by James White
As he led them into the corridor, McCullough wondered why it was so important to him that he should get as far away from the colonel's body as possible. In the past he had treated automobile accident cases and examined the pulverized remains of jet pilots who had hit the deck at close to Mach One, so that Morrison's body was not by any means the worst sight he had had to witness in his life. He had even seen a matador gored repeatedly by a bull on one occasion, and while he had felt clinical concern for the unfortunate man, some detached portion of his mind -- a group of rebel brain cells, perhaps, which had abstained when the majority were taking the Hippocratic Oath -- had been glad that on this occasion the bull had been able to hit back. It was just that in some obscure fashion the colonel's had been such a dirty death, and McCullough did not want to think about it at all.
They spotted a Two about ten minutes later and trailed it at a distance of twenty yards or less, depending on the turns and twists of its route. At intervals they wrapped pieces of paper around the netting so that they would be able to find their way back again. But the Two ignored them, either because it did not see them or because it had something more important on its mind. A few minutes later it was joined by another of its kind, then three more, none of which showed any interest in their pursuers. The men were pushing deeper and deeper into the Ship now, and large stretches of the corridors were permanently lit -- they did not have to switch on the corridor lighting here and could not even see the switches which controlled it. They also became aware of a low, moaning sound which rose and fell and changed pitch constantly but erratically and grew steadily louder as they went on.
Suddenly there were three aliens following them and gaining steadily. Before they became sandwiched too tightly between the two groups of e-t's, McCullough led his party into the next empty compartment. Its sliding door had a large window, so he did not switch on the room lights. While waiting for the second group to pass, he had a few minutes to look around, and he discovered something which almost made him call off the search for a water supply.
This compartment was different from the others they had examined. Even the light which filtered in from the corridor made that very plain. The cable runs and ducting were absent or hidden behind flush wall panels and the objects occupying the room had the unmistakable, finished look of items of furniture. In the center of the room there was suspended a long, cylindrical shape which could very well be a free-fall hammock.
"They've gone past," said Drew, opening the sliding door. "We'll have to hurry -- they're turning into an intersection . . ."
Very carefully McCullough marked the position of the compartment on his map, then left with the others. He still felt that he should have made them stop until they had examined and considered all the implications of the room they had just left.
A lab animal would not require a furnished room, which meant that there were intelligent extraterrestrials on the Ship.
He needed time to think. The search for water could be postponed for a few hours or days while they decided what was the best thing to do. McCullough was the boss and he would order a return to base.
But McCullough did not give the order because everything began happening at once.
They turned into a corridor unlike any they had seen before. One wall was made up of heavy wire mesh through which they could see a large compartment filled with Twos, while other Twos fought and wriggled their way through gaps in the mesh. Inside the enclosure the fighting and jockeying for position was so vicious that several of the e-t's were dead. The object of the fighting seemed to be to gain a position near a long plastic panel running along one wall of the enclosure. From the panel there sprouted a large number of open, small-diameter pipes and a similar number which terminated in rubbery swellings. The fighting which was going on made it difficult to see exactly what it was that was oozing out of them.
"Semiliquid food from the pipes, I think," said Hollis excitedly, "and what looks like water from the nipples!"
He broke off as a single, deafening chime reverberated along the corridor and they heard their first alien voice.
It could have been his imagination, but McCullough felt sure that the sound was subtly unlike the alien gobblings of the Twos. The word-sounds seemed more complex and meaningful somehow, and there was almost a quality of urgency about them. He knew that it was ridiculous to read meanings into a completely alien sequence of sounds, but his feeling of being warned remained strong. Each time the voice paused, the single, tremendous chime was repeated -- or perhaps the voice was speaking quickly between chimes.
The Twos on the other side of the mesh became more agitated when a chime sounded, but they did not stop either eating or fighting each other.
Drew said something about Pavlov to Hollis, and McCullough unstrapped his tape recorder. Drew swung his weapon to point at a nearby speaker grill, where it would be possible to get a recording without too much interference from the feeding animals, but he never completed the movement. There was a blinding double flash as the spear touched the mesh and the corridor. Drew jerked violently, then became motionless except for a slow, lateral spin.
A second alien voice joined the first one and the moaning sounds increased in intensity.
The new voice seemed to be speaking the same language. Very often it repeated the same word-sounds as the first voice, but it spoke over or around it and did not pause for the chimes. Sometimes it spoke quickly and at other times the words were dragged out and their pitch, volume and inflection varied so widely that it seemed to be trying to sing. McCullough felt confused and stupid as he blinked away the green afterimage of the flash and tried to make some kind of sense out of what was happening. He needed time to think.
But he was given no time to think, because Berryman was coming back and shouting at them from the other end of the corridor.
"Doctor! Doctor! Walters says the generator blisters are beginning to glow -- all of them that he can see from P-Two! He says the Ship is leaving!"
chapter fifteen
For the first few seconds McCullough's feeling was one of outrage rather than fear. This was going too far, he thought; being marooned on the Ship, running short of water, under nearly constant attack by aliens, the deaths of Colonel Morrison and Drew. This was piling on the agony and taking misfortune to ridiculous extremes. The Ship couldn't be leaving!
But Berryman kept babbling on about Walters and the glow enamating from the interior of the transparent generator blisters and the interference which was being picked up by P-Two's radio, all of which indicated a steady build-up of power within the Ship. Then there was the constant gabbling of the Twos, the chiming, the alien voices and moaning sound pouring out of the wall speaker. If the Ship was leaving, McCullough would be expected to do something about it, react in some fashion, make decisions, give orders now.
He couldn't.
The problem was too big and complicated for quick decisions and inspired leadership -- at least, so far as he was concerned. He had to put it into some sort of order in his mind, take time to consider the events in consecutive fashion and break the problem down, even though they might have no time at all. He must go back past Berryman's arrival to the time when Drew was alive and only the alien voices . . .
McCullough's mind came to a sudden halt at that point and ground into reverse. Drew might very well be still alive. Now that he had time to think about it, the more likely it became. He pointed at the mesh and at Drew and tried to speak.
What he wanted to say was that the mesh was electrified and they should stay clear of it, and that Drew's weapon had touched it while the haft was in contact with the floor, so that the flash had been a short along the shaft of the spear. He wanted to tell them that in his opinion the mesh was not too highly charged -- the way he saw it there should be just enough kick in it to keep the captive animals under control -- and in any case Drew had been wearing his suit gauntlets which would give added protection. Considering the gauntlets and the fact that the discharge
had gone through the weapon and not by way of Drew's body, he tried to say, there was a good chance that prompt resuscitation measures would save him. But all he could do was stammer and point. He could not make them understand or even hold their attention.
Hollis shouted something at him but a chime from the speaker a few inches from McCullough's ear kept him from hearing what the physicist had said. But Berryman was closer to Hollis and replied. Hollis pulled Drew's weapon out of the air and added it to the one already in his hand, shouted something at McCullough, then launched himself back in the direction from which they had just come. Berryman looked from the physicist's fast-disappearing feet to McCullough and back again, waved and bellowed.
It had been impossible to hear what either of them had been saying over the cacophony of chimes, moaning, squabbling Twos and the alien duet.
McCullough could understand Hollis running away. The physicist was wearing one of the two remaining undamaged spacesuits and there was a chance that he could make it to the airlock and to the P-ships in time. But why was the pilot running away? Surely Berryman did not think that he could take Hollis' suit away from him, after fighting him for it and knocking him unconscious? The only result of such a fight would be another ruptured spacesuit.
Not knowing what to think and feeling bitterly disappointed in both of them, McCullough opened his visor and dived slowly toward Drew. In the weightless condition and with an electrified mesh just a few feet away, there was only one method of resuscitation possible. McCullough did his best to ignore the alien voices rattling at him from the speaker, the gobbles and wheezing sounds coming from the Twos and the all-pervading moaning and chiming, and concentrated instead on administering the Kiss of Life to the dead or unconscious Drew.
But finding Drew's mouth was like ducking for apples in a tub of water at Halloween. The pilot's head kept bobbing away and rolling flabbily about inside his helmet. Finally, by sliding one hand carefully into the helmet and supporting the back of Drew's neck with his fingers, McCullough was able to press the other's face forward into the visor opening.
Results came quickly after that.
Gasping and choking and struggling like a drowning man, Drew began to come to. He flung one arm around McCullough's neck so tightly that the doctor thought his helmet would come off and possibly his head as well. He was able to hold Drew clear of the electrified mesh until the pilot settled down, then he detached the arm from around his neck.
For some reason McCullough was feeling unusually well-disposed toward the pilot. Possibly this was because he might have been instrumental in saving the other's life and this made him feel a vaguely godlike possessiveness and concern for this life he might have saved. As well, there was the fact that Drew would be the only company available if the other two did not come back. And after everything the pilot had been through he did not want to add to Drew's troubles by telling him that the Ship was leaving, even though every instinct he possessed seemed to be urging him to get to the nearest airlock and jump for the P-ships while he had the chance.
Drew was mumbling something at him, looking very awkward and embarrassed.
Obviously the chimes and alien voices were some kind of pre-takeoff warning. While they continued, there was still a chance for him to leave the Ship.
"I can't hear you," he said hurriedly to the pilot. "But there's no need to thank me -- you probably wouldn't have died anyway . . ."
"You mustn't think I meant it personally," Drew broke in, speaking loudly but with his awkwardness still very much in evidence. "It was just that your hand and your mouth . . . I mean, there was a girl at home who -- who . . . For a minute I thought . . . Dammit, Doc, I don't want you thinking I'm some kind of pervert or anything!"
Get out of here! screamed a voice in McCullough's mind, while another pointed out the ridiculous, almost insane humor of the situation and urged him to laugh while yet another voice, calmer and more clinical, reminded him that so far as Drew was concerned this was a very serious matter and he should avoid hurting the pilot's feelings.
"The thought," said McCullough with the ring of absolute truth and sincerity in his voice, "never entered my mind. But if you look in the enclosure you'll see the Twos are beginning to lose interest in their feeding. We had better leave before they see us."
"What happened to my spear?" said Drew. "Where are Hollis and Berryman? It is very bad tactics to split up our force like this, sir . . ."
Drew was his old self again, obviously, and McCullough felt less hesitation about passing on the bad news of the Ship leaving and the desertion of Hollis and Berryman. But he was saved the trouble. Berryman was with them again, hanging onto the wall net and trying to talk and catch his breath at the same time.
He was giving Drew a startled, I-didn't-expect-to-see-you-alive-again sort of look while he spoke to McCullough. He said, "Sorry for leaving you -- without permission -- just now. I got excited and took off -- without thinking. When you gave Captain Hollis the idea for -- for shorting the generator with the metal spears -- he told me he needed help. He still does, inside the blister. You have the only other working spacesuit, sir. We haven't much time . . ."
Until then McCullough had not been aware that he had given an idea to anyone, but he realized at once what Hollis was trying to do because they had discussed just this eventuality several times. In general, that was -- he would have to wait until they reached the generator blister to see what particular form of sabotage the physicist had been able to devise.
On the way they surprised a not quite fully grown Two at an intersection. Being unarmed, Drew and Berryman grabbed two tentacles each, twisted their feet into the wall net, and swung it hard and repeatedly against a projecting bracket until its carapace split and it stopped moving. Berryman looked slightly sick and Drew, who had devised this particular method of unarmed combat, muttered something about neatness and dispatch.
McCullough wondered why such complimentary terms were used to describe such a vicious and despicable act. But with every wall speaker erupting chimes and a continuous alien gabble bounding their ears; with the knowledge that all around them the generators which could whisk them away to some alien solar system were building up to full power, it was impossible to behave in an ethical and moral manner. It was impossible, Mccullough thought cynically, because so very few human beings were capable of such behavior in the present circumstances, and if enough people considered it impossible, then it was impossible.
For four frightened astronauts, read fifty million Frenchmen who could not be wrong, and for fifty million Frenchmen, read the whole human race . . .
For a moment the thought came to him of traveling an unguessable number of light-years to another solar system, of seeing an alien world and its culture and having contact with true, extraterrestrial intelligences -- even if only briefly as an animal they might consider of too little interest or importance to keep alive. The idea of not helping the physicist, of ordering Hollis to cease attempting to sabotage the generator, came and was hurriedly rejected. The sudden, awful wonder of his original thought was quickly overwhelmed by fear.
They passed quickly through the lock chamber and the interhull space where their first major brush with the Twos had occurred, and on to the lock which gave access to the generator blister. Hollis' legs showed in the transparent panel of the inner seal.
As McCullough was joining him, Berryman placed his antenna against the bulkhead and said, "Walters is pulling away under steering power, Doctor. Hollis says there are likely to be gravitational side-effects if the Ship generators reach full power. He says the P-ships might be sucked in and suggested that Walters move out to at least five miles so that someone would be able to tell Earth what happened to the rest of us . . ."
Listening to him, McCullough wondered if the sabotage attempt was unsuccessful, and if he wasn't killed by it and if he could get to an airlock in time, would he be able to launch himself toward Walters and the P-ships even if the alien vessel was already moving a
way. Angrily, he wondered why he had not simply broken away from Drew and Berryman on the way here and used a lock chamber to leave the Ship. He had thought about it but had not seriously considered doing it.