by John Kippax
Koninburger watched the creature pass him to the door. The chief man on Balomain Four opened his mouth, wide. Strangled sounds came from it. Then he began to weep, and to curl up in the chair. He trembled; he was condemned.
More and more armed men made their way into the workings, each ready to kill on sight. More importantly, technicians of all grades returned to see if there had been any sabotage on the computers. It soon became plain that the alien had relied on the self-contained reactors going critical and splitting the area as they blew. But the search went on, every shaft, every spoil tub, every which way in the workings; nothing was missed. And the alien was not there.
Bruce said to Panos: 'You be in charge of this squad. There's something I must do.' 'Sir!' Panos acknowledged.
Bruce found his way to Koninburger's quarters. The man was lying curled up, his eyes tightly closed, his mouth open, his body shivering, and spittle oozing from his lips. Bruce shuddered. He figured he knew what sort of death the frail genius was dying. He hoisted Koninburger over his shoulder, and made for the elevator. At ground level, he could see lights in the surrounding hills. He dumped the hapless scientist in Admiral Carter's quarters, this being the nearest place, and begged the Admiral to find Baksh or Maseba to see if there was anything that could be done, and Carter went at once on the errand.
Venturer Twelve was on shutdown 'E' which meant that the whole great vessel was almost completely out of action. Creighton had made his way to the bridge without difficulty; one elevator was still working. His heart was pounding. The understanding that he had with Ba - that he was sure he had with Ba - was that when Ba chose to go, he, Creighton, would be with the alien. Starlight alone illuminated the bridge. A figure padded across the metal floor. Below where the Commander had his seat and his repeater board, a dim figure moved.
'Ba,' Creighton said.
The alien turned. 'Creighton,' it squeaked.
Creighton came forward. 'You are going?'
It was a fantastically unreal sound, this conversation, the one squeaking high and finding it difficult, the other going as low as possible. But it worked.
'I go.'
'You can go, in this ship?'
'Yes. I think my way through each circuit, many times.'
'You can make the antigrav start, and control the engines, you can bridge the shutdowns?'
'Of course.'
'And I am coming too.'
In the starlight, they faced each other. 'Did I say so?'
Creighton gasped. 'Yes, you said so. You said that if your people needed an interpreter, a go-between, when they conquer Earth, then I would be the right man to rule Earth! All I've ever wanted, from the time I began to study your life form, was to join you. Only your race, with its superior intellect, is good enough for me! I can be useful to you!'
No sound. If the creature knew laughter, it did not show it.
'Ba. Don't you hear me? I want to come with you, to your people!'
In comparatively measured tones, it said: 'You do not know what you are saying. My people consider me to be good for very little, being of low intellect and unstable mind. That was why they agreed to let me do something useful, and act as a decoy for your cursed ship!' The alien ripped off a dial, took the leads in his hand. "Now, I bridge all the gaps, and I can leave the ground in this ship, taking the dome with me!'
Then the alien stood tense, leads in hand, and eight thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three fuse boxes, all over the ship, blew like so many muffled Chinese crackers.
A second after, before either the alien or Creighton could move, a powerful torchlight shone down upon them from the Commander's chair.
'Well,' Bruce's voice was heard to say, 'I want to enjoy killing this pink, goggled bastard!'
Creighton yelled. 'No, no, you must not!'
'My gun's levelled,' Bruce said, from the darkness, and Creighton shivered. Everything he had planned for...
"No, you mustn't shoot!'
'Ask your pink friend how it attacked those two sentries, apart from any others!'
Ba squeaked and Creighton translated: 'I punch them with my mind!'
Then you've done punching,' Bruce said, and fired.
He missed; a needle from Creighton's pocket gun hit his rifle and zoomed away, like an angry bee.
'You too, then,' Bruce said, and shot Creighton in his left eye, from which the blood gushed as though from a mountain freshet; in the next second, the alien got a charge full at its head, and collapsed on the floor of the bridge.
Bruce remained where he was for half a minute; he stood his rifle in the nearest corner. Far away, someone was yelling; in six different parts of the ship emergency generators began to hum. A few lights came on. One appeared over Bruce's vantage point. He stood and lit a cigar, and then returned to his leaning with both hands on the rail, looking down. He felt no emotion over having killed Creighton, any more than he cared for the life of the alien. Bruce took it personally, and did what he saw as his duty at the same time.
World Admiral Carter arrived, along with Maseba and Lindstrom.
'Tom.'
'Yes, Admiral?'
'Was this killing necessary?'
Maseba went to the two still forms.
'I figure it was,' Bruce said, 'and I command the ship.'
Lindstrom stood apart from them.
These two had a plan of some sort?'
'Creighton thought that he was going to escape when the alien escaped, that he would join 'em, as he couldn't beat 'em.'
Maseba looked up, startled.
'Yeah?'
'Charlie Alien wasn't having any. All it got was a few thousand blown fuses.'
Maseba got up. His face was grave. 'So, all we have is a dead supermedic and an alien, and we don't even know if the alien was really a Kilroy.'
'All right, George,' Bruce said, 'just you tell me what you'd do if one guy was out to kill you with a needier and the other was going to give you a death punch in the middle of your head. Any suggestions better than mine?'
'No. But—'
'But what?' Bruce's manner was arrogant; he could have been enjoying it.
Things should never - I mean, this sort of thing... well, we ought to be better organized. Like Koninburger, who'll soon be dead—'
'That Niebohr bitch knew he would die. But she gambled on his being able to do his work up to the point where lesser men could carry on; and her gamble came off.' His voice rasped. 'For Pete's sake, George, people are disposable, didn't you know that?'
Lindstrom had no feeling for the dead alien but she could not bear to look at Creighton's smashed and bloody head.
Panos arrived, sweating, and relaxed when he saw the dead.
Maseba said to Bruce: 'Yeah. Disposable. But some are more disposable than others. It's lucky for all of us that there are hard nuts like you, Tom.'
Then don't complain. Get that shit off my bridge, and send a GD detail to clean up. Those two have been nothing but bloody nuisances ever since they came aboard.'
Under her breath, Lindstrom, unable to contain the words, muttered to Panos: 'Has he no feelings?'
'He's right,' Panos said; 'one hundred per cent.'
Carter called: 'Tom, I back you fully on this.'
Maseba spoke to the Admiral. 'You, sir, will please go to your quarters, where I will give you the first of a series of sedations for your transplant. Your heart will arrive by drone tomorrow morning.'
Carter scratched his fuzzy pate, looked from the dead bodies to the blackness of Maseba's face, then at Lindstrom and Panos, and finally at Bruce.
'Damn funny time to say it,' he rumbled, 'but while there's life, there's hope.' He turned to go. 'I'm on my way, George.'
Dan Morgan and John Kippax (John Hynam)
John Hynam's very recently acquired Mini veered across the white line into the path of an oncoming lorry at Werrington, just a few miles outside Peterborough, on the afternoon of 17 July 1974. The driver of the lorry was fortunately unharmed, but John
was killed instantaneously. He left a wife, Phyl, who is in hospital and a daughter, Jennifer, who last week gave birth to his first grandson, an event which he was awaiting with eager anticipation.
Our friendship and collaboration stretch back over so many years that even now, after attending his cremation, it is difficult for me to avoid the feeling that he may be on the other end of the line every time the telephone rings. John had a larger-than- life physical and psychic presence. Likeable, eccentric, egocentric, kind, brusque, take your pick from the thesaurus to describe him, he was all of these and more. A man of tremendous enthusiasms, he died as he lived, at full speed.
At present I am confined to the UK, having once more taken over the full-time management of my menswear business. Almeria seems a very long way on this rainy Sunday afternoon, and my time for writing is nonexistent My commitments over the past year or so have been such that the fourth novel in the 'Stars' series, Where No Stars Guide, was with our mutual agreement written by John alone. The fifth, which I look forward to working on in 1975, will unfortunately be another solo effort, although I know that I shall feel the spirit of John very close to me when I once again enter the world of Tom Bruce, Helen Lindstrom and Henry Fong - not to mention Admiral Junius Farragut Carter, who was John's own wryly conceived self-caricature.
Dan Morgan Spalding, 4 August 1974
End of Where No Stars Guide
Table of Contents
A prologue and a link
Chapter I
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Dan Morgan and John Kippax (John Hynam)
End of Where No Stars Guide