The Ecolog, page 6
Briggs snorted. "Without power, the Manta's no more than a pile of useless scrap. Do you want me to weaken this already pitiful exploratory force just to guard a scrapheap?"
"I suppose not, sir," Phillips replied glumly.
In the gathering darkness they trudged through the abandoned city. By the time they reached the gate at the opposite end of the main street, the last trace of sunlight had vanished. They paused to check their gear. (Each man carried an improvised backpack containing food, equipment and—most important—water.)
When they were under way again, marching out across the open sand, Mike said to Garbage, "I don't see any road from here on."
She answered lightly, "There isn't any. Once there was a road, but now the sand has covered it."
Mike felt vaguely uneasy. "With no road, how will you find your way?"
She gestured heavenward. "I can never get lost while I can see the Great Whirlpool."
Above, the sky was filled with the spiral nebula.
Hours later Briggs broke the long silence. "She's right, you know, Mister Phillips."
Slightly startled, Phillips said, "About what, sir?"
The commodore nodded toward the nebula. "About the so-called Great Whirlpool up there. As long as we can see that, we're not completely lost."
The girl had been walking slightly faster than the rest of the caravan and now was some distance ahead. Briggs said, "She was speaking of directions down here on the ground. I'm talking about something more. That's the good old Milky Way Galaxy up there, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," Phillips answered without conviction.
"Of course it is. We didn't fly long enough to reach any other galaxy. So we can be pretty damn sure we're still in the Milky Way system, but it's also obvious we're far out of the galactic plane. Now are we above or below the plane, eh?"
Mike felt annoyed. "How should I know? I'm not an astrogator." It seemed to him the galaxy would look exactly the same from the top and bottom.
"I'm not an astrogator either," said Briggs. "But I know the answer anyway. Think, man."
"I'm sorry. I don't know."
"We're below the plane, of course. If we were above the plane the spiral would turn counterclockwise, but it's turning clockwise, you see?"
Grudgingly Mike agreed.
"And you be damn glad we live in a spiral galaxy, not a ring-shaped or ball-shaped one. That kind really would look the same from the top and bottom. But now we can't be altogether outside the system, can we, since the spiral fills the sky? We're narrowing things down."
"To a few billion light-years," said Mike glumly.
"Don't be defeatist. Look here, if we were to view the galaxy from directly below, it would look pretty much as if it was a regular golden section spiral inscribed on a circle. Now look up there. Is that a circle?"
"No, more of an oval."
"An oval you say? Right! So that means we're not beneath the center of the spiral. We're some distance toward the edge. I'd say we're viewing the spiral hub from about a ten-degree angle to the galactic plane. Right?"
"If you say so."
"I do say so." Briggs sounded disgustingly smug. "That would put us, all things considered, more than halfway out from the hub of the galaxy, but less than a quarter of the way to the rim."
Mike realized that with each observation Briggs was eliminating a vast number of possibilities, but here it seemed Briggs must stop. "That's pretty good, as far as it goes," said Mike.
"Ah, but I'm not finished yet. Did we fly at near light speed long enough to cross the galaxy? We did not. Therefore we can be sure we're not on the other side of the hub. I think we've narrowed our position down to an arc of about 20 degrees horizontally and ten degrees vertically. Not a bad neighborhood." The commodore was searching the sky eagerly.
"Now what are you looking for?" Mike demanded.
"The White Giants! You've got younger eyes than mine. Help me look. Right around there somewhere." He pointed.
Mike looked, but it was Briggs who found them. He spoke with a kind of awe. "There they are, Altair and Sirius. They don't look like much from here, but they're the brightest things within 20 light-years of Earth." He was pointing at two gleaming points of light near the end of one of the arms of the spiral nebula. "You can't see our own sun—good old Sol—from here of course, but it's there! It's about two-thirds of the way along a line drawn from Altair to Sirius, as seen from this angle. Altair is 16 light-years from Earth; Sirius is only eight point seven." Mike noticed the commodore's voice was shaking.
Mike looked away, embarrassed.
He was, nevertheless, impressed. The commodore, without instruments, without even a telescope, had found the way home.
The sky began to brighten.
The Great Whirlpool faded. A large portion of it had already passed below the horizon.
With surprising speed the desert became visible around them, taking on muted color. No sign of the city lay behind them, no sign of anything else ahead. There was nothing but sand in all directions.
Briggs raised his hand. The caravan halted. "Did you hear something?" the commodore whispered.
Everyone listened intently.
The silence was broken by Garbage, up ahead of the rest of them. "I hear it! I hear it!" Undisguised fear was in her voice. She turned and ran toward Briggs and Phillips, white garments swirling behind her, bare feet kicking up little clouds of dust.
Phillips could hear it now, the faint distant drone and flutter of some sort of motor.
Garbage clutched Mike's arm with fingers that dug into the flesh and screamed, "The Ecolog! The Ecolog!"
During the moments before the sun broke the horizon, the huge, silver dirigible, like a mirage, passed slowly in the distance.
CHAPTER 5
Sunrise; an early morning of majestic splendor began in a hush.
Under a sky of muted blue, the horizon filled to a great height with a greenish golden haze that hinted of distant mountains whose shapes could not be seen clearly enough to be certain of their reality. The dunes, however, remained gray and somehow ghostly, a sandy garment carelessly dropped by a giant, a garment that draped its folds from horizon to horizon.
Out of the haze, quite suddenly, came a stabbing ray of unbearable light. The sun had made its entrance, and having entered, grew. It was at first an inverted dish, viewed edge-on, then, climbing higher, it became a bowl, till, clearing the skyline, a bloated reddish-white egg formed. The men could still see their breath—brief white clouds in the cold air—but the sun's heat already made itself unmistakably felt on their sunward side.
Frowning, Briggs surveyed the far haze. Was that a harmless cloud, or a sandstorm? He could not say. He turned to his little caravan. "We'll pitch camp here. Dig in as well as you can." He spoke softly, as though in a cathedral.
The tents went up, white against the shadowed tan of the dunes. Would these makeshift shelters last more than a few seconds in a real wind? The commodore shaded his eyes and looked up.
Perhaps at this instant the Corregidor was passing overhead. The techmen might be watching him on a video-telescope. Yes, they could see him even if he could not see them. He wondered if he should try to communicate with them, but decided his presence here was self-explanatory.
Once, long ago, men had feared the void of outer space.
Now, he thought, we know the real dangers are down here.
The sandstorm did not materialize, but as the sun neared the zenith the temperature rose to a point that rendered sleep impossible. To lie still was an agony; yet movement also was slow and painful. Commodore Briggs made a decision. They would push on now and rest later, after sundown.
They folded their tents and straggled onward, Garbage leading the way, navigating by the sun.
The desert had become unreal, shimmering, too bright to look at. Part of the time Briggs marched with eyes closed. It was not necessary to make much use of the sense of sight. There were no obstacles to avoid, no path to follow, no hiding places where enemies might lie in wait.
It seemed to him he could have found his way by the sense of hearing, which told him where the rest of his squad was, and his sense of heat, which told him where the sun was.
He slogged forward through a red universe as the sunlight through his closed eyelids created shining geometrical patterns, and sometimes grotesque leering faces, on his retinas.
When he opened his eyes momentarily, Briggs noticed that Garbage was wearing an odd pair of glasses she'd apparently fashioned from bits of material cannibalized from the Manta. They were nothing more than a bit of cardboard that fitted over the bridge of the nose with a narrow slit in front of the eyes. He vaguely remembered that skiers wore some such things to prevent snow blindness.
So, the girl was the only person in this caravan who could really see. Briggs did not like that. Yet the terrible heat seemed to paralyze his mind. He could not think of anything to do about it or summon the will to take any action. He was totally absorbed in placing one foot in front of the other.
He opened his eyes again for an instant. There was the girl, leading the procession. Her steps were not sluggish, but quick and lively. The dunes were not her enemy, but her home. And it was she, Briggs realized, who now commanded. Naturally, without effort, she had taken over.
He felt for the handle of his sword, as if afraid he might have lost it, and with it his position of authority. It was still there, thank God! It hung in its scabbard the same as always; yet, in this situation, what meaning did it have? Damn little!
It was late afternoon when one of the men fainted.
The caravan stopped for a while, and attempts were made to revive him, but he did not regain consciousness.
Briggs turned to the girl and asked, "You know the desert. What can we do for him?"
"Cut his throat," she answered lightly.
"Be serious."
"I am being serious. If you leave him behind he will die. If you try to carry him along, those who have to carry him will soon also faint. If you cannot bring yourself to kill him, if he is your close friend or something, I will do the job for you."
There was a long silence. Then Briggs said, "We'll make camp here."
Garbage said, "I think I should tell you we are being followed."
Briggs looked up, startled. "Followed?"
"By animals. They have been trailing us for hours. They think some of us may die. If you leave them a man they will gorge themselves and let the rest of us alone."
"And if we don't?"
She shrugged. "Perhaps they will attack, perhaps not. It depends how hungry they are. Leave them a man. Better they should have one of us than all of us."
“We're armed," said Briggs.
"Can you see in the dark?" asked the girl softly. "The animals can. They can see heat as clearly as you see light. And soon it will be night."
Briggs looked back the way they had come. He could see nothing, only shimmering brightness and endless sand. Was she lying? He had no way of knowing.
He turned toward Phillips and growled, "Can't you get that man on his feet?"
Mike shook his head.
"Rig a stretcher," the commodore commanded.
"Out of what?" asked the girl in a mocking tone.
They had no poles, no rifles, nothing that would serve the purpose. Briggs felt dizzy. His mind refused to function. "All right, dammit. We'll take turns carrying him. Nobody take him more than a little way."
The girl said with contempt, "You fool."
Briggs took the first turn carrying the unconscious soldier over his shoulders. He had to set an example for the men, didn't he? The soldier was heavy, impossibly heavy. Briggs lurched from side to side like a drunk. Ahead he heard the girl's light, quick footsteps; behind, the panting and sighs of his men. He did not open his eyes until he heard her shout, "Look there!"
He blinked, followed the line of her gaze to his left. In the whiteness something moved, then was still.
"It's one of the animals," said the girl soberly. "They're coming closer, trying to encircle us."
Briggs squinted for a long time, but whatever that had been moving out there was now invisible.
It was Mike's turn to carry the soldier.
The sun had gone; the nebula returned, and its blue light turned the desert into a vague pattern of soft-edged shadows. The temperature was falling fast. Briggs could think again, but his body was dead tired.
And now that he could see, he had spotted the creatures several times. They seemed about the size and shape of wolves, but appeared to have little or no fur and an extra pair of legs. They moved fast, darting from shadow to shadow. He fired at one with his stinger pistol, but it did not fall.
"They have armor on their bodies," explained the girl. "We call them ngaas." (The "ng" sound was pronounced as in "wing" and "sing.") Briggs thought, What kind of armor can stop a rocket dart?
The ngaa scuttled again from one dune to another, now looking more like some immense spider than any sort of canine. Another ngaa appeared, then disappeared. Then yet another.
"How intelligent are they?" Briggs asked her.
"Not as intelligent as men, but they have a language. Before humans came to this planet, they were the highest form of life here. We thought they'd become extinct when the Ecolog changed the ecology, but it seems some have survived and adapted to the new environment. Every year they become more of a problem." She raised her finger to her lips. "Hush! You can hear them."
Briggs strained his ears.
At first there was nothing; but soon he could make out a faint hissing, whistling and clicking.
"You see?" she said. "They're talking… about us."
Briggs said, "Can you understand what they're saying?"
She shook her head and laughed contemptuously. "Of course not!"
The rustle of the ngaas grew louder; they began to sound like a vast, whispering crowd.
Garbage said uneasily, "There are so many of them. I don't know if one man will satisfy them."
Briggs said, "They won't get even one, if I have anything to say about it."
The ngaas were getting so close now that Briggs could hear their scampering feet. He could even smell them. They had a sharp, pungent odor, not altogether unpleasant. In fact at first it seemed rather sweet when it was faint and far-off and he caught it in scattered whiffs. But when the sluggish breeze shifted slightly the odor became abruptly much stronger, so Briggs could literally taste it as well as smell it. Then the sweetness became sickening: raw, rancid, sensual, crude, intoxicating. It made him dizzy, nauseous.
He thought of roses rotting in the rain, of roses piled in an open grave: billions and billions of decaying roses. Sweet, sweet, poisonously sweet. He was suffocating, choking on that malodorous, fetid, foul, putrid, pink sweetness.
Without warning the ngaas fell silent.
Their reek remained, but the creatures could no longer be seen or heard.
"They hear something," whispered the girl.
Briggs heard it too. It was the unmistakable fluttering roar of the dirigible. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw, against the starry background, a tiny moving point of light. How slowly it moved!
"Flashlights!" commanded Briggs. "Turn on every flashlight we have. Wave them around! Shout! Jump up and down! We must attract those people's attention."
"No!" protested the girl. "No! You fools!"
They did not listen to her. Even though weary and half-dead, the little party somehow found the energy to break into a wild, shouting, light-waving dance.
"They're coming this way!" exclaimed one of the soldiers.
He was right. The moving point of light grew brighter; the motor sounded louder. The dirigible was definitely coming closer.
"Help!" bellowed Briggs. "We're right down here! Help! Help!"
Mike Phillips, behind him, held the unconscious soldier, but managed a healthy shout.
The dirigible became clearer every minute.
The one light had become many, and the gasbag blocked out the stars in a dark oval. Briggs realized that this time the airship would pass directly overhead.
"Help!" he screamed hoarsely. "Help!"
The roar of the motors had become deafening. Could his cries for help be heard over that roar? Probably not, but Briggs shouted all the louder!
Suddenly the ship turned slightly and Briggs could see banks of floor-to-ceiling windows in the gondola of the vessel. There were people inside, men and women dressed in bright flowing robes and jewels. They were chatting, smoking, drinking cocktails. None of them were looking out the windows.
"Help!" screamed Briggs.
The ship passed directly above his head, drifting slightly sideways.
It passed and continued on its way.
Briggs was the last to stop yelling, the last to lower his flashlight and snap it off.
Garbage said bitterly, "If they'd stopped, it would only have been to watch the ngaas eat us."
With the fading of the motor drone, the rustle of the scampering ngaas recommenced. One of the soldiers beamed his flashlight into the gloom and picked out a pair of glittering eyes.
"Commodore Briggs," said Mike uncomfortably.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" snapped Briggs.
Mike nodded at the man draped over his shoulders. "This soldier has stopped breathing, sir. I think he's dead."
Briggs stepped quickly over and took the man's pulse. There was no pulse. The wrist was cold to the touch. Briggs said, "He's been dead for some time."
"We'd better bury him, sir," said Phillips. "Don't want the ngaas to get him."
Garbage let out a wordless howl of protest and dashed forward to throw herself against Phillips, knocking the corpse to the ground.
"Leave him!" she shrieked. "Where do you think you are? Leave him! It's our only chance!"
Ignoring her, Mike stooped to pick up the body.
Briggs raised his hand. "Wait. She's right." His voice was almost a whisper. "Leave him."
The soldiers stared at him, but obeyed.
The procession trudged onward, leaving the dead man spread-eagled on the sand. Briggs tried not to listen to the awful crunching and munching in the darkness behind him.
