Life at the Station had ceased to hold any drama. The only enemies were boredom - a psychic inertia - and the innate weakness of the human element. Reading and samplings, data analysis and stereotyped daily radio reporting filed the long bleak hours. Suddenly they lost all contact with the outside. No radio...No television...No physical contact with patrolling ships... Nothing... Their universe had contracted until life was bounded by the beryllium alloy fuselage of the Station. Martia, the assistant astro-physicist, woke from a strangely deep sleep to find herself unable to get out of her cabin. None of the others could reach her... When the door was finally cut away Martia had vanished. One by one other crew members and scientific personnel disappeared until Kersh, the radio-operator, found himself alone on the vast echoing station...
Release date:
July 31, 2014
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
320
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CAPTAIN KERIOT looked at his reflection in the mirror with a certain amount of mildly amused indifference. At a rough estimate he supposed that ninety per cent of his hair had gone. The domed head was high, and the lack of cranial hair, the complete lack of hirsute coverage in the occipital region, was compensated for to some extent by the thickness of the eyebrows. They stood on the bone ridges like two hairy caterpillars making their way slowly but surely towards a succulent plum. Keriot’s nose was aquiline, Romanesque, and the eyes on each side of it dark and thoughtful. There was a searching quality in those eyes. They seemed to be forever inspecting, superintending, looking, if not for trouble, certainly for something that was out of alignment. Keriot allowed his gaze to travel down to the thin, iron grey line of the moustache. There was a meticulously neat quality about it that reflected the entire personality of the man himself. The mouth hid beneath the moustache; every individual hair, looked as though it was growing in accordance with a predestined pattern. The whole appearance of the face was ovaloid, but the upper area, brow and forehead, was wider in proportion than the chin. A roll of fat was developing under it, on the lines of a violinist’s instrument holder, but Keriot was taking the evading action recommended by the general guides to health and appearance that are so beloved of men in late middle age. It was one of the captain’s finer idiosyncrasies, one of his small, personal vanities.
Keriot half closed the clear, intelligent eyes beneath the heavy brows, and weighed up the whole of his reflection. A gentleman of the old school, he thought to himself. It was what he had set out to be. He felt that, as far as appearance, at any rate, was concerned, he had succeeded …
Kersh picked up his transistorised extension signalling unit and left the radio cabin. His mind was far from the mathematical precision of electrical engineering at that moment. Kersh was deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. His mind had plummeted down inside itself until the essential aspects of his day to day routine aboard the VQ9 had vanished. He was engrossed in the development of his own metaphysical philosophy. There was something of the visionary quality of Plato in Kersh’s intense, sensitive face. His hair was as black as night. It went back from a high, broad forehead in midnight waves. The brows were thick and dark. almost meeting above the bridge of the nose. The eyes were deep set and full of the thought of the finest minds of a hundred centuries; Aristotle lived there in Kersh’s memory. Dryden, Milton and Pope, John Stuart Mill, and a host of others of that calibre too numerous to name. Not only the philosopher but the poet lived in the mind behind those sensitive features. The sonnets of a Shakespeare, the word music of Wordsworth, and a hundred more, lurked in the deep caverns of Kersh’s memory. Beneath the finely chiselled nose and high cheekbones, the mouth was full, and sensitive. Kersh was a man in the fullest and most vital sense of the word. His philosophy and his poetry had not eviscerated him, had not robbed him of his human qualities. He was a philosopher, but his philosophy dealt with life itself in real terms. He was a poet, but his cantos and stanzas were involved in the fabric of the full blooded everyday world …
Cray picked up the microphone of the auto-log and began intoning the records of the daily bulletin. He spoke in an almost mechanical tone. His words followed one another like components on a conveyor belt; each seemed identical. Now and again the conveyor belt would stop, as Cray took another report card from the pack in front of him and began summarising the information it contained. In his own opinion, at least, he had the most important job on the ship. The function of the XQ9, and the other space stations like her—great hollow wheels from Earth revolving in alien skies—was to record. Even the captain was, in a sense, subservient to the records officer, though Cray, despite his superficial cleverness, his unscrupulous ambition and his general shallowness, would have hesitated before trying conclusions with Keriot. He prided himself on being a blunt man, a man who dealt in facts and figures; a man to who common sense was a kind of religion and to whom everyday life was an end, not merely a means. Cray finished the last of his reports, replaced the microphone on its hook, and stood for a moment deciding whether to take his coffee break, or to go in search of Martia, the assistant astro-physicist. He decided on the coffee, and his rather cruel mouth parted in a kind of smile. There was something acquisitive about the ferrety little teeth half-hidden by the semi-parted lips. His nose was like the questing trunk of a hungry elephant. There were lines round the corners of his eyes that seemed too numerous for a man of his comparative youth. They were cunning lines, and the eyes were deeper set even than Kersh’s, they seemed to look out like furtive saboteurs from vantage points above important installations, due to be wrecked …
Martia, the assistant astro-physicist, put down her spectroscope and wrote four lines of beautifully neat, concise notes with a small, steel-tipped stylo, held in an exquisitely dainty hand. There was a very pale, almost Eastern tan to the hand, a tan which combined fittingly with the Oriental cast of feature. Martia had jet black hair of fascinating length, piled high on the top of her head and pinned neatly into position. Her mouth was full, wide and generous, her face and features slightly up-tilted in the traditional Eastern pattern; her brows were fine and very dark; her slanting almond eyes were full of mystery. There was depth there, and artistry; but a kind of secretive quality in her gave her the air of an eternal Eve. The pretty little ears, were very close to her head, and her teeth were as white and even as a row of cultured pearls. She seemed to smile inscrutably as she worked and the smile was as alluring as the beckoning hand of the semi-legendary Cleopatra. Martia took another look with the spectroscope, added a line to her notes, and decided that it was time for some refreshments. She covered the spectroscope carefully and made her way out of the astro-physics laboratory towards the canteen. Half way along the corridor she encountered the burly figure of Ross. He was in his early twenties, the youngest man aboard the XQ9; dark hair, parted on the left and growing low over his wide forehead. The forehead was slightly too wide for its height. Ross’s features were very thick and heavy; he had a square jaw, and a nose that had been broken in a college Rugby match, years before. His ears protruded a little more than was fashionable because of the ministrations they had received from a fellow student’s glove during a boxing tournament. Ross had been his university heavyweight champion not long since. It had been a toss up in fact, whether he made a career of cosmonautics—which he had ostensibly trained for—or boxing, which he rather thought he preferred, but which was an even more precarious profession than space travel.
There was something reliable about Ross; the squareness of his face mirrored the squareness of his character. He was not over endowed intellectually—he had left college with a Third—but at least he had graduated. That, as far as he was concerned, was all that really counted. It enabled him to take up work in the service, and he had no particular ambitions for promotion; he didn’t really want the responsibility of being a captain. He was powerful and practical, and his flair for general maintenance made him an ideal handyman. His size and general affability made him popular with Keriot and the other crew members.
Cray sneered occasionally, when he dared, when he thought that Ross didn’t fully understand the implications of his remarks, and on these occasions Ross grew a little cold, and his square face set like the face of a statue of Hercules. More than once he had wondered what to do about Cray, but the records officer outranked him considerably, and on this new assignment Ross did not particularly want a major offence booked against him by blacking Cray’s eye, much as he would have liked to. Apart from his general maintenance work his special responsibility was the hydroponics section, and as he worked among the small plants and the chlorophyll tanks that kept the station’s oxygen supply constant, he thought of the responsibility of the job. If the chlorophyll became diseased, the XQ9 would turn into a beryllium coffin for six in no time flat!
Beth, the station’s chief astro-physicist, was an attractive young Jamaican. Her coffee coloured skin and dark brown eyes set off the black waves of her strong wiry hair. Warm, and generous, by nature it was not always easy to remember when you looked at her that this girl was near genius, despite her youth. She had already published five books which had become definitive editions. There was nothing condescending or patronising about her, and yet, if anyone could have been excused for intellectual snobbery it was she.
She was, in fact, so Ross understood, only aboard the XQ9 to continue some original research. He was also under the impression that she was planning another astro-physics textbook. It was a subject which fascinated him, but he was realist enough to know that it required a higher I.Q. than his to get anywhere in that field. With his realistically practical streak, Ross had decided to stick to hydroponics.
The soft tones of the coffee buzzer made themselves heard throughout the ship, and the personnel made their way rather gratefully towards the central rest room which they normally referred to as a canteen. Keriot arrived first, took coffee from the auto dispenser, and grimaced rather angrily as a sudden fault in the pseudo grav spilled hot brown fluid on his immaculate shirt cuff. Beth produced a square of clean white linen from the side of the auto dispenser and handed it to him.
“Thank you,” Keriot wiped the shirt cuff carefully and dropped the linen square into the auto laundry receptacle.
“Anything interesting to report?” It was a routine question as far as the captain was concerned.
“Experiment 219 is coming along on the right lines, I think,” said the Jamaican girl.
“Pleased to hear it, very pleased. I can’t tell you how glad we are to have you with us, though I have said it before.”
“I am finding the experience most interesting, thank you.” Kersh strode in with his transistorised extension until depending from a thick plastic strap around his neck.
“Good morning, captain.”
“Morning, Kersh; anything?”
The captain’s left eyebrow arched itself interrogatively.
“Nothing unusual.” Kersh had a deep, powerful, sensitive voice, it seemed to go particularly well with his face. It was the kind of voice a man like Kersh ought to have had, thought Keriot, a tenor, or even a baritone, would not have suited Kersh. The intensity of that face demanded a rich bass.
Cray entered from the other side.
“Pass me a coffee, Kersh, lad.”
It wasn’t the remark so much as the way he made it that angered the radio operator. He was not mature enough to ignore the studied insult in the apparently innocuous words. He fetched a coffee cup from the dispenser and handed it over without so much as a smile or a word of greeting.
“You’re looking a bit glum this morning! What’s the matter? Work getting you down? Playing on your nerves, or something, eh?”
“It’s not the work.”
“Some of the people, perhaps?”
He looked at Cray meaningfully, the records officer laughed.
“I think I’ll mention you in despatches,” he said “‘The radio officer’s nerves seemed aff. . .
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