Lifeforce Read Online Free

tombs,” Carlsen said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t need furniture.”
    “The ancient Egyptians buried furniture with their dead.” Ives had a passion for archaeology.
    For some reason, Carlsen felt a flash of irritation. “But they expected to take their goods to the underworld. These people don’t look that stupid.”
    Craigie said: “All the same, they could hope to rise from the dead.”
    Carlsen said angrily: “Don’t talk bloody nonsense.” Then, as he caught Craigie’s startled glance through the glass of the helmet: “I”m sorry. I think I must be hungry.”
    Back in the Hermes , Steinberg had cooked the meal intended for Christmas Day. It was now mid-October; they were scheduled to leave for earth in the second week of November, arriving in mid-January. (At top speed, the Hermes covered four million miles a day.) No one had any doubt that they would be leaving sooner than that. This find was more important than a dozen unknown asteroids.
    The atmosphere was now relaxed and festive. They drank champagne with the goose, and brandy with the Christmas pudding. Ives, Murchison and Craigie talked almost without pause; the others were happy to listen. Carlsen was oddly tired. He felt as if he had been awake for two days. Everything was slightly unreal. He wondered if it could be the effect of radioactivity, then dismissed the idea. In that case, the others would feel it too. Their spacesuits were now in the decontaminator unit, and the meter showed that absorption had been minimal.
    Farmer said: “Olof, you’re not saying much.”
    “Tired, that’s all.”
    Dabrowsky asked him: “What’s your theory about all this? Why did they build that thing?”
    They all waited for Carlsen to speak, but he shook his head.
    “Then let me tell you mine.” Farmer said. He was smoking a pipe and used the stem to gesture. “From what you say, all those stairways couldn’t serve any practical purpose. Right? So, as Olof said this morning, it’s probably an impractical purpose — an aesthetic or religious purpose.”
    “All right,” Steinberg said, “so it’s a kind of floating cathedral. It still doesn’t make sense.”
    “Let me go on. We know these creatures aren’t from within the solar system. So they’re from another system, perhaps another galaxy.”
    “Impossible, unless they’ve been travelling for a hundred million years or so.”
    “All right.” Farmer was unperturbed. “But they could have come from another star system. If they could reach half the speed of light, Alpha Centauri’s only nine years away.” He waved aside interruption. “We know they must have come from another star system. So the only question is which one. And if they’ve travelled that far, then the size of the ship becomes logical. It’s the equivalent of an ocean liner. Our ship’s no more than a rowboat by comparison. Now…” He turned to Ives. “If people migrate, what’s the first thing they take with them?”
    “Their gods.”
    “Quite. The Israelites travelled with the Ark of the Covenant. These people brought a temple.”
    Steinberg said: “And it still doesn’t make sense. If we all migrated to Mars, we wouldn’t try to take Canterbury Cathedral. We’d build another on Mars.”
    “You forget that the cathedral’s also a home. Suppose they land on Mars? It’s an inhospitable place. It might take them years to establish a city under a glass dome. But they’ve brought their dome with them.”
    The others were impressed. Dabrowsky asked: “But why the stairways and catwalks?”
    “Because they’re the basic necessities of a new city. Their size is limited. As the population increases, they have to expand upwards. It’s the only direction. So they’ve built the skeleton of a multilevel city.”
    Ives said with excitement: “I’ll tell you another thing. They wouldn’t be alone. They’d send two or three ships. And they wouldn’t land on Mars, because it doesn’t support life. They’d land on