"I don't think so." Matt shook his head. "But anyway we're only seven
months out. We should be able to contact other radio stations. I don't
understand it at all."
Their return to the messroom was greeted by an excited volley of
questions from the others. The director held up his hands in dismay.
"The trouble is on Earth," he explained when quiet was restored. "Our
instruments are functioning quite all right. There probably has been a
power stoppage of some sort. We should re-establish contact any minute."
But by the beginning of the rest period seven hours later, Earth was
still silent.
No one slept that night. Matt Magoffin tried, but at length he gave up
and switched on the lights in his cabin. He drew on comfortable gray
coveralls, which made him look even stockier than he was, and departed
for the messroom.
Counting the crew, there were thirty-one members of the
expedition--nine women and twenty-two men. Everyone of them, Matt
realized, must be present. The tension was so apparent that he could
feel a thrill of nervousness.
"No word, I suppose?" he asked, dropping into a vacant seat beside Lynn.
"No," the girl shook her head, setting her shoulder-length, yellow
hair to swinging. There was generally a half-wicked, half-mischievous
twinkle in her blue eyes, but it was lacking tonight. Little frown
lines creased her low broad forehead. "You don't suppose the plague has
anything to do with it, do you Matt?"
"Plague? How could the plague affect broadcasting?"
"I don't know." She shrugged helplessly. "Let's go up to the
observation deck. This waiting is driving me off my beam."
"Sure."
Matt followed her into the passage. She was wearing coveralls like his
own, but of a trimmer cut. She was unquestionably the prettiest of the
nine women, he reflected. And hard as nails.
Two years on the treacherous Martian deserts had enabled Matt to arrive
at a pretty accurate estimate of everyone by the way they reacted to
danger, to the disappointment at failing to discover evidence of life,
to their cramped quarters.
Their disappointment had been greater because Mars had been the last
hope of discovering life in the Solar System besides that of Earth.
No fossil life had been reported on the moon. The Reeves' expedition to
Venus two years ago had found that the Venusian clouds were composed
of dust swirling about a desiccated and lifeless world. Mercury had
not yet been reached, nor any of the outer planets, but there was
little expectation that life could have lodged in such inhospitable
environments.
No, in all the Solar System, Earth apparently was the only planet where
septic conditions prevailed--and life could germinate....
* * * * *
They reached the observation deck in the bullet-shaped nose of the
vessel. Here the hull was built up of many small plates of quartzite
like the facets of a fly's eye. They had an unobstructed view of the
ebony arch of the heavens with Sol flaming like a beacon a point to
starboard.
"Where's Earth?" Lynn asked. "I never can find it."
He pointed it out, a bright greenish star on the port side of the ship.
It was just assuming a disk-shape with its tiny moon barely visible
beside it.
"It looks so far away," said the girl with a shiver. "I'm homesick, I
guess. We've been gone almost three years."
Matt said, "It's a long time." He slipped his arm about her waist.
Lynn let her yellow head rest on his shoulder. "I'm tired of being
tough. I'm scared. I want somebody to baby me and tell me everything's
all right.
"You--you don't think anything's happened to Earth, do you Matt?"
"Nothing could happen to seven billion people that suddenly! We've got
the jitters. We've been out too long." He kissed her almost roughly.
The girl clung to him half in terror. Matt could feel her taut young
body pressed against him. Slowly the tension melted out of her muscles.
_Fool_, he thought, _why didn't I try this two years ago?_
Matt stiffened. Over the crown of Lynn's yellow hair he caught sight of
a pale drawn face in the shadows of the ladder well across the deck.
It took him a second to recognize Nesbit, the palaeontologist, a young
man only a few years out of college.
"What is it?" Lynn asked, turning her head. "Oh!"
Nesbit glared at the pair silently; then his face disappeared as he
withdrew down the ladder.
"What the hell's eating him?" asked Matt.
Lynn bit her lip. "He must have followed us up. He...." She paused,
looking embarrassed. "He asked me to marry him when we reach Earth."
"Good Lord," ejaculated Matt. He turned the girl loose. "I wouldn't...."
Lynn's arms went around him fiercely and shook him. "Silly. He's just
a kid. I tried to let him down easy, but I certainly didn't promise to
marry him."
A grin spread across Matt's face. His arms tightened. From the corner
of his eye, he could see the unwinking green disk of Earth, silent,
cold, and unbelievably far away.
* * * * *
During the next three months, they tore the radio down seven times and
rebuilt it with infinite care. They tested every tube and circuit. They
might as well have saved their time.
Not a single message reached them from Earth.
After three months they gave up trying at last and a queer sense of
dread took possession of them as the earth slowly expanded.
Sparks was a wreck. He spent incredible stretches in the radio shack
listening for a signal--any signal--from his dead instruments. The
cook went berserk and stabbed one of the engineers. Dr. Gwathmey, the
gentle, gray-haired psychologist, picked a fight with Pendergrast, the
expedition's gentle, gray-haired anthropologist over the theory that
life had resulted from spores drifting to Earth on light tides. The two
old men had battled it out in the messroom with their fists.
They were all, Matt realized, strained, nervous, edgy....
On the seventh of May the _Argus_ began to drop cautiously down through
a blanket of clouds that hid the surface of Earth. Everyone was at the
ports, but they were descending on the night side of the planet, and
the clouds were like soup.
Nothing was to be seen.
They were long since through the Heaviside layer, but still no
broadcast had reached them. The ether was as silent as it must have
been before the discovery of radio.
"Hell!" said Matt. "There's nothing to be seen out there." He took his
nose away from the port beyond which the wet clouds were roiling in
sheets of red, tinted by the flaming jets. "I'm going to wait in the
messroom."
He stamped off. He had grown thinner and his face was lined. His blue
eyes were haggard. The _Argus_ lurched and dropped a dozen feet,
hurling him to his knees.
Matt cursed viciously and caught his balance to stagger into the
messroom. Isaac Trigg, the director, was there, and Pendergrast. They
sat tense as violin strings, waiting.
"I couldn't stand it in the control room," Trigg explained to Matt.
"They're guiding us down with radar. There's been no radio beam to lead
us in. What the hell's wrong? You'd think Earth was a tomb!"
"Where are we?" Matt asked as he flung himself in a chair.
The director shook his head. "Some place in North America, the Ohio
valley, I believe. But the clouds shut us off before the navigator
could take accurate shots."
The loud speaker blared into sudden life, the first time since the
Silence! The men jumped to their feet, thinking that at last contact
had been established with Earth. Then they realized that it was the
captain speaking over the intercommunicator.
Matt cursed again, then paused.
"_Attention!_" the loud speaker blared. "_Attention, everyone. We
are descending in very hilly country. The radar reveals an irregular
surface beneath us. Please secure yourselves in your seats. Be sure to
fasten the safety straps._"
"Hilly country!" said Matt and buckled his safety strap. "But where?"
Most of the others straggled into their seats. There was no
conversation. Their faces were strained and white.
"_Four thousand feet!_" came the captain's voice over the broadcaster.
"_Visibility zero. Check your safety belts._"
Matt was conscious of a nervous rustle in the messroom. He realized
that he was biting his lip.
The _Argus_ lurched, fell another hundred feet and brought up with a
stuttering roar from her tubes. The business of landing a rocket ship
without a beam was nasty and uncertain. Matt could feel his heart
pumping almost in his mouth.
He looked about for Lynn and found her three seats off. She gave him a
wan grin, but blanched as the _Argus_ rolled sickeningly.
"_Three thousand feet!_" came the voice through the loud speaker.
"_Clouds and rain._"
An eternity went by.
At a thousand feet the suspense made Matt ill. The jets were striking
the surface now, bouncing back, dispelling the clouds directly beneath
them.
"_Wooded hills below_," said the loud speaker. "_Five hundred feet!_"
Again the minutes crawled away. There was a faint jar, then a settling
lurch. It was almost unexpected when it came. The jets fell silent.
Earth!
Matt found himself looking around at the strained faces. Hesitantly, he
threw off his straps and stood up. Others followed suit. None of them,
Matt realized, was anxious to be the first out.
It was a strange homecoming--certainly nothing like the one they had
all planned before the silence!
"Well," said Matt, "someone's got to be first."
He made his way to the main port. Silent, and uneasy, they all trooped
after him.
"What the hell!" said Matt with a sudden grin. He spat on his hands and
began to unscrew the bolts.
There was a collective sigh from those behind as he kicked open the
heavy port.
Only rain and blackness met his eyes.