Space Beagle- the Complete Adventures

by A. E. van Vogt

  “Er, yes. Most of you will recall my mentioning before that it was a paradox that a pure sympodial development, such as this creature, did not populate the entire universe. The answer is that, logically, if his race should have controlled the universe, then they did control it. We human beings have discovered that logic is the sole stable factor in the all; and we cannot shrink even from the most far-reaching conclusions that the mind may arrive at. This race did control the universe, but it was the previous universe they ruled, not our present one. Now, naturally, the creature intends that his race shall also dominate this universe.”

  “In short,” Morton snapped, “we are faced with the survivor Of the supreme race of a universe. There is no reason to assume that they did not arrive at our present level of progress any later than we did; and we’ve still got several million million years to go before our universe crashes into flaming death. Therefore, they are not only billions of years ahead of us, but millions of millions of years.” His voice took on a strained note: “Frankly, it scares me. We’re not doing enough. Our plans are too sketchy. We must have more information before we can hope to win against such a super-human monster. I’m very much afraid that-—”

  The shrill scream of a man protruded horribly into his words, and there came a gurgling “—got me . . . quick . . . ripping me out of my suit—”

  The voice collapsed; and somebody shouted in frank dismay: “Good Heaven! That was Dack, my assistant!”

  THE WORLD of ship became, for Morton, a long, shining corridor that persisted in blurring before his eyes. And it was suddenly as if he were looking, not out at it, but down into its depths—fearsome depths that made his brain reel.

  Ages seemed to pass. But Morton,, schooled now to abnormal calm, knew that only fractions of seconds were dragging by. Just as his nerves threatened to break, he heard a voice, Pennons’ voice, cool, steady, yet almost unrecognizable:

  “One!” said Pennons; and it sounded absolute mumbo-jumbo in that moment when out there another man was going through a hell of fear and torment.

  “Two!” said Pennons, cold as ice.

  Morton found himself staring curiously at his feet. Sparkling, brilliant, beautiful blue fire throbbed there. Little tendrils of that gorgeous flame reared up hungrily a few inches from his suit, as if baffled by some invisible force protecting the suit.

  There was a distinct click in Morton’s mind. Instantly, his brain jumped to full fear. In a flash of thought, he realized that Pennons had energized floors seven and nine. And that it was blue ferocity of the energization that was struggling to break through the full-driven screens of his space armor.

  Through his communicators came the engineer’s hiss of indrawn breath: “If I’m right,” Pennons almost whispered, all the strength gone from his voice, “we’ve now got that—-devil—cornered on the eighth floor.”

  “Then,” barked Morton efficiently, “we’ll carry on according to plan. Group one, follow me to the seventh floor.”

  The men behind Morton stopped short as he halted abruptly at the second corner. Sickly, he went forward, and stood staring at the human body that sagged against the floor, pasted to the metal by almost unbearably brilliant fingers of blue fire. His voice, when he spoke, was only a whisper, but it cut across the strain of silence like a whiplash:

  “Pull him loose!”

  Two men stepped gingerly forward, and touched the body. The blue fire leaped ravenously at them, straining with futile ferocity to break through the full-driven defense screens of their suits. The men jerked, and the unholy bonds snapped. They carried the body up the nearest stairs to the unenergized eighth level. The other men followed silently, and watched as the body was laid on the floor.

  The lifeless thing continued to kick for several minutes, discharging torrents of energy, then gradually took on the quietness of natural death.

  “I’m waiting for reports!” Morton said stiffly into his communicators.

  Pennons’ voice came. “The men are spread out over the eighth floor according to plan, taking continuous pictures with fluorite cameras. If he’s anywhere on the floor, we’ll get a picture of his swift-moving body; and then it will be a matter of energizing the floor piecemeal. It’ll take about thirty minutes yet—”

  And finally the report came: “Nothing!” Pennons’ voice held an incredulous note tinged with dismay. “Morton, he’s not here. It can only mean that he passed through the energized floor as easily as through ordinary metal. We know he must have gone through it because Dack’s dead body was on this side.”

  Somebody said hopelessly: “And now what are we going to do?”

  Morton didn’t answer. It struck him abruptly, with a shock that tore away his breath, that he had no answer.

  THE SILENCE in that shining corridor was a form of death. It pressed against Morton, a queer, murky, lightless thing. Death was written too in the faces that

  blurred around him, the cold, logical death expectancy of men who could see no way out.

  Morton broke the silence: “I am willing to accept von Grossen’s analysis of how the thing passes through metal. But he intimated the creature recoiled from the energized wall. Can anyone explain then—how?”

  “Zeller speaking!” The brisk voice of the metallurgist came through the communicators. “I’ve finished the neutronium-alloy suit, and I’ve started my search at the bottom of the ship—I heard your question, Morton. To my mind, we missed one point the first time the creature struck the wall of force: The point is that he was in it. And what basic difference is there between being partially inside the wall, and actually passing through? He could pass through in less than a second. The first time, he touched the wall for several seconds, which probably means that, in his surprise, he recoiled and lost his balance. That must have made his position very unpleasant. The second time, however, he simply released poor Dack and passed on through with a minimum of discomfort.”

  “Hm-m-m!” Morton pondered-. “That means he’s still vulnerable to walls of force, provided we could keep him inside one for a long enough time. And that would mean complete energization of the ship which, in turn, would depend on his allowing us to make the connections without interference. I think he would interfere. He let us get away with energizing the two floors because he knew it didn’t mean anything—and it gave him a good opportunity to kidnap some more men. Fortunately, he didn’t grab off as many as we expected, though Heaven help those four.”

  Smith said grimly, his first words in a long time: “My firm opinion is that anything that would require more than two hours to complete will be fatal. We are dealing with a creature who has everything to gain by killing us, and obtaining control of the ship. Zeller, how long would it take to build neutronium-alloy suits for every man on this ship?”

  “About two hundred hours,” the metallurgist replied coolly, “mainly because I used up nearly all the available alloy for this one suit. We’d have to break down the walls of the ship, and build the alloy from an electronic base. We’re not in the habit of carrying a lot of metal on this ship, as you know, because there’s usually a planet a few minutes from anywhere. Now, we’ve still got a two week’s trip either way.”

  “Then that’s out!” frowned Smith blackly. He looked stunned. “And since the complete energization is out—we’ve got nothing else.”

  The usually lazy voice of Gourlay, the communications chief, snapped: “I don’t see why those ways are out. We’re still alive; and I suggest we get to work, and do as much as we can as soon as we can—everybody working first at making suits for the men who go out to prepare the walls for energizing. At least, that will protect them from being kidnaped.”

  “What makes you think,” Smith asked coldly, “that the creature is not capable of smashing down neutronium ahoy? As a superior being, his knowledge of physics should make it a simple matter for him to construct a beam that could destroy anything we have. Heaven knows there’s plenty of tools lying in the various laboratories.”

&n
bsp; THE TWO MEN glared at each other with the flashing, angry eyes of men whose nerves have been strained to the utmost limit. Before Morton could speak, Korita’s sibilant voice cut across the tense silence: “I am inclined to agree with Smith. We are dealing with a being who must now know that he cannot allow us time for anything important. I agree with the commander when he says that the creature will interfere if we attempt to prepare the ship for complete controlled energization. The honorable gentlemen must not forget, however, that we are dealing with a creature whom we have decided is in the peasant stage of his particular cycle.

  “Let me enlarge on that. Life is an ebb and flow. There is a full tide of glorious accomplishment, and a low tide of recuperation. For generations, centuries, the blood flows in the peasant, turgid, impure, gathering strength from the soil; and then it begins to grow, to expand, reaching finally for the remotest stars. At this point, amazingly enough, the blood grows weary; and, in this late megapolitan era, men no longer desire to prolong their race. Highly cultivated people regard having children as a question of pros and cons, and their general outlook on life is tinged with a noble skepticism.

  “Nature, on the other hand, knows nothing of pro and con. You cannot reason with a peasant—and he cannot reason except as a peasant. His land and his son, or—to put a higher term to it—his property and his blood are sacred. If a bourgeoisie court orders him off his land, he fights blindly, ignorantly, for his own. It matters not to him that he may have accepted money for a mortgage. He only knows they’re trying to take his property, to draw his roots from the soil where his blood has been nourished.

  “Honorable sirs, here is my point: This creature cannot begin to imagine anyone else not feeling about his patch of home—his own property the way he does.

  “But we . . . we can make such a sacrifice without suffering a spiritual collapse.”

  Every muscle in Morton’s body grew taut, as he realized the implications. His exclamation was almost a whisper: “Korita, you’ve got it! It means sacrificing von Grossen and the others. It means sacrifice that makes my brain reel, but property is not sacred to us. And as for von Grossen and the other three”—his voice grew stern and hard, his eyes wide with a chill horror—“I didn’t tell you about the notes that Smith gave me. I didn’t tell you because he suggested a possible parallel with a certain species of wasp back home on the earth. The thought is so horrible that I think instantaneous death will come as a release to these bold men.”

  “The wasp!” A man gasped. “You’re right, Morton. The sooner, they’re dead the better!”

  “Then,” Morton cried, “to the engine room. We—”

  A swift, excited voice clamored into his communicators; it was a long second before he recognized it as belonging to Zeller, the metallurgist:

  “Morton—quick! Down to the hold! I’ve found them—in,the air-conditioning pipe. The creature’s here, and I’m holding him off as best I can. He’s trying to sneak upon me through the walls. Hurry!”

  Morton snapped orders with machine-gun precision, as the men swarmed toward the elevators: “Smith, take a dozen men and get Kent down from the bedrooms to the engine room, I’d almost forgotten about him and his broken leg! Pennons, take a hundred men to the engine room and make the preparations to carry out Korita’s plan. The rest take the four heavy freight elevators and follow me!”

  He finished in a ringing voice: “We won’t kill him in the hold of course, unless he’s gone stark mad. But the crisis has come! Things are breaking our way at last. And we’ve got him! We’ve got him!”

  XTL retreated reluctantly, sullenly, as the men carried off his four guuls. The first shrinking fear of defeat closed over his mind like the night that brooded beyond the inclosing walls of the ship. His impulse was t6 dash into their midst, a whirlwind of ferocity, and smash them. But those ugly, glittering weapons congealed that wild rage.

  He retreated with a dismaying sense of disaster, conscious that he had lost the initiative. The men would discover his eggs now; and, in destroying them, would destroy his immediate chances of being reinforced by other Xtls. And, what was more, they were temporarily safe in the engine room.

  His brain spun into a cold web of purpose. From this moment, he must kill, and kill only. It seemed suddenly incredible that he had thought first of reproduction, with everything else coming secondary, even his every other thought blurred by that subordination to his one flaming desire.

  His proper action was preternaturally clear now. Not to get his guuls first, but to kill these dangerous enemies, to control the ship, then head for the nearest inhabited planet, where it would be a simple matter to find other, more stupid guuls.

  To kill he must have an irresistible weapon, one that could smash—anything! And valuable time had already been wasted. After a moment’s thought, he headed for the nearest laboratory, conscious of a burning urgency, unlike anything he had ever known.

  As he worked—tall, nightmare body and hideous face bent intently over the gleaming metal of the queer-shaped mechanism—his sensitive feet grew aware of a difference in the symphony of vibrations that throbbed in discordant melody through the ship.

  He paused, straightened, alert and tense; and realized what it was. The drive engines were silent. The monster ship of space had halted in its head-long flight, and was lying quiescent in the black deeps.

  An abrupt, indefinable sense of urgency came to Xtl—an icy alarm. His long, black, wirelike fingers became flashing things as he made delicate connections, deftly and frantically.

  Suddenly, he paused again. Through his brain pulsed a distinct sensation of something wrong, dangerously, desperately, terribly wrong. The muscles of his feet grew taut with straining. Abruptly, he knew what it was.

  He could no longer feel the vibrations of the men. They had left the ship!

  Xtl whirled from his nearly finished weapon, and plunged through the nearest wall. He knew his doom with a burning certainty that found hope only in the blackness of space.

  Through deserted corridors he fled, slavering slit-faced hate, scarlet monster from ancient, incredibly ancient Glor. The gleaming walls seemed to mock him. The whole world of the great ship, which had promised so much, was now only the place where sudden intolerable hell would break loose in a devastating, irresistible torrent of energy.

  He saw the air lock ahead—and flashed through the first section, then the second, the third—then, he was out in space. There was a sense of increasing lightness as his body flung by momentum darted from the side of the ship, out into that blackest of black nights.

  For a brief instant, his body glinted and flashed a startling scarlet, reflecting the dazzling light from the row on row of brilliant portholes.

  The queerest thing happened then. The porthole fights snuffed out, and were replaced by a strange, unearthly blue glow, that flashed out from every square inch of that dark, sweeping plain of metal.

  The blue glow faded, died. Some of the porthole lights came on again, flickering weakly, uncertainly; and then, as mighty engines recovered from that devastating flare of blue power, the lights already shining grew stronger. Others began to flash on.

  Xtl was a hundred yards from the ship when he saw the first of the torpedolike craft dart out of the surrounding night, into an opening that yawned in the side of the mighty vessel. Four other dark craft followed, whipping down in swift arcs, their shapes blurred against the background of immensity, vaguely visible in the light that glowed now, strong and steady from the lighted portholes.

  The opening shut; and—just like that—the ship vanished. One instant, it was there, a vast sphere of dark metal; the next he was staring through the space where it had been at a vague swirl of light, an enormous galaxy that swam beyond a gulf of a billion years.

  Time dragged drearily toward infinity. Xtl sprawled moveless and unutterably hopeless on the bosom of endless night. He couldn’t help thinking of the sturdy sons he might have had, and of the universe that was lost because of his mistak
es. But it was the thought of the sons, of companionship, that really brought despair.

  MORTON watched the skillful fingers of the surgeon, as the electrified knife cut into the fourth man’s stomach. The last egg was deposited in the bottom of the tall neutronium alloy vat.

  The eggs were round, grayish objects, one of them slightly cracked.”

  As they watched, the crack widened; an ugly, round, scarlet head with tiny, beady eyes and a tiny slit ofV a mouth poked out. The head twisted on its short neck, and the eyes glittered up at them with a hard ferocity.

  And then, with a swiftness that almost took them by surprise, it reared up and tried to run out of the vat, slid back—and dissolved into the flame that Morton poured down upon it.

  Smith, licking his dry lips, said: “Suppose he’d,got away, and dissolved into the nearest wall!”

  Nobody said anything. They stood with intent eyes, staring into the vat. The eggs melted reluctantly, under die merciless fire of Morton’s gun, and then burned with a queer, golden fight.

  “Ah,” said Dr. Eggert; and attention turned to him, and the body of von Grossen, over which he was bending-“His muscles are beginning to relax, and his eyes are open and alive. I imagine he knows what’s going on. It was a form of paralysis induced by the egg, and fading now that the egg is no longer present. Nothing fundamentally wrong. They’ll all be O.K. shortly. What about the big fellow?”

  Morton replied: “Zeller swears he saw a flash of red emerge from the main lock just as we swept the ship with uncontrolled energization. It must have been, because we haven’t found his body. However, Pennons is out with half the men, taking pictures with fluorite cameras; and we’ll know for certain in a few hours. Here he is now. Well, Pennons?”