by Ben Bova
“Another waste of time,” one of the Skorpis was grumbling.
The smaller one, in the middle, said in a lighter, softer tone, “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
The first one growled, “You may impress your fellow scientists with such talk, but all I see is a day spent searching for prey that doesn’t exist.”
“They exist,” said the smaller one. “We’re certain of that.”
The third one spoke up. “Once I was certain that I could fly with no aid except a certain magical beverage that I had been drinking.” His voice was heavy, sorrowful. “I was very certain. But I was wrong. Several broken bones showed how wrong I was.”
“The aliens are here,” said the one in the middle. Her voice sounded like a woman’s. A human woman’s.
“So you believe.”
“We have evidence of their presence,” she insisted.
“I am only a warrior, not a scientist. I believe what I can see, what I can touch or smell or hear or sink my teeth into. Your evidence”—he practically sneered the word—“is nothing but old myths and the tales of ancient ones.”
They were getting close enough for me to see that the smaller of them was a human. A woman. Humans working with the Skorpis? I had thought that the human race was locked in a war for survival against the Skorpis and their allies. How could humans be allied to our enemies?
“We have more evidence than the mythology,” the woman said. “And these underwater structures were built for a purpose.”
Neither Skorpis warrior answered her. Yet their silence was more eloquent than further arguing.
They were close enough for me to see clearly now. Unarmed. From the sound of their conversation, they knew nothing about my troopers in the ruins. They were looking for aliens, based on ancient myths.
If I gunned them down it would tell their leaders that enemies were near. When they failed to return to the Skorpis base, others would be sent to search for them. I could not hide their bodies. Sooner or later they would be found. The fact that they came out here unarmed told me that there were no predators in these waters that they feared. Their disappearance would immediately be suspect.
And, truth to tell, I found the prospect of shooting an unarmed human woman more than I wanted to deal with. Besides, I wanted to find out what she was doing with the Skorpis. There was much more going on here than the Golden One had told me.
Chapter 9
Softly I shut the hatch. Swiftly I opened the one in the floor and slipped into the water. Closing it behind me, I swam back out into the open sea and used my flight pack to drive myself quickly away from the end of the tube, back to the structures that could hide me.
If the trio suspected that someone else had been in the air lock, they gave no sign of it. They came out, with helmets and flippers back in place, gathered up their tools and swam back toward the Skorpis base. I waited awhile, then followed at a more leisurely pace, bobbing up to the surface every few minutes to gulp in air, rather like a dolphin.
There were underwater piers at the Skorpis base, too, but they were far smaller than the ancient ruins. Only two of them, and so new that hardly a barnacle had attached itself to them as yet.
I could see above me the shadow of a pier built over the water’s surface, extending out the same length as this underwater shaft. Cautiously I rose to the surface for a fresh swallow of air. So far so good. I was almost inside the Skorpis base. Almost. It surprised me that the Skorpis had not set out electronic security systems underwater to protect their base from any possible seaborne threat. And the trio I had seen in the water had been unarmed. It was as if they expected no enemy attack, almost as if this was not a military base at all.
And there was at least one human working with them.
The sun was sinking into the sea, throwing a reddish gold glow over the wave tops. I treaded water for a while, bobbing up and down as each fresh crest of the incoming tide surged past me. I was close enough to the enemy to hear them walking along the pier above my head, to hear their voices as they worked and talked and complained about their situation the way all soldiers do everywhere, in any era.
“Protecting a litter of humans,” one voice griped. “This isn’t the life of a warrior.”
“Maybe you’d rather have been with Second Battalion,” said its companion.
“At least they got to use their claws.”
“They’re all dead. Is that what you want to be?”
“We should’ve sent in both battalions.”
“No, we shouldn’t have sent in either one. We should’ve nuked those hairless apes in the first place, not wasted a whole battalion trying to capture their damnable transceiver.”
“Well, anyway, we’re stuck with guard duty.”
“Do you trust ’em?”
“Who?”
“The humans, who else? They say they’re scientists, but do you think we can trust them? Or are they really spies?”
“How the hell should I know? They all look alike to me. The gray furs make those decisions.”
“Like the decision to try to capture the enemy transceiver.”
“Yes. Just like that.”
There was more than one human in the Skorpis camp. And they were scientists, apparently. My head buzzed with the possibilities. Perhaps this was the way for me to penetrate farther into their camp.
I gave the matter a few moments’ thought. No sense waiting until dark. Boldness might work where stealth would be detected.
Hoping that all humans truly did look alike to these Skorpis warriors, I wormed my shoulders out of the flight-pack harness and fastened it to the underside of the pier. With some feelings of trepidation, I also unbuckled my gunbelt and left the laser pistol and knife there, as well. Then I reached up, grabbed the edge of the pier and hauled myself up out of the water.
“Who the hell…?” The two Skorpis on the pier were evidently sentries. They both had rifles, which they immediately unslung from their shoulders and pointed at me.
“Identify yourself!” said the larger of the two. Both of them were enormous, towering above my height and twice my bulk.
“Orion,” I said, trying to smile disarmingly. “I got separated from the others and just made it back.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“Just arrived a few days ago,” I said.
“There’s been no resupply mission here for months,” said the Skorpis. Both their rifles were pointed at my chest.
Drawing myself up on my dignity, I answered as haughtily as I could, “I was brought here on a special flight, at great expense. At least your superiors recognize the value of a scientist, even if you don’t.”
They looked at each other. It was difficult to read the expression on their feline faces, but to me they seemed uncertain, fully suspecting that I was lying through my teeth but unable to be sure. Then they did what all soldiers in every era do when in doubt: they marched me to their commanding officer.
Thus I was trooped from one giant Skorpis to another, from the pier to the command post at its base, from the command post to the quarters of the officer of the guard. From there to the offices of the chief of security, where a Skorpis wearing a chestful of ribbons on a cinnamon-colored uniform eyed me with enormous suspicion from behind an airport-sized desk. There were no obvious gender characteristics among the Skorpis, at least none that I could detect with their uniforms on, but I knew from my briefing information that this security chief was a female, as all Skorpis officers were.
“You come out of the sea with no clothes, no equipment?”
I must admit that I did feel slightly foolish standing in front of her with nothing but a pair of shorts that were still dripping wet. “I am with the human scientists,” I said with as much dignity as I could command. “I was simply swimming near the base to check the structures that have been built underwater.”
“And you claim that you arrived three days ago.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“There has been no flight into this base since the fleet departed after the battle several weeks ago,” she growled at me.
“Take me to my fellow scientists,” I insisted. “They’ll vouch for me.”
“There has been no flight in here for several weeks,” she repeated.
“There was one. Perhaps you were not informed about it.”
“That is impossible. Who are you and where are you from?”
I kept insisting that she take me to the other human scientists. She studied me the way a cat studies a bird chirping on a limb, just out of reach.
“The only other humans on this planet were the assault team that we wiped out. Perhaps we didn’t exterminate all of you…” There was a heavily gouged square of wood on her desktop. Unconsciously, she scraped the unsheathed claws of one hand along it. Or was it unconsciously? I got the impression she would like to use her claws on me.
I continued my bluff. “If you’ll simply let me see my fellow scientists, I’m certain that all this confusion can be cleared up.”
She shook her head in a very human negative.
“What harm could it do?” I coaxed. “One single human, unarmed, in the midst of a whole baseful of warriors?”
“You could be carrying an explosive device inside you. You could be an android. A walking bomb. The humans are very clever that way.”
I shrugged carelessly. “Examine me, then. Probe me with search beams.”
“You’ve already been probed,” she replied. “While you’ve been standing here.”
“Have you found any explosives? Anything at all but normal human organs inside a normal human skin?”
“You humans are very clever,” she muttered again.
After nearly an hour of stubborn intransigence, she finally decided to march me personally—with a squad of six fully-armed warriors escorting us—to the part of the base where the human scientists were quartered.
“They sleep at night,” she said disdainfully as we walked through the camp. It was bustling with activity, much as a human camp would in early morning. “This will disturb them.”
It seemed to me that she did not mind disturbing the humans. Not in the slightest.
The humans were in a compound separated from the rest of the base by a fence of energy beams. Two Skorpis guards snapped to spine-popping attention as the officer approached. They turned off a section of the fence for us to walk through. The officer ordered our escort to remain at the fence. “Come if I call you,” she commanded them. They saluted as one single organism.
It was quiet inside the human compound. Most of the buildings were dark, although lights showed through the windows of one long, low-roofed structure.
“The humans eat their meals together,” the officer muttered, from somewhere in the darkness over my head. “They eat plants and pastes made by machines.” Her voice reeked with distaste.
I was tempted to tell her that some humans hunt for their meals. But I refrained.
Without knocking she opened the door to the mess hall—for that is what it was—and stepped inside. Floorboards creaked under her mass. I came in behind her.
Twenty-two men and women, each of them in drab coveralls, stopped eating and turned to stare at us, spoons and forks in midair, mouths open and eyes wide with surprise.
The officer grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and nearly hauled me off my feet.
“This one says he belongs with you,” she said, loud enough to rattle the windows. “Does he speak truth?”
A bearded man at the head of the table swallowed hard enough for me to see his Adam’s apple work up and down.
“He belongs with us, yes,” he said in a high, surprised voice.
The officer let go of me.
“When did he arrive? How?”
Before they could give a story that contradicted mine, I rattled, “On the special flight several days ago, just as I told you.” Desperately I hoped that none of the other humans would give me away.
“I know of no special flight.”
“It was only here very briefly,” said the man at the head of the table.
“You might have been out at the perimeter,” one of the women added, in a voice that trembled slightly.
“I can check all incoming flights in our computer records,” said the officer. “If he is lying, he will die. If you help him lie, you will die with him.”
The bearded man at the head of the table got to his feet. “You can’t threaten us so easily. We were sent here by the Hegemony high command. The work we have to do here is too important to the progress of the war for us to be bullied by Skorpis warriors.”
The officer hissed at him, just like a spitting cat. Then she said, with murderous calm, “The Hegemony orders us to protect you. If this human is a spy or a saboteur, he must be dealt with. If you help him, you are working against the Hegemony and you will be dealt with also.”
“Let us take care of him,” the bearded man said. “He’s no threat to you or anyone else.”
“You vouch for him? He is a scientist, as you are?”
The man started to nod, but one of the women down the table burst but, “We never saw him before! We don’t know who he is!”
“Randa!”
“It’s no good, Delos,” she said to the bearded one. “What we’re trying to accomplish here is too important to allow some spy to wreck everything!”
“You say he is a spy?” the officer thundered.
“None of us ever saw him before!” Randa fairly screamed. “Take him away. Open up his brain and find out who he is and why he’s here!”
Chapter 10
Everyone in the mess hall froze, frightened, faces contorted with shock and uncertainty. Even the huge Skorpis security officer stood stock-still for a moment, just as stunned by Randa’s revelation as the other humans.
In that flash of a moment I acted. It was either move or die, and I had no intention of dying.
I spun on the ball of my foot and punched the security officer as hard as I could on her chin. She staggered backward, knees buckling. Before she could recover I bolted across the mess hall, vaulting clean over the table while several of the humans shrieked and hurling myself through one of the windows. I crashed through and landed head-first on the hard-baked ground outside. I could hear the security officer bellowing like a lioness in heat as I rolled to my feet and ran for the energy fence that enclosed the human compound.
It was more than two meters high, but I cleared it with room to spare. Fear augments athletic skills. Now I could hear shouting behind me as I raced through the square tents and more permanent structures of the Skorpis camp. There were plenty of the huge warriors in sight, working, digging, marching in the darkness of the night. They seemed more surprised than alarmed as I sprinted past them, heading for the beach and the sea.
I knew the officer I had slugged would radio her security detail to head me off. And sure enough, I could see teams of warriors bustling out of the buildings at the base of the twin piers up ahead. More shouts behind me and a laser bolt crackling bright red lanced past my ear. A warning shot. They won’t try to kill me, I reasoned. They want me alive for questioning. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t gleefully burn my legs off.
I dodged behind one of the metal prefabricated buildings and started running off at a tangent to the beach. The piers were out, too well guarded. But if I could get to the water perhaps I could wait awhile, then swim back to the place where I had stashed my flight pack and weapons. If the Skorpis did not find them first.
As I bolted around the corner of another building, angling off toward the beach once more, a team of six Skorpis suddenly loomed ahead of me. All of them armed with rifles. I gave them no chance to aim at me. I dived into them with a rolling block, barreling into their legs, knocking several of them down. My senses were in overdrive, and I saw them tangling each other’s arms and legs, cursing and snarling as they tried to pull themselves loose and get at me. I grabbed the rifle out o
f the hands of one of them, clubbed him to his knees with its butt, then flipped it around and fired into them point-blank.
I had no time to see how much damage I had done. Leaving them writhing on the ground, I dashed off toward the beach once again. To my left I could see a squad of Skorpis running along the sand in my direction. I had to get to the water before they saw me.
Too late. They saw in the dark much better than I did, and they quickly fired several rifle blasts at my feet, puffing up gritty pebbles and sand. I skidded to a stop and they ceased shooting and came running toward me.
I fired from the hip, one-handed, and knocked the closest two of them down. Then I flung myself face-first on the ground as the rest of them dropped to their knees and shot back at me.
There was no time for a firefight. If they pinned me down here for more than a few moments, the whole Skorpis base would be upon me. I had no choice. I leaped to my feet, firing as I ran, and raced for the water as fast as my legs would carry me.
My firing made them duck their heads a bit, but before I had taken a dozen strides a laser bolt seared my hip. I spun around, staggered, then drove on toward the water. Clamping down on the blood vessels, shutting off the pain signals, I limped toward the sea, only a tantalizingly dozen or so meters away now.
Another bolt hit my leg and I flopped down, rolled, and used my rifle to haul myself up again. I hopped, hobbled, staggered for the water as the Skorpis warriors came running toward me.
“Alive!” I heard one of them yell. “Take him alive!”
That was my one hope. I shot two more of the warriors as I tottered for the water. More laser blasts hit me, in the legs, in the chest. They were no longer worried about preserving me for interrogation; I was hitting too many of them.
I splashed into the surf, still firing, still being hit. Despite my rigid self-control I felt as if my legs had been burned off. Another bolt burned my shoulder so badly that I dropped the rifle. It hissed as its hot barrel struck the water.