Earthlight

Chapter XVIII

To the Observatory, the battle was no more than an occasional distant earthquake, a faint vibration of the ground which disturbed some of the more delicate instruments but did no material damage. The psychological damage, however, was a different matter. Nothing is so demoralizing as to know that great and shattering events are taking place, but to be totally unaware of their outcome. The Observatory was full of wild rumors, the Signals Office besieged with inquiries. But even here there was no information. All news broadcasts from Earth had ceased; the whole world was waiting, as if with bated breath, for the fury of the battle to die away so that the victor could be known. That there would be no victor was the one thing that had not been anticipated.

Not until long after the last vibrations had died away and the radio had announced that the Federation forces were in full retreat did Maclaurin permit anyone to go up to the surface. The report that came down was, after the strain and excitement of the last few hours, not only a relief but a considerable anticlimax. There was a small amount of increased radioactivity about, but not the slightest trace of damage. What it would be like on the other side of the mountains was, of course, a different matter.

The news that Wheeler and Jamieson were safe gave a tremendous boost to the staff’s morale. Owing to a partial breakdown of communications, it had taken them almost an hour to contact Earth and to get connected to the Observatory. The delay had been both infuriating and worrying, for it had left them wondering if the Observatory had been destroyed. They dared not set out on foot until they were sure they had somewhere to go—and Ferdinand was now too radioactive to be a safe refuge.

Sadler was in Communications trying to find out what was happening, when the message came through. Jamieson, sounding very tired, gave a brief report of the battle and asked for instructions.

“What’s the radiation reading inside the cab?” Maclaurin asked. Jamieson called back the figures: it still seemed strange to Sadler that the message should have to go all the way to Earth just to span a hundred kilometers of the Moon, and he was never able to get used to the three-second delay that this implied.

“I’ll get the health section to work out the tolerance,” Maclaurin answered. “You say it’s only a quarter of that reading out in the open?”

“Yes—we’ve stayed outside the tractor as much as possible, and have come in every ten minutes to try and contact you.”

“The best plan is this—we’ll send a Caterpillar right away, and you start walking toward us. Any particular rendezvous you’d like to aim for?”

Jamieson thought for a moment.

“Tell your driver to head for the five-kilometer marker on this side of Prospect; we’ll reach it about the same time as he does. We’ll keep our suit radios on so there’ll be no chance of him missing us.”

As Maclaurin was giving his orders, Sadler asked if there was room for an extra passenger in the rescue tractor. It would give him a chance of questioning Wheeler and Jamieson much sooner than would otherwise be the case. When they reached the Observatory—though they did not know it yet—they would be whipped into hospital at once and treated for radiation sickness.

They were in no serious danger, but Sadler doubted that he would have much chance of seeing them for a while when the doctors got hold of them.

Maclaurin granted the request, adding the comment: “Of course, you realize this means that you’ll have to tell them who you are. Then the whole Observatory will know inside ten minutes.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Sadler replied. “It doesn’t matter now.” Always assuming, he added to himself, that it ever did.

Half an hour later, he was learning the difference between travel in the smooth, swift monorail and in a jolting tractor. After a while he became used to the nightmare grades the driver was light-heartedly attacking, and ceased to regret volunteering for this mission. Besides the operating crew, the vehicle was carrying the chief medical officer, who hoped to make blood counts and give injections as soon as the rescue had been effected.

There was no dramatic climax to the expedition; as soon as they topped Prospect Pass, they made radio contact with the two men trudging toward them. Fifteen minutes later the moving figures appeared on the skyline, and there was no ceremony apart from fervent handshakes as they came aboard the tractor.

They halted for a while so that the M.O. could give his injections and make his tests. When he had finished he told Wheeler: “You’re going to be in bed for the next week, but there’s no need to worry.”

“What about me?” asked Jamieson.

“You’re all right—a much smaller dose. A couple of days is all you need.”

“It was worth it,” said Wheeler cheerfully. “I don’t think that was much of a price to pay for a grandstand view of Armageddon.” Then, as the reaction of knowing that he was safe wore off, he added anxiously: “What’s the latest news? Has the Federation attacked anywhere else?”

“No,” Sadler replied. “It hasn’t, and I doubt that it can. But it seems to have achieved its main objective, which was to stop us using that mine. What will happen now is up to the politicians.”

“Hey,” said Jamieson, “what are you doing here, anyway?”

Sadler smiled.

“I’m still investigating, but let’s say that my terms of reference are wider than anyone imagined.”

“You aren’t a radio reporter?” asked Wheeler suspiciously.

“Er—not exactly. I’d rather not ”

“I know,” Jamieson interjected suddenly. “You’re something to do with Security. It makes sense now.”

Sadler looked at him with mild annoyance. Jamieson, he decided, had a remarkable talent for making things difficult.

“It doesn’t matter. But I want to send in a full report of everything you saw. You realize that you are the only surviving eyewitnesses, except for the crew of the Federal ship.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Jamieson. “So Project Thor was wiped out?”

“Yes, but I think it did its job.”

“What a waste, though—Steffanson and all those others! If it hadn’t been for me, he’d probably still be alive.”

“He knew what he was doing—and he made his own choice,” replied Sadler, rather curtly. Yes, Jamieson was going to be a most recalcitrant hero.

For the next thirty minutes, as they were climbing back over the wall of Plato on the homeward run, he questioned Wheeler about the course of the battle. Although the astronomer could only have seen a small part of the engagement, owing to his limited angle of view, his information would be invaluable when the tacticians back on Earth carried out their post-mortem.

“What puzzles me most of all,” Wheeler concluded, “is the weapon the fort used to destroy the battleship. It looked like a beam of some kind, but of course that’s impossible. No beam can be visible in a vacuum. And I wonder why they only used it once? Do you know anything about it?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Sadler, which was quite untrue. He still knew very little about the weapons in the fort, but this was the only one he now fully understood. He could well appreciate why a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred kilometers a second by the most powerful electromagnets ever built, might have looked like a beam of light flashing on for an instant. And he knew that it was a short-range weapon, designed to pierce the fields which would deflect ordinary projectiles. It could be used only under ideal conditions, and it took many minutes to recharge the gigantic condensers which powered the magnets.

This was a mystery the astonomers would have to solve for themselves. He did not imagine that it would take them very long, when they really turned their minds to the subject.

The tractor came crawling cautiously down the steep inner slopes of the great walled-plain, and the latticework of the telescopes appeared on the horizon. They looked, Sadler thought, exactly like a couple of factory chimneys surrounded by scaffolding. Even in his short stay here, he had grown quite fond of them and had come to think of them as personalities, just as did the men who used them. He could share the astronomer’s concern that any harm might befall these superb instruments, which had brought knowledge back to Earth from a hundred thousand million light-years away in space.

A towering cliff cut them off from the sun, and darkness fell abruptly as they rolled into shadow. Overhead, the stars began to reappear as Sadler’s eyes automatically adjusted for the change in light. He stared up into the northern sky, and saw that Wheeler was doing the same.

Nova Draconis was still among the brightest stars in the sky, but it was fading fast. In a few days, it would be no more brilliant than Sirius; in a few months, it would be beyond the grasp of the unaided eye. There was, surely, some message here, some symbol half glimpsed on the frontiers of imagination. Science would learn much from N. Draconis, but what would it teach the ordinary world of men?

Only this, thought Sadler. The heavens might blaze with portents, the galaxy might burn with the beacon lights of detonating stars, but man would go about his own affairs with a sublime indifference. He was busy with the planets now, and the stars would have to wait. He would not be overawed by anything that they could do; and in his own good time, he would deal with them as he considered fit.

Neither rescued nor rescuers had much to say on the last lap of the homeward journey. Wheeler was obviously beginning to suffer from delayed shock, and his hands had developed a nervous tremble. Jamieson merely sat and watched the Observatory approaching, as if he had never seen it before. When they drove through the long shadow of the thousand-centimeter telescope, he turned to Sadler and asked: “Did they get everything under cover in time?”

“I believe so,” Sadler replied. “I’ve not heard of any damage.”

Jamieson nodded absent-mindedly. He showed no sign of pleasure or relief; he had reached emotional saturation, and nothing could really affect him now until the impact of the last few hours had worn away.

Sadler left them as soon as the tractor drove into the underground garage, and hurried to his room to write up his report. This was outside his terms of reference, but he felt glad that at least he was able to do something constructive.

There was a sense of anticlimax now—a feeling that the storm had spent its fury and would not return. In the aftermath of the battle, Sadler felt far less depressed than he had for days. It seemed to him that both Earth and the Federation must be equally overawed by the forces they had released, and both equally anxious for peace.

For the first time since he had left Earth, he dared to think once more of his future. Though it could still not be wholly dismissed, the danger of a raid on Earth itself now seemed remote. Jeannette was safe, and soon he might be seeing her again. At least he could tell her where he was, since events had made any further secrecy absurd.

But there was just one nagging frustration in Sadler’s mind. He hated to leave a job undone, yet in the nature of things this mission of his might remain forever uncompleted. He would have given so much to have known whether or not there had been a spy in the Observatory.