Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  And all his careful disguise had proved useless. They weren't fooled--and this business of dodging was wearing thin. By now, they'd know his habits!

  He drew out a coin, flipping it. It came up heads. He frowned, but there was nothing else to do. He moved down the ramp toward the subway that would carry him back to Sixty-sixth and Broadway. He was probably walking into their trap by now, but the coin was right. He had to free Ellen. If they got him, it couldn't be much worse for him.

  Then he shuddered. He couldn't know whether it would be worse for his country, or even his world. He couldn't really know anything.

  V

  It was growing dark as he walked down Sixty-sixth, eyeing every man suspiciously, and knowing his suspicion would do no good. He was still trying to think, though he knew his thoughts were as useless as his suspicions.

  If he could remember! His mind came up sharply against leaving Irma and taking out the mail; then it went abruptly blank. What had been in the letter? It had been from a professor--it might have been from Professor Meinzer. That would tie in neatly. But Meinzer was dead, and he couldn't remember. They'd stripped him of his memory. How? Why? Were they trying to prevent his giving information to others--or were they trying to get something from him? And what could he know?

  He'd dabbled with ESP mathematically, but now he found himself wondering if it could exist. Could they be tracking him by some natural or mechanical ability to read his mind? He strained his own mind to find a whisper of foreign thought, outside his brain. He drew a blank, of course, as he'd expected.

  There were no answers. They could play with him, like a cat juggling a mouse, letting him almost learn something--and then, always, they arrived just in time to prevent his success!

  Put a rat in a maze where it can't learn the path, and it goes insane. But what good would he be to anyone if they drove him insane? And why bother with all that when they could silence him as well by killing him?

  He'd forgotten to watch, and was surprised to find his feet on the steps of the apartment building. He jerked back, and bumped into someone.

  "Sorry." The words came from behind him, automatically, and he turned to see the slim young man stepping aside. For a second, their eyes met squarely. A row of teeth flashed in a brief smile as the man started around him. "Guess I was thinking. Should have watched where I was going."

  The man went on down the street, and turned in at the restaurant entrance.

  * * * * *

  Hawkes lifted a foot that weighed a ton and slowly closed his mouth. He'd been facing away from the street light--and his face might have been hard to see. Yet....

  It didn't fit. The young man must have known him!

  He blanked it from his mind. He couldn't believe that it was anything but lack of recognition. It was hard to see here, where the other was facing the light, and he was in the shadow.

  But it still meant that they were waiting, nearby.

  He dashed up the stairs, expecting a rush at both landings. The normal sounds of the apartment house went on. He listened at his door, but he could hear nothing except the same drip he had heard before. Slowly, he inserted the key and went in. The small bulb was still on. He crept along, trying to move silently on floors that insisted on creaking. The living room was as he had left it, and he caught sight of Ellen on the bed.

  He spotted a mirror over one of the dressers, and used that to study more of the bedroom. It seemed as empty as before.

  Finally, he stepped inside. There was no one there but Ellen, and she seemed to be asleep, doubled up in a position that might have made the unkind cords easier to stand. She moaned slightly as he untied her gently, but didn't awaken. Her breathing was regular, and her breath had the odd muskiness of someone who has slept for several hours.

  He found a bottle of liquor on the shelf where she had put it, and rinsed out a couple of glasses. It was good liquor--good enough to take without mixers, as they'd have to do.

  She came awake when he called her, rubbing her eyes and then her wrists, where the cords had left a mark. But she was smiling. "Hi, Will. I knew you'd come back. Hey, not on an empty stomach."

  "You need it--and so do I," he told her. "Bottoms up!"

  They were big glasses. She gasped over it, but she downed it, then reached for the water he had brought as a chaser. She swallowed, and blinked tears out of her eyes. "I don't usually drink."

  He made no comment, but refilled the glass. The liquor had less effect on him than he'd expected, though he'd always had a good head for it. It took some of the edge off his worrying, though.

  She giggled suddenly, and he frowned. She couldn't take much on an empty stomach, it seemed. Then he shrugged. Let her drink--maybe if he could get her drunk, he could find something out; at least he might learn whether the slim young man had been there during the day.

  "Like when you found your dad's cider," she said, and giggled again. "You got awful--hp!--awful drunk, Willy, din't you? You were--so--funny!"

  She was trying to be careful with her words already. She slid around, doing things that brought more honestly beautiful thigh into the light than Will had seen in ten years. He reached to adjust her dress, and she giggled again, sliding against him.

  "You kissed me then, Willy. Remember? Bet you don' remember!"

  * * * * *

  He began it coldly, deliberately. If he could work on her emotions enough, he'd crack the wall of evasion and lies, somehow. He reached for her, calculating what would arouse her without causing any shock to bring her back to her senses.

  He hadn't counted on the quickness of her reponse, nor the complete acceptance of his right with which she took it. The liquor had reduced her to the stage of a little girl who competely trusted her companion. She seemed as unconscious of her body as a child might be.

  Instead of protesting, she reached down and began unfastening the buttons on her dress. "'Syour turn now, Willy. Put you to bed last night, you put me to bed t'-night. Then you gotta kiss me good-night. Nighty-night, nighty-night."

  He felt like a heel at first. And then he began to feel like a man--any man around a beautiful girl half-undressed, and getting more so.

  She slipped under the sheets, tossing out the last of her clothing, and crooning happily. "Gotta kiss me good-night, Willy. Nighty-night!"

  He yanked the pull-cord savagely, cutting off the light, and fumbling in the darkness. After what seemed hours of awkwardness, he slid in beside her, feeling her arms go around him in complete acceptance. To hell with them! They could chase him some other time!

  He pulled her to him, while his blood beat in his neck, and he began to lose any conscious volition of what he was doing. He drew her tighter, while a great clot of emotion set fire to his brain. He--

  Cold beyond anything he had known bit at him. A tremendous pressure within him seemed about to force him to explode outwards, and the shock jerked him into full awareness.

  In a split second, he swung his eyes from the great, jagged landscape on which he stood, up an impossible range of mountains that were all harsh blacks and cold whites, to a cold black sky in which the stars were blazing specks without a flicker. He saw the Earth above him, bigger than the moon had ever been, and with the dim outlines of continents showing through the soft stuff that must be clouds.

  He was on the moon! And naked, without air!

  * * * * *

  Almost at once, something clapped down around him, and the pressure let up, while heat seemed to leap into the rocks under his feet and make them comfortable. He gulped down the air that somehow seemed to stay close to him, instead of evaporating into the vacuum.

  The moon! Now they had him!

  Fear blazed in him--a stark, unreasoning terror that was like a physical thing. Run--but you can't run! They've got you! You can't escape!

  The light blotted out, and then snapped on, more strongly. He stood in the kitchen of the cold-water apartment, still naked, with bits of chalky dust between his toes.

  He had
no time for reason. His brain seemed to have jumped over a hurdle and come down in a puddle beyond, foul with the stuff it had found there. He heard Ellen shriek, and then cry out again.

  He lurched into the bedroom, while she let out another gurgling cry as the light showed him in the doorway. She came out of the bed, leaping for him, crying his name--cold sober! But he wanted none of her act. He shook her off.

  "You damned alien! You filthy monster, disguised as a girl! When you get in a spot where I'm sure to find you out, you have a cute trick up your sleeve--but it won't work. You can send me back there--back to the rest of your kind, from wherever they came. But you won't fool me into thinking you're human again. You can't pass one test!"

  He wouldn't be fooled into thinking it was a dream, either. He'd been physically on the moon--the very dust on his feet proved that. They might drive him insane, but they wouldn't do it that way.

  She was crying now, gasping out words that he only half heard. "I'm human, Will. Oh, I'm human!"

  "Then prove it! Come here, and prove it!"

  She cried again at that, as he pulled her down with him. But slowly her crying quieted.

  He awoke slowly, with sun-light streaming in the windows, and reached for her. He owed her more apologies than one, though he wasn't too sorry about most of it. She had proven herself human. And virginally so. Her complete surrender still left something warm inside him, where only the madness and the fear had been before.

  Then he jerked upright, as he found her gone. He cursed himself for a fool, and listened for a stir and bustle from the kitchen, but there was none.

  * * * * *

  He was getting used to dressing with a feeling of dire pressure driving him on. He finished rapidly, and yanked the bedroom door open, just as he heard the outer lock click. She was coming in with a bottle of cream and a package of sausage as he reached the kitchen, and there was a smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.

  And this time, he knew she wouldn't have betrayed him. Yet the fear increased in him. He darted past her as she leaned to kiss him, heading for the door. The room seemed to quiver. The hall was filled with a faint golden haze!

  He had to get out! He jerked backwards, caught her hand, and pulled her. "Ellen! We've got to get out!"

  It was a half-articulate shout, and she resisted, but he began dragging her after him. Something fumbled at the lock, and a key slipped into it. The door opened.

  Hawkes didn't know what kind of an alien he expected. He knew that men could never have thrown him to the moon and back, not in another thousand years. It had to be a monster.

  But he should have known that monsters here came in human form--they'd have to.

  The fear rose to a shriek in his brain, and then died down as the human form entered. It was too normal--too familiar. A medium-sized man, dressed in a suit as inconspicuous as his own, wearing a silly little mustache that no outland monster should ever wear.

  The creature jumped in, slamming the door behind it. "Stay there! You can't risk it outside now! We've got to--"

  Hawkes hit the figure with his shoulder, in the best football fashion he could muster. It could try--but it couldn't keep him and Ellen here to be burned in their heat-ray bath, or treated to whatever alien torture they had in mind. He felt his shoulder hit. And he knew he'd missed. It was an arm that he struck against, and the arm brought him upright, while a second arm drew back and came forward with a savage right to his jaw.

  He went out with a dull plopping sound in his brain. Then, slowly, an ache came out of the blackness, and the beginning of sound. He was fighting out of the unconsciousness, fighting against time and the monster who'd try to steal Ellen.

  But Ellen's hands were on his head, and an ice-cold towel was wet against his forehead. "Will! Will!"

  * * * * *

  He groaned and sat up. The other--alien or human--was gone.

  "Where--?" he began.

  She was trying to help him to his feet, and he got up groggily, with his head beginning to clear.

  "He just ran out, Will." Ellen was crying, this time almost silently, with the words coming out between shakes of her shoulders. "Will, we've got to get out. We've got to. The men are coming for you. They'll be here any minute. And it's wrong--it won't work! Oh, Will, hurry!"

  "Men? Men are coming?" He'd almost forgotten that it could be men who were after him.

  "I called them, Will. I thought I had to. But it won't work. Will, do anything you like, but get out! They are fools. They...."

  He opened the door and peered out the doorway into the hall, which seemed quiet. He'd been a fool again. He'd trusted her for some reason, as if a body and loyalty had to go together. They'd been smart, picking a virgin for the job. It must have cost them plenty, unless they'd twisted her mind somehow. Maybe they could do it.

  But he knew that whatever they looked like, it couldn't be real men who'd meet him out there.

  "Why?" he asked, and was surprised at the flatness of his voice.

  She shook her head. "Because I'm a fool, Will. Because I thought they could help you--until he came! And because I'm still in love with you, even if you'd forgotten me."

  But the fear inside him was drowning out her words, and the golden haze was faint in the air again.

  "Okay," he said finally. "Okay, don't burn her, too, now that she's done your dirty work. I'm coming."

  The haze disappeared slowly, and he started down the stairs, still holding her hand.

  VI

  There were men with guns in the street. He'd heard two shots as he came down the stairs, and had shoved Ellen behind him. But it was silent now. People with dazed, frightened faces were still darting into the houses, leaving the street to the men with the guns.

  Hawkes marched forward grimly, perversely stripped of fear, even though he was sure some of the men out there were monsters and others were their dupes. He tapped one of the men on the shoulder.

  "Okay, here I am. The girl goes free!"

  The man spun around as if mounted on a ball bearing and pulled by strings. The gun fell from his hands. His emotion-taut face loosened suddenly, seemed to run like melted wax, and congealed again in an expression of utter idiocy. He gargled frothily, and then screamed--high and shrill, like a tortured woman.

  Suddenly he was a lunging maniac, tearing up the street.

  Now the others were running--some toward cars, and some toward the corners, running flat and desperately on the flat of their feet, without any spring to their motions.

  Hawkes jerked his eyes down toward the big gas-storage tanks where most of them had been, and the glow that had been in the corner of his vision was gone. Men seemed to be coming out of a trance. They were breaking away, forgetting about their guns and fleeing.

  Three men alone were left.

  Hawkes ducked back into the hall of the apartment, dragging Ellen with him. The glass of the door was somewhat dirty, but it made a dim mirror. He could see the slim young man and two others still there. The two men darted into a waiting car, and the leader turned up the street, running smoothly toward the apartment house.

  Hawkes could make no sense of it--unless it was another of the seeming tricks designed to drive him out of his mind. He had decided he was one of the rats in the maze that didn't go crazy--the pressure could drive him somewhat mad, but it couldn't keep him that way.

  He didn't wait to see what had happened, or whether the sirens that were sounding now were reinforcements for the men with guns or the police. He didn't bother with the slim young man any more. They'd apparently used their dupes to frighten out the people, and then had scared off the dupes--the poor humans who didn't know what it was all about. Now two of the three were gone, and the third monster was coming for him.

  He'd escaped before. But sooner or later, they'd catch him--once they were sure he wouldn't be driven insane.

  Or was this the beginning of insanity--a delusion of power, a feeling that he could escape? He could never know, if it was. He had to a
ssume that he was sane.

  * * * * *

  He crouched back behind the stairs, while the young man in the gray tweeds dashed up them. Then he headed out into the street. The siren was near now--and tardily, he realized that the siren might herald the coming of the real monsters. It was as easy to look like a cop as any other human!

  He jerked open the door of the nearest car, pulled Ellen in, and kicked the motor to life. He gunned away from the curb, tossed it into second, and twisted around the corner, straight toward the siren that was nearest. At the last minute, he jerked to the side of the street, to let the police car shoot by. "Never run from a tiger--run toward it. It sometimes works, and it's no worse."

  The car was a big one, and the motor purred smoothly. He glanced down at the dash, and frowned. There was no key in the switch. For a second, he stared at it, and then grinned. He'd picked a monster's car, apparently--they'd done a neat job of duplicating, but they didn't need all the safeguards that humans used, and the switch had obviously been a dummy.

  He looked at the buttons on the dash, wondering which would make it levitate. But he had no desire to test it, nor to stay in an auto which could probably be traced so easily.

  He braked to a halt outside the subway and led Ellen down.

  "We're down to the last hole," he told her as the train pulled out of the station. "How much money do you have?"

  She shook her head, and held up her arm. "I left it, Will."

  They were beyond the last hole, then. He realized now that as long as they'd been in a crowded apartment house, filled with other humans, it had proved a tough nut to crack for the aliens. But on the move....

  "Maybe we have a chance," he told her. "If humans were after me, it'd be tough--but these things have to avoid the police."

  She looked at him, misery on her face. "There are no aliens, Will. Those men you saw were F. B. I. men. That's where I reported you."

  "You...."

  He stared at her, but she was serious.

  "But there was nothing about me in the papers, Ellen."

  She pointed across the aisle. Spread over two columns on the front page, an older picture of him showed plainly. And even at the distance, the heading was boldly legible.