Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “It’s too late,” Herb said doggedly. But even with the words, he felt the first hesitant flicker of hope. If he could take over this ship, and with it assault the great ship in space, there capture the remote-control mechanism by which the charge would be detonated then perhaps Earth could really be saved. First kill the Oligarch. Then . . .

  Norma whimpered to herself. “You stay here,” he hissed, too softly, he hoped for the microphones to pick up his voice.

  Her eyes widened in protest. “Don’t go. He’ll . . .”

  “Shhhhhh,” he silenced her. Bending, he whispered, “I’ll find him first. You’ll be all right.” He left her. At the doorway, he looked back. She seemed crumpled and lifeless and defeated.

  The Oligarch was somewhere to his left. In the corridor, waiting? Herb could not know. There was only one way to find out. He stepped from the room, gun ready to fire.

  The corridor was empty. Where? In the control room? In the office? In the kitchen? The messhall?

  Herb moved forward silently.

  THE Oligarch had backed across the messhall. One hand clutched at his left side. His breathing was too loud. Herb would surely hear it.

  He stood in the far doorway that opened into the short corridor leading to his office and that extended beyond his office to open into the main corridor. Herb would have to cross before its open face should he come forward. From the doorway, the Oligarch also commanded a view of the main messhall entrance, should Herb stop to inspect that room first. By ducking either in or out, he could place a protecting wall between himself and his pursurer. The Oligarch knew that Herb would come. His left side was terrifying testimony that the lifetime of conditioning had been stripped away.

  It would be so easy to dart to his own office; but the unprotected space between him and it was a barrier more solid than a rock cliff. If Herb should emerge as he was making the exposed crossing, he would be a perfect target. His movements were sluggish. He had to locate Herb in order to know in which direction safety lay. But to be safe in the office, with the door barricaded . . .

  * * *

  Herb saw the drops of blood drying slowly along the floor of the corridor.

  The Oligarch had entered the messhall. Herb approached cautiously.

  Standing just outside, not exposing himself, he could see a clot of blood beyond the main door. Probably the Oligarch had hesitated there, undecided—or resting.

  He held the gun more tightly. His heart beat rapidly, and his mouth was dry. But he was not afraid. There was an iciness far down inside of him.

  He stepped across the threshold, and just as suddenly, leaped back.

  He heard the stumble of the Oligarch’s fleeing feet, heard the office door open and slam.

  Herb waited, listening: a feint?

  No. There was no sound.

  Again he stepped into the messhall. It was empty.

  “Herb!” Norma called. “Herb! Are you all right?” She was running down the corridor toward him.

  “Get back!” Herb called, but she came on, and then she was beside him.

  “He’s in the office. I’m going after him. You stay here.”

  “No. Leave him there. Prop the door. Keep him in. Take the ship . . .”

  “I’m going in after him,” Herb said. “I’ve got to. It’s more than him, more than killing or getting killed. I’ve got to.”

  “It’s so senseless,” she said. “If we could get control of the ship . . .”

  He shook his head. “You stay here!”

  He walked across the messhall. He stepped out into the narrow corridor.

  “Get away!” the Oligarch cried frantically. His voice was no longer vigorous, and it sounded pathetic and child-like through the door.

  Herb, going toward it, said, “I’m coming in!” He tried the door. Locked.

  He fired twice at the lock. He stepped back and kicked. The door swung inward.

  The Oligarch did not fire. Herb, pressed against the wall, could not see into the room.

  “I’m coming in, damn you!”

  “Don’t,” the Oligarch cried weakly. “Please, don’t. Don’t now!”

  Herb heard a gun clatter to the floor.

  “Don’t,” the Oligarch moaned. “I’ve thrown it away. I’m helpless.”

  Herb balanced on the balls of his feet. Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped into the doorway, his body framed beautifully between the two jambs. He held his gun at ready and then lowered it.

  The Oligarch was slumped over his desk.

  Herb heard Norma come up behind him.

  “He’s dying,” she said.

  Reaction set in, and Herb’s knees almost collapsed. His body was trembling and drenched with perspiration.

  The Oligarch coughed.

  THE Oligarch said something in his own language.

  “What?” Herb asked.

  “Make him tell us. How we can keep them from setting off the explosion!” Norma said.

  The Oligarch wanted to talk, and he made a motion—a feeble one—to silence them both. The girl’s pathetic conviction that the explosion could be prevented infuriated the Oligarch. There was nothing she could do. The cleverness with which he had executed his mission defied time and eternity.

  “It won’t be set off in the big ship,” the Oligarch said. “I had intended to leave you at the site, Herb, to trigger it personally.” He spoke English and was disappointed to see that his vision began to mist. He would have liked to watch the girl’s face. “But your later dream forms made me deny you martyrdom. I think I might have done it any way, if you hadn’t left. You have the idealism. You were the one I had counted on. And after you, of course, there was only Bud.”

  Norma choked weakly and her knees half gave way. The sound was satisfying to the Oligarch.

  “I told Bud the explosion was planted,” the Oligarch said. “Then I . . . I told him . . .” He coughed again. “I told him that I had mailed his brother’s head along with his confession to . . . to . . . Then I gave him a telephone number. He phones long distance, gives the number. At the bomb site, the receiver . . . lifts automatically . . . He says, ‘Frank Council’ . . . his brother’s name . . . the key . . . The trigger falls.” The Oligarch’s hands scrabbled on the desk. “Don’t you think he’ll do it, in the knowledge of his own personal destruction? . . . Oh, he will, yes . . . And this is the final . . .” Blood dribbled from the Oligarch’s mouth. “I didn’t mail his brother’s head . . . I lied to him. Don’t you see what a beautiful . . . what a satisfying lie that was?” He laughed, coughed again, and slumped forward. And the chase ended.

  And Herb, looking at death, grabbed Norma by the arm and ran toward the control room.

  . . . And back on Earth, Bud Council sat sick and trembling, his eyes fastened on the telephone beside him . . .

  CHAPTER XIV

  HERB thought first of the bomb site. The chill desert night would be fresh upon it. Overhead, the pale moon would ride toward the terrible Apocalypse of dawn—if Bud waited until then to make his phone call.

  In a few hours (he thought) he could bring the spider ship down upon the desert. The long dark night beyond would give him time.

  He visualized the scene as he remembered it from TV: the single sentry shack where an Army guard protected the alien handiwork.

  “I’ll talk to them when we land. I’ll explain about Bud. They’ll find him and keep him away from the telephone. They’ll tell long distance operators not to place any calls until they can find him. All I need is a few hours to convince someone that Bud, that Bud.”

  Norma was in his arms, shaking hysterically. “He . . . he did that to Frank. Bud did that!”

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Herb said.

  She shivered against him. Gently he disengaged himself.

  “In an hour, now . . .” he said. His hand rested on the forward firing stud.

  Rested and withdrew.

  “What’s wrong?” Norma asked.

  “The fuel. I haven’t
got enough left to brake the ship, to turn it, and then land against Earth gravity.”

  “No,” Norma said. “No! That can’t be right!”

  HERB re-sorted the information available from the dials, seeking a method to defy the dictates of inertia. Once more he weighed the remaining fuel against that necessary to brake and turn the ship, and still there was none left over to counteract Earth’s gravity and the long planetfall. He projected trajectories.

  “Maybe I can throw the ship in a long orbit,” he said. “If I can kill the speed against the atmosphere . . .”

  “Can you do it?”

  Herb’s hands eased fuel into the forward port jet and sparked it. “I’m tilting for the orbit.”

  The guage dropped alarmingly, and as momentum changed, the center of gravity shifted. The ship nosed up and fell sideways and slipped away to the right.

  Norma held her breath, afraid to interrupt even with encouragement.

  “It’s an ellipse,” Herb said. “It’s a long fall now, but I’m afraid to make it shorter.” He set the controls.

  “How long will it take?” Norma asked.

  “I’ll have to make half a dozen bounces. The first one won’t be for nearly six hours . . . We won’t be able to land until sunup.” Norma bit her lip. “But that’s . . .”

  “We won’t have much time. We’ll have to try to get to Bud ourselves.”

  WHEN the time came, he turned to her. “I’ve got to hit the atmosphere now. We’ll have to strap down.”

  Numb with tension, she sat in one of the shock-chairs and buckled herself in. Then, in his chair before the panel, Herb adjusted the buckles and waited the few remaining minutes. “This will be the worst,” he said.

  The ship hit the upper gases—gases, made by speed into an iron curtain; and as the air clawed at the strange shape of the ship, and as the interior cooling system whined into overdrive, he fought against wild, erratic movements, firing precious fuel to brake and stabilize . . . And then they were free, and shooting away along a shortened and slower ellipse.

  Finally they were well into the atmosphere, but they were very high, too high to be more than a speck, so high that the sound spread too thinly to be heard on the surface.

  “I’ll set down outside Washington,” Herb said. “Somewhere outside, where we can get away from the ship before they get there to start asking questions.”

  He released his blast, and the ship turned nose up. Gravity became heavier. The ship plummeted down.

  “Here’s the last of the jets,” Herb hissed, and he eased them in, slowing the fall, slowing it . . .

  Down the ship came.

  The Earth expanded and a fantastically fast painter seemed to be sketching in the details of the landscape.

  The sun was cut off by the horizon. A few lights sparkled in slowly waking Washington.

  The jets sputtered, and the ship slipped; the jets caught, sputtered, and died.

  Herb slammed on the low lift controls. The aerodynamically designed platform-like wings spun and hissed against tin air. For a long moment, Herb was afraid they would not brake the fall, but the lifts caught, and the ship jerked, and Herb felt the bouyancy through the ship and through his mind and through his body.

  CHAPTER XV

  LESS than five minutes later, they were stationary. The slowing lifts purred and the landing ladder hissed down.

  Herb and Norma were upon it.

  “About a—five hundred yards,” Herb said. “Over that way; the highway. Let’s go!”

  Running at his side, Norma prayed desperately for a car to come soon.

  They sprinted the last short distance because of growing headlights from the south. The car was coming fast, and Herb jumped into the roadway, waving his hands.

  The car came on, sounding its horn hysterically. Herb waved and brakes squealed, and the car, at almost the last instant, veered away from him. The wind of its passing rustled his hair, and the horn still bleating, it slowly dwindled as the red tail lights faded into the darkness.

  They waited. Five minutes passed.

  “One’s got to come!”

  Early fire hung over the ocean from the as yet invisible sun. Dew lay on the plowed field behind them. The air was chill.

  It seemed that the sun was symbolic fire slowly creeping and coloring the sky, slowly spreading over the world.

  “What time is it?” Herb asked.

  “Here’s a car! Here’s a car!”

  Both of them leaped into the highway, waving and jumping up and down.

  A long way away, the driver set his brakes, and the car coasted slowly, passed them, and finally stopped.

  They ran to it. Herb jerked open the door. “You’ve got to take us to Washington!” Herb said.

  Norma, arriving behind him, said, “It’s a matter of life and death!”

  “Then get in,” the man said.

  Overhead a jet thundered in to locate the spider ship.

  They were in the car.

  “You’ve got to drive us to an apartment in Georgetown,” Norma said.

  “Lady, I’ve been driving all night.”

  “You’ve got to!” The urgency in her voice was nearly that of hysteria.

  The driver started the car. “If it’s that urgent . . .”

  “It is,” Herb said.

  “Hurry, please, please hurry. Don’t ask us to explain. Just hurry.”

  The driver stepped down on the gas. The car leaped ahead.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE new buildings pressed against the new sidewalks. The streets were empty except for their car and a turret-like Mobile Sweeper whose gutter broom whispered against the curb. A light here and there in a window heralded the end of sleep. A lone car crossed at an intersection ahead, moving slowly as if fatigued by a night-long vigil.

  The sun seemed reluctant to plunge the world into daylight; it balanced on the horizon in indecision. The moon was high and tiny and rode the growing blueness with a ghostlike palor.

  Herb, leaning forward tensely, thought: Suppose Bud isn’t there? Suppose he’s somewhere else?

  “Turn left up here,” Norma said. “It’s only a few blocks.”

  The buildings anchored time to the Earth, encapsulating the past in steel and concrete. Morning shadows walked before the on-rushing future.

  “Here!” Norma cried.

  The car braked to a stop.

  The driver watched them run wildly, and an uneasiness settled upon him. He glanced to the east. The morning was chill. The excitement their urgency had generated had not vanished with their departure. What the devil? he thought. Whadda you suppose it’s all about?

  INSIDE, Norma said, “Third floor. He’s got guards. I’ll take the elevator. You take the stairs. I’ll try to get the guards’ attention.”

  Herb nodded. He bolted for the stairway. The carpet blanketed his footfalls. He heard the elevator doors click and the cage rattle upward.

  First landing.

  Silence.

  Second landing.

  His heart was loud. His feet became delicate, and he balanced on his toes, moving toward the final encounter.

  There.

  Norma had the guard. There was only one. She was speaking intently. The guard faced away from Herb.

  Herb was in the corridor. He moved like a sigh, and the space between him and the guard shortened.

  The guard turned, and Herb sprang. He crashed into the guard before the police automatic was clear of the shiny holster. The impact of his body spun the gun away.

  They were down, wrestling viciously. Herb felt his head ring. He stiffled a cry. Pain nestled in his groin. He struck out.

  The guard smashed an elbow into Herb’s nose. He got up and kicked Herb in the face, and Herb jerked his leg savagely. Unbalanced, he went down. Herb was upon him. Breath hissed out, and Herb struck viciously with his gun butt. Panting, he stood.

  “It’s locked,” he said, testing the door. Norma had recovered the guard’s automatic. Whitefaced
she stood.

  Bloody nosed, bleeding. Herb threw himself into the panel. There was a great, kettle drum boom and the panel held. Again he slammed into it. It splintered away. He fought through the shards of maple; and was halfway into the room when Bud, looking up from the telephone, fired. Herb sighed and fell to the left and his gun slipped from his hand.

  CHAPTER XVII

  BUD, drained of color, cried “Hurry that call, operator!” His gun was on the door when Norma filled it. “Stop, Bud!” His eyes dulled. Conflicting emotions ran jagged edges over his face. One hand held the phone, the other the gun. Norma was afraid to fire for fear she would miss. “I’ll kill you if you try to stop me!” he screamed. He could not place the person in the doorway. And then he realized that it was the Devil cleverly disguised as his sister.

  Norma stepped into the room, drawing closer. Her hand trembled violently. Bud was perspiring.

  “Bud.” she said. Her voice choked. “He didn’t mail . . . he didn’t mail the . . . package . . . the . . . the package.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Get away! Get away!”

  “He didn’t mail it! No one need . . . you’re safe . . . your secret . . . Put down the phone, Bud. Please, now. Put down the phone!”

  Very clever nonsense, Bud thought, not believing it for a moment. What package? There was no . . . He must shoot this creature, now, before she . . .

  The operator said in his ear: “Here is your number, sir.”

  “Put me on!”

  The Devil was nearer. It was too late, he thought. Norma thought: Now, now, now.

  Bud’s hand whitened at the knuckles. His throat was dry. He was ready to scream the Name. He did not see Herb’s hand close on the weapon nor see the muzzle elevate.

  “Bud, Bud, Bud, please, please, Bud!” Norma said. The trigger of her gun would not respond.

  “Get away,” Bud said. He opened his mouth. “Frank C—”

  And Herb fired until the weapon was empty.

  There was echoing silence, and then Bud fell.

  Norma was upon the telephone, ripping it free from the wall.