The Mechanical Monarch Read online

Waiting for dawn.

  CHAPTER II

  Dawn came with a thin wind, a chill wind bearing promise of early winter and carrying a fine dust of stinging sand. In the east a pink glow suffused the sky and a scud of thin cloud hid the dying light of the fading stars. The Moon had gone, falling below the horizon, and it was strange to see men glancing to where it had been, even though they knew that die ship would be aimed at a set of co-ordinates rather than a visual target.

  Adams gathered them all in the control room for a final briefing.

  The Colonel showed signs of strain, his eyes were bloodshot and his grizzled hair rumpled, matching his usually impeccable uniform. He glared at Curt, almost as if he would like to give the young man hell for slipping away from his surveillance, then, as he stared at the young man, shrugged and got down to business.

  “Blast-off’s in one hour,” he said abruptly. “The ship has been fueled, the instruments checked, and the weather report is favourable. You will each report in turn.”

  “Tracking stations standing by, sir.”

  “Radio checked and ready.” Comain leaned against the edge of the table and winked at Curt.

  “Medical examination completed.” The doctor yawned and rubbed his tired eyes. “Is all this necessary, Adams? I can’t see why I’ve got to stand by. There’s nothing more I can do until Rosslyn returns.”

  “You’ve given him the drugs?”

  “Yes. The complete hell-brew. Stuff to lower his instinctive muscular resistance to strain. Other stuff to prevent congealing of his blood.” The doctor looked at Curt. “Be careful of that by the way. If you cut yourself you’re liable to bleed to death.”

  “If I’m injured I take the green injection. Right?” “Right.” The doctor yawned again. “Damn it all, Adams! I’m an old man, I need my sleep. Can I go now?”

  “You are excused, doctor,” said the Colonel stiffly. “Naturally you will make no attempt to leave the area.”

  “And miss the chance of almost taking a man apart?” The doctor grinned at Curt. “Man! Wait until you see what I’ve got lined up for you when you return. Three hundred tests and twenty days of controlled feeding. I'll make you wish that you had never gone.”

  “It’ll be worth it.” Curt grinned after the old medico as he left the room. “Rocket checked O.K.?”

  A technician nodded. “Yeah. I examined the venturis myself. The ship won’t let you down, Rosslyn.”

  “I hope not,” said Curt quietly. “There won’t be any chance of repairing it if it does.”

  “It won’t let you down.” Adams jerked his head and the technician left the room. “Now. You, Comain will keep in constant radio communication with the ship. You, Rosslyn, will maintain a running commentary on everything that happens. I mean that literally, Rosslyn. I want you to keep talking, about the ship, your own reactions, even your thoughts and emotions. I don’t want you to freeze up on us. This thing has cost too much for a temperamental pilot to queer things. You may die, you know that, but if you do I want to know just why. Remember that no matter what happens to you another ship will be coming after. There will be other men, lots of them, and you may help to save their lives.”

  “I understand, Adams.”

  “I hope that you do.” The Colonel sighed and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “I want you to come back to us, Rosslyn, alive and well. You know that, so take good care of yourself will you?” He grinned and Curt felt himself warm to the grizzled man.

  “I’ll take care,” he promised. “I . . .” He paused as a man’s voice echoed from a speaker against the wall.

  “Zero minus fifty.”

  “That’s it!” Adams heaved himself from his chair. “Get to the ship, Rosslyn. They’ll dress you in your anti-G suit there. Comain! Get to your radio and warm it up. Move now.”

  It was psychology of course. A deliberate leaving of everything until the last few minutes when, in the final rush of activity, strain and nervous anticipation would be forgotten. Curt almost ran from the room, piling into a waiting jeep and feeling the cold wind tug at his hair as he was driven to the base of the loading platform.

  Men grabbed him as the vehicle sledded to a halt. They stripped him, dressed him in a one-piece undersuit of nonconducting nylon, then in a thick armour of canvas and plastic. Swiftly the loading platform carried both Curt and his helpers to the nose of the rocket, and within what seemed an incredibly short time he sat in his padded control chair, the inflated sections of his G-suit pressing hard against his body, his hands, gloved and steady, reaching for the warmup switches.

  “Good luck, Rosslyn!” The last of his helpers grinned as he crawled through the tiny entrance port, swinging the panel behind him and dogging it tight against the rubber gaskets. Abruptly the radio droned into life.

  “Curt. All set?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Routine check now. Ready?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Oxygen bottles?”

  “Check.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Check.”

  “Water?” The calm voice of Comain droned on, forcing Curt to keep his mind on the vital supplies of the ship, checking every item, not through fear of any last-minute error, but to keep the pilot’s mind from what was coming. Softly, over the calm monotony of Comain’s voice, Curt heard the time signal whispered from some distance speaker.

  "Zero minus seven minutes.”

  Seven minutes!

  Four hundred and twenty seconds before he would feel the thunder of the venturis and feel the bone-jarring thrust of acceleration pressure. Seven minutes, not even time for a cigarette, before he would rise on wings of flame, rise on the thundering power of unleashed energy, rise towards the stars. Sweat oozed from his forehead and he felt #n insane desire to stop the whole thing, to get up from his padded chair, open the hatch, return to the safe, sure world of normal men.

  ' “Curt!”

  Comain’s voice jerked him back to sanity and he licked his lips as he tried to still the butterflies crawling in his stomach. “Yes?”

  “What’s the matter, getting nervous?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “How much longer?”

  “Take it easy, you’ll know when it’s time.” Curt could almost see his friend’s thin features, the thin lips curved in a cynical smile. “Last instructions, Curt. You know what you must do.”

  “I know. Practically nothing at all.”

  “That’s right. The take off will be automatic. The gyroscopes will take care of the course. You just sit there and do nothing unless something goes haywire. You’ll circle the Moon, the cameras are automatic too, but you’d better check them just in case."

  “Just a passenger aren’t I?”

  “No. Don’t make that mistake, Curt. You’ve got to watch everything all the time, we just don’t know what free radiation will do to the instruments, and remember, you’ve got to land the ship too.”

  “A parachute could do that.”

  “Perhaps, you’ve got one anyway, but it isn’t as simple as that, Curt. You are as much an instrument as anything else aboard. On you will rest, in the final analysis, the whole success or failure of this flight An instrument could fail, the acceleration shock could do it and you must be there to take its place. Also, and perhaps this is the most important, until you return we cannot be sure that man can even live in space.”

  “So now I’m a guinea pig.” Curt smiled at the radio, grateful to Comain for easing his nervous tension. A whisper came from the radio, the sound of the time check, and over it Curt heard Comain’s expression of annoyance.

  “Shut that thing off.”

  “How long, Comain?” Curt licked his dry lips. “How long damn you!”

  “Take it easy, Curt. You’ve got a long time yet.”

  "You’re a liar, Comain. Tell me. How long?” The whispering of the time check gave the answer.

  “Zero minus one minute.”

  One minute!

  It was too much. It w
as impossible for any man born of woman not to dwell on the passing seconds. Later perhaps, when space flight was as normal as catching a plane, the time wouldn’t matter so much, but now . . .

  Curt could feel his heart thudding against his ribs as he ' waited for the rocket to thunder into strident life. Now there was no turning back. Now he just had to sit there, poised over five hundred tons of one of the most violent explosives known, waiting for it to ignite and hurl him beyond the planet of his birth. He would rise on that thundering pillar of flame, rise up and up, through the clouds and through the thinning atmosphere. Up and out—into what?

  Space was the great unknown. It was a void, they knew that. It was a vacuum in which the planets swum like lonely fish in an ebon sea. Temperatureless, without any heat or light of its own, without gravity, illumined by the faint dots of the distant stars and the naked furnace of the roaring sun. Space was emptiness—or was it? Radiation streamed through that void. The broken atoms of incredible cataclysms, cosmic rays, tides of free electrons, gamma and alpha radiation, and other strange and unguessed-at forces. Men had always been protected from them, shielded by the ozone belt of the Heavyside layer, but he was going beyond that protection, venturing his soft and helpless body into the surging currents of outer space.

  He could go blind. He could return a distorted cripple, his cells and bones twisted and warped by that flood of radiation. His mind could yield and raving insanity replace his schooled calm. Anything could happen. Anything.

  He half rose from the padded seat, his gloved hands fumbling at his harness, the sweat of fear trickling down his face, stinging his eyes and wetting his parched lips with the salty taste of terror.

  Comain’s voice from the radio jerked him back to sanity.

  “Curt! Blast-off in ten seconds. Rockets now warming up.”

  A mutter echoed throughout the ship. A quivering vibration singing along the metal of the hull, the internal stanchions, sending little ringing sounds from the plastic faces of the instruments and the thin sheeting of the control bank. Curt tensed, then, accepting the inevitable, lost his fear and refastened his harness. Swiftly he scanned the dials, snapping quick reports into the radio.

  “Temperature rising. Number four jet higher than the other six. Vibration increasing. How’s she look, Comain?”

  “Beautiful!” Envy tinged the thin man’s reply. “I wish I was with you, Curt.”

  “So do I,” said the slender man feelingly, then gripped the arms of his chair as the muttering grew louder. “Switch in the radio-clock, Comain. I . . .” He bit his lip as the sound of the rockets rose to a screaming whine, and again he could taste the salt of his own fear.

  The whistling roar grew louder, shrieking with the full power of a million tormented giants, yelling a brutal challenge towards the far horizon and the careless stars. Vibration sang from the metal of hull and stanchions, a thin shrilling of jarred atoms, ringing and blending with the pulsing thunder of the blasting rockets. Dimly, over the hell of blasting sound, Curt heard the thin voice from the radio.

  “Good luck, Curt. This is it!”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “Here we go.”

  Weight slammed at him, thrusting him deep into the padding of his chair, piling tons of invisible lead on chest and and stomach, squeezing his lungs and pressing his head down between his shoulders. The weight grew, became a nightmare of ceaseless struggle, a pain-shot, timeless period of eternal anguish.

  Blood streamed from his nose and ears, filled his eyes, thundered from his labouring heart and filled his mouth with salty wetness. He gasped, writhing on his padded chair, twisting in the confines of his inflated G-suit and wishing that he were dead. Nothing he had ever experienced had ever been like this. It seemed as if his very bones would protrude through his skin, the flesh ripped away by the piling weight of acceleration pressure. He wanted to black-out, and, at the same time, fought against it. He wanted to stop the ship, to get out and to call the whole thing off, and at the same time he urged the rockets to still greater thrust, knowing that the sooner the ship reached escape velocity the sooner his torment would be over.

  The rockets died, cutting with an almost savage abruptness, and in the silence little sounds seemed to have gained greater power. The soft hiss of air from an oxygen cylinder, the creak and rust of still-vibrating stanchions, the throb and pulse of surging current, and, above all, the muted chatter of the Geiger counter measuring the flood of radiation penetrating the vessel.

  Curt stirred, licking his lips and lifting himself into a more comfortable position before the banked controls. His face • felt wet, sticky and uncomfortable, stiff and a little numb. Clumsily he unbuckled his mask and dabbed at his features with his gloved hand. He winced at the touch, his muscles and skin feeling as though he had been beaten with a rubber hose, then stared blankly at his gloved fingers.

  They were stained with blood.

  The radio crackled, and a voice, blurred with static and distorted with emotion echoed from the speaker.

  “Curt! Are you all right, Curt? Curt! Answer me!”

  He ignored it, unbuckling the safety harness, and, even though he had expected it, the eerie sensation of free fall made him catch at the back of the chair in sudden fear. He hovered there, weightless, his feet unsupported and his whole body drifting lightly like a gas-filled balloon, and, as he hovered, he smiled.

  He didn’t need to glance out of the ports at the ebon night of space. He didn’t need the sight of the scintillant stars, bright and burning with their cold white fire against the soft velvet of the void. He knew.

  Of all men he was the first. The new Columbus. The hero of every boy and man who had ever stared at the sky and wished for wings to travel between the stars.

  He was in space.

  CHAPTER III

  The room was heavy with coiling clouds of stale smoke and rank with the taste of air which had been breathed too often. It seemed that every man who could possibly find an excuse for cramming himself in the room had done so, and they leaned against the walls, poised on the edges of tables and chairs, smoking, breathing, their eyes heavy with lack of sleep and nervous tension.

  Adams sprawled in a chair, his tunic unbuttoned, his grizzled hair rumpled and his bloodshot eyes dull as he listened to the voice of the thin man sitting before the radio. Comain wiped his lips with the back of his hand, adjusted a vernier control a trifle, and leaned closer to the microphone.

  “Curt. Comain here. Answer me, Curt. Answer me damn you!”

  “Maybe the radio went?” A man whispered the suggestion, then recoiled at the naked hate in Comain’s eyes.

  “No! That radio was tested up to fifty G. It couldn’t have gone. Anyway, the signal is getting through.” He turned to the mike again and the sound of his voice echoed with a plaintive desperation in the silence of the room.

  “Even if he’d blacked-out he would have recovered by now.” The man who had suggested that perhaps the radio had broken whispered to his neighbour, a small technician with a twisted scar writhing across one cheek. “My guess is that Rosslyn couldn’t take it.”

  “I doubt it.” The scarred man shook his head. “They tested him remember. He stood ten gravities in the centrifuge.”

  “Yeah, but that ship hit twelve on the way up. It had to in order to reach the seven miles per second escape velocity before the fuel got too low. My guess is that . .

  “Shut up,” said Adams quietly. “If you can’t keep your lip buttoned get out.”

  • “I only ...”

  “You heard me.” Adams didn’t raise his voice but the man winced at the Colonel’s tone, then, shrugging he lit a fresh cigarette and fell silent.

  “Curt! Comain calling. Curt! Answer me will you! Answer me!”

  “How long now?" Adams rubbed his bloodshot eyes and Comain twisted in his seat as he looked at the Colonel.

  “Three hours. He should have reported before this. He should have reported within the first ten minutes even if he did black-ou
t. Something’s wrong, Colonel. Curt wouldn’t do this if he could help it.”

  “No.” Adams rubbed his eyes again. “Is the ship on course?”

  “Tracking stations report that its take off was as per schedule. The observatories are reporting every fifteen minutes. As far as the ship itself is concerned everything is on the beam. If only Curt would answer.” Comain bit his thin lips and leaned towards the radio again.

  “Curt! Comain here. Come in, Curt! Make some sort of noise, damn you! Are you still alive?”

  The radio hummed with a smooth surge of power and outside, high on a slender tower, the beam antenna focused on the tiny point of the ship, swung a little as it followed the course of the gleaming speck.

  “He could be dead,” said Adams sombrely. “The free radiation could have got him, the weightlessness of free fall, anything. Well,” he shifted in his chair, “we can only hope that the automatics will bring the ship back again without him."

  “He isn’t dead,” insisted Comain savagely. “He couldn’t be dead. He . . .” He paused, his eyes behind their thick lenses widening as sound filtered from the humming radio. “Comain . . . Curt here . . . Ill . . . Answer.”

  “Curt!" The thin man’s hands fluttered as he adjusted the vernier dials, stepping up the beam power of the radio. “Speak up, man! Are you alright?”

  “I . . .” The radio blurred to a sudden wash of static, then, with almost shocking abruptness, the thin voice steadied, seemed to gain power, as if the speaker stood in the very same room as the tensely listening men.

  “Comain! Man it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “What happened, Curt? Why didn’t you answer sooner?” “Acceleration twisted a wire, threw the radio out of kilter, that or the radiation up here altered the capacity of a coil.

  ' I could hear you, but you didn’t seem to be bearing me.” “Right.” Comain threw the switches of three recording machines, and reached for a pad. “Let’s have it, Curt. You said that you were ill? Are you?”

  “Yes.” The pilot retched and the sound made the listening men glance uneasily at each other. “Nothing too serious—I hope. Free fall isn’t a picnic, Comain. At first it wasn’t too bad, probably the excitement kept me normal, but after a while I felt my stomach tie itself into knots and my last three meals are still floating around the cabin.”