink clouds laced across the land and still eddies caught in the rising mountain peaks. At the shore a slightly lighter line suggested great breakers thundering against the beaches. There were traces of shoals and deep currents of sediment.

“What part of Earth is that?” Nikka murmured. “Can’t say. Reminds me of some map I’ve seen, but I can’t remember which. I’ll log this for transmission to Alphonsus. Maybe they can find a contemporary shot of the same place.”

The next few sequences yielded nothing. There followed complexes of swirling dots, and then a pattern that remained fixed. “
Hold
that,” Nigel said. “That’s a three-dimensional lattice, I’m sure. Look, the little balls are of different sizes and colors.”

“It might be a molecular chain model,” Nikka said. “Or maybe a picture of the real thing.”

“Precisely. I’ll log that, too. And I’m going to tell Communications to not transmit anything until I have a chance to look over their programs. We don’t want these lost as well.”

“Wait a second, Engineering is calling—” Nikka broke off.

Nigel waited, drumming his fingers on the console. He hoped the message he had sent to Kardensky wasn’t intercepted. He needed the information and photos Kardensky could provide.

“There’s another damned leak,” Nikka said suddenly over the speaker. “Engineering threatened to come in here and drag me out—I’d like to see them do it—if I didn’t come. I’ve got enough air in the bottles but—
Oh,
my ears just popped—”

Nigel threw down his pencil in disgust. “Never mind, come on in. You and I are going to see Valiera.”

“It was an impossibly
dumb
thing to do,” Nigel concluded. He glared at Valiera. “If for some reason the images were erased by the alien computer when we read it out on the screen, that material is
lost.
Forever.”

Valiera made a steeple with his fingers. He tilted his chair back and glanced at Nikka and Sanges. “I agree the situation is intolerable. Some of our hardware isn’t functioning right and I think it’s mostly due to the fact that everything is disorderly around here. Remember, we are just setting up Site Seven and mistakes are bound to happen. Victor, here, is looking into the entire Communications net and I expect his recommendations shortly.” Valiera looked significantly at Sanges.

“Yes, I expect I can get things in order soon,” Sanges said.

“I don’t think this should be taken so calmly,” Nikka said abruptly. “It’s possible that we have lost some irreplaceable information from the wreck’s computer bank.”

“And it’s not as though Mr. Sanges has suffered a great loss, is it?” Nigel said with a thin smile. “Team One hasn’t made much headway on their inventory search.”

Sanges bristled. “We have been working as hard as you. I see
no
reason—”

“Now, none of that,” Valiera said. “True, Team One is only now getting its footing, but you must realize, Nigel, that their task is much harder. They are compiling an inventory, using the alien script. Until they have cracked the code and know what the script means, they will not have any solid results.”