The Alien MEGAPACK®

by Talmage Powell

  There had been hostility in Featherstone’s eyes. A little of the hostility went away when Graham spoke. But the grim central core of his thinking did not change.

  “I believe you,” Featherstone said. “Odd as it is, I believe you would actually help me if you could.”

  “I can try,” Graham said. “I think I told you once before that you had nothing to fear from me, if you had made me an honest discovery and were using it for honest purposes.”

  “I wasn’t using it for honest purposes.”

  “When you are willing to admit that, I am willing to help you. What is a draal? I would like to know.”

  “The draal?” Featherstone paused. Graham had the impression that the man was listening before he answered. His face was tense, his eyes alert.

  The night wind went over the roof of the house, softly sighing. Featherstone looked up, listened to the wind, made, certain it was only the wind, before he answered.

  When he spoke his voice was the lowest possible whisper.

  “The draal is a brain!”

  He looked quickly around the room as if he was afraid someone was listening.

  “A brain?” Graham spoke.

  “Yes. Speak in a whisper, will you? It probably doesn’t make any difference but I feel a little safer when we speak softly.”

  * * * *

  The wind, blowing through an open window, tugged at a curtain. Featherstone’s gaze concentrated with terrible intensity on that moving piece of cloth.

  “It’s only the wind,” he muttered at last.

  “You were telling me about the draal?” Graham whispered.

  “Yes. So I was. So I was. The draal is a brain—” He paused, groped for words. “When I say the draal is a brain, I don’t mean that it is like a human brain. It isn’t. The only parallel between the draal and the human brain is that both of them are organs capable of rational thought. The parallel ends there. There is no comparison between the quality of the thinking of the two organs. So far as I have been able to determine, the thinking power of the draal begins at about the highest level of which the human mind is capable.”

  Again he looked around the room seeking some invisible listener whose presence he suspected but could not detect.

  “Where did this brain come from?” Graham questioned.

  “It was found in a ditch,” Featherstone answered.

  “A—!” Graham abruptly shut up. He looked closely at Featherstone, seeking the tell-tale marks that would reveal a wandering mind. A brain found in a ditch! It seemed incredible.

  “It was in a plastic ball that was incased in lead,” Featherstone continued. “How long it had been in that ditch, I do not know, but it must have been there for thousands of years. It was covered with compacted glacial detritus that must have been deposited during the last ice age.”

  He began pacing the floor again as he sought the answer to some perplexing problem.

  “I have thought and thought about the origin of the draal,” he continued, still speaking in a whisper and still keeping a wary eye on the blowing of the curtain at the window. “And I have not reached a conclusion. If it originated on earth, then there must have been other pre-human races of tremendous intelligence on this planet. I think a far more likely solution for its origin is that it came from somewhere in space, and reaching earth just as the last ice age was ending, was somehow caught and buried in a flood of water flowing from a glacier.”

  Graham was silent. Was Featherstone telling the truth or was he putting on a superb act, building fantasy on fantasy, erecting a towering dream structure of other worlds and other universes? Graham was not certain, but more and more he was beginning to suspect that the faker was telling the truth. Certainly Featherstone’s words were opening long avenues into space and time, were revealing tantalizing glimpses of the secrets that went into the making of the worlds.

  “Another problem I have not been able to solve,” Featherstone spoke again, “is whether the draal is itself an independent brain or whether it is only the relay station of some other greater brain that is located somewhere else.”

  “Ah,” Graham said.

  * * * *

  Featherstone’s piercing eyes were on him. “You think you have a brain,” he said. “And you think your thoughts originate in your brain. Did it ever occur to you that your thoughts might not be your own, that your brain might be only a relay station receiving impulses from some infinitely greater, mightier, stronger, brain located perhaps even outside space and time as we have come to know them?”

  Graham stared at this enigmatical man. “And I thought you were just a crook!” he whispered.

  “I am a crook,” Featherstone answered. “But not just a crook.”

  “I’ll say you’re not! Did you know that when you talked about the human mind being only a relay station operated by some greater mind you were coming very close to some of the most advanced scientific thinking of this century?”

  “Of course I know it,” Featherstone answered.

  “I think,” Graham said slowly. “I think perhaps I am beginning to trust you.”

  “You have to trust me,” Featherstone answered. “And so does this girl. And, so does Louie. And so does the whole damned human race tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Haven’t you yet realized what those things down in that building mean?” Featherstone asked.

  “I’m beginning to realize it,” Graham answered grimly. “I didn’t realize it at first, because I thought you could control them.”

  “I’m not at all certain of my control. At first, when there was only one of them, I was sure of my control. That was what led me astray. I was tricked and didn’t know it.”

  “I guessed something like that. And I didn’t know whether to shoot you or help you.”

  “The time when shooting me would do any good is passed,” Featherstone said. “If you had shot me two months ago, it might have done some good. I say might. Probably, if I had been taken out of the picture, the draal would merely have fastened on someone else and the result would have been the same whether I was living or dead. No, Graham, this is no time to shoot me. I’m the one man on earth who has to stay alive until—” He paused “—until it is determined whether or not the human race is to remain the dominant species on this planet.”

  Mildred Chambers had been following this conversation in silence. Changing emotions showed on her face as she listened now to Graham and now to Featherstone. Doubt, disbelief, uncertainty, had all from time to time showed on her face. Disbelief showed there now.

  “That sounds silly,” she spoke. “Those devils may be dangerous, they may be deadly, but there are only a few of them, only as many as I have fingers on one hand. There are hundreds of millions of men. How can four or five creatures, even with tremendous powers, overcome the millions of humans?”

  Featherstone looked at her. “I wonder what dinosaurs thought when a little animal something like a shrew squeaked at them around the edges of their marshes, hopping frantically away from their thundering feet? If the dinosaurs had been capable of thinking, I wonder if they would have thought silly the idea that the far-removed descendants of this little shrew might sometime supplant them? There were millions of them. Any one of them could have crushed the squeaky little shrew without knowing it. Yet the dinosaurs are gone and the descendents of the shrews rule this planet today.”

  He shrugged. “Evolution and survival are the only different words for battle. You are either stronger, smarter, swifter, than something else, or you die. That is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. And you cannot evade the fight. The human race has fought the battle of evolution since this planet cooled enough for life to appear on it. The race has always won. If it hadn’t won, it wouldn’t be here. Tonight, and tomorrow night, and all the other nights that are to be until the issue is decided, the human ra
ce must fight again. Either we survive or the draal survives. In this battle there is no compromise.”

  * * * *

  He paused. “Only tonight, when I learned what had happened to your father and what had happened to a farmer’s cow, did I finally realize that what I had thought was merely a method of becoming wealthy was in reality the bugle call to battle. And I also realized—to my eternal pain—that the bugle call had found me playing the part of traitor to my own kind.”

  For the first time he forgot to whisper. The words rang clear and compelling in the silent room.

  “I hope,” Featherstone continued. “I fervently hope that the historians of the future—if there are any—will write that only through ignorance of the true nature of the enemy did I play the part of a traitor. I know, however, that ignorance is no excuse. In the battle of evolution, in the battle to determine which species survives and which dies, only results count. You either survive or die and ignorance is not an excuse for dying but a reason for it. I know this. I hope, however, that the historians will write that the ignorant traitor was at least sorry.”

  Graham felt the struggle going on in the man’s soul. Featherstone had been false to the oldest loyalty of the race, the loyalty to ones own kind. He was paying part of the price in bitterness. Graham wondered how he would pay the whole price. For always the whole price is exacted for disloyalty. And the price is never merely a single pound of flesh.

  “The draal tricked me,” Featherstone continued. “I thought I could use it. All the time it was using me. It taught me how to create the dreth, how to blend and mold and feed the forces that go into that hideous little monstrosity—”

  “Dreth?” Graham questioned.

  “I forgot you didn’t know. The thing that killed the dog, that was a dreth. The things you saw down in the building below us, those were dreths. If you ask me what they are I can only tell you that they are fields of electro-magnetic force. As to the powers they possess, I can only say I don’t know, but I suspect their ability to kill by turning flesh into bone is merely a demonstration of a minor ability. They go through glass as if it didn’t exist, they can go through steel, through copper, through any metal that is not several inches thick. Thickness stops them. They can’t go through a brick or a stone wall. Too thick. But they can go through the wall of a frame house or a wooden box without even slowing down. They move at a speed of hundreds—possibly thousands—of miles per hour. They may be alive. I don’t know about that. They are under the control of the draal, which sends them out and calls them back at will. Although they do not possess sight as we know sight, they are most certainly aware of everything around them. They are the things I was using in New York to scare money out of millionaires.”

  “You said the draal controls them,” Graham pointed out. “Yet in your studio in New York, you seemed to control one of them.”

  “Wrong. My control was not direct. It was through the draal. In other words, I told the draal what I wanted done—choosing always something that the dreth could do—and the draal sent the dreth to do the job. At no time did I have direct control over the dreth.”

  “How did you tell the draal what you wanted done?”

  “Telepathy,” Featherstone answered.

  “Telepathy?” Graham echoed.

  “Certainly. Direct contact between minds. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I have no telepathic powers. It wasn’t my mind, nor the power of my mind, that made the trick work. The draal has the telepathic powers, not me. It reached my mind, learned what I wanted, sent the dreth to do the job. The draal, in other words, can reach and read my mind. For the love of heaven, Graham, why do you think I’ve been talking in a whisper, why do you think I’ve been jumping every time the wind blows that curtain, why do you think I’m so blasted scared? Because the draal can read my mind!

  “All the time I’ve been talking to you, Graham, I’ve been afraid the draal was reading my mind. I’m scared to death that it knows what I have been saying and what I have been thinking. If it has been reading my mind—if it knows that I realize how dangerous it is and what a horrible menace it is not only to us but to the whole human race—then at, any second a dreth may whistle through the walls of this room and kill all of us!”

  The wind tugged at the curtain as Featherstone stopped speaking. Every sense tense with expectancy, he stared at the moving cloth. There was silence in the room, the sort of silence that comes from dreadful expectancy.

  * * * *

  When I first found the draal, my own greed obscured my vision,” Featherstone said. “I was so intrigued with how I could turn the discovery to my own advantage—how I could use the draal to make myself rich—that I did not realize it was using me. When it told me how to make a dreth, I was delighted. I could use the dreth to clean up. Only when the second dreth appeared out of the same crucible of force in which the first one was created did I begin to become suspicious. One dreth was all right. I could use one of them. Two of them, however, I did not need. Then there were three, then four, then five of them. My suspicions grew stronger. When I learned of the death of Mr. Chambers, my suspicions became certainties. The draal was using me.”

  His whispering voice faded into silence and Graham got a glimpse of the grim drama that had been played here in this hillside house. Featherstone had tried to use the draal. And had been used instead!

  “The draal itself is almost helpless,” Featherstone continued. “It can barely move. Possibly, at one time, it possessed full, free-ranging, unlimited motive powers, but in the centuries during which it was buried in the ground, it lost almost all of its ability to move. Having no hands, it cannot use tools. A man without legs or arms would be in much the same position as the draal. Such a man could not move, nor could he use tools to make himself a pair of artificial legs, or a gun to defend himself. He might have the most brilliant and powerful mind of any individual in the human race but the only way he could use his mind would be to tell someone else what to do and how to do it.”

  He paused. Off in the night a whippoorwill was calling.

  “The draal used me as its legs and arms,” he continued. “It used me as its tool. I brought to it the equipment it needed. And it flattered me, oh so subtly it flattered me! It told me what a smart person I was, how intelligent I was, and how the dreth would aid me. I never did realize that its real purpose was to get a dreth created, that once a dreth was created the draal was probably the most powerful entity on this planet!”

  He looked at Graham. “Now you understand why I said I have played the part of a traitor to my own kind. I have brought into existence a monster the like of which the human race has never seen. Because of me the bugle call of battle is blowing tonight all over the world! Graham—” clenched fist smacked into open palm in a sound as loud in that stillness as a pistol shot—“Graham, we either destroy the draal, or destroy the dreth and thus take away all powers from it, or there is in motion a force that will either conquer or destroy the human race. It’s either or else, Graham. Either or else.”

  “What do you propose to do?” Graham said slowly. “How are you going to destroy the draal, how are you going to render it powerless?”

  “That’s what I don’t know,” Featherstone answered. “Oh, I know how to destroy it, or think I know how. Actually the plastic ball in which it is encased seems fragile. A single quick blow from a hammer ought to smash it. The question is how to hit that single blow and stay alive! If you try to strike it, it will read your mind, and you will be dead before you can pick up a hammer.”

  * * * *

  He began to pace the floor again. As he walked, he talked to himself.

  “It’s got to be done right away. Tonight. There are five of the dreth now; Tomorrow there may be ten. Every new dreth is a new weapon. So it’s got to be done now. And I’m the man who has got to do it.”

  Featherstone shuddered away from that decision. He didn’t wan
t to decide that he was the man who had to destroy the draal. He didn’t want to take that chance. He wanted to stay alive as much as any man. The loyalty to his kind, the loyalty to his own people, was driving him. He took a deep breath, stopped pacing.

  “I’ll go do it,” he said.

  “And I’ll go with you.” Graham said.

  Featherstone stared at him in blank astonishment. “You will not!” he said.

  “This is my fight too,” Graham argued. “You may need help, and need it badly.”

  “I’m not thinking about that,” Featherstone answered. “You are a stranger to the draal. The instant you step inside that building it will begin probing into your mind. It will sense your intentions in a second. No, Graham, you’re not going with me.”

  The ghost of a smile showed on the lean face. “Though I thank you for your good intentions.”

  “What about it reading your mind?” Graham retorted.

  “It knows me. It has accepted me. Unless I do something to arouse its suspicions, it will pay no attention to me. Louie, where are you going?”

  The little scar-faced man had started to sneak from the room.

  “I—I was just—just going to step aside for a breath of fresh air,” he answered. His face was gray with sudden fear.

  “You were going to take a run-out powder on me,” Featherstone accused. “But you’re not going to get away with it. You are going to help me carry the last load of stuff down to that building.”

  “No!” Louie whispered. “Not down there. Not when you’re going to try—”

  “You’ve been helping all evening,” Featherstone answered. “You’ve been in and out of that building a dozen times tonight. The draal knows you. You will be safe enough.

  “Supposing I fail?” Featherstone grunted. “Come on, Louie. I won’t fail. Get hold of the other end of this box. No Louie, there is no use in trying to argue. You have been with me all evening. If you don’t make this trip with me, your absence might arouse the suspicions of the draal.”