The Voyage of the Space Beagle

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The thirty-first star they visited was Sol-size, Sol-type. Of its three planets, one followed an orbit of eighty million miles. Like all the other habitable worlds they had seen, it was a steaming jungle and primeval sea.

The Space Beagle settled through its gaseous envelope of air and water vapour, and began to fly along at a low level, a great alien ball of metal in a fantastic land.

In the geology laboratory, Grosvenor watched a bank of instruments that metered the nature of the terrain below. It was a complex job which demanded the closest attention, since much of the interpretation of the data called for the associative processes of a highly trained mind. The constant stream of reflexions of the ultrasonic and short-wave signals being sent out had to be channelled into the proper computing devices at precisely the right time for comparative analysis. To the standard techniques with which McCann was familiar, Grosvenor had added certain refinements in accordance with Nexial principles, and an amazingly complete picture of the planet’s outer crust was being tabulated.

For an hour Grosvenor sat there, deeply involved in his educated guesswork. The facts emerging varied widely in detail, but consideration of molecular structure, arrangement and distribution of the different elements indicated a certain geologic sameness: mud, sandstone, clay, granite, organic debris — probably coal deposits — silicates in the form of sand overlying rock, water—

Several needles on the dials before him swung over sharply and held steady. Their reaction showed indirectly the presence of metallic iron in large quantities with traces of carbon, molybdenum—

Steel! Grosvenor snatched at a lever which precipitated a series of events. A bell started to ring. McCann came running. The ship stopped. A few feet from Grosvenor, McCann began to talk to Acting Director Kent.

“Yes, Director,” he was saying, “steel, not just iron ore.” He did not mention Grosvenor by name, but went on, “We set our instruments at a hundred feet maximum. This could be a city buried — or hidden — in a jungle mud.”

Kent said matter-of-factly, “We’ll know in a few days.”

Cautiously, the ship was kept well above the surface, and the necessary equipment was lowered through a temporary gap in its energy screen. Giant shovels, cranes, mobile conveyors were set up, along with supplementary devices. So carefully had everything been rehearsed that thirty minutes after the ship started to disgorge material it was again heading out into space.

The entire excavating job was done by remote control. Trained men watched the scene in communicator plates and operated the machines on the ground. In four days, the highly integrated mass of implements had dug a hole two hundred and fifty feet deep by four hundred feet wide and eight hundred feet long. What was exposed then was not so much a city as the incredible rubble of what had been a city.

The buildings looked as if they had crumpled under the weight of a burden too great for them to carry. The street level was at the full two-hundred-and-fifty-foot depth, and there they began to turn up bones. Cease-digging orders were given, and several lifeboats made their way down through the muggy atmosphere. Grosvenor went along with McCann, and presently he was standing with several other scientists beside what was left of one of the skeletons.

“Rather badly crushed,” said Smith. “But I think I can piece it together.”

His trained fingers arranged bones into a rough design. “Four-legged,” he said. He brought a fluoroscopic device to bear on one of the limbs. He said presently, “This one seems to have been dead about twenty-five years.”

Grosvenor turned away. The shattered relics that lay around might hold the secret of the fundamental physical character of a vanished race. But it was unlikely that the skeletons held any clue to the identity of the unimaginably merciless beings who had murdered them. These were the pitiful victims, not the arrogant and deadly destroyers.

He made his way gingerly to where McCann was examining soil dug up from the street itself. The geologist said, “I think we’ll be justified in taking a stratigraphical survey from here on down several hundred feet.”

At his word, a drill crew sprang into action. During the next hour, as the machine tore its way through rock and clay, Grosvenor was kept busy. A steady trickle of soil samplings passed under his eyes. Occasionally, he put a bit of rock or earth through a chemical-breakdown process. By the time the lifeboats headed back to the parent ship, McCann was in a position to give a fairly accurate generalized report to Kent. Grosvenor stayed out of the receptive field of the communicator plate while McCann gave the report.

“Director, you will recall that I was particularly asked to check if this could be an artificial jungle plant. It seems to be. The strata below the mud appears to be that of an older, less primitive planet. It is hard to believe that a layer of jungle could have been skimmed from some distant planet and super-imposed on this one, but the evidence points in that direction.”

Kent said, “What about the city itself? How was it destroyed?”

“We have made a few of the calculations, and we can say cautiously that the enormous weight of rock and soil and water could have done all the damage we saw.”

“Have you found any evidence to indicate how long ago this catastrophe took place?”

“We have a little geomorphological data. In several places we examined, the new surface has formed depressions in the old one, indicating that the extra weight is forcing down weaker areas below. By identifying the type of land fault that would sag under such circumstances, we have some figures that we intend to feed into a computing machine. A competent mathematician” — he meant Grosvenor — “has roughly estimated that the pressure of the weight was first applied not more than a hundred years ago. Since geology deals in events that require thousands and millions of years to mature, all the machine can do is to check the manual calculation. It cannot give us a closer estimate.”

There was a pause, and then Kent said formally, “Thank you. I feel that you and your staff have done a good job. One more question: In your investigation, did you find anything that might be a clue to the nature of the intelligence that could bring about such a cataclysmic destruction?”

“Speaking only for myself, without having consulted with my assistants — no!”

It was, Grosvenor reflected, just as well that McCann had so carefully limited his denial. For the geologist, the investigation of this planet was the beginning of the search for the enemy. For himself, it had proved to be the final link in a chain of discovery and reasoning that had started when they first began to hear the strange murmurings in space.

He knew the identity of the most monstrous alien intelligence conceivable. He could guess its terrible purpose. He had carefully analysed what must be done.

His problem was no longer: What is the danger? He had reached the stage where he needed, above all, to put over his solution without compromise. Unfortunately, men who had knowledge of only one or two sciences might not be able, or even willing, to comprehend the potentialities of the deadliest danger that had ever confronted all the life of the entire inter-galactic universe. The solution itself might become the centre of a violent controversy.

Accordingly Grosvenor saw the problem as both political and scientific. He analysed, with a sharp awareness of the possible nature of the forthcoming struggle, that his tactics must be carefully thought out and carried through with the utmost determination.

It was too soon to decide how far he would have to go. But it seemed to him that he dared not place any limitation upon his actions. He would do what was necessary.