The Invincible Read Free Page A

Now that the spacecraft rested on its stern the corridor had turned into a vertical shaft reaching down all the way to the first engine room. Above and below him were the many storeys of the rocket; somewhere in the depths the conveyor belts ran quietly. He could hear faint smacking sounds coming from the hydraulic system. Cool air blew up the shaft from forty yards below where the air conditioning plant inside the engine room had cleansed the fouled atmosphere.
    The personnel at the airlock opened the door for them. Rohan made a routine check: the straps were tight; the mask fitted properly. Jordan and Blank entered behind him, followed by the robot. The steel floor resounded under the metal monster’s weighty steps. A piercing, constant hissing sound came from the air that was sucked inside the interior of the ship. The outside hatch sprung open, and they could see the engine ramp four storeys below. A small elevator was already waiting for them. (It had been released from inside the hull the moment they had entered the airlock.) The elevator shaft consisted of a wire network which stretched all the way down, touching the rim of the sand dunes. The elevator cage had no walls, and the men could feel the air, but it was hardly cooler than inside the Invincible. As they stepped onto the waiting platform, the magnetic brakes were released. From a height of eleven storeys up, the four glided down gently, passing the various sections of the ship’s hull on the way. Rohan inspected the walls mechanically. You rarely get a chance to look at a spaceship so closely from the outside, he thought to himself. That rocket had a pretty rough time, all these years. Must have been hit by some meteors … looks as if the armored plate has corroded in spots here; no longer looks shiny…
    The elevator reached its destination and came to a complete standstill on top of the soft sand dune. The men jumped out, sinking knee-deep into the shifting sand. The robot waddled ahead with firm strides, like a giant duck. It had been outfitted with absurd-looking monstrous flat feet, reminiscent of snowshoes, for just this purpose. Rohan ordered the robot to stop. Then he and his men examined the outer rim of the jet openings around the stern, approaching as closely as possible.
    “They could stand a good cleaning. Need to be ground and polished again,” he remarked to his companions.
    As they crept out from under the ship’s stern, he noticed the gigantic shadow cast by the Invincible ahead of them, a dark road stretched straight out across the sand dunes, bathed in the light of the setting sun. A strange calm emanated from the monotonously even sandy waves. Blue shadows gathered in the ridges while rosy twilight played on the crests. This warm, delicate pink reminded him of the pastel hues he had seen in picture books as a child. Such incredibly soft colors. His eyes wandered across the dunes, detecting ever new variations of this yellowish-pink glow. Farther away the colors deepened to a rich red interspersed with sickle-shaped black shadows. Far off in the distance where the dunes nestled at the foot of bare, threatening volcanic rocks, the warm colors faded into a uniform yellowish gray.
    While Rohan stood gazing at the landscape, his men carried out their routine measurements. They worked at a deliberate pace, mechanically employing the skills they had acquired over so many years. They filled small containers with samples of the atmosphere, the soil, the rocks. They tested the radioactivity of the ground with the help of a probe manipulated by the Arctane robot.
    Rohan paid no heed to what his men were doing. The oxygen mask covered only his nose and mouth, while his eyes and the rest of his head were exposed to the air. He had removed his protective helmet, and could feel the wind ruffling his hair. Tiny grains of sand were blown against his face and clung to the skin, tickling where they penetrated the gap between the mask and his cheeks. Heavy