“What do you suppose that thing is?” Glint asked. Badger said, “It's some critter indigenous to this planet, I think. Boys, I'll bet we're the first ones ever to look at this thing.”
“G'wan!” Meg said. “One of the Lancet people might have seen it first.”
“No way to prove that,” Badger said. “But this thing could be rare, and never take to hanging around the places where humans live and work. Like the bobcat and the wolverine on Earth. If there's animals like that on Earth, why not here?”
“Here, fella,” Meg called. “Why'ncha come over here?”
The piglike thing lifted its little triangular ears and stared at them with bulbous blue eyes. It lifted a forepaw and pawed the ground. Then it trotted over to Meg.
“Hey, ain't that nice?” said Meg. She reached over and scratched the creature above its ears. It made a high-pitched grunting sound that had about it a tone of approval. No mistaking that sound for a cry of pain.
The others crowded around. “Cute, ain't it?” said Glint, who had raised hogs in Arkansas.
Meg said, “I wonder why it came to us?”
“Can't tell about alien life-forms,” Badger said. “I wonder if we should take this fellow along with us. Back on Earth sell him to a circus, make a lot of money off'n him. I wonder what he eats?”
“I'm sure he'd tell us if he could,” Meg said, scratching the creature's back. “Where do you come from, fellow?”
The creature cocked its head at them as if it were trying to understand. It seemed to be listening to something. Or for something. It was hard to tell which.
Badger listened, too. And after a few moments he heard a high-pitched buzzing sound, like locusts, only heavier somehow, meaner. As he listened the sound changed. It turned into a heavy thumping, as if a thousand bass drums were advancing up the ridge. Then Badger realized that the two noises were going on simultaneously. He wondered what it could be, and suddenly he didn't want to know.
“Lock and load!” he shouted to the men. “I don't like the sound of this!”
The creatures came over the top of the little hill, a couple dozen of them, though of course that was only the first wave. They were different from the creatures they had seen before. They were the size of large dogs, and their heads were big and shaped like raptor birds. They had no feathers, however, just two tails apiece, and those tails appeared to be barbed. Their mouths were filled with long sharp teeth — that seemed to be a rule here on this planet — and they were making a buzzing sound as they came.
Behind them came another group of creatures, a little smaller than the others, about the size and general shape of woodchucks, and colored a lime green with bluish features. They all had mustaches, like walruses. They made a booming sound as they walked, but Badger couldn't see how they produced it. They came on, all of them, and they didn't look friendly.
“Hit 'em with it!” Red shouted, and he and his three buddies began to pour in fire. They had the caseless carbines going so fast that the firing mechanisms began to grow hot, but they ignored the pain and kept on firing.
One thing was plain from the first: these creatures were hard to hit. They weren't coming on fast, but their dodging and swerving made them difficult targets. Nevertheless, Red scored a hit, and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the woodchuck blow up like an overinflated beach ball.
Meg scored, and then Glint, who shouted in triumph.
Then one of the raptor-headed creatures got under the one of his fire and grabbed his foot. It bit, twisted.
Glint's foot came off at the ankle. He stared at the stump, too surprised to feel pain yet, and tried to take a step away. But he toppled over and they were on him, a dozen of them, biting and tearing. One longnecked creature buried his head in Glint's belly. Glint screamed and tried to tear it away, but the bird-thing was stronger. It got its head deep inside Glint's belly, and then pulled the rest of itself in. Lying on the ground, Glint went into convulsions.
Badger dropped his empty carbine and picked up a plasma rifle. He turned it to full fire and sprayed the area. He caught Meg, out on the periphery, with his blast and saw her wither and collapse before he could turn it off her.
“Damn it, sorry, Meg!” he shouted. It was just the sort of unfortunate thing that happens sometimes in combat.
Meanwhile, Min Dwin, firing from the hip, was seized from behind by an alien. It caught her by her long hair, and she turned, still firing, and put four rounds into the creature's head, had the satisfaction of seeing it blow apart. But it still held her hair in its dying claw, and from its ruined head a gout of acid sprayed, catching her full in the face.
“My eyes!” she screamed, and fell to the ground, clawing at her face. She writhed for a moment, then lay still. The acid had penetrated to her brain.
Andy Groggins tried to turn his carbine to face an alien that had just come up on his side. His feet were yanked from under him. An alien had him by the ankles, another seized his arms. They tugged in opposite directions, and Andy triggered off his entire magazine, spraying the area and nearly catching Badger, who had to dive to escape the blasts. Then Andy roared as his left leg was ripped off at the hip.
The alien who had been pulling his feet fell backward. The other caught its balance and came at him. Badger triggered off a burst and blew the creature away. Groggins was dead before the carbine's reverberations died away.
Looking around, Badger saw that he was alone. The others were dead. The original beast, the barrel-shaped thing, was nearby, sitting on its haunches and watching expectantly.
“Damn you, you Judas goat!” Badger said, and blew it away with a short burst.
The area was a shambles of blood and gore. All Badger's people were dead, and he expected to go next, but the attack had ended. There were no aliens in sight now except dead ones, and no other creatures, either.
Badger stood there, sobbing with fatigue and anguish, and saw a shadow appear as if from nowhere. He looked up.
There it was, Potter's ship, the Lancet, and he had a chance to get out of this. “Drop a line! Pick me up!”
They were down level with him, and he saw four of the crew watching him from one of the big glassite windows. He screamed at them, and finally they opened a hatch and threw out a rope ladder. Badger scrambled up with his remaining strength and collapsed inside the ship.
“Did you get all that on tape?” Potter asked.
“Yes, sir,” the second-in-command said.
“The scientists will be interested in these creatures,” Potter commented.
“Yes, sir,” the second-in-command said. “But the killing of all those men was a little gruesome, wasn't it?”
“Oh, edit that part out,” Potter scoffed. “And mark it in the log that we didn't reach the surface in time to save the rest of the mutineers.” He turned to go, then stroked his chin. “Not that one ever really wants to rescue mutineers. They set a bad example for the rest of the crew. But don't put that in.”
“Yes, sir.” The second-in-command saluted and began to walk off. “We did pull one of them out.”
“Take him to the medics,” Potter said. “We'll get his story later.”
“Yes, sir.” The second saluted and left the control room.
“And now, Dr. Myakovsky,” Potter said to himself, “It is time to deal with you.”
64
Stan and his group went through a maze of pathways. They found no sign of Norbert's electronic trail. No sign of Norbert, either. He had dropped behind, after making a gallant stand against the aliens. Stan had last seen him submerged under a writhing mound of black alien bodies.
Stan's breathing was laboring, he could hardly drag himself along. When was the royal jelly going to kick in? Julie and Gill helped him all they could, but they needed to keep their hands free to use their weapons. Because now more and more aliens were appearing, coming out of different turnings in the tunnels. They came in ones and twos, no mass attack yet, but it was probably only a matter of time.
/> It was clear that the suppressors were no longer doing their job. Stan, Julie, and Gill had to be constantly on the alert, because the creatures were attacking silently, suddenly springing out of the shadows.
Julie was leading the way. Her searchlight beam probed ahead into the profound darkness. She thought she had never seen such darkness before. Even the darkness she saw when she closed her eyes was not as deep as this. This was the darkness of evil, the darkness that cloaked a place where unspeakable creatures performed horrifying rituals. This was the darkness of childhood terrors. This was the darkness out of which monsters swarmed, the place where they tortured little children, and ate them, and then spit them up to make them live again so they could kill them anew.
Glancing back, Julie saw Gill falling back to help Stan, fighting half turned around to keep the aliens from running up their backs. He showed no expression when the searchlight beams occasionally illuminated his long, serious face. The android did his work methodically, but then he wasn't really human, it was all the same to him, he had no feelings, not really. He'd act just the same if he were on an assembly line screwing down machine parts. He's lucky, Julie thought, because it's not all the same to me, no matter how hard I try to make it so.
And Stan? In a way he was lucky, too. Too exhausted to care any longer, and in too much pain, to judge from his twisted features and the sweat that dripped from his face. She felt so sorry for him, and yet, in a way, she envied him. He was too far gone to feel the terror that engulfed her mind and turned her legs to jelly.
Gill plodded along, an efficient machine doing what it was supposed to do. His peripheral vision was enormously extended, and when he caught movement at the outer edges, he wheeled and fired in a single economical movement. When a group of three or more aliens came at him, he switched to the small thermite bombs he carried in a pouch on his left side, setting the proximity fuse with his thumb just before he let them go.
It was like a dance — turn, swing, fire — the only dance he had ever done. Turn, wheel, extend the arm. Boom! Blam! Turn again, gracefully duck, turn, fire, fire again, then go forward….
He heard Stan gasp and slip. Gill scooped him up and put him back on his feet. “Can you go on?”
“Yes. Thanks …” Stan was saving his breath.
Gill was worried about the doctor. That dose of pure royal jelly hadn't seemed to help any. He knew how much Stan had been expecting to find some sort of divine elixir that would cure his cancer. Gill had no particular hope that this would happen. It was illogical. The royal jelly was not a cure; it served merely to diminish the pain. Why should a pure strain do more than the other, adulterated strains?
He knew that humans liked to entertain far-fetched notions. All of the humans, in a way, were like those Spanish conquistadores he had learned about during his hypnopaedic learning sessions, those men in armor who had painfully trekked across the American plains, searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, imaginary places that had never existed outside the dreams of mythographers.
Stan's belief in a cure for his disease was like that. It was forlorn, even silly. No android would be capable of such folly. Yet Gill didn't think that made him better than Stan. Quite the contrary, it made him subhuman, because he could not participate in the delusions, both the pathetic and the sublime, that made the human race what it was.
The aliens were massing behind them. Gill had to slow down more and more to flight rearguard actions.
Julie pressed on ahead, hoping that the turns she took were leading them toward the outside of the hive rather than deeper into it.
Gill switched the plasma rifle to automatic fire and laid down a sheet of flame as half a dozen aliens came crawling out of a pit and, rearing to their feet, loped toward him.
Stan stumbled and fell, and lay still. Gill scooped him up and draped him over one shoulder, leaving one arm free to aim and fire the heavy plasma rifle.
By now the aliens were coming from side turnings as well as from behind. The little party wasn't surrounded yet, but it looked imminent. Gill threw his last thermite grenade, shifted Stan higher onto his shoulder, and noted that the charge in the plasma rifle was almost depleted. He turned, ready to fight to the end.
Then Julie cried, “There's light ahead! We're almost out of it!”
Gill turned and saw the faintest glimmer of grayness penetrating the profound gloom of the hive. He let go of the depleted plasma rifle and pulled a chemical slugthrower out of a side pouch. Four quick shots blasted a close-packed group of aliens with high explosives. Then Gill turned and ran, with Stan on his shoulder, toward the light.
His feet slid on the hard-packed clay of the tunnel's floor, and then suddenly he was out of the hive and into the sepulchral gray light of AR-32.
Behind him he heard Julie say, “Get out of the way, Gill.”
He managed to stagger a few steps farther. This gave Julie a chance to reset her plasma gun to full heat. She held it steadily, hosing the entrance to the hive through which they had come.
It took Gill a moment to understand what she was doing. Then he put Stan down, rummaged in his pouch, and found a plasma-rifle refill. He reloaded and swept the spot where Julie was beaming.
The beams glittered and coruscated on the hive face. The aliens were forced back, deeper into the cave, to wait until the noise and heat died down.
But Julie had something else in mind. She kept on firing until, with a sudden thunderous roar, the cave mouth collapsed. A cloud of dust and smoke arose, and then it was quiet.
Julie turned off her weapon, as did Gill. “That'll do it for a little while,” she said. “Until they find another exit from the hive,” Stan said.
“Well, it's better than nothing. Now, where in hell are we?”
Stan pointed. “You've done a great job, Julie. Look down there.”
Julie looked, and saw, less than a hundred yards away, the squat hull of the harvester.
“Now we're getting somewhere!” she said. “We just have to get aboard.”
“Yes,” said Gill. “But there's a difficulty.” He pointed again.
It took Julie a moment to see it. But then she saw the small black dots moving at the base of the hive. She could finally make them out: aliens! They had found another exit from the hive sooner than she expected. And they were blocking the way to the harvester.
She asked, “What now, Stan?” But Stan was unconscious again.
Julie and Gill looked at each other, then glanced up as a shadow crossed them.
It was a ship. For one moment Julie's hopes flared. But then she took in the ship's markings and design, and a great despondency came over her. That was not the Dolomite. That was the Lancet, commanded by Potter, the Bio-Pharm man. It hovered in the air, and nothing about it stirred. It seemed obvious to Julie that Potter was going to let them die here, watching and maybe videotaping their final agonies.
Stan revived and sat up. “The harvester, did you say?”
“It's right down there.” Julie pointed.
Stan looked and nodded. He struggled to his feet. “We've got to get there. From there, something may be possible.”
“There are quite a few aliens in the way,” Gill pointed out.
“So I see,” Stan said. “Have you ever heard of the old American Indian stunt of running the gauntlet?”
“I don't believe so,” Gill said.
“You're about to learn history in a very practical way,” Stan announced. “Load what's left of the ammo and we'll be on our way.”
Despite the mortal danger of their position, Julie could have kissed him at that moment.
65
Stan gave the signal and they were off, trotting down the rocky path that led from the edge of the hive to the plain. Fifty yards away, more or less, was the harvester. In the sky above them, the Lancet hovered, silent, watching.
And then the aliens came.
They came singly and in pairs, and then in threes. They seemed to crawl out from under rocks and to appe
ar out of holes. They came in silent ferocity, fangs bared, talons extended, forming a rough line between the hive and the harvester. Stan and the others ran through the line, blasting as they went. They had all shifted now to rapid-fire weapons. Never did Julie display better hand-eye coordination. She managed to move at full stride, at the same time keeping a look on all sides of her and releasing sizzling bolts of energy at anything that moved. The rocks turned white-hot under the glancing energy beams. The aliens surged forward, and died. Julie and Gill were doing fine….
And then Stan collapsed.
He had been doing very well, for a man in his condition. But his illness and general debilitation were not to be denied forever. Pain coursed through his chest like a sea of fire. He gritted his teeth and tried to continue, but now everything was turning dark before his eyes. He couldn't see where he was going. His feet stumbled on the rocky surface, a pebble turned under his foot. He felt himself falling, and a black pit seemed to yawn in front of him. He threw his arms wide as he fell, but before he hit, Gill scooped him up.
“Don't stop for me!” Stan said.
“Order denied,” Gill said, setting him on his shoulder and running again.
They cut their way through the ranks of the aliens. Flesh, blood, and bile spilled in all directions. It was like a free-for-all in a slaughterhouse. Julie hadn't imagined there was that much gore in the whole world. Scattered parts of aliens lay everywhere, arms and legs, long ugly tails, heads with the teeth still snapping. And still they came on. Julie thought that every alien on the planet must be here, or on its way.
She was firing two weapons now, cutting a path for herself through a growing mound of living matter — the locked bodies of aliens, still trying to get at them. Gill, running along hard on Julie's heels, with Stan bouncing up and down on his shoulder, was cutting wide swaths in the clustered aliens. Julie saw her left-hand weapon flare and die. Firing right-handed, she snatched a vibraknife from her waist pouch to set it on high. The blade had to make physical contact to do any harm, but it had come to that now with the aliens pressing ever closer. It seemed to her that this was the end; aliens pressed in and she had no idea where she was. And then Gill was shouting, “The harvester, Julie!”
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