He shrugged. “The signals ought to be registering full blast now. We’ll see what degree system this is. But you can start hoping hard right now.”
At the control board, he cautiously manipulated the room into darkness and set the automatics — a picture took form on a screen on the opposite wall.
At first there was only a point of light in the middle of a starry sky, then a planet floating brightly in the dark space, continents and oceans plainly visible. A voice came out of the screen:
“This star system contains one inhabited planet, the third from the Sun, called Earth by its inhabitants. It was colonized by Galactics about seven thousand years ago in the usual manner. It is now in the third degree of development, having attained a limited form of space travel little more than a hundred years ago. It — “
With a swift movement, the man cut off the picture and turned on the light, then looked across at the woman in a blank, triumphant silence.
“Third degree!” he said softly, and there was an almost incredulous note in his voice. “Only third degree. Merla, do you realize what this means? This is the opportunity of the ages. I’m going to call the Dreegh tribe. If we can’t get away with several tankers of blood and a whole battery of ‘life,’ we don’t deserve to be immortal. We — “
He turned toward the communicator, and for that exultant moment caution was a dim thing in the back of his mind. From the corner of his eye, he saw the woman flow from the edge of the cot. Too late he twisted aside. The frantic jerk saved him only partially; it was their cheeks, not their lips that met.
Blue flame flashed from him to her. The burning energy seared his cheek to instant, bleeding rawness. He half fell to the floor from the shock; and then, furious with the intense agony, he fought free.
“I’ll break your bones!” he raged.
Her laughter, unlovely with her own suppressed fury, floated up at him from the floor, where he had flung her. She snarled:
“So you did have a secret supply of ‘life’ for yourself. You damned double-crosser!”
His black mortification dimmed before the stark realization that anger was useless. Tense with the weakness that was already a weight on his muscles, he whirled toward the control board, and began feverishly to make the adjustments that would pull the ship back into normal space and time.
The body urge grew in him swiftly, a dark, remorseless need. Twice, black nausea sent him reeling to the cot; but each time he fought back to the control board. He sat there finally at the controls, head drooping, conscious of the numbing tautness that crept deeper, deeper — Almost, he drove the ship too fast. It turned a blazing white when at last it struck the atmosphere of the third planet. But those hard metals held their shape; and the terrible speeds yielded to the fury of the reversers and to the pressure of the air that thickened with every receding mile.
It was the woman who helped his faltering form into the tiny lifeboat. He lay there, gathering strength, staring with tense eagerness down at the blazing sea of lights that was the first city he had seen on the night side of this strange world.
Dully, he watched as the woman carefully eased the small ship into the darkness behind a shed in a little back alley; and, because succor seemed suddenly near, sheer hope enabled him to walk beside her to the dimly lighted residential street nearby.
He would have walked on blankly into the street, but the woman’s fingers held him back into the shadows of the alleyway.
“Are you mad?” she whispered. “Lie down. We’ll stay right here till someone comes.”
The cement was hard beneath his body, but after a moment of the painful rest it brought, he felt a faint surge of energy; and he was able to voice his bitter thought:
“If you hadn’t stolen most of my carefully saved ‘life,’ we wouldn’t be in this desperate position. You know well that it’s more important that I remain at full power.”
In the dark beside him, the woman lay quiet for a while; then her defiant whisper came:
“We both need a change of blood and a new charge of ‘life.’ Perhaps I did take a little too much out of you, but that was because I had to steal it. You wouldn’t have given it to me of your own free will, and you know it.”
For a time, the futility of argument held him silent, but, as the minutes dragged, that dreadful physical urgency once more tainted his thoughts, he said heavily:
“You realize of course that we’ve revealed our presence. We should have waited for the others to come. There’s no doubt at all that our ship was spotted by the Galactic Observer in this system before we reached the outer planets. They’ll have tracers on us wherever we go, and, no matter where we bury our machine, they’ll know its exact location. It is impossible to hide the interstellar drive energies; and, since they wouldn’t make the mistake of bringing such energies to a third-degree planet, we can’t hope to locate them in that fashion.
“But we must expect an attack of some kind. I only hope one of the great Galactics doesn’t take part in it.”
“One of them!” Her whisper was a gasp, then she snapped irritably, “Don’t try to scare me. You’ve told me time and again that — “
“All right, all right!” He spoke grudgingly, wearily. “A million years have proven that they consider us beneath their personal attention. And” — in spite of his appalling weakness, scorn came — “let any of the kind of agents they have in these lower category planets try to stop us.”
“Hush!” Her whisper was tense. “Footsteps! Quick, get to your feet!”
He was aware of the shadowed form of her rising; then her hands were tugging at him. Dizzily, he stood up.
“I don’t think,” he began wanly, “that I can — “
“Jeel!” Her whisper beat at him; her hands shook him. “It’s a man and a woman. They’re ‘life,’ Jeel, ‘life’!”
Life!
He straightened with a terrible effort. A spark of the unquenchable will to live that had brought him across the black miles and the blacker years, burst into flames inside him. Lightly, swiftly, he fell into step beside Merla, and strode beside her into the open. He saw the shapes of the man and the woman.
In the half-night under the trees of that street, the couple came toward them, drawing aside to let them pass; first the woman came, then the man — and it was as simple as if all his strength had been there in his muscles.
He saw Merla launch herself at the man; and then he was grabbing the woman, his head bending instantly for that abnormal kiss. Afterward — after they had taken the blood, too — grimness came to the man, a hard fabric of thought and counterthought, that slowly formed into purpose; he said:
“We’ll leave the bodies here.”
Her startled whisper rose in objection, but he cut her short harshly: “Let me handle this. These dead bodies will draw to this city news gatherers, news reporters or whatever their breed are called on this planet; and we need such a person now. Somewhere in the reservoir of facts possessed by a person of this type must be clues, meaningless to him, but by which we can discover the secret base of the Galactic Observer in this system. We must find that base, discover its strength, and destroy it if necessary when the tribe comes.”
His voice took on a steely note: “And now, we’ve got to explore this city, find a much frequented building, under which we can bury our ship, learn the language, replenish our own vital supplies — and capture that reporter.
“After I’m through with him” — his tone became silk smooth — “he will undoubtedly provide you with that physical diversion which you apparently crave when you have been particularly chemical.”
He laughed gently, as her fingers gripped his arm in the darkness, a convulsive gesture; her voice came: “Thank you, Jeel, you do understand, don’t you?”
2
Behind Leigh, a door opened. Instantly the clatter of voices in the room faded to a murmur. He turned alertly, tossing his cigar
ette onto the marble floor, and stepping on it, all in one motion.
Overhead, the lights brightened to daylight intensity; and in that blaze he saw what the other eyes were already staring at: the two bodies, the man’s and the woman’s, as they were wheeled in.
The dead couple lay side by side on the flat, gleaming top of the carrier. Their bodies were rigid, their eyes closed; they looked as dead as they were, and not at all, Leigh thought, as if they were sleeping.
He caught himself making a mental note of that fact — and felt abruptly shocked.
The first murders on the North American continent in twenty-seven years. And it was only another job. By Heaven, he was tougher than he’d ever believed.
He grew aware that the voices had stopped completely. The only sound was the hoarse breathing of the man nearest him — and then the scrape of his own shoes as he went forward.
His movement acted like a signal on that tense group of men. There was a general pressing forward. Leigh had a moment of hard anxiety; and then his bigger, harder muscles brought him where he wanted to be, opposite the two heads.
He leaned forward in dark absorption. His fingers probed gingerly the neck of the woman, where the incisions showed. He did not look up at the attendant, as he said softly:
“This is where the blood was drained?”
“Yes.”
Before he could speak again, another reporter interjected: “Any special comment from the police scientists? The murders are more than a day old now. There ought to be something new.”
Leigh scarcely heard. The woman’s body, electrically warmed for embalming, felt eerily lifelike to his touch. It was only after a long moment that he noticed her lips were badly, almost brutally bruised.
His gaze flicked to the man; and there were the same neck cuts, the same torn lips. He looked up, questions quivered on his tongue — and remained unspoken as realization came that the calm-voiced attendant was still talking. The man was saying:
“ — normally, when the electric embalmers are applied, there is resistance from the static electricity of the body. Curiously, that resistance was not present in either body.”
Somebody said: “Just what does that mean?”
“This static force is actually a form of life force, which usually trickles out of a corpse over a period of a month. We know of no way to hasten the process, but the bruises on the lips show distinct burns, which are suggestive.”
There was a craning of necks, a crowding forward; and Leigh allowed himself to be pushed aside. He stopped attentively, as the attendant said: “Presumably, a pervert could have kissed with such violence.”
“I thought,” Leigh called distinctly, “there were no more perverts since Professor Ungarn persuaded the government to institute his brand of mechanical psychology in all schools, thus ending murder, theft, war and all unsocial perversions.”
The attendant in his black frock coat hesitated; then: “A very bad one seems to have been missed.”
He finished: “That’s all, gentlemen. No clues, no promise of an early capture, and only this final fact: We’ve wirelessed Professor Ungarn and, by great good fortune, we caught him on his way to Earth from his meteorite retreat near Jupiter. He’ll be landing shortly after dark, in a few hours now.”
The lights dimmed. As Leigh stood frowning, watching the bodies being wheeled out, a phrase floated out of the gathering chorus of voices:
“ — The kiss of death — “
“I tell you,” another voice said, “the captain of this space liner swears it happened — the spaceship came past him at a million miles an hour, and it was slowing down, get that, slowing down — two days ago.”
“ — The vampire case! That’s what I’m going to call it — “
That’s what Leigh called it, too, as he talked briefly into his wrist communicator. He finished: “I’m going to supper now, Jim.”
“O.K., Bill.” The local editor’s voice came metallically. “And say, I’m supposed to commend you. Nine thousand papers took the Planetarian Service on this story, as compared with about forty-seven hundred who bought from Universal, who got the second largest coverage.
“And I think you’ve got the right angle for today also. Husband and wife, ordinary young couple, taking an evening’s walk. Some devil hauls up alongside them, drains their blood into a tank, their life energy onto a wire or something — people will believe that, I guess. Anyway, you suggest it could happen to anybody; so be careful, folks. And you warn that, in these days of interplanetary speeds, he could be anywhere tonight for his next murder.
“As I said before, good stuff. That’ll keep the story frying hard for tonight. Oh, by the way — “
“Shoot!”
“A kid called half an hour ago to see you. Said you expected him.”
“A kid?” Leigh frowned to himself.
“Name of Patrick. High school age, about sixteen. No, come to think of it, that was only my first impression. Eighteen, maybe twenty, very bright, confident, proud.”
“I remember now,” said Leigh, “college student. Interview for a college paper. Called me up this afternoon. One of those damned persuasive talkers. Before I knew it, I was signed up for supper at Constantine’s.”
“That’s right. I was supposed to remind you. O.K.?”
Leigh shrugged. “I promised,” he said.
Actually, as he went out into the blaze of late afternoon, sunlit street, there was not a thought in his head. Nor a premonition.
Around him, the swarm of humankind began to thicken. Vast buildings discharged the first surge of the five o’clock tidal wave — and twice Leigh felt the tug at his arm before it struck him that someone was not just bumping him.
He turned, and stared down at a pair of dark, eager eyes set in a brown, wizened face. The little man waved a sheaf of papers at him. Leigh caught a glimpse of writing in longhand on the papers. Then the fellow was babbling:
“Mr. Leigh, hundred dollars for these … biggest story — “
“Oh,” said Leigh. His interest collapsed; then his mind roused itself from its almost blank state; and pure politeness made him say:
“Take it up to the Planetarian office. Jim Brian will pay you what the story is worth.”
He walked on, the vague conviction in his mind that the matter was settled. Then, abruptly, there was the tugging at his arm again.
“Scoop!” the little man was muttering. “Professor Ungarn’s log, all about a spaceship that came from the stars. Devils in it who drink blood and kiss people to death!”
“See here!” Leigh began, irritated; and then he stopped physically and mentally. A strange ugly chill swept through him. He stood there, swaying a little from the shock of the thought that was frozen in his brain:
The newspapers with those details of “blood” and “kiss” were not on the street yet, wouldn’t be for another five minutes.
The man was saying: “Look, it’s got Professor Ungarn’s name printed in gold on the top of each sheet, and it’s all about how he first spotted the ship eighteen light years out, and how it came all that distance in a few hours … and he knows where it is now and — “
Leigh heard, but that was all. His reporter’s brain, that special, highly developed department, was whirling with a little swarm of thoughts that suddenly straightened into a hard, bright pattern; and in that tightly built design, there was no room for any such brazen coincidence as this man coming to him here in this crowded street.
He said: “Let me see those!” And reached as he spoke.
The papers came free from the other’s fingers into his hands, hut Leigh did not even glance at them. Flis brain was crystal-clear, his eyes cold; he snapped:
“I don’t know what game you’re trying to pull. I want to know three things, and make your answers damned fast! One: How did you pick me out, name and job and all, here in this packed street of a city I haven’t b
een in for a year?”
He was vaguely aware of the little man trying to speak, stammering incomprehensible words. But he paid no attention. Remorselessly, he pounded on:
“Two: Professor Ungarn is arriving from Jupiter in three hours. How do you explain your possession of papers he must have written, less than two days ago?”
“Look, boss,” the man chattered, “you’ve got me all wrong — “
“My third question,” Leigh said grimly, “is how are you going to explain to the police your preknowledge of the details of — murder?”
“Huh!” The little man’s eyes were glassy, and for the first time pity came to Leigh. He said almost softly:
“All right, fellah, start talking.”
The words came swiftly, and at first they were simply senseless sounds; only gradually did coherence come.
“ — And that’s the way it was, boss. I’m standing there, and this kid comes up to me and points you out, and gives me five bucks and those papers you’ve got, and tells me what I’m supposed to say to you and — “
“Kid!” said Leigh; and the first shock was already in him.
“Yeah, kid about sixteen; no, more like eighteen or twenty and he gives me the papers and — “
“This kid,” said Leigh, “would you say he was of college age?”
“That’s it, boss; you’ve got it. That’s just what he was. You know him, eh? O.K., that leaves me in the clear, and I’ll be going — “
“Wait!” Leigh called, but the little man seemed suddenly to realize that he need only run, for he jerked into a mad pace; and people stared, and that was all. He vanished around a corner, and was gone forever.
Leigh stood, frowning, reading the thin sheaf of papers. And there was nothing beyond what the little man had already conveyed by his incoherent word of mouth, simply a vague series of entries on sheets from a loose-leaf notebook.
Written down, the tale about the spaceship and its occupants lacked depth, and seemed more unconvincing each passing second. True, there was the single word “Ungarn” inscribed in gold on the top of each sheet but — Leigh shook himself. The sense of silly hoax grew so violently that he thought with abrupt anger: If that damned fool college kid really pulled a stunt like — The thought ended; for the idea was as senseless as everything that had happened.
Adventures in Time and Space Page 77
