The Dark Light Years

CHAPTER THREE

Much happened during the year 1999 on Earth. Quins were born to a twenty-year-old mother in Kennedyville, Mars. A robot team was admitted for the first time into the World series. New Zealand launched its own system-ship. The first Spanish nuclear submarine was launched by a Spanish princess.

There were two one-day revolutions in Java, six in Sumatra, and seven in South America. Brazil declared war on Great Britain. Common Europe beat the U.S.S.R. at football. A Japanese screen star married the Shah of Persia. The gallant All-Texan expedition attempting to cross the bright side of Mercury in exotanks perished to a man. All-Africa set up its first radio-control-led whale farm. And a little grizzled Australian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress’s room at three o’clock of a May morning shrieking. “Got it. got it! Transponential flight!”

Within two years, the first unmanned and experimental transponential drive had been built into a rocket, launched, and proved successful. They never got that one back.

This is not the place for an explanation of TP formulae; the printer, in any case, refuses to set three pages of math symbols. Suffice it to say that a favorite science fiction gimmick — to the dismay and subsequent bankruptcy of all science fiction writers — was suddenly translated into actuality. Thanks to Buzzard, the gulfs of space became not barriers between but doorways to the planets. By 2010. you could get from New York to Procyon more comfortably and quickly than it had taken, a century before, to get from New York to Paris.

That is what’s so tedious about progress. Nobody seems able to jog it out of that dreary old exponential curve.

All of which goes to show that while the trip between B12 and Earth took less than a fortnight by the year 2035. that still left plenty of time for letter writing.

Or — in Captain Bargerone’s case, as he composed a TP cable to their lordships in the Admiralty — for cable writing.

In the first week he cabled:

Other prosodists were busy aboard the Mariestopes.

Walthamstone wrote laboriously to an aunt in a far-flung western suburb of London called Windsor: My dear old aunt Flo — We are now coming home to see you again, how is your rheumatism, looking up I hope. I have not been space sick this voyage. When the ship goes into TP drive if you know what this is you feel a bit sick for a couple of hours. My pal Quilt says that’s because all your molecules go negative.

But then you’re all right.

When we stopped at one planet which hasn’t got no name because we were the first, Quilt and me had a chance to go hunting. The place is swarming with big fierce dirty animals as big as the ship. It lives in mudholes. We shot dozens. We got two alive ones on board this old tub, we call them rhmomen, their names are Gertie and Mush. They are filthy. I have to clean out their cage but they don’t bite. They make a lot of rude noises.

As usual the food is bad. Not only poison but small helpings. Give my love to cousin Madge, I wonder if her education is completed yet. Whose winning the war with Brazil, us I hope!!!!

Hoping this leaves you as it finds me at present, your loving nephew, Rodney.

Augustus Phipps was composing a love letter to a Sino-Portuguese girl; above his bunk was a phobe of her looking extremely sinuous. Phipps regarded it frequently as he wrote: Ah CM darling.

This brave old bus is now pointing towards Macao. My heart as you know is permanently oriented (no pun intended) towards that fair place when you are holidaying there, but how good to know we shall soon be together in more than spirit I’m hoping this trip will bring us fame and fortune. For we have found a sort of strange life out here in this neck of the galaxy, and are bringing two live samples of it home. When I think of you, so slender, sweet, and immaculate in your cheongsam, I wonder why we need such dirty ugly beasts on the same planet — but science must be served.

Wonder of wonders! — They’re supposed to be intelligent according to my superior, and we are presently engaged in trying to talk to them. No, don’t laugh, pretty though I remember your laughter to be. How I long for the moment I can talk to you, my sweet and passionate Ah Chi; and of course not only talk! You must let me [Ed. — two pages omitted].

Until we can do the same sort of thing again.

Your devoted adoring admiring pulsating Augustus.

Meanwhile, down on the messdeck of the Mariestopes, Quilter also was wrestling with the problem of communicating with a girl: Hi honey!

Right now as I write I am heading straight back to Dodge City as fast as the light waves will carry me. Got the captain and the boys along with me too, but I’ll be shedding them before I drop in at 1477 Rainbow.

Beneath a brave exterior, your lover boy is feeling sour way up to here. These beasts, the rhinomen I was telling you about, they are the filthiest things you ever saw, and I can’t tell you about it in the mails. Guess it’s because you like me I know have always taken a pride in being modern and hygienic, but these things they’re worse than animals.

This has finished me for the Exploration Corps. At trip’s end, I quit and shall remuster in the Space Corps. You can go places in the Space Corps. As witness our Captain Bargerone, jumped up from nowhere. His father is caretaker or something at a block of flats Amsterdam way. Well, that’s democracy — guess I’ll try some myself, maybe wind up captain myself. Why not?

This seems to be written all around me, honey. When I get home you bet I’ll be all around you.

Your lovingest chewingest Hank.

In his cabin on B deck. Master Explorer Bruce Ainson wrote soberly to his wife: My dearest Enid, How often I pray that your ordeal with Aylmer may now be over. You have done all you could for the boy, never reproach yourself on that score. He is a disgrace to our name. Heaven alone knows what will become of him. I fear he is as dirty-minded as he is dirty in his personal habits.

My regret is that I have to be away so long, particularly when a son of ours is causing so much trouble. But a consolation is that at last this trip has become rewarding. We have located a major life form. Under my supervision, two live individuals of this form have been brought aboard this ship. ETA’s we call them.

You will be considerably more surprised when I tell you that these individuals, despite their strange appearance and habits, appear to manifest intelligence. More than that, they seem to be a space-faring race. We captured a space ship that undoubtedly is connected with them, though whether they actually control the craft is at present undecided. I am attempting to communicate with them, but as yet without success.

Let me describe the ETA’s to you — rhinomen, the crew call them, and until a better designation is arrived at, that will do. The rhinomen walk on six limbs. The six limbs each terminate in very capable hands, widespread, but each bearing six digits, of which the first and last are opposed and may be regarded as thumbs. The rhinomen are omnidextrous. When not in use, the limbs are retracted into the hide rather like a tortoise’s legs, and are then barely noticeable.

With its limbs retracted, a rhinoman is symmetrical and shaped roughly like the two segments of an orange adhering together, the shallow curve representing the creature’s spine, the fuller curve its belly, and the two apices its two heads. Yes, our captives appear to be two-headed; the heads come to a point and are neckless, though they can swivel through several degrees. In each head are set two eyes, small and dark in color with lower lids that slide upward to cover the eyes during sleep. Beneath the eyes are orifices which look alike; one is the rhinoman’s mouth, one his anus. There are also several orifices punctuating the expanse of body; these may be breathing tubes. The exobiologists are dissecting some corpses we have aboard with us. When I get their report, several things should be clearer.

Our captives encompass a wide range of sounds, ranging through whistles and screams to grunts and smacking noises. I fear that all orifices are able to contribute to this gamut of sound, some of which, I am convinced, goes above man’s auditory threshold. As yet neither of our specimens is communicative, though all the sounds they make to each other are automatically recorded on tape; but I am sure this is merely due to the shock of capture, and that on Earth, with more time, and in a more congenial environment where we can keep them more hygienically, we shall soon begin to obtain positive results.

As ever, these long voyages are tedious. I avoid the captain as much as I can; an unpleasant man, with public school and Cambridge written all over him. I immerse myself in our two ETA’s.

For all their unpleasant habits, they have a fascination my human companions lack.

There will be much to talk about on my return.

Your dutiful husband, Bruce.

Down in the main cargo hold, safely away from all the letter-writing, a mixed bag of men of all trades was strip-ping the ETA space ship and pulling it to pieces splinter by splinter. For the strange craft was made of wood, wood of an unknown toughness, wood of an unknown resilience, wood as tough and durable as steel — yet wood which on the inside, for it was shaped like a great pod, sprouted a variety of branches like horns. On these branches grew a lowly type of parasitic plant. One of the triumphs of the botanical team was the discovery that this parasite was not the natural foliage of the horn-branches but an alien growing thereon.

They also discover that the parasite was a glutton for absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and exuding oxygen. They scraped bits of the parasite from the horn-branches and attempted to grow it in more favorable conditions; the plant died. At the current one hundred and thirty-fourth attempt, it was still dying, but the men in Bot were noted for stubbornness. The interior of the ship was caked with filth of a certain rich consistency made up chiefly of mud and excrement When comparing this dirty little wooden coracle with the gleamingly clean Mariestopes, it would have been impossible for an rational individual — and rational individuals exist even amid the incarcerations of space travel — to imagine that both craft were constructed for the same purpose.

Indeed, many of the crew, and notably those who prided themselves on their rationality, were loud in their laughter as they refused to concede that the alien artifact was anything but a well-frequented jakes.

Discovering the drive quenched about 98 per cent of the laughter. Under the mire the motor lay, a strange distorted thing no bigger than a rhinoman. It was snugged into the wooden hull without visible welding and bolting; it was made of a substance outwardly resembling porcelain; it had no moving parts; and a ceramicist followed it weeping with a wild surmise into the engineering labs when the unit was finally drilled and grilled from the hull The next discovery was a bunch of great nuts that clung to the two peaks of the roof with a tenacity that defied the best flame-cutters. At least, some said they were nuts, for a fibrous husk covering them suggested die fruits of the coconut palm. But when it was perceived that the ribs running down from the nuts which had hitherto been regarded as wall strengtheners connected with the drive, several sages declared the nuts to be fuel tanks.

The next discovery put an end to discoveries for a time. An artisan chipping at a hardened bank of dirt discovered, entombed within it, a dead ETA. Thereupon the men gathered together and made emotional noises.

“How much longer are we going to stand for this, fellows?” cried Interior Rating Ginger Duffield, jumping on to a tool box and showing them white teeth and black fists. “This is a company ship, not a Corps ship, and we don’t have to put up with just any old treatment they care to give us.

There’s nothing down in regulations says we have to clean out alien tombs and bogs. I’m downing tools till we get Dirty Pay. and I demand you lot join me.”

His words drew forth a babble of response.

“Yes, make the company pay!”

“Who do they think they are?”

“Let ’em clean out their own stink holes!”

“More pay! Time and a half, boys!”

“Get knotted, Duffield, you ruddy trouble-maker.”

“What does the sergeant say?”

Sergeant Warrick elbowed his way through the bunch of men. He stood looking up at Ginger Duffield, whose lean and peppery figure did not wilt under the gaze.

“Duffield, I know your sort. You ought to be out on the Deep Freeze Planet, helping to win the war.

We don’t want none of your factory tactics here. Climb down off that box and let’s all get back to work.

A bit of dirt won’t harm your lily white hands.”

Duffield spoke very quietly and nicely.

“I’m not looking for any trouble, sarge. Why should we do it, that’s all I say. Don’t know what dangerous disease is lurking in this little cesspit. We want danger money for working in it. Why should we risk our necks for the company? What’s the company ever done for us?” A rumble of approval greeted this question, but Duffield affected to take no notice of it. “What’re they going to do when we get home?

Why, they’re going to put this stinking alien box on show, and everyone’s going to come and have a look and a sniff at ten tubbies a tune. They’re going to make their fortune out of this and out of those animals that lived in it. So why shouldn’t we have our little bite now? You just push along to C Deck and bring the Union man to see us, hey, sarge, and keep that nose of yours out of trouble, hey?”

“You’re nothing but a flaming trouble-maker, Duffield, that’s your trouble,” the sergeant said angrily.

He pushed through the men, heading for C Deck. Mocking cheers followed him into the corridor.

Two watches later, Quilter, armed with hose and brush, entered the cage containing the two ETA’s.

They sprouted their limbs and moved to the far end of the confined space, watching him hopefully.

“This is the last clean-out you guys are going to get from me,” Quilter told them. “At the end of this watch, I’m joining the walk-out, just to demonstrate my solidarity with the Space Corps. After this, as far as I’m concerned, you can sleep in crap as deep as the Pacific.”

With the fun-loving ebullience of youth, he turned the hose on to them.