At a height of about one kilometre he gave the order to decelerate and began squirting jets of compressed gas from the suit’s forward nozzle. As the surface of the planetoid drew nearer he saw that it was not as even as he had at first supposed. Hillocks of water arose and gradually subsided in response to internal forces, their peaks sometimes emerging through the covering mist, creating the impression that the entire globe was a living entity. The notion led Tarrant’s thoughts in the direction of the dark, sentient core of the planetoid, and he felt a return of the unmanning revulsion and dread which had been inspired in him by the sight of a small fragment of Ka-tissue.
Miss. Orchard had confidently stated that fifty kilos of explosive would bring about the loss of connectivity necessary to reduce Ka to mindless protoplasm, but such assurances meant little when it came to a confrontation with the living enormity, the vast obscenity that was Ka. Tarrant became aware of the harsh, irregular sound of his own breathing, and knew it would be transmitted by the suit radio.
“Retain some velocity and go in feet first,” he said, taking refuge in practicalities. “We can muster again just below the surface and start getting used to. …” His voice was lost in a prolonged burst of static which lasted until the surface of the planetoid had been transformed into a vapour-shrouded plain only metres beneath him. Tarrant’s bafflement lasted perhaps a second, then he looked back over his shoulder and saw a very small, intensely brilliant constellation in stealthy movement against the hinterland of fixed stars.
“No!” he shouted, rationality swept away. “You can’t!”
There was a soft impact and suddenly he was in a clear blue universe where the suited figures of his companions threshed amid sprays of silver bubbles. He stabilised himself automatically and brought the sled under control at the end of its short tether. Other men clustered around him, making uncertain movements with their arms and legs, looking remarkably similar to divers in conventional underwater gear. The surface of the water, disturbed by their arrival, undulated nearby like a blanket of white fire.
“That radio interference,” Bram Scotland said, “was it from the ship’s ion guns?”
“We’ve lost her,” Tarrant replied tersely.
“Lost her! What do you mean we’ve lost her?” Petersdorff dosed with Tarrant, the panic-pitch of his voice slipping beyond his suit transducer’s range. “What sort of a bloody pilot are you?”
Tarrant fended him off. “It looks as though the drive unit was only dormant.”
“You bastard!” Petersdorff shouted. “I said, what sort of a bloody pilot are you supposed to be?”
“Your people had the ship for two years. That was long enough to make sure. …”
“This is wasting time,” Martine put in. “Hal, is there any chance of catching her? Using the suit thrusters?”
“No chance. No chance at all.”
“Does that mean we’re finished?” Gerald Osaka said, speaking for the first time.
Petersdorff turned to him, flailing a huge bubble out of his way. “What else can it mean?”
“I’ll tell you what it means, gentlemen.” Martine spoke in a calm but authoritative voice. “It means—and Hal will confirm this—that we go back to Earth the quick way. Through the matter transceiver.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The strange little conference lasted fifteen minutes.
Tarrant knew that oxygen supplies were being expended—and, at another level of his consciousness, he was acutely aware that time was running out on Will Somerville and Myrah—but he was unable to countenance taking the group to the centre of the planetoid without explaining the dangers involved. Petersdorff, Osaka and Scotland had been told nothing of the events leading up to their first space flight. They listened to Tarrant’s story with quiet concentration, acceptance encouraged by the desire to believe they could return to Earth, and by the bizarre circumstances in which the account was presented. Petersdorff, after his initial outburst, developed a manic cheerfulness which abated only slightly when he learned that he might have to face the malign creatures known as the Horra. It appeared that his professional interest in marine biology was overcoming his concern for his own safety. Osaka and Scotland, the dysteleonics men, had greater difficulty in comprehending all that was implied by the monosyllable, Ka.
“You believe this … thing started off as a single medusa fish,” Scotland said, “then incorporated other organisms into itself. It’s hard to believe that such a. …”
“The same thing on a smaller scale has been happening on Earth for millions of years,” Petersdorff interrupted. “Your ordinary Portuguese man-of-war is actually a colony of hundreds of polyps, all of which. …”
“The point is that we have to kill it,” Tarrant said, raising his voice. “Kill it or disperse it—otherwise we may not reach the transceiver. Any more comments?”
Scotland raised an arm. “We’d better not waste any more time, Hal. If there are ten or twelve Bergmann machines scattered around the Earth, as we believe, the water is almost certain to be delivered to all of them in rotation.”
“You mean …?” Tarrant looked at Martine for confirmation.
‘It’s a good point,” Martine said. “We’d better just pray the transceiver is still delivering to the Cawley Island region—I couldn’t take a thousand-kilometre swim.”
The new uncertainty, the new variable in the problem, served to increase Tarrant’s sense of urgency. “How far is it to the centre of this place? Ninety kilometres?”
“About that.”
“Can we go that far on suit air? Even if we could swim at a steady five kilometres an hour it would take. …”
“Swimming is out,” Martine cut in. “We’ve only got enough breathing gas for about five hours, so we’ll have to ride the sled most of the way down, and break free before your bomb goes off.”
Without waiting for reactions to his words, he caught hold of the sled and manoeuvred himself into position at its control panel. Grateful for the positive leadership, Tarrant swung in beside him. As soon as the three other men had tethered themselves to the tubular framework, Martine activated the automatic control circuits and pressed the button which ignited the sled’s engine. There was a dull, continuous roar from within the combustion chamber, the caged propeller began to spin, and the sled moved off at once with the serene purposefulness of a robot device. It hunted in slow circles for a few seconds, then its sensors determined the direction of the planetoid’s faint gravity and its nose swung sharply downwards.
Tarrant discovered immediately that all his previous experience of supersonic flight through an invisible medium had been bland and monotonous compared to the roller-coaster dash through galaxies of solid-seeming bubbles which rushed to meet him and darted frantically to each side as they encountered the sled’s bow wave. When he looked behind him he saw them shattered and transformed into millions of opals and pearls which stretched upwards towards the light in the form of intertwined spirals created by the propeller wash. To his astonishment, the speed shown on the sled’s control panel was less than thirty kilometres an hour.