by E. C. Tubb
“No.” Wendis grunted as he flexed his fingers, wincing to the pain of returning circulation. “They’ve got a metaman placed at each end of the corridor. They’ll keep us bottled up in here until they , can fetch reinforcements, probably anaesthetic gas or a sonic beam.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do?”
“No.” Wendis thinned his lips as he checked the loading of his pistol. “Personally I feel like making a rush for it. They’re going to get us anyway and I’d feel a lot better if I could take some of them with me. We could rig up some shields from the furniture, and they would enable us to get close enough to shoot. With any luck at all we could break through the metamen.”
“And get away?” Curt shook his head. “No, Wendis.'We might get a couple, but what good would it do us? Why don’t you let me give myself up?”
“Too late for that now. We’ve hidden you, they know it, and even if you were to walk out there now it would make no difference to how they treat us.” Wendis glowered at the silent shapes of the halted metamen. “If they were only flesh and blood it would be different. What real harm can we do to those robots? But the Matriarch won’t send humans, she values life too highly." He paused, his nostrils wrinkling as he sniffed at the air. “Smell anything?”
“No.” Curt took a deep breath. “What makes you ask that?”
'“Nothing. I . . .” Wendis snarled as something exploded with a soft thud outside the door. “Gas! Hold your breath, Curt. They’re gassing us!”
From the open doorway a thin, milky white mist flowed into the room. It writhed, drifting through the still air as if it were a cloud of cigarette smoke, and as Curt sucked in a deep breath, he felt his senses reel.
Wendis ran towards the door, his pistol glinting in his hand. Narrow-eyed he stared through the swirling mist, then, his face red with the exertion of holding his breath, he staggered back across the room and towards the high windows. Savagely he jerked one open, gulping at the fresh air, and Curt, fighting the desire to breathe at any cost, joined him.
“We’ve got to get out of here," gasped Wendis. He stared from the window and his eyes narrowed as he studied a ledge running along the front of the building. “How are your nerves, Curt?” He pointed to the ledge. “If we can crawl along that ledge to the comer, then climb up the ornamentation towards the roof, we- might stand a chance 'of getting away. Luckily we’re on the top floor, and they won’t be able to use gas once we’re in the open.”
Curt shuddered, looking down at the street far below. He hesitated, and as he did so, the mist seeped around them and from the corridor came the heavy sound of metallic feet.
“Let’s go.”
Lithely Wendis crawled out of the window and dropped on to the ledge. He swayed a moment, then, his face wet with perspiration, regained hi^ balance and began to inch along the narrow strip of concrete. Curt followed him, the HV pistol pressing against his stomach from where he had thrust it into his belt; and around them, pushing like tiny hands, a faint wind blew from the West.
It wasn’t really hard, thought Curt grimly. It was no more difficult than walking along a nine inch plank laid on the ground. But somehow he couldn’t forget the thousand feet drop waiting just behind him, the tiny figures of staring people in the street below, the mess he would make if he slipped or staggered away from the wall. He could see it before him, two inches from his eyes, and he pressed his hands against it as he sidled along, poising on the, balls of his feet, rubbing the stone with his chest and thighs, refusing with a grim determination to yield to the temptation of looking downwards.
Suddenly he bumped into Wendis.
The young man had stopped, half around the corner of the building, and Curt could see the sweat glistening on his features.
“Now for the hard part.” The young man grinned, a savage
baring of his teeth, and the rising winds seemed to catch his words and whip them away. “I’ll go first. If we can manage to climb to that overhang, get over it, then reach that cornice and pull ourselves on to the roof we’ll be safe. Think you can do it?”
“I can try.” Curt licked his lips and kept his eyes fastened on the smooth stone before him. “Hurry will you. I can't take too much of this.”
Wendis grunted and reached for an ornamented piece of stone.
Impatiently Curt waited for Wendis to climb up and out of the way. He stood, his head turned back along the way they had come, his cheek pressed against the smooth stone. He was trembling, his muscles jumping with reaction and fear, and within bis chest his heart thudded with an almost painful violence. Surely the metamen would have reached the room by now? They would have crossed it, unaffected by the anaesthetic gas. They would have seen the open window, known what it meant, they . . .
He almost screamed as a cone-shaped head' thrust itself from the open window and ruby light flared as the metaman scanned the narrow ledge.
Tensely he waited. Afraid to move. Afraid to twist his body, drag the pistol from his belt and fire at the red glow of the scanning eyes. He waited, almost sick with dread, for the blue fire of the para-beam to stiffen his body and send him plunging to his death a thousand feet below.
It didn’t come.
The flaring red glow of the scanning eyes steadied as the metaman stared at him. For an awful moment Curt hovered on the brink of destruction as his fear-tensed muscles caused him to sway away from the safety of the building, then understanding came, and with it a flood of relief. They wanted him alive. The blue ray didn’t kill, not immediately, and the gas was relatively harmless. The only danger he was in was of his own making and he felt sweat trickle down his back as he relaxed and tried to ignore the cold glare of the robot-like thing staring at him. -
From above came the spiteful sound of a high velocity pistol on automatic fire.
Incandescent vapour exploded from the cone-shaped head. Plastic yielded to the impact of slugs moving at tremendous velocity, and a gush of electronic blue flame replaced the red glow of the scanning eyes. Abruptly the metaman slumped and from the room came the faint sounds of clanging metal.
“Curt!” Wendis’s voice was thin and distant as he called against the rising wind. “Hurry. Before another one comes.”
Obediently Curt reached upwards and began to climb' the corner of the building.
It was a nightmare. It was a thing he had dreamed about before he discovered his innate fear of heights. Sweat moistened his palms, trickled down his face, stung his eyes and turned his fingers into slippery claws. His feet fumbled as he forced them against the stone, and the droning wind seemed to get between him and the building, forcing him outwards to the gulf below.
Above him he heard Wendis’s snarling curse.
Fear replaced the savage anger. “Curt! I can’t make it! I can’t get over the overhang!”
"What’s wrong?” Curt gritted his teeth as he forced himself to stare upwards.
“My arms aren’t long enough to get a grip. Curt I’m falling!”
“Hold on!” Grimly the young man climbed upwards. “I’ll get below you, take a good grip, and you can rest your foot on my head. Get as high as you can."
“Right. But hurry, Curt. Hurry.”
Curt winced to the desperation in the other’s voice. If Wendis lost his grip, slipped, fell from where he clung to the ornamented stone, he would strike Curt and together they would plunge to the street a thousand feet below. Frantically he glanced to either side of where he clung.t Aside from the ornamentation at the corner the building was a smooth surface of sheer stone, broken only by the narrow ledge far below. His only chance was to retreat, climb down to the ledge and crawl away from the comer, but he knew that he couldn’t do that, knew that long before he reached the ledge his fingers would slip or Wendis would fall.
He grunted as a boot struck him on the side of the head.
“Ready?” He reached for a handhold and pressed himself tight against the stone. “Now. Rest your foot on my head. I’m going to surge upwards and I want
you to make a grab at the next hold. We’ll move together when I shout. Understand?” ;
“What if I miss, Curt? We’ll both go down.”
“If you fall we’ll both go anyway. Nowl Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Now!”
Desperately he surged upwards, trying to ignore the crushing pressure against his skull, clawing at, the ornamentation with a_ grim frenzy, and fighting the down and outwards thrust of the other’s foot. For a moment it seemed that they had failed. For a moment the wind droned between Curt and the building, and he could hear the sounds of the other’s rasping breath. Then the pressure had gone, the wind no longer whined before him, and, his heart pounding against his ribs and the cold sweat of fear trickling down his face, he pressed himself against the stone.
“Made it.” Wendis made the words sound like a prayer. “You all right, Curt?”
“Yes.” He bit his lips as tormented muscles relayed their messages of pain. “What now?”
“I’ll climb up to the roof. Strip off my clothes and make a rope, then lower it down to you. Can you hold on for a few more minutes?”
“I don’t know.” Curt tasted the warm saltiness of blood from his bitten lips. “Hurry!”
He waited. He waited while aching muscles weakened and within his skull his brain seemed limned in fire. A peculiar numbness came over him, as if all he did and felt was somehow unreal. It would be such a little thing. Just a brief gust of wind, a painless .fall, then a sudden shock and an eternity of rest. It-'would be better than this mind-twisting fear, this torment of outraged flesh and quivering muscles. It would be death, but what was that? A dark encounter, and to him, it would be as if he met an old friend. He grinned a little, his bps twisting without humour, as he pondered what seemed to be an important question.
Can the dead die? He had died once. He had gone into the great dark and the deep unknown, and death and he were no strangers. He had died, and been resurrected, and of all men he should be the least to fear the ultimate ending. He . . .
Something whipped across his face. A long, thin, slender rope of twisted cloth. Knotted, crude, a thing of hasty construction and desperate hope. It swayed before him, stirred by the droning wind, and he stared at it for a full second before he realised what it was. Then he grabbed it, and signalled with a long tug.
“Ready?” Wendis’s voice mingled with the droning wind, tattered and weak. “Hang on, Curt. Ill have you safe in half a minute.”
Grimly Curt clutched hold of the crude rope as the young man heaved on the other end. Slowly the building fell before him, the ornamentation, the overhang, the cornice. Curt sagged with relief as he saw the rim of the roof, grinned _as he watched the almost naked figure of the young man drawing in the rope, then felt burning tension and sick fear as he saw something else.
A tall thing, metallic, ruby light flaring from its cone-shaped head, and articulated arms outstretched towards the sweat-marked figure of the young miner.
Desperately he grabbed at his waist, fumbling for the smooth butt of the high velocity pistol. He clamped his teeth on his instinctive shout of warning, and fear clawed at him as the metaman came closer to Wendis. If he shouted—if Wendis turned and saw what was behind him—if the thing used the para-beam, now, when he was still hanging helpless at the end of a rope, hanging suspended over a thousand foot drop . . . Curt swallowed and clawed at the gun.
He touched it, felt the smooth metal of the butt, then his sweat-covered fingers slipped off the smooth metal and he knew the sickness of despair as the gun went spinning to the street below.
Wendis turned and saw the metaman.
He turned, and the rope sagged from his startled grasp. He turned—and the blue fire of the para-beam stiffened him into wooden rigidity.
Then Curt was falling a thousand feet to the street below.
He dropped past the cornice. He fell past the overhang and the wind droned louder in his ears as he stared numbly at the tiny, ant-like figures of people far below. Then something almost tore the rope from his lax fingers, spinning him like a weight at the end of a line, jerking at his arms and sending waves x>f pain from his shoulder sockets.
Swiftly he rose again towards the safety of the roof. He rose with almost incredible speed, and before his shocked senses could register what must have happened he felt the firmness of the roof beneath him, and, almost collapsing from reaction and strain, sagged forward.
Something gripped him firmly around the waist, preventing his fall, and steadying him against something hard and firm. ^
Dully he stared at the glint of metal, the smooth, articulated metal of a metaman’s arms.
CHAPTER XVII
Sarah Bowman sat at her desk and stared at a calendar with sombre eyes. In the early morning light she seemed haggard, with dark circles beneath her eyes and lines of worry and indecision scored deep into the surface of her mannish features. A videophone screen flared into colourful life and the old Matriarch stared dully at the picture of her receptionist.
“Madam?”
“What do you want?”
“Your secretary is here, Madam. Shall I admit her?”
“Yes.”
“Very good, Madam.” The screen dulled, swirled with fading colour, then resumed its normal gleaming blankness. Softly the door opened and Nyeeda entered the office.
She wore her usual black and her hair and skin displayed their normal, well-tended grooming, but, like the old woman sitting at the desk, she seemed tired and overstrained. Slowly she crossed the room, sitting in a vacant chair, and as she sat, the light from the high windows glittered from the wide band of-intricately fashioned gold she wore at her wrist.
“Well?” The Matriarch spoke without looking at the young girl. "Is everything under control?”
"Yes, Madam.” Nyeeda sighed and gently massaged her temples with the tips of. her slender fingers. “All the Martians have been captured and re-registered with Comain. The unknown force has been found. Every person in the city and every person who could possibly have been in contact with the Martians has been traced and has donned the helmet. Aside from the extra man Comain has full data about everyone, and, as soon as the registration is complete, things will be as they used to be.”
“Normal you mean?"
“Yes, Madam.”
“Good.” The old woman sighed, and, as if moving of their own volition, her eyes turned to the calendar. “Have you discovered anything about this ‘extra man’?”
“His name is Rosslyn, Curt Rosslyn. He was discovered by two Asteroid Miners adrift in space and revived at the Martian settlement. Their nominal head, a Doctor Lasser, had the idea of keeping his presence a secret. Though he doesn’t admit it I believe that he hoped the extra man would so upset the predictions of Comain that we' would agree to sending the colonists back to Mars in order to end the nuisance.”
“He made a nuisance of himself all right,” said the Matriarch grimly. “Anything else?”
“Yes. This man Rosslyn is a ‘freak.’ By that, of course,
I mean a freak survival. He actually lived in the days before the Atom War, before Comain even. He was the first pilot 'to attempt a Moon flight. His ship was wrecked, the hull split, and he died instantly from loss of heat and asphyxiation. It was a miracle that he was ever found, another that he was revived. No wonder he could upset the predictions so much. Why the man knows nothing of our civilisation at all.” “The Martians of course thought to use him as a tool.” The Matriarch nodded. “So much for the mystery of the ‘unknown force.’ Has he been registered?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Since his capture three days ago he has been in a state of coma.” Nyeeda flushed a little beneath the critical gaze of the old woman. “I admit that I could have revived him, but I thought it best to leave him alone. If you have read my reports you will know that he and one of the Martians; a man named Wendis, fought' and immobilised four of the metamen. They tried to escape by climbin
g from their room to the roof of the building. Rosslyn almost died, if the metaman hadn’t grabbed his rope and broken his fall he would have been smashed to pieces. The experience gave him a tremendous mental trauma. Add that to' his undoubted confusion at being thrust into an unfamiliar environment, his physical weakness and the, as ^et unknown, effects of exposure to the free radiations of outer space for more than two centuries, and you will understand why I decided to leave him alone. More shocks may irreparably damage his mind and it won’t hurt for us to wait a few more hours before registering him with Comain.”
“You think so?” Again the Matriarch stared at the calendar. “For you perhaps a few hours may make no difference, but not for others. Why wasn’t he registered?”
“I told you!” Nyeeda winced at the raw emotion and naked hate in the old woman’s tone. “He was in a state of coma. What should I have done, killed him?”
“Better that than leave him as a permanent threat to our safety.”
“He can do no harm now. An unconscious man cannot be registered and when he awakes 1 will lead him straight to the machine. You have nothing to fear, Madam.”
“No?” Again the old woman stared at the calendar and something, a peculiar blending of fear and a horrible kind of fascination, glowed for a moment in her faded eyes. “Sometimes, Nyeeda, I think that you are a fool. At other times I am certain of it You say that it can make no difference, that a few hours can’t hurt anyone, that a day or so doesn’t matter. Fool! Look at the date, girl. Look at it”
"Well?” Nyeeda stared blankly at the calendar. “What of it?”
“It means nothing to you does it? Just another day, one of several thousand which you still hope to enjoy. Just a mark on a calendar. Well, maybe it means nothing to you, but to me . . .” The old woman paused and again the mingling of opposed emotions glowed in her faded eyes. “To me,” she whispered. “It means death.”