The Voyage of the Space Beagle

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The silence grew long. The great men of the ship, who were ordinarily so articulate, seemed to have lost their voices. Grosvenor shrank a little from the purpose, the new plan, in his own mind. And then, slowly, he faced up to the reality that now confronted the expedition. But still he waited. For it was not up to him to speak first.

It was chief chemist Kent who finally broke the spell. “It would appear,” he said, “that our enemy can pass through energized walls as easily as through unenergized ones. We can continue to assume that he does not care for the experience, but that his recuperation is so swift that what he feels in one floor has no effect on him by the time he falls through the air to the next one.”

Captain Leeth said, “I should like to hear from Mr. Zeller. Where are you now, sir?”

“Zeller speaking!” The brisk voice of the metallurgist sounded on the communicators. “I’ve finished the resistance suit, Captain. And I’ve started my search at the bottom of the ship.”

“How long would it take to build resistance suits for every-body on the ship?”

Zeller’s reply was slow in coming. “We’d have to set up a production unit,” he said finally. “First we’d have to make the tools to make the tools that would make such suits in quantity from any metal. Simultaneously, we would start one of the hot piles to the task of making resistance metal. As you probably know, it comes out radioactive with a half life of five hours, which is a long time. My guess is that the first suit would roll off the assembly line in about two hundred hours from now.”

To Grosvenor, it sounded like a conservative estimate. The difficulty of machining resistance metal could hardly be overstated. Captain Leeth seemed to have been struck into silence by the metallurgist’s words. It was Smith who spoke.

“Then that’s out!” The biologist sounded uncertain. “And since the complete energization would also take too long, we’ve shot our bolt. We’ve got nothing else.”

The usually lazy voice of Gourlay, the communications expert, snapped, “I don’t see why those ways are out. We’re still alive. I suggest we get to work, and do as much as we can as soon as we can.”

“What makes you think,” Smith asked coldly, “that the creature is not capable of smashing down resistance metal? As a superior being, his knowledge of physics probably transcends our own. He might find it comparatively simple to construct a beam that could destroy anything we have. Don’t forget, pussy could pulverize resistance metal. And heaven knows there are plenty of tools available in the various laboratories.”

Gourlay said scornfully, “Are you suggesting that we give up?”

“No!” The biologist was angry. “I want us to use common sense. Let’s not just work blindly towards an unrealizable goal.”

Korita’s voice sounded on the communicators, and ended the verbal duel. “I am inclined to agree with Smith. I say further that we are now dealing with a being who must shortly realize that he cannot allow us time for anything important. For that and other reasons, I believe the creature would interfere if we attempted to prepare the ship for complete controlled energization.”

Captain Leeth remained silent. From the engine room, Kent’s voice came again. “What do you think he will do when he begins to understand that it’s dangerous to let us continue organizing against him?”

“He’ll start to kill. I can’t think of any method by which we can stop him, short of retreating into the engine room. And I believe, with Smith, that he will be able to come in there after us, given time.”

“Have you any suggestions?” That was Captain Leeth, Korita hesitated. “Frankly, no. I would say we mustn’t forget we are dealing with a creature who seems to be in the peasant stage of his particular cycle. To a peasant, his land and his son — or, to use a higher level of abstraction — his property and his blood are sacred. He fights blindly against encroachment. Like a plant, he attaches himself to a piece of property, and there he sinks his roots and nourishes his blood.”

Korita hesitated, then said, “That is the generalized picture, gentlemen. At the moment, I have no idea how it should be applied.”

Captain Leeth said, “I seriously can’t see how it can help us. Will each department head consult on his private band with his lower-echelon executives? Report in five minutes if anybody has come up with a worth-while idea?”

Grosvenor, who had no assistants in his department, said, “I wonder if I could ask Mr. Korita a few questions while the departmental discussions are in progress.”

Captain Leeth shook his head. “If no one else objects, you have my permission.”

There were no objections, so Grosvenor said, “Mr. Korita, are you available?”

“Who is this?”

“Grosvenor.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Grosvenor. I recognize your voice now. Proceed.”

“You mentioned that the peasant clings with an almost senseless tenacity to his plot of land. If this creature is in the peasant stage of one of his civilizations, could he imagine our feeling differently about our property?”

“I’m sure he could not.”

“He would make his plans in the full conviction that we cannot escape him, since we are cornered aboard this ship?”

“It is a fairly safe assumption on his part. We cannot abandon the ship and survive.”

Grosvenor persisted, “But we are in a cycle where any particular property means little to us? We are not blindly attached to it?”

“I still don’t think I understand what you mean.” Korita sounded puzzled.

“I am,” said Grosvenor steadily, “pursuing your notion to its logical conclusion in this situation.”

Captain Leeth interrupted. “Mr. Grosvenor, I think I am beginning to get the direction of your reasoning. Are you about to offer another plan?”

“Yes.” In spite of himself, his voice trembled slightly.

Captain Leeth sounded taut. “Mr. Grosvenor,” he said, “if I’m anticipating you correctly, your solution shows courage and imagination. I want you to explain it to the others in—” he hesitated, and glanced at his watch — “as soon as the five minutes are up.”

After a very brief silence, Korita spoke again. “Mr. Grosvenor,” he said, “your reasoning is sound. We can make such a sacrifice without suffering a spiritual collapse. It is the only solution.”

A minute later, Grosvenor gave his analysis to the entire membership of the expeditionary force. When he finished, it was Smith who said in a tone that was scarcely more than a loud whisper, “Grosvenor, you’ve got it! It means sacrificing von Grossen and the others. It means individual sacrifice for every one of us. But you’re right. Property is not sacred to us. As for von Grossen and the four with him” — his voice grew stern and hard — “I haven’t had a chance to tell you about the notes I gave Morton. He didn’t tell you because I suggested a possible parallel with a certain species of wasp back home on Earth. The thought is so horrible that I think quick death will come as a release to those men.”

“The wasp!” a man gasped. “You’re right, Smith. The sooner they’re dead the better!”

It was Captain Leeth who gave the command. “To the engine room!” he said. “We—”

A swift, excited voice clamouring into the communicators interrupted him. A long second went by before Grosvenor recognized it as belonging to Zeller, the metallurgist.

“Captain — quick! Send men and projectors down to the hold! I’ve found them in the air-conditioning pipe. The creature’s here, and I’m holding him off with my vibrator. It’s not doing him much damage, so — hurry!”

Captain Leeth snapped orders with machine-gun speed as the men swarmed toward the elevators. “All scientists and their staff proceed to the air locks. Military personnel take the freight elevators and follow me!” He went on, “We probably won’t be able to corner him or kill him in the hold. But, gentlemen” — his voice became grave and determined — “we’re going to get rid of this monster, and we’re going to do so at any cost. We can no longer consider ourselves.”

Ixtl retreated reluctantly as the man carried off his guuls. The first shrinking fear of defeat closed over his mind like the night that brooded beyond the enclosing walls of the ship. His impulse was to dash into their midst and smash them. But these ugly, glittering weapons held back the desperate urge. He retreated with a sense of disaster. He had lost the initiative. The men would discover his eggs now, and, in destroying them, would destroy his immediate chances of being reinforced by other ixtls.

His brain spun into a tightening web of purpose. From this moment, he must kill, and kill only. He was astounded that he had thought first of reproduction, with everything else secondary. Already he had wasted valuable time. To kill he must have a weapon that would smash everything. After a moment’s thought, he headed for the nearest laboratory. He felt a burning urgency, unlike anything he had ever known.

As he worked, tall body and intent face bent over the gleaming metal of the mechanism, his sensitive feet grew aware of a difference in the symphony of vibrations that throbbed in discordant melody through the ship. He paused and straightened. Then he realized what it was. The drive engines were silent. The monster ship of space had halted in its headlong acceleration and was lying quiescent in the black deeps. An indefinable sense of alarm came to Ixtl. His long, black, wirelike fingers became flashing things as he made delicate connections deftly and frantically.

Suddenly, he paused again. Stronger than before came the sensation that something was wrong, dangerously wrong. The muscles of his feet grew taut with straining. And then he knew what it was. He could no longer feel the vibrations of the men. They had left the ship!

Ixtl whirled from his almost completed weapon and plunged through the nearest wall. He knew his doom with a certainty that found hope only in the blackness of space.

Through deserted corridors he fled, slavering hate, a scarlet monster from ancient, ancient Glor. The gleaming walls seemed to mock him. The whole world of the great ship, which had promised so much, was now only the place where a hell of energy would break loose at any moment. With relief, he saw an air lock ahead. He flashed through the first section, the second, the third — and then he was out in space. He anticipated that the men would be watching for him to appear, so he set up a violent repulsion between his body and the ship. He had a sensation of increasing lightness as his body darted from the side of the ship out into that black night.

Behind him, the porthole lights were snuffed out and were replaced by an unearthly blue glow. The blue first flashed out from every inch of the ship’s immense outer skin. The blue glow faded slowly, almost reluctantly. Long before it died away completely, the potent energy screen came on, blocking him forever from access to the ship. Some of the porthole lights came on again, flickered weakly and then slowly began to brighten. As mighty engines recovered from the devastating flare of energy, the lights already shining grew stronger, others began to flash on.

Ixtl, who had withdrawn several miles, drove himself nearer. He was careful. Now that he was out in space, they could use atomic cannon on him and destroy him without danger to themselves. He approached to within half a mile of the screen, and there, uneasy, stopped. He saw the first of the lifeboats dart out of the darkness inside the screen into an opening that yawned in the side of the big vessel. Other dark craft followed, whipping down in swift arcs, their shapes blurred against the background of space. They were vaguely visible in the light that glowed steadily again from the lighted portholes.

The opening shut, and without warning the ship vanished. One instant it was there, a vast sphere of dark metal. The next, he was staring through the space where it had been at a spiral-shaped bright splotch, a galaxy that floated beyond a gulf of a million light-years.

Time dragged drearily towards eternity. Ixtl sprawled un-moving and hopeless in the boundless night. He couldn’t help thinking of the young ixtls, who now would never be born, and of the universe that was lost because of his mistakes.

Grosvenor watched the skilful fingers of the surgeon as the electrified knife cut into the fourth man’s stomach. The last egg was deposited in the bottom of the tall resistance-metal vat. The eggs were round, greyish objects, one of them slightly cracked.

Several men stood by with drawn heat blasters as the crack widened. An ugly, round, scarlet head with tiny, beady eyes and a tiny slit of a mouth poked out. The head twisted on its short neck and the eyes glittered up at them with hard ferocity. With a swiftness that almost took them by surprise, the creature reared up and tried to climb out of the vat. The smooth walls defeated it. It slid back and dissolved in the flame that was poured down upon it.

Smith, licking his lips, said, “Suppose he’d got away and dissolved into the nearest wall!”

No one answered that. Grosvenor saw that the men were staring into the vat. The eggs melted reluctantly under the heat from the blasters, but finally burned with a golden light. “Ah,” said Dr. Eggert; and attention turned to him and to the body of von Grossen, over which he was bending. “His muscles are beginning to relax, and his eyes are open and alive. I imagine he knows what’s going on. It was a form of paralysis induced by the egg, and fading now that the egg is no longer present. Nothing fundamentally wrong. They’ll be all right shortly. What about the monster?”

Captain Leeth replied, “The men in two lifeboats claim to have seen a flash of red emerge from the main lock just as we swept the ship with uncontrolled energization. It must have been our deadly friend, because we haven’t found his body. However, Pennons is going around with the camera staff taking pictures with fluorite cameras, and we’ll know for certain in a few hours. Here he is now. Well, Mr, Pennons?”

The engineer strode in briskly and placed a misshapen thing of metal on one of the tables. “Nothing definite to report yet — but I found this in the main physics laboratory. What do you make of it?”

Grosvenor was pushed forward by department heads who drew in around the table for a closer look. He frowned down at the fragile-looking object with its intricate network of wires. There were three distinct tubes that might have been muzzles running into and through three small, round balls that shone with a queer, silvery light. The light penetrated the table, making it as transparent as glassite. And, strangest of all, the balls absorbed heat like a thermal sponge. Grosvenor reached out towards the nearest ball, and felt his hands stiffen as the heat was drawn from them. He drew back quickly.

Pennons nodded. And Smith carried on the thought. “It would appear that the creature was working on it when he suspected that something was amiss. He must have realized the truth, for he left the ship. That seems to discount your theory, Korita. You said that, as a true peasant, he couldn’t even imagine what we were going to do.”

The Japanese archaeologist smiled faintly through the fatigue that paled his face. “Mr. Smith,” he said politely, “there is no question but that this one did imagine it. The probable answer is that the peasant category amounted to an analogy. The red monster was, by all odds, the most superior peasant we have yet encountered.”

Pennons groaned. “I wish we had a few peasant limitations. Do you know that it will take us three months at least to get this ship properly repaired after those three minutes of uncontrolled energization? For a time I was afraid that….” His voice trailed off doubtfully.

Captain Leeth said with a grim smile, “I’ll finish that sentence for you, Mr. Pennons. You were afraid the ship would be completely destroyed. I think that most of us realized the risk we were taking when we adopted Mr. Grosvenor’s final plan. We knew that our lifeboats could be given only partial anti-acceleration. So we’d have been stranded here a quarter of a million light-years from home.”

A man said, “I wonder whether, if the scarlet beast had actually taken over this ship, it would have gotten away with its obvious intent to take over the galaxy. After all, man is pretty well established in it — and pretty stubborn, too.”

Smith shook his head. “It dominated once, and it could dominate again. You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting, apparently, that he has a long and savage history. He has killed other animals not only for meat but for pleasure; he has enslaved his neighbours, murdered his opponents, and obtained the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe.”

“By heaven!” said a man, “no dangerous-looking creature should even be allowed aboard this ship again. My nerves are all shot; and I’m not so good a man as I was when I first came aboard the Beagle.”

“You speak for us all!” came the voice of Acting Director Kent over the communicator.