“Why—it’s a space helmet!”
“Yeah,” said Wayne. “The question is: was he wearing just the helmet, or the whole suit? If he was wearing the whole suit, we’re not going to be as well protected as we thought, even with our fancy suits.”
Fifteen minutes passed slowly before the medics returned, and five minutes more before they had passed through the decontamination chambers and were allowed into the ship proper. A ring of tense faces surrounded them as they made their report.
The leader, a tall, bespectacled doctor named Stevelman, was the spokesman. He shrugged when Colonel Petersen put forth the question whose answer everyone waited for.
“I don’t know,” the medic replied. “I don’t know what killed them. There’s dry bones out there, but no sign of anything that might have done it. It’s pretty hard to make a quick diagnosis on a skeleton, Colonel.”
“What about the one skeleton with the bubble helmet?” Peter Wayne asked. “Did you see any sign of a full suit on him?”
Stevelman shook his head. “Not a sign, sir.”
Colonel Petersen turned and glanced at Lieutenant Jervis. “Do you remember what the circumstances were, Lieutenant?”
Jervis shrugged. “I don’t recall it very clearly, sir. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether they were wearing suits or bubble-helmets or anything. I was too upset at the time to make careful observations.”
“I understand,” Petersen said.
But the medic had a different theory. He pointed at Jervis and said, “That’s a point I’ve meant to make, Lieutenant. You’re a trained space scout. Your psychological records show that you’re not the sort of man given to panic or to become confused.”
“Are you implying that there’s something improper about my statement, Dr. Stevelman?”
The medic held up a hand. “Nothing of the sort, Lieutenant. But since you’re not the sort to panic, even in such a crisis as the complete destruction of the entire crew of your scout ship, you must have been ill—partly delirious from fever. Not delirious enough to cause hallucinations, but just enough to impair your judgment.”
Jervis nodded. “That is possible,” he said.
“Good,” said Stevelman. “I have two tentative hypotheses, then.” He turned to the colonel. “Should I state them now, Colonel Petersen?”
“There’s to be no secrecy aboard this ship, Doctor. I want every man and woman on the ship to know all the facts at all times.”
“Very well,” the medic said. “I’d suggest the deaths were caused by some unknown virus—or, perhaps, by some virulent poison that occurred occasionally, a poisonous smog of some kind that had settled in the valley for a time and then dissipated.”
Wayne frowned and shook his head. Both hypotheses made sense.
“Do you have any suggestions, Doctor?” Petersen said.
“Since we don’t have any direct information about why those men died, Colonel, I can’t make any definite statements. But I can offer one bit of advice to everyone: wear your suits and be alert.”
During the week that followed, several groups went out without suffering any ill effects. A short service was held for the eight of the Mavis and then the skeletons were buried in the valley.
They ran a check on the double-nucleus beryllium toward the end of the week, after it had been fairly safely established that no apparent harm was going to come to them. Wayne and Sherri were both in the crew that went outside to set up the detector.
“You man the detector plate,” said Major MacDougal, who was in charge of the group, turning to Wayne.
He put his hand on the plate and waited for the guide coordinates to be set. MacDougal fumbled at the base of the detector for a moment, and the machine began picking up eloptic radiations.
Wayne now looked down at the detector plate. “Here we are,” he said. “The dial’s oscillating between four and eight, all right. The stuff’s here.”
MacDougal whistled gently. “It’s really sending, isn’t it!” He pointed toward the mountaintop. “From up there, too. It’s going to be a nice climb. Okay, pack the detector up and let’s get back inside.”
They entered the airlock and passed on into the ship.
“The D-N beryllium up there, sir,” Major MacDougal said. “It’s going to be a devil of a job to get up to find the stuff.”
“That’s what Captain Wayne’s here for,” Petersen said. “Captain, what do you think? Can you get up here?”
“It would have been easier to bring along a helicopter,” Wayne said wryly. “Pity the things don’t fit into spaceships. But I think I can get up there. I’d like to try surveying the lay of the land, first. I want to know all the possible routes before I start climbing.”
“Good idea,” Petersen said. “I’ll send you out with three men to do some preliminary exploring. Boggs! Manetti! MacPherson! Suit up and get with it!”
Wayne strode toward the spacesuit locker, took out his suit, and donned it. Instead of the normal space boots, he put on the special metamagnetic boots for mountain climbing. The little reactors in the back of the calf activated the thick metal sole of each boot so that it would cling tightly to the metallic rock of the mountain. Unlike ordinary magnetism, the metamagnetic field acted on all metals, even when they were in combination with other elements.
His team of three stood before him in the airlock room. He knew all three of them fairly well from Earthside; they were capable, level-headed men, and at least one—Boggs—had already been out in the valley surveying once, and so knew the area pretty well.
He pulled on the boots and looked up. “We’re not going to climb the mountain this time, men. We’ll just take a look around it to decide which is the best way.”
“You have any ideas, sir?” Sergeant Boggs asked.
“From looking at the photographs, I’d guess that the western approach is the best. But I may be wrong. Little details are hard to see from five hundred miles up, even with the best of instruments, and there may be things in our way that will make the west slope impassible. If so, we’ll try the southern side. It looks pretty steep, but it also seems rough enough to offer plenty of handholds.”
“Too bad we couldn’t have had that helicopter you were talking about,” said Boggs.
Wayne grinned. “With these winds? They’d smash us against the side of the mountain before we’d get up fifty feet. You ought to know, Sergeant—you’ve been out in them once already.”
“They’re not so bad down in this valley, sir,” Boggs said. “The only time you really notice them is when you climb the escarpment at the northern end. They get pretty rough up there.”
Wayne nodded. “You can see what kind of a job we’ll have. Even with metamagnetic boots and grapples, we’ll still have to use the old standbys.” He looked at the men. “Okay; we’re all ready. Let’s go.”
They unhooked four of the six tabs from the wall and donned them. Then they moved on into the airlock and closed the inner door. The air was pumped out, just as though the ship were in space or on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. As far as anyone knew, the atmosphere of Fomalhaut V actually was poisonous. Some of the tension had relaxed after a week spent in safety, but there was always the first expedition to consider; no one took chances.
When all the air had been removed, a bleeder valve allowed the outer air to come into the chamber. Then the outer door opened, and the four men went down the ladder to the valley floor.
Wayne led the way across the sand in silence. The four men made their way toward the slope on the western side of the valley. Overhead, the bright globe of Fomalhaut shed its orange light over the rugged landscape.
When they reached the beginning of the slope, Wayne stopped and looked upwards. “Doesn’t look easy,” he grunted. “Damned rough hill, matter of fact. MacPherson, do you think you could make it to the top?”
Corporal MacPherson was a small, wiry man who had the reputation of being a first-rank mountaineer. He had been a member of the eighteenth Mount Everest Party, and had been the second of that party to reach the summit of the towering peak.
“Sure I can, sir,” he said confidently. “Shall I take the rope?”
“Go ahead. You and Manetti get the rope to the top, and Sergeant Boggs and I will follow up.”
“Righto, sir.”
Corporal MacPherson reached his gloved hands forward and contracted his fingers. The tiny microswitches in his gloves actuated the relays, and his hands clung to the rock. Then he put his boots against the wall and began to move up the steep escarpment.