The Silent Vulcan Read online

  THE SILENT VULCAN

  87,000 word novel

  by James Follett

  Revised 5-10 May 2002

  The final book in the

  `The Silent Vulcan' trilogy

  James Follett

  [email protected]

  www.james-follett.co.uk

  REPRESENTATION:

  Philip Patterson

  Marjacq Scripts Ltd

  Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7563 1302

  email: [email protected]

  KINDLE EDITION PREPARED BY:

  Richard Follett

  Kindred Partners [email protected]

  Tel: 01730 819915

  THE SILENT VULCAN

  by

  James Follett

  PROLOGUE

  Statement broadcast on an emergency radio transmitter by Asquith Prescott, Chairman of Pentworth Town Council, made in March on the day after the appearance of the Wall:

  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I doubt if there is anyone in the Pentworth area who isn't aware of the extraordinary fate that has overtaken our community. As from last night we have been enclosed by a seemingly impenetrable and invisible dome, six miles in diameter and effectively imprisoning some 6000 of us within an area of 30 square miles, with many suffering the anguish of separation from loved ones.

  “We are lucky in having the services of Councillor Robert Harding who is a senior government advisor on scientific matters. It's thanks to him that I am able to talk to you now. He has examined the Wall and has confirmed what many of you have suspected all along -- that it is definitely not of earthly origin. It is also certain that the centre of dome is Pentworth Lake. It is to the credit of the good sense of the people of Pentworth that there has been no panic. Whoever these creatures or beings are, or what their purpose is in coming here, or how long they intend to stay, we can only guess. But at least we know from the design of their amazing force wall that they mean us no harm. But the loss of all our public utilities and our total isolation is causing massive problems for all of us.

  “But our immediate concern is our air quality. It has got steadily worse today therefore, even if the dome lasts only a day or so, we must deal with the problem now. In the interests of us all, particularly our children, do not use your cars, or motorbikes, or any form of combustion engine unless it is absolutely essential. Only emergency vehicles are exempt. The same goes for barbecues and bonfires: a total voluntary ban until we have more information from our advisors. Clean air must be our first priority.”

  Prescott spoke for a further three minutes in which he urged those with bottled or LPG gas, or methane digesters, to form communal cooking groups for those without -- such gases gave off very little carbon and sulphur; those with good boreholes to provide an outside tap for others to use. He urged utmost economy with water in household tanks and on no account were lavatories on main drainage to be flushed. In all he covered a further five interim emergency measures, including a request for all food shops to sell only perishable stock, and concluded with:

  “If the crisis continues we will call on everyone in the setting up of voluntary groups to deal with day-to-day and long term problems. The British have always been good at rising to challenges such as these which I am laying before you. Our best qualities shine in adversity. Father Adrian Roscoe and his Bodian Brethren have already responded by providing free cooked lunches today and will do so again tomorrow at Pentworth House between midday and 2:00pm. They will also be making a start on deliveries of fresh bread and milk tomorrow morning. Initial priority will be given to families with children. With such public-spiritedness and your fortitude and willingness to make sacrifices, I am confident that we will overcome all our problems.

  “Thank you for listening to me. I will talk to you again at the same time tomorrow. Goodnight and God bless you all.”

  Statement by Councillor Bob Harding at the first meeting of Pentworth's Emergency Council:

  “The Wall is definitely not the product of human technology. Of that there is no doubt. That leaves extra-terrestrial technology. It would seem that the claims of those that they saw an object in the sky last Tuesday may have been accurate afterall. The ufologists who scoured the area on Wednesday and Thursday looking for this so-called Silent Vulcan didn't find anything because they didn't investigate Pentworth Lake which is the geographic centre of the Wall. An excellent choice of hiding place for a flying saucer, spacecraft, Silent Vulcan -- call it what you will. We can send probes to the planets and submersibles to the greatest depths of the oceans, but we do not have the instruments to probe very deep swamps.”

  In answer to a question about the likely place of origin of the invaders, Councillor Harding said:

  “We know enough about the solar system to rule out all the planets. That leaves our galaxy -- the Milky Way. Our nearest star is Proxima Centauri. A type M red dwarf flare star whose light takes 4.3 years to reach us -- just over one parsec. For the sake of argument let us assume that Centauri has a planetary system and that's where our visitors are from. We know that they can't be from anywhere nearer, and the probability is that they're from somewhere a good deal further away. Certain characteristics of the Wall -- we now know from a check on the sewers and an old lead mine that it's actually a sphere -- indicate that our visitors are not in possession of the sort of super-advanced technology as favoured by most science-fiction writers. It is advanced enough -- but from what I've observed, I doubt if they're much more than 300 years ahead of us.

  “Certainly enough to give us serious problems. I'm going to make another supposition and give our visitors' spacecraft a capability of one fifth of the speed of light -- around 60,000 kilometres per second. Allowing for periods of acceleration and deceleration, the journey from Centauri to Earth would take them about 22 years. A round trip of 44 years. An awesome time-span but within the realms of possibility for a survey expedition by a determined people with inquiring minds. The scientist in me rebels at all this stretching of a theory but I've started it so I'll continue. I believe that our visitors had problems with their spacecraft when they went into orbit around the earth. Rather than remain in orbit and risk detection and possible destruction by us, they searched for a haven. Where better than a deep swamp? And as an added safeguard, they threw up an enclosing protective sphere around themselves. They then broadcast for help -- they certainly generated a lot of broadband radio noise around 100 megaHertz on Thursday and Friday which led to the drowning of two Radio Communications Agency investigators. The visitors' SOS is now on its way to Centauri and will reach it in four years and four months. Assuming that HQ can launch a rescue mission right away, we can expect to be reluctant hosts to our visitors for the next 27 years. On the other hand, they may be from the heart of our galaxy in which case they, and us, will have to wait many thousands of years.”

  First draft of a speech by Councillor Bob Harding for the opening of the May Day Carnival held in Market Square, Pentworth, two months after the appearance of the Wall.

  “In September 1991, eight men and women said goodbye to Mother Earth and locked themselves into an artificial 3.1 acre ecosystem in the Arizona desert for two years. Their giant greenhouse-like building was called Biosphere 2 -- the earth being Biosphere 1. It was, in many respects, similar to the situation confronting us in Pentworth. Biosphere 2 was airtight and contained everything needed to sustain life. Plants would make food and oxygen, insects would pollinate the plants, and algae and bacteria would break down waste and purify the water. The purpose of the project was to investigate ecosystems that would be needed to support crews on long space voyages, or in colonies on planets such as Mars.

  “Biosphere 2 included a miniature rain forest, some swamp, a four million litre `ocean'
with a wave-making machine, desert, savannah and marshland. There was a farm with goats, pigs, and chickens. Additionally, there were fish in the ocean, and about 4000 species of reptiles and insects in the swamp and forest. There were even birds. Everything was put in place to create a supposedly ideal environment for the eight `biospherians' in which they would grow their own food, recycle water, while completely cut off from a sustaining outside world from which they would receive only sunlight.

  “It didn't work. The crew ended up competing for food with their livestock. For example, egg production went down but the hens ate just as much. The goats and pigs didn't breed nearly so prolifically. This meant that animals slaughtered for food were not replaced. Weeds flourished, taking valuable nitrogen and nutrients from the soil resulting in the biospherians expending more energy in weeding than they were able to replace by eating their crops.

  “The all-important lesson learned in the case of Biosphere 2 was that we don't know, as yet, how to engineer a system that provides humans with the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free. Our Earth remains the only known home that can sustain life.

  “Biosphere 2 wasn't big enough to permit the drumbeat of nature to resonate. For example, their species of frog relied on the splatter of heavy rain to announce mating time. There was no rain, the frogs didn't breed, therefore there were no tadpoles to feed on water weeds to provide food for the carp that would be eaten by the crew. The food chain wasn't so much broken -- it was never even started.

  “The crew were forced to provide a huge input of work to do the job that nature does for free. You can build synthetic ecosystems as small as you want, but the smaller you make it, the greater role human operators have to play because they must act out the larger forces of nature. A scientist on the project said that the subsidy we get from nature is incredible. I want you all to remember those words, `The subsidy we get from nature is incredible.'

  The breeze taking away the smoke from that barbecue is doing a job that we could not replicate without a million horsepower of electric fans. Not only is the breeze carrying the carbon from the barbecue's charcoal across the fields to feed plant life, but it's also taking moisture, such as our sweat, with it at the same time. It then rises over Pentworth Lake, and gives up its harvest of moisture to the colder air so that it falls as rain... Perhaps as much as a tonne of our body waste has been purified, transported, and redistributed since I started talking... All without any effort on our part. The subsidy we get from nature is indeed, truly incredible.

  “Pentworth within its 10 kilometre sphere is over a million times the size of Biosphere 2. It is just large enough for the cycles of nature to operate -- at least we have the natural water purification process of evaporation and condensation at work -- we have rainfall and sometimes heavy dews. We have plenty of water locked within our dome. Like the earth's water, it is our only water. Like the earth's water, we won't lose it, but we won't get anymore therefore we have to take great care of it.

  “And that applies to not only water, but all our raw materials. We do not know if the Wall will remain in place for a year, or ten years, or ten centuries. Therefore we must conserve and, above all, recycle. We have about a tonne of metals per person, which ought to be more than enough. But anything we make from those metals must be built to last. Obsolescence cannot become a component part of our economy. The regulations on separation of household waste before collection, on the avoidance of pollution, the strict controls on fires, may seem irksome, but by following them we are ensuring, not only our health, but the health and well-being of future generations. That we are entrusted with the present does not give us the right to raid the future."

  Chapter 1.

  THE TRIANGULAR-SHAPED MOUND protruding above the sediment was at a depth of 120 metres and almost in the precise centre of the broad expanse of Pentworth Lake.

  "That," said Bob Harding with suppressed excitement while staring at the echo-sounder's display, "has to be the Silent Vulcan -- our visitors' UFO."

  A breeze tugged at the Zodiac inflatable boat that the two men were sitting in, causing it to jerk against its tethers. The boat was moored at the intersection of three marker lines that had been stretched taut across the lake and kept afloat with an assortment of beach balls and plastic bottles spaced at regular intervals.

  Bob Harding's companion in the boat was Detective Sergeant Mike Malone. Both men were wearing shorts and T-shirts. Malone was in his mid 30s. He was lean, muscular and bronzed. His passions were jogging and philosophy -- interests that suited his temperament because he could indulge them alone. By contrast Harding was round-shouldered and pale skinned. He was a former government scientific advisor who had taken early retirement to set up an electrical repair shop and workshop in Pentworth. Now he was the reluctant chairman of Pentworth's governing council and therefore the most powerful man in the community. It was a post that had been thrust on him a week earlier after a successful coup masterminded by Malone. Harding supported the coup -- the former chairman of what had been Pentworth Town Council, Asquith Prescott, had used the emergency to gradually acquire almost dictatorial powers since the appearance of the Wall. His early moves, such as strict controls on air pollution and the setting up of the morris man police had enjoyed wide support because they had been necessary, but Asquith Prescott had gone on to seek absolute power in league with Adrian Roscoe. His ruthlessness had led to him being deposed and Bob Harding being installed as acting-chairman.

  Bob Harding was a mild-mannered man with no taste for power; he was quietly determined to restore normal democracy to Pentworth and step down at the first opportunity. The trouble was that to quickly undo the damage caused by Asquith Prescott required stroke-of-a-pen dictatorial powers similar to those that Prescott had employed to put them in place.

  Malone squinted up at the blistering sun and adjusted the position of the parasol so that the echo-sounder's screen remained shaded. Harding used a digital camera to take another close-up picture of the anomaly in the centre of display. He checked the image he had captured on camera's liquid crystal display.

  "Damn. Still too much hand shake," he said, not concealing the tremble in his voice.

  Malone said nothing but continued staring at the echo-sounder's screen. Harding's excitement was understandable. If the hazy pattern of green shading on the screen was the Silent Vulcan, then it was the first visible evidence of the UFO's awesome presence other than the Visitors' ten kilometre diameter Wall that had dominated all their lives for six months since March.

  The Wall had proved impregnable. It had resisted repeated attempts to break through it. Even a coordinated onslaught by the massed forces of nearly 400 trucks, cars, and tractors distributed around the thirty kilometre perimeter of the Wall had been unable to overcome its terrible yet strangely benign power. As the vehicles began thrusting, the Wall had given way gently at first, and then had gradually pushed back with an irresistible equal and opposite force. No one had come to harm as a result of contact with the Wall. On the night of its appearance, a woman had unwittingly driven into it at high speed. Her Jaguar had been brought to a controlled standstill. "It was like hitting a wall of foam rubber mattresses," the baffled woman had later reported.

  Equally extraordinary was that the unreachable world beyond the invisible Wall consisted of wind-blasted steppes -- a bleak vista of frost-hardy sedge grasses, and a few wind-stunted trees struggling to survive in hollows and valleys. Small herds of woolly mammoths had been seen grazing the strange landscape, and a retired school teacher, a nun, had even seen a sabre-toothed cat on several occasions. Bob Harding and other amateur astronomers had identified the night sky as that of northern Europe of 40,000 years ago. The strange world beyond the Wall had become known as Farside -- a name also used for the modern world that now, after six months of isolation, seemed lost forever to the imprisoned people of Pentworth.

  Some even thought that the real world had ceased to exist, and a steadily increasin
g minority believed that the Wall was a punishment by God. Then there were those who liked the new life, as it was called. They liked the simplicity, the clean air, organically grown food, the freedom from motor traffic and above all, the community spirit that the Visitors and their Wall had produced.

  Harding had a hazy plan to attempt to communicate with the Visitors in their Silent Vulcan. There were so many questions to be asked. Where were they from? Why had they come? How long did they intend to stay? Why had they created the Wall? Did they realise the heartache and misery it was causing?

  There were so many questions clamouring for answers -- the most immediate being was how to communicate with the Visitors. Harding had no idea but he was confident that he would think of something. Knowing exactly where they were helped.

  A distant whistle blew. Malone glanced up and saw a volunteer lifeguard signalling to a bather who had swum outside the roped-off safe bathing area. The small beach that the governing council of Pentworth had been created using wagon loads of sand was dotted with sunshades. Beyond the bathing area around the beach where children were splashing with their parents was a steep shelf which fell away to the unplumbed depths of the lake.

  Millennia before, water made acidic by decaying vegetation had leached down through the upper strata of sandstone and washed away the underlying limestone leaving a vast cavern. Eventually the land had collapsed to form this curious lake. It was typical of the supposedly bottomless swallow holes of Sussex. In the case of Pentworth Lake, the upwelling from underground springs had kept the bottom sediment in a state of low density and near-constant agitation so that no one knew the lake's true depth. Since the appearance of the Wall there had been a decrease in evaporation and a corresponding decrease in the formation of rain clouds within the dome which had allowed the sediment to settle. What rainfall there was proving adequate for the needs of 6000 people, but only just.