by Keith Laumer
“Al!” he shouted, leaped forward―and was flung to the ground with stunning force. He struggled to hands and knees, was again hauled upright Then he saw the physicist lying on the ground, two of the leather-faced men bending over him. David’s captor buzzed. The men lifted Lieberman’s limp body, carried it to the copter. David was propelled up behind him. Four men clambered in, silent, grim-faced. One took the controls. With a beat of rotors, the heli lifted off, swung away at tree-top level. Below, David caught a final glimpse of the car, binning fiercely.
For the next half-hour the copter raced through the night detouring at intervals around concentrations of light, never venturing above one hundred feet of altitude―a precaution, David guessed, against radar detection. Beside him, Al Lieberman lay, breathing stertorously. There was blood on his face. Two of their captors were busy with him, running instruments over his body. One buzzed to the man in the front seat beside the pilot. He replied in the same unearthly rasp. The copter dropped lower, hovered over a wooded ravine. One of the men opened the side door. Cold air blasted in. Too late, David lunged as Lieberman’s body was unceremoniously, callously heaved over the side. A wild yell tore from Vincent’s throat; he swung a blow that caught one of the grey-faced men full in the face―and then hands like steel claws caught him, hurled him back, and again the copter was lifting, sliding away into the night All right, David thought. I’ll wait, look for my chance. And when it comes―But the thought would not complete itself. For against such force, what could a single man, exhausted and injured, hope to accomplish?
2
David lay slack in the seat, drifting in and out of consciousness, only half aware of the terse, buzzing conversation of the murderous quartet around him. Hours passed. He came alert at a change in the swift motion. The heli circled, climbing steeply, rocking in an updraft, then dropping abruptly. Dark walls rose up around the machine―walls of jagged rock, topped with ranks of tall pines. There was the jar of landing, then a rush of bitter cold air as the door dropped open. Rough hands thrust him outside, hustled him impatiently across uneven, snow-patched ground toward the lights of a small shed, perched at the edge of a yawning abyss.
Inside a rough-board-walled room, one of the men pressed at a panel; it swung back. Beyond it, a featureless, grey corridor, stretched away. The air here was hot, stifling, bearing an acrid odor of sulphur.
At the end of the passage they came into a small, bare room. The ceiling glowed with a cold yellow illumination which gave David’s hands the color of dead flesh. The faces of the four silent men were horror masks of colorless putty. Their mouths formed obscene O’s as they buzzed their alien buzzing at each other.
The only furnishings in the room were a table and two chairs. The tallest of the four men pointed.
“Sit there.”
David obeyed, feeling the dull pain in his back, the pull of drying blood across the side of his face. His eyes burned, his temples throbbed. One of the men stepped forward, placed the attach^ case containing the parts and drawings of the strange machine on the table, seated himself. He sat opposite David. The other three men stood against the wall, watching with hooded, malevolent eyes.
“Where did you learn of the Eruptor?” the seated man demanded in a tone devoid of emotion.
David shook his head. He was aware of the murmur of air through a ventilator grill, the soft creak of the chair, the loud, heavy thump of his own heartbeat.
His own heartbeat―but no other. Somehow he knew the pulses of the men should have been audible to him in his unnatural state of drugged sensitivity, but only a faint whispering came from the men in the room―a soft susurration, like a teapot about to boil. David felt a stab of utter cold inside him―a sensation as if he had thrown back the blankets of his bed and uncovered a coiled, somnolent rattler . . . .
“You will answer my questions,” the inquisitor said. “If you resist or he, there will be pain.” His hand shot out, caught David’s wrist, squeezed; agony shot up his arm. He gasped, almost fell forward onto the table.
“Who told you of the Eruptor?” the man repeated.
“No . . . nobody . . . “ David gasped out. In the grip of the unhuman creature he was as helpless as an infant. For a moment, rage swept through him―but he caught it, checked it. Not yet, a voice inside cautioned him. Wait, and watch . . . .
“Was it Professor Lieberman?” the relentless voice pressed on.
“No! I went to him . . . he had nothing to do with it . . . until I told him . . . “ Why did you kill him?”
“He would have died. He was useless to us. Why did you not attempt to he, place the blame on him? He is beyond us now.”
“I’m . . . telling you the truth.” David’s voice was a hoarse croak. His throat seemed scalded by fire. All the weariness of the past week was on him now. Only the drugs kept his mind clear, his hearing keened.
“How did you learn of the true nature of the Emptor?”
“I figured it out . . . for myself..
Pain shot up his arm. For an instant his senses swam. He was dimly aware of a blow on the side of the head as his head struck the table. A humming filled the room.
“ . . . . awake . . . answer my questions . . . “ a remote voice echoed from somewhere far away. Then buzzes, hands that shoved him upright. Through half-closed lids he saw a door in the opposite wall open―and Dorn stepped through.
3
There was a moment of silence. The man at the desk rose; all four faced the newcomer. His eyes went to David as he sagged in the chair.
“What are you doing with him?” Dorn barked. One of the four started to reply in the shocking, alien buzz, but Dorn cut him off:
“Speak the native language, you fool! You’ll betray us yet with your carelessness!” He stepped to David, thumbed up an eyelid. David lay slack, head lolling.
“The creature is in grave condition!” Dorn rasped. “Would you kill him before you have the information?”
David felt a sharp pain in his arm. He didn’t move.
“The fatigue poison level is dangerously high,” Dorn said. “Administer a hypnotic and allow him five hours’ dormancy. Then rouse him and drain him dry.” David saw the false Security man turn on the one who had begun the questioning. “This one represents a flaw in our concealment―perhaps a traitor among us―a mortal danger. If you allow him to die . . . “ He left the threat hanging in the air.
David pretended unconsciousness as ungentle hands clutched him, carried him through the door, down steps, along a corridor, through echoing rooms. Suddenly light glared in his face, through his closed eyelids; abruptly he was deposited on a hard cot, felt a rough blanket tossed carelessly over him. There was a sudden, acrid odor as a cold mist stung his face. Then the light winked out, a door thudded. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
He was alone.
4
The room was small, blank walled, dusty, lit by a faint glow from the ceiling. David prowled, found no opening in the seamless plastic partitions other than the door through which he had entered, now rigidly locked. There was a small hole in the jamb, six inches from the closed panel. He searched his clothes for something―anything―with which to probe. His pockets were empty. Then at a sudden thought he checked the collar of his grimy shirt. There was a wire stiffener, stitched inside the cloth. A moment later, he had worked it free, straightened it. Carefully, he inserted it in the aperture. There was a soft click and the panel slid back.
The dim-lit corridor was empty. Off to the right, David heard faint voices. He went that way, approached the entry to a large room. From concealment, he looked in at tables, shelves stacked with papers, a man, his back toward David, seated before a rank of TV screens, all dark and silent―except one. Pale light danced across it―the hazy, wavering outline of a narrow, unsmiling face―a member of the Tribe.
“ . . . brood racks cannot long endure the null-G condition,” a flat voice was whispering. “Nutrient supplies approach exhaustion; energy flow levels dropping rapidl
y. Contact must be made within one half revolution . . . “
“You have already been informed that no further support is possible!” the seated man replied coldly. “Repeat, no support possible! You must wait―until the cloud passes!”
“We have passed outside contact range. Now in planetary shadow at hundred minute level. Ornyx supplies at minimal level; shielding failure rate 9. The unit requires immediate extrapolative vector of grade 7―”
“Revert to secondary plan! Recommend immediate disposal of twenty percent of stasis pods! Reset guidance complex to self-programming! The survival-probability balance is at equity, trending negative! Repeat, trending negative! You are now on self-supportive basis. Attempt no further contact!” As the incomprehensible voices droned David retreated, passed the door to the room where he had been confined, went on to the end of the passage. A narrow stair led upward. As he started up it, he stumbled, went down. The hypnotic administered by his captors dragged at him. But he fought it, fought the accumulated fatigue―and went on, his head filled with a relentless humming. A hot mist seemed to float behind his eyes.
He passed a landing, went up another short flight, through a door into a corridor like the one below. There was a door at the end of the hall. He started for it, caroming off the wall as his exhausted legs almost failed to carry his weight David reached the door, paused to listen. Silence. He pushed the panel back, looked inside. His sense of direction hadn’t failed him. It was the room where he had been interogated. There was the table, with its two empty chairs―and spread out on the table-top, the components of the device Dorn had called the Eruptor.
David groped for a chair, half fell into it. With a terrible effort, he forced his mind to clarity, focussed his eyes on the parts laid out before him. He remembered the sketches, his own and Al Lieberman’s reconstruction of the proper assembly of the infernal machine. The red wafer first, fitted atop the blue egg-shape, the leads snapping into position here, and here . . . Then the fancifully wrought grip, sliding under to lock in place, welded as firmly as if it had been forced in one piece with the rest. And last, the assembly that he and Lieberman had constructed in the basement shop. The rods fitting snugly into matched sockets; the heavy leads slid in place, one to each side. The axial member eased home, and twisted tight-
A tingle flowed through David’s hand, like a sharp electrical shock. From the coil atop the disruptor, an eerie nimbus of light sprang up, leaped in a crackling violet spark to the vertical rod at the end of the Taarrel.’ There was a sharp ping, as of contracting metal. Then the Disruptor lay on his palm, inert, deadly―waiting.
At that moment, feet sounded near at hand; the door slammed wide. One of them stood there, his clay-like face a mask of cold fury. In a step, he reached the table, stretched out a long arm-
David brought the weapon up, his thumb stroked the firing stud. Instantly, with a sharp crackling, like dry wood in a fire, a pencil-thin beam of cold green light lanced out, impaled the alien. David hurled himself aside and the other crashed into the table, smashing it into kindling as he hurtled on across the room, slammed the opposite wall, rebounded, fell like a thing of broken wires to the floor. From a ragged hole in the victim’s chest a curl of smoke came, nothing more. Not a drop of blood marked the awful wound.
Then, as David took a halting step forward, sudden, searing pain scorched his hand. With a muffled grunt of agony, he dropped the Eruptor. It was suddenly scorching, searing hot! As he watched, it glowed a dull red, then faded back into its normal, incongruous carnival colors.
Now other feet clumped in the corridor. There was a door at David’s back. He whirled through it, sprinting for the entry through which he had been brought, reached the camouflaged door, burst through it, on through the outer door, and was outside, under a stark, starry sky, circled by a rim of rock. Icy wind plucked at him, sucking the heat from him, freezing his breath in his throat. He couldn’t stay here, unprotected, in what felt like sub-zero weather. The dark shape of a larger building loomed nearby, he ran for it, skirting the sheer drop-off in the center of the crater-like hollow, pushed past the sagging edge of the broken barn door―and was in an echoing chamber, concrete floored. Filtering starlight showed him stacked cases, high piled crates, drums, bags. It was a storeroom, bulging with supplies. David ducked into a pitch-dark aisle, thrust his way all the way back to the wall. He could go no further.
Chapter Seven
Outside, a voice called—a shrill cry, like the scream of some great bird of prey. Using what seemed the last of his strength, David reached, found a grip, pulled himself up the top of the stack of cases, lay flat, twelve feet above the floor. Across the wide room, the outer door opened, and three men came in.
Hardly breathing, David watched them come, moving cautiously along the aisle, the rays of powerful handlights flicking ahead.
“The creature cannot have gone far,” Dorn’s voice said. “The data on their capacities for endurance show that he has been pressed far beyond the normal collapse-point―”
“The data are flawed,” another cut in harshly. “I think many of our data are flawed. Already the survival probability has fallen to unity.”
“Impossible!” Dorn snapped. “AGAINST THESE PUNY”
“Against these puny beings the Great Race must prevail!”
“Then why do four of us hold this station alone, waiting still for the relief pod―”
“It is your duty to carry out the commands of the Survival-master―not to question them!” Dorn’s voice was a cold raging. “Now find this sick weak animal! On that all our fates hinge―and the fates of broods yet unformed! You―take that side! And you, the other!”
The reply was a harsh, contemptuous buzz―but the two . . . creatures; David could no longer think of them as men―moved off, while Dorn lingered near the door.
For the next fifteen minutes―a quarter of an hour that seemed like an eternity―the things prowled below, poking into every cranny among the heaps and stacks of materiel.
“Not here,” one called flatly, emotionlessly.
“Nor here,” the other reported.
“Then,” Dorn said, “he must be . . . “ his voice broke off, switched to the buzzing language. Now his time had run out, David knew. It would be only a matter of seconds now before the probing hghts swept across his hiding place, exposing him. He came to all fours, moved softly forward. The three moved along the aisle, buzzing softly to each other. They were between David and the door. There was no escape―and he had had enough experience of their monstrous strength to retain no illusions as to the outcome of a hand-to-hand fight But if he could enlist some weapon―any weapon. Anything other than his bare hands. But there was nothing: only the massive, smooth-surfaced cases on which he crouched.
Massive. The word caught at his mind, and with it a picture. There might be a chance―a slim chance-but it was worth a try.
David felt over the surface of the crate beneath him, found the corners. He gripped it, heaved with all his strength. It barely stirred. No good. He had to find one in a better position, one he could get a full-handed grasp on. Through the gloom, he made out the shape of a lone box, perched above the rest. He went across to it soundlessly. It was even bigger than the others, smooth, with almost a soapy feel under his hands. He braced himself, pushed. The heavy crate budged, moved a foot nearer the edge. Getting a new purchase, David lunged again against the ponderous weight, slid it across another yard. And another. And now it was poised on the edge.
He looked below. Dorn was posted by the door again, something glinting in his hand. The other two approached, one carrying a light ladder. It was too late now to change the position of the crate. David could only wait, hoping for his chance.
The two men had stopped ten feet away, erected the ladder against the crates. One stepped up on it, paused to shift his light to the other hand. David shifted his position to place himself behind the crate, concealed from the ladder. A moment later a head appeared, shoulders. The climber pu
lled himself up, flashed his light past David’s hiding place―then tinned, went the other way. David risked a look below. The one on the ground turned, scanning the darkness across the way, then―as David’s heart seemed to skip a beat―took a step forward. And another. And another. One more―
Dorn’s harsh voice called out, and the man above answered, “Nothing here.”
David braced his feet, his hands gripping the crate, waiting . . . The creature below paused, hesitated―then took his last step, and David heaved with all the remaining strength of his body. The crate resisted for a moment, then slid smoothly forward, over the edge―The impact was a dull boom like the muffled explosion of a bomb. Even before the first echo had died. David was up, racing for the far end of the big shed. Behind him he heard Dorn’s shout, the strangled croak of the victim, saw the slashing beam of the handlight playing across the spot he had occupied a moment before.
He reached the end wall. No escape here. To the right, the stack of crates dropped sheer to the dark floor―and there in the darkness, something bulked. A stray ray of light from the far end of the room fell across it. It was a fork-lift, used for moving the stock. In an instant, David had dropped down, was beside the machine, his hands exploring the controls. It was a familiar type, one he could have disassembled and reassembled in the dark. Silently, he eased into the operator’s seat. There was no time now to calculate odds, plan strategy. His one possible ally was the element of surprise. His feet found the pedals, his hand touched the starting button, pressed it. With a blattering roar, the powerful engine burst into life. David flipped the headlight switch, and the brilliant beams burned down the length of the long room, outlined the fallen crate, canted at an awkward angle, by the broken body pinned beneath it, the two figures who bent over it, straightening now, staring . . . .