Sundog

by Brian Ball

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

Synopsis

The Solar System was imprisoned. Locked in a vast, invisible screen. Set there by something - or someone - but no one knew why... And man, banned from the stars, turned inward to himself, to a world of carefully controlled thoughts and ideas, a world where it was forbidden to dream...

Release date: June 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 216

Sample

UNTIL he saw the reflection in the blanked-off screen, it was just another trip to log up: his seventy-first.

He was two days out from Pluto on the run to Moonbase. The ship was carrying—Dod caught himself wondering what it was carrying. Immediately, he checked the thought. It was no concern of his; he was a space-pilot. He felt vaguely uncomfortable at catching himself in what was almost an error-like way of thought.

When the time came for his afternoon’s totex session, Dod’s big face creased into a happy grin. He had chosen a historical romance, one he had watched a dozen times already, even though he knew it was a re-hash of a pre-totex epic and not a good one at that.

He lowered his big athletic body into the totex globe. What more could you want out of life? He felt the suckers gently place themselves on to his forehead. As the music mellowed and the hero received his orders, he smiled a wry critic’s smile. What the Companies had ordered the rock-hard hero to do was impossible—he would succeed, of course, but still it was impossible.

The old epics had harsh, simple outlines, he thought, suited to their immense themes. But they could have got their sets right.

The mock-ups of the moon were all wrong. As an interested and expert selenologist, he knew that the hero’s feats were impossible; the very buildings shown were quite out of keeping with the ruins he himself had explored, and on which he was an authority of interplanetary repute.

The hero scrambled from ledge to ledge, burrowing into soft dust when the tracery of primitive atomic cannon shimmered just above his antennae. And when the heroine appeared, her space-suit was frilled.

Still, thought Dod, the story was compelling. The old ’texs about early Company days were preferable to the fantasies about the Aliens. The ’tex makers had good material to work on. After all, the Company was a noble conception. It was worth fighting for. And dying for.

He let himself slip into the story. At last the hero blasted down the opposition by spectacularly bringing a lunar mountain fifty miles high crashing down on to the cannon’s site with a skilfully lobbed T-bomb—although how he detonated it was glossed over. And when the Companies’ patrols got through, the hero presented them with a scarcely damaged Luna City. Loyalty to the Companies brought fame, wealth, and the girl in the frilly space-suit who also happened to be a Fleet-Admiral’s daughter. Dod swept her into his arms and felt the warm surging music rising to a mellow crescendo around him.

His eyes were shining as the blast of sound mellowed into the prescribed interval of gentle Company march-music. When he was automatically roused and lifted from the machine, he was ready for another spell of duty, happy, inspired, confident, and reliable. It had been like this for as long as he could remember. What more could you want?

Without another sigh over the heart-stirring ’tex, Dod crossed the wide cabin to the control area. He blanked off the first screen as part of a routine check. As he was about to pass on to the next screen, a shimmer of light attracted his eye. He flicked the lever which blanked off the second of the battery of screens. His feet turned to go to the third screen, but he found himself dragged to the first screen.

Something shone back brightly in the screen.

And it was blanked off.

He switched it back on, and the screen at once filled with its usual image, the coiled mass of the multi-phased coaxial plasma engine.

There was something wrong with the screen. He switched it off again. The light returned.

Then Dod began to feel afraid. For, as his head moved slightly, so did the shimmering light in the screen.

Frantically, he moved from screen to screen, peering into each darkened surface, but the light moved with him.

Fear bit into his stomach, sending lancing thrusts of cold pain into his head. Between spasms, he suddenly thought of the clear mirror-like reflecting surfaces of the walls opposite.

That was when he first saw the halo for what it was.

He stared, shut his eyes, opened them, blinked, and stared again; he refused to accept what he saw. It was a halo.

It glowed gold like a sunset over the Baltic, shimmering with energy. In diameter, he noted, it was about the size of his skull, and it stood—hovered, he thought in panic—about six inches above his head. An insignificant part of his mind tried to examine the halo dispassionately, but the waves of panic surged over it, and he went racing about the cabin, peering into every reflecting surface, hoping against hope that it would disappear. He finished up in front of the screen he had first blanked off.

It was still there.

Gingerly, he attempted to touch it, but before his fingers reached the shimmering circle of light, he stopped, appalled by the calamity that had overtaken him.

He was different from the other Companions. Therefore he was not like them. So he was in Error. He was ruined.

Dod’s amiable face puckered into dismay; he slid to the floor and wept. Then the uncomfortable needle of inquisitiveness he had felt when he was examining the halo began to irritate him again. How could a light operate without a source? It had to be projected from somewhere. How could—it was mad!

Mad! He was mad! Pure relief filled him, flooding through him so that he laughed aloud. He was space-struck!

There was no halo! It was only a case of space-sickness! A couple of tablets should cure that!

Doubt countered the hopes that filled him as he crossed to the health-area for the prescribed tablets.

Suppose he had a severe attack of space-sickness?

He had seen the space-stricken in every port from Moonbase to Pluto—the shamblers, the arrogant, the idiots. Nothing could rid them of the monsters they thought pursued them, the extra limbs they believed they had grown, or the splendid delusions of empire and wisdom they supposed they possessed.

Was he going to join them? Already he was in Error for being different. Suppose the tablets didn’t work?

He swallowed them hastily, noting the proud Dog Company crest stamped on them; he felt a warm glow of loyalty as he took them. The Company cared for its Companions. And hallucinations were a feature of space-flight. Maybe Psych would overlook one slight Error—his first, he thought, more happily. The halo should have gone by now.

He found difficulty, however, in crossing to the nearest reflecting surface. He closed his eyes and felt his way to the bright wall. When I open my eyes, he told himself, it will be gone. Then all I have to do is to enter a report in the log; and that will be the end of it.

He opened his eyes. The halo glowed back healthily. He moved his head. The halo moved, too. He nodded his head forward. The halo followed his movement. It was a hollow circle, he saw.

Dod leant against the wall, feeling sick. He was space-struck. Badly. Now he was one with the clowns that the tourists made a point of seeing. He thought he had a halo.

‘Halo,’ he breathed. ‘Halo.’

Again there was that unnatural flicker of scientific interest in the apparition; to his surprise, Dod felt panic receding, and curiosity replacing it. Almost, he thought, as if he were a trained scientist himself.

He checked with the small wordbank the ship carried. ‘A disc of light surrounding the head of a saint; a luminous circle investing a planet or star.’

Numbness and depression returned as he realised that his successful career was at an end. What form would his delusion take? Would he imagine himself as a planet? And what was a saint?

Despair overwhelmed him; he felt too despondent to care what the apparition meant. There was no sign yet that he felt like entering into a planetary orbit, or acting like a saint—whatever that was—but he felt sure it would not be long before he started acting irrationally.

The voyage’s days stretched ahead like years.

Somehow they passed. Dod wondered how any thousands of times he had looked into mirror surfaces, miserably wishing to be his safe, normal self again. As he pulled his best cap on, Dod felt an inexpressible grief. The freighter was settling like an old lady into the cradle on Moonbase, and this was the last time he would be in command of her. He would never be able to serve the Company again.

The cap passed through the halo, and the Company crest was irradiated with golden fire.

Dod passed through the air-lock into Moonbase feeling like the hero in the ’tex he had seen that afternoon; just like the heroic Company undercover man before the Free Spacers came to fetch him from the death-cell. The intensely moving theme-music surged inside him as he walked into Moonbase.

He still wished he had found what a saint was.

A crewman was looking oddly at him; the madness must be apparent, he supposed. The man’s eyes widened; he dropped the tools he was carrying and fled in the direction of the Plag detachment.

Dod walked on to the Merchant’s office. A secretary stopped. She too dropped what she was carrying—a tray of spools—and ran. When she reached the nearest doorway, feminine curiosity won, and she peered back at him.

The crewman came into view just as Dod reached the Merchant’s office. A couple of Plagmen flanked him, their hands purposefully on the blasters in their belts.

Dod wondered if they were coming for him; he subdued a minor panic when he realised that they must be: Errors were Rooted Out. In a way, he felt comforted that he was to be checked, since it proved the Company’s interest in the wellbeing of the Companions.

Undecided, he paused. He could Wait for the Plagmen or go in. Routine carried him into the Merchant’s office; he had to make his report and surrender the log of his ship.

Bucchi’s pig face registered incredulity, dismay, and finally, rage.

‘What in the name of the Great Hound have you got there!’

Looming over him, Dod felt like the youngest recruit in Space School. He passed over the cargo manifest.

‘I’m sorry’ he said. He passed a hand to his cap and guiltily withdrew it.

‘Remove it! Get it off!’ Bucchi bellowed.

Dod took off his cap reluctantly; Caps were a symbol of status. His was to go. Bucchi must have heard of his madness, and already he was to be deprived of his Space-pilot’s uniform. It hadn’t taken long to get about, he thought miserably.

‘Off I said!’ Bucchi bellowed again, his face mottled in red and purple rage. Dod felt a rush of self-pity; he ground his big fists together.

‘Off!’ Dod almost wept. He had taken his cap off. What more could Bucchi want? ‘Remove it!’ the little man shouted.

Suddenly he realised the truth. Bucchi could see the halo.

‘This?’ he whispered, pointing over his head.

‘Some would call it an Error,’ Bucchi said growling. ‘In view of good conduct previously, I’ll ignore it—if you just get rid it! What is it? Latest fashion on Venus?’

Dod could not reply in his happiness. He was not space-struck! Bucchi—the crewmen—the secretary! They had all seen the halo! It was real! Bucchi flipped through the papers.

He wasn’t mad. He was Dod again.

‘Always something new from Venus,’ Bucchi was growling. ‘They’ll be in trouble, some of those young fellows, if Plag gets to hear——’ Bucchi had looked up.

Dod missed his look. He was thinking about the Moon Ruins, and the paper he would now be able to complete; about his calm, successful life; about serving the Company.

Someone flashed at the door.

‘Quick!’ said Bucchi. ‘Off quick—someone might see it!’ Again the door signal flashed. ‘Keep out of Plag’s way, man! Be reasonable!’

‘I can’t,’ said Dod happily. ‘It’s just struck there. I’ve tried to get rid.’ He couldn’t tell of the anguished efforts on the flight from Pluto. ‘It just came.’

Bucchi’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for you, Dod. Don’t strain things. Get rid of it now! That’s an order!’

Dod felt light-hearted still, but Bucchi’s tone of command jerked him back to reality, setting off a series of automatic responses—he felt reassured by their familiarity; he was in Error, it was wrong for a Companion to be in Error, and so he must purge his Error! He resolved to get rid of the halo.

He knew he couldn’t.

He thought he would weep.

Then the Plagmen came in. ‘Trouble, Merchant Bucchi?’

Their arrogant bearing was conditioned; Dod could read the menace in their pose. He knew that if he moved they would batter him within seconds. A peaceable man, for all his size, in a peaceful trade, he shuddered at the implied threat. He was afraid.

Even as Bucchi spoke, though, that wasp of a thought came back to plague him: if the halo was real, what was it?

‘Dod here,’ said Bucchi, getting up. ‘Book him for an Error. And get that thing off him!’ He looked compassionately at the big Space-pilot. ‘Error, third-type,’ he added.

Dod was grateful. It was the minimal charge. Bucchi had to charge him—he himself would be in Error if he failed to bring charges—but the Merchant had done his best for him. Although it meant losing his rank, the credits he had managed to save, his ticket of eligibility for the Space Games, and the right to pursue his study of the Moon Ruins, he could keep his pleasant quarters. Dod tried to thank him—tears blocked his eyes—but Bucchi glanced in a scared way at the halo and turned away.

So what was it, if it was real? Dod found his mind working in an unaccustomed track. What data have I? First, it’s an objective manifestation——

‘Move,’ said the second Plagman. Dod was grateful for the interruption. What had made him think like that? It was not the proper way for a Space-pilot to think.

The Plagmen flanked him like two massive dogs.

‘Keep your hands to the side,’ advised the first one.

Dod walked between them, for the second time that day in an agonising frame of mind, alternating again between grief and despair, and wild hopes. Despair at the sudden loss of his rank; he shuddered when he thought that he might not be able to serve the Company again. Joy that he was spared the horror of being a tourist attraction in one of the dives near Moonbase as a space-struck moron.

Dod failed to notice that the Plagmen were taking him by an unfamiliar route to his quarters. He was turning over in his mind the fact that he had hardly yet brought himself to examine the most important fact: exactly what did the halo signify-if it was real? Speculation on the nature of the halo struggled with horror at the thought of being in Error—was it an Error even to think about it?

His hand moved out in a reflex action to touch it, and he knew in the same second that he had made a bad mistake.

The first Plagmen acted with the speed of a Venusian settler. His hand caught Dod across the throat, sending him smashing back across the corridor to where the second man was waiting; he flicked a gentle-looking blow to Dod’s shoulder paralysing his right arm. Then they grinned as they began on him together.

Dod had heard of it before, but he hadn’t believed it. They still went in for fist-fighting on Venus, but civilised people, especially Company officials …

When he woke up in his own quarters, an aching mass of smashed flesh; he knew he wouldn’t show a mark. Plag didn’t like to be thought of as a brutal organisation.

A small flare of protest flickered in Dod’s mind, and he found himself bunching his big shoulders; but his anger died quickly. They had their reasons. They were men of the Company, after all. He rolled on to his back and tried to sleep.

Hours later, Dod woke, and in the moments between sleep and full consciousness, he had a sudden memory of himself at sixteen and Grandma telling him something important. About the Watcher, and he was straining to remember her words, clinging to the memory desperately, when he woke fully and thought about the halo.

He jumped up, most of the stiffness gone from his muscles, and looked into the mirror; he passed his hand through the disc of light, but, as usual, there was no sensation. He turned the lights off; still it shone back. Then he closed his eyes and willed it to go in the name of the Great Hound; he gritted his teeth, screwed his eyes savagely, and concentrated on this one wish. He could not sustain the effort of mind: a thin edge of thought crept into his mind to distract him. What had made him think of Grandma?

He hadn’t seen her for five years, hadn’t thought about her in all that time. Was she still living in that ancient unhygienic Terran castle? He saw her old handsome face again smiling, and telling him of the equipment she would show him one day!

What was it she had wanted to tell him about the Watcher? That she had told him. Something about the loss, one by one, of the senses; a peculiar correlation of mind and time and space; all mixed up with the idea that he should be doing something about it! But Grandma was senile, he thought. She was too old to talk sense. And her experiments were of no value. What was of no value was of no use to the Company. Dod agreed.

He squashed hurriedly the flicker of dissent in his mind, the tiny seed of doubt that wanted to state outright that these were not his thoughts, that … Dod found himself repeating the Company oath fervently.

It was all the halo’s fault. If it hadn’t come, he wouldn’t be brooding, thinking about Grandma. Who was Grandma anyway?

It had all grown vague in his mind; he did not struggle against the gradual blotting of his errant thought. Rather, he was grateful for the peace of mind that returned slowly.

He did not even think about the halo. After a while, he did not even think. He waited.

The door swung open, causing him to jerk to his feet.

‘Come with us, Dod,’ said the Plagman. Dod recoiled when he saw that it was the same two men. Their flat eyes looked hard at him, daring him to defy the order. The first man pointed to the screen behind Dod, who followed his hand.

‘Accompany the two Plagmen,’ said the burly Plagchief. ‘The Company demands it.’ Dod had never met Getler, but he knew him by sight; he was reputed to be a good Companion, but over-zealous.

Looking at him in the flesh, Dod felt unafraid. Getler looked more like a comfortably-rich Martian motel-keeper than a top-ranking member of Plag.

‘Sit down, Dod,’ said Getler. The two Plagmen moved back to the door. ‘Now what is this?’ he said pleasantly, indicating the halo.

Dod was ready with his explanation, but the first of the Plagmen spoke.

‘We tried to get it off,’ he said in his flat voice.

‘He offered resistance,’ the other took him up.

Getler smiled at Dod and winked; Dod felt contempt for these automatons.

‘On the second day of my journey to Moonbase,’ he said calmly, ‘I noticed this phenomenon. Immediately I made out a report and filed it.’

‘Correct,’ encouraged the Plagchief. Dod noticed the transcript of the log on his desk.

‘Th. . .