Hell's Gate

by Dean R. Koontz

  “Perhaps I should have let you sleep,” the rescuer said, looking down on Salsbury with concern. “But this is a very important thing. I think, perhaps, it is our chance. We must make use of it as swiftly as possible. But if you feel like you must rest-”

  “I'm okay,” Salsbury said.

  “Good.” The creature smiled at others nearby, giving Victor a moment to survey the room. It was still a cave. They were farther down in the earth than before, for the walls were more solid, more of a piece, and there were no loose rocks. Despite the fact it was a cave, it was a relactively pleasant place. It was kept scrupulously clean. One of the walls was decorated with a mural that showed that artistic concepts here were modern, enlightened, far beyond all other cave art. Another wall was carved with shelves which held other pieces of work, mostly stone and wood sculpture, though one held a thatched strawpiece resembling a kneeling woman. Salsbury saw at once that the women of these half-men-or nine-tenths men- were closer his own idea of femininity than those of the naked half-men had been. Finally, he took in the fact that there were three other creatures seated in the room, all on chairs, some drinking out of wooden tumblers, others just biding their time.

  “I'm Moog,” his rescuer said, turning back to him. “You are?”

  “Vic.”

  “It is a new name for me.”

  “Victor is the full name.”

  “Oh, yes! Some of the creatures of other probability lines in this area do shorten their names for convenience. Though I never fully understood why they weren't given the short names to begin with.”

  “Could I have some water?” Salsbury asked, his words like stones rolling up the incline of his throat.

  “I have something better,” Moog said. He went off for a moment, returned with a wooden mug.

  Salsbury remembered the half-men's gruel. “Water would be fine.”

  “Just try this.”

  “I-”

  “Please.”

  Salsbury took the mug and sipped the fluid gingerly. It was not repulsive as he had feared. It was cool, smooth, sweet, much like apple cider, tangy but not alcoholic. He downed it in a few gulps and asked Moog to bring him more. This he sipped while he tried to fathom the events of the last few hours.

  “There are many things I have to ask,” Moog said. “Perhaps the best way would be for you to tell us your story. That would be quicker, and nothing would be missed.”

  “I don't know,” Victor said guardedly.

  “We only wish to help. I think you badly need assistance. Am I wrong?”

  “You are not wrong.”

  “Begin, then. We are listening.”

  Victor wondered if he should tell them the whole thing. Indeed, he did need help, and he could hardly expect them to give it unless they knew the story. He perceived that they were as sharp as he was, with IQ's every bit as high, though their civilization had not progressed as far as that on the Earthline he had come from. If he tried to hold out on them, they would reciprocate when it was his turn to ask questions. And it would help a great deal to know how Moog came to speak English, how he knew of the probability lines, why he was risking vacii anger by hiding Salsbury from them. He decided to be open. He told them the entire story.

  When he was finished, Moog turned to the others and recounted Salsbury's tale in their tongue. There were questions, some of them which Moog relayed to Victor, others which he answered himself. In the end, the others were satisfied, and there was an air of excitement that was almost tangible.

  “Now your story,” he said to Moog.

  “Not half so interesting as yours.”

  “Tell it anyway.”

  Moog nodded and began.

  The vacii had begun their invasion of Earth over a hundred years ago. It had lasted less than six hours. Some half-men had attacked the first vacii party and were summarily destroyed. The vacii moved in, took over, and had been established ever since. Recently, within the last thirty years, the vacii had discovered the presence of the first whole men in the half-man society. These were creatures like Moog who were born with softer features, higher foreheads, and IQ's ranging from a hundred-and-ten to a hundred-and-forty. At first, the half-men destroyed these more human children at birth, for they regarded them as freaks or visitations of the demons. But the vacii had started attending every birth and studiously rescued those babies and took them away.

  One of the first of such new creatures was Moog. The vacii raised him in a strictly controlled environment. Their actions were not so much generous as more in the line of scientific curiosity. They had not spared him death from any idealistic philosophy about the value of intelligent life. The vacii had no such philosophies. They had rescued Moog and others like him solely for experimental purposes.

  They taught him as much as they could about his world, and found that his IQ was one of the higher ones. He became a challenge for them. By the time he had reached his late teens, they had introduced him to as much technical information as he could accept. He was taught about the vacii culture, and he recognized it for the cold, emotionless thing it was, and despised it; he was a creature of emotions himself. They moved on, introducing him to the theory of probability lines, taking him on tours of some of the other worlds, teaching him languages. (A vacii linguist requisitioned him for an experiment in determining the verbal abilities of the newly intelligent species he represented.) He had learned English in this manner.

  When he reached the age of twenty-four, six years ago, Moog was privy to a great many facets of vacii life. Because of this, he learned the eventual fate of vacii experimental animals. Two things might happen. One: the vacii might allow the test animal to live a natural lifespan if only to determine exactly what it could accomplish in that time. Two: they might terminate the experiment and perform an autopsy. This was enough to decide Moog's future for him. He could not stay in the starship. In addition to the constant fear he might be slated for dissection, there was the increasingly harsh nature of the regular vacii tests. “Survival experiments,” the vacii called them. They consisted of placing Moog in a particularly hostile position and then observing him saving himself. Although the aliens were undoubtedly obtaining much valuable data on the survival abilities of his species, Moog decided the pain he was enduring wasn't worth it. Since no experimental animal had tried to escape before, his plans met with little hitch. He broke free, along with two cohorts, and had remained free ever since.

  He and his companions had not been idle in their freedom. They managed, in two raids on the vacii complex, to free forty-six other intelligent Earthmen of their hairy breed. However, they were never inside the ship, for that was now beyond their reach. The third raid was anticipated, and the vacii killed eleven of their number, while they were unable to free any more of their brethren. With their thirty-eight, they went into the deepest caves in the mountain and hid from the lizardmen. Slowly, they established contact with the half-men above them- the naked, savage type-and began rescuing children of their own breed before the vacii got to them, rewarding the half-men with trinkets for not slaughtering them. A great number of the half-men's pregnant women were secreted away until it could be learned whether their child was savage or intelligent. If intelligent, Moog's group kept it and raised it. They began breeding some of their own. Now, in six years, their number stood at eighty-nine and was climbing faster and faster every month.

  Yet the vacii remained a thorn in their side. Fully half a dozen babies a month were abducted into the vacii ship for experimental purposes. Moog and the others were anxious to free them, anxious to somehow defeat and drive off the vacii. But, of course, the vacii had guns. The Earthmen here had bows and arrows. Moog knew how metal could be smelted, how machinery of limited complexity could be built. But, having to live in utter secrecy, unable to go out of the caves in daylight, the Earthmen were restricted from achieving the level of social order they knew they could create.

  “But you have a gun,” Moog said.

  “Be careful!” Victor shouted as the hairy man picked up his gas pel
let pistol.

  “Do not worry. We are not as stupid as those whose hands you first fell into. I've heard what the gun does from the half-men. And I can figure it out, almost. But would you mind explaining?”

  Salsbury didn't mind.

  “May I fire it at that rock?” Moog asked.

  Salsbury shrugged. “Go on.”

  He fired. The pellet sank only an inch into the boulder before exploding. Chips of stone flew in all directions, and a fine gray powder hung in the air. “Would this work on metal?” Moog asked.

  “Yes. Only it will take more shots. If the metal is thick, that is. The pellet will only sink a fraction of an inch into dense material before exploding.”

  “It can require as many shots as you have,” Moog said. “Just so we get inside.”

  “Inside?” Salsbury thought he was beginning to lose track of the conversation.

  “Inside the vacii ship,” Moog said, smiling, his wide mouth full of glittering teeth.

  “But what good will that do us?” Victor wanted to know, suddenly coming forward on his chair. It sounded foolish, half-baked, unrealistic. The vacii outnumbered them. The aliens had weapons far superior to anything the men here could possess or hope to obtain. Yet, somehow, he had the feeling that Moog already considered these things and was speaking rationally, with something definite and workable in mind.

  “I know the inside of the vacii starship by heart,” Moog said. “I lived in it for twenty-four years, except when they took me on field experiments. I used that time to memorize every foot of the place in the event such information would ever come in handy. It has. I know, for instance, exactly where the ship armory is.”

  “But-”

  “If you will help us with your pellet gun,” Moog said, grinning even wider so that it seemed his head would split open, “I think we will solve several problems simultaneously. We will be rid of the vacii at last and free to raise all the newborn children in an enlightened atmosphere, in a society where they will not have to hide by day and move at night only with fear. And you will get a chance to return to the woman you call Lynda. That should be enough for you. And perhaps we will even destroy the vacii installations across all the probability lines.”

  The others looked anxious, as if, despite the language barrier, they knew what Moog was saying.

  “But,” the hairy man finished, “you must understand that you will not have a promise of return to your probability. Only a chance. A chance and nothing more.”

  “That's a hundred percent more than I had an hour ago,” Salsbury said.

  Moog chuckled, slapped his arm, and translated his acceptance to the others.

  There was a brief but enthusiastic cheer.

  CHAPTER 19

  Moog's war party moved with astonishing cat-like grace and silence, considering the size of it and the size of each member. There were thirty-one in the party aside from Salsbury, all the men their settlement contained. Those left behind were women and children; even some of them had been anxious to go along, to fight the hated enemy. The decision had been to go for broke, to seize all or nothing. It was thought all men were needed (though a slaughter of them by the vacii would mean a virtual end to the colony), but that women, untrained for combat, would only get in the way.

  Once, they met a party of vacii still searching the compound, walking the alleyways with electric torches. The war party was quicker, for it was expecting trouble. The arrows were swift and silent. Six dead vacii without one managing a scream was a testimony to the accuracy of the archers.

  They went on to the starship.

  That portion of the great hull which, Moog assured him, was on the outside of the ship's armory, was pressed close against the white walls of a building, hidden in welcoming shadows. The war party stationed itself along the walls, taking advantage of the pitch darkness, while Moog and Salsbury walked along the hull to the place the hairy one chose as the most advantageous for forced entry.

  “There will be no one in the armory,” Moog said. “There will be an armory officer stationed just outside it, in the antiroom. But by the time he realizes we are in the ship, we will be armed and ready for a fight.”

  “I hope you're right,” Salsbury said. Moog had assured him that the hull sensors were inactive and would not go active until the ship was preparing for spaceflight. Still he worried.

  “I most certainly am right,” Moog said, shaking his burly head. “Let's begin, eh?”

  Salsbury ran his hand along the hull, sampling the coolness of the metal. He rapped, heard only a faint booming sound. “It's thick.” He rapped again, listened. “It'll take some time. I think we better fire sideways so the metal chips will be propelled away from us. You stand behind me.”

  Moog obliged, moving softly, quietly.

  Salsbury aimed, fired the first pellet. There was a sharp pinging noise and the rattle of metal chips on the curve of the hull. He ran his fingers over the spot he had shot at. It was hot, though not hot enough to burn him. He found he had made perhaps a quarter to a half inch indentation in the alloy, rugged, with sharp edges, perhaps half a foot across. To make a hole large enough to admit these fellows, he was going to have to do much better than that. He set the pistol to machine gun status and prayed there were enough of the little droplets in the gas bottle cartridge to do the job. Then he depressed the trigger and held it down.

  The pinging grew louder, harsher. After two minutes of continuous fire, he stopped, waited until the echoing ring had ceased, then looked closely at what he had done. There was a rugged hole three feet across and four feet high. Only the center, big as a penny, had broken clear through. Resetting the pistol to a single shot basis, he began chopping away at the stubborn alloy, enlarging that penny-sized aperture.

  Ten minutes later, he had a hole big enough to crawl through. “Let's check it out,” he said to Moog.

  They went through into the dark interior, letting their eyes adjust. At last, when they could see well enough, they found they were only through the outer hull, in an air space full of beams and supports; three feet away, there was another wall, the inner wall, the partition that was part of the armory.

  “Well? “Moog asked.

  “If this is as thick as the first, we're in trouble,” Salsbury said gloomily. “The gun is getting lighter; it's low on gas.”

  “Nothing to do but try,” Moog said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Salsbury tried. They were fortunate indeed, for the wall was of half-inch steel which parted much more easily under the gun's assault. When a second hole had been cleared, they stepped into the darkened armory, looked around joyously. Moog went back to usher the others inside.

  Fifteen minutes later, the cache of vibratubes and slug guns the size of shotguns had been broken open. They were armed to the proverbial teeth. No, clear up to the hairline. Moog stationed himself by the door to the anti-room, looked back to make sure everyone was prepared. Then he swung it inward and went through fast, a vibratube in one hand, the heavy bulk of a frag slug gun in the other.

  The others followed. Salsbury was fourth in line, willing to let two other of these Earthmen follow Moog before sticking his own tender neck out. When he entered the chamber, the vacii armory officer was lying in a crumpled heap to the left of its desk. The vibratube had done the job. It was quieter than a frag slug, but every bit as effective.

  When the last member of the war party had filed in, Moog recited the plans that had been gone over so hastily before their departure from the caves. The layout of the ship was not complex. Thanks to Moog, the Earth-men had a rough blueprint in their minds. The party divided into six groups, five men in each of the first five parties, five men plus Moog and Salsbury in the sixth. The others were to spread into selected portions of the starship as fast and efficiently as they could. Since the vacii in the ship were not generally armed, the battle would be heavily weighted in the Earthmen's favor. The sixth group's objective was to get Salsbury to the teleportation room. They would destroy vacii and vacii machinery as the other five groups, but on
ly as the opportunity arose during their flight to the teleportation cart.

  Moog opened the door, and they went into the corridor, leaving the other groups to go their own ways, intent now on reaching the transportation that might or might not take Vic back to his basement, back to Lynda. They raced along the main corridor, not bothering much about quiet now. Behind, the detail assigned to this hall was already opening doors and cutting down the vacii within. The noise was nearly deafening. Farther away, echoing from other parts of the ship, more sounds of battle arose.

  They rounded a corner and confronted a small group of vacii that had come out of the rooms to see what the noise was all about. One of the men beside Salsbury pumped three frag slugs at the assemblage. The vacii dropped in twos and threes. The six still standing got themselves vibrabeamed by Moog. Then they went over and around the bodies, trying not to breathe in the stench of burned alien flesh.

  Two turns and six dead vacii later, one of the boys in their group got his chest pounded open by a guard's personal pistol. Moog fired at the vacii. So did Salsbury. Their vibrabeams caught it from both sides of the head, finished it messily.

  “This is it,” Moog said, turning into a room on the right. He bounced back, a vibrabeam sear along the top of his right shoulder.

  Salsbury went down, rolled, narrowly avoided a second blast from the vacii operator's weapon. When he came onto his back, he fired, swept half the room, nearly cut the alien in two. The thing fell forward, trying to groan, and was very still. He went back to Moog. “How is it?”

  “Just a burn. Nothing important.” He wasn't even clutching at the wound. Not even moaning. Or grimacing.

  “That's the cart,” Salsbury said.

  “Do you know how to operate it?”

  “I can try. The worst I can do is blow myself up,” Salsbury said.