by Earl
“Maybe they’re mechanicals, robots,” ventured Osgood. inspirationally. “Forged and welded and wired together, sort of.”
WELTON sighed and turned moodily toward the exposed engine entrails under the floor plates. “Personally, I’d much prefer right now to know why that doesn’t tick.” He paced the cabin floor while Osgood slipped into his parka.
“Why not come along with me? Wade, you need some fresh air. It’ll clear the cranial cobwebs. You’re so deep in a stew of chemically pure befuddlement that you can’t think straight any more.”
Welton grumbled, but donned his parka and went along.
As they strode crunchily toward a valley in the distance, an anemic sun spattered the topography with eerie, dancing light. Welton watched his wrist compass perform weird gyrations, often jumping a quarter circle without warning. Periodically Osgood stopped to use his atom-indicator on the soil underneath.
“Seems to be some of the lighter elements after all.” He wiped his eyes clear of tears from the cold. “A pinch each of magnesium, calcium, silicon, boron, chlorine, even beryllium. But no carlton, not one wretched atom of it. Wade, those X-ians can’t have sugar in their coffee. In fact, they can’t have coffee. What a world!”
“I agree,” Welton nodded awkwardly, holding his fur glove over his nose to warm it. “Archie, volt don’t realize the half of it. This dose-to-Earth-gravity means it must have about Earth’s mass, though narrower around the equator. Yet it doesn’t exist, this world. It can’t, for otherwise it would markedly perturb Saturn and Uranus. It doesn’t exist. Archie.”
“So we aren’t here, either?”
“Damn it. it’s easier to believe that than the other. And this magnetic held has more twists and convolutions than a snake. In fact, it isn’t just one field; it’s a dozen or a hundred built up in concentric cones. Some physicist is going to come here some day to plot it out and go gloriously mad.”
“How do we know we’re not mad?” philosophized Osgood. “See those fungoid trees, fifty feet high it an inch! They weigh tons and tons. Wade, of almost solid metal. I low can they grow, and stay together?”
“And my engine,” said Welton with a ferocious growl. “I’ve gone over it bit by bit, almost atom by atom. It’s perfectly O.K. Yet it won’t even cough out one erg of energy.”
“Then it’s agreed that we re insane?”
“It’s us,” assured Welton. “Or else it’s all a dream. Because if it weren’t, the whole universe would be thrown out of whack. We can’t let a little personal pride bring on the collapse of the cosmos!
“Wade, I know what happened. Remember when the ship came down—fast? We were killed there. It’s just our spirits walking around on some ghost world.” Osgood shifted his comet-gun to the other arm. “That critter there, climbing a tree—a ton weight slicking up like greased lightning. A manganese monkey. By the way, could a ghost be insane? Arc we both?”
They stood at the crest of the long, low valley and peered into its shadowed depths. The queer, faceted life seemed rampant in many forms among the giant growths that glinted nakedly in the sunlight. They were strange growths, vegetable only in being rooted in the soil, fungoid in appearance. Once they saw a huge bulbosity with spikes strike down a many-legged monstrosity and begin to devour it. The metallic crunching of its great jaws came to the two humans. I hey even seemed to see friction sparks fly from the process.
WELTON unlimbered his zero-gun.
“I’m curious to know——” he began vaguely and aimed for a small shape skittering in the open. He fired once, frowned, then sent three more bullets at the creature. It went on unconcernedly.
Osgood whistled. “Wade, if you missed four times in a row. this is all a dream.”
Welton reloaded but did not fire again. “The funny thing is, I didn’t hear any of those shots strike. They should have made some sort of clatter, with all this metal around.” He looked up. “Sun’s setting, Archie. Let’s go back.”
Osgood giggled suddenly, as they were on the return trip. Welton started to growl at him but the sound changed to a nervous laugh. In turn, then, and sometimes together, they chuckled fitfully. choking down peals of laughter with an hysterical edge to it.
“Nothing to worry about,” gasped Osgood between fits of merriment. “Just the high percentage of oxygen getting us. I felt it the other times I was out, too.” Then he burst out into gales of involuntary laughter, joined by Welton.
Like two madmen with an overdeveloped sense of humor, they staggered back toward the ship. The sun was low on the horizon when the Thunderbolt’s clean-cut lines materialized out of the gloom. Both knew the horrible fit of laughter would not leave till they were safe inside.
The windy gusts in Welton’s throat died abruptly, however, when they came closer. “Archie, in the name of Pluto, do you see what I see? Or am I having a personal hallucination?”
“I’ll tell you just what I see,” Osgood proclaimed. “And you check on me. I see about thirty of those overgrown spider-men we saw this morning. Half of them are supporting one end of what looks like a heavy cable. Its bulging end is being pressed against the lower curve of our ship’s hull. Damn it. it looks alive, like a leech, and like the same is attaching itself to the metal. The other half are doing the same on the other side with another hawser. That’s what I see. Now you tell me what they aim to do, Wade.”
The pulsating terminus of the heavy cable flattened itself tightly against the hull as they watched. At times ripples ran through the length of the cable, as though it were alive. The spider beings continued to hold it in position until the bulbous end had quieted its movements. Then they let go. The enlarged cable end remained firmly affixed. The rest of its fifty foot length trailed along the ground, twitching gently.
“It is alive!” Welton hissed. “It’s such infernal metal snake biting its way into the interior, I suppose, with diamond fangs and acid digestive fluids. Here—Archie—watch your step——”
But Osgood had already lumbered forward. “You can’t do that!” he shouted at the aliens. They paid absolutely no attention. He ran to within twenty feet of them and raised the comet-gun belligerently. “Call off your pet or you get some of this!”
As though he were truly the ghost he had mockingly called himself before, the aliens were completely indifferent. By not one recognizable sign did they betray awareness of his presence, or his voice, or the ominous gun in his hands. Osgood went completely berserk. Aiming the comet-gun straight for the massed group, he pressed the trigger savagely. The ionized beam of violet that gave the gun its name streamed backward from the breech chamber, indicating that its nozzle was pouring out the deadly shock-beam. Yet not one of the spider creatures fell. In fact, they paid no more attention to it than they had to its user.
OSGOOD sprayed them several times in hopeful desperation, then flung the gun down in disgust. Grabbing the zero-gun from Welton as he came up, lie pumped ten shots in quick succession at the aliens. They stood there adamantly, unmindful of the steel hail.
With a wild look in his eye. Osgood leaped forward with the gun upraised like a club. Welton grabbed his arm, planted his heels in the crumbly ground and jerked him back. “Lot me go!” roared Osgood, tugging furiously. “I’ll teach them what’s what around here. I’ll kick them halfway around this planet. I’ll——”
“You’ll come with me—quietly,” countermanded Welton. “Archie, snap out of it. You can’t touch them. You saw what a comet-gun and bullets did—or didn’t do—to them. They’re juggernauts of iron and manganese and what-not. Animated powerhouses. Your kicking them would have about as much effect as an amoeba bumping into a whale. Come on.” He dragged the cursing, hot-eyed Osgood toward the ship, after picking up the comet-gun. He fairly pushed him into the lock. Then he turned and shook his fist at the aliens. “We shall see, my fine friends, we shall see!”
Inside the comfortably warmed cabin, they faced one another querulously. Without anticipation Welton snapped the motor switch. It
was still dead.
“Wade, we can’t admit we’re beaten.” Osgood was still panting, still growling in anger. “I’ll bet a hearty clout on the brainpan—if any—would teach them a little courtesy. They ignored us like we were a couple of gnats come to bother them. Wade, I’m going out there with a six-foot length of handrail and——”
“Shut up!” Welton rubbed his chapped face reflectively. “Archie, we’re up against it b-a-d—bad. Those metal monsters are up to something and it won’t be to have us meet their wives. We’re of no more concern to them, apparently, than a couple of thinking gusts of wind would be to us.”
“And what’s to be done?” stormed Osgood, clipping the corners of the cabin. “We can’t just sit here while that snake thing eats through the hull. I say let’s give them some strong arm. They can’t be so almighty impervious to a good clubbing. A few good——”
“Archie, will you please pipe down and get that oxygen jag out of your head. This is a case of brain against brawn. They have it all over us physically. Metal bodies, elephantine weight, and the direct energy of electricity for muscle power. But I doubt they have much of a brain. Perhaps none. Per——”
He stopped, peering out of the port. Though quite dark except for starlight with the sun gone, he was able to make out the spider beings in their queer, whirling dance. “Storing up power—lots of it,” he muttered wonderingly, as it kept up for many minutes. “Now what——”
A moment later there was a tremor in the ship, followed by an unmistakable jerk. “Would you believe it?” Welton’s eyes strained into the night. “They’re dragging the ship away. Those cables—alive or not—are just cables after all, by which they are going to take our ship wherever they want. Half of them are tugging on one line, half on the other. So that was it!”
“But where to?” Osgood gulped, amazement succeeding anger, as the ship began moving steadily over the ground.
Welton snorted. “Do I know? To some hellish fate we can’t conceive. They want the ship, not us. They want the metal. We’ve either got to rescue our ship or be marooned on this frozen ball of metal. Now take it calm, Archie. And don’t try to sneak out. I have some A-1 thinking to do.”
WELTOX’S thinking occupied most of the short six-hour night. But it seemed long to the fuming, impatient Osgood. Even food did not come to his mind. The Thunderbolt moved over the plateau flats steadily. At times it rocked crazily as it was dragged over distortions of the terrain outside. A continuous scratching sound filled the cabin from friction between the hull and coarse, rough ground.
At dawn Welton jumped up. “It’s worth a try.”
“Anything is,” agreed Osgood eagerly, reaching for a wrench with which to loosen the handrail.
“Telepathy is what I mean. Archie. It’s the one means of contact between alien minds that always seems to work. If I can contact them mentally and get an idea of what it’s all about, maybe I can argue them out of anything rash.”
“They don’t look arguable to me.”
“Let’s go.” Welton, after donning his parka, stretched himself in his bunk. “Put me in the cataleptic, Archie. I want full contact. But don’t forget to take me out of it in an hour. You know the danger of staying in the cataleptic state longer—breakdown of the central nervous system. In plain words, insanity. Snap it up.”
A bit nervously, Osgood performed the series of operations leading to the third and final stage of hypnosis. Trained as they were in this useful art, with Welton not only a willing but eager subject, it did not take long. Osgood’s staring threw Welton into somnambulism. His low-voiced murmuring then brought lethargy. His command of “Sleep!” many times repeated, finally produced catalepsy, with Welton’s eyes closed and his breathing slow and deep.
Osgood waited a full minute. “Open your eyes, Wade. Get up. You are under my command. Help me take down this handrail and——”
“I am not under your command.” Welton’s lips barely moved, but they were firm. His eyes were flames of living force.
Osgood shrugged. “I guess you aren’t at that.” he muttered. “O.K., have it your way. Go out and establish telepathic communication with the aliens. But only for an hour. Then I’ll awaken you. Remember, one hour.” Welton intoned an affirmative and strode with a strange stiffness toward the lock. Osgood watched from the port. He saw his friend’s figure walk around one group of unnoticing aliens dragging at a cable, and take up a path between the two groups. For several minutes nothing happened. Then quite suddenly all the aliens stepped, as though at a command. Heads turned curiously. Faceted eyes stared at Welton, or in his general direction.
“Ah!” murmured Osgood. “At least he’s got their attention. I was afraid they weren’t anything but soulless, mindless machines.”
Welton stood there, face set and grim, eyes flashing fire. Osgood imagined he could hear his telepathized message, though he knew the mesmerized Welton had automatically attuned his mental vibrations to those of the aliens. Osgood was out of range. The whole purpose of telepathic transmission in a hypnotic state was to achieve mental rapport in some range unattainable to the conscious mind.
WELTON stalked in in precisely an hour, and stood before Osgood obediently. “I am now in your command,” he said. Osgood took a sheet of paper and held it before Welton’s eyes. “Wade, you are at the edge of a high cliff. Take a step forward.”
Welton took a step. “You’re falling, Wade! Wake up!”
Osgood jerked the paper away and caught Welton as he stumbled forward. Welton, pale of face, looked up with a weak grin. “All right, Archie. It’s a hell of a way to come out of a cataleptic state, but the quickest and surest—if you have a strong heart.” He sat down on his bunk weakly.
Osgood waited patiently. He had experienced those awakening symptoms himself.
“Thus and so. We live again.” Welton tried his legs and managed to stagger to the port. “I thought so,” he complained bitterly, as the aliens again took up their writhing cables and trudged forward. The ship bumped along noisily, a weight that a hundred Earthmen could not have moved an inch.
“They go their way and we go theirs, eh?” Osgood clamped his teeth together with a grinding sound. “Wade, what do you think about a quart of neodyne fuel would do to those highhanded gents? Nicely packed in a jar with a percussion fuse? See——”
Osgood held it up. “I figured your peace parley would have about as much effect as a debutante trying to reform head-hunters. You’ve been out. Now it’s my turn. A little moral persuasion, as it were——”
“Wait!” Welton went on slowly. “I don’t want you to try that—yet. It’ll be the only way to do it in the end, but——”
“Why wait then?” Osgood was bewildered.
Welton waved an arm vaguely. “It’s hard to explain, Archie. Damned hard. I couldn’t possibly hope to change their minds about this taking of the ship. It’s very important to them. In fact, I didn’t contact their minds at all. Not in any normal way.” He shook his head helplessly. “Look. Archie, they think in mathematical symbols. They are creatures of crystal, their minds, too. We are amorphous. We think in abstractions, circumlocutions. In curves, so to speak. They—built up mentally and physically in a linear existence—think in straight lines. And in numbers. And in formulae, constants, equations. They must know incredibly more of them than we. We arrive at ours only through elaborate experimentation, with laborious plotting and inadequate instruments. They conjure them up in their minds, perhaps are born with them. We humans have elements of error in our mathematics and much theory in its application. These creatures can make no mathematical errors, and do not theorize They know!”
Welton choked for breath. “Gosh, Archie, these beings know many, many things. Perhaps they know everything. I only groped in the fringe of their mental radiation. I was like a cork in a whirlwind, vaguely aware of what must lie further in. I did not even attempt to find out why they are taking our ship. I could not phrase my questions in the language of formulae they speak
. So my quest was useless in that respect.”
“Exactly. Wade, I don’t know any more than you what it’s all about, but here’s one equation I know that they don’t. One quart of neodyne plus one percussion fuse equals big noise, much wind, and many, many flying pieces of our cast-iron friends. Now what are you grabbing my arm for——”
“Archie. I said my quest was useless in that respect. But not in another. I was on the verge of learning something important.” Welton, dead serious, would not let go of Osgood’s arm. “No, not anything directly concerned with you and me here, hut things about—oh, about the universe. Archie, as you’re my friend, let me go out there once more, as a cataleptic, lust another hour and then you can give them hell with the neodyne bomb.”
Welton was pleading, rather than asking. Osgood hesitated, muttered a while, then gave in. In another five minutes Welton stalked out of the cabin, deep in hypnosis. He did not return on the hour, and Osgood went out to get him in. He carried the jar of neodyne in his hand. Welton stared at him dazedly as Osgood commanded him three times to enter the cabin. Osgood grew afraid.
Then he ran a hundred yards in front of the two marching columns of aliens. They paid him no attention. Grinning cynically, Osgood laid the neodyne bomb down directly between the oncoming parties. He jerked out the pin of the percussion fuse and sped for the ship. Welton walked along dazedly, still lost to conscious life. Osgood tossed him over his shoulder and ran for the lock. Inside, he threw Welton’s stiffened body in his bunk and strapped him down.
Then Osgood crouched down in a comer, wincing in anticipation. At last it came—a thunderous explosion. The roaring voice of the most powerful chemical known to science. The ship’s motion stopped. A hail tattooed against the nose of the ship for many seconds. With a prayer of relief that the bow ports had not been blown in. Osgood ran to look.
