Adventures in Time and Space

by Raymond J Healy

  Leigh felt genuinely dizzy. The room swayed; and he thought sickly: If he could only faint.

  But he recognized dismally that that was beyond the power of his tough body. It was sheer mental dismay that made his nerves so shivery. And even that faded like fog in strong sunlight, as he walked to the recorder. For the first time in his life, he hated the resilience of strength that made his voice steady as a rock, as, after setting the machine, he said:

  “This is William Leigh. Give me all the dope you’ve got on Professor Garret Ungarn.”

  There was a pause, during which he thought hopelessly: “It wasn’t as if he was giving information not otherwise accessible. Only ‌—‌ “

  There was a click in the machine; then a brisk voice: “You’ve got it. Sign the form.”

  Leigh signed, and watched the signature dissolve into the machine. It was then, as he was straightening, that the woman said:

  “Shall I read it here, Jeel, or shall we take the machine along?”

  That was mind-wrecking. Like a man possessed, Leigh whirled; and then, very carefully, he sat down on the bed.

  The Dreegh, Jeel, was leaning idly against the jamb of the bathroom door, a dark, malignantly handsome man, with a faint, unpleasant smile on his ups. Behind him ‌—‌ incredibly, behind him, through the open bathroom door was, not the gleaming bath, but another door; and beyond that door still another door, and beyond that ‌—‌ The control room of the Dreegh spaceship!

  There it was, exactly as he had seen it in the solid ground under Constantine’s. He had the same partial view of the sumptuous cot, the imposing section of instrument board, the tastefully padded floor ‌—‌ In his bathroom!

  The insane thought came to Leigh: “Oh, yes, I keep my spaceship in my bathroom and ‌—‌ “ It was the Dreegh’s voice that drew his brain from its dizzy contemplation; the Dreegh saying:

  “I think we’d better leave. I’m having difficulty holding the ship on the alternation of spacetime planes. Bring the man and the machine and ‌—‌ “

  Leigh didn’t hear the last word. He jerked his mind all the way out of the ‌—‌ bathroom. “You’re ‌—‌ taking ‌—‌ me?”

  “Why, of course.” It was the woman who spoke. “You’ve been promised to me, and, besides, we’ll need your help in finding Ungam’s meteorite.”

  Leigh sat very still. The unnatural thought came: He was glad that he had in the past proven to himself that he was not a coward.

  For here was certainty of death.

  He saw after a moment that the rain was still beating against the glass, great, sparkling drops that washed murkily down the broad panes. And he saw that the night was dark.

  Dark night, dark rain, dark destiny ‌—‌ they fitted his dark, grim thoughts. With an effort he forced his body, his mind, into greater stiffness. Automatically, he shifted his position, so that the weight of muscles would draw a tight band over the hollowness that he felt in his stomach. When at last he faced his alien captors again, Reporter Leigh was cold with acceptance of his fate ‌—‌ and prepared to fight for his life.

  “I can’t think of a single reason,” he said, “why I should go with you. And if you think I’m going to help you destroy the Observer, you’re crazy.”

  The woman said matter-of-factly: “There was a passing reference in your psychograph to a Mrs. Henry Leigh, who lives in a village called Relton, on the Pacific coast. We could be there in half an hour, your mother and her home destroyed within a minute after that. Or, perhaps, we could add her blood to our reserves.”

  “She would be too old,” the man said in a chill tone. “We do not want the blood of old people.”

  It was the icy objection that brought horror to Leigh. He had a brief, terrible picture of a silent, immensely swift ship sweeping out of the Eastern night, over the peaceful hamlet; and then unearthly energies would reach down in a blaze of fury.

  One second of slashing fire, and the ship would sweep on over the long, dark waters to the west.

  The deadly picture faded. The woman was saying, gently:

  “Jeel and I have evolved an interesting little system of interviewing human beings of the lower order. For some reason, he frightens people merely by his presence. Similarly, people develop an unnatural fear of me when they see me clearly in a strong light. So we have always tried to arrange our meetings with human beings with me sitting in semidarkness and Jeel very much in the background. It has proved very effective.”

  She stood up, a tall, lithely built, shadowed figure in a rather tight-fitting skirt and a dark blouse. She finished: “But now, shall we go? You bring the machine, Mr. Leigh.”

  “I’ll take it,” said the Dreegh.

  Leigh glanced sharply at the lean, sinewed face of the terrible man, startled at the instant, accurate suspicion of the desperate intention that had formed in his mind.

  The Dreegh loomed over the small machine, where it stood on a corner desk. “How does it work?” he asked almost mildly.

  Trembling, Leigh stepped forward. There was still a chance that he could manage this without additional danger to anyone. Not that it would be more than a vexation, unless ‌—‌ as their suggestion about finding the Ungarn meteorite indicated ‌—‌ they headed straight out to space. Then, why,. it might actually cause real delay. He began swiftly:

  “Press the key marked ‘Titles,’ and the machine will-type all the main headings.”

  “That sounds reasonable.” The long, grim-faced head nodded. The Dreegh reached forward, pressed the button. The recorder hummed softly, and a section of it lit up, showing typed lines under a transparent covering. There were several headings.

  “ ‌—‌ ‘His Meteorite Home,’ ” the Dreegh read. “That’s what I want. What is the next step?”

  “Press the key marked ‘Subheads.’ ”

  Leigh was suddenly shaky. He groaned inwardly. Was it possible this creature-man was going to obtain the information he wanted? Certainly, such a tremendous intelligence would not easily be led away from logical sequence.

  He forced himself to grimness. He’d have to take a chance.

  “The subhead I desire,” said the Dreegh, “is marked ‘Location.’ And there is a number, one, in front of it. What next?”

  “Press Key No. 1,” Leigh said, “then press the key lettered ‘General Release.’

  The moment he had spoken, he grew taut. If this worked ‌—‌ and it should. There was no reason why it shouldn’t.

  Key No. 1 would impart all the information under that heading. And surely the man would not want more until later. After all, this was only a test. They were in a hurry.

  And later, when the Dreegh discovered that the “General Release” key had dissolved all the other information ‌—‌ it would be too late.

  The thought dimmed. Leigh started. The Dreegh was staring at him with a bleak sardonicism. The man said:

  “Your voice has been like an organ; each word uttered full of subtle shadings that mean much to the sensitive ear. Accordingly” ‌—‌ a steely, ferocious smile twisted that lean and deadly face ‌—‌ “I shall press Key No. 1. But not ‘General Release.’ And as soon as I’ve examined the little story on the recorder, I shall attend to you for that attempted trick. The sentence is ‌—‌ death.”

  “Jeel!”

  “Death!” reiterated the man flatly. And the woman was silent.

  There was silence, then, except for the subdued humming of the recorder. Leigh’s mind was almost without thought. He felt flesh-less, a strange, disembodied soul; and only gradually did a curious realization grow that he was waiting here on the brink of a night darker than the black wastes of space from which these monster humans had come.

  Consciousness came of kinship with the black rain that poured with such solid, noiseless power against the glinting panes. For soon, he would be part of the inorganic darkness ‌—‌ a shadowed figure sprawling sightlessly in this dim room.

  His aimless gaze returned to the rec
order machine, and to the grim man who stood so thoughtfully, staring down at the words it was unfolding.

  His thought quickened. His life, that had been pressed so shockingly out of his system by the sentence of death, quivered forth. He straightened, physically and mentally. And, suddenly, there was purpose in him.

  If death was inescapable, at least he could try again, somehow, to knock down that “General Release” key. He stared at the key, measuring the distance; and the gray thought came: What incredible irony that he should die, that he should waste his effort, to prevent the Dreeghs from having this minute information that was available from ten thousand sources. And yet ‌—‌ The purpose remained. Three feet, he thought carefully, perhaps four. If he should fling himself toward it, how could even a Dreegh prevent the dead weight of his body and his extended fingers from accomplishing such a simple, straightforward mission?

  After all, his sudden action had once before frustrated the Dreeghs, permitting the Ungarn girl ‌—‌ in spite of her denials ‌—‌ to get her gun into position for firing. And ‌—‌ He grew rigid as he saw that the Dreegh was turning away from the machine. The man pursed his lips, but it was the woman, Merla, who spoke from where she stood in the gloom:

  “Well?”

  The man frowned. “The exact location is nowhere on record. Apparently, there has been no development of meteorites in this system. I suspected as much. After all, space travel has only existed a hundred years; and the new planets and the moons of Jupiter have absorbed all the energies of exploring, exploiting man.”

  “I could have told you that,” said Leigh.

  If he could move a little to one side of the recorder, so that the Dreegh would have to do more than simply put his arm out ‌—‌ The man was saying: “There is, however, a reference to some man who transports food and merchandise from the moon Europa to the Ungarns. We will … er … persuade this man to show us the way.”

  “One of these days,” said Leigh, “you’re going to discover that all human beings cannot be persuaded. What pressure are you going to put on this chap? Suppose he hasn’t got a mother.”

  “He has ‌—‌ life!” said the woman softly.

  “One look at you,” Leigh snapped, “and he’d know that he’d lose that, anyway.”

  As he spoke, he stepped with enormous casualness to the left, one short step. He had a violent impulse to say something, anything to cover the action. But his voice had betrayed him once. And actually it might already have done so again. The cold face of the man was almost too enigmatic.

  “We could,” said the woman, “use William Leigh to persuade him.”

  The words were softly spoken, but they shocked Leigh to his bones. For they offered a distorted hope. And that shattered his will to action. His purpose faded into remoteness. Almost grimly, he fought to draw that hard determination back into his consciousness. He concentrated his gaze on the recorder machine, but the woman was speaking again; and his mind wouldn’t hold anything except the urgent meaning of her words:

  “He is too valuable a slave to destroy. We can always take his blood and energy, but now we must send him to Europa, there to find the freighter pilot of the Ungarns, and actually accompany him to the Ungarn meteorite. If he could investigate the interior, our attack might conceivably be simplified, and there is just a possibility that there might be new weapons, of which we should be informed. We must not underestimate the science of the great Galactics.

  “Naturally, before we allowed Leigh his freedom, we would do a little tampering with his mind, and so blot out from his conscious mind all that has happened in this hotel room.

  “The identification of Professor Ungarn as the Galactic Observer we would make plausible for Leigh by a little rewriting of his psychograph report; and tomorrow he will waken in his bed with a new purpose, based on some simple human impulse such as love of the ‘girl.”

  The very fact that the Dreegh, Jeel, was allowing her to go on, brought the first, faint color to Leigh’s cheeks, a thin flush at the enormous series of betrayals she was so passionately expecting of him. Nevertheless, so weak was his resistance to the idea of continued life, that he could only snap:

  “If you think I’m going to fall in love with a dame who’s got twice my I.Q., you’re ‌—‌ “

  The woman cut him off. “Shut up, you fool! Can’t you see I’ve saved your life?”

  The man was cold, ice-cold. “Yes, we shall use him, not because he is essential, but because we have time to search for easier victories. The first members of the Dreegh tribe will not arrive for a month and a half, and it will take Mr. Leigh a month of that to get to the moon, Europa, by one of Earth’s primitive passenger liners. Fortunately, the nearest Galactic military base is well over three months distant ‌—‌ by Galactic ship speeds.

  “Finally” ‌—‌ with a disconcerting, tigerish swiftness, the Dreegh whirled full upon Leigh, eyes that were like pools of black fire measured his own startled stare ‌—‌ “finally, as a notable reminder to your subconscious of the error of trickery, and as complete punishment for past and ‌—‌ intended ‌—‌ -offenses, this!

  Despairingly, Leigh twisted away from the metal that glowed at him. His muscles tried horribly to carry out the purpose that had been working to a crisis inside him. He lunged for the recorder ‌—‌ but something caught his body. Something ‌—‌ not physical. But the very pain seemed mortal.

  There was no visible flame of energy, only that glow at the metal source. But his nerves writhed; enormous forces contorted his throat muscles, froze the scream that quivered there, hideously.

  His whole being welcomed the blackness that came mercifully to blot out the hellish pain.

  6

  On the third day, Europa began to give up some of the sky to the vast mass of Jupiter behind it. The engines that so imperfectly transformed magnetic attraction to a halfhearted repulsion functioned more and more smoothly as the infinite complication of pull and counterpull yielded to distance.

  The old, slow, small freighter scurried on into the immense, enveloping night; and the days dragged into weeks, the weeks crawled their drab course toward the full month.

  On the thirty-seventh day, the sense of slowing up was so distinct that Leigh crept dully out of his bunk, and croaked:

  “How much farther?”

  He was aware of the stolid-faced space trucker grinning at him. The man’s name was Hanardy, and he said now matter-of-factly:

  “We’re just pulling in. See that spot of light over to the left? It’s moving this way.”

  He ended with a rough sympathy. “Been a tough trip, eh? Tougher’n you figgered when you offered to write up my little route for your big syndicate.”

  Leigh scarcely heard. He was clawing at the porthole, straining to penetrate the blackness. At first his eyes kept blinking on him, and nothing came. Stars were out there, but it was long seconds before his bleary gaze made out moving lights. He counted them with sluggish puzzlement:

  “One, two, three ‌—‌ seven ‌—‌ “ he counted. “And all traveling together.”

  “What’s that?” Hanardy bent beside him. “Seven?”

  There was a brief silence between them, as the lights grew visibly dim with distance, and winked out.

  “Too bad,” Leigh ventured, “that Jupiter’s behind us. They mightn’t fade out like that in silhouette. Which one was Ungarn’s meteorite?”

  With a shock, he grew aware that Hanardy was standing. The man’s heavy face was dark with frown. Hanardy said slowly:

  “Those were ships. I never saw ships go so fast before. They were out of sight in less than a minute.”

  The frown faded from his stolid face. He shrugged. “Some of those new police ships, I guess. And we must have seen them from a funny angle for them to disappear so fast.”

  Leigh half sat, half knelt, frozen into immobility. And after that one swift glance at the pilot’s rough face, he averted his own. For a moment, the black fear was in him th
at his wild thoughts would blaze from his eyes.

  Dreeghs! Two and a half months had wound their appallingly slow course since the murders. More than a month to get from Earth to Europa, and now this miserable, lonely journey with Hanardy, the man who trucked for the Ungarns.

  Every day of that time, he had known with an inner certainty that none of this incredible business had gone backward. That it could only have assumed a hidden, more dangerous form. The one fortunate reality in the whole mad affair was that he had wakened on the morning after the mechanical psychologist test from a dreamless sleep; and there in the psychograph report was the identification of Ungarn as the Observer, and the statement, borne out by an all too familiar emotional tension, that he was in love with the girl.

  Now this! His mind flared. Dreeghs in seven ships. That meant the first had been reinforced by ‌—‌ many. And perhaps the seven were only a reconnaissance group, withdrawing at Hanardy’s approach.

  Or perhaps those fantastic murderers had already attacked the Observer’s base. Perhaps the girl ‌—‌ He fought the desperate thought out of his consciousness, and watched, frowning, as the Ungam meteorite made a dark, glinting path in the blackness to one side. The two objects, the ship and the bleak, rough-shaped mass of metallic stone drew together in the night, the ship slightly behind.

  A great steel door slid open in the rock. Skillfully, the ship glided into the chasm. There was a noisy clicking. Hanardy came out of the control room, his face dark with puzzlement.

  “Those damn ships are out there again,” he said. “I’ve closed the big steel locks, but I’d better tell the professor and ‌—‌ “

  Crash! The world jiggled. The floor came up and hit Leigh a violent blow. He lay there, cold in spite of the thoughts that burned at fire heat in his mind:

  For some reason, the vampires had waited until the freighter was inside. Then instantly, ferociously, attacked.

  In packs!

  “Hanardy!” A vibrant girl’s voice blared from one of the loudspeakers.