Bedlam Planet (2 page)

“When they had been convinced by the agreement between the data gathered by the first probe, and those from the second and third, they converted one of the probes to carry four curious persons, poised at that improbable
fulcrum of awareness where explorers live. Because they had to be enclosed together for nearly four years first in a fragile cockleshell of a starship, then on a world unseen by human eyes, and then in the ship again, they were all in a sense lovers. But what sustained them was the shared discovery of a greater hunger: the lust for knowledge.

“They called the ship the
Argo.
If that matters. And the world they called Asgard, the place in heaven reached across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge.

“In order of setting foot on the planet’s surface, the first visitors were Dennis Malone, Carmen Vlady, Pyotr Tang-Lin and Sigrid Kallela. They lived for five months on Asgard, deliberately—”

And once without intention.
But one would not wish to burden a school-child with the problem which had caused Earth’s leading psychologists to peel down his personality like an onion, to the final weak green core, in search of the explanation for it, before conceding ultimately that it might have stemmed from a need to impose the most basic element of human experience on a totally new environment, and agreeing that by a miracle it had done no harm. So:

“Deliberately exposing themselves to the new planet to determine its habitability. When they brought home a favourable report, an expedition was mounted which consisted of three ships named the
Pinta,
the
Niña
and the
Santa Maria
(after the ocean-going vessels of the expedition led by Christopher Columbus,
q.v.
under ‘Terrestrial History’), crewed by volunteers who planned to colonise the newly discovered world.

“Unfortunately, in those pioneering days, the control which could be exercised over the resultant velocity at which a ship emerged from qua-space was rudimentary. When the P
inta
returned to our normal universe, she was on a course which led to a grazing collision with Asgard’s satellite. Among those killed was Pyotr Tang-Lin, one of the two members of the original expedition who had agreed to act as guides for the colonists.”

He stared upward, across three hundred thousand miles, and wondered for a moment how the moon had looked before the
Pinta
had died there in thirty seconds of hell, like the passage of a match-head across sandpaper. Alarmed, he discovered that he could not remember. The first time, he had not been looking at the moon through the eyes of a child eager to make patterns of the dark maria.

But if only they hadn’t combined to suggest two eyes, a
skull-pit nose, brows arching up across a hydrocephalic idiot’s forehead, to which the new formation added the last touch: a lop-sided mouth set in a permanent mocking leer.

He had been up there. He had touched, albeit through gauntlets, the rough-and-smooth surface of fused rock, seen the bright gobbets of spattered metal, steel-white, gold-yellow, cobalt-blue, embedded like shrapnel in the bones of the satellite. There was no one who could be held to blame for what had happened. It was blind chance.

And now here he was, on warm hospitable Asgard, where each breath he drew should remind him of the welcome the alien visitors had received: comfortable, well-nourished, healthy because there were so few native organisms which found human tissue congenial for infection. It was no use. In the silent cavern of his skull he cried the truth.

I didn’t want to be made welcome! I wanted to go home!

But he spoke aloud again, levelly, still picturing that unknown child a century hence, and said, “Although there could not be any more starships built in the immediate future, since producing them had strained even the incredible resources of modern Earth and no more were planned unless a still more promising planet should be discovered-which was unlikely-the loss of the
Pinta
was not an irremediable calamity except to one member of the expedition. Although with the wreck had gone many of the key experts, especially biologists, and
many important supplies including computer-memories, the survival of the colony had not been made dependent on having all three ships available. It had been intended that one should be cannibalised, broken down into millions of valuable parts from the enormous fusion-generators which had supplied the power to blast her into qua-space clear through to the plainest sheet-metal bulkhead capable of being stamped into fence-nails; one should remain intact on the planet in case total evacuation should become necessary in emergency; and one should return to Earth after a year, piloted by Pyotr Tang-Lin and the other second-time visitor, Dennis Malone, taking along any of the colonists who had been overcome by uncontrollable nostalgia, or proved subject to an incurable allergy, or in some other way unsuitable to remain on Asgard.

“After half that time had passed, there were as yet no signs that any colonists would need to return. They had been screened and screened again, until those who were chosen were identified beyond doubt as settlers, capable of uprooting and re-planting themselves. There was only one person on the whole new world for whom the
Pinta’s
loss might truly be called disastrous, and it was so to him because he was not a settler. He was an explorer. And he wished, and wished, and
wished
it might have been himself and not Pyotr who died on the alien moon.”

He gazed up, eyes aching, fists clenched so that his nails drove deep into his palms. It occurred to him to wonder when that satellite had ceased to be Sigma Draconis III/l and become simply “the moon”, because he felt vaguely that the change was in some way significant, but he was incapable of following the thought to a conclusion. He could only sit stiller than a rock and stare at it, and suffer.

T
ALL, SLIM
, graceful, golden-brown, her sleek black hair grown out now to nape-length since she had left the ship where long tresses might prove dangerous in the event of air-loss and the need to seal spacegear within seconds, Parvati Chandra sat at Abdul Hassan’s table in the administrative office and sifted through the summary reports which all the specialist departments had forwarded for consideration at today’s progress meeting. It was another hot day; in the corner of the room, a primitive mechanical fan struggled to stir the sluggish air which seeped through the open window.

But she had been used to a warm humid climate most of her life, at home on Earth. The weather didn’t distract her. She had paid it as much attention as she meant to today, while she was reading Kitty Minakis’s report on the probable pattern of the climate during the fall.

Satisfied that the report contained nothing alarming, she had put it aside, taking up in its place that from Ulla Berzelius regarding materials and resources. Despite her almost inhuman power of detachment—compelled on her by the need to watch every movement and practically every thought of the colonists with more than paranoid suspicion—she felt a stir of excitement as she scanned the sheets. Last month Ulla had gloomily concentrated on the possibility of re-designing their planned equipment in terms of the aluminium and silica which could be got merely by shovelling up beach-sand. Now, here she was talking about gallium, indium, germanium; about a rock analogous to pitchblende with a high radioactive count; about a native form of fluorspar from which they could extract fluorine and, if required, employ the ancient process of gaseous diffusion to make fuel for a fission pile.

Parvati made a check-mark on the margin of the copy of the schedule which lay before her, detailing the predicted
stages of the conquest of Asgard. This island where the settlers had landed had been chosen by the original team of four explorers as ideal for a first colony. It was neither small nor large-extensive enough to offer plenty of data by which they could judge the true habitability of Asgard, yet not so big that its unexplored recesses might hide serious threats like carnivores or poisonous plants to kill over-confident and ignorant children when they started their families. It was steep enough to resist the tides. It was located in a temperate climatic zone where the fauna of the ocean were neither as fierce as in the equatorial waters nor as frenzied as at the poles, where the annual melting of the ice poured incredible volumes of nutriment into the sea and provoked a fantastic outburst of ravening greed.

Nonetheless, in spite of all these advantages, the programme for the settlement had been laid out in gradual stages. By policy, to impress beyond doubt on the colonists that this was
not
tame, domesticated Earth, they had gone straight to grips with their new home. Instead of retreating nightly to the security of durasteel bulkheads, they cut native wood and fashioned huts like barracks, partitioned to afford privacy to those who had paired off, or who preferred to sleep alone. They made furniture. Currently they were baking pots of clay, since a suitable deposit had been found near the inland peak where the
Santa Maria
rested. It was no use relying on something manufactured lightyears away by the peak tools of terrestrial technology, when without warning they might be left naked and desperate.

And yet …

Parvati hesitated. At last she nodded and shrugged, and decided the gamble was justifiable. She was going to recommend to Hassan, at the progress meeting, that they omit some of the slow stages from their schedule. They could scarcely expect to leap ahead to programmed dwellings, polysensory entertainment channels and all the other trappings of the leisured culture they had left, not within the lifetimes of the first arrivals. But
at the back of her mind she had always nursed the vague hope that here, with a chance to start over, mankind might avoid some of the worst mistakes he had committed at home: raping fertile lands until they became dustbowls, hunting animals like whales until it was too late to prevent their extinction, squandering irreplaceable coal and oil in furnaces and cars when they would eventually be needed as a source of food.

It looked as though that was going to be possible. For instance, according to the report which Hassan himself had prepared-as well as being their chairman and senior administrator, he was their quartermaster and responsible fo the use they made of the stores they had brought from Earth, including the surviving ships—their solar collectors were already providing nearly all their power requirements, and if the tidal generators could be installed before winter they could cocoon their fusion generators for emergency use only. That was crucial; refining heavy hydrogen was not on the schedule for another year and a half.

From this starting-point, optimistic conclusions radiated. They could scrap the idea of heating their new home in winter by means of a clay-pipe hot-water system connected to a common boiler, and concentrate the labour freed thereby on producing proper window-glass, a task which had posed unexpected difficulties. Small individual heaters containing unrefined molten salts and plugged into the common power-cable would be far more convenient. And so on.

A shadow crossed the window, and she glanced around. Her brow clouded suddenly as she remembered what she, of all people, ought not to have forgotten for an instant: that it was on their human resources, not the material ones, that their success ultimately depended. She leaned back in her chair, bracing herself. Clearly Dennis Malone was going to come knocking at the door.

In answer to his diffident tap, she called for him to enter, and he stood on the threshold with a look of faint surprise at seeing her rather than Hassan.

“Ah—morning, Parvati,” he muttered. “Is Abdul around?”

“He’s doing a tour of the island. We have a progress meeting today. Can I help you?”

“Oh yes, of course. I’d forgotten.” Dennis seemed distracted, so that his eyes did not meet hers, and she surveyed him covertly while waiting for him to explain his business. She was alarmed at what she saw. His lids were puffy, most likely with lack of sleep, and there were deep lines seaming his forehead. His hands moved together nervously, as though possessed of independent life.

Poor devil!

Briskly, she said, “Well, I’m glad you’re here, anyway. I was just thinking yesterday I’d like to give you another checkup. Could you—?”

“Oh, shut up, Parvati,” he said. There was no force behind the words. “What could another bunch of tests tell me that you don’t know already—that I don’t know still better because I’m on the inside? I’m a mess. I’m a wreck. About the only thing we can hope for is that I’ll sweat out my problem before it starts to bother anyone else.”

“You’re exaggerating, Dennis.”

“The hell I am.” He kicked around a chair, formed bentwood-fashion from slivers of the native woodplant, and slumped into it. “My trouble is that I’m a settler against my will, and not even the colony voting to give me the
Niña
to go home in would cure me, because I’d go crazy during the trip to Earth for fear sacrificing their spare ship meant the colonists were exterminated by something we haven’t come across and which they couldn’t run away from. Right? Don’t bother to answer. I just came in to tell Abdul that I need to go off by myself again.”

“So soon? But you only came back from your last trip—”

“It’s been two weeks, hasn’t it? If I’d picked up any diseases or anything, they’d have shown by now. And
what other use can you make of me except send me off to scout the neighbourhood? After all, I’m the only expendable person here.”

“A hundred and eighty people on a planet the size of Earth give or take a few per cent, and you think even one of them can be called expendable? Dennis, you’re not developing a martyr complex, are you?”

“If I were, you’d have found it out from your tests,” Dennis muttered. “Quit fencing with me, Parvati. I
know
that in spite of everything—two hands, strong back, adequate intelligence, technical skills—I’m a liability. Everybody else wanted to be here, everybody else was prepared consciously and subconsciously for the idea of remaining here till their dying day. I’m the only one who’s trapped. And it follows from that that I’m the likeliest to go crazy. Something which even you couldn’t predict with your fantastic empathy might break me apart one day—a last-straw frustration, more than likely—and you might well lose someone you genuinely can’t afford to do without. Isn’t that true? Tell me honestly.”