Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

“Dome field generator,” he explained. “We must take air with us.”

“With us? I don’t want to go to the Moon.”

“But it’s so close to your final destination,” Vekrynn replied reasonably. “A very small detour.”

“Does this mean you don’t trust me?”

“Of course not! I trust you every bit as much as you trust me.” Vekrynn extended his left hand for Hargate to clasp it and, eyes narrowing with the exertion, gradually raised his right hand in preparation for the tracing of a mnemo-curve.

The Moon! Hargate had expected to feel terror, but instead a deep, searching sadness diffused through him as he considered what he had to do, the obligation he had accepted on behalf of every man, woman and child now living on his home world, and with the mute authority of all those who had gone before. Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my wheelchair of fire…

The transfer took place.

In spite of his foreknowledge of where he was going and the fact that he had seen a thousand pictures of the Moon’s surface, Hargate gasped aloud as the sky went black. His previous jumps between habitable worlds, dramatic though they were, had not equalled the emotional shock of seeing a carpet of living turf instantaneously replaced by the ancient and sterile dust of the Oceanus Procellarum. The plain stretched without interruption to the horizon, with the few distant mountain peaks that were visible rising from beyond the curve of the lifeless world. A blindingly brilliant sun hung almost at the zenith, drenching everything with a harsh vertical light, and closer to the horizon Earth was visible as a blue-white hemisphere.

Taking his bearings from familiar star groupings, Hargate swung his gaze around the plane of the ecliptic and almost immediately found what he was seeking. Low down in the sky was an object that had no right to be there, a celestial trespasser. The asteroid Ceres was visible as a first-magnitude star. In Hargate’s imagination he could see it growing brighter by the second as it bored its way in at inconceivable velocity from beyond the orbit of Mars. He glanced at his watch and his eyes dilated as he saw that the collision time quoted to him by Lorrest was closer than he had realised. In a scant eighteen minutes a ball of rock seven hundred kilometres in diameter was going to impact with the force of millions of H-bombs, and he—Denny Hargate—was sitting at the precise centre of what would become a continent-sized crater.

“Where is the machine?” Vekrynn shouted, tottering away from Hargate. “I don’t see the machine.”

Wrenching his thoughts away from visions of hell, Hargate shielded his eyes and scanned his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that there were numerous footprints in the dust beneath his chair. They formed an irregular swathe leading to an area, perhaps fifty paces away, where the surface had been extensively disturbed, apparently by excavation.

Lorrest didn’t tell me they’d buried the machine, he thought. So much the better .

“Over there,” he called out. “It seems to be under the ground.”

Vekrynn turned in the direction indicated, broke into a hobbling run and promptly pitched forward. The semi-paralysis that still affected his mobility prevented him from breaking the fall with his hands, even though it seemed to Hargate that he had gone down in a dreamlike slow motion. Vekrynn lay prone in the dust for a moment, then struggled to his feet and resumed his progress at a more prudent speed. It took Hargate several seconds to appreciate that the lesser gravity of the Moon was actually making walking more difficult for the Mollanian in his present condition.

He switched on the wheelchair’s power and moved the drive control. As he had expected, the chair surged forward, its partially rested batteries more than adequate for propulsion when the whole assemblage had only a sixth of its weight on Earth. For the time being, he was in the novel situation of being more mobile than his adversary.

“It’s all working out my way, Vekrynn, you bastard,” he whispered vindictively, reaching into the hiding place between his right hip and the back of his chair. “Perhaps there is some justice in this universe—perhaps there’s just a trace.”

Vekrynn, having finally reached the site of the excavation, studied the broken ground for a short time and looked up with evident surprise as Hargate brought his chair to a halt close by. “What did they think they were achieving?” he said. “I may not be able to deactivate this type of machine from here, but I can do it from there.” He nodded in the direction of Ceres.

Hargate glanced at the oncoming asteroid and was positive he could now discern an increase in its brightness. “How?”

“That region of space is filled with Bureau engineers and equipment. I can contact my men from here and in less than a minute have this site vaporised to a depth of a thousand metres. That will take care of any number of cone field generators.”

“I daresay.” Hargate frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose it will also take care of us if we don’t transfer out of here.”

“Your grasp of the situation is excellent,” Vekrynn said, beginning to smile. “The Ceres operation is being directed from a small space habitat centred on a drifting node little more than a light second from here. That will be my vantage point for the final minutes of this affair.”

“Suits me fine—Let’s go.”

“I’m afraid your understanding of the situation isn’t quite as good as I thought.” Vekrynn turned and began to shuffle towards the point at which they had arrived, exercising great care with his balance. “I’m not taking you with me.”

“You can’t leave me here,” Hargate said in a kind of startled whinny, going after the retreating figure. “The stuff they pour in here is bound to kill me.”

“Wrong again!” Vekrynn did not look back, but his voice carried clearly. “When I transfer away from this dismal spot my dome field and the air it contains will go with me. No, I don’t think you need worry about being vaporised.”

Hargate swore loudly and increased his speed. “Let’s drop all the phoney Agatha Christie politeness, Vekrynn. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

The Mollanian continued his ungainly progress, still without looking back.

“Listen to me, Vekrynn, you great bag of dung,” Hargate shouted, acutely aware that Ceres was no longer a star-like point of light. Within a very short time it had begun to exhibit a visible disc—testimony to its frightening speed.

Vekrynn kept on lurching forward, seemingly oblivious to everything in his determination to reach the nodal point.

“Lorrest put one over on you,” Hargate said gently. “We found the sixth copy of your Notebook. We know you, Vekrynn.”

The Warden stopped abruptly, a huge clockwork figure whose mechanism had jammed. Hargate steered to the right and went in a semi-circle which enabled him to halt directly in front of the Mollanian. In the relentless vertical light Vekrynn’s face was no longer human, the eye sockets reduced to blind black cavities. He remained motionless for a few seconds, then started forward with increased urgency.

“I told you I wasn’t letting you go anywhere.” Hargate reached down behind his right hip, brought out his most treasured possession—the complex, glittering shape of the Mollanian travel trainer—and held it aloft like a talisman.

“Look at this, Vekrynn,” he gloated. “Look at the curve, Vekrynn—it’s the one you just used to get to this place. I’ve got you.”

Vekrynn uttered a single word in Mollanian and swayed directly towards Hargate. Remembering the effect on Lorrest of one brief contact with the Warden’s tunic, Hargate hastily selected maximum speed and swung the chair out of Vekrynn’s path. Vekrynn changed direction and came after him.