The Seed of Evil Page 5

  “What I can’t understand,” I remarked conversationally, “is why that thing out there makes me think of a Greek trireme.”

  I was glad to be back in our cosy living quarters. We keep the lights low and it’s comfortable, if you don’t mind the rotten food lying about the floor, and the smell. It would have suited me perfectly to forget we ever saw the alien body: all it had done was disturb our routine.

  “Never mind,” I said consolingly, “we’ve had a harrowing experience. Come on, drink up and have another.”

  But he wouldn’t be cheered, and presently we lapsed into a silent drinking bout. We have had many of these in the course of our career out here beyond Neptune, particularly when we muse on our memories and our misfortunes among the society of our fellow-men back on Earth; but never before had I seen Rim guzzle so solidly, and with such an air of desperation.

  Some hours later he struggled to a sitting position, breathing heavily. “Don’t you see?” he uttered hoarsely, the words coming with scant coherence. “Don’t you see what that ship is? It floats on space as an ocean ship floats on water! It’s really right outside space—outside the dimensions. But it floats on them, and we see the part its weight causes to be projected below the water-line … the space-line.”

  “But it doesn’t have any weight,” I objected hazily. By this time we were both pretty far gone.

  “Their kind of weight, not ours, fool. By God! If they use space for water, what do they use for air? And us, do you know what we are? Fishes in the sea. Never able to reach the surface.”

  He came towards me, groping blindly until his hand clapped my shoulder. “Listen. There’ll never be another chance like this.”

  “Chance for what?”

  “To see what it’s like where there’s no space. I’m going inside that ship.”

  “But you can’t do that—”

  “What do you mean, I can’t? Are you telling me what I can do? Me, Rim, the Great Rim? Why, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have this job at all. You’d still be walking around the gutters on Earth.”

  Even in my befuddled state I could see he’d got to the maudlin stage, and that would quickly be followed by the self-pitying stage. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it, and anyway it was a sort of entertainment. But as for any half-mad scheme he might dream up, well, that was different. It was dangerous.

  “Look here,” I coaxed, “there isn’t any way you can get inside that ship. There are no openings. Now if you spent more time in the laboratory. …”

  “Yaah!” Big brownish tears trickled out of Rim’s eyes. “Keeping me out of all the big research! Pushing me out here where they think I won’t be able to achieve anything. …”

  “Genius is never tolerated,” I consoled.

  “But Rim will discover something to amaze them all! Rim will find out about space itself. You watch me.”

  “There’s no way inside, old chap.”

  “No way? Hah! A few ounces of blasting powder will soon make a way. All I have to do is nip inside before all the space comes washing in, and observe … observe. …”

  The voice faded into the familiar mutter. I rose to my feet, aghast. He was really drunk! “But what about the people inside?”

  Rim looked at me with a mean look I had never seen on his face before. I never knew until that moment just how much he resented the way society had treated him, even though it was his own fault. Now he wanted to assert himself against all the force of moral feeling which society represented.

  “People?” he roared. “A bit of space won’t hurt them! This is for science!”

  I shook my head with as much firmness as I could muster. “You’re not going.”

  “You’re telling Rim what to do?” Rim shook his head shaggily and landed his fist on my nose. I reeled, ignoring the pain and trying to sort out the scenery from the streaks of light flashing across my brain, and stumbled over a chair. Rim came after me. Rolling aside to evade him, I looked desperately around for something to hit him with. A bottle! There was one lying on the floor an arm’s length away, and I grabbed it as I came to my feet.

  Rim was in a half crouch, he also had a bottle in his hand. “So it’s bottles, is it?” he spat, and smashed his on the edge of the table. Neither of us had ever done that before.

  “Rim!” I cried in amazement. “We’ve known each other all our lives!”

  I backed against the wall, letting my own weapon fall in my surprise. Rim edged to me, displaying his jagged glass proudly and making thrusting motions. Then he threw it aside at the last moment and aimed one of his best hammerblows at my jaw.

  That was when I temporarily left the scene in the living quarters, for the happier climes of unconsciousness.

  When I recovered he’d suited up and left. I didn’t know how long it had been but I guessed it was five or ten minutes.

  I felt too groggy to follow, though. I climbed to my feet, groaned a little, felt sorry for myself for a while, then became supine again, this time on the couch. My head felt really bad, and I don’t think it was just the beer.

  For the first time in my life I felt a twinge of remorse. Why that should be, I couldn’t make out: Rim should be the one going through all that conscience stuff, not me. Still, I staggered over to a mirror and gazed long, if unsteadily, at the horrifying sight I presented.

  “You look wretched,” I accused miserably. “You look as bad as him.”

  I took solace in the thought that perhaps I didn’t look quite as bad as Rim, then turned my attention to what he was doing, switching on the main view-screen to show the alien ship. Bringing up the magnification a few degrees, I saw my partner puttering at the vessel’s lower aft part; soon he backed off, and a neat explosion blew a large chunk out of the fabric.

  Rim darted forward immediately and slipped inside the hole. Even in those few seconds I saw him twist and waver as if he’d been caught in a swift current, but I lost interest in him in the course of the next minute, because I was so completely fascinated by what was happening to the ship.

  When the space rushed in, she began to sink. That is, she took on greater, more meaningful proportions, became more majestic. As more of her bulk was submerged, the enigma of her appearance was resolved, and at last she reached the point where she revealed her real shape to us fishes. There was a keel, now, and a curving bulge of prow, sides and stern. Even a steering oar became visible.

  Slowly, the true nature of the vessel heeled over into the sidereal universe as currents of space swirled in and around her. And then, when she was totally submerged, I saw it—the open deck, the drowned crewmen, the great expanse of square sail. Then I saw the nobles which the ship carried: the poet-faced youth, with a golden circlet about his neck, a short dagger of authority at his side, and his arm around a beautiful lady, dressed in a loose flowing robe, her hair gorgeously arrayed, but both their faces relaxed now in the repose of death by drowning. Of course, they were about thirty feet tall. …

  Within a few minutes the ship began to break up. I saw a tiny figure struggling through the disintegrating bilges, and automatically flicked on the intercom to hear his hoarse gasping breath. Nothing amiss there. He jetted a short distance away and looked up at the lord and lady, a blunt midget against their gracious forms.

  Immersed in space, their bodies dissipated, fading away in spinning particles, brief glimmers and spiracles. Even the ship itself had become water-logged—space-logged, and was shredding into fragments which dispersed into non-existence.

  “Oh,” quavered Rim, “I’m a murderer.”

  Ten minutes later there was only black, empty space on the view-screen. Rim clumped through the airlock and grumpily told me he hadn’t learned a thing about what it was like without space.

  So we both returned to the bottle.

  All that Rim put on his research report this year was: “Found a sailing ship. Sank it.” I hope we don’t lose our jobs because of that; we’d be pretty lucky to find another easy number like this one.
Still, we’ve got beer enough for another three months, so we’ll find out then.

  Actually, I think we’ll get through the beer in two months, or even one.

  The other day Rim started laughing. “I just can’t get over it,” he said. “Creatures to whom space is a heavy liquid! I’d like to see their aeroplanes.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “What about when they get the idea of submarines?”

  The Radius Riders

  The last dive of the subterrene vessel Interstice began as a test mission to prove her worth. She had but recently been launched: half her galleries were empty shells, waiting to be fitted with munitions and crew quarters. Nevertheless, we carried a good load, a crew of two hundred, and our technical plant, including armaments, was complete. Two magazines, one fore, one aft, were stacked with torpedoes; and the whole mass lay sedately in the grip of the polariser fields, by means of which our newly-built ship travelled through solid matter.

  The development of subterrene ships had only just begun, and the Interstice was the fifth of the species, the others being prototypes. We had built her large, and we had built her powerful, for she was a warship. As yet, our nation was not at war, but we had enemies, and underground travel was an advantage to be quickly grasped.

  And so, with Captain Joule in command, and I, Ross, as technical officer, we undertook to journey across the American continent from east to west, at a depth of ten miles. We passed beneath mountain ranges, beneath deserts and lakes, and slipped through every kind of geological formation. We tested for speed, steering—a complicated process where atom-polarisers are concerned—and depth control. Throughout, the equipment did not falter. The polariser fields stayed solidly in balance, even when we turned the Interstice first hard to port, then hard to starboard. The first fully operational subterrene ship was a success.

  We were jubilant. We had no suspicion, as we approached the west coast, that a grave misfortune was soon to befall us, provoking us into reckless folly and causing us to be caught helpless in the grip of the mighty terrestrial planet.

  I was with Captain Joule in the control cabin when he gave the order to surface at our prearranged location. On an even keel, the ship rose steadily.

  At seven miles, a high-pitched hum sounded in the metal of the ship, rising rapidly to an unnerving screech as we ascended. At the same time, an urgent call came from Polariser Section.

  The white-faced image of the chief engineer stared from the communicator screen. “Captain! An outside force is distorting the field! We can’t hold it!”

  “Dive!” ordered Captain Joule.

  Down we plunged, and immediately the terrifying sound ceased. As the Interstice shuddered to a stop, Joule questioned the engineer.

  “What sort of a force?” he demanded.

  “It was magnetic, very powerful. The noise we heard was due to every metallic atom on board vibrating on its polarised alignment. Another half minute and the whole ship would have been unpolarised!”

  “Just how powerful is it?” Joules asked, puzzled.

  The engineer shrugged. “The meters went haywire. I don’t understand it! We never guessed there were such intense energies at only five miles.”

  Joule paused. “Weapons Section! Fire a torpedo straight up; but don’t set the fuse.”

  Moments later, the Interstice made the first use of her armament. The torpedo lanced upwards, traced by polarised-field detectors. Shortly after it passed the five-mile limit, the missile vanished from the screen, and we received a series of strong shock-waves.

  The torpedo’s polarisers had failed.

  Still Joule was not satisfied. He ordered us up once more. Cautiously, we approached the danger level, and the shrieking of vibrating atoms hummed through the ship. Following on the pleas of Polariser Section, we sank back to a safe depth.

  Now our confidence was gone. Retracing our route, we tried again with the same result. Then we made periodic attempts all the way back to the east coast, and for two weeks wandered over the continent, probing. The unbelievably strong phenomenon lay like a blanket under the land.

  Myself, I doubted that it was magnetic in origin. Most likely, I thought, it was a magnetic effect produced by a freak stream of particles which had begun to flow while we were submerged.

  Captain Joule was gloomy when I expressed this idea to him. “In that case,” he commented, “it might be artificial. It certainly is an effective weapon against a subterrene ship.”

  But whatever the origin, the practical fact remained: we were unable to break surface.

  The mood of the Interstice changed as we realised this. The excitement of our successful new enterprise vanished. I noticed for the first time how hollow the inside of the ship was, how every sound produced echoes in its cavities, and how dully its arched walls reflected the yellow lighting. It was easy to imagine how far within the Earth we were. I looked at Captain Joule, and knew that he had the same feelings.

  Suddenly, I roared with laughter. “Well, we are trapped,” I said lightly. “What of it? All the better. This is our chance to defy those faint-hearts of the Navy Department with impunity.”

  “What do you mean?” Joule asked.

  “They forbade us, in the interests of caution, to take any of our ships deeper than ten miles at this stage. But since we cannot ascend, we will return to the surface the long way—through the diameter of the planet.”

  He smiled, considering the proposal with characteristic brevity. I remembered the previous conversations we had held over the years, when the polariser fields were undergoing their slow, painful development in the Navy laboratories. Many daring schemes such as this had suggested themselves to us, and we were only biding our time in order to carry them out.

  “Let us put it to the others,” he said at length, and spoke into the communicator, calling an officers’ conference.

  The control cabin was claustrophobic by the time six officers had crowded into it. The air inductors weren’t designed to accommodate this many, and after ten minutes I was gasping for breath.

  In the pause before Joule spoke, I heard the steady hum of the now resting ship. “You will all know by now,” he began, “that we are unable to break surface. Ross has a proposal, which he will outline to you.” He gave me a nod.

  “Ever since the subterrene ship became a possibility,” I said, “I have conceived the idea of journeying into the interior of the Earth, perhaps to the centre itself. During the building of the Interstice I took advantage of the polariser propulsor’s ability to move very large masses, and made tentative plans for such an expedition. The Interstice is considerably larger than her first design called for: she has a heavier power plant, more instrumentation and food and air recyclers to keep a full crew supplied for several years. I also installed a workshop, and refrigerating equipment to guard against overheating.”

  There were some surprised expressions among the Navy men when I revealed this, but others, those officers from my own civilian team, already knew of it. I feared no recriminations. The civilised man never entirely ignores the pursuit of knowledge.

  “The Interstice is still not fully fitted for the voyage I envisaged,” I told them, “but in my opinion she will suffice. Since we are cut off from America, I propose to emerge on another quadrant of the planet.”

  Joule interrupted here. “One point to bear in mind, gentlemen. It is possible that the barrier we encountered is an artificial device. If this is so, then our nation is at war, and the enemy already knows about subterrene ships. In this case it is our duty to return as soon as possible, not to go wandering off following our own interests.”

  “I confess,” I said, “that I am delighted to have this opportunity to fulfil my ambitions. But in any case, there is no other way to make the Interstice useful in battle, since the shortest route to any other land mass now lies in an approach to the world’s core.”

  “May I ask a technical question?” an officer asked. “Already we are close to the level where the Earth’s
crust gives way to the hotter mantle. Beyond that, the liquid core is even hotter. Can we stand up to these conditions?”

  “The polariser field makes us impervious in theory to any degree of heat or density,” I answered, “but it gives no protection from gravity and magnetism. Gravity will first aid, then hinder us. But magnetism will also grow intense towards the centre, and we have already seen what that can do to the polarisers.”

  There were shudders as I said this.

  “To be honest,” I continued, “if we run into a phenomenon like the one we have just escaped, I don’t know what we shall do. But there is an ingenious device called a gauss shunt, which can control gradual increments of magnetism by means of meson currents. This will not take too long to build, and should be able to handle the steady rise of energy we may naturally expect.”

  The officers thought about it in silence. Already the Interstice had gone deeper than any before, slipping through high-density rock by virtue of the fact that the respective atoms of ship, men and air were individually aligned in different directions in space. At that very moment the cabin, the walls, our very bodies, were filled with a solid mass of hot rock, made impalpable by a delicate balance.

  It was nightmarish to the imagination. But these were sturdy men, the cream of our nation, and they were inspired by my enthusiasm and by Joule’s leadership. “Come on!” I urged. “Man has never been this way before. Let us make the adventure!”

  “I favour Ross’s proposal,” Joule said. “Any further questions?”