“Crime?”
“Well, maybe not crime. We need a new term for it. Like ‘jet-propelled divorce.’ Does that sound better?”
“You’re quite the wit,” I said.
“Would you rather I was crying? You suggest something.”
“Give me a break.”
“No, I mean it: now you know more or less as much as me. Do you have a plan?”
“I like that! I don’t even know what I’m going to do when… she appears again. She has to appear again, right?”
“Probably.”
“How do they actually get in? I mean, the Station is hermetically sealed. Maybe through the plating…”
He shook his head.
“The plating is in good shape. I’ve no idea how they do it. The ‘guests’ are usually there when you wake up, and everyone has to sleep from time to time, after all.”
“What about locking them up?”
“It helps for a short time. Then there are other methods — you know what I’m talking about.”
He stood up. I followed suit.
“Listen, Snaut… You think the Station should be closed down, but you want the idea to come from me?”
He shook his head.
“It’s not that simple. Naturally we could escape, if only to the Satelloid, and send an SOS from there. Obviously they’d treat us like lunatics — there’d be a sanatorium on Earth, until we’d obligingly retract the whole thing. After all, there have been cases of group madness at isolated outposts like this… It wouldn’t be so bad. A nice garden, peace and quiet, white rooms, walks with the orderlies…”
He was completely serious, his hands in his pockets, staring vacantly into the corner of the room. The red sun had already dropped below the horizon and the curling waves had melted into an inky wasteland. The sky was afire. Clouds with lilac-tinted edges drifted over the unutterably dismal two-toned landscape.
“So do you want to run away? Or not? Not just yet?”
He smiled.
“You undaunted conqueror… You haven’t had a real taste of it yet, or you wouldn’t keep insisting like that. It’s not a matter of what I want but of what’s possible.”
“What is?”
“That’s what I don’t know.”
“So we stay here? You reckon a means’ll be found…”
He looked at me, scrawny, the skin on his wrinkled face peeling.
“Who knows? Maybe it’ll be worth it,” he said finally. “We’re unlikely to learn anything about it, but maybe about ourselves…”
He turned, picked up his papers and left. I wanted to stop him, but my open mouth made no sound. There was nothing to be done; I could only wait. I went up to the window and looked out at the blood-black ocean without really seeing it. It occurred to me that I could lock myself in one of the rockets at the docking bay, but I didn’t take the idea seriously, it was too silly — sooner or later I’d have to come out. I sat down by the window and took out the book Snaut had given me. There was still enough light; it turned the pages pink, while the whole room glowed red. The book contained a number of articles and studies, mostly of very dubious value, collected by one Otto Ravintzer, M. Phil. Every science comes with its own pseudo-science, a bizarre distortion that comes from a certain kind of mind: astronomy has its caricaturist in astrology, chemistry used to have alchemy. So little wonder that the emergence of solaristics was accompanied by a veritable explosion of the oddest notions. Ravintzer’s book was filled with this sort of mental matter — prefaced, to be fair, by an introduction in which the editor distanced himself from this house of wonders. He simply believed, not without reason, that such a collection might constitute a record of the times that would be of value both to historians and to psychologists of science.
Berton’s report occupied a prominent place in the book. It consisted of several parts. The first was a transcription of his extremely laconic logbook.
From fourteen hundred to sixteen forty ship’s time, the notes were terse and negative.
Altitude 3000 feet, or 4000, or 2500. Nothing observed, ocean deserted. This was repeated several times.
Then at 16.40: Red mist rising. Visibility 700 yards. Ocean deserted.
17.00: Fog thickening, silence, visibility 400 yards with clearer moments. Descending to 700 feet.
17.20: In fog. Altitude 700. Visibility 20–40 yards. Silence. Climbing to 1300.
17.45: Altitude 1600. Banks of fog to the horizon. In the fog, funnel-shaped openings through which ocean can be seen. Something happening inside them. Attempting to enter one such funnel.
17.52: Kind of whirlpool visible, throwing up yellow foam. Am surrounded by wall of fog. Altitude 300. Descending to 60.
This was the end of the transcription from Berton’s logbook. The next part of the so-called report was an excerpt from his medical history; to be precise, it was the text of a statement dictated by Berton and interspersed with questions from members of the commission.
Berton: When I dropped to a hundred feet, maintaining altitude became difficult, because in the circular space free of fog there were gusty winds. I had to keep a firm hold on the rudder, and for this reason, for some time — perhaps 10 or 15 minutes — I didn’t look out of the cockpit. As a result, I unintentionally entered into the fog, blown there by a strong gust. It wasn’t ordinary fog but a kind of suspension, colloidal in nature it seemed, because it clouded all my windows. I had a lot of trouble cleaning them. The suspension was extremely sticky. At the same time, my rotor speed had been reduced by thirty-some percent because of resistance from the fog or whatever it was, and I began to lose altitude. I was very low and I was worried I’d flip over on the waves, so I gave it full power. The craft maintained altitude, but didn’t rise any higher. I still had four cartridges of rocket boosters. I chose not to use them, thinking the situation could get worse and then I’d need them. At maximum revs the craft began to vibrate badly; I figured the rotors must have gotten covered in the strange suspension. But the load indicators were still showing zero, so there was nothing I could do. I hadn’t seen the sun from the moment I entered the cloud, though the fog was a phosphorescent red in that direction. I was still circling in the hope that I’d eventually come upon one of those holes in the fog, and in fact I did about half an hour later. I climbed into a free zone that was almost perfectly circular, with a diameter of several hundred yards. It was bounded by fog that was swirling dramatically, as if it were being lifted by powerful convection currents. For this reason I attempted to remain as best I could in the center of the hole — that was where the air was calmest. At that time I noticed a change in the surface of the ocean. The waves had almost completely disappeared, and the top of the fluid — the stuff the ocean is made of — had become semi-transparent, with smoky spots that faded away until, after a very short time, the whole thing was completely clear and I could see several yards, I believe, into the depths. Deep down there was a kind of gold-colored ooze that was gathering and sending thin streaks upwards. When it emerged onto the surface it became glassy and shining, it started seething and foaming, and solidifying. At this point it looked like dense burned caramel. This ooze or sludge collected into thick knots, rose up out of the ocean, it formed cauliflower-like swellings and slowly made various shapes. I started being pulled towards the wall of fog, so for a few minutes I had to counter the drift with the engine and the rudder. When I was able to look out again, down below, underneath me, I saw something that resembled a garden. That’s right, a garden. I saw dwarf trees and hedges, paths, none of it real — it was all made of the same substance, which by now had completely hardened, like yellowish plaster. That was how it appeared. The surface glistened brightly. I descended as low as I could to get a closer look.