Solar Lottery (18 page)

Konklin was thrown against a heap of bedding. Pots and pans rained down on him; in the gloom he fought his way up until his fingers closed around a hull support. “Mary!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

In the darkness nearby he felt her moving. “I’m here,” she answered faintly. “I think my helmet’s cracked; it’s leaking air.”

Konklin caught hold of her. “You’re all right.” The ship was still moving, an inferno of sound and protesting metal that gradually slowed to a reluctant, uneven halt. The lights flickered, came on for a brief moment, and then again faded out. Somewhere moisture dripped slow and steady. Down the corridor a fire crackled among heaps of supplies that had tumbled from a locker.

“Get that fire out,” Groves ordered.

With an extinguisher Jereti made his way unsteadily into
the corridor. “I guess we’re there,” he said shakily, as he covered the fire. His voice vibrated thinly in their helmet phones.

Somebody lit a flashlight. “The hull must have stood up,” Konklin said. “I don’t hear any important leaks.”

“Let’s get out,” Mary said intensely. “Let’s see it.”

Groves was already at the hatch. He stood waiting stonily until everybody was around him and then he began unsealing the heavy locks by hand. “The power is dead,” he explained. “Leads snapped someplace.”

The hatch slid back. Air whooshed out and Groves moved forward, wide-eyed and immediately silent. The others crowded onto the ramp after him; for a moment they stood awed and hesitant. Then as a group they descended.

Half-way down Mary stumbled and Jereti halted to catch hold of her. One of the Japanese optical workers touched the surface first. Agilely, he slid over the side and dropped to the hard-frozen rock, face excited and eager within his bulging helmet. Grinning up at them, he waved them on.

“It’s okay,” he shouted. “No monsters in sight.”

Mary held back. “Look,” she whispered. “Look at it glow.”

The planet was a single plain of green light. Wherever they looked there was a faint, unwinking sheen of color, soft and unfocused, on the rocks and boulders, on the ground itself. In the dim green phosphorescence the group of men and women were strange opaque shapes, black columns of metal and plastic stepping awkwardly and hesitantly down.

“It’s been here all this time,” Jereti said wonderingly. “And nobody to look at it.” He kicked at the frozen rock. “We’re the first to set foot here.”

“Maybe not,” Groves said thoughtfully. “As we landed I saw something. I tried to come as close as possible without hitting it.” He unclipped his heavy-duty shoulder weapon. “Preston thought the Disc might be a stray from another system.”

*   *   *

It was a building, a structure of some kind, resting on the smooth surface ahead. It was a sphere of some dull metal, without features or ornaments. Green crystals of frozen gas drifted and blew around them as they apprehensively approached the sphere.

“How the hell do we get in it?” Konklin demanded.

Groves lifted his weapon. “I don’t see any other way,” his voice came in their phones. He squeezed the trigger and moved the muzzle in a slow circle. “This material looks like stainless steel. This thing may be man-made.”

Through the sizzling, dripping rent, Konklin and Groves crawled. A dull throbbing reached their ears as they climbed down to the floor of the globe. They were in a single chamber of whirring machinery. Air shrieked out past them as they stood peering around.

“Plug it up,” Groves said.

Together they managed to get a patch over the leak their weapon had cut. Then they turned to examine the humming bank of machinery and wiring.

“Welcome,” a dry, dusty voice said mildly.

They spun quickly, the weapon high.

“Don’t be afraid,” the old man continued. “I’m only another human being like yourself.”

Konklin and Groves stood rooted to the metal floor. “Good God,” Groves said thickly. “But I thought—”

“I,” the old man said, “am John Preston.”

A shudder rolled up Konklin’s spine. His teeth began to chatter. “You said his ship was destroyed. Look at him; he must be a million years old. And he’s in that solution.”

As if in agreement, the paper-thin lips moved, and from the mechanical speakers the dry whisper sounded again. “I am very old,” Preston said. “I am almost completely deaf and paralyzed.” The mouth twisted in a half-smile. “I have arthritis,
as you probably know. And some place along the line I lost my glasses. So I can’t really make you out too clearly.”

“This is your ship?” Konklin demanded. “You landed here ahead of us?”

The ancient head, within its supporting hoop, nodded.

“He’s watching us,” Groves said. “It’s frightening. It’s not natural.”

“How long have you been here?” Konklin asked the ancient withered creature suspended in its nourishing bath.

“You will have to excuse me,” Preston answered. “I can’t come down and shake hands with you.”

Konklin blinked. “I guess he didn’t hear me,” he said uneasily.

“We represent the Preston Society,” Groves said awkwardly. “We’re following your work. Are you—”

“It has been a long wait,” the old man interrupted him. “It’s been many weary years. Many, many long days alone.”

“Something’s wrong!” Konklin snapped fearfully. “Something’s the matter with him!”

“He’s deaf and blind.”

Konklin moved toward the banks of machinery. “This isn’t a ship. It’s something else, similar to a ship but not a ship. I think—”

“I want to tell you about Flame Disc,” John Preston’s dry, harsh words interrupted him. “That’s what I’m interested in. That’s what I consider important.”

“So do we,” Groves said, baffled and confused.

Konklin was feverishly examining the smooth inner surface of the sphere. “This has no drive jets! It can’t go anywhere! It has some sort of anti-grav shield, like a marker buoy.” He leaped away from the machinery. “Groves,
this is a buoy.
I’m beginning to get it.”

“You must hear me out,” Preston was saying. “I have to tell you about the Disc.”

“There must be more of these buoys,” Konklin said. “This
one must have drifted down here; pulled down by the intense gravity. There must be thousands of them, all exactly alike.”

It came slowly to Groves. “We came in contact with a series of buoys, not a ship. Each one directed us to the next. We followed a trail of buoys all the way here, step by step.”

“Do whatever you want,” the dry, inexorable voice broke in. “But listen to what I have to say.”

“Shut up!” Konklin shouted.

“I have to remain here,” Preston said, slowly and painfully, picking his words with infinite care. “I don’t dare leave. If I—”

“Preston,” Konklin shouted wildly. “What’s the sum of two and two?”

“I know nothing about you,” the relentless whisper continued.

“Repeat after me!” Konklin shouted. “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow!”

“Stop it,” Groves snarled, on the verge of hysteria. “Have you gone crazy?”

“The search has been long,” Preston’s withered whisper rasped on monotonously. “And it has brought me nothing. Nothing at all.”

Konklin sagged. He moved away, back toward the rent they had cut. “It’s not alive. That isn’t a nourishing bath. That’s some kind of volatile substance on which a vid image is being projected. Vid and aud tapes synchronized to form a replica. He’s been dead a hundred and fifty years.”

There was silence, except for the dry, whispering voice of Preston and it went on and on.

Konklin tore away the patch and scrambled out of the sphere. “Come on,” he signalled to the others. “Come on in.”

“We got most of that on our phones,” Jereti said, as he struggled into the sphere. “What was it all about? What the hell was that Mary had a little lamb?”

He saw the replica of John Preston and his voice stopped. The others scrambled in after him, excited and breathless. One by one they came to a halt as they saw the old man, and heard the faint, dry words whispering through the thinning air of the sphere.

“Seal it up,” Groves ordered, when the last of the Japanese optical workers was in.

“Is it—” Mary began doubtfully. “But why’s he talking like that? Just sort of … reciting.”

Konklin put his stiff pressure-glove on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s only an image. He left hundreds of them, maybe thousands, scattered through space, all around here. To attract ships and lead them to the Disc.”

“Then he’s dead!”

“He died a long time ago,” Konklin said. “You can tell by looking at him that he died a very old man. Probably a few years after he found the Disc. He knew ships would be coming out in this direction someday. He wanted to bring one of them here, to his world.”

“I guess he didn’t know there would be a Society,” Mary said sadly. “He didn’t realize anybody would actually be
looking
for the Disc.”

“No,” Konklin agreed. “But he knew there would be ships heading out this way.”

“It’s sort of … disappointing.”

“No,” Groves corrected. “I don’t think so. Don’t feel bad about it. It’s only the physical part of John Preston that’s dead, and that part isn’t really very important.”

“I guess so,” Mary said. She brightened. “It’s sort of wonderful, too. In a way, it’s sort of a miracle.”

“Shut up and listen,” Konklin said softly.

They all became silent and listened.

“It isn’t senseless drive,” the withered image of the old man was saying. Its blind eyes gazed out over the group of people, not seeing them, not hearing them, not aware of their
presence. It was speaking, instead, to listeners far off, watchers far away. “It isn’t a brute instinct that keeps us restless and dissatisfied. I’ll tell you what it is: it’s the highest goal of man—the need to grow and advance … to find new things … to expand. To spread out, reach areas, experiences, comprehend and live in an evolving fashion. To push aside routine and repetition, to break out of mindless monotony and thrust forward. To keep moving on …”

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2003

Copyright © 1955 by Philip K. Dick