Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

It was hard for me to admit that only a minute or two could have passed, when I was sure that I had been talking and listening for hours. I will never be able to know absolutely, and certainly never be able to prove, that what I say took place really did take place. I can only speak of the compelling veridity of my recollection. But whatever the truth, it has at least brought to my notice that for all our knowledge of the universe, even when we project our giant rockets into space and imagine that at last we are penetrating the basic void that holds all things, we still have not touched or even suspected the immensities and the mysteries that existence contains.

THE BEES OF KNOWLEDGE

It scarcely seems necessary to relate how I first came to be cast on to Handrea, like a man thrown up on a strange shore. To the Bees of Handrea these details, though possibly known to them, are of negligible interest since in their regard I rate as no more than an unremarkable piece of flotsam that chanced to drift into their domain. Let it suffice, then, that I had paused to say a prayer at the shrine of Saint Hysastum, the patron saint of interstellar travellers, when an explosion in the region of the engine-room wrecked the entire liner. The cause of the catastrophe remains a mystery to me. Such accidents are far from common aboard passenger ships, though when they do occur subsequent rescue is an uncertain hope, owing to the great choice of routes open to interstellar navigators and to their habit of changing course in mid-flight to provide additional sightseeing.

My timely devotions saved my life, though reserving me for a weirder fate. Within seconds I was able to gain a lifeboat, which was stationed thoughtfully adjacent to the shrine, and, amid flame and buckling metal, I was ejected into space. After the explosion, picking my way through the scattered debris, I learned that no one but myself had escaped.

The crushing sense of desolation that comes over one at such a moment cannot adequately be described. Nothing brings one so thoroughly face to face with blind, uncaring Nature as this sudden, utter remoteness from one’s fellow human beings. Here I was, surrounded by vast light years of space, with probably not another human soul within hundreds of parsecs, totally alone and very nearly helpless.

My feeling of isolation mounted to a state of terror when I discovered that the rescue beacon was not operating. Once again I had recourse to prayer, which calmed me a little and brought me to a more hopeful appraisal of my situation. The lifeboat, I reminded myself, could keep me alive for up to a year if all went well. There would have been little point in activating the beacon immediately in any case. The star liner would not be reported missing for several weeks, and taking into account the delay before a search was organised, and the dozens of possible routes to be surveyed, a sweep within range of the beacon might not occur for months, if at all. During that time its repair seemed a feasible project, or at any rate not a hopeless one.

But it could not be done conveniently in space, and I peered again through the lifeboat’s portholes. On one side glimmered a reddish-yellow sun. Close by on the other side hung a big murky globe resembling an overripe fruit – the planet Handrea, to provide a view of which the star liner had been slowing down at the time of the explosion. It had received its name but an hour previously from one of the passengers (the privilege of naming newly sighted worlds being another of the minor perquisites of interstellar travel) and had already been ascertained as being tolerable as regards chemistry, and geology. So, heartened by having at least some course of action to pursue, I turned my small lifeboat towards it.

As I passed through them I made a careful recording of the bands of magnetism and radiation that planets of this type usually possess, noting as I did so that they were uncommonly strong and complicated. I was perturbed to find that the atmosphere was a deep one, descending nearly seven hundred miles. Upon my entering its outer fringes the sky turned from jet black to dark brown and the stars quickly vanished from sight. A hundred miles further down I entered a sphere of electrical storms and was buffeted about by powerful gusts. It had been my intention, had Handrea looked unduly inhospitable, to fly straight out again, but before long it was all I could do to keep on an even keel, not being an expert pilot. Eventually, much relieved after a harrowing passage, I entered the layer of calm air that lies close to the surface and accomplished a landing amid large tufts of a plant which, though maroon in colour, could fairly be described as grass-like.