Forbidden Planet (16 page)

I found I was almost running, and forced myself to stop. I was just about at the point where Altaira had stood to feed her animals when the thought struck me that I might shout. In the silence my voice ought to carry for miles.

I was cupping my hands around my mouth, and filling my lungs, when I suddenly saw him.

He was less than a hundred yards away, pacing slowly up and down the paved walk on the far side of the pool, appearing and reappearing through the screen of the shrubbery. His hands were thrust into his pockets, his head was bent. He was so deep in thought I doubted he even knew where he was.

Seeing him made everything feel very different. I was thankful I hadn’t shouted, and instead of thinking about myself I began thinking about him. No wonder he was pacing. Even yesterday he’d had enough on his mind to frighten a Marshal, let alone a young SE Commander. And look what today had brought! The added, the incalculable responsibility of finding that Morbius was the sole holder of knowledge which must be communicated to Mankind!

And Morbius was sick. And Morbius would fight against sharing his knowledge. And there was no one to decide how he should be dealt with; no one except Commander John Justin Adams . . .

And, unless I had missed my best guess, John Justin Adams was in love with Morbius’ daughter.

I started toward the pool. But I’d only gone a step or so when I stopped dead in my tracks. As if my thinking about her had conjured her, there was Altaira, face to face with Adams just as he emerged into my line of sight again. She had come from the trees behind the pool, and her arms were full of flowers she had been gathering. They were great red-and-purple blossoms on long white stems, and she was looking down at them.

Neither of them saw the other until they had almost collided. They were only a pace apart when they stopped, and raised their heads, and stared at each other, motionless.

There was something about the little tableau—an exquisite tension, a purely natural drama of line and color—that held me as still as they were. They hadn’t seen me, and wouldn’t. So it was plain I must either get out of there or hail them.

But I didn’t move. I went on watching them.

I don’t know how long it was they stood there, gazing at each other. But I do know they didn’t speak. Although they were too far away for me to hear or even see, I knew that. There was something defiant in the way they looked; some nuance of posture which made me know—particularly about Altaira—that there was conflict here; conflict I knew nothing about . . .

Then the whole static picture burst into movement. She did speak—and as she spoke she started to turn away . . .

And then Adams moved for the first time. His hand shot out and caught her by the shoulder. She faced him again, her head flung back as if in protest . . .

And then her arms opened, and the flowers fell at her feet. And his arms went around her and hers went around his shoulders and they were locked in a kiss . . .

I came to myself. I turned quickly away and started back toward the house. My feet made no sound in the grass, but I found myself walking on tiptoe . . .

I was nearly back to the tractor when I looked around. I couldn’t help it.

I could see them through the shrubs. They were walking away from the pool, slowly, and Adams’ arm was around the girl as they walked.

They disappeared into the trees . . .

II

I went back into the house. I didn’t mind the thought of Robby so much now, and started looking for him. He was standing, startlingly dead-seeming, just behind the rear door to the living room. I activated him by using his name, and he not only showed me Morbius’ room but carried him there.

It was a small, monastic place, just off the corridor which led back from the living room. When we had my still sleeping patient in bed I sent Robby out and checked the man’s heart and respiration and blood pressure. They were all much better than I’d expected, and when I’d made sure he was lying comfortably I went out of the room myself.

And was faced with a problem I hadn’t contemplated. Robby was activated; how did one de-activate him?

The answer was simple, but it only came to me after I’d kept myself busy for half an hour thinking up orders to give him. For some reason, I found he made me more uncomfortable ‘alive’ and waiting, with that one light glowing behind the louvres, than he did as an inanimate hunk looming in a corner.

He gave me the answer himself—because I asked him. I said, “Robby—how do I switch you off?” and he told me, whirring and clicking. It was as easy as that. I said, “That’s all now—” and it was. He stood there, a dead lump of metal again.

Then I sat by the windows, looking out over the patio and smoking one cigarette after the other and trying to keep awake by telling myself this was no time to get tired . . .

I was on my second or third cigarette when I thought I heard the distant spit-crack-hiss of a D-R pistol. I jumped up and ran to the entry and pulled open the door . . .

And stopped on the threshold, wondering whether I’d dreamed the sound. There was something so absolute about the silence that somehow I couldn’t imagine it had just been broken, and the more I thought, the less certain I was that I had really heard it . . .

But then I saw Adams and Altaira. They were walking toward the house over the gold-tinted turf. They were very close together.

But they hadn’t seen me, and I backed in and closed the door, slowly and quietly, and crossed to the rear of the living room and sat myself in a big chair.

They arrived a moment or two before I thought they would. I did a good job of not hearing them until they were right in the room and then jumped up and said I hadn’t heard them come in.

They weren’t close together now, of course, but there was no mistaking their new relationship. It crackled between them like the EM waves of the fence that by this time Quinn and Farman must have set up around the ship.

But then I saw Altaira had been crying; tears were still welling in her eyes. They didn’t fit the sentimental picture I’d been building in my mind and I blurted out, “What’s the matter?” before I realized this could possibly be the worst thing to say.

But she smiled at me and said, “Please forgive me. I know I’m being foolish—” and gulped down a sob and looked across at Adams and said, “Please—you tell him—please . . .”

Adams said, “It was Khan—that tiger of hers. We—we’d been—we were coming out of the woods back there—and it was going to spring at her. It was out to kill. Luckily I saw it in time—”

He seemed to be bogging down and I said, “So I did hear a D-R. I thought I’d been dreaming . . .”

Adams said, “I couldn’t help it. I had to do it—I had to!” He was speaking to me, but he was looking at the girl.

She gave him a smile which made me know the picture I’d been drawing for myself was right after all.

She said, “Of course you did, J—” She started to say his name but caught herself. She looked at me. She said, “How is Father, Major Ostrow?”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t been expecting the question, and I wondered how much—or how little—Adams had told her.

He cut in before I could speak. He said quickly, “I told her about you checking him, Doc. And finding he was way over-tired—”

Poor John Justin Adams, I thought. I could see all too well the jam he’d been in. At first forgetting Morbius completely; then remembering, and thinking what she would think of him for having forgotten; then not wanting to scare her but knowing he’d got to say something—

I said, “Your Father’s fine, Altaira. He’s in bed and asleep. And he’d better stay asleep for twelve hours at least. I gave him a shot; it seemed to me he’d been over-working, not getting enough rest—”

She said, “Oh, I’m
so
glad! I know he hasn’t been sleeping enough . . . I’ve tried and tried to tell him.” She came closer to me and laid a hand on my arm. She said, “Might I just go in and look at him. I won’t wake him—”

I said, “Of course you can, honey.” I felt old and avuncular.

She gave me another smile, and carefully didn’t look at John Justin Adams, and was gone . . .

John Justin grabbed me by the arm with fingers that felt as if they might leave permanent dents. He said, “I had to do it that way about Morb—about her father, Doc!”

I said, “Of course you did.” I smiled at him because I’d only just realized how young he really was.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have smiled. He didn’t seem to like it. He said, “What the hell d’you mean—of course?” and I couldn’t help smiling again.

He scowled at me—then suddenly changed the scowl to a sheepish grin. He said, “My God, is it that obvious?”

I said, “We-ell, I’m sort of a trained observer of homo miscalled sapiens.”

He caught at my arm again. He wasn’t grinning now, sheepishly or otherwise. He said, “Look, Doc—I don’t know what you’re thinking. But in case it’s wrong, I’d better put it right. And quick!” The fingers were sinking deeper and deeper into my flesh. He said, “You don’t know me very well, but maybe you can guess I’m not—well, I’m no Jerry Farman about women. I—well, I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that if I ever found the right one I just might transfer out of this Deep Space stuff. I mean, so that we could marry, and have a family, and be together the way human beings were meant to—”

He stopped as abruptly as he’d begun. He was bitterly embarrassed, not by me so much as by himself.

And then, before I could think of anything to say, he let go of my arm and pulled the back of a hand across his forehead and said, in a hushed voice that was almost a whisper, “Jesus, Doc—that tiger! If I’d been a split microsecond later with that blaster—” He closed his eyes for an instant, trying to shut out a sight behind them.

And then he said, “Now why the hell would he want to kill Altaira?”

Without thinking I said, “John, where’s your memory? Didn’t I tell you the story of the Unicorn?”

A slow flush crept up into his face, and I could have happily cut out my tongue. The trouble was that I’d suddenly realized how much I liked this boy, and the discovery had startled me into being utterly tactless.

The flush died away. “I see what you mean,” he said, and his face had its poker mask on again.

He walked across to the center window and stood looking out of it for a moment. There was something about the set of his shoulder; the boy had disappeared, and this was Commander Adams again. Commander Adams once more wrestling with the problems of duty . . .

III

It was nearly dusk when we drove away, Adams at the wheel.

As we started around the curve into the grove of trees, I turned in my seat and saw Altaira still standing on the patio, staring after us.

I told Adams, and he nodded. His face was set, and I thought he looked ten years older.

We were two-thirds up the long slope to the desert before either of us spoke again. And then he said, suddenly, “Quite a day, huh? How d’you feel, Doc?”

“Unreal,” I said. “And God-awfully tired!” I wished he hadn’t asked me; it made me feel worse.

There was another silence after that. It lasted until we were through the gap in the rocks. I was three-quarters asleep when he said, just as if we’d been talking all the time, “That roller-coaster trip? I suppose we
did
take it? . . . Those umpty-million relays! That hell-hole in the looking glass! . . . We aren’t having nightmares, are we?”

“I wish we were,” I said.

I wanted to leave it at that, but he wouldn’t let me. He said, “That god-damn power! What the hell is it, Doc?”

I said, “I don’t know! I’m no scientist.” But then a memory rang in my head. “Remember what he said down there? ‘Cosmic power.’ Do you think he meant it, by any chance?”

The tractor swerved as Adams looked at me, startled. “Christ!” he said, “I wonder—”

There was more silence then, but no more dozing for me. My mind had started working again. I found myself going over every minute of this extraordinary day—and coming up with one vast Why . . .

Why the huge instrument to do away with instrumentality? Why the device which measured intellects with one hand and boosted them with the other? Why the extermination, in what Morbius had called ‘one single night,’ of the whole race of Krell super-beings? Why Morbius’ dread of being forced to report on his discoveries? Why the terra-type animals? And why, why, why hadn’t their development included protective coloration?

I stopped the why-ing right there, because the last was one which, conceivably, I could do something about answering. And any answer in this maze of riddles was better than none, might even give the key to others. Half an hour’s work in my surgery—an hour’s—and I might come up with something. I could only try. I made up my mind to start the minute I was back on board, or at least as soon as we’d had food . . .

I looked around. Adams was driving pretty fast, even though it was quite dark now. But we’d passed the chasm, so there was nothing to worry about. I began thinking about Farman and the others. I wondered whether there’d been any more mysterious happenings, and then realized that if there had, Jerry would have got in touch with Adams on the audi-video.

The lights of the ship were showing more and more plainly now. They’d been augmented by a flare which I figured must be just by Quinn’s rig. And that started me thinking about Quinn, and how it really should have been he to whom Morbius showed the Krell powerhouse . . .

Adams said out of the blue, “Lonnie’s got to see that underground stuff,” and I laughed and said something about one of us being a telepath.

The moons were coming up. Their green-grey glow was changing the ship’s lights to a glaring, brazen yellow which didn’t fit the Altairian landscape. It was odd. It made me feel, suddenly and for the first time, that after all we were the interlopers.

“The fence is up,” Adams said, and I peered ahead and saw the metal posts, at regular forty-foot intervals, standing all around the perimeter like inanimate sentries.

They looked innocuous, even faintly silly. But when we passed the twenty-yard mark, they burst into crackling life. Between them, great twenty-foot jets of blue-white shot out to join each other, looking like flaring wires. First they were only in that section immediately in our path, but almost at once, as the other posts picked up the impulse, they spread until they outlined the whole perimeter. Inside, the guards came running, converging on the point where the fence first was activated. I could hear the Bosun’s voice shouting orders—and the beam of a searchlight from the ship cut a big ribbon out of the darkness, swept in narrowing arcs, and then hit us, pinning the tractor in a flood of brightness.