The Unorthodox Engineers Page 11

  ‘So we knock in our tube. Then what?’

  ‘It depends on what we find. The Dark may be a solid or it may be a thin-wall phenomenon. If it’s a solid we shall not gain much except for a little knowledge. But if it’s thin-wall, then we might have a chance to look inside.’

  ‘From which you’re assuming that the Dark effect won’t penetrate inside the pipe.’

  ‘I think it may to some extent, but take any physical phenomenon and place an inch of steel in front of it and you always get some modification or attenuation, if not a complete shutoff. I don’t see that the situation should be materially different for anti-physical phenomena. With a bit of luck we should be able to get through.’

  ‘What do you think’s inside there, Fritz?’

  ‘As I see it, Jacko, some form of intelligence, but I wouldn’t like to guess any closer than that. Whether the Dark is some cosmic amoeba or has inside it a complex of little green men is something I intend to find out. Are you with me?’

  ‘I’m right behind you,’ said Jacko. ‘But don’t ask me to be the first man through that damned pipe.’

  By the time that Courtney returned to the base camp a few days later van Noon’s plans were fairly well advanced. Fritz described the scheme briefly. Courtney was intrigued but doubtful.

  ‘I don’t see,’ he said, ‘how you’re going to drive a pipe of that diameter into the Dark—remembering that the driving has to be done in the deep Pen area where the anti-momentum is killing. You’d never get a horizontal pile-driver to work under those conditions.’

  ‘No. We’ve already taken care of that point by taking a new line entirely. We’re going to fire it in.’

  ‘Fire it?’

  ‘Yes. Attach the free end of the pipe to what is effectively a large-bore gun or reaction chamber with an open muzzle pointing away from the Dark. In the gun we fire a high-explosive charge and let the recoil of the apparatus drive the pipe against the Dark. According to my calculations, a series of explosive shocks should have the right sort of driving characteristics for the job. How does it sound as an idea?’

  ‘It could work,’ admitted Courtney. ‘Unless we’re up against something we don’t know about yet. How far have you got with the project.’

  ‘We’ve managed to get the lengths of pipe into the Dark area, and the gun chamber is there also. There’s trouble keeping handling equipment working so far into the Pen, but we’ve managed somehow. We should be ready to start firing sometime tomorrow. Have you been able to get the extra stuff I asked for?’

  ‘Most of it’s outside on the carriers, and the generators will arrive in the morning. Here’s the wide-band radiation monitor, trolley-mounted as specified. I only hope it fits into the pipe.’

  ‘I’ll try it out,’ said van Noon. ‘I can run it through our test length and if it doesn’t fit we can modify it before it goes into the Pen.’

  He wheeled the small apparatus-laden trolley to the length of pipe that ran down the workshop where they had been fabricating the gun chamber. The trolley fitted easily into the interior of the pipe and, to give himself a little practice, he crawled in after it and pushed it before him. The iron confines of the pipe returned the sound of the small rollers with a noise like a train speeding through a tunnel. When van Noon reached the far end he found that Jacko had returned and was peering anxiously down the pipe.

  ‘Why the sound effects, Fritz?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, this? It’s the radiation detector. It’s obvious that even the iron of the pipe can’t do more than attenuate some wave lengths of the electromagnetic spectrum—and the same presumably applies to the negative spectrum. So just to be on the safe side Courtney has knocked up a combined range monitor which should cover anything likely to be dangerous but not detectable by our own senses. I don’t expect that we’ll encounter any such radiation, but it’s better to be safe than sterile.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Jacko. ‘We’re taking enough chances with the unknown already. I’ve just come back out of the Pen, and we’re right on schedule. The first firing can take place at mid-day tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Fritz. ‘I’m particularly interested in knowing what happens to the core which we leave in the pipe. If the Dark is true radiation-type phenomena, there won’t be any core material. But if it’s something else, we may have to think again.’

  The null-pressure suits obtained from Space Command were far more suitable for working under deep Pen conditions than the expeditionary clothing had been. Specifically designed for work on asteroids and similar bodies under a pressure dome but exposed to extremes of stellar heat and cold, the suits were the finest flexible radiation foils that had yet been devised. In the Pen, of course, no pressurized dome was needed, but the suits ensured that the searching fingers of negative-heat were no longer a danger or of major discomfort to the UE squad.

  But the drag of the anti-momentum was not so easily avoided. Close to the wall of the Dark it exhibited an almost treacle-like resistance to movement which was common to both men and machines alike. The adaptations of technique needed for working in an environment possessing such a high quasi-viscosity were numerous, but the combined ingenuity of the Unorthodox Engineering squad was equal to the challenge. Somehow the impossible had been accomplished, and the structural components of van Noon’s tunnel had been patiently swung into place ready for the projected penetration of the Dark.

  ‘Ready to fire?’

  Jacko nodded. ‘First shot in thirty seconds.’

  They were watching the scene by the light of two large continuously operating lasers which Courtney had managed to obtain. These were directed on the point where the leading end of the pipe was pressed hard against the Dark perimeter. The illumination, spread slightly by deliberate diffusion with mesh screens, was adequate despite the negative-radiation loss. The backscatter illumination was also quite useful around the working area, but was attenuated sharply and unnaturally with distance. The power for the lasers had to be derived from outside the Pen via cable, and the negative-electrical loss was such that two large generators were needed to drive sufficient energy in to keep the lasers in operation.

  The first shot was fired. The sound of the explosion was incredibly muted, and the tongue of flame from the reaction chamber was quickly quenched and drained. Van Noon examined the junction between the pipe and the Dark.

  ‘I think it’s working, Jacko. Only millimetres so far, but it’s definitely going in. Keep firing rapidly but erratically. Let me know when you’re in about a metre. Then I want to go down inside the pipe and see if any sort of core is left.’

  By reason of good organization on Jacko’s part they had penetrated a metre by late afternoon. Then the gun chamber was removed to allow access to the free end of the pipe. Van Noon had a line measured to a pipe’s length minus one metre, and one end he left clamped to the free end of the pipe while he took the rest of the line inside to give him an indication of his position. Ten minutes later he came out jubilant.

  ‘No core material, Jacko. The pipe is clear to the very end, and then the Dark begins again. That means we’ve got a metre of clear tunnel already and no complications so far. Now I want firings to continue right round the clock, as close-spaced as possible without setting up a standard repetition rate. If you scatter the charges round the area a bit so that each has to be fetched from a slightly different distance, that should be sufficient. But I want the depth of penetration per shot carefully watched, and if it varies very much from the existing rate, cease firing and let me know.’

  It took forty hours to drive the first length of pipe into the Dark. By this time a second length had been added to the first and there were indications that the depth of penetration per shot was increasing. The second was driven home in twenty-five hours, partly due to the decreasing resistance it encountered, and partly due to the increasing proficiency of the shot-firers.

  The third pipe was inserted in seventeen hours, and the fourth, in twelve. The time for subsequ
ent pipes decreased in rough proportion. The tenth went half way, and then the indications were that no great resistance was being offered to it by the Dark since the assembly of pipes now moved forward the full theoretical distance per shot that they would have moved in the Pen itself. Jacko brought his charts to van Noon.

  ‘I think we’re through, Fritz. These seem to show that the Dark is a relatively thin-wall phenomenon with its effects decreasing with depth of penetration and reaching virtually zero at about ninety-five metres. God alone knows what’s at the other end.’

  ‘Take the gun chamber off, Jacko, but be careful in case something unexpected comes out of the pipe. If nothing happens in half an hour then I’m going through to have a look.’

  Nothing did happen. The end of the pipe protruding from the Dark remained empty, silent and cold; and there was no way of telling what lay at the far end. A laser directed down the pipe returned nothing but light-scatter from walls and motes of dust. The only factor of note was a strong current of air entering the pipe as though to equalize some unexplained deficiency in pressure.

  Finally van Noon hoisted the radiation trolley into the pipe and followed it in.

  ‘I’m going down a bit, Jacko, for a preliminary survey. Stand by with some weapons in case I come out fast with something after me.’

  ‘Nothing doing!’ said Jacko. ‘If you’re going down that pipe, then I’m coming too.’

  Fritz nodded. ‘All right, let’s get on with it. The situation won’t improve itself by waiting.’

  He crawled into the pipe. With some misgivings, Jacko followed him in. Ahead of Fritz the radiation trolley clattered on the metal and raised a multitude of clamorous echoes which engulfed them in a tide of sound. Inside the pipe the negative-sound attenuation apparently did not operate to anything like the same degree as that encountered in the Pen. The radiation monitor gave no indication of any increase in rate above the slow background count, and they considered it safe to continue.

  Occasionally van Noon stopped and let the echoes die, but nothing else disturbed the silence except their own breathing and their own awkward movements in the confines of the pipe. Then after what seemed an eternity of crawling the clatter of the trolley ceased again and van Noon stopped and half twisted himself to look back.

  ‘Jacko,’ he said urgently, ‘think very carefully. Are you absolutely sure how many lengths of pipe we drove into the Dark?’

  ‘A bloody fine time to be concerned about the economics of the project.’

  ‘Stuff the economics! Are you sure?’

  ‘Certainly. Ten in all. Why?’

  ‘I’ve been counting the joins. I’m now in the twelfth pipe, that’s why.’

  ‘Don’t make jokes like that, Fritz. You’ll give me heart failure.’

  ‘I wasn’t joking. The rollers on the trolley drop into the flange gap at every join, and I have to ease them over. That’s what made me start counting how many joins I’d passed.’

  ‘So you’re now in the twelfth pipe out of the original ten,’ said Jacko, still not fully convinced. ‘That’s quite a trick! I think I’d like to go home now.’

  ‘Opposing steel pipe,’ said van Noon. ‘Lord! I thought it was a joke when Courtney suggested that they stopped a projectile with an anti-projectile. But it appears it wasn’t. They do just that. They tried to stop our pipe with a length of opposing pipe so precisely similar that I’d not have noticed the difference had I not been counting. What type of creatures could do that, Jacko—almost instantaneously?’

  I don’t know,’ said Jacko. ‘But I’m afraid of them.’

  ‘You and me both. To work a trick like that must demand a technology centuries ahead of ours. But even so, I’ve a feeling we’ve got them worried.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because if they were still operating at full efficiency there’s something we’d logically have met in this pipe before now—a anti-radiation monitoring trolley pushed by an anti-Fritz van Noon.’

  ‘We’re way out of our depth, Fritz,’ said Jacko finally. ‘Are you still going on?’

  ‘If you’re still following.’

  ‘I’m still behind you, but I’m damned if I know why. I’ve followed you into some crazy situations before, but this has the lot beaten.’

  They moved on, the roar of the trolley echoing and reverberating around them and occasionally stopping as Fritz eased the little wheels over a flange gap.

  Just entering pipe nineteen,’ said van Noon finally. ‘If they provided as many as we did then there’s only one to go.’

  ‘See anything yet?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I was just thinking, Fritz. It’d be a neat trick if they’d connected an infinity of pipes together. We could go on crawling through here till Judgment Day.’

  ‘Good point, Jacko. We’ll reconsider the position when we get to the end of number twenty.’

  Again the trolley jerked and stopped.

  ‘Just entering pipe twenty,’ said van Noon.

  ‘Let’s get it over with,’ said Jacko. ‘It can’t get any worse, surely.’

  ‘Right. This is it!’

  The trolley was moving slowly now, with Fritz concentrating on every centimetre of its progress, using the feel of the iron instead of eyes. There was no way to measure distance in the darkness. The only way was to crawl and to hope that one remembered the feeling of crawling a length of pipe. Then a sudden cessation of noise, with the echoes slowly sinking around them.

  ‘End of pipe,’ said van Noon. ‘But no resistance. The trolley is half way out of the end but I still can’t see a thing. I’m going to let the trolley go and see what happens.’

  There was a brief scrape of metal on metal, and the thump of something on the pipe.

  ‘It fell down,’ said van Noon, ‘but not very far. I can still feel it with my hand. And something else… There’s no anti-momentum out here. I can move quite freely. It isn’t even very cold. It must mean we’re well inside the wall of the Dark. I wonder if the torch will work.’

  The torch did work. In the darkness the light touched the interior of the pipe with an intensity that was momentarily dazzling. Projected outwards, the beam was clearly visible but it contacted nothing that reflected except the wet, brown stones of the earth, and the equipment trolley fallen on its side. Ostensibly they were looking into night, bare and empty, but Fritz was not convinced.

  ‘This isn’t darkness,’ said van Noon. ‘It’s more like veils of darkness… thin layers of negative-light. See how the torch beam falls off in discrete quanta. I’m going out there, Jacko, to see if I can make head or tail of this. You stay by the pipe with a torch ready to guide me back. I’d very much like to find out who or what it was that put ten pipes on the end of ours.’

  ‘And I’m going to wish you luck,’ Jacko said. ‘But I’m not at all sure I want to know.’

  Van Noon dropped to the ground. The soil underfoot was an obvious continuation of the old town terrain. His torch illuminated the stony earth for many metres in front of him, but it was useless when directed horizontally in any direction because of the apparent lack of anything to reflect the light.

  But he was right in his observation that the intensity of the light was stepped-down by curtaining veils of something. As he approached a veil he could see a distinct drop in the brightness of the beam as it was intercepted by something dark and nebulous. He reached the veil and touched it, curiously. His fingers encountered nothing, and he walked through it without sensation. Looking back, he was glad still to be able to see the light from Jacko’s torch, but he knew that if he passed through many veils even that would be lost to him.

  But the situation changed without warning. The fifth veil was not insubstantial at all. It was a film of something like dark, thin-blown glass, and he shattered it with his torch because he had not known of its solidity. And as it shattered, light from beyond spilled out through the broken edges and he had the briefest glimpse of the scene of gold-hazed wonder…
and then the air exploded in his face.

  But even the explosion was unreal. The blast caught him not from in front but from behind and above, moving towards the explosion rather than from it. It tumbled him forward and pinned his body to the ground with a great pressure. Desperately he fought to raise his neck and shoulders for a further glimpse of the creatures who lived in their sanctuary deep inside the hollow Dark. He wanted a better look at the godlike machines they controlled, now rising high like gossamer and congregating in the golden light as they swept magnificently upwards almost faster than the eye could follow. But a sheet of flame crackled and tore across the vastness of the area and whipped high in an angry, explosive tide.

  A shockfront of pressure tore him from the ground, then dropped him cruelly. Despite the hurt he fought to retain consciousness and turn and watch the exodus of the gods. But the forces acting on him were too great. Instead he was swamped by darkness.

  His next impression was that of Courtney’s face and the sense of lapsed hours. He felt bruised and shaken, but not seriously hurt. He was lying in the open, and the Ithican sky above was broadly trailed with the colours of the sunset.

  Courtney came up and put a folded coat beneath his head and a blanket over him.

  ‘Take it easy, Fritz. There’s a doctor on his way.’

  Van Noon smiled wanly. He tried to sit up, then thought better of it. ‘Is this where the Dark was, or did you get me out.’

  Courtney sat down beside him. ‘The Dark’s gone, Fritz. I don’t know what you did, but you certainly made a good job of it. The whole darn thing imploded. It was a fantastic sight. The Dark and the Pen drew up together, then spiralized like a whirlwind. There was a blast which broke every window in New Bedlam… and then the whole complex just disappeared.’