His fingertips touched the ragged edges of the ladder, and then slipped. The world dropped away. Kicking the pile of rubble into all corners of the plot room, he crashed to the deck. He lay there, silently, feeling the pain throb in his head and spine, and the voice that came down from above was mocking:
“Glad I don’t have to depend on you, Corny.”
The voice did not register. The voice was something he had managed to forget in the space of a few hours. But the word did it. That word Rennert had often used; knowing in its use he was hurting Cornfeld.
The astrogator looked up, the pains still flashing brightly behind his eyes, and saw the face, framed in the opening at the top of the downladder. Rennert was alive. Cornfeld gasped, his back hurt unmercifully.
“Just lie still, I’ll be down in a second,” Rennert grinned that wide, white infectious grin of superiority. He disappeared.
An instant later a pair of heavily–muscled legs in jump–shorts—bloody jump–shorts—appeared in the opening, and the magno–sole sneakers gripped at the top rungs of the downladder.
He descended quickly, to the end of the whole sections, and then dropped athletically, grasping at the last moment for the bottom rung. He hung suspended there, swaying slightly, then dropped the rest of the way to the deck, agilely avoiding Cornfeld and the bits of rubble beneath him. He landed with knees bent, and came erect with a leopard–like smoothness.
Rennert stood there and chuckled softly. “Honest to God! I mean honest to God, Corny!” as though he were the father of a mischievous boy. He bent to help Cornfeld to his feet.
Cornfeld felt a staggering loathing come over him. “Let me alone,” he snapped out, ending the phrase with a raw gasp as his back throbbed painfully.
Rennert shrugged and backed away.
Cornfeld tried to get up. His back flamed incredibly, but he was sure he had broken nothing. As he struggled to rise, Rennert went about the plot room methodically, till he found what he was seeking, a deck of scratchbutts, in a still–closed drawer.
He drew one out with two fingers and scratched it alight on the magno–sole of his sneaker.
As he lifted his foot for the motion, Cornfeld saw the nasty gash that had been ripped in the man’s left thigh. The blood was still pulsing warmly down Rennert’s leg.
Rennert took a deep drag on the butt and offered it to Cornfeld. “Smoke?”
Cornfeld shook his head no, got one arm under himself, and heaved to his feet. He squealed sharply, and then it was all right. He was on his feet.
“I thought you were dead up there.”
Rennert shook his head. “No such luck. The good, remember? They’re the ones who get it young. Guys like me live to be a hund—”
Cornfeld cut him off. To hell with Rennert’s wise remarks. “Iris is outside. Both her legs are broken, I think.”
“Hey, where is she?” Rennert said, the concern reflected in his deep voice.
Cornfeld knew what was in Rennert’s mind, knew it was playing its chess game, five moves ahead, and he knew he was losing again—if he had not already lost—as he always lost. He turned away, and limped toward the plot–bucket, slumping into it with a sigh, resting his back. “She’s in the shade of a fin out there. I thought you were dead.” He knew he was being repetitious, but what did it matter?
“I got wedged into the collar between sections,” Rennert explained, hitching at his jump–shorts. “When the crash came I went out. I came to with a chunk of surfacing plate on my belly.
“I worked it off, and then fainted again. I guess I was just getting free when you started to pile those things up. Noble of you to think of me.” He grinned wolfishly.
“Didn’t you hope I’d been lost, Corny? Then you could have Iris all to yourself. Even with a pair of busted legs she’s a pretty good lay.”
“Shut up, will you, Rennert!” Cornfeld turned away, squirming in the chair. Partially because he could see the naked unpleasantness of Rennert’s character, and partially because what Rennert said was true. He hated himself, at that moment, far more than he hated Rennert.
“Have it your way, Lancelot.” And Rennert moved quickly through the rubble to the rent in the hull. He disappeared through it, into the heat of the alien day.
Cornfeld sat very still for some time, wondering.
Night had fallen more swiftly than he had thought possible, out on the dunes. And with the night came a humidity, stealing out of the rank jungle beyond. Deep in there, alien beasts struggled for supremacy, ripped, tore, killed and were, in turn, themselves killed. The stench of it, the sound of it, rose against the night sky, overpoweringly.
Iris Crosse lay against the cooling metal of the fin, her face drawn in the firm light of a lectrotorch stuck to the hull. Her legs had been tended with plastic splints from the first aid kit, and with the poultice Cornfeld had given Rennert to apply, there was no doubt her bones would knit properly in a few weeks.
But for now, her strength was drained, her blood ran slowly, there was a coolness about her.
Rennert crouched over a makeshift brazier from the ship’s stores, cooking three strip steaks. Cornfeld was behind them, directly in the light of the torch, tinkering with the inverspace radio. Finally, as the scent of the jungle mingled alarmingly with the odors of the cooking steaks, he straightened and said, “I’m afraid we won’t be stranded here after all. It works just fine. It was cushioned on its buffers, didn’t even shake loose a circuit. All I have to do is call back to the relay station on Point George, let them know we’re here, and they’ll send out a beacon ship for us.”
Iris raised her dark eyes to him, and the faint edge of a smile crossed her thin lips. Cornfeld felt ill at ease. “That’s good,” she said.
Rennert’s masculine chuckle floated to them across the shadows, and he gave a massive halloo. “We’re saved!” he clowned. “Saved from the ravages of the alien world!” His hand dipped toward the brazier, and when the fork came up, a deeply–charred strip steak dangled from the tines. “But right now…soup’s on!”
Cornfeld was left to take his own as Rennert slapped steaks on disposable platters and moved next to the woman. Even though their relationship was one built on hatred and lust, Cornfeld knew he could be nothing to either of them. Not buffer, not catalyst, not deterrent, nothing. To them, he was there/not there.
Finally, because it seemed he must say something, so contained were they in theft little game of no–notice, Cornfeld ventured: “I’ll call Point George.”
Neither answered him. Iris Crosse looked up with a half–smile that said do what you wish if you wish, more of condescension than interest. Rennert did not bother to leave his food for a moment.
Finally, with effort, for they watched him without watching, Cornfeld rose, setting aside the platter, and said, “I’ll call them now.” He picked up the radio.
He walked around the rim of the ship, still and deep in the golden sand, and bent to enter the rip in the hull. Something moving at the far right edge of his vision brought him erect, hands on either side of the tear in the metal.
He turned his head quickly, and caught the flicker of it, at the edge of the jungle. What it was, he could not tell in the faint moonlight tattered by the feathery treetops. But it was there. Not heat dancers as he had thought earlier. Something was out there.
Was it danger? If it was, they would find out soon enough. He entered the ship.
He set the inverspace radio into its mounts. It was able to thrust its sorting beams through space (and not–space between space). He set it back between two buffer guards, cushioned on all sides. A set of eighteen verniers paraded across its face like an orderly progression of top–hatted men.
Bolted to the face of the machine were computed signals for all the major relay stations on the Rim. Cornfeld ran a stubby finger down the list, pausing at Point George to take the reading. He dialed it out and set the range and directional meters to full output. There was little hope of gauging how much matter–interferen
ce this planet contained in its soil composition, with the analyzers ruined. He set the inverad at full scope and drive, and clicked it on.
The response was immediate.
Almost immediately, a bounce signal returned and came out strong on the control room’s beep system. It was the bounce signal for standby, indicating Point George was on the beam, and turning precedence calls over before accepting Cornfeld’s.
Cornfeld dialed out a crash red! and the precedence signal for standby changed to acceptance immediate. A voice cut through the signal and rang loud in the control room:
“Point George acceptance. Go ahead. Point George acceptance. We read you, feature strong, signal clear, go ahead.”
Cornfeld bent to the speak–tip and spoke in the tones he had been instructed to use over inverad. Calm, detached, authoritative: “This is Surveyship Charlie X–ray Delta niner fi–yive six six calling Point George. Do you read, Point George?”
The voice came back after a split–instant’s time–lapse as the message sped through inverspace. “We read you, Charlie X–ray Delta niner five six six. Go ahead.”
Cornfeld edged the bucket up closer to the console and passed across his word. “We are down in disabled condition on co–ordinates…” he paused a moment to consult the Celestial Atlas for approximate readings, checked the readings with what coursecomp dials were still intact, and fed the data across.
Point George was silent a long minute and then, just as Cornfeld began to wonder if the beam had died, they came back: “Point George to CXD 9566. We have you spotted on the boards. Take it easy, mister, got a beam–spitter comin’ in on you. Figure a week, at the outside. Do you need anything? Medic? Innoc–beads? Just name it, fella.”
“We’re fine,” Cornfeld assured the nameless voice. “Plenty of rations, and no injuries we haven’t already ministered to. Do you need any pin–point directions?”
Point George made a ticking sound as though considering his question, and then asked, “You’re the fifth world out from a type G, aren’t you?”
Cornfeld considered the sun that burned down from the sky each day, and answered, “Right. Type G. I don’t know if we’re fifth out…we were all unconscious when we came in. Is that what your readings on my beam say?”
Point George: “Check.”
Cornfeld: “Then that’s us. We’re on the shore of a pretty big body of water. Jungle beyond the sand. That might help a little.”
“It helps a lot, fella. Anything else?”
Cornfeld: “No, that’s it. You figure we’ll be picked up inside a week?”
Point George: “That’s what Clearance just reported. The spitbeam is bouncing now. They had a ship out near Kasca IV. Figure the normal invertime and a week or thereabouts ought to see you on the way back.”
Cornfeld: “Thanks a lot, Point George.” His voice was ripe with gratitude and undisguised relief, “This is CXD 9566 over and out.”
The cutaway signal filled the room, and Cornfeld snapped the inverad off. He slumped back in the bucket. For some unreasonable reason, he had been at ease since he had found the inverspace radio intact, knowing they could get through; but only now, with the rescue beam–spitter bouncing out to them, was he untensed, secure again. He realized, abruptly and with a shocking coldness, for the first time in his life, how terrified he was of reality and the confusion of situations in which he was a pawn. Insecure. Frightened. Not weak, but needing order and stability.
Quiet, peace of mind, order, quiet.
The scream rang out in the night, building, climbing, spiralling till it was choked off by vocal cords that could stretch no tighter. Iris Crosse had seen horror.
The sound paralyzed him for a second, and then he was tripping over broken bits of ship accoutrements, stumbling to the opening in the hull and pausing there, hands frozen on either side of the rip, staring into the dunes.
What had been movement—what had been heat–lightning or dust shimmering—had now fully materialized, at last revealed itself, was now near enough to be labelled as what it really was.
Ants!
A horde of ants. A wave of ants. A sea, a torrent, a world of ants. A million and another million and a billion ants, tumbled crowded jammed one atop another. An army, drawn up just on the other side of the dune on which Iris Crosse propped against the ship’s fin. They were moving and moving and moving, yet they were still. Each creature had individual movement, but the mass was still, not advancing.
Iris Crosse was white in the shadow of the ship’s fin. There in the moonlight, her body twitching with uncontrolled horror, her hand fisted between her teeth, her eyes great dark inkblots above alabaster cheeks, the strong woman sat and struggled in the grip of a hundred thousand volts of terror.
“Iris!” Rennart screamed, “Get up! Get up!” He yelled, but he did not move from the two–foot area beyond the opening in the hull. Cornfeld realized, even as Rennert’s hysterical shriek cut the night, that Iris couldn’t move—two splinted legs stretched out before her. But neither did he make the move to rescue her. Both men stood staring at her.
Staring at the sea of ants—or something like ants—so near to her. So near to overflowing, to picking her young body clean of flesh and firmness. In his mind, Cornfeld could see the naked land after an attack of the army ants. His mind saw the eyeless sockets jabbed in the skull of what had once been Iris Crosse.
Yet he stood there, unmoving. Why was that?
Then, without any warning, as one, the ants moved.
They surged and churned and roiled and moved.
Back into the jungle.
Cornfeld realized someone was giggling hysterically, teeth chattering. The ants were almost entirely gone before he recognized the mad little titter as his own.
After Rennert had gone into the jungle and snatched up a dozen of the ant–like creatures, he brought them back in a specimen cradle, for Iris Crosse’s examination.
Her stateroom was split in half. One compartment held living accommodations, and the section behind the accordion–door was a compact laboratory.
It was to this lab that Rennert and Cornfeld carried Iris, their arms locked hand–on–wrist to make a seat for her. The specimen cradle was brought in by Wayne Rennert and deposited beside the woman.
She sat on a high stool, her legs straight out before her, under the bench, awkwardly, as she prepared slides and gauging devices from the clipboards above the bench.
“I’d like to be alone, do you mind?” She did not bother to ask; it was merely an impolite directive. Rennert chuckled nastily and—accidentally?—his arm brushed a stand of test tubes as he went out. They crashed to the deckplate and bounced madly around the laboratory.
He was gone, and Cornfeld, feeling foolish, bent to pick them up. A vague, “Thank you,” edged with ice–crystals, came from her, but she did not look up.
He left the laboratory quietly.
The ants returned the next day, and the next. On a short safari paralleling the edge of the sea for a mile, and then into the rim of the dessicated area at the edge of the jungle, Rennert and Cornfeld saw the great hordes many times.
Then, three days after Iris Crosse had begun her experiments on the ants, two things happened.
As they came down the side of a dune, they stopped abruptly, for the golden sands were dark with the ant horde. “Again?” Rennert snorted, and started to turn away.
Cornfeld continued walking. It was something—what?—that made him what could he call it? want to know these odd ant–like creatures. He could not put it into words, but there was a drawing from them, to him, and back to them again. He walked toward them slowly.
“What the hell is with you, Cornfeld? You want to get chewed up or something?” He continued to curse, trying to stop Cornfeld, but the shorter man was determined.
“Leave me alone, Rennert. Get away.” Rennert tried to land a right cross on Cornfeld’s jaw, but the shorter man stepped out of the path of the blow easily.
Then Cornfeld wa
s near enough. A good thirty feet still separated him from the dark inkstain that covered the dunes from the edge of the sea to the rim of the jungle. But he was near enough.
What was between them…what began with the ants…and was magnified in him…and was returned to the ants…was strong enough. A feeling of infinite sadness welled over Cornfeld and
the weeping woman clothed in grey sheets came toward them, her face hung about with monstrous shadows, her features contorted with the sorrow that ate at her. There had been death and sadness unable to be borne. A dam had burst inside her, and the world had lost all light. Oh, God! The misery, the aching, the loneliness and the hunger for no–sorrow. The weeping woman clutched at her streaming hair, and pulled at her cadaverous grey bindings. She stopped, there before the two men—Cornfeld living in the sorrow he felt; Rennert a study in terror as this image came on—and her throat stretched tight as old leather, while her chin turned up to the sun, and her eyes exploded with tears and her mouth’s gash was a black entry to nothing. The sorrow boiled and broiled in her, rising to a hysterical pitch, as Cornfeld
felt the sorrow pass, and the woman disappear. Gone!
Rennert’s mouth was wide open. That was the first thing Cornfeld saw as the emotion of sadness drained out of him, leaving him vessel–empty, eyes burning. He dropped to his knees, stiffly, and remained there.
“You’re crazy!” Rennert sobbed.
as
the madman gibbered across the sands at them. His rags gave off the smell of dung, and his hair was unkempt, flowing about him from head to shoulders, his hands wicked claws that rent the air as he screamed and laughed and cavorted toward them in a frenzy of maniacal destruction. Rennert screamed, and the thought of Cornfeld’s insanity faded
to the accompaniment of
the fading of the crazed one. The sand was clean and silent once more, save the dark cancer of the ant horde, still there, still commanding.
“Devils!” Rennert shrieked and
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream Page 7