Confinement in the sanatorium was easier than in the spaceship. There were laboratories in which to work, concert halls, combined baths using electric currents, music, water and wave oscillations, daily walks in light protective suits in the hills near the sanatorium, and, lastly, there was contact with Earth, not always regular, but, still, Earth was only five hours away!
Nisa’s silicolloid sarcophagus was carried into the sanatorium with every possible precaution. Erg Noor and the biologist Eon Thai were the last to leave Tantra. They moved easily even though wearing weights to prevent their making sudden leaps in the low gravitation on the satellite.
The floodlights around the landing fieldwere extinguished. Triton was moving across Neptune’s daylight side. Dull as the greyish light reflected by Neptune was, the giant mirror of the planet, only 35,000 kilometres away from Triton, dispelled the gloom and gave the satellite a bright twilight like that of a spring evening in the northern latitudes of Earth. Triton revolved about Neptune in the opposite direction to the planet’s revolution, that is, from east to west, once in about six terrestrial days so that the “daytime” twilight lasted about seventy hours. In that time Neptune revolved about its Own axis four times and at the moment of their arrival the shadow of the satellite was noticeable as it crossed the nebulous disc.
Almost simultaneously the commander and the biologist noticed a small ship standing near the edge of the plateau. This was not a spaceship with its stern half broader than the bows and with high stabilizer ribs. Judging by the sharp bows and slim hull it must have been a planetship hut its contours differed in the thick ring at the stern and the long, distaff-shaped structure on top.
“There’s another ship here in quarantine?” half asked, half asserted Eon. “Can the Council have changed its rules?”
“Not to send out stellar expeditions before a previous one has returned?” asked Erg Noor in his turn. “We have kept to our schedule but the report we should have sent to Earth from Zirda was two years late.”
“Perhaps it is an expedition to Neptune,” suggested the biologist. They soon covered the two kilometres to the sanatorium and climbed up to a wide terrace faced with red basalt. The tiny disc of the Sun, easily visible from the pole of the non-rotating satellite, shone brighter than any other star in the black sky. The bitter frost, — 170 °C., felt like the ordinary cold of a northern winter on Earth through their heated protective suits. Huge flakes of snow, frozen ammonia or carbon monoxide, fell slowly through the still atmosphere, giving their surroundings the serene appearance of Earth during a snow-fall.
Erg Noor and Eon Thai stared hypnotized at the falling snow-flakes as did their distant ancestors in the northern lands for whom the first snow-fall meant the end of the farm year. And this unusual snow also meant the end of their journey and their labours.
The biologist, in response to a subconscious impulse, held out his hand to the commander.
“Our adventures are over and we are still alive and well — thanks to you!”
Erg Noor made an abrupt gesture repelling his hand. “Are we all well? And thanks to whom am I alive?” Eon Thai was not put out.
“I’m sure Nisa will be saved! The doctors here want to begin treatment immediately. Instructions have been received from Grimm Schar himself, you know, the head of the General Paralysis Laboratory.”
“Do they know what it is?”
“Not yet. But Nisa has obviously been struck by some sort of current that condenses in the nerve nodes of the autonomous systems. When we find out how to put a stop to its extraordinarily long action the girl will be cured. We have discovered the functioning of persistent psychic paralysis that was considered incurable for centuries, haven’t we? This is something similar caused by an outside exciter. We’ll carry out some experiments on my prisoners, whether they are dead or alive, then… my arm will also begin to function again!”
The commander felt ashamed and frowned; in his great sorrow he had forgotten how much the biologist had done for him. Not at all decent in a grown man! He took the biologist’s hand and they expressed their warm friendship in man’s age-old handshake.
“Do you think the lethal organs of the black jelly-fish and that — that cross-shaped abomination are of the same order?” asked Erg Noor.
“I don’t doubt it, my arm tells me that. Adaptation to life in these black creatures, inhabitants of a planet rich in electricity, has taken the form of the accumulation and transformation of electric energy. They are obviously beasts of prey but we still don’t know whom they prey on.”
“But do you remember what happened to us all when Nisa….”
“That’s another thing. I have thought a lot about that. When that awful cross appeared it radiated infrasonic waves of tremendous strength that broke down our willpower. Sounds in that black world are also black and we cannot hear them. This monster dulls the consciousness with infrasonic effects, and then uses a sort of hypnosis much stronger than that once used by the now extinct big terrestrial snakes, like the anaconda, for example. That was what nearly finished us — if it had not been for Nisa….”
Erg Noor looked at the distant Sun that was at that moment also shining on Earth. The Sun is man’s eternal hope, has been since the prehistoric days when man dragged out a pitiful existence in the teeth of ruthless nature. The Sun is the incarnation of the bright forces of the intellect driving away the darkness and the monsters of the night. And a joyful spark of hope went with him for the rest of his journey.
The Director of the Triton Station came to see Erg Noor at the sanatorium to tell him that Earth wanted to speak to him. The Director’s appearance in a building that was in strict quarantine meant that their isolation was over and that Tantra would be able to complete her thirteen-year journey. Erg Noor came back looking more business-like than ever.
“We are leaving today. I have been asked to take six people from the planetship Amat with us; the ship is remaining here to organize the mining of new mineral deposits on Pluto. We are taking back the expedition and the material they collected on Pluto.
“These six people re-equipped an ordinary planetship for the performance of a deed of great valour. They dived into the depths of hell, down through Pluto’s thick atmosphere of neon and methane, they flew through blizzards of ammonia snow, every second bringing fresh risks of collision with gigantic needles of frozen water as hard as steel. They managed to find a region where there are mountains.
“The mystery of Pluto has been solved at last — it is a planet that does not belong to our solar system but one that was captured by the Sun during its passage through the Galaxy. This accounts for Pluto’s density being much greater than that of any other planet. The explorers discovered strange minerals on this alien world but more important still, on one ridge they found an almost completely ruined structure that told of an inconceivably ancient civilization. The research data must, of course, be checked. The intelligent working of building materials has still to be proved. But still, an amazingly valorous deed has been done. I am proud that our spaceship will carry the heroes back to Earth and I am all impatience to hear their stories. Their quarantine was over three days ago.”
Erg Noor stopped, exhausted by such a lengthy speech.
“But there is a serious contradiction in this!” shouted Pour Hyss.
“Contradiction is the mother of truth!” Erg Noor answered calmly, making use of an old proverb. “It’s time to get Tantra ready.”
The tried and tested spaceship got away from Triton very easily and described a huge arc perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. It was impossible to get directly to Earth — any ship would have been destroyed in the wide asteroid and meteoroid belt, a zone filled with the fragments of the burst planet Phaeton that once existed between Mars and Jupiter and was exploded by the gravitation of the giant of the solar system.