Edmund Cooper: Seahorse in the Sky

Tore Norstedt was busy making a crude spark transmitter out of bits and pieces and a coil of insulated copper wire that he had discovered in one of the workshops. The spark transmitter would serve two useful functions. If the exploration party took transistor radios with them, it would enable one—way radio contact to be maintained. And there was also the possibility that it could be used to establish contact with those who were responsible for their situation or with any other group of human beings in a similar predicament.

At dawn the following day, all was ready; and everyone turned out to wish the ‘deep’ exploration party good luck. Tore Norstedt had his spark transmitter working and had devised a simple telegraph key.

He had already tested transmission, and was confident that he could make signals effectively for at least forty kilometres, using the hotel’s supply of electricity converted into rippling direct current.

The only trouble was that no one in the exploration party could read Morse code. And as Norstedt could not use his spark transmitter for the delivery of plain language, a very simple system of signals had to be devised. SOS meant return with all speed. O.K. meant proceed as planned. Transmissions would take place every hour on the hour.

Grahame was disappointed that there was not the possibility of two-way transmission. But, as Tore Norstedt pointed out, to make a portable spark transmitter with the equipment available would take quite a lot of time and testing.

On the whole, the expedition was reasonably well equipped. They had homemade spears, knives, hatchets, two bows and a dozen arrows. They had a tent and packaged rations. And they had a compass, binoculars and a camera.

Nevertheless, Grahame waved them off with a heavy heart. The previous party had not gone far before two of them discovered what looked like fairies and a knight. This expedition was journeying several times further into the interior. He did not really care to contemplate what news they might bring back—if, indeed, they managed to get back. His fears were not unfounded.

At dusk the following day, the party returned. Or, rather, three of them returned.

Gunnar Rudefors, who had been leading the group on the last leg of the journey, had fallen into a concealed pit. He had been impaled on sharpened stakes.

RUSSELL GRAHAME SAT on his bed in his own room late at night, brooding upon the deaths of two of his companions in three days. He had brought a half bottle of whisky up with him and was proceeding to demolish it systematically. Solitary drinking had never appealed to him before. It did not appeal to him now.

He was leaning on the whisky as a man with a broken leg might lean on a crutch.

At the rate he had been drinking it during the last few days, he told himself, he stood a fair chance of breaking all speed records for becoming an alcoholic. It was a good job the invisible replenishers kept topping up supplies. Though how they did it was a complete mystery. He had arranged for a night watch to be kept on the supermarket, but no one had detected any visitation. Yet, every morning, whatever had been taken out on the previous day was restored. It was a hell of a mystery. But then what was one bloody mystery among so many?

He felt desperately lonely. There were obvious reasons for that. Perhaps it would not have been so bad, though, if he had not been so damned egotistically public-spirited as to accept leadership and with it the concomitant of responsibility. People looked at him and asked him things as if he was supposed to know all the bleeding answers.

Hell, he didn’t even know the right questions. A fine leader indeed!

He poured himself some more whisky.

Because he had accepted responsibility, he felt the loss of the British girl and the young Swede all the more keenly.

Salud, Marina! Salud, Gunnar! May your bones and spirits rest in peace on this alien world far from the green fields of Earth…

He tried to concentrate on the information that the survivors of the second expedition had brought back with them. It was more alarming even than the minority reports from the first expedition. For on the second journey, everyone agreed on what they had seen. And they had brought back instant photographs to prove it.

Apart from Gunnar’s death, the most disquieting event on the second expedition had been the discovery of other human beings—the People of the River, as they were now being called.

Simone, the young French artist, had been the first to spot them. They might easily have been missed, because the party was about twenty kilometres from ‘home’ and travelling on a course roughly parallel with the river, which was about two kilometres from them. Simone had chased after what she believed to be a large and gorgeous butterfly which she had evidently surprised as the party was travelling through heavily wooded country. The butterfly seemed to be moving rather slowly—almost, she suggested later, as if it were trying to lead her.

Perhaps it was. The party was already near the edge of the patch of forest, and the pursuit of the butterfly took her out into open country on a small rise, where she could look down slightly on the river. She promptly lost the butterfly. But, luckily, she was carrying the binoculars. Idly she used them to look at the river. What at first appeared to be a rough bridge turned out not to be a bridge when she focused carefully.

Or, rather, it was a bridge of rough huts built upon piles. Smoke was coming through roof holes. The occupants of the huts were evidently at home.

Sensibly, the exploration party approached the small colony of river dwellings very cautiously indeed. They did not go nearer than half a kilometre, and they conducted their investigation with the aid of the binoculars.

The river people—and there were several of them on the near bank—looked rough and shaggy and seemed to be clothed in animal skins. They looked for all the world, said John Howard, like refugees from the Stone Age. They had axes and clubs, apparently with stone heads, and spears with stone blades. They also had what seemed to be hollowed log canoes.

Wisely, John Howard decided not to investigate more closely—in case of accidents. He thought it was more important to bring the information they had already discovered back to base. However, he spent some time studying not only the People of the River with his binoculars but also the surrounding terrain. In the distance, on the far side of the river, he found what he could only describe as a high, unmoving wall of fog or mist. It seemed to be five or six kilometres away, and he judged that it must be at least a couple of hundred metres high.

The party retreated to the forest to camp for the night, which they spent with two people watching and two people resting for hourly spells. They heard some rather disturbing sounds of wild animals, but saw nothing. On the following day, it was not until they were no more than seven or eight kilometres from home that Gunnar Rudefors fell into the pit.

It was not a very big pit. But it had been cunningly placed in a barely distinguishable track—perhaps the watering route of some herd creatures—that the party must have been subconsciously following. The sharpened stakes killed him almost instantly. They had been arranged so that they would achieve minimum damage.

Gunnar was doubly unlucky. Unlucky that he was leading at the time and unlucky that he did not notice that the patch of grass ahead of him was curiously brown…

As he mulled over all that had happened since he had stepped out of his coffin and entered the hotel, Russell Grahame was acutely aware of his own inadequacy. Leader, indeed! He was not fit to lead a troop of Boy Scouts.

If he had had any sense, he would have kept people so busy that Marina would have been too tired to contemplate suicide. If he had had any sense, he would not have allowed exploration parties to venture forth until they had trained themselves very carefully. If he had had any sense…