by Dean Koontz
Sam fought the weariness that ached in every joint of his body. Fatigue, he told himself, was one of those mental disorders you could overcome with the proper tools of concentration. But concentrate as he would, his legs still throbbed madly, and his lungs heaved like sacks full of hot coals suddenly come to life.
"Here," Coro said.
They dropped to the earth at the edge of the grass, staring across five yards of open ground to the trees and the indentation in the forest where the floater spun and was fired upon. "What now?" Sam asked, his throat dry and cracked like his lips.
Coro wiped perspiration from his forehead despite the cool breezes playing inside their minds and bodies. "I count... fourteen. But there may be more hidden in the trees. Dont start fanning your rifle right off. That wastes too many darts. But look how they are standing. They all have their backs to us. If we pick them off, moving inward, the boys in front wont realize the boys behind are going down."
"I dont know about my aim-"
"The gun will handle most of that. You just sight through the keyhole bubble here. The gun will correct for the rest."
They dropped to their bellies, crawled forward the last few feet until their heads were exposed beyond the tall grass. Sam raised his gun, sighted. The nearest slug on his side was a dozen feet away. His finger encircled the trigger, and he felt things rising in his stomach. Then he forced himself to think about all those guns from the jelly-mass ship-and that he knew how to work them. And they were to kill; these were only to drug. He pulled the trigger, closing his eyes with the soft whuff of discharge.
When he opened his eyes, the slug was lying on its side, fuzzy, thin lids closed over its eyes, still alive but out of action for a while. Coro had gotten two in the same time. Carefully, Sam raised his gun again, sighted in on another slug. Whuff! This time he didnt close his eyes. The dart spun forth, buried itself in the tender flesh of the slug-form. The alien started to turn, a pseudopod lashing around to clutch the dart in bewilderment, then it was toppling sideways off its snake-like locomotion tail and onto the ground, its eyes staring fixedly at nothing for a moment before fuzzy lids closed over them.
It was like a game, really.
The slugs were like little cardboard targets, five feet high and relatively easy to hit. When you were on target, they fell over almost instantly. And the blue lights flashed almost as if in notice of a score.
The game neared its end. Six slugs remained standing, still oblivious to the eight unconscious comrades behind. Then Sam fired on the next closest of the gross creatures, caught it in the middle of the back. It bent convulsively, straightened to pluck the dart from itself, and toppled forward. Forward! It struck the slug in front of it a glancing blow. That slug turned to see what was the matter, saw the bodies, and sounded the alarm.
"Fan them now!" Coro hissed.
Sam swung the barrel of the rifle back and forth, not bothering to aim any longer.
Three more slugs toppled to the ground before they could swing their own weapons up.
Another dropped, four darts in its chest.
The two aliens operating the beam weapon swung it off the floater and toward the open meadow, playing the blue fire over the mens heads and setting the grass on fire behind them. Sam sighted on one of the remaining duo, but they both fell as Coro fanned a burst of darts and caught them in midsection.
The beam winked out.
"Hurry!" Coro snapped. "They might have gotten a message back to their ship."
They were up, running.
"The net!" Sam shouted.
Coro nodded. Together they hefted the heavy beam-projector, palmed what seemed to be the control panel. Blue light burst out of the nozzle, humming. Carefully, they sighted on the cables linking the net to magno-pegs, burning through the heavy strands. Eventually the net slid off the ball, pulled downward by its own weight. They dropped the weapon and ran up the ramp that had opened in the side of the floater to welcome them like the tongue of a favorite dog.
"Thank the stars!" Lotus said, coming into Coros arms, her wings fluffed out and fluttering slightly, beautiful in the warm yellow light of the cabin. Sam felt as if he were intruding on something private. But after a few messy and misplaced kisses of joy, the two separated.
"Thought youd never get here," Crazy said, getting out of Coros pilot seat and into his own chair. "I have the floater ready. We better move, and fast. Theres another detachment of those worms leaving the mother ship."
They all turned to stare at the viewplate. A block of yellow light shone where a port had opened in the giant vessels side. Coro climbed into his chair, keeping his eyes on the screen.
"Where to?" Sam asked as he crawled into his makeshift berth.
"Anywhere," Lotus said, shivering with disgust. "Anywhere thats not near those... those..."
"Agreed," Coro said between clenched teeth.
The floater groaned, leaped. The screen showed a spinning night scene that tumbled and flopped as they moved across the forest, low to the tops of the trees and with full anti-radar gear in operation. As they moved, Coro and Sam tried to explain what they found.
"We have to go on to Hope," Coro said finally.
"Easier said than accomplished," Lotus noted. "We dont have a starship."
"Dont be so negativistic," Coro said, smiling a thin smile that almost wasnt. "We might have a ship. It is a small chance, but we just might be able to get one."
* * *
IX
Food-slugs as large as houses lay pulsating against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air. Patches of white spotted the most bulbous portions of the giants, the areas of new flesh tender and undeveloped, as yet inedible. The smaller slug-forms tending them moved through the tremendous bulks in sanitary linen frocks, their pseudopods testing the toughness of skin near the connection junction where flesh of food-slug met nutrient tubes in the wall. They occasionally took small instruments out of pockets in the nightgown garments they wore, plunged them into the food-slugs and took readings as the cancerous masses throbbed mindlessly, adding cell after cell after cell at a rate that was almost visible. The food deck stretched into the distance, filled to overflowing with the ponderous behemoths that neither thought nor felt nor moved nor laughed. But merely were. A team of butchers slithered down the main avenue between stalls. A forty-car train of magno-carts floated behind them. The butchers stopped at each food-slug that had grown beyond a mark on the floor that was used to make a quick judgment on their readiness. With precision, they used cauterizing lasers to slice huge steaks from the fleshy giants, hefting the fluid-oozing slabs onto the carts and moving ahead-trimming, cutting, butchering for the great crew of Raceship.
The reek of life fluids spilled was constantly sucked away by enormous ceiling fans, replaced by perfume-heavy air.
The Central Being examined the work in progress, watched as the skins of the cancerous slugs formed and covered the wounds the butchers had left, as skin on other food-slugs bulged and stretched and reformed to accommodate the ever-increasing supply of meat and fat. And the Central Being approved. This was fine. This was a goodness. And when the gargantuan steaks were spitted and roasted for the crew, when the fat dripped into the fire and sizzled and bloated the air with its fumes, then the crew would also see it as a goodness and would give thanks to the Central Being. This was the plan sliding on polished runners. Only briefly did the Central Being think of the annoying creatures in the floating ball. They were gone now and certainly not worth the bother of a protracted chase. Besides, within the day, the ship would be lifting and setting course for the world called Hope. The center of these creatures empire. From there, destruction of this blasphemous species would be swift and most gratifying...
Food slugs as large as houses pulsated against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air.
X
"Just as I tho
ught," Coro said. "They wouldnt destroy those."
Beyond the safety fence was the vast expanse of concrete that was Chaplin-Alphas spaceport, and the tall, phallic starships, mute dragons making silent testimony to the greatness of the race that had built the city of Chaplin- Alpha.
The city that was now in ashes, Sam reminded himself. The city behind the rolling green hills. The rolling green hills that belied the horror the other-dimensional God and its slug-forms had wrought.
The aliens had left the starships untouched. In fact, some of the ships sported crews of slug-forms clinging like fleas on a dogs back. There were four slugs to each crew, and they seemed to be painting the hulls black to match the Raceship. These vessels would not be large enough to serve as Spoorships, but they would do the slugs well for survey craft-and possibly as battleships against the race that had made them.
Coro settled the floater behind the fence, into the shadows and the grass, cut all power and unstrapped himself. "We just have to go get one."
"How?" Lotus asked.
"We have dart guns. If we have just a little bit of luck besides, well have it made."
"Without the luck?" Crazy asked.
"Its been a pleasant association," Coro said, smiling another of his non-smiles.
Minutes later they stood before the fence, each carrying a rifle armed with a clip of forty drug darts. The darkness would only shield them for half a dozen feet beyond the fence. Then, once onto the concrete runway, they would be held in the glare of the triple polyarcs, small, clear targets on the sea of smooth, featureless grayness that offered no place for concealment.
"Now comes an unpleasant choice," Coro said, hunkering down and staring through the chainlink.
"What?" Sam asked, getting down next to him.
"Do we take the nearest ship-which has a four-slug crew working on it? Or do we go to the next ship-which has no crew, but which is three times as far from us?"
"I dont like the slugs," Crazy grumbled, shaking his massive head, hair twirling madly for a moment.
"Neither do I," Sam said. "But we risk three times as much by going to the more distant ship. I opt for the closest vessel and the use of the drug darts."
"Agreed," Coro said. Then: "Agreed?"
It was, and swiftly. With a hand-laser torch like the one they had used to cut through the hull of the Raceship, they began work on the links of the safety fence. Within minutes they were through, hugging the shadows on the other side where they were thin and shallow. Ahead lay the runway, too bright for comfort. If there were only some cover, some little thing between here and the ship, some stopping point to catch breath. But there wasnt.
"Together," Coro said. "Run as fast as you can to the bottom of the ship, then stay with it like it was a lover, cause it offers at least a little bit of shade. From there, we can pick off the painting crew on the mobile scaffolding and use it to get to the portal. Ready? Move!"
Sams lungs pounded as he raced across the concrete, gray swimming about him almost as if the deck were liquid, night air biting his cheeks and making them red. He wished he could move as fast as Lotus, but then she seemed to be just skimming the ground, flying more than she was running. He felt so small and so easily seen, naked on an endless plain of nightmare lights. But he couldnt let himself think about that-or about one of the aliens beams picking him out and charring him into a smoldering, writhing mass of human flesh, spouting blood from ears and nose, eyes red with burst vessels. Those were not scenes to be imagined. Only run. Run, run, run until your chest is bursting and your legs are throbbing like footless stumps. Run, run...
But by expecting the worst, he felt spiritually exulted when they arrived at the bottom of the starship unharmed and apparently unnoticed. They stood, still together, with their backs pressed against the cold, cold metal of the hull, sweat on their backs seeming to turn to ice. Breaths pounded in and out of four sets of lungs. Four hearts thumped too fast.
"Carefully again," Coro said between labored suckings of air.
Quietly, gently they moved along the base of the ship, sliding next to the scaffold wheels. The lace-work steel shot up eighty feet. At the top, spray guns blasted black paint onto the gleaming metal.
"Drop back and fire," Coro said.
And they did. Darts spurted out of four guns, and the slugs slumped quickly under the hail of needles, dropping spray machines onto the platform beside them. But even the loud clunkings from this didnt seem to draw any unwanted attention.
"Up," Coro said curtly, boarding the ramp of the scaffold and climbing quickly through the shadows of the metal piping.
At the top, they stepped over the slugs and reached the controls of the mobile scaffold. Coro experimented, found the proper operational procedure, and began moving them toward the main portal to the control cabin of the vessel. The machine hummed softly as it moved, a hum reminiscent of Racesong. They were almost to the portal when the beams burst bluely against the hull, announcing their loss of secrecy.
"Cover me!" Coro shouted, holding onto the controls.
The machine suddenly seemed to be moving so damnably slow! Moving slowly toward a port that was abruptly so distant as to seem an impossible quest. The other three turned, kneeling on the platform. There was no cover for them up here, nothing to intercept the beams that flushed outward from the weapons of a block of guards racing across the port deck.
"Cant you move this thing any faster?" Lotus called.
"Its at top speed already," Coro shouted. "They didnt design it for racing!" A beam smashed inches above his head, pitting the thick metal of the starship.
"Dammit!" Lotus snapped, angry at the machine, herself, all of them for not being able to move faster.
Sam fired a few darts, saw that the slugs were still too far away. The darts dropped lazily, snapping against the concrete thirty yards short. He stopped and watched the advancing guards. There appeared to be an even dozen of them, rolling like snakes, their black and yellow uniform cloaks fluttering idiotically behind them. Costumed worms, he thought. On their way to some ludicrous Halloween ball. Their anterior segments gripped the concrete and thrust them on. Their pseudopods gripped the sleek, powerful-looking rifles that spat the blue beams.
"Just another minute!" Coro called.
There was a blue explosion next to Sam. He fell flat against the platform, hugging it as if he could melt into it by virtue of the heat of his fear. Theyre trying to kill me, he thought. They are purposefully trying to blow off my head. He clutched the dart gun, wanted to retch. The others fell flat and began shooting. The guards were close enough now, and they dropped almost as one as the first wave hit them. Seven fell with the initial round. The other five turned, abruptly anxious to seek cover, went down as the trio fanned them with darts.
Sirens wailed from the polyarcs. More slugs appeared between the ships that dotted the port deck. They rolled about, buzzing in confusion, then came to grips with the situation, armed themselves, and moved toward the starship with cold purpose.
Clunk! The scaffold jerked to a stop. "Someone help me with this portal!" Coro shouted.
Sam jumped and ran to the circular hatch. Together, they gripped the large primary handle, twisted it in the direction of a series of red arrows. When it clicked and could be moved no further, they turned to the second wheel and twisted it counterclockwise. The noise on the port deck below was much louder and much closer. A spatter of beams boiled over the plating, leaving shallow pits in the ships thick hide.
"Not much more," Coro groaned between breaths.
Sam began to croak an answer, was flung from his feet and tossed against the hull, smashed back to the deck of the scaffold. A beam had caught his arm, leaving a four-inch wound. The gouge was an inch deep along his biceps. Blood gurgled out, matted in his shirt. Pain throbbed through every nerve and erupted nova-like into his brain. "Im all right," he managed to hiss to Coro. "Go on. Hurry!"
Coro turned back to the portal, strained a
t the wheel to move it the last few crucial inches.
Lotus and Crazy had used all the darts in their own guns just as the door swung open with a sigh. Slugs were clambering up the ramp while others stood on the deck below firing a murderous barrage that pitted metal and singed clothing and skin.
"Go ahead," Crazy bellowed, grabbing Coros unused rifle. "Ill hold them off a few more seconds, then leap in after you."
Coro pulled Lotus-she was reluctant to go before Crazy-to the portal and shoved her through, jumped for Sam and helped him in. A hail of beams chipped at the rim of the hatch.
Crazy fired wildly, his hair bouncing.
Coro turned, opened his mouth to call; his mouth stayed open-in a scream. A beam caught Crazy in the chest, tore him open to the crotch and spilled his insides all over the scaffolding. For a split instant the boyish face looked surprised. Then the eyes fluttered shut. He swayed and toppled over the edge of the scaffold, hooves kicking.
* * *
XI
Like a needle sinking through a jar of Stygian syrup, the starship slid silently through the thickness of hyperspace, set on a course for Hope. Lotus lay huddled on a bunk, her wings crumpled carelessly beneath her, her cheeks stained with tears. It had taken both of them to hold her down and hypo enough c.c.s of sedatives into her to put her to sleep. She wanted to leap out onto the platform, get Crazy back inside-even though he was dead. Dead. A word she couldnt connect with Crazy, a word distant and unreal. Now, at last, she slept.
Sam stretched out on a bunk, anxious to catch a little nap before they reached Hope and the trouble ahead. A little nap, perhaps, before the longest nap...
Blackness... Blackness...
Concussion! Brilliance! A rectangle of nova-light!
The door had burst open, and the shadow-clad figure of a man stood there, framed in the doorway against the burning background of light. His eyes gleamed madly in darkness. Slowly he advanced.