Erg Noor turned round and without looking back made his way to the disc spaceship. The “cannon” was pushed forward. The engineer-mechanic who stood behind it swept the plain with it every ten minutes, covering a semicircle, with the disc at its centre. The robot raised his cutter to the second outer loop of the spiral which, on the side where the edge of the disc was deeply sunk in the ground, was level with the robot’s breast.
The loud roar that followed could be heard even through the high-protection space helmets. Thin cracks appeared on the section of the malachite coating that had been chosen. Pieces of that hard material flew off and struck resoundingly against the metal body of the robot. Lateral motions of the cutter removed a big slab of the outer layer revealing a bright light-blue granular surface that was pleasant to the eyes even in the glare of the floodlamp. Kay Bear marked out a square big enough to allow a man in a spacesuit to pass and set the robot to making a deep channel in the blue metal without cutting right through it. The robot cut a second line at an angle to the first and then began moving the sharp end of the cutter back and forth, increasing the pressure as it did so. When the mechanical servant cut the third side of the square the lines he had made began to move outwards.
“Look out! Get back, everybody- lie down!” howled Erg Noor in the microphone as he switched off the robot and staggered back. The thick slab of metal suddenly bent outwards like the lid of a tin can. A stream of extraordinarily bright, rainbow-coloured fire burst out of the hole, and flew off at a tangent from the spiral protuberance. This, and the fact that the blue metal melted and immediately closed the hold that had been cut, saved the unfortunate explorers. Nothing remained of the mighty robot but a mass of molten metal with two short metal legs sticking pitifully out of it. Erg Noor and Kay Bear escaped because of the special protection suits they were wearing. The explosion threw them far back from the peculiar spaceship; it hurled the others back, too, overturned the “cannon” and broke the high-voltage cables.
When the people recovered from the shock they realized that they were defenceless. Fortunately for them they were lying in the rays of the undamaged floodlight. Although nobody had been hurt Erg Noor decided that they had had enough. They abandoned unnecessary tools, cables and the floodlamp, piled on to the undamaged car and beat a hurried retreat to their spaceship.
This fortunate outcome of an incautious attempt to open an alien spaceship was by no means due to the foresight of the commander. A second attempt would have ended with some serious accident… and Nisa, the pretty astronavigator, what of her?…. Erg Noor hoped that the spacesuit would have weakened the lethal power of the black cross. After all the biologist had not been killed by contact with the black medusa. But out in the Cosmos, so far from the mighty terrestrial medical institutions, would they be able to counteract the effects of an unknown weapon?
In the air-lock Kay Bear drew near to the commander and pointed to the rear side of his left shoulder armour. Erg Noor turned towards the mirrors that were always provided in the locks for those who returned from an alien planet to examine themselves. The thin sheet of zircono-titanium of which the shoulder armour was made had been torn. A piece of sky-blue metal stuck out of the furrow it had cut in the insulation lining although it had not reached the inner layer of the suit. They had difficulty in removing the metal splinter. At the cost of great risk and, in the final analysis, by sheer chance, they had obtained a specimen of the mysterious metal of which the spiral-disc spaceship was made and which would now be taken back to Earth.
At last Erg Noor, divested of his heavy spacesuit, was able to enter his ship or rather to crawl in under the influence of the gravity of the fearful planet.
The entire expedition was relieved when he arrived. They had watched the catastrophe at the disc through their stereovisophones and had no need to ask what the result had been.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RIVER OF TIME
Veda Kong and Darr Veter were standing on the little round flying platform as it swept slowly over the endless steppes. The thick, flowering grasses rolled in waves under the gentle breeze. In the distance they could see a herd of black and white cattle, the descendants of animals bred by crossing yaks, domestic cows and buffaloes.
This unchanging lowland with its low hills and quiet rivers in wide valleys, a part of Earth’s crust once known as the Hanty-Mansy Territory, breathed the peace of great open spaces.
Darr Veter was gazing contemplatively at the land that had formerly been covered with the dismal swamps and sparse, stunted woods of Yamal. It brought to mind a picture by an old master that had impressed itself on his memory when he was still a child.
Where the river curved round a high promontory, there stood a church, timber-built and grey with time, its lonely gaze turned towards the wide fields and grasslands across the river. The tiny cross on the dome was black under masses of low, black clouds. In the little graveyard behind the church a cluster of birches and willows bowed their tousled heads to the wind. Their low-hanging boughs almost brushed the rotting crosses, thrown down by time and storm and overgrown with fresh damp grass. Across the river gigantic violet-grey masses of cloud were piling up until they became tangibly dense. The wide river gave off a cruel, steel-coloured gleam, a cold gleam that lay on everything round about. The whole countryside, far and near, was wet in the miserable autumn drizzle, so cold and uninviting in those northern latitudes. The whole palette of blue-grey-green tones used in the picture told of stretches of barren land, where it was hard for man to live, where man was cold and hungry, where he felt so strongly the loneliness that was typical of the long-forgotten days of human folly.
This picture, seen in a museum, had seemed to Darr Veter to be a window looking into the past; it was kept under a plexiglass shield, its colours ever fresh in the illumination of invisible rays.
Without a word Darr Veter looked at Veda. The young woman put her hand on the rail around the platform. With her head bent she stood there, deep in thought. watching the stems of the tall grass as they bent to the wind. Wave after wave swept slowly across the feathergrass and equally slowly the round platform floated over the steppe. Tiny hot whirlwinds rushed suddenly on the travellers, ruffled Veda’s hair and dress and breathed heat mischievously into Darr Veter’s eyes. The automatic stabilizer, however, worked more rapidly than thoughts and the flying platform merely heaved or swayed slightly.
Darr Veter bent over the chart frame: the strip of map was moving quickly, showing their movement — hadn’t they flown too far north? They had crossed the sixtieth parallel some time before, had passed the junction of the Irtish and the Ob and were approaching the plateau known as the North Siberian Uval or Highlands.
The two travellers had become accustomed to the open country during their four months at the excavation of ancient grave mounds in the hot steppes of the Altai lowlands. It was as though the explorercs of the past had travelled hack to times when only occasional small parties of armed horsemen crossed the southern steppes….
Veda turned and pointed ahead without a word. A dark island, seemingly torn off from the earth, was floating in streams of heated air. A few minutes later the platform approached a small hill, probably the slag-heap of what had once been a mine. There was nothing left of the buildings and the pit — just that slag-heap overgrown with wild cherry, The round flying platform suddenly listed.