Fritz Leiber - The Wanderer

“And I’ve been talking to one of their beings,” Paul put in. “She’s quite a person — you’d have to see her. She wants us to—”

Hunter interrupted, “You’ve been on the Wanderer, you’ve talked with them — Who are they? What are they doing? What do they want?”

Paul said: “We haven’t time to try to answer any questions like that. As I was about to say, our…well, captress…wants us to assure ourselves that you survived the tidal waves and that you’re all safe. That’s half the reason for this…call.”

“We’re safe,” Margo said faintly, “as far as anyone on Earth is.”

“Our whole party’s survived so far,” Beardy amplified, “except for Rudolph Brecht, who was killed in a mountain accident.”

“Brecht?” Paul questioned him doubtfully, frowning.

“You remember; we called him Doc,” Margo explained.

“Of course,” Paul said, “and we called that funny old crackpot the Ramrod and Professor Hunter Beardy. Excuse me. Professor.”

“Of course,” Hunter said impatiently. “What’s the other reason for the call?”

Don said: “To let you know that if everything works out right, we’ll be landing at Vandenberg Two in a few hours, probably in my moon ship.”

“At least Don will,” Paul added. “We have to stay up here in space now. The Wanderer may be in danger, there’s an emergency developing.”

“The Wanderer, in danger?” Margo repeated incredulously, almost sardonically. “Emergency developing? What do you call what’s been happening the last two days?”

Hunter said to Don: “We’re in sight of Vandenberg Two, as you know, and we’re planning to go there as soon as we can.”

“We’re trying to find Morton Opperly,** Margo put in automatically.

Don said to Hunter: “That’s good. If you bring them the news about me, it’ll be easier for you to get in. Tell Oppie the Wanderer has linear accelerators eight thousand miles long and a cyclotron of that diameter. That should convince him of something! It’ll help me if they’re informed ahead of time about my intended landing.” He looked toward Margo. “Then I’ll be able to kiss you properly, dear.”

Margo looked back at him and said: “And I’ll kiss you, Don. But I want you to know that things have changed. I’ve changed,” and she pressed more closely to Hunter to show what she meant.

Hunter frowned and pressed his lips against his teeth, but then he tightened his arm around her and nodded and said curtly: “That’s right.”

Before Don could say anything, if he’d been going to, the ground suddenly turned bright red, faded, turned red again. The same thing was happening to the whole landscape: it was lightening redly, then darkening, then reddening again, as if from soundless red lightning flashes coming in a steady rhythm. Hunter and Margo looked up and instantly flinched their eyes away from the blinding red pinpoint flares winking on and off at the north and south poles of the Wanderer, rhythmically reddening its own polar caps as well as the Earth’s whole sky. Never in their whole lives had they seen anything like such bright sources of monochromatic light.

“The emergency’s arrived,” said the Paul-image, the red light striking weirdly through it, making it doubly unreal. “We’re going to have to cut this short.”

The Don-image said: “The Wanderer is recalling its ships.”

Hunter said strongly: “We’ll tell them at Vandenberg. We’ll see you there. Oppie: eight-thousand-mile linear accelerators and a cyclotron of that diameter. Good luck!”

But in that instant the two images were gone. They didn’t fade or drift, just winked out.

Hunter and Margo looked down the red-lit hillside. Even the surf was red, the foaming of a lava sea. The camp was astir; there were small figures moving about, clustering, pointing.

But one was nearer. From behind a boulder not twenty feet away the Ramrod stared at them wonderingly, enviously, in his eyes an unappeasable hunger as the red light rhythmically bathed his face.

Fifty million miles starward of Earth, spacemen Tigran Biryuzov could see the Red Recall plainly as he and his five comrades orbited Mars in the three ships of the First Soviet People’s Expedition. For Tigran, Earth and the Wanderer were two bright planets about as far apart as adjoining stars in the Pleiades. Even in airless space, their crescent shapes were not quite apparent to the Communist spaceman’s unaided eye.

Radio communications from home had stopped with the Wanderer’s appearance, and for two days the six men had been in a frenzy of wonder about what was going on in the next orbit sunward. The projected surface landing on Mars, scheduled for ten hours ago, had been postponed.

Their telescopes showed them the astronomic situation clearly enough — the capture and destruction of the moon, the weird surface patterns of the Wanderer — but that was all.

Not only was the Red Recall plainly visible to Tigran, but also its dark red visual echoes from the night side of Earth. He started to note down, “ Krasniya molniya —” and then broke off to beat his cheeks with his knuckles in a fury of frustrated curiosity and to think, Red lightning! Mother of Lenin! Blood of Marx! What next? What next?

The saucer students had many questions to ask about the tantalizingly limited conversation with Paul and Don. When Hunter and Margo had finished answering them, the Red Recall had stopped flashing, and the swiftly-sinking tide had uncovered more of the road to Vandenberg, even a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Hixon summed it up, jerking a thumb at the Wanderer. “So they got saucers, which we knew. And they got energy guns’ll shoot rays that can chop up mountains and puncture planets probably. And they got three-D TV a lot better than ours, which makes sense. But they’re supposed to be in danger, which doesn’t! Why should they be in danger?”

Ann said brightly: “Maybe there’s another planet after them.”

“Anything but that, Annie, please,” Wojtowkz protested comically. “One weird planet is all I can stand.”

At that moment the landscape brightened, and Clarence Dodd, who alone of them was looking east, made a single strangling, clucking noise, as if he’d tried to cry out and choked on the cry, and he hunched away from the east and at the same time pointed his hand in that direction above the mountains.

Hanging there, between the Wanderer and the serrated eastern horizon, was a gibbous shape half again as wide as the Wanderer, all an unvarying, bright steely gray except for one glittering highlight midway between its round rim and its natter rim.

Margo felt, Now the sky’s too heavy — it must fall.

The Ramrod thought, And a voice like a trumpet spoke and the Lamb opened another seal … and another…and another…and another…

Wojtowicz yelled softly: “My God, Ann was right. It is another planet”

“And it’s bigger.” That was Mrs. Hixon.

“But it’s not round,” Hixon protested, almost angrily.

“Yes, it is,” Hunter contradicted, “only it’s partly in shadow, more than the Wanderer is. It’s as much in shadow as the moon would be if it were there.”

“It’s at least seven Wanderer-diameters down the sky from the Wanderer,” the little Man pronounced, so quickly recovered from his original shock that he was already pulling out his notebook. “That’s fifteen degrees. An hour.” He uncapped his pen and studied his wrist watch.

Rama Joan said: “The highlight’s the reflection of the sun. Its surface must be like a dull mirror.”

Ann said, “I dont like the new planet, Mommy. The Wanderer’s our friend, all golden and lovely, but this one’s in armor.”