The Voyage of the Space Beagle

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

To Ixtl, returning to the upper floors from exploring the lower ones, the shock was devastating, the surprise complete. One moment he was thinking complacently of the metal sections in the hold of the ship, where he would secrete his guuls. The next moment he was caught in the full sparkling, furious centre of an energy screen.

His mind went black with agony. Clouds of electrons broke free inside him. They flashed from system to system, seeking union, only to be violently repelled by atom systems fighting stubbornly to remain stable. During those long, fateful seconds, the wonderfully balanced flexibility of his structure nearly collapsed. What saved him was that even this dangerous eventuality had been anticipated by the collective genius of his race.

In forcing artificial evolution upon his body — and their own — they had taken into account the possibility of a chance encounter with violent radiation. Like lightning, his body adjusted and readjusted, each new-built structure carrying the intolerable load for a fraction of a microsecond. And then he had jerked back from the wall, and was safe.

He concentrated his mind on the immediate potentialities. The defensive wall of force would have an alarm system connected to it. That meant the men would be bearing down on all the adjacent corridors in an organized attempt to corner him. Ixtl’s eyes were glowing pools of fire as he realized the opportunity. They would be scattered, and he would be able to catch one of them, investigate him for his guul properties, and use him for his first guul.

There was no time to waste. He darted into the nearest unenergized wall, a tall, gaudy, ungraceful shape. Without pausing, he sped through room after room, keeping roughly parallel to a main corridor. His sensitive eyes followed the blurred figures of the men as they raced by. One, two, three, four, five in this corridor. The fifth man was some distance behind the others. Comparatively, it was a slight advantage, but it was all Ixtl needed.

Like a wraith he glided through the wall just ahead of the last man and pounced forth in an irresistible charge. He was a rearing, frightful monstrosity with glaring eyes and ghastly mouth. He reached out with his four fire-coloured arms, and with his immense strength clutched the human being. The man squirmed and jerked in one contorted effort; and then he was overwhelmed, and flung to the floor.

He lay on his back, and Ixtl saw that his mouth opened and shut in an uneven series of movement. Every time it opened, Ixtl felt a sharp tingling in his feet. The sensation was not hard to identify. It was the vibrations of a call for help. With a snarl, Ixtl pounced forward. With one great hand he smashed at the man’s mouth. The man’s body sagged. But he was still alive and conscious as Ixtl plunged two hands into him.

The action seemed to petrify the man. He ceased to struggle. With widened eyes, he watched as the long, thin arms vanished under his shirt and stirred around in his chest. Then, horrified, he stared at the blood-red, cylindrical body that loomed over him.

The inside of the man’s body seemed to be solid flesh. And Ixtl’s need was for an open space, or one that could be pressed open, so long as the pressing did not kill his victim. For his purposes, he needed living flesh.

Hurry, hurry! His feet registered the vibrations of approaching footsteps. They came from one direction only, but they came swiftly. In his anxiety, Ixtl made the mistake of actually speeding up his investigation. He hardened his searching fingers momentarily into a state of semi-solidity. In that moment, he touched the heart. The man heaved convulsively, shuddered, and slumped into death.

An instant later, Ixtl’s probing fingers discovered the stomach and intestines. He drew back in a violence of self-criticism. Here was what he wanted; and he had rendered it useless. He straightened slowly, his anger and dismay fading. For he had not anticipated that these intelligent beings could die so easily. It changed and simplified everything. They were at his mercy, not he at theirs. No need for him to be more than casually cautious in dealing with them.

Two men with drawn vibrators whipped around the nearest corner and slid to a halt at the sight of the apparition that snarled at them across the dead body of their companion. Then, as they came out of the momentary paralysis, Ixtl stepped into the nearest wall. One instant he was a blur of scarlet in that brightly lighted corridor, the next he was gone as if he had never been. He felt the transmitted vibration from the weapons as the energy tore futilely at the walls behind him.

His plan was quite clear now. He would capture half a dozen men and make guuls of them. Then he could kill all the others, since they would not be necessary to him. That done, he could proceed on to the galaxy towards which the ship was evidently heading and there take control of the first inhabited planet. After that, domination of the entire reachable universe would be a matter of a short time only.

Grosvenor stood in front of a wall communicator with several other men, and watched the image of the group that had gathered around the dead technician. He would have liked to be on the scene, but it would have taken him several minutes to get there. During that time he would be out of touch. He preferred to watch, and see and hear everything.

Director Morton stood nearest the sending plate, less than three feet from where Dr. Eggert was bending over the dead man. He looked tense. His jaw was clenched. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. Yet the words cut across the silence like a whiplash. “Well, Doctor?”

Dr. Eggert rose up from his kneeling position beside the body and turned to Morton. The action brought him to face the sending plate. Grosvenor saw that he was frowning. “Heart failure,” he said. “Heart failure?”

“All right, all right.” The doctor put up his hands as if to defend himself. “I know his teeth look as if they’ve been smashed back into his brain. And, having examined him many times, I know his heart was perfect. Nevertheless, heart failure is what it looks like to me.”

“I can believe it,” a man said sourly. “When I came around that corner and saw that beast, I nearly had heart failure myself.”

“We’re wasting time.” Grosvenor recognized the voice of von Grossen before he saw the physicist standing between two men on the other side of Morton. The scientist continued. “We can beat this fellow, but not by talking about him and feeling sick every time he makes a move. If I’m next on his list of victims, I want to know that the best damned bunch of scientists in the system are not crying over my fate but instead are putting their brains to the job of avenging my death.”

“You’re right.” That was Smith. “The trouble with us is we’ve been feeling inferior. He’s been on the ship less than an hour, but I can see clearly that some of us are going to get killed. I accept my chance. But let’s get organized for combat.”

Morton said slowly, “Mr. Pennons, here’s a problem. We’ve got about two square miles of floor space in our thirty levels. How long will it take to energize every inch of it?”

Grosvenor could not see the chief engineer. He was not within range of the plate’s curving lens. But the expression on the officer’s face must have been something to witness. His voice, when he responded to Morton, sounded aghast. He said, “I could sweep the ship, and probably wreck it completely within an hour. I won’t go into details. But uncontrolled energization would kill every living thing aboard.”

Morton’s back was partly to the communicating plate that was transmitting the images and voices of those who stood beside the body of the man who had been killed by Ixtl. He said questioningly, “You could feed more energy to those walls, couldn’t you, Mr. Pennons?”

“No-o!” The ship’s engineer sounded reluctant “The walls couldn’t stand it. They’d melt.”

“The walls couldn’t stand it!” a man gasped. “Sir, do you realize what you’re making this creature out to be?”

Grosvenor saw that there was consternation in the faces of the men whose images were being transmitted. Korita’s voice cut across the pregnant silence. He said, “Director, I am watching you on a communicator in the control room. To the suggestion that we are dealing with a super-being, I want to say this: Let us not forget that he did blunder into the wall of force, and that he recoiled in dismay without penetrating into the sleeping quarters. I use the word ‘blunder’ deliberately. His action proves once again that he does make mistakes.”

Morton said, “That takes me back to what you said earlier about the psychological characteristics to be expected at the various cyclic stages. Let us suppose he’s a peasant of his cycle.” Korita’s reply was crisp for one who usually spoke with such care. “The inability to understand the full power of organization. He will think, in all likelihood, that in order to gain control of the ship he need only fight the men who are in it. Instinctively, he would tend to discount the fact that we are part of a great galactic civilization. The mind of the true peasant is very individualistic, almost anarchic. His desire to reproduce himself is a form of egoism, to have his own blood, particularly, carried on. This creature — if he is in the peasant stage of his development — will very possibly want to have numbers of beings similar to himself to help him with his fight. He likes company, but he doesn’t want interference. Any organized society can dominate a peasant community, because its members never form anything more than a loose union against outsiders.”

“A loose union of those fire-eaters ought to be enough!” a technician commented acidly. “I… aaa-a-a….”

His words tailed into a yell. His lower jaw sagged open. His eyes, plainly visible to Grosvenor, took on a goggly stare. All the men who could be seen in the plate retreated several feet.

Full into the centre of the viewing plate stepped Ixtl.