by James White
But he did not wake up and the Twos rushed down on him, figments of a nightmare which was not even of Earth. Their tentacles spread and coiled like the legs of great, fat spiders and that horrible, obscene horn jabbed and quivered and gave every attack the added horror of indecent assault.
". . . Psychology is far from being an exact science, and it is difficult enough to cure the aberrations of a human being . . ."
Twice his spear made a wet, thudding sound and another pair of Twos spun out of sight. He began to think that they might, after all, succeed in exterminating the animals. It was obvious that they were all here, attracted by the scent the humans had picked up in the crew quarters. With the Twos out of the way they could investigate the Ship at leisure, building up a picture of the culture of its home planet and getting to know and understand the alien crew member before actual contact was attempted. But then everything went suddenly wrong.
Berryman speared a Two just as another came spinning close to the net on McCullough's side. The doctor lunged, missed and had to fend it off with his feet. Both animals crashed together just as a third arrived on the scene, and within seconds the remainder of the Twos were adding to the pile-up. McCullough lost his spear -- he couldn't bring it to bear anyway -- and somebody screamed and then went on cursing. McCullough wanted to laugh because that meant the wound had not been immediately fatal.
He threw his arms around a passing Two, hugging its bony shell close to his chest so that its horn and threshing tentacles formed a defensive shield. He shouted, "Get out of here! Crawl along the wall net, get clear!"
They kicked and wrestled their way free of the jam, Berryman first, then Hollis and McCullough trailed by their madly flapping Threes. Already the First Twos were beginning to give chase.
"We have to find shelter," Berryman gasped as they sailed along the corridor. "A good, strong door . . ."
Hollis was looking back over his shoulder. He said, "Only -- only five of them left . . ."
"In here!"
Berryman had stopped and was clinging to the net beside a door, one arm out to check Hollis. They pulled the door aside and within seconds the pilot's head, shoulders and spear showed around the edge as he prepared to defend it until the others arrived.
Behind them the Twos went suddenly berserk.
"No!" McCullough shouted urgently. "Berryman, get out of there!"
But it was too late. A Two hurled itself past both Hollis and himself without bothering even to strike at them. It impaled itself on Berryman's spear, driving the haft backward between the wall and the sliding panel. Berryman yelled that he couldn't free his spear and the door was jammed open.
Hollis had caught the netting beside the door and was about to go through when McCullough arrived behind him. The doctor gripped the net firmly, planted both feet in the small of the physicist's back and pushed hard. Berryman looked at McCullough as if he had just committed murder.
"Contact Walters!" McCullough yelled as Hollis went spinning down the corridor. "Clear the short in the generator! And don't worry about the Twos -- they aren't interested in you now!"
They would not follow Hollis because Berryman had just opened another way into the crew quarters.
It was a different entrance, opening into a compartment they had not seen before. One wall was covered with the bright, translucent murals McCullough had come to know so well and the rest of the small room was devoted to storage cabinets. There was a sound of wind blowing through alien trees. It was unoccupied.
McCullough pointed to the room's inner door and said, very seriously, "They mustn't kill the last survivor. We've done enough harm to the Ship as it is. We've got to kill every last one of them here and now . . ."
". . . And in conclusion we must state that the surviving e-t, for physical or mental reasons or both, is almost certainly helpless . . ."
It was a large doorway and the spear jammed across it did not form an effective barrier. The first attacker blundered onto Berryman's spear, the second batted it aside with one tentacle and reached for him with the other three. With no net to steady him, suspended weightless and helpless in the middle of the room, Berryman was being pulled onto its horn when a Three got between them and was caught instead. It fluttered like a furry flag and died while Berryman struggled free. The rest of the Twos were swarming in.
McCullough took a blow on the shoulder which nearly paralyzed his arm, and suddenly there was a Two with its tentacles around his head and shoulder and its horn only inches away from his face. He let go his spear and grabbed for the horn with both hands. It was dry and hot and felt like rough wood. The whole twitching mass of its underbelly was oily with alien sweat or saliva and the stink made him want to vomit. The room rotated slowly around them as their struggles made them spin.
Berryman swam into sight beside a dying Two. He was terribly wounded and large, red bubbles were forming and breaking away from his abdomen and chest. A Three was trying to spread itself over him so as to stanch the flow of blood, and wriggling because Berryman, an expression on his face that was almost sublime, kept running his fingers through the fur on its back. The pilot swung into sight three or four times before McCullough saw that he had died. And still the doctor gripped the Two's horn and tried desperately to push it away.
But it clung and tightened its hold and hung above his head like a vile, alien umbrella. His legs were encircled and another Two swarmed awkwardly along his body. He tried to kick it away but it was too high up. Then he saw that there was a Three on its back, the flat, furry body oozing between the Two's tentacles, blinding and smothering it in tight, clinging fur until it drifted away dead.
But the Threes were fluttering and flapping all over the compartment, unwilling for some reason to come to his aid. His spear was drifting a few feet away, but he dared not let go of the horn for even a second and expect to live. The Two kept changing its grip and each time the horn came a little closer. His arms were very tired . . .
". . . In general terms its psychological troubles stem from loneliness, grief, and fear caused by its being surrounded by enemies. It must feel that there is nobody who cares whether it lives or dies.
"We know so little about this being that curative therapy is beyond us. But if its basic needs are enough like ours, and if its mental condition has not already reached the point of no return we might, by our actions alone, show it that . . ."
McCullough tried to count slowly to ten. He thought that if he could just hold off that horrible yellow horn for ten seconds, he would be able to do it for another ten seconds. But the muscles in his back were cracking and his arms felt as if they were on fire. He closed his eyes tight because he was horribly afraid of seeing as well as feeling himsef being killed.
" . . . And eventually make it realize that it isn't alone and that someone, us, is trying to help it . . ."
The noise in that confined space was incredible. McCullough jerked open his eyes to see chunks of tentacles and shell being torn off his Two. Then he saw why the Threes were so excited, the weapon with its odd double stock and very ordinary magazine and barrel, and the being who was holding it.
He saw, too, the four manipulators encircling the alien's head, three of which were so badly damaged that it was a miracle it was able to hold the weapon at all, and the awful, Two-inflicted scars running the length of its body. He looked last at its eyes and for a long time neither of them did anything. Then the alien pushed its machine gun away and McCullough, now that his taped report had come to an end, began calling Hollis and Walters on his suit radio.
chapter twenty-three
Both supply rockets with their water, food and spare spacesuits went off course.
When he told him about it, Walter's voice was strained. McCullough could imagine the pilot's feelings -- the fear of how the doctor might react, his pleas for help which the pilot could not possibly give him, and Walter's own, personal fear of the long voyage home with Hollis in a vehicle which had already passed the time limit for operat
ional safety. When the pilot went on speaking, his cheerfulness was obviously forced.
He said, "Brady feels terrible about this. He says you did the right thing despite his and everyone else's opposition. He's sorry for the things he said to you and he says he deserved everything you said to him. He -- well, he's beginning to sound like Churchill -- the debt owed you by the whole of humanity, the immeasurable social and scientific advances this First Contact will bring about, and so on. He wishes there was only some way to bring all of us back . . ."
The pilot broke off, then said awkwardly, "You said earlier how terrific a thing it would be to travel to another solar system . . ."
McCullough and Hollis looked at each other and the alien watched both of them. They were in the antechamber of the generator blister where the physicist had just completed repairs, and the e-t had followed them there as it followed them everywhere. Sometimes the being made noises at them or waved its mandible or they exchanged sketches. But mostly it just hung there and watched everything they did.
It was possible that the being was security conscious or anxious lest they commit further acts of sabotage, but McCullough did not think so. To his way of thinking, the e-t was simply glad of the company, any company.
To Walters he said, "It seemed like a fine idea at the time, but I wasn't thinking straight just then. No doubt someone will bust a gut to get going, and it'll happen soon if, as I'm convinced, we can duplicate the Ship's drive. But I prefer to go home."
"But sir . . ."
"Hollis' suit is still in one piece, and I have an idea. Last week it would not have been a good idea . . ."
. . . Because last week Berryman and Drew were alive and both P-ships would have been needed to get them home . . .
By the time he had finished explaining, Walters was much happier. The pilot said briskly, "Two days should be enough for the job, but I'll contact Brady at once asking for a course based on a four-day countdown -- that will give us time to check our ship. And -- and I'll tell them we want return tickets for three!"
He had to explain his idea to the alien then, but that was not too difficult because the old adage about a good picture being worth two thousand words held true even among extraterrestrials. But the result was that the alien stuck even closer to him from then on, especially when Hollis was working on P-One. And it kept forcing things on him, things like odd pieces of equipment, the lovely, glowing murals and carvings, books and film spools as well as food and water. McCullough explained graphically about fuel reserves and weight allowances and knew that the alien understood, but it still continued to give him things.
Then early in the second day, Hollis completed his work on P-One. On the Ship a large cargo hatch swung open and Walters, moving very slowly and carefully, edged toward it. The two P-ships were docked nose to nose and Hollis had stripped P-One of all its projecting antennae, collectors and sensory equipment and had completely removed the return fuel tanks and motors so that the bare command module would fit, just nicely,into the large cargo lock.
Walters slid the stripped-down P-One into the cargo lock, detached it from P-Two and withdrew. The outer seal was closed and pressure restored. Hollis, McCullough and the alien began transferring quantites of food, water, artifacts, photographs and sketches which they had placed in the corridor into the module section. Then they wedged it firmly into the lock chamber -- a present from Earth for a culture an unguessable number of light-years away -- and suddenly it was time to go.
It had been relatively easy to exchange simple concepts via sketch pad, but there was no way at all for him to tell what it was thinking during those last few minutes in the airlock. It was just a great, fat caterpillar, an LSD nightmare with too many eyes and mouths in all the wrong places, for him to be able to read such a subtle thing as a facial expression -- and the problem cut both ways. All he could do was look at it for a few minutes while it looked at him, them follow Hollis into P-One.
The cargo hatch swung open, air whistled into space and Walters came edging back with P-Two. He docked, they transferred themselves and their stores and artifacts into P-Two and drifted away again. The cargo hatch closed, Walters used steering thrust briefly and the great Ship fell slowly away from them.
For a long time McCullough did not speak. He was thinking about the alien he had just left and its Ship and the beings who had sent her out, and wondering what they would think of his people -- the people who had left three of their dead aboard, killed while trying to clear the Ship of a particularly nasty form of vermin. And in one of the cargo locks there was a human artifact, a tiny, ridiculous, fragile shell which had carried three human beings more than fifty million miles out to their Ship. He did not know what they would think about his people, but that P-ship should tell them a lot.
Walters had completed a last altitude check and was listening to Control during the last few seconds of the countdown when the generator blisters on the Ship glowed suddenly. In an instant it had shrunk from sight.
Hollis gave a great sigh of relief. "I was worried in case I'd botched the repair job," he said. Then he looked closely at McCullough and added, "Don't worry, Doctor, our friend will be all right. It's going home."
Walters was moving his lips silently. Suddenly he pressed the thrust button and said, "So are we . . ."
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