He waited until her face replaced Saha’s on the tiny screen.
‘Correlate all instrument readings for the past month against those presently received. I want detailed comparisons as to temperature and radiation fluctuations. In all future scans include Doppler compensations based on spectrum shift.’
Light had mass, it could be bent by gravitational or magnetic fields, but unless those fields were perfect there would be minor variations. If spotted they could plot the extent of the bubble before them. Light was similar to sound; advancing it rose in pitch, retreating it lowered. A shift to the red meant that a light source was retreating, towards the blue that it was advancing towards them. Again they could only hope for minor alterations, but any information would be of value.
But none would solve the main question.
‘What’s in there?’ Maddox voiced his main worry. ‘Eric, what are we heading into?’
‘I don’t know, Carl.’ Manton was coldly precise. ‘Only time will answer that. But there is another question which should be asked.’
‘How can we defend ourselves?’ Maddox looked at the other, his face grim. ‘I know, Eric. Any suggestions?’
*
He was aching and sore but alive and all in one piece and, for that, Douglas West was grateful. Cautiously he stretched, feeling the nag of bruises.
Watching him Claire said, ‘Take things easy for a while, Douglas. Some heat and massage will help.’
‘Ivan?’
He too was all in one piece and still alive but, watching him through the transparent partition, West would have wished that, if he had been in the same condition, the instruments registering his physical condition would have dropped to zero. No man, while living, should adopt the appearance of a corpse. No pilot should be staring with dull eyes at the ceiling, his hands limply folded in his lap. No human should lie like a vegetable unable to even smile.
Without turning his head West asked, ‘How long?’
‘Since the trouble.’
‘When the Pinnace went haywire?
‘There was nothing wrong with the Pinnace, Douglas. The fault was entirely human. Don’t you remember?’
He frowned, remembering only Ivan’s sudden madness, his own confusion.
‘Frank was monitoring,’ she explained. There was no need to lower her voice, Ivan if he could hear would make no response — if he did it would be a step towards recovery, but even so she spoke in a whisper. ‘He saw Gogol rise and head for the port and you trying to stop him. There was a struggle and you were thrown to one side. Ivan turned back towards the door but, naturally, Frank had the Pinnace on remote control and he couldn’t open it. He tried, God how he tried, then, suddenly, he collapsed.’
‘And Frank brought us back to the ship?’
‘Yes. You seemed to be unconscious and when you arrived back here —’
‘Seemed? I was out, surely.’
‘No, Douglas.’ Claire met his eyes, her own direct. ‘You weren’t unconscious, not in the way you mean. You were disoriented and on the edge of catatonia, but you weren’t asleep or stunned.’
He said, attempting to be casual, ‘There’s a difference?’
‘Medically, yes, but we won’t go into that now. It isn’t important. I drugged you, gave you hypnotic therapy and some electro-stimulated sleep. Now it’s your turn to help me. What happened out there?’
‘You know what happened. Ivan went crazy and tried to step out into space. I tried to stop him and got hurt. I guess I was concussed — would that account for it? My condition, I mean?’
He was anxious and Claire could guess why. A pilot had to be fit otherwise he was useless. A man given to psychic breakdown had no place in a Pinnace.
‘Officially, yes.’ Her smile eased his trepidation. ‘But there was more to it than that. Did you sense that the Pinnace was out of control? Veering? Twisting, perhaps?’
‘Yes.’
It had maintained an even course at all times — his own sensory apparatus had been at fault, not the guidance systems of the machine.
‘Anything else? Dreams, perhaps? Odd visual effects? Sounds?’
‘There was confusion and then darkness. Nothing else.’
‘Are you certain?’
He said, stiffly, ‘You’ve known me long enough and well enough to know that I’m not a liar.’
‘Douglas, I didn’t call you that! But I need to know. It’s important. Can you remember anything at all after Gogol hit you? I’m not asking you to be factual — we know what happened within the Pinnace, but only you can tell us what happened in your mind. You mentioned confusion. Was it visual? Did you hear snatches of song, for example? A voice? Did you experience a sudden, overwhelming desire of some kind? An urge to do something?’
He said, dryly, ‘Like opening the port? No. I had no intention of committing suicide.’
‘What then?’
For a moment he remained silent and she gained the impression of a man struggling with himself, of overcoming doubts and fears, of surrendering some private citadel.
‘Ivan hit me and I fell,’ he said, abruptly. ‘I was dazed and almost out. The Pinnace seemed to be spinning and twisting — you said it wasn’t but that’s how it felt to me. It grew dark but there were lights and, yes, a voice of some kind. It was like when you are half asleep and barely hear what’s going on close at hand. The lights were flashes, dots in the shadows like stars and something moved against them. I was afraid, I think. No, I was afraid and yet at the same time resigned. There was nothing I could do. Then the darkness came and it was like falling into an ebon cloud.’ He added, thoughtfully, ‘A fall which never seemed to end.’
‘The voice — what did it say?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged at her expression. ‘I’m not playing games, Doctor, I simply don’t know. The words were blurred and almost as if they were foreign. I say “almost” because there was a familiarity about them, but I couldn’t make them out.’
‘The tone? One of rejection?’
‘More of negation.’ Carter frowned as he thought about it. ‘Someone or something saying a certain thing was not to be. Am I making sense?’
Before answering Claire crossed to her desk and activated an instrument. West heard a blur of words, questions and answers, and realised that the present interrogation wasn’t the first. He had been questioned under hypnosis; taken from the Pinnace, sedated, drugged, cross-examined. His anger died as quickly as it came. To each their responsibility and the burden of that carried by Claire Allard was far from light.
She said, ‘Douglas, you were very young when your mother died. Correct?’
’Yes.’
‘But you remember her.’
‘No.’
‘You remember her,’ she said again. It was not a question. ‘A person is a receptive organism and all that happens close at hand is noted and filed within the cortex. Now, those lights, the shape and voice you saw and heard. I suggest that they could have been the reflected illumination of an external source. The shadow that of a woman limned against them. The voice that of your mother telling you to be silent, perhaps. A common occurrence. You agree it might be possible?’
An ancient memory dredged from his subconscious?
‘Good,’ she said as he nodded. ‘As I suspected. It leads to the conclusion that the force responsible is one which triggers various rejective syndromes within the brain. If so it accounts for the diversity of experience common during the warning periods. You were fortunate, Douglas.’
‘Why?’
‘You returned to early childhood. If Frank hadn’t withdrawn the Pinnace from that sector of space —’
‘Back even further?’ He had anticipated her reasoning. ‘Back to the embryo?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is that what happened to Ivan?’
‘No.’ Claire glanced to where he lay, eyes open but unseeing. ‘He isn’t catatonic. Not in the true sense that he has retreated to early childhood to escape the pressures of being an adult and then having to retreat even further because childhood is not a happy time. He has, in a sense, escaped, but in some different form. The fact he tried to open the port worries me. He must have known the danger which means he was subconsciously trying to kill himself.’
‘Kill himself? Ivan?’
‘He belongs to a race in which the death-wish is very strong.’
Douglas glanced at the other, finding it impossible to believe that a man so strong and so fit should be eager to find death. And, if not one, then why not them both? Why had Gogol succumbed and he survived?
‘If all men were alike, Douglas,’ said Claire when he put the question, ‘they wouldn’t be men they’d be robots. How do I know? Yet it’s something we’ve got to try and find out and find it soon.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Within sixty-seven hours to be exact.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s when we hit the bubble which almost sent you insane and wrecked Gogol’s mind.’ She looked at where he lay. ‘And what happened to him could happen to us all!’
Nothing.
Maddox stared at the screens and felt the tug and pull of frustration. With an effort he kept his face a blank mask, his hands unclenched. To be a commander was more than to give orders. Always he had to present a confident aspect, always to radiate a confidence he might not feel and yet, this time was harder than most.
How to fight an enemy unseen? A danger unknown?
Before him the stars glittered with their usual brightness, the bright expanse of the galaxy glowing as if a rich scatter of gems lay on the sombre velvet of a jeweller’s cloth. It was hard to realise that between he and they rested something destructive. A thing which threatened them all. An invisible killer edging closer even as he watched. A menace which had already caused the death of one man and had reduced another to a mindless shell.
For a moment Maddox had the impression of a crouching beast, alien, horrible, waiting with gaping jaws and venomous sting to grip, to hold, to suck intelligence and life from the hapless prey falling into its grasp.
A moment only, then the illusion was gone and, taking a deep breath, Maddox glanced at the chronometer.
‘Minus fifteen seconds, Commander.’ Frank spoke from his chair. ‘Full strength?’
‘Yes.’
‘For an indefinite period?’ Weight’s voice held doubt. ‘The generators might not be able to take maximum load for too long.’
‘Full strength for five minutes. Cut for checking then resume for fifteen. Check again then operate at half power until we are an hour from impact.’
An hour from madness and maybe death and the time could be less if the bubble was moving towards them. Manton doubted that it was. Maddox hoped that he was right.
‘Ready to activate,’ said Weight. ‘Three, two, one — on!’
A shimmer softened the glow of the stars, a ripple made of broken rainbows which strengthened even as he watched and settled into a sparkling, coruscating bowl which covered the ship. Electronic wizardry devised by Manton and built by the technicians. Forces bent and twisted into channelled lines. Energies formed and held in powerful fields. A defence powered by the strength of the atomic engines, refined in the generators, fed through projectors set about the exterior hull of the Ad Astra.
‘Loss?’
‘Two per cent below normal, Commander.’
‘Reason?’
‘Maladjustment, I think.’ Weight grunted as he sent his hands flying over his controls. Before him a digital readout moved, figures glowing with ruby flame. ‘A slight imbalance, Commander. Now compensated. Operational level one per cent above.’
Under test the screen had withstood the fury of exploding nuclear devices, but what they faced was no familiar form of energy. The screen might be useless and probably was, yet it had to be incorporated into their defences. Maddox glanced again at the chronometer. Two minutes remained of the initial period.
‘Boost to absolute maximum, Frank.’
‘Commander?’
‘Do it!’ If the generators were to fail it was better to find out now rather than later. ‘Lift and hold.’
The rainbow shimmer thickened, blanked the stars with its coruscating curtain, throwing a lambent glow over the outer hull, the surface installations of the ship. Scanners gave an external view, a curved surface dotted with scintillating flashes like tiny explosions; local flares of energy escaping from the confining fields.
‘Strength falling,’ said Weight. ‘Decay accelerating. Power-loss nine per cent…eleven…fifteen…eighteen…Commander?’
‘Maintain.’ A muscle twitched high on one cheek as Maddox watched the tell-tales on the console. Any weakness had to be found and eliminated, suspect points strengthened, extra circuits incorporated if necessary.
‘Twenty-one…two…’ Weight’s voice rose and he half turned in his chair. ‘A quarter down, Commander!’
‘Maintain!’
Hold the torrent of power as the gauges fell and the scintillating flashes grew until they sparkled like a miniature battlefield over the glowing hull. Until the meters flashed red and the alarm stabbed the air with its warning snarl.
‘Cut!’ Maddox drew in his breath as the sound and flashing died. ‘Report?’
‘Fifty per cent loss of retrieved power — total loss close to seventy-three per cent. Reserve accumulators depleted by a third. Insulation damage on generators two and five. Terminal corrosion on points three to twelve, seventeen to twenty-nine.’ Frowning Weight added, ‘I don’t understand this. The last regular maintenance report showed all installations at optimum level. Those generators should have stood up better than that.’
‘When was the last check made?’ Maddox nodded at the answer. ‘Before the last warning. I thought so. Can anyone really be certain what they saw and did during that time?’
‘Sabotage?’ Weight’s voice echoed his incredulity. ‘That’s tantamount to suicide. Who —?’ He broke off, remembering, feeling again the terrible revulsion, the urge to run, to hide, to escape. ‘Someone maybe tried to kill himself. He rigged the generator in some way hoping it would blow. Maybe, under external stress, it would have blown and taken the entire ship with it. If we hadn’t tested it as we did — Commander, you could have saved us all!’
A possibility, but the danger was now over. Maddox wondered what had made him abort the original test and push the screen so hard for so long. Instinct, perhaps, the cultivated inner sense which defied all logic and so often provided the right answer.