Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

But already Colbie was tearing out into the open, racing across the space separating him from the ship, a wave of pity for the helpless man breaking over him.

The outer valve was open. Colbie climbed in, drew it shut, manipulated the controls of the inner valve, and debouched into the ship proper.

He was now amidships, standing opposite the lazaret. Forward was the control cabin and vital machinery, abaft, in the stern compartment, were sleeping and living quarters.

Colbie bounded aft, swung through a door, and saw a pitiable sight indeed. The room was incredibly littered with such items as soiled clothing, and dishes with the scum of meals dried onto them. In the middle of the room was a table, and on that table an electric fan was whirling full blast, flinging a steady current of air upon a man who lay stark naked on a bunk which seemed the ultimate in human filth.

Deverel lay there, twisting, squirming, panting, moaning, his eyes rolling, and rivulets of sweat bubbling up from his queerly yellow skin, and flowing down to encounter a plain, stained mattress.

The first thing Colbie did was to snap off that venomous, killing fan. In fact, to sweep it from the table with one blow of his open palm. The next was to take Deverel’s pulse. It was quick, dangerously high, but certainly not predicting the close approach of death. In another day it might have ceased altogether, but at present there was plenty of chance.

Deverel’s eyes lolled over to Colbie’s, and his lips drew back painfully over handsome white teeth.

“Glad you came,” he whispered, and then his head dropped back and his eyes closed. He was not asleep; the knowledge that he was now in the hands of a competent person sent him into a dead faint.

Colbie knew what to do in cases like this. He went forward to the control room, manipulated oxygen tank valves, and increased the quantity of oxygen in the air. He got all the clean linen he could find, and bathed Deverel from head to foot in lukewarm water. He turned the mattress over, put on clean sheets, and then lifted Deverel lightly as a baby back on to it. Then he stuck a thermometer into the outlaw’s mouth.

He cleaned the room, occupying a full hour in washing dishes with a minimum of valuable water. Then he took meats and vegetables from the refrigerator, where they had doubtless reposed for months perfectly frozen, and started a pot of soup.

And that was all he could do for a while.

He sat down and waited, taking many readings on the thermometer.

And Deverel’s temperature went down. His breathing became even, and then he slept. Thirteen hours later he awoke.

“Hi, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Hi, yourself!” Colbie put down the magazine with which he had been really enjoying himself for the first time in months. “How’s the temperature?” he inquired.

“Gone. Thanks a lot,” he added carelessly, but he was serious. “You know I mean it, too.”

“Sure.” Colbie waved it aside. “A pleasure—I was glad to do it, y’know.” He fingered the pages of the magazine abstractedly. He jerked a thumb. “How’d you know I was out there?”

“Didn’t know it.” Deverel laughed. “It’s a cinch if you weren’t out there you wouldn’t have heard me say I knew you were.”

“That’s right.” Colbie laughed, too, and blue eyes and gray eyes met each other in mutual amusement. “Like some soup?”

Deverel said enthusiastically that he did. So that these two men, mutually respecting enemies of each other, sat down and ate for all the world as if each was an affectionate friend of the other.

For many days life was easy. No grueling flights through harsh space. No anxieties. No dread of death to come. No fear of insanely impersonal meteors. Here on Cyclops, the planet of the great mirror, living was a pleasure.

Deverel regained his health. He was finally able to get out of bed and walk around. With that done, it was not long before Deverel was considered a well man once more. Of course, the old life then had to be recognized. There had been a tacit understanding between the two men— for a little while their personal relationships did not stand. That was fair.

But that understanding had to be sundered eventually, and Deverel did not put the time off. The moment he felt his strength had returned in full measure, he said: “Well, it’s been fun while it lasted. But it’s time for us to sort of assume our natural antagonisms. So you put me in irons—right away. Or I’ll give you a swift, underhanded poke to the jaw.”

Colbie regarded him judicially. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “You wouldn’t mind getting me about the heaviest pair of leg and arm irons from the lazaret, would you?” he inquired quizzically.

“Not at all,” murmured Deverel politely.

“Wait a minute,” Colbie said uneasily. He leaned forward. “Now look. Did you notice the mirror?”

“Certainly. And damned curious about it, too.”

“And I. Now suppose we let this unwritten pact of mutual noninterference drag on for a while, just enough to allow us to explore? Y’know, I haven’t got a time limit on me—”

“Oh”—Deverel waved a scornful hand—”neither have I. Let’s let it drag on, shall we?” he said in the unconscious manner of a youngster excited over the prospect of a pleasing new toy. “You’ve got my promise, Colbie— I won’t try to get away.”

They saluted each other with a grin, and forthwith made ready for their adventure in exploration.

Sleep was the first preparation. After a good many hours, they set off across the gouged, forbidding plain. The stars looked down at them un-windingly through the vacuum separating them from Cyclops’ harsh terrain. Behind the men loomed the sharp, high peaks of the mountain in whose proximity Deverel had put down his stolen cruiser.

They were decked out as completely as they deemed advisable. They had oxygen, water, and food for at least a day. Colbie had decided not to carry his projector. It was a clumsy weapon, and he saw no possible use for it. Thus, attached by a two-hundred-foot hank of rope, which was suited in composition to the demands the cold and vacuum of space might make upon it, they wended their starlit way across Cyclops. When they were not using the rope fording dangerous chasms, they wound it up about them. They progressed steadily toward the rim of the reflector which probably had been constructed long before man had made the first full stride toward harmonized society.

Twice, Colbie slipped at the termination of a leap which taxed all his physical powers, and twice would have plunged into the apparently bottomless gorges below; and twice Deverel braced himself against the rims of the pits, and pulled the Interplanetary man back to safety. In both cases they made extended searches for narrower crevices.

Slowly but surely they worked their way to the rim, and finally struck level country. The last mile was a true plain, so unmarred that they suspected it must have been smoothed over artificially at some long-gone period. It struck Colbie that this would have been a much better place for Deverel to have put his ship down. Deverel explained that at the moment the first spasm of sickness had hit him, he was not in a frame of mind to care where he landed.

They came, then, to the rim.

They regarded with awe the black wall. It was composed of some dully hued metal. It stretched away from them in a slow curve that lost itself to their eyes many miles to either side of them. It was perfectly formed and unmarred in the slightest particular, about twice as tall as a man.

Deverel struck a pose, and said vibrantly, “The mirror!” But certainly he was not unshaken by the anciently constructed reflector.

Colbie put in wonderingly, “Some things a man can’t believe. I wonder how old this thing is—wonder who made it—how they made it! Lord, what engineers they must have been! What a job!”