Ivan Yefremov - Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

The gleaming black of the water gave way to the dull black of land. The crossed rays of the searchlights cut a narrow lane between walls of darkness. Unexpectedly there were patches of colour in this lane, yellow sands and the greyish-green surface of a flat rocky ridge.

Tantra swept across the continent, obedient to the skilled hand of the commander.

At last Erg Noor found the plain he was looking for; it proved to be low-lying country that could not possibly be termed a plateau although it was obvious that the tides and storms of the black sea would not reach it, lying, as it did, some hundred metres above the surrounding country.

The locator on the spaceship’s port bow whistled. Tantra’s searchlights followed the locator beam and the clear outlines of a first class spaceship came into view.

The bow armour, made of an isotope of iridium having a reorganized crystalline structure, shone like new in the rays of the searchlight. There were no temporary structures anywhere near the ship, there were no lights on board — it stood dark and lifeless and did not in any way react to the approach of a sister ship. The searchlight rays moved past the ship and were reflected from a huge disc with spiral projections as they would have been from a blue mirror. The disc was standing on edge, leaning slightly to one side and was partly buried in the black soil. For a moment the observers got the impression that there were cliffs behind the disc and that beyond them the darkness was blacker and thicker, probably it was a precipice or a slope leading down to the lowlands….

The deafening roar of Tantra’s sirens shook the hull of the ship. Erg Noor intended to land close to the newly-discovered ship and was giving warning to any people who might be within the danger zone, that is, within a radius of some thousand metres from the landing place. The terrific roar of the planetary motors could be heard even inside the ship and a cloud of red-hot dust appeared in the screens. The ship’s floor began to rise up and then slip backwards. The hydraulic hinges of the landing seats turned them smoothly and soundlessly, keeping them perpendicular to the now vertical floors.

The huge jointed landing struts slid out of the ship’s hull, straightened out and took the first shock of the landing on an alien world. A shock, a recoil and another shock and Tantra, her bows still swaying, came to a standstill at the same time as the engines cut out. Erg Noor raised his hand to a lever on the control desk that was now directly over his head and released the jointed struts. Slowly, with a number of short jerks, the spaceship’s bows sank towards the ground until the hull had assumed its normal, horizontal position. The landing had been accomplished. As usual, the landing had shaken the human organism bo strongly that the astronauts required some time to recover and remained semi-recumbent in their landing seats.

They were all held down by an awful weight and were scarcely able to rise to their feet, like patients recovering slowly from a serious illness. The irrepressible biologist, however, had managed to take a sample of the, air.

“It’s fit to breathe,” he said. “I’ll take a look at it through the microscope.”

“Don’t bother,” said Erg Noor, unfastening the cushions of his landing chair, “we can’t go out without a spacesuit. There may be very dangerous spores and viruses on this planet.”

In the air-lock at the exit to the ship biologically shielded spacesuits and “jumping skeletons” had been prepared in readiness for an exploring party; the “skeletons” were steel, leather-covered frames that were worn over the spacesuits and were fitted with electric motors, springs and shock absorbers to enable the explorers to move about under conditions of excessive weight.

After six years’ travelling through interstellar space every one of them wanted to feel soil, even alien soil, under his feet. Kay Bear, Pour Hyss, Ingrid, Doctor Louma Lasvy and two engineers had to remain on board the vessel to man the radio, searchlights and various measuring and recording instruments.

Nisa stood aside from the party with her space helmet in her hands.

“Why do you hesitate, Nisa?” the commander called to her as he tested the radio set in the top of his helmet. “Come along to the spaceship!”

“I… I…” the girl stammered, “I believe it’s dead, it’s been standing here a long time…. Another catastrophe, another victim claimed by the merciless Cosmos. I know it’s inevitable but still it’s hard to bear, especially after Zirda and Algrab….”

“Perhaps the death of this spaceship will mean life for us,” said Pour Hyss who was busy training a short-focus telescope on the other ship which still remained unlighted.

Eight members of the expedition climbed into the air-lock and waited.

“Turn on the air!” ordered Erg Noor addressing those who were remaining on the ship and from whom they were now divided by an air-tight wall.

When the pressure in the air-lock had risen to ten atmospheres and was higher than that outside, hydraulic jacks opened the hermetically sealed doors. The air pressure in the lock was so great that it almost hurled the people out of the chamber and at the same time prevented anything harmful in the alien atmosphere from entering the chamber. The door clanged to behind them. The rays of a searchlight lit up a clear road along which the explorers hobbled on their spring legs, scarcely able to drag their own heavy weight along. The gigantic spaceship stood at the other end of the beam of light, about a mile away, a distance that seemed interminable to them in their impatience. They were badly shaken up by their clumsy jumps over uneven ground covered with small boulders and greatly heated by the black sun.

The stars made pale, diffused patches when seen through the dense, highly humid atmosphere. Instead of the brilliant magnificence of the Cosmos the planet’s sky showed only a faint suggestion of the constellations, the pale, reddish lanterns of their stars unable to penetrate the darkness on the planet.

The spaceship stood out in clear relief in the profound darkness of its surroundings. The thick borated zirconium lacquer on the hull plates had been rubbed off in places. The ship must have been wandering about the Cosmos for a long time.

An exclamation, repeated in all the radio telephones, came from Eon Thal. With his hand he pointed to the ship’s smaller lift that had been lowered to the ground and stood with its door wide open. What were undoubtedly plants grew around the lift and under the ship’s hull. Thick stems raised black bowls of parabolic shape nearly three feet above the ground; they had serrated edges something like the teeth of a cog-wheel and it was difficult to say whether they were leaves or flowers. A mass of these motionless cog-wheels growing together had an evil look about them. Still more disturbing was the silent, open door of the lift. Untouched plants and an open door could only mean that nobody had used that way for a long time, that the people were not guarding their tiny terrestrial world from that which was alien to them.

Erg Noor, Eon Thal and Nisa Greet entered the lift and the commander pressed the button. With a slight squeak the machinery was set in motion and the lift carried the explorers to the wide-open air-lock. They were followed by the others. Erg Noor transmitted an order to switch off the searchlight on Tantra. An instant later the tiny group of Earth-dwellers was lost in utter darkness. The world of the iron sun enveloped them as though trying to absorb that feeble spark of terrestrial life pressed down to the soil of the huge black planet.

They switched on the revolving electric lanterns in their helmets. The inner door of the air-lock, leading into the ship, was closed but not locked and opened at a push. The explorers entered the central corridor and easily found their way through the dark alleyways. The spaceship differed but little from Tantra in its design.