“More than images,” Gerry put in. “The tower does just that, without the intermediate step. Nothing is actually recorded. The towers just take the electric dream-pattern of the seven Proteans and recreate it, broadcast it. in the precise positions and motions that the dreamer wishes.”
“You mean all those spheres were dreams?” Quade asked. “Dreams that had acquired the attributes of matter?”
“Yes. They were real. Or, maybe, one-tenth real. Real enough to fight and die and communicate with me.”
“But why?” Quade asked. “Scientifically, it’s possible, though screwy as hell. But logically, there’s no reason for it.”
“It’s logical enough,” the girl declared, shifting her position uneasily on the hard gravel. “I told you there were seven bored intellectuals left on this comet. Blue and red—four of one, three of another. They couldn’t leave their world. They were faced with an unending monotony of existence. What would you have done?”
“Go crazy,” Quade admitted frankly. “There was another way out. They had to create some interest in life. And they did. A deadly sort of chess game, three on one side, four on the other. It’s logical enough. Chess is an intellectual pastime, and this is super-scientific chess. Here’s what the Proteans did.
“They made this tower to materialize their dreams. They changed their shape, though I’m not quite sure about that. And they materialized their thought-patterns in the form of duplicates of themselves. Half of their brains are asleep and dreaming, while the other half is conscious, directing operations. We ourselves use only half of our brains, you know.”
Quade nodded curtly. “Right. But you actually mean there are only seven real Proteans on the comet?”
“That’s all. All the others are dream-images, plenty real enough though, because they’re given the energy and attributes of matter by the black tower.
“For centuries this murderous chess game has gone on. It might have gone on eternally, if we hadn’t introduced a new factor into the game.”
“Wait a minute,” Quade interrupted. Swiftly he told the girl of the bizarre creatures they had seen on the way to the tower—the Venusian whip, and the freak with Strike’s head.
“Sure.” Gerry smiled wryly. “I was delirious, feverish. And I was inside the tower. My proximity to the machine simply made my hallucinations materialize. And that’s the crux of the matter. The Proteans realized that I was valuable to them.”
CHAPTER VIII
Dreamt Walking
WHEN Gerry stated her value to the Dreamers, Quade fell silent. His tanned face was suddenly grim and worried as he realized the potential danger.
“Think of our memories!” Gerry whispered in horror. “The monsters we’ve seen on all the planets, the weapons we’ve used. The Proteans intended to put me asleep, control ray brain, and induce me to dream of things I’d experienced. A Venusian whip! What a weapon that would be in the hands of the blues against the reds! We’re invaluable to them as fodder. Our brains are storehouses of dreams. And the Proteans can materialize dreams!”
“Lord, oh Lord,” Quade groaned. “What a mess. This is just about the damnedest thing I’ve ever run up against. How the devil can I photograph a dream? It just isn’t real.”
“It’s real enough to be filmed,” Gerry said. “And a Protean—a real Protean, not a dream—can be captured! But there’s another handicap. These things are above the minimum level of intelligence. By Interplanetary Law, no intelligent being can be taken from its home world against its consent.”
“Well, that can wait,” Quade said. “The main problem is to save Strike and my men. Wonder if the ship’s ready yet?”
He used the audiophone. Morgan responded worriedly. The engine wasn’t repaired but work to repair the ship was proceeding rapidly.
“We can’t stay here,” Tony said. “And we can’t go back to the tower. Let’s head for the ship.”
“We’d better hurry,” Gerry observed. “Once Tommy and the others are put to sleep, their dreams will start to come true. And Tommy has a frightful imagination.”
Quade arose painfully, assisted Gerry to her feet. The girl was still weak, but she pluckily shook off the man’s arm and started plodding forward.
“Keep your gun handy,” she advised.
The Proteans seemed to be lying low. But once the two caught sight of a whip lumbering over a rise to the left. It did not menace them, however, and soon went out of sight.
“The main problem,” Gerry mused, “is to awaken the seven sleeping Proteans. It’ll do no good to kill the others. New ones will materialize faster than we can shoot.”
“Where are the real ones?” Quade asked.
GERRY laughed bitterly. “Oh, they’re not tucked away in a private dormitory. That’s where the fun comes in. They’re mixed in with the others. They’re only half asleep, you know. Half of their brain is still conscious. And it’s utterly impossible to tell a real Protean from a fake one.”
“Can’t we simply keep shooting till we kill off all the real ones?”
“It’d be like cleaning up the Asteroid Belt with a bucket,” Gerry said in a hopeless voice. “We’ve got to identify the real ones and—Well, I don’t want to kill them unless it’s necessary. They’d be no good to either of us dead. If we can awaken them—”
“We can’t wake ’em up without identifying them,” Quade said. “And we can’t identify ’em without waking them up. Lord!”
“Well, you can be sure this isn’t a real Protean,” Gerry said, as a shaggy, apelike figure lumbered over the rise toward them. “It’s a Hyclops! Where’s your rifle?”
The Hyclops, native to Ganymede, stands more than twelve feet high, is terrifyingly covered with hair, and has four arms. Its three one-eyed heads bear murderous fangs that protrude from a slobbering, looselipped mouth. “Get the eyes,” Gerry yelped, scurrying to one side. “We haven’t any super-explosive bullets, but—Aim at the eyes!”
“You’re telling me!” Quade grunted, dashing in the other direction. He whirled, crouched on one knee, pumped bullets at the monster. The Hyclops charged on, foam frothing from its slavering mouth. The huge, shaggy arms clawed at the air.
One bullet found its mark. The right head lost its eye and lolled uselessly on the fatty neck. The creature let out a soundless bellow of agony and whirled toward Quade. If this was a dream, the man thought, it was certainly one hell of a nightmare!
Quade scampered away. He caught a flashing glimpse of the monster towering above him, huge as a colossus, the mighty arms clutching. Quade dived between the pillarlike legs, shuddering at what might happen if a taloned hand closed on his space suit. In that cyanogen atmosphere, he’d die almost before the Hyclops crushed him.
Gerry’s bullet found the center head. The huge monster shrieked silently and jerked erect. The remaining head lifted. Gerry fired again.
The Hyclops collapsed. Like a bag of deflated skin, it slumped down and fell on Quade. The man had only time for one frantic thought of impending destruction before he was smashed flat. He tried to roll aside—
And the Hyclops vanished. It disappeared into thin air. It was gone like the figment of a dream that it was.
“This is doing me no good,” Quade said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Suppose I’d wanted that head—or those heads, I mean—for my mantelpiece.”
Gerry laughed somewhat hysterically. “Imagine how a real big-game hunter feels. Come on. Let’s hurry, before Tommy uses his imagination again.”
A new phase entered the situation. Mirages seemed to dance indistinctly all about them. Vague, half-seen images flickered in the distance and were gone—flashing pictures of alien worlds Tommy Strike had once seen—bizarre monsters, strange faces, some that were recognizable. One in particular made Gerry’s lovely eyes narrow. A blond, lusciously curved damsel had posed like a houri on a hilltop, and then vanished.
Quade couldn’t help grinning, but he said nothing as Gerry glanced furiously at him. Gerry was, of cours
e, a redhead. Strike certainly had no business dreaming of blondes.
“Lord help Strike,” Tony thought pityingly.
On they went, under the strange white sky of the comet. The seething, colossal tides of flame roared and swept above them. It was weird beyond all imagination. The two might have imagined themselves the last humans in the Universe, tracking a barren waste beneath the cosmic fires of creation.
Once they saw, or thought they saw, Gerry herself running rapidly but getting nowhere. This, too, dissolved.
“If I meet myself,” the girl said unhappily, “I’ll go crazy. How much farther is it?”
“Not far,” Quade comforted. “What’s this, now?”
Apparently Tommy Strike had once had delirium tremens. At least, the monster approaching looked like nothing that ever existed anywhere. It was a sea-serpent, twenty feet long, writhing rapidly toward them with vast jaws agape. But luckily it disappeared before guns could be drawn.
QUADE and Gerry reached the ship without further mishap. Morgan greeted them, helping them off with the bulky suits.
“That engine’s still giving trouble,” he observed. “We strained it badly, getting through the coma. And another motor’s in need of overhauling.”
“Has to be done,” Quade said grimly. “We want to get off the comet alive. I need a drink.”
He took Gerry to the control cabin. For some time they pondered, between pouring and drinking. But they did succeed in calming their battered mind to coherence.
“We can’t move the ship,” Quade said at length. “That’s certain. Will any of those traps and snares of yours work on the Proteans?”
“You can’t hypnotize a sleeping person,” the girl said. “So the hypnotic lure wouldn’t work. That’s the toughest part of it. My traps are designed for living monsters, not dreams and dreamers. The heavy-range guns might work, but we can’t drag them all the way to the tower. Also”—she glanced at a chronometer—“time’s getting short. We’re nearing the Sun. This comet is traveling plenty fast.”
Quade lit a cigar of greenish, aromatic Lunar tobacco.
“Let’s think. We’ve got to figure out a way of waking the seven sleepers so their phantom legions will vanish. Um-m. What is sleep, anyway?”
“There’s more than one theory. The brain varies between states of excitation and relaxation. The greater the excitation, the sooner comes relaxation, or sleep. The seven Proteans are half awake and half asleep. Super-development of the brain causes that.”
Quade nodded. “If we could irritate them enough to cause wakening—Let’s see. These creatures are highly evolved. Their outer membranes are composed of specialized cells. That means their nerve-endings must be extremely sensitive. And they live in a cyanogen atmosphere.”
Gerry adjusted her red hair and began to do things with a lipstick.
“Cyanogen. If we could release a gas or a liquid chemical spray to change the cyanogen into something irritating, something that would wake up the sleepers—”
“We can’t use the ship,” Quade pointed out. “It’d have to be portable. Um-m . . .” He reached for a pad and pencil and made hasty notations.
“(CN)2 plus 02—>nitrogen and carbon dioxide,” the formula read. He showed it to Gerry.
“The Proteans are used to a cyanogen atmosphere. The carbon dioxide would be poisonous or suffocating to them. Maybe. It’d destroy all life on the comet, except us.”
GERRY started convulsively. She snatched up the pad and figured quickly.
“Hold on! I think I’ve got it. Ammonium oxalate. Yeah! Look at this.” She showed Quade her notation. It read: “(CN)2 plus H20—>ammonium oxalate.”
“Water?” Quade asked.
“Cyanogen plus water in the form of a simple spray would form ammonium oxalate. That salt isn’t a cyanide and would be a tremendous irritant to creatures living in cyanogen and its compounds. And the effect would be local. That’s the answer. We’ve got it!”
Quade nodded slowly. “I think you’re right. Sure! We’ll use portable tanks and sprayers. I’ll get Morgan.”
He did so, and issued hasty instructions. There was instant, orderly confusion. Portable tanks had to be filled. Hoses and spray-nozzles had to be prepared. But at last a skeleton crew of men was ready, Gerry and Quade at their head. A few were left to work on the engines, Morgan among them.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Quade said. “In the meantime, my orders still stand. If we’re not back before the deadline, take off without us.”
Morgan shook his shaggy head.
“We’re getting awful close to the Sun, Chief.”
“I know,” Quade shrugged. “I’m taking a few cameras with me, but I can’t load up on bulky stuff. It’d slow us down too much. It looks like we’ll get damn little for Von Zorn. And it looks like you won’t get any monsters, either,” he added, to Gerry. She didn’t say anything.
They set out at a furious, but more hopeful Dace.
“We’ll wear a trail to the tower pretty soon,” Gerry said bitterly.
“Uh-huh. I wonder if that will work?” Quade pondered. “Plain water doesn’t sound like much of a weapon.”
Ten minutes later his words seemed justified. A creature like a gigantic spider, six feet high and a dozen in diameter, rushed down a slope toward them. Its mandibles clicked viciously.
“The tanks!” Gerry cried shrilly. “Try the water.”
“Use your guns!” Quade’s deeper voice drowned her out. “Fire, everybody!” Pistols crashed loudly. At once the great spider was killed. But its body still raced forward, bowling over one man before it collapsed. Though its eyes had been smashed and it was blind, the mandibles still snapped in insensate fury, until it vanished from sight.
“There was no time for anything but bullets then,” Quade explained. “But it looks like your chance is right here. There comes a blue globe.”
One of the blue Proteans, only five feet in diameter, was rolling unsuspiciously toward them. On its surface-membrane a picture appeared—a picture of the spider that had just been killed.
Nobody said anything. The Protean hesitated, grew larger, and began to roll purposefully toward the group.
“Now!” Gerry said.
Quade pointed the nozzle of his tank-tube. He turned a valve. The nozzle hissed shrilly. They stared hopefully, expectantly.
CHAPTER IX
Fire and Water
IT began to snow. Ammonium oxalate was precipitated out of the cyanogen atmosphere. It drifted down on the Protean, who did not seem discouraged in the least degree.
“Doesn’t work,” Quade groaned, and used his gun.
The blue monster deflated. But several more appeared. Again Quade tried the water-tank, with equal failure. Bullets finally slew the comet creatures.
“Well,” Gerry said, as the last of them disappeared. “I don’t know. Either I’m completely wrong, or else ammonium oxalate affects only real Proteans, not the dream-images. In that case we’ve got to find the real sleepers.”
“All right, Quade acceded. “We’ll keep on toward the tower. We’d better not use the tanks again till we’re absolutely ready. The sleepers may not have been warned, so we don’t want to show our hand too soon. If your idea’s right, we’ll be okay. If it’s wrong, we’re eclipsed.”
Gerry said nothing, though she realized the truth of Quade’s assertion. Doggedly the little group plodded on through the gray, gravelly soil. Several times they caught sight of additional Proteans. Once they viewed a Hyclops, in the distance, pursuing a group of fleeing red spheres.
“Looks like the blue Proteans have captured Tommy,” Gerry remarked. “They’re using his dream-visions in their crazy chess game. Wonder what happened to the other men?”
Quade was wondering, too, and it wasn’t a pleasant thought.
Gerry’s thoughts were equally distressful. Tommy Strike was in serious trouble. The girl knew that her own rashness had been responsible for his present predicament. She kept seeing
his face—
Abruptly, she muttered something suspiciously like an oath and took deadly aim at a blue Protean that had materialized nearby. It exploded into tatters. She felt slightly better.
Overhead the fires of the comet’s coma seethed and churned. Beyond that white veil the Solar System moved in its accustomed orbits. Work was proceeding on the Ark.
People were wandering through the London Zoo, gaping at Gerry’s exhibits. Hollywood on the Moon was, as usual, buzzing with excitement. Everywhere television sets were discussing the comet, and the possible late of the explorers who had vanished into its fires.
NOT far away were all these friendly, familiar things—shut out by an impalpable wall of alien matter. Light-years away! Gerry, Quade, and the others were imprisoned on the comet, while the galactic wanderer rushed on toward the disastrous proximity of the Sun. And slowly, slowly, the time of grace shortened.
From the start, things had gone wrong. Perhaps it was Gerry’s fault. But, then, nobody could have foreseen conditions on the comet. It was too far outside the ken of Earthmen. Gerry felt a touch of awe as she looked up at the weird sky, a realization of the vast, cosmic immensities that surround our Solar System. So much lay outside! So much was unknown, could never be understood by human minds!
She shrugged and plodded on. It didn’t matter. The business of the day was something entirely different. This was more familiar, dealing with weapons, pitting the skill and intelligence of Catch-’em-Alive Carlyle against her enemies.
Quade’s thoughts were rather similar, though less emotional. His keen brain was working, discarding possibilities, advancing theories, planning, plotting.
When they came in sight of the black tower, the minds of all the group were attuned to highest intensity.
Quade stopped.
“We don’t know the full power or capabilities of the Proteans,” he said quietly. “So watch yourselves. They may have purely mental weapons. Keep alert, and in touch with me. The minute anything seems to be going wrong, let me know.”
Collected Fiction Page 148