Erg Noor switched off the apparatus and turned to his companions.
“Our brothers and sisters who died in Parus will save us! Can’t you feel the strong arm of the man of Earth! There’s a supply of anameson on the ship and we’ve been given a warning of the mortal danger that threatens us. I have no idea what it is but it’s undoubtedly some alien form of life. If it had been elemental. Cosmic forces, they’d have damaged the ship and not merely killed the people, It would be a disgrace if we could not save ourselves now that we have been given so much help; we must take our discoveries and those of Parus back to Earth. The great work of those who perished at their posts, their half-century’s struggle against the Cosmos, must not have been in vain.”
“How do you propose to get the fuel on board without leaving the ship?” asked Kay Bear.
“Why without leaving the ship? You know that’s impossible and that we have to go “out and work outside. We’ve been warned and we’ll take the necessary steps.”
“I suppose you mean a barrage around the place where we’re going to work,” said biologist Eon Thai.
“Not only that, a barrage along the whole way between the two ships,” added Pour Hyss.
“Naturally! We don’t know what to expect so we’ll make the barrage a double one, a radiation and an electric wall. We’ll put out cables and have a path of light all the way. There’s an unused rocket standing behind Parus that contains sufficient energy for all the time we’ll have to work.”
Beena Ledd’s head dropped on to the table with a thud. The doctor and the second astronomer moved their heavy bodies with difficulty towards her.
“It’s nothing,” explained Louma Lasvy, “concussion and overstrain. Help me get Beena to bed.”
Even that simple task would not have been performed very quickly if mechanic Taron had not thought of adapting an automatic robot car. With the help of the car all the eight explorers were taken to their beds — if they did not rest in time, organisms that had not yet adapted themselves to new conditions would break down. At this difficult moment every member of the expedition was essential and irreplaceable.
Soon two universal automatic cars for transport purposes and road building were linked together and used to level the road between the two spaceships. Heavy cables were hung on both sides. Watch towers with a protective hood of thick silicoborum[15] were erected at each of the spaceships. In each tower an observer from time to time would send a fan-shaped bunch of death-dealing rays along the road from an impulse chamber. During the hours of work the powerful searchlights were kept going all the time. The main hatch in Parus’ keel was opened, some of the bulkheads were removed and four containers of anameson and thirty cylinders with ion charges were made ready to load on to the cars. It would be more difficult to load them on to Tantra. They could not open the spaceship the way Parus was opened and so allow whatever was engendered by the alien life of the planet, and which was probably lethal, to enter the ship. For this reason they only made the necessary preparations inside the ship but did not open the hatch; interior bulkheads were removed and containers of compressed air were brought from Parus. The plan was to blow a strong blast of air under high pressure down the shaft from the time the manhole was opened until the containers were loaded into Tantra. At the same time the hull of the vessel would be screened by a radiation cascade.
The expedition gradually grew accustomed to working in their “steel skeletons” and began to bear the triple weight somewhat more easily. The unbearable pain in all their bones that had begun as soon as they landed was also beginning to ease up.
Several terrestrial days passed and the mysterious “nothing” did not appear. The temperature of the surrounding atmosphere began to fall rapidly. A hurricane arose that increased in fury hour by hour. This was the setting of the black sun — the planet rotated and the continent on which the spaceship stood plunged into night. The convection currents, the heat given off by the ocean and the thick atmosphere prevented a sudden drop in temperature but towards the middle of the planetary “night” a sharp frost set in. The work continued with the heating systems in the spacesuits switched on. They had managed to get the first container out of Parus and transport it to Tantra when at “sunrise” there came a hurricane much fiercer than had been the one at “sunset.” The temperature rose rapidly above freezing point, a current of dense air brought with it excessive humidity and the sky was rent by endless lightnings. The hurricane became so fierce that the spaceship began to tremble under pressure of the terrific wind. The crew concentrated all their efforts on safely anchoring the container under Tantra’s keel. The fearful roar of the wind increased and there were dangerous whirling vortices on the plateau that closely resembled a terrestrial tornado. In the searchlight beam there appeared a huge whirlwind, a rotating column of water, snow and dust whose funnel rested on the low dark sky. The whirlwind broke the high-voltage cables and there were blue flashes caused by short circuits as the ends coiled up. The yellow light of Parus’ searchlight disappeared as though the wind had blown it out.
Erg Noor gave the order to stop work and take cover in the ship.
“But there is an observer there!” exclaimed geologist Beena Ledd, pointing to the faintly visible light of the silicoborum turret.
“I know, Nisa’s there and I’m going over there myself,” answered the commander.
“The current is cut off and ‘nothing’ has come into his own,” said Beena in serious tones.
“If the hurricane affects us it will no doubt also affect ‘nothing.’ I’m sure there’s no danger until the storm dies down. I’m so heavy in this world that I won’t be blown away if I crawl along the ground. I’ve been wanting to watch that ‘nothing’ from an observation turret for a long time.”
“May I come with you?” asked the biologist, jumping towards the commander.
“Come along, only remember, I won’t take anybody else! You need that….”
The two men crawled for a long time, hanging on to irregularities and cracks in the stones and keeping as far as possible out of the way of the whirlwinds. The hurricane did its best to tear them from the ground, turn them over and roll them along. Once it succeeded but Erg Noor managed to catch hold of Eon Thai as he rolled past, dropped flat on his stomach and caught hold of a big boulder with his hooked gloves.
Nisa opened the hatch of her turret and the two men crawled into the narrow space. It was quiet and warm inside, the turret stood firm, securely anchored against the storms their wisdom had foreseen. The auburn-headed astronavigator frowned but was glad to have companions. She frankly admitted that she was not looking forward to spending twenty-four hours alone in a storm on a strange planet.
Erg Noor informed Tantra of their safe arrival and the searchlight was turned off. The tiny lamp in the turret was now the only light in that kingdom of darkness. The ground trembled under the gusts of wind, the lightning and the passing whirlwinds. Nisa sat in a revolving chair with her back against the rheostat. The commander and the biologist sat at her feet on the round ledge formed by the base of the turret. In their spacesuits they occupied almost all the space inside the turret.
“I suggest we sleep,” came Erg Noor’s soft voice in the telephones. “It’s a good twelve hours to the black sunrise when the storm will die down and it will be warmer.”
15
Silicoborum — an amalgam of borum carbide and silicon to produce an extremely hard, transparent material (imaginary).