The Invincible (17 page)

Everything went according to plan, and the last big truck was just passing between the two rock pillars when a strange shock rent the air—not a sound but a vibration, as if somewhere nearby a huge boulder had fallen to the ground. The stubbly walls of the gully began to steam; a black cloud emerged from them, slowly creeping at first, but then rushing with unbelievable speed toward the column.

Rohan had let the trucks pass first and he was waiting his turn in his amphibian scouter; suddenly he saw black swaths break from the slopes of the gully, and a gigantic fiery glow appeared at the head of the column, where the front robot (which had already emerged from the rocky gate) had activated the force field. Wherever the attacking cloud masses touched the field they burned brightly. But many of them managed to rise above the flames and fell upon the vehicles.

Rohan screamed at Jarg to switch on the rear energo-robot’s field and connect it with the front, for the potential danger of a landslide was immaterial now. Jarg tried, but he could not switch on the force field. As the chief engineer stated later, the electronic tubes of the apparatus were probably overheated. Had Jarg continued sending current impulses for a few more seconds, the field would undoubtedly have ‘turned on.’ Instead, Jarg lost his head and jumped out of the vehicle. Rohan had barely managed to grab his sleeve when Jarg tore himself away and, mad with fear, fled down the ravine. Rohan rushed over to the vehicle, but it was too late.

The men who had been taken by surprise inside their vehicles jumped out and ran off in all directions, their figures barely recognizable behind the seething clouds. This sight was so incredible that Rohan froze on the spot. At this point it was senseless to reestablish the force field, for he would have killed the whole crew: the men were even climbing up the slopes, as if trying to find refuge in the metal thicket. Rohan remained standing, motionless in the deserted vehicle, waiting for the same fate to befall him.

Behind Rohan, Terner fired away, leaning out of the turret hatch of his tank. He shot off compression lasers—a useless gesture, since the largest part of the clouds was already quite near. Not more than sixty yards separated Rohan from the others. The victims threw themselves on the ground and rolled around, engulfed by the black flames. They must have been screaming, but the constant roar of the cloud drowned out their voices along with all other sounds—including the noise of the front energo-robot. Myriads of tiny attacking particles sparked off endlessly wherever they hit the robot’s energy field.

Rohan remained motionless, leaning halfway over the side of his scouter vehicle. He made no attempt to seek cover. This was no courage born of desperation, as he told them later on; it simply did not occur to him. He had no thoughts at all.

The unforgettable scene—his men under the black avalanche—changed abruptly. The victims stopped rolling on the ground, trying to escape or to crawl into the wiry growth. They stood still or sat down. The cloud had divided into funnels to form a kind of localized whirlpool above each of the men, swirling around the entire body or just the head. Then, brushing against each man briefly, the cloud, now churning and raging, fled upward, surging higher and higher along the canyon walls until the light of the evening sky was blotted out. Finally the black seething mass crept into crevices among the rocks, while the roaring tumult gradually subsided. Soon everything submerged into the black jungle. Nothing remained of the cloud except for some tiny black dots sprinkled here and there around the motionless bodies, bearing witness to the catastrophe that had unfolded but a few instants earlier.

Rohan still could not believe that he had escaped unscathed. He did not understand to what circumstances he owed his good fortune, He glanced over in Terner’s direction, but the turret hatch was empty. The mate must have jumped out—there was no telling why and when. Then he saw him lying on the ground nearby, still clutching at the butt-ends of the laser guns. His dead eyes stared up at the sky.

Rohan got out of his car and ran from one man to the next. They did not recognize him. No one said a word. Most appeared to be calm; they were either lying down or sitting on the boulders. Several men got up, walked over to the vehicles, and ran their fingers over the surfaces slowly and clumsily, like blind men.

Rohan saw Jarg’s friend Genlis, an excellent radio man, standing and gaping at the trucks as if he were seeing them for the first time in his life. His mouth was half open as he tried to move one of the door handles.

Suddenly Rohan realized the significance of the round scorched hole in one of the partition walls of the
Condor’s
command center. He knelt next to Dr. Ballmin, grabbing his shoulders, trying desperately to shake him back to consciousness, knowing full well that this would be in vain. Suddenly he heard a sharp report and a violet flame flared up directly by his head. One of the men who were sitting over to one side had removed his Weyr mortar from his holster, and accidentally pushed the trigger, Rohan called out to him but the man paid not the slightest attention. The bright flash of light seemed to delight him, like a child watching fireworks, for now he began shooting wildly in all directions. He used up the entire nuclear-powered magazine of the mortar. The air hissed in the intense heat. Rohan instinctively dropped to the ground, trying to seek protection behind some large boulders. He heard heavy steps coming nearer and saw Jarg appearing from behind a bend, his face bathed in perspiration, and running breathlessly, He stormed straight toward the madman, who amused himself by firing his Weyr weapon. “Stop! Take cover! Take cover, Jarg!” shouted Rohan at the top of his voice. But before the confused Jarg could come to a complete standstill, a horrible explosion hit his left arm. Rohan caught a glimpse of his face as the torn-off shoulder was hurled up into the air, the blood gushing wildly from the frightful wound. The insane marksman did not seem to notice anything, while Jarg gazed in astonished disbelief first at the bloody stump, then at his mangled arm. Jarg staggered; his knees began to sag; finally he crumpled down on the ground.

The man with the Weyr mortar got up. Rohan could see the incessant stream of fire from the heated weapon striking sparks wherever it hit stones and rocks. The air began to smell of silicious earth. The man stumbled forwards, his arms describing random movements like a baby playing with a rattle. The flame whizzed through the narrow air space between two men sitting next to each other. They made no attempt to shield their eyes from the blinding light; another moment and they would get the full load right in their faces. In a purely reflex action, Rohan drew his own Weyr gun and fired once. The man hit his chest violently with both arms; his weapon clattered onto the rocks, and he fell face downward to the ground.

Rohan came to his senses. Dusk was falling. The men had to be transported out of this place as quickly as possible. All he could use was his small amphibian car. He tried to get one of the cross-country vehicles ready to start, but it turned out that two of them had collided at the narrowest part of the gulch. A crane would be needed to pull them apart. That left only the rear robot, which could carry five men at best. But he had nine on his hands, and all nine had lost their senses. He decided to gather them together and tie them up, so that they would be unable to escape and harm themselves. For the time being and for their own protection, he would place them inside the energy dome between the two energo-robots.

It was already pitch dark when he finished his ghastly task. The men offered no resistance when he bound them with ropes. He backed out the rear robot to make a gangway for his small vehicle, then placed both emitters in position, switched on the protective field by remote control, left all the helpless men safely herded inside the energy dome, and started back.

On the twenty-seventh day after landing on Regis III, almost half of the
Invincible’s
crew had been put out of action.

Rohan’s report sounded irrational, as true stories often do. Why hadn’t the cloud attacked him or Jarg? Why hadn’t it touched Terner until he got out of the amphibian vehicle? Why had Jarg first tried to escape, only to return later? The last question was fairly easy to answer. He probably decided to turn back the moment he stopped panicking and realized he was more than thirty miles away from the spaceship, which obviously couldn’t be reached on foot with his limited supply of oxygen.

The other questions, however, remained puzzles whose solution might mean life or death for them. But the need for action left no time for reflections and hypotheses.

It was past midnight when Horpach learned of the catastrophe that had befallen Rohan’s group. Half an hour later the astrogator was ready for takeoff. It is a thankless task to fly a spacecruiser to a spot only one hundred and twenty miles away. The ship must proceed at a relatively slow speed and at a right angle to the planet’s surface, standing vertically above its exhaust flames, and consuming a vast amount of fuel. Since the craft’s power drive had not been geared to this, they had to switch on the electro-automation. Nevertheless, the steel colossus floated softly through the night, as if carried by gently rolling waves. To any observer standing on Regis III, this would have presented a most unusual sight: the ship’s dim outline, hardly visible against the glow of the flames emanating from its rear jets, traveling through the night sky like a dark silhouette poised on a column of fire.

It was no small task to steer a proper course. They had to climb beyond the stratosphere, then descend again, all the while with stern pointing downwards, perpendicular to the ground.

All this maneuvering demanded the astrogator’s undivided attention, especially since their destination, the crater, lay hidden underneath a thin veil of clouds. Shortly before dawn, the
Invincible
set down in the crater, just over a mile away from Regnar’s former station. Supercopters and machines were quickly unloaded, huts erected within the protected area of the force field surrounding the spacecruiser. By noon, all survivors of Rohan’s group had been brought back safely by a specially equipped rescue team. None of the men was injured, except for a total loss of all mental functions. Two additional rooms had to be prepared as a sick bay, since every bed was occupied in the
Invincible’s
regular infirmary. Only now did the scientists try to probe the mystery that had spared Rohan’s life, and which—had it not been for the tragic incident with the Weyr mortar held by an insane man—would have saved Jarg as well.

It was a mystery. The clothing and equipment of the two men had been identical to that of the afflicted group. The fact that the three of them, Terner included, had been together in the small vehicle was probably of no significance either.

At the same time, Horpach had the unpleasant job of deciding how to proceed from here. One thing was clear: he could return to home base and present facts that would justify his terminating this mission, as well as facts that would clear up the tragic fate of the
Condor
. The questions that so intrigued the scientists—the metal pseudo-insects, their symbiosis with the metallic plants that grew on the rocks, and finally the questions regarding the “mind” of the cloud (they didn’t even know whether there was only one or several of these clouds, and whether all the small clouds formed a single closed system)—all that would not have induced the astrogator to remain one hour longer on Regis III if four men of Regnar’s group, Regnar himself among them, had not still been missing.

The trail of the lost men had led Rohan’s group into the ravine. The defenseless men would undoubtedly perish there, even if the inorganic occupants of Regis III left them alone. Thus the whole area would have to be searched, as the victims were bereft of any ability to act rationally, and were entirely dependent on the help of the
Invincible.

They were comparatively certain only of the extent of the area where the search would have to be carried out, since the men could not have gotten more than twenty to thirty miles from the crater in their aimless wandering through the grottoes and gullies. Not much oxygen would be left in their packs, but the physicians reassured them that breathing the planet’s atmosphere would not constitute any serious danger. Considering the mental state of the men, it would, of course, not matter too much if the methane content in their blood resulted in a stuporous state.

The area they would cover in their search for the lost men was not too extensive, but extremely difficult to explore. It would take weeks, even under the best circumstances, to comb all the nooks and crannies, grottoes and caves. Beneath the layer of winding ravines and valleys existed another system of subterranean corridors and caverns, hollowed from the rock by underground rivers. The two upper and lower labyrinths were connected only at certain spots. The lost men might easily have wandered into one of these hiding places, and probably had separated from each other by now. Their total amnesia made them more helpless than small children—who would at least have stayed together. And worst of all, this terrain was the nesting place of the black cloud. Not much use could be made here of the
Invincible’s
gigantic technical facilities and scientific equipment. The most effective protection, the force field, could not be applied at all in the subterranean vaults of this planet. Horpach faced a most difficult choice: leaving the planet at once—which would have amounted to a death sentence for the lost men—or taking up the risky search. Their chances for success here were limited to the next few days, perhaps a week at most. Horpach realized that after that time there would be no hope of finding the men alive.

Early the next morning, Rohan called the scientists to a meeting, explained the situation and told them he was counting on their help. Rohan had brought back a handful of the “metal insects” in his pocket. Nearly twenty-four hours had been spent examining the little “flies.” Horpach wanted to know whether it would be possible to render them harmless. And the question arose again: why had Rohan and Jarg been spared by the attacking cloud?