The Edge Of Beyond, page 4
`Probably the quiet of the place. No noise at all. Just the soft pit-a-patter of footsteps. The only place I know on Earth where you can hear that same sound is Venice, where the streets being water, so to speak, people walk to work on pavements. But let's go and hear the news. If the Professor has his way we shan't be here much longer. He's all agog to push on. Don't mention that television idea to him or he might try it for a joke, just to hear what the scientists had to say about it.'
Vargo's news, they learned presently, was as the Professor had hoped. The ship was now free and at their disposal. The Council on Mino were themselves now preparing to move to Mars. They could, said Vargo, find work for the ship, but in view of what the Professor had done for them, and the regard in which they held him, they were prepared to allow him to borrow it for as long as he wished, and for any purpose.
`Capital,' said the Professor, beaming. 'That is an offer of which I shall certainly take full advantage, assuming that meets with the approval of the crew.'
4 Back to Arcadia
Tiger's belief that the Professor would lose no time in pressing on with his main project, a survey of more distant planets, was soon confirmed, for he at once began to discuss the possibilities with Vargo, Gator and Borron. It was agreed that they should first move on to Mino, to pay their respects to the Council, calling at the planetoid which they had named Arcadia on the way.
Vargo said there would be no difficulty about that. It might be a good thing, he advised, to leave further plans until that had been done. He would speak to some of the old Remote Space Fleet crew men when they reached Mino.
`What do you know about a place called Ardilla?' asked Rex.
Vargo looked at him. 'What do you know about Ardilla?' he came back quickly, in his thin voice.
`Nothing,' returned Rex. 'Nothing at all, except that Rolto hinted that it might be an interesting place for us to visit.
`You should know better than to listen to that man. Shall I tell you why he suggested Ardilla? The region of that planet is one of the most dangerous areas in the Universe.'
`Have you been there?' asked the Professor.
`No. If I had it is unlikely that I would be here now.'
`What do you know about it?'
`Only that it is a place of dangers beyond imagination.'
`One of the places you had in mind when we were discussing these matters in my house?'
`Yes.'
`How do you know about these dangers?'
`From rumours, the sort of thing I have heard you call legends — strange tales told by men about ships that went out and never returned.'
`But some ships must have returned or nothing whatever would be known of these alleged dangers,' the Professor pointed out.
`Yes,' said Vargo, slowly. 'It is said that one ship did return, but the crew in it was not the one that went out. The men had changed. They never did return to normal.'
`Did they say what had happened?'
`No. They were unable to do that. We could only judge from their behaviour that it was something awful.'
`They had not suffered any actual injury?'
`Only their brains had been injured, and beyond repair.'
`And that was why they were unable to tell you what had happened?'
`Yes. They seemed afraid even to speak. They did not live very long afterwards.'
`So you have no idea of how far the danger extends from the planet?' put in Tiger. 'I am thinking of the range of the thing, whatever it may be.'
`I don't know that, and I don't know anyone who could answer that question.'
`What about Rolto?'
`He only knows what I know. He is a frustrated man, and such men are dangerous. It would please him to see you in trouble.'
The Professor resumed. 'But surely, Vargo, if this is a mystery it should be solved. It will have to be solved one day. Are you, with your facilities for space travel, prepared to regard a whole section of the Galaxy as a prohibited area?'
`Yes. Why should we look for trouble when there are plenty of safe places for us to visit? As you must know by now, even the worlds that are considered safe are not without their unpleasant surprises.'
`On Earth, the more dangerous a place, the greater is its attraction for some people.'
`So I judge, if your own behaviour is an indication. But I doubt if you have any dangers on Earth to be compared with those that may be encountered in space.'
`Let us go to Arcadia for a start,' suggested Borron. 'There will be time to talk of other places afterwards.'
This was agreed. The subject was dropped, and in a few hours Gator's ship was on its way to the uninhabited but comfortable little planetoid where they had found, and rescued, the crew of the Andoan ship that had crashed there.
After an uneventful journey, and a little trouble in finding it, for it was of course far from where they had last seen it, Arcadia came into view; but such were the changes on and around its surface that had they not known it could be no other — for Borron had mapped its probable orbit — they would not have recognized it.
`We shall now see,' said the Professor, 'what happens to a world with an orbit that takes it too near the Sun.'
The changes were apparent even from a distance. Gone was the sparkling clarity of the atmosphere. It had been replaced by a dull cloud which, while transparent from above, would obviously be fairly dense at ground level. Moreover, it had the strange property of slightly changing colour from time to time, according to the direction from which it was observed. The surface of the ground, instead of being green with vegetation, was now for the most part a dull, mottled brown.
Gator moved the ship horizontally until they were over their original landing ground, for the most conspicuous landmarks such as the limestone cliffs in which they had found the caves, could still be made out. Rex could see the wreck of the abandoned spaceship, still lying at an angle as they had left it.
`Take care, Gator,' warned the Professor, as the ship, with its jet-brakes hissing, prepared to make its landing on the flat piece of ground near the wreck. 'I don't care for the look of this murk,' he went on. 'We know it indicates there must still be an atmosphere but it may have changed its composition.'
`Poor old Arcadia,' murmured Toby. 'It looks as if Smog would now be a more appropriate name. This murk looks mighty like smoke to me.'
As Gator made a cautious approach the Professor resumed : `Yes, there is no doubt that what we feared was going to happen has happened. Actually the damage is not as severe as I thought it might be. I was fully prepared to find this unlucky little paradise charred to a cinder as a result of its passage near the Sun at the extremity of its orbit. Obviously it has not been as close as we presumed.'
`It has been too close to be healthy, however,' put in Toby.
`It appears to have been no more than scorched; but even that, I imagine, will have been sufficient to destroy all life, except perhaps some of the tougher vegetation with their roots well under the ground. Seeds, deep down, may have survived, too, so Arcadia is not altogether without hope of recovery, although that will take time.'
Vargo, who had been making the usual routine atmospheric and habitation tests, now announced that the air had not changed much in character. It carried a little more helium, as was to be expected, and one or two other components that he could not identify. There was smoke, too, and water-vapour, probably the result of the evaporation of all surface water. This in due course would fall back to the ground as the atmosphere cooled. It might be falling now. The big change was in density. The air was heavier than it had been; but it was safe, thought Vargo, even if breathing might be a little uncomfortable. The smoke content might cause them to cough.
`We know all about smog,' said Tiger, cheerfully.
The ship made its landing. After taking the usual precautions they stepped out, and steadying themselves to become accustomed to their loss of weight, due to the weak gravity, found they were able to breathe and move about without difficulty. There was a strong smell of scorching, and this produced a certain amount of coughing. It caused Rex's eyes to smart a little, but there was no serious discomfort.
Looking about him it seemed to Rex that apart from poor visibility, as a result of the murk, the changes were mainly superficial. The actual ground, the soil, did not appear to have suffered. But gone was the verdant freshness of the trees. The trees were still there, but shorn of their leaves, and with their bark scorched, they looked as if a fire had swept through them, as in a way it had.
But already a new growth had started, although this, to Rex's surprise, was obviously going to be different from what had been there. A few young palms, already a foot or more high, and cacti on the more sandy ground, suggested that the new vegetation was going to be tropical.
`There's nothing strange about that,' said the Professor, in answer to a query from Rex. 'This sort of thing happens on Earth after a forest fire. In Canada, I have heard, the great forests of fir and other conifers are sometimes replaced, after a fire, by birch.'
`But how did these palms get here?' asked Rex.
`Obviously the seeds must have been in the ground. It may well be that they needed heat to crack them and so start germination. All this may be a recurring phase on Arcadia. It may not approach so near to the Sun again for a great many years — I use the word years in our own sense, of course. What will happen at the other extremity of its orbit is a matter for conjecture, unless Vargo is clever enough to work it out. It may go through a period of intense cold, which again may cause the vegetation to change. I have no doubt that for a long time now, as it leaves the Sun, it will become steadily colder. Following that argument there should come a time when things will be much as we found them on the occasion of our first visit.'
`It's cooler than it was when we left here,' put in Tiger. `I'd still call it pretty sultry,' observed Toby, mopping his face.
`No doubt the ground will hold the heat it collected near the Sun for some time,' said the Professor.
`But why should all these changes happen here?' inquired Rex. 'They don't happen on Earth — luckily for us.'
`My friends, few of the people on Earth pause to think how lucky they are to live on a planet with a regular orbit,' replied the Professor. 'There have, of course, been changes in the past. There must have been, or how are we to account for the Ice Ages, when glaciers reached to what are now the tropics? Arcadia has died, temporarily, of heat. More than once Earth must nearly have died from cold.'
`Could that happen again?' asked Rex.
`Who can say? I presume that anything that has happened once could happen again. But there, civilization is wise not to think too much about that. The only escape, if astronomers could predict the catastrophe, would be by spaceship to another world — as happened, by accident, to a few people of Mars when Kraka blew up.'
`That's a pleasant thought,' said Tiger, sarcastically.
`What we were inclined to overlook in our earlier visits to the planetoids,' continued the Professor, 'is that not one is stationary. All are hurtling through space at astronomical velocities. As I have told you before, at least one planetoid approaches nearer to us than our moon. It is only a little one, a mere mile in diameter, but even so it must have a mass of billions of tons. But come, come. This is no place for such disconcerting thoughts. Where are you going, Rex?'
`I'm only going to look at the old ship,' Rex threw back over his shoulder.
He had started to walk to where he knew the wrecked Andoan ship lay, although he couldn't actually see it on account of the murk that hung about.
`You be careful what you're doing,' warned Tiger.
Rex merely waved. To him the remark seemed unnecessary, for although no one knew better than he that on unknown worlds danger could lurk in the most unexpected places, here, he was confident, he had nothing to fear. He was familiar with the ground. He had been on Arcadia before, had in fact stayed there for some time. If there had been nothing to fear then, what could there be now that the place had been subjected to such heat that no form of life, animal, insect or reptile, could have survived. The Professor's oft-repeated maxim, that nothing in space should be taken for granted, hardly applied.
So he strode on, casually, with the bouncing stride that could not be avoided with so slight a gravity. He knew that feeling, too, well enough. Even when, presently, he noticed things that puzzled him, he still saw no cause for uneasiness, much less alarm. But remembering other experiences, he resolved not to take too much for granted.
5 A walk to remember
As Rex walked on towards the spot where he knew the abandoned spaceship to lie he became aware of a curious and rather fascinating phenomenon. From time to time the colour of the atmosphere seemed to change. Did it, he wondered, or was it his imagination? At the outset it had been a peculiar shade of yellow — or so he had thought. Now, suddenly, it was pink. Not a steady pink everywhere. In places it varied between lilac and mauve. Everything on the ground became diffused with these tints in the manner of a sunset. The effect, he decided, was rather charming, and in some way due to the fog.
The mist itself was patchy, sometimes tenuous and in other places dense. Not that there was anything particularly odd about that, for in certain weather conditions it happened commonly at home.
What did strike him as remarkable was the way it had of clinging to him in the thicker patches through which he passed. This gave the impression that the stuff was actually tangible, as if it might have been composed of masses of floating cobwebs. The stuff seemed to be getting thicker, too, as he advanced, yet in some extraordinary way the visibility remained fairly good, at all events for a short distance. Farther on it looked more solid. In fact, it created a wonderful effect of a multicoloured curtain encircling the whole area. From time to time it moved slightly, as if a light breeze had caused it to shiver; and as it shivered so it changed colour; not abruptly, but with a slow creeping movement, as if it were caused by some trick of artificial lighting. No matter which way he looked the curtain was always there, sometimes flat, but more often draped in loose folds. He was still moving forward but he could never reach it. It was always the same distance away.
This, he told himself, must be where the rainbow ended.
He was not in the least worried, although it did occur to him that something in the air might be affecting his eyes, causing temporary colour-blindness. It merely struck him as an interesting set of conditions for which the Professor would no doubt have an explanation. The important thing was that he felt no ill effects. Had he done so he would certainly have turned back, for if his travels had taught him one lesson it was not to take chances with anything abnormal. He realized he must be breathing the fog, or whatever the stuff was, but as it caused him no inconvenience he carried on.
Occasionally he could smell it. Or he caught a whiff of smoke, sweet and sickly, and wondered if these weird effects were in fact caused by smoke still hanging about the planetoid after its recent scorching. The ground might well carry a smell of burning for some time, he reasoned. Metals, or metallic oxides, having been subjected to heat, might give off gas, or even minute particles of solid· matter in the form of dust. The same applied to the trees, some of which were of a species unknown to him. They might, when heated, give off an aromatic smell, in the manner of frankincense and other gum-bearing trees on Earth. Anything thrown high by up-currents of hot air might remain in suspension for some time. A slow descent to the ground could, he thought, account for the curious quivering movement of the 'curtain'. He could think of no other explanation, for there appeared to be no breeze. On the contrary, the atmosphere felt utterly stagnant.
The first indication that all was not as it should be came when he saw the ship, their own ship, directly in front of him. He stopped. He stared. He gazed around. 'But that's impossible,' he muttered. He had been walking away from it. How could it be in front of him? He looked again. There was no possibility of mistake. There was the ship, Borron in the entrance, the others standing beside it. Tiger was in the act of lighting his pipe. The only thing was, in some queer way they all appeared to have shrunk in size. They looked like a lot of dwarfs seen through a piece of blue gauze.
The explanation that struck him was of course, the obvious one. In the fog, as not infrequently happens, he had walked in a circle and was now on his way back. So certain was he that this was the answer that he accepted it without question. What did occur to him was that it might be ill-advised to continue in conditions that were obviously treacherous. He had no particular reason for going to the wrecked ship. It was merely a matter of curiosity and an excuse to stretch his legs. It was not worth the risk of becoming lost, he decided. He would give up the idea and rejoin the others forthwith.
Without haste, for while the others were in sight he could hardly go wrong, he walked towards them, only to pull up again as they appeared to recede. Instead of getting closer he was farther away from them. But that, he told himself again as he went on, was impossible. But far from making any progress the figures continued to recede.
His first twinge of alarm came when they began to fade, as if mist or fog was coming between them. He broke into a run determined not to lose sight of them; but this defeated its object, for the faster he ran the more indistinct became the figures. By the time he had reached the spot where he could have sworn they had been standing there was nothing there. Nothing except an area of bare earth littered with the leafless remains of some heat-shrivelled shrubs.
Breathing heavily, partly from exertion and partly from annoyance, he glared around. In every direction, still the same distance away, was the vague opaque curtain. It was now mostly yellow, and it made everything else, including himself, look yellow, as a sunset glow will tinge a landscape with colour. Even as he stared at it, it shivered slowly to orange with crimson streaks.
