And then they were there. The lander was stocked. There was nothing left to do but the launch.
For all that long voyage Ark’s sensors had been fixed on one target only, the planet they were about to invade. What the people aboard Ark saw of the surface of the mystery planet depended on how they looked at it. Through the fiber-optic links to the external telescopes there was very little to see. The cloud cover was in the way—featureless white by day, emptily black when they were in the nightside portion of their orbit around the planet—except for a few spots, where something bright beneath the clouds lighted them ruddily from below.
The instruments told them a lot more. They had long been detecting definite, large-scale emissions from the surface—gamma rays, X rays, radio static. The infrared sensors showed the clear-cut heat sources under the clouds. And radar was the most useful of all. The radar plot had grown more detailed with every day. The radar images were displayed as holograms, and they showed a variety of hard-edged structures. There were flat, broad things that looked almost like buildings. There were tulip-shaped things, like the horn on an old acoustic phonograph, all apparently oriented toward the dimming sun. There were ribbed metal shells like the carapace of a turtle, and those came in two varieties. Some had things like horn antennae nearby; others were surrounded by great spiky clusters of spiral metal, like Art Deco lightning rods.
None of the sensors detected anything moving. Nothing seemed to be in any physical action anywhere on the surface of Nebo. Captain Rodericks, defending his gift of weapons, argued that there had to be life of some kind there—how else to explain the machines? Could they have built themselves? But there was no sign of the kind of movement that one associated with life, especially of civilized, technological life—nothing like trucks, planes, trains—nothing like anything that might have held whoever it was who built the metal structures. For that matter, there was no sign of any living, moving thing at all.
All the same, when Viktor studied the radar he said, “Even if we don’t see them, I guess you were right, Captain Rodericks. It stands to reason there’s somebody down there.” And then he added, “My father was right.”
Captain Rodericks barked at him, “Your father was right about what? Do you know what those things are?”
Viktor looked up from the scan. “I don’t know what they are,” he said, keeping his temper, “but I can see what they’re doing. My father always thought that Nebo and the astronomical events were connected. Obviously they are! Look at those antennae; They’re all pointed right at the sun!”
Jake Lundy stood up. He glanced at Viktor, then walked over and studied the plot.
When he turned around he was smiling—not a happy smile, the small smile of relief of someone who has had his mind made up on a tough question. “I’d say that settles the first landing place. We check those things out.”
On the next to the last orbit, they had a farewell dinner for the chosen four. It wasn’t gourmet food. It all came out of the ancient cryonics stores of Ark, and it had been put there in the first place for its value as biological specimens, not for epicures. But they managed a sort of stew out of seed corn and a kind of hard, flat peas, and the main course was the last of a small breeding stock of dwarf sheep, roasted.
Captain Bu said a short, reverential grace. There was no wine. There was not much conversation, either. Once Bu looked up from stirring the stew around his plate and said, to no one in particular, “You know, the lander has to come back. Otherwise there won’t be any way for us to get down to the surface of Newmanhome again.”
Jake Lundy laughed. “What’s the matter, Captain? Do you think they’ll maroon you in Ark, for taking the ship?” But that was obviously what Bu did think. Jake shrugged and changed the subject. “It’s a pity,” he said deliberately, gnawing at a tiny chop, “that none of these strains will ever live on Newmanhome now.”
And little Luo Fah, who also had drawn one of the four slips in the lottery, stood up. “I’m not hungry,” she declared. “Do we have to wait for another whole orbit? Can’t we launch the lander now?”
Then, all of a sudden, it was happening. The four got up. Some stretched. Some yawned. Some rubbed their chins, or shook hands with one or more of the others. Lundy, after a quick and noncommittal glance at Viktor, pulled Reesa to him and kissed her. (She wasn’t the one who had started it—but she didn’t resist at all, Viktor observed.) Then they filed slowly into the lander and sealed it down. Viktor and two others closed the inner seals and retreated to the control room, where Captain Rodericks was on the radio to the ship, his eyes glued to the course plot. The little dot that was Ark was creeping across the face of the planet Nebo. Captain Bu cleared his throat, looking around, and then began to pray aloud. “Dear Almighty God Who is all-seeing judge and eternal master of us all, I pray You care for these, our friends, who embark on this dangerous mission in Your service—”
“Launch!” Captain Rodericks cried. And the ship shook slightly, and the lander was gone.
On the radio speaker, Jake Lundy’s voice unemotionally reported distance, altitude, and speed every few moments. On the navigation radar, the lander was a blip of bright red, paralleling their course but falling behind. As it passed out of the shadow of Nebo the optics picked it up, too, a glimmer of metal, dropping away into Nebo’s air. Everyone was watching, Captain Rodericks hunched over his controls, Captain Bu with his eyes glued to the fiber-optic tubes, everyone else staring at the wall displays.
And as they stood there, Viktor felt Reesa’s hand creep into his.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t pull away, but he left his hand limp and uncooperative in hers.
She removed it and turned to look at him. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
He was stubbornly mute. He didn’t even look at her. He kept his eyes on the screen.
“Come on, Viktor,” she said, her tone unfriendly. “Are you pissed because I kissed Jake Lundy good-bye?” She was scowling now. “He’s going into real danger, damn it! I would’ve kissed Rodericks if it’d been him!”
Viktor allowed his gaze to turn to her. “Would you have been off in a corner whispering with Rodericks all this time, too?”
“Viktor! What the hell are you talking about? Are you jealous?”
“I thought you were my wife, not his,” he said stiffly.
“I am your wife, damn you! I’m not your possession. But I’m your wife, all right!”
“A wife is supposed to be true to her husband,” he pointed out. “You agreed to that.”
“Viktor!” she blazed, flushed with anger. “What do you think we were doing? He wanted someone to talk to—who better than me? Oh, Viktor,” she said, her voice thick, “you’re a dirty, suspicious man. I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t want to talk to you at all! We’ll have to settle this later.”
“We certainly will,” Viktor said grimly. But he didn’t know, neither of them knew, how much longer “later” was going to be . . .
A shout of shock and anger from Bu took their minds off the quarrel. “The lander! It’s been hit!” he cried; and the others watching the wall screens were shouting, too—and then everything went bad at once.
The radio communications from the lander stopped in the middle of a sentence, and a vast warbling sound filled the speakers.
On the phosphor screen Viktor and Reesa watched in horror as, from the surface of the planet, an intolerably bright orange-red light winked at them—brighter than they had ever seen on a screen—so bright that the screen shut down in automatic self-defense.
And a shock shook the Ark as though it had been rammed by a truck.
Captain Bu, at the fiber-optic periscope, screamed in pain, as that intolerable brightness, unfiltered by electronics, struck his eyes. The metallic voice of the ship’s warning system spoke up from behind Viktor: Sensor lock lost. Sensor lock lost. Sensor . . . At the same time, another machine voice, deeper and calmer, announced Thruster controls inoperative over and over, while still a third cried, Systems malfunction!
It seemed that every emergency system in Ark was announcing trouble at once. The crunching came again—then once more; and this time Ark itself jerked under them, sending them flying, while the last of the damage reporters cried, Air pressure dropping!
There was no doubt that was true. Viktor could hear the scream of escaping air from somewhere. His ears were popping. His lungs hurt until he exhaled, and then as he tried to breathe in he was gasping. There was a faint, frightening pressure behind his eyes.