Ivan Yefremov: The Heart of the Serpent

Moot Ang was not looking at the screen when it happened, but the sudden tension of his comrades told him at once that their vigil had not been in vain. The point of light flashed across the screen, and the sound signal was over almost as soon as it had begun. The astronauts sprang up and leaned forward over the control panel in an instinctive effort to obtain a better view of the locator screen. But as brief as the fleck had been, it had told its story. The other ship had turned back to meet them. This meant it was manned by creatures no less versed in the art of space navigation than themselves; they had worked out the bearings of the two ships with sufficient accuracy and now were searching for the Tellur with their locator. The imagination reeled at the thought of the two minute particles lost in the vastness of space searching for each other — two grains of dust that at the same time were two enormous worlds full of energy and knowledge probing for each other with directed beams of light waves. Kari moved the main beam control from 1488 to 375, then further down the scale. The point of light returned, vanished, reappeared, accompanied by a sound signal that died in a fraction of a second.

Moot Ang gripped the locator verniers and described a spiral from the periphery to the centre of a gigantic circle in the quarter where the signals originated.

The oncoming ship evidently did the same, for after a great deal of groping the spot of light settled firmly within the limits of the third circle of the black screen, vacillating only as much as might be due to the vibration of the two ships. The sound signal was constant now, and it had to be cut off. There was no doubt that the signals of the Tellur had been received by the strangers. The two ships were now approaching each other at a rate of no less than 400,000 kilometres per hour.

Tey Eron read the computer calculations. The ships were now about three million kilometres apart. At the present speed they would meet in seven hours. Integral braking action could be started in an hour; this would delay the meeting a few more hours, provided the oncoming ship did the same and decelerated at a like rate. It might be able to stop sooner than the Tellur, but on the other hand they might pass each other again and this would cause a further delay; the astronauts hoped this would not happen, for to wait any longer seemed unbearable.

The oncoming ship did not hold things up. It cut speed faster than the Tellur and then, having established the lat-ter’s rate of deceleration, settled down to an equal pace. The ships were now closing in. The crew of the Tellur again gathered in the central control room and all eyes were glued to the pin-point of light on the locator screen spread out into a luminous blotch. This was the beam of the Tellur reflected back from the other ship. Gradually the blotch took the shape of a tiny cylinder girdled with a thicker ring in the middle. The other ship bore no resemblance whatever to the Tellur. At closer range cupola-shaped bulges could be discerned at both ends of the cylinder.

The glowing contours of the ship spread out until they filled the entire diameter of the screen.

“Attention all! All hands to their stations! Final deceleration at 8 g!”

Blood rushed to the eyes and sticky sweat rose on faces as bodies developed a leaden weight pressing down on the hydraulic shock-absorbers of the crew’s soft padded seats. At last the Tellur hung motionless in the icy darkness of space where there is no above or below, right or left, one hundred and two parsecs from its home star, the yellow Sun.

As soon as they had recovered from the deceleration the astronauts switched on the direct-view scanners and the ship’s powerful illuminator. But they saw only a bright fog forward and to port. The illuminator went out, and at once a strong blue light completely blinded the men peering at the scanners.

“Polarizer at thirty-five degrees. Light filter!” ordered Moot Ang.

“At a wave-length of 620?” asked Tey Eron.

“Right.”

The blue glow was gone. Instead, a powerful orange flood of light cut into the blackness, swung over, caught a corner of something solid and finally spread over the whole of the strange ship.

It was now only a few kilometres away. This did credit to the skill of the pilots of both ships. But the distance was still too great to determine the exact size of the stranger. Suddenly a thick orange ray shot upward from the ship; its wave-length was the same as that of the light of the Tellur. Then the finger of light disappeared only to shoot up again and remain vertical.

Moot Ang passed his hand over his forehead as he always did in moments of intense concentration.

“That must mean something,” Tey Eron said cautiously.

“I’m sure it does. I believe they are signalling us to stand still while they come up alongside. Let’s try answering.”

The Tellur switched off its projector, then on again with a wave-length of 430. The blue beam swept aft. The orange light on the other ship died at once.

The astronauts waited, breathless with tension. The ship lying abeam was now clearly visible. Roughly its shape was that of a cylinder with a cone, base outward, at each end. The base of one of the cones, evidently the forward one, was covered with a dome-shaped nosepiece, while aft there was a wide funnel-like opening. Amidships was a thick band of uncertain outline which emanated a faint glow. Through it the contours of the cylindrical part of the hull could be seen. Suddenly the band grew dense and opaque and began spinning around like the wheel of a turbine. The ship grew bigger and in three or four seconds filled the entire range of vision of the scanners. It clearly was bigger than the Tellur.

“Afra, Yas and Kari, I want you on the observation platform with me,” Moot Ang said. “Tey, you will remain at the controls. Switch on the planetary illuminator and the port landing lights.”

In the airlock the four quickly got into space suits which were used for exploring planets and for emerging from the ship in outer space wherever there was no danger from stellar radiation.

Moot Ang inspected the gear of his three companions, quickly checked up on his own, and threw in the air-pump switch. In a moment the airlock was a vacuum. When the pressure-gauge indicator reached green he flipped over three levers one after the other. In response, several layers of sliding panels slid aside noiselessly, a round hatch opened overhead, and a hydraulic lift went into action. Slowly the floor of the airlock rose until the four astronauts were standing four metres above the nose of the Tellur on the round upper observation platform.

In the belt of blue lights the strange space ship was pure white. It gleamed with the dazzling brilliance of mountain snow, unlike the Tellur whose outer armour of metal polished to a mirror-like sheen was designed to reflect all types of cosmic radiation. Only the central ring-like structure of the mystery ship continued to glow faintly.

Its huge bulk had drawn noticeably closer to the Tellur. Far from other gravitational fields, the two ships attracted each other, which was proof that the ship from the unknown world was not made of anti-matter. The Tellur extended its port landing struts. These were a structure of telescoping tubes tipped with cushions of a resilient plastic covered with a protective layer designed to safeguard the ship against possible contact with anti-matter. In the meantime a black gash that looked like a sneering mouth appeared on the nose of the other ship and a retractable balcony with a barrier of thin uprights all around emerged from it. Something white moved in the dark opening, then five figures stepped out on the platform. Afra caught her breath sharply. The figures were all white and of extraordinary proportions, roughly of the same height as people on Earth, but far greater in girth, and with a ridge of humps down their backs. Instead of spherical transparent space helmets they wore something like large sea-shells with a fan-shaped fringe of spines in front under which there was the dull gleam of black glass.