Space 1999 - Earthfall Page 33
“But Victor, how?”
Bergman shook his head, toying with the papers he had brought with him into the office, the sheets and graphs produced by the machines, the correlations, the data which had removed all doubt.
“The cosmic singularity,” mused Koenig, “An area in which anything could happen. Could those forces have produced another Earth? Another sun?”
“And another universe?” Bergman shook his head. “You’ve seen the stars, John, they are identical to those of our own continuum. The constellations are the same. I’ve checked a dozen stellar signposts: Rigel, Sirius, Antares, Procyon—all of them.”
And still the question remained.
“We’ve come back,” said Koenig. “From that alien universe we drifted in for twenty years. Back to our own solar system to orbit our own planet. Coincidence?”
“No, John.”
“Then what? Damn it, Victor, you’re the genius! At least make a guess.”
“That’s all it can ever be,” said Bergman. “For the reason that we can never be sure. But think of what happened. We were exposed to tremendous forces which, we thought, threw us from orbit and sent us drifting in space. It wasn’t our normal space and we were in a different universe, flung there by the conflict of tremendous energies, held there, perhaps, by our own accumulated inertial and kinetic forces. I am being crude, John, but the mathematics don’t exist to describe exactly what must have occurred. I can only use analogies.”
The pip of an orange, squeezed between finger and thumb, escaping the intolerable pressure in the only way it could. Springing out and away to a different place.
“The black hole,” said Koenig. “It strained the fabric of the universe we were in. Towards the last I felt a twisting, a peculiar movement.”
“We all felt it, John. And it was just that, a movement. Perhaps, if it hadn’t been for that cosmic singularity, we would have eventually returned anyway. When our accumulated energies had drained away and broken the bonds which held us. We were alien to that universe, John, an intruder. We never really belonged.”
Perhaps, but men had died in it, women too, and that made it a part of the human domain. Koenig rose from his desk and activated the screen within his office. It revealed the stars, coldly distant, arranged in patterns he now found strange. There was too much darkness, too wide a gap between the glittering points—two decades had made him accustomed to the close-set splendor of massed suns spaced in regular array.
And what had happened to the ubiquitous silver glow?
Gone with the world they had known and the bodies of those who had died on them. Lonely graves and, now, lonelier ghosts. If ghosts could roam that strange universe to stare mournfully at the alien stars.
Without turning he said, “We entered that other universe. We stayed there for twenty years. As accident forced us back into our own continuum. But, Victor, how the hell do we find ourselves orbiting the Earth?”
Bergman said, “Because we couldn’t have really left it.”
“What?” Koenig spun, his face savage. “Is that some kind of a joke?”
“An explanation—the only one which makes any kind of sense.” Bergman lifted a placating hand. “Think about it, John. If we had really been blasted from orbit how could we ever have returned to where we are now? It would have been impossible so, obviously, we maintained our position. We moved, yes, but into a different dimension. A universe which closed around us and which contained its own, physical laws. But, always, we remained relative to Earth.”
A planet which had changed.
The engines died, the Eagle turning back into an inert thing of artificial construction, a machine yielding the semblance of life to the lone figure it contained.
“Commander?”
“I’m all right, Paul.”
Slowly Koenig undid the restraints holding him in the command chair, pausing to sit and stare at the instruments before him, remembering what he had seen on the planet of his birth.
Endless deserts, terrain scarred and gaping with fissures, canyons, raw gulleys, plains pocked with craters, raw peaks thrusting where once had been valleys. The coasts were a litter of skeletal buildings tumbled like rubbish for miles inland; rust painting smears on broken concrete, mounds of rubble wreathed with trailing vines, roads twisting like insane strands of wool. The rivers were skeins of silver and forests held a rich greenness.
A contrast to the crumbled ruin of cities, the broken stumps of buildings which rested like rotten teeth in close array, the fuming pits of noxious vapors, the smouldering fires of lambent volcanoes, the ash and lava and scars where once had reared the proud handiwork of Man.
“John?” Helena had replaced Morrow on the screen. “Is anything wrong?”
“No.”
“You took so long. Alan said you wanted to make a circuit alone.”
“He’s back?”
“Of course.”
“Did he—never mind.” The conversation was stupid—within minutes they could be talking face to face. “I’ll meet you in the Observation Room.”
It was too crowded, the voices of those watching the misted ball of Earth, too loud, too irritating. Koenig led the way to a smaller compartment, one restricted to those engaged in astronomical investigations. It was empty.
As he closed the door he said, “Helena, Earth is a ruin.”
“So Alan hinted, but how, John? Why? If we never really left our orbit then what caused the destruction?”
“We did.”
“But—”
“There was an energy imbalance which triggered off the movement of continental plates. They had been poised on the brink of such a shift for some time and we provided the final impetus. California, the Phillipines, Japan—all took a beating.”
As had other parts of the world. Earthquakes of a violence previously unknown. Volcanoes erupting with the force of nuclear missiles. Ash which had risen to cover the sky, falling in a red-hot rain, causing fires, adding to the overall hell. Then would have come the tsunami—the gigantic tidal waves which had lashed the coasts with the massed fury and weight of the oceans. And there had been more.
“The antimatter,” she whispered. “Some of it most have got through.”
The antimatter and the stocks of atomic missiles, the reactor piles themselves, all adding to the radioactive storm of killing, burning destruction.
“Hell,” said Helena. “It must have been literal hell down there. John, did you—”
“I saw smoke,” he interrupted, anticipating her question. “The smoke rising from fires.”
“Camp fires? John, answer me! Is anyone living down there? Did they manage to survive?”
“Something did.”
He fell silent, thinking, remembering what he had seen. The oddly shaped mounds clinging to the sides of mountains, the tremendous cloud of gossamer holding liquid glitters, the masses of fungi, the ribbon-like thing which had rippled and had turned into stone even as he watched.
And the castle—how could he ever forget the castle?
“It was an illusion,” said Helena when he told her. “It had to be.”
“Alan saw it too.”
“Of course. A fretted scrap of rock set on a peak—any romantic would associate it with a castle. But did you see life, John? Human life?”
“Only the smoke from fires, and what could have been villages and something which could have been a town.”
“Which means they’ve organized after a fashion. Well, they’ve had twenty years in which to do it.”
“Not twenty, Helena—two hundred.”
“What?”
“Two hundred years,” he repeated, patiently. “The forests gave us the clue. Oaks just don’t grow that fast and large areas are covered with oaks. We took samples and they test out to almost two centuries.”
“But, John, we’ve only been gone twenty years!”
“Remember Einstein?”
“Relativity,” she said, slowly. “But for God’s sake h
ow fast did we travel in that alien universe?”
Bergman, perhaps, could tell them, working out the ratio of time-dilation to velocity and arriving at a figure which now had no relevance. They had left and they had returned and two hundred years had passed on Earth while they had been absent.
“Rip van Winkle,” said Helena. “He fell asleep for years while we—two centuries!”
Time for scars to have healed and the shaken world to have gained some form of stability. Time for the remnants of destroyed civilizations to have banded into viable groups. To have enabled them to arrange some kind of life-style in order to ensure their survival. To have sparred them to begin again the long, painful climb towards the stars.
And time for monsters to be born, mutants, strange and fearful creatures spawned from the depths.
“If there are people living on Earth they’ll need help, John. We can give it to them. We have the skill and technology. We have the knowledge and how to apply it. We can teach and guide and help them avoid the mistakes we made in the past and the suffering which accompanied those mistakes.”
The trials and errors, the deluded prophets and cruel idols, the bonds of superstition and the intolerance of ignorance, the stubborn conviction of right and the tyranny of false gods.
“A new world,” mused Helena, and turned so as to look up into his face. “The children could find a new life there. Have grass to run in, rivers to swim in. Breed animals and watch their children grow tall and strong. Learn what it’s like to live in the open with the sky for a roof and the Moon as a lantern.” Her hand closed on his arm. “Home, John. Home!”
One they had lost and found again—and now would make wholly their own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and educated in London, E. C. Tubb has been writing steadily for the past thirty years, his work also appearing in many translations and on continental television and radio. He has written widely on the humanistic aspects of space flight and is often consulted on technical problems in science fiction.
An ex-editor, E. C. Tubb co-founded the British Science Fiction Association; he won the short story award at the Trieste Festival and was chosen to be guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Convention at Heidelberg. His studies embrace astronomy, physics and extra-sensory perception while his hobbies include photography, ancient weapons and archaeology.
Table of Contents
SPACE: 1999 EARTHFALL
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR