Fade Out (31 page)

‘But if Friday is capable of emotions such as fear and aggression – or in this case nonaggression – he must be
alive. And if he's alive, how can he be a machine?' asked Connors.

‘Very easily,' said Wedderkind. ‘The two states are not incompatible. But if you find the concept too difficult, just think of him as a very sophisticated robot.'

‘Okay. How do you propose to verify these ideas?' said the President.

‘By continued observation.'

‘Do you plan to take him apart?'

‘Some of the group would like to try,' said Connors. ‘The trouble is we're not sure whether we need a neurosurgeon or a plumber.'

‘A lot will depend on what Friday does next,' said Wedderkind.

‘Which could be nothing,' said Connors. ‘After almost getting trampled to death the first time out he may decide it's safer to stay inside.'

‘He'll be out,' said Wedderkind.

President Lorenzo leaned forward and tapped the clear plastic case Wedderkind had placed on his desk. It contained the plaque that Friday had presented to the research team on Crow Ridge. ‘I take it there's no doubt about this?'

‘No, we checked,' said Wedderkind. ‘It's definitely from Pioneer 10.'

‘What d'you make of it?'

Connors deflected the question on to Wedderkind. They had already discussed Friday's surprise package at some length during the flight to Washington. There had been a great deal of speculation but they had failed to reach any meaningful conclusions. Connors thought back to Wedderkind's remark about the difficulty of relating to an alien intelligence. Perhaps there
were
no answers – at least on a level that Man could understand. Perhaps the
meaning of this long-awaited encounter was beyond the limits of human comprehension.

Good old Arnold, however, was not about to give up on the case. ‘I'm not quite sure…' He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘According to the last data received by the Space-flight Center at Houston, Pioneer 10 was alive and well and on its way out of the solar system. Crusoe and Friday must have hijacked the plaque without altering Pioneer's flight trajectory. It's the only scenario that fits the known data.'

‘After Pioneer completed its fly-by of Uranus?'

‘That's the gut feeling I have,' said Wedderkind. ‘But it could have happened anywhere along the line.'

‘Could, uhh – Crusoe have come from one of those planets out there?'

Wedderkind shook his head. ‘The chances are next to nil. Compared to Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are still in a primitive state of evolution. And conditions get even worse the further out you go. Jupiter, for example, has no solid surface – '

The President cut in. ‘How about one of its moons? Aren't some of them almost as big as Mercury?'

‘One of them is even bigger. But before the inhabitants of Jupiter could establish a moon-base, they would first have to develop space-flight technology on the planet itself. And that's just not possible. Higher forms of life couldn't exist there.'

‘We don't know that for sure,' said Connors.

Wedderkind eyed him and turned back to the President. ‘Bob has developed a space conspiracy theory.'

Connors stepped in to explain for himself. ‘All I said was we can no longer take anything for granted. Crusoe's arrival is proof that somebody is out there. If Pioneer 10
was
intercepted then the information it sent back could have been doctored. The same goes for the Surveyor
package that was soft-landed on Mars, the Russian Venus probe, and the recent Voyager fly-by of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Let's face it, the pictures and measurements are only sets of figures radioed across space and recorded down here on computer tape.'

The President considered this proposition with a puzzled frown. ‘Why would anyone want to beam us a mass of phoney data?'

‘To mislead us as to the
real
conditions up there.'

‘Is that possible, Arnold?'

Wedderkind favoured Connors with an indulgent smile then answered the President. ‘It's an engaging theory. It's true we have no way to verify the integrity of the transmissions but the pictures and data received so far support our previous visual observations and the predictions based on current scientific theories.'

‘So what's
your
theory?' insisted the President.

‘Everything points to Crusoe and Friday being sent from another star system. Since the technology involved in their construction is way ahead of ours I believe their purpose is to explore all the planets in our solar system. If I was given the job I would start at the edge and work my way in towards the sun.'

‘Which was how he ran into Pioneer – and tracked back from there,' suggested the President, anxious to demonstrate that his brain was not, as some unkind critics had suggested, made from
mozzarella.

‘Yes. On the other hand, he may have been around for some time. He could have been camping out on one of Jupiter's or Saturn's moons as you suggested or, alternatively, he might have been in a parking orbit around Uranus or Neptune, or circling the sun – like Halley's comet. Waiting.'

‘For what?'

‘Some sign of life.' Wedderkind stubbed out his cigarette and dispersed the wreath of smoke around his head.

‘You mean… some sign of life from intelligent beings who were into space flight…'

‘That's one possibility.'

Connors realized why the President got so frustrated when he couldn't get ‘yes' or ‘no' answers. Especially at a time like this with so many other problems crowding in on him. He was clearly wishing he hadn't opened up this particular can of worms.

‘I don't get it, Arnold. If Crusoe has been coasting around our solar system for some time, as you suggest, he'd know about Earth. And all the radio and TV traffic would tell him something or someone was down here. Why wait till now?'

‘Good point…' Wedderkind lit another cigarette. ‘I wish I knew the answer. Maybe – until we got into space flight – he didn't think we were worth talking to.'

‘There could be another reason,' said Connors. ‘Maybe it's because until we launched a craft that could travel out of the solar system we didn't pose a threat to anyone. If the beings who built Crusoe already knew where we were, why remove the plaque from Pioneer 10? You've already accused me of being paranoid but, to my mind, there's only one answer: to stop us from making contact with whoever else might be out there.'

‘In that case, why not just destroy the spacecraft?' said Wedderkind. ‘If it just disappeared that far from home we would assume it ran into a meteorite or an asteroid.'

‘Crusoe and Friday aren't human, Arnold. They may not like killing other machines. In any case they've achieved the same result. Anyone finding Pioneer 10 now will never know where he came from.' Connors smiled and adopted a lighter tone. ‘Maybe they're trying to tell us we're looked upon as undesirable aliens who need a
special visa before we can emigrate to the United Galactic States.'

Wedderkind gave him a long hard look. ‘That may have been meant as a joke but it could be closer to the truth than you think…'

At sunrise Crusoe's black dome rotated. The inner sphere spun around on its opposed axis until the two circular hatches were in alignment. Then Friday rose into view, unfolded his legs, and stood astride the dome. Behind him, the sun cleared the tops of the pines and outlined him briefly with burning gold.

Nobody was on the Ridge to greet him, but the TV cameras picked him up, and the night crew in the monitor hut alerted the research group.

Friday spent most of the morning wandering around the plateau, then discovered the collection of prefabs and trailers. It was as he began to explore these that he revealed the unexpected ability to climb up vertical surfaces.

The research group kept him under close observation as he walked from roof to roof, going up and down walls and peering in windows and open doorways. Everyone had been briefed to go on with what they were doing and pretend he wasn't there, but it was difficult to remain completely natural when you found yourself being shadowed by a spider nearly seven feet tall and fourteen feet across.

Friday found his way to the trailer park. There was just enough room for him to walk down between each line. Max was at home, engaged in another interminable round of cards with his off-duty gang. As he studied his hand, he felt someone looking over his shoulder. He turned
round to find Friday peering in through the window. Max laid down his hand, got up, switched on the lights, and dropped the blind in Friday's face.

Friday completed his tour of the trailers and the other installations, then headed down to the tree line. Most of the pines covering the flanks of the Ridge grew too close together for him to walk between them easily. He turned back on to the plateau and found the extended dirt road. This he explored all the way down to the gate in the high wire fence. He took a long look at the cadets guarding it, the fence and the vehicles parked among the trees by the side of the road, then shifted into reverse gear and went back on to the plateau.

From there, he moved smoothly over the rocky ground up to the high point of the Ridge. Milsom, Spencer, Wetherby, and Collis, the language scientist, walked up to see what he was doing. They found Friday standing motionless astride the crest from where he had a view of the surrounding country. They sat down some distance away expecting him to swivel around and scan them with his eye pod. Friday didn't react to their presence. Half an hour later when his head did start to rotate, it wasn't in their direction. They could only guess he might be scanning the horizon. They left Friday to enjoy the view and returned to the research hut.

Friday stayed almost motionless on the Ridge till sunset, then he moved gracefully down over the rocks and returned to Crusoe.

In the research hut, the scientists watched the TV monitor as Friday folded himself up and slid in through the two hatches.

‘I wonder why he stayed up on top of the Ridge all day?' said Milsom. ‘Surely he wasn't just sunning himself.'

‘He just seems to be wandering around aimlessly.' Page, the biochemist, never did anything aimlessly.

‘I don't agree,' said Spencer. ‘He's explored everything that's on the Ridge.'

‘Depends what you mean by explore,' said Page. ‘He spent half the morning going backward and forward over the roofs. There was absolutely nothing systematic about his movements at all.' Page held up a sheet of paper. ‘Here's a plot of his tracks that the monitor hut recorded. It looks like a ball of string that's been got at by a kitten.'

Collis took the sheet of paper from Page. Friday's tangled tracks had been superimposed on a simplified map of Crow Ridge and the installations. Page was right, Friday's movements could hardly be described as systematic. He passed the paper on to the others.

‘I don't see anything wrong with it,' said Tomkin. ‘It may not be the way
you
would walk around the ridge, but it is the way an insect would.'

‘I thought we were agreed Friday was a machine,' said Page. He still hadn't managed to master his disappointment.

‘Maybe he was looking for something,' said Milsom.

‘Why?' asked Page. ‘He didn't collect any soil or rock samples, or any specimens of flora, or any of the dozens of insects running around those rocks out there.'

‘Maybe that comes next,' said Collis. ‘He obviously wanted to find out more about us first.'

‘We couldn't have been all
that
interesting,' said Page. ‘He ignored us for most of the day.'

Milsom grinned. ‘I sometimes feel that way about people myself.'

‘Funny man,' said Page, peevishly.

‘Listen,' said Spencer. ‘Right now we may have nothing but question marks, but let's not fall into the trap of attributing superman status to that pair out there. They may be products of a highly advanced technology, but they are still two pieces of machinery. A machine's
function can be analysed, and if it's been put together, it can be taken apart.'

‘How can you talk of taking Crusoe apart?' said Page. ‘You can't even dig him up.'

Spencer didn't bother to look at Page. He thought he was a prick. ‘Page is right. We haven't been able to dig him up. But if we could get inside him, we may not need to.'

‘Inside?' Tomkin looked surprised.

‘What do you want to do?' asked Spencer. ‘Let them fly away without finding out how they work? If we could crack the secrets of their technology, it might help us leapfrog the next two hundred years.'

‘Aren't we in a big enough mess already?'

Milsom jabbed a finger at Collis. ‘Don't start hitting us with that classical
shtick.
Whatever technology has gotten us into, it can get us out of.'

‘But do we have the right to take Crusoe or Friday apart?' insisted Collis.

‘Look, let's forget this ethical crap,' said Neame. ‘Let's get down to the practical problems. What are you going to use for a can opener, Dan?'

‘Don't you think you ought to wait till Arnold comes back from Washington?' said Collis.

‘Exactly,' said Page. And in the meantime, I think you should consult Professor Lovell before you take this any further.' Lovell was the senior member of the group.

‘Page,' said Spencer. ‘Why don't you fuck off?'

Page rose, tight-lipped, and made a prim exit.

‘So what's next?' asked Milsom.

‘The first thing we have to do is to get Neal Zabrodski to run us the tapes of Friday going in and out of the hatch. It opens when he stands astride it, and closes as soon as he's inside. What we need to check is whether he stands in exactly the same place each time, and whether
he follows a sequence of movements. If he does, there's a chance that he activates the hatch himself. If we can find out how he does it, there's a chance we may be able to duplicate the operation. The rest is simple.'