It was a duplicate of Quade.
“It’s a mirror,” Strike said softly.
“No. Look at that!”
The image of Quade was moving. It extended its arms and bowed, though the original made no motion. It jumped up and down, and then vanished as the membrane went blank. The picture had been perfectly distinct, three-dimensional.
Another picture formed. This time it showed the space ship. It also vanished. The sphere increased in size like an inflated balloon, and the men sprang back in alarm. But no hostile move was made. Instead, the thing disappeared.
In its place stood a model of the space ship. It was no more than six feet high, but complete in each detail.
This vanished, also. The original sphere, or a duplicate of it, reappeared. It shrank to a few inches and was gone.
“I will be damned,” Quade said, slowly and emphatically. “It can’t be happening. The thing’s a super motion-picture projector.”
“Intelligent?” Strike asked.
“Dunno. That membrane—I’ve a hunch it’s composed of evolved, highly adaptable cells, which take the place of our own normal senses. Respiration, vision, and so forth may be accomplished by those cells. Communication—they seem to do it visually, by projecting pictures of thought-images on their membranous surface.”
“But how can they vanish like that? And assume different shapes? That thing took the form of our space ship. Maybe of Gerry, too.”
QUADE made a despairing gesture. “Too deep for me, Strike. I think the key’s in that black tower we saw. Let’s get going.”
An eternity of plodding, laborous marching ensued. The monotonous white fires of the comet blazed overhead, twisting in strange, titanic tides. The terrain underfoot was monotonous beyond description. Inside the suits, the men perspired and swore under their breath.
A creature like prehistoric Tyrannosaurus Rex leaped from nowhere. It stood kangaroolike on its hind legs atop a dune, and stared around, its reptilian, flat head revolving slowly. It was at least twenty-five feet high. But that wasn’t the most amazing part of the apparition.
Strike seized Quade’s arm.
“That’s a Venusian whip!” he yelped. “A Venusian monster! Here—on the comet!” “You’re crazy,” Quade said.
Then he saw it. His eyes bulged.
“It—it can’t be real,” Strike said desperately, “It can’t be.”
The whip settled the problem by sighting the men. Flicking out its long, prehensile tongue, it charged down the slope. The thunder of its progress shook the ground. It was certainly no phantom. Strike jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired. The giant reptile flung back its head, hissed with ear-shattering shrillness. But still it continued its onrush.
The men were well-trained enough not to give way to panic. They scattered, each unlimbering his weapon. They evaded the monster’s charge, but the prehensile tongue flicked out like greased lightning and rasped over Quade’s suit as he sprang away. The guns bellowed out with staccato roars.
The whip, its head blown completely off, ran around in a vast circle. It took a long while before the minor brain in the tail-end of its spine brought it the realization that it was dead. Then, abruptly, it toppled over. The great tail continued swishing, the muscles still twitched under the scaly hide.
“Phantom?” Quade said bitterly. “I don’t think so. It isn’t vanishing, is it?”
“I don’t get it,” Strike mused. “A Venusian life-form on the comet. Somebody else might have forestalled us. But why bring a whip here?”
There seemed to be no solution to the problem. Nor was it possible to examine the giant carcass closely. Muscular reaction still made it a bundle of potential dynamite, twitching and jerking as it did at unexpected intervals. So the men resumed their march.
THEY were unquestionably nervous, and Quade could not blame them. He himself jumped slightly when Strike cried out: “Say, I just thought of something! How can an oxygen-breathing whip live in a cyanogen atmosphere?”
There was no possible answer to that, of course.
The next arrival was the red sphere, or a duplicate of it. It appeared on the summit of a dune, rolled down toward the Earthmen, and suddenly hesitated. From empty air around it appeared a dozen bluish globes, converging on the original one. They formed formed a milling, chaotic group of bubbles. When they drew away, the red one was gone. A deflated, punctured skin lay on the gravel, and colorless ichor was running out of it.
A score of reddish globes materialized from the air. The blue ones began to roll rapidly away, the newcomers in furious pursuit. Both groups scooted over a rise and disappeared, this time in a somewhat more logical manner.
“Didn’t see us, I guess,” Strike said.
“No . . . The blue ones seemed down on the red ones, and vice versa. Two different tribes or species, perhaps. But the color seems to be the only difference.”
“I wonder if they’re intelligent,” Strike persisted.
“It’s difficult to say,” Quade replied thoughtfully as he trudged on, ploughing through the gravel. “It doesn’t seem so, but their thought-processes may be so entirely alien to ours that there’s probably no common ground to meet on. There are vast gaps even between the System’s planetary life-forms.
“Originally the Arhennius spores, drifting through the void, may have created life. But adaptation and environment played a tremendous part. Besides, I doubt if any sort of spore could get through this comet’s coma. Microscopic bodies, shoved around by radiation, would be repelled by the electronic barrier. I told you we might run into almost anything here. We’re outside normal boundaries—almost outside our known Universe.”
“Are you telling me?” Strike replied bitterly. “Look! I might swallow a whip, but—This is too much!”
Quade didn’t believe what he saw. The other men were stupefied with amazement. They had topped a dune. In the valley beneath them squatted a vast bulk. It was alive, but it wasn’t homogeneous. It was a freak, a sport, and an impossible one.
It had the body of an elephant, gaudily striped with a zebra’s markings. It had the neck of an ostrich, unduly elongated. Its thin, awkward legs resembled those of a giraffe. And atop that lean, gawky neck was—The head of Tommy Strike!
IT was quite unmistakable, to the last freckle and lock of disordered hair falling over the tanned forehead. It looked into space with a wildly vacuous air, turned toward the Earthmen. The colossal hulk writhed, struggled. For a second it stood erect. Then the frail legs splintered, and the torso came crashing down. It struggled in agony.
Incontinently, it vanished.
“All right,” Quade said to the befuddled Strike. “That settles it. The whip was a known life-form. This wasn’t.”
“The component parts were.”
Quade refrained from the obvious rebuttal. “Yes. But nothing like that, in toto, ever existed in any universe. It was created, somehow, and it disappeared into thin air. The question is—how?”
“Dunno. I think the question’s why?” Quade resumed his forward march.
“The answer to both is in the black tower, I’m certain. It shouldn’t be far away now.” They saw it long before they reached it, a colossal structure rearing from the gravelly surface of the comet. It seemed entirely deserted. It was a duplicate of the phantom monolith that had appeared some time before. The same gateway yawned uninvitingly. The same shimmering, metallic sphere crowned the summit, crawling with unknown but potent force.
“Those red and blue globes never built that,” Strike said emphatically. “It was built by hands, or their equivalent.”
“Maybe the ancestors of our little friends did it,” Quade said. “That tower may have stood there for a long, long time. Besides, it might have been built by machinery.”
“Machines? Why should the globes use ’em? That outer membrane of theirs serves every purpose. They probably absorb food through it, if they don’t acquire it in this screwy atmosphere by respiration.”
“
That could be, of course. Meanwhile, let’s go down and investigate.”
Furtively, they sneaked to the threshold of the tower and peered in. A huge bare chamber gaped before them. It was lit by dim, pale fluorescence, and seemed to stretch up and up eternally. The interior of the tower was hollow. But far above, Quade caught the gleam of metal.
“Machine up there—”
He was interrupted by a cry from Strike. “Gerry!”
The girl lay across the vast room, stretched unconscious on the floor.
CHAPTER VII
Battle in the Tower
STRIKE raced toward her, the others not far behind. He knelt beside the girl, examining her oxygen apparatus. Quickly he turned a valve.
Gerry’s face was flushed. Her lips were moving, and her eyes stared blankly, unseeingly. For a second. Strike imagined that the creatures of the comet had afflicted her with some weird disease. Then he recognized that this was merely delirium.
“Back to the ship,” Quade commanded. “Two of you carry her.”
“It’s too late,” Tommy Strike grunted. “Here come our little friends.”
Dozens of the blue spheres were rolling across the threshold into the huge room. More and more of them flooded in. Inexorably they bore down on the trapped Earthmen.
Strike gently lowered Gerry to the floor and whipped out his gun. The others had already drawn. But none fired till the hostile intentions of the intruders became unmistakable.
Then Quade’s explosive bullet blew one of the blue globes to fragments. A staccato blast of gunfire instantly boomed and echoed through the cyanogen atmosphere within the tower, when his men followed his lead. A dozen of the enemy vanished, collapsing like split bladders. Curiously enough, some of them continued their disappearance, dematerializing like ghosts. Others remained.
But more of them appeared. Quade and his companions were forced back against the inner wall. They had plenty of ammunition, but it was impossible to withstand the irresistible tide of the globes.
“Where in hell are they coming from?” Strike yelled.
On they came, more and more of them, till the floor of the tower was covered with bluish balls, ranging in size from two to ten feet.
Quade switched on his audiophone and called Morgan, at the ship.
“What’s up, Chief?” Morgan asked, hearing the commotion.
“Come after us, quick,” the cameraman said quietly. In a few succinct sentences, he explained the situation, pausing at times to take pot-shots at the monsters.
“Can’t do it!” Morgan said. “One of the engines just went out. It’ll take hours to fix. Well come and get you on foot.”
“No,” Quade snapped. “Stay in the ship. Get that engine fixed. Those are definite orders!”
He had no time to say any more. Some of his men were already down, and the globes were rolling over them. Strike stood straddle-legged above Gerry’s unmoving form, a gun in either hand. The remnant of the men were clustered together. Backed helplessly against the wall, they were surrounded by the advancing hordes. Abruptly, unexpectedly, there came a breathing space.
The reason for it could not be discovered at first. Quade only realized that the attackers were failing to press their advantage. Previously, when one sphere had been destroyed, another sprang immediately into its place. But now the ranks were thinning, almost imperceptibly at first, but with steadily increasing speed. An alleyway opened toward the door, and Quade caught a glimpse of something entirely unexpected.
Through the door poured an army of red globes!
Red spheres and blue met in furious battle. The chamber was a seething, raging mass of bubbles, curiously lovely, tumbling and darting viciously in all directions. In dead silence, without visible weapons, the opposing groups pitted their strength against each other. And blue and red globes were deflated one by one.
“You were right!” Strike gasped, swaying on his feet. “Those two gangs are down on one another. Boy, is that lucky for us!”
“Yeah. If they’re not both down on us!” There was enough time to take inventory. None of the men had been injured, save for minor contusions. The strong, flexible helmets had withstood all blows.
“No weapons,” Strike said. “They don’t use any, apparently. But they’re committing mayhem anyhow.”
Quade lifted his gun and then lowered it without firing.
“No visible weapons, Strike,” he amended. “Don’t forget, these creatures are utterly alien to us. Their weapons may be purely mental. They might kill by sheer thought-force.”
“Then why doesn’t it work on us?”
“We’re not of the same species. We’re of entirely different chemical composition,” Quade pointed out. “Say, this fight looks like it’ll keep up forever. There’re more spheres now than when they started. They keep coming out of empty air.”
“I noticed that,” Strike grunted. “Hadn’t we better make a run for it?”
“I think so.”
THE movie man issued orders. In a compact body, bearing Gerry’s body between them, the group moved forward, guns lifted. The spheres paid little attention until the Earthmen were almost at the door. Then the bizarre comet creatures realized that their prisoners were escaping. Blue monsters and red joined forces to attack Quade and his companions.
This time results were somewhat different. Under the onslaught, most of the men went down, fighting gamely but uselessly. Quade was knocked flat beside Gerry. He twisted his head, trying to rise, saw the girl’s eyes open and the light of consciousness spring into them. She recognized Quade.
Her lips moved, but her dead audiophone failed to respond. Nevertheless the movie man managed to read some of the words.
“Out of here . . . quick . . . Save the others later . . . Only chance . . .”
There was still a gun in Gerry’s hand. It blasted. The girl began to roll over and over. After a brief hesitation, Quade followed.
It wasn’t easy. The thought of deserting his men was far from pleasant. But he realized that Gerry was seemingly deserting Strike, and he knew that she would never have done that without good reason. Moreover, two might escape where seven couldn’t. Most of the globes were occupied with Strike and the other men.
By luck, skill and murderous aim, Gerry and Quade managed to reach the outskirts of the struggle. There they rose. Gerry ripped Quade’s mittened hand and both ran rantically up the slope toward the nearest ridge.
Some of the spheres pursued. The next ten minutes were a chaos of gunfire and collapsing red and blue globes.
When no more of the things appeared. Gerry sank down in the gravel, dragging Quade beside her.
“My audiophone,” her lips formed. “Can you fix it?”
Quade had an emergency repair kit with him. Hastily he repaired the device. It wasn’t long before Gerry’s voice came to him.
“Keep your eyes open,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t know how much time we have, but it won’t be long. We’ve only got the Proteans to contend with for awhile, but pretty soon all hell’s going to break loose.”
“Proteans?”
“That’s what I call them. You’ll know why when I tell you what’s happened. Meanwhile, have your gun ready.”
SUCCINCTLY Gerry outlined what had happened to her up to the time of her capture. She went on:
“Those creatures are intelligent. They communicate by pictures—thought-images—projected on their outer membrane. They communicated with me, all right. I found out plenty. Quade, what I’m going to tell you is going to seem unbelievable. Do you know how many Proteans there are?”
“A few thousand?” Tony hazarded. “Seven,” Gerry said. “Seven Proteans, and that’s all! Seven—sleepers!”
Quade wrinkled his brow. “I don’t—”
“They’re a decadent race. Ages ago they had an entirely different form, I don’t know just what. They’ve lived on this comet for unimaginable eons. They evolved along lines totally alien to ours, reached the summit of their culture,
and began to slide back. This barren body won’t support much life. In time, only seven Proteans were left. They were highly evolved intellectuals, chained to this barren world because they hadn’t mastered space travel. Know what they did?”
A red sphere materialized twelve feet away. It rolled toward them, expanding as it moved. Quade blew it to fragments. The fragments dissolved into nothingness.
“They built the black tower,” Gerry went on. “It’s a machine, Quade, and what it does is something almost impossible. It materializes—dreams!”
The man didn’t laugh. “On first thought, it’s crazy,” he said thoughtfully.
“I know. But it’s a fact that all living tissue has a sort of electric halo, a field of energy. Isn’t that so?”
“Yeah. Way back in the nineteen-thirties, two chaps named Nims and Lane made a gadget sensitive enough to detect that field and record its patterns. But what has that got to do with a dream?”
“Dreams take electric energy, the same as conscious thought,” Gerry explained. “I figured it out, as well as I could, from what the Protean told me. Ever have a nightmare where you run and run but get nowhere? Ever wake up covered with perspiration, exhausted? That proves dreams take energy. Listen, if corporate life has a measurable electric field, it’s only a step further to record the energy patterns of a dream.”
FOR a few moments there was silence, while Quade digested the information. “I’m getting the picture,” Quade said. “I think I follow you. If the energy pattern is recorded, why not change these patterns back into the electric waves that produced them, thus recreating the living issue, or the dream, that created them? The human voice was recorded in visible patterns long before Edison. But Edison’s phonograph retraced those visible patterns with a needle and made the sound come to life again.
“Sure! Even now images can be recorded as sound tracks. They sound like squeals and grunts, but an experienced movie engineer can identify them. I’ve done it myself. It’s not such a long step to playing them back as three-dimensional images.”
Collected Fiction Page 147