Fade Out (28 page)

Neame drove away and came back with several reels of masking tape, newspaper, and white cellulose spray paint.

‘What do you want me to do?' asked Milsom.

‘Nothing,' said Neame. He had a mania for neatness.

Milsom sat back and watched as Neame stuck down arrow-straight strips of masking tape and newspaper and sprayed matching white bars on to the dome and hull. When the paint was dry, Neame let Milsom help him strip off the paper and masking tape.

Spencer got the monitor hut to make a videotape record of the sighting marks using the overhead camera in the balloon. The tape was looped, so they could run it continuously and intercut later recordings for instant comparison on the same screen. If the markings appeared to ‘jump' it would mean that the dome had moved in relation to the hull.

The three of them went over to the canteen for a cup of coffee.

‘Which way do you think it's going to go?' asked Neame.

‘I can see only two possibilities,' said Milsom. ‘The dome could be the top of a cylinder that rises vertically out of the hull, or it's part of a sphere – in which case it will have to rotate like the ball turret on those old B-17s. My money is on the sphere.'

‘What do you think that is, the accommodation section?' asked Spencer.

‘It's either that or just the way in,' said Milsom. ‘Let's sketch it out.' He reached for a paper napkin and clicked up the point of his ball pen. He drew two lemon shapes which he labelled ‘A' and ‘B', then added a circle to each and arrows to show direction of rotation.

‘Since Crusoe won't let us dig him up, we have to assume that Arnold's guess at his shape is correct. It doesn't actually affect our problem with the hatch. Take A – the dot in the middle is the axis of rotation. There could be a hole right through the sphere giving you access to both sides of the craft. To open, the sphere rotates through ninety degrees.

‘In B, there is only one way into the sphere – and it rotates through one hundred and eighty degrees to open. The sphere could also rotate on more than one axis,
which would give you access to and from several points within the hull.'

‘Yes, that's good,' said Spencer.

‘Except that I don't know what we're all getting excited about,' said Milsom. ‘If that dome does move, it can only be because something inside is going to come out.'

‘Or someone,' added Spencer.

‘Not necessarily,' said Neame. ‘Crusoe might open up to let us in.'

Milsom exchanged a glance with Spencer. ‘You mean like those plants that catch flies?'

‘It doesn't have to be a trap. It could be a self-opening birthday present.'

‘That's a pretty wild idea, Rog. When did you dream that up?' asked Spencer.

Neame shrugged. ‘I don't know. It just occurred to me.'

Connors and Wedderkind arrived back on the Ridge in time for a late supper. Spencer told them about the progress on the hatch, but didn't pass on Neame's theory.

Neame popped into the monitor hut on his way to breakfast and ran the looped master against the first reel of the morning. The dome
was
rotating, on an axis roughly 30 degrees to their horizontal sighting marks.

Neame called up the canteen, got Milsom on the phone, told him the news and ruined everybody's breakfast. Within about three minutes, practically the whole
research group, both scientists and engineers, were crowded into the monitor hut. Wedderkind still had some shaving cream on his face.

‘We'd better get some more marks on that dome,' said Spencer.

Milsom turned to Neame. ‘What did you do with the paint?'

‘Everything's still in the back of the jeep.'

‘Right.'

‘I'll come with you.'

Wedderkind wiped some more of his Old Spice foam away. ‘I'll go and tell Bob. We'll be in the operations room.'

‘That's in the command hut…?'

‘Yes. We'll be with Allbright. But first I'm going to have some breakfast. It looks like it could be quite a day.'

Within thirty minutes, the second set of sighting marks had moved towards the top right-hand corner of the TV screen and had been swallowed up as the dome continued to rotate into the hull. There was now no doubt that the dome formed part of a large sphere turning on an axis deep within Crusoe's hull.

Milsom toyed with the idea of asking if anyone was good at reading crystal balls, then decided it might not go down too well.

A circle started to appear in the left-hand bottom corner of their screens. As it rose clear of the hull they saw that it was a shallow circular well cut into the surface of the sphere, rather like a screw countersunk below the surface of a piece of wood. It was the first sign of anything remotely resembling a hatch. When the circle reached the centre of the screen, it stopped moving.

Spencer telephoned Wedderkind, who was now sitting
in front of the bank of TV monitors in the command hut's operations room.

‘This is looking good. Is it okay to go and check it out?'

‘Yes,' said Wedderkind. ‘But not all at once.'

Spencer drove out with Milsom, Neame, and Gilligan and padded up on to the hull. They'd taken to wearing rubber-soled basketball shoes when walking about on Crusoe in case he had another bout of magnetism.

To avoid confusion, it was agreed to retain the word ‘dome' to describe the exposed portion of the black crystal sphere above the line of the hull. The circular well, which had come to rest in the top dead centre of the dome, had an external diameter of six feet, a depth of twelve inches, and an internal diameter of five feet. Like most of Crusoe's quoted measurements, these were only close approximations. The sides of the well tapered inward, and the bottom of the well had a convex surface like a magnifying glass.

Spencer and the others each checked the bottom rim of the well to see if it was part of, or fitted to, the sloping sides. If there was a joint, it was too fine to see, even with the hefty magnification of a jeweller's eyepiece.

They sprayed a new set of sighting marks on the dome and the bottom of the circular well, so that any movement would show up on the monitor screens. As they were gathering up their gear, something at the rim of the dome caught Gilligan's eye.

‘Hey, look at this.' He knelt down to examine it and beckoned to the others.

Spencer, Neame, and Milsom bent over to take a look at what he had found. Gilligan carefully picked up several thin, shredded, white fragments and sniffed them.

‘It's that white cellulose paint.'

The fragments were curled into tiny rolls.

‘Do you think the surface rejected it?' asked Neame.

‘No,' said Spencer. ‘I think I know what happened. The tolerance between the dome and the hull is so fine, the paint was scraped off as the dome turned over.'

‘Now that's what I call microtolerance,' said Milsom. ‘That was a
thin
coat of spray.'

‘We could work to that,' said Neame.

‘On a sphere nearly fifteen feet across?'

‘Let's get out of here,' said Spencer. ‘We're spoiling everybody's view.'

Connors sat watching the bank of TV screens in the operations room of the command hut. Allbright was on his right, Wedderkind on his left. On the big centre screen they saw the four engineers get back into the jeep and drive away from Crusoe.

Wedderkind hit the mike button. ‘Neal, can you give us an overhead close-up on the dome, please?'

Neal Zabrodski was the Air Force Master Sergeant in charge of the monitor team.

‘Coming up on main screen,' said Zabrodski.

The dome expanded rapidly to fill the twenty-one-inch screen. Connors sat up in his chair. The bottom of the circular well had already begun to move – at right angles to the axis of rotation of the dome. There was a second sphere fitting snugly inside the first, just like those sets of intricately-carved hollow ivory balls the Chinese delight in producing.

‘Arnold, it
is
a hatch. We're in business.'

Wedderkind kept his finger on the mike button. ‘Neal, is Dan there?'

‘Yes, he's sitting on my shoulder.'

Spencer's voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘What is it, Arnold?'

‘Dan, I know you've just got back, but we're going to need some more sighting marks on that hatch.'

‘No problem. We're on our way.' ‘Okay, but be careful.'

The curved surface continued to move towards the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Milsom and Neame added as many marks as they could, then as a darker shape appeared at the edge of the circle, they scuttled off the hull.

The dark curved shape continued to move across the circular hole in the dome like the moon eclipsing the sun. The second inner sphere was hollow. The dark shape was another circular hatch exactly the same size as that in the dome. When both hatches were in line, the inner sphere stopped rotating.

‘Gentlemen,' said Wedderkind. ‘As you can all see, we have two hollow spheres fitting one inside the other, and rotating at right angles to one another. This is a real Swiss-watch job. We'll call the circular aperture in the dome the outer hatch, and its matchmate in the second sphere the inner hatch. Okay, Neal – can you take us in closer?'

The overhead camera zoomed in for a tight close-up. Connors and the others found themselves looking into a dark well, containing an eight-sided box with sloping sides. It appeared to be attached to the sides of the well by a series of angular struts. The box appeared to be made of the same translucent black crystalline material as the rest of Crusoe, but without the underlying brain-coral pattern. The top of the box was faceted like a gemstone with eight sloping panels butted together round another octagon containing four, insect-like, compound eyes.

Spencer's voice came through again. ‘I think there's some upward movement on that box.'

Wedderkind leaned forward and spoke into the mike,
‘Neal, can we get a close-up of that with one of the ground cameras?'

Connors looked down at his calendar watch. ‘Friday…'

‘The seventh of September,' said Wedderkind.

‘That clinches it. Since we started with Crusoe, we might as well stick to the story. Whatever comes out, that's what we'll call him.'

So Friday it was, after the native companion of Robinson Crusoe, whose name marked the day of his rescue from his savage captors.

‘Camera South on main screen…

‘With the sun behind it, Camera South had the best chance of picking up the details of the black boxlike object that was now emerging from the hatch. Connors watched closely as the telephoto lens zeroed in for a tight side view.

The four ‘eyes' grew out on thick curving stalks, arced through a quarter of a circle above the rim of the hatch, then stopped. Connors glanced at the bank of small monitors above the main screen that carried the pictures transmitted by the other cameras. He saw that the ‘eyes' were at right angles to each other, and that, between them, they quartered the immediate horizon. It reminded Connors of four cautious soldiers looking out of a foxhole with periscopes.

If the object
was
scanning Crusoe's surroundings the view from the hatch must have been puzzling. To the east was the semicircle of blasted trees, to the west, the bare rocks on the high point of the Ridge. Floating directly overhead was the silver, three-finned balloon with its camera platform, and stretching away on all sides across the barren plateau, the lines of red and white stakes each topped with a blue light. And that was all. There were no men and no machines.

Apparently satisfied with the view, the four stalks retracted into the top of the box, which then slid upward out of the hatch on eight rather complicated struts. The box was about three feet high, with sides that tapered outward, then sloped sharply back in at the base. The box measured about four feet across at its widest point.

Connors could now see that the struts were not part of the hatch, they were attached to the base of the eight-sided box. The struts slowly unfolded outward until they touched Crusoe's hull.

‘Oh, Jesus…' murmured Connors as Friday's black shape became clear.

They were not struts at all. They were eight articulated legs, and the body they now lifted clear of the hatch looked uncomfortably like that of a spider. Beneath him, the inner sphere rotated, closing the inner hatch, then the outer hatch rolled smoothly back out of sight under the surface of the hull. It happened so quickly no one had a chance to time it, but the guess was it took less than five seconds for Crusoe to batten down the hatches.

Fully extended, Friday's legs had a spread of about fourteen feet. His body hung between five and six feet off the ground. The eight side panels of his body had a small honeycomb pattern underneath the black crystal surface. In a curved housing projecting from the body panel facing them were four larger ‘eyes' set close together in a diamond pattern. On each side of this eyes pod were two ribbed, tubular feelers like vacuum cleaner hose. The inside pair were short, the outside pair, long. Underneath the body was a multiple array of jointed attachments rather like stunted arms. Some of these appeared to have pincerlike ends.