The Wanderer

Chapter Eight

Hunter and Doc were jabbering together as they watched the Wanderer. Doc’s bald dome had a weird magenta glow as Hunter’s shaggy head and bearded face momentarily cut him off from the golden half of the body in the sky.

Paul, suddenly flooded by a strange, reckless energy, sprang up on the platform beside them and said loudly: “Look here, I’ve got some inside information on star photos showing areas of twist that completely confirm what you—”

“Shut up! I’ve got no time to listen to the crackpot claims of you saucer bugs,” Doc roared at him, not unkindly, and instantly went on: “Ross, I’ll grant you that if that thing is as far away as the moon, then it’s as big as the earth. Has to be. But—”

“Provided it’s a sphere,” Hunter put in sharply. “Could be flat like a plate.”

“Sure, provided it’s a sphere. But that’s a natural, sane assumption, don’t you think? I was going to say that if it’s only a thousand miles up, then it’s only—” he shut his eyes for two seconds — “thirty miles across. You follow me?”

“Sure,” Hunter told him. “Similar triangles and eight thousand miles divided by 250.”

Doc nodded so violently he almost lost his glasses and had to grab at them to steady them. “And if it’s only a hundred miles up — that’s still high enough for it to give a general illumination, though not from reflected sunlight—”

“Then it’s only three miles’ across,” Hunter finished for him.

“Yes,” Paul agreed loudly, “but in that case it’ll be moving in a ninety-minute orbit. That’s four degrees a minute — enough so we’ll notice it pretty quickly, even without stars to judge it by.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Doc said, turning to him now as if Paul were an old colleague. “Four degrees is as long as Orion’s Belt. We’ll see that much movement pretty fast.”

“But how do you know it’s in any kind of orbit?” Hunter asked. “How do we know anything like that?”

“It’s just another natural, sane assumption,” Doc told him, rather bitterly and roaring a little. “Like we assume the thing’s reflecting sunlight. Wherever it came from, it’s in space now, so we assume it obeys the laws of space until we know different.” He switched to Paul. “What were you saying about star photos?”

Paul began to tell them.

Margo hadn’t followed Paul onto the platform. People were pushing and jabbering around, her, two women were kneeling by the Ramrod and rubbing his wrists, the Little Man was hunting behind chairs for something, but Margo was staring across the dun sand at the eerie amethyst and topaz wake of the Wanderer in the waters of the Pacific. The fancy came to her that all the ghosts in her past, or perhaps it was the world’s past, were going to come marching toward her along that jeweled highway.

The She-Turban’s face came in the way and said to her accusingly, “I know you — you’re the girl friend of that spaceman. I saw your picture in Life.”

“You’re right, Rama Joan,” a woman in a pale gray sweater and slacks said to the She-Turban. “I must have seen the same picture.”

“She came with a man,” Ann volunteered from her Rama Joan’s side. “But they’re nice people; they brought a cat. See how it stares at the big velvet saucer, Mommy?”

“Yes, dear.” Rama Joan agreed, smiling twistedly. “It’s seeing devils. Cats like them.”

“Please don’t try to scare us any more than we are,” Margo said sharply. “It’s stupid and childish.”

“Oh, you think there won’t be devils?” Rama Joan asked, quite conversationally. “Don’t worry about Ann. She loves everything.”

Ragnarok, slinking by, reared at Miaow with a snarl. The Little Man, still feeling under chairs, snapped out: “Down, sir!” Margo fought to hold on to the cat and minimize scratches. Rama Joan turned her back and looked up at the Wanderer and then at the moon emerging from eclipse. The Little Man found what he’d been hunting for and he sat down and settled it on his knees — something the size of a briefcase but with sharper edges.

On the platform Doc was saying to Paul: “Well, yes, those photos sound pretty suggestive of emergences from hyperspace, but—” His thick glasses magnified his frown. “I don’t see how they’re going to solve any problems here and now. Especially the one of how far away the damn thing is.” The frown deepened.

Hunter said loudly to Doc: “Rudolf! Listen to me!”

Doc grabbed up a furled umbrella, saying: “Sorry, Ross I’ve got to do something else,” and jumped rather clumsily off the platform into the sand.

Paul realized what the strange energy flooding him was, because he could see now that it possessed everyone else: plain exhilaration.

“But this is important,” Hunter went on, loudly speaking half to Paul and half past Paul down to Doc kneeling in the sand. “If that thing’s just a hundred miles up, it’s in Earth’s shadow and can’t be reflecting sunlight So suppose we figure it’s just ten miles up. That’s altitude enough for illumination of a wide area. And then it would be just three-tenths of a mile across — only five hundred yards. Rudolf, listen — I know we all laughed at old Charlie Fulby’s idea of a fire balloon, but balloons over a hundred yards in diameter have been flown to altitudes of twenty miles and more. If we assume a gigantic balloon carrying inside itself a tremendous light source, which perhaps adds to the lift by heating the balloon’s gas…” He broke off. “Rudolf, what the hell are you doing down there?”

Doc had thrust the furled umbrella deep into the sand and was crouched behind it, peering up toward them through the curve of the umbrella’s handle. The Wanderer was reflected fantastically in his thick lenses.

“I’m checking that damn thing’s orbit,” Doc called up. “I’m lining it up with the corner of the big table and this umbrella. Don’t anybody move that table!”

“Well, I’m telling you,” Hunter called back, “that it may not have an orbit at all, but simply be floating. I’m telling you it may be nothing but a balloon as big as five football fields.”

“Ross Hunter!” Rama Joan’s voice was ringing and carried the hint of a laugh. The bearded man looked around. So did the others.

“Ross Hunter!” Rama Joan repeated. “Twenty minutes ago you were telling us of great symbols in the sky and now you’re willing to settle for a big red and yellow balloon. Oh, you children, look at the moon!”

Paul copied those who held up a hand to blank out the Wanderer. The eastern rim of the moon glowed whitely, almost one-third out of eclipse, but even that area had colored flecks on it, while the brownishly shadowed margin around it was full of purple and golden gleams. Unquestionably, the light of the Wanderer was falling at least as fiercely on that side of the moon as on the Earth.

The silence was broken by a sudden rat-a-tat-tat. The Little Man had unfolded a collapsible portable typewriter on his knees and was pecking away at it. To Margo, that irregular clicking sounded as lonely and incongruous as a tap dance on a tomb in a graveyard.

General Spike Stevens snapped: “O.K., since HQ One isn’t taking it, we are. Jimmy, crash this order through to Moon-base: LIFT A SHIP AND SCOUT THE NEW PLANET BEHIND YOU. ESTIMATED DISTANCE FROM YOU 25,000 MILES. (Add the lunacentric spatial coordinates there!) VITAL WE HAVE INTELLIGENCE. SEND DATA DIRECT.”

Colonel Griswold said: “Spike, their ship senders haven’t the power to reach us.”

“They’ll relay through Moonbase.”

“Not through the thickness of the moon they won’t.”

Spike snapped his fingers. “O.K., tell ’em to lift two ships. One to reconnoiter, the other — after a suitable interval — to relay to Moonbase. Hold that. They’re supposed to have three ships operational, aren’t they? Good, make it two to scout the new planet, north and south, and one to orbit the moon as cover point and relay. Yes, Will, I know that just leaves ’em one man and no ship to hold down home, but we’ve got to get intelligence even if we strip the base.”

Colonel Mabel Wallingford, shivering in the electric atmosphere of the buried room, suddenly wondered: What if it’s not a problem? Spike won’t be able to handle it then. I’ll have given him his little victory and I’ll see it taken away!

Margo Gelhorn heard one of the women say: “Don’t try to get up yet, Charlie.” The Ramrod lay back in her arms and watched the Wanderer quite tranquilly, a faint smile playing around his lips.

On an impulse Margo leaned over. So did Rama Joan, mechanically tucking in the trailing end of her green turban.

“Ispan,” the gaunt man said faintly. “Oh, Ispan, how did I not know thee? Guess I must have never thought about this side of you.” Then, more loudly: “Ispan, all purple and gold. Ispan, the Imperial Planet.”

“Ispan-Hispan,” the Little Man said without emotion, continuing to type.

“Charlie Fulby, you old liar,” Rama Joan said almost tenderly, “why do you keep it up? You know you never set foot on another planet in your whole life.”

The woman glared but the Ramrod looked up at the green-turbaned one holding him without rancor. “Not in the body, no, that’s quite true, Rama,” he said. “But I’ve visited them for years in my thoughts. I’m as sure of their reality as Plato was of universals or Euclid of infinity. Ispan and Arietta and Brima have to exist, just like God. I know. But to make people understand in this materialistic age, I had to pretend I’d visited them in the flesh.”

“Why do you drop the pretence now?” Rama Joan pressed lightly, as if she already knew the answer.

“Now no one needs to pretend anything,” the Ramrod said quietly. “Ispan is here.”

The Little Man spun the sheet out of his typewriter, stuck it in a clipboard, stepped onto the platform, and rapped on the table for attention.

Reading from the sheet, he said: “After the place, date, hour and minute I’ve got: WE THE UNDERSIGNED SAW A CIRCULAR OBJECT IN THE SKY NEAR THE MOON. ITS APPARENT DIAMETER WAS FOUR TIMES THAT OF THE MOON. ITS TWO HALVES WERE PURPLE AND YELLOW AND RESEMBLED A YIN-YANG OR THE MIRROR IMAGE OF A SOLID SIXTY-NINE. IT GAVE ENOUGH LIGHT TO READ NEWSPRINT BY AND IT MAINTAINED THE SAME APPEARANCE FOR AT LEAST 20 MINUTES. Any emendations? Very well, I’ll circulate this for signatures as read. I’ll want your addresses, too.”

Somebody groaned but Doc called from his post in the sand: “That’s right, Doddsy, nail it down!” The Little Man presented his clipboard to the two women nearest him. One giggled hysterically, the other grabbed his pen and signed…

Paul called down to Doc: “Are you getting any movement yet?”

“Not anything I can be sure of,” the latter said, standing up carefully so as not to disturb the deep-thrust umbrella. “It’s certainly not anything in a nearby orbit.” He climbed back on the platform. “Anybody here got a telescope or binoculars?” he asked loudly but not very hopefully. “Opera glasses?” He waited a moment longer, then shrugged. “That’s typical,” he said to Paul, removing his glasses to polish them and to massage around his eyes. “What a bunch of greenhorns!”

Hunter’s bearded face brightened. “Anybody here got a radio?” he called out.

“I have,” said the thin woman sitting on the floor with the Ramrod.

“Good, then get us a news station,” Hunter told her.

She said, “I’ll get KFAC — that’s got classical music with regular traffic bulletins and news flashes.”

He commented, “If they’re seeing it in New York or Buenos Aires, say, we’ll know it has to be high.”

Margo was studying the Wanderer again when someone jogged her elbow, the one away from the cat. The Little Man said to her pleasantly: “My name is Clarence Dodd. You are…?”

“Margo Gelhorn,” she told him. “Is that huge beast your dog, Mr. Dodd?”

“Yes, he is,” he said quickly, with a bright smile. “May I have your signature on this document?”

“Oh, please!” she said sourly, looking up again at the Wanderer overhead.

“You’ll be sorry,” the Little Man assured her peaceably. “The one time I saw a plausible saucer I omitted to get signed statements from the four people in the car with me. A week later they were all saying it was something else.”

Margo shrugged, then went to the edge of the platform and said: “Paul, I think the purple half is getting smaller and there’s a purple streak down the outside edge of the yellow half that wasn’t there before.”

“She’s right,” several people said. Doc fumbled at his slipping glasses, but before he could get a word out Hunter said: “It’s rotating. It must be a sphere!”

Suddenly the Wanderer, which Paul had been seeing as flat, rounded itself out. There was something unspeakably strange about the hidden and utterly unknown other side crawling into view.

Doc raised a hand. “It’s rotating toward the east,” he asserted. “That is, this side of it is — which means that it is rotating retrograde to Earth and most of the other planets of our solar system.”

“My God, Bill, now we get astronomy lessons,” the woman in pale gray carped in a low, sardonic voice to the man beside her.

The thin woman’s portable radio came on, quite weakly except for the static. The music, what there was of it, had a galloping, surging rhythm. After a moment Paul recognized Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” sounding, out here in the great open, as if it were being played by an orchestra of mice.

Don Merriam was almost halfway back to the Hut, his boots kicking up dust as he hurried with care across the lightening plain, when Johannsen’s voice sounded crisply by his ear. He stopped.

Johannsen said: “Get this, Don. You are not to re-enter the Hut. You are to board Ship One and prepare for solo take-off.”

Don suppressed the impulse to say: “But Yo—”

The other chuckled approvingly at his silence and continued: “I know we’ve never flown them solo except in practice on the mock-up, but this is orders from the top. Dufresne’s suited up. He’ll join you in Ship Two. I’ll be in Baba Yaga Three to relay back to Gompert at base, who’ll relay to HQ Earth. On order you and Dufresne will take off. You will reconnoiter the northern half, and he, the southern, of the object behind Luna that’s making the yellow and purple light. It’s hard to believe, but HQ Earth says it’s a—”

The voice was lost in a ponderous, almost subsonic, grinding roar coming through Don’s boots and up his legs. The moon moved sideways a foot or more under Don’s feet, throwing him down. In the two seconds he was falling his only active thought was to lift his arms bent-elbowed to make a cage around his helmet, but he could see the gray dust rippling and lifting a little here and there like a thick rug with wind under it, as inertia held it back while the solid moon moved beneath it.

He crashed hollowly on his back. The roaring multiplied, coming in everywhere through the underside of his suit. Gouts of dust skimmed off around him in low parabolas. His helmet hadn’t cracked.

The roaring faded. He said: “Yo!” and “Yo!” again, and then with his tongue he triggered the Hut whistle.

The purple-and-yellow highlight glared down at him from the western edge of the Atlantic, touching Florida.

There was no answer from the Hut.