“No,” Jerome breathed. “No, no, no!”
He backed away from the screen, which now showed the remaining two astronauts bending over the inert figure of Marmorc, and kept moving without looking around—guided by a radar-like awareness of his surroundings—until his hands encountered metal projections. Moving as in a dream, he turned and drove the engineer’s key attached to his belt into the lock of the tunnel door. It rotated easily. He threw the dogging lever, hauled the door open a short way and squeezed through the gap into the tunnel which ran from the terminal chamber to the surface.
The single globe in the tunnel roof splayed light into the dimness of the chamber, causing the nearest Dorrinians to turn in his direction.
Jerome slammed the door with all his strength and dogged it shut. This part of the tunnel was only about forty metres in length and ascended steeply to the surface. Jerome had not been in it before, but he knew that it contained two further airtight doors, for safety, and that the section beyond the nearer of them had been evacuated. He ran up the slope to the door, clamping the faceplate of his helmet down as he went, and had to stab three times with his key before managing to guide it into the lock of the equalizer valve. Air whistled through the valve as he twisted it to the open position.
He unlocked the dogging lever, threw it and—unable to restrain himself—tried to drag the door open at once. Still clamped in place by air pressure differential, it resisted his efforts. Jerome let go of the handle, suddenly fearful of rupturing his glove, and forced himself to remain motionless while the equalizer valve did its work. The ten or twelve seconds that it took passed with nightmarish slowness, and in the nightmare he was overtaken and brought down many times by pursuing Dorrinians. When the sound of escaping air became inaudible he pulled the door open and ran up the incline to the one which formed the end of the tunnel proper.
This time the rush of air was less violent when he opened the valve, the pressure in the tunnel having been halved. He began to feel safer, knowing that the door to the terminal chamber now could not be opened until every Dorrinian beyond it had sealed his vacuum suit. He opened the final door, crouched down and stepped through into a small cell which had been hewn into dark basalt. In its roof was a ribbed panel of dull plastic which closely resembled the surrounding rock. He put his hands on the panel and pushed upwards. It lifted easily and slid away to one side, and he found himself looking into a black and star-seeded sky.
He climbed up out of the cell and stood up on a gently sloping crown of rock, the cuboidal cracking of which had effectively disguised the tunnel entrance hatch. The scene before him was exactly what he had observed from the underground chamber, all its elements assembled on a natural stage.
Most distant was the complex boxy shape of the Quicksilver, and close to it was the mirrored metal of the decoy which the Dorrinians had assembled on the surface at such a great cost in human lives. In the centre of the arena the two astronauts were kneeling by their fallen companion, and closest to Jerome—flanked by two skull-shaped boulders—was an insignificant-looking white pebble containing the soul of a beleaguered race.
The whole, with its background of scarps and crater walls, was starkly lit by the paring of the Sun’s disc which blazed on the horizon, and low in the sky was a twinned speck of blue-white brilliance. In spite of its remoteness, the Earth– Moon system was an integral part of the tableau. Not only was it the ultimate goal for Jerome and every Dorrinian, it was the emplacement from which Belzor, the malign superman, had struck down a chief actor in the drama which was being enacted. Jerome visualized him somewhere in the white wilderness of the Antarctic, perhaps lying on his back in a thermal cocoon, his unblinking gaze fixed on Mercury as he drove a lance of psychic power through millions of kilometres of space…
Tranced and bemused, Jerome replaced the hatch behind him and stepped down off the dome of rock. He felt no sensation in his body or limbs—he had become a pair of eyes, a discorporate being floating through a dream landscape. The white pebble containing the Thabbren was just ahead, calling to him. He picked it up and dropped it into the thigh pocket of his right leg and continued walking towards the Terran astronauts.
Their attention was concentrated on Marmorc as they began to lift the body, and Jerome was only a few paces away when one of them turned his head and saw him. The astronaut released Marmorc and sprawled backwards, cowering away from Jerome. His mouth was wide open, and in the airless silence Jerome was slow to realize the man was screaming. The other astronaut was on his feet and backing away, his hands outstretched as though to ward off a blow.
Jerome, recovering the ability to empathize with his own kind, suddenly understood that he had given the two men the worst shock they were ever likely to experience. They had just completed a three-month voyage to an alien world and had been in a state of high anxiety over their crewmate—and if there was anything which was not supposed to happen it was the sudden appearance of a humanoid figure in a strange design of spacesuit. Jerome took a step backwards and raised his hands, hoping to convey reassurance, then he realized he was beginning to hear the laboured breathing of the two men. The button-sized Dorrinian transceiver in his helmet was tuning itself to the frequency used by the astronauts’ suit radios.
“I’m from Earth,” he said quickly, grateful that micro-communication was one of the fields in which the Dorrinians excelled. “Everything is all right. I’m like you. I’m from Earth.”
“The hell you are,” one of the astronauts gasped. “Stay away from me.”
“I know you’ve had a shock—and I apologize—but please take some time to think.” Jerome paused, becoming aware of a problem he would have to solve within the next minute. “Look, I speak English, and I even know your names. You are Hal Buxton and Carl Teinert—although I don’t know which is which. Take a minute and think about it.”
There was a period of silence during which the recumbent astronaut slowly got to his feet. The two men faced Jerome warily, and he prayed they would not be able to think too logically about his words. By identifying them as Buxton and Teinert he had revealed foreknowledge that the dead astronaut was Marmorc/Baumanis.
“Okay, we’ve thought about it,” the taller of the two men said. “Now tell us who the hell you are and how you got here.”
Everything that had happened to Jerome since that prehistoric morning when, in all his innocence and ignorance, he had driven to Pitman’s house sped through his mind…strange images and outlandish concepts blurring in a praxinoscope of memory. The universe was waiting for him to speak.
“My name is Pavel Radanovik,” he said steadily. “I hold the rank of captain in the air force of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
The Americans glanced at each other, then scanned the horizon. “Where’s your ship?”
“What remains of it is lying in a ravine about twenty kilometres from here. It developed a guidance fault at a late stage of the descent. My three comrades died in the crash.”
“I never heard anything so…” The American who was doing the talking swung his arms out and let them fall to his side, conveying his exasperation. “And how did you get here?”
“I walked, of course,” Jerome said. “I was able to carry spare oxygen cylinders—enough to get me here—then I waited for you to arrive.”
“Where are the cylinders?”
“I was discarding them as they went down. I’m wearing the last one now. You got here just in time.”