Prelude to Space (21 page)

Many years ago the planning staff had foreseen the possibility of sabotage by religious
fanatics, and one of Interplanetary’s most cherished files contained the threatening
letters which these people had been illogical enough to write. All reasonable precautions
had therefore been taken—and taken by experts, some of whom had themselves spent years
during the War sabotaging Axis or Allied equipment.

Tonight the watchman in the concrete bunker at the edge of the macadam was a law student
named Achmet Singh, who was earning a little money during his vacation in a way that
suited him very well. He had only to be at his post eight hours a day, and the job
gave him ample time for study. When Jefferson Wilkes came to the first rope barrier,
Achmet Singh was fast asleep—as, surprisingly enough, he was quite expected to be.
But five seconds later, he was wide awake.

Singh punched the alarm cut-off button, and moved swiftly across to the control panel,
cursing fluently in three languages and four religions. This was the second time this
had happened on his watch: before, a stray dog belonging to one of the staff had set
off the alarms. The same thing had probably happened again.

He switched on the image converter, waiting impatiently for the few seconds it took
the tubes to warm up. Then he grasped the projector controls and started to survey
the ship.

To Achmet Singh, it seemed that a purple search-light was shining across the concrete
toward the launching platform. Through the beam of the search-light, utterly unconscious
of its presence, a man was cautiously feeling his way toward the “Prometheus.” It
was impossible not to laugh at his movements as he groped blindly along while all
around him was bathed with light. Achmet Singh followed him steadily with the beam
of the infra-red projector until he came to the gantry. The secondary alarms went
into action then, and again Singh switched them off. He would not act, he decided,
until he had learned the midnight prowler’s motives.

When Jefferson Wilkes paused with some satisfaction on the first platform, Achmet
Singh secured an excellent photograph which would be conclusive evidence in any court
of law. He waited until Wilkes had reached the airlock itself; then he decided to
act.

The blast of light which pinned Wilkes against the walls of the spaceship blinded
him as effectively as the darkness through which he had been feeling his way. For
a moment the shock was so paralyzing that he could not move. Then a great voice roared
at him out of the night.

“What are you doing there? Come down at once!”

Automatically he began to stumble down the steps. He had reached the lower platform
before his mind lost its paralysis and he looked desperately around for a means of
escape. By shielding his eyes, he could now see a little; the fatal ring of floorlights
around the “Prometheus” was only a hundred yards across and beyond it lay darkness
and, perhaps, safety.

The voice called again from beyond the pool of light.

“Hurry up! Come this way—we’ve got you covered!”

The “we” was pure invention on the part of Singh, though it was true that reinforcements
in the form of two annoyed and sleepy police sergeants were on the way.

Jefferson Wilkes finished his slow descent, and stood trembling with reaction on the
concrete, steadying himself against the gantry. He remained almost motionless for
half a minute: then, as Achmet Singh had anticipated, he suddenly bolted around the
ship and disappeared. He would be running toward the desert, and could be rounded
up easily enough, but it would save time if he could be scared back again. The watchman
knocked down another loudspeaker switch.

When that same voice roared at him again out of the darkness ahead, where he had thought
to find safety, the terrified little spirit of Jefferson Wilkes finally despaired.
In unreasoning fear, like some wild animal, he ran back to the ship and tried to hide
himself in its shadow. Yet even now the impulse that had brought him round the world
still drove him blindly on, though he was scarcely aware of his motives or his actions.
He began to work his way along the base of the ship, always keeping in the shadows.

The great hollow shaft only a few feet above his head seemed to offer a second way
into the machine—or, at least, a chance of hiding until he could escape. In ordinary
times, he could never have made that climb over the smooth metal walls, but fear and
determination gave him strength. Achmet Singh, looking into his television screen
a hundred yards away, became suddenly ashen. He began to speak, quickly and urgently,
into his microphone.

Jefferson Wilkes did not hear him; he scarcely noticed that the great voice from the
night was no longer peremptory, but pleading. It meant nothing to him now; he was
conscious only of the dark tunnel ahead. Holding his torch in one hand, he began to
crawl along it.

The walls were made of some gray, rock-like material that was hard yet oddly warm
to the touch. It seemed to Wilkes as if he was entering a cave with perfectly circular
walls; after a few yards it widened and he could almost walk if he bent double. Around
him now was a meaningless mosaic of metal bars and that strange gray rock—the most
refractory of all ceramics—over which he had been crawling.

He could go no farther; the cave had suddenly divided into a series of branching passages
too small for him to enter. Shining his torch along them he could see that the walls
were pierced with jets and nozzles. He might have done some damage here, but they
were all beyond his reach.

Jefferson Wilkes slumped down on the hard, unyielding floor. The torch fell from his
nerveless fingers and the darkness enfolded him again. He was too exhausted for disappointment
or regret. He did not notice, nor could he have understood, the faint unwavering glow
that was burning in the walls around him.

A long time later, some noise in the external world drew his mind back from wherever
it had fled. He sat up and stared around him, not knowing where he was or how he had
come here. Far away he could see a faint circle of light, the mouth of this mysterious
cavern. Beyond that opening were voices and the sounds of machines moving to and fro.
He knew that they were hostile and that he must remain here where they could not find
him.

It was not to be. A brilliant light passed like a rising sun across the mouth of his
cave, then returned to shine full upon him. It was moving down the tunnel, and behind
it was something strange and huge which his mind could not grasp.

He screamed in terror as those metal claws came full into the light and reached forward
to grasp him. Then he was being dragged helplessly out into the open where his unknown
enemies were waiting.

There was a confusion of light and noises all around him. A great machine that seemed
to be alive was holding him in its metal arms and rolling away from a tremendous winged
shape that should have aroused memories, but did not. Then he was lowered to the ground
in a circle of waiting men.

He wondered why they did not come near, why they kept so far away and looked at him
so strangely. He did not resist when long poles carrying shining instruments were
waved around him as if exploring his body. Nothing mattered now; he felt only a dull
sickness and an overwhelming desire for sleep.

Suddenly a wave of nausea swept over him and he crumpled to the ground. Impulsively,
the men standing in that wide circle moved a pace toward him—and then drew back.

The twisted, infinitely pathetic figure lay like a broken doll beneath the glaring
lights. There was no sound or movement anywhere; in the background, the great wings
of the “Prometheus” brooded above their pools of shadow. Then the robot glided forward,
trailing its armored cables across the concrete. Very gently, the metal arms reached
down and the strange hands unfolded.

Jefferson Wilkes had reached the end of his journey.

Dirk hoped that the crew had spent a better night than he had. He was still sleepy
and confused, but he had a distinct impression of being awakened more than once by
the sounds of cars driven recklessly through the night. Perhaps there had been a fire
somewhere, but he had heard no alarm.

He was shaving when McAndrews came into his room, obviously bursting with news. The
Director of Public Relations looked as if he had been up half the night, which indeed
was very nearly the case.

“Have you heard the news?” he said breathlessly.

“
What
news?” asked Dirk, switching off his shaver with some annoyance.

“There’s been an attempt to sabotage the ship.”

“What!”

“It happened about one o’clock this morning. The detectors spotted a man trying to
get aboard ‘Alpha.’ When the watchman challenged him the damn fool tried to hide himself—in
‘Beta’s’ exhaust!”

It was some seconds before the full meaning of the words dawned. Then Dirk remembered
what Collins had told him when he had looked through the telescope into that deadly
pit.

“What happened to him?” he said thickly.

“They called to him through loudspeakers, but he took no notice. So they had to get
him out with the servicing robot. He was still alive, but too hot to go near. He died
a couple of minutes later. The doctors say he probably never knew what had happened
to him—you don’t when you get a dose like that.”

Feeling a little sick, Dirk slumped down on his bed.

“Did he do any damage?” he asked at length.

“We don’t think so. He never got into the ship, and there was nothing he could do
to the jet. They were afraid he might have left a bomb, but luckily he hadn’t.”

“He must have been crazy! Any idea who he was?”

“Probably a religious maniac of some kind. We get a lot of them after us. The police
are trying to trace him from the contents of his pockets.”

There was a gloomy pause before Dirk spoke again.

“Not a very good send-off for the ‘Prometheus,’ is it?”

McAndrews shrugged his shoulders, somewhat callously.

“I don’t think anyone round here’s likely to be superstitious! Are you coming out
to watch the fueling? It’s scheduled for two o’clock. I’ll give you a lift down in
the car.”

Dirk was not enthusiastic.

“Thanks all the same,” he said, “but I’ve got rather a lot to do. And anyway, there
won’t be much to see, will there? I mean, pumping a few hundred tons of fuel isn’t
going to be very exciting. I suppose it
could
be—but in that event I’d rather not be there!”

McAndrews seemed slightly annoyed, but Dirk couldn’t help that. At the moment he felt
singularly little desire to go near the “Prometheus” again. It was an irrational feeling,
of course; for why should one blame the great ship if it protected itself against
its enemies?

Throughout the day Dirk could hear the roar of helicopters arriving in a continual
stream from the great Australian cities, while from time to time a transcontinental
jet would come whistling down into the airport. Where these early arrivals expected
to spend the night he could not imagine. It was none too warm in the centrally heated
huts, and the news reporters unlucky enough to be under canvas had told terrible stories
of hardship, many of which were very nearly true.

Late in the afternoon he met Collins and Maxton in the lounge and heard that the fueling
had been carried out with no difficulty. As Collins said: “We have now only to light
the blue touch-paper and retire.”

“By the way,” remarked Maxton, “didn’t you say the other night that you’d never seen
the Moon through a telescope? We’re going over to the Observatory in a minute. Why
not come along?”

“I’d love to—but don’t say that
you’ve
never looked at her, either!”

Maxton grinned.

“That would be a ‘very poor show,’ as Ray would put it. I happen to know my way around
the Moon quite well, but I doubt if more than half the people in Interplanetary have
ever used a telescope. The D.-G.’s the best example of that. He spent ten years on
astronomical research before he ever went near an observatory.”

“Don’t say I told you,” said Collins with great seriousness, “but I’ve found that
astronomers are divided into two species. The first is purely nocturnal and spends
its working hours taking photos of objects so far away that they probably don’t exist
any more. They’re not interested in the solar system, which they consider a very odd
and almost inexcusable accident. During the daytime they may be found sleeping under
large stones and in warm, dry places.

“Members of the second species work more normal hours and inhabit offices full of
calculating machines and lady computers. This hinders them a lot; nevertheless they
manage to produce reams of mathematics about the—probably non-existent—objects photographed
by their colleagues, with whom they communicate through little notes left with the
night-watchman.

“Both species have one thing in common. They are never known, except in moments of
extreme mental aberration, actually to
look
through their telescopes. Still, they do get some very pretty photographs.”

“I think,” laughed Professor Maxton, “that the nocturnal species should be emerging
any moment now. Let’s go.”

The “Observatory” at Luna City had been erected largely for the amusement of the technical
staff, which included far more amateur astronomers than professionals. It consisted
of a group of wooden huts which had been drastically modified to hold about a dozen
instruments of all sizes from three to twelve inches’ aperture. A twenty-inch reflector
was now under construction, but would not be completed for some weeks.

The visitors had, it seemed, already discovered the Observatory and were making full
use of it. Some scores of people were lining up hopefully in front of the various
buildings, while the thwarted owners of the telescopes were giving them two-minute
peeks accompanied by impromptu lectures. They had not bargained for this when they
had gone out to have a look at the four-day-old Moon, and they had now given up all
hope of having a view themselves.