A World is Born
Page 5
him, grimly, Dio followed.
The electric beasts didn't notice him. His insulated feet trampledthrough them, buried to the ankle in living flame, feeling queer tenuousbodies break and reform.
The wind met them like a physical barrier at the tunnel mouth. Gray putJill down. The wind strangled him. He tore off his coat and wrapped itover the girl's head, using his shirt over his own. Jill, her blackcurls whipped straight, tried to fight back past him, and he saw Diocoming, bent double against the wind.
He saw something else. Something that made him grab Jill and point, hisflesh crawling with swift, cold dread.
* * * * *
The electric beasts had finished their pleasure. The dead were cinderson the rock. The living had run back into the tunnels. And now the bluesea of fire was flowing again, straight toward the place where theystood.
It was flowing fast, and Gray sensed an urgency, an impersonal haste, asthough a command had been laid upon those living ropes of flame.
The first dim rumble of thunder rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill,Gray turned up the tunnel.
The wind, compressed in that narrow throat of rock, beat them blind andbreathless, beat them to their bellies, to crawl. How long it took them,they never knew.
But Gray caught glimpses of Dio the Martian crawling behind them, andbehind him again, the relentless flow of the fire-things.
They floundered out onto a rocky slope, fell away beneath the suck ofthe wind, and lay still, gasping. It was hot. Thunder crashed abruptly,and lightning flared between the cliffs.
Gray felt a contracting of the heart. There were no cables.
Then he saw it--the small, fast fighter flying below them on a flatplateau. A cave mouth beside it had been closed with a plastic door. Theship was the one that had followed them. He guessed at another onebehind the protecting door.
Raking the tumbled blond hair out of his eyes, Gray got up.
Jill was still sitting, her black curls bowed between her hands. Therewasn't much time, but Gray yielded to impulse. Pulling her head back bythe silken hair, he kissed her.
"If you ever get tired of virtue, sweetheart, look me up." But somehowhe wasn't grinning, and he ran down the slope.
He was almost to the open lock of the ship when things began to happen.Dio staggered out of the wind-tunnel and sagged down beside Jill. Then,abruptly, the big door opened.
Five men came out--one in pilot's costume, two in nondescript apparel,one in expensive business clothes, and the fifth in dark prison garb.
Gray recognized the last two. Caron of Mars and the errant Ward.
They were evidently on the verge of leaving. But they looked cheerful.Caron's sickly-sweet face all but oozed honey, and Ward was grinning hisrat's grin.
Thunder banged and rolled among the rocks. Lightning flared in thecloudy murk. Gray saw the hull of a second ship beyond the door. Thenthe newcomers had seen him, and the two on the slope.
Guns ripped out of holsters. Gray's heart began to pound slowly. He, andJill and Dio, were caught on that naked slope, with the flood ofelectric death at their backs.
His Indianesque face hardened. Bullets whined round him as he turnedback up the slope, but he ran doubled over, putting all his hope in thetricky, uncertain light.
Jill and the Martian crouched stiffly, not knowing where to turn. Aflare of lightning showed Gray the first of the firethings, flowing outonto the ledge, hidden from the men below.
"Back into the cave!" he yelled. His urgent hand fairly lifted Dio. TheMartian glared at him, then obeyed. Bullets snarled against the rock.The light was too bad for accurate shooting, but luck couldn't stay withthem forever.
Gray glanced over his shoulder as they scrambled up on the ledge. Caronwaited by his ship. Ward and the others were charging the slope. Gray'steeth gleamed in a cruel grin.
Sweeping Jill into his arms, he stepped into the lapping flow of fire.Dio swore viciously, but he followed. They started toward the cavemouth, staggering in the rush of the wind.
"For God's sake, don't fall," snapped Gray. "Here they come!"
The pilot and one of the nondescript men were the first over. They wereinto the river of fire before they knew, it, and then it was too late.One collapsed and was buried. The pilot fell backward, and then otherman died under his body, of a broken neck.
Ward stopped. Gray could see his face, dark and hard and calculating. Hestudied Gray and Dio, and the dead men. He turned and looked back atCaron. Then, deliberately, he stripped off his gun belt, threw down hisgun, and waded into the river.
Gray remembered, then, that Ward too wore rubber boots, and had no metalon him.
* * * * *
Ward came on, the glowing ropes sliding surf-like around his boots. Verycarefully. Gray handed Jill to Dio.
"If I die too," he said, "there's only Caron down there. He's too fat tostop you."
Jill spoke, but he turned his back. He was suddenly confused, and it wasalmost pleasant to be able to lose his confusion in fighting. Ward hadstopped some five feet away. Now he untied the length of tough cord thatserved him for a belt.
Gray nodded. Ward would try to throw a twist around his ankle and triphim. Once his body touched those swarming creatures....
He tensed, watchfully. The rat's grin was set on Ward's dark face. Thecord licked out.
But it caught Gray's throat instead of his ankle!
Ward laughed and braced himself. Cursing, Gray caught at the rope. Butfriction held it, and Ward pulled, hard. His face purpling, Gray couldstill commend Ward's strategy. In taking Gray off guard, he'd more thanmade up what he lost in point of leverage.
Letting his body go with the pull, Gray flung himself at Ward. Bloodblinded him, his heart was pounding, but he thought he foresaw Ward'snext move. He let himself be pulled almost within striking distance.
Then, as Ward stepped, aside, jerking the rope and thrusting out atripping foot, Gray made a catlike shift of balance and bent over.
His hands almost touched that weird, flowing surf as they clasped Ward'sboot. Throwing all his strength into the lift, he hurled Ward backward.
Ward screamed once and disappeared under the blue fire. Gray clawed therope from his neck. And then, suddenly, the world began to sway underhim. He knew he was falling.
Some one's hand caught him, held him up. Fighting down his vertigo ashis breath came back, he saw that it was Jill.
"Why?" he gasped, but her answer was lost in a titanic roar of thunder.Lightning blasted down. Dio's voice reached him, thin and distantthrough the clamor.
"We'll be killed! These damn things will attract the bolts!"
It was true. All his work had been for nothing. Looking up into thatlow, angry sky, Gray knew he was going to die.
Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in the tunnel came back to him. "You'rea fool ... lost truth ... not true to lie!"
Now, in this moment, she couldn't lie to him. He caught her shoulderscruelly, trying to read her eyes.
Very faintly through the uproar, he heard her. "I'm sorry for you, Gray.Good man, gone to waste."
Dio stifled a scream. Thunder crashed between the sounding boards of thecliffs. Gray looked up.
A titanic bolt of lightning shot down, straight for them. The burningblue surf was agitated, sending up pseudopods uncannily like worshippingarms. The bolt struck.
The air reeked of ozone, but Gray felt no shock. There was a hiss, avast stirring of creatures around him. The blue light glowed, purpled.
Another bolt struck down, and another, and still they were not dead. Thefire-things had become a writhing, joyous tangle of tenuous bodies,glowing bright and brighter.
Stunned, incredulous, the three humans stood. The light was now aneye-searing violet. Static electricity tingled through them in eeriewaves. But they were not burned.
"My God," whispered Gray. "They eat it. They eat lightning!"
Not daring to move, they stood watching that miracle of alien life, thefeedin
g of living things on raw current. And when the last bolt hadstruck, the tide turned and rolled back down the wind-tunnel, a blindingriver of living light.
Silently, the three humans went down the rocky slope to where Caron ofMars cowered in the silver ship. No bolt had come near it. And now Caroncame to meet them.
His face was pasty with fear, but the old cunning still lurked in hiseyes.
"Gray," he said. "I have an offer to make."
"Well?"
"You killed my pilot," said Caron suavely. "I can't fly, myself. Take meoff, and I'll pay you anything you want."
"In bullets," retorted Gray. "You won't want witnesses to this."
"Circumstances force me. Physically, you have the advantage."
Jill's fingers caught his arm. "Don't, Gray! The Project...."
Caron faced her. "The Project is doomed in any case. My men carried outmy secondary