The panel slammed and the bolt ground home. But in the last fleeting instant Temple was sure that Mullane’s face registered a staggering shock.
He listened to the angry beat of Mullane’s feet down the corridor outside and his eyes flamed in the granite mask of his face. He wanted to sit and think over Mullane’s fantastic story, to sort out the grains of truth he knew were scattered through. But the thinking time was past. In his desperate effort to extract information by needling Mullane, he had obviously skirted dangerously close to some truths.
They could no longer afford to let him live. Temple had no doubt at all his death warrant was already signed and sealed. In a matter of minutes Mullane or an appointed executioner would be back with a weapon and his last chance to save Lee and the rest from their sinister bondage would be ended.
The thought of Lee Mason, doomed to live out her life as the helpless puppet of some inhuman control aroused him to desperation. His mind raced as he searched the barren room for a defense.
He might wrench a club of some kind from the iron cot, but whoever came would be too clever to get within reach. A stab of blue ray through the panel would put him out instantly. Perhaps it could even find him through the wall or closed door, since it had struck through clothing without apparent hindrance.
His frantic gaze fell on the blankets folded across the cot. With desperate haste he ripped the stoutest into long strips, using a sharp edge of the cot frame as a knife. Knotting these together, he fashioned a crude noose, but when he let go the soft loop collapsed. Still, there was nothing else to do but try.
Standing on the cot he worked his noose up through the mesh ceiling over the door, pushed it along past the partition and felt it drop through on the outside. He played out line, hoping no one was in the corridor to notice the dangling loop. He could only guess—and fervently hope—that it hung above the door, high enough to escape notice.
It was such a slender gamble, with so much riding on its success. His palms were wet and he could feel cold sweat gluing his shirt to his back. He fought to keep his hands steady and his nerves keen.
Somewhere a door slammed and hurrying steps pounded close. They sounded like Mullane’s swift tread. His heart sank as the steps halted outside the door but were not followed by the grating of the bolt being slid back. If the panel was not opened, and his executioner merely shot a sweeping beam through the door, he was doomed.
“Mully,” he called. “Is that you out there? I wanted to tell you that I’ve been thinking over what you told me and maybe it is the truth. I’d hate to be on the wrong side if your outfit really can save the human race from extinction.”
Hardly daring to breathe, he waited until the bolt slid back and the panel opened. “Now it is you who are treating me like a gullible child, Curtis. You’re merely stalling, hoping somehow to persuade me to spare your valueless life. It is too late for that.”
He lifted the blue beam projector, frowning as he made some adjustment of a stud on the base of the stubby, flaring barrel. Temple’s right hand, outside Mullane’s line of vision, lifted. The noose on the other end slid down into sight, just over the astronomer’s head but too far forward.
Mullane finished his adjustment and leveled the projector. Temple put on an expression of anguished terror and weaved to the side. Mullane had to bend almost to the open panel to see him.
“Don’t make this difficult, Curtis. There is no possible escape, as you must know.”
Temple’s hand snapped upward. The noose dropped squarely onto Mullane’s head, started to slip off sideways as he jerked his face upward, then opened and slid down over his ears.
Mullane yelled, Temple dived aside, hauling with all his strength on the makeshift hangman’s noose and a lance of bluish light flashed past his face by inches. Then the beam vanished and he heard the clatter of the projector on the corridor floor.
The astronomer was on tiptoe, his face turning dark with suffused blood, small hands clawing futilely at the strangling loop. Temple gritted his teeth and hung on until the hands fell limply away and the face turned purple.
Keeping his line taut, he stretched through the panel, drew Mullane’s slight body closer and felt the pockets. There was one key by itself. Stretching his arm to full length, Temple worked it into the lock and suddenly his prison door swung open.
He lowered the limp figure to the floor, tore away the noose and gusted a great sigh of relief when he felt a thread of pulse. Dragging Mullane into the cell room he locked the door and put the key in his own pocket. “Some day you’ll thank me for this, Mully,” he murmured. “If I’m still alive.”
He examined the fallen projector with interest. There were two studs, one apparently controlling intensity, the other inside the curve of butt serving as a trigger. He turned the control stud halfway back and hoped that if he had to use it, it was not set at lethal power.
Escape had no part in his thoughts. He had penetrated the camp but not its deeper mysteries. Until Lee Mason and the rest were freed from their weird captivity he would not leave the camp under his own power. But right now he must find a hiding place until nightfall when he had some chance of moving around with a degree of freedom.
He looked around the great, shadowy cylinder of the tower. A row of small rooms, similar to his late prison, seemed to encircle the base. Outside these was a narrow corridor, formed by a metal wall that encircled the lower part of the crouching rocket. He guessed this was a sort of splash-guard to confine the rocket blast, but it seemed much too low and frail to offer much protection.
But there was no time to study the assembly. Reluctantly he tore himself from contemplation of the towering rocket and looked around for safe cover. Moving warily around the curving corridor he came upon a closed door in the outer wall. Holding his breath he eased it open a crack and peered out. The sight that met his gaze made him stiffen.
He was looking down a wide camp street, thick with lengthening shadows of evening. Pounding toward him through those shadows like a wolf pack in full cry came the entire Meteoritics Team, running in a grim bunch. Rocossen and Jacobs were carrying shotguns. Out in front and leading them was Lee Mason, her lovely face set in cold fury, her slender hands clutching one of blue beam projectors.
They were heading with ominous purposefulness straight toward the door where Temple stood. From their grim manner there was no shadow of doubt in his mind that somehow they knew of his escape and were racing to corner him for the kill.
He lifted his own projector to the crack. One sweep of the paralyzing ray would send them all tumbling. But as his finger tightened on the firing stud the realization came to him that he had no sure knowledge of the setting. For all he knew, it might be powerful enough to deliver serious injury or even death.
He let the projector drop to his side, whirled away and ran. Around a curve in the corridor he saw another outside door and plunged through it, hearing the pounding feet of his hunters enter the corridor.
Temple found himself in a long hall with a closed door at the far end, apparently leading outside. On each side of the hall were small laboratories, each fitted out for research in a different field. He ran past them, toward the far door that offered a hope of breaking out into the dusk where there was more room to flee and more places to hide.
He was almost to his goal when he heard the scrape of feet beyond the door and the knob turned. Someone was coming in. He flung himself through the nearest door and saw, by the special instruments and the racks of lenses and prisms, that this must be the laboratory of Lansdon, the physicist whose special field was optics.
On a small stand stood an instrument so oddly out of place that it caught his attention. At first he thought it was an old-fashioned stereoscope. It had the same kind of hooded viewer with twin square lenses, but instead of the old double cards that produced a three-dimensional picture, the sliding rack held a thin sheet of some richly violet metal that he guessed might be cesium.
For an instant his scientific cur
iosity made him pause for a closer look. Then the sound of feet in the hall and the closing of the door reminded him of his perilous position.
There were no windows in the lab and only the one door he had just entered. The only possible hiding place was in the deep shadows under the lab bench. He dived for it, hunching as far back as possible as he heard the heavy feet tramp into the room.
Hardly daring to breathe he heard the feet approach. Then he could see a man’s legs from the knees down. They moved toward the bench and stopped. There was an ominous silence, and then the familiar voice of Lansdon spoke.
“I am quite aware that you are hiding under my bench, Curtis. Come out quietly. I have a pistol trained on you and I will not hesitate to shoot if necessary.”
Temple’s breath gusted out. He lifted the projector, hesitated, then tucked it out of sight under his coat and crawled out. He climbed to his feet with weary resignation.
The movement brought his eyes momentarily in line with the screen of the curious instrument on the stand so that he was seeing Lansdon’s head and shoulders through the violet film. The sight froze him in gaping amazement.
The image on the screen showed something alien and incredible—a ball of glowing violent luminescence clinging tightly to the nape of Lansdon’s neck at the base of his brain. It was like nothing Temple had ever seen before, a globule of pure radiance without form or features. When he looked past the screen, the thing was invisible. Viewed through the film again it was still there, pulsing with a malevolent life of its own.
The mind-shattering discovery had taken only a moment, his own reaction masked too quickly to be noticed. He finished climbing to his feet and met the physicist’s furious eyes.
“You have seen too much,” Lansdon whispered. He pointed a revolver point-blank and fired.
The tightening of Lansdon’s muscles and the rise of the revolver’s double action hammer telegraphed the shot, sent Temple plunging aside as the explosion thundered. Liquid fire seared a path along his ribs under his left arm, drove the breath from his lungs with a gasping yelp.
He stumbled, went to his knees and felt breath and strength surge back to his body under the lash of terrible desperation. A table of instruments shielded him briefly. Yelling, Lansdon was starting around the end to get another clear shot. Temple got his hands under the edge of the table and heaved. It went over with a crash of shattering glass, knocking the physicist back against a row of metal supply cabinets, momentarily pinning him.
Before he could jerk his gun hand free, Temple was past and into the hall. He bounced off the opposite wall, snatched the door open and raced out into the night as the whole pack, still led by Lee Mason, burst into the hall from the tower.
Head down, sobbing for breath, Temple pounded down the wide street toward the outside gate. Behind him there were no loud cries or bawling of directions. There was something inexpressibly chilling in that silence, a grim reminder that the things had a means of silent communication all their own.
A guard stood in front of the locked gate, cradling a shotgun. Temple could knock him down with the blue ray, throw the automatic gate control switch and escape. But escape was no part of his intention. He swerved, raced between two buildings and doubled back toward the tower.
It was a crazy, suicidal action. He was stumbling with exhaustion, his wounded side was a knife of pain, his shirt stiff with blood. But now that he knew so much of the terrible truth, his mind was locked on one desperate purpose.
From the deep shadows, he saw his pursuers separating, fanning out with flashlights whipping back and forth to probe every possible hiding place. He saw Lee Mason, gripping projector and flashlight, swing aside to cover a parallel street. Like a grim ghost, he drifted after her. At every step he expected her invisible control to detect his presence and warn her, as it had apparently done for Spirovic and Lansdon.
Now, for some reason that left him baffled, it had apparently deserted her. She reached the end of the street and stopped, flashing the beam of her light along the fence. Temple’s running feet made no sound on the soft dirt. Her first inkling of danger was the encircling arm like a band of steel and the hand that muffled her outcry.
She fought him viciously, with an unexpected strength that took all his effort to counter. He gasped in agony as her elbow slammed his wounded side, gasped again as sharp heels drummed against his shins. He could feel her teeth snapping savagely in an effort to bite the muffling palm. His right hand caught her flailing wrist and twisted mercilessly until limp fingers let go of the deadly projector.
Temple felt himself weakening. The throbbing wound seemed to be draining his left arm of strength. If the violent jerking of her head freed her mouth for even a moment, her cry would bring help. There had to be an end to the struggle at any cost.
He used his last waning strength to pull her head back and her chin up. His right released her suddenly and came up in a chopping arc. Knuckles slammed into the line of slender jaw with brutal force and her body went limp.
Cold-eyed and grim, Temple hoisted her over his shoulder and squatted down, panting, to feel for the projector and flashlight. He jammed both into his pocket and looked around. His purpose was not yet accomplished while that circle of deadly fence hemmed him within the hostile camp. While the floodlights seemed to be still out of order, a few scattered streetlights were on. He was grimly sure that their first move had been to restore current to the fence.
His gaze fell on the row of parked trucks. He stumbled to the nearest and found the ignition key in the lock. He hoisted Lee’s limp body into the cab, climbed under the wheel and toed the starter. The engine roared to life, alerting the scattered searchers to his whereabouts and intent. Temple clashed the gears and sent the heavy vehicle around and out onto the main street that led to the gate.
He glimpsed darting flash beams and wondered vaguely why no deadly blue ray reached out for him. Then the truck was thundering toward the brightly lighted gate.
The guard was in the road, leveling a pistol. Temple saw the wink of scarlet flame and heard the impact of slugs against the truck body. A corner of the windshield sprouted a pattern of diverging lines and broken glass showered over Lee’s huddled form.
Cold-eyed and grim, Temple got out one of the projectors, leaned from the cab window and pressed the stud. The blue ray lanced out and the guard collapsed like a punctured balloon. The truck skidded around him to a halt. Temple leaped down, ran to the shack and threw a switch just inside the door. Motors hummed and the gate began to swing open.
He whirled back, bent over the guard and gusted a breath of relief when he felt a steady pulse. Then the projector was set to stun, not kill, and he could use it with impunity. He ran back to the truck and sent it roaring out through the gate to freedom.
At the juncture of the dirt road with the main highway he stopped the truck and looked back. There were no signs of pursuit. He rummaged through the cab and found a coil of light rope that was probably used to secure small loads. With this he tied Lee’s wrists and ankles. He knew the bonds were cruelly tight, but he also knew the savage cunning of the power that possessed her and far more than comfort was involved.
He let the motor idle and sat gripping the wheel, trying to plot his next move. He had Lee safe for the moment from the physical clutches of the group and he had at least a vague idea now of what was behind the sickening personality change. But he had no idea at all of how to bring her back to normal, or even if such a thing were possible.
He knew only that he had to find a haven somewhere with the equipment to work and search for the hidden answer. All usual laboratories would be closed to him now. In the eyes of the law he was a car thief, a kidnaper and probably worse, and he had no doubt at all that the group in the camp would press every possible charge to hamper him.
Mullane’s claim to government support was no exaggeration. The whole power of the nation would be arrayed against him to “rescue” Lee and punish him. If he tried to tell the incredible t
ruth as far as he knew it, he would undoubtedly be rushed to the nearest mental hospital and committed for life.
Suddenly the thought of the one possible haven, the one person he knew who would believe him and help him, no matter what the risk. Allen Farge, who had been his roommate and closest friend through college, was now head of the Physics Department at Rocky Mountain Tech. If anyone could help him now, it would be Farge. It was a gamble, but now every breath was a gamble.
Beside him Lee stirred and whimpered. He bent over her, his fingers probing the soft golden cloud of her hair. It might have been overwrought imagination but he was sure his fingertips felt a faint electric tingling at the back of her head. There was no doubt in his mind that whether he actually felt it or not, the sinister thing was still there.
She opened her eyes, glared around wildly, then spat at him with an animal snarl of rage. “You fool! What have you done? Untie me and take me back to the camp immediately.”
“Take it easy,” Temple said quietly. “I know what I’m facing now and I’ve tied those ropes to stay tied. There’ll be no freedom until I’ve found out exactly what you are and how you can be destroyed. You know I’m not speaking to Lee Mason now. I am speaking to you—the thing that has attached itself to her head and taken over her mind and will. I know you’re there. I saw you, or a piece of you, on Lansdon’s head when I accidentally looked through the detector device he had. I don’t know what you are, except that you’re a shining blob of something evil that has turned Lee and Lansdon and all those others into mindless robots. I don’t know now, but I’ll find out.”
“You’re insane!” Lee panted. “What kind of mad talk is that? Don’t you realize that what you’re doing is kidnapping me? And in case you have forgotten, the penalty for kidnapping is the electric chair.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Temple said, his eyes terrible in their cold determination. “And you might remember that since I have already earned that ultimate penalty, I couldn’t suffer anything worse for murder. Lee Mason means more to me than my life. If at any time I see that I am going to be captured or otherwise prevented from finishing what I’ve started, I will destroy this lovely shell of her before I’ll see it go on to a lifetime of slavery. Think that over before you force her to scream for help while we’re in a gas station or passing through towns.”
The Gods Hate Kansas Page 7