John Racham (5 page)

well
make for it. Take it easy now, no hurry. Save your strength."

"In a fix!"
Evans blew hard as he swam alongside. "Lost our mark . . . when
that thing . . . goes down . . . can't see
it .
..
floating
. . .
can you?"

"Doubt
it.
All that metal, instruments, batteries.
But the
trapped air should hold it long enough for us to get clear."

"What
I mean. With that gone . . . nothing to fix on . . . hell of a job . . . search
party . . . finding just the three of us.
Mustn't get . . .
too far!"

"Let's
get ashore, anyway." Query swam easily, almost enjoying himself. The
darkness ahead might be shore, it didn't much matter. The air and water were
just as hot as they had been inside, hotter, if anything, yet he felt easy,
almost at home. The comedy wasn't over yet, seemingly. He spent a moment
wondering where they were, until he realized the question meant nothing. There
was no reference except Step Two. Nothing of the rest of the planet had been
researched at all.

"Take
it easy, sir, don't rush," he advised, and left Evans to his hopes and
dreams of rescue, while he cast his mind back over what he knew of the planet.
It wasn't much, but it was all on record, and he had read it just from
curiosity. There had been one advance research party long before the war, who
had orbited awhile, measured temperatures and masses, taken probe samples of
the atmosphere, and declared the planet absolutely impossible for exploration,
settlement or anything else human, just a dot on a map, a curiosity. But the
war had rearranged that.
Logistics.
The
need for somewhere to break the immensely long hop between
Draconis
and
Alkaid
, a dump for fuel and spares, and patch up
repairs.
And GOC Evans, and his bulldozer techniques.
It was all in the record as a shining example of how to overcome the
impossible.

Sling
one enormous monitor tanker into orbit, her tanks full of fuel. Order four
light cruisers to go down there, to jet down, tail first into the soup, and a
bonus to the first one to scorch the murk down to bedrock. Bum a hole in the
stuff,
damnit
! Do it again! Quarter the surface by
numbers! There has got to be a solid surface down there somewhere! Find it!
And, in time, they found it.
And hung a marker above it.
And then the ships went down, one

32 after another, squandering fuel
recklessly, spouting fire, hovering until their tanks were almost empty and
coming back up for more, and again, and again. Until there was an area down
there of more than a square mile that was blasted, cooked, fried and fused down
to the virgin rock. Then it was time for the heavy gang to move in and down, to
spray quick set concrete, and plastic, and more concrete, more plastic, in
layers until they had a foundation. And then the bubble domes to start with,
and living units, and bigger domes; and then the repair and maintenance
systems, fuel dumps, spares, and men, and the beacon . . . and the base,
finally. And then Earth had a second stepping-stone between Moon Base and
Alkaid
for the more efficient promotion of the war.

One square mile on the whole of a planet surface that was virtually as
big as Earth.
The
rest was dark mystery, totally unknown. Query swam on easily, trying to see
some land of poetic justice about the fact that the man who had been
responsible for burning that sore into the planet's bosom should now be about
to die in the midst of its wilderness. But there was something wrong with
that. His daughter never had anything to do with it. And Query
himself
, far from fearing or defying the place, had
actually grown to like it. There was no justice in that, surely?

He
became aware of furtive movement against his arm, of weak struggle, and, too,
of heavily 'labored breathing from his blind side. Evans panted, "Just
about
...
all in . . . Query!
Can't.
. . keep on . . . anymore!"

"I
told you to take it easy, didn't I? Hold it.
Turn over
on your back and float.
Rest awhile.
You'll be all
right!" He rolled over himself and drew the girl close, passing his free
arm under hers and holding her to him as she started to moan and struggle.

"You
hold still, too," he ordered, close to her ear. "You've been all
right up to now. No
trouble,
and you're quite safe,
see? Understand?"

"Yes. I'll try. What
do I do?"

"Nothing at all, for the moment.
Just lie flat and easy. Not stiff.
Easy, as if you were in bed.
That's right; good!"

He
smiled reassuringly down at her pale face in the water, and she tried to smile
back at him.

"Admiral!
Work your way over this way a bit. Right,

33
that's fine.
Now, roll over again and float. Put your hands back under your head and feel
this—the end of the pole-right? Hold on. Now you do it." He smiled at the
girl again. "That's right. Feel the pole? Right, now you are quite safe.
Your father's on the other end, and I'm in the middle, holding it up. Just
relax, both of you."

He
ducked under the pole to get himself pointed right, and used the moment to bob
up high out of the water and look ahead. Distant but distinct, he saw dark
columnar boles and uprights.
Trees.
So they were,
after all, headed the right way. For what difference it made. As he sank down
again his feet touched a sandy bottom.

I
wonder how long that's been
there?
he
thought. I could have walked it, maybe. But not the others, he amended quickly.
He was a good three inches taller than Evans, and his chin was barely clear.
Never mind, he dismissed it. It makes it a trifle easier, that's all.

He
started to wade-walk, leaning into the water. Perhaps his vision had adapted
considerably, but he felt he could see fugitive lights,
veiy
faintly, ahead. Possibly, or it could be the first insidious symptoms of death
by poisoning. Or whatever it was that this air would do to an unprotected
person. He pondered on that as he walked on. How soon would death come, and in
what form? Death he could face readily, but dying was another matter, and it
could be painful. But his information was scanty. That original research team
had taken some samples of the atmosphere, enough to be able to say that it was
literally swarming with bacteria, spores,
microlife
of every imaginable kind. It attacked and ate, voraciously, anything and
everything they tried it on, except that one particular plastic. Query had
done a few tests of his own, and could verify that.
Chunks of
rubber, odd bits of highly polished chrome steel and various alloys.
Even glass.
All rotted and crumbled before the hungry air.
And it wasn't just corrosion, for a strong dose of ultraviolet was enough to
destroy the effect. So it was life. Living spores.

He imagined them, by the uncountable million,
passing in and out of his lungs right now, mingling with his sweat, nibbling at
the soft lining of his mouth and throat, and felt a shudder of distaste. That
would be a hideous way to go. Eaten alive! Forcing himself to be objective, he
had to admit he couldn't feel anything yet. But that was not significant.

Human
tests, understandably, hadn't been done. But he did know of one case of two
men, who, by accident and carelessness, had stepped out into the open, bent on
an external welding job, with their helmets improperly set.
Only
for a minute or two.
Someone else had spotted it and sent them back
inside, fast. And those two men, anxiously watched by their fellows, had been
fit and healthy for twenty-four hours, and then they had gone down with acute
bellyache, vomiting, cramps and bloody discharge, to be prostrate and weak for
several days, and then, by degrees, to get well again.
And
that after only a breath or two.
He shivered again at the thought.

The
water grew steadily and slowly shallower now, and he felt his feet stirring up
mud. He was on the point of suggesting that his floating burden might just as
well roll over and try walking it, when he felt the water about him tremble,
and from far away there came
a
sudden,
massive, slurping sound, a bursting, a huge wet explosion that echoed across
the oily water.

"What the hell was
that?" Evans grunted.

"The
last of our derelict ship," Query answered, but his gaze was ahead and
suddenly intent in amazement, for it was as if the sound wave, rushing on past
him, had struck a vast hillside there and set it afire with washes of faint
color, muted tinges of rainbow light. He was still staring, watching the
miracle fade and die, when, out of the same enigmatic loom of land came
a
gargantuan sound, a monstrous gargling screech that shook the air and
made his spine run chill And the entire slope of land flared up in a glorious
blaze of every color
imaginablel

"What
the hell was
that?"
Evans demanded, in a
totally different tone of voice, as his daughter gave a terrified wail and
started thrashing in the water. Query stared breathlessly, heedless of her
struggles, as the wonderful rainbow shivered and faded away.

"That,"
he breathed, "was one of the local inhabitants, raising objections to our
intrusion.
Powerful objections!"

"I
t
was a monster
!"
Lieutenant Evans babbled, clutching at him so that he had to thrust her off
roughly. "We'll all be killed!"

"Hold
on!" he snapped. "Get your feet on the bottom. It's not deep.
You too, sir.
It's shallow enough for wading. We're almost
inshore."

"What was it?"
She clutched at his arm.

"How should I know?"

"Get
a grip on yourself, Christine!" her father yapped, getting his feet down
solid and peering ahead. "This is no time to go to pieces. We're not dead
yet. Come on!" He started wading. "Damn this light.
Can't see more than a yard or two.
Need landmarks of some
kind,
damnit
Better
not get
too far before daylight. Don't want to get lost. Can you see anything,
Sergeant?"

We're
back
to
that,
are
we?
Query thought, and said, "No, not a
thing, apart from some trees. I think they are trees, that is. That's no help.
I haven't a clue where we
arel
"

"That's no way to look at it, man! Keep
your chin up!
Did a first class job back there.
Saved
our lives!
First class.
Resourceful! Can't give up
now,
damnit
! We need you, your experience. You know
the planet, the local conditions, stuff like that. All in this together
nowl
"

They
waded on in sweating silence and the mud grew deeper as the water
shallowed
, was no more than waist deep, and the dark
columns of soaring trees came slowly closer in the gloom. Not quite gloom, Query
thought It was a strange light, with a curious luminosity of its own, and
deceptive, so that sometimes one had the illusion of seeing a long way, and the
next minute it was as if a blue green curtain hung there just beyond the nose.
All at once Lieutenant Evans gave a weary wail.

"I'm tired!
How much further?"

"Chin
up, my dear. Keep on.
Can't be much more of this.
Soon's
we're out and dry, get a little breather, take our
bearings, you'll feel a lot better. Not long, now."

"But I can't
seel
"
she complained drearily. "It's all dark!"

Query
turned to peer at her in the gloom. The greenish glow made her skin show dead
white and lost the black of her uniform altogether, so that she was just the
face and bust of a woman seemingly floating in mid-air. He stooped to peer
closer, and said, "You could try taking off your spectacles."

She
raised her hand to grasp them, to lift them away, and the stem came off in her
hand, the rest of it falling in pieces to splash into the dark water.
"They're, broken!" She held out the ear hook stem, and he took it
from her, feeling the fragility of it even as his fingers touched it.

"Optical plastic," he murmured, "most probably vitreous
carbon.
And
not broken, not as you mean it.
Rotted.
Eaten away."
He held the stem to let Evans see, and
rolled it in his fingers. The stuff crumbled and fell in damp flakes.
"It's the effect of the atmosphere."

"Hah!"
the old man barked. "I remember that.
When we were
putting the base down.
Technical section tested it out.
Biological activity.
Only one thing proof
against it.
Special plastic.
Right?"

"That's right, sir. Any time we have to
go outside the Domes, and that's not often, we have to wear special protective
suits made of that stuff. The Domes are made of it. Any time we have to make
external ship repairs we mount
a
battery
of ultraviolet floodlights. It's the only way. This stuff eats anything."

"Anything?"

■
"That's right, sir."

They slopped on in silence for a while, until
they came at last to
a
huge blue black tree trunk that stood up out
of the water and towered away up into the mist overhead. The water was only
knee-deep now, and not water any longer but hot squishy mud. Query pressed his
palm to the trunk as they went by. It had a rubbery feel; it was the very first
time he had ever felt one with his bare hand. Their feet made glutinous sucking
sounds as they plodded on.

"Sergeant Query?"

"Sir?"

"We're in a worse fix than I
thought."
"Yes, sir."

"You say this atmosphere eats anything?
Including us?"

"I
suppose. As far as I know, nobody ever stayed out in it long enough to find
out!"

"I
suppose not.
Hmm!"
Evans slurped on, scowling
into the gloom. "But that can't be right,
damnit
!
I feel fine!
Wet and weary, yes.
Stinking
hot.
Bruised.
Smothered in
this blasted mud.
Getting a bit
peckish
,
too.
But fine, otherwise. Not sick!"

"No, sir.
For what it's worth, I feel all right, too." Query took in a deep
breath of the steamy, hot air, thick with unidentifiable smells, and said it
again. "I feel all right!"

And
then he froze into petrified stillness as that monstrous screech came again,
only a lot closer now, and enormous, like a vast cavern of echoing noise,
shaking the moist air with its fury. Lieutenant Evans hurled herself at him,
clutching, frantically trying to burrow right into him, almost knocking him
over. He put an arm around her, grasped his pole, and stared over her head,
past the bole of a tree. From over there, a lot too close to be happy about it,
came a sudden and growing barrage of wet, slapping, splash-plop impacts like
huge boulders falling into the mud, but too regular to be anything like that.
A galloping army?

"Good
God, would you look at that!"
Evans breathed, as the
glowing miracle of the lanterns was repeated; a great wash of blue and green
and scarlet lights spread out, like noise made visible.
And there, at
the heart and origin of the noise-color and making more, came a monstrous creature
that sent his mind spinning for appropriate terms. At the front end was an
enormous, slobbering wet, toothless gape of a mouth, and trailing it came a
lumpy, round, wormlike body, spotted with peacock eyes all the way along its
vast barrel girth. And under each "eye" stood a crooked leg with a
flat and
flipperlike
foot on the end. The legs moved
and slapped the mud like some set of crooked oars in a fiendish goblin galleon,
slurping the gross body steadily along at a fair speed. Query could actually
see the sluggish bow wave of mud being thrown up by its passage.

Accurate estimate was out of the question in
the circumstances, but the blaze of witch fire made it possible for him to
guess that the thing had to be at least ten feet