Less than half the size of Earth, and completely devoid of atmosphere, it was a ball of rock and dust which patrolled a lonely orbit so far out that its parent sun appeared as little more than a bright star casting barely perceptible shadows in an inert landscape. And when that sun vanished it made very little difference to the planet. Its surface became a little colder and a little darker, but the cooling stresses were not great enough to cause anything as spectacular as movements of the crust. Nothing stirred in the blackness, except for infrequent puffs of dust from meteor strikes, and the uneventful millennia continued to drag by as they had always done.
Using its radar fans like the feelers of a giant insect, the Bissendorf groped its way into orbit around the invisible sphere which was the dead world.
The ship was in the form of three equal cylinders joined together, with the central one projecting forward from the other two by almost half its length. The command deck, administrative and technical levels, living quarters and workshops were contained in the central cylinder. This exposed position meant the inhabited regions of the vessel could have been subjected to an intense bombardment during high speed flight, when — due to the ship’s own velocity — even stationary motes of interstellar dust registered as fantastically energetic particles. The problem had been solved by using the same magnetic deflection techniques which guided the particles into the ramjet’s thermonuclear reactors. Both the Bissendorf’s flux pumps shaped their magnetic lines of force into the form of a protective shield around which the charged particles flowed harmlessly into the engines.
An inherent disadvantage of the system was that a starship could never coast at high speed — with the flux pumps closed down the crew would quickly have been fried in self-induced radiation. Communications with a ship which was under way were also precluded, and under these conditions even radar sensing could not be employed. The approach to the dark planet had been made at modest interplanetary speeds, however, and the Bissendorf was able to proceed by using its main drive in short bursts, between which it was possible to run position checks. Because it was designed for exploration work in unknown planetary systems, the vessel was further equipped with conventional nuclear thrusters and a limited amount of stored reaction mass which gave it extra capability for close manoeuvring. The task of slipping into stable orbit was therefore accomplished quickly and efficiently, even though the target planet remained invisible to the Bissendorf’s crew.
It took only one pass to enable the long-range sensors and recording banks to answer all of Garamond’s questions.
“This is pretty disappointing,” Sammy Yamoto said as he examined the glowing numerals and symbols of the preliminary analysis. “The planet has no atmosphere now and appears never to have had one at any time in its past. Its surface is completely barren. I was hoping for the remains of some kind of plant life which would have told us whether the radiation from the primary was cut off suddenly or over a period of years.”
Chief Science Officer O’Hagan said, “We can still do a lot with samples of dust and rock from the surface.”
Yamoto nodded without enthusiasm. “I guess so, but botanical evidence would have been so precise. So nice. With nothing but inorganic evidence we’re going to have margins of error of what? A thousand years or more?”
“On an astronomical timescale that’s not bad.”
“It’s not bad, but it’s not…”
“Is it the opinion of the group,” Garamond put in, “that a manned descent is still worth while?”
O’Hagan glanced around the other science officers who were anchored close to the information display, then shook his head. “At this stage it would be enough to drop a robolander and take three or four cores. Somebody can always come back if the cores prove to be of exceptional interest, but I don’t hold out much hope.”
“Right — it’s decided we send down one probe.” Garamond used his end-of-meeting voice. “Get it down there and back again as quickly as possible, and include flares and holorecording gear in the package — I want to be able to present certain people with visible evidence.”
Denise Serra, the physicist, raised her eyebrows. “I heard the Starflight Information Bureau was propagating some fantasy about a beautiful civilization being snuffed out in its prime, but I didn’t believe it. I mean, who would swallow an idea like that?”
“You’d be surprised,” Garamond told her ruefully. “I’ve been learning that there are different kinds of naivety. We’re subject to one kind — it’s an occupational hazard associated with spending half your life cut off from the big scene — but there are others just as dangerous.”
“That may be so, but to believe that the Clowns created Orbitsville!”
“Genuine belief isn’t required — the story is only a formula which allows certain manipulations to be carried out. We all know the square root of minus one is an unreal quantity, and yet we’ve all used it when it suited us to do so. Same thing.”
Denise’s eyes twinkled. “It isn’t the same.”
“I know, but my statement was an example of the general class of thing we were talking about.”
“Neat footwork.” Denise laughed outright and, for no reason which was immediately apparent to him, Garamond suddenly became aware of how much he enjoyed simply looking at her. He had accepted the phrase ‘easy on the eyes’ as pure metaphor but now was surprised to discover that letting his gaze rest on the physicist’s pale sensitive face actually produced a soothing sensation in his eyes. The phenomenon entranced and then disturbed him. When the meeting broke up he went to his own quarters and devoted several hours to his principal spare-time occupation of recording television interviews for Colbert Mason. The reporter, after his initial difficulties on Orbitsville, had established himself in a position of relative strength, and had obtained an office in Beachhead City from which he sent back a prolific stream of news stories for syndication on the Two Worlds. Garamond cooperated with him as much as he could, mainly because in his estimation his personal fame was still his family’s best protection against Elizabeth Lindstrom.
There were times when he was almost persuaded by Aileen that he was wrong in his suspicions of the President, but against that there were persistent rumours that she had slain a member of her domestic staff who had found her son’s body. Garamond continued to maintain his defences. The system was that Mason supplied him with tridi tapes of recorded questions and when it was convenient Garamond used his own equipment to fill in his answers and comments. On a number of occasions Mason had confessed that he was making a fortune from the arrangement and had proposed sharing the profits but Garamond had refused to accept any money, stipulating only that Mason obtain for him the widest possible exposure. It appeared that this objective was being achieved because there was a growing clamour for the discoverer of Lindstromland to make a personal return to Earth.
Garamond spent most of the current session giving suitable reasons for not being able to return and in describing, in precise details, what had been learned about the invisible planet. Assuming the material would be safely relayed to the Two Worlds by Mason and broadcast on the planet-wide networks, he had gone a long way towards killing any suggestion that the Clowns or any other beings connected with Orbitsville had obliterated an entire civilization.
He stored the tapes away carefully, again wondering at the great latitude Elizabeth was permitting him, and fastened himself into his bed with the intention of catching up on his sleep. The slow-drifting cubes of coloured radiance merged and shimmered in the air above him, creating hypnotic patterns. Once more there came the idea that he might be completely wrong about Elizabeth Lindstrom, and he found himself wishing it were possible to discuss the subject emotionlessly and intellectually with his wife. There would be, he decided sleepily, no communications problem with a woman like Denise Serra who shared his background and his interests, and who produced the curiously pleasant sensation in his eyes when he…