The Old Man of the Stars (4 page)

“They're coming! Here they come!”

The cry reached them faintly from below.

They swung round and looked up through the glass dome, over towards the hills that concealed the destruction of Martinstown.

There in the sky, speeding in this direction, were three slivers of brightness, three gleaming ships racing towards their own town.

“Outside!” snapped Clifford decisively. “Safer out there until we know what's happening. Down to the edge of the woods. You three get moving, I'll warn the others.”

The men from the main construction hall were emerging into the open. Clifford waved them towards the shelter of the woods, then he himself stood for a moment at the foot of the slope, staring up as the ships came dropping lower and lower.

“Clifford!” It was Alida, despairingly calling him.

He waved reassuringly and moved slowly into cover, still watching with awed fascination as the ships streaked overhead, ignoring the two isolated buildings on the edge of the wood and heading straight for the town itself.

In less than ten seconds there was an explosion that shook the ground and sent a ravaging wind through the trees. Flame stood up in the distance, growing and bending, then growing again, like some lurching giant trying to stand upright.

Matthew said: “It's insane. So senseless.... Wanton destruction. What race can so lust for destruction that it attacks without provocation like this? Am I going mad?”

“If you are,” said Clifford, “we all are.”

Again there was a shudder through the earth. Beyond the trees, interlaced with the pattern of trunks and branches, they saw the great glow of their dying town.

Then they heard voices. A group of men and women, dragging and carrying children, forced their way through the undergrowth, sobbing and shouting with fear.

Alida moved towards them to offer help. Clifford waved to them to be careful and not to emerge from the wood yet.

Bellhouse began to sob with terrifying quietness. He said through his teeth: “My wife was in there. And my mother and father.”

The flames began to attack the fringe of the woods.

Matthew said: “We won't be able to stay in here for long, once that fire gets started. It's to be hoped those ships have gone. If they're going to come back and destroy the observatory and the sheds, they'd better hurry up about it.”

He stared down at the building that housed the space ship. If that went, all hope went with it. He was utterly impotent: he and this group of people with him could do nothing to check this murderous assault from the heavens.

Clifford said: “If they do come back....” He paused, and glanced questioningly at Matthew. “The disruptors—the guns on our ship—they work from the same power pile. It's still running on test. They ought to work.”

Matthew said huskily: “Anything might go wrong. They haven't been checked over.”

“Nothing much worse can happen than what's going to happen anyway,” said Clifford. He took a pace forward, down the hill. “Are you coming?”

“Of course I'm coming.”

Matthew, Clifford, and Bellhouse were running down to the entrance. They were breathless by the time they reached the control cabin, slipping and sliding along the tilted floor. Below, one of the men who had followed them threw a switch, and the great roof rolled back. Now the ship lay on its side beneath the sky to which it belonged. And inside the ship the three men watched and waited, each with fingers poised above the starboard disruptor controls.

“We shall probably go up along with the ship,” said Bellhouse with a half-hysterical laugh.

Dazzling across the sky game the three destroyers, the three vicious ships from space. Their noses turned down towards the buildings that waited for there.

Clifford found time to say, as though it were a theory worth discussing at this very moment: “Maybe they come from that planet that's swum into view recently. Seems probable.”

Matthew said: “Could be.” And then the predictor control flickered its warning, the disruptor quivered gently and seemed to reach out as though plucked from its mountings by the approaching ships. Matthew's finger stabbed down.

There was a gout of savage, radiant force that scorched away part of the corner of the roof. But at the same time two stabbing fingers leaped out from the two companion disruptors, and caught in their mingled, blinding beam was one of the attacking ships.

It was knocked upwards as though punched by a mighty hand. The nose dissolved, molten metal falling on the ground below; and the spinning wreckage of what had once been a spaceship made a great spinning arc and came to earth out on the grassy plain below the hills.

“Next one!” shouted Matthews exultantly.

There was a delay. They waited for the other two ships to come back.

Then, faintly, they heard the mechanic calling them from below. Clifford opened the nearest port and leaned out.

“They've gone!” came the jubilant message.

“They'll only be turning to come back and have another go,” warned Matthew.

“No. He says they've gone well beyond the hills—angled upwards.”

“Off for reinforcements?”

“We can relax for a little while, anyhow.”

Bellhouse stayed in the cabin in case of a sudden emergency. Matthew and Clifford lowered themselves to the ground and went out into the air, reeking with smoke that blew over from the stricken town. The woods were burning slowly but steadily.

The handful of survivors, helped down by the men who had been working here, came down to the shelter of the observatory.

Matthew said: “I think you're right, and those murderers did come from that new planet. Now they're going back to report. After all, from up there this ship of ours must look pretty menacing. It's four times as big as their things, and they couldn't know that it wasn't capable of leaving the ground. A couple of destroyers might be able to knock hell out of a battleship, but it's safer to go and get the rest of the fleet.”

“I wonder how long that will take?”

“Hours, perhaps. Or maybe a day or two. I wouldn't be surprised to see them back tonight, ready to finish us off.”

They looked out speculatively across the plain to the hills. It was Clifford who said:

“I'd like to go and have a look at that wreckage.”

“What? Good heavens, yes.”

“There might be somebody—something—still alive. We oughtn't to dismiss that possibility.”

“After seeing that ship come down,” said Matthew vindictively, “I am prepared to dismiss the possibility of anybody inside it being alive. But I'd like to have a look at what's left.”

“Tomorrow,” said Clifford, “we must investigate—if we're still alive. I think we need to be very much on the alert tonight.”

* * * *

But the ships did not return that night. And in the morning it began to rain—not gently and refreshingly as it usually did on Elysium, but with a ferocity that literally beat the breath out of anybody not under cover. A wind came up—a wind such as had never been known on this planet before. Then lightning blazed along the horizon, heralding a furious electrical storm that lasted for five days.

It was futile to try to contact the other towns, to find if they still existed. There was nothing but a wild roaring in the receiver. Light played about the observatory dome, and the hall in which the spaceship lay resounded to the persistent drumming of the rain.

“There used to be a lot of arguments back on Earth,” Matthew reminisced, “about the effects of man's doings. There were tales told of the really ancient days when cannons were fired at clouds to bring rain down. And then bad weather was blamed on atom bombs and so on. It may or may not have been true on Earth, but it certainly looks as though the weapons we—or maybe those others—used here have shaken up the Elysian atmosphere.”

Clifford said: “It's saved us from an immediate attack, anyway. I don't believe any ship would try any nonsense under these conditions.”

“We'll just have to wait and see what happens when the storm clears.”

At the end of the fifth day there were signs that stability was returning. The rain stopped and the electric oppressiveness of the atmosphere relaxed its grip on the men and women who had been sheltering in the construction hall. The skies cleared. Clifford did not waste any time. He went to the observatory, and returned within fifteen minutes, pursing his lips over a sheet of scribbled calculations.

“That planet has moved some distance away by now,” he said. “My guess is that we won't see any more of those ships. There was a sharp intersection of our two orbits, but we're moving away from one another pretty fast, and I should imagine that the distance is too great for them to make another sortie like that—unless, of course, they're really anxious to make a lot of trouble.”

“I still can't begin to understand that first attack,” said Matthew. “I don't see how we shall ever find out what it was all about.”

Clifford said: “We can start with that wrecked ship. If they don't come back and attack us again tonight, now that it's clear again, we must go over to the hills tomorrow morning and examine the wreckage.”

“Before we do that,” said Matthew sombrely, “we shall have to go and have a look at the town. There can't be any more survivors: we should have had them over here in no time at all. But we must go and see exactly what happened to the town.”

It was a grim duty that faced them on that following morning. They stepped in silent horror over the crumpled ruins of what had so recently been graceful buildings. Charred bodies lay on the edge of once-beautiful gardens. On the slopes below the Community Palace, the fountains still played. But the young men and women would not walk here again.

The rain had extinguished all the fires, and at the same time had carried black rivulets across lawns and across the whiteness of fallen masonry. The town had become smeared and ugly in its death throes.

Matthew said abruptly: “There's nothing we can do here. Nothing but go away and leave it.”

Clifford said: “Oughtn't we to...? I mean....”

He fumbled, unsure of himself, and Matthew said: “You want a handful of us to try to give decent burial to all the bits and pieces we can find? To sweep up the bits? It couldn't be done. Don't think I'm callous, Clifford. I'm just trying to be realistic.”

The young man nodded.

“While we're being realistic,” he said, “I think we ought to face up to the fact that the few helicars we had in this town have all been destroyed. Unless we can catch an Elysian pony—which is unlikely—we shall have to walk in order to reach that wreckage. And I suggest we start now.”

Three of them went—Matthew, Clifford, and Bellhouse. After reporting to the others and warning them to be careful if they proposed to explore the ruins for personal belongings, they set off on the long walk across the plain.

It was a warm day, and by the time they had finished the five or six miles, they were hot and weary. They stopped a hundred yards away from the fallen spaceship, and looked at it speculatively.

Matthew said: “Better be careful.”

There was no sound from the interior. No sound, no movement.

Clifford abruptly strode forward, indicating that the other two should stay where they were. He went up to the jagged opening where the nose had been blown off.

They saw him peer in. Then he stepped cautiously over the raw edges of torn metal, and disappeared from their sight inside the remains of the hull.

CHAPTER THREE

Light fell obliquely through holes and shattered ports. Clifford picked his way over a tangle of wiring and metal fragments. In the comer he saw a torn heap of something that was not metallic—something that might once have been a living being.

The horrors of the morning's investigation had hardened him. He looked down with no more than a slight, involuntary contraction of his throat at the pulped flesh. Whatever it had once been, it was nothing human: it was an alien, unrecognisable creature.

He turned away and was about to open the door that hung loosely across the corridor when he heard a faint scratching noise.

Clifford stood quite still.

It came again, faint but unmistakable.

He moved cautiously along the wall and reached silently towards the door. Then he kicked it open and went through.

Below a control panel that formed the whole of one wall lay something that was alive—just alive.

It scrabbled long, fine claws against the floor, and made a guttural noise that might have been a word or a groan of pain.

It was a creature that did not seem to belong to the order of vertebrates as men knew it. There was a slackness about its whole bulky body that reminded Clifford of some reptile—only the body was grey and possessed none of the beautiful flickering colours of the Elysian reptiles. The head was flattened and marked out with a pattern of scaly flaps that might have been eyes or other sensory organs. Incongruously, the mouth might have been a human mouth, though it was thicker and more fleshy than any human mouth had ever been.

Clifford bent over the creature. The weak throbbing and twisting of its body testified to its agony. Even with the memory of the destroyed town fresh in his mind, he instinctively sought for some way to alleviate this being's pain.

But before he could even begin to think of what could be done, the creature spoke. It spoke to him in his own language. It said in a thick slurring voice:

“Earthman.... Go away. Do not touch me. I wish to die unpolluted.”

Clifford stood up, dumbfounded. His first impulse was to fire questions, to demand why such a murderous attack had been made on the towns of Elysium. Before he could speak, the creature thrust itself up into an ungainly mound, struggling to rise to its strangely flexing legs.

“I die hating you,” it mouthed. “We did well before you struck us. We destroyed nobly, and it is good. Conquerors, exploiters...your day has come.”

“Now, hold it a minute,” said Clifford. “I want to know what—”

The voice rose to a scream. “Hatred of your people is a sacred duty, and we of this ship have done our duty. The day of reckoning is here. You shall be wiped from the universe.”

The effort had been too much. It slumped down and did not move again.

There were other voices—familiar, reassuring voices—calling Clifford's name. The two men outside were getting worried. He went further along the corridor and found the airlock door, pulled away from its mountings. He opened it, and Matthew and Bellhouse climbed in.

Clifford led them into what was obviously the control cabin, and showed them the dead mass on the floor. He repeated what he had heard.

“There must be some others aboard. Perhaps one or two were quite blotted out when the nose was hit, but there must be some in the stern of the ship.”

Warily, they explored the rest of the small craft. They found six more bodies. Bellhouse shuddered.

“Hideous things. They're not natural.”

Matthew chuckled. “There are stranger things than that in the universe. Actually, this is a life-form that I've seen once or twice—or variations of it, that is.” He frowned thoughtfully. “These creatures remind me of something. I believe there were such beings on one of the outer worlds. They were friendly when we arrived. We left a fairly large group of our people there to establish good relations, so that trade possibilities could be opened up when a good regular service had been established with Earth. They were friendly,” he repeated.

“They certainly aren't friendly any longer,” said Clifford. “Come on, let's see what we can find out about the ship itself. The controls and the drive chambers don't seem to have suffered too badly. We might find out something useful.”

Bellhouse said: “It's very doubtful if we can follow the workings of an alien mind. Their engines and indicators won't mean a thing to us.”

“Perhaps not, but there's no harm in trying to sort out a few loose ends.”

He examined the dials on the control panel, and then looked down at a chart on the slanting panel at which two pilots obviously sat.

“If only we knew what this meant.”

“I once had a head for figures,” said Matthew self-consciously. “Surely we can find some relation between their figures and our own. Mathematics can't vary.”

“I'm not sure that I believe in mathematical absolutes,” said Clifford, “but I'm willing to make the effort.”

They were in a way, thought Matthew, complementary: Clifford had an urge to know, to pull things to pieces, to drag the truth forcibly out of things; he himself had lived too long to be impatient—he saw things in perspective, set them in their places, and worked methodically.

They worked in the ship until the late afternoon, Bellhouse spending most of his time in the cramped engine-room, the other two comparing charts and trying to make sense of the characters on the displays. When they decided to call it a day, they had reached certain conclusions—conclusions that made them shake their heads incredulously. Bellhouse, coming in from the engine-room, said:

“It's queer. I can't make out what all that stuff in there is supposed to do, and yet I can guess what a lot of the components are for.”

Matthew and Clifford exchanged glances.

“You mean that the—er—well, what you might call basic elements are the same as our own?” asked Clifford.

“Something like that. They must have a different way of making the ship move from what we have, but the machinery isn't at all strange.”

Clifford nodded. “It's more or less the same is here,” he said. “The symbols aren't the same as ours, but it's only a matter of mathematical transposition. These displays are easy to read, though of course we don't know the actual value of the quantities represented: we only know—and recognise—the proportions, the relation of one symbol to another. There's even a clock here: and I'm willing to swear it's based on the same principles as our own clocks.”

Matthew hastened to agree. “After seeing the linear clocks of Antares and some of the weird devices used by other races,” he said, “it hits you in the eye when you come across a clock that looks like a clock.”

“What it amounts to,” murmured Clifford, “is that these creatures started from the same basic suppositions as the builders of our own space ship—of our own civilisation, even. It's not just that they worked away at a problem and came to the same conclusion; they started out the same. There's a family likeness in everything here that can't be mistaken. Everything fits into our own scheme of knowledge. And that dying creature spoke to me in our own language. It's as though he were a member of a race that had been educated by Earthmen, taught to cope with things as Earthmen cope with them. This race may have learned its groundwork from Earthmen, just as a musical genius-to-be learns his basic theory from a teacher; and then they've developed these techniques further—”

“And then,” Matthew continued, “they've turned against their benefactors.”

“If they were benefactors,” said Clifford.

“What are you getting at?”

“I don't know. It was a thought that came into my head. I'm not really sure,” he frankly laughed, “that I know what I mean. I was just groping.”

They looked at the array of displays on the control panel as though expecting them to surrender their meaning at once.

Clifford went on: “But what's so impossible is that if these figures we've worked out mean anything at all—and they tally in every way—this ship travels at a speed that...that...well,” he waved his right hand vaguely, “we've never believed in such a thing.”

Matthew said: “It's no good pretending we're not sure. We're quite certain. These figures can't lie. We've worked out the relationship between the clock symbols, those four displays above the scanner, and this heap of charts, and we know we've worked it out right. And if these figures mean what we think they mean—what we're damned sure they mean—then a ship powered by these engines could reach Earth in twenty-five years.”

Bellhouse shook his head dazedly. He said: “But that means—”

“It means,” said Matthew, “that if we could transfer the engines to our own ship, or adapt them for our own use, everyone on board could reach Earth alive. Not just myself, and not the descendants of the original crew, but all those who actually embark!”

They went out into the open air and looked up at the stars that were already bright in the first haze of twilight.

Clifford said: “We don't know how those engines work. We don't know how seriously damaged they are. We don't know if they will work in a larger ship such as ours. But by heaven, we're going to find out. I want to see Earth and find out what has been happening. The prospect of seeing Earth itself was only a dream, but now it's a possibility. And by the time we've finished it will be a probability!”

* * * *

They worked for three months on exasperating preparations that had to be made before the real work could be tackled. Men whose work would have been welcomed full-time on the mechanical side had to spend a certain amount of time on the land, maintaining food supplies for present requirements and preparing concentrates for the journey. Most of the food would of course be grown on board by the shallow culture method, providing concentrates in sufficient quantity to feed the crew effectively. Someone had to make experiments with this technique, as none of those at present available were experts on such matters.

Fortunately, at the end of the first month, an experienced biologist appeared. He came trudging into sight across the plain in company with four others—survivors of Decelonia, the town beyond Martinstown.

“We heard your signals and questions on the day of the attack,” he told Matthew and Clifford, “but after that the building was destroyed, and we had no way of getting in touch with you.”

He and his companions had come through Martinstown and found no one left alive there. But from the hills they had seen the shattered enemy ship, and signs of activity in the distance, and they had come on full of hope.

“Must have been different ships that attacked you,” said Clifford after a comparison of times on that fateful day had been made. “Mm. They were certainly out to finish us off.”

The biologist gladly set to work to develop the shallow culture beds. Three of the women who had come with him began to make clothing. “We shall wear as little as possible on board ship,” Matthew explained. “You'll find it gets intolerably hot inside the ship, even though space itself is icy cold. But the climates of other planets are nothing like Elysium. We must have plenty of adequate clothing stowed away, ready for when we need it.” And so the various tasks were allotted to eager helpers. Setting off into space was not merely a matter of building a suitable engine into a ship, and then launching it: food and clothing, air purification plant and the manufacture of oxygen in conjunction with the food culture shelves were all prime essentials.

Innumerable frustrating difficulties were encountered. A prosperous industrial civilisation had first conceived and built the spaceship that had left Earth for the stars. A pastoral civilisation whose members had nearly all been blotted out in a ruthless attack was now trying to make that ship spaceworthy again, and it was not an easy task. The months rolled by. The furnaces in the old factories on the far side of the town had to be brought into use, and their inefficiencies rectified.

Clifford and Bellhouse spent weeks tracing the convolutions of the drive mechanism in the enemy ship. They evolved a theory, experimented, and nearly blew out the side of the main building. But they insisted that they were on the right track, and went on until they were satisfied.

Matthew found it hard now to control his impatience. Despite all the setbacks, his dream of going home was nearer realisation than it had ever been before; but that only had the effect of making him more and more irritable. How long would these wearisome constructional jobs take? How long before they soared up into space and turned towards Earth?

There were other problems to be dealt with, too. Human problems.

Most of those preparing for the flight into space had been enthusiasts from the start. The nucleus of the group was formed of men and women whose imaginations had been excited by Matthew's hopes and by the stories he told, and now that their homes had been destroyed they had an additional reason for no longer staying on this planet. Added to that, the promise of getting to Earth in twenty-five years was a real incentive.

But there were one or two people who were not too happy about the voyage. Two young men and a middle-aged woman who had come from Decelonia were particularly hostile.

“Why should we slave to go out and spend the better part of our lives cooped up in a spaceship?” they demanded. “Better to stay here. We can live simply, and slowly rebuild a town here.”

“A hundred years from now,” grumbled the woman, “there could be a thriving town here again—or at the very least a village—instead of nothing at all. If we set off in this ship, we may all be killed, and there will be nothing left on Elysium but ruins. But if we stay, in a few hundred years there will be happiness and life here again—”

“And in a few hundred years,” said Clifford, “that planet will come swimming back along its orbit, and the destroying ships may come again. They may come along before then, because new drives will have been perfected—and new weapons of destruction.”