The Tenth Planet (21 page)

Idris smiled to himself and peered rapturously through his visor at the bleak glory of the surface of the tenth planet.

Hans Andersen, he thought. The Ice Queen’s Palace. Complete with diamonds as big as the Ritz. Where did that phrase come from? Ah, yes. Scott Fitzgerald. A twentieth century American writer …

Only the diamonds were not crystalline carbon. They were crystalline forms of oxygen and nitrogen. They caught the light from the atomic lamps and flashed as if they, too, were generating fire. It was like Guy Fawkes night, the Fourth of July, Bastille Day. With every step he took the crystalline rocks glittered and flashed in icy splendour, for kilometre upon kilometre. It was as if the entire planet were laying on an immense fireworks display—the greatest ever seen—to mark the passing of the last Earth man.

The atomic lamps had been turned on the moment Idris had stepped out of Talbot air-lock. Perhaps the Minervans thought he would be more afraid to die in the dark. They were not spacemen. They could not know that darkness and a skyful of stars were home to a spaceman. They could not know that, apart from the sun and the terrestrial moon, the stars were the oldest friends of man … Anyway, it was a
nice gesture. The troglodytes meant well.

Far to the planetary north, there was another glow in the sky. It shouldn’t be there, he thought hazily. It shouldn’t bloody be there. There ought to be nothing but stars and cars and damned noisy bars thataways. Ooops!

Experienced spaceman that he was, he realised that he was getting rapidly drunk. “Only one iddy-biddy reason for that!” he said thickly to himself. “Oxygen bloody narcosis!”

The oxygen feed control and the meter were on the left arm of his space suit. He peered at it and saw that his oxynitro mix was far too rich. It was almost in reverse ratio. Perhaps he had absent-mindedly set it at that himself. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the bloody Minervans were trying to be kind. He turned the oxygen down. Goddammit, a man doesn’t want to get pissed when he’s about to die. Or does he?

Answer: No. Thought was still important. It was no good sinking into a state of euphoria while there were still several hours of life left in the tank. Besides, he still carried the spare pack. It felt damned heavy; but he wasn’t going to jettison it. At least not yet. Not until he got tired of gazing at stars and sitting on rocks in the Snow Queen’s Palace.

He wondered if he were under observation from any of the tower domes. Probably. Even though it was impossible for him to get back through an air-lock, the Minervans would not trust him to die docilely as required. It had been made abundantly clear at the trial that though, by Minervan standards, he was regarded as sub-human, he was also regarded as a very dangerous and unpredictable animal.

They had driven the tiger out, but they would not rest easy until they knew it was dead.

Well, he would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him die. They would have to come out and search for the body if they wanted proof. In any case, even then he could frustrate them. He could always throw himself into a hydrogen lake when he was ready to pull the plug. The weight of the suit and support pack should be enough to take him to
the bottom, where he would lie, perfectly preserved for all eternity—or until the sun blew its fuses and destroyed the entire solar system.

Now that the oxygen and nitrogen mixture was back to normal, he was able to think clearly once more. He was able to consider his options. He had about eighteen hours of air left, he supposed.

So what were the options?

One: he could pull the plug here and now—to the immense relief of any watching Minervans. Two: he could take himself away from the illuminated areas, amuse himself for a while by exploring the extraordinary conditions on the surface of a planet whose temperature was only about sixteen or seventeen degrees above absolute zero, then pop into the nearest hydro-lake and perhaps leave behind him the legend of an immortal Earth man. Three: he could do something constructive.

But what the hell could be constructive in a situation like this?

The answer came almost as soon as he had formulated the question. He could head for Talbot Field. There were ferry rockets at Talbot Field, and the
Amazonia
. He knew that the space-ship was rarely used, and the ferry rockets only very infrequently. Therefore, there would only be a small duty staff. But, naturally, they would be alert to the fact that an Earth man was wandering about. So the chances of being able to pull a rabbit out of the hat were like those of the proverbial snowball in hell.

But the third option was better than nothing. Better than strolling about in ever decreasing circles until …

Besides, it would be good to see a space-ship again.

He switched on his head lamp and started to march—away from the atomic lamps, away from the planetary north where the glow in the sky marked the location of Talbot Field. No point in telegraphing his intentions. He would get out of visual range of the tower domes before he headed for the space-port. It occurred to him that the Minervans might have planted a radio beacon in his suit. Or they might
simply track his movements by the atomic micropile that powered his heating circuit and lighted his head lamp. No matter. At least, now, he had a purpose. He would give them a run for their money.

His progress was slow. The ground was very uneven and some of the rocks—possibly igneous in origin—were razor sharp. If he tripped and his vizor hit one of those, all his problems would be over.

It took him the best part of two hours to get clear of the illuminated area.

He floundered through shallow puddles of liquid hydrogen and was amazed that the vacuum cells in the fabric of his space suit and the heating circuits protected him so efficiently from the external cold. The kind of space suits that were standard equipment on the
Dag Hammarskjold
would not have withstood such treatment. His legs would have frozen solid the moment he tried to wade through liquid hydrogen.

It was a fine clear night. A fine clear eternal night. There were a few fleecy hydrogen clouds in the clear helium sky. But, for the time being, there did not seem to be any prospect of rain or snow. Idris dreaded both. There were heating elements in his vizor, but he did not know if they were able to cope with a blizzard of hydro-snow. To be blinded at this stage would be damned near lethal.

He laughed aloud at the thought. Lethal, indeed! He was already a dead man, living on a few borrowed hours.

He looked at the stars, and was glad that they were still his friends. He picked out Polaris and silently sent it greetings. The greetings of a doomed Earth man.

To the north, the light in the sky was brighter. Goddammit, he would have to get over a range of hills.

A small range; but not cushioned by soil or grass like the hills of Earth. These, he knew, would be nothing but sharp rock with ice-caps of hydrogen and hydro-glaciers and outcrops of oxygen and nitrogen. The crystalline gases would be just as hazardous as the rocks themselves. One heavy fall and his problems would be over.

Somehow, he got over the hills. He was lucky. He found a small, narrow pass and trudged up a glacier towards it. Then the snow came. But it did not stick to his vizor.

And when he had negotiated the pass, he saw Talbot Field below him, about two kilometres away, its atomic lamp shining as bright as that goddammed star over Bethlehem.

N
OW HE STOOD
by the field itself, an immense apron of smooth, heat-blasted rock, gazing at the small ferry rockets and the sleek, towering shape of the
Amazonia
that pointed like a vast phallic symbol to the stars. There was a considerable dusting of hydrogen snow on the ground; but the atmosphere was clear again. Which was unfortunate. Under the light of the atomic lamp, he could be seen clearly. So could his tracks in the snow, where he had wandered round the ferry rockets, looking hopefully and in vain for an unsealed air-lock. He had even tried the
Amazonia
. Its service ramp was down; but the air-lock mechanism was evidently designed only to open when some kind of identification tab or key was inserted in a slot.

Well, he had not expected them to make him a present of their only space ship. It was something to have got this far and to have seen the vessel that, one day, would lift off for Earth. That was something he had to believe. He didn’t believe in God, but he had to believe in something. The unquenchable spirit of man was as good an abstraction as any. Some day, maybe not for hundreds of M-years, but some day, some bright Minervan young men would get fed up with living like moles. They would take the
Amazonia
and blast off for Earth or even Mars. It was a consoling thought. The one thing the Triple-T party could not do would be to make their sterile culture utterly and absolutely
stable. One day, then …

He was tired. He was very tired. And time was running out. He was on his second life-support pack. The first had failed in the hills and in a short snow storm. Fortunately, the snow had not been so thick that he could not see the warning red light that flashed on his arm panel. Changing a life-support pack was easy if you had a friend to help you. You just closed the umbilicus valve, lived patiently on your suit air and waited while your friend unhooked the dead pack, put the new one on your back and placed the fat cord in your hand so that you could snap it into position, check the seal, open the umbilicus valve once more and breathe freely.

To do it yourself in darkness in a hydrogen snow storm was rather more exciting. He had almost passed out before he could get the cord to the umbilicus. He was too far gone even to check the seal. Fortunately, it was perfect.

Then he had had to scramble down another bloody hydro-glacier, over an assortment of oxygen and nitrogen rocks as well as some bloody great igneous rocks. And, before he made the field, he had fallen head first into a fairly deep hydrogen pool. Despite the vacuum cells in the space suit and the heat provided by the overworked micro-pile, he had felt the cold. By the Lord Harry, he had felt the cold! It was so bloody cold he knew he would die within a few seconds. But somehow, blind and totally immersed in liquid hydrogen, he found his feet and started walking. Or wading. He walked out of the pool, a steaming bloody miracle, numb in his arms and legs and with hydrogen vapour wreathing about him like ghostly fingers of death.

It only took a short time for his visor to clear; and then, once more, his head lamp showed him the way forward.

And now here he was at Talbot Field, the end of the road. Well, it had been an interesting journey, worth making. He had seen the ship that would one day go back to Earth. Amen.

He judged he had about four hours of air left in the tank. Why didn’t those bastards in the control tower come out and slap him on the back? It had been one hell of a journey.
He doubted if it could have been made by a Minervan. Only an Earth man would have been so stupid …

Why the hell hadn’t they noticed him? Why had they let him prowl about the ferry rockets and try to get into the
Amazonia
? He was plainly visible. Why didn’t they just come out and put a hole in his space suit and let him die like a gent?

Idris was angry. Unreasonably angry. He realised he was being unreasonable and automatically checked the oxygen-nitrogen mix. Normal. So it wasn’t oxygen narcosis again. It was just the frustration of a man doomed to die. Hell, the least they could do would be to give him some small assistance. But, then, he reminded himself, the sentence had not been death. It had only been exile. Ha, ha! The Minervans made a fine distinction.

He looked at the control tower, and felt even more angry. He wondered if he could do any damage to those complacent zombies who were now, doubtless, observing him with clinical detachment.

He looked at the control tower and saw a light flashing.

He looked at it incredulously.

The sequence of flashes was regular. He understood it instantly. And didn’t believe it. But the sequence was repeated again, and again.

It was a signal that was more than five thousand years old and that had been used and understood by seamen, airmen and spacemen of every nationality.

S.O.S.

I
DRIS BEGAN TO
run towards the control tower—which was a damn silly thing to do, he realised, over hydrogen snow. He fell twice and almost cracked his vizor. But he managed to get to the air-lock without killing himself. It was open and waiting.

He stepped inside. The manual controls were easy to operate. He closed the door, waited for the signal that indicated a perfect seal, then set the controls to pump out the deadly cold helium that was the surface atmosphere of Minerva. When that was accomplished, he punched the button that would fill the chamber with the standard oxygen/nitrogen mix and waited impatiently while the needle of the pressure meter rose.

With frantic haste, he unclipped his helmet and tore off his space suit. Suppose it was all a trick, some kind of sick joke, a misunderstanding, an illusion. Maybe on the other side of the internal door, there was a reception committee of fanatical Triple-T men, determined to finish him off before he could get up to any serious mischief with the space-craft.

He didn’t care greatly. The only thing he was sure of was that the S.O.S. signal had not been an illusion.

What he found when he opened the door was the last thing he would have expected to find.

Mary—with an anaesthetising gun in her hand.

As soon as she saw him, she dropped the gun and rushed
to him, holding him fiercely, sobbing.

“Oh, Idris, Idris! I was so afraid you wouldn’t make it.” Then, despite the tears, she managed to smile. “But I knew you would, really. I had to believe you would … Otherwise, I couldn’t have done it.”

Bit by bit, he got the story out of her. She told it as they ran up a spiral stair-case to the control room. He hoped to live long enough to marvel at the sheer audacity of it all. But, for the time being, he could only register the facts.

She had managed to steal the anaesthetic gun from the woman who had been assigned to stay with her and keep her confined in her apartment until the sentence of exile had been carried out. She had put the woman guard to sleep, left the apartment and locked the door behind her. Then she had gone to Talbot station in the hope that she could find a monorail car that would take her up the branch line to Talbot Field. None seemed to be running. She waited till the platform was clear, then jumped down into the track pit and made her way along the tunnel to Talbot Field on foot. An empty car came when she was half-way up the tunnel. She lay in the pit and let it pass above.