“Hullo, observers, why are you switching the light on and off?” came Ingrid’s clear voice in the helmet telephones. “Are you in need of help? The storm’s over and we’re going to begin work. We’re coming to you now.”
“Stay where you are,” ordered the commander. “There is great danger abroad. Call everybody!”
Erg Noor told them about the terrible jelly-fish. After a consultation the explorers decided to move part of a planetary motor forward on an automatic car. An exhaust flame three hundred metres long swept across the stony plane removing everything visible and invisible from its path. Before half an hour had passed the crew had repaired the broken cable and protection was restored. They realized that the anameson fuel must be loaded before the planet’s night came again; at the cost of superhuman effort it was done and the exhausted travellers retired behind the armour of their tightly sealed spaceship and listened calmly as it trembled in the storm. Microphones brought the roar and rumble of the hurricane to them but it only served to make more cosy the little world of light impregnable to the powers of darkness.
Ingrid and Louma opened the stereoscreen. The film had been well chosen. The blue waters of the Indian Ocean splashed at the feet of those sitting in the ship’s library. The film showed the Neptune Games, the world-wide competition in all types of aquatic sports. In the Great Circle Era the entire world’s population had grown accustomed to water in a way that had only been possible for the maritime peoples in earlier days. Swimming; diving and plunging, surf-board riding and the sailing of rafts had become universal sports. Thousands of beautiful young bodies, tanned by the sun, ringing songs, laughter, the festive music of the finals….
Nisa leaned towards the biologist, who sat beside her deep in thought, carried away in his mind to the far distant planet that was his, to that dear planet where nature had been harnessed by man.
“Did you ever take part in these competitions. Eon?” The biologist looked at her somewhat puzzled. “What? Oh, these? No, never. I was thinking and didn’t understand you at first.”
“Weren’t you thinking about that?” asked the girl, pointing to the screen. “Don’t you find your appreciation of the beauty of our world comes so much fresher to you after all this darkness, after the storms and the jellyfish?”
“Of course I do, but that only makes me all the more anxious to get hold of one of those jelly-fish. I was racking my brains over that, trying to think of a way to capture one.”
Nisa Greet turned away from the smiling biologist and met Erg Noor’s smile.
“Have you, too, been thinking about how to catch that black horror?” she asked, mockingly.
“No, but I was thinking of how to explore the disc-shaped spaceship,” he said and the sly glint in the commander’s eyes almost annoyed Nisa.
“Now I understand why it is that men engaged in wars in the old days! I used to think it was only the boastful-ness of your sex, the so-called strong sex of that unorganized society.”
“You’re not quite right although you are pretty near to understanding our old-time psychology. My ideas are simple — the more beautiful I find my planet, the more I get to love it, the more I want to serve it, to plant gardens, extract metals, produce power and food, create music, so that when I have passed on my way I shall leave behind me a little piece of something real made by my hands and my head. The only thing I know is the Cosmos, astronautics, and that is the only way I can serve mankind. The goal is not the flight itself but the acquisition of fresh knowledge, the discovery of new worlds which we shall, in time, turn into planets as beautiful as our Earth. And what aim have you in view, Nisa? Why are you so interested in the disc spaceship? Is it mere curiosity?”
With a great effort the girl overcame the weight of her tired arms and stretched them out to the commander. He took her little hands in his and stroked them gently. Nisa’s cheeks flushed till they matched the tight auburn curls on her head, new strength flowed through her tired body. She pressed her cheek to Erg Noor’s hand as she had done in the moment of the dangerous landing and she forgave the biologist his seeming treachery to Earth. To show that she was in agreement with both of them she told them of an idea that had just entered her head. They could furnish one of the water-tanks with a self-closing lid, place a piece of fresh preserved meat (a rare luxury that they sometimes enjoyed in addition to their canned food) as bait and, should the “black something” crawl inside and the lid close, they could fill the tank with inert terrestrial gas through a previously arranged tap and seal the edges of the lid.
Eon was very enthusiastic over the resourcefulness of the auburn-headed girl. He was almost the same age as Nisa and permitted himself the gentle familiarity that is born of school years spent together. By the end of the nine days of the planetary night the trap, perfected by the engineers, was ready.
Erg Noor was busy with the adjustment of a manlike robot and he also got ready a powerful hydraulic cutting tool with which he hoped to make his way into the spiral disc from some distant star.
The storm died down in the now familiar darkness, the frost gave way to warmth and the day that was nine terrestrial days long began. They had work for four terrestrial days to load the ion charges, some other supplies and valuable instruments. In addition to these things Erg Noor considered it necessary to take some of the personal belongings of the lost crew so that, after a thorough disinfection, they could be taken to Earth for the relatives of the dead people to keep in their memory. In the Great Circle Era people did not burden themselves with many possessions so that their transfer to Tantra offered no difficulties.
On the fifth day they switched off the current and the biologist and two volunteers, Kay Bear and Ingrid Dietra, shut themselves up in the observation turret at Parus. The black creatures appeared almost immediately. The biologist had adapted an infrared screen and could follow the movements of the jelly-fish. One of them soon approached the tank trap; it folded up its tentacles, rolled itself up into a ball and started creeping inside. Suddenly another black rhombus appeared at the open lid of the tank. The one that had first arrived unfolded its tentacles and star-like flashes came with such rapidity that they turned into a strip of vibrant dark-red light which the screen reproduced as flashes of green lightning. The first jelly-fish moved back and the second immediately rolled up into a ball and fell on to the bottom of the tank. The biologist held his hand out towards the switch but Kay Bear held it back. The first monster had also rolled up and followed the second, so that there were two of the terrible brutes in the tank. It was amazing that they could reduce their apparent proportions to such an extent. The biologist pressed the switch, the lid closed and immediately five or six of the black monsters fastened on to the zirconium covered tank. The biologist turned on the light and asked Tantra to switch on the protection of the road. The black phantoms, as usual, dissolved immediately except for the two that remained imprisoned in the hermetically sealed tank.
The biologist went out to the tank, touched the lid and got such a severe shock that he could not restrain himself and shouted out aloud. His left arm hung limp, paralysed.
Mechanic Taron put on a high-temperature protective spacesuit and was then able to fill the tank with pure terrestrial nitrogen and weld the lid down. The taps were also welded and then the tank was wrapped in a spare piece of ship’s insulation and placed in the collection room.
Success had been achieved at a high price, for the biologist’s arm remained paralysed despite the efforts of the physician. Eon Thai was in great pain hut he did not dream of refusing to take part in the expedition to the disc ship. Erg Noor, compelled to submit to his insatiable thirst for exploration, could not leave him on Tantra.