A Maze of Death

13

Parked behind the infirmary a small squib-ship glistened moistly in the moon-laden night. The two men in black leather uniforms carried Morley in his stretcher to the hatch of the squib; there they set the stretcher down. One of them opened the hatch. They again picked up the stretcher and carried him carefully inside.

“Is Belsnor dead?” he asked.

The first man said, “Stunned.”

“Where are we going?” Morley said.

“To a place you’d like to go to.” The second leather-clad man seated himself at the control board; he threw several switches to “on,” adjusted dials and meters. The squib rose up and hurled itself into the nocturnal sky. “Are you comfortable, Mr. Morley? I’m sorry we had to put you on the floor, but this will not be a very long trip.”

“Can you tell me who you are?” Morley said.

“Just tell us,” the first man said, “if you’re comfortable.” Morley said, “I’m comfortable.” He could distinguish the viewscreen of the squib; on it, as if this were daylight, he saw trees and smaller flora: shrubs, lichens, and then a flash of illumination: a river.

And then, on the viewscreen, he saw the Building.

The squib prepared to land. On the Building’s roof. “Isn’t that right?” the first man in black leather said.

“Yes,” Morley nodded.

“Do you still want to go there?”

He said, “No.”

“You don’t remember this place,” the first man said. “Do you?”

“No,” Morley said. He lay breathing shallowly, trying to conserve his strength. “I saw it today for the first time,” he said.

“Oh no,” the second man said. “You’ve seen it before.” Warning lights on the Building’s roof glinted as the squib bounced to an unskilled landing.

“Damn that R.K. beam,” the first man said. “It’s erratic again. I was right; we should have come in on manual.”

“I couldn’t land on this roof,” the second man said. “It’s too irregular. I’d hit one of those hydro-towers.”

“I don’t think I want to work with you any more,” the first man said, “if you can’t land a size-B ship on a roof this large.”

“It has nothing to do with the size. What I’m complaining about is the random obstructions. There’re too many of them.” He went to the hatch and manually cranked it open. Night air smelling of violets drifted in… and, with it, the dull, moaning roar of the Building.

Seth Morley scrambled to his feet; at the same time he strained to get his fingers on the erggun held loosely by the man at the hatch.

The man was slow to react; he had looked away from Seth Morley for a moment, asking the man at the control board something—in any case he did not see Seth Morley in time. His companion had already shouted a warning before he reacted.

In Seth Morley’s grip the erggun slithered and escaped from him; he fell on it deliberately, struggling to get hold of it once again.

A high-frequency electrical impulse, released by the man at the control board, shimmered past him. The man had missed. Seth Morley flopped back onto his good shoulder, dragged himself to a quasi-sitting position, and fired back.

The beam touched the man at the control board; it caught him above the right ear. At the same time, Seth Morley swiveled the gun barrel; he shot the man tumbling vainly over him. At such close range the impact of the beam was enormous; the man convulsed, fell backward, tumbled with a loud crash into a complex of instrumentation mounted against the far wall of the squib.

Morley slammed the hatch, turned it to lock, then sank down onto the floor. Blood seeped through the bandage on his shoulder, befouling the area adjacent to him. His head hummed and he knew that he would, in a moment or two, pass entirely out.

A speaker mounted above the control board clicked on. “Mr. Morley,” it said, “we know that you have taken control of the squib. We know that both our men are unconscious. Please do not take off. Your shoulder was not operated on properly; the junction of torn pieces of artery was unsuccessful. If you do not open the hatch of the squib and let us render you major and immediate medical assistance, then you probably will not live another hour.”

The hell with you, Seth Morley thought. He crept toward the control board, reached one of its two seats; with his good arm he hoisted himself up, groped to steady himself and, gradually, pulled himself into place.

“You are not trained to pilot a high-speed squib,” the speaker said. Evidently monitors of some sort, within the squib, were telling them what he was doing.

“I can fly it,” he said, snorting for breath; his chest seemed weighted down and he had immense difficulty inhaling. On the dashboard a group of switches were marked as being tape-programmed flight patterns. Eight in all. He selected one at random, pressed the switch shut.

Nothing happened.

It’s still on the incoming beam, he realized. I have to release the beam lock.

He found the lock, clicked it off. The squib quivered and then, by degrees, rose up into the night sky.

Something is wrong, he said to himself. The squib isn’t handling right. The flaps must still be in a landing position.

By now he could barely see. The cab of the vehicle had begun to dim around him; he shut his eyes, shuddered, opened his eyes once more. Christ, he thought; I’m passing out. Will this thing crash without me? Or will it go somewhere, and if so, where?

He fell, then, toppling from the seat and onto the floor of the squib. Blackness collected around him and included him within itself.

As he lay on the floor unconscious the squib flew on and on.

Baleful white light dinned into his face; he felt the scorching brilliance, squeezed his eyes shut again—but he could not suppress it. “Stop,” he said; he tried to put up his arms, but they did not move. At that, he managed to open his eyes; he gazed around, trembling with weakness.

The two men in black leather uniforms lay quietly, exactly as he had last seen them. He did not have to examine them to know that they were dead. Belsnor, then, was dead; the weapon did not stun—it killed.

Where am I now? he wondered.

The viewscreen of the squib was still on, but its lens fed directly into an obstruction of some sort; on it he saw only a flat, white surface.

Rotating the ball which controlled the sweep of the viewscreen he said to himself, A lot of time has passed. He touched his injured shoulder cautiously. The bleeding had stopped. Perhaps they had lied to him; perhaps Babble had done an adequate job after all.

Now the viewscreen showed…

A great dead city. Under him. The squib had come to rest at a field up in the higher spires of the city’s building-web.

No movement. No life. No one lived in the city; he saw in the viewscreen decay and absolute, endless collapse. As if, he thought, this is the city of the Form Destroyer.

The speaker mounted above the control board made no sound. He would get no help from them.

Where the hell can I be? he asked himself. Where in the galaxy is there a city of this size which has been abandoned, allowed to die? Left to erode and rot away. It has been dead for a century! he said to himself, appalled.

Rising unsteadily to his feet he crept to the hatch of the squib. Opening it electrically—he did not have enough strength to operate the quicker manual crank—he peered out.

The air smelled stale and cold. He listened. No sound.

Summoning his strength he lurched haltingly out of the squib, onto the roof top.

There is no one here, he said to himself.

Am I still on Delmak-O? he wondered.

He thought. There is no place like this on Delmak-O. Because Delmak-O is a new world to us; we never colonized it. Except for our one small settlement of fourteen people.

And this is old!

He clambered unstably back into the squib, stumbled to the control board and awkwardly reseated himself. There he sat for a time, meditating. What should I do? he asked himself. I’ve got to find my way back to Delmak-O, he decided. He examined his watch. Fifteen hours had passed—roughly—since the two men in black leather uniforms had kidnapped him. Are the others in the group still alive? he wondered. Or did they get all of them?

The automatic pilot; it had a voice-control box.

He snapped it on and said into the microphone, “Take me to Delmak-O. At once.” He shut the microphone off, leaned back to rest himself, waited.

The ship did nothing.

“Do you know where Delmak-O is?” he said into the microphone. “Can you take me there? You were there fifteen hours ago; you remember, don’t you?” Nothing. No response, no movement. No sound of its ion-propulsion engine cackling into activity. There is no Delmak-O flight pattern engrammed into it, he realized. The two leather-clad men had taken the squib there on manual, evidently. Or else he was operating the equipment incorrectly.

Gathering his faculties, he inspected the control board. He read everything printed on its switches, dials, knobs, controlball … every written declaration. No clue. He could learn nothing from it—least of all how to operate it manually. I can’t go anywhere, he said to himself, because I don’t know where I am. All I could do would be fly at random. Which presupposes that I figure out how to operate this thing manually.

One switch caught his eye; he had missed it the first time around. REFERENCE, the switch read. He snapped it on. For a time nothing happened. And then the speaker above the control board squawked into life.

“Your query.”

He said, “Can you tell me my location?”

“You want FLIGHT INFO.”

“I don’t see anything on the panel marked FLIGHT INFO,” he said.

“It is not on the panel. It is mounted above the panel to your right.”

He looked. There it was.

Snapping the FLIGHT INFO unit into operating position, he said, “Can you tell me where I am?”

Static, the semblance of something at work… he heard a faint zzzzzzz sound; almost a whir. A mechanical device had slid into activity. And then, from the speaker, a vodor voice, an electronic matching of human vocal sound. “Yezzz sirrr. Euuuu arrrr in London.”

“‘London’!” he echoed, dazed. “How can that be?”

“Euuuu fluuuu there.”

He struggled with that but could make nothing out of it.

“You mean the city of London, England, on Terra?” he asked.

“Yezzz sirrr.”

After a time he managed to pull himself together enough to put another question to it. “Can I fly to Delmak-O in this squib?”

“That izzz a six-year flightttt. Euuuur squib is not equipped for such a flighttt. Forrr example it doesss not possess enough thrust to breakkk euuuu freeeee from the planet.”

“Terra,” he said thickly. Well, it explained the deserted city. All the big cities on Terra were—he had heard—deserted. They no longer served any purpose. There was no population to house itself in them because everyone, except the ostriches, had emigrated.

“My squib, then,” he said, “is a local high-velocity shuttle vessel, for homoplanetery flight only?”

“Yesss sirrr.”

“Then I could fly here to London only from another locus on the planet.”

“Yesss sirrr.”

Morley, his head ringing, his face damp with grease-like drops of perspiration, said, “Can you retroplot my previous course? Can you determine where I came here from?”

“Certainly.” A protracted wheeze from the mechanism. “Yezz. Euuuu flewww here from the following origination: #3R68-222B. And before thattt—”

“The ident notation is incomprehensible to me,” Morley said. “Can you translate that into words?”

“Nooo. There are nooo wordzzz to describe it.”

“Can you program my squib to returnfly there?”

“Yezzz. I can feed the coordinates into euuuur flightcontrol assembly. I am also equipped to accident-arrest monitor the flighttt; shall I do thattt?”

“Yes,” he said, and slumped, exhausted and painfilled, against the horizontal frame of the control board.

The FLIGHT INFO unit said, “Sirrr, do you need medical attentionnn?”

“Yes,” Morley said.

“Dooo you wish your squibbb to shuttle euuuu to the nearest medical station?”

He hesitated. Something at work in the deeper parts of his mind told him to say no. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “The trip won’t take long.”

“Nooo sirrr. T-ank euuuu, sirrr. I am now feeding the coordinates for a flight to #3R68-222B. And I will accidentarrest minimon euuuur flight; isss that correct?”

He could not answer. His shoulder had begun bleeding once more; evidently he had lost more blood than he realized.

Lights, as on a player piano, lit up before him; he vaguely made their winking warmth out. Switches opened and shut… it was like resting his head on a pinball machine prepared to release a free game—in this case a black and dismal free game. And then, smoothly, the squib rose up into the midday sky; it circled London—if it actually was London—and then headed west.

“Give me oral confinnation,” he grunted. “When we get there.”

“Yezzz sirrr. I will awaken euuuu.”

“Am I really talking to a machine?” Morley murmured.

“Technically I am an inorganic artificial constructtt in the proto-computer classsss. But—” It rambled on, but he did not hear it; once again Seth Morley had passed out.

The squib continued on its short flight.

“We are approaching coordinates #3R68-222B,” a shrill voice squeaked in his ear, jarring him awake.

“Thanks,” he said, lifting his heavy head to peer cloudily into the viewscreen. A massive entity loomed up in the viewscreen; for a moment he could not identify it—most certainly it was not the settlement—and then, with horror, he realized that the squib had returned to the Building. “Wait,” he said frantically. “Don’t land!”

“But we are at coordinates #3R68—”

“I countermand that order,” he snapped. “Take me to the coordinates prior to that.”

A pause, and then the FLIGHT INFO unit said, “The previoussss flight originated at a locussss manually plotted. Hence there isss nooo recorddd of it in the guide-assembly. There isss nooo way I can compute ittt.”

“I see,” he said. It did not really surprise him. “Okay,” he said, watching the Building below become smaller and smaller; the squib was rising from it to flap about in a circle overhead. “Tell me how to assume manual control of this craft.”

“Firssst euuuu push switch tennn for override cancellation. Then—doo euuuu seee that large plastic ball? Euuuu roll that from side to side and forwarddd and backkk; that controlsss the flight path of euuuur small craft. I suggest euuuu practice before I release controlil.”

“Just release control,” he said savagely. Far below, he saw two black dots rising from the Building.

“Control released.”

He rotated the big plastic ball. The squib at once bucked, floundered; it shuddered and then plunged nose-first toward the dry lands below.

“Back, back,” FLIGHT INFO said warningly. “Euuur descending too fassst.”

He rolled the ball back and this time found himself on a reasonably horizontal course.

“I want to lose those two ships following me,” he said.

“Euuuur ability to maneuver thisss craft isss not such that—”

“Can you do it?” he broke in.

The FLIGHT INFO unit said. “I possess a variety of random flight-patternsss, any one of which would tend to throwww them offf.”

“Pick one,” Morley said, “and use it.” The two pursuing ships were much closer, now. And, in the viewscreen, he saw the barrel of a cannon poking from the nose of each, an .88 millimeter barrel. Any second now they would open fire.

“Random course in operation, sirrr,” the FLIGHT INFO unit told him. “Pleeezzz strap eurrself in, sirrr.”

He haltingly fiddled with the seat belt. As he clicked the buckle into place his squib abruptly shot upward, rolling into an Immelmann loop… it came out of the maneuver flying in the opposite direction, and well above the pursuing ships.

“Radar fixxx on usss, sirrr,” the FLIGHT INFO unit informed him. “From the aforementioned two vesselsss. I shall program the flight-control assembly to take proper evasive action. Therefore we will shortly be flying close to the groundddd. Do not be alarmed.” The ship plunged down like a deranged elevator; stunned, he rested his head on his arm and shut his eyes. Then, equally abruptly, the squib leveled off. It flew erratically, compensating from moment to moment against altitude-variations in the terrain.

He lay resting in his seat, sickened by the up-and-down gyrations of the ship.

Something boomed dully. One of the pursuing ships had either fired its cannon or released an air-to-air missile. Swiftly coming awake he studied the viewscreen. Had it been close?

He saw, far off, across the wild terrain, a tall column of black smoke arising. The shot had been across his bow, as he had feared; it was now telling him that he had been caught.

“Are we armed in any manner?” he asked FLIGHT INFO.

FLIGHT INFO said, “As per regulation we carry two 120-A type air-to-air missiles. Shall I program the control carrier to activate themmm in relation to the craft following ussss?”

“Yes,” he said. It was, in a way, a hard decision to make; he would be committing his first voluntary homicidal act in their—in any—direction. But they had started the firing; they had no hesitation about killing him. And if he did not defend himself they would.

“Missssilesss fired,” a new and different vodor voice sounded, this one from the central control panel itself. “Doooo euuuu want a vizzzual scan of their activity?”

“Yesss, he doesss,” FLIGHT INFO ordered.

On the screen a different scene appeared; it was being transmitted, via a split screen, from both missiles.

The missile on the left side of the screen missed its target and passed on by, to descend, gradually, into a collision course with the ground. The second one, however, flew directly at its target. The pursuing ship wheeled, screamed directly upward… the missile altered target and then the viewscreen was suffused with silent, white light. The missile had detonated. One of the two pursuing ships had died.

The other one continued on, directly at him. Picking up velocity as it came. The pilot knew that he had fired all his armaments. Combatwise he was now helpless—and the remaining ship knew it.

“Do we have a cannon?” Morley asked.

FLIGHT INFO said, “The small size of thisss ship doesss not permit—”

“A simple yes or no.”

“No.”

“Anything, then?”

“No.”

Morley said, “I want to give up. I’m injured and I’m bleeding to death as I sit here. Land this ship as soon as possible.”

“Yesss sirrr.” Now the squib dipped down; again it flew parallel to the ground, but this time braking, slowing its speed. He heard its wheel-lowering mechanism go into operation and then, with a shuddering bump, the squib touched down.

He moaned with pain as the squib bounced, quaked, then turned on an angle, its tires squealing.

It came to a stop. Silence. He lay against the central control panel, listening for the other ship. He waited; he waited. No sound. Still only the empty silence.

“FLIGHT INFO,” he said aloud, raising his head in a palsied, trembling motion. “Has it landed?”

“It continued on byyy.”

“Why?”

“I do not knowww. It continuesss to move away from usss; my scanner can barely pick it up.” A pause. “Now it’s beyond scanner-probe range.”

Maybe it had failed to perceive his landing. Maybe it—the pilot—had assumed his low-level, horizontal flight to be a further attempt to defeat the computerized radar.

Morley said, “Take off again. Fly in widening circles. I’m looking for a settlement that’s in this area.” He chose a course at random. “Fly slightly northeast.”

“Yesss sirrr.” The squib pulsed with new activity and then, in a professional, competent way, rose up into the sky.

Again he rested, but this time lying so that he could perpetually scan the viewscreen. He did not really think that they would be successful; the settlement was small and the funky landscape was enormous. But—what was the alternative?

To go back to the Building. And now he had a firm, physical revulsion toward it; his earlier desire to enter it had evaporated.

It is not a winery, he said to himself. But what the hell is it, then?

He did not know. And he hoped he never would.

Something glinted to the right. Something metallic. He roused himself groggily. Looking at the control board clock he saw that the squib had been flying in widening circles for almost an hour. Did I drift off? he wondered. Squinting, he peeped to see what had glinted. Small buildings.

He said, “That’s it.”

“Shall I land there?”

“Yes.” He hunched forward, straining to see. Straining to be sure.

It was the settlement.