They were still fifty yards away, sprawling and stumbling over brush and deadwood with their burdens of food and oxygen. Could he, wondered Blakston, reach the other “end” of the looth in time to join the Ootlandahs in forcing the ungainly beast back and keep it blocking the convicts’ path?
He sprang forward, brandishing the crook as professional wool shearers did, opening a gap amid those questing tentacles. In one six-foot jump he gained the looth’s back and scrambled away from the animal’s side. The pseudopods could reach only a few feet back, forming as they did a fringe about the huge, squat body. Paradoxically, he was safer here than on the ground.
The looth’s wool, prized in commerce, was thick and resilient underfoot, a carpet over a firm floor of flesh. He ran swiftly over it, toward the squealing Ootlandahs, who for all their noise were now slowly falling back before the looth’s stolid advance. And every foot of that retreat in turn shortened the distance that lay between the convicts and their ship.
But they, hampered by oxygen flasks and the burden net, made hard going of it through the dense underbrush. Blakston chuckled madly and plunged on. The looth, he observed, was no less than a hundred yards long and fifty wide—a little over an acre in size. It surged forward suddenly as a gust of wind blew the hot breath of the fire upon it. The Ootlandahs, who had been standing in a clear swath of ground that was the feeding trail of the beast, turned and fled.
Blakston cursed them, and, having reached the “end” of the beast, laid about him with the charged crook. Tentacles writhed and disappeared before it. He applied the electrode directly to the looth’s back. Sparks snarled through the thick wool to the flesh beneath. The looth quivered, jerked blindly back from the stinging pain, reluctantly retreated to again bar the convicts’ path. Blakston felt a thrill of savage satisfaction. Now let the murderers try to escape!
The smaller convict dropped his burden, ran back through the scrubby growth a little way, a grotesque gnome in the fantastic firelight. He stopped, rested his proton gun in a tree crotch for better aim. The narrow beam sheared past Blakston, followed an instant later by its characteristic miniature thunderclap. He laughed in reckless defiance, goaded the looth even more furiously. Small chance the man had of hitting him at this distance!
That was apparently the belief of the gunman, also, for his tactics changed abruptly. The proton beam crackled again, but this time its narrow streak of electrical flame seared a narrow welt across the looth’s back. The huge beast shuddered, humped itself with a quick, convulsive movement, a sudden twitch like that of a horse’s flank, but a thousandfold greater. Blakston felt as though the ground had reached up to hit his chin. He felt himself flying through space, falling, and tried desperately to twist in midair, to land without damaging his precious helmet.
~ * ~
He struck unyielding ground hard enough to knock every bit of breath from him, and lay half stunned for a time. His crook was gone, lost in that wild flight, and if the looth were to come upon him he would be in a bad case. On the heels of that thought he saw it, a wall of undulating tentacles, creeping down upon him in that inexorable way it had. He got unsteadily to his feet.
“Am most grateful man friend is living,” said a reedy voice behind him. He whirled in astonishment. In the light of the forest fire, Queel stood there, whiskers aquiver—and in one flipper of a hand he held the precious crook.
“Ability to hasten life cycle at will responsible for my continued existence,” explained the native. “When evil character attempt murder, self beat him to it. After departure of criminals was just in time to save friend Blakston by opening helmet cock.”
Blakston nodded gratefully, a lump in his throat. He could guess what it had cost Queel to turn that stiff little handle with his soft, flipperlike hands. Nor was it the first time he had heard that the Ootlandahs could hasten their demise at will when danger threatened. In times of famine, whole tribes often elected to stay in the nuclear, or egg, stage for long periods—so many little beanlike pods lying inert in the yellow dust of their dissolution—only to spring magically to life at some later time. But against fire even this strange ability could not protect them, for the eggs would explode like any other living tissue on Dhee Minor.
It was Queel, Blakston realized, who had gathered the Ootlandahs and conceived the amazing idea of blocking the convicts’ path by driving the looth between them and their ship. The little native had acted with marvelous courage and incredible quickness, reaching Heaven knew what heights of rhetoric to induce his timid fellows to face the tentacled horror.
“Many thanks for your kindly aid,” continued Queel sadly. “But is now common sense for you to save yourself while possible. My people have run away. Plot to use looth can no longer be used. Evil men’s ship lies there, offering you swift escape from world that is soon to die. Take it quickly, man friend.”
Blakston stared at him thoughtfully. The Ootlandah’s suggestion, oddly enough, aroused nothing but horror in his mind —horror at a people’s acceptance of extinction, as voiced by Queel. It seemed to him that the little native was watching him closely, questioningly. And yet, what he said was true. There lay the convicts’ ship; Blakston could seal himself in it, take off safely and reach some neighboring space post. There was no longer any need for him, at least, to share the death of Dhee Minor. And if he took off, the convicts would be irrevocably trapped, unable to set other fires on the planetoid. A part of Dhee Minor at least might be spared the flames.
The fire was, of course, spreading fiercely. Vegetation burned white and green and red and violet. Somewhere in the forest a chan-chan tree burst explosively, hurled aloft balls of crimson flame like an incredibly huge Roman candle. Above the general conflagration a feeble blue flicker of light hovered—the hydrogen sulphide of Dhee Minor’s atmosphere burning in the surplus of oxygen released by blazing plants.
“I’m staying,” said Blakston curtly, belying another and larger lump that had come into his throat. Leave now, desert this plucky little Ootlandah, he could not. “How about that plot you were talking about?”
Queel’s whispers quivered with delight. “Is mere hopeful idea. Looth leaves dead trail no fire can cross. What if looth were driven around fire and cut it off from rest of world?”
It was, Blakston realized instantly, just possible that the scheme might work. The looth, feeding as it went, left a fifty-yard-wide swath of cleared ground in its wake. Directly behind the forest rose the equatorial mountain range, a barren backbone of rock which twice before in the history of the planetoid had acted as a firebreak. On this side the fire was already isolated by that hundred-and-fifty-foot gap the looth had left behind. On the other it would leap from the patch of forest to thick scrub brush and bramble thickets, and from there everywhere—unless the looth could be persuaded to devour that tangled growth which was the next link in the chain of disaster. But could the beast be driven that way, against the heat? Could a single man with a looth-shearer’s crook, succeed where the drumming, hooting Ootlandahs had failed?
~ * ~
Blakston gave Queel his instructions. The native padded off and Blakston advanced upon the fringed bulk of looth, switching on the pale glow of the crook as he approached.
Again he whipped writhing tentacles aside, again leaped to the thing’s broad back. The outlaws were not in sight. Probably they were trying another flanking movement through the brush, which must be getting pretty hot by now. But the growing fury of the fire made his own task harder. The looth moved slowly under the electrical prodding of the crook. Blakston gauged direction carefully and urged on that vast, stubborn bulk of eyeless flesh by running here and there to apply the stinging current to best effect.
The red glare of strontium compounds, the green of barium, the violet of potassium, the rarer white of magnesium, cast a weird, striated light over the familiar landscape, a pyrotechnical display of ghastly beauty, fed by living tissue of leaf and branch —and perhaps by more animate forms of life. Over a mile-long fr
ont flame raged. Blakston estimated its advance and anxiously compared its speed with that of the looth. The conclusion he reached was alarming. He cut in a heavier current on the crook, knowing that the batteries would drain more quickly. But hotter sparks had the desired effect. The looth quickened its pace, leaving behind it a broad swath of denuded ground upon which everything combustible had been consumed—feeding as it went through sheer inability to stop feeding!
Chance might, of course, defeat him after all. A bursting chan-chan fruit thrown too far, a stray spark or blown straw, might carry the conflagration abroad. The outlaws themselves were still the deadliest menace of all. If they broke through Queel’s cordon—if Queel had a cordon—and reached their ship, Dhee Minor would be ablaze in a dozen spots within the hour, on both sides of the equatorial range.
Two moving spots of flame caught Blakston’s eyes, and resolved themselves into two men running from the forest. Each of the outlaws carried a blazing brand as defense against the looth. Blakston bit his lip. He had not considered the simple, daring strategy of fire—fire before which looth and Ootlandah alike must give way. As he watched, the bigger convict thrust flame against the outflung tentacles of Blakston’s huge mount The looth shuddered and retreated. Both convicts came on, gaining ground at each step as the beast fell back before their singeing brands. A ripple of pain went through it hurling Blakston to his knees. If the looth itself caught fire, he knew, all hope was gone; fleeing from the flame death that rode its flesh, it would spread disaster irrevocably.
But its own sense of pain, and the less inflammable covering of thick wool that guarded its flesh, prevented that. When Blakston had regained his feet the convicts were racing for their ship across the barren landing field. Nothing there, at least, for their torches to set alight, Blakston knew. Now it was up to Queel and his people to stop the outlaws, if they could, while he kept to his all-important task of circling the fire with his monstrous mount.
It grew increasingly stubborn, and he was forced to turn on more and more current in order to turn the recalcitrant beast into the sweep of the fire and goad it at last up to the very fringe of rocks, which it steadfastly refused to mount. But it had served its purpose. He raced to the side of the looth, swung the crook to clear its upflung pseudopods so that he might jump to the ground.
The tentacles did not waver. One of them seized the crook and almost yanked him off his feet. Helpless, he realized that the batteries in the thing had been exhausted. He was a prisoner on the looth’s back! To try to jump through that living fringe of tentacles was tantamount to suicide.
~ * ~
On the landing field he spied two running figures armed with brands, encircled by a thin and futile line of Ootlandahs. A few threw gourds and stones. Twice a whirling kfee—the knife discus, made of native flint, which the Ootlandahs used to cut fruit down out of high trees—flashed close to the fleeing men. But constantly the natives retreated before those menacing brands. Faint thunderclaps of an occasional proton blast reached Blakston’s ears. He desperately wanted to go to Queel’s aid.
In that desperation he ran to the side of the looth nearest the fire, which was now burning down to the very edge of the denuded area. On this side the heat was greatest, and the animal was sluggishly drawing away from it. Its tentacles were erect, bent inward away from the withering heat. For a moment he almost gave up hope of breaking through that sentient wall, yet he realized that here was his only chance. The heat of the fire was his ally.
He crouched, tensely watching for a gap to open in the fringe of writhing tentacles. He jumped, the soft, yielding wool underfoot making his leap a clumsy one. The gap began to close, and he felt the hairy touch of pseudopods as he dropped.
He landed on his feet, stumbled, but rolled over and over out of the looth’s range. A blazing limb crashed not a foot from his head. Smoking fronds fell on his legs. He brushed them off and sprang to his feet, and began running toward the landing field at a ridiculous but swift gallop. Had the convicts worn such a flexible airsuit as he had on, he thought grimly, they would long ago have reached the ship. But their heavy, stiff, pressure-proof space armor made such a gait impossible to them.
He was startled to see them scarcely a hundred yards from the vessel. The Ootlandahs were being driven back constantly; they delayed the convicts little, if at all. One native, boldly approaching the men to hurl his kfee, doubled over in pain as the bigger man thrust the brand against his body. The Ootlandah, hooting mournfully, became a briefly burning column of yellow flame.
Blakston put all his heart into a last burst of speed, fury seething in his veins. Let them fight man! Let them meet somebody who wasn’t afraid of fire—or of their guns!
The smaller man saw him coming, jerked the proton gun up. Blakston heard its thunder, ducked, flung himself into a tackle that hurled the convict to the ground. But something tackled Blakston in turn. He felt himself lifted as the looth had lifted him, and turned around in midair to face his assailant. It was the other outlaw, the giant, still carrying in one huge fist the net with its tremendous load, and the torch with which he had fought past the looth. But with the other hand he held Blakston, shook him as a tiger shakes a hare.
The ferret-faced man struggled erect The big outlaw dropped the net and reached for Blakston’s airhose. Blakston smashed his fists numb against the man’s space armor, but he felt the end to be near, and inevitable. One rip of those strong fingers would tear the hose; instead of oxygen, the poisonous atmosphere would seep into his helmet.
A kfee hurtled before his face. The spinning blade slit through the tough, flexible canvas joint between the convict’s helmet and shoulder plate, but drew no blood. With the hand that still held the torch, instead of ripping Blakston’s airhose, the man tore the flint disk free, mouthing curses.
Incredulously Blakston saw a puff of sullen blue flame blossom out over the rent in the canvas. Instantly a column of azure fire flared between him and the convict The torch had set Dhee’s atmosphere afire where oxygen streamed from the man’s spacesuit!
Blakston easily squirmed free as the other made futile, frantic efforts to beat out the flames. The canvas charred, the rent grew larger, and the column of fire thicker. Behind the helmet plate the convict’s face worked in helpless terror.
~ * ~
The other convict turned briefly in his flight, saw what had happened, but sped on alone. With a bellow of pain and rage that faintly reached Blakston’s ears, the giant lumbered after him, a living torch. The other turned, sent a proton blast stabbing wildly toward his late companion. Blakston also found his legs and joined in pursuing the smaller man, who had almost reached the ship. Beside the open air-lock port he paused to hurl his blazing torch full at Blakston.
It struck him on the knee, splintered into burning fragments that threatened to fire his suit. He brushed them off hastily, but that moment’s delay wrought bitter havoc. The convict slipped into the air lock, and the ponderous door now swung slowly to behind him. It was all over, Blakston thought grimly. The man would take off, drop a blazing rocket stream into some other forest or brush, and Dhee Minor would blaze into a tiny starlet for a few hours and be no more.
But Blakston had forgotten the giant, who had never paused in that tortured, lumbering run of his, and was close to the ship. He hurled his flaming body at the air-lock port, gripped the thick stellite rim, and held on for life, as though he knew that only by getting into the ship, away from the planetoid’s inflammable atmosphere could he cheat death. Blakston could hear him scream with pain as fire ate inexorably toward his flesh. But he held on doggedly. The other outlaw, inside the air lock, could not secure the port to its pressure-tight seat. Nor could he enter the ship proper, Blakston knew, for the inner and outer air-lock ports were interlocked, and only one could be opened at a time. It was a curious, fatal deadlock.
The man inside ended it. Suddenly he let the port swing wide, which threw the straining giant off balance. In the air lock stood the smaller conv
ict, proton gun ready. Its thunder blasted once, twice—
Blakston’s heart was pounding madly. All his being focused upon a rock lying providentially before him. He picked it up, aimed to a nicety, and let fly. There was a crunch as it struck a fragile helmet. The ferret-faced man fell out of the air lock into the giant’s arms, and the bundle of oxygen flasks tumbled out with him.
Reason had departed the tortured body of the big man. He battered the other with maniacal fury. Blue flame roared between them, augmented by oxygen pouring from the smaller man’s shattered helmet. And at last the giant tossed him aside, a limp, broken, blazing puppet
Blakston felt sick. He saw that the giant was blind now, and felt a thrill almost of pity as the man lurched past the ship. The gross vitality in that huge frame carried him a dozen steps farther. Then his knees buckled and he pitched forward, slowly, like a felled tree.
Dimly Blakston was aware of a circle of Ootlandahs who had watched the end of things like so many silent ghosts. Dimly he knew there was something wrong with him, but his head was spinning madly, and even trying to think made it worse.
The oxy-cylinders flickered before his sight seemed to pile themselves into fantastic, dwindling pyramids. And then he knew what was wrong. His tank was empty. He needed oxygen and he needed it quick. He staggered toward the tanks, slowly sank to his knees and crawled the rest of the way.
Travelers of Space - [Adventures in Science Fiction 03] Page 14