A Time Appointed

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

On her maiden voyage to Venus, the space liner Cosmic Cloud encounters a mysterious voice speaking through the void. The language is alien-but it is realised that danger threatens. Hardly has a recording been sent to Earth for expert interpretation before a mysterious gong is heard in the space liner, followed by further nerve-shattering notes until, abruptly, the space liner is utterly destroyed. Eventually it is learned that a diabolical mechanism is buried somewhere on Venus, left behind by a long-vanished malign alien race, and at a time appointed it will destroy the whole Solar System. Three men and a girl travel to Venus in a desperate race against time to find and deactivate the doomsday device...

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 93

Sample

The Cosmic Cloud was some twenty-eight million miles out from Earth, one of the first of the giant space liners of 1990, travelling on her maiden voyage with Venus as her destination. This indeed was the first full-length interplanetary voyage which had been attempted by human beings, all previous efforts having been confined to small test vessels which had made the Moon and just beyond it their main target. Since space had proved to be entirely harmless as far as the Moon it had naturally been assumed by courageous pilots that there was nothing to fear in the depths which lay beyond the orbit of Earth’s satellite.

Between two hundred and forty thousand miles and twenty-eight million miles, however, there is a vast difference, and though he showed no visible sign of it Commander Lloyd Henderson of the Cosmic Cloud was more than anxious for the sixty-million-mile journey to Venus to be finished and done with. Not that anything untoward had happened in the void, or that anything unusual had presented itself—it was just that he had the natural uneasiness of one who carries the vast responsibility of taking some two hundred souls across the depths of space for the first time. For absolutely nothing was known about Venus, cloaked as she always was in her eternal blanket of cloud. The pioneer ships had never ventured this far, and Venus had only been selected now because it was obviously the one planet in the inner system which offered possibilities. Mars was plainly dead, at least as far as Earthly telescopic observations showed, and the Moon had already been proven by the pioneers to be completely useless except, perhaps, as a mid-journey fuelling station. As for Mercury, it was not even included in the list of planets worth visiting, for being so close to the Sun it had been written off as nothing more than a graveyard.

So Venus had been selected by the newly-formed Interplanetary Pioneering Corporation of Earth, and this was the first daring journey to what Earthlings had so long called “The Evening Star.”

“If only Venus were not such a damned mysterious planet I’d be a good deal happier,” Commander Henderson commented, when the twenty-eight million mile mark had been reached.

He was standing at the enormous bowed window in the control room of the vessel, his hands clasped behind him, his gaze directed towards that solitary goal which loomed ahead like a brightly gleaming tennis ball.

“The trouble is that nobody has ever been able to penetrate beneath those clouds, and all the improved telescopic systems of Earth have not devised any infra-red or other process which might enable us to penetrate the atmospheric blanket and see what lies below. I’m not at all happy, Mr. Jackson—not at all happy.”

Mr. Jackson, the first mate and navigator, gave his superior a brief glance. Jackson was short, wiry and extremely alert to his job, probably one of the best astronavigators to ever come out of the College of Interplanetary Physics. Henderson, on the other hand, was large, full necked, and the kind of man who always meant exactly what he said. Most of the men who formed the crew of this immense liner liked the captain, but they also knew he was not the kind of man to tolerate the slightest deviation from duty.

“I can’t see that we have anything particular to worry about, sir,” Jackson said after a moment’s thought. “It isn’t as if we had aboard this vessel a great number of women and children and uninitiated men—we’re carrying some of the best scientists the Earth has ever turned out, together with all the experts who are interested in interplanetary matters. If we happen to get into a tight corner when we reach Venus—or even before we get to the planet—we ought to have plenty of capable people around us to extricate ourselves from a jam. Anyway,” Jackson continued, studying Venus through the port, “I cannot see that we have anything unpleasant to expect on that planet. We know quite well that it is a world of torrential heat and possessing a day seven hundred and twenty hours long. Below that thick cloud blanket we ought to find something which resembles the Earth’s Carboniferous era——”

“Oh yes, yes, I know all about that,” Henderson interrupted impatiently. “That isn’t the side that worries me, Mr. Jackson. I’m thinking of the possibility of an alien type of life existing on Venus which may prove inimical to us. We’ve no reason for assuming that Venus does not possess life—rather the contrary in fact. And this journeying onwards to a world of which we know virtually nothing is proving a far bigger strain than I ever expected it would.”

“We’ll tackle it, sir, whatever happens,” Jackson said quietly, and turned back to the charts.

Just what was in Commander Henderson’s mind was not entirely clear, for he was anything but a nervous type of man. Actually the real trouble was an attack of “space neurosis”—as it would come to be known medically in later years, brought about by the extraordinary conditions existing in the void, conditions which made themselves evident in an immense depression of the spirits, an unexpected irritability of temperament, and a nervous fear of things quite unproven. It was nothing more than this, but since at this stage medical diagnoses of ailments brought about by interplanetary travel were not by any means perfect, it was impossible for Commander Henderson to know exactly what was the matter with him.

Half an hour later he went off duty, a still somewhat worried man. Halfway down the main corridor he glanced once into the huge solarium lounge wherein the various passengers were disporting themselves, passing the time as best they could and fighting the one gruelling drawback to space travel—monotony—by every means within their power. Practically everything that human ingenuity could devise to take the interest during the endless hours was aboard the ship in the form of private movie theatres, gymnasiums, radio television direct to Earth, games, and indeed every conceivable recreation and pastime. In the main however, as First Mate Jackson had observed, the passengers were made up of scientists, astronomers, and physicists from every quarter of the Earth; men and women who lived more for their profession than anything else and who, therefore, had that enviable gift of being able to withdraw into their own concentrations when boredom threatened.

Smiling rather grimly to himself, Commander Henderson went on his way to his own quarters, and before very long was stretched on his bunk doing his utmost to sleep. Sleep did not come very easily chiefly because of that strange worry in the back of his mind which demanded attention. He could not help wondering if perhaps his definitely psychic tendencies, which he had always known existed, were not trying to make themselves evident and warn him of an approaching danger. Then at last his commonsense overcame these cloudy and nebulous speculations and he fell asleep.

Back in the control room First Mate Jackson remained on duty, the two other members of the crew taking their orders from him, for it was during these periods that Jackson was Deputy Commander. Not that anything particular needed his attention at the moment. Outside there was the yawning void, with its endless scattering of brilliant stars—and ahead the imperceptibly growing silver ball of Venus. On the instrument panels the distance from Earth gradually increased from twenty-eight million to twenty-nine million, and at length to thirty million miles—and it was at this point that the calm, undisturbed journey towards the “Evening Star” was suddenly interrupted by the most incredible happening.

Into the control room over the ever-open radio circuit—left ever-open in case there was some urgent message to be received from Earth—there came a powerful voice speaking in a completely foreign language. What it said was quite impossible for Jackson and his fellow pilots to understand. All they could do was gaze at the speaker in blank amazement, realising as they did that this message was certainly not coming from Earth, but from some point in space. Automatically the tape recording equipment linked to the radio immediately started up when the voice began speaking, so that whatever the men missed, the instrument would be sure to take down.

For nearly fifteen minutes this extraordinary booming voice continued to speak, the diction uncannily clear in the dead quiet of the control room. Within the first minute Jackson recovered himself sufficiently to switch in the detectors linked into the radio apparatus, and what he beheld made him give a start of surprise, for beyond doubt the transmission was emanating from a source some thirty million miles directly ahead of them, which could only be Venus itself. He remained tautly listening and wishing he could understand as the message was given forth, then, some fifteen minutes later, as abruptly as it had started, it suddenly ceased again, and the quietness of the control room remained as before.

Jackson looked at his colleagues and they looked back at him. On each of their faces was the same blank look of enquiry for here was something phenomenal. Over thirty million miles of space, a very considerable distance for a radio transmission, had come a voice as clear as though it were in the next room, which in itself spoke of radio engineering of a very high degree, and on top of that there was the perfect enunciation of the voice which had given the message, which also proved that the speaker was highly educated, even though his language was completely foreign. In those few minutes Jackson and his colleagues realised that Venus was not perhaps the dead, cloudy world that it appeared to be, but evidently contained intelligent life of a very high order. So much Jackson weighed up, then he hurried from the control room to make his report to Commander Henderson.

Henderson, shaken out of sleep, listened in grim silence as Jackson related what had happened.

“We got it all down on the tape recorder, sir,” he finished. “I think you’d better come along immediately and see if you can make anything of the language. I certainly can’t!”

Henderson nodded and scrambled from his bunk. “Be with you in a moment.”

Jackson nodded briefly and hurried out of the room and back along the corridor. He found that by this time his two colleagues had already rewound the tape recording equipment back to the start and were listening to that voice once again booming forth its quite inexplicable communication. In the midst of it Commander Henderson arrived and also stood listening, the corners of his mouth dragged down and his eyes staring keenly at the open orifice of the tape recorder’s speaker.

“Is that in any language that you understand, sir?” Jackson asked glancing at him, but Henderson shook his head.

“No, it’s completely alien to me. I wonder if there is any chance of any of the passengers knowing what it means? We have plenty of linguists aboard—I’d better see what I can find out.”

He turned to hurry from the control room and then paused by the doorway, held by a most extraordinary sound. He was not the only one who heard it, even though he fancied at first that it was some quirk of his imagination. From the expressions on the faces of Jackson and the other two engineers it was plain that they too had noticed it, and it appeared to be coming from the cosmic radiation detector set high up above the main control panel. As a rule this cosmic detector was used for the locating of special vibrations, and indeed for whatever dangerous radiations t. . .