‘Have the engineers check the system,’ he ordered. ‘All defective parts to be replaced. Summon Professor Manton to check and test the installation when the work has been completed.’ Maddox glanced at the chronometer. ‘And tell them to hurry — we have only twelve hours left before impact.’
*
Claire Allard was asleep and, in her sleep, a man came to her in a dream. He was short, stocky with a neatly trimmed beard and a domed, balding skull. He wore a ceremonial dress coat with a scarlet flower in his lapel and, crossing his torso from his right shoulder to the left hip, a wide ribbon blazed in gold and emerald. She had seen him three times before.
The last had been on the stage of the theatre.
The time before had been when he had given her the highest accolade of her profession short of the Nobel Prize.
The first had been when, as a young student, she had been privileged to attend one of his lectures.
Years ago now, a time when both he and she had been much younger, but always she remembered him as he had been when handing her the award, neatly if fussily dressed in his old-fashioned dress coat, his inevitable flower and the sash which was the decoration he had won from the President of Zaire as a part-reward for saving ten million souls from the ravages of plague.
Professor Victor Rousseau.
To her, once, the living symbol of ultimate authority.
And, in the dream, he came to stand before her, moving through wisps of swirling fog, his face blurred a little, his voice distant but as firm and impatient as she remembered.
‘In ancient times men thought of a person as consisting of three parts: the brain, the body and the soul. Later, when we, in our arrogance, assumed that only ourselves had been graced with receiving true knowledge, an adjustment was made. The brain became the mind, the body remained and the concept of the soul was medically disposed of. Now a person consisted only of two parts; the body and the mind and it was natural to place them each in their neatly labelled compartments. If the mind was affected, then the subject was insane. As insanity has no connection with reality as we have determined, what it should be then all statements and utterances of the poor, demented creature could be safely ignored. If the body fell ill, then it could be repaired as a mechanic would mend a broken machine. In those enlightened days it was common for eminent surgeons to complain bitterly that, while their operations had been successful, the ungrateful patient had insisted on dying.’
A calculated pause; time in which to take a sip of water, to adjust his flower, to move a little to ease incipient cramp, to allow the sycophantic laughter to fade into a respectful silence.
In her dream Claire saw it all as she had seen it before. Turning she looked at an endless expanse of barren desert, sere beneath a lambent sun, the grit strewn with a stark litter of bone; fleshless skulls watching her with cavernous sockets, teeth bared in the parody of a smile.
On the podium the archaic figure continued as before.
‘…is a tedious thing. It is hard to accept the fact that we may have been wrong and it is easy to look for simple answers to involved questions. A sane man becomes deranged — how convenient to say that a demon has possessed him. A man’s body is not as it should be — obviously the humours are not working in true harmony. Words!’ The dry voice held the crack of a whip. ‘Rubbish! What is a demon? What are humours? Define! Define before you can hope to understand!’
The figure blurred, wavered, mist rising to stream in wreaths and tendrils of luminous colour. A rainbow swirled and, for a moment, she was conscious of an aching poignancy. So dear the departed days! So sweet the illusions of youth! So rich the future which had yet to come!
‘Doctor! Doctor Allard!’
Bain was beside her, his face reflecting his concern. As she opened her eyes, he lifted his hand from her shoulder.
‘Ted?’
‘You were restless,’ he said. ‘Crying out.’
‘A dream,’ she said. ‘I was young again and listening to Professor Rousseau. In Vienna at the Institute. He was talking of the interaction of body and mind.’ With a smooth motion she sat upright and clasped her hands around her lifted knees. ‘A great man, Ted. A great physician and a wonderful psychiatrist. I think it was he who guided me to take an interest in space medicine. Something he said — I can’t remember just what, but a hint, maybe, a little verbal push.’
‘A psychological nudge.’ He nodded, understanding. ‘Something similar happened to me. Coffee?’
‘Please.’
She watched as he went to get it, looking around at the empty ward. She had rested for a moment on one of the beds, intending only to relax for a moment, to ease the tension of mind and body, and had obviously fallen asleep. She stretched, feeling the tug of her uniform, noting the blanket that lay to one side. Bain had covered her, had looked in from time to time and, in the last, had touched her gently to reassure her, to offer what comfort his presence could provide.
She smiled as he returned with steaming cups of coffee.
‘Thank you, Ted. Did you ever meet the professor?’
‘No. He had retired by the time I graduated and was dead before I’d gained my doctorate.’
A few years, she thought, suddenly reminded of the age differential between them. Less than a decade but it had robbed him of the chance of meeting a genius.
She sipped her coffee, grateful for its warmth and comfort, mulling the accomplishments of the dead. Rousseau had been a rebel, tearing down accepted beliefs, hurling challenges at the establishment, mocking ancient traditions. For years he had wandered in the wilderness, damned by his unorthodox experiments in mind-body function. An accident had saved him. The daughter of the President of some South American Republic had crashed to wander in the jungle. Saved, she had been insane. Taken to Rousseau, she had been cured.
Then had come the disaster at Zaire.
‘He was lucky,’ said Bain as if he had been reading her thoughts. ‘The chance of being in the right place at the right time.’
‘But he proved his contention.’
‘And again was fortunate. The girl could have died or remained permanently insane.’ Bain took a sip of coffee. ‘I wonder why you dreamed of him?’
A subconscious association, of course, but exactly what? Sitting on the bed, knees uplifted, sipping her coffee Claire thought about it. The lecture itself was nothing; a replayed mental recording. It had only repeated elemental facts, now common knowledge, of the association between mental and physical health, the basic unity of both and the influence of external sensory stimuli to each individual picture of reality. Touch a man with a red-hot poker after mentally convincing him that he is to be touched by ice and he will not blister or suffer hurt. Conversely, once convinced that a feather is a sword, and flesh will part, wounds bleed and bones break beneath its impact.
‘Define? Rousseau had said. ‘Define before you can hope to understand!’
Define what?
The present problem?
What else had she been trying to do!
‘Doctor?’ Bain had seen the sudden tension of her hand, the betrayed emotion. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I’m a fool, Ted, that’s what is wrong. We’ve been trying to find out what happened during the warnings and what happened to Douglas and Ivan Gogol out there in space. We’ve been hoping to find a shield of some kind to protect us.’
‘So?’
‘A wrong definition. We don’t have to beat the situation, just find a way to live with it. We know, for example, that some force is inducing mental derangement by some form of cortical stimulus. We can’t prevent it as yet but perhaps we can negate its effects in some way.’
‘With drugs?’
‘If possible.’ She set aside the coffee. ‘Can you think of anything which would do?’
‘We have quite a selection,’ he said. ‘Alcohol, for example, the ancient anaesthetic. It is a depressant and throws the motor systems all to hell if enough is taken. It confuses the reality-sense and could work if the application and control could be maintained. Unfortunately, there are unpredictable side effects which make its use undesirable. Tranquilisers?’
‘Numb emotional reaction but we want more than a delayed reaction.’ Claire rose and inflated her lungs, her figure sharply prominent against the taut material of her uniform. ‘As I see it the thing is to affect the synapses in some way. If mentally received stimuli can be prevented from conversion into physical activity, then we will have found some form of defence. Acetylcholine, perhaps?’
‘It could hold the answer,’ admitted Bain. ‘We know it is an essential ingredient in the passing on of nerve impulses. We can destroy it with the enzyme cholinesterase so if we could compound something combining a form of paralytic agent coupled with a reality-distorter such as LSD — no, Doctor. There would be no way to predict the action of such a hell’s brew.’
‘But we must try, Ted,’ said Claire. ‘We must try.
*
‘Nothing.’ Rose Armstrong looked up from her instruments. ‘Space ahead is still apparently clear. All receptors negative.’
‘Incredible!’ Manton narrowed his eyes, heavy lines creasing his cheeks. ‘I would have sworn that, so close to the impact-point, some aberration would have been obvious. No trace of any stellar displacement on the comparison-runs?’
‘None.’
‘Nor temperature differentials?’ Manton grunted at her negative shake of the head. ‘Well, Carl, that leaves us with nothing but speculation and intelligent assumptions.’
‘Such as?’
‘The warning field could either be of great depth and some distance from the actual area or the forces which rotate the electro-magnetic spectrum are of an immensely high order. In that case…’
He rambled on but Maddox wasn’t paying full attention. Instead he moved to where the internal monitors scanned the interior of the ship, running his eyes over the screens, noting small points and sensing again the unusual eeriness of what he saw. Always, when the ship was on red alert, there was an unusual and intangible atmosphere. A silence, a tension as of a coiled spring, an awareness which held something of the animal poised to strike but now there was an added quality.
The guards were in their places, the technicians at their posts, all security areas sealed. But now those doors had been welded shut, the passages were deserted, all non-essential personnel confined to their quarters. On the screens the rooms and corridors were deserted and, to Maddox, the Ad Astra gained the appearance of a ghost town, an empty village, a sepulchre.
A bad thought and one he dismissed with an irritable shake of the head. The spaceship was far from dead. It was a citadel prepared for the unknown. Once the warning barrier had been passed — what?
From his console Frank Weight said, quietly, ‘Twenty-five minutes to go, Commander.’
‘The defences?’
‘At optimum.’ Weight glanced at the screens showing the coruscating bowl of protective energy which covered the ship. ‘Ten per cent more available power for emergency boost if required.’
‘Save it until moment of impact. Set up an automatic switch to throw in all power one minute before contact and to maintain it for — how long can the installation take boosted power, Eric?’
‘On emergency overload about thirty minutes.’
‘For twenty-five minutes, Frank.’ It should be long enough, if not a few minutes would serve no purpose, but to burn out the installation would leave them defenceless against normal dangers.
Claire had done her best to provide a safeguard against the rest.
Maddox looked at the capsule she placed in his hand. It was large, smooth, brightly coloured and he was reminded of a sugared almond, but the hard outer coating held not a nut but a chemical combination of involved complexity. He watched as she handed one to everyone in Mission Control.
As she returned to face him he said, ‘What is it, Claire?’
‘A witch’s brew.’ She shrugged at his expression. ‘Guesswork mostly, we’ve had no time to make thorough tests, but it should help. Think of it as water which will damp down a fire. If things get too bad bite down on the coating, break it, the liquid inside will be absorbed by the inner membranes and enter the bloodstream. As I said it should act like a deluge of water on a flame.’
Looking at his own capsule Manton said, ‘My guess is that it contains an anti-hallucinogenic coupled with a strong tranquiliser and maybe a curare derivative. Am I right?’
‘As much as you’d be right if you said that a house consisted of bricks, planks and plaster. Don’t worry about what’s in it; just take it if you feel that you are losing control. You too, Carl.’
‘Yes, Claire.’
‘I mean it.’ She looked at his face, the curve of his eyebrows, the set of his jaw. A face which revealed his inner strength and determination. One she didn’t want to see turned into a slack, idiotic mask as Ivan Gogol’s had been. The man who now lay like a vegetable in Medical. ‘Take care, Carl.’
‘You too, Claire.’
Her duties were with the sick, her place in the Section she commanded, and he watched her go, turning back to the screens only after the doors had closed behind her.
‘Nine,’ said Weight. ‘Nine minutes to go.’
‘Rose?’
‘Still nothing, Commander.’
Nothing to do but wait as the seconds dragged past, as the hands of the chronometer swept around and around the illuminated dial, as the digital counters flipped to show a reducing number of figures. Minutes and seconds pouring through the sieve of time.
‘Five seconds,’ breathed Manton. ‘Three…two…one…’
Madness!
It came in a wave, a flood, a crashing deluge which tore at the fabric of reality and turned the familiar into the strange. The lights changed, the instruments became grimacing faces, the floor a stinking morass which sucked at the feet with liquid squelching. And, abruptly, each was alone.
Nelson Saha sucked in his breath, feeling the fear of dreadful knowledge, the soul-twisting terror which urged him to run before it was too late. They were coming for him; he knew it, the tall and dreadful shapes with their painted masks and skirts of grass, their bells and clawed sticks, the instruments of pain and torment. The forest rustled with them, the firelight limned their figures, the ghost-masks, the devil-masks, the depicted god-faces.