‘You did?’ West frowned, trying to think and finding it difficult. The air, he knew, it was too vitiated; too rich in waste and too low in oxygen. The result of deliberately adjusting the valves. Extra life had been gained at the expense of mental alertness.
‘A click.’ Martyn was insistent. To him in his low condition it had become a very important problem to be painstakingly solved. ‘In my phones. In my phones, Skipper.’
West looked down at his belt. The power-pack fitted snugly, the batteries at almost full charge. He hit it again with the metal band and then, with sudden clarity, was jerking at the catches.
‘Skipper?’ Martyn caught at his arm. ‘You crazy or something?’
‘No.’
‘Then —’
‘They’re out there looking for us, right? The Commander,’ he yelled as Martyn made no answer. ‘Holt and the others. They can’t be far but they can’t hear us. We’ve no radio.’
‘So?’
‘We’ll make noise. They must be using phones if they’re in the tunnels. Now listen.’ He touched the band to the battery terminals, creating an arc, a minute flare which caused a crackle in his earphones. ‘Old-fashioned radio,’ he said. ‘A spark gap. They can’t pick it up on UHF but it might trigger their phones. All we need is to create noise.’ He manipulated the band, concentrating on his fingers, the sound which buzzed from his phones. Three shorts, three longs, three shorts. SOS. The old call for help in a code developed long before he’d been born. ‘Get it, Martyn?’
‘I get it.’ The man slumped against the door. His voice was tired, slurred. ‘Morse Code. Can I help, Skipper? Can I —?’
‘You can sit, save your breath and hang on. And,’ West added, grimly, ‘you can pray someone hears us.’
A prayer that was answered.
Maddox frowned as his phones buzzed, the sound repeated to form a pattern.
‘Carl!’ Claire turned to face him, ‘What —?’
‘Silence!’ He held up one hand. ‘All of you, be quiet and listen.’ He held his breath as the buzzing continued. ‘It’s code.’
‘A call for help, Carl.’ Manton threw his light against the walls around them. ‘From the missing men, obviously, but where are they?’
‘A door,’ snapped Maddox. ‘Look for a door.’
Claire found it, spotting the thin lines depicting the octagonal opening, catching the outline in a shift of the light. Maddox dropped to his knees and lowered his helmet to the floor. Staring over the surface he saw little scuffs in the fine tracery of dust.
‘This is it. Eric, how can we get it open?’
Manton said, dubiously, ‘I’m not sure, Carl. We’ll need lasers and drills at least. If we try to blow it open, we could kill the others. If we could only talk to them perhaps they could tell us how they got inside.’
Hunt had brought a heavy crowbar with him. Maddox took it, lifted it, sent it smashing hard against the door. Three times he repeated the blows then paused. The impact would be unheard unless one or the other was in direct contact with the metal, but the chance was worth taking. After a moment he repeated the blows, paused, slammed at the metal again.
Inside the chamber Martyn stirred and said, ‘Skipper, my head. I keep getting sounds in my head.’
‘Clicks?’
‘No.’ Clumsily Martyn moved, his suited figure rolling away from the door against which he had been leaning. ‘Thuds like a hammer was at work. A hammer,’ he muttered and then, suddenly, retched. ‘Air — I’ve gotta have air!’
He was dying. Had he been deep in water he would have inhaled his lungs full of liquid, impelled by the sheer necessity to breathe, a reflex over which he would no longer have control. As it was, in the suit, he could do nothing but gasp and flounder like a landed fish, inhaling stale poison, trying to rid himself of it, in danger of strangling on his own vomit.
Kneeling West spun the valves, flushing out the air cylinder and feeding the last puff of precious oxygen to the helpless man.
It was impossible to do more. His own supply was exhausted, only a difference in metabolism had enabled him to last a little longer. Tiredly he leaned back against the door, the crude signals forgotten as he rested his helmet against the metal.
And heard the repeated thud of blows.
‘Martyn! They’re here! They’re outside! Hold on, man! Hold on!’
The band slipped in his fingers, almost fell, lifted as if it weighed a ton to touch the terminals and to flash its spark and electronic noise. Not to call for help, that had arrived, but to relay the most important information of all.
‘Door…wheel…combolock,’ he muttered as his fingers spelt out the words. ‘Wriggle…coil…stars. Sequence…helix…twist…stars…Door…wheel…lock — for God’s sake hurry!’
The thud of blows signalling what? Agreement, understanding, mystification? Had they heard at all? Could they hear? Would the door open if they could?
The band fell and he picked it up, darkness edging his vision, the sour taste of acid in his throat, pain growing in his lungs. He retched, spattering the interior of his helmet with a thin wetness then retched again, dry heaves which tore at his lungs and sent stars to flame in ruby darlings against the growing darkness.
Dying.
He was dying!
And then, suddenly, there was peace.
Claire said, sharply, ‘The tanks, quickly!’
Manton was already at work kneeling beside one of the sprawled figures, his hands deft as he undid the connection and fitted the new container of air. A twist of the valve and oxygen gusted into the suit, chilling but carrying with it the essence of life. To one side Claire was doing the same, checking, probing, her fingers searching for signs of life as her eyes checked monitors.
‘Eric?’
‘Nothing.’ He stared through the soiled face-plate and saw the starting eyes, the tongue, the distorted features. ‘This is Martyn. He’s dead.’
‘And Douglas?’ Maddox stood by the open door, cursing the delay it had caused. A few minutes earlier and both would have been safe. A little faster in solving the crude message — but to regret was useless, time could not be reversed, what had happened was done. ‘Claire?’
‘The sac,’ she snapped. ‘Quickly!’
In such matters she was to be obeyed. Maddox ripped open the emergency pack, wrapped the thin but tough membrane around both Claire and the still figure at her side, threw in her medical bag and a spare tank of air. Sealing the bag, he twisted the valve of the cylinder, pressure rounding the sac as it filled with air.
Inside Claire set to work.
The suit had been flushed but Douglas hadn’t responded. He was, she decided, medically dead. His lungs had ceased to work and his heart to beat — unless the flow of blood could be restored to his brain within minutes he would, if he lived at all, be a mental cripple, the lack of oxygen having caused irremediable damage.
Minutes — and he had been dead for how long?
The helmet came free and was thrown to one side. Quickly she wiped the mouth and chin and held the nozzle of the air tank to flaccid lips. Propping it into position she moved to straddle the supine figure and, stiffening her arms, threw her weight against the torso in the region of the heart. The suit hampered her and made it difficult to hit the right spot, but practice had earned her skill and the heels of her hands slammed up beneath the ribs as she massaged the heart.
As he made no response she paused and took a hypodermic from her bag. It was loaded with a heavy dose of adrenalin and ready to fire its charge into the bloodstream. She triggered it, sending the drug into the great veins of the neck and again thrust her hands against the torso.
A minute gone at least, maybe two.
‘Douglas! Douglas West! Douglas!’
He lay as if dead. He was dead and only she could restore him. She had unsealed her helmet, lifting the faceplate, and now she stooped over the still figure. Inflating her chest, she adjusted his head then, parting his lips, pressed her own against them and gusted air into the pilot’s lungs.
Again.
Again.
Inhale, blow, release, inhale, blow, release…pumping air into him as if he were a balloon.
The kiss of life and the only chance he had.
Again she massaged the heart, again breathed into him, her mouth against his own.
‘Douglas! For God’s sake! Douglas!’
West stirred, moaned a little, sucked air into his lungs. Claire straightened, still straddled across his body, her helmet touching the top of the sac. From her bag she took a phial and sprayed an acrid compound into his mouth and nostrils. He coughed, choked a little and opened his eyes.
‘Douglas. Do you know who you are?’
‘I —’ His eyes rolled a little, vague, empty. ‘Who? What? You —’
She said again, her voice holding the sting of a whip, ‘Who are you? Tell me who you are!’
The essential test of identity. He could have been dead too long, the ego already impaired, his personality changed, blurred, distorted. If so it was better that she had let him go. Kinder to give him an injection now and report that she had been too late.
Not that she would need to lie. Maddox, for one, would understand.
‘Douglas?’
‘Doctor!’ His eyes settled, became bright with life and awareness. ‘Doctor Allard!’
‘Who are you? Tell me?’ She relaxed as he obeyed, adding other information, proving that his intelligence was unimpaired. ‘Relax,’ she ordered as he moved beneath her thighs. ‘Don’t try to move just yet. Just lie and breathe and let your heart and lungs achieve full automatic operation.’
‘I’m alright, Doctor.’
‘Yes, thank God!’
Her tone betrayed her and, staring up into her face West said, slowly, ‘It was close, eh? I’d passed out. I remember that I was retching then seemed to be falling and then there was nothing. It was odd in a way. As if, at the end, nothing really mattered. That all the struggle and fear was over. And then —’ He broke off then added, slowly, ‘I was dead. Dead and you resurrected me.’
Her hand reached for another hypodermic, this one loaded with a tranquiliser. She had won the battle with death before and knew what could so easily happen. The resurgence of life, the euphoria, the biological reaction which affected men and women alike and was the most common cause of romantic associations formed by patients for their doctors and nurses.
West saw the instrument in her lifted hand and said, dryly, ‘You know, Doctor, this is getting to be a habit. If it keeps up, I’ll be so compromised that you’ll have to marry me.’
A joke and his way of telling her that the danger she feared did not exist, that he needed no chemical help to regain his normal emotional equilibrium.
Then, as she restored the hypodermic to her bag, he said, ‘I was lucky. You got to me in time. But Martyn? What about Martyn?’
He was dead, inert flesh locked in a personal coffin, the suit which had maintained his life now a temporary grave. Maddox watched him leave, carried in Holt’s Pinnace together with Claire and her patient. West had sworn that he was fit for duty but Maddox had insisted and he’d had no choice but to obey.
As the Pinnace dwindled and vanished from sight he turned to where Manton was kneeling, his gloved hands probing at the ground.
‘Have you noticed anything strange about this place, Carl?’
‘It’s small and round and apparently smooth,’ said Maddox and added, dryly, ‘I’ve been a little too busy to pay much attention to the scenery.’
‘The chamber.’ Manton rose. ‘And that metal lining the tunnels. The inscriptions too, all most interesting.’
And food for later study if ever they had the time or opportunity. Already Carey’s co-pilot had taken a series of photographs and was even now attempting to remove a segment of the stuff from the rim of the shaft. He was finding it hard work.
‘At first examination it looks as if at one time it was a mine,’ said Manton. ‘But I don’t think it could have been that. Maybe at first but certainly not for some time. The galleries if any existed have all been sealed and that chamber with the bodies — most unusual.’ He moved his boot over the soil, scraping at the dirt with its edge. It rose in a mound of fine particles to form a heap resembling ash.
‘The inner lock of the door was broken,’ Manton mused. ‘It must have been done deliberately which means that the creatures who sealed themselves in the chamber had no intention of ever leaving it. Perhaps they couldn’t. Perhaps there was nowhere else they could go.’ Again his boot scraped at the gritty soil. ‘A last stand,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The final retreat. Did they continue to hope, I wonder? Did some take their own lives? Or did they wait until their air escaped and died as they had lived in a common unity?’
‘If they had lived that way.’
‘They could live in no other, Carl. It took cooperation to work that metal, to form it, to set it into place. It took more to arrive at a common decision and to stick to it. To fashion the chamber and to enter it and wait. Perhaps they still had hope, Carl, but I doubt it. They would have seen too much, experienced too crushing a defeat for hope to have remained. And yet they must have had determination.’ He paused then said, wistfully, ‘I wished that we could have known them. There would have been much we could have learned and, towards the end at least, we’d have had much in common.’
The mutual necessity which had driven them to burrow deep into the ground, to construct tunnels, chambers, a means to survive. In that, at least, the aliens and the humans were alike. A common need and a common enemy. A common death, perhaps.
Maddox said, ‘The beam?’
‘It’s obvious what it does, Carl. This is the final proof if we should need it. A force which weakens the molecular and atomic bonds and attracts the latent energy of matter itself. This planetoid could have been much larger than it is now. In fact, I’m certain of it. The bodies we found proves that. There could have been an atmosphere, water, soil, growing things, villages, even. A small world but a pleasant one. Then it entered this space and was trapped by the Omphalos.’
Caught to be eaten by the beam as a boy would gnaw at an apple on a stick. Matter reduced to energy and drawn away and, as the balance was altered the tiny world would have turned to expose a fresh portion of its surface to the devouring energy. Such a minute shift must have caused the closing of the door which had trapped West and Martyn.