Caroline nodded at him. "The mistakes creep in so easy," she admitted. "Like mice… mice running in the mind."
"We can turn around and go back," said Gary, but even as he said it he knew that it was no good. For if the tunnel of distorted time-space through which they had come was jiggered out of position at this end, it would be out of focus at the other end as well.
"But we can't," said Caroline.
"I know we can't," said Gary. "I spoke too quickly. Without thinking."
"We can't even try," said Caroline. "The wheel is gone." He saw that she was right. The wheel of light was no longer in the sky. It had snuffed out and they were here alone.
Here? he asked. And where was here?
There was a simple answer. They simply did not know. At the moment, there was no way of telling.
"Lost," said Caroline. "Like the babes in the woods. The robins came, you remember, and covered them with leaves."
The ship was gliding down toward the planet and Gary swung around to the controls again.
"We'll look it over," he said.
"There may be someone there," said Caroline.
Someone, Gary thought, was not quite the word. Something would be more like it. Some thing.
The planet was flat, a world without mountains, without rivers, without seas. There were great green bogs instead of seas and flat arid plains with splotches of color that might be vegetation or might be no more than the outcropping of different geological strata.
The ship took up its descent spiral and Gary and Caroline hung close above the visor, watching for some sign of habitation, for some hint of life. A road, perhaps. Or a building. Or a vehicle moving on the ground or in the air. But there was nothing.
Finally Gary shook his head. "There's nothing here," he said. "We might as well go down. One place on this planet is as good as any other."
They landed on a flat expanse of sand between the shore of one of the green bogs and the edge of a patch of splotched vegetation, for by now it was apparent that the color spots on the planet's surface were vegetation of a sort.
"Toadstools," said Caroline, looking out the vision plate. "Toadstools and that other kind of funny stuff, like asparagus spears, only it's not asparagus."
"Like something out of a goblin book," said Gary.
Like something that you thought about when you were a kid and couldn't go to sleep after grandmother had read you some story about a shivery place and you had pulled the covers up over your head and listened for the footsteps to start coming through the dark.
They made the tests and the planet was livable without their suits — slightly high in oxygen, a little colder and a slighter gravity than Earth, but livable.
"Let's go out," said Gary, gruffly, "and have a look around."
"Gary, you sound as if you might be scared."
"I am," he admitted. "Pink with purple spots."
The silence smote them as they stepped outside the ship. An awesome and abiding silence that was louder than a shattering sound.
There was no sound of wind, and no sound of water. No song of birds. No grass to rustle.
The great red sun hung in the sky above them and their shadows were soft and fuzzy on the sand, the faint, fugitive shadows of a cloudy day.
On one hand lay the stagnant pools of water and the hummocks of slimy vegetation that formed the bog and on the other stretched the forest of giant mushrooms, towering to the height of an average man.
"You'd expect to see a goblin," Caroline said, and she shivered as she said it.
All at once the goblin was there.
He stood underneath one of the toadstools and he was looking at them. When he saw that they had seen him, he lowered one eyelid in a ponderous and exaggerated wink and his slobbering mouth twisted into a grimace that might have been a smile. Its skin was mottled and its eyes were narrow, slitted eyes and even as they watched, an exudation of slimy substance welled out of one of the gland-like openings which pitted its face and ran down its cheek and dripped onto its chest.
"Good Lord!" said Gary. "I know that fellow!"
The goblin leaped into the air and cracked its heels together and gobbled like an excited turkey.
"He's the one that was there the day the Engineers held the conference," said Gary. "You remember, when they got all the aliens together — all those that had come through space to the city of the Engineers. It was him — or one just like him. He sat opposite me and he winked at me, just like he did now, and I thought that…
"There's another one," said Caroline.
The second one was perched on top of one of the mushrooms, with his splayed feet swinging over the edge.
Then there was a third one peeping from behind a stem and still another one, sitting on the ground and leaning against a stem. All of them were watching and all of them were grinning, but the grins were enough to strike terror and revulsion into one's soul.
Caroline and Gary retreated backward to the ship, step by slow step until they stood with their backs against it.
Now there was sound, the soft padding of feet coming through the toadstool forest, the clucking noises that the goblins made.
"Let's go away," said Caroline. "Let's get in the ship and go."
"Wait," counseled Gary. "Let us wait a while. We can always go. These things are intelligent. They have to be, since they were among the ones the Engineers called in."
He stepped out from the ship two slow paces and called.
"Hello," he called.
They stopped their clucking and their running and stood and looked at him out of slitted eyes.
"We are friends," said Gary. They didn't move a muscle.
Gary held up his empty hands, palms outward in the human gesture of peace.
"We are friends," he said.
The silence was on the world again — the dreadful, empty silence. The goblins were gone.
Slowly Gary came back to the ship.
"It doesn't work," he said. "I had no reason to believe it would."
"All things," said Caroline, "would not necessarily communicate by sound. That's just one way of making yourself understood. There would be many other ways. These things make sounds, but that doesn't mean they would have to talk with sound. They may have no auditory apparatus. They may not even know that they make sounds, might not know what sound is."
"They're back again," said Gary. "You try this time. Try thinking at them. Pick out one of them and concentrate on him."
A minute passed, a minute of utter silence.
"It's funny," said Caroline. "I couldn't reach them at all. There wasn't even a flicker of response. But I had the feeling that they knew and that they rejected what I tried to tell them. They closed their minds and would not listen."
"They don't talk," said Gary. "And they either can't or won't telepath. What's next?"
"Sign language," Caroline said. "Pictures after that. Pantomime."
But it did no good. The goblins watched with interest when Gary tried sign language. They crept close to watch as he drew diagrams in the sandy soil. And they squealed and chortled when he tried pantomime. But that they understood any of it they gave not a single sign.
Gary came back to the ship.
"They're intelligent," he said. "They have to be, otherwise how would they ever have been brought to the rim of the universe by the Engineers. Something like that takes understanding, a mechanical aptitude, a penchant for higher mathematics."
He gestured in disgust. "And yet," he said, "they do not understand even the most elementary symbolism."
"These ones may not be trained," said Caroline. "There may be others here who are. There may be an elite, an intelligentsia. These may be the peasants and the serfs."
Gary said wearily: "Let's get out of here. Make a circuit or two of the planet. Watch closely for some sign of development, some evidence of culture."
Caroline nodded. "We could have missed it before."
They went into the ship and closed the po
rt behind them. Through the vision plates they saw the goblins, a large crowd of them by now, lined up at the edge of the mushroom forest, staring at the ship.
Gary lowered himself into the pilot's chair, reached out for the warming knob and twisted it over. Nothing happened. He twisted it back and turned it on again. Silence swam within the ship — no sound of warming jets.
Lord, thought Gary, what a place to get stuck.
Outside the ship, equipped with a kit of tools, he crawled into the take-off tubes, took off the plates that housed the warming assembly and pried into their innards.
An hour later he had finished. He crawled out, grimed and smudged with carbon.
"Nothing wrong," he told Caroline. "No reason why they shouldn't work."
He tried again and they didn't work.
He checked the feed line and the wiring. He ripped off the control panel and went over it, wire by wire, relay by relay, tube by tube. There was nothing wrong. But still it wouldn't work.
"The goblins," Caroline guessed.
He agreed. "It must be the goblins. There is nothing else to think."
But how, he asked himself, could such simple-minded things turn an almost foolproof, letter-perfect spaceship into a heap of junk?
CHAPTER Fourteen
The next morning the Hellhounds came, a small ship quartering down out of the dawn light of the great red sun. It came down on a long smooth slant and landed not more than half a mile away, plowing a swath through the mushroom forest as it grounded. There was no mistaking its identity, for its lines were distinctive and the insignia upon its bow was the insignia that both Caroline and Gary had seen many times on the ships that screamed down to lay bombs upon the mighty city of the Engineers.
"And us," said Gary, "with nothing but hand guns in the locker and a ship that we can't lift."
He saw the stricken look on Caroline's face and tried to make amends. "Maybe they won't know who we are," he said. "Maybe they…"
"Don't let's fool ourselves," Caroline told him. "They know who we are, all right. More than likely we're the reason that they're here. Maybe they…"
She hesitated and Gary asked, "Maybe they what?"
"I was thinking," she said, "that they might have twisted the tunnel. The mathematics might have been all right. Somebody might have brought us here. It might have been the Hellhounds who trapped us here, knowing what we had, knowing the knowledge that we carried. They might have brought us here and now they've come to finish up the job."
"They were not the ones who brought you here," said a voice out of nowhere. "You were brought here but they were not the ones who brought you. They were brought themselves."
Gary whirled around. "Who said that?" he shouted.
"You cannot find me," said the voice, still talking out of nowhere. "Don't waste your time in trying to find me. I brought you here and I brought the others here and only the one of you may leave… the humans or the Hellhounds."
"I don't understand," said Gary. "You are mad…"
"You are enemies, you and the Hellhounds," said the voice. "You are equal in number and in strength of arms. There are two of you and there are two of them. You have small weapons only and so have they. It will be a fair encounter."
Fantastic, thought Gary. A situation jerked raw from a latter-day Alice in Wonderland. A nightmare twisted out of the strange and grotesque alienness of this splotched planet. A planet filed with goblins and with nightmares — a fairyland turned sour.
"You want us to fight?" he asked. "Fight the Hellhounds? A sort of — well, you might call it a duel?"
"That is exactly it," the voice told him.
"But what good will it do?"
"You are enemies, aren't you, human?"
"Why, yes, we are," said Gary, "but anything that we do here won't affect the war one way or the other."
"You will fight," said the voice. "You are two and they are two and…"
"But one of us is a woman," protested Gary. "Female humans do not engage in duels."
The voice did not answer, but Gary sensed frustration in a mind — perhaps a presence rather than a mind — that was near to them.
He pressed his advantage. "You say that our arms are equal, that they have small arms only and so have we. But you can't be sure that the arms are equal. Their arms, even if they are no bigger than ours, may be more powerful. Size is not a measure for power. Or their arms may be equal, but the Hellhounds may be better versed in their use."
"They are small weapons," said the voice. "They are…"
"You want this to be a fair fight, don't you?"
"Why, yes," said the voice. "Yes, of course, I do. That is the purpose of it, that everything be even, so that in all fairness the two species may test their true and proper fitness for survival."
"But, you see," said Gary, "you can't be sure it's even. You never can be sure."
"Yes, I can," the voice told him and there was an insane ring of triumph in it. "I can make sure that it will be even. You will fight without weapons. None of you will have weapons. Just bare hands and teeth or whatever else you may have."
"Without…"
"That's it. Neither of you will have weapons."
"But they have guns," said Gary.
"Their guns won't work," the voice said. "And yours won't either. Your ship won't work and your guns won't work and you will have to fight."
Terrible laughter came from the voice, a gleeful laughter that verged on hysteria. Then the laughter ceased and they knew that they were alone, that the mind — or the presence — with the voice had withdrawn from them, that it had gone elsewhere. But that it still was watching.
"Gary," Caroline said softly.
"Yes," said Gary.
"That voice was insane," she said. "You caught it, didn't you. The overtones in it."
He nodded. "Delusion of grandeur. Playing at God. And the worst of it is, he can make it stick. We've stumbled into his yard. There isn't a thing we can do about it."
Across the mushroom forest, the entrance port of the Hellhound ship was swinging open. From it came two beings, tall and waddling things that glimmered in the feeble light of the great red sun.
"Reptilian," said Caroline and there was more disgust than horror in her voice.
The Hellhounds stepped down from the ship and stood uncertainly, their snouted faces turning toward the Earth ship, then swinging from side to side to take in the country.
"Caroline," said Gary, "I'll stay here and watch. You go in and get the guns. They are in the locker."
"They won't work," said Caroline.
"I want to be sure," Gary told her.
He heard her turn from his side and go, climbing up the ladder into the entrance lock.
The Hellhounds still stayed near their ship. They're confused, too, Gary told himself. They don't understand it any more than we do. They're nervous, trying to figure out just what to do.
But they wouldn't stay that way long, he knew.
Shadows flitted in the mushroom forest. Some of the natives, perhaps, sneaking around, keeping under cover, waiting to see what happened.
Caroline spoke from the lock. "The guns aren't any good. They won't work. Just like the voice said."
He nodded, still watching the Hellhounds. She came down the steps and stood beside him.
"We haven't got a chance against them," she said. "They are brutes, strong. They are trained for war. Killing is their business."
The Hellhounds were walking out from their ship, heading cautiously and slowly toward the Earth ship.
"Not too sure of themselves yet," said Gary. "Probably we don't look too formidable to them, but they aren't taking any chances… not yet. In a little while they'll figure that we're comparatively harmless and they'll make their play."
The Hellhounds were dog-trotting now, their scaly bodies glistening redly in the sun, their blunt feet lifting little puffs of dust as they ran along.
"What are we going to do, Gary?" Caroline asked.
"Fort up? You mean the ship."
Gary nodded. "We got to buy us some time. We have to get a thing or two figured out. As it is, we're caught flatfooted."
"What if they find a way of getting at us, even in the ship."
Gary shrugged. "That's a chance we take."
The Hellhounds separated, spreading out to left and right, angling out to come at the ship from two directions.
"You better get into the lock," said Gary. "Grab hold of the closing lever and be ready. When I come, I may have to move fast. There's no telling what these gents are fixing to uncork."
But even as he spoke, the two reptiles charged, angling in at a burst of speed that almost made them blur, a whirlwind of dust spiraling up behind them.
"In we go!" yelled Gary.
He heard Caroline's feet beating a tattoo on the steps.
For a split second he stood there, still facing the charging Hellhounds, then whirled and leaped up the steps, catapulting himself into the lock. He saw Caroline swinging the lever down. The ladder ran up into its seat and the lock slammed home. Through its closing edge he caught sight of the beasts as they swung about in a skidding turn, cheated of their kill.
Gary wiped his forehead. "Close thing," he said. "We almost waited too long. I had no idea they could move that fast."
Caroline nodded. "They figured that we wouldn't. They saw a chance to catch us at the very start. Remember how they waddled. That was to make us think that they couldn't move too fast."
The voice said to them: "This is no way to fight."
"It's common sense," said Gary. "Common sense and good strategy."
"What is strategy?"
"Fooling the enemy," said Gary. "Working things so that you get an advantage over him."
"He'll be waiting for you when you come out. And you'll have to come out after a while."
"We rest and take it easy," said Gary, "while he tears up the ground outside and wears himself to a frazzle. And we do some thinking."
All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories Page 45