Killer Planet

Chapter Nine

Trying to strike a balance between moving quickly and conserving their strength, Jan and Petra maintained their distance from the advancing bulldozers. The crash of falling trees from behind them mingled with the rumbling of thunder.

As they walked through the humid gloom they kept a close check on what was happening to their left. One of their principal worries was that some of the tanks might have battered their way through thinner parts of the jungle, blocking the way to the north, but there was no sign of them and nothing to be heard from that direction.

“It’s almost too quiet up ahead,” Jan said uneasily.

“The monster seems to have every confidence in the bulldozers,” Petra replied. She refrained from adding that such confidence seemed justifiable—the line of terraforming machines which were steadily smashing their way through the trees constituted a terrifying and unstoppable force.

After some twenty minutes the stream began to meander away to the east, ceasing to be of value as a jungle pathway. Jan consulted his tiny compass.

“The needle’s standing on end,” he said. “It looks as though we’ve come as far north as we need.”

Petra noticed a low place in the left bank and led the way out of the stream. The fern-covered ground sloped upwards for some distance, blocking their view to the north, but they both knew that from the top of the gradient they would be able to see the enigmatic tower which housed their enemy. The time for the final conflict had almost arrived.

Jan summoned up a humourless smile. “It looks as though this is where we go…What did they call it in all the old war movies?…over the top.” Petra returned the smile. “I always preferred comedies.”

“Petra…”Jan hesitated. “In case we don’t get another chance to talk, I’d like to say…What I mean is…”

“I already know what you mean,” Petra said, keeping her voice calm, resolutely thrusting aside her natural fears. “Don’t you think it would be best if we got on with the job and saved the talking till later?”

Jan nodded. “Let’s go!”

They climbed the long slope and at the top had to clamber over some lichen-covered masonry, a reminder that the whole area had once been a city. Old instincts prompted them to negotiate the massive blocks as quietly as possible. They then found their view obscured by a screen of shrubs and tall fleshy fronds, but they did not need to see the alien being to know they were close to it. The air was oppressively hot and heavy, loaded with electrical tension, and although there was no breeze Jan felt the hairs on his forearms begin to stir. They had become charged with static electricity. Without any help from scientific instruments, Jan and Petra could tell that they were close to the inconceivable concentration of power which surrounded their monstrous enemy.

“Can you hear a noise like a dynamo?” Petra said. “A kind of low humming?”

“I’m not sure if I can hear it or feel it.” Jan pressed a fingertip against one of his ears. “And there’s something else, isn’t there? This is like telepathy…you can sense something…the monster is gloating…”

“It knows exactly where we are,” Petra said in a low voice. “It’s waiting for us.”

“In that case, let’s not disappoint it.”

Jan and Petra tightened their grips on their swords and swung the grey blades, cleaving the screen of vegetation. They froze into shocked immobility as they took in the scene which lay beyond.

Several hundred metres away was a squat, windowless black tower—the stronghold of the inhuman fiend which had descended on Verdia centuries earlier. The force of evil and of hatred emanating from it was almost tangible, a silent assault on the mind which made all who encountered it want to cower away.

No vegetation grew in the vicinity of the tower, as though even plant life was repelled by the thing which lurked within. The ground all around was flat and paved with dark granite, looking much as it would have done when the ancient city was in its heyday, forming a perfectly level battleground.

And on that battleground, their menacing shapes fitfully illuminated by lightning flashes, were perhaps fifty tanks and other machines of war. They were slowly circling the black tower in two contra-rotating rings, forming an impenetrable defence.

“Oh, Jesus!” Petra gasped as the burden of total despair descended on her.

Standing beside her, Jan swore bitterly. The slim hope they had pinned on the possibility of primitive hand-to-hand combat with the alien had vanished. This was why there had been no attack from the military machines as he and Petra were making their way north along the bed of the stream. The alien, knowing where they were going, had summoned the armoured juggernauts directly to it—and now they were ready to destroy the insignificant humans who had dared oppose their master.

“We’re finished!” Jan whispered, his eyes prickling with sheer frustration and dismay. “We’re bloody well done for!”

“It looks…” Petra tilted her head. “Listen!”

From behind them came the sound of crashing trees and the squealing of machinery. The army of bulldozers and earth-movers, steadily approaching from the south, had almost caught up with them. They were trapped at the centre of a legion of invincible steel monsters!

Pale and silent, Jan and Petra exchanged glances and then—accepting that there was no hope of escape in any direction—walked forward on to the dark granite of the huge plaza. Several of the tanks circling the tower turned and surged towards them at once, their tracks emitting discordant screeches of triumph as they converged on their human quarries. A moment later, behind the pair, the last trees of the jungle were toppled and crushed as the enormous shapes of the bulldozers came into view. Petra and Jan were now almost completely surrounded by the instruments of the alien invader, and the trap was inexorably closing on them.

Jan lowered his head and tried to compose himself, wondering how quickly the end would come, and if there would be much pain. He felt oddly at peace with himself. His main regret was that Petra and he had not even been able to scratch the alien, but they could hope that others would one day follow in their footsteps, and that they would inflict on the alien the punishment it so richly deserved.

Petra, walking with her head held high, found it difficult to accept that she had entered the last minutes of her life. Death had always seemed a remote event, especially as medical science had extended life expectancy to almost a hundred years. To die at the age of sixteen was an unbelievably harsh consequence of her impulsive action in jumping into the Seeker’s cockpit when Jan had been knocked unconscious. But there’s no point in fretting about the past, she told herself. The thing to do now is to cheat the grim reaper for as long as possible—even if it’s only for a matter of seconds.

Jan’s thoughts were interrupted by an insect-like fluttering in the breast pocket of his shirt. Bemused, wondering why he was bothering with such trivia while on the verge of extinction, he put his hand into the pocket. There was nothing there but the miniature compass. He brought it out and saw that the fluttering vibrations were being caused by the needle. It was standing vertically on its microscopic universal joint, quivering violently, a reminder that this spot was precisely on Verdia’s north pole.

Jan stared at the needle for a moment, wondering why its antics should suddenly seem important to him, then his memory began to stir. He seemed to hear Major Haines, the dead science officer, speaking to Petra and him again…

“…alien creature arrived here from space…power to control and direct electromagnetic forces…alien being is still alive…in the tower which marks Verdia’s north pole…and it is feeding on…feeding on…”

Feeding!

FEEDING!

That was the key word!

Jan gasped aloud as he received a sudden insight into the nature of the alien. “Petra!”

Petra dragged her gaze away from the advancing tanks. “What is it?”

“The monster! It doesn’t only control electromagnetic forces—it feeds on them!”

Petra scanned Jan’s face, noting his obvious excitement. “Does that help us?”

“It might, it might,” he exclaimed, almost running his words together in his eagerness to get them out. “That’s why the monster decided to base itself here—exactly at the north pole. The force lines of Verdia’s magnetic field are concentrated on this spot. They’re food and drink to the monster. They keep it alive…supplying all its energy…giving it the power to…”

“To control the machines!” Petra cut in, suddenly understanding Jan’s excitement.

“Yes, and if only we can find a way of interrupting that flow of energy into and out of the monster we could isolate it from the tanks and bulldozers. They’d all stop moving. Then it would be something like a fair fight between us and the…”

Jan broke off, his mind working with fear-induced speed as the tanks and bulldozers continued to close in on them. One way to prevent electrical energy waves from reaching the alien would be to encase it in sheet metal, but that was a task which would take weeks—whereas Petra and he needed a solution which could be carried out in minutes. It was crazy to imagine that such a solution existed, and yet…and yet…

“Faraday!” he half-shouted. “Faraday’s Cage!”

Petra narrowed her eyes at him. “Faraday’s Cage?”

“Yes, yes! You remember it from elementary physics, don’t you?”

“I always found physics a bore, but wasn’t it something about screening out radio waves with…um…wire mesh?”

“That’s exactly it!” Jan sheathed his sword and was unslinging his bow as he spoke. “You can shut out energy waves with a sheet of metal, but Faraday discovered that you don’t need a solid sheet. Wire mesh will do the trick just as well.”

“I remember that much,” Petra replied. “But we haven’t got any mesh.”

“No, but we’ve got the makings—there’s wire lying all over the place. The guidance wires from all those missiles that were fired! If we could…”

“Tie wires to the arrows and use them to wrap the wires all around the tower!” Petra was unslinging her own bow as she spoke. “We could starve the monster…choke it to death…”

“You’ve got it,” Jan said. “Come on, Petra, let’s go to war!”

The tanks were moving quite slowly now, as though their alien overlord felt secure in the knowledge that its victims could not escape and was prolonging its moment of triumph. Jan and Petra walked towards them, both drawing red-fletched arrows from the quivers on their backs.

When the nearest of the tanks were only a few metres away, and they could clearly see skeletal figures lolling in the turrets, Petra and he suddenly darted forward with all the speed they could muster. They passed between two tanks before the lumbering vehicles could converge to crush them.

Now they were barely a hundred paces from the tower and very close to the inner circle of machines which still cruised around it.

As they had been counting on, the ground here was crisscrossed with the fine wires which had once linked the tanks to their guided weapons, and which the blindly lumbering vehicles trailed like spider webs everywhere they went.

Petra knelt, picked up a free end of wire and quickly tied it to the end of an arrow. “You were right,” she called out. “I think we’ve got a chance with this stuff.”

“Yes, but keep an eye on those tanks—they’re coming back!” Working with feverish haste, Jan tied a wire to one of his arrows and quickly drew the bow. He took aim, not at the black tower but at a point directly above it, and fired the arrow. It soared away through the gloom, and he saw the sun-bright needle of flame appear at its tail as the miniature motor ignited.

Driven by the powerful micro-rocket, the arrow passed over the tower, dragging a tangled skein of fine wires behind it. As the burdened arrow sagged in its flight and arced downwards the trailing network of wires settled over the tower. A moment later Petra’s first arrow achieved the same result. They both leaped aside, narrowly escaping the tank which had thundered at them from behind. The machine slewed around to come after them again—but it seemed to Jan and Petra that its movements were already less forceful, less certain than before.

“Did you see that?” Petra shouted, giving a slightly unnatural laugh. “We’re hurting the monster!”

“I think you’re right.”

Scarcely daring to hope that their scheme was taking effect so soon, Jan and Petra ran a short distance while drawing fresh arrows from their quivers. Jan found another guidance wire and fired it off as before, with Petra doing the same thing in unison. This time, when the double skeins of wire settled over the tower, the effect on the surrounding army of vehicles was clearly noticeable.

The squeal of tracks and rusted components abruptly sank to a lower level. The machines were rapidly losing power, making Jan and Petra’s task easier.

Encouraged by their success, they ran here and there among the now crawling juggernauts. Each time Jan found a sizeable tangle of wire he used one of his arrows to hurl it over the black tower. Other arrows, deliberately fired low by Petra, lapped their lines around the structure, tightening the net.

More expert than Jan with the bow, Petra was able to shoot faster and quickly expended all of her arrows, binding the tower with more and more layers of wire. Each time a new arrow was loosed off, the cage—the Faraday’s Cage—which was being woven around the tower became more complete, forming a radiation-proof screen between the unseen alien and its mechanical slaves, depriving it of control.

Finally, the last circling tank and clanking bulldozer ground to a halt.

An eerie stillness, broken by only an occasional rumble of thunder, descended over the plaza.

Jan took a deep, quavering breath and stood facing the tower, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “We did it!” he said, exulting. “We caged the monster!”

“Yes.” Petra sounded equally relieved. “And, to tell the truth, I wasn’t at all sure it would work.”

“To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that sure, either.” Jan did an exaggerated mime of wiping sweat from his brow.

“There’s nothing to stop us going back to the Seeker and getting away from this miserable dump for ever,” Petra said, then she looked closely into Jan’s face. “Except that you don’t want to do that, do you?”

“Oh, I want to do it,” Jan assured her, “but I’ve just had an unpleasant thought. As far as we know, the monster is telepathic. If it has been reading our thoughts, it knows that our plan is to get the military to drop a nuclear bomb on this spot. What would you do if you were in the monster’s place?”

“Get as far away from here as possible.”

“Exactly! It’s bound to be at least a day before the Council can react and get a military ship to Verdia, and by that time the monster will be far away from here. And as soon as it quits the tower, and gets outside the wires, all its powers will come back to it. We’ll have achieved nothing.”

Petra studied the enigmatic black tower and gave a slight shudder. “In fact, if the monster thinks logically it should already be on the way out.” She dropped her bow and empty quiver to the ground, and drew her sword.

“Perhaps it doesn’t want to face our swords, or…” A new note of grimness appeared in Jan’s voice. “Perhaps it’s waiting for us in the tower.”

“In that case,” Petra replied, managing to sound almost casual, “we go into the tower.”

Jan felt an immediate surge of admiration and respect for her courage, but his reaction was to give an emphatic shake of his head. “No, Petra—I am going into the tower. Alone.”

“We’ve already been through all this stuff,” Petra said heatedly. “If you think…”

“I have been thinking,” Jan cut in. “Just give me a few seconds to tell you what, and then you can decide what would be the best thing to do. All right?”

“I…I suppose so.”

Jan spoke quickly. “Our one objective is to see to it that the monster gets destroyed—and that means that we now have to split up.”

“Split up! But we agreed not to do that.”

“Things are different now. One of us has to go into the tower, and I’m the logical choice, Petra. You’re much better than I’ll ever be with the bow, but I’ve been training with the sword for two years. I’m bound to have the better chance.”

“Two of us would have an even better chance,” Petra said, refusing to be put off so easily.

“Yes, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that we wouldn’t both be killed in there—and then the monster would be safe again. Isn’t that right?” Jan was speaking with the persuasiveness of utter conviction. “That’s why you’ve got to wait out here. And if I don’t come out of the tower within ten minutes you’ve got to run—and I mean run—back to the Seeker.

“You’ll have to go fast, because if the alien defeats me it is bound to leave the tower and get all the machines going again. And when you get to the Seeker jump into it and blast off. You have flown a light aircraft, haven’t you?”

Petra nodded. “I’ve done about twenty hours or so in the family Cessna.”

“That’s good. The Seeker is a tricky beast to land, but all you’ll have to do is go straight up. Just point her at the sky and burn your way up into space. The Quarantine Police will pick you up in no time and you can tell them everything that happened down here. Some day, if there’s any justice in this universe, the authorities will get around to doing something about the monster. Doesn’t that make sense?”

In spite of her instinctive feeling that it would be wrong to let Jan venture into the black tower alone, Petra had to go along with his reasoning. More important than any individual human life was the need to make public the knowledge that Verdia itself was a perfectly normal world, and that a single alien invader had been responsible for all the tragedies that had occurred beneath its leaden skies.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said slowly, unable to disguise her fears for Jan’s safety. “But don’t take any chances in there, Jan. Don’t get yourself killed.”

He gave a wry grimace, briefly squeezed her shoulder, then turned away and walked towards the tower. As he stepped over clumps of yellow moss, he—in preparation for the ordeal to come—banished all pretence of cool rationality from his mind and yielded to the primitive side of his nature. It was now a personal duel with the alien. The monstrous thing skulking in the black tower had murdered Bari Hazard and hundreds of other human beings. It had made many attempts to kill Petra and himself, and he hated it with a special, private passion which could only be satisfied in one way. The old way. It was all a question of whether or not his courage would sustain him after he had entered the dark tower to face his enemy…

When he was about ten paces from the black structure a door in its base—one he had not previously noticed—swung open to receive him.

He tightened his grip on the grey sword. What sort of creature was he going to find within? Would it resemble something which had crawled out from under a rock, but swollen to gigantic proportions? Or would it be so nightmarish in its alienness that nothing in his previous experience could be compared with it?

Jan’s heartbeats sounded like thunder in his own ears as he reached the foot of the tower.

Carefully threading his way through the webwork of wires which shrouded the black monolith, he reached its base and paused just outside the threshold of the open door. There was total darkness inside—even the misty flashes of lightning failed to reveal any detail of what lay inside, beyond the door.

This is madness, he thought. I’ll be meeting the beast on its own ground…giving it every advantage…

He took a tentative step forward and stood on the threshold of the black opening, then paused again, trying to force his mind into action, trying to gain some foreknowledge of his unseen adversary.

Logically speaking, it was possible to deduce quite a lot about any creature simply by studying its environment. The complete blackness within the tower, for instance, probably meant that the creature had no eyes. Any organism which had natural radar would have no need for organs of sight.

By the same token, any creature which drew its sustenance directly from geomagnetic forces, and which could command metal objects to do its bidding, might have no need for hands. But if that were the case—how had it built the tower in the first place? Had it made use of the ancient Verdians’ machines to construct its lair before it destroyed their city?

Jan did not think so. The tower was completely smooth and seamless, as though carved from one enormous block of obsidian. In fact, at close range it looked less like a building than something which had grown organically…

From the corner of one eye, Jan saw the door beside him give a single preliminary quiver.

My God, he screamed inwardly as the terrible truth hit him, the tower IS the alien!

He threw himself backwards as the door slammed like a savage mouth, its edge sending him spinning to the ground. As he sprawled there, sick with horror and shock, he saw the edges of the door flow and disappear as it was re-absorbed into the body of the parent creature. It had been a trap specially created for him, and he had all but walked into it.

Filled with a yammering desire to put distance between himself and the monstrous being, Jan scrambled to his feet and backed away. He could sense the monster’s fury and frustration—waves of hatred were telepathically battering at his mind—and suddenly he was aware of a terrible new danger.

The wires he and Petra had woven in a net around the alien were beginning to twitch and writhe.

Jan realised belatedly that the alien, having decided to lure him and perhaps. Petra to their deaths, had in its cunning allowed them to think it was helpless inside the improvised Faraday’s Cage. But the missile guidance wires had metal cores, and the monster could exert the telekinetic powers which remained to it on anything made of metal.

Now the wires were slithering like snakes, beginning to unwind and fall away from the alien’s vast bulk. As soon as it had stripped away the radiation-proof cocoon it would again have control of its army of tanks and bulldozers. The deadly hunt would begin all over again—and this time there could be only one conclusion. The untiring metal juggernauts would not stop until their enemies were dead.

In a blind reflex of hatred, Jan dodged through the living wires, unslung his bow and reached over his shoulder to his quiver. It contained only one arrow. His face a white mask of fury and loathing, he nocked the red-fletched arrow and drew the bow.

He aimed it at the towering black hulk of the alien—then came the bleak realisation that the weapon was too puny to have any effect. A thousand such arrows would have no effect.

He lowered the bow, frantically turning his head from side to side like a cornered animal as he tried to solve the ultimate problem, to escape from the final predicament. Conventional weapons would be useless against a monster as huge and as powerful as the alien. He doubted if even a laser cannon would harm it. What was needed was sheer power…the sort of power which was unleashed by a nuclear bomb…the sort of power that came from the…”That’s it!” Jan cried aloud.

He turned on his heel and scanned the formation of tanks which enclosed the alien. Most of them had fired off their missiles during the orgy of blind destruction two years earlier, but at last he picked out one which still had a finned missle on its quadruple launcher.

Sobbing with gratitude, he sprinted to the inert vehicle and leaped up on to its sloping front end. The missile itself must have had a serious internal malfunction, otherwise it would not still be in place, but Jan’s interest was not in the missile itself.

He knelt at its full reel of guidance wire, snatched out his knife and cut through the wire just behind the missile. His fingers trembling with urgency, he tied the wire to his sole remaining arrow. He stood up and drew the bow. There was no time for careful aiming, but it did not matter—for his target was the sky itself.

He released the arrow, saw the needle of brilliance flick out from its tail, then he threw the bow aside, jumped down from the tank and ran towards Petra.

“Run!” he shouted. “For Christ’s sake, run!”

Without wasting time on questions, she darted away, the fear he had communicated to her lending her the strength for a burst of speed Jan could not match. He could not take time for a backward glance as he bounded across the plaza, away from the dark silhouette of the alien, but in his mind’s eye he saw the arrow ascending on the powerful thrust of its micro-rocket. He visualised it penetrating the lowlying cloud ceiling, the trailing wire creating a pathway for billion-volt electrical potentials…

The whole world seemed to explode into purple brilliance behind him.

He saw Petra throwing herself to the ground and he dropped down beside her. They huddled together on the dark granite of the plaza, unable to move as they watched the stupendous forces of nature at work. Lightning bolts struck down out of the sky, dancing and marching and counter-marching around the broken lines of tanks to the accompaniment of deafening thunderclaps.

The wire-covered alien monster, highest point in the vicinity, became a dreadful focus for unimaginably ferocious electrical discharges. Jan’s and Petra’s overloaded retinas gave them a bleached-out image of frenzied lightning strikes blazing around the alien hulk, cleaving and searing and ripping its living tissue, exploding and ripping it apart. They felt the alien’s telepathic death-scream—then all was silent.

The Killer Planet had lived up to its name.

Verdia had, at last, avenged itself on the alien invader which had desecrated its surface.