As on a Darkling Plain Read online

  AS ON A DARKLING PLAIN

  by

  BEN BOVA

  Published by ReAnimus Press

  Other books by Ben Bova:

  The Exiles Trilogy

  The Star Conquerors (Special Collector's Edition)

  The Star Conquerors (Standard Edition)

  Colony

  The Kinsman Saga

  Star Watchmen

  The Winds of Altair

  The Weathermakers

  The Dueling Machine

  The Multiple Man

  Escape!

  The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells

  © 2012, 1972 by Ben Bova. All rights reserved.

  http://ReAnimus.com/authors/benbova

  Cover Art by Clay Hagebusch

  Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ~~~

  To Damon Knight and Frederik Pohl, with thanks

  ~~~

  The universe is not only queerer than we imagine—it is queerer than we can imagine.

  —J.B.S. HALDANE

  Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  —ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Deep in cryogenic sleep the mind dreams the same frozen dreams, endlessly circuiting through the long empty years. Sidney Lee dreamed of the towers on Titan, over and again, their smooth blank walls of metal that was beyond metal, their throbbing, ceaseless, purposeful machines that ran at tasks that men could not even guess at. The towers loomed in his darkened dreams, standing menacing and alien above the frozen wastes of Titan, utterly unmindful of the tiny men who groveled at their base. He tried to scale those smooth steep walls, and fell back. He tried to penetrate them, and failed. He tried to scream, and—in his dreams, at least—he succeeded.

  1. TITAN

  Lee looked down at his gloved hands. They were shaking uncontrollably, as if they belonged to someone else and he had no power over them at all.

  He was standing on an ice bluff, overlooking the plain where the towers stood. Even from this distance they seemed to pulsate, to glow with unknown energies. He could feel the machines inside them throbbing, rumbling, endlessly, always at work. Always. A tiny knot of pressure-suited men huddled along the base of one of the buildings, insectlike and insignificant at this distance. The towers soared above them, probing straight and alien into the dark sky of Titan. A column of tracked cars inched along the icy plain toward the towers. More insects.

  The fat, gaudy crescent of Saturn hung overhead, its rings just a thin, barely visible line, like the border between sanity and madness. Somewhere Lee could hear laughter, alien laughter, disdainful and completely superior.

  There were five people working with him. With their pressure suits on, they too looked like clumsy beetles clambering painfully over the frozen wasteland, going through instinctive motions while the builders of those towers watched from far, far off, pointing at the pitiful men of Earth and laughing.

  Lee walked away. He didn’t say a word, he just started walking. It was several minutes before any of the others realized that he was leaving them. Had left them.

  “Dr. Lee?”

  “Dr. Lee, where are you going? Shall we...”

  “Sid! What’s wrong?”

  “Can you hear us? Answer please!”

  He touched a switch on the belt of his pressure suit and their voices snapped off. It was always dark on Titan, walking alone was discouraged. But Saturn’s crescent cast enough light so that Lee didn’t bother to turn on his helmet lamp. Even when a wispy ammonia cloud drifted across the yellowish crescent, Lee kept right on walking.

  Faster and faster, down the gentle back slope of the ice bluff, cleated boots crunching into the frozen ground. His pace quickened as he went downhill, the walk became a trot, then a full run.

  He raced over the tumbled ice with huge, loping, low-gravity strides, straight toward the edge of the ammonia sea. The faceplate of his helmet fogged, his ears ached with the sound of his own thundering pulse. But he kept on, lungs rasping, sweating, eyes stinging, running for the sea.

  It might have taken an hour or a few minutes. Lee didn’t think about the time. He stopped at the shore of the gray sea of ammonia. Colder than any ice-filled ocean of Earth, the ammonia sea was ruled by Saturn’s immense tidal pull; it slid foaming, churning, breaking against the cliffs a hundred kilometers away and then back again, halfway up the ice bluff. The tide was coming in now. In a quarter hour, maybe less, the purifying ammonia would cover Lee with twenty meters of silent, cold darkness.

  He stood and waited, watching the current lapping closer, covering this mound of ice, that shard of rock, edging up to his boots, swirling around the bright metal leggings of his pressure suit.

  Five years, he thought. Five years today. It took me five years to admit it. We’ll never know. The towers will always defeat us.

  Some instinct made him turn his head. Through the plastic bubble of his helmet he could see three people racing, tumbling down the slope, heading toward him. They were waving their arms, gesticulating wildly. Probably shouting themselves hoarse, he thought.

  Unhurried, Lee looked back at the sea. Not enough time. They’ll get here first.

  Very deliberately and carefully, he reached up to the neck of his pressure suit and began to unfasten the seal.

  Man reached toward the stars not in glory, but in fear.

  The buildings on Titan were clearly the work of an alien, intelligent race. No man could tell exactly how old they were, how long their baffling machines had been running, what their purpose was. Whoever had built them had left the solar system hundreds of centuries ago.

  For the first time, men dreaded the stars.

  Still, they had to know, had to learn. Robot probes were sent to the nearest dozen stars, the farthest that man’s technology could reach.

  A generation passed on Earth before the faint signals from the probes returned. Seven of the stars had planets circling around them. Of these, five possessed Earth-like worlds. On four of them, some indications of life were found. Life, not intelligence.

  Long and hot were the debates about what to do next. Finally, it was decided to send manned expeditions to all four of the Earthlike planets.

  Through it all, the machines on Titan hummed smoothly.

  2. EARTH:

  The Sequoia Forest

  They had hiked well away from the main trail, carrying their bulky backpacks across the uneven ground, gawking at the huge sequoia boles that stood straight and solemn as pillars in a cathedral. Bob O’Banion was tall, broad-shouldered, fairhaired, smiling, and young. Marlene Ettinger was tall for a woman, leggy in hiking shorts, strong in a completely feminine way.

  A bird swooped past them and Bob laughed and pointed. The mottled sunshine filtering through the branches so far overhead set off sparkling highlights in Marlene’s long, auburn hair. They walked in silence, only an arm’s reach apart, yet separated.

  She watched his face as they walked. He was happy, happy to be away from training, to be out of uniform, happy to forget about the buildings on Titan and the star missions, happy to be in the forest soaking up the sun’s warmth and smelling the piney odor of the redwoods and listening to the sounds of life. Soon enough they would all be locked into metal wombs for the long journey. And sooner still she would have to tell him....

  “Here’s a good place
,” Bob said.

  It was a flat, mossy spot between giant trees. A cold stream sluiced by, making barely a sound. A squirrel chittered at them briefly from the fire-hollowed base of a sequoia. When they didn’t leave, the squirrel dashed out of sight.

  Marlene nodded and gratefully let the heavy backpack slide off her shoulders. Bob braced his pack against a tree trunk and pulled out an old-fashioned blanket. Not a plastic spread or even a synthetic fabric: an honest, faded blue fuzzy wool blanket.

  She smiled at him.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t realize you were such a traditionalist.”

  He grinned back at her as he bent over the pack and took out food packages. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Yet.”

  She kept the smile on her face. But behind it she was asking, And can’t you realize that there’s so much about me that you don’t know?

  They ate, they talked. Inevitably the conversation drifted to the buildings on Titan, to the upcoming star missions, to their training. Inevitably they finished eating and lay down on the yielding ground side by side. And soon he was holding her, touching her, kissing her.

  “Bob,” she said, “when I was on Titan...”

  “I don’t want to talk about Titan or anything else,” he murmured in her ear.

  “No... I’ve got to tell you.” She pushed away slightly. His youthful face clouded for an instant, but then he smiled and said, “Marlene, you don’t have to...”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. She sat up, then turned to look back at him. “I saw a man try to kill himself on Titan. He just walked off into the sea one day. We barely got to him in time. He was unlocking his helmet when we reached him.”

  Bob made a sympathetic noise.

  “You see... I was in love with him. He was married, but his wife had stayed on Earth, and we...” Her voice trailed off.

  His smile died. “But I thought you and me... we’ve got something good going between us, Marlene.”

  “I know. Honestly, I thought I had forgotten him, that what happened on Titan was all over... but yesterday I saw him again. He’s at the Training Center now, trying to qualify for a star mission.”

  “And you still love him?”

  She could see the pain in his eyes. “Bob, I don’t know. Until yesterday you were the only man I cared about. But now—he didn’t even see me, I only caught a glimpse of him as he got off the shuttle....”

  “Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe it isn’t him.”

  “No. I checked. It’s him. He’s been in the hospital for more than a year, but now he’s at the Training Center. It’s him.”

  “And you and me?” Bob asked. “What happens to us?” The pain had reached his voice now.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t know if he’s the same person he was on Titan. Maybe he doesn’t want me now. Maybe he never really loved me. I just don’t know.”

  The pain had reached her long ago.

  3. EARTH:

  The Training Center

  It looked like a campus. Big plastiglass buildings with swooping curved roofs and graceful rampways connecting them at every tenth level. Trees that still looked new and gawky as they poked thin leaves into the burning Texas sky. Grass kept green by underground irrigation so that the forty thousand men and women of the Training Center would have pleasant lawns to stroll past or lunch on.

  Forty thousand people. Eighty of them would go to the stars.

  Marlene rode the lift up to the twenty-eighth level, shivering slightly from the too-efficient air conditioning. The car slid to a smooth, quiet halt and the doors slid open noiselessly. In mid-morning, the dormitory hallway was empty of people. The walls were bare and antiseptic white. Like a hospital.

  She started down the hall in one direction, hesitated, reversed herself. Walking slowly, she read the names on each identical plastic door until she came to LEE, S., PhD.

  For a moment she stood before the door, uncertain. Then she touched the buzzer.

  No answer.

  She wondered whether to ring again or forget the whole thing. Abruptly, the door pulled open and Sidney Lee stood there facing her.

  “Marlene!” He looked surprised.

  “Hello, Sid.”

  He was thinner, his face all bone and tendon, his eyes faintly haunted. Hair still dark, just a touch of gray.

  “Uh... come on in.” He gestured. “What are you doing up here?”

  She stepped into his room. “You never answered my messages, so I decided to come and see what’s keeping you so busy.” She tried to make it sound light, pleasant.

  The room was small, functional, sterile. Morning sunlight at the only window. A foam couch, desk, wall drawers, two sling chairs. Doors that must have closets and bathroom and kitchen behind them. No decorations, no personal touches, no warmth.

  Standing beside her, Lee pointed to the gray computer terminal box on the desk. “That’s what’s been making a hermit out of me. I’m a schoolboy again.”

  She smiled at him.

  “I’ve got a lot of studying to do,” he explained, “to qualify for a star mission. There’s a lot I’ve got to learn.”

  “It keeps us all busy,” she said quietly.

  They stood next to each other in the middle of the flat, impersonal room, the room he lived in, the room they had given him.

  “I know,” he admitted. “I should have answered your calls....”

  “It’s all right, Sid. I just wanted to make sure you... you’re all right. If you’re busy, I can leave.”

  “No, don’t go.... Here, sit down, I’ll get some coffee.”

  So she sat in one of the sling chairs and toyed with the gold medallion that Bob had given her while Lee fidgeted noisily in the kitchen. He came out shaking his head, carrying two steaming mugs.

  “I hope my qualification exams don’t include mechanical aptitude,” he said, handing her a cup. “I have a battle with that damned coffeemaker every day.”

  He pulled the other chair up next to her and sat in it.

  She asked, “How have you been? We were so worried about you.”

  “They gave me a clean bill of health at the hospital.”

  She sipped at the coffee. It was too strong, and hot enough to hurt her teeth.

  “You look just fine, Marlene. What have you been doing since they carried me off Titan?”

  He said it flatly, without a smile or a grimace. But she thought she saw something in his eyes.

  “I’ve been there all the while. Until a few months ago, that is. When they started the star flight program, I volunteered, and they sent me here.”

  He nodded.

  “I tried to get in touch with you from Titan,” she said. “But the hospital wouldn’t permit it.”

  “I didn’t know....”

  “Do you think we’ll be placed on the same star mission?”

  He shrugged. They sat looking at each other for an agonizingly long, silent moment.

  Marlene finally said, “There’s a rumor going around the Center that you were offered the job of chief of the archaeology section on Mars, but you turned it down.”

  “That’s right. I want a star flight, not Mars.”

  “But—head of the section...”

  “There’s nothing for me on Mars,” he said gravely. “They only asked me because of the Martian script business. That’s all ancient history now. The man who deciphered the script. That’s the bag they want to keep me in. A nice safe position.”

  “But it’s an honor, Sid. They didn’t have to—”

  “Look,” he snapped. “I deciphered all ninety-six lines of the script. They want me to sit in a dome up there and wait for somebody to find more? A few more scratches dug out of sand? Let somebody else read it.”

  Anger! Why is he angry?

  “Once you’ve seen those machines,” he went on, his face grim, “once you’ve felt them going night and day, every minute, every year... everythin
g else is meaningless. You know that.”

  “Everything?” she asked.

  He looked straight at her. “Everything. Why do you think I’ve been living inside this room for two weeks straight, trying to cram my head full of all the things I’ll need to know to qualify for a star mission?”

  “But you don’t have to....”

  “Yes I do!” His voice was tense, urgent. “I’ve got to do better on these qualification tests than anybody else in the Center. I’ve got to do so well that they won’t have the slightest excuse for turning me down. I’ve got to qualify! I’ve got to get on a star flight! Nothing else matters.”

  “But you will, Sid. They couldn’t possibly turn you down.”

  His eyes were blazing now. “Couldn’t they? The chief administrator’s already asked me to take the Mars job, to quit the Training Center.”

  “He has?”

  “Not in so many words... but I know what he wants. He’s afraid of putting me on a starship. Afraid I might crack up again, light-years out where they can’t do anything about it. Afraid I’ll wreck the mission and kill everybody.”

  “That’s cr—” She caught herself too late.

  Pointing at her, “See what I mean? Once you get the tag, it doesn’t wear off. They’re really afraid of me. They’d much rather see me quit the star program. Or flunk out.”

  “You say the chief administrator told you?”

  He nodded. “Know what my answer was? I told him that there are only eight archaeologists in the whole star program. He’s going to need four of them at least. I told him that if he forced me out, I’d get all eight of them to resign in protest.”

  “You didn’t! What did he say?”

  “What could he say? He changed the subject.”

  “You’d really do that, Sid? You’d ask them all to quit?”