The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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      ‘I’m not going to kill you, Sharn, just as I didn’t kill Baron. Just as killing Malravin was an accident. You know – Wait! Don’t move! There’s a signal.’

      He slightly swivelled his chair and turned up the volume of the set. Below the crackle of static, a faint voice called them. It said, ‘Can you hear me, Wilson? Can you hear me, Wilson? Grant of the Brinkdale here. Come in, please.’

      ‘Hello, Grant! Hello, Grant!’ As he spoke, the captain moved the mike so that he could continue to cover Sharn with his iongun. ‘Dominguey of Wilson here. We’re down on an asteroid for repairs. If I send a carrier, will you get a fix on us? Situation very urgent – dawn is less than an hour away, and static will cancel reception then.’

      Far away, down a great well of time and space, a tiny voice asked for the carrier wave. Dominguey switched to send and turned to face Sharn.

      Sharn still crouched over Malravin. He had brought himself under control now.

      ‘Going to finish me at once, Dominguey?’ he asked. ‘Don’t want any witnesses, do you?’

      ‘Get up, Sharn. Back over to the wall. I want to see if Malravin is really dead, or if you are up to some stupid deception.’

      ‘Oh, he’s dead all right. I’d say you did a very good job. And with Baron too, although there it was easier because the poor fellow was not only asleep but believed himself already dead.’

      ‘You’re sick, Sharn. Get over against that wall when you’re ordered to.’

      They moved into their new positions, Sharn by the wall near the shuttered ports, Dominguey by the ugly body on the floor. Both of them moved slowly, watching each other, their faces blank.

      ‘He’s dead all right,’ Sharn said.

      ‘He’s dead. Sharn, get into your space suit.’

      ‘What are you planning, a burial service? You’re crazy, Dominguey! It’s only a few hours before our mass cremation.’

      ‘Don’t you call me crazy, you little snake. Get into your space suit. I can’t have you in here while I’m working. I don’t trust you. I know you killed Baron; you’re mad and he had less patience with your talk and theories than any of us. You can’t tolerate anyone who won’t enlist as your audience, can you? But you’re not going to kill me. So you wait outside until we are ready to go, or until the Brinkdale comes to pick us up, whichever is soonest. Move fast now, man, into your suit.’

      ‘You’re going to leave me out there, you swine! What are you doing, compiling an anthology of ways to murder in galactic space? Beyond the solar system, the word of man becomes the word of God.’

      Moving fast, Dominguey slapped him across the cheek.

      ‘– And the hand of God,’ Sharn muttered. He moved towards his suit. Reluctantly, he climbed into it, menaced continually by the iongun. Dominguey propelled him towards the lock.

      ‘Don’t send me out there again, Dominguey, please. I can’t stand it. You know what Big Bertha’s like – Please! Tie me to my bunk –’

      ‘Move, man. I have to get back to the set. I won’t leave without you.’

      ‘Please, Dominguey, Captain, I swear I’m innocent. You know I never touched Baron. I’d die out there on the rock! Forgive me!’

      ‘You can stay if you’ll sign a confession that you murdered Baron.’

      ‘You know I never did it! You did it while we were all asleep. You saw how his idea about our all being dead was a menace to the general sanity, and so you killed him. Or Malravin killed him. Yes, Malravin killed Jim, Dominguey, it’s obvious! You know we were talking together while they were quarrelling! We’re not to blame. Let’s not be at each other’s throats now we’re the only two left. We’ve got to get out of here quickly – you need help. We always get on well together, we’ve covered the galaxy –’

      ‘Confess or get out, Sharn. I know you did it. I can’t have you’ in here or you’ll kill me.’

      Sharn stopped protesting. He ran a hand through his damp hair and leant back against the bulkhead.

      ‘All right. I’ll sign. Anything rather than go out there again. I can always say I signed under duress.’

      Dominguey dragged him to the table, seized a scratch pad from the radio bench, and forced Sharn to write out a brief confession to the murder of Jim Baron. He pocketed it and levelled the iongun again.

      ‘Now get outside,’ he said.

      ‘Dominguey, no, no, you lied to me – please –’

      ‘You’ve got to get out, Sharn. With this paper in my pocket, you’d not hesitate to kill me now, given half a chance.’

      ‘You’re mad, Dominguey, cunning mad. You’re going to get rid of me and then blame it all onto me –’

      ‘I’ll count five, Sharn. If you’re not on your way to that lock by then, I swear I’ll fry your boots off.’

      The look on his face was unmistakable. Sharn backed into the lock, weeping. The door closed on him. He heard Dominguey begin to exhaust the air from the room panel. Hurriedly, he screwed down his faceplate. The air whispered away and the lock descended to ground level.

      When it stopped, he opened the door, unscrewed one of the levers from the control panel, and wedged it in the doorway so that the door could not close. It could not retract until it was closed, so his way to the ship was not withdrawn. Then he stepped out onto the surface of Erewhon for a second time.

      Conditions were changing. Bertha came ripping up into the sky, surrounded by a shock wave of star-blur. The farther stars lent it a halo of confused light. It was rising ahead of the time-table the humans had worked out. So communication with Brinkdale would now be effectively cut off. Also, the perceptible disc of the body was larger. They were indeed falling towards it.

      Sharn wondered why he was not already fried to smears of carbohydrate on the rock, despite the refrigeration unit in his suit. But if Bertha was so gigantic, then she would not even be able to release her own heat. What a terrible unstable thing it was! He looked up at it, in a sort of ecstasy transcending fear, feeling in his lack of weight that he was drifting out towards it. The black globe seemed to thunder overhead, a symbol – a symbol of what? Of life, of fertility, of death, of destruction? It seemed to combine aspects of all things as it rode omnipotently overhead.

      ‘The core of experience – to be at the core of experience transcends the need for lesser pleasures,’ Sharn told himself. He could feel his black notebook in his hip pocket. It was inaccessible inside the space-suit. For all his inability to get at it, it might as well have been left back on Earth. That was a terrible loss – not just to him, but to others who might have read and been stimulated by his work. Words were coming to him now, thick and rich as blood, coming first singly like birds alighting on his shoulder, then in swarms.

      Finally he fell silent, impaled under that black gaze. The isolation was so acute, it was as if he alone of all creation had been singled out to stand there … there under something that was physically impossible.

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