Edmund Cooper - Transit

‘Me,’ said Tom.

‘And me,’ said Avery surprisingly. ‘A double. I’ll pour my own water.’

Barbara raised an eyebrow, then disappeared briefly into the tent.

‘You mentioned the subject of guinea-pigs,’ pursued Avery. ‘Two sets, I believe.’

‘Us and them,’ said Mary. ‘I have a theory.’

‘First define them.’

Barbara had returned with the whisky and plastic tumblers.

‘The Golden people,’ said Mary. ‘Since I’m the only person who’s seen one, I suppose, I’m the only person who believes in them. But somebody must have wrecked Camp One, and I think they did.’

Tom was about to say something, but Avery silenced him. ‘Tell us about the theory,’ he said.

‘Well, there isn’t much,’ went on Mary brightly. ‘I just think there are two sets of guinea-pigs, and we’re one set. Of course, there may be even more for all I know. Maybe we haven’t come across them yet.’

‘You think there is a kind of experiment in progress?’

‘Don’t be pedantic, Richard,’ said Barbara. ‘By this time we know there’s a kind of experiment in progress. Even Tom forgot all about habeas corpus when he spotted two moons in the sky. After all, nobody is going to snatch us across the light-years—or whatever they are —just to give us a tropical rest cure. Besides, think of those bloody eleven-plus questions we had in solitary confinement.’

‘All right, darling, you’ve made your point,’ said Avery with a smile. ‘The question is ’

‘You called me darling! ’ said Barbara.

Tm sorry. Slip of the tongue.’

She smiled. ‘Also, a strategic error. Now I shall expect it at regular intervals.’

He grinned uneasily, and took a drink of whisky. ‘I’ll try to remember Now where the hell was I?’

‘The question is,’ prompted Tom.

‘Ah, yes. The question is: what for?’ '

‘To see how we live,’ suggested Mary.

‘Not good enough,’ objected Tom. ‘If bug-eyed monsters can hop around London without exciting too much general comment, they can bloody well study us in our natural habitat.’

‘That’s so,’ said Avery. ‘But they may not be interested in our natural habitat.’

‘Where does that get us, then?’

‘Here,’ answered Barbara drily. ‘’Neath two tropical moons, and all that jazz.’

‘Stress conditions,’ said Avery seriously. ‘That’s where it gets us. They want to find out how we behave under stress conditions.’

‘Possibly,’ conceded Tom, ‘but so far nobody has dropped by to check our pulse rates or ask us to fill in any questionnaires.’

‘I’ll come to that later,’ retorted Avery. ‘If Mary’s notion is right—and there is no reason to think that it isn’t—and if another group or groups have been dumped in our vicinity—and there’s a bit of evidence to support that one—then the situation gets complicated. Maybe our invisible bug-eyed scientists want to give us a little healthy competition.’

Mary looked searchingly at Tom and Avery. ‘You’ve been holding out on us,’ she said at length. ‘There’s something you know—or that you’ve seen—that you haven’t told us about.’

‘That’s so,’ agreed Avery contritely. ‘There’s something else, too. It happened a little before the camp was wrecked—or possibly while the operation was in progress. I didn’t want to cause any panic by telling you. But I’m steadily coming to the conclusion that that’s a stupid attitude. We aren’t going to get anywhere, I think, unless we all learn to share everything. And now seems to be a good time to begin All right, tell them about this afternoon, Tom.’

Tom told them, succinctly and graphically. When he had finished, there was a brief silence.

Barbara shivered a little and tossed some more wood on to the fire. Sparks like transient glow-worms danced jerkily up into the night air.

‘I’m almost wishing you’d left us in blissful ignorance,’ she said quietly. ‘The way Tom describes it, I’m tempted to believe that those two have walked straight out of a super-race myth.’

‘My point exactly,’ said Tom. ‘The more I think about it, the more sure I am that those jokers didn’t come from Earth.’

‘The mind simply boggles,’ observed Mary wearily. ‘The more you try to sort things out, the more inscrutable the whole situation gets.’

‘Of course,’ said Avery. ‘They may be indigenous.’

‘In what?’ asked Barbara.

‘Indigenous. They may belong here In that case, if we are the intruders, what they did to our camp—if they did it—is at least understandable.’

‘No,’ objected Mary with a curious conviction. ‘This planet is neutral territory. We have all been brought here —us and them, and anyone else there may be.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Avery was intrigued.

Then, with typical feminine para-logic, Mary became vague. ‘Because it fits better. There must be a sort of pattern—oh, I can’t explain it—but something has to be worked out…. And the people who brought us here are watching the process through some kind of celestial keyhole— That’s what I feel. I don’t know if it makes any sense.’

‘It makes sense,’ said Avery soberly. ‘The kind of sense I don’t much care for.’

Barbara turned to him. ‘While we are on the subject of astounding disclosures, I believe you have a small contribution to make.’

Avery smiled. ‘Mine’s a real tall one.’

‘They can’t come any taller than the one we have just had.’

‘Judge for yourself.’ He described the glowing sphere to them, his reactions to it, and the way it had just disappeared with a sound as of breaking splinters of glass, and without leaving any trace of its presence on the sand. But he did not mention his earlier fleeting vision of a land mass across the sea. It did not seem now to have much relevance to their predicament.

‘Stone me!’ exploded Tom, when he had finished. ‘The whole set-up is getting crazier and crazier…. You’re sure it was real?’

‘No, of course I’m not sure,’ retorted Avery. ‘Who can be sure of anything here? But I’d dam well swear to it.’

‘Perhaps it was just a sort of balloon,’ suggested Mary, ‘with a camera or something inside.’

‘Yes,’ said Avery, ‘a balloon with the surface temperature of molten metal, and one that just disappears— camera and all—with a snap, crackle, pop.’

For a time there was silence, with each of them retreating into lonely, frightening and absurd worlds of speculation. Profitless speculation, since the facts themselves were absurd; and therefore the degree of improbability of any possible explanation could only be measured against a background that was itself improbable.

Presently, Avery got tired of trying to solve the insoluble. He got up, went into the supplies tent and came out again with the portable record player and the first record he laid his hands on.

‘Let’s see if we can get any music out of this thing.’

‘Was that yours?’ asked Barbara. ‘Back on Earth, I mean.’

‘No, I had a king-size one. I was—am—very fond of music…. I expect our crystal-packing friends just wanted to keep me happy.’ He gave her a thin smile.

Then he found the key of the record player and wound its motor up. Evidendy the mechanical motor operated some kind of small generator as well as the turntable, because the sound was produced from a tiny loudspeaker.

He put the record on and set the pick-up carefully against its edge. It turned out to be a selection from My , Fair Lady.

For a moment or two everyone listened as if they had never heard such music before.

Then the lyric and the voice of Julie Andrews bravely made their debut on an alien world. All I want is a room somewhere …. The sound, indescribably sweet, the thought, subdy appropriate, hung like a small invisible cloud of magic between the security of the firelight and the brooding ring of darkness that surrounded it.