The Complete Short Stories

The Venus Hunters

When Dr Andrew Ward joined the Hubble Memorial Institute at Mount Vernon Observatory he never imagined that the closest of his new acquaintances would be an amateur star-gazer and spare-time prophet called Charles Kandinski, tolerantly regarded by the Observatory professionals as a madman. In fact, had either he or Professor Cameron, the Institute’s Deputy Director, known just how far he was to be prepared to carry this friendship before his two-year tour at the Institute was over, Ward would certainly have left Mount Vernon the day he arrived and would never have become involved in the bizarre and curiously ironic tragedy which was to leave an ineradicable stigma upon his career.

Professor Cameron first introduced him to Kandinski. About a week after Ward came to the Hubble he and Cameron were lunching together in the Institute cafeteria.

‘We’ll go down to Vernon Gardens for coffee,’ Cameron said when they finished dessert. ‘I want to get a shampoo for Edna’s roses and then we’ll sit in the sun for an hour and watch the girls go by.’ They strolled out through the terrace tables towards the parking lot. A mile away, beyond the conifers thinning out on the slopes above them, the three great Vernon domes gleamed like white marble against the sky. ‘Incidentally, you can meet the opposition.’

‘Is there another observatory at Vernon?’ Ward asked as they set off along the drive in Cameron’s Buick. ‘What is it an Air Force weather station?’

‘Have you ever heard of Charles Kandinski?’ Cameron said. ‘He wrote a book called The Landings from Outer Space. It was published about three years ago.’

Ward shook his head doubtfully. They slowed down past the checkpoint at the gates and Cameron waved to the guard. ‘Is that the man who claims to have seen extra-terrestrial beings? Martians or ‘Venusians. That’s Kandinski. Not only seen them,’ Professor Cameron added. ‘He’s talked to them. Charles works at a caf in Vernon Gardens. We know him fairly well.’

‘He runs the other observatory?’

‘Well, an old 4-inch MacDonald Refractor mounted in a bucket of cement. You probably wouldn’t think much of it, but I wish we could see with our two-fifty just a tenth of what he sees.’

Ward nodded vaguely. The two observatories at which he had worked previously, Cape Town and the Milan Astrographie, had both attracted any number of cranks and charlatans eager to reveal their own final truths about the cosmos, and the prospect of meeting Kandinski interested him only slightly. ‘What is he?’ he asked. ‘A practical joker, or just a lunatic?’

Professor Cameron propped his glasses on to his forehead and negotiated a tight hairpin. ‘Neither,’ he said.

Ward smiled at Cameron, idly studying his plump cherubic face with its puckish mouth and keen eyes. He knew that Cameron enjoyed a modest reputation as a wit. ‘Has he ever claimed in front of you that he’s seen a… Venusian?’

‘Often,’ Professor Cameron said. ‘Charles lectures two or three times a week about the landings to the women’s societies around here and put himself completely at our disposal. I’m afraid we had to tell him he was a little too advanced for us. But wait until you meet him.’

Ward shrugged and looked out at the long curving peach terraces lying below them, gold and heavy in the August heat. They dropped a thousand feet and the road widened and joined the highway which ran from the Vernon’ Gardens across the desert to Santa Vera and the coast.

Vernon Gardens was the nearest town to the Observatory and most of it had been built within the last few years, evidently with an eye on the tourist trade. They passed a string of blue and pink-washed houses, a school constructed of glass bricks and an abstract Baptist chapel. Along the main thoroughfare the shops and stores were painted in bright jazzy colours, the vivid awnings and neon signs like street scenery in an experimental musical.

Professor Cameron turned off into a wide tree-lined square and parked by a cluster of fountains in the centre. He and Ward walked towards the cafs — Al’s Fresco Diner, Ylla’s, the Dome — which stretched down to the sidewalk. Around the square were a dozen gift-shops filled with cheap souvenirs: silverplate telescopes and models of the great Vernon dome masquerading as ink-stands and cigar-boxes, plus a juvenile omnium gatherum of miniature planetaria, space helmets and plastic 3-D star atlases.

The caf to which they went was decorated in the same futuristic motifs. The chairs and tables were painted a drab aluminium grey, their limbs and panels cut in random geometric shapes. A silver rocket ship, ten feet long, its paint peeling off in rusty strips, reared up from a pedestal among the tables. Across it was painted the caf’s name.

‘The Site Tycho.’

A large mobile had been planted in the ground by the sidewalk and dangled down over them, its vanes and struts flashing in the sun. Gingerly Professor Cameron pushed it away. ‘I’ll swear that damn thing is growing,’ he confided to Ward. ‘I must tell Charles to prune it.’ He lowered himself into a chair by one of the open-air tables, put on a fresh pair of sunglasses and focused them at the long brown legs of a girl sauntering past.

Left alone for the moment, Ward looked around him and picked at a cellophane transfer of a ringed planet glued to the table-top. The Site Tycho was also used as a small science fiction exchange library. A couple of metal bookstands stood outside the caf door, where a soberly dressed middle-aged man, obviously hiding behind his upturned collar, worked his way quickly through the rows of paperbacks. At another table a young man with an intent, serious face was reading a magazine. His high cerebrotonic forehead was marked across the temple by a ridge of pink tissue, which Ward wryly decided was a lobotomy scar.

‘Perhaps we ought to show our landing permits,’ he said to Cameron when after three or four minutes no one had appeared to serve them. ‘Or at least get our pH’s checked.’

Professor Cameron grinned. ‘Don’t worry, no customs, no surgery.’ He took his eyes off the sidewalk for a moment. ‘This looks like him now.’

A tall, bearded man in a short-sleeved tartan shirt and pale green slacks came out of the caf towards them with two cups of coffee on a tray.

‘Hello, Charles,’ Cameron greeted him. ‘There you are. We were beginning to think we’d lost ourselves in a timetrap.’

The tall man grunted something and put the cups down. Ward guessed that he was about 55 years old. He was well over six feet tall, with a massive sunburnt head and lean but powerfully muscled arms.

‘Andrew, this is Charles Kandinski.’ Cameron introduced the two men. ‘Andrew’s come to work for me, Charles. He photographed all those Cepheids for the Milan Conference last year.’

Kandinski nodded. His eyes examined Ward critically but showed no signs of interest.

‘I’ve been telling him all about you, Charles,’ Cameron went on, ‘and how we all follow your work. No further news yet, I trust?’

Kandinski’s lips parted in a slight smile. He listened politely to Cameron’s banter and looked out over the square, his great seamed head raised to the sky.

‘Andrew’s read your book, Charles,’ Cameron was saying. ‘Very interested. He’d like to see the originals of those photographs. Wouldn’t you Andrew?’

‘Yes, I certainly would,’ Ward said.

Kandinski gazed down at him again. His expression was not so much penetrating as detached and impersonal, as if he were assessing Ward with an utter lack of bias, so complete, in fact, that it left no room for even the smallest illusion. Previously Ward had only seen this expression in the eyes of the very old. ‘Good,’ Kandinski said. ‘At present they are in a safe deposit box at my bank, but if you are serious I will get them out.’

Just then two young women wearing wide-brimmed Rapallo hats made their way through the tables. They sat down and smiled at Kandinski. He nodded to Ward and Cameron and went over to the young women, who began to chatter to him animatedly.

‘Well, he seems popular with them,’ Ward commented. ‘He’s certainly not what I anticipated. I hope I didn’t offend him over the plates. He was taking you seriously.’

‘He’s a little sensitive about them,’ Cameron explained. ‘The famous dustbin-lid flying saucers. You mustn’t think I bait him, though. To tell the truth I hold Charles in great respect. When all’s said and done, we’re in the same racket.’

‘Are we?’ Ward said doubtfully. ‘I haven’t read his book, Does he say in so many words that he saw and spoke to a visitor from Venus?’

‘Precisely. Don’t you believe him?’

Ward laughed and looked through the coins in his pocket, leaving one on the table. ‘I haven’t tried to yet. You say the whole thing isn’t a hoax?’

‘Of course not.’

‘How do you explain it then? Compensation-fantasy or—’

Professor Cameron smiled. ‘Wait until you know Charles a little better.’

‘I already know the man’s messianic,’ Ward said dryly. ‘Let me guess the rest. He lives on yoghurt, weaves his own clothes, and stands on his head all night, reciting the Bhagavadgita backwards.’

‘He doesn’t,’ Cameron said, still smiling at Ward. ‘He happens to be a big man who suffers from barber’s rash. I thought he’d have you puzzled.’

Ward pulled the transfer off the table. Some science fantast had skilfully pencilled in an imaginary topography on the planet’s surface. There were canals, craters and lake systems named Verne, Wells and Bradbury. ‘Where did he see this Venusian?’ Ward asked, trying to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

‘About twenty miles from here, out in the desert off the Santa Vera highway. He was picnicking with some friends, went off for a stroll in the sandhills and ran straight into the space-ship. His friends swear he was perfectly normal both immediately before and after the landing, and all of them saw the inscribed metallic tablet which the Venusian pilot left behind. Some sort of ultimatum, if I remember, warning mankind to abandon all its space programmes. Apparently someone up there does not like us.’

‘Has he still got the tablet?’ Ward asked.

‘No. Unluckily it combusted spontaneously in the heat. But Charles managed to take a photograph of it.’

Ward laughed. ‘I bet he did. It sounds like a beautifully organized hoax. I suppose he made a fortune out of his book?’

‘About 150 dollars. He had to pay for the printing himself. Why do you think he works here? The reviews were too unfavourable. People who read science fiction apparently dislike flying saucers, and everyone else dismissed him as a lunatic.’ He stood up. ‘We might as well get back.’

As they left the caf Cameron waved to Kandinski, who was still talking to the young women. They were leaning forward and listening with rapt attention to whatever he was saying.

‘What do the people in Vernon Gardens think of him?’ Ward asked as they moved away under the trees.

‘Well, it’s a curious thing, almost without exception those who actually know Kandinski are convinced he’s sincere and that he saw an alien space craft, while at the same time realizing the absolute impossibility of the whole story.’

"I know God exists, but I cannot believe in him"?’

‘Exactly. Naturally, most people in Vernon think he’s crazy. About three months after he met the Venusian, Charles saw another UFO chasing its tail over the town. He got the Fire Police out, alerted the Radar Command chain and even had the National Guard driving around town ringing a bell. Sure enough, there were two white blobs diving about in the clouds. Unfortunately for Charles, they were caused by the headlights of one of the asparagus farmers in the valley doing some night spraying. Charles was the first to admit it, but at 3 o’clock in the morning no one was very pleased.’

‘Who is Kandinski, anyway?’ Ward asked. ‘Where does he come from?’

‘He doesn’t make a profession of seeing Venusians, if that’s what you mean. He was born in Alaska, for some years taught psychology at Mexico City University. He’s been just about everywhere, had a thousand different jobs. A veteran of the private evacuations. Get his book.’

Ward murmured non-committally. They entered a small arcade and stood for a moment by the first shop, an aquarium called ‘The Nouvelle Vague’, watching the Angel fish and Royal Brahmins swim dreamily up and down their tanks.

‘It’s worth reading,’ Professor Cameron went on. ‘Without exaggerating, it’s really one of the most interesting documents I’ve ever come across.’

‘I’m afraid I have a closed mind when it comes to interplanetary bogey-men,’ Ward said.

‘A pity,’ Cameron rejoined. ‘I find them fascinating. Straight out of the unconscious. The fish too,’ he added, pointing at the tanks. He grinned whimsically at Ward and ducked away into a horticulture store halfway down the arcade.

While Professor Cameron was looking through the sprays on the hormone counter, Ward went over to a news-stand and glanced at the magazines. The proximity of the observatory had prompted a large selection of popular astronomical guides and digests, most of them with illustrations of the Mount Vernon domes on their wrappers. Among them Ward noticed a dusty, dog-eared paperback, The Landings from Outer Space by Charles Kandinski. On the front cover a gigantic space vehicle, at least the size of New York, tens of thousands of portholes ablaze with light, was soaring majestically across a brilliant backdrop of stars and spiral nebulae.

Ward picked up the book and turned to the end cover. Here there was a photograph of Kandinski, dressed in a dark lounge suit several sizes too small, peering stiffly into the eye-piece of his MacDonald.

Ward hesitated before finally taking out his wallet. He bought the book and slipped it into his pocket as Professor Cameron emerged from the horticulture store.

‘Get your shampoo?’ Ward asked.

Cameron brandished a brass insecticide gun, then slung it, buccaneerlike, under his belt. ‘My disintegrator,’ he said, patting the butt of the gun. ‘There’s a positive plague of white ants in the garden, like something out of a science fiction nightmare. I’ve tried to convince Edna that their real source is psychological. Remember the story "Leiningen vs the Ants"? A classic example of the forces of the Id rebelling against the Super-Ego.’ He watched a girl in a black bikini and lemon-coloured sunglasses move gracefully through the arcade and added meditatively: ‘You know, Andrew, like everyone else my real vocation was to be a psychiatrist. I spend so long analysing my motives I’ve no time left to act.’

‘Kandinski’s Super-Ego must be in difficulties,’ Ward remarked. ‘You haven’t told me your explanation yet.’

‘What explanation?’

‘Well, what’s really at the bottom of this Venusian he claims to have seen?’

‘Nothing is at the bottom of it. Why?’

Ward smiled helplessly. ‘You will tell me next that you really believe him.’

Professor Cameron chuckled. They reached his car and climbed in. ‘Of course I do,’ he said.

When, three days later, Ward borrowed Professor Cameron’s car and drove down to the rail depot in Vernon Gardens to collect a case of slides which had followed him across the Atlantic, he had no intention of seeing Charles Kandinski again. He had read one or two chapters of Kandinski’s book before going to sleep the previous night and dropped it in boredom. Kandinski’s description of his encounter with the Venusian was not only puerile and crudely written but, most disappointing of all, completely devoid of imagination. Ward’s work at the Institute was now taking up most of his time. The Annual Congress of the International Geophysical Association was being held at Mount Vernon in little under a month, and most of the burden for organizing the three-week programme of lectures, semesters and dinners had fallen on Professor Cameron and himself.

But as he drove away from the depot past the cafs in the square he caught sight of Kandinski on the terrace of the Site Tycho. It was 3 o’clock, a time when most people in Vernon Gardens were lying asleep indoors, and Kandinski seemed to be the only person out in the sun. He was scrubbing away energetically at the abstract tables with his long hairy arms, head down so that his beard was almost touching the metal tops, like an aboriginal halfman prowling in dim bewilderment over the ruins of a futuristic city lost in an inversion of time.

On an impulse, Ward parked the car in the square and walked across to the Site Tycho, but as soon as Kandinski came over to his table he wished he had gone to another of the cafs. Kandinski had been reticent enough the previous day, but now that Cameron was absent he might well turn out to be a garrulous bore.

After serving him, Kandinski sat down on a bench by the bookshelves and stared moodily at his feet. Ward watched him quietly for five minutes, as the mobiles revolved delicately in the warm air, deciding whether to approach Kandinski. Then he stood up and went over to the rows of magazines. He picked in a desultory way through half a dozen and turned to Kandinski. ‘Can you recommend any of these?’

Kandinski looked up. ‘Do you read science fiction?’ he asked matterof-factly.

‘Not as a rule,’ Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: ‘Perhaps I’m too sceptical, but I can’t take it seriously.’

Kandinski pulled a blister on his palm. ‘No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.’

Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees and children’s bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. ‘You’re probably right,’ Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. ‘I’d hate to want to take that seriously.’

Kandinski waved it aside. ‘I have seen 11th-century illuminations of the Pentateuch more sensational than any of these covers.’ He pointed to the cinema theatre on the far side of the square, where the four-hour Biblical epic Cain and Abel was showing. Above the trees an elaborate technicolored hoarding showed Cain, wearing what appeared to be a suit of Roman armour, wrestling with an immense hydraheaded boa constrictor.

Kandinski shrugged tolerantly. ‘If Michelangelo were working for MGM today would he produce anything better?’

Ward laughed. ‘You may well be right. Perhaps the House of the Medicis should be re-christened "16th CenturyFox".’

Kandinski stood up and straightened the shelves. ‘I saw you here with Godfrey Cameron,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You’re working at the Observatory?’

‘At the Hubble.’

Kandinski came and sat down beside Ward. ‘Cameron is a good man. A very pleasant fellow.’

‘He thinks a great deal of you,’ Ward volunteered, realizing that Kandinski was probably short of friends.

‘You mustn’t believe everything that Cameron says about me,’ Kandinski said suddenly. He hesitated, apparently uncertain whether to confide further in Ward, and then took the magazine from him. ‘There are better ones here. You have to exercise some discrimination.’

‘It’s not so much the sensationalism that puts me off,’ Ward explained, as the psychological implications. Most of the themes in these stories come straight out of the more unpleasant reaches of the unconscious.’

Kandinski glanced sharply at Ward, a trace of amusement in his eyes. ‘That sounds rather dubious and, if I may say so, second-hand. Take the best of these stories for what they are: imaginative exercises on the theme of tomorrow.’

‘You read a good deal of science fiction?’ Ward asked.

Kandinski shook his head. ‘Never. Not since I was a child.’

‘I’m surprised,’ Ward said. ‘Professor Cameron told me you had written a science fiction novel.’

‘Not a novel,’ Kandinski corrected.

‘I’d like to read it,’ Ward went on. ‘From what Cameron said it sounded fascinating, almost Swiftian in concept. This space-craft which arrives from Venus and the strange conversations the pilot holds with a philosopher he meets. A modern morality. Is that the subject?’

Kandinski watched Ward thoughtfully before replying. ‘Loosely, yes. But, as I said, the book is not a novel. It is a factual and literal report of a Venus landing which actually took place, a diary of the most significant encounter in history since Paul saw his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus.’ He lifted his huge bearded head and gazed at Ward without embarrassment. ‘As a matter of interest, as Professor Cameron probably explained to you, I was the man who witnessed the landing.’

Still maintaining his pose, Ward frowned intently. ‘Well, in fact Cameron did say something of the sort, but I…’

‘But you found it difficult to believe?’ Kandinski suggested ironically.

‘Just a little,’ Ward admitted. ‘Are you seriously claiming that you did see a Venusian space-craft?’

Kandinski nodded. ‘Exactly.’ Then, as if aware that their conversation had reached a familiar turning he suddenly seemed to lose interest in Ward. ‘Excuse me.’ He nodded politely to Ward, picked up a length of hose-pipe connected to a faucet and began to spray one of the big mobiles.

Puzzled but still sceptical, Ward sat back and watched him critically, then fished in his pockets for some change. ‘I must say I admire you for taking it all so calmly,’ he told Kandinski as he paid him.

‘What makes you think I do?’

‘Well, if I’d seen, let alone spoken to a visitor from Venus I think I’d be running around in a flat spin, notifying every government and observatory in the world.’

‘I did,’ Kandinski said. ‘As far as I could. No one was very interested.’

Ward shook his head and laughed. ‘It is incredible, to put it mildly.’

‘I agree with you.’

‘What I mean,’ Ward said, ‘is that it’s straight out of one of these science fiction stories of yours.’

Kandinski rubbed his lips with a scarred knuckle, obviously searching for some means of ending the conversation. ‘The resemblance is misleading. They are not my stories,’ he added parenthetically. ‘This caf is the only one which would give me work, for a perhaps obvious reason. As for the incredibility, let me say that I was and still am completely amazed. You may think I take it all calmly, but ever since the landing I have lived in a state of acute anxiety and foreboding. But short of committing some spectacular crime to draw attention to myself I don’t see now how I can convince anyone.’

Ward gestured with his glasses. ‘Perhaps. But I’m surprised you don’t realize the very simple reasons why people refuse to take you seriously. For example, why should you be the only person to witness an event of such staggering implications? Why have you alone seen a Venusian?’

‘A sheer accident.’

‘But why should a space-craft from Venus land here?’

‘What better place than near Mount Vernon Observatory?’

‘I can think of any number. The UN Assembly, for one.’

Kandinski smiled lightly. ‘Columbus didn’t make his first contacts with the North-American Indians at the IroquoisSioux Tribal Conference.’

‘That may be,’ Ward admitted, beginning to feel impatient. ‘What did this Venusian look like?’

Kandinski smiled wearily at the empty tables and picked up his hose again. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve read my book,’ he said, ‘but if you haven’t you’ll find it all there.’

‘Professor Cameron mentioned that you took some photographs of the Venusian space-craft. Could I examine them?’

‘Certainly,’ Kandinski replied promptly. ‘I’ll bring them here tomorrow. You’re welcome to test them in any way you wish.’

That evening Ward had dinner with the Camerons. Professor Renthall, Director of the Hubble, and his wife completed the party. The table-talk consisted almost entirely of good-humoured gossip about their colleagues retailed by Cameron and Renthall, and Ward was able to mention his conversation with Kandinski.

‘At first I thought he was mad, but now I’m not so certain. There’s something rather too subtle about him. The way he creates an impression of absolute integrity, but at the same time never gives you a chance to tackle him directly on any point of detail. And when you do manage to ask him outright about this Venusian his answers are far too pat. I’m convinced the whole thing is an elaborate hoax.’

Professor Renthall shook his head. ‘No, it’s no hoax. Don’t you agree, Godfrey?’

Cameron nodded. ‘Not in Andrew’s sense, anyway.’

‘But what other explanation is there?’ Ward asked. ‘We know he hasn’t seen a Venusian, so he must be a fraud. Unless you think he’s a lunatic. And he certainly doesn’t behave like one.’

‘What is a lunatic?’ Professor Renthall asked rhetorically, peering into the faceted stem of his raised hock glass. ‘Merely a man with more understanding than he can contain. I think Charles belongs in that category.’

‘The definition doesn’t explain him, sir,’ Ward insisted. ‘He’s going to lend me his photographs and when I prove those are fakes I think I’ll be able to get under his guard.’

‘Poor Charles,’ Edna Cameron said. ‘Why shouldn’t he have seen a space-ship? I think I see them every day.’

‘That’s just what I feel, dear,’ Cameron said, patting his wife’s matronly, brocaded shoulder. ‘Let Charles have his Venusian if he wants to. Damn it, all it’s trying to do is ban Project Apollo. An excellent idea, I have always maintained; only the professional astronomer has any business in space. After the Rainbow tests there isn’t an astronomer anywhere in the world who wouldn’t follow Charles Kandinski to the stake.’ He turned to Renthall. ‘By the way, I wonder what Charles is planning for the Congress? A Neptunian? Or perhaps a whole delegation from Proxima Centauri. We ought to fit him out with a space-suit and a pavilion — "Charles Kandinski — New Worlds for Old".’

‘Santa Claus in a space-suit,’ Professor Renthall mused. ‘That’s a new one. Send him a ticket.’

The next weekend Ward returned the twelve plates to the Site Tycho.

‘Well?’ Kandinski asked.

‘It’s difficult to say,’ Ward answered. ‘They’re all too heavily absorbed. They could be clever montages of light brackets and turbine blades. One of them looks like a close-up of a clutch plate. There’s a significant lack of any real corroborative details which you’d expect somewhere in so wide a selection.’ He paused. ‘On the other hand, they could be genuine.’

Kandinski said nothing, took the paper package, and went off into the caf.

The interior of the Site Tycho had been designed to represent the control room of a space-ship on the surface of the Moon. Hidden fluorescent lighting glimmered through plastic wall fascia and filled the room with an eerie blue glow. Behind the bar a large mural threw the curving outline of the Moon on to an illuminated star-scape. The doors leading to the rest-rooms were circular and bulged outwards like air-locks, distinguished from each other by the symbols cj and.

The total effect was ingenious but somehow reminiscent to Ward of a twenty-fifth-century cave.

He sat down at the bar and waited while Kandinski packed the plates away carefully in an old leather briefcase.

‘I’ve read your book,’ Ward said. ‘I had looked at it the last time I saw you, but I read it again thoroughly.’ He waited for some comment upon this admission, but Kandinski went over to an old portable typewriter standing at the far end of the bar and began to type laboriously with one finger. ‘Have you seen any more Venusians since the book was published?’ Ward asked.

‘None,’ Kandinski said.

‘Do you think you will?’

‘Perhaps.’ Kandinski shrugged and went on with his typing.

‘What are you working on now?’ Ward asked.

‘A lecture I am giving on Friday evening,’ Kandinski said. Two keys locked together and he flicked them back. ‘Would you care to come? Eight-thirty, at the high school near the Baptist chapel.’

‘If I can,’ Ward said. He saw that Kandinski wanted to get rid of him. ‘Thanks for letting me see the plates.’ He made his way out into the sun. People were walking about through the fresh morning air, and he caught the clean scent of peach blossom carried down the slopes into the town.

Suddenly Ward felt how enclosed and insane it had been inside the Tycho, and how apposite had been his description of it as a cave, with its residential magician incanting over his photographs like a down-at-heel Merlin manipulating his set of runes. He felt annoyed with himself for becoming involved with Kandinski and allowing the potent charisma of his personality to confuse him. Obviously Kandinski played upon the instinctive sympathy for the outcast, his whole pose of integrity and conviction a device for drawing the gullible towards him.

Letting the light spray from the fountains fall across his face, Ward crossed the square towards his car.

Away in the distance 2,000 feet above, rising beyond a screen of fir trees, the three Mount Vernon domes shone together in the sun like a futuristic Taj Mahal.

Fifteen miles from Vernon Gardens the Santa Vera highway circled down from the foot of Mount Vernon into the first low scrub-covered hills which marked the southern edge of the desert. Ward looked out at the long banks of coarse sand stretching away through the haze, their outlines blurring in the afternoon heat. He glanced at the book lying on the seat beside him, open at the map printed between its end covers, and carefully checked his position, involuntarily slowing the speed of the Chevrolet as he moved nearer to the site of the Venus landings.

In the fortnight since he had returned the photographs to the Site Tycho, he had seen Kandinski only once, at the lecture delivered the previous night. Ward had deliberately stayed away from the Site Tycho, but he had seen a poster advertising the lecture and driven down to the school despite himself.

The lecture was delivered in the gymnasium before an audience of forty or fifty people, most of them women, who formed one of the innumerable local astronomical societies. Listening to the talk round him, Ward gathered that their activities principally consisted of trying to identify more than half a dozen of the constellations. Kandinski had lectured to them on several occasions and the subject of this latest instalment was his researches into the significance of the Venusian tablet he had been analysing for the last three years.

When Kandinski stepped onto the dais there was a brief round of applause. He was wearing a lounge suit of a curiously archaic cut and had washed his beard, which bushed out above his string tie so that he resembled a Mormon patriarch or the homespun saint of some fervent evangelical community.

For the benefit of any new members, he prefaced his lecture with a brief account of his meeting with the Venusian, and then turned to his analysis of the tablet. This was the familiar ultimatum warning mankind to abandon its preparations for the exploration of space, for the ostensible reason that, just as the sea was a universal image of the unconscious, so space was nothing less than an image of psychosis and death, and that if he tried to penetrate the interplanetary voids man would only plunge to earth like a demented Icarus, unable to scale the vastness of the cosmic zero. Kandinski’s real motives for introducing this were all too apparent the expected success of Project Apollo and subsequent landings on Mars and Venus would, if nothing else, conclusively expose his fantasies.

However, by the end of the lecture Ward found that his opinion of Kandinski had experienced a complete about-face.

As a lecturer Kandinski was poor, losing words, speaking in a slow ponderous style and trapping himself in long subordinate clauses, but his quiet, matter-of-fact tone and absolute conviction in the importance of what he was saying, coupled with the nature of his material, held the talk together. His analysis of the Venusian cryptograms, a succession of intricate philological theorems, was well above the heads of his audience, but what began to impress Ward, as much as the painstaking preparation which must have preceded the lecture, was Kandinski’s acute nervousness in delivering it. Ward noticed that he suffered from an irritating speech impediment that made it difficult for him to pronounce ‘Venusian’, and he saw that Kandinski, far from basking in the limelight, was delivering the lecture only out of a deep sense of obligation to his audience and was greatly relieved when the ordeal was over.

At the end Kandinski had invited questions. These, with the exception of the chairman’s, all concerned the landing of the alien space vehicle and ignored the real subject of the lecture. Kandinski answered them all carefully, taking in good part the inevitable facetious questions. Ward noted with interest the audience’s curious ambivalence, simultaneously fascinated by and resentful of Kandinski’s exposure of their own private fantasies, an expression of the same ambivalence which had propelled so many of the mana-personalities of history towards their inevitable Calvarys.

Just as the chairman was about to close the meeting, Ward stood up.

‘Mr Kandinski. You say that this Venusian indicated that there was also life on one of the moons of Uranus. Can you tell us how he did this if there was no verbal communication between you?’

Kandinski showed no surprise at seeing Ward. ‘Certainly; as I told you, he drew eight concentric circles in the sand, one for each of the planets. Around Uranus he drew five lesser orbits and marked one of these. Then he pointed to himself and to me and to a patch of lichen. From this I deduced, reasonably I maintain, that—’

‘Excuse me, Mr Kandinski,’ Ward interrupted. ‘You say he drew five orbits around Uranus? One for each of the moons?’

Kandinski nodded. ‘Yes. Five.’

‘That was in 1960,’ Ward went on. ‘Three weeks ago Professor Pineau at Brussels discovered a sixth moon of Uranus.’

The audience looked around at Ward and began to murmur.

‘Why should this Venusian have omitted one of the moons?’ Ward asked, his voice ringing across the gymnasium.

Kandinski frowned and peered at Ward suspiciously. ‘I didn’t know there was a sixth moon…’ he began.

‘Exactly!’ someone called out. The audience began to titter.

‘I can understand the Venusian not wishing to introduce any difficulties,’ Ward said, ‘but this seems a curious way of doing it.’

Kandinski appeared at a loss. Then he introduced Ward to the audience. ‘Dr Ward is a professional while I am only an amateur,’ he admitted. ‘I am afraid I cannot explain the anomaly. Perhaps my memory is at fault. But I am sure the Venusian drew only five orbits.’ He stepped down from the dais and strode out hurriedly, scowling into his beard, pursued by a few derisory hoots from the audience.

It took Ward fifteen minutes to free himself from the knot of admiring white-gloved spinsters who cornered him between two vaulting horses. When he broke away he ran out to his car and drove into Vernon Gardens, hoping to see Kandinski and apologize to him.

Five miles into the desert Ward approached a nexus of rock-cuttings and causeways which were part of an abandoned irrigation scheme. The colours of the hills were more vivid now, bright siliconic reds and yellows, crossed with sharp stabs of light from the exposed quartz veins. Following the map on the seat, he turned off the highway onto a rough track which ran along the bank of a dried-up canal. He passed a few rusting sections of picket fencing, a derelict grader half-submerged under the sand, and a collection of dilapidated metal shacks. The car bumped over the potholes at little more than ten miles an hour, throwing up clouds of hot ashy dust that swirled high into the air behind him.

Two miles along the canal the track came to an end. Ward stopped the car and waited for the dust to subside. Carrying Kandinski’s book in front of him like a divining instrument, he set off on foot across the remaining three hundred yards. The contours around him were marked on the map, but the hills had shifted several hundred yards westwards since the book’s publication and he found himself wandering about from one crest to another, peering into shallow depressions only as old as the last sand-storm. The entire landscape seemed haunted by strange currents and moods; the sand swirls surging down the aisles of dunes and the proximity of the horizon enclosed the whole place of stones with invisible walls.

Finally he found the ring of hills indicated and climbed a narrow saddle leading to its centre. When he scaled the thirty-foot slope he stopped abruptly.

Down on his knees in the middle of the basin with his back to Ward, the studs of his boots flashing in the sunlight, was Kandinski. There was a clutter of tiny objects on the sand around him, and at first Ward thought he was at prayer, making his oblations to the tutelary deities of Venus. Then he saw that Kandinski was slowly scraping the surface of the ground with a small trowel. A circle about 20 yards in diameter had been marked off with pegs and string into a series of wedgeshaped allotments. Every few seconds Kandinski carefully decanted a small heap of grit into one of the test-tubes mounted in a wooden rack in front of him.

Ward put away the book and walked down the slope. Kandinski looked around and then climbed to his feet. The coating of red ash on his beard gave him a fiery, prophetic look. He recognized Ward and raised the trowel in greeting.

Ward stopped at the edge of the string perimeter. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I am collecting soil specimens.’ Kandinski bent down and corked one of the tubes. He looked tired but worked away steadily.

Ward watched him finish a row. ‘It’s going to take you a long time to cover the whole area. I thought there weren’t any gaps left in the Periodic Table.’

‘The space-craft rotated at speed before it rose into the air. This surface is abrasive enough to have scratched off a few minute filings. With luck I may find one of them.’ Kandinski smiled thinly. ‘262. Venusium, I hope.’

Ward started to say: ‘But the transuranic elements decay spontaneously…’ and then walked over to the centre of the circle, where there was a round indentation, three feet deep and five across. The inner surface was glazed and smooth. It was shaped like an inverted cone and looked as if it had been caused by the boss of an enormous spinning top. ‘This is where the spacecraft landed?’

Kandinski nodded. He filled the last tube and then stowed the rack away in a canvas satchel. He came over to Ward and stared down at the hole. ‘What does it look like to you? A meteor impact? Or an oil drill, perhaps?’ A smile showed behind his dusty beard. ‘The F-109s at the Air Force Weapons School begin their target runs across here. It might have been caused by a rogue cannon shell.’

Ward stooped down and felt the surface of the pit, running his fingers thoughtfully over the warm fused silica. ‘More like a 500-pound bomb. But the cone is geometrically perfect. It’s certainly unusual.’

‘Unusual?’ Kandinski chuckled to himself and picked up the satchel.

‘Has anyone else been out here?’ Ward asked as they trudged up the slope.

‘Two so-called experts.’ Kandinski slapped the sand off his knees. ‘A geologist from Gulf-Vacuum and an Air Force ballistics officer. You’ll be glad to hear that they both thought I had dug the pit myself and then fused the surface with an acetylene torch.’ He peered critically at Ward. ‘Why did you come out here today?’

‘Idle curiosity,’ Ward said. ‘I had an afternoon off and I felt like a drive.’

They reached the crest of the hill and he stopped and looked down into the basin. The lines of string split the circle into a strange horological device, a huge zodiacal mandala, the dark patches in the arcs Kandinski had been working telling its stations.

‘You were going to tell me why you came out here,’ Kandinski said as they walked back to the car.

Ward shrugged. ‘I suppose I wanted to prove something to myself. There’s a problem of reconciliation.’ He hesitated, and then began: ‘You see, there are some things which are self-evidently false. The laws of common sense and everyday experience refute them. I know a lot of the evidence for many things we believe in is pretty thin, but I don’t have to embark on a theory of knowledge to decide that the Moon isn’t made of green cheese.’

‘Well?’ Kandinski shifted the satchel to his other shoulder.

‘This Venusian you’ve seen,’ Ward said. ‘The landing, the runic tablet. I can’t believe them. Every piece of evidence I’ve seen, all the circumstantial details, the facts given in this book… they’re all patently false.’ He turned to one of the middle chapters. ‘Take this at random — "A phosphorescent green fluid pulsed through the dorsal lung-chamber of the Prime’s helmet, inflating two opaque fan-like gills…" Ward closed the book and shrugged helplessly. Kandinski stood a few feet away from him, the sunlight breaking across the deep lines of his face.

‘Now I know what you say to my objections,’ Ward went on. ‘If you told a 19th century chemist that lead could be transmuted into gold he would have dismissed you as a mediaevalist. But the point is that he’d have been right to do so—’

‘I understand,’ Kandinski interrupted. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you came out here today.’

Ward stared out over the desert. High above, a stratojet was doing cuban eights into the sun, the spiral vapour trails drifting across the sky like gigantic fragments of an apocalyptic message. Looking around, he realized that Kandinski must have walked from the bus-stop on the highway. ‘I’ll give you a lift back,’ he said.

As they drove along the canal he turned to Kandinski. ‘I enjoyed your lecture last night. I apologize for trying to make you look a fool.’

Kandinski was loosening his boot-straps. He laughed unreproachfully. ‘You put me in an awkward position. I could hardly have challenged you. I can’t afford to subscribe to every astronomical journal. Though a sixth moon would have been big news.’ As they neared Vernon Gardens he asked: ‘Would you like to come in and look at the tablet analysis?’

Ward made no reply to the invitation. He drove around the square and parked under the trees, then looked up at the fountains, tapping his fingers on the windshield. Kandinski sat beside him, cogitating into his beard.

Ward watched him carefully. ‘Do you think this Venusian will return?’

Kandinski nodded. ‘Yes. I am sure he will.’

Later they sat together at a broad roll-top desk in the room above the Tycho. Around the wall hung white cardboard screens packed with lines of cuneiform glyphics and Kandinski’s progressive breakdown of their meaning.

Ward held an enlargement of the original photograph of the Venusian tablet and listened to Kandinski’s explanation.

‘As you see from this,’ Kandinski explained, ‘in all probability there are not millions of Venusians, as every one would expect, but only three or four of them altogether. Two are circling Venus, a third Uranus and possibly a fourth is in orbit around Neptune. This solves the difficulty that puzzled you and antagonizes everyone else. Why should the Prime have approached only one person out of several hundred million and selected him on a completely random basis? Now obviously he had seen the Russian and American satellite capsules and assumed that our race, like his now, numbered no more than three or four, then concluded from the atmospheric H-bomb tests that we were in conflict and would soon destroy ourselves. This is one of the reasons why I think he will return shortly and why it is important to organize a world-wide reception for him on a governmental level.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Ward said. ‘He must have known that the population of this planet numbered more than three or four. Even the weakest telescope would demonstrate that.’

‘Of course, but he would naturally assume that the millions of inhabitants of the Earth belonged to an aboriginal sub-species, perhaps employed as work animals. After all, if he observed that despite this planet’s immense resources the bulk of its population lived like animals, an alien visitor could only decide that they were considered as such.’

‘But space vehicles are supposed to have been observing us since the Babylonian era, long before the development of satellite rockets. There have been thousands of recorded sightings.’

Kandinski shook his head. ‘None of them has been authenticated.’

‘What about the other landings that have been reported recently?’ Ward asked. ‘Any number of people have seen Venusians and Martians.’

‘Have they?’ Kandinski asked sceptically. ‘I wish I could believe that. Some of the encounters reveal marvellous powers of invention, but no one can accept them as anything but fantasy.’

‘The same criticism has been levelled at your space-craft,’ Ward reminded him.

Kandinski seemed to lose patience. ‘I saw it,’ he explained, impotently tossing his notebook on to the desk. ‘I spoke to the Prime!’

Ward nodded non-committally and picked up the photograph again. Kandinski stepped over to him and took it out of his hands. ‘Ward,’ he said carefully. ‘Believe me. You must. You know I am too big a man to waste myself on a senseless charade.’ His massive hands squeezed Ward’s shoulders, and almost lifted him off the seat. ‘Believe me. Together we can be ready for the next landings and alert the world. I am only Charles Kandinski, a waiter at a thirdrate caf, but you are Dr Andrew Ward of Mount Vernon Observatory. They will listen to you. Try to realize what this may mean for mankind.’

Ward pulled himself away from Kandinski and rubbed his shoulders.

‘Ward, do you believe me? Ask yourself.’

Ward looked up pensively at Kandinski towering over him, his red beard like the burning, unconsumed bush.

‘I think so,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, I do.’

A week later the 23rd Congress of the International Geophysical Association opened at Mount Vernon Observatory. At 3.30 P.M., in the Hoyle Library amphitheatre, Professor Renthall was to deliver the inaugural address welcoming the 92 delegates and 25 newspaper and agency reporters to the fortnight’s programme of lectures and discussions.

Shortly after 11 o’clock that morning Ward and Professor Cameron completed their final arrangements and escaped down to Vernon Gardens for an hour’s relaxation.

‘Well,’ Cameron said as they walked over to the Site Tycho, ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it must be like to run the Waldorf-Astoria.’ They picked one of the sidewalk tables and sat down. ‘I haven’t been here for weeks,’ Cameron said. ‘How are you getting on with the Man in the Moon?’

‘Kandinski? I hardly ever see him,’ Ward said.

‘I was talking to the Time magazine stringer about Charles,’ Cameron said, cleaning his sunglasses. ‘He thought he might do a piece about him.’

‘Hasn’t Kandinski suffered enough of that sort of thing?’ Ward asked moodily.

‘Perhaps he has,’ Cameron agreed. ‘Is he still working on his crossword puzzle? The tablet thing, whatever he calls it.’

Casually, Ward said: ‘He has a theory that it should be possible to see the lunar bases. Refuelling points established there by the Venusians over the centuries.’

‘Interesting,’ Cameron commented.

‘They’re sited near Copernicus,’ Ward went on. ‘I know Vandone at Milan is mapping Archimedes and the Imbrium, I thought I might mention it to him at his semester tomorrow.’

Professor Cameron took off his glasses and gazed quizzically at Ward. ‘My dear Andrew, what has been going on? Don’t tell me you’ve become one of Charles’ converts?’

Ward laughed and shook his head. ‘Of course not. Obviously there are no lunar bases or alien space-craft. I don’t for a moment believe a word Kandinski says.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘At the same time I admit I have become involved with him. There’s something about Kandinski’s personality. On the on hand I can’t take him seriously—’

‘Oh, I take him seriously,’ Cameron cut in smoothly. ‘Very seriously indeed, if not quite in the sense you mean.’ Cameron turned his back on the sidewalk crowds. ‘Jung’s views on flying saucers are very illuminating, Andrew; they’d help you to understand Kandinski. Jung believes that civilization now stands at the conclusion of a Platonic Great Year, at the eclipse of the sign of Pisces which has dominated the Christian epoch, and that we are entering the sign of Aquarius, a period of confusion and psychic chaos. He remarks that throughout history, at all times of uncertainty and discord, cosmic space vehicles have been seen approaching Earth, and that in a few extreme cases actual meetings with their occupants are supposed to have taken place.’

As Cameron paused, Ward glanced across the tables for Kandinski, but a relief waiter served them and he assumed it was Kandinski’s day off.

Cameron continued: ‘Most people regard Charles Kandinski as a lunatic, but as a matter of fact he is performing one of the most important roles in the world today, the role of a prophet alerting people of this coming crisis. The real significance of his fantasies, like that of the ban-the-bomb movements, is to be found elsewhere than on the conscious plane, as an expression of the immense psychic forces stirring below the surface of rational life, like the isotactic movements of the continental tables which heralded the major geological transformations.’

Ward shook his head dubiously. ‘I can accept that a man such as Freud was a prophet, but Charles Kandinski—?’

‘Certainly. Far more than Freud. It’s unfortunate for Kandinski, and for the writers of science fiction for that matter, that they have to perform their tasks of describing the symbols of transformation in a so-called rationalist society, where a scientific, or at least a pesudo-scientific explanation is required a priori. And because the true prophet never deals in what may be rationally deduced, people such as Charles are ignored or derided today.’

‘It’s interesting that Kandinski compared his meeting with the Venusian with Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus,’ Ward said.

‘He was quite right. In both encounters you see the same mechanism of blinding unconscious revelation. And you can see too that Charles feels the same overwhelming need to spread the Pauline revelation to the world. The AntiApollo movement is only now getting under way, but within the next decade it will recruit millions, and men such as Charles Kandinski will be the fathers of its apocalypse.’

‘You make him sound like a titanic figure,’ Ward remarked quietly. ‘I think he’s just a lonely, tired man obsessed by something he can’t understand. Perhaps he simply needs a few friends to confide in.’

Slowly shaking his head, Cameron tapped the table with his glasses. ‘Be warned, Andrew, you’ll burn your fingers if you play with Charles’ brand of fire. The mana-personalities of history have no time for personal loyalties — the founder of the Christian church made that pretty plain.’

Shortly after seven o’clock that evening Charles Kandinski mounted his bicycle and set off out of Vernon Gardens. The small room in the seedy area where he lived always depressed him on his free days from the Tycho, and as he pedalled along he ignored the shouts from his neighbours sitting out on their balconies with their crates of beer. He knew that his beard and the high, ancient bicycle with its capacious wicker basket made him a grotesque, Quixotic figure, but he felt too preoccupied to care. That morning he had heard that the French translation of The Landings from Outer Space, printed at his own cost, had been completely ignored by the Paris press. In addition a jobbing printer in Santa Vera was pressing him for payment for 5,000 anti-Apollo leaflets that had been distributed the previous year.

Above all had come the news on the radio that the target date of the first manned Moon flight had been advanced to 1969, and on the following day would take place the latest and most ambitious of the instrumented lunar flights. The anticipated budget for the Apollo programme (in a moment of grim humour he had calculated that it would pay for the printing of some 1,000 billion leaflets) seemed to double each year, but so far he had found little success in his attempt to alert people to the folly of venturing into space. All that day he had felt sick with frustration and anger.

At the end of the avenue he turned on to the highway which served the asparagus farms lying in the 20-mile strip between Vernon Gardens and the desert. It was a hot empty evening and few cars or trucks passed him. On either side of the road the great lemon-green terraces of asparagus lay seeping in their moist paddy beds, and occasionally a marsh-hen clacked overhead and dived out of sight.

Five miles along the road he reached the last farmhouse above the edge of the desert. He cycled on to where the road ended 200 yards ahead, dismounted and left the bicycle in a culvert. Slinging his camera over one shoulder, he walked off across the hard ground into the mouth of a small valley.

The boundary between the desert and the farm-strip was irregular. On his left, beyond the rocky slopes, he could hear a motor-reaper purring down one of the mile-long spits of fertile land running into the desert, but the barren terrain and the sense of isolation began to relax him and he forgot the irritations that had plagued him all day.

A keen naturalist, he saw a long-necked sand-crane perched on a spur of shale fifty feet from him and stopped and raised his camera. Peering through the finder he noticed that the light had faded too deeply for a photograph. Curiously, the sandcrane was clearly silhouetted against a circular glow of light which emanated from beyond a low ridge at the end of the valley. This apparently sourceless corona fitfully illuminated the darkening air, as if coming from a lighted mineshaft.

Putting away his camera, Kandinski walked forward, within a few minutes reached the ridge, and began to climb it. The face sloped steeply, and he pulled himself up by the hefts of brush and scrub, kicking away footholds in the rocky surface.

Just before he reached the crest he felt his heart surge painfully with the exertion, and he lay still for a moment, a sudden feeling of dizziness spinning in his head. He waited until the spasm subsided, shivering faintly in the cool air, an unfamiliar undertone of uneasiness in his mind. The air seemed to vibrate strangely with an intense inaudible music that pressed upon his temples. Rubbing his forehead, he lifted himself over the crest.

The ridge he had climbed was U-shaped and about 200 feet across, its open end away from him. Resting on the sandy floor in its centre was an enormous metal disc, over 100 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. It seemed to be balanced on a huge conical boss, half of which had already sunk into the sand. A fluted rim ran around the edge of the disc and separated the upper and lower curvatures, which were revolving rapidly in opposite directions, throwing off magnificent flashes of silver light.

Kandinski lay still, as his first feeling of fear retreated and his courage and presence of mind returned. The inaudible piercing music had faded, and his mind felt brilliantly clear. His eyes ran rapidly over the space-ship, and he estimated that it was over twice the size of the craft he had seen three years earlier. There were no markings or ports on the carapace, but he was certain it had not come from Venus.

Kandinski lay watching the space-craft for ten minutes, trying to decide upon his best course of action. Unfortunately he had smashed the lens of his camera. Finally, pushing himself backwards, he slid slowly down the slope. When he reached the floor he could still hear the whine of the rotors. Hiding in the pools of shadow, he made his way up the valley, and two hundred yards from the ridge he broke into a run.

He returned the way he had come, his great legs carrying him across the ruts and boulders, seized his bicycle from the culvert and pedalled rapidly towards the farmhouse.

A single light shone in an upstairs room and he pressed one hand to the bell and pounded on the screen door with the other, nearly tearing it from its hinges. Eventually a young woman appeared. She came down the stairs reluctantly, uncertain what to make of Kandinski’s beard and ragged, dusty clothes.

‘Telephone!’ Kandinski bellowed at her, gasping wildly, as he caught back his breath.

The girl at last unlatched the door and backed away from him nervously. Kandinski lurched past her and staggered blindly around the darkened hall. ‘Where is it?’ he roared.

The girl switched on the lights and pointed into the sitting room. Kandinski pushed past her and rushed over to it.

Ward played with his brandy glass and discreetly loosened the collar of his dress shirt, listening to Dr Maclntyre of Greenwich Observatory, four seats away on his right, make the third of the after-dinner speeches. Ward was to speak next, and he ran through the opening phrases of his speech, glancing down occasionally to con his notes. At 34 he was the youngest member to address the Congress banquet, and by no means unimpressed by the honour. He looked at the venerable figures to his left and right at the top table, their black jackets and white shirt fronts reflected in the table silver, and saw Professor Cameron wink at him reassuringly.

He was going through his notes for the last time when a steward bent over his shoulder. ‘Telephone for you, Dr Ward.’

‘I can’t take it now,’ Ward whispered. ‘Tell them to call later.’

‘The caller said it was extremely urgent, Doctor. Something about some people from the Neptune arriving.’

‘The Neptune?’

‘I think that’s a hotel in Santa Vera. Maybe the Russian delegates have turned up after all.’

Ward pushed his chair back, made his apologies and slipped away.

Professor Cameron was waiting in the alcove outside the banqueting hall when Ward stepped out of the booth. ‘Anything the trouble, Andrew? It’s not your father, I hope—’ ‘It’s Kandinski,’ Ward said hurriedly. ‘He’s out in the desert, near the farm-strip. He says he’s seen another space vehicle.’

‘Oh, is that all.’ Cameron shook his head. ‘Come on, we’d better get back. The poor fool!’

‘Hold on,’ Ward said. ‘He’s got it under observation now. It’s on the ground. He told me to call General Wayne at the air base and alert the Strategic Air Command.’ Ward chewed his lip. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Cameron took him by the arm. ‘Andrew, come on. Maclntyre’s winding up.’

‘What can we do, though?’ Ward asked. ‘He seemed all right, but then he said that he thought they were hostile. That sounds a little sinister.’

‘Andrew!’ Cameron snapped. ‘What’s the matter with you? Leave Kandinski to himself. You can’t go now. It would be unpardonable rudeness.’

‘I’ve got to help Kandinski,’ Ward insisted. ‘I’m sure he needs it this time.’ He wrenched himself away from Cameron.

‘Ward!’ Professor Cameron called. ‘For God’s sake, come back!’ He followed Ward onto the balcony and watched him run down the steps and disappear across the lawn into the darkness.

As the wheels of the car thudded over the deep ruts, Ward cut the headlights and searched the dark hills which marked the desert’s edge. The warm glitter of Vernon Gardens lay behind him and only a few isolated lights shone in the darkness on either side of the road. He passed the farmhouse from which he assumed Kandinski had telephoned, then drove on slowly until he saw the bicycle Kandinski had left for him.

It took him several minutes to mount the huge machine, his feet well clear of the pedals for most of their stroke. Laboriously he covered a hundred yards, and after careering helplessly into a clump of scrub was forced to dismount and continue on foot.

Kandinski had told him that the ridge was about a mile up the valley. It was almost night and the starlight reflected off the hills lit the valley with fleeting, vivid colours. He ran on heavily, the only sounds he could hear were those of a thresher rattling like a giant metal insect half a mile behind him. Filling his lungs, he pushed on across the last hundred yards.

Kandinski was still lying on the edge of the ridge, watching the space-ship and waiting impatiently for Ward. Below him in the hollow the upper and lower rotor sections swung around more slowly, at about one revolution per second. The space-ship had sunk a further ten feet into the desert floor and he was now on the same level as the observation dome. A single finger of light poked out into the darkness, circling the ridge walls in jerky sweeps.

Then out of the valley behind him he saw someone stumbling along towards the ridge at a broken run. Suddenly a feeling of triumph and exhilaration came over him, and he knew that at last he had his witness.

Ward climbed up the slope to where he could see Kandinski. Twice he lost his grip and slithered downwards helplessly, tearing his hands on the gritty surface. Kandinski was lying flat on his chest, his head just above the ridge. Covered by dust, he was barely distinguishable from the slope itself.

‘Are you all right?’ Ward whispered. He pulled off his bow tie and ripped open his collar. When he had controlled his breathing he crawled up beside Kandinski.

‘Where?’ he asked.

Kandinski pointed down into the hollow.

Ward raised his head, levering himself up on his elbows. For a few seconds he peered out into the darkness, and then drew his head back.

‘You see it?’ Kandinski whispered. His voice was short and laboured. When Ward hesitated before replying he suddenly seized Ward’s wrist in a vice-like grip. In the faint light reflected by the white dust on the ridge Ward could see plainly his bright inflamed eyes.

‘Ward! Can you see it?’

The powerful fingers remained clamped to his wrist as he lay beside Kandinski and gazed down into the darkness.

Below the compartment window one of Ward’s fellow passengers was being seen off by a group of friends, and the young women in bright hats and bandanas and the men in slacks and beach sandals made him feel that he was leaving a seaside resort at the end of a holiday. From the window he could see the observatory domes of Mount Vernon rising out of the trees, and he identified the white brickwork of the Hoyle Library a thousand feet below the summit. Edna Cameron had brought him to the station, but he had asked her not to come onto the platform, and she had said goodbye and driven off. Cameron himself he had seen only once, when he had collected his books from the Institute.

Trying to forget it all, Ward noted thankfully that the train would leave within five minutes. He took his bankbook out of his wallet and counted the last week’s withdrawals. He winced at the largest item, 600 dollars which he had transferred to Kandinski’s account to pay for the cablegrams.

Deciding to buy something to read, he left the car and walked back to the news-stand. Several of the magazines contained what could only be described as discouraging articles about himself, and he chose two or three newspapers.

Just then someone put a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Kandinski.

‘Are you leaving?’ Kandinski asked quietly. He had trimmed his beard so that only a pale vestige of the original bloom remained, revealing his high bony cheekbones. His face seemed almost fifteen years younger, thinner and more drawn, but at the same time composed, like that of a man recovering slowly from the attack of some intermittent fever.

‘I’m sorry, Charles,’ Ward said as they walked back to the car. ‘I should have said goodbye to you but I thought I’d better not.’

Kandinski’s expression was subdued but puzzled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

Ward shrugged. ‘I’m afraid everything here has more or less come to an end for me, Charles. I’m going back to Princeton until the spring. Freshman physics.’ He smiled ruefully at himself. ‘Boyle’s Law, Young’s Modulus, getting right back to fundamentals. Not a bad idea, perhaps.’

‘But why are you leaving?’ Kandinski pressed.

‘Well, Cameron thought it might be tactful of me to leave. After our statement to the Secretary-General was published in The New York Times I became very much persona non grata at the Hubble. The trustees were on to Professor Renthall again this morning.’

Kandinski smiled and seemed relieved. ‘What does the Hubble matter?’ he scoffed. ‘We have more important work to do. You know, Ward, when Mrs Cameron told me just now that you were leaving I couldn’t believe it.’

‘I’m sorry, Charles, but it’s true.’

‘Ward,’ Kandinski insisted. ‘You can’t leave. The Primes will be returning soon. We must prepare for them.’

‘I know, Charles, and I wish I could stay.’ They reached the car and Ward put his hand out. ‘Thanks for coming to see me off.’

Kandinski held his hand tightly. ‘Andrew, tell me the truth. Are you afraid of what people will think of you? Is that why you want to leave? Haven’t you enough courage and faith in yourself?’

‘Perhaps that’s it,’ Ward conceded, wishing the train would start. He reached for the rail and began to climb into the car but Kandinski held him.

‘Ward, you can’t drop your responsibilities like this!’

‘Please, Charles,’ Ward said, feeling his temper rising. He pulled his hand away but Kandinski seized him by the shoulder and almost dragged him off the car.

Ward wrenched himself away. ‘Leave me alone!’ he snapped fiercely. ‘I saw your space-ship, didn’t I?’

Kandinski watched him go, a hand picking at his vanished beard, completely perplexed.

Whistles sounded, and the train began to edge forward.

‘Goodbye, Charles,’ Ward called down. ‘Let me know if you see anything else.’

He went into the car and took his seat. Only when the train was twenty miles from Mount Vernon did he look out of the window.