by Dean Koontz
There was a booming in the front of the ship, and the door between the pilots cabin and the passenger area sealed itself with a loud sirening. The viewplate had smashed out of-or rather into-the pilots chamber, probably skewering the crew with thousands of slivers of plastiglass-including the blue-eyed hostess with the trim, tan legs. Soon, similar things would be happening to the hull and the rest of the ship. If they didnt crash first. Which was a distinct possibility.
Reaching for the next ring, he began crawling up the deck. In a surprisingly short time, speed increased with the imminent presence of death, he had reached the runneled gangplank. Hands latched onto him, dragged him into the floater. He looked up to say thanks, saw that his rescuer was a man with the legs of a horse, and slipped willingly into blackness.
* * *
IV
Nests budded.
Nests bloomed rapidly, one after another like roses in a speeded stop-action film.
A new generation came forth, the uncountable generation of an uncountable cycle of generations. The new-hatched slugs worked their jaws rapidly, smashing their gums together, looking for some manner of nourishment. Web hangings flushed about them and guarded them against scraping harshly against deck plating or over raised bolts and seams in the skin of Raceship. Almost as one organism, the thousands of pink, young slugs, rising up and standing on only half their segments, mewed piteously-asking, asking, asking. The mists of shock-absorbent webs swayed with their crawling quest, shredded and came down around them. And the mists parted as the sacrifice slugs came forth from their places of waiting, glorying that their time was finally near, finally at hand, finally and gloriously to be consummated. They drew back and threw themselves at the young slugs, opening the pores of their first segments so that appetite-arousing juices could flow out and permeate the air with a delicious, dank heaviness. The baby slugs responded, whining insanely, gnawing their horny gums into the pulpy body of the elder sacrifice slugs, gnawing and tearing at the flesh, swallowing it in great shreds, foaming over the smell of blood. And still the sacrifice slugs came joyfully, to be fulfilled in purpose.
In the Ships Core, the Central Being turned to the other matters bothering It:
The slugs in the navigation and tracking quarters had come upon the form of another ship moving out and away from the vessel they had shot down shortly before. If this smaller thing should escape, Raceship might be in danger of discovery by the minions of mankind that swarmed in the galaxy ahead. There was great fury among the navigators and radar crews as they worked over the instruments, their pseudopodia grasping at the controls. The smaller ship, the chief tracker discovered, was a ball of some sort. Hollow. Yes, definitely hollow. At first, they feared it might be a bomb. But it moved away from Raceship, not toward it. Still, they must get it. It had greater speed, at this low altitude, than Raceship had, but the slug-form crew lifted the mountainous ship and set out in pursuit, coasting over the surface of Chaplin I, seeking to kill...
V
"Are you all right?" a small, china-tone voice whisper-spoke to him as he swam upward through the inkiness that seemed endless, thick, and sticky. But, after all, there was light, and he homed in on the words as if they were a small beacon that would lead him out of his fuzziness into clarity-a very pleasant, gentle beacon.
"He just passed out is all," another, gruffer, voice said.
"You have no sympathy," china-tone snapped.
Sam opened his eyes completely and found he was looking at a tiny, elfin face. Elfin! Pointed ears... small and delicate features... tiny but well-formed body... Wings! A pair of velvet-like wings fluffed gently behind her like sheets on a line, then drew shut. Their color matched the toga that fell to an end above her round and lovely knees. He remembered Hurkos and calmed himself. This was a mutant of some sort-whether a product of Nature or of the Artificial Wombs. A delightful mutation, to be sure. She was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
"Are you okay?" she asked again, tiny lips parting slightly to let the little words out.
Sam groaned, tried to sit up.
"Dont strain yourself," she said, grasping his shoulders in her fine, shell hands in an effort to restrain him, her sculptured fingers pressing him back.
"Im... okay," he said, fighting off a headache that he knew could not successfully be fought off.
"I told you," the gruff voice said.
Sam turned to the right, looked into the wide, handsome face of the man with the gruff voice. There was a wild mane of hair framing his head, partially covering his two large ears. Memories of being dragged into the floater by a man-horse came back to him. "I guess I should thank you for saving-"
"Wasnt anything to it," the man-horse said, flushing slightly and grinning.
"It was my life, though..."
"Dont praise Crazy too much," a third voice said. It was Andrew Coro, the man he had met briefly on Horners Earth ranch when a Beast hunt had been initiated some months ago. Coro stepped between the girl and the man-horse. "Things like that go to his head, and he gets impossible to live with."
"Hmmph!" Crazy snorted.
"I havent met your... your colleagues, Mr. Coro."
"Of course not," Coro said. "Im sorry. This is Lotus, our nursemaid, comforter, and spoiled friend. Shes also a famous botanist, but shell have you seeing plants in your sleep if you get her talking about it. Fair warning. This is Crazy Horse," he continued, pointing to the other mutant before the elfin girl-woman could respond. "Crazy is our muscle, as you might have guessed-and a bit, I imagine, of our brains also. And me you know, Mr. Penuel."
"Sam. And Im pleased to meet you two. You did a fine job for Congressman Horner. Do you have anything for a headache?"
"Its as makeshift as anything could be," Andy said.
"Itll do," Crazy grunted, crossing his arms over his massive chest and shuffling his hooves on the metal deck.
"Sam? After all, youll be sitting there."
Sam dropped into the homemade chair, fastened the seat belt. Crazy had taken a wall cot and bent it into the rugged form of a chair. Together, he and Coro had bolted it to the deck while Lotus had sewn a spare belt to it. He was reminded of the flexoplast chair in the jelly-mass ship. Suddenly things seemed to be revolving on a wheel, the playing of old events all over with just a few different characters. "I think it will do just fine."
"Okay," Coro said, turning and dropping into his own seat. "Now lets find out what happened to those two colony-cities."
Coro plotted the position of the larger of the two silent cities, Chaplin-Alpha, set the floater on a high speed, automatic course for the place. As they bobbled along at what seemed like a leisurely pace but was really a wild, lightning-fast streaking, Sam learned to know the trio by their personalities and not just by their physical appearances. Lotus was tender, greatly affectionate, and very proud of her two men. She was also a lever to maintain humility and tranquillity within the group. She did these last two things with humor, not with nagging, and Sam came to appreciate this very much in only minutes. Crazy was quick-witted, quick-temered, and extremely friendly. He seemed the type who would lend you everything he owned-then kick your head in if you proved no more than a thief. He had a bit of the boyish wonder at the marvelous everyday things in life, a quality which most men lose early and never manage to regain. And Coro... Coro was different altogether. He was friendly, to be sure, and there was nothing but kindness in his manner. But he was not as candid as Crazy and Lotus, not as easy to know. He was withdrawn, and a touch of melancholy tinted his dark eyes, giving him a perpetual look of hurt.
They were talking, despite Coros warnings, about botany, when he began reducing the floaters speed and shifting from plotogram to manual control. "Were almost there," he said, interrupting Lotus as she related her adventures with a Porcupine Rose.
All four faced front. The conversation had been a diversion, a way to keep their minds off the missile that had torn up their ship
, and to stop any questions about who might possibly have fired it in a world of pacifism. Suddenly the screens popped to life under Coros hands. The city of Chaplin-Alpha swam into clarity before them.
Rather, what had been Chaplin-Alpha...
Once a thriving metropolis. Now ashes. How blithely this peaceful society tripped into disaster! Never expecting anything like this because things like this just didnt happen. In the old world, police and rescue teams would have come by the droves. But there had been no police for centuries, and no one had foreseen that the fifty-five robodocs would be shot down before they could land.
Ashes. A gray-white film like the thinnest veneer of snow lay obfuscating all. Rubble lay in mounds like camel humps. Here and there the girders of a building stood like broken, singed bones, some of their stone and mortar flesh still clinging to them. Some places, the rubble stretched in long rows where the buildings had fallen directly sideways to crumble and decay like the body of a huge animal.
Plants. Lotus knew what kinds. They grew snakily from the burned edges, searching through the rubble, seeking sustenance from the two million bodies that, certainly, lay smashed beneath. Some others, dark and with slender leaves like knives, were carbon-eaters, relishing the richness of their coveted food.
"The people-" Lotus began.
"Dead," Coro finished.
"But how-"
"Killed."
Everyone sat silent a moment.
"But men dont kill," Crazy insisted. "Not like this. And since the Breadloaf Shield and the death of God-"
Sam was slightly surprised to hear the casualness with which the man-horse mentioned the death of God. But then, the news media had splashed the story in depth and everywhere. Breadloaf had been interviewed to the point of exhaustion. Hurkos had become a minor celebrity on the variety-talk shows. Gnossos book On Gods Demise, was a runaway best seller on any world you could name. Breadloafs scientists had been badgered, bothered, pumped for opinions and facts. Only Sam had managed, with a great deal of difficulty, to keep his privacy intact. With this bounty of media coverage, the fact of divine expiration was a common piece of knowledge, unquestioned and-ten months after the act-generally unthought of. But what Crazy was saying was correct. Men should be less able to kill than ever. The perpetrator of aggression was gone. Man was saner than ever. This sort of atrocity should be impossible. Men should not have the ability to... and of course, Sam thought, men didnt do it!
"Not men," he said aloud.
"What?" they all said, almost together.
"Ill wager that it wasnt men. Not men as we know them."
"Talk sense," Coro said. "Youre worse than Crazy."
Sam strained at his seat belt. "These... killers are from another galaxy, not this one. They might not be men at all." His mind ran backward to the time in the ship when he still had only a first name and Gnossos had proposed the idea that he was being controlled by extra-galactic forces. Gnossos had been wrong then. But now the theory seemed to fit. He could think of no contradiction with what evidence they now had. Was he just as wrong as Gnossos? "It sounds crazy," he said, trying to say it all aloud and give it more validity than it now had in the tenuous thought-concepts of his mind. "But think about it. First of all, we do not have men in this galaxy who could perpetrate such violence. Secondly, there is absolutely no way, even if an army of these men existed, that they could secure the weapons to level a city to ashes. They have to be from Outside."
The others regarded him, trying to find some chink in the reasoning. Crazy spoke first: "But wouldnt the God who gave us aggression give it to all intelligent species in the universe? I was under the impression that men were actually basically good and sensible and that their bad qualities came from Gods schizoid personality. Now wouldnt this God from the higher universe control this entire universe?"
Sam started to answer, closed his mouth when he couldnt think of anything to say. His reasoning seemed sound. When Hurkos had killed the pink grub, the holy worm, then all intelligent species in this universe should have benefited from it. Perhaps God had controlled only part of the universe and... But, no. He had been the entire higher dimension. There had been no other gods with him. That was a fact. Breadloafs scientists said it was a fact, and they were hard boys to find fault with. Accordingly, these extra-galactics should not be able to kill, void of blood lust.
But below, a city lay in ruin, concealing two million bodies.
"It must have been fast," Coro said. "There dont seem to be any survivors."
"Lets take a look at Chaplin-Beta," Lotus suggested.
"Itll be the same." Coro began bringing the floater around in a one hundred and eighty degree turn.
Lotus folded her wings around her pert breasts, hiding her arms and shoulders in a shell of velvet membrane. "Lets look anyway."
Coro completed the turn, and all four of them gasped at once when they saw it: a mountain in flight. Rather, a plateau. It was a flat slab of a ship, miles across. The floater was a small pebble beside it, an infinitesimal grain of sand.
"What-" Coro started.
The vast ship was over three thousand feet high, and that was but a fraction of its length and equal to its breadth. It seemed to be a solid piece with no seams and no windows to break its perfect sheen. It appeared to be powered by some magnetic system, as the ground beneath it reverberated in answer to the silent call of its star-shattering engines. The only scars on the great bulk were three rows of tiny holes (tiny from where they sat, but very likely feet across when viewed closely), five hundred holes per row. From the center of the middle row of holes there was a puff of white, and a silver missile like the one that had downed their last ship came spinning lazily toward them.
"Dive!" Sam shouted.
Coro hit the controls, pushing the floater down under the missile.
The projectile whirred past, thrumming like a torpedo. Arcing delicately, it turned back on them, correcting its course.
"Its self-propelled!" Coro gasped between his teeth like gas escaping from a split pipe. "And has its own radar!"
* * *
VI
In the shells of corridors and maze rooms directly out from the Ships Core, the mother-slugs were writhing in the throes of racial creation. Their great soft bodies bulged with the fat of readiness, their saucer-sized cataracted eyes glazed with the ecstasy of their purpose. Above and around them, the thin-shelled nodules of male sperm cells hung suspended in the web matter of the new nests, ripe and thick, waiting dumbly for contact with the reproductive segments of the huge mother-body worms. As if in unanimous accord, the hundreds of giant females began bumping and twisting more violently, writhing madly as their brains dissolved under the enzyme-hormones of sexual stimulation. The brain tissue bubbled and frothed, sizzling without heat, dissolving to form a nutrient atmosphere within the reproductive segment conducive to the fertilization of the male cell and the growth of the eggs into young. The intelligence and memory centers were the first to crumble so that there was no long and painful realization of what was happening to them. The end would be a form of glorious, prolonged orgasm for the mother-bodies.
Squirming and flopping heavily in fierce delight, they reared up, smashing the dangling sperm nodules planted there by mates they would never see, and bathed themselves in the soul fire of the male contribution. The raw, skinless, center segments each sported a brown nucleus throbbing on the surface in a primitive one-two, one-two rhythm. The center segments accepted the male fluid, shivered uncontrollably as it seeped sweetly onto the brown nucleus. The air was sweet and sickly, the web matter wet and heavy with the contents of the burst nodules. On hundreds of mother-bodies, the nuclei, permeated with sperm, began a slow but apparent sinking toward the center of the reproductive segment, there to lodge in the warmth of the rich protein bath that had once been a brain.
The mother-bodies curled and shook.
All segments, save the reproductive central ones, died and began
the process of rotting.
A new generation was formed, now only zygotes. Someday, full-grown slugs.
From insanity, comes life...
In the war control room, furthest out from Ships Core, the slug crewmen prepared various battle programs to initiate against the spherical enemy who had suddenly disappeared from the radar screens though no missile hit had been made. This meant the enemy understood and employed anti-radar techniques. This made it more difficult than had been expected. They buzzed and they chattered, formulating death.
And in the Ships Core, the Central Being was, for the moment, unconcerned with the battle against the floating ball and the four humans; unconcerned, also and equally, with the mother-bodies and the cycle of reproduction, since both of these things were so natural, so a part of the general plan. But if truth be known and infinitesimal differences measured, it could be found that the Central Being held a greater deal of interest in the conception of new slugs than in any minor battle. Slugs were life. Life was a tool. Actually, It did not run the slugs as puppets, though strings were attached to be pulled and maneuvered whenever the occasion rose. Mainly, however, the Central Being was a planner of the major pattern, an architect of the overall purpose and methods of execution, not of the bothersome detail of day-to-day. In Its mind was the great plan of Raceship and of the one hundred and a half another hundred Spoorships that had been moved out to spread the plan and the hopes and the dreams. All the Raceverse lay before the Central Being and Its plans became-of necessity-plans in general, not specific. So It drew some strings some of the time, but rarely drew all strings at any one time. At this moment, It toyed with the plan to eliminate the beings of this galaxy. Ever since the Fall, when the Dimensional Vacuum had caused the Big Drop, It had seen Its duty-to Itself and to Raceship and its Spoorships. These strange, two-legged, two-armed, two-eyed beings were a challenge to the concept of Raceship and slug-form. And a challenge to what had conceived Raceship and slug-form. All of them, every last creature, had to be destroyed. It was an absolute prerequisite to the remainder of the plan of Raceship. These beings must die before the overall plan could continue with any degree of integrity. Simply: death to man. Small "m" intentioned.