Dr. Santasiere put the razor on the desk. With a stiffened forefinger, he poked it into a straight line with the Luger, the silencer, the unmarked pillbox and the gas cylinder.
“Stop playing with that damned razor!” Cadena shouted. “You’ll get to use it soon enough. Five minutes! Just stop playing with it now.”
“Don’t lose your nerve, Frank,” Dr. Mellen said. “Sit down. Relax. Try to compose yourself.”
Cadena’s thin face was glistening with perspiration. He dropped into a chair and exhaustedly closed his eyes.
On the desk, an electric clock hummed, its second hand creeping implacably. Cadena’s eyes snapped open.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” he said.
“No one is going to sneak up on you,” said Dr. Mellen wearily. “I think we should get on with it, Frank.”
“Five minutes more!”
“Further delay will just unsettle you. Let’s finish it now.”
DR. SANTASIERE stood up, removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Dr. Mellen asked, “What method would you prefer, Frank?”
“None. None of them . . .”
“Oh, come now,” Dr. Mellen said sternly. “You have an excellent assortment. These pills are tasteless. The gas has an odor, strong but not unpleasant. Perhaps, though, the simplest method would be to open a vein in your wrist, like the Romans of old.”
“Tell me again about the serum,” Cadena begged.
“Again? But really—”
“Tell me again. Go on, tell me.”
“Very well. As per agreement, I have injected you with a serum developed by Dr. Santasiere and myself, which confers the power of complete and instant regeneration.”
“Say it straight!” Cadena said. “It’s an immortality serum! That’s what you told me before.”
“Yes, if you prefer that phraseology.”
“I’m immortal right now!” Cadena cried.
“We have every reason to believe so. All that remains is this final test, in the interest of science. Now, Frank, if you will choose your method—”
“But how do I know?” Cadena asked. “How can I be absolutely sure?”
“We’ve been through this again and again,” Dr. Santasiere said. “The serum works on guinea pigs, on rabbits and on Rhesus monkeys. You have seen the results yourself. They are unkillable by every single method we could devised.”
“But I’m no ape,” Cadena objected. “I’m a man. How do I know it’ll work on me? There are a lot of angles to this thing I didn’t figure on.”
Dr. Mellen held out the pillbox. “Swallow two of these, Frank.”
Cadena held the pillbox in his hand. “It’s worth more than a lousy thousand dollars, the risk I’m taking.”
“A thousand dollars and immortality,” Dr. Mellen pointed out.
“So I’m immortal right now,” Cadena said slowly. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“But I don’t feel any different. I feel just the same as always.”
“Take the pills, Frank,” Mellen said. “Or if you prefer the razor—”
“Forget the damned razor.” Cadena walked again to the window and looked at the green lawn and the oak trees. He turned, took a deep breath and said, “You can have back the thousand.”
“What?”
“I want out. Immortality or sudden death—it’s just too big a gamble. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Take the pills, Frank,” Mellen said flatly.
CADENA THREW the pillbox across the room and ran toward the door. Mellen picked up the Luger, fitted the silencer to it and called, “Wait, Frank! Don’t make me shoot you in the leg!”
Cadena turned. “No, Doc! No!”
Mellen took a firm stance, released the safety and aimed.
“Doc, please—”
“Don’t move, Frank. Let it be a clean shot.”
Cadena stared, his mouth open, and saw Mellen’s finger turn white on the trigger. He tried to scream. The silenced Luger clicked harshly. Cadena was slammed against the door, jerked spasmodically and slid to the floor.
“Beautiful shot,” Santasiere complimented. “Centered right through the heart. Beautiful!”
“I used to do quite a bit of target shooting,” Mellen said. “Steady grip is the answer. And trigger squeeze, of course.”
“Of course,” Santasiere agreed. “I notice you didn’t use your free arm as a support.”
“No, it was unnecessary for so short a distance. Besides, with a weapon as balanced as the Luger—well, anyone could have done it.”
“Now, now. Don’t be modest. Shall we examine the patient?” Together they bent over Cadena’s body.
“The wound has closed already!” Mellen exclaimed.
“Pulse is strong.”
“Respiration normal.”
“Magnificent!” Dr. Mellen said. “The serum is a complete success. Pity he made such a fuss.”
“Took, his eyes are opening.” Cadena’s eyelids fluttered. Then his eyes opened wide.
“Well, Frank, old boy,” Mellen said heartily, “I hope you aren’t angry at us.”
“It was part of the bargain,” Santasiere reminded him.
“And you’re fine. You’re perfectly all right. You are truly and demonstrably immortal, Frank!”
FRANK STARED at them, not answering.
“Come, come,” Mellen said. “No sense being sullen. Speak up! How does it feel to have an unlimited life-span?”
A thread of drool ran from Cadena’s mouth down his chin. His hands plucked aimlessly at the air, then reached vaguely for a patch of sunlight on the floor. “Frank!”
His fingers closed on the sunlit patch and his hands came up empty. Cadena looked at his empty fingers and began to sob.
“Trauma,” Dr. Santasiere sighed. “Of all the luck.”
Dr. Mellen stood up glumly. “Complete idiocy, I suppose. The shock of a gun fired at him . . .”
“Apparently that did it.”
“He was a martyr to science.”
“Yes. But we have an idiot on our hands now. An immortal idiot. What do we do about it?”
Dr. Mellen seemed perplexed for a moment. Then his face brightened.
“Why, it’s obvious, Doctor. We’ll start researching at once for an antidote. Something to put poor Frank out of his misery.”
DAWN INVADER
After too long an absence, Robert Sheckely returns to FS&F—not with one of his bright topsyturfy satires (though you’ll find one of them here within the next few months), but with a serious, evocative, even somewhat perturbing story of man’s mind, and the welding of that mind into a weapon of interstellar invasion.
THERE WERE ELEVEN PLANETS IN that system, and Dillon found that the outer ones contained no life whatsoever. The fourth planet from the sun had once been populated, and the third would someday be. But on the second, a blue world with a single moon, intelligent life existed, and to this planet Dillon directed his ship.
He approached stealthily, slipping through the atmosphere under cover of darkness, descending through thick rain clouds looking much like a cloud himself. He landed with that absolute lack of commotion possible only for an Earthman.
When his ship finally settled it was an hour before dawn, the safe hour, the time when most creatures, no matter what planet has spawned them, are least alert. Or so his father had told him before he left Earth. Invading before dawn was part of the lore of Earth, hard-won knowledge directed solely toward survival on alien planets.
“But all this knowledge is fallible,” his father had reminded him. “For it deals with that least predictable of entities, intelligent life.” The old man had nodded sententiously as he made that statement.
“Remember, my boy,” the old man went on, “you can outwit a meteor, predict an ice age, outguess a nova. But what, truthfully, can you know about those baffling and constantly changing entities who are possessed of intelligence?”
Not very much, Dillon realized. B
ut he believed in his own youth, fire, and cunning, and he trusted the unique Terran invasion technique. With that special skill, an Earthman could battle his way to the top of any environment, no matter how alien, no matter how hostile.
From the day he was born, Dillon had been taught that life is incessant combat. He had learned that the galaxy is large and unfriendly, made up mostly of incandescent suns and empty space. But sometimes there are planets, and on these planets are races, differing vastly in shape and size, but alike in one respect: their hatred for anything unlike themselves. No cooperation was possible between these races. For an Earthman to live among them called for the utmost in skill, stamina, and cunning. And even then, survival would be impossible without Earth’s devastating technique of invasion.
Dillon had been an apt student, eager to face his destiny in the great galaxy. He had enlisted for the Exodus, not waiting to be drafted. And finally, like millions of young men before him, he had been given his own spaceship and sent out, leaving small, overcrowded Earth forever behind. He had flown to the limit of his fuel. And now his destiny lay before him.
His ship rested in a clump of jungle near a thatch-roofed village, almost invisible in dense underbrush. He waited, tense behind his controls, until the dawn came up white, with red hints of sunrise in it. But no one came near, no bomb fell, no shells burst. He had to assume that he had landed undetected.
When the planet’s yellow sun touched the rim of the horizon, Dillon emerged and sized up his physical surroundings. He sniffed the air, felt the gravity, estimated the sun’s spectrum and power, and sadly shook his head. This planet, like most planets in the galaxy, would not support Terra life. He had perhaps an hour in which to complete his invasion.
He touched a button on his instrument panel and walked quickly away. Behind him, his ship dissolved into a gray ash. The ash scattered on the morning breeze and dispersed over the jungle. Now he was committed irrevocably. He moved toward the alien village.
As he approached he saw that the aliens’ huts were crude affairs of wood and thatch, a few of hand-hewn stone. They seemed durable and sufficient for the climate. There was no sign of roads—only a single footpath leading into the jungle. There were no power installations, no manufactured articles. This, he decided, was an early civilization, one he should have no difficulty mastering.
Confidently he stepped forward, and almost bumped into an alien.
They stared at each other. The alien was bipedal, considerably taller than an Earthman, with a good cranial capacity. He wore a single striped garment wrapped around his waist. His skin was pigmented a light brown beneath gray fur. He showed no tendency to run.
“Ir tai!” the creature said, sounds which Dillon interpreted as a cry of surprise. Looking hastily around, he saw that no other villager had discovered him yet. He tensed slightly and leaned forward.
“K’tal tai a—”
Dillon leaped like a great spring unfolding. The alien tried to dodge, but Dillon twisted in midair like a cat and managed to clamp a hand around one of the alien’s limbs.
That was all he needed. Now physical contact had been established. The rest should be easy.
For hundreds of years, an exploding birth rate had forced the inhabitants of Earth to migrate in ever-increasing numbers. But not one planet in ten thousand was suitable for human life. Therefore, Earth considered the possibility of altering alien environments to suit Terran needs, or changing men biologically to suit the new environments. But there was a third method which yielded the greatest returns for the least effort. This was to develop the mind-projecting tendency latent in all intelligent races.
Earth bred for it, concentrated and trained it. With this ability, an Earthman could live on any planet simply by taking over the mind of one of its inhabitants. This done, he had a body tailor-made for its environment, and filled with useful and interesting information. Once an Earthman was established, his love of competition usually carried him to a preeminent position in the new world he had invaded.
There was only one slight hitch; an alien usually resented having his mind invaded. And sometimes, he was able to do something about it.
In the first instant of penetration, Dillon sensed, with passionate regret, his own body collapsing, folding in on itself. It would dissolve immediately, leaving no trace. Only he and his host would know an invasion had taken place.
And at the end, only one of them would know.
Now, within the alien mind, Dillon concentrated entirely on the job ahead. Barriers went down one after another as he drove hard toward the center, where the I-am-I existed. When he entered that citadel and succeeded in driving out the ego now occupying it, the body would be his.
Hastily erected defenses dissolved before him. For an instant, Dillon thought that his first wild rush was going to carry him all the way. Then, suddenly, he was directionless, wandering through a gray and featureless no-man’s-land.
The alien had recovered from his initial shock. Dillon could sense energies slowly growing around him.
Now he was really in for a fight.
A parlay was held in the no-man’s-land of the alien’s mind.
“Who are you?”
“Edward Dillon, from the planet Earth. And you?”
“Arek. We call this planet K’egra. What do you want here, Dillon?”
“A little living space, Arek,” Dillon said, grinning. “Can you spare it?”
“Well, I’ll be damned . . . Get out of my mind!”
“I can’t,” Dillon said. “I have no place to go.”
“I see,” Arek mused. “Tough. But you are uninvited. And something tells me you want more than just living room. You want everything, don’t you?”
“I must have control,” Dillon admitted. “There’s no other way. But if you don’t struggle, perhaps I can leave a space for you, although it isn’t customary.”
“It isn’t?”
“Of course not,” Dillon said. “Different races can’t exist together. That’s a law of nature. The stronger drives out the weaker. But I might be willing to try it for a while.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Arek said, and broke off contact.
The grayness of no-man’s-land turned solid black. And Dillon, waiting for the coming struggle, felt the first pang of self-doubt.
Arek was a primitive. He couldn’t have any training in mind-combat. Yet he grasped the situation at once, adjusted to it, and was now prepared to deal with it. Probably his efforts would be feeble, but still . . .
What kind of a creature was this?
He was standing on a rocky hillside, surrounded by ragged cliffs. Far ahead was a tall range of misty blue mountains. The sun was in his eyes, blinding and hot. A black speck crawled up the hillside toward him.
Dillon kicked a stone out of his way and waited for the speck to resolve. This was the pattern of mental combat, where thought becomes physical, and ideas are touchable things.
The speck became a K’egran. Suddenly he loomed above Dillon, enormous, glistening with muscle, armed with sword and dagger.
Dillon moved back, avoiding the first stroke. The fight was proceeding in a recognizable—and controllable—pattern. Aliens usually conjured an idealized image of their race, with its attributes magnified and augmented. The figure was invariably fearsome, superhuman, irresistible. But usually, it had a rather subtle flaw. Dillon decided to gamble on its presence here.
The K’egran lunged ahead. Dillon dodged, dropped to the ground, and lashed out with both feet, leaving his body momentarily exposed. The K’egran tried to parry and respond, but too slowly. The blow from Dillon’s booted feet caught him powerfully in the stomach.
Exultantly, Dillon bounded forward. The flaw was there!
He ran in under the sword, feinted, and, while the K’egran tried to guard, neatly broke his neck with two blows of the edge of his hand.
The K’egran fell, shaking the ground. Dillon watched him die with a certain sympathy. The idealized racial fi
ghting image was larger than life, stronger, braver, more enduring. But it always had a certain ponderousness about it, a sure and terrible majesty. This was excellent for an image—but not for a fighting machine. It meant slow reaction time, which meant death.
The dead giant vanished. Dillon thought for a moment that he had won. Then he heard a snarl behind him. He whirled and saw a long, low black beast, panther-like, with ears laid back and teeth bared.
So Arek had reserves. But Dillon knew how much energy this kind of a fight used up. In a while, the alien’s reserves would be gone. And then . . .
Dillon picked up the giant’s sword and moved back, the panther advancing, until he found a high boulder against which he could set his back. A waist-high rock in front of him served as a parapet, across which the panther had to leap. The sun hung before him, in his eyes, and a light breeze blew dust in his face. He swung back the sword as the panther leaped.
During the next slow hours, Dillon met and destroyed a complete sampling of K’egra’s more deadly creatures, and dealt with them as he would deal with similar animals on Earth. The rhinoceros—at least, it resembled one—was easy in spite of its formidable size and speed. He was able to lure it to a cliff edge and goad it into charging over. The cobra was more dangerous, nearly spitting poison in his eyes before he was able to slash it in half. The gorilla was powerful, strong, and terribly quick. But he could never get his bone-crushing hands on Dillon, who danced back and forth, slashing him to shreds. The tyrannosaurus was armored and tenacious. It took an avalanche to bury him. And Dillon lost count of the others. But at the end, sick with fatigue, his sword reduced to a jagged splinter, he stood alone.
“Had enough, Dillon?” Arek asked.
“Not at all,” Dillon answered, through thirst-blackened lips. “You can’t go on forever, Arek. There’s a limit to even your vitality.”
“Really?” Arek asked.
“You can’t have much left,” Dillon said, trying to show a confidence he did not feel. “Why not be reasonable? I’ll leave you room, Arek, I really will. I . . . well, I sort of respect you.”
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