As soon as it was off, Seaton gasped, “God, God!… It went for me… I could almost feel it…and Wilson ran to me…tried to throw his light at it…to attract it…it—it took him!…”
Parkerson murmured, “I know, I know,” helplessly, mechanically, as he unloosened the fastenings on the difolchrome suit. Wilson and Seaton had been the kind of buddies Parkerson and Wilkus were. “But Bill—you ran the camera, didn’t you? You exposed some of the film? Maybe we can trap these—”
Seaton nodded wordlessly, then slumped into one of the bunks, his head in his hands.
Crayley broke open the camera and let fall from its interior a thin sheaf of automatically developed photographic plates. He handed these to Helen, whose fingers had not been chilled by the unbelievable cold of the camera.
With wordless apprehension, Helen lifted the topmost plate and turned it slowly about under one of the control-room lights.
The plate contained a clear image. Helen handed it to her husband, scarcely understanding what she saw. But Crayley took one glance and said:
“It’s life, all right!”
With that, both Parkerson and Seaton rushed to stare over Crayley’s shoulder. For a moment all that could be heard was the swift breathing of the four explorers.
Then Crayley spoke again. “Life, Helen—a sentient form, perhaps not intelligent, but certainly sentient. Seaton, did you feel anything—out there?”
Seaton said, “Feel?… Nothing… Nothing except…well, it was like a continuous electric shock, growing stronger and stronger… Horrible!…”
Crayley studied the picture more closely. By comparing it with the metallic pebbles on the ground, he concluded that the shape was very large, perhaps four times as tall as a man, and proportionately huge in its other dimensions.
It was cone-shaped, mathematically clean in line and yet disturbingly vital. From its broad base a single long rod descended to the ground, and four smaller rods projected sideways from its pointed summit. Where the base of the rod rested on the soil there were many little flares, as though the shape were standing on a surface which constantly reacted to it with electrical coruscations.
Crayley said quietly, “The second plate, Helen.”
Helen looked at it, gasped. “Three of them.”
Crayley seized the plate and studied it. “Three—and see how they are grouped!”
“Five on this one,” said Helen, extending the third plate.
Crayley swiftly went through the rest of the plates without another word. When he had finished examining the twelfth and last, he looked up slowly, his lips set in a tight line.
“The ship is in danger,” he said.
Parkerson stared. “What do you mean, Gibbs?”
“Simply this. These cones are sentient entities. I think they are energy shapes, moving fields of force, endowed with intelligence and purpose. My guess is that they are connected in some way with the electromagnetic fields, the shock patches.”
He stood up, wincing as the wrenched tendon reminded him of its presence. “I think these cones generate ultraviolet and nourish themselves on the electromagnetic resources of the shock patches. Remember that protoplasm itself is an electrical phenomenon, shaped by energy and radiation. But protoplasm is the product of an environment only lightly charged with solar energies. Mercury is different.”
He handed the pictures to Parkerson. “Note this series, Fred. I think they prove that these cones are planning to attack. They seem to be forming some kind of a wedge-shaped formation. There are at least fifteen cones in the last shot—and all of them are pointing toward this ship!”
Crayley pivoted and stared out through the view port. Below was blackness, save for the faintest glimmerings of light where the tenuous Venus rays glittered on tiny pebble points. But the explorer knew that strange shapes of power were there, though he could not see them. And he also suspected that the cones were assembling on the immense shock patch which lay less than five hundred feet from the stern of the ship.
Time for action, Crayley thought regretfully. The odds were too great—this time. He sat again in his control seat, and turned to activate the starting motors of the great vessel.
Before he could do so, a violent glare pierced through the ship. A roar drowned out all other sound. A shaking detonation vibrated every object in the control room. The floor seemed to rise up, suddenly and horribly. Then came the familiar crushing weight of acceleration, and Crayley blacked out momentarily, despite the fact that he was cupped in the cushions of the control chair.
He regained consciousness by a feat of buried will, coming up hand over hand out of the mists of blackout. There was an ominous silence in the ship, punctured by eerie creaks and cracklings from the tortured cobalt-glass plates. Crayley glanced then at the vision port. The haunted plain, the distant, twisted hills of Mercury were gone, and in their place was black space and wheeling stars.
Instantly his trained eyes flicked over the dials and gauges of the control panel. The great atomic motors were still. The only operating machinery was the auxiliary plant—light, heat, atmosphere. A red light glowed above one gauge, indicating the firing of two of the chemical jets which were used to give nonradioactive thrust at takeoff.
Crayley’s quick mind assimilated and computed the evidence. The strange cones of the plain unquestionably had loosed a blast of energy which had fired the chemical jets and had sent the ship screaming upwards from the face of the planet. An occurrence so unlikely as to seem providential—except that Crayley knew that statistically it lay high in the realm of probability.
His fingers played the switches on the panel with a controlled frenzy. The silence ended with a dull thunder from the atom motors, and the ship steadied as they took hold. Crayley let out a noisy sigh of relief: The atomic fuels were immune even to the fantastic temperatures of the cone’s ultraviolet radiation. Artificial gravity and running lights came on, and at last the great cobalt-glass ship was under full control.
Only then did Crayley permit himself to look around.
Parkerson was huddled in a broken heap by the after bulkhead. Next to him lay Seaton, his head turning slowly, his eyelids fluttering. And—
“Helen!”
He limped to her, unconscious of his own wrenching pain; touched her body swiftly, deftly, in a frantic mixture of caresses and skillful probing for injuries. She moaned.
“Are you all right? Helen! Helen…”
She opened her eyes, moaned again, and then gave him the tiniest of smiles. “Wh-what..”
He helped her up. She was badly shaken but relatively unhurt. She had apparently hurtled back and struck Parkerson, and his body had cushioned the impact when they struck the bulkhead.
Crayley gently lowered Helen onto one of the benches and turned to Parkerson. He was unconscious, breathing painfully. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.
“Ribs broken,” said Crayley tersely. “Possible puncture. See to Seaton if you can, darling. I’ll take care of Fred.”
An hour later they were droning through the dark, building up acceleration for the long loop back to Earth. Seaton, his arm in a sling, crouched over the computer, checking their flight line. Helen sat by Parkerson’s bunk, watching the flow of plasma from a plastic container into his veins. The automatic privacy screen was partly drawn, concealing the front of the control room from Parkerson’s view.
“Home…” Parkerson said weakly. “It’s going to be good, Helen.”
She nodded. “Try not to talk, Parky.”
Ignoring her, Parkerson said, “Wilkus, Wilson, Grayson. Scottie, too. All dead. For what? Bloody unnecessary business. What has anyone gained because they’re dead?” Tears appeared under his lids. He shook them away angrily. “Sorry, Helen. But it’s such a waste.”
With a strange, tight smile, Helen rose and raised the automatic screen. “Look,”
she said softly.
Parkerson slowly turned his head, following her gaze. Crayley was there in the control chair. His shoulders were squared, his hands quiet on the ledge of the panel before him, his face lifted to the spangled immensities of space. He did not move.
She came back and sat down, her eyes first on the plasma bottle and then on the injured man. “Parky,” she whispered, “you wondered once whether he was human. Look at him now. We were driven off. They killed our men and hurt our ship. We were defeated. We cut and ran.” She smiled wryly. “But—look at him, Parky. He’s an explorer. He’s the new frontiersman, in an age which knows the greatest frontier of all.”
She pushed back her hair with a tired motion. “Maybe he isn’t human. Maybe he’s just humanity. Look at him, Parky. In spite of death and in spite of danger, in spite of life forms which have all the advantage of their own mystery—he’ll be back. Don’t you see it?”
Parkerson gazed at the still, strong figure and then at the woman.
“He’ll be back,” he whispered. “Yes—that’s it.” And as the full realization of what Helen Crayley had been saying flooded him, he said, “We’ll be back!”
ALIEN OFFER, by Al Sevcik
Originally published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, January 1959.
“You are General James Rothwell?”
Rothwell sighed. “Yes, Commander Aku. We have met several times.”
“Ah, yes. I recognize your insignia. Humans are so alike.” The alien strode importantly across the office, the resilient pads of his broad feet making little plopping sounds on the rug, and seated himself abruptly in the visitor’s chair beside Rothwell’s desk. He gave a sharp cry, and another alien, shorter, but sporting similar, golden fur, stepped into the office and closed the door. Both wore simple, brown uniforms, without ornamentation.
“I am here,” Aku said, “to tell you something.” He stared impassively at Rothwell for a minute, his fur-covered, almost human face completely expressionless, then his gaze shifted to the window, to the hot runways of New York International Airport and to the immense gray spaceship that, even from the center of the field, loomed above the hangars and passenger buildings. For an instant, a quick, unguessable emotion clouded the wide black eyes and tightened the thin lips, then it was gone.
Rothwell waited.
“General, Earth’s children must all be aboard my ships within one week. We will start to load on the sixth day, next Thursday.” He stood.
Rothwell locked eyes with the alien, and leaned forward, grinding his knuckles into the desk top. “You know that’s impossible. We can’t select 100,000 children from every country and assemble them in only six days.”
“You will do it.” The alien turned to leave.
“Commander Aku! Let me remind you…”
Aku spun around, eyes flashing. “General Rothwell! Let me remind you that two weeks ago I didn’t even know Earth existed, and since accidentally happening across your sun system and learning of your trouble I have had my entire trading fleet of a hundred ships in orbit about this planet while all your multitudinous political subdivisions have filled the air with talk and wrangle.
“I am sorry for Earth, but my allegiance is to my fleet and I cannot remain longer than seven more days and risk being caught up in your destruction. Now, either you accept my offer to evacuate as many humans as my ships will carry, or you don’t.” He paused. “You are the planet’s evacuation coordinator; you will give me an answer.”
Rothwell’s arms sagged, he sunk back down into his chair, all pretense gone. Slowly he swung around to face the window and the gray ship, standing like a Gargantuan sundial counting the last days of Earth. He almost whispered. “We are choosing the children. They will be ready in six days.”
He heard the door open and close. He was alone.
Five years ago, he thought, we cracked the secret of faster-than-light travel, and since then we’ve built about three dozen exploration ships and sent them out among the stars to see what they could see.
He stared blankly at the palms of his hand. I wonder what it was we expected to find?
We found that the galaxy was big, that there were a lot of stars, not so many planets, and practically no other life—at least no intelligence to compare with ours. Then… He jabbed a button on his intercom.
“Ed Philips here. What is it Jim?”
“Doc, are you sure your boys have hypo’d, couched, and hypno’d the Leo crew with everything you’ve got?”
The voice on the intercom sighed. “Jim, those guys haven’t got a memory of their own. We know everything about each one of them, from the hurts he got falling off tricycles to the feel of the first girl he kissed. Those men aren’t lying, Jim.”
“I never thought they were lying, Doc.” Rothwell paused for a minute and studied the long yellow hairs that grew sparsely across the back of his hand, thickened to a dense grove at his wrist, and vanished under the sleeve of his uniform. He looked back at the intercom. “Doc, all I know is that three perfectly normal guys got on board that ship, and when it came back we found a lot of jammed instruments and three men terrified almost to the point of insanity.”
“Jim, if you’d seen…”
Rothwell interrupted. “I know. Five radioactive planets with the fresh scars of cobalt bombs and the remains of civilizations. Then radar screens erupting crazily with signals from a multi-thousand ship space fleet; vector computers hurriedly plotting and re-plotting the fast-moving trajectory, submitting each time an unvarying answer for the fleet’s destination—our own solar system.” He slapped his hand flat against the desk. “The point is, Doc, it’s not much to go on, and we don’t dare send another ship to check for fear of attracting attention to ourselves. If we could only be sure.”
“Jim,” over the intercom, Philips’ voice seemed to waver slightly, “those men honestly saw what they say. I’d stake my life on it.”
“All of us are, Doc.” He flipped the off button. Just thirty days now, since the scout ship Leo’s discovery and the panicked dash for home with the warning. Not that the warning was worth much, he reflected, Earth had no space battle fleet. There had never been any reason to build one.
Then, two weeks ago, Aku’s trading fleet had descended from nowhere, having blundered, he said, across Earth’s orbit while on a new route between two distant star clusters. When told of the impending attack, Aku immediately offered to cancel his trip and evacuate as many humans as his ships could hold, so that humanity would at least survive, somewhere in the galaxy. Earth chose to accept his offer.
“Hobson’s choice,” Rothwell growled to himself. “No choice at all.” After years of handling hot and cold local wars and crises of every description, his military mind had become conditioned to a complete disbelief in fortuitous coincidence, and he gagged at the thought of Aku “just happening by.” Still frowning, he punched a yellow button on his desk, and reviewed in his mind the things he wanted to say.
“Jim! Isn’t everything all right?”
Chagrined, Rothwell scrambled to his feet, the President had never answered so quickly before. He faced the screen on the wall to his right and saluted, amazed once again at how old the man looked. Sparse white hair crisscrossed haphazardly over the President’s head, his face was lined with deep trenches that not even the most charitable could call wrinkles, and the faded eyes that stared from deep caverns no longer radiated the flaming vitality that had inspired victorious armies in the African war.
“Commander Aku was just here, sir. He demands that the children be ready for evacuation next Thursday. I told him that it would be damned difficult.”
The face on the screen paled perceptibly. “I hope you didn’t anger the commander!”
Rothwell ground his teeth. “I told him we’d deliver the goods on Thursday.”
Presidential lips tightened. “I don’t care for the way y
ou said that, General.”
Rothwell straightened. “I apologize, sir. It’s just that this whole lousy setup has me worried silly. I don’t like Aku making like a guardian angel and us having no choice but to dance to his harp.” His fingers clenched. “God knows we need his help, and I guess its wrong to ask too many questions, but how come he’s only landed one of his ships, and why is it that he and his lieutenant are the only aliens to leave that ship—the only aliens we’ve ever even seen? It just doesn’t figure out!” There, he thought, I’ve said it.
The President looked at him quietly for a minute, then answered softly, “I know, Jim, but what else can we do?” Rothwell winced at the shake in the old man’s voice.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Aku’s got us in a hell of a spot.”
“Uh, Jim. You haven’t said this in public, have you?”
Rothwell snorted. “No, sir, I don’t care for a panic.”
“There, there, Jim.” The President smiled weakly. “We can’t expect the aliens to act like we do, can we?” He began to adopt the preacher tone he used so effectively in his campaign speeches. “We must be thankful for the chance breeze that wafted Commander Aku to these shores, and for his help. Maybe the war fleet won’t arrive after all and everything will turn out all right. You’re doing a fine job, Jim.” The screen went blank.
Rothwell felt sick. He felt sorry for the President, but sorrier for the Western Democratic Union, to be captained by such a feeble thing. Leaning back in his chair, he glared at the empty screen. “You can’t solve problems by wishing them away. You knew that once.”
His mind wandered, and for a minute he thought he could actually feel the growing pressure of three billion people waiting for the computers of Moscow Central to make their impartial choice from the world’s children. Trained mathematicians, the best that could be mustered from every major country, monitored each phase of the project to insure its absolute honesty. One hundred thousand children were to be picked completely at random; brown, yellow, black, white, red; sick or well; genius or moron; every child had an equal chance. This fact, this fact alone gave every parent hope, and possibly prevented world-wide rioting.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 43
