Hunt the Space-Witch! Seven Adventures in Time and Space

by Robert Silverberg

  She remained calm. Harris measured the distance between them, wondering whether she would use the weapon after all. A disruptor broiled the neural tissue; death was instantaneous and fairly ghastly.

  He decided to risk it. His assignment was to kill Medlins, not to let himself be killed by them. He had nothing to lose by making the attempt.

  In a soft voice he said, “You didn’t answer. Do you really think I’d fall in love with something like you?”

  “Biologically we’re Earthers now, not Medlins or Darruui. It’s possible.”

  “Maybe you’re right. After all, I did ask you to cover yourself up.” He smiled and said, “I’m all confused. I need time to think things over.”

  “Of course. You—”

  He sprang from the chair and covered the ten feet between them in two big bounds, stretching out one hand to grab the hand that held the disruptor. He deflected the weapon toward the ceiling. She did not fire. He closed on her wrist and forced her to drop the tiny pistol. Pressed against her, he stared into eyes blazing with anger.

  The anger melted suddenly into passion. He stepped back, reaching for his own gun, not willing to have such close contact with her. She was too dangerous. Better to kill her right now, he thought. She’s just a Medlin. A deadly one.

  He started to draw the weapon from his tunic: Suddenly she lifted her hand; there was the twinkle of something bright between her fingers, and then Harris recoiled, helpless, as the bolt of a stunner struck him in the face like a club against the back of his skull.

  She fired again. He struggled to get his gun out, but his muscles would not obey.

  He toppled forward, paralyzed.

  Chapter Four

  Harris felt a teeth-chattering chill as he began to come awake. The stunner-bolt had temporarily overloaded his motor neurons, and the body’s escape from the frustration of paralysis was unconsciousness. Now he was waking, and the strength was ebbing slowly and painfully back into his muscles.

  The light of morning streamed in through a depolarized window on the left wall of the unfamiliar room in which he found himself. He felt stiff and sore all over, and realized he had spent the night—where?—

  He groped in his pockets. His weapons were gone; they had left his wallet.

  He got unsteadily to his feet and surveyed the room. The window was beyond his reach; there was no sign of a door. Obviously some section of the wall folded away to admit people to the room, but the door and door-jamb, wherever they were, must have been machined as smoothly as a couple of jo-blocks, because there was no sign of a break in the wall.

  He looked up. There was a grid in the ceiling. Airconditioning, no doubt—and probably a spy-mechanism also. He stared at the grid and said, “Okay. I’m awake now. You can come work me over.”

  There was no immediate response. Surreptitiously Harris slipped a hand inside his waistband and squeezed a fold of flesh between his thumb and index finger. The action set in operation a minute amplifier embedded there; a distress signal, directionally modulated, was sent out to any Darruui agents who might be within a thousand-mile radius. He completed the gesture by lazily scratching his chest, stretching, yawning.

  He waited.

  Finally a segment of the door flipped upward out of sight, and three figures entered.

  He recognized one of them: Beth. She smiled at him and said, “Good morning, Major.”

  Harris glared sourly at her. Behind her stood two males—one an ordinary-looking sort of Earther, the other rather special. He was about six feet six, well-proportioned for his height, with a regularity of feature that seemed startlingly beautiful.

  Beth said, “Major Abner Harris, formerly Aar Khiilom of Darruu—this is Paul Coburn of Medlin Intelligence and David Wrynn of Earth.”

  “A real Earthman? Not a phony like the rest of us?”

  Wrynn smiled pleasantly and said, “I assure you I’m a home-grown product, Major Harris.” His voice was like the mellow boom of a well-tuned cello.

  The Darruui folded his arms. “Well. How nice of you to introduce us all. Now what?”

  “Still belligerent,” he heard Beth murmur to the other Medlin, Coburn. Coburn nodded. The giant Earthman merely looked unhappy in a calm sort of way.

  Harris eyed them all coldly. “If you’re going to torture me, why not get started with it?”

  “Who said anything about torture?” Beth asked.

  “Why else would you bring me here? Obviously you want to wring information from me. Well, go ahead. I’m ready for you.”

  Coburn chuckled and fingered his double chins. “Don’t you think we know that torture’s useless on you? That if we tried any kind of forcible neural extraction of information from your mind your memory-chambers would automatically short-circuit?”

  Harris’ jaw dropped. “How did you know—” He stopped. The Medlins evidently had a fantastically efficient spy service. The filter-circuit in his brain was a highly secret development.

  Beth said, “Relax and listen to us. We aren’t out to torture you. We know already all you can tell us.”

  “Doubtful. But go ahead and talk.”

  “We know how many Darruui are on Earth. And we know approximately where they are. We’d like you to serve as a contact man for us.”

  “And do what?”

  “Kill the other nine Darruui on Earth,” Beth said simply.

  Harris smiled. “Is there any special reason why I should do this?”

  “For the good of the universe.”

  He laughed derisively. “For the good of Medlin, you mean.”

  “No. Listen to me. When we arrived on Earth—it was years ago, by the way—we quickly discovered that a new race was evolving here. A super-race, you might say. One with abnormal physical and mental powers. But in most cases children of this new race were killed or mentally stunted before they reached maturity. People tend to resent being made obsolete—and even a super-child is unable to defend himself until he’s learned how. By then it’s usually too late.”

  It was a nice fairy-tale, Harris thought. He made no comment, but listened with apparent interest.

  Beth continued, “We discovered isolated members of this new race here and there on Earth. We decided to help them—knowing they would help us, some day, when it became necessary. We protected these children. We brought them together and raised them in safety. David Wrynn here is one of our first discoveries.”

  Harris glanced at the big Earthman. “So you’re a superman?”

  Wrynn smiled. “I’m somewhat better equipped for life than most other Earthmen. My children will be as far beyond me as I am beyond my parents.”

  “Our purpose here on Earth is to aid this evolving race until it’s capable of taking care of itself—which won’t be too long now. There are more than a hundred of them, of which thirty are adult. But now Darruui agents have started to arrive on Earth. Their purpose is to obstruct us, to interfere with our actions, and to win Earth over to what they think is their ‘cause.’ They don’t see that they’re backing a dead horse.”

  “Tell me,” Harris said. “What’s your motive in bringing into being this super-race?”

  “Motive?” Beth said. “You Darruui always think in terms of motives, don’t you? Profit and reward. Major, there’s nothing in this for us but the satisfaction of knowing that we’re bringing something wonderful into being in the universe.”

  Harris swallowed that with much salt. The concept of altruism was not unknown on Darruu, certainly, but it seemed highly improbable that a planet would go to the trouble of sending emissaries across space for the sole purpose of serving as midwives to an emerging race of super-beings on Earth.

  No, he thought. It was simply part of an elaborate propaganda maneuver whose motives did not lie close to the surface. There were no super-men. Wrynn was probably a Medlin himself, on whom the surgeons had done a specially good job.

  Whatever the Medlins’ motive, he determined to play along with them. By now Carver had probabl
y picked up his distress signal and had worked out the location of the place where he was being held.

  He said, “So you’re busily raising a breed of super-Earthmen, and you want me to help? How?”

  “We told you. By disposing of your comrades before they make things complicated for us.”

  “You’re asking me to commit treason against my people, in other words.”

  “We know what sort of a man you are,” Beth said. “You aren’t in sympathy with the Darruui imperialistic ideals. You may think you are, but you aren’t.”

  I’ll play along, Harris thought. He said, “You’re right. I didn’t want to take the job on Earth in the first place. What can I do to help?”

  Coburn and Beth exchanged glances. The “Earthman” Wrynn merely smiled.

  Beth said, “I knew you’d cooperate. The first target is the man who calls himself Carver. Get rid of him and the Darruui agents are without a nerve-center. After him, the other eight will be easy targets.”

  “How do you know I won’t trick you once you’ve released me?” Harris said.

  Coburn said, “We have ways of keeping watch.”

  Harris nodded. “I’ll go after Carver first. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as he’s out of the way.”

  It seemed too transparent, Harris thought, when they had set him loose. He found himself in a distant quarter of the city, nearly an hour’s journey by helitaxi from his hotel.

  All this talk of supermen and altruism! It made no sense, he thought—but Medlin propaganda was devious stuff, and he had good reason to distrust it.

  Were they as simple as all that, though, to release him merely on his promise of good faith? If they were truly altruistic, of course, it made sense; but he knew the Medlins too well to believe that. Darkly he thought he must be part of some larger Medlin plan.

  Well, let Carver worry about it, he thought.

  Though he was hungry, he knew he had no time to bother about breakfast until he got in touch with the Darruui chief agent. He signalled for a helitaxi and gave his destination as the Spaceways Hotel.

  When he finally arrived, fifty minutes later, he headed straight for his room, activated the narrow-beam communicator, and waited until the metallic voice from the speaker said in code, “Carver here.”

  “Harris speaking.”

  “You’ve escaped?”

  “They set me free. It’s a long story. Did you get a directional fix on the building?”

  “Yes. Why did they let you go?”

  “I promised to become a Medlin secret agent,” Harris said. “My first assignment is to assassinate you.”

  The chuckle that came from the speaker grid held little mirth. Carver said, “Fill me in on everything that’s happened to you since last night.”

  “For one thing, the Medlins know everything, but everything. When I went to visit the girl last night she was waiting for me with a gun. She stunned me and carted me off to the Medlin headquarters. When I woke up they gave me some weird line about raising a breed of super-Earthmen, and would I help them in this noble cause?”

  “You agreed?”

  “Of course. They let me go and I’m supposed to eradicate all the Darruui on Earth, beginning with you.”

  “The others are well scattered,” Carver said.

  “They seem to know where they are.”

  Carver was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We’ll have to strike at once. We’ll attack the Medlin headquarters and kill as many as we can. Do you really think they trust you?”

  “Either that or they’re using me as bait for an elaborate trap,” Harris said.

  “That’s more likely. Well, we’ll take their bait. Only they won’t be able to handle us once they’ve caught hold of us.”

  Carver broke contact. Carefully Harris packed the equipment away again.

  He breakfasted in the hotel restaurant after a prolonged session under the molecular showerbath to remove the fatigue and grime of his night’s imprisonment. The meal was close to tasteless, but he needed the nourishment.

  Returning to his room, he locked himself in and threw himself wearily on the bed. He was tired and deeply troubled.

  Supermen, he thought.

  Did it make sense for the Medlins to rear a possible galactic conqueror? Earthmen were dangerous enough as it was; though the spheres of galactic influence still were divided as of old between Darruu and Medlin, the Earthmen in their bare three hundred years of galactic contact had taken giant strides toward holding a major place in the affairs of the universe.

  Their colonies stretched halfway across the galaxy. The Interstellar Development Corps of which he claimed to be a member had planted Earthmen indiscriminately on any uninhabited world of the galaxy that was not claimed by Darruu or Medlin.

  And the Medlins, the ancient enemies of his people, the race he had been taught all his life to regard as the embodiment of evil—these were aiding Earthmen to progress to a plane of development far beyond anything either Darruu or Medlin had attained?

  Ridiculous, he thought. No race breeds its own destruction knowingly. And the Medlins are no fools.

  Certainly not fools enough to let me go on a mere promise that I’ll turn traitor and aid them, he thought.

  He shook his head. After a while he uncorked his precious flask of Darruui wine and poured a small quantity. The velvet-textured dark wine of his home-world soothed him a little, but the ultimate result was simply to increase his already painful longing for home. Soon, he thought, it would be harvest-time, and the first bottles of new wine would reach the shops. This would be the first year that he had not tasted the year’s vintage while it still held the bouquet of youth.

  Instead I find myself on a strange planet in a strange skin, caught up in the coils of the devil Medlins. He scowled darkly, and took another sip of wine to ease the ache his heart felt.

  Chapter Five

  A day of nerve-twisting inactivity passed. Harris did not hear from Carver, nor did any of the Medlins contact him. Once he checked Beth Baldwin’s room at the hotel, but no one answered the door, and when he inquired at the desk he learned that she had moved out earlier in the day, leaving no forwarding address. It figured. She had established quarters in the hotel only long enough to come in touch with him, and, that done, had left.

  Regretfully Harris wished he had had a chance to try that biological experiment with her, after all. Medlin though she was, his body was now Terran-oriented, and it might have been an interesting experience. Well, no chance for that now.

  He ate alone, in the hotel restaurant, and kept close to his room all day. Toward evening his signal-amplifier buzzed. He activated the communicator and spoke briefly with Carver, who gave him an address and ordered him to report there immediately.

  It was a shabby, old-fashioned building far to the east, at the edge of the river. He rode up eight stories in a gravshaft that vibrated so badly he expected to be hurled back down at any moment, and made his way down a poorly-lit dusty corridor to a weather-beaten door that gave off the faint yellow glow that indicated a protection-field.

  Harris felt the gentle tingling in his stomach that told him he was getting a radionic scanning. Finally the door opened. Carver said to him, “Come in.”

  There were four others in the room—a pudgy balding man named Reynolds, a youthful smiling man who called himself Tompkins, a short, cold-eyed man introduced as McDermott, and a lanky fellow who spoke his name drawlingly as Patterson. As each of them in turn was introduced, he gave the Darruui recognition signal.

  “The other four of us are elsewhere in the eastern hemisphere of Earth,” Carver said. “But six should be enough to handle the situation.”

  Harris glanced at his five comrades. “What are you planning to do?”

  “Attack the Medlins, of course. We’ll have to wipe them out at once.”

  Harris nodded. Inwardly he felt troubled; it seemed to him now that the Medlins had been strangely sincere in releasing him, though he knew that t
hat was preposterous. He said, “How?”

  “They trust you. You’re one of their agents, so far as they think.”

  “Right.”

  “You’ll return to them and tell them you’ve disposed of me, as instructed. Only you’ll be bearing a subsonic on your body. Once you’re inside, you activate it and knock them out—you’ll be shielded.”

  “And I kill them when they’re unconscious?”

  “Exactly,” Carver said. “You can’t be humane with Medlins. It’s like being humane with bloodsucking bats or with snakes.”

  The Darruui called McDermott said, “We’ll wait outside until we get the signal that you’ve done the job. If you need help, just let us know.”

  Harris moistened his lips and nodded. “It sounds all right.”

  Carver said, “Reynolds, insert the subsonic.”

  The bald man produced a small metal pellet the size of a tiny bead, from which three tantalum filaments projected. He indicated to Harris that he should roll up his trousers to the thigh.

  Instead, Harris dropped them. Reynolds drew a scalpel from somewhere and lifted the flap of nerveless flesh that served as trapdoor to the network of devices underneath. With steady, unquivering fingers, he affixed the bead to the minute wires already set in Harris’ leg, and closed the wound with nuplast.

  Carver said, “You activate it by pressing against the left-hip neural nexus. It’s selfshielding for a distance of three feet around you, so make sure none of your victims are any closer than that.”

  “It radiates a pretty potent subsonic,” Reynolds said. “Guaranteed knockout for a radius of forty feet.”

  “Suppose the Medlins are shielded against subsonics?” Harris asked.

  Carver chuckled. “This is a variable-cycle transmitter. If they’ve perfected anything that can shield against a random wave, we might as well give up right now. But I’m inclined to doubt they have.”

  All very simple, Harris thought as he rode across town to the Medlin headquarters. Simply walk in, smile politely, stun them all with the subsonic, and boil their brains with your disruptor.