“Something else you were right about, Hal,” Petersdorff shouted, sounding almost happy. “Definitely a giant form of Loligo vulgaris.”
Tarrant tried to squeeze further into his niche. “For God’s sake watch out!”
“It’s all right—they won’t attack anything as big as the sled.”
One of the squid swooped in close to the starboard side of the sled, coming to within an arm’s length, and Tarrant—past caring what others might think of him—reacted by giving a full-throated scream. He struck out with the knife, but the squid moved effortlessly beyond his reach, then closed again.
“Take it easy, Hal.” Petersdorff’s voice registered surprise and concern. “They’re just curious.”
“I don’t like the brutes, either,” Martine said. “What can we do to get rid of them?”
“Try the lateral photofloods.”
A second later there was a searing flash of brilliance from each side of the sled, and the squid vanished before it like phantoms. Tarrant gave a sob of relief and tried to steady his breathing as the lights were doused. He could hear Martine and Petersdorff having a whispered argument above him, and guessed Martine was pointing out how much he had gone through in the previous three days. Tarrant knew he should be grateful, but all at once he felt no more obligation to be courageous or disciplined. For what seemed an eternity he had been frightened, shocked, threatened, violated, punished—and now he was reaching the limit of what he could take. Life had become a nightmare in which somebody had thrown away all the old rulebooks, and he felt entitled to do the same. With luck he would be back on Earth within another hour or so, and if that happened he was going to live exactly as he pleased from then on, and in the meantime he was going to hang back and let others take the responsibilities and the risks, and if anything scared him he was going to let the whole universe know he was scared, and if he had to die he was going to claim the right to go out kicking and cursing and screaming.
Curled up in as small a compass as he could attain with the bulk of the suit, Tarrant clung to the framework of metal struts and watched the darkness gather around as the sled continued on its reckless plunge into the centre of the planetoid. He ignored all attempts to draw him into communication. After a time the others accepted his new passive role, and he realised this with a flicker of pleasure. The appearance of the Horra was not repeated, but it was no longer possible for him to drift off into semi-consciousness. In spite of his exhaustion, he remained alert and nervous, and all the while the darkness became more complete. …
“I don’t see how this can be,” Theo Martine was saying, many light years away. “We’re bound to be within ten kilometres of the centre.”
“I know,” Scotland replied. “That’s what’s bothering me.”
“You’re sure your instruments are working?”
“Positive.”
“I confirm the readings,” Osaka said. “There aren’t any sizeable chunks of metal or anything else up ahead of us.”
There was a lengthy pause before Martine spoke again. “That leaves us with two possibilities, gentlemen—the transceiver is built of some substance which doesn’t register on our instruments; or … or the system doesn’t require the physical presence of a machine at the target location.”
Tarrant listened to the words from his remote cocoon of loneliness, and—without his quite knowing why—a mood of bitter sadness began to steal over him.
“It might explain why there are two planetoids,” Osaka said. “If there’s no physical transceiver, the water must have been transmitted to a target location at the united focus of the Bergmann machines on Earth—but the sun must have got in the way every now and then. It would have been logical to switch to an alternative target location.”
“I like it,” Martine said. “I like that a lot.”
Tarrant’s sadness increased, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut, contorting his whole face in protest. He waited, straining his ears for words which had yet to be spoken.
“Of course,” Martine continued, “it means that the Special Products team have balled up the design of this bomb we’re riding around on. The proximity fuse won’t function unless there’s something for it to be proximate to.”
“Any chance of modifying it? Putting in a timer?”
“Underwater? In the dark? With no tools or components?”
“This is all to the good,” Scotland said. “Instead of letting the sled go ahead by itself … leaving us to swim God knows how far in the dark … we can switch on all the lights and go down-current at full speed … right through the gate. The sled has buoyancy bags, hasn’t it? We’ll even have transportation when we come out on the other side.”
Tarrant fought a battle against his own psychic inertia. “We’re not going to do it that way.”
“It’s come to life again,” Petersdoff whispered incredulously. “It spoke!”
“This sled is my responsibility,” Tarrant said.
“Just like the ship was.”
“That’s enough, Evan.” Martine’s voice cut sharply through the blackness and the blur of other sounds.
Petersdorff was not subdued. “We had a ship to take us back to Earth. And we lost the ship. So now we go back on the sled.”
“Nobody is disputing that,” Martine said angrily.
“I am,” Tarrant countered, straightening up against the onrushing flow of water so that he could be closer to Martine.
“Hal, I know how you feel.” Martine touched his shoulder briefly. ‘Believe me, I know what’s going on in your mind—but here are the facts. The simple, engineering facts.”
He went on to give a detailed description of the electrical system which had been put together in such haste to detonate the sled’s explosive charge. His words, emotionless and academic, carried all the more conviction for the grotesque circumstances in which they were being delivered. And in spite of Tarrant’s mental turmoil, he eventually had to accept that it was impossible—because of the underwater environment—even to carry out a suicide mission in which the bomb would have been triggered manually.
“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” Martine concluded, trying to offer the absolution Tarrant needed. “The system just isn’t adaptable.”
“We’re starting to pull across current,” Bram Scotland said, the outline of his helmet faintly visible in the glow from the sled’s control panel. “We must be nearly there.”
Martine turned away from Tarrant at once. “Take her off automatic. Go with the current.”
“Do you want the big lights?”
“Not yet—save them in case we run into trouble.”
Tarrant stared ahead, into the dark heart of the world, and an arctic coldness developed in his gut as he thought about Martine’s final words to him. Every organism, every mechanism, was conditioned by its environment—and, if the environment changed, failure to adapt meant failure to function and survive. This applied to electrical circuits, dinosaurs, civilisations. As he became aware of the awful conclusion which was surfacing through resistant layers of his mind, Tarrant tried to stop thinking altogether, but the logical processes—having been set in ponderous motion—could not be halted.
Man was supreme on Earth, even in this latter day, because he had been given many opportunities to be flexible, and had taken them. Man was doomed to extinction in this alien globe because he had lost most of his adaptive capability.
Not enough air for a man, the nameless member of the Clan had said, unable to enlarge his world-view to accommodate a new reality.
Return to your master, Solman had said, unable to think in new categories.