By the time he was twenty, the memory was fading, merging with other thoughts, other goals, until at times he thought it only a child’s dream. But then at night it would come again in all its vividness, and the thing in the ooze would beckon him.
A long life, long and crowded . . . One night he’d tried to tell his wife about it, but she wouldn’t listen. That was the night he’d realized how little he’d ever loved her. Perhaps he’d only married her because, in a certain light, she reminded him of that sister of his youth. But the love that sometimes comes later came not at all to the two of them. She was gone now, like his youth, like his family and friends. There was only this memory remaining. The memory of a thing in the ooze.
Now the weeds were tall, beating against his legs, stirring nameless insects to flight with every step. He pressed a handkerchief against his brow, sponging the sweat that was forming there. Would the dark place still be there, or had fifty years of rain and dirt sealed it forever?
“Hello there,” a voice called out. It was an old voice, barely carrying with the breeze. He turned and saw someone on the porch of the deserted farmhouse. An old woman, ancient and wrinkled.
“Do I know you?” he asked, moving closer.
“You may,” she answered. “You’re Buddy, aren’t you? My, how old I’ve gotten. I used to live at the next farm, when you were just a boy. I was young then myself. I remember you.”
“Oh! Mrs . . .?” The name escaped him, but it wasn’t important.
“Why did you come back, Buddy? Why, after all these years?”
He was an old man. Was it necessary to explain his actions to this woman from the past? “I just wanted to see the place,” he answered. “Memories, you know.”
“Bitter memories. Your little sister died here, did she not?” The old woman should have been dead, should have been dead and in her grave long ago.
He paused in the shade of the porch roof. “She died here, yes, but that was fifty years ago.”
“How old we grow, how ancient! Is that why you returned?”
“In a way. I wanted to see the spot.”
“Ah! The little brook back there beyond the last field. Let me walk that way with you. These old legs need exercise.”
“Do you live here?” he asked, wanting to escape her now but knowing not how.
“No, still down the road. All alone now. Are you all alone, too?”
“I suppose so.” The high grass made walking difficult.
“You know what they all said at the time, don’t you? They all said you were fooling around, like you always did, and pushed her into the water.”
There was a pain in his chest from breathing so hard. He was an old man. “Do you believe that?”
“What does it matter?” she answered. “After all these fifty years, what does it matter?”
“Would you believe me,” he began, then hesitated into silence. Of course she wouldn’t believe him, but he had to tell now. “Would you believe me if I told you what happened?”
She was a very old woman and she panted to keep up even his slow pace. She was ancient even to his old eyes, even in his world where now everyone was old. “I would believe you,” she said.
“There was something in the ooze. Call it a monster, a demon, if you want. I saw it in the light of a match, and I can remember it as if it were yesterday. It took her.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I said I would. This sun is hot today, even at twilight.”
“It will be gone soon. I hate to hurry you, old woman, but I must reach the stream before dark.”
“The last field is in sight.”
Yes, it was in sight. But how would he ever fit through that small opening, how would he face the thing, even if by some miracle it still waited there in the ooze? Fifty years was a long long time.
“Wait here,” he said as they reached the little stream at last. It hadn’t changed much, not really.
“You won’t find it.” He lowered his aged body into the bed of the stream, feeling once again the familiar forgotten ooze closing over his shoes.
“No one has to know,” she called after him. “Even if there was something, that was fifty years ago.”
But he went on, to the place where the water vanished into the rock. He held his breath and groped for the little flashlight in his pocket. Then he ducked his head and followed the water into the black.
It was steamy here, steamy and hot with the sweat of the earth. He flipped on the flashlight with trembling hands and followed its narrow beam with his eyes. The place was almost like a room in the side of the hill, a room perhaps seven feet high, with a floor of mud and ooze that seemed almost to bubble as he watched.
“Come on,” he said softly, almost to himself. “I know you’re there. You’ve got to be there.”
And then he saw it, rising slowly from the ooze. A shapeless thing without a face, a thing that moved so slowly it might have been dead. An old, very old thing. For a long time he watched it, unable to move, unable to cry out. And even as he watched, the thing settled back softly into the ooze, as if even this small exertion had tired it.
“Rest,” he said, very quietly. “We are all so old now.”
And then he made his way back out of the cave, along the stream, and finally pulled himself from the clinging ooze. The ancient woman was still waiting on the bank, with fireflies playing about her in the dusk.
“Did you find anything?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he answered.
“Fifty years is a long time. You shouldn’t have come back.”
He sighed and fell into step beside her. “It was something I had to do.”
“Come up to my house, if you want. I can make you a bit of tea.”
His breath was coming better now, and the distance back to the farmhouse seemed shorter than he’d remembered. “I think I’d like that,” he said.
“The Rull” is pure 1940s space opera, but that is in no way meant to be a negative comment. Space opera at its best was exciting, suspenseful, and rich in imagery and invention—all of which qualities are abundant in this strong story of a one-on-one confrontation between an Earthman and a wormlike BEM, two opposing players in a thousand-year war for control of the galaxy.
A.E. Van Vogt (b. 1912) was one of the six major writers of John Campbell’s 1940s Astounding (the others being Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, and the interchangeable Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore) who centered the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction and helped pivot the field toward mass-audience respectability. His novels of the period, such as Sian, The World of Null A, The Players of Null A, and The Weapon Shops of Isher, remain in the contemporary repertory, as do several of his short stories. Between 1950 and 1965 he ceased for all intents and purposes to write fiction, but has subsequently returned with novels and occasional short-story appearances. The indescribable and awful alien was one of Van Vogt’s obsessive themes of the forties and he does it characteristically well in “The Rull.”
The Rull
A.E. Van Vogt
Professor Jamieson saw the other space boat out of the corner of one eye. He was sitting in a hollow about a dozen yards from the edge of the precipice, and some score of feet from the doorway of his own lifeboat. He had been intent on his survey book, annotating a comment beside the voice graph to the effect that Laertes III was so close to the invisible dividing line between Earth-controlled and Rull-controlled space that its prior discovery by man was in itself a major victory in the Rull-human war.
It was at that point that he saw the other boat, above and somewhat to his left, approaching the tableland. He glanced up at it—and froze where he was, torn between two opposing purposes.
His first impulse, to run for the lifeboat, yielded to the realization that the movement would be seen instantly by the electronic reflexes of the other ship. For a moment, then, he had the dim hope that if he remained quiet enough
, neither he nor his ship would be observed.
Even as he sat there, perspiring with indecision, his tensed eyes noted the Rull markings and the rakish design of the other vessel. His vast knowledge of things Rull enabled him to catalogue it instantly as a survey craft.
A survey craft. The Rulls had discovered the Laertes sun.
The terrible potentiality was that behind this small craft might be fleets of battleships, whereas he was alone. His own lifeboat had been dropped by the Orion nearly a par-sec away while the big ship was proceeding at antigravity speeds. That was to insure that Rull energy traces did not record its passage through this area of space.
The Orion was to head for the nearest base, load up with planetary defense equipment, and return. She was due in ten days.
Ten days. Jamieson groaned inwardly, and drew his legs under him and clenched his survey book in the fingers of one hand. But still the possibility that his ship, partially hidden under a clump of trees, might escape notice if he remained quiet, held him there in the open. His head tilted up, his eyes glared at the alien, and his brain willed it to turn aside.
Once more, flashingly, while he waited, the implications of the disaster that could be here struck deep. In all the universe there had never been so dangerous an intelligence as the Rull. At once remorseless and immune to all attempts at establishing communication, Rulls killed human beings on sight. A human-manned warship that ventured into Rull-patrolled space was attacked until it withdrew or was destroyed. Rull ships that entered Earth-controlled space never withdrew once they were attacked. In the beginning, man had been reluctant to engage in a death struggle for the galaxy. But the inexorable enemy had forced him finally to match in every respect the tenacious and murderous policies of the Rull.
The thought ended. The Rull ship was a hundred yards away, and showed no signs of changing its course. In seconds, it would cross the clump of trees that half-hid the lifeboat.
In a spasm of a movement, Jamieson launched himself from his chair. Like a shot from a gun, with utter abandon, he dived for the open doorway of his machine. As the door clanged behind him, the boat shook as if it had been struck by a giant. Part of the ceiling sagged; the floor staggered toward him, and the air grew hot and suffocating.
Gasping, Jamieson slid into the control chair and struck at the main emergency switch. The rapid-fire blasters huzzaed into automatic firing positions and let go with a hum and deep-throated ping. The refrigerators whined with power; a cold blast of air blew at his body. The relief was so quick that a second passed before Jamieson realized that the atomic engines had failed to respond, and that the lifeboat, which should already have been sliding into the air, was still lying inert in an exposed position.
Tense, he stared into the visiplates. It took a moment to locate the Rull ship. It was at the lower edge of one plate, tumbling slowly out of sight beyond a clump of trees a quarter of a mile away. As he watched, it disappeared; and then the crash of the landing came clear and unmistakable from the sound board in front of him.
The relief that came was weighted with an awful reaction. Jamieson sank back into the cushions of the control chair, weak from the narrowness of his escape. The weakness ended abruptly as a thought struck him. There had been a sedateness about the way the enemy ship fell. The crash hadn’t killed the Rulls aboard.
He was alone in a damaged lifeboat on an impassable mountain with one or more of the most remorseless creatures ever spawned. For ten days, he must fight in the hope that man would still be able to seize the most valuable planet discovered in a century.
He saw in his visiplate that it was growing darker outside.
Jamieson took another antisleep pill and made a more definite examination of the atomic motors. It didn’t take long to verify his earlier diagnosis. The basic graviton pile had been thoroughly frustrated. Until it could be reactivated on the Orion, the motors were useless.
The conclusive examination braced Jamieson. He was committed irrevocably to the battle of the tableland, with all its intricate possibilities. The idea that had been turning over in his mind during the prolonged night took on new meaning. This was the first time in his knowledge that a Rull and a human being had faced each other on a limited field of action, where neither was a prisoner. The great battles in space were ship against ship and fleet against fleet. Survivors either escaped or were picked up by overwhelming forces. Actually, both humans and Rulls, captured or facing capture, were conditioned to kill themselves. Rulls did it by a mental willing that had never been circumvented. Men had to use mechanical methods, and in some cases that had proved impossible. The result was that Rulls had had occasional opportunities to experiment on living, conscious men.
Unless he was bested before he could get organized, here was a priceless opportunity to try some tests on Rulls—and without delay. Every moment of daylight must be utilized to the uttermost limit.
By the time the Laertes sun peered palely over the horizon that was the northeast cliff’s edge, the assault was under way. The automatic defensors, which he had set up the night before, moved slowly from point to point ahead of the mobile blaster.
Jamieson cautiously saw to it that one of the three defensors also brought up his rear. He augmented that basic protection by crawling from one projecting rock after another. The machines he manipulated from a tiny hand control, which was connected to the visiplate that poked out from his headgear just above his eyes. With tensed eyes he watched the wavering needles that would indicate movement or that the defensor screens were being subjected to energy opposition.
Nothing happened.
As he came within sight of the Rull craft, Jamieson stalled his attack while he seriously pondered the problem of no resistance. He didn’t like it. It was possible that all the Rulls aboard had been killed, but he doubted it mightily. Rulls were almost boneless. Except for half a dozen strategically linked cartilages, they were all muscles.
With bleak eyes, Jamieson studied the wreck through the telescopic eyes of one of the defensors. It lay in a shallow indentation, its nose buried in a wall of gravel. Its lower plates were collapsed versions of the originals. His single-energy blast the evening before, completely automatic though it had been, had really dealt a smashing blow to the Rull ship.
The overall effect was of utter lifelessness. If it were a trick, then it was a very skillful one. Fortunately, there were tests he could make, not absolutely final but evidential and indicative.
He made them.
The echoless height of the most unique mountain ever discovered hummed with the fire-sound of the mobile blaster. The noise grew to a roar as the unit’s pile warmed to its task and developed its maximum kilo-curie activity.
Under that barrage, the hull of the enemy craft trembled a little and changed color slightly, but that was all. After ten minutes, Jamieson cut the power and sat baffled and indecisive.
The defensive screens of the Rull ship were full on. Had they gone on automatically after his first shot of the evening before? Or had they been put up deliberately to nullify just such an attack as this?
He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble; he had no positive knowledge. The Rulls could be lying inside dead. They could be wounded and incapable of doing anything against him. They could have spent the night marking up the tableland with elled nerve-control lines—he’d have to make sure he never looked directly at the ground—or they could simply be waiting for the arrival of the greater ship that had dropped it onto the planet.
Jamieson refused to consider the last possibility. That way was death, without qualification or hope.
Frowningly, he studied the visible damage he had done the ship. All the hard metals had held together so far as he could see, but the whole bottom of the ship was dented to a depth that varied from one to four feet. Some radiation must have got in, and the question was, what would it have damaged?
He had examined dozens of captured Rull survey craft, and if this one ran to the pattern, then in the front would
be the control center, with a sealed-off blaster chamber. In the rear the engine room, two storerooms, one for fuel and equipment, the other for food and—
For food. Jamieson jumped, and then with wide eyes noted how the food section had suffered greater damage than any other part of the ship.
Surely, surely, some radiation must have got into it, poisoning it, ruining it, and instantly putting the Rull, with his swift digestive system, into a deadly position.
Jamieson sighed with the intensity of his hope, and prepared to retreat. As he turned away, quite accidentally, he glanced at the rock behind which he had shielded himself from possible direct fire.
Glanced at it, and saw the elled lines in it. Intricate lines, based on a profound and inhuman study of the human nervous system. Jamieson recognized them, and stiffened in horror. He thought in anguish: Where, where am I supposed to fall? Which cliff?
With a desperate will, with all his strength, he fought to retain his senses a moment longer. He strove to see the lines again. He saw, briefly, flashingly, five vertical and above them three lines that pointed east with their wavering ends.
The pressure built up, up, up inside him, but still he fought to keep his thoughts moving. Fought to remember if there were any wide ledges near the top of the east cliff.
There were. He recalled them in a final agony of hope. There, he thought. That one, that one. Let me fall on that one. He strained to hold the ledge image he wanted, and to repeat, repeat the command that might save his life. His last, dreary thought was that here was the answer to his doubts. The Rull was alive.
Blackness came like a curtain of pure essence of night.
Somberly, the Rull glided toward the man’s lifeboat. From a safe distance, he examined it. The defense screens were up, but he couldn’t be sure they had been put up before the attack of the morning, or had been raised since then, or had come on automatically at his approach.
He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble. Everywhere, on the tableland around him, was a barrenness, a desolation unlike anything else he had ever known. The man could be dead, his smashed body lying at the remote bottom of the mountain. He could be inside the ship badly injured; he had, unfortunately, had time to get back to the safety of his craft. Or he could be waiting inside, alert, aggressive, and conscious of his enemy’s uncertainty, determined to take full advantage of that uncertainty.
Bug-Eyed Monsters Page 15