Stephen Baxter - Last and First Contacts

Then I saw people. They were naked, tall, slim, upright. They looked more ‘modern’, if that is the right word, than the lumpy-browed Neanderthals we saw on the islands of mastodons, many days ago. Yet their heads receded from their foreheads; their shapely skulls can contain little in the way of grey matter, and their pretty brown eyes held only bewilderment. They fled from our approach like the other animals of the savannah.

Primitive they might be, but it appears they lead the march of the hominids, off to the east. I took more photos.

I have begun to develop a theory about the nature of the world, and the surface of the ocean over which we travel – or rather the geometric continuum in which it seems to be embedded. I think the Pacific is a challenge not merely to the cartographic mind but to the mathematical. (I just read those sentences over – how pompous – once a Girton girl, always a Girton girl!) I’ve yet to talk it over with anybody. Only Wolfgang Ciliax has a hope of understanding me, I think. I prefer to be sure of my ground before I approach him.

Certainly a radical new theory of this ocean of ours is needed. Think of it! Since the coast of Asia we have already travelled far enough to circle the earth nearly five times , if it were not for this oddity, this Fold in the World.

The Pacific is defeating us, I think, crushing our minds with its sheer scale. After only three days on half tuck everybody is grumbling as loudly as their bellies. Yet we go on…

Day 33. It has taken me twenty-four hours to get around to this entry. After the events of yesterday the writing of it seemed futile. Courage, Bliss! However bad things are, one must behave as if they are not so, as my mother, a stoical woman, has always said.

It began when Jack Bovell, for the third day in a row, did not emerge from his cabin. One cannot have uncontrollable drunks at large on an aircraft, not even one as large as this. And no part of the Goering , not even passengers’ cabins, can be off-limits to the god-like surveillance of the Captain. So Wolfgang Ciliax led a party of hefty aircrew to Jack’s cabin. I went along at Ciliax’s request, as the nearest thing to a friend Jack has on this crate.

I watched as the Germans broke down Jack’s door. Jack was drunk, but coherent, and belligerent. He took on the Luftwaffe toughs, and as he was held back Ciliax ordered a thorough search of his cabin – ‘thorough’ meaning the furniture was dismantled and the false ceiling broken into.

The flap that followed moved fast. I have since pieced it together.

The airmen found a small radio transceiver, a compact leather case full of valves and wiring. This, it turned out, had been used by Jack to attract the attention of that rocket-plane as we flew over the Ukraine. So Ciliax’s suspicions were proven correct. I am subtly disappointed in Jack; it seems such an obvious thing to have done. Anyhow, this discovery led to a lot of shouting, and the thugs moved in on Jack. But as they did so he raised his right hand, which held what I thought at first was a grenade, and the thugs backed off.

Ciliax turned to me, his face like a thunderous sky. ‘Talk to this fool or he’ll kill us all.’

Jack huddled in the corner of his smashed-up room, his face bleeding, his gadget in his upraised right hand. ‘Bliss,’ he panted. ‘I’m sorry you got dragged into this.’

‘I was in it from the moment I stepped aboard. If you sober up – Wolfgang could fetch you some coffee—’

‘Adrenaline and a beating-up are great hangover cures.’

‘Then think about what you’re doing. If you set that thing off, whatever it is, do you expect to survive?’

‘I didn’t expect to survive when I called up that Russkie rocket-plane. But it isn’t about me, Bliss. It’s about duty.’

Ciliax sneered. ‘Your President must be desperate if his only way of striking at the Reich is through suicide attacks.’

‘This has nothing to do with Truman or his administration,’ Jack said. ‘If he’s ever challenged about it he’ll deny any knowledge of this, and he’ll be telling the truth.’

Ciliax wasn’t impressed. ‘Plausible deniability. I thought that was an SS invention.’

‘Tell me why, Jack,’ I pressed him.

He eyed me. ‘Can’t you see it? Ciliax said it himself. It’s all about global strategies, Bliss. If the Pacific crossing is completed the Germans will be able to strike at us. And that’s what I’ve got to put a stop to.’

‘But there will be other Goerings ,’ Ciliax said.

‘Yeah, but at least I’ll buy some time, if it ends here – if nobody knows – if the Mystery remains, a little longer. Somebody has to take down this damn Beast. A rocket-plane didn’t do it. But I’m Jonah, swallowed by the whale.’ He laughed, and I saw he was still drunk after all.

I yelled, ‘Jack, no!’ In the same instant half the German toughs fell on him, and the other half, including Ciliax, crowded out of the room.

I had been expecting an explosion in the cabin. I cowered. But there was only a distant crump , like far-off thunder. The deck, subtly, began to pitch …

Day 34.We aren’t dead yet.

The picture has become clearer. Jack sabotaged the Goering ’s main control links; the switch he held was a radio trigger. But it didn’t quite work; we didn’t pitch into the sea. The technicians bodged up a fix to stabilise our attitude, and even keep us on our course, heading ever east. This whale of the sky still swims through her element. But the crew can’t tell yet if she remains dirigible – if we will ever be able to fly her home again.

Six people died, some crewmen on the flight deck, a couple of technicians wrestling with repairs outside. And Jack, of course. Already beaten half to death, he was presented to a summary court presided over by the Captain. Then Fassbender gave him to the crew. They hung him up in the hold, then while he still lived cut him down, and pitched him into the sea.

I don’t know what Ciliax made of all this. He said these common airmen lacked the inventiveness of the SS, to whom he was under pressure to hand over Jack. Ciliax has a core of human decency, I think.

So we fly on. The engineers toil in shifts on the Goering ’s shattered innards. I have more faith in engineers than in gods or gargoyles, priests or politicians. But I no longer believe I will ever see England again. There. I’ve written it down, so it must be true. I wonder what strange creatures of the sea will feast on Jack’s flesh …

Day 50.Another round number, another pointless milestone.

I estimate we have travelled a distance that would span from the earth to the moon. Think of that! Perhaps in another universe the German genius for technology would have taken humans on just such an epic voyage, rather than this pointless slog.

We continue to pass over island groups and chains. On one island yesterday, covered by a crude-looking jungle of immense feathery ferns, I saw very exotic animals running in herds, or peering with suspicion at our passage. Think of flightless birds, muscular and upright and with an avian nerviness; and think of a crocodile’s massive reptilian patience; combine the two, and you have what I saw.

How did the dinosaurs die? Was it an immense volcanic episode, a comet or other fire from the sky, a deadly plague, some inherent weakness of the reptilian race? Whatever it was, it seems that no matter how dramatic the disaster that seeks to wipe you out, there is always room to run. Perhaps on this peculiar folded-up earth of ours there is no species that has ever gone extinct. What a marvellous thought!

But if they were dinosaurs, down on that island, we will never know. The plane no longer stops to orbit, for it cannot; the chariots no longer fly down to investigate thunder lizards. And we plough on ever east, ever further over the ocean, ever deeper into a past even beyond the dinosaurs.