The Invincible

THE LONG NIGHT

The intense cold woke Rohan up. Drugged with sleep, he curled up under his blanket and pressed his face into the pillow. Then he placed his hands over his face, trying to shield it from the biting cold, but it was no use. He realized that he had to wake up completely. But he kept putting the moment off without knowing why. Suddenly he sat up. The cabin was pitch black. An icy blast of air hit him directly in the face. He jumped off his bunk, cursing softly as he groped his way in the dark toward the air conditioning. As he had gone to bed, he had felt so warm that he had turned the knob to “cold.”

Little by little the air in the small cabin heated up, but Rohan, huddling under his blanket, could not go back to sleep again. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch — 3:00 A.M. Only three hours of sleep again, he thought furiously and still freezing. The conference had lasted a long time. It was almost midnight when they had finally broken up. All that useless talk, he thought. Now, enveloped by this darkness, he would give anything to be back at the space station, not to have to see or hear any more of this damned Regis III and its dead nightmare of a world. Most of the strategists had been in favor of going into orbit, except for the chief engineer and the head physicist. From the beginning the latter had strongly supported Horpach’s opinion: remain here as long as possible. The probability of finding the men of Regnar’s group was one in a million, or not even that much. If they weren’t already dead, only the great distance between them and the battle scene could have saved them from this atomic inferno. Rohan wished he knew whether the astrogator had stayed solely because of the four lost men, or if other considerations had played a role in his decision. The way it appeared from Regis III was just one side of the story; it would look very different indeed in the dry words of some report and in the bright calm of the space station. The report would simply state that the Invincible had lost half its overland vehicles and its main weapon, the Cyclops (which would represent a future threat for any spacecraft landing on the planet). In addition, they had suffered six casualties, and more than half the crew had to be hospitalized and would most likely remain unfit for duty for many years to come. And because of these losses in human lives, machines and their most valuable instruments, they had run away from microscopic crystals, the creatures of a small desert planet, the dead remainder of the Lyre civilization that had long since been surpassed by Earth. What else but flight would it be, if they turned back now? But was Horpach the kind of man who would take such motives into consideration? Maybe he himself did not know why he had not ordered them to take off? Was he waiting for something? Surely, the biologists had discussed the possibility of defeating the inorganic insects with their own weapons. If that species had already undergone evolution, they concluded, it should be possible to introduce further changes. To begin with, the scientists would need to experiment with a considerable quantity of captured specimens and bring about certain genetic changes that would reappear in future insect generations, changes that would render harmless this whole crystalline race. Such genetic changes would have to be of an extremely specific nature; they would need to offer an immediate, exploitable effect, and ensure that succeeding generations would develop an Achilles heel, a vulnerable feature that could be attacked. But this was just the usual, speculative, idle talk of the theoreticists: they hadn’t the faintest idea what type of a mutation this would require, how to produce it, how many of these cursed crystals could be captured without risking another battle whose outcome might mean an even more serious defeat than on the previous day. Even if everything should go smoothly, how long would they have to wait for the results of this new evolution? Not just days or weeks, surely. Were they supposed to circle around Regis III like children on a merry-go-round, for one or two or even ten years? The whole thing was totally absurd.

Rohan noticed that he had turned the heat up too high: it had become uncomfortably hot in his cabin. He threw back his blanket, got up, took a shower, dressed quickly and left the cabin.

The elevator was not there. While he waited in the semi-darkness, broken only by the moving lights of the indicator, he listened to the nocturnal quiet enveloping the spaceship. His temples were throbbing, his head felt heavy with the torment of sleepless nights and days filled with tension. Occasionally a blubbering sound could be heard in the pipe lines. From the levels below came the muffled murmurings of the idling engines, which were ready for takeoff at any moment. Dry metallic air wafted from the ventilation shafts next to the platform on which he was standing. When the door slid open, he entered the elevator. He got off on the eighth level. Here the corridor made a turn and followed the curve of the main hull. Rohan walked ahead without really knowing where he was going. Mechanically he lifted his feet in the right spots in order to step over the high thresholds of the separating walls that could be hermetically sealed off, until finally he caught sight of the shadows of the crew working at the main reactor. The room was dark; only a few dozen luminescent hands flickered over the control panels.

“They can’t possibly be alive any more,” said one of the men sitting at the instrument panel. Rohan could not recognize who he was. “A thousand Roentgen went out to a radius of five miles. They’re dead by now, you can bet on that.”

“What are we sitting around here for, then?” grumbled another man. Not the voice, but the seat the man occupied — he was sitting at the gravimetrical control panel — told Rohan that Blank had spoken.

“Why? The old man doesn’t want to turn back, that’s why.”

“How about you? Would you do it?”

“What else can we do?”

It was warm in the room. The air was filled with the peculiar artificial pine scent used in the air conditioning units to alleviate the odor given off by the plastic parts and the tin casing when the reactor was on. The result was a blend which could be found only here on the eighth level.

The men could not see Rohan as he leaned with his back against the foam-rubber padding of the partition wall. Not that he was hiding there on purpose; he simply did not wish to participate in this conversation.

“It’ll be right on our heels,” another man said after a brief silence, and bent forward. For a fleeting instant his face became visible, half pink, half yellow from the glow of the little control lamps on the reactor wall, whose lights seemed to glare at the men huddled in front of the instrument panel. Rohan, like the rest of the men, knew at once what he was talking about.

“We have the field, and there’s our radar,” muttered Blank, annoyed.

“A fat lot of good that’ll do us if it shoots at one billierg.”

“The radar won’t let it get close enough.”

“Who are you trying to kid? I know it like the inside of my own pocket.”

“So what?”

“It’s equipped with an antiradar system. Interference systems — ”

“But it’s gone off its rocker — an electronic looney.”

“Looney, you say? Were you in the command center?”

“No. I was here the whole time.”

“Well, I was there. Too bad you didn’t see how that monster smashed our teleprobes.”

“Do you mean they reprogramed it? The Cyclops is already under their control?”

They’re talking about “them,” thought Rohan, as if it were really something rational.

“Who knows? Supposedly the only thing that’s off is the communication system.”

“Then why is it shooting at us?”

Again there was a moment of silence.

“Don’t we even know where it is?” asked the man who had not been in the command center.

“No. The last report arrived at eleven. Kralik told me so. The Cyclops was sighted toddling along through the desert.”

“Was it far from here?”

“Are you crazy? Ninety miles. That’s just under an hour’s drive for it. Maybe less.”

“Why don’t you two shut up? Just speculating won’t help any of us,” Blank snapped at them. His sharp profile was silhouetted against the colorful flickering of the little lights.

The men fell silent. Slowly, Rohan turned around and left as quietly as he had come. His way led past the two laboratories. The light was out in the big lab but in the small one all was lit up brightly. Rohan glanced inside. Only cyberneticists and physicists sat around the table — Jazon, Kronotos, Sarner, Liwin, Saurahan and someone else who had his back turned to the rest and, half hidden in the shadow of the slanting partition wall, was busy programing a big electronic brain.

“There are two potential solutions to this problem: annihilation or self-destruction. Anything else would amount merely to changing the cloud’s conditions for existence,” Saurahan said. Rohan did not budge. Once again he was just standing there and listening.

“The first solution is based on triggering a snowballing process. For that you need an antimatter projector that will drive into the ravine and stay there.”

“We already tried that once,” somebody remarked. “If it doesn’t have an electronic brain, it will still be able to function at temperatures of more than one million degrees. We’d need a plasma missile too. Plasma is insensitive to star temperatures. The cloud will react the same way as before — it will try to strangle it, to find resonance in its steering circuits. Nothing will happen except for a low-yield nuclear reaction. The more matter is drawn into this reaction, the more violent it will become. That way we can gather up the entire necrosphere of this planet in one place and then annihilate it…”

Necrosphere, thought Rohan. Oh, sure — inorganic crystals. Just leave it to the scientists to come up with a fancy new name.

“I’d prefer the self-destruction alternative,” Jazon said. “How would that work?”

“First you’d need to bring about two separate consolidations of two giant cloud brains. Then cause the two to collide with each other. Get each cloud to consider the other a threat to its own survival in the struggle for existence.”

“Sounds good. How do you plan to accomplish this?”

“It won’t be easy, but it is feasible — provided that the cloud is only a pseudo-brain, incapable of drawing logical conclusions.”

“The safest method is nevertheless changing the cloud’s conditions for existence by lowering the average intensity of radiation,” said Sarner. “Four hydrogen bombs, fifty to one hundred megatons each, over each hemisphere, that means altogether about 800 megatons, would be sufficient. The water in the oceans would evaporate. As a result the planet’s cloud cover would become denser, the albedo would increase and the symbiotic partners on the ground could no longer give off the required minimum of energy needed for their multiplication.”

“The equation won’t balance out,” objected Jazon. Seeing that the discussion threatened to turn into a technical dispute, Rohan stepped away from the door and went on.

Instead of taking the elevator again, he returned by a metal spiral staircase which was rarely used. As he passed one level after the other he saw the repair shops, where De Vries’ mechanics were working on the dark, motionless Arctanes as sparks showered from their welding torches. Far away he noticed the tiny windows of the sick bay, spreading a soft lilac-colored glow. A physician in a white coat noiselessly hurried along one of the corridors, followed by a small automaton carrying a tray with glittering instruments. Rohan walked past the dark and deserted mess halls, the club rooms, the library, and finally reached his own level. He slowed down near the astrogator’s cabin, as if he wanted to stop and listen here too. But no sound came through the smooth door, not even a light ray, and the portholes were bolted down with copper nuts. Not until he was back in his cabin did he feel how tired he was. His arms hung numbly at his sides. Heavily he plunked himself down on his bunk, kicked off his shoes and folded his hands behind his neck, staring up at the low, poorly lit ceiling, whose blue paint showed a long crack right in the middle.

Neither a sense of duty nor curiosity about other people’s private affairs and conversations had driven him to roam through the spaceship. He was simply afraid of the lonely night, for that was the time when he was troubled by images he would have liked to forget. Worst was the memory of the man he had shot at close range to prevent him from killing the others. He had been forced to shoot him, but that didn’t make things any easier. He knew the moment he turned off the light he would have to relive the scene, see the man in front of him again who with a dull smile obeyed the Weyr gun in his hand, while he stepped across the dead man lying on the rocks, his arm torn off.

The dead man was Jarg, who had returned, and who — after having been saved by some miracle — now had to die such a senseless death. Seconds later the other man, his protective suit smoldering and shred to pieces across his chest, would collapse over Jarg’s body. In vain Rohan tried to chase away these images that, against his will, kept appearing before his eyes — he could smell again the sharp odor of ozone, the hot recoil of the butt tightly grasped by his sweating fingers — he could hear again the men’s whimpers as he chased them, panting and wheezing, and then dragged them one by one, tying them up in bundles like sheaves of corn. And each time he shuddered to the core of his innermost being when he peered into the desperate helplessness of the familiar faces, into their blind, unseeing eyes.

A dull thud — the book he had once started to read back in the space station had fallen to the floor. He had put a white slip of paper inside to use as a bookmark, but he had not read a single line. Who had time for reading? He stretched out on his bunk, thinking of the scientists who were now sitting together concocting plans to destroy the cloud, and his lips drew up in a scornful smile. What absurdity, he thought. They want to destroy, and so do we. Everyone wants to destroy that certain something, but it won’t save anyone. The planet Regis is uninhabited; man has no business being there. Why be so grimly stubborn? It’s no different than if the men had perished in an earthquake or a thunderstorm. We haven’t been confronted by someone’s conscious, purposeful effort, or some hostile will. Nothing but an inorganic process of self-organization… Is it worth wasting our energy and strength to destroy it, simply because from the start we’ve considered it an enemy lying in wait for us, who ambushed the Condor first and then ourselves? How many weird phenomena alien to human concepts are harbored by the universe? Should we land everywhere with weapons of annihilation aboard, in order to smash to smithereens all that surpasses man’s power of comprehension? What did they call it just now? A necrosphere. Which means necro-evolution as well. Development of inorganic matter. Perhaps the inhabitants of the Lyre system might have put in a word or two about that; Regis III belonged to their realm. Maybe they intended to settle here on this planet; once their astrophysicists announced that their sun would turn into a nova, it might have been their last hope. If we ever found ourselves in such a situation, of course we would fight and try to stamp out the black crystal brood. But under the present circumstances? One parsec away from the space station, and the station removed from Earth by so many light years… For whose sake are we sitting here in this damned spot losing our men? Why must the scientists search all night for the best method of annihilation? How can anyone speak of vengeance here?

If only Horpach stood in front of him now, he would tell him all that. How foolhardy, how ludicrous this “victory at any price,” this “heroic persistence of man,” this obsession with retaliation for the death of their companions, who had perished only because they themselves had sent them to their death… We were simply not cautious enough, we relied too much on our powerful weapons. We made mistakes, and now we must take the consequences. We and no one else are responsible.

These were his thoughts in the dimly lit room as he lay on his cot, his eyes burning as if sand had accumulated under his closed eyelids. Man — he saw in a flash of insight — had not yet reached the true pinnacle; he had not yet appropriated that galactocentric idea, praised since antiquity, whose real meaning could not consist in searching only for similar beings and learning to understand them, but rather in refraining from interfering with alien, non-human affairs. Conquer the void, of course; why not? But don’t attack what already is, that which in the course of millions of years has achieved a balanced existence of its own, independent, not subject to anyone or anything, except the forces of radiation and matter — an active existence, neither better nor worse than the existence of the amino-acid compounds we call animals or human beings.

Rohan reveled in this noble thought, was filled with understanding for any form of existence, when he was suddenly hit by a sound, sharp as an arrow: the unnerving high-pitched howling of the alarm sirens.

All his thoughts vanished instantly, as if blown away by the blatant noise which spread throughout all the level. He jumped up and rushed out into the corridor, running with the other men with warm, human breath in a heavy, tired trot. But even before he reached the elevator, he felt a blow. Not with any particular organ of sense: indeed, not with his own body at all, but rather as if it were with the spaceship’s body of which he was an infinite particle. Though very distant and weak, the blow shook the Invincible’s hull from one end to the other. It was a jolt of immense severity, which — and he felt this too — was received and skilfully warded off by something far bigger than the Invincible.

“It’s the Cyclops! The Cyclops did it!” yelled the men as they raced ahead. One after the other disappeared in the elevator, whose doors shut with a hissing sound. Other members of the crew stormed noisily down the circular stairway, too impatient to wait their turn at the elevator. At this moment, the silent but even more violent detonation of the second blow bored through the babble of voices, the shouts, the whistles of the crewmen, the nonstop howling of the alarm sirens, through the hasty shuffle of feet coming from the upper levels. The little blue lamps on the corridor ceilings began to flicker, then burned brightly again.

Rohan would never have believed that an elevator could be so slow. He did not even notice that he was still pushing the button with all his might. Only one man still stood beside him, Liwin, the cyberneticist. The elevator stopped, and as Rohan got off he heard a whistling sound, so fine that it was almost unbelievable. He knew that the highest frequencies of this sound could not be perceived by the human ear. It was as if all the titanium joints of the spacecruiser were moaning at the same time. Rohan reached the door to the command center and realized that the Invincible had answered fire with fire. That effectively ended the battle.

Before the flaming background of the videoscreen loomed up the tall dark figure of the astrogator. The ceiling lights had been switched off. perhaps on purpose, and through the lines that rippled over the screen from top to bottom, causing the entire visual field to grow hazy, there glistened a gigantic, bulging mushroom, its stem attached to the ground, its huge billowing blisters extending into all four corners of the sky. It seemed motionless. The explosion had annihilated the Cyclops, reduced it to its very atoms, and left a terrible trembling in the air, through which the monotonous voice of the technician could be heard: “Twenty dash six hundred at zero point. Nine dash eight hundred at the circumference. One dash four twenty two in the field.”

1420 Roentgen in the field, pondered Rohan — that means that the radiation has broken through the barrier of the force field. He had not known it was possible. But when he glanced at the dial of the main output meter he saw how powerful a charge the astrogator had applied, enough energy to bring a good-sized inland sea to the boiling point. Well, Horpach hadn’t wanted to risk any further shooting matches. Perhaps he had gone a bit too far here; however, they now had to face only one adversary again.

Meanwhile an extraordinary spectacle unfolded on the picture screens: the ruffled, cauliflower-like mushroom cap was ablaze with all the colors of the rainbow, from the most delicate silvery green to rich orange and carmine red shades. Suddenly Rohan became aware that the desert was no longer visible. It was covered by a dense fog-like bank of sand that had been whirled up to a height of several dozen yards, surging and heaving, as if the desert had become an ocean.

The technician was still calling out the readings on the dial: “Nineteen thousand at zero point. Eight dash six hundred at the circumference. One dash one zero two in the field.”

The victory over the Cyclops was received with a dull silence: to have defeated their own strongest weapon was a hollow triumph. Gradually the men dispersed while the mushroom cloud rose higher and higher into the atmosphere. Suddenly its top flared up in a new color display, as it was hit by the rays of the sun that had not yet risen over the horizon. The peak of the mushroom cap had pierced the upper strata of the icy cirrus clouds and now displayed, high up in the sky, golden lilac, amber yellow and platinum white nuances, whose light was reflected from the videoscreens into the darkness of the command center. The entire room was faintly illuminated by an irridescent glow, as if someone had pulverized colorful terrestrial flowers on the enameled white of the instrument panels.

Once more Rohan felt amazement, this time at Horpach’s appearance. The astrogator had thrown over his shoulders the snow-white dress overcoat which he had last worn during the farewell festivities in the space station. Evidently he had grabbed the nearest article of clothing at hand as he had hurriedly rushed out of his cabin. There he stood, hands in pockets, with gray disheveled hair, letting his gaze wander around the circle of men assembled in the command center.

“Rohan,” he said in an unexpectedly soft voice. “Will you come with me, please.”

Rohan stepped closer, automatically pulling himself up as he did so. The astrogator turned around and walked over to the door. They strode down the corridor, one after the other, and through the ventilation shaft they could hear above the soft hiss of compressed air a dull murmur, the irritated voices of the men on the lower levels.