The Randall Garrett Megapack

by Randall Garrett

  He kept moving—one man, alone, walking through the dark toward a superhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade.

  A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been very useful, but to synthesize such a drug would have required a greater knowledge of the biochemical processes of the Nipe than any human scientist had. The same applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics. There was no way of determining how much would be required to knock him out or how much would be required to kill. There were no easy answers.

  The only answer was a man called Stanton.

  Boots! Boots! Boots! Boots!

  Marchin’ up and down again!

  And there’s no discharge in the war!

  Stanton hummed the song in his mind. It seemed that he had been walking forever through the Kingdom of Hades, while around him twittered the ghosts of the dead.

  Poor shades, he thought, entertaining the fancy for a brief moment, will I be one of you in a short while?

  There was no answer, though the squeaking continued. The sound of his feet and the snarling chirping of the rats were the only sounds in the world.

  “Barhop to Barbell,” said a voice suddenly, sounding very loud in his ear, “this is where you have to make your change to the other tunnel.”

  “Barbell to Barhop. I know. I’ve been watching the markers.”

  “Just precaution, Barbell,” Captain Greer said. “How do you feel?”

  “I’d like to rest for a few minutes, frankly,” Stanton said.

  “Feeling tired?” There was just the barest tinge of alarm in the captain’s voice.

  “No,” Stanton said. “I just want to sit down and rest my feet for a few minutes.”

  There was a pause. Then the captain’s voice came again. “Okay, go ahead and relax, Barbell. Take ten. But be ready to move fast if I yell. These alarm systems are tricky things to hold. And don’t start moving again without letting me know.”

  “Right.”

  Stanton lifted himself out of the trench in which the tunnel ran and sat on the edge of the boarding platform. It wasn’t far now. There was only one more of the old entranceways between himself and the Nipe. This particular one was a transfer point, where two different parts of the tunnel network met and it was possible to transfer from one to another. It required going up a couple of flights of stairs to the next higher level, and changing to another tunnel going southward.

  There were other ways. This tunnel, the one he had been following for so long, branched a little farther south. If he took one branch, he would end up to the east of the Nipe; the other would bring him to a point on the west. From either, he would have to travel laterally through another set of tunnels, but neither route offered anything that this one didn’t have, and the most direct route would be best.

  “Barbell to Barhop,” he whispered, “I’m ready to go.”

  “It’s only been five minutes.”

  “I know. But I rest pretty fast, too. Let’s move out.”

  There were a few seconds of silence, then Captain Greer said: “All set, Barbell. Move out.”

  Stanton got to his feet and walked toward the stairway that led up to the next level. Minutes later, he was in another tunnel exactly similar to the first one, walking southward again.

  But now he was more careful. He watched the ground carefully, making sure that he didn’t step on anything that would snap or rattle. The Nipe was still quite a distance away—three-quarters of a mile, or so—but taking the chance that the beast couldn’t hear him might be deadly dangerous. The robot rat that he was following led him along a path that had been unobtrusively cleared of rubble by the robot rats over a period of months, but the robots weren’t the only rats in the place. He kept his eyes on the path.

  A while later, the voice in his ear said: “A hundred yards to go, Barbell.”

  “I know,” Stanton whispered. “He hasn’t moved?”

  “No. I’ll yell if he does. You don’t need to talk any more. His ears might pick up even that whisper.”

  He hasn’t moved, Stanton thought. Not for all this time. Not since I came down into his private domain. All this time, he has been sitting motionless—waiting. Wouldn’t it be funny if he were dead? If his heart had stopped, or something. Wouldn’t that be absolutely hilarious? Wouldn’t that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me.

  Ahead was the large area that had been one of the major junction points of the tunnel network. This was the area that the Nipe had taken over to build his home-away-from-home. Here were his workshops, his laboratories, his storerooms.

  And somewhere here was the Nipe.

  He came out of the tunnel into another passenger-loading area. Just to his left was another short stairway that led up to a slightly higher level. He moved slowly and quietly. He didn’t want to fight down here on the tracks, and he didn’t want to be caught just yet.

  Cautiously he lifted himself to the platform where long-gone passengers had once waited for long-gone trains.

  The quality of the illumination at the head of the stairs was different from that which he had been used to for the past three hours. He lifted off the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe’s lair to give him illumination to see by. Silently, he put the goggles on the floor of the platform. He wouldn’t need them again.

  Then, step by step, he walked up the concrete stairway.

  At the head of the stairs, he paused to get his bearings.

  The illumination was not bright, but it was enough to—

  “Barbell! He’s heard you! Watch it!”

  But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked off the communicator and threw it down the stairs behind him. He wanted no encumbrances now!

  He ran quickly out into the center of the big underground room, away from the open stairwell.

  And then, as fast as any express train that had ever moved through these subterranean ways, the Nipe came around a corner thirty feet away, his four violet eyes gleaming, his limbs rippling beneath his centipede-like body.

  From fifteen feet away, he launched himself through the air, his outstretched hands ready to kill.

  But Stanton’s marvelous neuromuscular system was already in action.

  At this stage of the game, it would be utter suicide to let the Nipe get in close. Stanton couldn’t fend off eight grasping hands with his own two. He leaped to one side, and the Nipe got his first surprise in ten years when Stanton’s fist slammed against the side of his snouted head, knocking him in the direction opposite that in which Stanton had moved.

  The Nipe landed, turned, and charged back toward the man. This time he reared up, using his two rearmost pairs of limbs for locomotion, while the two forward pairs were held out, ready to kill.

  He got surprise number two when Stanton’s fist landed on the tip of his rather sensitive snout, rocking his head back. His own hands met nothing but air, and by the time he had recovered from the blow, Stanton was well back, out of the way.

  He’s so small! Stanton thought wonderingly. Even when he reared up, the Nipe’s head was only three feet above the concrete floor.

  The Nipe came in again—more cautiously this time.

  Stanton punched again with a straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton’s knuckles merely grazed the side of the alien’s head, just below the lower right eye.

  At the same time, one of the Nipe’s hands swung in in a chopping right hook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with a gasp of pain.

  The Nipe didn’t use fists. He used his open hand, fingers together, like a judo fighter.

  The Nipe came forward, and, as Stanton danced back, the Nipe made a grab for his ankle, almost catching it. There were too many hands to watch!

  Stanton had two advantages: weight and reach. His arms were almost half again as long as the Nipe’s.

  Against that, the Nipe had all those hands; and with his low center of gravity and four-footed stance, it
would be hard to knock him down. On the other hand, if Stanton lost his footing, the fight would be over fast.

  Stanton lunged suddenly forward and planted a left in the Nipe’s right upper eye, then followed it with a right uppercut to the Nipe’s jaw as his head snapped back. The Nipe’s four hands cut inward from the sides like sword blades, but they found no target.

  Backing away, Stanton realized he had another advantage. The Nipe couldn’t throw a straight jab! His shoulders—if that’s what they should be called—were narrow and the upper arm bones weren’t articulated properly for such a blow. The alien could throw a mean hook, but he had to get in close to deliver it.

  On the other side of the coin was the fact that the Nipe knew plenty about human anatomy—from the bones out. Stanton’s knowledge of Nipe anatomy was almost totally superficial.

  He wished he knew if and where the Nipe had a solar plexus. He would like to punch something soft for a change.

  Instead, he tried for another eye. He danced in, jabbed, and danced out. The Nipe had ducked again, taking the blow on the side of his head.

  Then the Nipe came in low, at an angle, trying for the groin. For his troubles, he got a knee in the jaw that staggered him badly. One grasping hand clutched at Stanton’s right thigh and grabbed hard. Stanton swung his fist down like a pendulum and knocked the arm aside.

  But there was a slight limp in his movements as he back-pedaled away from the Nipe. That full-handed pinch had hurt like the very devil!

  Stanton was angry now, with the hot, controlled anger of a fighting man. He stepped in quickly and slammed two fast hard jabs into the point of the Nipe’s snout, jarring the monster backward. And this time it was the Nipe who scuttled back out of the way.

  Stanton moved in fast to press his advantage and landed a beaut on the Nipe’s lower left eye. Then he tried a body blow. It wasn’t too successful. The alien had an endoskeleton, but he also had a tough hide that was somewhat like thick, leathery chitin.

  Stanton pulled back, getting out of the way of the Nipe’s open-handed judo cuts.

  His fists were beginning to hurt, and his leg was paining him badly where the Nipe had clamped onto it. And his ribs were throbbing where the Nipe had landed that single blow.

  And then he realized that, so far, the Nipe had only landed that one blow!

  One punch and one pinch, Stanton thought with a touch of awe. The only other damage he’s inflicted has been to my knuckles!

  The Nipe charged in again, then he leaped suddenly and clawed for Stanton’s face with his first pair of hands. The second and third pairs chopped in toward the man’s body. The last pair propelled him off the floor.

  Stanton stepped back and drove in a long, hard right, hitting him just below the jaw, where his throat would have been if he had been human.

  The Nipe arced backward in a half somersault and landed flat on his back.

  Stanton backed up a little more, waiting, while the Nipe wiggled feebly for a moment. The Marquis of Queensberry should have lived to see this, he thought.

  The Nipe rolled over and crouched on all eight limbs. His violet eyes watched Stanton, but the man could read no expression on that inhuman face.

  “You did not kill.”

  For a moment, Stanton found it hard to believe that the hissing, guttural voice had come from the crouching monster.

  “You did not even try to kill.”

  “I have no wish to kill you,” Stanton said evenly.

  “I can see that. Do you… Are you…” He stopped, as if baffled. “There are not the proper words. Do you follow the Customs?”

  Stanton felt a surge of triumph. This was what George Yoritomo had guessed might happen!

  “If I must kill you,” Stanton said carefully, “I, myself, will do the honors. You will not go uneaten.”

  The Nipe sagged a little, relaxing all over. “I had hoped it was so. It was the only thinkable thing. I saw you on the television, and it was only thinkable that you came for me.”

  Stanton sighed inwardly. That part of Colonel Mannheim’s strategy had worked, too. The Nipe had seen all the publicity releases that had been so carefully tailored for him.

  “I knew you were out on the asteroids,” the Nipe went on. “But I had decided that you had come to kill. Since you did not, what are your thoughts, Stanley Martin?”

  “That we should help each other,” Stanton said.

  It was as simple as that.

  CHAPTER 23

  Stanton sat in his hotel room, smoking a cigarette, staring at the wall, and thinking.

  He was alone again. All the fuss and feathers and foofaraw were over. Dr. Farnsworth was in another room of the suite, making his plans for a complete physical examination of the Nipe. Dr. George Yoritomo was having the time of his life, holding a conversation with the Nipe, drawing the alien out, and getting him to talk about his own race and their history.

  And Stanley Martin was plotting the next phase of the capture—the cover-up.

  Stanton smiled a little. Colonel Mannheim had been a great one for planning, all right. Every little detail was taken care of. It had sometimes made his plans more complex than necessary, Stanton suspected. Mannheim had tended to try to account for every possible eventuality, and, after he had done that, he had set aside a few reserves here and there, just in case they might be useful if something unforeseen happened.

  All things considered, the Government had certainly done the right thing. And, in picking Mannheim, they had picked the right man.

  Stanton got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at the streets of Government City, eight floors below.

  What would those people down there think if they were told the true story of the Nipe? What would the average citizen say if he discovered that, at this very moment, the Nipe was being treated almost as an honored guest of the Government? More, what would he say if he suspected that the Nipe—the horrible, murderous, man-eating Nipe—could have been killed easily at any time during the past six years?

  Would it be possible for anyone to explain to the common average man that, in the long run, the knowledge possessed by the Nipe was tremendously more valuable to the race of Man than the lives of a few individuals?

  Could those people down there, and the others like them all over the world, be made to understand that, by his own lights, the Nipe had been behaving in the most civilized and gentlemanly fashion he knew? Could they ever be made to understand that, because of the tremendous wealth of priceless information stored in that alien brain, the Nipe’s life had to be preserved at any cost?

  Or would they scream for blood?

  Dr. Farnsworth assumed that Stanley Martin was going to spread a story about the Nipe’s death—a carefully concocted story about how Stanley Martin had found the beast and the police had killed it. There might, Farnsworth assumed, be a carefully made “corpse” for the mob to hiss at. Maybe Farnsworth was right. But Stanton had the feeling that Martin and George Yoritomo had something else up their collective sleeve.

  The phone hummed. Stanton walked over, thumbed the answer button, and watched George Yoritomo’s face take shape on the screen.

  “Bart! I have just had the privilege of viewing the tapes of your fight with our friend, the Nipe. Incredible! I watched the original on the screen, of course, but I had to run the tapes. I wanted to slow it down, so that I could see what actually happened. Magnificent, that right of yours! So!” He jabbed a fist out, shadowboxing with Stanton over the phone circuit.

  “Awww, it weren’t nuthin’, Maw,” Stanton drawled. “I jes’ sorta flang out a fist an’ he got in the way.”

  “Of course! But such a fling! Seriously, Bart, I want to run those tapes over again, and I want you to tell me, as best you can, just what went on in your mind at each stage of the fight. It will be most informative.”

  “You mean right now? I have an appointment—”

  Yoritomo waved a hand. “No, no. Later. Take your time. But I am honestly amazed that you won
so easily. I knew you were good, and I was certain you’d win, but I must admit that I honestly expected you to be injured.”

  Stanton looked down at his bandaged hands and felt the ache of his broken rib and the pain of the blue bruise on his thigh. In spite of the way it looked, he had actually been hurt worse than the Nipe had. That boy was tough!

  “The trouble was that he couldn’t adapt himself to fighting in a new way, just as you predicted,” he told Yoritomo. “He fought me, I assume, in just the way he would have fought another Nipe. And that didn’t work. I had the reach on him, and I could maneuver faster. Besides, he can’t throw a straight punch with those shoulders of his.”

  “It appeared to me,” Yoritomo said with a broad grin, “that you were fighting him as you would fight another human being. Eh?”

  Stanton grinned back. “I was, in a modified way. But I wasn’t confined to a pattern. Besides, I won—the Nipe didn’t. And that’s all that counts.”

  “It is, indeed. Well, I’ll let you know when I’m ready for your impressions of the fight. Probably tomorrow some time—say, in the afternoon?”

  “Fine.”

  George Yoritomo nodded his thanks, and his image collapsed and faded from the screen.

  Stanton walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at the horizon, not the street.

  George Yoritomo had called him “Bart”. It’s funny, Stanton thought, how habit can get the best of a man. Yoritomo had known the truth all along. And now he knew that his pupil—or patient—whichever it was—was aware of the truth. And still, he had called him “Bart”.

  And I still think of myself as Bart, he thought. I probably always will.

  And why not? Why shouldn’t he? Martin Stanton no longer existed—in a sense, he had never existed. And in actual fact, he had never had much of a real existence. He was only a bad dream. He had always been a bad dream. And now that the dream was over, only “Bart” was real.