Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

“Thanks for not too much.”

Dane went on up the ladder. He mounted rapidly to Colonel Cragg’s quarters.

Lieutenant McDonald and Wertz were already in the little chamber.

Cragg’s lips thinned. His face, rough and stubborn as fired stone, twitched at the long scar that ran across his cheekbone to the tip of his ear. When he was angered, officially or privately, as he frequently was, the scar flared red. At the sight of Dane it began to burn. He threw down his pencil. “That’s all, gentlemen, I want to speak to Dr. Dane.” Dourly he watched them get out.

“Dane,” he lanced out, “I’ve got only one thing to say to you. I intend to prosecute you to the limit of the law for delaying the take-off and exposing this vehicle and its crew to grave danger in wilful contradiction of the orders of its commander.”

“Possibly I ought to remind you,” Dane restrained himself, “that I am not in the military service. I may be technically under your command for the duration of this voyage, but at its end I shall be as free to sue you as you are to charge me. If I were you, I wouldn’t make any wild charges I couldn’t prove.”

“Through no fault of yours,” Cragg ignored him, “we are all still healthy. Yesterday the penetrations came within point five of critical. For some reason, or good luck, they leveled off just in time. Today they are a little lower. Now that you and the precious Pembroke are safe inside, I suppose Vining will be able to repair the drive.”

Dane decided to try to be reasonable. “Colonel, have you given any thought to the possibility of intelligence on this planet? Hostile intelligence? Spark fires concentrating around our personnel. Men mysteriously unconscious. Radios mysteriously dead when you need them most. Lieutenant Houck mysteriously dead. Fire patterns pointed at the spacecraft. Engines mysteriously inoperative. It just might add up to God knows what.”

Cragg surveyed him coldly. “This conference is over.”

Dane said, “That’s okay with me. Our plain ordinary physical troubles are bad enough for me. Now maybe even the lichen vegetation is reacting to us. If the lichens really are attracted by the spacecraft metal, you had better give a lot of thought to stopping them before they get in contact with us.”

Cragg spoke contemptuously in four letters.

FROM THE ports of the high observation deck Dane watched the Martian night unroll itself from the east, as visible as a blue-black storm moving in wide brush strokes to paint over the sunset. Occasionally a metallic clamor intruded, but otherwise the spacecraft, huge and solid, seemed to doze, unfolding its people for sleep and untroubled security. The hour of evening slowed, nodded—deceived. Dane knew that in a dozen tactic positions men were alert.

Not only the engineers pursued their mystery. An officer stood watch at the command post, very probably Colonel Cragg himself. Power spun out of the dynamos for the lights and the living equipment, the radar that probed their environment, and the diverse complexes in the laboratories that stood by to record and interpret it.

Not only the crew and its officers, but physicists, biologists, chemists, astronomers, botanists, zoologists, mathematicians and statisticians, mineralogists strove in their tiny workshops with their instruments and their learning to bend a new world to the discipline of ordered inquiry. Doubtlessly the medic still lingered at his task of restoring Dr. Pembroke, Beemis, and Jackson. The cook and his helper must be busy with the evening rations.

And even as Dane contemplated the quiet and his aloneness, Airman First Class Humphries climbed into the chamber and busied himself with the searchlight, bringing on the piercing white beam and making trial sweeps over the near terrain. Afterward he switched it on automatic, so that the bright light ground tirelessly through 360 degrees of the darkness that shut them in.

The kitten-friendly Humphries was himself unusually reticent. In fact he had not spoken a word, greeting or otherwise. “You mad about something?” Dane asked him.

With patent care Humphries continued to monitor the sweep of the light. “I’m on duty,” he muttered.

“That mean you can’t even say hello? You’ve been on duty up here before and spoken your piece.”

“Colonel Cragg ordered a special watch.”

“What does he think is out there to watch against?” Dane tried.

“He didn’t say.” The remark was rudely short.

“Look, fellow,” Dane spoke out sharply, “I may as well begin with you. There seems to be an idea running around that somebody fouled up the engines. If that’s what you’re sore about. Just for the record, I didn’t. And I’m convinced that Mr. Vining didn’t either.”

The man stopped his fiddling. “Then why wouldn’t they run?” he said. Surly disbelief canceled the question.

Dane decided that he might as well get to work. He toggled the power switches of the radar photo plane table. “I don’t know. We can only hope they find the trouble soon.”

“The grease is we’ll take off in the morning. Now that you got back with Dr. Pembroke.”

“I don’t seem to have many choices,” Dane observed. “If Vining and the engineers can fix the engines, he and I are guilty of sabotage. If they don’t, we rot here.” He worked the keys that inflated the balloon and released the antenna reel. In the attenuated atmosphere, even with the peanut scanner and the tiny photo-electric pickup button, the balloon could carry the finest and lightest of lead wires scarcely a thousand feet aloft.

Through the ports he had seen visually that the spark fires were exceptionally profuse, but when he tuned the plane table and threw both the radar and the photo-electric pickups on it, he let out a low whistle. Masses of the spark nets glowed twice as bright as he had yet observed them, and the great overriding bolts flung themselves from the nets to the horizon line every few seconds. Without any plotting Dane perceived the insistent and superior intensity of a pattern that converged toward the spacecraft. When he measured the peninsula of lichens that had thrust out into the plain, it was over two thousands yards long. In one day it had grown two thousand yards!

While he watched, an odd blip of light formed at the tip of the peninsula’s image on the glass. To his amazement he saw it wink once, then twice, then three times, then repeat the cycle. After a pause the light winked again. Steadily the phenomenon repeated itself.

Why had Colonel Cragg sent a party out after dark to explore the lichen peninsula and why were they signaling with lights? He didn’t recognize the signal. One dot, two dots, three dots spelled out E-R-S in radio code. It meant nothing to him.

Then he noticed that the phenomenon could not be a light signal. It was not being picked up by the photo-electric scanner. It was being picked up by the radar antenna. It had to be a radar signal, and the impulse that bore it was not originating with the spacecraft!

He fumbled at the keys of the intercom and called the command post. “Captain Spear?” he called, recognizing the answering voice. “Dane. Has Colonel Cragg got a patrol out? Near the lichen beds?”

“No.” The reply was coldly official.

“Could any of the scientists have gone out?”

“That would really take the colonel off! Didn’t you get a copy of the order he passed out?”

“Get this!” Dane said. “This is important. Check everybody and see if anyone is missing. It’s possible someone might have slipped out without your knowing it.”

“Jesus,” Spear exclaimed. “If they did, the Old Man will fry them when they get back. Your little trip was enough for him.” His voice changed. “Say, your crowd up to something ‘scientific’ again?”