Fade Out (40 page)

‘If it was that fantastic, why didn't he come out and tell us all about it?' asked Connors.

‘There could be two reasons. The first is that Milsom may have been unsure he would be able to get back inside – it's possible we might have tried to prevent him. The second is that perhaps whatever he experienced is something impossible to communicate in words. It may be something that has to be experienced in order to be understood.'

‘Okay,' said Connors. ‘Why couldn't he come out and tell us that?'

‘I don't know,' said Collis. ‘Maybe the hatch is like a turnstile. You can only go through it one way. He may have undergone an irreversible mental process that makes a return to our world impossible.'

‘Are you also saying that this – process – was so good Milsom was prepared to share it with Max even if it killed him?'

‘That
is
a problem,' admitted Collis. ‘I'm not dodging the question. I can only imagine that in relation to the benefits conferred by the experience, Max's physical death was probably irrelevant.'

‘I doubt if it was to Max,' said Allbright.

‘Nor to any of us, General, on this side of the hatch.'

Connors exchanged a long look with Wedderkind and wondered why he hadn't said anything. Did he agree? He turned back to Collis. ‘That's quite a hefty spiritual kite you're flying, Ray.'

Collis shrugged. ‘The physical sciences can't provide all the answers. If you find the word “spiritual” upsetting, consider it as a metaphysical experience.'

‘It doesn't make much difference,' said Connors. ‘The only way we can verify your theory is for us to follow
Chris through the hatch – in the way the children of Hamelin followed the Pied Piper into the mountain. When do we stop, when there are none of us left?'

‘That could be the reason why we were allowed to open the hatch in the first place,' said Collis. ‘But how many of us are prepared to risk losing this uncertain life in search of good news in the next?'

‘Exactly,' said Connors. ‘It's a nice idea, Ray, but I don't think it gets us any nearer to solving our immediate problem – which is what to do about Chris.' He looked at his watch. ‘He's got enough oxygen till seven – is that right?'

‘Yes. But seven is the absolute limit,' said Spencer.

‘Okay, I suggest the best thing for you to do is to rotate the hatch every fifteen minutes starting at twelve-thirty, just in case Chris reappears. Anything to add, Arnold?'

‘No, that's fine.'

Connors patted Spencer on the shoulder and walked with him to the door. ‘I know how you feel, but don't take the whole thing on yourself.' He dropped his voice. ‘One other thing. If you'd been on that rope with ten seconds to go and Milsom around your feet,
I
wouldn't have stuck my arm in that hatch – and Max wouldn't have either.'

Spencer bit his lip on what he was going to say and nodded instead.

The meeting broke up, leaving Connors alone with Allbright and Wedderkind. Connors called the monitor hut and got them to pipe in a second replay of the whole disastrous sequence. As he watched Max's life end for a third time, Connors thought about Collis' idea. It was interesting, but not the kind of thing he could take to the President. He swung his chair away from the screens and found Wedderkind watching him.

‘Had any more thoughts?'

‘Yes,' said Connors. ‘I was thinking that if I was asked to describe our progress on this project, I'd say that every time we open one can of beans, all we find inside it is another can.'

‘We have two decisions to make,' said Connors. ‘One, do we go for a second insertion, and two, should we tie the next candidate down to keep him from leaving the hatch?' Connors sat back while Allbright and Wedderkind mulled over their answers.

‘Number Two is easier,' said Wedderkind. ‘We could lock our man into a safety harness anchored to the guide rails.'

‘It sounds like a real ball and chain job.'

‘It would have to be.'

‘I think we're getting a little off course,' said Allbright. ‘If whoever goes into the hatch becomes so deranged as to require this treatment then it may be safer for us to leave him there.'

‘Does that mean you think we shouldn't try to find out what happened to Milsom?'

‘It would cut down our casualty rate – and it might save us a lot of problems,' said Allbright.

‘General, Milsom's disappearance means that there
is
a way into Crusoe. It means there is a chance for us to try and unlock some of its secrets. For a scientist, that prospect is irresistible. That hatch is like the doorway to a twentieth-century version of Aladdin's cave. A treasure house of technology. Why, just the power unit alone might provide the answer to our energy problems. And think what it would mean to the Air Force if we could discover how Crusoe causes the radar fade-out.'

‘I'm glad you finally agree with me, Arnold.' Connors
tried not to smile at Wedderkind's political somersault. ‘Let's get back to basics. Do we go for a second insertion?'

‘Yes, I'll go.'

‘Arnold, you're not going anywhere. If you had to carry that backpack you'd need an armour-plated truss.'

Wedderkind's mouth turned sour.

‘General?'

‘You have one more space suit and two volunteers.'

‘That was yesterday.'

‘Then let's check them out.'

Checking out the backup men took hardly any time at all. Neither Vincent nor Gilligan wanted to try out the hatch. Since Vincent was a civilian Air Force employee, Allbright couldn't make it an order even if he had wanted to, and Gilligan wasn't even on the payroll. That left the USAF technicians and the five squads of cadets. Connors was mulling over Allbright's offer to call for volunteers when Spencer arrived and got him off the hook.

‘Are you sure you want to go?'

‘Yes. It's not a snap decision. Chris and I planned to go in together way before you started picking names out of a hat.'

‘It wasn't that haphazard. You have a family.'

‘So had Max.'

‘You need a better reason than that for volunteering.'

‘I'm not volunteering, I'm laying it on the line. The other three only had six months' astronaut training. I had a full year.'

‘That was three years ago,' said Wedderkind.

‘The project owes me this trip. I was the one who opened the hatch.'

‘No one can argue with that.'

‘Besides which, I know Chris better than anyone else here. If he needs handling, I'm the best person to do it.'

‘Arnold?'

Spencer didn't give him a chance. ‘Arnold knows ‘I've got the qualifications and the medics can tell you I'm fit enough.'

And pushy, too. Connors turned to Allbright. ‘Would you like to try and get a word in edgeways?'

Allbright looked at his watch. It was nearly two o'clock. ‘How are things out there?'

‘There's no sign of Chris. We've decided to rotate the hatch every half hour instead of every fifteen minutes. We don't want to jam up the works. Those two spheres have probably spun round more times this morning than they have in the last ten years.'

Allbright looked at Connors. His eyes said it all.

‘Okay, Dan. Stand by. We'll let you know.'

‘If I'm going to go, I'd better start getting into that suit. It takes time.'

‘I'm not making any promises,' said Connors. ‘But if you want to try it on for size, go ahead.'

‘I'll need Arnold's authorization.'

‘And he'll need mine,' said Connors. ‘Tell them to phone me.'

Spencer left.

‘What do you think, General? Should we go again?'

‘Let me ask you a question. If you lose Spencer, will you try a third insertion, and after that a fourth, fifth, and sixth?'

‘No. I think I'd probably stop right there. How would the Air Force evaluate this kind of situation?'

‘Well, in the planning of any operation, you establish what we call an acceptable loss rate of men and aeroplanes. It usually bears a direct relationship to the strategic or tactical value of the operation. On this project, we don't know how much there is to discover, so it's difficult to assess the value of any particular mission. In that kind of situation, one has to set an arbitrary figure.
You appear to feel that, in this case, the acceptable loss rate is three. In the circumstances I've described, it might be argued that even that is one too many. I'm sure Mr Wedderkind understands what I mean.'

‘I know we could draw a blank or hit a bonanza,' said Wedderkind. ‘Whether either is worth another life, I can't say. If one is going to be coldly scientific, one can't draw any firm conclusions from Milsom's reactions. A sample of one is useless. The experiment has to be repeated. What happened to Max, regrettably, doesn't count. We have to try again.'

‘That's what I think,' said Connors. ‘General?'

Before Allbright could answer, the phone rang. It was the medical unit. They wanted to know whether they should put Spencer in the space suit.

‘Yes,' said Connors.

Wedderkind put the phone back on the hook. ‘Do you think we've made the right decision?'

‘He's fit, he's qualified, he feels responsible – and he'll never forgive us if we say “No”,' said Connors. ‘Let him go.'

When Spencer was ready, Connors drove over to the medical unit with Wedderkind.

‘Does it fit?' asked Connors.

‘Tailor-made.'

‘Dan,' said Wedderkind, ‘once that hatch closes, you are going to find yourself, quite literally, in the dark. None of us knows what happens in there, so you're going to have to play this whole thing by ear. What we want you to do is to stay inside the hatch – unless some unforeseeable condition makes that impossible.'

‘Don't worry, I'll hang on tight.'

‘Good. You're due to insert at fifteen-thirty. We'll rotate at fifteen thirty-five, at which time we expect to lift
you out. Now –' Wedderkind spread his hands. ‘If something
does
begin to go wrong, ah, perhaps there may be some degree of physical or mental disorientation, ah – '

‘I know what you're trying to say,' said Spencer.

‘Good. What we want you to do is write down as much as you can on this.'

Page showed Spencer a clipboard with a pad of black paper. A chubby pen was attached to the board by a plastic line. ‘This may be the world's first luminous pen,' said Page. ‘It's really more like an oversized eyedropper. You squeeze out the paste as you write. Write in largish capitals. The paper is porous to prevent it smudging, and the edge of the clipboard is luminous so you can see where to write.'

Spencer tried out the pen.

‘We are going to hang this pad inside the well,' said Wedderkind. ‘If, for any reason, there is not enough time to write whole words, we want you to use this simple code: X – for danger. O – no danger, keep opening hatch. L – internal light source. M – contact with Chris. If Chris is alive, put a circle around the M. If you find a way into Crusoe, put a dot inside the O. If you find no way in, put a line across it. Have you got that?'

‘Yes. Supposing I do make contact with Chris and find he's in a bad situation? Can I leave the hatch to help him?'

‘The answer is “No” – but I'm probably wasting my breath telling you that. Naturally we want both of you out safely. The really important thing is to give us as much information as you can. That's absolutely vital. Don't let us down, Dan.'

‘Okay. I'll do my best.'

On the hull platform, a new snap-shut lifting hook had been fitted on to the severed rope. Spencer clipped it on
to the chest loop of his safety harness. The time was 15:28.

Neame had taken over command of the hatch party. He patted Spencer's shoulder. ‘Just hang on tight to those rails and stay loose.'

Spencer lowered the visor of his helmet. The NASA suit technician checked the life-support pack and watched closely as Spencer pressurized his suit.

15:29. In the operations room, Connors sat half-turned away from the bank of screens. He had thought about going up on to the platform but had decided to stay out of the way. On either side of him, Allbright and Wedderkind remained annoyingly calm, their eyes fastened on the main screen.

At 15:30, Vincent rotated the two spheres and Spencer was lowered in through the circular hatch. As the rope was hauled clear, Neame leaned in and fastened the black notepad and pen to the top of the guide rails where it could be easily retrieved.

‘Twenty-five seconds to rotation…' With Max's death, Neal Zabrodski's tape-recorded voice had acquired a sinister, relentless quality.

Spencer found handholds and footholds on the guide rail supports and pulled himself clear of the raised disc on the floor of the sphere. In a few seconds it would swing around up over his head.

‘Twenty seconds to rotation…'

What
are
we doing? Connors asked himself. He had come to regard Crusoe as a huge, half-buried technological, cultural – even intellectual – time bomb slowly ticking away in their midst. And there they were, tinkering around with it like a bunch of blind ants.

For the scientists, the project was a Fourth of July treat but Connors was convinced that none of them were
within a million miles of understanding the how, what, and why of Crusoe.

The alarm bell rang. Ten seconds.

‘Five-four-three-two-one-
rotation
…'

As the hatches moved out of line, Connors saw Spencer raise his right thumb.

Spencer saw the circle of daylight become lemon-shaped, then rapidly diminish and disappear in under a second. An impenetrable darkness filled the sphere. He looked up and saw the luminous pale green line that marked the edge of the clipboard. The burden of his backpack and the weight of his body began to ebb away as the hatch became an integral part of Crusoe's zero-gravity field. Spencer reached up and touched the pad with his finger. The pad floated away from him, slowly rotating on the end of its invisible line.