The Tenth Planet

by Edmund Cooper

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

Synopsis

The Dag Hammarskjold takes off from Woomera, Australia for the new human settlement on Mars. Planet Earth is being eaten away by uncontrollable pollution, starvation and disease. Its life expectancy is nil. This is the last spaceship, its passengers the last people on earth with any hope. But it is never to reach its objective. Five thousand years later its captain wakes up to a new world undiscovered in his time and to a bitter experience he must fight alone.

Release date: July 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 188

Sample

IDRIS HAMILTON, MASTER of the Dag Hammarskjold, had been staring at Earth for the best part of an hour. It would have been better to have looked ahead, to have allowed his practised eye to pick out Mars and magnify it in his imagination until he could see the craters, and the mountains and the five cities, and the tiny, precious, man-made waterways. It would have been better just to have gazed mindlessly—as he had so often done—at all the pin-pricks of cold light in the black velvet of the firmament. But he had sentenced himself to look back at Earth.

He had looked at Earth as one might look upon the face of a dying friend. Correction—a dead friend. For Earth already wore its death-mask. No longer was it the brilliant jewel of the solar system, its iridescent oceans flecked with white and silver clouds, its continents glowing green with vegetation, its night-side cities bright with filaments of light. Earth was now wrapped in its winding sheet, its shroud of perpetual fog. Though, a hundred thousand miles away, on that grey sphere hanging in the void, there were many millions of the species homo sapiens who were taking an unconscionable time adying.

But, still, Earth was dead. When a man dies, the microorganisms to which he plays host do not immediately react to his death. When a planet dies, a number of life-forms may yet linger awhile. Earth was dead; and the people back there, below that grey shroud, were, at last, aware of the fact. But they had yet to face their own individual deaths. They were not unthinking micro-organisms: they were human beings. They had the life-force and they had intelligence. Death would not treat them gently.

Idris Hamilton made the mistake of sending his imagination back down there among them. He shuddered and let out a great cry of anguish. Then, with a shaking finger, he pressed the stud that would screen the observation panels with duralumin shutters. He could take no more.

So now the Dag Hammarskjold was an enclosed world of its own, scurrying to Mars like a rat that deserts a sinking ship.

Hamilton sat on the edge of his contour chair, and tears coursed down his cheeks.

‘I am not crying,’ he told himself reasonably. ‘I am master of this vessel and I am not empowered to weep … It is something to be master of the last space-ship to leave Earth. It is something to have witnessed the greatest crisis in the history of mankind. It is too big for tears.’

And yet, even by command, his eyes would not remain dry.

He broke the habit of fifteen years of space service. He walked carefully across the bond-fuzz carpet of the navigation deck to an emergency stores cabinet, one of which was in every compartment of the vessel, and took out a plastic bulb of whisky—or the alcohol, water and flavouring that passed these days for whisky—and broke the seal. Expertly, he filled his mouth with the burning fluid, not losing a drop. Then he swallowed.

Even as a wild young ensign, Hamilton had never sneaked a drink on duty. He had despised other men he had known who drank on watch. Now he had only himself to despise. He despised himself because he was a chosen survivor.

The whisky tasted bitter, made him cough. He drank some more. It didn’t taste quite so bitter the second time. ‘What the hell,’ he told himself. ‘The ship is in fall for a hundred and forty hours.’ Which did not alter the fact that the captain of the Dag Hammarskjold was quietly going to pieces.

He remembered the time when you had to use magnetic shoes even inboard in a field of zero G. Clang, clang, every step you took. The noise alone drove some people round the twist. Bond-fuzz carpeting was better. It reminded him always of the time when he was a boy—how many centuries ago?—and used to throw hooked thistle-heads that stuck on people’s clothes. That, of course, was on Earth—the dead planet.

“What the hell?” he demanded aloud. “I’m alone with it. Who’s going to know? Who’s going to know that Captain Hamilton, Distinguished Space Service Cross, seventy-five thousand space-hours logged, is falling apart? Brackley will be checking the frozen kids in the hold, Davison will be monitoring his precious atomic fuel, and Suzy Wu will be deciding on which culinary masterpiece to present us with for dinner, and which of us thereafter needs some old-fashioned therapy most.”

“I’m going to know, skipper.” The voice belonged to Orlando Brackley. “But don’t let it worry you.”

Orlando came floating along the navigation deck like a graceful bird. He hated the bond-fuzz carpets. He should have been a ballet-dancer.

“Sorry about that, lieutenant.” Hamilton’s voice was light.

“Captain, you think you’re the only one with a wet face?” Orlando touched down gracefully on the bond-fuzz in front of Idris Hamilton. He did everything gracefully. Idris envied him. Youth! Youth! Orlando was only twenty-three.

“How are the children?”

“Cool. They do not complain. Life support systems function normally.”

“And the lady teachers?”

Orlando laughed. “Ah, the lady teachers. Not just teachers. But the lady teachers. I like that. Well, captain, the lady teachers also are safely chilled and likewise do not complain. Let us hope that suspended animation does not affect their wombs unduly. Mars will require them to bear many children.”

“Stop that!”

“Ay ay, sir.”

“Forgive me, Orlando … It is an occasion, is it not?”

“Yes sir. We were lucky to get away from Woomera—evidently the last open space-port. It is an occasion.”

Idris said: “Compound my felony. Help yourself to a bulb of whisky.”

“Thank you, sir.” Orlando took off gracefully and floated to the emergency cabinet. He took a bulb of whisky out of its clip and expertly gave himself a shot. “Salud, sir … How do we account for this illegal consumption of emergency booze?”

“Prosit, Orlando. A votre santé. Grüss Gott … You see, the dead languages of Earth haunt us even in our drinking … Don’t worry about the tally sheet. There are two solutions. I will make good the loss from general stores or I will write in my log: this day, 23rd March 2077, two bulbs of emergency booze were used for emergency medical treatment … Yes, Woomera was a nasty business. You did not look out just before lift-off?”

Orlando wore a pained expression. “Captain, you know I didn’t. I had to monitor the life-support systems of our passengers under the G thrust.”

“You were lucky, Orlando. I did. The rebels brought in tanks and field guns. They blasted the control tower to rubble ninety seconds before we burned.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Another dead symbol. Jesus was a man of Earth. Long, long ago … We were lucky the pad was more than two miles from Control. They couldn’t get our range in time. Otherwise, the Dag would have been blasted before it could lift.”

“Commander Hillovan? Chief Worthing? That delicious computer queen with the fantastic boobs? What was her name? Sally Weingarten. What a hell of a name! Sally Weingarten.”

Idris drank more whisky, regarded the transparent bulb as a surgeon might regard his patient. “They are all gone, Orlando,” he said thickly. “All gone under the hill, as some bloody poet once said. Hillovan, Worthing, Weingarten were blasted by their own people. They bought us enough time to lift off … Remember that when we touch down on Mars. Or perhaps I should say if.”

Orlando raised an eyebrow. “Now I know who Suzy is going to cheer up first. We got away, sir. We are in fall. This is a good vessel. What the hell can happen now?”

Idris withered him with a look. “Anything. You’ve logged enough space hours to know that … But, specifically, I was thinking of sabotage. By my estimation there had to be at least seventy-five people concerned with loading, servicing and make-ready while the Dag sat on its arse at Woomera. None of those people had a snowball in hell’s chance of dying in their beds, and they knew it. If, among seventy-five doomed people, you are going to count seventy-five saints, I shall call you a liar.”

“Captain, the ship was double-checked.”

“They double-checked—the security boys who very likely are now dead or dying. We didn’t. We were too busy … So tell Leo Davison and Suzy they are entitled to a bulb of booze each, if that is their pleasure. But, afterwards, we all wash our faces and go over the Dag with a tooth comb. And, Orlando …”

“Sir?”

“You were born on Mars, I was born on Earth. If, at any time during the next few days my behaviour seems peculiar to you, you will assume command of this vessel and place me under restraint. I will immediately put this order in writing.”

“Sir!” Lieutenant Brackley was shaken. “It is not necessary.”

Idris Hamilton gave him a wintry smile. “Allow me to decide that. The night before lift-off, I checked internal security and then turned in and went to sleep. Next thing I knew, I woke up standing on the pad, wearing my vest and pants, drenched in rain, surrounded by security guards. I almost got myself shot. They told me I’d been stooping and picking at things on the ground that weren’t there.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Matter of fact, I’d been dreaming I was a child at home, picking spring flowers … The lost flowers of Earth … So, lieutenant, it is an order and I will put it in writing. They must have taught you back at space-school that the effects of stress are often magnified in free fall. Therefore you carry the order on your person at all times. You will only show it to Engineer Officer Davison and Miss Wu if it becomes necessary to relieve me of my command. If, as I hope, we touch down on Mars without incident, you will return the order to me. Understand?”

“Sir! Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Brackley saluted. He did not leave the navigation deck in his customary fashion. He walked smartly over the bond-fuzz, as if he had just been dismissed by a commodore.

MOST OF THE people of Earth never knew that their planet was dying. Most of the people of Earth—the teeming millions of Asia, Africa, South America—remained as they had always been: hungry, illiterate, disease-ridden, short-lived. By the late twenty-first century, man had established viable, independent colonies on the moon and on Mars. These were superb achievements of science and technology. If comparable resources had been applied to solving the problems that had accumulated in the terrestrial biosphere, Earth might have been saved.

But they were not. It was as if terrestrial man had a built-in death wish. As if the technologically advanced and highly civilised members of the human race, collectively, had shrugged and said: ‘We’re finished here. Let’s toss a few seeds somewhere else, and see if they germinate.’

It was easier—politically easier—to carry out planetary engineering projects on Mars than to do so on Earth.

So the obsolete internal combustion engine continued to foul Earth’s atmosphere; the pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides continued to destroy the balance of nature; industrial pollution continued to poison the rivers and the oceans; domestic effluent choked the antiquated, overloaded sewage systems of cities that contained ten times too many people; pestilence caught up with antibiotics; the demand for atomic energy grew at such a pace that waste heat pumped into the sea accelerated the greenhouse effect and brought about the melting of the ice-caps; and the vast majority of fifteen thousand million human beings continued to breed as if sheer weight of numbers would help them avert, rather than bring on, the final catastrophe.

The point of no return had been passed quite early in the twenty-first century. Many distinguished members of the international scientific community had given advance warning and had suggested drastic remedies—such as compulsory birth control, mass sterilization projects; internationally accepted limitations on the energy consumption of technologically advanced countries; the outlawing of the internal combustion engine; the reclamation of African, Indian, Asian and Australian desert country; the controlled harvesting of the seas; the re-distribution of material wealth and material resources; the abandonment of a costly space programme; the abandonment of the international weapons race.

Such suggestions might have worked or, at least, might have delayed the reckoning. But such suggestions were politically and internationally undesirable—so the politicians said. It seemed that they could only agree on how to tackle the problems of other worlds than Earth.

Thus, while Lunar City flourished and maintained a stable population of two thousand five hundred people by the most efficient hydroponics techniques, and while magnificent feats of planetary engineering were giving Mars a breathable atmosphere and the resources to support independently a population of more than ten thousand, which would be allowed to grow as the fertile areas expanded, Earth receded into a literally Dark Age from which it could never emerge while the teeming millions squandered huge amounts of energy on their hopeless struggle to maintain diminishing food supplies.

By 2050 AD the blue skies of Earth had become almost a legend. Nine tenths of the planetary surface were shrouded in mist, cloud, fog. Monsoon weather was no longer confined to southern Asia or, indeed, to a particular season. Overheated oceans produced constant evaporation which, in turn, produced everlasting clouds and everlasting rain. Photosynthesis was an early casualty of the long wet twilight. Winter and summer became as one. Crops still germinated readily, but failed to ripen. The polluted rain beat them, dying, back into the saturated soil.

Since time immemorial, hunger had been a great destroyer of empires and the sophisticated ambitions of mankind. Now it became the universal destroyer. No amount of gold could buy a ripe field of wheat. Not even the most ingenious technology could create a stable window of clear sky for the dying fields and the millions of square miles of mud that had once been fertile country.

Eventually, even the politicians realized that Earth was doomed and that mankind’s only hope lay elsewhere. Elsewhere consisted of two possibilities: a small, dead satellite that would require skills as yet undreamed of to transform it into a world where man might flourish, and a planet of immense potential that would take a longer time than was available to prepare for a mass exodus.

Therefore, with late logic, with late courage and with late resolution, the United Nations Organisation—ineffectual for more than one hundred years—determined to transfer all that could be saved to Mars. But the combined fleet of American, Russian, European and Chinese interplanetary vessels amounted to no more than fifteen. The largest, an American vessel built for orbital service, could carry one thousand tons of cargo; but that cargo had to be ferried up into Earth orbit in fifty-ton lots by shuttle rockets and then ferried down again from Mars orbit. Apart from the length of the voyage, the loading and unloading of the Martin Luther King took at least fifty terrestrial days. The smallest, a Chinese touch-down vessel, the Confucius, could carry a cargo of only one hundred and twenty tons.

The international arguments about priorities raged throughout four terrifying years, from the time when the United Nations officially authorised and supervised Operation Phoenix to the time when the last space ship, the Dag Hammarskjold lifted from Earth for the last time.

Should the Mona Lisa and a hundred other of the world’s greatest paintings take precedence over semen and ova banks, the semen and ova having been. . .