Children of Infinity Page 5

  “Well, yes, sure. Wasn’t that the whole idea behind this colony?”

  And standing there between sky and sea, Nat remembered swimming, diving, surfing, all the years of his life, brightness and laughter of the water that kissed his face and embraced his whole body, the riding on splendid waves and questing into secret twilit depths, the sudden astonishing beauty of a fish or a rippled sandy bottom, sunlight adance overhead . . . and he looked at the Ythrian and felt a little sorry for him.

  robert bloch

  Space—Born

  The probe-mission ship locked into orbit and began its sensor-scan of the planet Echo.

  Seated at his post on the bridge, Mission Commander Richard Tasman, United States Navy, checked out the data processed by the technical teams of his crew. Beside him Lieutenant Ted Gilbey, his second in command, nodded approvingly.

  “Looks good!” Gilbey said. “Looks very good.”

  And it did.

  According to the computerized data fed back through the tapes, Echo was indeed an earth-type planet, just as had been suspected. Photoscopes confirmed the presence of running water, surface soil, and abundant vegetation. The bacterial life analysis indicated nothing harmful or unfamiliar. Echo’s planetary profile was that of a miniature world—alive and unpolluted, unspoiled by the presence of man.

  Then the tapes began running wild.

  Tasman stared at Gilbey. Gilbey stared at Tasman. And both men turned to stare at the photoscope.

  The confirming data coming in told the story, but one picture is always worth ten thousand words, even though for a moment this particular picture left them both speechless.

  Clearly and unmistakably it showed the boulder-strewn hillside and what rested on the sloping surface—landing gear crumpled against the looming rocks. The scope moved in for a close shot, panning across the hull, picking up the insignia and legible lettering: U.S.S. Orion.

  There on the face of a minor planet near the edge of the galaxy, unexplored and unvisited by man, was a spacecraft from earth.

  Tasman took over the landing party himself, leaving Gilbey behind in command.

  There were five members in the task force, counting Tasman, as the auxiliary launch settled safely on target. When the spacemen emerged from the hatch, they were less than a thousand yards from the hulk of the U.S.S. Orion on the hillside.

  Even before they forced their way inside, all doubts had vanished. Weber, the chief petty officer of the party, spoke for them all. “This is it, sir. Kevin’s ship.”

  Tasman shook his head grimly. “Our ship,” he said. “Kevin stole it.”

  There was no answer to that, not from Weber or any of the others, because all of them knew Tasman spoke the truth.

  Senior Commander Kevin Nichols, USN—veteran astronaut, hero of the space program, next in line for appointment to head the entire space project itself—had stolen the ship.

  A year ago, almost to the day by earth calendar, Nichols and the Orion had vanished. No advance warning, no clearance, nothing. And no telltale traces left behind; even his wife had disappeared. It took almost six months of intensive investigation to unravel the tangle of red tape surrounding the flight, and even now there were a thousand loose ends. All the evidence added up to the fact that Kevin Nichols had moved swiftly and secretly, according to a well-prepared plan. Forged orders for a security-sealed mission had been used to get the Orion equipped and on the launching pad without a leak. One of the very latest miniaturized spacecraft, Orion required only the services of a pilot, with all flight functions self-powered, self-contained, and computer-directed. It was a top secret test model, designed for future exploration projects, and put through its trial runs by Kevin Nichols himself. So when he ordered it supplied and readied for takeoff, no one had questioned him or broken security regulations to reveal its departure.

  Not until the Orion soared into space did the scandal rise in its wake—and even that was secret, hushed up by the space program itself before the news could break to the public. Then came the investigation, and the eventual discovery of Kevin’s probable destination—not Echo itself, but Sector XXIII, the same area of the space chart.

  It was then that Commander Tasman had been assigned to go after the missing ship and the missing man.

  Tasman knew Kevin Nichols—they had been classmates at the Cape years ago—and perhaps that’s why he was chosen for the mission. But knowing Kevin hadn’t made the job of locating him any easier. They had touched down at a dozen points before the process of elimination zeroed them in on Echo. It was only now, months after the start of the expedition, that they had caught up with the fugitive.

  Or had they?

  Kevin wasn’t on the ship.

  Neither were its supplies and portable instruments.

  “Now what?” Tasman muttered.

  Weber, the CPO, suggested scouting the surrounding terrain, and it was he who discovered the cave set in the rocks.

  Tasman was the first to enter, and what he found there in the dark depths brought the others to his side on the run.

  Living in a cave is not an ideal existence at best, and when one’s supplies are exhausted and the battery-powered light sources fail, there’s nothing left but shadows—shadows looming up everywhere from the twisted tunnels which wind on down endlessly beyond the outer chamber. And when one cries out, the shadows do not answer—there is only the sound of echoes screaming through the darkness. Echo; the planet was well named.

  Had Kevin Nichols thought of that while he screamed, or when he grew too weak for screaming? Had he stared at the shapeless shadows which seemed to seethe and stir in the tunnel mouths beyond?

  It didn’t matter now. The tunnel mouths were open, but Kevin’s mouth was closed; closed and set in the grim grin of death. One look at the gaunt face and emaciated body brought one word to Weber’s lips.

  “Starvation.”

  Commander Tasman nodded without comment, then stooped to examine the other body.

  For there was another body lying there, some little distance away—lying face downward, arms outstretched as though attempting to crawl toward the tunnels when death halted her.

  Her.

  Tasman turned the body over, staring in recognition at the wasted form.

  “Kevin’s wife,” he murmured. “He took her with him.”

  Kevin took her with him, and death took them both. Here, in a remote cave on a distant planet, surrounded by shadows, the fugitives had died in darkness, and now only echoes lingered, wailing in the depths. If you listened closely, you could almost hear them now, faint and faraway.

  And then they did hear the sound, all of them, and recognized it for what it was—issuing from the shadows beyond, impossibly but unmistakably.

  A baby had cried.

  There were problems, many problems.

  The first was physical—how to transport a newborn infant back to earth on a probe-mission ship lacking the facilities and even the feeding formula necessary to sustain its fragile hold on life.

  Surprisingly enough, the little one survived and even flourished on the hastily improvised diet of powdered milk and juices. The infant girl seemed to have inherited some of Kevin Nichols’ toughness and tenacity as well as his features. Indeed, the resemblance was so close between father and daughter that it was decided to name her after him. They called her Keva.

  It wasn’t until after splashdown on earth that the other problems arose. Then Space Control took charge of Keva and inherited the dilemma she brought with her.

  There was no publicity, of course, but that in itself solved nothing. Sooner or later the news would inevitably leak out. An honored and acclaimed astronaut had succeeded in violating top security, had foiled all interplanetary precautions, and had stolen the latest and most advanced spacecraft.

  Waves of panic rose and spread behind the locked doors of Space Command. Top brass and top government officials floundered, engulfed in those waves, spluttering in confusion, choking in consternation.<
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  “Do you know what this means? When the story gets out, the whole program will be discredited. Stealing a prototype ship right out from under our noses—we’re going to be the laughingstock of the world, the whole galaxy!”

  Those words were shouted by a senior spokesman for the space project, and a senior spokesman for the government answered him.

  “Then why not tell the truth? Tell them that we had our eye on Kevin Nichols all along, knew he was cracking up. Sure, he was next in line for the big promotion.

  but he wasn’t going to make it. Not after what our investigation uncovered—the drug thing, the embezzlement of project funds. He must have realized we were going to blow the whistle on him and that’s why he got out, taking his wife with him. Let the public know what happened, that we were the victims of a conspiracy—”

  “You’re crazy!” Psychiatrists usually disapprove of using such language, but it was a senior member of the psychiatric advisory staff who spoke. “We can’t afford to be laughed at, and we can’t afford to be pitied, either. Right now we can’t afford anything, period. I don’t need to remind you gentlemen that the vote on new appropriations for the entire space project is coming up next week. There couldn’t possibly be a worse time to tell the world that the largest and most important program in all history has been victimized by one man—and that the biggest hero of that program was a psychotic, a thief, and a traitor. There’s got to be another answer.”

  There was.

  Exactly who gave it is not known—probably some minor member of the staff. It is the fate of junior officers to come up with the right suggestion, and their reward is to be forgotten even while the suggestion is remembered.

  “Keva is our answer,” said the nameless junior officer.

  Everyone looked at him, everyone listened, and everyone understood.

  “Don’t you realize what Nichols has done for the program? He’s given us the biggest public-relations hook anyone could wish for. His daughter, Keva. The first child ever to be born in outer space! Not on Mars or Venus or a colony, but on a new frontier, the farthermost outpost of all interplanetary exploration known to man!

  “You don’t have to say that her father was flipping out, that the ship was stolen. Make the whole thing part of a top security mission, a secret program to test human survival on an earth-type world. Nichols and his wife volunteered to take the ship off to Echo and have their child there. A heroic experiment that turned into a heroic sacrifice when they emerged from the crash unharmed but unable to return or communicate with the project back on earth. Let it be known that Nichols kept a complete record of his stay on Echo, up to and including the actual birth of the infant, but that the data are still classified information. That should put an end to any further embarrassing questions about the affair. But there won’t be any trouble about the appropriation—not if you concentrate publicity where it belongs and keep it there. You’re sitting on the greatest story of all time, the greatest celebrity ever known—Keva, the spacechild!”

  They didn’t sit much longer.

  Within a matter of hours the well-oiled machinery of the space program’s Information Unit started to function. The wheels began to turn, and the end product of the manufacturing process appeared. Instant heroes.

  Kevin Nichols, heroic astronaut who piloted an untested ship to an uncharted world. His wife, who risked her unborn baby in the unknown. The space program itself, bravely breaking through all barriers to prove, once and for all, that humanity could move forward without fear and perpetuate itself on other planets.

  Nichols and his wife were dead, but the space program survived. Just as predicted, the appropriation passed.

  And as for young Keva herself, she lived and thrived. Keva, the new symbol of the Age of Space. Publicized, photographed, promoted, praised; in a matter of days, her name was known throughout the solar system and beyond. Child of space, heir to the future.

  And ward of the space program.

  Jealously guarded, possessively protected, little Keva was withdrawn from public scrutiny shortly after she had served her primary purpose, and was placed in a private—very private—nursery. While Keva dolls and Keva toys flooded the market, and Keva songs and Keva pictures kept her image bright, the object of all this adulation was being carefully nursed and tended by a team of medical specialists. Pediatricians and psychologists alike agreed; Keva was a very special baby. Not just because of her value as a living symbol, but for what she was—exceptionally sturdy, bright, alert, healthy, and precocious.

  Yet, in spite of security, rumors poured out of the nursery-laboratory where young Keva was hidden.

  Standing alone at five months. Walking at seven months. Only nine months old and seems to understand everything you say to her. One year old and she’s already talking—complete sentences! Did you hear the latest about Keva? Two and a half, going on three, and they say she already is reading! Can you imagine that?

  The public could imagine it very easily. As a matter of fact, they were beginning to imagine a little too much. No matter how much a genius was praised, nobody really loved one. A genius was too hard to understand. And the whole point of the plan was plain; Keva had to be loved.

  So, after much consideration, Keva was placed in an exclusive private school—in first-phase classes, or what used to be called kindergarten. Good thinking, everyone said; give her a chance to grow up with other youngsters, learn to be like the rest of the kids.

  But Keva wasn’t like the rest of the kids. She grew faster and learned more quickly. She seemed immune to childhood diseases and she was never ill. Perhaps this was a result of the antiseptic care of the medical team, but even so it was highly unusual. The doctors took notes.

  The psychologists took notes, too. Keva did not relate to her peer group—that was the way they phrased it. In plainer words, she didn’t want to have anything to do with the other children. And tvhat she did not want to do she did not bother with. She read. She asked questions—intelligent, penetrating questions—and she was impatient with stupid answers.

  Keva had no interest in nursery rhymes or fairy tales or bedtime stories. Facts and figures, those were the things that fascinated her. She never played with toys, and she refused to learn any games.

  The other youngsters didn’t understand her, and what children can’t understand they usually dislike—a trait often carried over into adult life.

  Two of the children never got to carry that or any other trait into adult life. They took to teasing Keva, calling her names, but only for a few days. Then they died.

  One of them fell out of an upstairs window while walking in his sleep. The other went into convulsions—an epileptic seizure, the doctors decided.

  Of course, Keva had nothing to do with it; she was nowhere near either of the youngsters at the time. But there was bound to be talk, so the medical team took her out of the school.

  To put an end to any possible rumors, a thorough checkup was programmed for the prodigy. And prodigy she was—a beautiful, healthy child, without functional defect. The results of the battery of mental tests indicated genius.

  What Keva needed, the medical team decided, was a chance to lead a normal existence, an opportunity to relate to ordinary people in ordinary surroundings. As a celebrity such a life was, of course, impossible.

  So they changed her name, took her clear across the country, and put her up for adoption.

  The world at large was told that Keva had been sent abroad for further education under governmental supervision. Even the couple who took her into their home didn’t realize that their bright, good-looking new daughter was the famous spacechild.

  To George and Elaine Rutherford, Keva was an orphan named Robin. A quiet girl but well-behaved, quick in her studies, sailing through high school and into college at fifteen. There were no problems.

  At least, the security reports didn’t indicate any. The space program had her under observation, of course, monitoring her progress in school.

/>   Perhaps they should have spent more time monitoring her foster parents. As it was, they didn’t seem to notice the change in Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford. Maybe the Rutherfords weren’t even aware of it themselves. It wasn’t anything dramatic.

  But as Keva grew, they dwindled.

  Keva’s growth was physically apparent. At seventeen, already a senior in college, she seemed completely mature—enough of an adult, in fact, to enter into the management of her foster father’s prosperous ranch during the summer months.

  Rutherford, the bluff, hearty rancher with the booming voice, made no objection. It was as though he secretly welcomed the idea of taking things easy, of not having to bawl out orders, of sitting quietly on the big screened porch and rocking away. After a time people began to notice how he mumbled and muttered, talking to himself.

  Elaine Rutherford didn’t say anything—she gradually stopped entertaining or going out, and never saw any of their old friends. While the girl ran the ranch, she was content just to keep house and spend her spare time resting upstairs. Then she began to talk to herself, too.

  It was just about a year later—after Keva had graduated and gone into advanced work in astrophysics—that the authorities came and took the Rutherfords away.

  There was a hearing and the ranch hands testified. So did the girl. Everyone agreed there had been no violence, no real crisis. It was only that the Rutherfords had gone from talking to babbling, and from babbling to screaming.

  Shadows were what they feared. Shadows, or a single shadow—apparently they never saw more than one at a given moment. A shadow moving at midnight in the corrals, making the cattle bellow in terror—but why should cattle be afraid of something that cannot be seen? A shadow creeping through the long dark ranch house hall, while the floorboards creaked—but how can there be sound without substance? A shadow glimpsed in the girl’s room, stretched sleeping in the bed where the girl should be—but shadows do not sleep, and the girl testified she had seen nothing.