Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  He wouldn’t drown in ten seconds. She inflated both of the suits with oxygen, dragged Quade into the portal lock and shut the valve behind her with a futile hope that, if the atmosphere stayed in the ship, it might rise of its own accord, or at least that it would be easier to salvage the equipment. She opened the outer door and went head over heels into the rush of water. Somehow she kept hold of Quade’s arm.

  LUCKILY, the lock was angled so that they slid out of their own accord, buoyed up by the oxygen. Quade, still unconscious, blew bubbles. With panic beginning to dry her throat, Kathleen tightened her grip on his suit and they shot up like rockets into clear, cool Saturnlight.

  Quade was torn away from the girl’s clutch. She blinked and stared around. He was floating only a few yards away, his face submerged. Lying flat on the surface, Kathleen paddled to him, dragged his head up in the crook of her arm and awkwardly made for the shore.

  Several sleek objects appeared above the surface and watched her speculatively. But they were somewhat different from the Zonals Quade had already encountered. Their heads were flattened, their jaws heavier.

  Altogether they lacked the suggestion of good nature and humanity that the other Zonals had possessed. But they did not attack, for which Kathleen was duly grateful. She finally reached the beach and dragged Quade ashore.

  He had swallowed little water, being unconscious, and with a small gasp Kathleen sat down beside him, weak with relief and reaction. She looked around.

  They were in a crater perhaps two miles in diameter, surrounded by overhanging peaks and glaciers that seemed to be getting ready to rush down in catastrophic destruction. This lake, a small one, was in the very center. Plumes of steam flared up here and there, indicating geysers.

  Underfoot was the eternal lava, rising into a jungle labyrinth of twisted malformations. In the distance Kathleen made out a great black dome, faintly glistening. But she could not guess its nature.

  Meanwhile the Zonals were swimming closer, in a semicircle. They emerged from the water, dripping, to reveal another way in which they differed from Quade’s Zonals. The sacs on their backs were shrunken and atrophied.

  Kathleen found it difficult to believe that the creatures were harmless. She was eying the long, curved claws on the webbed hands, and the tusklike, capable teeth bared by retracted lips. If she had been alone she would not have waited to face the amphibians. As it was, Quade lay unconscious beside her. Neither of the two was armed.

  The Zonals slipped closer. There was, Kathleen thought, unmistakable menace in their attitude. Growls rumbled from their throats. These weren’t Udell’s tame Zonals, that was certain.

  Hastily Kathleen looked about for a weapon, but all she could find was a good-sized lava chunk. Hefting this, she stood up, waiting.

  The Zonals, emerging from the water, closed in. Their growling was louder now. One amphibian was in the forefront; Kathleen could see him sinking lower as his furry legs bent and he tensed for a spring.

  She hurled the rock.

  The amphibian dodged easily. He sidled forward, and behind him came the others.

  A man’s voice shouted. There was the vicious crack of a whip. Again the harsh voice roared a command. The Zonals hesitated—and Kathleen looked back hastily to see a giant figure, clothed in rags, coming forward. Gray-shot red hair bristled wildly. His face was turned toward the Zonals, but the heavy broad shoulders spoke of enormous strength.

  The whip cracked. The man bellowed an order.

  SNARLING, the Zonals drew back. Suddenly they broke and fled to the lake. The man stood waiting till they had submerged and then turned to Kathleen. He stood quietly facing her, the whip hanging lax.

  And something in his face made the girl shiver a little. The features were strong enough, even harshly handsome. But the glacial black eyes were—disturbing. There was no trace of expression in them. They stared like glazed jet marbles, cool and remote.

  “My name’s Milo Sherman,” the man said. He glanced at the unconscious Quade.

  As Kathleen opened her mouth, Sherman halted her with an upraised palm.

  “Better talk as we go. The Zonals are dangerous.” He laughed unpleasantly. “They’re afraid of me, but I take no chances. Come on.” He bent, hoisted Quade to his shoulders and started toward the glistening dome Kathleen had already glimpsed. “Now talk,” he commanded.

  Kathleen talked.

  “I see,” Sherman said as they rounded a shoulder of lava. “You’re unlucky. However, you’ll be safe for a while. There’s my castle, see?”

  Fifty feet away the building loomed, a dome-shaped structure as high as a six-story building. It seemed to be built of some gleaming black substance, broken at intervals by round gaps. Sherman marched forward, straight toward a blank wall.

  No—not entirely blank—there was an inchwide hole in it. And the hole began to broaden as they approached, opening till it was a gaping portal.

  They stepped across the threshold. Behind them the hole shrank again, like a sphincter. They were in a large room, bare except for a sloping ramp that led up to a gap in the ceiling. A row of luminous spots glowed in the walls.

  Sherman went up the ramp. Kathleen was behind him, a little troubled now, conscious of some unknown danger. Above, the room was larger, lighted by similar light-spots in the walls. It was filled with a clutter of junk—chairs, tables—some of them twisted and broken—most of them rusty.

  “Salvage,” Sherman said. He went to a comer, dropped Quade into a shallow depression in the floor and tossed his whip aside. Quade’s body sank down a few inches, as though into an air mattress.

  “Well, take off your helmet,” Sherman said coolly. “Make yourself at home. You’ll be here for life—since there’s no way of getting out of this valley!”

  CHAPTER V

  Perilous Valley

  KATHLEEN sat down limply on a rusty chair that squeaked under her weight. Her fingers felt cold and clumsy as she unscrewed her helmet, deflated the spacesuit and shook her hair free.

  “No way out?” she said. “We could climb—”

  “You could try it,” Sherman said, “till you got tired. The glaciers wall us in. And they crumble. I broke my arm six years ago trying to escape.”

  “Six years!”

  “I’ve been here seven,” Sherman told her. “I’m the last survivor of the patrol ship Kestrel, wrecked while making a forced landing in the Devil’s Range. Three of us escaped with our lives from the crash—the ship’s doctor, myself and another patrolman. Their graves are down the valley a bit.” His eyes were blank.

  “Seven years here, with the Zonals gradually losing their fear of me. They multiply faster than I can kill them. Now I’ve got about eight rounds of ammunition left—no, nine, I see.” He showed an old-fashioned pistol.

  “But the camera crew will search for us.”

  “A tiny valley in three hundred miles of mountains? And your friends won’t know where to look, from what you say? For all they know, you might have crashed anywhere on Titan.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’d forgotten something. You’ve got to be inoculated immediately. Otherwise you’ll just go crazy and die.”

  Kathleen blinked. “Huh?”

  “The plague—the one you say killed that man Udell and his crew. It nearly killed us before the Kestrel’s doctor got on the track. You’ve got the virus in you now.”

  “That’s impossible,” the girl said. “Unless we were infected since we cracked up.”

  “You were infected before you ever landed on Titan,” Sherman said grimly. “The virus is a protein molecule that exists in living organisms—Zonals and humans alike. Usually it’s harmless—a recessive characteristic. But under the influence of a certain kind of radiation the virus becomes actively malignant.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Sherman had talked a good deal with the Kestrel’s doctor before the latter died. He told Kathleen about the tobacco mosaic disease—how a plant, suffering from comm
on mosaic disease, may suddenly become victim of a more virulent form—acuba—caused when the basic molecules change their structure.

  “It’s like that,” he said. “There’s a meteor on this continent which emits rays that develop the latent, harmless virus in one into the active, malignant form. That’s what originally wrecked the minds of the Zonals, you know.” He noticed Kathleen’s pallor.

  “Don’t worry too much about it. I’m still alive, you see. Our doctor worked out a cure. The Zonals have antibodies in their bloodstreams—antibodies strong enough to immunize a human. They developed ’em, but not in time to save themselves from degeneration. I prepared a fresh batch of serum yesterday—so come along and I’ll inoculate you.”

  “But—will Tony—”

  “He’ll be safe here. The Zonals don’t dare come into my castle.”

  Kathleen followed Sherman through other of the sphincter doors. She was thinking of Wolfe and his crew. They were also exposed to the meteoric radiation—which would eventually kill them unless they were warned and immunized.

  BUT when Kathleen told Sherman, he merely shrugged.

  “We’re in prison here. No radio. No way of communication. Your ship’s under water and wrecked. So—” He picked up a hypodermic syringe. “You and your friend—what’s his name, Quade?—you’ll be safe enough, unless the Zonals kill us. They can’t come in here.”

  “This building? Who made it, anyway?”

  “The Zonals,” Sherman said. “A long time ago. They were a plenty intelligent race before the meteor landed and the plague hit them. I’ve got an idea there used to be a lot of these castles on Equatorial—bigger ones than this, too. It’s not exactly a building, though. It’s alive.”

  “Alive? How?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it? I guess there’s nothing like these castles anywhere else in the System.”

  “The studio biologists make robot animals,” Kathleen said doubtfully.

  “Yeah? These castles were made by the Zonals once—to live in. As though a lot of blood corpuscles had got together and built a man to live in. These castles don’t wear out and they don’t need electricity or air conditioning—they’ve got everything. Notice how fresh the air is?”

  “I hadn’t. But I do now.”

  “That’s air conditioning. The castles breathe—they take in air, filter out the harmful bugs and cool or heat or humidify it if necessary. You don’t need windows for light, with those eye-spots in the walls.”

  The syringe was ready. Sherman made an awkward but careful injection in Kathleen’s arm.

  “You’re safe enough now,” he said. “You’re immune. But you’ll need occasional booster shots. I’ll fix up your friend next. Look around the castle if you want—it’s safe enough, as long as you don’t go outside.” He refilled the syringe and departed.

  Kathleen sat down to wait for the inoculation-shock to wear off. It was some time later when she heard a confused clamor from outside. Hastily she rose, found the weakness had passed and hurried to the room where she had left Quade. He still lay unconscious, the syringe at his side and a wad of cotton still sticking to his bare arm. Sherman was gone.

  Outside the yelling of the Zonals stilled. Sherman’s voice rose. The growling began. It rose to a roar. The whip cracked violently, but the noise did not stop, though it sank to a harsh murmur.

  Presently Sherman came back into the room, dragging his whip. His eyes were bleak as ever, but a muscle was twitching under his eye. Without pausing he said, “You’ve set off the Zonals.”

  “I did? How?”

  “Ever since I landed here the food supply In the lake has been diminishing. Before that, too, I suppose—but it got below the danger point not long ago. The lake’s nearly cleaned out. There’s another little pool ’way up at the end, but that’s empty too, now.

  “The Zonals are hungry. Which adds up to the fact that they figure we’re good to eat. I told ’em to go catch fish—there must be a few left—but they didn’t understand me, of course.”

  Kathleen gulped. Sherman grinned at her. He went through one of the sphincter doors and came back with the whip in one hand and a long knife in the other.

  “I may have to fight,” he said. “Our little friends are getting anxious outside. Here’s my gun. If they get past me—use it.”

  The next ten minutes were far too long. It was impossible for Kathleen to guess what was happening outside; she could only listen to the muffled snarling and the incessant crack of Sherman’s whip. Once Quade moaned and stirred and she turned hastily to him, but it was a false alarm.

  Sherman backed into sight. He was retreating very slowly, using both the lash and his knife. Beyond him the Zonals pressed forward, snarling.

  “Shall I shoot?” Kathleen asked softly.

  “Not yet,” Sherman said without turning. “Save it till—”

  He stopped talking, for the Zonals’ growling rose to a roar. They flooded forward into the room, forcing Sherman to give ground. He swung his whip—and it was caught, dragged from his hand. He went down under the rush of the amphibians.

  Then the creatures were everywhere, Before Kathleen had a chance to fire, the gun was knocked out of her grip. The Zonals moved far faster than she had anticipated. She struck out desperately, hearing Sherman’s hoarse curses as he slugged and battled under a mound of Zonals.

  And just then the gun exploded. A concerted wave of panic caught the amphibians. They gave ground as the gun crashed again.

  It was Quade, on his feet now, placing his shots accurately. The Zonals were beginning to drift toward the door, a movement that grew into flight and then to panic. In a minute or less the room was empty except for the three humans.

  Sherman got up, rocking unsteadily.

  “Lucky I didn’t use the gun much,” he said. “They’re plenty afraid of it. But we’re out of ammunition now.”

  “A fine thing to wake up to,” Quade said, sitting down and turning a pale green. “What’s been going on? Kathleen—”

  She told him.

  CHAPTER VI

  Poisoned Javelins

  IT WAS indeed alarming news.

  “Unarmed, eh?” Quade said when she had finished. Sherman had gone out of the room, but now he came back in time to hear the words. He was carrying a bundle of sharpened metal rods.

  “Only these,” he said. “I ground ’em a long time ago.”

  “Javelins? Mm-m.” Quade dug into a pocket of his space-suit. “Neo-curare,” he said, bringing out the bottle. “Lucky I brought it along. If we smear some of this stuff on the points, it ought to account for a few Zonals. It’s a fast-acting poison. Anything going on outside?”

  There was nothing. They stood in the castle’s door-sphincter. As it automatically widened, the barren wilderness of the valley became visible. No Zonals were in sight. The lake glowed phosphorescently in the distance.

  “Here comes something,” Kathleen said.

  With a swish and a thump something rocketed into view, plumping down just outside the threshold. Quade stopped Sherman’s lifted javelin-arm.

  “Hold on. He’s not dangerous. This is Speedy, one of my tame Zonals. He must have trailed us here.”

  It was Speedy, all right and Speedy was staring with wild curiosity at Quade and the others. The contrast between this amphibian and the degenerate Zonals of the valley was marked. The fangs and claws of the decadent tribe didn’t show in Speedy, and his high-arched cranium hinted at intelligence, not brutal ferocity alone.

  “Pencil and paper, quick!” Quade said. “We’ve got a carrier pigeon here!”

  Sherman vanished. He reappeared in a moment, bearing a small metal cylinder and a length of wire as well as writing equipment. Quade hastily scribbled a note, thrust it into the cylinder and cautiously approached Speedy.

  The Zonal almost got away, but was betrayed by his suspicion that Quade’s hand was good to eat. Quade held the amphibian firmly while he fastened the cylinder to Speedy’s body and tried to ke
ep his hands out of reach of the nibbling mouth at the same time.

  “Hope he doesn’t know how to untie knots,” Kathleen said. “How about it, Tony? Will he head back for the camp?”

  “I don’t know,” Quade said. “Still, that’s where he lives.” He released the Zonal. “Blow. Take a walk. Rocket off!”

  Speedy reached for the metal tube. Quade yelled and clapped his hands, and the amphibian rocketed away in alarm. He came down fifty feet away, near a mound of lava and went to work on the wire.

  Quade started toward him, running. From behind the lava block came two of the decadent Zonals, closing in on poor Speedy. He didn’t see them until too late, and then he went down under the rush, fighting with feeble valor.

  Quade stopped. He couldn’t reach the battle in time, but he still held a poisoned javelin. He hurled it at the struggling group.

  Speedy yelped, waving a bleeding arm grazed by the metal point. Quade was a poor marksman with this unfamiliar weapon.

  But Sherman was a better one. His javelin struck one of the attacking Zonals and got him through the heart. The other, taking alarm, fled.

  SPEEDY lay limp and unconscious. Quade started to run again, hearing footsteps behind him. He felt slightly sick. The last chance for escape was gone now. Then his eye caught a flicker of motion. Speedy wasn’t dead. He grunted, stood up, swaying, and stared around.

  A yelling came from the lake.

  “Come on,” Sherman said urgently. “Let’s get back to the castle. We haven’t a chance here in the open.”

  Speedy suddenly rocketed away. Quade saw him land beside Kathleen at the castle’s doorway. The two men fled, hearing the thud of racing feet and the roars of the Zonals rising in volume. They reached the castle—and Quade got the shock of his life.

  “They try kill us, yes?” an unfamiliar voice said hoarsely.

  Quade looked at Kathleen, then at Sherman. They, too, were staring. Again the voice repeated its question. Slowly Quade turned to meet the unblinking gaze of Speedy.