a chance to rest, gather fresh strength and think over what he was
to do next.
Darr Veter did not yield to the temptation of armchair and book. He had
to contact Earth-the light burning all night at that height might cause
alarm amongst those who were keeping the satellite under observation. It was
also necessary to warn Earth that reinforcements would be needed ahead of
time.
There was good communication that day and Darr Veter talked with Grom
Orme on the TVP and not in coded signals; the TVP was an extremely powerful
one, such as was fitted to every spaceship. The old chairman was pleased
with the progress made and said he would immediately see about new workers
and extra materials.
Darr Veter left the Altai's control tower and passed through the
library that had been re-equipped as a dormitory with two tiers of bunks.
Cabins, dining-rooms, the cook's galley, the side corridors and the forward
engine room had all been fitted out with extra bunks. The planet-ship had
been converted into a stationary base and was overcrowded. Scarcely able to
drag his feet Darr Veter walked down the corridor panelled with plastics
warm to the touch, and lazily opened and closed hermetically sealed doors.
He was thinking of astronauts who spent dozens of years inside such a
ship without any hope of leaving it before the appointed time, a cruelly
long one. He had been living there six months and every day had left the
narrow confines to work in the oppressive spaces of interplanetary vacuum.
He was already longing for his beautiful Earth with its steppes and seas and
the teeming life of the big centres in the inhabited zones. But Erg Noor,
Nisa Greet and twenty other people would have to spend ninety-two dependent
years or a hundred and forty terrestrial years in a spaceship before it
brought them back to their own planet. Not one of them could possibly live
so long! Their bodies would be cremated and buried away on the distant
planets of the green zirconium star!
Or they would die en route and their bodies enclosed in a funeral
rocket would be sent out into the Cosmos just ,as the funeral boats of their
ancestors swept out to sea carrying dead warriors away with them. But such
heroes as those who undertook life-long imprisonment in a spaceship without
the hope that they, personally, would return, were unknown in the history of
mankind. No, he was wrong, Veda would have rebuked him! How could he have
forgotten the nameless fighters for the dignity and freedom of man in
distant epochs who undertook even greater risks-horrible tortures and
life-long imprisonment in damp dungeons. Yes, these heroes had been stronger
and more worthy even than his contemporaries preparing to make their
magnificent flight into the Cosmos to explore distant worlds!
And he, Darr Veter, who had never been away from his native planet for
any length of time, was a pygmy compared with them and by no means an angel
of heaven, as his infinitely dear Veda Kong had called him!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE STEEL DOOR
The robot tunneller had been working for twenty, days in the damp and
gloom before it had finally cleared away the roof fall and bolstered up the
ceiling. The road down into the cave was open and could be used as soon as
it had been tested for safety. Other robots, small cars on caterpillar
tracks, operated by Archimedean screws moved noiselessly down into the
depths. At every hundred metres the instruments on the cars sent back
reports on temperature, humidity and the content of the air. The cars
cleverly overcame all obstacles and went down to a depth of four hundred
metres. Following behind them Veda Kong and a group of historians descended
into the treasure cave. Ninety years before that, when tests for subsoil
waters were being made, indicators had shown a large quantity of metal
amongst sandstone and limestone deposits that are not, in general,
associated with metallic ores. It was soon discovered that the place
coincided with a description of the site of a cave, Halovkul, that had been
mentioned in old legends. The name had originally been Hall of Culture in a
language now dead. During a terribly devastating war, people who had
believed themselves the most advanced in science and culture, hid the
treasures of their civilization in a cave. In those distant days secrecy and
mystery were very widespread.
Veda was quite as excited as the youngest of her assistants as she slid
down the wet, red clay that formed the floor of the sloping entrance tunnel.
Her imagination drew pictures of magnificent halls, hermetically sealed
safes containing films, drawings and maps, cupboards of tape recordings or
the recordings of memory machines, shelves with jars of chemical compounds,
alloys and medicines, stuffed animals, now extinct, in air- and water-tight
glass-cases, prepared plants and skeletons put together from the fossilized
bones of the past inhabitants of Earth. She even dreamed of slabs of
silicoll in which the pictures of the most famous artists had been cast,
whole galleries of sculptures of mankind's best representatives, the most
prominent people, skilful carvings of animals ... models of famous
buildings, inscriptions about outstanding events perpetuated in stone or
metal....
Lost in her dreams Veda Kong found herself in a huge cave between three
and four thousand square metres in extent. The vaulted ceiling was lost in
the darkness and long stalactites glistened in the electric light. The cave
was truly magnificent and, in realization of Veda's dreams, machines and
cupboards had been placed in the countless niches formed in the walls by the
ribs and ledges of limestone. With shouts of joy the archaeologists spread
around the perimeter of the cave: many of the machines standing in the
niches, some of them retaining the polish on their glass and metal parts,
were motor-cars of the type that pleased our distant ancestors to such an
extent and were considered the highest technical achievement of human genius
in the Era of Disunity. In that period, for some unknown reason, people
built large numbers of vehicles capable of carrying only a few passengers.
The construction of the cars reached a high level of elegance, the engines
and steering mechanisms were very ingenious but in all else these vehicles
were senseless. Hundreds of thousands of them filled the city streets and
country roads carrying people who lived far from the places where they
worked and hurried every day to reach their jobs and then get home again.
The vehicles were dangerous to drive, killed a tremendous number of people
every year and burned up millions and millions of tons of valuable organic
substances accumulated in the geological past of the planet and in so doing
poisoned the atmosphere with carbon monoxide. The archaeologists of the
Great Circle Era were very disappointed when they discovered how much room
had been devoted to these machines in the cave.
On low platforms, however, there were more powerful steam engines,
electric motors, jet, turbine and nuclear motors. In glass show-cases
covered with a coating of limestone there were vertical rows of instruments
of all kinds, most likely they were TV receivers, cameras, calculating
machines and other similar devices. This museum of machines, some of which
had quite rusted away but others were in a good state of preservation, was
of great historical value as it illustrated the technical level of
civilization at a distant date, the majority of whose records had been lost
in political and military disturbances.
Miyiko Eigoro, Veda's faithful assistant who had again given up her
beloved sea for the damp and darkness of underground exploration, noticed
the black opening of a gallery at the far end of the cave, behind a big
limestone pillar. The pillar turned out to be the limestone-covered skeleton
of a machine and at its foot lay a heap of plastic dust, the remains of the
door that had once covered the entrance to the gallery. Advancing step by
step, guided by the red cable of the scouting machines, the archaeologists
got into the second chamber that was almost at the same level and was filled
with hermetically sealed cupboards of metal and glass. A long English
inscription in big letters ran round the vertical walls that had, in places,
collapsed. Veda had to stop for a moment to decipher it.
With the boastfulness that was typical of the ancient individualists,
the builders of the caves informed their descendants that they had reached
the heights of knowledge and were preserving their magnificent achievements
for posterity.
Miyiko shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
"The inscription alone tells us that the Hall of Culture belongs to the
end of the Era of Disunity, to the last years of the old type of social
order. This foolish confidence in the eternal and unchanging continuation of
their civilization, language, customs, morals and in the majesty of the
so-called 'white man' is typical of the period!"
"You have a clear conception of the past, but it is somewhat one-sided,
Miyiko. Through the grim skeleton of moribund capitalism I see those who
struggled for a better future. Their future is our 'today.' I see countless
men and women seeking light in a narrow impoverished life-they had strength
enough to fight their way out of its captivity and goodness enough to help
their friends and not harden their hearts in the suffocating morals of the
world around them. And they were brave, recklessly brave."
"But it was not they who hid their culture here," objected Miyiko.
"Just look, there is nothing but machines, technology, here. They wallowed
in machines, paying no attention to their own moral and emotional
degradation. They were contemptuous of the past and blind to the future!"
Veda thought that Miyiko was right. The lives of the people who had
filled those caves would have been easier if they had been able to compare
that which they had achieved with that which still had to be done before the
world and society could be really transformed. Then their dirty, sooty
planet, with its felled forests and litter of paper and broken glass, bricks
and rusty iron, would have been seen in its real light. Our ancestors would
have had a better understanding of what still had to be done and would not
have blinded themselves with self-praise.
A narrow well, thirty-two metres deep, led down to the next cave. Veda
sent Miyiko and two other assistants back for the gamma-ray apparatus to
examine the contents of the cupboards and herself went to examine the third
cave that had not been affected by lime and clay deposits. The low,
quadrangular plate-glass show-cases were only misty from the damp that had
penetrated into the cave. Pressing their faces against the glass the
archaeologists saw the most remarkable articles of gold and platinum
decorated with precious stones. Judging by the workmanship these ancient
relics had been collected at a time when people still had more respect for
the old than for the new, a habit that had come into being in very ancient
days when people worshipped their ancestors. As Veda looked at the
collection she felt the same disappointment in the people of olden days as
she had done when she read the inscription on the wall: she was annoyed at
the absurd self-confidence of the ancients who believed that their idea of
values and their tastes would continue unchanged for dozens of centuries and
would be accepted as canons by their descendants.
The far end of the cave merged into a high, straight passage that
sloped down to an unknown depth. The instruments on the explorer cars showed
a depth of three hundred and four metres from the surface at the beginning
of the corridor. Huge crevices divided the ceiling into a number of separate
limestone blocks that probably weighed several thousand tons each. Veda felt
alarmed: her experience in the exploration of many underground premises told
her that the rocks at the foot of the mountain chain were certain to be in a
state of instability. The mass of rock may have been shifted by an
earthquake or by the general rise of the mountains that had grown at least
fifty metres higher in the centuries that had elapsed since the caves had
been sealed. An ordinary archaeological expedition had no means at its
disposal to strengthen such a huge mass. Only an objective of importance to
the planet's economy would have justified the expenditure necessary for the
job.
At the same time historical secrets hidden in the deep cave might be of
technical value, they might consist of such things as forgotten inventions
that would be of value in modern times.
It would have been nothing more than wise precaution to abandon all
further exploration. But why should a historian be so very careful of his
own person? When millions of people were carrying out risky experiments and
doing risky jobs, when Darr Veter and his companions were working at a
height of fifty-seven thousand kilometres above the Earth, when Erg Noor was
preparing to start out on a voyage from which there would be no return!
Neither of these men whom Veda admired would have hesitated ... nor would
she!
They would take reserve batteries, an electronic camera, two oxygen
apparatuses and would go alone, she and the fearless Miyiko, leaving their
companions to study the third cave.
Veda advised her workers to take a meal to keep up their strength. They
got out their travellers' cakes, slabs of pressed, easily assimilated
proteins, sugars and preparations destroying the toxins of weariness mixed
with vitamins, hormones and nerve stimulants. Veda, nervously impatient, did
not want to eat. Miyiko appeared some forty minutes later, she had been
unable to resist the temptation of examining the contents of some of the
cupboards with her gamma-rays.
The descendant of Japanese women divers thanked her principal with a
glance and got herself ready in the twinkling of an eye.
The thin red cables stretched down the centre of the passage. The pale
light emanating from the phosphorescent crowns worn by the two women was
insufficient to penetrate the thousand-year-old darkness that lay ahead of
them where the slope grew steeper. Big drops of cold water dripped steadily
and dully from the roof. To the sides and below them they could hear the
gurgle of streams of water running in the crevices. The air, saturated with
moisture, was as still as death in that enclosed underground chamber. The
silence was such as exists only in caves where it is guarded by the dead and
inert matter of Earth's crust. Outside, no matter how great the silence may
be, nature's hidden life, the movement of water, air and light may always be
assumed.
Miyiko and Veda were unwittingly hypnotized by the cave that drew them
into its black depths as though into the depths of a dead past that had been
wiped out by time and lived only as figments of the imagination.
The descent was rapid although there was a thick layer of sticky clay
on the floor. Blocks of stone fallen from the walls at times barred the way
and had to he climbed over, the women crawling through the narrow space left
between the fall and the roof. In half an hour Miyiko and Veda had descended
another one hundred and ninety metres into the earth and reached a perfectly
smooth wall at the foot of which the two explorer robots lay motionless. One
flash of light was enough to show them that the smooth wall was a massive,
hermetically sealed door of stainless steel. In the middle of the door were
two convex circles with certain symbols on them, handles and gilded arrows.
The lock opened when a pre-arranged signal had been selected. The two
archaeologists knew of such safes belonging to an earlier period. After a
short consultation Veda and Miyiko made a closer examination of the lode. It
was very much like those malignantly clever constructions that people once
used to keep other people's hands off their property-in the Era of Disunity
people were divided in that way into "us" and "others." There had been a
number of cases when an attempt to open such doors had caused an explosion
or the emission of poisonous gases or deadly radiations, killing the
unsuspecting investigators. The mechanism of such locks, made of
non-oxidizing metals or plastics, was not affected by time: a large number
of people had fallen victim to these steel doors before archaeologists had
learned to render them harmless.
It was obvious that the door had to be opened with special instruments.
They would have to go all the way back from the very threshold of the cave's
main secret. Who could doubt that the locked door would hide the most
important and valuable possession of the people of those distant times.
Putting out their lamps and making do with the glow of their phosphorescent
crowns, Veda and Miyiko sat down to rest and eat in order to be able to
repeat their attempt.
"What can there be in there?" asked Miyiko with a sigh, never once
taking her eyes off the door and its haughtily gleaming gold symbols. "It
seems to be laughing at us... 'I won't let you in, I won't tell you
anything!' "
"What did you see in the cupboards you gamma-rayed in the second cave?"
asked Veda, driving away her primitive and useless chagrin at this
unexpected obstacle.
"Drawings of machines, books printed on metal sheets instead of on the
old-fashioned paper made from wood. Then there was something that looked
like rolls of films. some sort of lists, stellar and terrestrial maps. In
the first hall there are samples of machines and in the second there are the
technical documents belonging to them and in the third there are, well, what
can I call them? - historical relics and the valuables of the period when
money still existed. It all follows the usual scheme.
"Where are the things that we regard as being valuable? The loftiest
achievements of man's spiritual development-science, art, literature?"
exclaimed Miyiko.
"I hope they're behind that door," answered Veda, calmly, "but I should
not be at all surprised if there were weapons there."
"What? What did you say?"
"Weapons, armaments, the means of slaughtering masses of people in the
shortest possible time. I don't think that such an assumption is either
fantastic or pessimistic!"
Little Miyiko thought it over for a while and then said:
"Yes, that seems to be quite regular if you think of the object of this
cache. The chief technical and material values of the Western civilization
of those days are hidden here. What did they regard as fundamental? If the
public opinion of the planet as a whole or even of nations or of a group of
countries did not then exist? The necessity or the importance of anything at
any given moment was decided by the ruling group of people who were not
always competent to judge. That is why the things here were not really the
most valuable possessions of mankind but those things that the given group
deemed valuable. They tried to preserve chiefly machines and, possibly,
weapons, not realizing that civilization is built up historically, like a
living organism," added Miyiko, thoughtfully.
"Yes, by the growth and acquisition of working experience, knowledge,
techniques, stores of materials, pure chemical substances and buildings. The
restoration of high civilizations would have been impossible without highly
durable alloys, rare metals, machines with a high productivity and great
precision. If all these things were destroyed where would they be able to
get them from and where would they get the experience and ability to build
complicated cybernetic machines capable of satisfying the needs of thousands
of millions of people?"
"It would have been just as impossible to return to a pre-machine age
civilization, like that of antiquity, although some people did dream of it."
"Of course. Instead of the civilization of antiquity they would have
been faced with a terrible famine. Those were individualist dreamers who did
not want to understand that history does not turn back."
"I'm not insisting that there are armaments in there," said Veda, "but
there is every reason to suppose there are. If the men who devised this
cache made the mistake that was typical of their day in confusing culture
and civilization and ignoring the absolute necessity of training and
developing a man, they would certainly not have seen the vital necessity for
preserving works of art, literature or research far removed from current
needs. In those days science was divided into useful and useless sciences
and no thought was given to their unity. There were branches of art and
science that were regarded as being merely pleasant but by no means an
essential or even useful accompaniment to the life of mankind. Here, in this
cave, the most important things are preserved, that's why I think of
weapons, no matter how foolish and naive that may seem to us today."
Veda stopped talking and stared at the door.
"Perhaps that's just a cipher lock and we can open it by listening to
it with a microphone," she said, suddenly, walking over to the door. "Shall
we risk it?"
Miyiko jumped between her friend and the door.
"No, Veda, why take such a foolish risk?"
"It seems to me that the roof of this cave is very insecure. We'll go
away from here and we'll never have a chance to come back. Listen! ..."
A diffused and distant sound from time to time penetrated into the cave
in front of the door. It came sometimes from below, sometimes from above.
Miyiko, however, was adamant, she stood with her back to the door and
her arms outstretched.
"You think there are weapons in there, Veda. If there are they must be
well protected. No, no ... it's an evil door, like many others."
Two days later a portable X-ray reflector screen to study the mechanism
and a focussed high-frequency radiator for the molecular destruction of
parts of the door were brought into the cave. They did not, however, have
time to set their apparatus to work.
Suddenly an intermittent roar resounded through the caves. Strong earth
tremors underfoot sent the people who were in the third cave running
instinctively to the exit.
The noise increased until it became a dull rumble. The whole mass of
fissured rock was apparently settling along the line of the fault at the
foot of mountains.
"Save yourselves, everybody get out," shouted Veda and her people ran
to the robot cars, directing them towards the entrance to the second cave.
Hanging on to the cables of the robots they scrambled out of the well.
The noise and the tremors of the stone walls followed close on their heels
and, at last, overtook them. There came a fearful crash as the walls of the
second cave tumbled into the abyss that had formed where the wall had been
seconds before. The air blast literally carried the people together with a
shower of dust and rubble into the first cave. There the archaeologists
threw themselves on the floor and awaited death.
The clouds of dust began to subside. Through the dusty haze it could be
seen that the stalagmites and the niches had not changed their form. The
former grave-like silence returned to the caves.
Veda came to and stood up, trembling from the reaction. Two of her
assistants took hold of her but she shook them off impatiently.
"Where's Miyiko?"
Her friend was leaning against a low stalagmite carefully wiping the
dust from her neck, ears and hair.
"Almost everything has been lost," she said in answer to an unasked
question. "The impassable door will remain closed under a four-hundred-metre
thick layer of stone. The third cave has been completely destroyed but the
second can be excavated. There and in this cave are the things of greatest
value to us."
"You're right." Veda licked her dry lips. "We were wrong in dallying
and being over-careful. We should have foreseen the fall."
"You had only unfounded instinct to go on. But there's nothing to worry
about, we would hardly have tried to prop up those masses of rock for the
sake of very doubtful treasures behind that closed door. Especially if it is
full of worthless weapons."
"But suppose there are works of art there, inestimable human creations?
We could have worked faster!"
Miyiko shrugged her shoulders and led the depressed Veda in the wake of
their companions, out into the magnificence of a sunny day, to the joy of
clean water and an electric shower to drown all pain.
As was his habit, Mven Mass strode bade and forth in the room that had
been allotted him on the top floor of the History House in the Indian
Section of the northern inhabited zone. He had arrived there but two days
before after having finished work in the History House in the American
Section.
The room, or verandah with an outer wall of polarizing glass, looked
out on the blue distance of the hilly plateau. Mven Mass from time to time
switched on the cross polarization shutters. The room was plunged into grey
gloom and pieces of old cinema films, sculptures and buildings that he had
selected appeared on the hemispherical screen. The African watched them and
dictated notes for his future book to a robot secretary. The machine printed
and numbered the sheets, folded and sorted them according to subject matter,
descriptions or generalizations.
When he grew tired Mven Mass switched off the shutters and walked over
to the window to stare into the distance with unseeing eyes as he stood for
a long time thinking over what he had seen.
He could not help but feel amazed that much of mankind's recent culture
had already passed into the limbo. Verbal finesse that had been so typical
of the Era of World Unity, oral and written whimsicalities that had at one
time been regarded as the hallmark of a good education, had completely
disappeared. Writing for the sake of beauty, so widespread in the Era of
Common Labour, had gone and with it the juggling with words that went by the
name of witticism. Still earlier the necessity to hide one's thoughts, an
important matter in the Era of Disunity, had ceased to exist. All talk had
become simpler and terser and it seemed that the Great Circle Era would
become the era of the third system of signals-comprehension without words.
From time to time Mven Mass- turned to the ever wakeful mechanical
secretary with new recordings of his thoughts.
"The fluctuating psychology of art had its beginning in the second
century of the Great Circle Era and was founded by Liuda Pheer. She first
gave a scientific proof of the difference in the emotional perception of men
and women and laid bare that sphere that had for centuries been regarded as
the semi-mystic subconscious. The proofs she offered for the understanding
of her contemporaries, however, constituted the lesser part of her work.
Liuda Pheer did more-she indicated the main series of sensual perceptions
that made it possible to achieve similarity in the perception of the two
sexes."
A ringing signal and a green light suddenly called Mven Mass to the
televisophone. A call that came during working hours meant something very
urgent. The automatic secretary was switched off and Mven Mass hurried
downstairs to the room where long-distance calls were received.
Veda Kong, with bruised and scratched cheeks and with deep shadows
under her eyes, greeted him from the screen. Mven Mass was pleased to see
her and held out his huge hands to her, causing Veda's worried face to break
into a faint smile.
"Help me, Mven. I know you're working but Darr Veter isn't on Earth and
Erg Noor is far away; besides them you're the only one I have to whom I can
turn with any request. I've had a misfortune."
"What? Darr Veter...."
"No, a cave collapsed during excavations."
Veda gave him a brief description of what had happened in the Hall of
Culture.
"You're the only one of my friends who has free access to the Prophetic
Brain."
"To which of the four?"
"The Brain of Lower Definition."
"I understand; you want me to calculate the possibility of reaching the
door with a minimum expenditure of labour and material."
"You're right."
"Have you got the data?"
"I have them before me."
"All right. I'm listening."
Mven Mass wrote down some columns of figures very rapidly.
"Now you'll have to wait until the machine can accept my figures. If
you wait I'll get in touch with the Prophetic Brain engineer on duty. The
Brain of Lower Definition is in the Australian Section of the southern
zone."
"Where is the Brain of Higher Definition?"
"That's in the Indian Section, where I am, now. I'm changing over. Wait
for me."
As Veda stood before the empty screen she tried to imagine the
Prophetic Brain. Her imagination pictured a gigantic human brain with its
furrows and convolutions, alive and pulsating, although the young woman knew
that they were electronic research machines of the highest class capable of
solving any problem that could be solved by the known branches of
mathematics. There were only four such machines on the planet and they all
had special uses.
Veda did not have long to wait. The screen lit up and Mven Mass asked
her to call him again in six days' time. later in the evening.
"Mven, your help is invaluable!"
"Just because I know something of the rules of mathematics, is that it?
And your work is invaluable because you know the ancient languages and
cultures. Veda, you're overdoing it with the Era of Disunity!"
The historian frowned but Mven Mass laughed with such good nature and
so infectiously that Veda also laughed, waved him good-bye and disappeared.
At the appointed time Mven Mass again saw the young woman in the
televisophone.
"You needn't speak, I see by your face that the answer is
unfavourable."
"Yes, stability is below the safety limit. If you go straight to it you
will have to remove almost a million cubic metres of rock."
"It will only be possible for us to tunnel to the second cave and
remove the safes," said Veda, sadly.
"Is it a matter of such distress?"
"Excuse me, Mven, but you have also stood before a door that hid an
unfathomed secret. Yours are great, universal secrets and mine are tiny
little ones. Emotionally, however, my failure is the equal of yours!"
"We're companions in misfortune. I can tell you that we'll be knocking
our heads against closed doors many times, yet. The stronger and more
courageous our efforts the more often we shall come up against doors."
"One of them will open!"
"Naturally."
"You haven't given up altogether, have you?"
"Of course not, we're collecting fresh facts and the indicants of more
correct methods."
"And suppose you have to wait all your life?"
"What is my individual life compared with such a step forward in
knowledge!"
"Mven, what has happened to your impassioned impatience?"
"It hasn't disappeared, it's been curbed-by suffering."
"How's Renn Bose?"
"He's better. He's looking for ways to make his abstractions more
precise."
"I see. Wait a minute, Mven, there's something important for me!"
Veda disappeared from the screen and when the light flashed on again,
she was another, younger and more carefree woman.
"Darr Veter is returning to Earth. Satellite 57 is being completed
ahead of time."
"As quickly as that? Is it finished?"
"No, it's not finished, they've only put on the outer walls of the hull
and mounted the engines. The work inside is easier. He is being called back
to rest and to analyse Junius Antus' report on a new form of communication
around the Great Circle."
"Thanks, Veda. I'll be glad to see Darr Veter."
"You'll see him all right. I didn't finish. Supplies of anameson for
the new spaceship Lebed have been prepared by the efforts of the whole
planet. The crew invite you to see them off on the journey from which there
will be no return. Will you come?"
"I'll be there. The planet will show Lebed's crew everything that is
beautiful and lovable in the world. They also wanted to see Chara's dance at
the Fete of the Flaming Bowls. She is going to repeat her performance at the
central cosmoport in El Homra. We'll meet there!"
"Good, Mven Mass, my friend."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA
The huge plain of El Homra stretches away to the south of the Gulf of
Sirt in North Africa. Up to the time the trade winds and doldrums were
eliminated it had been known as Hammada, the Red Desert, a waste of sand and
stone, especially the triangular red stones that had given it its name. In
summer it had been an ocean of scorching sunlight and during the autumn and
winter nights it became an ocean of cold winds. Only the wind now remained
of the old Hammada and that sent wave after wave across the tall
silvery-blue grass that covered the firm soil of the plain; the grass had
been transplanted from the South African veldt. The whistling of the wind
and the bowed grass awakened in man's memory an uncertain feeling of sorrow
and, at the same time, a feeling that the great grassy plains are somehow
close to his heart, something that he had met with before in his life-not
just once before, but many times and under different circumstances, in
sorrow and in joy, in good times and bad.
Every take-off or landing of a spaceship left behind a circle, about a
kilometre in diameter, of scorched and poisoned earth. These circles were
surrounded by red metal screens and were out of bounds for a period of ten
years, twice as long as the harmful fall-out from the spaceship's exhaust
would be active. After each landing or take-off the cosmoport was
transferred to another place which gave its buildings the imprint of
temporariness and made its staff kin to the ancient nomads of the Sahara who
for thousands of years traversed the desert on a special kind of animal with
a humped back, a long curved neck and big corns on its paws, an animal
called the camel.
The planetship Barion on its thirteenth journey between the satellite
under construction and Earth brought Darr Veter to the Arizona Plain that,
on account of the accumulated radioactivity there, still remained a desert
even after the climate had changed. At the very dawn of the application of
nuclear energy in the Era of Disunity, many experiments and tests of this
new technique had been carried out there. The radioactive fall-out has
remained to this day-it is now too weak to harm man but is sufficient to
check the growth of trees and bushes.
Darr Veter took pleasure not only in the great charm of Earth-its blue
sky in a bridal gown of white clouds-but also in the dusty soil, the scanty,
tough grass....
How wonderful it was to walk with a firm tread on solid earth, under
the golden rays of the Sun and with his face turned to meet the fresh dry
breeze. After he had been on the threshold of Cosmic space he could better
appreciate the full beauty of our planet that our ancestors had once called
"the vale of tears and sorrow."
Grom Orme did not detain the builder for he himself wanted to be
present when Lebed took off. They arrived at El Homra together on the day
the expedition was to leave.
While still air-borne Darr Veter noticed huge patches on the dull
steel-grey plain-the one on the right was almost circular and the other was
more elongated, an oval with the narrow end turned away from the other.
These patches had been made by the spaceships of the 38th Cosmic Expedition
that had recently left.
The circle came from the spaceship Tintagelle that had gone to the
terrible star T and was loaded with all sorts of apparatus for the siege of
the disc ship from distant worlds. The oval was made by Aella whose ascent
was less steep; this ship was taking a large group of scientists to
investigate the changes in matter that took place on the white dwarf of the
triple star Omicron 2 Eridani. The ash that remained where the ships'
exhausts had burnt up the stony ground was about five feet thick and was
covered with a binding material to prevent its being wind-carried. All that
remained was to move the red fences from the old take-off ground, and this
would be done as soon as Lebed left.
And there stood Lebed, iron-grey in her heat armour that would burn off
during her passage through the atmosphere. After that the ship would
continue its flight with gleaming walls capable of reflecting any known
radiations. Nobody, however, would see it in this magnificence except the
robot astronomers that tracked the flight: these machines would provide the
people with nothing more than photographs of a flashing dot in the sky. When
a ship came back to Earth it was always covered with dross and scored with
furrows and hollows made by the explosions of tiny meteoric bodies. Darr
Veter remembered how Tantra had returned-greyish-green and rust-red with
parts of her outer walling in a state of collapse. None of the people
standing around Lebed would ever see her again since none of them could live
the hundred and seventy-two years that must elapse before she returned -a
hundred and sixty-eight independent years of travel and four years to
explore the planets....
Darr Veter's work was such that he would probably not live long enough
even for the ship to arrive at the planet of the green star. Just as in
those days of doubt, Darr Veter once again felt great admiration for the
bold ideas of Renn Bose and Mven Mass. What did it matter that their
experiment had failed-what did it matter that the problem, one which
affected the very foundations of the Cosmos, was still far from
solution-what did it matter, if it was all nothing more than a figment of
the imagination.... These lunatics were giants of creative thought for even
in the refutation of their theories and the failure of their experiments
people would make tremendous progress in many fields of knowledge.
Lost in thought, Darr Veter almost stumbled over the signal indicating
the safety zone, turned round and saw a well-known figure. Running his
fingers through his unruly red hair and screwing up his sharp eyes, Renn
Bose came running towards him. A network of thin. scarcely perceptible scars
had changed the face of the physicist by wrinkling it into an expression of
pained intensity.
"I'm glad to see you well again, Renn!"
"I want you urgently!" said Renn Bose, holding his tiny freckled hands
out to Veter.
"What are you doing here, so long before the take-off?"
"I saw Aella off, I'm very interested in the gravitation of such a
heavy star. I heard you would come and so I waited for you."
Darr Veter waited for an explanation.
"I hear you are returning to the observatory of the Outer Stations as
Junius Antus has requested."
Darr Veter nodded.
"Antus has recently recorded several undeciphered messages received
from a Great Circle transmission."
"Every month messages are received outside the usual transmission hours
and each month the transmission time is advanced by two terrestrial hours.
In the course of a year's testing this amounts to an earthly day and in
eight years it makes a whole hundred-thousandth of a galactic second.