Peron could not recall the exact moment when he knew that he was going to die on Whirlygig. The knowledge had grown exponentially, over perhaps a minute, as his mind rapidly ran through every possible escape and rejected all of them as impossible. Cold certainty had finally replaced hope.
The landing had gone almost perfectly, as the six other contestants assigned to visit Whirlygig sailed in to a smooth encounter with the landing web. Wilmer, paired with Kallen, had proved the exception. He had come barrelling in too fast and too high, and only Kallen's hefty pull on their line had brought him low enough to connect with the cables.
He seemed not at all upset by his narrow escape. "Guess you were right, Kallen," he said cheerfully, once he was safely down. "Odd, that. I'd have bet money I had the speed accurate and you had it wrong."
"Be thankful you weren't first man in," said Rosanne severelyshe had seen how close Kallen had come to losing his own hold. "If Peron had done that he'd have been in big trouble. And what do you have in there? That's probably the mass you didn't allow for in your calculations."
Wilmer held up a green case. "In this? Food. I didn't know how long we'd be here. I've no wish to starve, even if you all don't mind it. And if I had been first one in, Rosanne, with my trajectory I'd also have been first one out. At that speed and height I'd have missed Whirlygig altogether. There's a moral in that: better come in too high and fast than low and slow."
He had begun to hop gingerly from one foot to the other, testing his balance. The effective gravity on Whirlygig's equator was not exactly zero, but it was so slight that a tumbling upward leap of hundreds of feet was trivially easy. Everyone had tried it, and soon lost interest. It took minutes for the feather-light float down back to the surface, and one experience of that was enough.
They soon began the careful trek away from Whirlygig's equator, travelling in small groups and heading for the comforting gravity of the polar regions. Only Sy was left behind, making his own solitary and perplexing experiments in motion over the rough terrain.
Progress for everyone was slower than expected. They could fly low over the surface with little effort, using the tiny propulsive units flown in after they were all landed. But Whirlygig's rapid rotation made Coriolis forces a real factor to reckon with, and allowing for them called for constant adjustment to the flight line. The suit computers refused to accept and track a simple north reckoning, and it was easy to stray twenty or thirty degrees off course. After they had been on the way for a couple of hours, Sy caught up and quickly passed them all. He had discovered his own prescription for estimating and compensating for Coriolis effects.
As they flew north the appearance of the land below gradually changed. The equator was all broken, massive rocks, heaped into improbable, gravity-defying arches, spires, and buttresses. A few hundred kilometers farther toward the pole the terrain began to smooth, settling down into a flatter wilderness of rugged boulders. It was not a pleasant landscape, and the temperature was cold enough to freeze mercury. But compared with some of the other worlds, Whirlygig seemed like vacation-land.
The suits had efficient recycling systems, and ample food supplies. The contestants agreed to carry on right to the pole, then rest there for a few hours before returning to the equator and leaving. According to Gilby they would find a sizeable research dome at the north pole, where they would be able to sleep in comfort and remove suits for a few hours. All scientific surveys on Whirlygig had been completed many years earlier, but the dome facilities should still be in working order.
Elissa and Peron had chosen to travel side by side, with their radios set for private conversation. The suit computers would monitor incoming messages and interrupt for anything urgent. Elissa was bubbling over with high spirits and cheerfulness.
"Lots of things to tell you," she said. "I didn't have a chance to talk to you yesterday, you were too busy getting ready for the landing here. But I've spent a lot of time making friends with one of the crew membersTolider, the short-haired one with the pet tardy."
"That hadn't escaped my attention," said Peron drily. "I saw you petting it and pretending you liked it, too. Disgusting. Why would anybody want a big, fat, hairy pet worm?"
Elissa laughed. "If I were to tell you what some people want with it, I'd shock your innocent soul. But Tolider just likes it for company, and he looks after it well. Love me, love my tardy, that's what he seems to think. Once he thought I was a tardy-lover, too, he was ready to bare his soul. Now, are you going to spend the next few hours sounding jealous, or do you want to know what he said?"
"Oh, all right." Peron's curiosity was too great to allow him to maintain an aloof tone, and he knew from his own experience how good Elissa was at winkling information out of anyone. "What did he tell you?"
"After he felt comfortable with me we talked about the Immortals. He says they aren't a hoax, or something invented by the government. And they aren't human, or alien, either. He says they are machines."
"How does he know?"
"He saw them. He's been working in space for over twenty years, and he remembers the last time the Immortals came. He said something else, too, once I'd softened him upshut up, Peronsomething that he says the government doesn't want anyone down on Pentecost ever to know. He told me because he wanted to warn me, because he feels sorry for me. He says that some of the winners of the Planetfest games who go off-planet are sacrifices to the Immortals. Theythat means uswill become machines, themselves."
"Rubbish!"
"I agree, it sounds like it. But he made a lot of good points. You hear about the Immortals, but you never hear a description of oneno stories that they're just like us, or that they're big or little, or have green hair, or six arms. And you tell me: what does happen to Planetfest winners when they go off-planet?"
"You know I can't answer that. But we've seen videos of them, after they won the games. How could that happen if they had been converted to machines?"
"I'll tell you what Tolider saysand this is supposed to be common rumor through the whole space division. It's like an old legend that goes back to the time we were first contacted by the Immortals. We know that the computer records on The Ship were destroyed, but there's no real doubt that it left Sol over twenty thousand years ago, and travelled around in space until five thousand years ago when it found Pentecost."
"No one will argue with that, except maybe your old aunt who thinks we've been on Pentecost forever. We were even taught it in school."
"But the old records say that everything on Earth was wiped out, and everyone died in the Great Wars. Suppose that's not truepartly true, but exaggerated. Suppose there were enough people left to start over again, says Tolider, and suppose they survived the bombs and the Long Winter. They wouldn't be starting from scratch, the way we began on Pentecost. They'd be able to breed back quicklyit took us less than five thousand years to grow from The Ship's people to over a billion. Earth would have had at least fifteen thousand years to develop their technology, beyond anything we can imagine, while we were wandering round on The Ship, looking for a home. They would have machines hundreds of generations better than our best computers. Maybe they would have reached the point where the dividing line between organic and inorganic would be blurred. We definitely know they have better computersdid you realize that the Immortals, not Pentecost, control space travel through the Cass system, because their computerized tracking system is enormously better than ours? Sy told me that, and he got it from Gilby. Anyway, that's what Tolider believes: the Immortals are intelligent computers, maybe with biological components, sent here from Earth. There. You're the smart oneso find a hole in that logic."
They flew along in silence as Peron thought it over.
"I don't need to find a logical gap," he said at last. "Tolider's story doesn't fail on logical grounds, it fails on sense. People do things for reasons. If Earth had recovered and gone back to space, they might have sent ships out to look for us, sureand for the other ships that supposedly left at the same time we did. Suppose that's true, and suppose they eventually found us. Then they'd come and tell us we had been discovered. Why would they ever not want to tell us? Tolider is repeating old stories. Nothing wrong with that, but you don't expect legends to make sense. Let me ask you a question that doesn't depend on myths for an answer. Supposedly we get scientific information from the Immortals, and they drop off a new batch of ideas every twenty years, along with a few rare materials that are in short supply in the Cass system. Right?"
"I think that's definitely true. Tolider says he has actually been involved in the materials transfer. He also says that the government down on Pentecost is obsessed with control and maintaining the status quo, and that they use new technology to remain in power. That's why we've had a stable, single regime ever since we were contacted by the Immortals, and that's one reason he prefers to stay out in space where there's more freedom."
"He should meet my fatherhe's been saying for years that the government is run by a bunch of repressive tyrants. But don't you see the problem? The Immortals give us things, and it's a one-way transfer. Nobody, not even a machine, will stand for a one-way trade for four hundred and fifty years. If all they wanted to do was give us information, they could do that using radio signals. But they actually come here. So here's my question: What do the Immortals get from their visits to Pentecost?"
"Some of us, if you want to believe Tolider. You and me, that's what the government trades to get new information."
"That makes even less sense if we want to believe Tolider. We winners are a talented group, but we're not that special. If Earth had been repopulated to the point where they could explore the stars again, they'd have thousands like us."
"Tolider told me that we are an unusual group. Rumor says it's the first time for many games that all the top five in the Planetfest games are 'troublemakers'he couldn't define the term for me."
"I think I can. We won't take answers without digging for ourselves. That's one reason I feel so comfortable with the rest of you."
"I'll accept that. So let me point out one other thing. You can tell me what it means. The contestant groups for surface visits to Glug and Bedlam and Crater and Camel and the other planets were all some random mixture of all twenty-five winners. But look who's here on Whirlygig: Sy, me, you, Kallen, and Lumthe top five, all 'troublemakers,' plus Rosanne and Wilmer. I think Rosanne can be classed as a wild one, too, difficult to controlyour hair would curl if I told you some of the things she's done. And we all wonder about Wilmer. We've been specially picked for this trip, and I'm worried about what might happen here."
Peron moved their suits closer together so that he could see her face. He realized she was genuinely worried, not just joking. He reached across to take her suit glove. "Relax, Elissa. You're as bad as Tolider, all wild surmises. They wouldn't bring us all this way to dispose of us on Whirlygig. If we are that much nuisance we could have been chucked out of the contest back on Pentecost, and nobody would ever have suspected a thing." He laughed. "Don't worry. Now we've landed we're safe enough on Whirlygig."
They had made good progress. The north pole would soon be in sight. And in less than an hour, Peron would know the falseness of his final words.
The dome was a hemisphere of tough, flexible polymer, roughly twenty meters across. It was located on the exact axis of rotation of the planet. That axis was highly tilted to Whirlygig's orbit plane, so at this time of year the golden sun of Cassay was permanently invisible, hovering down over the other pole. Only the weak companion, Cassby, threw its ruddy glow across the landscape, providing adequate light but little heat. There were no free volatiles on Whirlygig, but the surface temperature at polar midwinter would be cold enough to liquefy methane.
Peron and Elissa had been too engrossed in their conversation to make the best speed from the equator, and they arrived last. The others were already landed, clustered around the dome. Sy, Lum and Rosanne were inspecting the entry airlock, without touching any part of the door. Kallen and Wilmer were away around the back, on the opposite side of the dome, looking at something on the wall.
Elissa stepped close to see what Sy was doing. "Problems?"
Lum turned and nodded. "Wondered when you two would get here. Problems. Maybe we won't have a pleasant night out of our suits after all."
Sy was still crouched over by the door. He seemed rather pleased to be faced with the new challenge.
"See, here's how it's supposed to work," he said. "There's an airlock with an inner and outer door. The outer door, this one here, has a fail-safe on it, so it won't open when there's any gas pressure in the airlock. First you have to pump out the lock to near vacuum, and you can do it from outside. That's this control, on the outside wall. When we arrived, there was atmosphere in the airlock, so naturally it wouldn't open. We pumped it outthe pumps work finebut it still won't open."
"Motor failure?" asked Peron.
"Could be. The next step is to try to open it manually. But we want to be sure we know what we're doing. Over on the other side of the dome there's a big patch of black sealant. Suggests there was a meteor impact, and the self-repairing system took care of it. But we don't know what that may have done to the inside until we get there. And we don't know how much damage the mechanical systems may have suffered. Maybe the meteor hit the lock, too. We'll have to get in and find out."
Peron stepped forward to peer at the door. It appeared quite intact. "You're sure there's no pressure now in the airlock?"
"Positive. The gauge there is working. It showed pressure when we arrived, and as we pumped it went down to zero."
"So it should be safe enough to open manually," added Lum. "We were preparing to do that when you two arrived. Come on, another pair of hands may help a lot."
The outer door of the lock gave grudgingly, as Sy, Lum, and Peron jerked hard at it. Finally it was about halfway open, almost enough to admit a person.
"My turn now," said Rosanne. "I couldn't be much use in the tugging and heaving part, but I'm thin enough to get in there where you fatties can't, and see what's going on. Give me room."
She came to the lock door, turned sideways, and began to crab carefully into the opening.
Peron was standing just behind her. He heard Sy's warning yell at the same moment as the thought came into his own head. Idiots! If we know the outer door isn't working right, why assume that the controls for the inner one are any better?
He leaned forward, took Rosanne around the waist and with one movement propelled her back and sideways, away from the open outer door of the lock. He heard a gasp of surprise and annoyance over her radio as Rosanne skittered away across the silver-and-brown surface. Then before he could follow her, a great force took him and drove him end-over-end across the jagged rocks.
Even as he was jerked and battered inside his suit, his own thoughts remained quite clear. The inner door seal must have been already broken, ready to fail and hanging on a thread. So long as there was an equalizing pressure in airlock and dome, there was no problem. But once they had pumped down the pressure in the lock, the inner door had tons of air pressure exerted upon it. If it failed, all the dome's gases would be released in one giant blow-out through the lock. And for anyone standing in the way . . .
Peron was spinning and ricocheting from one rock formation to the next. He felt three separate and shattering collisions, one on the chest, one on the head, and one across his hip. Then, quite suddenly, it was over. He was lying supine on the surface, staring at the ruby orb of Cassby and surprised to find that he was still alive.
The others came crowding round him, helping him to his feet. He was amazed to see that he was almost fifty meters away from the dome. Rosanne had picked herself up and was waving to show that she was all right.
"I'm all right, too," said Peron.
There was a long, strange silence from the others. At last Peron noticed a faint, ominous chill on the lower left side of his abdomen. He looked down. His suit there was dreadfully buckled and splintered from chest to thighs, and over his abdomen it showed white instead of the usual metallic gray.
"Air supply working, but he's lost two tanks." That was Lum, his voice oddly distorted, from behind him. The suit radio had taken a beating, but it still functioned after a fashion.
"No problem, he can share ours."
"Motor controls look all right."
"Food containers gone."
"We can cover for that."
"Oh-oh. Thermal system is out. And most of the suit insulation is stripped from the lower torso."
"That's a worse problem."
His radio's distortion was so bad that Peron found it hard to identify the speakers. He cut to a privacy mode. While they inspected the condition of his equipment, his own mind raced on ahead of them.
Evaluate the options.
Think!
Fourteen hours back to the equatorsay that could be shaved to ten hours at maximum speed. A few minutes in the launch catapult, then another six or seven hours to ship rendezvous. Hopeless. Even with full insulation, in these temperatures the suit would protect him for only three or four hours. He'd be dead of hypothermia long before he reached the equator.
Change to a new suit? There was none. They carried spare parts for small suit components, but not for the whole thing.
Think. Bundle him into something that would keep him warm for a long time? Finebut what? There was nothing.
Take him into the dome, replace the lost atmosphere from tanks, and raise the temperature? Maybe. They could get air in there in less than an hour. But they couldn't generate heat fast enough. He would be able to breathe, and still he'd freeze to death.
Signal for an emergency landing at the pole of Whirlygig by a small ship? It was probably the best hopebut still too slow. Say three or four hours to prepare, then another three before it arrived here. By then Peron would be an icy corpse.
Other ideas? He could find none. His mind ran on, writing its own obituary: Peron of Turcanta, twenty years old, who survived the dunes of Talimantor Desert, the night woods of Villasylvia, the Hendrack Maze, the water caverns of Charant, the Capandor glaciers, the abyssal depths of the Lackro Trench . . . who had lived on, to freeze on Whirlygig. His name would be added to that list of names that the government never mentioned, the unfortunates who died in the off-planet final trials of the Planetfest games.
Peron turned his suit back to general receiving mode.
"We're agreed, then," a clear voice was saying. "Nothing any of us can think of would do it in time?"
The distortion of the damaged radio changed the tone of the voice. Peron came back from his own somber thoughts, and found to his surprise that the speaker was Wilmer.
"Looks that way." That was obviously Lum speaking. "We called the ship and they'll have something here as soon as they can, but it will probably be eight hours. Sy did a rough heat loss estimate from the condition of the suit, and calculates that we have a couple of hours to do somethingthree at the outside."
"Damnation."
My thoughts exactly, said Peron to himself, amazed by his own calm. Damnation. But what was happening to Wilmer? After tagging along as a good-natured mystery and non-contestant through all the games, he was suddenly the dominant figure of the group. The others were actually deferring to him, letting him control them.
Peron had a sudden insight. It was simple shock. Shock had overwhelmed all of them; but somehow Wilmer and he, Peron, the source of all the concern and the one who was condemned to die, could distance themselves from the emotion. He caught sight of Elissa's horrified face through the faceplate of her suit, and gave her an encouraging smile. Kallen had tears in his eyes, and even Sy had lost that remote look of calm confidence.
"No other ideas?" went on Wilmer. "Right. Give me a hand. Peron, I want to talk to you. The rest of you, I want an atmosphere inside the dome as soon as you can get it. Don't worry about the temperature, I know it will be low and we can handle that."
He was opening the green equipment sack that he had carried with him down to Whirlygig, and examining the array of ampoules, syringes, and electronic tools that lay in neat rows within it. After one long, startled look Sy headed for the dome, but the others stood motionless until Lum's roar: "Let's get to it." As he left he turned to Wilmer, his great hands clenched in their suit gloves. "This is no time to talk, but you'd better know what you're doing. If you don't I'll personally skin you alive when we get back to the ship."
Wilmer didn't bother to answer. Behind the faceplate his face was set in a scowl of concentration.
"Private circuit. You and I have to talk for a couple of minutes," he said to Peron, and waited until the personal suit frequency was confirmed. "All right. How do you rate your chances?"
"As zero."
"Fine. We'll be starting off without any delusions. I assume you're ready to take a risk?"
Peron felt like laughing. "You mean, one that gives me less chance of survival than I have now?"
"A fair answer. I know exactly what I'm going to do, but I've never tried it under circumstances remotely like these. I've got the drugs I need, and the environment in the dome won't be too far from the lab conditions. All right?"
"I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about."
"And I don't have the time to explain. Never mind. First, I'm going to give you an injection. It will have to go right in through your suit, but I think the needle will take it and the self-sealing will take care of the puncture. After that we'll get you inside. I think the shoulder seal is best."
Before Peron had time to object Wilmer had moved to his side, and he felt the sharp sting of a needle in his left trapezius muscle.
"Now we have less than a minute before you'll begin to feel dizzy." Wilmer had thrown the hypodermic away and was taking another from his case. "Listen closely. I want you to crack all the suit seals so we can easily take it off you when you're unconscious. Don't talk, and go on breathing as shallowly as you can. When you feel you are going under, don't try to fight it. Let it happen. All right?"
The chilly area in the center of his stomach was spreading rapidly to engulf his whole torso. At the same time he had the feeling that the horizon of Whirlygig was retreating steadily from him, becoming farther and farther away. He nodded to Wilmer, and manipulated the control that transferred all suit seals to external access. His own breathing felt harsh and rapid, and he struggled to inhale and exhale slowly and steadily.
"Good man. Sorry I don't have time to explain, but I've never heard of this situation happening before. I'll probably get slaughtered when they find out what I'm trying to do. But you're lucky. I was in bad trouble myself on Whirlygig once, over three hundred years ago. And I remember how I felt." Wilmer gripped his hand. "Good luck, Peron. When you wake up again you'll be over in S-space."
In S-space. If I survive, there'll be one more mystery to explain. Peron returned Wilmer's grip.
"I'll need help," said Wilmer. He was back on open circuit. "We have to get Peron out of that suit as soon as the pressure will let us. And he'll be unconscious. Elissa, will you organize the fastest way to do that?"
Peron felt an overpowering and irrational urge to laugh. Wilmer, said a voice inside him, my odd and hairless friend, how you've changed. You were an old tardy-worm down on Pentecost, and now you're transformed into a golden-winged butterfly of authority. Or do I mean a plant, a rare exotic form that only blooms when it's off-planet? That question was suddenly important, but he knew he could not provide an answer.
Control had gone. He knew they were at the dome and ready to go inside it, but he could no longer see the door of the lock. Or the stars, or even the ground he stood upon. The scene before him was blinking out, bit by bit. It was like a great jigsaw puzzle, where every piece was black. All he could see was Wilmer, still holding his arm.
So. This is what it's like to die. Not too bad, really. Not bad at all.
The final piece of the puzzle was placed in position. Wilmer disappeared, and the whole world was dark.