Equator and Segregation - Brian Aldiss, ebook, Temp
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EQUATOR AND
SEGREGATION
Brian Aldiss
Other books by this author available from New English Library:
SCIENCE FICTION ART! THE FANTASIES OF SF
THE DARK LIGHT YEARS
THE CANOPY OF TIME
SPACE, TIME AND NATHANIEL
EARTHWORKS
THE AIRS OF EARTH
THE INTERPRETER
COMIC INFERNO
EQUATOR
AND
SEGREGATION
Brian Aldiss
NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY
First published in Great Britain by Digit Books Copyright © 1958 by Nova Publications Ltd.]
FIRST NEL PAPERBACK EDITION JUNE 1973
Reprinted June 1973 This new edition January 1977
Conditions of sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
NEL Books are published by
New English Library Limited from Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London EC1N2JR Made and printed in
Great Britain by Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd., Aylesbury, Bucks.
45003041 5
I
Evening shadows came across the spaceport in long strides. It was the one time of day when you could
almost feel the world rotating. In the rays of the sinking sun, dusty palms round the spaceport looked like
so many varnished cardboard props. By day, these palms seemed metal; by evening, so much papier
mache. In the tropics, nothing was itself, merely fabric stretched over heat, poses over pulses.
The palms bowed stiffly as Scout Ship AX25 blasted up into the sky, peppering them with another spray
of dust.
The three occupants of the ship were rocked back on their acceleration couches for only a few seconds.
Then Allan Cunliffe got up, strolled casually over to the port and gazed out. Nobody would guess from
his composed face that the ship had just embarked on a hazardous mission.
‘At once you begin to love,’ he said, looking down at the world with a kind of pride.
His friend, Tyne Leslie, nodded in an attempt at agreement. It was the best, at the moment, that he could
do. Joining Allan, he too looked out.
Already, he observed wonderingly, the mighty panorama of sunset was only a red stain on a carpet
below them; Sumatra lay across the equator like a roasting fish on a spit. Outside: a starry void. In his
stomach: another starry void.
At once you begin to live. . . . But this was Tyne’s first trip on the spy patrol; living meant extra adrenalin
walloping through his heart valves, the centipede track of prickles over his skin, the starry void in the
lesser intestine.
‘It’s the sort of feeling you don’t get behind an office desk,’ he said. Chalk one up to the office desk, he
thought.
Allan nodded, saying nothing. His silences were always positive. When the rest of the world was talking
as it never had before, Allan Cunliffe remained silent. Certainly he had as many mixed feelings about the
Rosks as anyone else on Earth: but be kept the lid on them. It was that quality as much as any other that
had guaranteed a firm friendship between Allan and Tyne, long before the latter followed his friend’s lead
and joined the space Service.
‘Let’s get forward and see Murray,’ Allan said, clapping Tyne on the back. Undoubtedly he had divined
something of the other’s feelings.
The scout was small, one of the Bristol-Cunard ‘Hynam’ line,, a three-berth job with light armament and
Betson-Watson ‘Medmenham X’ accelerators. The third member of the team, its leader, was Captain
Murray Mumford, one of the first men ever to set eyes on the Rosks, four years ago.
He grinned at the other two as they came into the cabin, set the autopilot, and turned round to face them.
‘Luna in five and a fraction hours,’ he said. Once you had seen Murray, you would never forget him.
Physically he was no more and no less than a superb specimen of broad-shouldered man-hood. Five
minutes with him convinced you that he had that extraordinary persuasive ability which, without a word
being said, could convert potential rivals into admirers. Tyne, always sensitive to the currents of human
feeling, was aware of this magnetic quality of Murray’s; he distrusted it merely because he knew Murray
himself was aware of it and frequently used it to his own advantage.
‘Well, what’s the picture?’ he asked, accepting a mescahale from Allan, trying to appear at ease.
‘With any luck, we’ll have a pretty quiet job for your first live op,’ Murray replied, as they lit their
mescahales. “The target area, as you know, is Luna Area 101. Luna Intelligence reports a new object
outside one of the Roskian domes. It’s small and immobile - so far, at any rate. It’s outside a dome on
the southern perimeter of Area 101, which means it is fairly accessible from Our point of view.’
‘What’s the state of light there now, Murray?’ Allan asked.
‘Sundown in Grimaldi, which contains Area 101, was four hours ago. Intelligence suspect the Rosks
may be planning some-thing under cover of darkness; we have imposed a lot of shipping restrictions on
their Earth-Luna route lately. So our orders are to slip in from the night side and investigate - obviously
without being seen, if possible. Just a quick look over, personal inspection in spacesuits. We should not
be out of the ship for more than twenty minutes. Then we streak for home again, heroes all.’
The starry void blossomed up again in Tyne’s midriff. Action; this was what he feared and what he
wanted. He looked at the lunar map Murray carelessly indicated. One small square of it, low in the third
quadrant covering Grimaldi, had been shaded yellow. This was Area 101. Beside it, in the same yellow
crayon, one word had been written: Rosk.
Tyne noticed Murray studying his face intently, and turned away, ‘World Government made a great
mistake in allowing the Rosks a base away from Earth,’ he said.
‘You were the diplomat when Allan and I were just squaddies in the Space Service,’ Murray said,
smiling. ‘You tell us why Area 101 was conceded to them.’
“The official reason given,’ Allan said, stepping in to back up his friend, ‘was that while we were being
kind to aliens we could not expect a space-travelling race to be pinned to one planet; we were morally
obliged to cede them a part of Grimaldi, so that they could indulge in Earth-Moon flight.’
‘Yes, that was the official face-saver,’ Tyne agreed. ‘Whenever it is beaten on any point of an agenda,
World Government, the United Nations Council, declares itself “morally obliged”. In actual fact, we had
rings made round us. The Rosks are so much better at argument and debate than we are, that at first they
could talk themselves into anything they wanted.”
‘And now the Space Service sorts out the results of the politi-cians’ muddle,’ Murray said. It sounded
slightly like a personal jibe; Tyne could not forget he had once been in politics; and in his present state of
tension, he did not ignore the remark.
‘You’d better ask yourself how fine a job the S.S. is doing, Murray. Human-Roskian relations have
deteriorated to such an extent this last year, that if we get caught in Area 101, we may well precipitate a
war.’
‘Spoken like a diplomat!’ Murray exclaimed sarcastically.
The three of them spent most of the next four and a half hours reading, hardly speaking at all.
‘Better look alert. Put your books away,’ Murray said sud-denly, jumping up and returning to the cabin.
‘Don’t mind Murray; he often behaves like a muscle-bound schoolmaster,’ Allan said laughing.
Not often, Tyne admitted to himself without bothering to contradict his friend aloud. Murray had drunk
with them several times at the Madeka Hotel in Sumatra; his manner then had been far from
schoolmasterly. He thought of Murray knocking back carioka till the early hours, rising later to eat with a
monstrous appetite, while Allan and Tyne beside him pushed away at the large unappetising breakfasts
the hotel provided.
The immediate present eclipsed Tyne’s thoughts as the great black segment of moon slid up at them. It
was like falling into a smile-shaped hole. Radar-guided, the scout became a tiny, moving chip of a ship
again, instead of a little world in its own right.
A few lights gleamed far ahead: Rosk lights, shining up from Area 101.
;’Strap in!’ Murray said, over the intercom.
They were braking. As deceleration increased, it felt as if they were plunging through water, then soup,
then treacle, then wood. Then they weren’t plunging at all. They were featherlight. With a bump, they
stopped. They were down.
‘All change; please have your alien identity cards ready!’ said Allan. Tyne wondered how he was
feeling, even as Allan smiled reassuringly at him.
Murray left the cabin, walking with something like a swagger. He was pleasantly excited. For him, this
was the simple life, with no cares but the present one.
“The radar-baffle’s on,’ he said. ‘No signs of alarm from our friends outside. Let’s get into our suits as
fast as possible.’
They climbed into the spacesuits. The process took half an hour, during which Tyne sweated freely,
wondering all the while if their ship had been sighted by Rosk lookouts. But there was no alternative. The
spacesuit is a tool; a bulky, complex, hazardous, pernicketty tool for surviving where one is not meant to
survive. It needs endless adjustment before it can be trusted. There was not a spacer in the system who
did not hate spacesuits, or envy the Rosks their immeasurably superior variety.
At last they had lashed, strapped, dogged and screwed each other into place. Three monstrous robots
bumbled round slowly in the confined space, nearly filling the ship with their bulk; they made with slow,
underwater gestures for the hatch. Five minutes later, they were all standing on the lunar surface in
complete darkness.
In what were already regarded as the old palmy days, before the Rosks arrived in the system, Tyne had
frequently been up to the moon, on pleasure and business. He was not prepared for how bleakly
uninviting the place appeared now. In the Grade-A darkness, Grimaldi was a desert of frozen soot.
‘We’ve something less than half a mile to the target dome,’ Murray said, his voice a whisper in the
headsets. ‘Let’s move!’ ‘ They saw by infra-red extensions. Murray led them along by the crater edge,
treading round spines of out-cropping debris. The alien domes became visible as black breasts against
sequin-studded silk. Through the little grille of his suit window, Tyne saw the world as a plaster mock-up
of a reality too unreal ever to be true. He himself was a pigmy imprisoned in the iron bowel of a robot
heading for destruction. Fighting off that irrational sensation, he peered ahead for the strange object they
had come to investigate.
Something lay ahead. It was impossible to see what it was. Tyne touched Allan’s arm. The latter swung
round, and then turned in the direction in which Tyne pointed. Murray paused, making a clumsily
impatient gesture to them to come on. Perhaps he feels vulnerable as I do, Tyne thought, sympathetically,
pointing again through the blackness for Murray’s benefit.
Next second, they were bathed in the ashy glare of a search-light, skewered neatly in mid-gesture.
The light came not from the domes ahead, but to one side, from a point by the crater wall. Tyne just
stood there, blinded, knowing they were trapped.
‘Drop!’ Allan shouted.
‘Shoot the light out!’ Murray said. His great metal-claw went down piston-fashion to the service pistol,
came up levelling the cumbrous weapon, jerked with the recoil. Allan and Tyne heard the shots only as
vibrant thuds through Murray’s suit mike.
He got the light. It cut off - but already another beam was striking out from the nearest dome, swerving
and sending an oval across the ash towards them. Probably they were being fired at, Tyne thought
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EQUATOR AND
SEGREGATION
Brian Aldiss
Other books by this author available from New English Library:
SCIENCE FICTION ART! THE FANTASIES OF SF
THE DARK LIGHT YEARS
THE CANOPY OF TIME
SPACE, TIME AND NATHANIEL
EARTHWORKS
THE AIRS OF EARTH
THE INTERPRETER
COMIC INFERNO
EQUATOR
AND
SEGREGATION
Brian Aldiss
NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY
First published in Great Britain by Digit Books Copyright © 1958 by Nova Publications Ltd.]
FIRST NEL PAPERBACK EDITION JUNE 1973
Reprinted June 1973 This new edition January 1977
Conditions of sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
NEL Books are published by
New English Library Limited from Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London EC1N2JR Made and printed in
Great Britain by Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd., Aylesbury, Bucks.
45003041 5
I
Evening shadows came across the spaceport in long strides. It was the one time of day when you could
almost feel the world rotating. In the rays of the sinking sun, dusty palms round the spaceport looked like
so many varnished cardboard props. By day, these palms seemed metal; by evening, so much papier
mache. In the tropics, nothing was itself, merely fabric stretched over heat, poses over pulses.
The palms bowed stiffly as Scout Ship AX25 blasted up into the sky, peppering them with another spray
of dust.
The three occupants of the ship were rocked back on their acceleration couches for only a few seconds.
Then Allan Cunliffe got up, strolled casually over to the port and gazed out. Nobody would guess from
his composed face that the ship had just embarked on a hazardous mission.
‘At once you begin to love,’ he said, looking down at the world with a kind of pride.
His friend, Tyne Leslie, nodded in an attempt at agreement. It was the best, at the moment, that he could
do. Joining Allan, he too looked out.
Already, he observed wonderingly, the mighty panorama of sunset was only a red stain on a carpet
below them; Sumatra lay across the equator like a roasting fish on a spit. Outside: a starry void. In his
stomach: another starry void.
At once you begin to live. . . . But this was Tyne’s first trip on the spy patrol; living meant extra adrenalin
walloping through his heart valves, the centipede track of prickles over his skin, the starry void in the
lesser intestine.
‘It’s the sort of feeling you don’t get behind an office desk,’ he said. Chalk one up to the office desk, he
thought.
Allan nodded, saying nothing. His silences were always positive. When the rest of the world was talking
as it never had before, Allan Cunliffe remained silent. Certainly he had as many mixed feelings about the
Rosks as anyone else on Earth: but be kept the lid on them. It was that quality as much as any other that
had guaranteed a firm friendship between Allan and Tyne, long before the latter followed his friend’s lead
and joined the space Service.
‘Let’s get forward and see Murray,’ Allan said, clapping Tyne on the back. Undoubtedly he had divined
something of the other’s feelings.
The scout was small, one of the Bristol-Cunard ‘Hynam’ line,, a three-berth job with light armament and
Betson-Watson ‘Medmenham X’ accelerators. The third member of the team, its leader, was Captain
Murray Mumford, one of the first men ever to set eyes on the Rosks, four years ago.
He grinned at the other two as they came into the cabin, set the autopilot, and turned round to face them.
‘Luna in five and a fraction hours,’ he said. Once you had seen Murray, you would never forget him.
Physically he was no more and no less than a superb specimen of broad-shouldered man-hood. Five
minutes with him convinced you that he had that extraordinary persuasive ability which, without a word
being said, could convert potential rivals into admirers. Tyne, always sensitive to the currents of human
feeling, was aware of this magnetic quality of Murray’s; he distrusted it merely because he knew Murray
himself was aware of it and frequently used it to his own advantage.
‘Well, what’s the picture?’ he asked, accepting a mescahale from Allan, trying to appear at ease.
‘With any luck, we’ll have a pretty quiet job for your first live op,’ Murray replied, as they lit their
mescahales. “The target area, as you know, is Luna Area 101. Luna Intelligence reports a new object
outside one of the Roskian domes. It’s small and immobile - so far, at any rate. It’s outside a dome on
the southern perimeter of Area 101, which means it is fairly accessible from Our point of view.’
‘What’s the state of light there now, Murray?’ Allan asked.
‘Sundown in Grimaldi, which contains Area 101, was four hours ago. Intelligence suspect the Rosks
may be planning some-thing under cover of darkness; we have imposed a lot of shipping restrictions on
their Earth-Luna route lately. So our orders are to slip in from the night side and investigate - obviously
without being seen, if possible. Just a quick look over, personal inspection in spacesuits. We should not
be out of the ship for more than twenty minutes. Then we streak for home again, heroes all.’
The starry void blossomed up again in Tyne’s midriff. Action; this was what he feared and what he
wanted. He looked at the lunar map Murray carelessly indicated. One small square of it, low in the third
quadrant covering Grimaldi, had been shaded yellow. This was Area 101. Beside it, in the same yellow
crayon, one word had been written: Rosk.
Tyne noticed Murray studying his face intently, and turned away, ‘World Government made a great
mistake in allowing the Rosks a base away from Earth,’ he said.
‘You were the diplomat when Allan and I were just squaddies in the Space Service,’ Murray said,
smiling. ‘You tell us why Area 101 was conceded to them.’
“The official reason given,’ Allan said, stepping in to back up his friend, ‘was that while we were being
kind to aliens we could not expect a space-travelling race to be pinned to one planet; we were morally
obliged to cede them a part of Grimaldi, so that they could indulge in Earth-Moon flight.’
‘Yes, that was the official face-saver,’ Tyne agreed. ‘Whenever it is beaten on any point of an agenda,
World Government, the United Nations Council, declares itself “morally obliged”. In actual fact, we had
rings made round us. The Rosks are so much better at argument and debate than we are, that at first they
could talk themselves into anything they wanted.”
‘And now the Space Service sorts out the results of the politi-cians’ muddle,’ Murray said. It sounded
slightly like a personal jibe; Tyne could not forget he had once been in politics; and in his present state of
tension, he did not ignore the remark.
‘You’d better ask yourself how fine a job the S.S. is doing, Murray. Human-Roskian relations have
deteriorated to such an extent this last year, that if we get caught in Area 101, we may well precipitate a
war.’
‘Spoken like a diplomat!’ Murray exclaimed sarcastically.
The three of them spent most of the next four and a half hours reading, hardly speaking at all.
‘Better look alert. Put your books away,’ Murray said sud-denly, jumping up and returning to the cabin.
‘Don’t mind Murray; he often behaves like a muscle-bound schoolmaster,’ Allan said laughing.
Not often, Tyne admitted to himself without bothering to contradict his friend aloud. Murray had drunk
with them several times at the Madeka Hotel in Sumatra; his manner then had been far from
schoolmasterly. He thought of Murray knocking back carioka till the early hours, rising later to eat with a
monstrous appetite, while Allan and Tyne beside him pushed away at the large unappetising breakfasts
the hotel provided.
The immediate present eclipsed Tyne’s thoughts as the great black segment of moon slid up at them. It
was like falling into a smile-shaped hole. Radar-guided, the scout became a tiny, moving chip of a ship
again, instead of a little world in its own right.
A few lights gleamed far ahead: Rosk lights, shining up from Area 101.
;’Strap in!’ Murray said, over the intercom.
They were braking. As deceleration increased, it felt as if they were plunging through water, then soup,
then treacle, then wood. Then they weren’t plunging at all. They were featherlight. With a bump, they
stopped. They were down.
‘All change; please have your alien identity cards ready!’ said Allan. Tyne wondered how he was
feeling, even as Allan smiled reassuringly at him.
Murray left the cabin, walking with something like a swagger. He was pleasantly excited. For him, this
was the simple life, with no cares but the present one.
“The radar-baffle’s on,’ he said. ‘No signs of alarm from our friends outside. Let’s get into our suits as
fast as possible.’
They climbed into the spacesuits. The process took half an hour, during which Tyne sweated freely,
wondering all the while if their ship had been sighted by Rosk lookouts. But there was no alternative. The
spacesuit is a tool; a bulky, complex, hazardous, pernicketty tool for surviving where one is not meant to
survive. It needs endless adjustment before it can be trusted. There was not a spacer in the system who
did not hate spacesuits, or envy the Rosks their immeasurably superior variety.
At last they had lashed, strapped, dogged and screwed each other into place. Three monstrous robots
bumbled round slowly in the confined space, nearly filling the ship with their bulk; they made with slow,
underwater gestures for the hatch. Five minutes later, they were all standing on the lunar surface in
complete darkness.
In what were already regarded as the old palmy days, before the Rosks arrived in the system, Tyne had
frequently been up to the moon, on pleasure and business. He was not prepared for how bleakly
uninviting the place appeared now. In the Grade-A darkness, Grimaldi was a desert of frozen soot.
‘We’ve something less than half a mile to the target dome,’ Murray said, his voice a whisper in the
headsets. ‘Let’s move!’ ‘ They saw by infra-red extensions. Murray led them along by the crater edge,
treading round spines of out-cropping debris. The alien domes became visible as black breasts against
sequin-studded silk. Through the little grille of his suit window, Tyne saw the world as a plaster mock-up
of a reality too unreal ever to be true. He himself was a pigmy imprisoned in the iron bowel of a robot
heading for destruction. Fighting off that irrational sensation, he peered ahead for the strange object they
had come to investigate.
Something lay ahead. It was impossible to see what it was. Tyne touched Allan’s arm. The latter swung
round, and then turned in the direction in which Tyne pointed. Murray paused, making a clumsily
impatient gesture to them to come on. Perhaps he feels vulnerable as I do, Tyne thought, sympathetically,
pointing again through the blackness for Murray’s benefit.
Next second, they were bathed in the ashy glare of a search-light, skewered neatly in mid-gesture.
The light came not from the domes ahead, but to one side, from a point by the crater wall. Tyne just
stood there, blinded, knowing they were trapped.
‘Drop!’ Allan shouted.
‘Shoot the light out!’ Murray said. His great metal-claw went down piston-fashion to the service pistol,
came up levelling the cumbrous weapon, jerked with the recoil. Allan and Tyne heard the shots only as
vibrant thuds through Murray’s suit mike.
He got the light. It cut off - but already another beam was striking out from the nearest dome, swerving
and sending an oval across the ash towards them. Probably they were being fired at, Tyne thought
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