Stanislaw Lem - The Invincible

All of a sudden something horrendous happened. Either the pilot of the machine imprisoned by the cloud lost his head, or some catastrophe occurred aboard the aircraft — in any event, a bolt of lightning coursed through the black simmering mass, a blinding light marked the spot where the lightning had hit, and long swaths of the cloud that had been ripped apart by the explosion scattered rapidly in all directions. The shock wave was so violent that the whole picture began to oscillate, echoing the same crazy dance that the KU-8 performed as it was tossed about by the turbulence of the atmosphere. Then the screen was filled again by the black mass which grew denser and denser. Only black could be seen, nothing else.

“Ready the antiprotons! Full force ahead! Aim at the cloud! Nonstop bombardment!”

The pilot repeated the order. The technicians observed the side screen on which everything was visible that happened behind the machine. All of a sudden one of the technicians yelled: “Watch out, KU-8! Climb! Higher! Climb, keep climbing!”

A huge black whirling cloud came racing like a hurricane from the vacant air space in the west. A moment earlier the black tornado had still been part of the immense cloud bank. Now it became separated and rose vertically, whirling rapidly, dragging offshoots behind that soon split off due to the violent motion. The pilot noticed this phenomenon a fraction of a second before the warning call rang out. He pulled the machine upward in steep ascent. But the cloud pursued him, spewing black columns up into the sky. He attacked them systematically, shooting at one after the other. He made a frontal hit and one of the black clusters nearby started to divide and became darker. Suddenly the whole image began to shake.

As soon as part of the cloud bank reached the region of the radio waves, making radio communication from plane to ground increasingly difficult, the pilot apparently used the antimatter mortar for the first time. Abruptly the planet’s atmosphere changed into one immense sea of fire. The purple afterglow of the sunset vanished instantly. For several seconds the television observers in the command center could still perceive the cloud through the jagged horizontal pattern on the screen. Out of the cloud rose smoke columns that quickly oozed away, their color fading to a grayish white. Now a second explosion, far more terrible than the first, poured cascades of fire over the rocky chaos that had been almost enveloped by gases, haze and smoke. This was the last picture that was transmitted, for one second later the screen was filled with sparks and arcs of electrical discharges, and then vanished altogether. Only the empty, brightly lit screen glimmered in the darkened command center, illuminating the deathly pale faces of the assembled men.

Horpach ordered the radio crew to keep calling both machines. Then he went to the adjoining navigation cabin together with Rohan, Jazon and several others.

“What is the nature of this cloud? What is your opinion?” he asked without any introductory remarks.

“It is made up of tiny metal particles. A remote-controlled emulsion, as it were, with uniform center,” answered Jazon.

“Gaarb?”

“I am of the same opinion.”

“Any suggestions? None? All the better. Which supercopter is in better shape, ours or the one from the Condor?” Horpach demanded of the chief engineer.

“Both are in perfect condition, astrogator. But I would prefer ours.”

“Excellent. Rohan, if I’m not mistaken you once expressed the desire to work outside the protective dome. Well, here’s your chance. You’ll get eighteen men, take along double the usual complement of automatic arms, vibration arc lasers and antiprotons. Anything else you could use?”

Nobody replied.

“All right, then. So far we haven’t invented anything more powerful than the antimatter. You’ll start at 4:31 A.M. Sunrise. Proceed in a northeasterly direction and try to find the crater that Regnar mentioned in his last report. Shoot at everything on your way out there, but keep at a safe distance. Don’t waste any time waiting around or experimenting. And don’t spare the ammunition. If you lose contact with our base here, just carry on. As soon as you’ve located the crater, proceed to land, but be careful not to lower on to our men there. I suppose they’re somewhere around there — ” He pointed at the map of Regis III that covered an entire wall. “Over in this area, cross-hatched in red. It’s just a rough guess, but that’s all we have so far.”

“What do we do after touchdown, astrogator? Shall I search for the men?”

“I leave that up to you. Use your own judgment. Rut please remember not to shoot at anything within a radius of thirty miles, because our men might be somewhere in there.”

“How about ground targets?”

“None whatsoever. Up to this point here” — the astrogator outlined the area with a sweeping motion of his hand — ”you may deploy your annihilation weapons aggressively. Rut beyond this line you’re to defend your selves only with your force field. Jazon, what is the limit for the field of such a supercopter?”

“Several million atmospheres per square inch.”

“ ‘Several million.’ What’s that supposed to mean? I asked you how many? Five million? Twenty million?”

Horpach’s voice sounded very quiet; but the effect of this studied calm was to strike chill in the hearts of the Invincible crew.

Jazon cleared his throat. “The field has been tested with twelve and a half.”

“That sounds much better. Did you get that, Rohan? Whenever this cloud bank reaches this limit of your force field, you get the hell out of there. Climb up, that would be the best escape route. Well, of course it’s impossible to predict everything that might happen…” He looked at his watch. “Eight hours after you leave here I’ll have you called over every wave length. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try to establish communication via satellites or direct optical contact. We’ll send laser signals using Morse code. That’s always worked up to now; at least I’ve never heard anything to the contrary. But just in case the laser beam signals should fail to get the message to you, wait another three hours and then start back to the base. If I’m not there — ”

“Do you plan to take off?”

“Don’t interrupt me, Rohan! No, I don’t plan to, but things don’t entirely depend on us. If we’re gone, you’re to go into orbit around the planet. Have you ever done that with a supercopter?”

“Yes, twice, in the delta of the Lyre constellation.”

“Fine. Then you’re aware that it’s somewhat complicated, but not impossible. Your orbit must be stationary. Stroem will give you the exact data before you start. Once in orbit, you will wait for me for thirty-six hours. If I haven’t reached you by then, you’ll simply return to the surface of Regis III and land near the Condor. Try to get it in shape to take off from here. I know what this advice sounds like, but you’ll have no alternative. Once you’ve engineered this miracle, report back to Earth with the Condor. Any questions?”

“Yes. May I establish contact with these… with this center that directs the cloud, if I should succeed in locating it?”

“I’ll leave that up to you also. But make sure that the risk remains within the limits of reason. Of course, I am totally ignorant, but I don’t think you’ll find any master brain on the surface of Regis III. If a center even exists.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We’ve been scanning the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. If anyone were steering this cloud with the help of rays, our instruments would have registered the corresponding signals.”