A short search, and he found what he was looking for—a good long solid board, designed for carving and therapeutic woodwork, now to be put to a purely practical use. He hurried down the corridor with it.
The canister was still in place, with no sign that the alien had tired to force it. That meant it was still on the other side.
Sweating, Pinback heaved the canister aside and peered across the dark elevator shaft. Still no sign of the alien, neither in the black unlit depths nor in the heights above.
Carefully, working as noiselessly as possible, he edged the board across the open gap. His one real concern was that it might not be long enough, but it spanned the gulf easily.
It would have been nice if he had had a board more than a dozen centimeters wide. This was not a very reassuring bridge, but it would have to do. And it was much better than a cable, which for a while he thought he might have to use.
Well, there was nothing left but simply to climb on and crawl across. Nothing to it. His pulse was racing.
Come on, now, Pinback, it's only a couple of meters. You'll be across before you know it.
Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, he put both hands out on the board, over the blackness, and pressed down sharply a couple of times. The board gave very slightly. Seemed solid enough.
Moving slowly, ever so slowly, he crawled out a centimeter at a time until his full weight was on the board. He stopped, jiggled while resting on the wood. Again it gave slightly. But there were no threatening cracking sounds, and the board didn't bend under him.
It was going to be all right.
Setting both hands in front of him, he brought his knees under his waist. Hands, knees, hands, knees—and then he was reaching for the far rim. He was more relieved than he cared to acknowledge when he was finally across and through the hatchway on the opposite side.
Standing up in the corridor, he saw lights in the distance. The only lights that would be shining here would be from the region of the emergency airlock, and then only if the interior airlock door had been activated.
Probably the crazy Beachball had bumbled into the contact switch which activated the door mechanism. Another couple of steps confirmed it. The door was wide open, the interior of the bay bright with light.
A sudden thought brought him to an abrupt stop. No doubt the alien was trapped inside. He had retreated to the absolute end of the ship. But Pinback had forgotten the broom. Well, he wasn't going back across that pit for a stick of wood. The flashlight would make do as a prod. Considering his present state of mind, he suspected his bare hands would be equal to the job.
He slowed as he neared the open doorway, edged right up to the opening, and jumped inside, holding the flashlight in front of him and trying to scan every direction at once.
A familiar twittering and honking greeted him. The alien was there, sure enough, clinging with those seemingly adhesive claws to the far wall. Pinback's gaze went immediately to another nearby switch—the one that would blow the explosive bolts on the emergency hatch cover and send anyone inside the lock flying out into free space.
Thus far the Beachball hadn't made a motion toward it. But if it suddenly took it into its head—or wherever its thinking mechanism was located—to fly onto the switch, even its slight weight should be enough to set off the device. He tried to edge toward it without being obvious.
"Go on, get out of there," he muttered menacingly, dividing his gaze between the alien and the lock mechanism. He made poking motions toward the alien with the blunt end of the flashlight. Unimpressed, the creature didn't budge.
"Out!" Pinback screamed. At his screech the alien leaped, not for the worrisome switch but straight at Pinback. He should have been ready for it. He wasn't.
This time it didn't attempt to dig at him. Instead, it made a sort of half-swipe in passing. That was more than enough to distract Pinback. Then it flew out the door, back the way they had both come.
Maybe now was the time to call for aid. After all, the monster had made two recognizably antagonistic moves at him. It could now be classed as definitely hostile, despite his earlier, gushing report. He saw his naiveté in retrospect.
No, what kind of coward are you, Pinback? What are you afraid of . . . a little corrosive alien saliva?
"Come back here, you!" he yelled decisively, hurrying in pursuit.
Actually, he made up some distance on it. But not enough. Reaching the hatchway leading to the shaft, he bent quickly, stared in—and saw the board disappearing back across the black gulf, back between a pair of busy clawed feet.
"No . . . oh, no . . ."
Beachball was being imitative again.
5
THEY RESTED LIKE that—man on one side, alien on the other. The alien gobbled playfully, evidentally enjoying the interesting afternoon. It didn't look malicious. Pinback, however, found that he could no longer regard the alien with anything remotely like objectivity.
He sat on the inside of the access port, caught his breath, and thought. This was the end. Now he would have to go back to the emergency airlock, get on the intercom, and ask either Boiler or Doolittle to send the elevator down for him. No way he could even do that for himself now.
Turning and kneeling, he stared across the shaft at the alien. It was still resting on the edge of the drop, quivering expectantly and twittering to itself. Pinback eyed it and thought uncomplimentary thoughts.
He would never live this down. Never. Boiler would never let him forget it. If there were any way to avoid calling for help . . . but how? What else could he do?
The board was gone, and long wooden boards were not scattered haphazardly about the ship. If there were another way across the shaft.
Sure . . . Leaning out, he looked down and traced the tiny ledge that ran completely around the interior walls. It was only a few centimeters wide, but it would hold his weight easily, being part of the structure itself.
If he moved carefully, took a step at a time, the ledge ought to be negotiable.
Unaware that his breathing had suddenly grown stronger than normal, he stuck his head, turned upward, into the shaft. Hanging on to the inside of the hatchway with both hands, he slid one foot out and tested the strength of the ledge. It was part of the shaft wall, for sure.
Gritting his teeth and edging his body out a little at a time, he soon found himself standing upright on the ledge, his body pressed tight against the wall, hands outstretched and facing inward.
He only looked down once.
Now, if he could just edge around, make his way across the first corner . . . Trying to get a grip on the smooth metal walls, and wishing his members were as adhesive as the alien's seemed to be, he stepped over the first corner. Then the back foot, and he was already nearly halfway across.
Hell, this was easy! The Beachball gobbled at him, and Pinback felt secure enough to risk shaking a fist at it.
"Idiot! When I get out of here and get you back into your room—"
Another voice interrupted him sharply, and he looked wildly around the shaft.
"Attention, attention." Soft voice, feminine—the computer again. "The central trunk elevator shaft is now activated. All personnel please clear the area."
There was a snap, a brilliant flare, and the shaft suddenly appeared above and below him, fully lighted. Now he could see exactly how high it was, exactly how deep it was, and exactly where he was trapped in relationship to those extremes. He screamed. He was all right when he didn't have to look down and see a bottom, but now . . .
His fear quickly gave way to anger.
"Doolittle . . . Boiler, Talby. I'm in here, you idiots! In the shaft. What are you playing with the elevator for? Turn it off. Turn . . .!"
His voice faded. There was absolutely no reason for Doolittle to activate the elevator. There was no reason for Boiler to activate the elevator. And even if there had been a reason for Talby to activate the elevator, he probably wouldn't have bothered. This led him to the obvious explanation: there had
been another malfunction, possibly keyed by his own presence in the shaft.
Leaning back against the cool metal, he closed his eyes and worked at fighting his recalcitrant muscles. He couldn't stay here. One way or another, he had to get moving. Otherwise, when the elevator got to this level its bottom would peel him off the wall as neatly as old skin off a beach-burned back.
"Help!" he streamed again. "Help!"
Now stop that and save your breath, Pinback. There's nobody here to hear you, and nobody's coming to rescue you. You've got to get out of this by yourself.
He was nearly to the hatchway on the other side, but it was still occupied by the twittering form of the alien. Making sure he was well set on his left leg, he kicked at it with his right, trying to force the creature back into the chamber beyond.
The alien bounced up and down violently in the portal, obviously agitated, but not struck sufficiently to be hurt. Pinback kicked at it again, and added some curses for added punch.
"Get out of there, you . . . go on, get out, move, you ignorant, stupid, ungrate . . .!"
Making an especially virulent gobbling sound, the alien leaped—not backward, but into the shaft. It landed on Pinback's chest and immediately began scratching at him with its claws. The claws had little clutching power behind them, but it was still damned uncomfortable.
"No, no!" Flailing at it hysterically with both hands, he tried to beat it off without sacrificing his balance. He couldn't keep it up indefinitely. If it got to his eyes . . .
Somehow he spun on the narrow ledge. Now he had his stomach and face pressed up against the wall. But the sudden twist had only temporarily dislodged the alien. It simply jumped free and reattached itself, this time to his upper back.
"Get off, get off!"
Still beating at it with little success, he started edging toward his right. Maybe it would leave him if he went back into the old hatchway. Taking another step, he arched his back slightly and took a good swat at the Beachball with his right hand. At the same time, it made a particularly strong wrench at his right side.
There was a loud, gobbling scream—from Pinback—as he slipped. Both hands caught the ledge as he slumped down. He hung like that, dangling over the seemingly bottomless shaft. Well, it was far from bottomless. But it was far too far away for him to risk a drop.
Grunting and twisting, he fought to get one leg back up on the ledge, swinging his body from side to side without much luck.
The alien had hopped free at the moment of falling and was now comfortably ensconced once more in the hatchway. It appeared to regard Pinback with interest, quivering and honking in its maddeningly unconcerned fashion.
Pinback had no trouble holding on—he'd been something of a gymnast in secondary school. No doubt with a little more effort he could get back up. At least, he thought so until he felt a frighteningly familiar light pressure on his shoulder blades.
"No . . . oh, no . . . I don't want to play anymore. Get off. Get offfff!"
The alien's weight was negligible. Its activities were not. After several moments of serene sizing-up, it started to squeeze at Pinback's rib cage. The sergeant started to scream, but soon found himself laughing uncontrollably. Occasionally the laugh would dissolve into a scream for help.
"Stop . . . s-s-stop! That's not . . . f-funny!" The alien continued its merciless tickling.
It shouldn't have known what it was doing—certainly Pinback couldn't recall any time when he'd done any tickling, or been tickled, in the alien's presence. He might have forgotten something, though.
In any case, he had no time to ponder the possibilities of a carefully camouflaged alien intelligence suddenly coming to the surface. The tickling was weakening him in a way that hanging on couldn't. At least nothing more could happen.
A mechanical voice drifted through the shaft.
"Attention, attention . . ."
"Arrghh . . . no!" Pinback howled.
"Elevator descending for midweekly proficiency check. Please clear the shaft."
"You crazy bundle of crossed circuits—this isn't midweek!"
"Your cooperation will be appreciated."
Pinback's gaze turned wildly upward. His laughter and his grip on the narrow ledge were fading fast. There was a muffled clank, followed by a whirring sound.
Above him, a smooth white panel began to grow larger—the bottom of the slowly descending elevator. His eyes widened. "Goddamn it!" Tears began to start from them, half from laughter, half from desperation.
Making a supreme effort, he somehow managed to get both arms up onto the ledge at the same time. This seemed to catalyze something in the Beachball's mind. Whether bored with the tickling or disappointed at its lack of success in getting Pinback to let go, or for some incomprehensible reason known only to animated Beachballs, the creature floated free and jumped back into the hatchway.
With a smooth whine, to indicate that all its components were functioning perfectly, the elevator continued to descend, a wide white foot coming down to crush Pinback.
He struggled wildly, got his foot, then his right leg back onto the ledge. Now that the alien had decided to leave him alone, his strength was coming back. Fighting frantically, he managed to get himself onto the ledge. Hands pressed against the wall, he started to stand.
He was just taking a retreating step toward the hatchway when the elevator touched his face—and stopped. Having detected interference, the lift would pause for a second, then move downward in stages unless it encountered stiff resistance. Pinback would not supply stiff resistance.
It would peel him off the ledge in slow jerks.
Even as he thought, the elevator dropped another tenth of a meter, bunching up his face and shoving him backward so that he was arching over the shaft. Another drop; and it would be impossible for him to keep his balance.
Just to one side of his scrunched-up face he saw a single metal bar suspended from the bottom of the lift. Reaching for it desperately, he just got a hand around it when the elevator dropped again.
Swinging out into open space, he grabbed with the other hand, rested in open air as the elevator slid another notch downward. That last one would have sent him tumbling down the shaft. His present position would not last forever, either, but it was better than lying broken fifty or sixty meters below.
There was a soft click, the pitch of the whining motor changed slightly, and he found himself rising as the elevator started up: He'd had some vague hope that it would continue downward until he could drop free. Now he dared not.
"Help . . . for God's sake, somebody, help!"
No one heard him, of course. And no doubt the malfunctioning elevator was stimulating no red warning light in the control room, so no one would be hurrying back here to check it out.
He wondered what the damn elevator would do next. How long did one of these automatic proficiency tests last, anyhow? It couldn't keep going up and down, up and down, forever—though it showed no sign of stopping.
There was no logic to it. Like the rest of the instrumentation on the Dark Star, it was operating in a typically haphazard manner.
As for the alien—he looked upward, and if he twisted his body, so, he could just see around one edge of the elevator. There was a brief flash of red, which had to be the Beachball clearing the shaft with ease. It squeezed through the other side, and as Pinback passed that level, with its open hatchways—open, unreachable hatchways—he saw it scampering along back to where he had disturbed it. Back to the emergency airlock.
Imitative creatures have one other characteristic in common with man—they are intensely curious. If Pinback had gone to the trouble of trying to root it out of the place it had been exploring, then it followed that there must be something in that place of particular interest to Beachballs. Anyhow, it was no longer curious about Pinback, now dangling helplessly in the shaft behind it.
The room certainly was an interesting place, though we have no descriptive referents capable of explaining exactly how the alien s
aw it. It was full of control panels, switches, blinking lights, five ranked sets of starsuits.
The Beachball examined each in turn, bouncing over open shelves and packages of emergency foodstuffs and even the triple knob that Pinback had sweated over—the one which, if engaged, would blow open the outer emergency door, an event that would be disastrous to anyone on the lock side of an airtight portal.
Not that the Beachball knew or could comprehend any of this. In any case, it elected not to play with the triple knob. Instead, its attention was drawn to a partial hole in the wall, where a protective plate had come loose and now swung from a last, reluctant screw. An interesting hum issued from within the hole, and there was an ugly dark spot on the outside of the loose plate where it had been scorched recently.
There was also a pretty glowing thing inside.
The alien couldn't read, either, so the characters etched into the swinging plate meant nothing to it beyond another smattering of red color. There was a lot of small print, and two big blotches of red, which spelled out:
CAUTION . . . LASER.
The Beachball took one bounce and stuck itself to the wall just outside the loose panel. It peered inward with whatever it used for eyes.
Two beams of intense red light flashed deeper into the dark interior, still steady, still in proper line. They issued from a complex instrument close by the portal.
If the Beachball had been at all familiar with starship construction, it would have noted instantly that the join between the light-emitting device and its base was no longer solid. Shifting its position on the wall, it reached in with both claws, touching, feeling, probing curiously for more tactile information about the thing that ended in the pretty lights.
Dark Star Page 9
