alien atmosphere from entering the chamber. The door clanged to behind
them. The rays of a searchlight lit up a clear road along which the
explorers hobbled on their spring legs, scarcely able to drag their own
heavy weight along. The gigantic spaceship stood at the other end of the
beam of light, about a mile away, a distance that seemed interminable to
them in their impatience. They were badly shaken up by their clumsy jumps
over uneven ground covered with small boulders and greatly heated by the
black sun.
The stars made pale, diffused patches when seen through the dense,
highly humid atmosphere. Instead of the brilliant magnificence of the Cosmos
the planet's sky showed only a faint suggestion of the constellations, the
pale, reddish lanterns of their stars unable to penetrate the darkness on
the planet.
The spaceship stood out in clear relief in the profound darkness of its
surroundings. The thick borated zirconium lacquer on the hull plates had
been rubbed off in places. The ship must have been wandering about the
Cosmos for a long time.
An exclamation, repeated in all the radio telephones, came from Eon
Thai. With his hand he pointed to the ship's smaller lift that had been
lowered to the ground and stood with its door wide open. What were
undoubtedly plants grew around the lift and under the ship's hull. Thick
stems raised black bowls of parabolic shape nearly three feet above the
ground; they had serrated edges something like the teeth of a cog-wheel and
it was difficult to say whether they were leaves or flowers. A mass of these
motionless cog-wheels growing together had an evil look about them. Still
more disturbing was the silent, open door of the lift. Untouched plants and
an open door could only mean that nobody had used that way for a long time,
that the people were not guarding their tiny terrestrial world from that
which was alien to them.
Erg Noor, Eon Thai and Nisa Greet entered the lift and the commander
pressed the button. With a slight squeak the machinery was set in motion and
the lift carried the explorers to the wide-open air-lock. They were followed
by the others. Erg Noor transmitted an order to switch off the searchlight
on Tantra. An instant later the tiny group of Earth-dwellers was lost in
utter darkness. The world of the iron sun enveloped them as though trying to
absorb that feeble spark of terrestrial life pressed down to the soil of the
huge black planet.
They switched on the revolving electric lanterns in their helmets. The
inner door of the air-lock, leading into the ship, was closed but not locked
and opened at a push. The explorers entered the central corridor and easily
found their way through the dark alleyways. The spaceship differed but
little from Tantra in its design.
"This ship was built less than a hundred years ago," said Erg Noor,
drawing closer to Nisa. The girl looked round. Through the silicolloid "
helmet the commander's half-lighted face looked mysterious.
"An impossible idea," he continued, "but suppose this is ...."
"Parus," exclaimed Nisa. She had forgotten the microphone and saw
everybody turn towards her.
The explorers made their way to the chief room of the spaceship, the
combined library and laboratory, and from there continued towards the ship's
control tower in the bows. Staggering along in his "skeleton," swaying from
side to side and banging against the walls as he went, the commander reached
the main switchboard. The ship's lights were switched on but there was no
current to keep them going. The phosphorescent signs and indicators still
glowed in the darkness. Erg Noor found the emergency switch, pressed it and,
to their surprise, the lamps glowed dimly, but to the explorers they seemed
blindingly bright. The light in the lift must have gone on, too, for they
heard the voice of Pour Hyss in their telephones asking about the results of
the examination. Geologist Beena Ledd answered him as the commander had
suddenly stopped in the doorway of the control tower. Following his glance
Nisa looked up and saw, between the fore screens, a double inscription, in
the letters of Earth and the symbols of the Great Circle-Parus. A line drawn
under the word separated it from Earth's galactic call sign and the
coordinates of the Solar System.
The spaceship that had disappeared eighty years before had been found
in the system of the black sun, a system that had formerly been unknown and
had been regarded as a dark cloud.
An examination of the interior of the spaceship did not tell them what
had happened to the ship's crew. The oxygen reservoirs were not empty, there
were supplies of food and water sufficient for several years but nowhere was
there any trace or any remains of Parus' crew.
Here and there in the corridors, in the control tower and in the
library there were strange dark stains on the walls. On the library floor
there was another stain that looked as though something that had been
spilled there had dried in a warped film of several layers. Before the open
door in the after bulkhead of the stern engine room, wires had been torn
apart and were hanging down, the massive uprights of the cooling system,
made of phosphor-bronze, had been badly bent. Everything else in the ship
was in perfect condition so that this damage, caused by a blow of tremendous
force, could not be explained. The explorers were becoming exhausted by
their efforts but were unable to find anything that would explain the
disappearance and undoubted loss of Parus' crew.
They did, however, make another discovery, one of the greatest
importance-the supplies of anameson fuel and ion charges for the planetary
motors were sufficient for the take-off of Tantra and for the journey back
to Earth.
This information was immediately transmitted to Tantra and relieved all
members of the expedition of that feeling of doom that had possessed them
since their spaceship had been captured by the iron star. Nor would they
have to carry out the lengthy work necessary to transmit a message to Earth.
There would be, however, the tremendous task of transferring the anameson
containers to Tantra. This would not have been an easy task anywhere, but
there, on a planet where everything weighed three times as much as on Earth,
it would require all the skill and ingenuity of the engineers. People of the
Great Circle Era, however, were not afraid of difficult mental problems; on
the contrary, they enjoyed them.
From the tape recorder in the central control tower the biologist
removed the unfinished spool of the ship's log-book. Erg Noor and the
biologist opened the door of the hermetically sealed main safe where the
results of the Parus expedition were kept. The members of the expedition
were burdened down with a heavy weight of numerous spools of photo-magnetic
films, log-books, astronomical observations and computations. They were
explorers themselves and could not dream of leaving such a valuable find
even for a moment.
Dead tired the explorers were met in Tantra's library by their excited
and impatient comrades. In surroundings to which they were accustomed,
seated around a comfortable table under bright lights, the tomb-like gloom
of the black world outside and the dead, abandoned spaceship seemed like a
gruesome nightmare. Nevertheless the force of gravity of that awful planet
continued to crush every one of them and from time to time one or another of
the explorers would grimace with pain on making some movement. It had been
very difficult, without considerable practice, to coordinate the movements
of the body with those of the "steel skeleton" so that an ordinary walk
became a series of jerks and severe shakings. The short journey to Parus and
back had completely exhausted them. Geologist Beena Ledd was apparently
suffering from a slight concussion of the brain, but she refused to go away
before she had heard the last spool of the ship's log-book and remained
leaning on the table with her hands pressed to her temples. Nisa expected
something extraordinary from the records that had lain for eighty years in a
dead ship on that horrid planet. She imagined hoarse appeals for help, howls
of a suffering, tragic words of farewell. The girl shuddered when a cold,
melodious voice came from the reproducer. Even Erg Noor, a man who possessed
great knowledge of everything connected with interstellar flights, knew
nothing of the crew of Parus. The crew had been made up exclusively of young
people and had set out on their fantastically courageous journey to Vega
without giving the Astronautical Council the usual film about the members of
the crew.
The unknown voice reported events that occurred seven months after the
last message had been sent to Earth. Twenty-five years before that, in
crossing a Cosmic ice zone on the fringe of the Vega system, Parus had been
damaged. The crew managed to patch the hole in the ship's stern and continue
their journey but it nevertheless upset the delicate regulation of the
protective field of the motors. After a struggle that lasted twenty years
they had had to stop the engines. Parus continued going five years by
inertia until she was pulled aside by a natural inaccuracy in the ship's
course. That was when the first message had been sent. The spaceship was
about to send another message when she was caught in the field of the iron
star. Then the same thing happened to Parus as had happened to Tantra with
the difference that Parus was without motors and had been unable to resist.
Nor could Parus become a satellite of the black planet since the planetary
motors, housed in the vessel's stern, had been wrecked at the same time as
the anameson motors. Parus landed safely on a low plateau near the sea. The
crew set about carrying out three tasks of importance: the repair of the
motors, the transmission of a message to Earth and the study of the unknown
planet. Before they had time to erect a rocket tower people began to
disappear mysteriously.
Those sent out to look for them did not return. The exploration of the
planet ceased, the remainder of the crew went out to the rocket tower only
in a group and for the long periods between spells of work that the strong
force of gravity made extremely exhausting, they remained in the tightly
sealed spaceship. In their hurry to send off the rocket they had not even
studied the strange spaceship in the vicinity of Parus that had, apparently,
been there a long time.
"That disc!" flashed through Nisa's mind. She met the commander's
glance and he, understanding her thoughts, nodded in affirmation. Six out of
the fourteen of Parus' crew had disappeared but after the necessary measures
had been taken the disappearances stopped. There then followed a break of
about three days in the log-book and the story was taken up by a young
woman's high-pitched voice.
"Today is the twelfth day of the seventh month, year 723 of the Great
Circle, and we who have remained alive have completed the construction of
the rocket transmitter. Tomorrow at this time ...."
Kay Bear glanced instinctively at the time gradations along the tape-5
a. m. Parus time, and who could know what time that would be on this planet!
"We are sending a reliably computed ..." the voice broke off and then
began again, this time weaker and suppressed, as though the speaker had
turned away from the microphone, "... I am switching on! More!" The
tape-recorder was silent although the tape continued to unwind.
"Something must have happened!" began Ingrid Dietra.
Hurried, choking words came from the tape-recorder. '"... two got away
... Laik is gone, she didn't jump far enough ... the lift... they couldn't
shut the outside door, only the inside one! Mechanic Sach Kthon has crawled
to the engines ... we'll start the planetary motors going ... there is
nothing to them but fury and horror, they are nothing! Yes, nothing ..." for
some time the tape unwound in silence, then the same voice began again.
"I don't think Kthon managed it. I'm alone, but I've thought of what to
do. Before I begin," the voice grew stronger and then sounded with amazing
strength, "Brothers, if you find Parus, take heed of my warning, never leave
the ship at all." The woman who was speaking heaved a deep sigh and said, as
though talking to herself, "I must find out about Kthon, I'll come back and
explain in detail." Then came a click and the tape continued to unwind for
about twenty minutes before it reached the end. The eager listeners waited
in vain, the unknown woman had been unable to give any further details just
as she had probably been unable to return.
Erg Noor switched off the apparatus and turned to his companions.
"Our brothers and sisters who died in Parus will save us! Can't you
feel the strong arm of the man of Earth! There's a supply of anameson on the
ship and we've been given a warning of the mortal danger that threatens us.
I have no idea what it is but it's undoubtedly some alien form of life. If
it had been elemental. Cosmic forces, they'd have damaged the ship and not
merely killed the people, It would be a disgrace if we could not save
ourselves now that we have been given so much help; we must take our
discoveries and those of Parus back to Earth. The great work of those who
perished at their posts, their half-century's struggle against the Cosmos,
must not have been in vain."
"How do you propose to get the fuel on board without leaving the ship?"
asked Kay Bear.
"Why without leaving the ship? You know that's impossible and that we
have to go "out and work outside. We've been warned and we'll take the
necessary steps."
"I suppose you mean a barrage around the place where we're going to
work," said biologist Eon Thai.
"Not only that, a barrage along the whole way between the two ships,"
added Pour Hyss.
"Naturally! We don't know what to expect so we'll make the barrage a
double one, a radiation and an electric wall. We'll put out cables and have
a path of light all the way. There's an unused rocket standing behind Parus
that contains sufficient energy for all the time we'll have to work."
Beena Ledd's head dropped on to the table with a thud. The doctor and
the second astronomer moved their heavy bodies with difficulty towards her.
"It's nothing," explained Louma Lasvy, "concussion and overstrain. Help
me get Beena to bed."
Even that simple task would not have been performed very quickly if
mechanic Taron had not thought of adapting an automatic robot car. With the
help of the car all the eight explorers were taken to their beds-if they did
not rest in time, organisms that had not yet adapted themselves to new
conditions would break down. At this difficult moment every member of the
expedition was essential and irreplaceable.
Soon two universal automatic cars for transport purposes and road
building were linked together and used to level the road between the two
spaceships. Heavy cables were hung on both sides. Watch towers with a
protective hood of thick silicoborum 15 were erected at each of
the spaceships. In each tower an observer from time to time would send a
fan-shaped bunch of death-dealing rays along the road from an impulse
chamber. During the hours of work the powerful searchlights were kept going
all the time. The main hatch in Parus' keel was opened, some of the
bulkheads were removed and four containers of anameson and thirty cylinders
with ion charges were made ready to load on to the cars. It would be more
difficult to load them on to Tantra. They could not open the spaceship the
way Parus was opened and so allow whatever was engendered by the alien life
of the planet, and which was probably lethal, to enter the ship. For this
reason they only made the necessary preparations inside the ship but did not
open the hatch; interior bulkheads were removed and containers of compressed
air were brought from Parus. The plan was to blow a strong blast of air
under high pressure down the shaft from the time the manhole was opened
until the containers were loaded into Tantra. At the same time the hull of
the vessel would be screened by a radiation cascade.
The expedition gradually grew accustomed to working in their "steel
skeletons" and began to bear the triple weight somewhat more easily. The
unbearable pain in all their bones that had begun as soon as they landed was
also beginning to ease up.
Several terrestrial days passed and the mysterious "nothing" did not
appear. The temperature of the surrounding atmosphere began to fall rapidly.
A hurricane arose that increased in fury hour by hour. This was the setting
of the black sun-the planet rotated and the continent on which the spaceship
stood plunged into night. The convection currents, the heat given off by the
ocean and the thick atmosphere prevented a sudden drop in temperature but
towards the middle of the planetary "night" a sharp frost set in. The work
continued with the heating systems in the spacesuits switched on. They had
managed to get the first container out of Parus and transport it to Tantra
when at "sunrise" there came a hurricane much fiercer than had been the one
at "sunset." The temperature rose rapidly above freezing point, a current of
dense air brought with it excessive humidity and the sky was rent by endless
lightnings. The hurricane became so fierce that the spaceship began to
tremble under pressure of the terrific wind. The crew concentrated all their
efforts on safely anchoring the container under Tantra's keel. The fearful
roar of the wind increased and there were dangerous whirling vortices on the
plateau that closely resembled a terrestrial tornado. In the searchlight
beam there appeared a huge whirlwind, a rotating column of water, snow and
dust whose funnel rested on the low dark sky. The whirlwind broke the
high-voltage cables and there were blue flashes caused by short circuits as
the ends coiled up. The yellow light of Parus' searchlight disappeared as
though the wind had blown it out.
Erg Noor gave the order to stop work and take cover in the ship.
"But there is an observer there!" exclaimed geologist Beena Ledd,
pointing to the faintly visible light of the silicoborum turret.
"I know, Nisa's there and I'm going over there myself," answered the
commander.
"The current is cut off and 'nothing' has come into his own," said
Beena in serious tones.
"If the hurricane affects us it will no doubt also affect 'nothing.'
I'm sure there's no danger until the storm dies down. I'm so heavy in this
world that I won't be blown away if I crawl along the ground. I've been
wanting to watch that 'nothing' from an observation turret for a long time."
"May I come with you?" asked the biologist, jumping towards the
commander.
"Come along, only remember, I won't take anybody else! You need
that...."
The two men crawled for a long time, hanging on to irregularities and
cracks in the stones and keeping as far as possible out of the way of the
whirlwinds. The hurricane did its best to tear them from the ground, turn
them over and roll them along. Once it succeeded but Erg Noor managed to
catch hold of Eon Thai as he rolled past, dropped flat on his stomach and
caught hold of a big boulder with his hooked gloves.
Nisa opened the hatch of her turret and the two men crawled into the
narrow space. It was quiet and warm inside, the turret stood firm, securely
anchored against the storms their wisdom had foreseen. The auburn-headed
astronavigator frowned but was glad to have companions. She frankly admitted
that she was not looking forward to spending twenty-four hours alone in a
storm on a strange planet.
Erg Noor informed Tantra of their safe arrival and the searchlight was
turned off. The tiny lamp in the turret was now the only light in that
kingdom of darkness. The ground trembled under the gusts of wind, the
lightning and the passing whirlwinds. Nisa sat in a revolving chair with her
back against the rheostat. The commander and the biologist sat at her feet
on the round ledge formed by the base of the turret. In their spacesuits
they occupied almost all the space inside the turret.
"I suggest we sleep," came Erg Noor's soft voice in the telephones.
"It's a good twelve hours to the black sunrise when the storm will die down
and it will be warmer."
His companions readily agreed. And so the three of them slept, held
down by triple weight, enclosed in their spacesuits, hampered by the stiff
"skeleton" in the narrow confines of a turret that was shaken by the storm.
Great is the adaptability of the human organism and great its powers of
resistance!
From time to time Nisa woke up, transmitted a reassuring message to the
watcher on Tantra and dozed off again. The hurricane was blowing itself out
and the earth tremors had ceased. The "nothing," or, more correctly, the
"something" might appear now. The observers on the turrets took VP,
vigilance pills, to liven up a tired nervous system.
"That other spaceship bothers me," confessed Nisa, "I should so much
like to know who they are, where they came from and how they got here."
"So would I," answered Erg Noor, "only it's obvious how they got here.
Stories of the iron stars and their planet traps have long been circulating
round the Great Circle. In the more densely inhabited parts of the Galaxy,
where ships have been making frequent trips for a long time already, there
are planet graveyards of lost spaceships. Many ships, especially the earlier
types, got stuck to those planets and many hair-raising stories are told
about them, stories that are almost legend today, the legends of the arduous
conquest of the Cosmos. Perhaps there are older spaceships on this planet
that belong to more ancient days, although the meeting of three ships in our
sparsely populated part of the Galaxy is an extraordinary event. So far not
a single iron star was known to exist in the vicinity of the Sun, we have
discovered the first."
"Do you intend to investigate the disc ship?" asked the biologist.
"Most certainly! Could a scientist ever forgive himself if he let such
an opportunity go? We don't know of any disc spaceships in regions
neighbouring on our solar system. This must be a ship from a great distance
that has, perhaps, been wandering about the Galaxy for several thousand
years after the death of the crew or after some irreparable damage. Many
transmissions round the Great Circle may become comprehensible to us when we
get whatever material there is in the disc ship. It has a very queer form,
it's a disc-shaped spiral, the ribs on its exterior are very convex. As soon
as we have transferred the cargo from Parus we'll start on that ship but at
present we cannot take a single person away from work."
"It took us only a few hours to investigate Parus." "I have examined
the disc ship through a stereotele-scope. It is sealed tight, not a single
opening is to be seen anywhere. It is very difficult to penetrate into any
Cosmic ship that is reliably protected against forces that are many times
stronger than our terrestrial elements. Just try and get into Tantra,
through her armour of metal with a reorganized internal crystal structure,
through the borason plating-it would be a task equal to the siege of a
fortress. It's still more difficult to deal with an alien ship, the
principles of whose structure are unknown to us. But we'll make an attempt
to find out what it is!"
"When are we going to examine what we've found in Parus?" asked Nisa.
"There should be some staggeringly interesting observations made in those
marvellous worlds mentioned in the message."
The telephone transmitted the commander's good-natured laugh.
"I've been dreaming of Vega since childhood and am more impatient than
any of you. But we'll have plenty of time for that on the way home. The
first thing we have to do is get out of this darkness, out of this inferno,
as they used to say in the old days. The Parus explorers did not make any
landings otherwise we should have found the things they brought from those
worlds in the collection rooms of the ship. You remember that despite the
thorough search we made we found only films, measurements, lists of surveys,
air tests and containers of explosive dust."
Erg Noor stopped talking and listened. Even the sensitive microphones
did not register the slightest breath of wind-the storm was over. A
scraping, rustling sound came through the ground from outside and was echoed
by the walls of the turret.
The commander raised his hand and Nisa, who understood him without
words, extinguished the light. The darkness seemed as dense inside the
turret, warmed up with infrared rays, as if it were standing in black liquid
on the bed of an ocean. Flashes of brown light showed through the
transparent hood of silicoborum. The watchers clearly saw the lights burn up
and for a second form tiny stars with dark-red or dark-green rays; they
would go out and then appear again. These little stars stretched out in
lines that wavered and bent into circles and figures of eight, and slid
soundlessly over the smooth diamond-hard surface of the hood. The people in
the turret felt a strange, acute pain in their eyes and a sharp pain along
the bigger nerves of the body as though the short rays of the brown stars
were stabbing the nerve stems like needles.
"Nisa," whispered Erg Noor, "turn the regulator on to 'full' and switch
on the light suddenly."
The turret was lit up with a bright, bluish terrestrial light. The
people were blinded by it and could see nothing, or practically nothing. Eon
and Nisa managed to see- or did they imagine it?-that the darkness on the
right-hand side of the turret did not disappear immediately but remained for
a moment as a flattened condensation of gloom with tentacles attached. The
"something" instantaneously withdrew its tentacles and sprang back into the
wall of darkness that the light had pushed farther from the turret.
"Perhaps those are phantoms?" suggested Nisa, "phantom condensations of
darkness around a charge of some sort of energy, like our fire balls, and
not a form of life at all. If everything here is black why shouldn't the
lightning be black, too?"
"That's all very poetical, Nisa," objected Erg Noor, "but hardly
likely. In the first place the 'something' was obviously attacking, was
after our living flesh. It or its brethren annihilated the people from
Parus. If it's organized and stable, if it can move in the desired
direction, if it can accumulate and discharge some form of energy, then, of
course, there can be no question of an atmospheric phantom. It's something
created from living matter and it's trying to devour us!"
The biologist supported the commander's conclusion.
"It seems to me that here, on this planet of darkness, it's dark for us
alone because our eyes arc not sensitive to the infrared rays of the heat
end of the spectrum;
but the other end of the spectrum, the yellow and blue rays, should
affect these creatures very strongly. Its reaction is so swift that the crew
of Parus could not see anything when they illuminated the site of the attack
and if they did see anything it was already too late and they were unable to
tell anybody."
"Let's repeat the experiment, even if the approach of that thing is
unpleasant."
Nisa switched off the light and again the three observers sat in
profound darkness awaiting the approach of the denizens of the world of
darkness.
"What is it armed with? Why is its approach felt through the hood and
the spacesuit?" asked the biologist aloud. "Is it some new form of energy?"
"There are few forms of energy and this is most likely electromagnetic.
There is no doubt that countless modifications of this form of energy exist.
This being has a weapon that affects our nervous system. You can imagine
what it would be like if those feelers were to touch the unprotected body!"
Erg Noor flinched and Nisa Greet shuddered inwardly as they noticed the
line of brown lights rapidly approaching from three sides.
"There isn't just one being!" exclaimed Eon, softly. "Perhaps we ought
not let them touch the hood."
"You're right. Let each of us turn his back on the light and look in
one direction only. Nisa, switch on!"
On this occasion each of the observers noted some details that could be
combined to give a general impression of creatures like huge flat
jelly-fish, floating low over the ground with a dense fringe waving in the
air below them. Some of the feelers were short when compared with the
dimensions of the creature and could not have been more than a yard long.
The acute-angled corners of the rhomboid body each had two feelers of much
greater length. At the base of the feelers the biologist noticed huge
bladders that glowed inside and seemed to be transmitting the star-like
flashes along them.
"Hullo, observers, why are you switching the light on and off?" came
Ingrid's clear voice in the helmet telephones. "Are you in need of help? The
storm's over and we're going to begin work. We're coming to you now."
"Stay where you are," ordered the commander. "There is great danger
abroad. Call everybody!"
Erg Noor told them about the terrible jelly-fish. After a consultation
the explorers decided to move part of a planetary motor forward on an
automatic car. An exhaust flame three hundred metres long swept across the
stony plane removing everything visible and invisible from its path. Before
half an hour had passed the crew had repaired the broken cable and
protection was restored. They realized that the anameson fuel must be loaded
before the planet's night came again; at the cost of superhuman effort it
was done and the exhausted travellers retired behind the armour of their
tightly sealed spaceship and listened calmly as it trembled in the storm.
Microphones brought the roar and rumble of the hurricane to them but it only
served to make more cosy the little world of light impregnable to the powers
of darkness.
Ingrid and Louma opened the stereoscreen. The film had been well
chosen. The blue waters of the Indian Ocean splashed at the feet of those
sitting in the ship's library. The film showed the Neptune Games, the
world-wide competition in all types of aquatic sports. In the Great Circle
Era the entire world's population had grown accustomed to water in a way
that had only been possible for the maritime peoples in earlier days.
Swimming; diving and plunging, surf-board riding and the sailing of rafts
had become universal sports. Thousands of beautiful young bodies, tanned by
the sun, ringing songs, laughter, the festive music of the finals....
Nisa leaned towards the biologist, who sat beside her deep in thought,
carried away in his mind to the far distant planet that was his, to that
dear planet where nature had been harnessed by man.
"Did you ever take part in these competitions. Eon?" The biologist
looked at her somewhat puzzled. "What? Oh, these? No, never. I was thinking
and didn't understand you at first."
"Weren't you thinking about that?" asked the girl, pointing to the
screen. "Don't you find your appreciation of the beauty of our world comes
so much fresher to you after all this darkness, after the storms and the
jellyfish?"
"Of course I do, but that only makes me all the more anxious to get
hold of one of those jelly-fish. I was racking my brains over that, trying
to think of a way to capture one."
Nisa Greet turned away from the smiling biologist and met Erg Noor's
smile.
"Have you, too, been thinking about how to catch that black horror?"
she asked, mockingly.
"No, but I was thinking of how to explore the disc-shaped spaceship,"
he said and the sly glint in the commander's eyes almost annoyed Nisa.
"Now I understand why it is that men engaged in wars in the old days! I
used to think it was only the boastful-ness of your sex, the so-called
strong sex of that unorganized society."
"You're not quite right although you are pretty near to understanding
our old-time psychology. My ideas are simple-the more beautiful I find my
planet, the more I get to love it, the more I want to serve it, to plant
gardens, extract metals, produce power and food, create music, so that when
I have passed on my way I shall leave behind me a little piece of something
real made by my hands and my head. The only thing I know is the Cosmos,
astronautics, and that is the only way I can serve mankind. The goal is not
the flight itself but the acquisition of fresh knowledge, the discovery of
new worlds which we shall, in time, turn into planets as beautiful as our
Earth. And what aim have you in view, Nisa? Why are you so interested in the
disc spaceship? Is it mere curiosity?"
With a great effort the girl overcame the weight of her tired arms and
stretched them out to the commander. He took her little hands in his and
stroked them gently. Nisa's cheeks flushed till they matched the tight
auburn curls on her head, new strength flowed through her tired body. She
pressed her cheek to Erg Noor's hand as she had done in the moment of the
dangerous landing and she forgave the biologist his seeming treachery to
Earth. To show that she was in agreement with both of them she told them of
an idea that had just entered her head. They could furnish one of the
water-tanks with a self-closing lid, place a piece of fresh preserved meat
(a rare luxury that they sometimes enjoyed in addition to their canned food)
as bait and, should the "black something" crawl inside and the lid close,
they could fill the tank with inert terrestrial gas through a previously
arranged tap and seal the edges of the lid.
Eon was very enthusiastic over the resourcefulness of the auburn-headed
girl. He was almost the same age as Nisa and permitted himself the gentle
familiarity that is born of school years spent together. By the end of the
nine days of the planetary night the trap, perfected by the engineers, was
ready.
Erg Noor was busy with the adjustment of a manlike robot and he also
got ready a powerful hydraulic cutting tool with which he hoped to make his
way into the spiral disc from some distant star.
The storm died down in the now familiar darkness, the frost gave way to
warmth and the day that was nine terrestrial days long began. They had work
for four terrestrial days to load the ion charges, some other supplies and
valuable instruments. In addition to these things Erg Noor considered it
necessary to take some of the personal belongings of the lost crew so that,
after a thorough disinfection, they could be taken to Earth for the
relatives of the dead people to keep in their memory. In the Great Circle
Era people did not burden themselves with many possessions so that their
transfer to Tantra offered no difficulties.
On the fifth day they switched off the current and the biologist and
two volunteers, Kay Bear and Ingrid Dietra, shut themselves up in the
observation turret at Parus. The black creatures appeared almost
immediately. The biologist had adapted an infrared screen and could follow
the movements of the jelly-fish. One of them soon approached the tank trap;
it folded up its tentacles, rolled itself up into a ball and started
creeping inside. Suddenly another black rhombus appeared at the open lid of
the tank. The one that had first arrived unfolded its tentacles and
star-like flashes came with such rapidity that they turned into a strip of
vibrant dark-red light which the screen reproduced as flashes of green
lightning. The first jelly-fish moved back and the second immediately rolled
up into a ball and fell on to the bottom of the tank. The biologist held his
hand out towards the switch but Kay Bear held it back. The first monster had
also rolled up and followed the second, so that there were two of the
terrible brutes in the tank. It was amazing that they could reduce their
apparent proportions to such an extent. The biologist pressed the switch,
the lid closed and immediately five or six of the black monsters fastened on
to the zirconium covered tank. The biologist turned on the light and asked
Tantra to switch on the protection of the road. The black phantoms, as
usual, dissolved immediately except for the two that remained imprisoned in
the hermetically sealed tank.
The biologist went out to the tank, touched the lid and got such a
severe shock that he could not restrain himself and shouted out aloud. His
left arm hung limp, paralysed.
Mechanic Taron put on a high-temperature protective spacesuit and was
then able to fill the tank with pure terrestrial nitrogen and weld the lid
down. The taps were also welded and then the tank was wrapped in a spare
piece of ship's insulation and placed in the collection room.
Success had been achieved at a high price, for the biologist's arm
remained paralysed despite the efforts of the physician. Eon Thai was in
great pain hut he did not dream of refusing to take part in the expedition
to the disc ship. Erg Noor, compelled to submit to his insatiable thirst for
exploration, could not leave him on Tantra.
The spiral-disc, a visitor from distant worlds, turned out to be
farther from Parus than they had expected. In the diffused light of the
projectors they had not judged the size of the spaceship correctly. It was a
truly gigantic structure nearly three hundred and fifty metres in diameter.
They had to take the cables from Parus in order to Stretch their protective
system as far as the disc. The mysterious spaceship hung over the travellers
like a vertical wall, stretching high over their heads and disappearing in
the speckled sky. Jet-black clouds massed around the upper edge of the giant
disc. The hull of the vessel was covered in some green substance the colour
of malachite; it was badly cracked in places and proved to be about a metre
thick. Through the cracks gleamed some bright, light-blue metal that had
turned to a dark blue in places where the malachite covering had been rubbed
off. The side of the disc facing Parus was furnished with a protuberance
that curved in a spiral fifteen metres in diameter and some ten metres
thick. The other side of the disc, the side that was lost in the pitch
darkness, was more convex, like a section of a sphere attached to a disc
twenty metres thick. On that side also there was a spiral protuberance that
looked like the end of the spiral pipe emerging from the ship.
The edge of the gigantic disc was sunk deep into the ground. At the
foot of this metal wall the explorers saw that stones had melted and flowed
away in all directions like thick pitch.
They spent many hours looking for some sort of entrance or hatch.
Either it was hidden under the malachite paint or dross or the ship's
hatches closed so neatly that no trace of them was left outside. They could
not find any orifices for optical instruments or stop-cocks for any sort of
blast. The metal disc seemed to be solid. Erg Noor had foreseen such a
possibility