Solaris (5 page)

As I was adjusting a strap, Snow showed his yellow teeth in a
mocking grin.

"Good hunting!" he said.

I turned towards the door.

"Thanks."

He dragged himself out of his chair.

"Kelvin!"

I looked at him. He was no longer smiling. I have never seen
such an expression of weariness on anyone's face.

He mumbled:

"Kelvin, it isn't that…Really, I…I
can't…"

I waited; his lips moved, but uttered no sound. I turned on my
heel and went out.

I followed a long, empty corridor, then forked right. I had
never lived on the Station, but during my training on Earth I had
spent six weeks in an exact replica of it; when I reached a short
aluminum stairway, I knew where it led.

The library was in darkness, and I had to fumble for the light
switch. I first consulted the index, then dialled the coordinates
for the first volume of the Solarist Annual and its supplement. A
red light came on. I turned to the register: the two books were
marked out to Gibarian, together with
The Little
Apocrypha
. I switched the lights off and returned to the lower
deck.

In spite of having heard the footsteps receding, I was afraid to
re-enter Gibarian's room.
She
might return. I hesitated
for some time outside the door; finally, pressing down the handle,
I forced myself to go in.

There was no one in the room. I began rummaging through the
books scattered beneath the window, interrupting my search only to
close the locker door: I could not bear the sight of the empty
space among the work-suits.

The supplement was not in the first pile, so, one by one, I
started methodically picking up the rest of the books around the
room. When I reached the final pile, between the bed and the
wardrobe, I found the volume I was looking for.

I was hoping to find some sort of clue and, sure enough, a
book-marker had been slipped between the pages of the index. A
name, unfamiliar to me, had been underlined in red: André
Berton. The corresponding page numbers indicated two different
chapters; glancing at the first, I learnt that Berton was a reserve
pilot on Shannahan's ship. The second reference appeared about a
hundred pages further on.

At first, it seemed, Shannahan's expedition had proceeded with
extreme caution. When, however, after sixteen days, the plasmatic
ocean had not only shown no signs of aggression, but appeared to
shun any direct contact with men and machines, recoiling whenever
anything approached its surface, Shannahan and his deputy, Timolis,
discontinued some of the precautions which were hindering the
progress of their work. The force fences which had been used to
demarcate and protect the working areas were taken back to base,
and the expedition split up into groups of two or three men, some
groups making reconnaissance flights over a radius of some several
hundred miles.

Apart from some unexpected damage to the oxygen-supply
systems—the atmosphere had an unusually corrosive effect on
the valves, which had to be replaced almost daily—four days
passed without mishap. On the morning of the fifth day—21
days after the arrival of the expedition—two scientists,
Carucci and Fechner (the first a radiobiologist, the second a
physicist), left on a mission aboard a hovercraft. Six hours later,
the explorers were overdue. Timolis, who was in charge of the base
in Shannahan's absence, raised the alarm and diverted every
available man into search-parties.

By a fatal combination of circumstances, long-range radio
contact had been cut that morning an hour after the departure of
the exploration groups—a large spot had appeared on the red
sun, producing a heavy bombardment of charged particles in the
upper atmosphere. Only the ultra-shortwave transmitters continued
to function, and contact was restricted to a radius of about twenty
miles. As a crowning stroke of bad luck, a thick fog descended just
before sunset and the search had to be called off.

The rescue teams were returning to base when the hovercraft was
spotted by a flitter, barely 24 miles from the command-ship. The
engine was running and the machine, at first sight undamaged, was
hovering above the waves. Carucci alone could be seen,
semi-conscious, in the glass-domed cockpit.

The hovercraft was escorted back to base. After treatment,
Carucci quickly regained consciousness, but could throw no light on
Fechner's disappearance. Just after they had decided to return to
base a valve in his oxygen-gear had failed and a small amount of
unfiltered gas had penetrated his atmosphere-suit. In an attempt to
repair the valve, Fechner had been forced to undo his safety belt
and stand up. That was the last thing Carucci could remember.

According to the experts who reconstructed the sequence of
events, Fechner must have opened the cabin roof because it impeded
his movements—a perfectly legitimate thing to do since the
cabins of these vehicles were not air-tight, the glass dome merely
providing some protection against infiltration and turbulence.
While Fechner was occupied with his colleague, his own oxygen
supply had probably been damaged and, no longer realizing what he
was doing, he had pulled himself up on to the superstructure, from
which he had fallen into the ocean.

Fechner thus became the ocean's first victim. Although the
atmosphere-suit was buoyant, they searched for his body without
success. It was, of course, possible that it was still floating
somewhere on the surface, but the expedition was not equipped for a
thorough search of this immense, undulating desert, covered with
patches of dense fog.

By dusk, all but one of the search craft had returned to base;
only a big supply helicopter piloted by André Berton was
still missing. Just as they were about to raise the alarm, the
aircraft appeared. Berton was obviously suffering from nervous
shock; after struggling out of his suit, he ran round in circles
like a madman. He had to be overpowered, but went on shouting and
sobbing. It was rather surprising behavior to put it mildly, on the
part of a man who had been flying for seventeen years and was well
used to the hazards of cosmic navigation. The doctors assumed that
he too was suffering from the effects of unfiltered gases.

Having more or less recovered his senses, Berton nevertheless
refused to leave the base, or even to go near the window
overlooking the ocean. Two days later, he asked for permission to
dictate a flight-report, stressing the importance of what he was
about to reveal. This report was studied by the expeditionary
council, who concluded that it was the morbid creation of a mind
under the influence of poisonous gases from the atmosphere. As for
the supposed revelations, they were evidently regarded as part of
Berton's clinical history rather than that of the expedition
itself, and they were not described.

So much for the supplement. It seemed to me that Berton's report
must at any rate provide a key to the mystery. What strange
happening could have had such a shattering effect on a veteran
space-pilot? I began to search through the books once more, but

The Little Apocrypha
was not to be found. I
was growing more and more exhausted and left the room, having
decided to postpone the search until the following day.

As I was passing the foot of the stairway, I noticed that the
aluminum treads were streaked with light falling from above.
Sartorius was still at work. I decided to go up and see him.

It was hotter on the upper deck, but the paper strips still
fluttered frenziedly at the air-vents. The corridor was wide and
low-ceilinged. The main laboratory was enclosed by a thick panel of
opaque glass in a chrome embrasure. A dark curtain screened the
door on the inside, and the light was coming from windows let in
above the lintel. I pressed down the handle, but, as I expected,
the door refused to budge. The only sound from the laboratory was
an intermittent whine like that of a defective gas jet. I knocked.
No reply. I called:

"Sartorius! Dr. Sartorius! I'm the new man, Kelvin. I must see
you, it's very important. Please let me in!"

There was a rustling of papers.

"It's me, Kelvin. You must have heard of me. I arrived off the
Prometheus
a few hours ago."

I was shouting, my lips glued to the angle where the door joined
the metal frame.

"Dr. Sartorius, I'm alone. Please open the door!"

Not a word. Then the same rustling as before, followed by the
clink of metal instruments on a tray. Then…I could scarcely
believe my ears…there came a succession of little short
footsteps, like the rapid drumming of a pair of tiny feet, or
remarkably agile fingers tapping out the rhythm of steps on the lid
of an empty tin box.

I yelled:

"Dr. Sartorius, are you going to open this door, yes or no?"

No answer. Nothing but the pattering, and, simultaneously, the
sound of a man walking on tiptoe. But, if the man was moving about,
he could not at the same time be tapping out an imitation of a
child's footsteps.

No longer able to control my growing fury, I burst out:

"Dr. Sartorius, I have not made a sixteen-month journey just to
come here and play games! I'll count up to ten. If you don't let me
in, I shall break down the door!"

In fact, I was doubtful whether it would be easy to force this
particular door, and the discharge of a gas pistol is not very
powerful. Nevertheless, I was determined somehow or other to carry
out my threat, even if it meant resorting to explosives, which I
could probably find in the munition store. I could not draw back
now; I could not go on playing an insane game with all the cards
stacked against me.

There was the sound of a struggle—or was it simply objects
being thrust aside? The curtain was pulled back, and an elongated
shadow was projected on to the glass.

A hoarse, high-pitched voice spoke:

"If I open the door, you must give me your word not to come
in."

"In that case, why open it?"

"I'll come out."

"Very well, I promise."

The silhouette vanished and the curtain was carefully
replaced.

Obscure noises came from inside the laboratory. I heard a
scraping—a table being dragged across the floor? At last, the
lock clicked back, and the glass panel opened just enough to allow
Sartorius to slip through into the corridor.

He stood with his back against the door, very tall and thin, all
bones under his white sweater. He had a black scarf knotted around
his neck, and over his arm he was carrying a laboratory smock,
covered with chemical burns. His head, which was unusually narrow,
was cocked to one side. I could not see his eyes: he wore curved
dark glasses, which covered up half his face. His lower jaw was
elongated; he had bluish lips and enormous, blue-tinged ears. He
was unshaven. Red anti-radiation gloves hung by their laces from
his wrists.

For a moment we looked at one another with undisguised aversion.
His shaggy hair (he had obviously cut it himself) was the color of
lead, his beard grizzled. Like Snow, his forehead was burnt, but
the lower half only; above it was pallid. He must have worn some
kind of cap when exposed to the sun.

"Well, I'm listening," he said.

I had the impression that he did not care what I had to say to
him. Standing there, tense, still pressed against the door panel,
his attention was mainly directed to what was going on behind
him.

Disconcerted, I hardly knew how to begin.

"My name is Kelvin," I said, "You must have heard about me. I
am, or rather I was, a colleague of Gibarian's."

His thin face, entirely composed of vertical planes, exactly as
I had always imagined Don Quixote's, was quite expressionless. This
blank mask did not help me to find the right words.

"I heard that Gibarian was dead…" I broke off.

"Yes. Go on, I'm listening." His voice betrayed his
impatience.

"Did he commit suicide? Who found the body, you or Snow?"

"Why ask me? Didn't Dr. Snow tell you what happened?"

"I wanted to hear your own account."

"You've studied psychology, haven't you, Dr. Kelvin?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"You think of yourself as a servant of science?"

"Yes, of course. What has that to do with…"

"You are not an officer of the law. At this hour of the day, you
should be at work, but instead of doing the job you were sent here
for, you not only threaten to force the door of my laboratory, you
question me as though I were a criminal suspect."

His forehead was dripping with sweat. I controlled myself with
an effort. I was determined to get through to him. I gritted my
teeth and said:

"You
are
suspect, Dr. Sartorius. What is more, you're
well aware of it!"

"Kelvin, unless you either retract or apologize, I shall lodge a
complaint against you."

"Why should I apologize? You're the one who barricaded himself
in this laboratory instead of coming out to meet me, instead of
telling me the truth about what is going on here. Have you gone
completely mad? What are you—a scientist, or a miserable
coward?"

I don't know what other insults I hurled at him. He did not even
flinch. Globules of sweat trickled down over the enlarged pores of
his cheeks. Suddenly I realized that he had not heard a word I was
saying. Both hands behind his back, he was holding the door in
position with all his strength; it was rattling as though someone
inside were firing bursts from a machine-gun at the panel.

In a strange, high-pitched voice, he moaned:

"Go away. For God's sake, leave me. Go downstairs, I'll join you
later. I'll do whatever you want, only please go away now."

His voice betrayed such exhaustion that instinctively I put out
my arms to help him control the door. At this, he uttered a cry of
horror, as though I had pointed a knife at him. As I retreated, he
was shouting in his falsetto voice: "Go away! Go away! I'm coming,
I'm coming, I'm coming! No! No!" He opened the door and shot
inside. I thought I saw a shining yellow disc flash across his
chest.

Now a muffled clamor rose from the laboratory; a huge shadow
appeared, as the curtain was brushed momentarily aside; then it
fell back into place and I could see nothing more. What was
happening inside that room? I heard running footsteps, as though a
mad chase were in progress, followed by a terrifying crash of
broken glass and the sound of a child's laugh.