West said, flatly, ‘I’ve done that. Now let’s take another look at that door.’
It was as they had left it, a metal slab firmly set in the octagonal jamb. The inner wheel bore the same ring of symbols but, no matter how he turned it, West hadn’t been able to swing it free. Now he tried again, trying to remember the exact sequence he had used before. A double wriggle like a twisted helix, an interwoven line, a pattern of superimposed stars. The door stayed sealed.
‘Something must have closed it,’ said Martyn. ‘But what?’
‘We know what closed it.’ West turned the knurled wheel, trying again. With three symbols there would have been six possible combinations. The marked ring held fifteen — it could take a thousand years to hit the correct sequence by trial and error. ‘We felt the shift of the floor. The planetoid must have tilted a little on its axis.’
Only a little but it would have been enough to swing shut the counterbalanced door. To turn the chamber of the dead aliens into a human tomb.
‘Let me try,’ said Martyn as West dropped his hands from the wheel. ‘Maybe I can hit it.’
‘Keep trying,’ said West. ‘I’m going to take a look around.’ He jerked free the connecting wire and let it wind back on its spring-loaded spool. Now the silence within his helmet was broken only by the sound of his own breathing, the gentle susurration of circulating air. Normally the sound was almost inaudible, noticed only when absent, now it had grown to dominate all others.
When it ceased he would die.
A matter neither of them had mentioned because each knew it too well. Death waited, not in the alien chamber, but in their own air tanks. It grew as the oxygen diminished, would strike when the last dregs had been used, would claim its own when asphyxiated, they succumbed to the final, eternal darkness.
He stumbled and almost fell, regaining his balance to look down to where a tangle of metal rods lay at his feet. Stooping he picked them up, turning them, studying their arrangement. Loops and eyes and interlocking bars forming a peculiar combination of unknown purpose. A toy? An instrument of some kind? A religious object? Discarded junk? How to read an alien mind?
West moved on, turning once to look at Martyn where he stood before the door, reflected light haloing helmet and suit and turning him into a bizarre presentation of the human shape.
The juncture of the walls and floor was, he knew, solid. Previous investigations had shown the floor to be the same. Higher, beyond reach, darkness ran from the moving circle of his light, the webs casting lacy shadows, colours sparkling to fade and die, to return with swathes of sombre hue.
Webs which had to be suspended from something. The rods he had found, perhaps?
West knelt, rolled on to his back, stared upwards towards the roof as he inched himself across the dust. A race which used webs as couches could have had an avian ancestry — certainly they would have had little fear of heights. Living in a practically three-dimensional area, doors and entrances would be placed without regard to the factors which guided human use. Perhaps, beyond the range of his vision, another opening could be found.
Martyn turned as West slapped his hand on the other’s helmet. Once connected he said, ‘No luck, Skipper. The wheel just turns and turns. I’ve tried until I’m dizzy.’
‘Sit down. Rest a while. Step up the oxygen.’
They had cut down the flow to conserve supplies but had paid for it with rapid fatigue and a slowness of mental aptitude. Now, as they squatted, West opened his valve and watched as Martyn did the same.
‘How long, Skipper?’
He was talking about their life expectancy but West deliberately misunderstood.
‘Not long. Holt knows we went down the shaft. He knows we’ve broken communication. He’ll come looking for us.’
‘And find what?’ Martyn snorted. ‘There’s a maze outside that door so how can he trail us? And even if he could how can he know we’re behind that door? And even if he does know how can he open it?’
‘The trouble with you,’ said West, ‘is that you’re a pessimist. Look on the bright side. We are alive, we have air, we have our brains and we have help coming from outside. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘So why am I worried?’
‘I told you; it’s because you’re a pessimist. An optimist now, well, he would say that we’ve a nice, snug place to sit in, interesting things to see, a little problem to solve and so exercise our brains, and a story to tell our grandchildren.’
‘Skipper, you’re a fool,’ said Martyn, but his tone was lighter than it had been. The graveyard humour had worked for this time at least, but West knew that it wouldn’t continue to dispel the inevitable fear and depression the future would bring. The panic too, perhaps, the one thing above all they had to guard against.
He said, ‘Martyn, I’ve been thinking. These people must have come in here for safety. The door was sealed — so why isn’t there any air?’
For a moment the co-pilot remained silent then he grunted. ‘No air? Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Think of it now,’ urged West. It would be better if Martyn could provide the answers. ‘No air — why?’
‘It could have leaked. This place is old and over the years it could have seeped away.’
‘Possible,’ admitted West, ‘but this chamber is lined with the same olive metal as the shaft and tunnels. As far as we can see it’s intact. And look at the dust, if there had been a trace of air when we opened the door it would have blown towards us. It didn’t.’
‘So this place was a vacuum when we found it.’ Martyn was thoughtful. ‘A fissure, maybe? A crack leading outside?’
‘That or another door — an open door.’
‘A way out!’ Martyn sucked in his breath. ‘Skipper, you’re a genius. Now tell me where it’s to be found.’
‘Up,’ said West. ‘Somewhere up high. It has to be.’
*
In the mirror the face was smooth, the skin clear, marked only by the thin lines of character, the mould of muscle and bone. How long would it be before age marred the contours, sagged the flesh, turned the present features into a raddled mask?
Thinking of it, Claire Allard lifted a hand and touched the mane of golden hair, soon to turn white, to grow brittle, to hang in stringy tufts from the dome of her scalp. To grow old was nothing given the time to do it. But if she, suddenly, became a thing of senility and decay…
The hum of her communicator broke the train of thought and she lifted the instrument from her belt, glad of the interruption, the electronic contact with others of her kind.
Maddox looked at her from the screen. He was worried.
‘Claire, some trouble. Douglas and his co-pilot are missing. At least they are out of contact.’
‘Missing?’ She remembered the mission he had led. ‘On the planetoid?’
‘He found a shaft of some kind and investigated it. Radio contact was lost. Holt waited and then landed to search. He found a maze of tunnels.’
‘And Douglas?’
‘No sign of either he or Martyn. They might be in need of emergency medical assistance. If you would ask Ted —’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘There’s no need for that. I’ll meet you on the launching pad in five minutes.’
‘Claire —’
‘Don’t waste time arguing, Carl. Five minutes.’
Manton was seated in the passenger module when she arrived. He saw her expression and guessed what was in her mind.
‘No one can live forever, Claire.’
‘But this is stupid, Eric. You aren’t needed. You should be staying in the lowest depths of the ship.’
‘Where I’d be safe?’ He smiled as she made no answer. ‘And what about you?’
‘I’m a doctor. It’s my job.’
‘It could be mine. Holt reported a strange olive-coloured metallic-seeming coating lining the shaft and tunnels. It appears to have been placed by an intelligent race. I want to see it, to examine it and learn what I can. As we can’t bring the planetoid to me then I must go to the planetoid.’ He grunted as the Pinnace lifted, Maddox at the controls. ‘And don’t worry about my health. I think that the aging process is a direct result of the beam impinging on the Ad Astra from the Omphalos. We’ll be away from it within seconds.’
A comfort — why had she been so terrified of sudden age? An instinctive rejection of the lost opportunities? Anger at the years lost and never lived? A woman’s vanity?
She thought of Maddox and tried to imagine his face seamed and lined and creped as Guthrie’s had been. His shoulders stooped, his limbs wasted, his bones grown brittle, his sharp intellect reduced to senseless wanderings.
It would come. Given time it would come — why did life have to be so short?
Manton shrugged as she put the question, ‘Claire, for some men eternity isn’t long enough and for others a decade is too long. Who can tell? Personally I hope to live long enough to complete our mission — to find a habitable world on which Earth colonist can settle. To know that humanity can spread amongst the stars. Once that has been accomplished, well, we all have to go and, for me, that will be as good a time as any.’
To find a new Earth — the hope and dream of them all. To find a world on which mankind could settle and build and be safe from the ultimate destruction in the future when the sun went nova.
The doom humanity faced in the far future now waited for them here in this alien space. A death from which there seemed to be no escape.
Depressed, Claire leaned back as the Pinnace hurtled through space. From the pilot’s seat Maddox said, ‘Better check your equipment, Claire. Minutes could count.’
His voice was flat, emotionless, but she could guess his concern.
‘It’s been done, Carl. When do we land?’
‘Soon.’ The throb of the engines at full power underlined his terseness. ‘Holt will be waiting.’
He stood, suited, his co-pilot beside him on the smooth expanse of the planetoid. West’s Pinnace was to his rear, the open hole of the shaft at his feet. He gestured towards it as Maddox and the others came towards him.
‘This is it, Commander. I’ve scanned the area and found no other opening. If they came out at all it had to be from here.’
‘And they didn’t?’
‘No.’ Holt was positive. ‘I’ve been operating continuous scan.’
‘And?’
‘I warned Carey and went after them. As I reported there’s a maze down there. The tunnels are lined with metal of some kind which seems to act as a radio-barrier.’ The man realised he was repeating himself, wasting time relaying information which they already knew. ‘Your orders?’
‘We go down. Signal Carey to hover low and maintain general watch.’ Maddox forced himself to contain his impatience. ‘Then follow us down. But waste no time.’
Hurry before the store of air was exhausted and the need for rescue had passed. Before the men died from lack of oxygen and the ship had lost two good workers; before he lost an old and valued friend.
Manton grunted as he landed at the foot of the shaft. Metal glinted in his hand as he scratched at the olive surface.
‘This colouring is like a patina, Carl. Similar to that found on bronze. Beneath the metal is incredibly hard and dense. It would be interesting to discover how it was worked.’
‘Later.’ Maddox was following Holt’s co-pilot along the passage. ‘Claire, stay close.’
She came after him, her medical bag slung over her shoulder, Maddox carrying the bulkier equipment; the sac which could be sealed around the doctor and her patient, inflated so as to permit her to remove a suit and give emergency treatment if necessary.
‘We left a trail,’ explained Hunt, the co-pilot. ‘See?’ He pointed to a thin line of white powder which lay on the floor. ‘And we left other marks on the walls ahead. If you want to keep in touch you’d better, make wire-connections now.’
A few moments and it was done, Maddox thinning his lips at the essential delay.
‘Did you find anything other than passages? Traps, alcoves, chambers?’
‘No, Commander.’
‘Any upward-leading shafts?’
‘No.’ Shaw grunted as he bumped into a wall. ‘Nothing.’
An answer which made no sense. Men couldn’t simply vanish without cause. The corridors seemed solid, the floor, the roof. The tunnels, branching and forking, formed an intricate maze but with the white powder tracing their path and marks on the walls they were covering every foot.
Maddox halted as he saw whiteness in the beam of his light.
‘We’ve covered this part.’
‘There’s another passage to the right,’ said Manton. He headed towards it, the connecting wire growing taut slackening as he halted. ‘We’ve covered that too. Carl, there has to be something we haven’t spotted as yet. A room in which they are trapped, maybe. A chute down which they have fallen. They could be inches from us. On the other side of a wall.’
But without a means of communication they would never know.
And both air and time were running out.
*
Martyn sagged, the sound of his breathing harsh, ragged, a wheeze in his throat and lungs. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Damn it, Skipper, no. There isn’t a door. There isn’t even a hole large enough to pass a cat. You were wrong.’
Wrong, thought West bleakly, but not wholly so. He looked at the thin crack in the circle of light thrown by his helmet, the only flaw in the walls and roof they had found. A small thing, barely noticeable, one they would not have discovered at all if it hadn’t been for the five bodies lying beneath it, the clutter of interwoven rods.
A ladder the dead had tried to use in a final attempt to seal the crack.
One which had bled the air from the chamber in a slow but relentless harbinger of death.
His boot hit a heap of dust as he turned and led the way back towards the door. Grit flew and something hard rolled to settle a few feet ahead. Stooping he picked it up and rolled it in his gloved hand. A stone, elaborately carved, set in a curved band of metal. A bracelet or an arm band. An item of jewellery once prized and now less than rubbish.
West slipped it over his forearm, the metal hitting the power-pack on his belt as he lowered his hand, a sharp click sounding in his helmet.
Martyn said, ‘What was that, Skipper?’
‘What?’
‘A click. I heard it through my phones.’