It was time for another roll of the dice.
The only way I could win would be to reach the Galactic Guard-ship. The implication seemed to be that the ship was in the ice. Why else would the aliens have a base camp beside a gigantic ice canyon in Greenland?
Before I could overanalyze this, I slid my feet toward the edge. Immediately, my trembling worsened.
I knew I didn’t have a choice, though. I forced my feet over the edge and slid my legs downward. I gripped the edge with my left hand, tilted out just a little, concentrating on my feet the whole time. I pressed the trigger stub, beaming the ice in two locations. I waited a few seconds before sliding down a little farther. The toe of each shoe slid into a melted step.
My descent was incredibly tedious, and gut-wrenching, too. It did not get easier the longer I did it. I did get better, however, at making the footholds. I tapped the trigger-stub now.
If I’d climbed up, I might have used the heated tip of the raygun to make the holds. I couldn’t do that going down because I didn’t dare reach down that far.
By the time the raygun ran out of juice, my arms were trembling from exhaustion and the cold had sapped my strength. I pocketed the useless gun, rested one side of my face against the ice and then resumed the descent.
I managed another few feet before I slipped. A ragged shout tore out of my throat. I fell, plummeting like a rock and struck another outcropping, driving the air from my lungs. I struck a second outcropping, a third, which flipped me, and slammed against the bottom.
I groaned painfully. That unlocked my lungs so I gasped for air.
I lay there, just breathing, afraid to move and find the extent of my injuries. I imagined I’d fallen another one hundred feet or more to the bottom. It’s possible the outcroppings had saved my life by slowing me down, provided I hadn’t broken any bones.
Just how far could a body fall and survive?
I discovered several pieces of luck. One, I’d fallen onto a heavy patch of snow. It might have cushioned my fall just a little.
The snow must have reached here from my initial breakthrough.
The second piece of luck was the last flip. It had moved me just enough so I’d missed the crumbled snow-cat to my left.
I tried sitting up. Several muscles immediately cramped, and a few spasmed. I let out another groan of pain before rolling over, clamping my hands over my mouth.
I didn’t know how much noise it would take for the aliens to detect something.
My back muscles were the worst, twitching with cramps as I lay there. I contorted several times, breathing raggedly.
I flexed my back muscles briefly, but stopped that as agony lanced through me. Finally, the process stopped.
Gingerly and painfully, I climbed to my feet. I didn’t straighten, but stood there like a bent old geezer with arthritis in every joint. I shuffled around the smashed snow-cat not sure what I was looking for.
I finally realized I couldn’t do this normally, so I eased down onto my hands and knees. I crawled over the smashed metal, being extremely careful around jagged and sharp metal edges.
After an eternity of searching, I found a flashlight, the flare gun and the half-melted raygun. I found pliers and a bottle of aspirin. It must have come from the same toolkit as the flashlight.
I took my treasure, sitting away from the wreck in the little spot of sunlight that reached down from the opening. I took six aspirin, force swallowing them one at a time. I used some of the fallen snow, putting it in my mouth and melting it before sipping. The drinking took time, but that was fine. I wanted some time for the aspirin to give my body a hand.
Finally, I used the pliers, working over the half-melted raygun. After considerable effort, I found what I took to be the power pack. It appeared to have survived the beaming. I pried it out, soon shoving it into my powerless raygun.
I decided to test the weapon later when I needed it. At this point, I didn’t want to waste any energy.
The process must have taken me longer than I realized. I could stand and straighten almost all the way. The aspirin had worked like magic.
First pocketing the flare gun and some extra flares, I clicked on the flashlight, looking in the darkened areas. The bottom was larger than I’d realized. Some of the walls were composed of rock. Other parts were blue—ice. There were no tunnels, no caves, no way out of the crevice bottom except up.
I might have sat down and quit except for one thing. I still had the raygun, a possibly charged raygun.
Once more, I returned to the wreckage. After a while, I found the various chunks of the dead alien. One of the chunks had a communicator. On a third chunk was another device.
I left the communicator and took the other device. Might this be a detector?
I held it in my cold fingers, realizing this was my only hope for survival. After a desperate search, I found the controls. After a little experimentation, I turned it on.
I aimed the device one way and another. I did that a second time, pressing more controls this time. After ten minutes of rational, systematic experimentation, I got the screen to glow green if I aimed it a certain way.
With a fatalistic shrug, I decided that would be my route, as it pointed at an icy wall, not rock. Now it was time to use the raygun.
With the flashlight in one hand and the raygun in the other, I pressed the trigger stub. To my great delight, the disintegrator ray struck ice. I began to burrow my way into the ice, planning to continue for as long as this sucker worked.
I dearly hoped I’d put a fully charged power pack into the raygun and not one nearly empty.
-14-
The biggest problem proved to be melted water. The second was steam.
Water kept trickling out of the tunnel, at times pooling in and under the slush. That soon soaked my pants and chilled my legs to the marrow. The steam made me cough and caused moisture to cling to my face. The fur that lined my hood was soon as soaked as my pants.
There was nothing else to do but to keep tunneling. I paused from time to time to check the detector—if it was a detector. It showed the same green glow that had caused me to start in this direction.
Shivering, with my teeth chattering, I held the beam on the ice before me, as I’d been doing for a while now. This time, the ice disintegrated and melted, and the beam poked through into something behind the ice.
I quit beaming and slid up to the hole, for once unmindful of the slush. With the flashlight beam poking through, I peered into what seemed to be a natural cave.
I drew back and rammed my shoulder against the ice. With the sound of crackling and splintering, I broke through to the other side.
A few seconds later, I climbed out of my slushy tunnel into a cavern. I played the flashlight beam everywhere. The cavern grew larger the farther the beam traveled.
Setting the flashlight on the ground, I pulled off my hood and debated ideas. Finally, I took off my shoes, my wet socks and pants. I rolled them and twisted, wringing out as much water as I could. Soon, I put my pants back on and did the same with my damp socks.
I was seriously freezing. I probably already had hyperthermia.
Despite my dire predicament, I was finding it difficult to keep my eyes open. An oppressive drowsiness had settled over me. I knew one thing. If I took a nap, I doubted I’d wake up on this side of life.
Once more, I was thankful that Z17 had given me perfect human health. I would never have lasted this long otherwise.
I was sleepy and ravenous, but I still had reserves of fat in my body. This was a matter of will power. I could keep going if I could stay awake.
The aspirin had done wonders for my aches and pains. Necessity had also kept me going. If I’d guessed correctly, I must be nearing the last lap of the quest.
I checked the detector. It gave me the same information as before.
Picking up the flashlight, I forced myself to jog. It turned into a shuffling gait soon enough, but that was fine. I was moving. That would help kee
p me warm after a fashion.
As I traveled along the cavern, I used the flashlight to scour ahead. Then I heard a noise.
I clicked off the flashlight and dug the raygun out of my parka pocket. I realized what it was—alien buzz talking.
That must mean I’d made it into their excavation site. I nodded but couldn’t think much more. My primary need was to get warm—fast.
Groping in the dark, I continued toward the buzzing. Soon, I saw light in the distance. I noticed something else, too. I was no longer traveling through a rocky tunnel, but a corridor with metal walls.
Increasing my gait, knowing I wouldn’t last more than another ten minutes, I readied myself for a final fight.
The light ahead intensified. I stopped, crouched and let my head droop. The next thing I remembered was snapping my head up. I’d fallen asleep. I rubbed my aching eyes and stared.
An alien hover-pad neared. I couldn’t have been asleep more than a minute or two. Two aliens stood on the pad shining beams on the walls. I glanced at the walls—
Shock made me shiver harder. Egyptian-style hieroglyphics adorned the metal walls. What did that signify?
I snorted softly to myself. What did it matter?
The hover-pad slipped out of sight then.
I blinked stupidly, wondering if they had teleported away. My sluggish mind understood a second later. The hover-pad had turned into a different corridor.
I knew I had to act while I still could, so I clicked on the flashlight, shouted feebly and shuffled after them. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly anymore. The hover-pad seemed like an angel of mercy just then. If I let it get away, I was going to go to sleep forever down here at the bottom of the world.
I took the turn into the new corridor and almost bumped into the slowly moving hover-pad. One of the aliens turned around.
I beamed him in the stomach. I did the same thing to the other one. They both half disintegrated and flopped onto the pad. The hover stopped moving after they both collapsed onto it.
Groaning like a lunatic, I rushed the floating pad. It was several feet off the floor. I put the raygun away, jumped and levered myself onto the pad with them.
One at a time, as I luxuriated in the hot gunk that must have been alien blood, I dumped each of them overboard.
I was closer to collapsing than I had realized. “You have to keep moving,” I told myself.
Food, I thought. I need food and I have to get warm.
Finding it too tiring to argue with myself, I cleaned my hands, stood and began figuring out the hover’s controls. It proved pathetically easy to drive. In moments, I was heading back for the turn.
With my flashlight beam leading the way, I traveled down long metal corridors away from my entrance point. Occasionally, I shined the beam on a wall, seeing more hieroglyphics.
I didn’t worry about the hieroglyphics anymore. I didn’t think about how they’d gotten here or who had put them on the walls. I didn’t worry about how old they might be. I was drugged with fatigue and hyperthermia.
The passage of moving air helped to dry my clothes. Heat from the pad did even more for me. In near apathy, as I struggled to keep my eyes open, I traveled under the Earth.
I heard a noise later, heard it again and finally realized there were lights headed toward me. I craned my neck forward. With a shock, I saw more hover-pads approaching me.
I turned my pad, racing away, taking different corridors. Soon, other hover-pads blocked my passage. I turned around again and tried yet another passageway. I zipped into the largest corridor of all. Behind me, the aliens followed. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if they had dropped farther behind.
At the last moment, I saw a wall loom before me. Fumbling at the controls, I brought the pad to a halt. A few taps more made the hover-pad sink to the floor. I had reached a dead-end. Behind me, the aliens approached at what seemed like a crawl.
I jumped off the pad and approached the wall. Playing the flashlight beam on it, I saw a line in the middle that reached from the floor to the ceiling.
What did that mean?
“Idiot,” I slurred. This was two big doors pushed together. I’d reached a portal.
I played the light behind me. That way represented death. I played the light on the doors. I pounded on them, shouting for an automated entryway to let me in. I kicked the doors. I—
Finally, I stopped shouting, stopped pleading and approached what seemed like a keypad along the side. Each button had a hieroglyphic on it. I pressed one. It sank in and stayed there. I pressed another one.
A nozzle protruded from a hidden slot. I heard clicking, rasping and a vile substance dripped out of the nozzle.
Was it supposed to have sprayed me, gassed me?
I kept pressing more buttons.
Another thing popped out of a wall. It glowed. I felt heat, but then something clattered and the glow and heat stopped.
I looked back at the approaching aliens but forced myself to turn back to the keypad.
I pressed another—
A great sound like giant millstones grinding caused the two doors to open a smidgen. A loud squeal and another grinding noise foretold the doors’ abrupt halt.
A terrible dry and ancient odor billowed out from the narrow opening. It caused me to sneeze several times and then begin hacking.
I didn’t care.
Covering my mouth with the sleeve of my parka, I staggered from the keypad. I forced myself through the narrow opening into the ancient room, cavern, whatever I’d found.
The aliens were coming and I had to keep going. If I was right about this, I’d found a way to the Galactic Guard-ship.
-15-
I finally stopped coughing but still found it hard to breathe in here. The air was stale and evil seeming. It made me dizzy. The longer I staggered, the more unfocused my eyesight became.
Through dogged determination, knowing that to stop was to die, I kept moving one foot ahead of the other. I’m not sure what I saw, as strange images swam before my vision.
At one point, I thought I saw men and women in individual glass cylinders. They wore odd, metallic seeming clothing. Some had star symbols. Others—
I can’t remember.
I staggered, wheezing, feeling a pounding in my brain. I fumbled open the aspirin bottle. They all poured onto the floor, but I had no time to pick them up. I could feel something closing in, aliens presumably.
I began to laugh, feeling unhinged.
Tears slid down my cheeks, and I wiped them away. That was the first time I noticed my skin wasn’t freezing anymore. Instead, my cheeks felt hot.
Was I delirious?
I stumbled past banks of controls. They seemed complex…and maybe even a little sinister. I did not like this place. It had a bad aura. Yes! I could almost hear screaming souls begging for mercy in here. But this place did not know the meaning of mercy. It was cold, clinical and exacting. A powerful intelligence, a brooding malignancy seemed to throb inside this chamber as if it were watching me.
I kept glancing over my shoulder, balled my fingers into fists—
I halted in shock. I saw more of the glass cylinders. There were rows of them this time. In them were frozen men and women in all manner of positions. Some had their palms pressed against the glass. They were big, squat and hairy with low foreheads. I’d seen people like this before. Neanderthals!
My heart thudded. My breathing quickened. I took a step toward the nearest cylinder. What was this place? How had Neanderthals found their way into these cylinders? It seemed as if someone had experimented on them.
I halted once more as my shoulders hunched. The sense of coldness, exactness, experimentation—the powerful intellect behind this—
I broke into a staggering run, desperate to get out of here. The underground complex had the feeling of great age. How long had this place existed in Greenland? Who had built it? Why did the aliens seek it?
My breathing became ragged as I staggered past other chambers
. My eyes narrowed in one as I spied smaller, prehistoric hominids. Just like the Neanderthals, they were frozen in various poses in yet more glass cylinders. They did not seem fully human with their furry bodies but like something from my high school biology textbooks, those that claimed they were apemen or apes evolving into men or proto-humans or whatever.
From a far distance came a loud squealing.
I shouted hoarsely, startled by the noise.
The noises were loud and metallic, as if giant metal teeth slowly and painfully clacked against each other. My breath whooshed from my lungs as I realized the aliens were coming. They must be forcing the giant doors. That caused my knees to give out.
I stumbled, crashed against a solid object with my head, bounced off it and slammed against the floor. I twisted in pain, wanting to curl up and forget the whole thing. My body throbbed. My head hurt, and I heard strange words coming from nearby.
I began to shake. With a last shred of self-control, I raised my head off the floor, opening my eyes. Something was wrong. I dragged a shaking hand across my face. I felt sticky…blood. There was blood on my face.
I heard more metallic screeching in the distance. The terror of this place propelled me. I crawled blindly, bumping against more objects before finding my way around them.
I heard strange words again coming from nearby. I forced myself to consider that.
“Is someone there?” I asked, hating the tentativeness of my voice.
“Indeed someone is,” the voice said in English. “Are you human?”
The voice didn’t strike me as evil, or even cold and clinical. Still, the thrust of the question troubled me. It took several tries. Finally, I forced myself to say:
“Yes, I’m human, a Homo sapien.”
“You are an aboriginal of the planet then?”
I hated my helplessness. I hated these bizarre questions. “I just said I am. Who are you?”
“This is distressing. I can’t seem to visualize you. Can you…see me perhaps?”
“I can’t see anything. Either my eyes are damaged or I can’t wipe away the blood pouring over them fast enough.”
Invaders Page 7