War Against the Rull

by A. E. van Vogt

  As he started toward the line of huts, Jamieson noticed that the green tint of the sky was the result of an energy screen. He detected the screen by the slight blurring of the outline of the treetops beyond it. The observation ended any confusion that remained, for the greenish effect was due to the screen's absorption of the lower visible frequencies from the oversized red giant sun, which now blazed so whitely at the zenith of the screen. Mira the red, the wonderful!

  Twice, as Jamieson walked, discing machines harumphed past him sowing their insect poison, and he had to step gingerly over the loose earth. In its early stages the poison was as unfriendly to human beings as it was to anything else. The upturned soil glittered with long, black shiny worms writhing feebly, with the famous red Mira bugs, that shocked their victims with electric currents, and with other things that he did not recognize. He reached the area of the huts, walked on, and came presently to a sign which read:

  MERIDAN SALVAGE CO.

  IRA CLUGY

  CHIEF ENGINEER

  Jamieson strode into the hut. A youth of perhaps twenty sat at a desk inside, looking annoyingly cool and alert to the perspiring Jamieson.

  "Where's Ira Clugy?" demanded Jamieson without preliminaries.

  The lad looked him over without any particular surprise. "Who are you? I don't remember seeing you around here before."

  "My name is Trevor Jamieson. That mean anything to you?"

  The youth didn't bat an eye. "The name does. That's the wheel assigned to this project by the Military Commission. You couldn't be Jamieson. He's not a field man."

  Jamieson ignored the objection. "You must be Peter Clugy."

  "How did you know that?" The boy looked steadily at Jamieson, then added, "Knowing my name doesn't prove you're Trevor Jamieson. How did you get here anyhow? There hasn't been a ship for five days."

  "Five days?" echoed Jamieson, shocked.

  The young man nodded.

  Five days, thought Jamieson. And the trip from Earth would have taken seven or eight. Could Ira Clugy have kept him unconscious and concealed all that time without the nephew's knowing it?

  "Where," demanded Jamieson simply, "is your uncle?"

  Peter Clugy shook his head. "I don't think I ought to tell you that, without knowing who you are or how you got here., But I'll call him." He picked up the phone from the desk and pressed a button on an adjacent panel. After a moment came the faint sound of a voice on the line. It became exclamatory as Peter Clugy imparted the message. Then Jamieson was startled to hear the lad describing him personally.'

  "Above average height, somewhat bushy sandy hair, with a pronounced widow's peak, very dark eyes, wide forehead, prominent features—" Peter Clugy paused as the voice on the line spoke briefly, then said, "Okay, but you'd better bring a couple of men with you, just in case." He hung up and turned to Jamieson. "My uncle says you could be Jamieson, from the description. Or a Rull posing as Jamieson."

  Jamieson smiled and stood up. He stepped forward, extending his hand. "Here—I'll prove I'm not a Rull, at least. Shake hands."

  Peter Clugy's hand was palm down on the desk. He moved it just enough to reveal a small but deadly blaster beneath it. "Keep your distance," he said evenly. "Time enough for tests when my uncle gets here."

  Jamieson stared at him a moment, then shrugged. He turned his back and sauntered to the doorway.

  "Come away from there," said young Clugy sharply. "Better sit down where I can watch you."

  Jamieson ignored him and stood looking out at the rather remarkable panorama beyond. In coming to this hut he had been too intent on his personal problem to notice the sweeping view from the campsite. This must be the compromise location Clugy had suggested during their bitter discussion back on Earth. This hill rose a thousand feet above the floor of the jungle, but not too sharply. Now that most of the growth was cleared from its crest it afforded a magnificent view of the vast, shining forest below, whose green splendor reached all the way to the dimly seen mountains based below the horizon.

  He saw the glint of rivers, the sparkling colors of strange trees; and, as he looked, the old, perennial thrill stirred within him, a feeling of exaltation in contemplating this universe of fabulous planets and of wondrous stars, like the famed Mira sun above him.

  The sight of three armed men crossing the clearing toward him reminded him abruptly of the urgency of the moment. The wiry figure in front would be that of Ira Clugy. As he came close enough for recognition, his deeply tanned face took on what Jamieson would have sworn was a look of honest bewilderment.

  Ira Clugy said nothing until, at his gesture, the others had "frisked" Jamieson and established his humanness beyond question. Then: "Just one more thing, Mr. Jamieson. I wouldn't insist on it if you hadn't shown up here in such a mysterious fashion." The engineer took a pen from the desk and held it out. "Please sign your name on this pad so I can compare it with some papers in our files which bear your signature."

  When that was established, Clugy said, "All right, then, Mr. Jamieson, I'd like to ask you one question: How did you get here?"

  Jamieson smiled grimly. "Believe it or not, I came to this office to ask you that same question." There was, he decided suddenly, nothing to be gained by withholding anything.

  He told Clugy all of the story that he knew, from the time he had left his office in Solar City until his arrival on this planet. He withheld nothing—not even his suspicions of Clugy.

  At this, Ira Clugy was ironically amused. "You don't know me very well," he said. "I could have cheerfully punched you in the nose when I talked to you in your office. But kidnapping's not my style." Clugy went on to outline the events following his angry parting from Jamieson. He had gone directly to the Spaceman's Club and radioed his crew on Mira 23 to pack up and come home. He was submersing his choler at the club bar when he was approached by a government agent who explained the reason for the difficult session with Jamieson. Mollified, Clugy countermanded the order to his crew. Next morning he signed the contract and began loading additional men and equipment aboard one of his salvage ships. Two days later he departed for Mira 23. Clugy finished, "You can radio Earth to verify what I've told you."

  "I must radio Earth anyway," he told Clugy, "and I'll check your story as a matter of course, though I really believe you. But far more important is to get a big ship here as fast as we can. What happened to me was no accident and we're not through with it."

  The radio shack was not far away and readily identifiable by the cone-shaped configuration of rings above it which formed the subspace antenna. The radio operator peered out from behind the control panel as they entered. There was a worried look on his face.

  "Mr. Clugy! I was just going to call you. It's the McLaurin condenser again. It's burned out."

  Clugy looked at the man with a grim expression. "I'm afraid, Landers, I'm going to have to put you under arrest."

  The remark seemed to stun the young man. Jamieson was also surprised, and said so.

  Clugy said, "Doctor, this is the third and last condenser. It'll be six days before another ship arrives, and they of course will have a stock of spares. Meanwhile, we are out of radio communication."

  The appalling significance of that instantly justified the arrest. In a flash, Jamieson sized up the situation. There were four of them here in the room: the two Clugys, the radio operator and himself. Outside, the roar of machinery nullified the possibility of any human-made sound being heard.

  Young Peter Clugy interrupted his train of thought, placed a blaster on the table beside him. "Here, sir; you cover him while I give him the test."

  Jamieson snatched the gun, relieved to have a weapon again. He stepped back and waved the younger Clugy forward. Beside him, Ira Clugy also pulled his blaster. They stood watchful, as the radio operator extended his hand.

  After the handshake, Clugy's nephew seemed relieved as he turned to Jamieson and said, "He's human, sir."

  The atmosphere in the shack grew less tense. "Where," Jamie
son asked, "is the nearest available transmitter?"

  "At the uranium mining camp, nine hundred miles south," Clugy replied, and added, "You can have one of our aerocars and leave right away. In fact, I'll take you myself."

  Young Peter Clugy immediately started off toward a group of small ships standing in a row across the clearing. "I'll bring you one," he called over his shoulder.

  Minutes later they were in the air, the dense, waxen-green forest sliding rapidly northward a thousand feet below. Peter Clugy had elected to pilot the ship for them; at the moment, he was expertly setting the automatic controls for the prescribed course.

  Ira Clugy sat staring silently out the window, apparently in no mood to talk. Jamieson didn't blame him—it was time to straighten out his own thoughts on a few matters.

  The purpose of the Rulls, he told himself, is to delay or block altogether the procurement of lymph fluid. That premise should be the key to the whole situation. But why would they arrange to trap him by their bizarre, mind-seizing line patterns and bring him here, apparently on one of their own ships? He shuddered at the thought of being in their alien custody during the long trip through space.

  And why did they let me live? There was only one reasonable explanation. It would not be sufficiently damaging to the project merely to kill the administrator, who could be replaced in due course. There must be a deeper plan, one involving Ira Clugy undoubtedly, which would be calculated to hold up the entire operation for some time.

  Apparently, the plan required that Jamieson's presence be established here. That was simple enough. All they had to do was to set him down in the camp, probably before dawn, and he had taken care of the rest of it himself, quite naturally.

  Jamieson felt a sudden uneasiness. Everything else he had done had been quite natural also, and quite predictable. What was more natural than that he—and Ira Clugy, too, for that matter—would be here in this small craft on their way across nine hundred miles of desolation toward the nearest subspace radio station, now that the one in the camp had failed. Yes, quite predictable, from the viewpoint of some agent who had cleverly sabotaged the subspace radio but who didn't know about the patrol ship above the atmosphere.

  Jamieson got to his feet. The mining camp must be contacted immediately, before it was too late!

  It was then, glancing quickly around the horizon, that he saw another ship approaching. Although he had more than half expected it, the sight sent a thrill of alarm along his nerves. It was larger and faster than their own ship, and probably armed. At that angle and speed it would overtake them in two or three minutes!

  Jamieson turned hastily toward the radio panel—and stopped. Peter Clugy stood before it, his face expressionless, but holding in his hand the same small blaster he had displayed earlier. It was aimed at Jamieson's stomach.

  There was a gasp from Ira Clugy. "Peter, you young fool! Have you lost your mind?" He got out of his seat and stepped forward as the menacing blaster swung around toward him. "Here, give me that thing!"

  Jamieson put out a restraining arm in front of the older man, "I only hope your nephew hasn't lost his life," he said, trying to keep his voice calm. "This is not Peter Clugy—nor any other human being."

  16

  In Jamieson's mind several things fell suddenly into place. Peter Clugy's refusal to shake hands on the pretense that he thought Jamieson might be a Rull. And the first thing he had noticed about young Clugy was his unnatural physical coolness in this superheated, humid climate—obvious now. And since it was Peter Clugy who had "established" by handshake the humanness of the radio operator, that individual must also be ... Rull.

  Jamieson studied the "youth" closely. There was no flaw in the human image that he could detect. He had to admit the perfection. It was apparently an inflexible rule that a disguise never be relaxed in the presence of human beings. Jamieson approved wholeheartedly. He had always found the sight of their wormlike, multi-appendaged bodies upsetting.

  Ira Clugy had recovered from his initial shock. He glared at the Rull. "What have you done with my nephew?" he demanded. He started forward threateningly.

  Jamieson held him back. "Careful, my friend. He doesn't need the blaster. He could destroy us with a bolt of high-frequency stuff that he can control with his body cells."

  The Rull said nothing but extended what appeared to be a human hand toward the control panel and pulled a lever. At once, the ship began to sink toward the green forest below.

  A glance around told Jamieson that the other ship had come in close and was descending with them. A minute later, brush crackled beneath the hull as they came to rest on the ground. Strangely, the other aerocar did not land but remained hovering a few feet above the ground a dozen yards away, its purring underjets automatically supplying just enough lift to offset its slight residual weight.

  Could the purpose be to leave no trace of the other ship's presence here? As he watched, the ship's two occupants, both human in appearance, both undoubtedly Rulls, jumped from its doorway to the ground and started across the intervening space. What startled Jamieson was their apparent disregard of the ground over which they passed. It was startling because this was the heart of the Green Forest, alive with the young of the lymph beast!

  Perhaps the Rulls didn't really know what the purpose was of Clugy's work. Perhaps this was just a routine spy operation to sabotage a human project. Not knowing, they might well have confused the adult lymph beast with the progeny. The parent was harmless. The young attacked anything that moved. If it ceased moving before they reached it, they forgot about it instantly. Utterly indiscriminate, they struck at leaves drifting in the wind, the waving branch of a tree, even moving water. Millions of the snakelike things died every month making insensate attacks on inanimate objects that had moved for one reason or another. But some, inevitably, survived the first two months of their existence and changed into their final form.

  In the development of the lymph beast, Nature had achieved one of her most fantastic balancing acts. The ultimate shape of the lymph beast was a hard-shelled beehivelike construction that could not move. It was hard to go far into the green forest without stumbling across one of these structures. They were everywhere—on the ground and in trees, on hillsides and in valleys; wherever the young monster happened to be at the moment of the change, there the adult settled. The final stage was short but prolific. The hive lived entirely on the food it had stored up as a youngster. Being bisexual, it spent its brief existence in a sustained ecstasy of procreation. The young, however, were not discharged from it. They incubated inside and promptly began eating at the vitals of the parent. This stopped the process of reproduction, but by this time there were many of them. They also ate each other, but as the shell softened and fell apart from the action of their secretions, a certain proportion would reach comparative safety outside.

  Jamieson's thought ended as the Rull-image of Peter Clugy flipped a switch, opening the door of the aerocar, and gestured with the blaster.

  "Get outside, you two!"

  Reluctantly, they preceded their captor to the ground outside, where the other two Rulls now stood waiting. The heat was suffocating. On Earth, in an almost rainless climate like this, the vegetation would be brown and desiccated; here, the grassy glade and surrounding forest were almost artificial-looking in their waxen greenness.

  The images of all three Rulls wavered slightly, one after another. "They're talking it over," Jamieson explained to Clugy in a low voice. "Apparently it's difficult to communicate with light waves and maintain a perfect image."

  The image of Peter Clugy turned abruptly toward Ira and gestured. "All right, you can leave now."

  Ira Clugy looked blank. "Leave?"

  "Yes. Get back in your ship and take off. Go to your camp or wherever you please. But don't come back here again today!"

  Jamieson felt as baffled as Ira Clugy looked. Clugy seemed to brace himself. "Nothing doing," he said flatly. "If Mr. Jamieson stays, I stay."

  The
likeness of Peter Clugy hesitated. Then, "But why? We know that you have a personal dislike for this man."

  "Maybe I did once, but—" Ira Clugy stopped. His face twisted with renewed fury as the full implication of the Rull's remark sank in. "So you know about that! That means my nephew was dead—and you were taking his place—even back on Earth!"

  Jamieson laid a restraining hand on the engineer's shoulder, or the man would surely have lunged at the Rull. The Rull said, "Your nephew is not dead. He is—here." Moving to the aft storage compartment of the ship beside which they were standing, the Rull slid open the hatch. Inside lay a motionless figure identical in appearance with the one which had opened the door.

  "He should remain unconscious for several hours," said the Rull. "He was surprisingly resistant to paralyis. But he will recover. It was only this morning, however, in your camp, that I took his place. That has not been necessary before, in order to find out what we needed to know."

  Jamieson could well believe that. Ira Clugy had undoubtedly broadcast his feelings sufficiently at the Spaceman's Club following the memorable altercation in Jamieson's office. Also, all personnel had been carefully checked for humanness before embarking for this planet.

  The Rull appeared to be conferring with his fellow agents. They had evidently not planned for Clugy's opposition.

  It was at that instant, while his mind was straining to fit together the pieces of the puzzling actions of the Rulls, that a movement in the grass caught Jamieson's attention. It was some distance away, and he could see only a series of shadows. But he felt an inner tremble of terrible fear.

  Dark forest of Mira, he thought shakily. Alive with the young of the lymph beast...

  The brief conference among the Rulls ended and the replica of Peter Clugy spoke to Ira. "It is not necessary for you to take the ship back yourself. I will take you within a short distance of the camp and leave you and the ship there. Now get in!" Ira Clugy's jaw set. "And what happens to Mr. Jamieson?" "We leave him here," replied the Rull. "It will be dark in an hour. Before you can possibly get back here and find him, he will be dead."