Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER THREE CAPTIVES OF THE DARK

The fat black arrows on the orange-coloured anameson fuel indicators stood at zero. The spaceship had not escaped the iron star, its speed was still great and it was being drawn towards that horrible star that human eyes could not see.

The astronavigator helped Erg Noor, who was trembling from weakness and from the effort he had made, to sit down at the computing machine. The planetary motors, disconnected from the robot helmsman, faded out.

“Ingrid, what’s an iron star?” asked Kay Bear, softly; all that time he had been standing motionless behind her back.

“An invisible star, spectral class T, that has become extinguished and is either in the process of cooling off or of reheating. It emanates the long infrared waves of the heat end of the spectrum whose rays are black to us and can only be seen through the electronic inverter. An owl can see the infrared rays and, therefore, could see the star.”

“Why is it called iron?”

“There is a lot of iron in the spectrum of those that have been studied and it seems there’s a lot of it in the star’s composition. If the star is a big one its mass and gravity are enormous. And I’m afraid we’re going to meet one of the big ones.” “What comes next?”

“I don’t know. You know yourself that we’ve got no fuel. We’re flying straight towards the star. We must brake Tantra down to a speed one-thousandth of the absolute, at which speed sufficient angular deviation will be possible. If the planetary fuel gives out too, the spaceship will slowly approach the star until it falls on it.”

Ingrid jerked her head nervously and Kay gently stroked her bare arm, all covered with goose-flesh.

The commander of the expedition went over to the control desk and concentrated on the instruments. Everybody kept silent, almost afraid to breathe, even Nisa Creet, who, although she had only just woke up, realized instinctively the danger of their situation. The fuel might be sufficient to brake the ship; but with loss of velocity it would be more difficult to get out of the tremendous gravitational field of the iron star without the ship’s motors. If Tantra had not approached so close and if Lynn had realized in time… but what consolation was there in those empty “ifs”?

Three hours passed before Erg Noor had made his decision. Tantra vibrated from the powerful thrust of the trigger motors. Her speed was reduced. An hour, a second, a third and a fourth, an elusive movement of the commander’s hand, horrible nausea for everybody in the ship and the terrifying brown star disappeared from the forward screen and reappeared on the second. Invisible bonds of gravity continued to hold the ship and were recorded in the measuring instruments. Two red eyes burned over Erg Noor’s head. He pulled a lever towards himself and the motors stopped working.

“We’re out!” breathed Pel Lynn in relief. The commander slowly turned his glance towards him.

“We’re not. We have only the iron ration of fuel left, sufficient for orbital revolution and landing.”

“What can we do?”

“Wait! I have diverted the ship a little, but we are passing too close. A battle is now going on between the star’s force of gravity and the reduced speed of Tantra. It’s flying like a lunar rocket at the moment and if it can get away we shall fly towards the Sun and will be able to call Earth. The time required for the journey, of course, will he much greater. In about thirty years we’ll send out our call for help and another eight years later it will come.”

“Thirty-eight years!” Bear whispered in scarcely audible tones in Ingrid’s ear. She pulled him sharply by the sleeve and turned away.

Erg Noor leaned back in his chair and dropped his hands on his knees. Nobody spoke and the instruments continued softly humming. Another melody, out of tune and, therefore, ominous, was added to the tuned melody of the navigation instruments. The call of the iron star, the great strength of its iron mass pulling for the weakened spaceship, was almost physically tangible.

Nisa Creet’s cheeks were burning, her heart was beating wildly. This inactive waiting had become unbearable.

The hours passed slowly. One after another the awakened members of the expedition appeared in the control tower. The number of silent people increased until all fourteen were assembled.

The speed of the ship had been progressively reduced until it reached a point that was lower than the velocity of escape so that Tantra could not get away from the iron star. Her crew forgot all about food and sleep and did not leave the control tower for many miserable hours during which the ship’s course changed more and more to a curve until she was in the fatal elliptical orbit. Tantra’s fate was obvious to the entire crew.

A sudden howl made them all start. Astronomer Pour Hyss jumped up and waved his hands. His distorted face was unrecognizable, he bore no resemblance to a man of the Great Circle Era. Fear, self-pity and a craving for revenge had swept all signs of intellectuality from the face of the scientist.

“Him, it was him,” howled Pour Hyss, pointing to Pel Lynn, “that clot, that fool, that brainless worm….” The astronomer choked as he tried to recall the swear-words of his ancestors that had long before gone out of use. Nisa, who was standing near him, moved away contemptuously. Erg Noor stood up.

“The condemnation of a colleague will not help us. The time is past when such an action could have been intentional. In this case,” Noor spun the handles on the computing machine carelessly, “as you see there was a thirty per cent probability of error. If we add to that the inevitable depression that comes at the end of a tour of duty and the disturbance due to the pitching of the ship I don’t doubt that you. Pour Hyss, would have made the same mistake!”

“And you?” shouted the astronomer, but with less fury than before.

“I should not. I saw a monster like this at close quarters during the 36th Space Expedition. It is mostly my fault — I hoped to pilot the ship through the unknown region myself, but I did not foresee everything, I confined myself to giving simple instructions!”

“How could you have known that they would enter this region without you?” exclaimed Nisa.

“I should have known it,” answered Erg Noor, firmly, in this way refusing the friendly aid of the astronavigator, “but there’s no sense in talking about it until we get bade to Earth.”

“To Earth!” whined Pour Hyss and even Pel Lynn frowned in perplexity, “to say that, when all is lost and only death lies ahead of us!”

“Not death but a gigantic struggle lies ahead of us,” answered Erg Noor, confidently, sitting down in a chair that stood before the table. “Sit down. There’s no need to hurry until Tantra has made one and a half revolutions.”

Those present obeyed him in silence and Nisa gave the biologist a smile, triumphant, despite the hopelessness of the moment.

“This star undoubtedly has a planet, even two, I imagine, judging by the curves of the isograve[10]. The planets, as you see,” the commander made a rapid but accurate sketch, “should be big ones and, therefore, should have an atmosphere. We don’t need to land, though, we have enough atomized solid oxygen[11].”

Erg Noor stopped to gather his thoughts. “We shall become the satellite of the planet and travel in orbit around it. If the atmosphere of the planet is suitable and we use up our air, we have sufficient planetary fuel to land and call for help. In six months we can calculate the direction,” he continued, ‘‘transmit to Earth the results obtained from Zirda and send for a rescue ship and save our ship.”

“If we do save it…” Pour Hyss pulled a wry face as he tried to hide the joy that kindled anew in his heart.

“Yes, if we do,” agreed Erg Noor. “That, however, is clearly our goal. We must muster all our forces to achieve it. You, Pour Hyss and Ingrid Dietra, make your observations and calculate the size of the planets, Bear and Nisa. compute the velocity from the mass of the planets and when you know that compute the orbital velocity of the spaceship and the optimal radiant[12] for its revolutions.”

The explorers began to make preparations for a landing should it prove to be necessary. The biologist, the geologist and the physician prepared a reconnaissance robot, the mechanics adjusted the landing locators and searchlights and got ready a rocket satellite that would transmit a message to Earth.

The work went particularly well after the horror and hopelessness they had experienced and was only interrupted by the pitching of the ship in gravitational vortices. Tantra, however, had so reduced her speed that the pitching no longer caused the people great discomfort.

Pour Hyss and Ingrid established the presence of two planets. They had to reject the idea of approaching the outer planet- it was huge in size, cold, encircled by a thick layer of atmosphere that was probably poisonous and threatened them with death. If they had to make a choice of deaths it would probably have been better to burn up on the surface of the iron star than drown in the gloom of an ammonia atmosphere by plunging the ship into a thousand-kilometre thick layer of ammonia ice. There were similar terrible, gigantic planets in the solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Tantra continued to approach the star. In nineteen days they determined the size of the inner planet and it proved to be bigger than Earth. The planet was quite close to its sun, the iron star, and was carried round its orbit at frantic speed, its year being no more than two or three terrestrial months. The invisible star T no doubt made it quite warm with its black rays and, if there was an atmosphere, life could have emerged there. In the latter case landing would be particularly dangerous.

Alien forms of life that had developed under conditions of other planets and by other evolutionary paths and had the albumin cells common to the whole Cosmos were extremely dangerous to Earth-dwellers. The adaptation of the organism to protect itself against harmful refuse and disease bacteria that had been going on for millions of centuries on our planet was powerless against alien forms of life. To the same degree life from other planets was in similar danger on Earth.

The basic activity of animal life — in killing to devour and in devouring to kill — made its appearance with depressingly brutal cruelty when the animal life of different worlds clashed. Fantastic diseases, instantaneous epidemics, the terrible spreading of pests and horrible injuries beset the first explorations of habitable hut uninhabited planets. Worlds that were inhabited by intelligent beings made numerous experiments and preparations before establishing direct spaceship communications. On our Earth, far removed from the central parts of the Galaxy where life abounds, there had been no visitors from the planets of other stars, no representatives of other civilizations. The Astronautical Council had shortly before completed preparations for the reception of visitors from the planets of not too distant stars in the Ophiuchus, Cygnus, Ursa Major and Apus constellations.

Erg Noor, worried by the possibility of meeting with unknown forms of life, ordered the biological means of defence, that he had taken a big supply of in the hope of visiting Vega, to be brought out of the distant store-rooms.

At last Tantra equalized her orbital velocity with that of the planet and then began to revolve around it. The indefinite, dark-brown surface of the planet, or rather, of its atmosphere, with reflections of the bloody-brown sun, could only be seen through the electronic inverter. All members of the expedition were busy at the instruments.

‘“The temperature of the upper layers of the daylight side is 320° on the Kelvin scale[13].”

“Rotation about the axis approximately 20 days.” “The locators show the presence of water and land.” ‘‘The thickness of the atmosphere is 1,700 kilometres.”

“The exact mass is 43.2 times Earth’s mass.” The reports followed one another continuously and the nature of the planet was becoming clear.

Erg Noor summarized the figures as they came in and was making preparations to compute the orbit. The planet was a big one, 43.2 times the mass of Earth, and its force of gravity would hold the ship pressed down to the ground. The people would be as helpless as flies on a fly-paper.

The commander recalled the terrible stories he had heard, half legend, half history, of the old spaceships that had, for various reasons, come into contact with the huge planets. In those days the slow ships with low-powered fuel often perished. The end came with a roar of motors and the spasmodic shuddering of a ship that could not get away but remained stuck to the surface of the planet. The ship remained intact but the bones of the people trying to crawl about the ship were broken. The indescribable horror of great weight had been communicated in the fragmentary cries of last reports, in the farewell transmissions.

The crew of Tantra were not menaced by that danger as long as they revolved about the planet. If they had to land on its surface, however, only the strongest people would be able to drag the weight of their own bodies in this, the future haven that was to be theirs for many long years…. Could they keep alive under such conditions — crushed by the great weight, in the eternal darkness of the infrared rays of the black sun, in a dense atmosphere?

Whatever the conditions were, it was a hope of salvation, it did not mean death and, anyway, there was no choice!

Tantra’s orbit drew closer to the outer fringe of the atmosphere. The expedition could not miss the opportunity of investigating a hitherto unknown planet that was comparatively close to Earth. The lighted, or rather, heated side of the planet differed from the night side not only by its much greater temperature but also by the huge agglomerations of electricity that so interfered with the powerful locators that their indications were distorted beyond recognition. Erg Noor decided to study the planet with the help of bomb stations. They sent out a physical research robot and the automatic recorder reported on an astonishing quantity of free oxygen in an atmosphere of neon and nitrogen, the presence of water vapour and a temperature of 12 °C. These were conditions that, in general, were similar to those on Earth. But the pressure of the thick atmosphere was 1.4 times that of normal pressure on Earth and the force of gravity was 2.5 times greater.

“We can live here,” said the biologist, smiling feebly as lie reported the station’s findings to the commander.

“If we can live on that gloomy, heavy planet, then something is probably living there already, something small and harmful.”

For the spaceship’s fifteenth revolution a bomb beacon with a powerful transmitter was prepared. This second physical research station, dropped on the night side when the planet had rotated through 120°, disappeared without sending out any signals.

“It has fallen into the ocean,” said geologist Beena Ledd, biting her lips in annoyance.

“We must feel our way with the main locator before we put out a TV robot. We’ve only got two of them.”

Tantra emitted a bunch of directed radio waves as she revolved round the planet, feeling for the contours of seas and continents that owing to distortion were unclear. They found the outlines of a huge plain that thrust out into the ocean, or divided two oceans, almost on the planet’s equator. The spaceship’s ray zigzagged across a strip of land two hundred kilometres wide. Suddenly a bright point flared up on the locator screen. A whistle that lashed their strained nerves told them that it was no hallucination.

“Metal!” exclaimed the geologist, “an open deposit.” Erg Noor shook his head.

“Although the flash did not last long I managed to note its regular outline. That was a huge piece of metal, a meteorite or….”

“A ship!” exclaimed Nisa and the biologist together. “Fantasy!” snapped Pour Hyss.

“It may be fact,” objected Erg Noor. “What does it matter, it’s no use arguing,” said Pour Hyss, unwilling to give in. “There’s no way of proving it, we’re not going to land, are we?”

“We’ll check up on it in three hours’ time when we reach that plain again. Notice that the metal object is on the plain that I, too, would have chosen to land on. We’ll throw out the TV robot at that very spot. Tune the locator ray to a six-second warning!”

The commander’s plan was successful and Tantra made another three-hour flight round the dark planet. The next time the ship approached the continental plain it was met by TV broadcasts from the robot. The people peered into the light screen. With a click the visible ray was switched on and peered like a human eye, noting the outlines of things far down below, in that thousand-kilometre-deep black abyss. Kay Bear could well imagine the head of the robot station sticking out of the armour plate and revolving like a lighthouse. The zone that was swept by the instrument’s eye appeared on the screen and was there and then photographed: the view consisted of low cliffs, hills and the winding black lines of watercourses. Suddenly the vision of a gleaming, fish-shaped object crossed the screen and again melted into the darkness as it was abandoned by the light ray to the darkness and the ledges of the plateau.

“A spaceship!” gasped several voices in unison. Nisa looked at Pour Hyss with undisguised triumph. The screen went dark as Tantra left the area of the TV robot’s activity and Eon Thal immediately set about developing the film of the electronic photographs. With fingers that trembled with impatience he placed the film in the projector of the hemispherical screen that would give them stereoscopic pictures of what had been photographed. The inner walls of the hollow hemisphere gave them an enlarged picture.

The familiar cigar-shaped outlines of the ship’s hows, the bulge of the stern, the high ridge of the equilibrium receiver…. No matter how unbelievable it all was, no matter how utterly impossible they might regard a meeting here, on the dark planet, the robot could not invent anything, a terrestrial spaceship lay there! It lay horizontally, in the normal landing position, supported by its powerful landing struts, undamaged, as though it had only just alighted on to the planet of the iron star.

Tantra, revolving in a shorter orbit closer to the planet, sent out signals that were not answered. A few more hours passed. The fourteen members of the expedition again gathered in the control tower. Erg Noor, who had been sitting in deep contemplation, stood up.

“I propose to land Tantra. Perhaps our brothers are in need of help, perhaps their ship is damaged and cannot return to Earth. If so we can take them, transfer their anameson and save ourselves. There is no sense in sending out a rescue rocket. It cannot do anything to give us fuel and will use up so much energy that there will not be enough left to send a signal to Earth.”

“Suppose the ship is here because of a shortage of anameson?” asked Pel Lynn, cautiously.

“Then it should have ion planetary charges, they could not have used up everything. As you see the spaceship is in its proper position which means they landed with the planetary motors. We’ll transfer the ion fuel, take off again and go into orbit; then we can call Earth for help and in case of success that won’t take more than eight years. And if we can get anameson, then we shall have won out.” “Maybe they have photon and not ion charges for their planetary motors,” said one of the engineers.

“We can make use of them in the big motors if we fit them with auxiliary bowl reflectors.”

“I see you’ve thought of everything.,” said the engineer, giving in.

“There is still the risk of landing on a heavy planet and the risk of living there,” muttered Pour Hyss. “It’s awful just to think of that world of darkness!”

“The risk, of course, remains. But there is risk in our very situation and we shall hardly increase it by landing. The planet on which our spaceship will land is not a bad one as long as we do not damage the ship.”

Erg Noor cast a glance at the dial of the speed regulator and walked swiftly to the control desk. For a whole minute he stood in front of the levers and vernier scales of the controls. The fingers of his big hands moved as though they were selecting chords on some musical instrument, his back was bent and his face turned to stone.

Nisa Creet went up to him, boldly took his right hand and pressed the palm to her smooth cheek, hot from excitement. Erg Noor nodded in gratitude, stroked the girl’s mass of hair and straightened himself up.

“We are entering the lower layers of the atmosphere to land,” he said loudly, switching on the warning siren. The howl carried throughout the ship and the crew hurried to strap themselves into hydraulic floating scats.

Erg Noor dropped into the soft embrace of the landing chair that rose up from the floor before the control desk. Then came the heavy strokes of the planetary engines and the spaceship rushed down, howling, towards the cliffs and oceans of the unknown planet.

The locators and the infrared reflectors felt their way through the primordial darkness below, red lights glowed on the altimeter scales at 15,000 metres. It was not anticipated that there would be mountains much over 10,000 metres high on the planet where water and the heat of the black sun had been working to level out the surface as was the case on Earth.

The first revolution round the planet revealed no mountains, only insignificant heights, little bigger than those of Mars. It looked as though the activity of the internal forces that gave rise to mountains had ceased or had been checked.

Erg Noor placed the altitude governor at 2,000 metres and switched on the powerful searchlights. A huge ocean stretched below the spaceship, an ocean of horror, an unbroken mass of black waves that rose and fell over unfathomable depths.

The biologist wiped away the perspiration caused by his strenuous efforts; he was trying to catch in his instrument the faint variations in reflection from the black water to determine its salt and mineral content.

The gleaming black of the water gave way to the dull black of land. The crossed rays of the searchlights cut a narrow lane between walls of darkness. Unexpectedly there were patches of colour in this lane, yellow sands and the greyish-green surface of a flat rocky ridge.

Tantra swept across the continent, obedient to the skilled hand of the commander.

At last Erg Noor found the plain he was looking for; it proved to be low-lying country that could not possibly be termed a plateau although it was obvious that the tides and storms of the black sea would not reach it, lying, as it did, some hundred metres above the surrounding country.

The locator on the spaceship’s port bow whistled. Tantra’s searchlights followed the locator beam and the clear outlines of a first class spaceship came into view.

The bow armour, made of an isotope of iridium having a reorganized crystalline structure, shone like new in the rays of the searchlight. There were no temporary structures anywhere near the ship, there were no lights on board — it stood dark and lifeless and did not in any way react to the approach of a sister ship. The searchlight rays moved past the ship and were reflected from a huge disc with spiral projections as they would have been from a blue mirror. The disc was standing on edge, leaning slightly to one side and was partly buried in the black soil. For a moment the observers got the impression that there were cliffs behind the disc and that beyond them the darkness was blacker and thicker, probably it was a precipice or a slope leading down to the lowlands….

The deafening roar of Tantra’s sirens shook the hull of the ship. Erg Noor intended to land close to the newly-discovered ship and was giving warning to any people who might be within the danger zone, that is, within a radius of some thousand metres from the landing place. The terrific roar of the planetary motors could be heard even inside the ship and a cloud of red-hot dust appeared in the screens. The ship’s floor began to rise up and then slip backwards. The hydraulic hinges of the landing seats turned them smoothly and soundlessly, keeping them perpendicular to the now vertical floors.

The huge jointed landing struts slid out of the ship’s hull, straightened out and took the first shock of the landing on an alien world. A shock, a recoil and another shock and Tantra, her bows still swaying, came to a standstill at the same time as the engines cut out. Erg Noor raised his hand to a lever on the control desk that was now directly over his head and released the jointed struts. Slowly, with a number of short jerks, the spaceship’s bows sank towards the ground until the hull had assumed its normal, horizontal position. The landing had been accomplished. As usual, the landing had shaken the human organism bo strongly that the astronauts required some time to recover and remained semi-recumbent in their landing seats.

They were all held down by an awful weight and were scarcely able to rise to their feet, like patients recovering slowly from a serious illness. The irrepressible biologist, however, had managed to take a sample of the, air.

“It’s fit to breathe,” he said. “I’ll take a look at it through the microscope.”

“Don’t bother,” said Erg Noor, unfastening the cushions of his landing chair, “we can’t go out without a spacesuit. There may be very dangerous spores and viruses on this planet.”

In the air-lock at the exit to the ship biologically shielded spacesuits and “jumping skeletons” had been prepared in readiness for an exploring party; the “skeletons” were steel, leather-covered frames that were worn over the spacesuits and were fitted with electric motors, springs and shock absorbers to enable the explorers to move about under conditions of excessive weight.

After six years’ travelling through interstellar space every one of them wanted to feel soil, even alien soil, under his feet. Kay Bear, Pour Hyss, Ingrid, Doctor Louma Lasvy and two engineers had to remain on board the vessel to man the radio, searchlights and various measuring and recording instruments.

Nisa stood aside from the party with her space helmet in her hands.

“Why do you hesitate, Nisa?” the commander called to her as he tested the radio set in the top of his helmet. “Come along to the spaceship!”

“I… I…” the girl stammered, “I believe it’s dead, it’s been standing here a long time…. Another catastrophe, another victim claimed by the merciless Cosmos. I know it’s inevitable but still it’s hard to bear, especially after Zirda and Algrab….”

“Perhaps the death of this spaceship will mean life for us,” said Pour Hyss who was busy training a short-focus telescope on the other ship which still remained unlighted.

Eight members of the expedition climbed into the air-lock and waited.

“Turn on the air!” ordered Erg Noor addressing those who were remaining on the ship and from whom they were now divided by an air-tight wall.

When the pressure in the air-lock had risen to ten atmospheres and was higher than that outside, hydraulic jacks opened the hermetically sealed doors. The air pressure in the lock was so great that it almost hurled the people out of the chamber and at the same time prevented anything harmful in the alien atmosphere from entering the chamber. The door clanged to behind them. The rays of a searchlight lit up a clear road along which the explorers hobbled on their spring legs, scarcely able to drag their own heavy weight along. The gigantic spaceship stood at the other end of the beam of light, about a mile away, a distance that seemed interminable to them in their impatience. They were badly shaken up by their clumsy jumps over uneven ground covered with small boulders and greatly heated by the black sun.

The stars made pale, diffused patches when seen through the dense, highly humid atmosphere. Instead of the brilliant magnificence of the Cosmos the planet’s sky showed only a faint suggestion of the constellations, the pale, reddish lanterns of their stars unable to penetrate the darkness on the planet.

The spaceship stood out in clear relief in the profound darkness of its surroundings. The thick borated zirconium lacquer on the hull plates had been rubbed off in places. The ship must have been wandering about the Cosmos for a long time.

An exclamation, repeated in all the radio telephones, came from Eon Thal. With his hand he pointed to the ship’s smaller lift that had been lowered to the ground and stood with its door wide open. What were undoubtedly plants grew around the lift and under the ship’s hull. Thick stems raised black bowls of parabolic shape nearly three feet above the ground; they had serrated edges something like the teeth of a cog-wheel and it was difficult to say whether they were leaves or flowers. A mass of these motionless cog-wheels growing together had an evil look about them. Still more disturbing was the silent, open door of the lift. Untouched plants and an open door could only mean that nobody had used that way for a long time, that the people were not guarding their tiny terrestrial world from that which was alien to them.

Erg Noor, Eon Thal and Nisa Greet entered the lift and the commander pressed the button. With a slight squeak the machinery was set in motion and the lift carried the explorers to the wide-open air-lock. They were followed by the others. Erg Noor transmitted an order to switch off the searchlight on Tantra. An instant later the tiny group of Earth-dwellers was lost in utter darkness. The world of the iron sun enveloped them as though trying to absorb that feeble spark of terrestrial life pressed down to the soil of the huge black planet.

They switched on the revolving electric lanterns in their helmets. The inner door of the air-lock, leading into the ship, was closed but not locked and opened at a push. The explorers entered the central corridor and easily found their way through the dark alleyways. The spaceship differed but little from Tantra in its design.

“This ship was built less than a hundred years ago,” said Erg Noor, drawing closer to Nisa. The girl looked round. Through the silicolloid[14] “ helmet the commander’s half-lighted face looked mysterious.

“An impossible idea,” he continued, “but suppose this is….”

“Parus,” exclaimed Nisa. She had forgotten the microphone and saw everybody turn towards her.

The explorers made their way to the chief room of the spaceship, the combined library and laboratory, and from there continued towards the ship’s control tower in the bows. Staggering along in his “skeleton,” swaying from side to side and banging against the walls as he went, the commander reached the main switchboard. The ship’s lights were switched on but there was no current to keep them going. The phosphorescent signs and indicators still glowed in the darkness. Erg Noor found the emergency switch, pressed it and, to their surprise, the lamps glowed dimly, but to the explorers they seemed blindingly bright. The light in the lift must have gone on, too, for they heard the voice of Pour Hyss in their telephones asking about the results of the examination. Geologist Beena Ledd answered him as the commander had suddenly stopped in the doorway of the control tower. Following his glance Nisa looked up and saw, between the fore screens, a double inscription, in the letters of Earth and the symbols of the Great Circle — Parus. A line drawn under the word separated it from Earth’s galactic call sign and the coordinates of the Solar System.

The spaceship that had disappeared eighty years before had been found in the system of the black sun, a system that had formerly been unknown and had been regarded as a dark cloud.

An examination of the interior of the spaceship did not tell them what had happened to the ship’s crew. The oxygen reservoirs were not empty, there were supplies of food and water sufficient for several years but nowhere was there any trace or any remains of Parus’ crew.

Here and there in the corridors, in the control tower and in the library there were strange dark stains on the walls. On the library floor there was another stain that looked as though something that had been spilled there had dried in a warped film of several layers. Before the open door in the after bulkhead of the stern engine room, wires had been torn apart and were hanging down, the massive uprights of the cooling system, made of phosphor-bronze, had been badly bent. Everything else in the ship was in perfect condition so that this damage, caused by a blow of tremendous force, could not be explained. The explorers were becoming exhausted by their efforts but were unable to find anything that would explain the disappearance and undoubted loss of Parus’ crew.

They did, however, make another discovery, one of the greatest importance — the supplies of anameson fuel and ion charges for the planetary motors were sufficient for the take-off of Tantra and for the journey back to Earth.

This information was immediately transmitted to Tantra and relieved all members of the expedition of that feeling of doom that had possessed them since their spaceship had been captured by the iron star. Nor would they have to carry out the lengthy work necessary to transmit a message to Earth. There would be, however, the tremendous task of transferring the anameson containers to Tantra. This would not have been an easy task anywhere, but there, on a planet where everything weighed three times as much as on Earth, it would require all the skill and ingenuity of the engineers. People of the Great Circle Era, however, were not afraid of difficult mental problems; on the contrary, they enjoyed them.

From the tape recorder in the central control tower the biologist removed the unfinished spool of the ship’s log-book. Erg Noor and the biologist opened the door of the hermetically sealed main safe where the results of the Parus expedition were kept. The members of the expedition were burdened down with a heavy weight of numerous spools of photo-magnetic films, log-books, astronomical observations and computations. They were explorers themselves and could not dream of leaving such a valuable find even for a moment.

Dead tired the explorers were met in Tantra’s library by their excited and impatient comrades. In surroundings to which they were accustomed, seated around a comfortable table under bright lights, the tomb-like gloom of the black world outside and the dead, abandoned spaceship seemed like a gruesome nightmare. Nevertheless the force of gravity of that awful planet continued to crush every one of them and from time to time one or another of the explorers would grimace with pain on making some movement. It had been very difficult, without considerable practice, to coordinate the movements of the body with those of the “steel skeleton” so that an ordinary walk became a series of jerks and severe shakings. The short journey to Parus and back had completely exhausted them. Geologist Beena Ledd was apparently suffering from a slight concussion of the brain, but she refused to go away before she had heard the last spool of the ship’s log-book and remained leaning on the table with her hands pressed to her temples. Nisa expected something extraordinary from the records that had lain for eighty years in a dead ship on that horrid planet. She imagined hoarse appeals for help, howls of a suffering, tragic words of farewell. The girl shuddered when a cold, melodious voice came from the reproducer. Even Erg Noor, a man who possessed great knowledge of everything connected with interstellar flights, knew nothing of the crew of Parus. The crew had been made up exclusively of young people and had set out on their fantastically courageous journey to Vega without giving the Astronautical Council the usual film about the members of the crew.

The unknown voice reported events that occurred seven months after the last message had been sent to Earth. Twenty-five years before that, in crossing a Cosmic ice zone on the fringe of the Vega system, Parus had been damaged. The crew managed to patch the hole in the ship’s stern and continue their journey but it nevertheless upset the delicate regulation of the protective field of the motors. After a struggle that lasted twenty years they had had to stop the engines. Parus continued going five years by inertia until she was pulled aside by a natural inaccuracy in the ship’s course. That was when the first message had been sent. The spaceship was about to send another message when she was caught in the field of the iron star. Then the same thing happened to Parus as had happened to Tantra with the difference that Parus was without motors and had been unable to resist. Nor could Parus become a satellite of the black planet since the planetary motors, housed in the vessel’s stern, had been wrecked at the same time as the anameson motors. Parus landed safely on a low plateau near the sea. The crew set about carrying out three tasks of importance: the repair of the motors, the transmission of a message to Earth and the study of the unknown planet. Before they had time to erect a rocket tower people began to disappear mysteriously.

Those sent out to look for them did not return. The exploration of the planet ceased, the remainder of the crew went out to the rocket tower only in a group and for the long periods between spells of work that the strong force of gravity made extremely exhausting, they remained in the tightly sealed spaceship. In their hurry to send off the rocket they had not even studied the strange spaceship in the vicinity of Parus that had, apparently, been there a long time.

“That disc!” flashed through Nisa’s mind. She met the commander’s glance and he, understanding her thoughts, nodded in affirmation. Six out of the fourteen of Parus’ crew had disappeared but after the necessary measures had been taken the disappearances stopped. There then followed a break of about three days in the log-book and the story was taken up by a young woman’s high-pitched voice.

“Today is the twelfth day of the seventh month, year 723 of the Great Circle, and we who have remained alive have completed the construction of the rocket transmitter. Tomorrow at this time….”

Kay Bear glanced instinctively at the time gradations along the tape — 5 a. m. Parus time, and who could know what time that would be on this planet!

“We are sending a reliably computed…” the voice broke off and then began again, this time weaker and suppressed, as though the speaker had turned away from the microphone, “… I am switching on! More!” The tape-recorder was silent although the tape continued to unwind.

“Something must have happened!” began Ingrid Dietra.

Hurried, choking words came from the tape-recorder. ‘“… two got away… Laik is gone, she didn’t jump far enough… the lift… they couldn’t shut the outside door, only the inside one! Mechanic Sach Kthon has crawled to the engines… we’ll start the planetary motors going… there is nothing to them but fury and horror, they are nothing! Yes, nothing…” for some time the tape unwound in silence, then the same voice began again.

“I don’t think Kthon managed it. I’m alone, but I’ve thought of what to do. Before I begin,” the voice grew stronger and then sounded with amazing strength, “Brothers, if you find Parus, take heed of my warning, never leave the ship at all.” The woman who was speaking heaved a deep sigh and said, as though talking to herself, “I must find out about Kthon, I’ll come back and explain in detail.” Then came a click and the tape continued to unwind for about twenty minutes before it reached the end. The eager listeners waited in vain, the unknown woman had been unable to give any further details just as she had probably been unable to return.

Erg Noor switched off the apparatus and turned to his companions.

“Our brothers and sisters who died in Parus will save us! Can’t you feel the strong arm of the man of Earth! There’s a supply of anameson on the ship and we’ve been given a warning of the mortal danger that threatens us. I have no idea what it is but it’s undoubtedly some alien form of life. If it had been elemental. Cosmic forces, they’d have damaged the ship and not merely killed the people, It would be a disgrace if we could not save ourselves now that we have been given so much help; we must take our discoveries and those of Parus back to Earth. The great work of those who perished at their posts, their half-century’s struggle against the Cosmos, must not have been in vain.”

“How do you propose to get the fuel on board without leaving the ship?” asked Kay Bear.

“Why without leaving the ship? You know that’s impossible and that we have to go out and work outside. We’ve been warned and we’ll take the necessary steps.”

“I suppose you mean a barrage around the place where we’re going to work,” said biologist Eon Thal.

“Not only that, a barrage along the whole way between the two ships,” added Pour Hyss.

“Naturally! We don’t know what to expect so we’ll make the barrage a double one, a radiation and an electric wall. We’ll put out cables and have a path of light all the way. There’s an unused rocket standing behind Parus that contains sufficient energy for all the time we’ll have to work.”

Beena Ledd’s head dropped on to the table with a thud. The doctor and the second astronomer moved their heavy bodies with difficulty towards her.

“It’s nothing,” explained Louma Lasvy, “concussion and overstrain. Help me get Beena to bed.”

Even that simple task would not have been performed very quickly if mechanic Taron had not thought of adapting an automatic robot car. With the help of the car all the eight explorers were taken to their beds — if they did not rest in time, organisms that had not yet adapted themselves to new conditions would break down. At this difficult moment every member of the expedition was essential and irreplaceable.

Soon two universal automatic cars for transport purposes and road building were linked together and used to level the road between the two spaceships. Heavy cables were hung on both sides. Watch towers with a protective hood of thick silicoborum[15] were erected at each of the spaceships. In each tower an observer from time to time would send a fan-shaped bunch of death-dealing rays along the road from an impulse chamber. During the hours of work the powerful searchlights were kept going all the time. The main hatch in Parus’ keel was opened, some of the bulkheads were removed and four containers of anameson and thirty cylinders with ion charges were made ready to load on to the cars. It would be more difficult to load them on to Tantra. They could not open the spaceship the way Parus was opened and so allow whatever was engendered by the alien life of the planet, and which was probably lethal, to enter the ship. For this reason they only made the necessary preparations inside the ship but did not open the hatch; interior bulkheads were removed and containers of compressed air were brought from Parus. The plan was to blow a strong blast of air under high pressure down the shaft from the time the manhole was opened until the containers were loaded into Tantra. At the same time the hull of the vessel would be screened by a radiation cascade.

The expedition gradually grew accustomed to working in their “steel skeletons” and began to bear the triple weight somewhat more easily. The unbearable pain in all their bones that had begun as soon as they landed was also beginning to ease up.

Several terrestrial days passed and the mysterious “nothing” did not appear. The temperature of the surrounding atmosphere began to fall rapidly. A hurricane arose that increased in fury hour by hour. This was the setting of the black sun — the planet rotated and the continent on which the spaceship stood plunged into night. The convection currents, the heat given off by the ocean and the thick atmosphere prevented a sudden drop in temperature but towards the middle of the planetary “night” a sharp frost set in. The work continued with the heating systems in the spacesuits switched on. They had managed to get the first container out of Parus and transport it to Tantra when at “sunrise” there came a hurricane much fiercer than had been the one at “sunset.” The temperature rose rapidly above freezing point, a current of dense air brought with it excessive humidity and the sky was rent by endless lightnings. The hurricane became so fierce that the spaceship began to tremble under pressure of the terrific wind. The crew concentrated all their efforts on safely anchoring the container under Tantra’s keel. The fearful roar of the wind increased and there were dangerous whirling vortices on the plateau that closely resembled a terrestrial tornado. In the searchlight beam there appeared a huge whirlwind, a rotating column of water, snow and dust whose funnel rested on the low dark sky. The whirlwind broke the high-voltage cables and there were blue flashes caused by short circuits as the ends coiled up. The yellow light of Parus’ searchlight disappeared as though the wind had blown it out.

Erg Noor gave the order to stop work and take cover in the ship.

“But there is an observer there!” exclaimed geologist Beena Ledd, pointing to the faintly visible light of the silicoborum turret.

“I know, Nisa’s there and I’m going over there myself,” answered the commander.

“The current is cut off and ‘nothing’ has come into his own,” said Beena in serious tones.

“If the hurricane affects us it will no doubt also affect ‘nothing.’ I’m sure there’s no danger until the storm dies down. I’m so heavy in this world that I won’t be blown away if I crawl along the ground. I’ve been wanting to watch that ‘nothing’ from an observation turret for a long time.”

“May I come with you?” asked the biologist, jumping towards the commander.

“Come along, only remember, I won’t take anybody else! You need that….”

The two men crawled for a long time, hanging on to irregularities and cracks in the stones and keeping as far as possible out of the way of the whirlwinds. The hurricane did its best to tear them from the ground, turn them over and roll them along. Once it succeeded but Erg Noor managed to catch hold of Eon Thal as he rolled past, dropped flat on his stomach and caught hold of a big boulder with his hooked gloves.

Nisa opened the hatch of her turret and the two men crawled into the narrow space. It was quiet and warm inside, the turret stood firm, securely anchored against the storms their wisdom had foreseen. The auburn-headed astronavigator frowned but was glad to have companions. She frankly admitted that she was not looking forward to spending twenty-four hours alone in a storm on a strange planet.

Erg Noor informed Tantra of their safe arrival and the searchlight was turned off. The tiny lamp in the turret was now the only light in that kingdom of darkness. The ground trembled under the gusts of wind, the lightning and the passing whirlwinds. Nisa sat in a revolving chair with her back against the rheostat. The commander and the biologist sat at her feet on the round ledge formed by the base of the turret. In their spacesuits they occupied almost all the space inside the turret.

“I suggest we sleep,” came Erg Noor’s soft voice in the telephones. “It’s a good twelve hours to the black sunrise when the storm will die down and it will be warmer.”

His companions readily agreed. And so the three of them slept, held down by triple weight, enclosed in their spacesuits, hampered by the stiff “skeleton” in the narrow confines of a turret that was shaken by the storm. Great is the adaptability of the human organism and great its powers of resistance!

From time to time Nisa woke up, transmitted a reassuring message to the watcher on Tantra and dozed off again. The hurricane was blowing itself out and the earth tremors had ceased. The “nothing,” or, more correctly, the “something” might appear now. The observers on the turrets took VP, vigilance pills, to liven up a tired nervous system.

“That other spaceship bothers me,” confessed Nisa, “I should so much like to know who they are, where they came from and how they got here.”

“So would I,” answered Erg Noor, “only it’s obvious how they got here. Stories of the iron stars and their planet traps have long been circulating round the Great Circle. In the more densely inhabited parts of the Galaxy, where ships have been making frequent trips for a long time already, there are planet graveyards of lost spaceships. Many ships, especially the earlier types, got stuck to those planets and many hair-raising stories are told about them, stories that are almost legend today, the legends of the arduous conquest of the Cosmos. Perhaps there are older spaceships on this planet that belong to more ancient days, although the meeting of three ships in our sparsely populated part of the Galaxy is an extraordinary event. So far not a single iron star was known to exist in the vicinity of the Sun, we have discovered the first.”

“Do you intend to investigate the disc ship?” asked the biologist.

“Most certainly! Could a scientist ever forgive himself if he let such an opportunity go? We don’t know of any disc spaceships in regions neighbouring on our solar system. This must be a ship from a great distance that has, perhaps, been wandering about the Galaxy for several thousand years after the death of the crew or after some irreparable damage. Many transmissions round the Great Circle may become comprehensible to us when we get whatever material there is in the disc ship. It has a very queer form, it’s a disc-shaped spiral, the ribs on its exterior are very convex. As soon as we have transferred the cargo from Parus we’ll start on that ship but at present we cannot take a single person away from work.”

“It took us only a few hours to investigate Parus.” “I have examined the disc ship through a stereotelescope. It is sealed tight, not a single opening is to be seen anywhere. It is very difficult to penetrate into any Cosmic ship that is reliably protected against forces that are many times stronger than our terrestrial elements. Just try and get into Tantra, through her armour of metal with a reorganized internal crystal structure, through the borason plating — it would be a task equal to the siege of a fortress. It’s still more difficult to deal with an alien ship, the principles of whose structure are unknown to us. But we’ll make an attempt to find out what it is!”

“When are we going to examine what we’ve found in Parus?” asked Nisa. “There should be some staggeringly interesting observations made in those marvellous worlds mentioned in the message.”

The telephone transmitted the commander’s good-natured laugh.

“I’ve been dreaming of Vega since childhood and am more impatient than any of you. But we’ll have plenty of time for that on the way home. The first thing we have to do is get out of this darkness, out of this inferno, as they used to say in the old days. The Parus explorers did not make any landings otherwise we should have found the things they brought from those worlds in the collection rooms of the ship. You remember that despite the thorough search we made we found only films, measurements, lists of surveys, air tests and containers of explosive dust.”

Erg Noor stopped talking and listened. Even the sensitive microphones did not register the slightest breath of wind — the storm was over. A scraping, rustling sound came through the ground from outside and was echoed by the walls of the turret.

The commander raised his hand and Nisa, who understood him without words, extinguished the light. The darkness seemed as dense inside the turret, warmed up with infrared rays, as if it were standing in black liquid on the bed of an ocean. Flashes of brown light showed through the transparent hood of silicoborum. The watchers clearly saw the lights burn up and for a second form tiny stars with dark-red or dark-green rays; they would go out and then appear again. These little stars stretched out in lines that wavered and bent into circles and figures of eight, and slid soundlessly over the smooth diamond-hard surface of the hood. The people in the turret felt a strange, acute pain in their eyes and a sharp pain along the bigger nerves of the body as though the short rays of the brown stars were stabbing the nerve stems like needles.

“Nisa,” whispered Erg Noor, “turn the regulator on to ‘full’ and switch on the light suddenly.”

The turret was lit up with a bright, bluish terrestrial light. The people were blinded by it and could see nothing, or practically nothing. Eon and Nisa managed to see — or did they imagine it? — that the darkness on the right-hand side of the turret did not disappear immediately but remained for a moment as a flattened condensation of gloom with tentacles attached. The “something” instantaneously withdrew its tentacles and sprang back into the wall of darkness that the light had pushed farther from the turret.

“Perhaps those are phantoms?” suggested Nisa, “phantom condensations of darkness around a charge of some sort of energy, like our fire balls, and not a form of life at all. If everything here is black why shouldn’t the lightning be black, too?”

“That’s all very poetical, Nisa,” objected Erg Noor, “but hardly likely. In the first place the ‘something’ was obviously attacking, was after our living flesh. It or its brethren annihilated the people from Parus. If it’s organized and stable, if it can move in the desired direction, if it can accumulate and discharge some form of energy, then, of course, there can be no question of an atmospheric phantom. It’s something created from living matter and it’s trying to devour us!”

The biologist supported the commander’s conclusion.

“It seems to me that here, on this planet of darkness, it’s dark for us alone because our eyes are not sensitive to the infrared rays of the heat end of the spectrum; but the other end of the spectrum, the yellow and blue rays, should affect these creatures very strongly. Its reaction is so swift that the crew of Parus could not see anything when they illuminated the site of the attack and if they did see anything it was already too late and they were unable to tell anybody.”

“Let’s repeat the experiment, even if the approach of that thing is unpleasant.”

Nisa switched off the light and again the three observers sat in profound darkness awaiting the approach of the denizens of the world of darkness.

“What is it armed with? Why is its approach felt through the hood and the spacesuit?” asked the biologist aloud. “Is it some new form of energy?”

“There are few forms of energy and this is most likely electromagnetic. There is no doubt that countless modifications of this form of energy exist. This being has a weapon that affects our nervous system. You can imagine what it would be like if those feelers were to touch the unprotected body!”

Erg Noor flinched and Nisa Creet shuddered inwardly as they noticed the line of brown lights rapidly approaching from three sides.

“There isn’t just one being!” exclaimed Eon, softly. “Perhaps we ought not let them touch the hood.”

“You’re right. Let each of us turn his back on the light and look in one direction only. Nisa, switch on!”

On this occasion each of the observers noted some details that could be combined to give a general impression of creatures like huge flat jelly-fish, floating low over the ground with a dense fringe waving in the air below them. Some of the feelers were short when compared with the dimensions of the creature and could not have been more than a yard long. The acute-angled corners of the rhomboid body each had two feelers of much greater length. At the base of the feelers the biologist noticed huge bladders that glowed inside and seemed to be transmitting the star-like flashes along them.

“Hullo, observers, why are you switching the light on and off?” came Ingrid’s clear voice in the helmet telephones. “Are you in need of help? The storm’s over and we’re going to begin work. We’re coming to you now.”

“Stay where you are,” ordered the commander. “There is great danger abroad. Call everybody!”

Erg Noor told them about the terrible jelly-fish. After a consultation the explorers decided to move part of a planetary motor forward on an automatic car. An exhaust flame three hundred metres long swept across the stony plane removing everything visible and invisible from its path. Before half an hour had passed the crew had repaired the broken cable and protection was restored. They realized that the anameson fuel must be loaded before the planet’s night came again; at the cost of superhuman effort it was done and the exhausted travellers retired behind the armour of their tightly sealed spaceship and listened calmly as it trembled in the storm. Microphones brought the roar and rumble of the hurricane to them but it only served to make more cosy the little world of light impregnable to the powers of darkness.

Ingrid and Louma opened the stereoscreen. The film had been well chosen. The blue waters of the Indian Ocean splashed at the feet of those sitting in the ship’s library. The film showed the Neptune Games, the world-wide competition in all types of aquatic sports. In the Great Circle Era the entire world’s population had grown accustomed to water in a way that had only been possible for the maritime peoples in earlier days. Swimming; diving and plunging, surf-board riding and the sailing of rafts had become universal sports. Thousands of beautiful young bodies, tanned by the sun, ringing songs, laughter, the festive music of the finals….

Nisa leaned towards the biologist, who sat beside her deep in thought, carried away in his mind to the far distant planet that was his, to that dear planet where nature had been harnessed by man.

“Did you ever take part in these competitions. Eon?” The biologist looked at her somewhat puzzled. “What? Oh, these? No, never. I was thinking and didn’t understand you at first.”

“Weren’t you thinking about that?” asked the girl, pointing to the screen. “Don’t you find your appreciation of the beauty of our world comes so much fresher to you after all this darkness, after the storms and the jellyfish?”

“Of course I do, but that only makes me all the more anxious to get hold of one of those jelly-fish. I was racking my brains over that, trying to think of a way to capture one.”

Nisa Greet turned away from the smiling biologist and met Erg Noor’s smile.

“Have you, too, been thinking about how to catch that black horror?” she asked, mockingly.

“No, but I was thinking of how to explore the disc-shaped spaceship,” he said and the sly glint in the commander’s eyes almost annoyed Nisa.

“Now I understand why it is that men engaged in wars in the old days! I used to think it was only the boastfulness of your sex, the so-called strong sex of that unorganized society.”

“You’re not quite right although you are pretty near to understanding our old-time psychology. My ideas are simple — the more beautiful I find my planet, the more I get to love it, the more I want to serve it, to plant gardens, extract metals, produce power and food, create music, so that when I have passed on my way I shall leave behind me a little piece of something real made by my hands and my head. The only thing I know is the Cosmos, astronautics, and that is the only way I can serve mankind. The goal is not the flight itself but the acquisition of fresh knowledge, the discovery of new worlds which we shall, in time, turn into planets as beautiful as our Earth. And what aim have you in view, Nisa? Why are you so interested in the disc spaceship? Is it mere curiosity?”

With a great effort the girl overcame the weight of her tired arms and stretched them out to the commander. He took her little hands in his and stroked them gently. Nisa’s cheeks flushed till they matched the tight auburn curls on her head, new strength flowed through her tired body. She pressed her cheek to Erg Noor’s hand as she had done in the moment of the dangerous landing and she forgave the biologist his seeming treachery to Earth. To show that she was in agreement with both of them she told them of an idea that had just entered her head. They could furnish one of the water-tanks with a self-closing lid, place a piece of fresh preserved meat (a rare luxury that they sometimes enjoyed in addition to their canned food) as bait and, should the “black something” crawl inside and the lid close, they could fill the tank with inert terrestrial gas through a previously arranged tap and seal the edges of the lid.

Eon was very enthusiastic over the resourcefulness of the auburn-headed girl. He was almost the same age as Nisa and permitted himself the gentle familiarity that is born of school years spent together. By the end of the nine days of the planetary night the trap, perfected by the engineers, was ready.

Erg Noor was busy with the adjustment of a manlike robot and he also got ready a powerful hydraulic cutting tool with which he hoped to make his way into the spiral disc from some distant star.

The storm died down in the now familiar darkness, the frost gave way to warmth and the day that was nine terrestrial days long began. They had work for four terrestrial days to load the ion charges, some other supplies and valuable instruments. In addition to these things Erg Noor considered it necessary to take some of the personal belongings of the lost crew so that, after a thorough disinfection, they could be taken to Earth for the relatives of the dead people to keep in their memory. In the Great Circle Era people did not burden themselves with many possessions so that their transfer to Tantra offered no difficulties.

On the fifth day they switched off the current and the biologist and two volunteers, Kay Bear and Ingrid Dietra, shut themselves up in the observation turret at Parus. The black creatures appeared almost immediately. The biologist had adapted an infrared screen and could follow the movements of the jelly-fish. One of them soon approached the tank trap; it folded up its tentacles, rolled itself up into a ball and started creeping inside. Suddenly another black rhombus appeared at the open lid of the tank. The one that had first arrived unfolded its tentacles and star-like flashes came with such rapidity that they turned into a strip of vibrant dark-red light which the screen reproduced as flashes of green lightning. The first jelly-fish moved back and the second immediately rolled up into a ball and fell on to the bottom of the tank. The biologist held his hand out towards the switch but Kay Bear held it back. The first monster had also rolled up and followed the second, so that there were two of the terrible brutes in the tank. It was amazing that they could reduce their apparent proportions to such an extent. The biologist pressed the switch, the lid closed and immediately five or six of the black monsters fastened on to the zirconium covered tank. The biologist turned on the light and asked Tantra to switch on the protection of the road. The black phantoms, as usual, dissolved immediately except for the two that remained imprisoned in the hermetically sealed tank.

The biologist went out to the tank, touched the lid and got such a severe shock that he could not restrain himself and shouted out aloud. His left arm hung limp, paralysed.

Mechanic Taron put on a high-temperature protective spacesuit and was then able to fill the tank with pure terrestrial nitrogen and weld the lid down. The taps were also welded and then the tank was wrapped in a spare piece of ship’s insulation and placed in the collection room.

Success had been achieved at a high price, for the biologist’s arm remained paralysed despite the efforts of the physician. Eon Thal was in great pain hut he did not dream of refusing to take part in the expedition to the disc ship. Erg Noor, compelled to submit to his insatiable thirst for exploration, could not leave him on Tantra.

The spiral-disc, a visitor from distant worlds, turned out to be farther from Parus than they had expected. In the diffused light of the projectors they had not judged the size of the spaceship correctly. It was a truly gigantic structure nearly three hundred and fifty metres in diameter. They had to take the cables from Parus in order to stretch their protective system as far as the disc. The mysterious spaceship hung over the travellers like a vertical wall, stretching high over their heads and disappearing in the speckled sky. Jet-black clouds massed around the upper edge of the giant disc. The hull of the vessel was covered in some green substance the colour of malachite; it was badly cracked in places and proved to be about a metre thick. Through the cracks gleamed some bright, light-blue metal that had turned to a dark blue in places where the malachite covering had been rubbed off. The side of the disc facing Parus was furnished with a protuberance that curved in a spiral fifteen metres in diameter and some ten metres thick. The other side of the disc, the side that was lost in the pitch darkness, was more convex, like a section of a sphere attached to a disc twenty metres thick. On that side also there was a spiral protuberance that looked like the end of the spiral pipe emerging from the ship.

The edge of the gigantic disc was sunk deep into the ground. At the foot of this metal wall the explorers saw that stones had melted and flowed away in all directions like thick pitch.

They spent many hours looking for some sort of entrance or hatch. Either it was hidden under the malachite paint or dross or the ship’s hatches closed so neatly that no trace of them was left outside. They could not find any orifices for optical instruments or stop-cocks for any sort of blast. The metal disc seemed to be solid. Erg Noor had foreseen such a possibility and had decided to open up the ship with an electro-hydraulic tool capable of cutting through the hardest and most viscous covering of the terrestrial spaceships. After a short discussion they all agreed that the robot should open the tip of the spiral. There should be a hollow space there, a pipe or a circular gangway leading round the ship, through which they hoped to get into the ship without the risk of running into a number of bulkheads that would bar their way.

The study of the spiral-disc would be of great interest. Inside this visitor from distant worlds there might be instruments and records, all the furniture and utensils of those who had brought the ship through such expanses that, in comparison, the journeys made by terrestrial astronauts were nothing but timid sallies into outer space.

On the far side of the disc the spiral came right down to the ground. A floodlight and high-voltage cable were taken there and the bluish light that was reflected from the disc was dispersed in a dull haze spreading across the plateau as far as some high objects of indefinite shape, probably cliffs, in which there was a gap of impenetrable blackness. Neither the pale reflected light of the hazy stars nor the floodlights gave any feeling of ground in that black gap; it was probably a steep slope leading down to the lowland plain that had been seen when Tantra was landing.

With a low, dull growl, the automatic car, loaded with the only universal robot on the ship, crawled towards the disc. The unusual weight did not make any difference to the robot and it moved quickly to its place beside the metal wall: it resembled a fat man on short legs, with a long body and a huge head that leaned forward menacingly.

The robot was controlled by Erg Noor; in its four front limbs it raised the heavy cutter and stood with its legs placed firmly apart ready to begin its dangerous undertaking.

“Only Kay Bear and I will direct the robot since we are wearing high-protection suits,” said the commander in the intercommunication ‘phone. “All those in light biological spacesuits will go farther away.”

The commander hesitated. Something penetrated into his mind causing inexplicable anguish and made his knees weaken under him. The proud will of man had wilted away and given place to the dumb obedience of an animal. Sticky with perspiration from head to foot, Erg Noor, with no will of his own, strode towards the black gap in the darkness. A cry from Nisa that he heard in the telephone, brought him back to his senses. He stood still, but the power of darkness that had taken control of his psyche again drove him forward.

Following the commander, halting and obviously struggling with themselves, went Kay Bear and Eon Thal, who had been standing on the fringe of the circle of light, Away out there, in the gates of darkness, in the clouds of mist, there was a movement of weird forms beyond the comprehension of man and, therefore, the more awe-inspiring. This was not the now familiar jellyfish-like creature — in the grey half-light there moved a black cross with widely outstretched arms and a convex ellipse in the middle. Three points of the cross had lenses on them reflecting the light of the flood lamp that scarcely penetrated the misty, humid atmosphere. The base of the cross was invisible in the darkness of an unilluminated depression in the ground.

Erg Noor, who was walking faster than the others, drew near the unknown object and fell to the ground about a hundred paces away from it. Before the stupefied onlookers could realize that it was a life and death matter for their commander, the black cross had risen above the ring of cables. It bent forward like the stem of a plant and clearly intended leaning over the protective field to get Erg Noor.

Nisa, in a frenzy that lent her the strength of an athlete, ran to the robot and started turning the control levers at the back of its head. Slowly and somewhat uncertainly, the robot lifted the cutter. Then the girl, afraid that she would be unable to work the intricate machine, jumped forward and with her body covered the commander. Serpentine streams of light or lightning came from the three points of the cross. The girl fell on Erg Noor with her arms spread out on either side. Fortunately the robot had by this time turned the funnel of the cutter, with its sharp instrument inside, towards the centre of the black cross. The thing bent convulsively backwards, seemed to fall flat on the ground and then disappeared in the impenetrable darkness under the cliffs. Erg Noor and his two companions immediately recovered, lifted up the girl and retired back behind the disc. The others had by this time recovered from the shock and were wheeling out the cannon improvised from a planetary motor. With a savage ferocity such as he had never before experienced. Erg Noor directed the destructive radiation beam to the cliffs with their gate-like gap, taking special care to sweep the plain without missing a single inch. Eon Thal knelt on the ground in front of the motionless Nisa, calling her softly in the telephone and trying to get a glimpse of her face through the silicolloid helmet. The girl lay dead still with her eyes closed. No sound of breathing could be heard in the telephone nor could the biologist detect it through the spacesuit.

“The monster has killed Nisa!” cried Eon Thal bitterly, as soon as Erg Noor approached them. It was impossible to see the commander’s eyes through the narrow slit in the high-protection helmet.

“Take her to Louma on Tantra immediately.” The metallic note resounded more strongly than ever in Erg Noor’s voice. “You, too, help her find out the nature of the injury. The six of us will remain here and continue the investigation. The geologist can go back with you and collect specimens of all the rocks between here and Tantra, we cannot remain on this planet any longer. Any exploration here must be carried out in high-protection tanks but if we go on like this we’ll only ruin the whole expedition! Take the third car and hurry!”

Erg Noor turned round and without looking back made his way to the disc spaceship. The “cannon” was pushed forward. The engineer-mechanic who stood behind it swept the plain with it every ten minutes, covering a semicircle, with the disc at its centre. The robot raised his cutter to the second outer loop of the spiral which, on the side where the edge of the disc was deeply sunk in the ground, was level with the robot’s breast.

The loud roar that followed could be heard even through the high-protection space helmets. Thin cracks appeared on the section of the malachite coating that had been chosen. Pieces of that hard material flew off and struck resoundingly against the metal body of the robot. Lateral motions of the cutter removed a big slab of the outer layer revealing a bright light-blue granular surface that was pleasant to the eyes even in the glare of the floodlamp. Kay Bear marked out a square big enough to allow a man in a spacesuit to pass and set the robot to making a deep channel in the blue metal without cutting right through it. The robot cut a second line at an angle to the first and then began moving the sharp end of the cutter back and forth, increasing the pressure as it did so. When the mechanical servant cut the third side of the square the lines he had made began to move outwards.

“Look out! Get back, everybody- lie down!” howled Erg Noor in the microphone as he switched off the robot and staggered back. The thick slab of metal suddenly bent outwards like the lid of a tin can. A stream of extraordinarily bright, rainbow-coloured fire burst out of the hole, and flew off at a tangent from the spiral protuberance. This, and the fact that the blue metal melted and immediately closed the hold that had been cut, saved the unfortunate explorers. Nothing remained of the mighty robot but a mass of molten metal with two short metal legs sticking pitifully out of it. Erg Noor and Kay Bear escaped because of the special protection suits they were wearing. The explosion threw them far back from the peculiar spaceship; it hurled the others back, too, overturned the “cannon” and broke the high-voltage cables.

When the people recovered from the shock they realized that they were defenceless. Fortunately for them they were lying in the rays of the undamaged floodlight. Although nobody had been hurt Erg Noor decided that they had had enough. They abandoned unnecessary tools, cables and the floodlamp, piled on to the undamaged car and beat a hurried retreat to their spaceship.

This fortunate outcome of an incautious attempt to open an alien spaceship was by no means due to the foresight of the commander. A second attempt would have ended with some serious accident… and Nisa, the pretty astronavigator, what of her?…. Erg Noor hoped that the spacesuit would have weakened the lethal power of the black cross. After all the biologist had not been killed by contact with the black medusa. But out in the Cosmos, so far from the mighty terrestrial medical institutions, would they be able to counteract the effects of an unknown weapon?

In the air-lock Kay Bear drew near to the commander and pointed to the rear side of his left shoulder armour. Erg Noor turned towards the mirrors that were always provided in the locks for those who returned from an alien planet to examine themselves. The thin sheet of zircono-titanium of which the shoulder armour was made had been torn. A piece of sky-blue metal stuck out of the furrow it had cut in the insulation lining although it had not reached the inner layer of the suit. They had difficulty in removing the metal splinter. At the cost of great risk and, in the final analysis, by sheer chance, they had obtained a specimen of the mysterious metal of which the spiral-disc spaceship was made and which would now be taken back to Earth.

At last Erg Noor, divested of his heavy spacesuit, was able to enter his ship or rather to crawl in under the influence of the gravity of the fearful planet.

The entire expedition was relieved when he arrived. They had watched the catastrophe at the disc through their stereovisophones and had no need to ask what the result had been.