The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (27 page)

Ophelia’s voice suddenly rattled in my headset. “There’s a gully just ahead that splits in two.”

A moment later the three of us were shining our helmet lights at the entrance, trying to peer through the snow at what lay beyond. The wind roared around us and there were moments when we had to hold onto each other for support. The gully, at least, would offer some protection so we could concentrate on work. We had our sample baskets and image cameras and what we had to do wasn’t that difficult—pick up a few rocks, take a few pix of strata, and then return to the Rover and the Lander. Back on the
Astron
we would fill in the maps and make preliminary notations for the geologists. And maybe we would take back a surprise or two.

“Sparrow, take the left leg. Snipe and I will take the right. Meet back here in thirty minutes. Take samples of anything that looks interesting—and watch your footing.”

A few feet into the gully the wind died away, though I could still hear it shrieking overhead. The banks were several meters above my helmet and my radio headset’s whip antenna just cleared them; I would be in touch with Ophelia and Snipe most of the time. We had orders to check in with each other every five minutes, and timers in our helmets to remind us.

Snipe, as always, sounded in complete control.

“Don’t get lost, Sparrow.”

“I’m not about to.”

“If anybody could—”

“Keep the frequencies clear for reports,” Ophelia interrupted, annoyed. Snipe shut up and I concentrated on the ravine walls, at the same time keeping to the middle of the small gorge to avoid anything falling on me from above. The gully walls were rough and dark, worn by the winds and the spring floods of methane. I dutifully hammered at a rock or two and took some image pix of formations I didn’t recognize. But I found no section of the rock walls that exposed different strata and thousands of years of planetary history.

The gully suddenly widened, its banks drifting away from each other.

“I think I’ve hit a lakebed,” I said into my head set.“Can’t tell the size.”

“Keep to… sides… don’t…”

Ophelia’s voice was intermittent and weak and I glanced up with alarm, noting that the banks were now above antenna height. If I continued on, I would be out of contact. I hesitated, but in the back of my mind was the picture of Hamlet laughing as he skidded down a methane mountain. I decided to risk it for a few minutes more. At least I would be protected from the howling wind.

Two hundred meters farther on, the gully wall dropped off sharply to the right; I faced a solid blanket of fog and driving sleet. I could see nothing at all, though a heavy roaring sound came from somewhere within the fog bank. Then the unpredictable wind brushed aside the snow and fog like a curtain and I stared in wonder at a shallow valley a dozen kilometers wide. At the bottom was a small lake and at the far end, I could just make out a methane fall thundering over the valley’s rim.
Falling liquids!
I had never seen liquids cascading in a fall, and the sight was both strange and beautiful. I could visualize the valley filling in the spring and the overflow racing through the gorge to the river beyond. The air was filled with dirty flakes of drifting snow and the fall at the far end was half obscured by haze. But the scene was striking—and unsettling. Except for some of the compartment falsies and the artificial reality of Seti IV, I had never been in the open. Even during the landing and the trip in the Rover, the snow had closed us in. Suddenly the horizon was no longer determined by the snow and the fog or by a bulkhead one or two hundred meters away at the end of a corridor. My only experience with a limitless horizon had been on Seti IV; but the scene now before me had far more depth and detail than Seti IV

had had and I could feel my stomach knot with sudden anxiety.

At the same time, it was humbling to realize that not only was I the first human being to see the valley, I was probably the first living creature in the entire universe to see it. For just a moment, I thought I understood both God and the Captain. Then the winds shifted, the valley disappeared, and I had to fight my way back to the gorge. I struggled through the slush to where the gully wall became a cliff twenty meters high. I was standing close to the rock face snapping image pix of the different formations when pebbles rattled onto my helmet. I glanced up. The rim above was actually an overhang where the rushing floods of methane had undercut the banks. I was staring at it, puzzled, when the puff of a small explosion just under the rim caused more pebbles and rocks to rain down.

I didn’t move. Small explosions don’t happen by themselves. Then my surprise turned to alarm as another rockslide tumbled down the bank.

Something was shooting at the overhang. And if it gave way, I would be buried under tons of rubble. Another small explosion and another shower of dirt and stones.I stood there in shock and panic, forgetting all the research I had done but remembering with remarkable clarity all of Tybalt’s stories. My first thought was that Tybalt had been right.

****

I struggled back up the gully, staying close to the wall and looking for cover. The overhang might come down and bury me but there was no protection at all in the open except for the thick gusts of swirling snow.

Whatever it was followed me, firing another shot every few seconds. There were boulders at the bottom of the ravine, but nothing large enough to hide behind. Besides, my enemy was on the opposite bank, shooting down at me. There were a few caves in the ravine wall, but none into which I could squeeze. And if I had, I would have been a stationary target, sooner or later to be buried alive. I slipped more than once in the slush, terrified that the sudden falls would loosen some of my suit disconnects. Then it would be a toss-up whether I froze to death or died breathing a mixture of nitrogen and methane so cold my lungs would turn to ice within a breath or two. The pattern of shooting suddenly changed, with shots aimed at the ground before my boots, trying to drive me back under the overhang. The top of the gorge still towered above me, but a pile of boulders in the middle looked just high enough that if I climbed it, the whip antenna might clear the banks and I could call Ophelia and Snipe for help. But climbing the boulders would expose me even more…

Or would it? I had already been exposed.A dozen times.And never been hit. Why try to hit the overhang, why not
me
? What reason required that I be crushed by a landslide rather than have my suit punctured so I could die from the cold or the unbreathable atmosphere?

Perhaps I had discovered life on Aquinas II. Perhaps creatures had evolved who were smart enough to make explosive weapons and who had a psychology strange enough to want my death and burial at the same time.

But I really didn’t think so. The planet was young and I found it hard to believe a local version of Tybalt’s aliens existed.

My alternatives were my fellow crew members. On a planet where simple walking was a hazard, a landslide would never be questioned. A suit with pellet holes in it would be. I forced myself to forget my panic and consider the problem. Once I did, the answer was obvious. Unlike Ophelia, whom he had accused of believing in nothing, Tybalt believed in everything. His team would have gone in armed.

I ran for the boulders and scrabbled to hoist myself up, slipping off the ice-covered rocks several times before finding handholds. Any minute I expected to feel metal pellets tear through my suit, but the small explosions and rockslides suddenly stopped.

I hit the helmet squawk button with my chin. To keep down the babble, each team had its own frequency—nobody on Tybalt’s team could overhear us.

“Ophelia!Sparrow here!”

Ophelia’s voice, angry but relieved, echoed in my headset immediately.

“You’re ten minutes late reporting in—”

“Somebody with a pellet gun!”I shouted. “They’re shooting at me!”

“Position, Sparrow.” I gave it to her and she asked the direction of the shots. Then Snipe came on, her voice shaky with worry.

“Seek cover, Sparrow, the walls—”

“—are dangerous,” Ophelia interrupted. “There’s an overhang in this branch as well. Use your own judgment on cover and continue toward the rendezvous point.”

It was growing darker, which helped, and the closer I got to the canyon mouth, the stronger the winds and the more driven the snow. I feverishly hoped the weather would provide all the cover I needed. I was the first to reach the ravine entrance and hid behind the Rovers a few meters away, crouching down and letting the snow cover me. It didn’t take long before I was sure I looked like just another snow-covered rock.

It was five minutes before the other team members struggled into view. I came out from behind the boulders and counted them as they pushed through the screaming winds.Three missing. Crow trudged over and said tentatively, “You all right, Sparrow?”

I nodded within the helmet. Ophelia had told them nothing and I felt too drained to fill them in. They would soon learn all about it.

A few minutes later somebody shouted and pointed toward the ravine’s mouth at the three figures coming out. One was ahead of the other two, stumbling occasionally when he was pushed from behind. Ophelia and Tybalt followed. Tybalt , limping slightly, held a pellet gun. We gathered around them and Ophelia reached out and scraped the snow off the visor of the first figure so we could see his face.

“We found an alien life form after all,” Tybalt said grimly.

The face behind the visor was pale and strained, the eyes frightened but not so frightened they didn’t fill with hatred when they saw me.

To my great surprise, it wasn’t Thrush.

It was Heron.

Man’s best friend.

H eron’scourt-martial was convened on the hangar deck. More than half the crew was present, even though it was a sleep period for many. With Banquo and Cato as his guards, Heron stood in front and a little to the right of the Captain, secured to the deck with magnetic lines, his hands bound behind him. His eyes were black holes in a pale, ugly face and he constantly licked his lips. Those close to him swore later that they could smell the stink of fear.

The audience sat in the few Rovers parked on the deck, clung to the sides of Inbetween Station, or had tied themselves to the rings on a nearby bulkhead. For the most part, they were silent and perhaps a little awed. Heron had tried to kill another crew member and that was something almost impossible to imagine. The few who glanced at him and could imagine it shivered with revulsion and looked away. The lead actor in the drama was the Captain, who sat behind a small desk inside the hatchway. His halter was plain black but he also wore a black armband with a single gold star. It was the first time any of us had seen him wear anything indicating rank, and we were properly impressed. We knew the Captain held the power of life and death over us, but until that moment it had been an abstraction. Now it was reality and I could sense the unease in the crew.

There was no jury. Judgement was the Captain’s responsibility, one he apparently wasn’t required to share, according to the computer.

Heron had been charged with attempted murder. I was called as the first witness. I told what had happened as objectively as I could. I mentioned the incident in sick bay and the Captain listened intently. He hadn’t known about it, which meant that Pipit hadn’t reportedit, and that surprised me. But in the end, he struck it as irrelevant.

“Why did you climb to the top of the boulders, Sparrow?”

I thought I had explained why,then realized he wanted me to repeat it so he could make a point. The proceedings had made me nervous to begin with and I felt even more so now.

“I needed the height so my whip antenna could clear the rim of the gorge and I could contact Ophelia for help.”

He frowned.

“Wasn’t that dangerous? Didn’t you consider that exposing yourself in the open would make you an easy target?”

I sensed a trap.

“I took a gamble, sir.”

The frown deepened.

“It would seem like a bad gamble, Sparrow. Something was shooting at you and yet you abandoned the only cover you had for the open area in the gorge. In your place, I would have assumed that would guarantee my being shot.”

I suddenly wondered whose trial it was.

“I could have been killed at any time, sir. The only logical answer was that a fellow crewman was shooting at me. If I were shot while in the open, there would be pellet holes in my body and my exploration suit. The list of suspects would have been very small. A landslide from the rim above would have covered the evidence as well as killed me.”

“It’s still a gigantic leap of faith, Sparrow.” He made a few notes on a writing slate,then asked, too casually: “You never considered the possibility of indigenous life on the planet?”

And that was the point he was driving at. Did I believe in life out there? Did I believe in the mission of the ship? Was I still willing to follow him?

I wasright, this was far more than Heron’s trial for attempted murder. I glimpsed Ophelia in the audience and she looked stricken; she realized it as well.

I needed time to think and made a show of clearing my throat.

“There had been no signatures of a technical civilization in the weeks before the landing, sir. And if I had stayed under the rim, it was only a matter of time before I was a dead man.”

The Captain hunched forward in his chair.

“So you chanced the open to try and signal for help. Since you really didn’t believe there was any life on the planet, your assailant had to be a fellow crew member. Is that right, Sparrow?”

I opened and closed my mouth several times before replying, then finally said, “I thought there was a good possibility of life, but not of beings so technically advanced they had pellet guns. It’s a young planet.” I hesitated again,then blurted: “I took the gamble because I had to. I was afraid all the time that I might lose.”

He relaxed but didn’t let me go without a reprimand.

“There’s no timetable for the development of life and different levels of civilization, Sparrow—you can’t use Earth as a measuring stick.”