Unwillingly to Earth (v1.0), page 23
“The Lost Kafoozalum,” says Cray impatiently. “In other words, we switch these people off a war only to send them on a wild goose chase.”
At which point a strange voice chimes in, “No, no, no, son, you’ve got it all wrong.”
Mr. Yardo is with us like a well-meaning skeleton.
During the next twenty-five minutes we learn a lot about Mr. Yardo including material for a good guess at how he came to be picked for this expedition; doubtless there are many experts on Reversal Of Vacuum-Induced Changes in Organic Tissue but maybe only one of them a Romantic at heart.
Mr. Yardo thinks chasing the Wild Goose will do the Incognitans all the good in the Galaxy, it will take their minds off controversies over interhemispherical trade and put them on to the quest of the Unobtainable; they will get to know something of the Universe outside their own little Speck … Mr. Yardo has seen a good deal of the Universe himself in the course of advising how to recondition space-packed meat and he has found it an Uplifting Experience.
We gather he finds this desperate bit of damfoolery we are engaged on now pretty Uplifting altogether.
Cray keeps surprisingly quiet but it is as well that the rest of the party starts to trickle in about twenty minutes later, the first arrivals remarking Oh That’s where you’ve got to!
Presently we are all congregated at one end of the table as before, except that Mr. Yardo is now sitting between B and me; when M’Clare and the Colonel come in he firmly stays where he is evidently considering himself One of Us now.
“The proposition,” says M’Clare, “is that we take Gilgamesh to Incognita and land there in such a way as to suggest that she crashed. In the absence of evidence to the contrary the Incognitans are bound to assume that that was her intended destination, and the presence of weapons, even disarmed, will suggest that her mission was aggressive. Firstly, can anyone suggest a better course of action? or does anyone object to this one?”
We all look at Lennie who sticks his hands in his pockets and mutters “No.”
Kirsty gives her little Cough and says there is a point which has not been mentioned.
If a heavily armed ship crashes on Incognita, will not the Gov. of the hemisphere in which it crashes be presented with new ideas for Offensive weapons? And won’t this make it more likely that they will start aggression? And won’t the fear of this make the other hemisphere even more likely to try and get in first before the new weapons are complete?
Hell, I ought to have thought of that.
From the glance of unwilling respect which the Colonel bestows on M’Clare it is plain these points have been dealt with.
“The weapons on Gilgamesh were disarmed when she was rediscovered,” he says. “Essential sections were removed. The Incognitans won’t be able to reconstruct how they worked.”
Another fact for which we shall have to provide an explanation. Well how about this: The early explorers sent out by these people—the people in Gilgamesh—oh, use Cray’s word and call them the Lost Kafoozalum—anyway their ships were armed, but they never found any enemies and the Idealists of B’s story refused even to carry arms any more.
(Which is just about what happened when the Terries set out to rediscover the Colonies, after all.)
So the Lost Kafoozalum could not get rid of their weapons completely because it would have meant rebuilding the ship; so they just partially dismantled them.
Mr. Yardo suddenly chips in, “About that other point, surely there must be some neutral ground left on a half-occupied planet like that?’’ He beams round, pleased at being able to contribute.
B says “The thing is,” and stops.
We wait.
We are about to give up Hope when she resumes, “The thing is, it will have to be neutral ground of course, only that might easily become a thingummy … I mean a, a causus belli in itself. So the other thing is it ought to be a place which is very hard to get at, so difficult that neither side can really get to it first, they’ll have to reach an agreement and Cooperate.”
“Yeah,” says Dillie, “sounds fine, but what kind of place is that?”
I am sorting out in my head the relative merits of Mountains deserts gorges et cetera when I am seized with Inspiration at the same time as half the group; we say the same thing in different words and for a time there is Babel, then the idea emerges:
“Drop her into the Sea!”
The Colonel nods resignedly.
“Yes,” he says, “that’s what we’re going to do.”
He presses a button and our projection-screens light up, first with a map of one pole of Incognita, expanding in scale till finally we are looking down on one little bit of coast on one of the polar islands. A glacier descends into it from mountains inland and there is a bay between cliffs. Then we get a stereo pic of approximately the least hospitable scenery I ever did see—(except maybe when Parvati Lai Dutt’s brother made me climb what he swore was the smallest peak in the Himalayas).
It is a small bay backed by tumbled cliffs. A shelving beach can be deduced from the contours and occasional boulders big enough to stick through the snow that smothers it all. A sort of mess of rocks and mud at the back might be a glacial moraine. Over the sea the ice is split in all directions by jagged rifts and channels; the whole thing is a bit like Antarctica but nothing like high enough or white enough to Uplift the spirit, it looks not only chilly but kind of mean.
“This place,” says the Colonel, “is the only one about which we have any topographical information, that seems to meet the requirements … Got to know about it from an elementary Planetography textbook. One of the Observers had the sense to see we might need something of the sort. This place”—the stereo jogs as he taps his projector—“seems it’s the center of a rising movement in the crust… that’s not to the point. Neither side has bothered to claim the land at the poles …”
I see why not if it’s all like this—
“… and a ship trying to land on those cliffs might very well pitch over into the sea. That is, if she were trying to land on emergency rockets.”
Rockets’, that brings home the ancientness of Gilgamesh—but I suppose the ships that colonized Incognita probably carried emergency rockets too.
This settled, the meeting turns into a briefing session and merges imperceptibly with the beginnings of the Job.
The Job of course is Faking the background of the crash: working out the past history and present aims of the Lost Kafoozalum. We have to invent a Planet and what’s more difficult convey all the essential Information about it by the sort of sideways hints you gather among people’s personal possessions: diaries, letters et cetera: and what is even more difficult we have to leave out anything that could lead to definite Identification of our unknown world with a Known one.
We never gave that world a name; it might be dangerous. Who speaks of their world by name, except to strangers? They call it “Home” or “The World” as often as not.
Some things have been decided for us. Language, for instance—one of the two thousand or so Earth tongues that went out of use late enough to be plausible as the main language of a colonized planet. The settlers on Incognita were not the sort to take along Dictionaries of the lesser-known tongues, so the computers at Russett had a fairly wide choice.
We had to take a hypnocourse in that language. Ditto the script, one of several forgotten phonetic shorthands. (Designed to enable the tongues of Aliens to be taken down. The Aliens have never been met, but it is plausible enough that some colony might have kept the script alive: after all Thasia uses something of the sort to this day.)
The final result of our work looks pretty small. Twenty-three “Personal Background Kits”—a few letters, a diary in some, an assortment of artifacts.
Whoever stocked the ship we are on supplied wood, of the half-a-dozen different species that have been taken wherever men have gone; stocks of a few plastics—known at the time of the Exodus or easily developed from those known, and not associated with any particular planet. Also books on design, a Formwriter for translating drawings into materials, and so on. Somebody put in a lot of work before this voyage began.
Most of the time it is like being back at Russett doing a group Project. What we are working on has no more and no less reality than that. The written work is all read into a computer and checked against everyone else’s. At first we keep clashing. Gradually a consistent picture builds up and gets translated in the end into the Personal Background Kits. The Lost Kafoozalum start to exist like people in a History book.
Fifteen days’ hard work and then we reach—call it Planet Gilgamesh.
I wake in my bunk to hear that there will be a brief Cessation of weight—strap down, please.
We are coming off Mass-Time to go on Planetary Drive.
Colonel Delano-Smith is in charge of operations on the planet, with Ram and Peter to assist. None of the rest of us sees the melting out of fifty years’ accumulation of ice, the pumping away of the water, the fitting and testing of the mounts for the grappling-beams. We stay inside the ship, on five-eighths G which we do not have time to adapt to, and try to work, discarding the results before the computer gets a chance to. There is hardly any work left to do, anyway.
It takes nearly twelve hours to get the ship free, caulked, and ready to lift. (Her hull has to be patched because Mr. Yardo’s operations use several sorts of vapors and gases.) Then there is a queer blind period with Up now one way, now another, and sudden jerks and tugs that upset everything not in gimbals or tied down; interspersed with periods of Weightlessness without any warning at all. After an hour or two of this it would be hard to say whether Mental or physical discomfort is more acute; B, consulted, however, says my Autonomic system must be quite something, after five minutes her thoughts were with her viscera entirely …
Then, suddenly, we are back on Mass-Time again.
Two days to go.
At first being on Mass-Time makes everything seem normal again. By sleep-time there is a strain, and next day it is everywhere. I know as well as any that on Mass-Time the greater the mass the faster the shift; all the same I cannot help feeling we are being slowed, dragged back by the dead ship coupled to our Live one.
When you stand by the hull Gilgamesh is only ten feet away.
I should have kept something to work on like Kirsty and B who have not done their Letters for Home in Case of Accidents. Mine is signed and sealed long ago. I am making a good start on a Neurosis when Delano-Smith announces a Meeting for one hour ahead.
Hurrah! now there is a time-mark fixed I think of all sorts of things I should have done before; such as taking a look at the controls of the Hoppers.
I have been in one of them half an hour and figured out most of the dials—Up Down and Sideways are controlled much as in a helicar, but here a big viewscreen has been hooked into the autopilot—when across the hold I see the airlock start to move.
Gilgamesh is on the other side.
It takes forever to open. When at last it swings wide on a dark tunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating on antigrav.
What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modem type, but the windows of the Hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face inside the bubble top.
He slings the rack up on the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangs that up too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enough sense to wonder Why when he comes slowly across the hold.
Reaching the doorway he says “Oh, it’s you, Lizzie. You’ll have to help me out of this. I’m stuck.”
M’Clare.
The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what has jammed the fastening. After a few seconds’ tugging it suddenly gives way. M’Clare climbs out of the suit leaving it standing and says “Help me with these, will you?”
These are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at one side of the suit. I recognized them as the envelopes in which we put the Personal Background Kits.
I say “There ought to be twenty-three.”
“No,” says M’Clare dreamily, “twenty-two, we’re saving one of them.”
What in Space is the use of an extra set of faked documents and oddments—
He seems to wake up suddenly and says “What are you doing here, Lizzie?”
I explain and he wanders over to the Hopper and starts to demonstrate the controls.
There is something odd about all this. M’Clare is obviously dead tired, but kind of relaxed; seeing that the moment of Danger is only thirty-six hours off I don’t understand it. Probably several of his students are going to have to risk their lives—
I am on the point of seeing something Important when the speaker announces in the Colonel’s voice that Professor M’Clare and Miss Lee will report to the Conference Room at once please.
M’Clare looks at me and grins. “Come along, Lizzie. Here’s where we take orders for once, you and I.”
It is the Colonel’s Hour. I suppose that having to work with Undergraduates is something he could never quite forget, but from the way he looks at us we might almost be Space Force personnel—low-grade, of course, but Respectable.
Everything is at last worked out and he has it on paper in front of him; he puts the paper four square on the table, gazes into the middle distance and proceeds to Recite.
“One. This ship will go off Mass-Time on 2nd August at 11:27 hours ship’s time—”
Thirty-six hours from Now—
“—at a point one thousand kilometers vertically above Coordinates 1650 E, 7320 S, on Planet Incognita, approximately one hour before midnight local time.”
Going on planetary drive as close as that will indicate that something is pretty badly wrong to begin with.
“Two. This ship will descend, coupled to Gilgamesh as at present, to a point seventy kilometers above the planetary surface. It will then uncouple, discharge one Hopper, and go back on Mass-Time. Estimated time for this stage of descent forty minutes.
“Three. The Hopper will then descend on its own engines at the maximum safe speed; estimated time thirty-seven minutes. Gilgamesh will complete descent in thirty-three minutes. Engines of Gilgamesh will not be used except for the gyro auxiliaries. The following installations have been made to allow for control of the descent: a ring of eight rockets in pentathene mounts around the tail end, and one heavy-duty antigrav unit inside the nose. Sympathizer controls hooked up with a visiscreen and a computer have also been installed in the nose.
“Four. Gilgamesh will carry one man only. The Hopper will carry a crew of three. The pilot of Gilgamesh will establish the ship on the edge of the cliff, supported on antigrav half a meter above the ground and leaning towards the sea at an angle of approximately 20° with the vertical. Except for this landing will be automatic.
“Five.”
The Colonel’s voice has Lulled us into passive acceptance; now we are jerked into sharper attention by the faintest possible check in it.
“The worst possible outcome of the Project would be for the Incognitans to discover that the crash has been faked. This would be inevitable if they were to capture (a) the Hopper (b) any member of the crew (c) any of the new installations in Gilgamesh, but especially the anti-grav.
“The function of the Hopper is to pick up the pilot of Gilgamesh and also to check that ground appearances are consistent. If not, a landslip will be produced on the cliff-edge, using power tools and explosives carried for the purpose. That is why the Hopper will carry three people; but the probability of such action being required is low.”
So I should think; Ground appearances are supposed to show that Gilgamesh landed using emergency rockets and then toppled over the cliff and this will be exactly what Happened.
“The pilot will carry a one-frequency low-power transmitter activated by the change in magnetic field on leaving the ship. The Hopper will remain at one hundred and fifty meters until this signal is received. It will home on the signal and pick up the pilot, check ground appearances and rendezvous with this ship at a height of three hundred kilometers at 18:27 hours.
“The ship and the Hopper are both radar-absorbent and therefore will not register on alarm systems; by keeping to local night-time they should be safe from visual detection.
“Danger (c) will be dealt with in two stages. The rocket-mounts being in pentathene will be destroyed by half an hour’s immersion in sea water. The installations in the nose will be destroyed with Andite.”
Andite produces complete molecular disruption in a short range, hardly any damage outside it; the effect will be as though the nose broke off on impact. I suppose the Incognitans will waste a lot of time looking for it on the bed of the sea.
“Four ten-centimeter cartridges will be inserted within the nose installations. The fuse will have two alternative settings. The first will be timed to act at 12:50 hours, seven minutes after the estimated time of landing. It will not be possible to deactivate it before 12:45 hours. This takes care of the possibility of the pilot’s becoming incapacitated during the descent.
“Having switched off the first fuse the pilot will get the ship into position and then activate a second, timed to blow after ten minutes. He will then leave the ship. When the antigrav is destroyed the ship will of course fall into the sea.
“Six. The pilot of Gilgamesh will be dressed in a space-suit of the pattern used by the original crew and will carry Personal Background Kit number 23. Should he fail to escape from the ship no attempt will be made to rescue him.”
