LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

planetoid the Wilson rested on seemed to exist. It was like being a bone alone in an empty room with a starving dog.

      ‘Gravitation can be felt not only in the muscles but in the thalamus. It is a power of darkness, perhaps the ultimate power.’

      ‘What’s that?’ Malravin asked, startled.

      ‘I was thinking aloud.’ Embarrassed, Sharn added, ‘Bertha will rise in a minute, Ike. Are you ready for it?’

      They stopped by the pathetic cluster of instruments. They just stood there, rooted to the spot with a tension that could not be denied. Bertha had already begun to rise.

      Their eyes were bad judges of what happened next, even with the infra-red screens pulled down over their faceplates. But they partly saw – and partly they felt, for a tidal sensation crawled across their bodies.

      Above the eastern horizon, a section of the star field began to melt and sag. Star after star, cluster after cluster, uncountably stratified and then wavered and ran towards the horizon like ill-applied paint trickling down a wall. As if in sympathy, distortion also seized the bodies of Sharn and Malravin.

      ‘An illusion, an optical illusion,’ Malravin said, raising a hand to the melting lines of stars. ‘Gravity bending light. But I’ve – Eddy, I’ve got something in my suit with me. Let’s get back to the ship.’

      Sharn could not reply. He fought silently with something inside his own suit, something closer to him than his muscles.

      Where the stars flowed, something was lumbering up over the horizon, a great body sure of its strength, rising powerfully from its grave, thrusting up now a shoulder now a torso into the visible. It was Bertha. The two men sank clumsily to their knees.

      Whatever it was, it was gigantic. It occupied about twenty degrees of arc. It climbed above the horizon – but more and more of it kept coming, and it seemed to expand as it came – it rose tall, swallowing the sky as it rose. Its outline indicated that it was spherical, though the outline was not distinct, the wavering bands of starlight rendering it impossible to see properly.

      The sensation in Sharn’s body had changed. He felt lighter now, and more comfortable. The feeling that he was wearing someone else’s body had disappeared. In its place had come an odd lopsidedness. Drained, he could only peer up at the disturbance.

      Whatever it was, it ate the sky. It did not radiate light. Yet what could be seen of it was clearly not seen by reflected light. It darkled in the sky.

      ‘It – emits black light,’ Sharn said. ‘Is it alive, Ike?’

      ‘It’s going to crush us,’ Ike said. He turned to crawl back to the ship, but at that instant the atmosphere hit them.

      Sharn had drawn his gaze away from that awesome monster in space to see what Malravin was doing, so that he saw the atmosphere arrive. He put a claw up to shield his face as it hit.

      The atmosphere came up over the horizon after Bertha. It came in long strands, travelling fast. With it came sound, a whisper that grew to a shriek that shrilled inside their faceplates. At first the vapour was no more than a confusion in the gloom, but as it thickened it became visible as drab grey cloud. There were electrical side effects too; corposants glowed along the ridges of rock about them. The cloud rose rapidly, engulfing them like an intangible sea.

      Sharn found he was on his knees beside Malravin. They both had their headlights on now, and headed for the ship in a rapid shuffle. It was hard going. That lopsided effect spoilt their instinctive placing of their limbs.

      Once they were touching the metal of the Wilson’s airlock, some of the panic left them. Both men stood up, breathing heavily. The level of the greyish gas had risen above their heads. Sharn moved out from under the bulk of the Wilson and looked into the sky. Bertha was still visible through haze.

      It was evident that Erewhon had a rapid rotation speed. The monstrous black disc was already almost at zenith; surrounded by a halo of distorted starglow, it loured over the little ship like a milestone about to fall. Hesitantly, Sharn put up his hand to see if he could touch it.

      Malravin tugged at his arm.

      ‘There’s nothing there,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible. It’s a dream, a figment. It’s the sort of thing you see in a dream. And how do you feel now? Very light now, as in a dream! It’s just a nightmare, and you’ll –’

      ‘You’re talking bloody nonsense, Malravin. You’re trying to escape into madness if you pretend it isn’t there. You wait till it falls down and crushes us all flat into the rock – then you’ll see whether it’s a dream or not!’

      Malravin broke from him and ran to the air lock. He opened the door and climbed in, beckoning to Sharn. Sharn stood where he was, laughing. The other’s absurd notion, so obviously a product of fear, had set Sharn into a high good humour. He did – Malravin was right there – feel much lighter than he had done; it made him light-headed.

      ‘Challenge,’ he said. ‘Challenge and response. The whole history of life can be related in those terms. That must go into the book. Those that do not respond go to the wall.’

      ‘It’s some sort of a nightmare, Eddy! What is that thing up there? It’s no sun! Come in here, for God’s sake!’ Malravin called from the safety of the air lock.

      ‘You fool, this is no dream or I’d be a figment of it, and you know that’s nonsense. You’re losing your head, that’s all.’

      In his contempt for Malravin, he turned his back on the man, and began to stride over the plain. Each stride took him a long floating way. He switched off his intercom, and at once the fellow’s voice was cut out of existence. In the helmet fell a perfect peace.

      He found he was not afraid to look up at the lumbering beast in the sky.

      ‘Put anything into words and it loses that touch of tabu to which fear attaches. That thing is a thing overhead. It may be some sort of a physical body. It may be some sort of a whirlpool operating in space in a way we do not yet understand. It may be an effect in space itself, caused by the stresses in the heart of a nebula. There must be all sorts of unexpected pressures there. So I put the thing into words and it ceases to worry me.’

      He had got only to chapter four in the autobiography he was writing, but he saw that it would be necessary at some point – perhaps at the focal point of the book – to explain what prompted a man to go into deep space, and what sustained him when he got there. This experience on Erewhon was valuable, an intellectual experience as much as anything. It would be something to recall in the years to come – if that beast did not fall and squash him! It was leaping at him, directly overhead.

      Again he was down full length, yelling into the dead microphone. He was too light to nuzzle properly, heavily, deeply, into the ground, and he cried his dismay till the helmet rang with sound.

      He stopped the noise abruptly.

      ‘Got dizzy,’ he told himself. He shut his eyes, squeezing up his face to do so. ‘Don’t relax your control over yourself, Ed. Think of those fools in the ship, how they’d laugh. Remember nothing can hurt a man who has enough resilience.’ He opened his eyes. The next thing would be to get up. He switched on his helmet light

      The ground was moving beneath him. For a while he stared fascinated at it. A light dust of grit and sand crawled over the solid rock at an unhurried but steady pace. He put his metal claw into it, and it piled against the barrier like water against a dam. Must be quite a wind blowing, Sharn told himself. Looking along the ground, he saw the particles trundled slowly towards the west. The west was veiled in the cloud-like atmosphere; into it, the great grinding shape of Big Bertha was sinking at a noticeable rate.

      Now other fears overcame him. He saw Erewhon for what it was, a fragment of rock twirling over and over. He – the ship – the others – they clung to this bit of rock like flies, and – and – no, that was something he couldn’t face, not alone out here. Something else occurred to him. Planetoids as small as Erewhon did not possess

Скачать книгу