The 35th Golden Age of Science Fiction: Keith Laumer

by Keith Laumer

  “So the ancient sinner is buried under the floor?”

  “Aye, so the tale goes, though I’ve not dug for him meself. But the house has been knowed by the name these four hundred years.”

  “Where was it you said the lay brother was digging?”

  “On the plain, yonder, by the Druid’s stones, what they call Stonehenge,” the publican said. He picked up the empty glasses. “What about another, gentlemen?”

  “Certainly,” Foster said. He sat quietly across from me, his features composed—but I could see there was tension under the surface calm.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked softly. “When did you get so interested in local history?”

  “Later,” Foster murmured. “Keep looking bored.”

  “That’ll be easy,” I said. The publican came back and placed heavy glass mugs before us.

  “You were telling us about the lay brother’s finding the bones,” Foster said. “You say they were buried in Stonehenge?”

  The publican cleared his throat, glanced sideways at Foster.

  “The gentlemen wouldna be from the University now, I suppose?” he said.

  “Let’s just say,” Foster said easily, smiling, “that we have a great interest in these bits of lore—an interest supported by modest funds, of course.”

  The publican made a show of wiping at the rings on the table top.

  “A costly business, I wager,” he said. “Digging about in odd places and all. Now, knowing where to dig; that’s important, I’ll be bound.”

  “Very important,” Foster said. “Worth five pounds, easily.”

  “’Twere my granfer told me of the spot; took me out by moonlight, he did, and showed me where his granfer had showed him. Told me it were a fine great secret, the likes of which a simple man could well take pride in.”

  “And an additional five pounds as a token of my personal esteem,” Foster said.

  The publican eyed me. “Well, a secret as was handed down father to son.…”

  “And, of course, my associate wishes to express his esteem, too,” Foster said. “Another five pounds worth.”

  “That’s all the esteem the budget will bear, Mr. Foster,” I said. I got out the fifteen pounds and passed the money across to him. “I hope you haven’t forgotten those people back home who wanted to talk to us,” I said. “They’ll be getting in touch with us any time now, I’ll bet.”

  Foster rolled up the bills and held them in his hand. “That’s true, Mr. Legion,” he said. “Perhaps we shouldn’t take the time.…”

  “But being it’s for the advancement of science,” the publican said, “I’m willing to make the sacrifice.”

  “We’ll want to go out tonight,” Foster said. “We have a very tight schedule.”

  The landlord dickered with Foster for another five minutes before he agreed to guide us to the spot where the skeleton had been found.

  When he left, I began. “Now tell me.”

  “Look at the signboard again,” Foster said. I looked. The skull smiled, holding up a hand.

  “I see it,” I said. “But it doesn’t explain why you handed over our last buck—”

  “Look at the hand. Look at the ring on the finger.”

  I looked again. A heavy ring was painted on the bony index finger, with a pattern of concentric circles.

  It was a duplicate of the one on Foster’s finger.

  * * * *

  The publican pulled the battered Morris Minor to the side of the highway and set the brake.

  “This is as close as we best take the machine,” he said. We got out, looked across the rolling plain where the megaliths of Stonehenge loomed against the last glow of sunset.

  The publican rummaged in the boot, produced a ragged blanket and two long four-cell flashlights, gave one to Foster and the other to me. “Do nae use the electric torches until I tell ye,” he said, “lest the whole county see there’s folks abroad here.” We watched as he draped the blanket over a barbed wire fence, clambered over, and started across the barren field. Foster and I followed, not talking.

  The plain was deserted. A few lonely lights showed on a distant slope. It was a dark night with no moon. I could hardly see the ground ahead. A car moved along a distant road, its headlights bobbing.

  We moved past the outer ring of stones, skirting fallen slabs twenty feet long.

  “We’ll break our necks,” I said. “Let’s have one of the flashlights.”

  “Not yet,” Foster whispered.

  Our guide paused; we came up to him.

  “It were a mortal long time since I were last hereabouts,” he said. “I best take me bearings off the Friar’s Heel.…”

  “What’s that?”

  “Yon great stone, standing alone in the Avenue.” We squinted; it was barely visible as a dark shape against the sky.

  “The bones were buried there?” Foster asked.

  “Nay, all by theirself, they was. Now it were twenty paces, granfer said, him bein fifteen stone and long in the leg.…” The publican muttered to himself, pacing off distances.

  “What’s to keep him from just pointing to a spot after a while,” I said to Foster, “and saying ‘This is it’?”

  “We’ll wait and see,” Foster said.

  “They were a hollow, as it were, in the earth,” the publican said, “with a bit of stone by it. I reckon it were fifty paces from here—” he pointed, “—yonder.”

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “Let’s take a closer look.” Foster started off and I followed, the publican trailing behind. I made out a dim shape, with a deep depression in the earth before it.

  “This could be the spot,” Foster said. “Old graves often sink—” Suddenly he grabbed my arm. “Look…!”

  The surface of the ground before us seemed to tremble, then heave. Foster snapped on his flashlight. The earth at the bottom of the hollow rose, cracked open. A boiling mass of luminescence churned, and a globe of light separated itself, rose, bumbling along the face of the weathered stone.

  “Saints preserve us,” the publican said in a choked voice. Foster and I stood, rooted to the spot, watching. The lone globe rose higher—and abruptly shot straight toward us. Foster threw up an arm and ducked. The ball of light veered, struck him a glancing blow, darted off a few yards, hovered. In an instant, the air was alive with the spheres, boiling up from the ground, and hurtling toward us, buzzing like a hive of yellow-jackets. Foster’s flashlight lanced out toward the swarm.

  “Use your light, Legion!” he shouted hoarsely. I was still standing, frozen. The globes rushed straight at Foster, ignoring me. Behind me, I heard the publican turn and run. I fumbled with the flashlight switch, snapped it on, swung the beam of white light on Foster. The globe at his head vanished as the light touched it. More globes swarmed to Foster—and popped like soap bubbles in the flashlight’s glare—but more swarmed to take their places. Foster reeled, fighting at them. He swung the light—and I heard it smash against the stone behind him. In the instant darkness, the globes clustered thick around his head.

  “Foster,” I yelled, “run!”

  He got no more than five yards before he staggered, went to his knees. “Cover,” he croaked. He fell on his face. I rushed the mass of darting globes, took up a stance straddling his body. A sulphurous reek hung around me. I coughed, concentrated on beaming the lights around Foster’s head. No more were rising from the crack in the earth now. A suffocating cloud pressed around both of us, but it was Foster they went for. I thought of the slab; if I could get my back to it, I might have a chance. I stooped, got a grip on Foster’s coat, and started back, dragging him. The lights boiled around me. I swept the beam of light and kept going until my back slammed against the stone. I crouched against it. Now they could only come from the front.

  I glanced at t
he cleft the lights had come from. It looked big enough to get Foster into. That would give him some protection. I tumbled him over the edge, then flattened my back against the slab and settled down to fight in earnest.

  I worked in a pattern, sweeping vertically, then horizontally. The globes ignored me, drove toward the cleft, fighting to get at Foster, and I swept them away as they came. The cloud around me was smaller now, the attack less ravenous. I picked out individual globes, snuffed them out. The hum became ragged, faltered. Then there were only a few globes around me, milling wildly, disorganized. The last half dozen fled, bumbling away across the plain.

  I slumped against the rock, sweat running down into my eyes, my lungs burning with the sulphur.

  “Foster,” I gasped. “Are you all right?”

  He didn’t answer. I flashed the light onto the cleft. It showed me damp clay, a few pebbles.

  Foster was gone.

  CHAPTER VI

  I scrambled to the edge of the pit and played the light around inside. It shelved back at one side, and a dark mouth showed, sloping down into the earth—the hiding place from which the globes had swarmed.

  Foster was wedged in the opening. I scrambled down beside him, tugged him back to the level ground. He was still breathing; that was something.

  I wondered if the pub owner would come back, now that the lights were gone—or if he’d tell someone what had happened, bring out a search party. Somehow, I doubted it. He didn’t seem like the type to ask for trouble with the ghosts of ancient sinners.

  Foster groaned opened his eyes. “Where are…they?” he muttered.

  “Take it easy, Foster,” I said. “You’re OK now.”

  “Legion,” Foster said. He tried to sit up. “The Hunters…”

  “OK, call ’em Hunters if you want to. I haven’t got a better name for them. I worked them over with the flashlights. They’re gone.”

  “That means…”

  “Let’s not worry about what it means. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “The Hunters—they burst out of the ground—from a cleft in the earth.”

  “That’s right. You were halfway into the hole. I guess that’s where they were hiding.”

  “The Pit of the Hunters,” Foster said.

  “If you say so,” I said. “Lucky you didn’t go down it.”

  “Legion, give me the flashlight.”

  “I feel something coming on that I’m not going to like,” I said. I handed him the light and he flashed it into the tunnel mouth. I saw a polished roof of black glass arching four feet over the rubble-strewn bottom of the shaft. A stone, dislodged by my movement, clattered away down the 30 slope.

  “Hell, that tunnel’s man-made,” I said, peering into it. “And I don’t mean neolithic man.”

  “Legion, we’ll have to see what’s down there,” Foster said.

  “We could come back later, with ropes and big insurance policies,” I said.

  “But we won’t,” said Foster. “We’ve found what we were looking for—”

  “Sure,” I said, “and it serves us right. Are you sure you feel good enough to make like Alice and the White Rabbit?”

  “I’m sure. Let’s go.”

  Foster thrust his legs into the opening, slid over the edge and disappeared. I followed him. I eased down a few feet, glanced back for a last look at the night sky, then lost my grip and slid. I hit bottom hard enough to knock the wind out of me, I got to my hands and knees on a level, gravel-strewn floor.

  “What is this place?” I dug the flashlight out of the rubble, flashed it around. We were in a low-ceilinged room ten yards square. I saw smooth walls, the dark bulks of massive shapes that made me think of sarcophagi in Egyptian burial vaults—except that these threw back highlights from dials and levers.

  “For a couple of guys who get shy in the company of cops,” I said, “we’ve a talent for doing the wrong thing. This is some kind of Top Secret military installation.”

  “Impossible,” Foster replied. “This couldn’t be a modern structure, at the bottom of a rubble-filled shaft—”

  “Let’s get out of here fast,” I said. “We’ve probably set off an alarm already.”

  As if in answer, a low chime cut across our talk. Pearly light sprang up on a square panel. I got to my feet, moved over to stare at it. Foster came to my side.

  “What do you make of it?” he said.

  “I’m no expert on stone-age relics,” I said. “But if that’s not a radar screen, I’ll eat it.”

  I sat down in the single chair before the dusty control console, and watched a red blip creep across the screen. Foster stood behind me.

  “We owe a debt to that ancient sinner,” he said. “Who would have dreamed he’d lead us here?”

  “Ancient sinner?” I said. “This place is as modern as next year’s juke box.”

  “Look at the symbols on the machines,” Foster said. “They’re identical with those in the first section of the journal.”

  “All pot-hooks look alike to me,” I said. “It’s this screen that’s got me worried. If I’ve got it doped out correctly, that blip is either a mighty slow airplane—or it’s at one hell of an altitude.”

  “Modern aircraft operate at great heights,” Foster said.

  “Not at this height,” I said. “Give me a few more minutes to study these scales.…”

  “There are a number of controls here,” Foster said, “obviously intended to activate mechanisms—”

  “Don’t touch ’em,” I said. “Unless you want to start World War III.”

  “I hardly think the results would be so drastic,” Foster replied. “Surely this installation has a simple purpose—unconnected with modern wars—but very possibly connected with the mystery of the journal—and of my own past.”

  “The less we know about this, the better,” I said. “At least, if we don’t mess with anything, we can always claim we just stepped in here to get out of the rain—”

  “You’re forgetting the Hunters,” said Foster.

  “Some new anti-personnel gimmick.”

  “They came out of this shaft, Legion. It was opened by the pressure of the Hunters bursting out.”

  “Why did they pick that precise moment—just as we arrived?” I asked.

  “I think they were aroused,” said Foster. “I think they sensed the presence of their ancient foe.”

  I swung around to look at him.

  “I see the way your thoughts are running,” I said. “You’re their Ancient Foe, now, huh? Just let me get this straight: that means that umpteen hundred years ago, you personally had a fight with the Hunters—here at Stonehenge. You killed a batch of them and ran. You hired some kind of Viking ship and crossed the Atlantic. Later on, you lost your memory, and started being a guy named Foster. A few weeks ago you lost it again. Is that the picture?”

  “More or less.”

  “And now we’re a couple of hundred feet under Stonehenge—after a brush with a crowd of luminous stinkbombs—and you’re telling me you’ll be nine hundred on your next birthday.”

  “Remember the entry in the journal, Legion? ‘I came to the place of the Hunters, and it was a place I knew of old, and there was no hive, but a Pit built by men of the Two Worlds…’”

  “Okay,” I said. “So you’re pushing a thousand.”

  I glanced at the screen, got out a scrap of paper, and scribbled a rapid calculation. “Here’s another big number for you. That object on the screen is at an altitude—give or take a few percent—of thirty thousand miles.”

  I tossed the pencil aside, swung around to frown at Foster. “What are we mixed up in, Foster? Not that I really want to know. I’m ready to go to a nice clean jail now, and pay my debt to society—”

  “Calm down, Legion,” Foster said. “You’re raving.”

 
“OK,” I said, turning back to the screen. “You’re the boss. Do what you like. It’s just my reflexes wanting to run. I’ve got no place to run to. At least with you I’ve always got the wild hope that maybe you’re not completely nuts, and that somehow—”

  I sat upright, eyes on the screen. “Look at this, Foster,” I snapped. A pattern of dots flashed across the screen, faded, flashed again.…

  “Some kind of IFF,” I said. “A recognition signal. I wonder what we’re supposed to do now.”

  Foster watched the screen, saying nothing.

  “I don’t like that thing blinking at us,” I said. “It makes me feel conspicuous.” I looked at the big red button beside the screen. “Maybe if I pushed that.…” Without waiting to think it over, I jabbed at it.

  A yellow light blinked on the control panel. On the screen, the pattern of dots vanished. The red blip separated, a smaller blip moving off at right angles to the main mass.

  “I’m not sure you should have done that,” Foster said.

  “There is room for doubt,” I said in a strained voice. “It looks like I’ve launched a bomb from the ship overhead.”

  * * * *

  The climb back up the tunnel took three hours, and every foot of the way I was listening to a refrain in my head: This may be it; this may be it; this may be.…

  I crawled out of the tunnel mouth and lay on my back, breathing hard. Foster groped his way out beside me.

  “We’ll have to get to the highway,” I said, untying the ten-foot rope of ripped garments that had linked us during the climb. “There’s a telephone at the pub; we’ll notify the authorities.…” I glanced up.

  “Hold it!” I grabbed Foster’s arm and pointed overhead. “What’s that?”

  Foster looked up. A brilliant point of blue light, brighter than a star, grew perceptibly as we watched.

  “Maybe we won’t get to notify anybody after all,” I said. “I think that’s our bomb—coming home to roost.”

  “That’s illogical,” Foster said. “The installation would hardly be arranged merely to destroy itself in so complex a manner.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I yelled.