Stanislaw Lem: The Invincible

The gigantic area that stretched endlessly out before him seemed totally devoid of life, as if no living being had ever set foot on it. Could this be the same planet that had devoured a spaceship as immense as their own? A heavy cruiser with a crew of one hundred men, a mighty experienced sailor of the void, capable of developing energies of several million kilowatts within the fraction of a second which could be transformed into protective screens impenetrable by any matter; energies which might be bunched into destructive rays with the soaring temperatures of a burning star, that would change mountain ranges to dust and ashes, or dry out entire oceans. Yet the Condor had disappeared from this very same planet without a trace. How was it possible to explain the fact that a huge steel structure, built on earth, the fruit of a highly developed technology that had already flourished for centuries, could simply vanish in this red and gray desert without so much as even sending an SOS?

This is what the whole continent looks like, he thought. He remembered the view from above: crater after crater with their serrated rims. The only noticeable movement came from floating cloud banks that dragged their shadows across the endless desert dunes.

“Any radioactivity?” he asked without turning around.

“Zero, zero, two,” replied Jordan while slowly getting off his knees. His face looked flushed, his eyes shiny. The mask distorted his voice.

That’s negligible, Rohan thought. That couldn’t have done anything to the Condor’s crew. Besides, they’d know better than to commit any gross negligence. Even if they hadn’t carried out the routine stereotype examination, the automatic controls would have sounded the alarm.

“Atmosphere?”

“Nitrogen seventy-eight per cent, argon two per cent, carbon dioxide zero, methane four per cent, the rest is oxygen.”

“Oxygen sixteen per cent? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Any radioactivity in the air?”

“Practically none.”

That much oxygen. Strange. Rohan was surprised. He stepped over to the robot who held out a cassette containing all the figures for Rohan’s inspection.

Maybe they tried to go without oxygen tanks. He dismissed the thought as absurd. Occasionally a crew member would take off his mask against orders and die of poisoning. Maybe one or two men, but no more than that.

“Are you through with everything?” he wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Then get back to the ship.”

“How about you, Navigator?”

“I’ll stay a while longer. Just go back now, all of you!” He grew impatient in his desire to be alone. Blank swung the strap over his shoulder. The strap held all the containers together that now dangled down his back. Jordan handed the probe to the robot. The men waded clumsily through the deep sand, the Arctane waddling behind them like a man in disguise.

Rohan walked some distance until he could see the broad openings of the energy-field emitters sticking out of the sand. In a sudden surge of childish mischief he grabbed a handful of sand and threw it against the spot where the invisible wall was supposed to be. Not that he needed any confirmation; he just obeyed a playful impulse. The sand arched through the air, then trickled down in a straight line as if it had hit an invisible glass vault. Rohan’s fingers were itching to tear off his mask.. How well he knew that sensation: spit out the plasti-mouthpiece, jerk loose the safety straps, then pump his chest full of air, sucking it deeply into his lungs…

I’m getting emotional, he thought, as he slowly made his way back to the ship. The elevator was waiting for him, empty, the platform nestled softly in the sand. Within a few minutes the wind had already deposited a fine layer of dust upon the entire structure.

In the main corridor of the fifth deck he glanced at the information panel. The commander was in the forward cabin. He made his way up there.

“To sum it up, it’s quite idyllic out there,” was Horpach’s comment after listening to the navigator’s report. “No radioactivity, no spores, fungi, viruses… nothing except this oxygen. Be sure you have some cultures made of those samples.”

“That’s already being taken care of in the lab. Perhaps life has developed on some other continent of this planet.” Rohan’s voice lacked conviction.

“I’d rather doubt that. Not too much solar irradiation beyond the equatorial zone. Didn’t you notice how thick the polar icecaps seemed to be? They must be some five to six miles deep. More likely we’d find life in the ocean. Maybe some algae or seaweeds. I wonder why no living forms ever left the water and adapted to dry land?”

“We’ll have to take a closer look at that ocean,” said Rohan.

“It’s too soon to ask our people for definite data; but the planet seems to be quite old. It must have been around for a good billion years. Even the sun must once have seen better days. Lost all its lustre. It’s almost a red dwarf star. Puzzling that there is no life on land. Perhaps some special evolutionary characteristic that cannot exist outside of water… that would explain the presence of oxygen, but not the mysterious disappearance of the Condor.”

“Maybe there are aquatic life forms down on the ocean bed, some kind of hidden civilization at the bottom of the sea,” ventured Rohan.

The two men examined a huge map of the planet. It had been drawn in Mercator projection about a century earlier, according to the data obtained by automatic probes. The map was inexact, showing only the outlines of the most important continents and oceans, the approximate extent of the polar caps and the largest craters. A red dot marked their landing site, below the eighth parallel of the northern latitude. Horpach swept aside the map impatiently.

“How can you believe such nonsense!” he snapped at the navigator. “Tressor was just as smart as we are. He would never have capitulated to a bunch of fish from the ocean. Besides, let’s assume any intelligent life had evolved in the sea, it would surely have established a foothold on dry land. They could always have used protective suits filled with ocean water. Rubbish. Total nonsense,” he grumbled, not because Rohan’s suggestion was entirely without any merit. His thoughts had raced ahead to something else.

“We’ll stay here for a while” he concluded. He touched the lower rim of the map, which rolled up with a softly rustling noise, then disappeared on one of the horizontal shelves of the big map case. “We’ll just wait and see.”

“And if nothing happens?” Rohan inquired cautiously. “Won’t we start looking for them?”

“Be reasonable, Rohan! Such a — ” The astrogator tried to find a suitable phrase. But the right word would not come. He replaced it by a disdainful wave of his right hand.

“This planet is as big as Mars. How could we possibly send out search parties for them? How can we hope to find the Condor?”

“The soil does contain a lot of iron,” Rohan admitted reluctantly. An analysis of the soil had indeed shown a considerable admixture of iron oxides, so that ferro-induction values would be useless under these circumstances. Rohan did not know what else to say. He was quite convinced that the Commander would find a solution somehow. After all, they could not return home empty-handed. He gazed at Horpach’s heavy eyebrows with their white bristling hairs, and he waited.

“To be frank with you, I’m not so sure that these forty-eight hours we are supposed to wait will help us in any way; but these are the regulations we have to obey,” suddenly confessed the astrogator. “Sit down, Rohan! You bother my conscience. This Regis III is the most idiotic place in the universe. Sheer idiocy to have sent the Condor here in the first place. I can’t imagine why they did it. But that’s neither here nor there. We just have to face the facts of the situation.”