“A letter? What did it say?”
“Nothing much. It was more of a note than a letter, with bibliographic references – allusions to the supplement to the Annual and to the _Apocrypha_. What is this _Apocrypha_?”
“An antique which seems to have some relevance to our situation. Here!” He drew from his pocket a small, leatherbound volume, scuffed at the edges, and handed it to me.
I grabbed the little book.
“And what about Sartorius?”
“Him! Everyone has his own way of coping. Sartorius is trying to remain normal – that is, to preserve his respectability as an envoy of an official mission.”
“You’re joking!”
“No, I’m quite serious. We were together on another occasion. I won’t bother you with the details, but there were eight of us and we were down to our last 1000 pounds of oxygen. One after another, we gave up our chores, and by the end we all had beards except Sartorius. He was the only one who shaved and polished his shoes. He’s like that. Now, of course, he can only pretend, act a part – or else commit a crime.”
“A crime?”
“Perhaps that isn’t quite the right word. ‘Divorce by ejection!’ Does that sound better?”
“Very funny!”
“Suggest something else if you don’t like it.”
“Oh, leave me alone!”
“No, let’s discuss the thing seriously. You know pretty well as much as I do by now. Have you got a plan?”
“No, none. I haven’t the least idea what I’ll do when . . . when she comes back. She will return, if I’ve understood you correctly?”
“It’s on the cards.”
“How do they get in? The Station is hermetically sealed. Perhaps the layer on the outer hull . . .”
He shook his head.
“The outer hull is in perfect condition. I don’t know where they get in. Usually, they’re there when you wake up, and you have to sleep eventually!”
“Could you barricade yourself securely inside a cabin?”
“The barricades wouldn’t survive for long. There’s only one solution, and you can guess what that is . . .”
We both stood up.
“Just a minute, Snow! You’re suggesting we liquidate the Station and you expect me to take the initiative and accept the responsibility?”
“It’s not as simple as that. Obviously, we could get out, if only as far as the satellite, and send an SOS from there. Of course, we’ll be regarded as lunatics; we’ll be shut up in a mad-house on Earth – unless we have the sense to retract. A distant planet, isolation, collective derangement – our case won’t seem at all out of the ordinary. But at least we’d be better off in a mental home than we are here: a quiet garden, little white cells, nurses, supervised walks . . .”
Hands in his pockets, staring fixedly at a corner of the room, he spoke with the utmost seriousness.
The red sun had disappeared over the horizon and the ocean was a sombre desert, mottled with dying gleams, the last rays lingering among the long tresses of the waves. The sky was ablaze. Purple-edged clouds drifted across this dismal red and black world.
“Well, do you want to get out, yes or no? Or not yet?”
“Always the fighter! If you knew the full implications of what you’re asking, you wouldn’t be so insistent. It’s not a matter of what I want, it’s a matter of what’s possible.”
“Such as what?”
“That’s the point, I don’t know.”
“We stay here then? Do you think we’ll find some way . . . ?”
Thin, sickly-looking, his peeling face deeply lined, he turned towards me:
“It might be worth our while to stay. We’re unlikely to learn anything about _it_, but about ourselves . . .”
He turned, picked up his papers, and went out. I opened my mouth to detain him, but no sound escaped my lips.
There was nothing I could do now except wait. I went to the window and ran my eyes absently over the dark-red glimmer of the shadowed ocean. For a moment, I thought of locking myself inside one of the capsules on the hangar-deck, but it was not an idea worth considering for long: sooner or later, I should have to come out again.
I sat by the window, and began to leaf through the book Snow had given me. The glowing twilight lit up the room and colored the pages. It was a collection of articles and treatises edited by an Otho Ravintzer, Ph.D., and its general level was immediately obvious. Every science engenders some pseudo-science, inspiring eccentrics to explore freakish by-ways; astronomy has its parodists in astrology, chemistry used to have them in alchemy. It was not surprising, therefore, that Solaristics, in its early days, had set off an explosion of marginal cogitations. Ravintzer’s book was full of this sort of intellectual speculation, prefaced, it is only fair to add, by an introduction in which the editor dissociated himself from some of the texts reproduced. He considered, with some justice, that such a collection could provide an invaluable period document as much for the historian as for the psychologist of science.
Berton’s report, divided into two parts and complete with a summary of his log, occupied the place of honor in the book.
From 14.00 hours to 16.40 hours, by expedition time, the entries in the log were laconic and negative.
_Altitude 3000 – or 3500 – 2500 feet; nothing visible; ocean empty_. The same words recurred over and over again.
Then, at 16.40 hours: _A red mist rising. Visibility 700 yards. Ocean empty.
17.00 hours: fog thickening; visibility 400 yards, with clear patches. Descending to 600 feet.
17.20 hours: in fog. Altitude 600. Visibility 20-40 yards. Climbing to 1200.
17.45: altitude 1500. Pall of fog to horizon. Funnel-shaped openings through which I can see ocean surface. Attempting to enter one of these clearings; something is moving.
17.52: have spotted what appears to be a waterspout; it is throwing up a yellow foam. Surrounded by a wall of fog. Altitude 300. Descending to 60 feet_.
The extract from Berton’s log stopped at this point. There followed his case-history, or, more precisely, the statement dictated by Berton and interrupted at intervals by questions from the members of the Commission of Enquiry.
BERTON: When I reached 100 feet it became very difficult to maintain altitude because of the violent gusts of wind inside the cone. I had to hang on to the controls and for a short period – about ten or fifteen minutes – I did not look outside. I realized too late that a powerful undertow was dragging me back into the fog. It wasn’t like an ordinary fog, it was a thick colloidal substance which coated my windows. I had a lot of trouble cleaning them; that fog – or glue rather – was obstinate stuff. Due to this resistance, the speed of my rotor-blades was reduced by thirty percent and I began losing height. I was afraid of capsizing on the waves; but, even at full power, I could maintain altitude but not increase it. I still had four booster-rockets left but felt the situation was not yet desperate enough to use them. The aircraft was shaken by shuddering vibrations that grew more and more violent. Thinking my rotor-blades must have become coated with the gluey substance, I glanced at the overload indicator, but to my surprise it read zero. Since entering the fog, I had not seen the sun – only a red glow. I continued to fly around in the hope of emerging into one of the funnels, which, after half an hour, was what happened. I found myself in a new ‘well,’ perfectly cylindrical in shape, and several hundred yards in diameter. The walls of the cylinder were formed by an enormous whirlpool of fog, spiralling upwards. I struggled to keep in the middle, where the wind was less violent. It was then that I noticed a change in the ocean’s surface. The waves had almost completely disappeared, and the upper layer of the fluid – or whatever the ocean is made of – was becoming transparent, with murky streaks here and there which gradually dissolved until, finally, it was perfectly clear. I could see distinctly to a depth of several yards. I saw a sort of yellow sludge which was sprouting vertical filaments. When these filaments emerged above the surface, they had a glassy sheen. Then they began to exuam – they frothed – until the foam solidified; it was like a very thick treacle. These glutinous filaments merged and became intertwined; great bubbles swelled up on the surface and slowly began to change shape. Suddenly I realized that my machine was being driven towards the wall of fog. I had to manoeuver against the wind, and when I was able to look down again, I saw something which looked like a garden. Yes, a garden. Trees, hedges, paths – but it wasn’t a real garden; it was all made of the same substance, which had hardened and by now looked like yellow plaster. Beneath this garden, the ocean glittered. I came down as low as I dared in order to take a closer look.