by Zach Hughes
Earth, the jungles might be still full of tigers, hip deep in them, with man a small, frightened thing running for his life and hiding in holes in the ground. The planet looked deceptively peaceful. A water and oxygen world is beautiful from space. Blues and the cover of clouds, a large storm system in the southern hemisphere. Winter in the northern temperate zone. He boarded the scout in his mobile form and blinked to within the atmosphere to begin his sweeps. He had selected the largest landmass, the one that had been populated most densely by the small, sluglike creatures—the planet's dominant form of life. Moving at low altitudes, slightly higher than 1,500 meters, he scanned the ground. The first thing that came to his attention was the total absence of the little animals. Where there had been millions, there were none. He lowered, slowed his speed. A dozen instruments found and analyzed a new substance, piled
and strewn, a reeking, oily, glutinous mass. It was in evidence all over the landscape. He did not take time to collect a sample. He returned to his high speed survey. Hours later, he was convinced that the largest landmass was not only devoid of animal life, but was empty of the presence of any alien visible to his detection instruments. Reporting his findings to the others aboard the dark ship, he flashed across an ocean to the second continental landmass. The findings were the same. Scattered islands and two subcontinental masses were yet to be searched. He chose to cover the larger area first. Once again he found that
the little slugs were no longer in evidence, only great accumulations of that glutinous material he had observed on both major landmasses. He had confined his search to daylight areas, adjusting his flight plan
to the planet's rotation. There was left only the ocean islands, some rather extensive chains in the southern oceans. He approached one of the larger islands from the sea, flying low and fast, lifting the scout over the escarpment and reading the findings of his instruments as they scanned
the hills and valleys of the interior of the island. At first, he received no life signals near the coast. Then, inland, he began to get scattered blips revealing the presence of the slugs. And, lifting over the peak of the dead volcano at the center and looking down into a small, beautiful, forested
valley, he saw his instruments leap wildly. Below him was a life-force of an astounding intensity. He slowed. He saw the thing in a jungle clearing. Its pale hump of a back towered above the tall trees surrounding it. Its bulk was, he estimated, in the hundreds of metric tons. Hovering over it, he had microseconds to assess and record. Later, when he had time to look at the visuals, he could not believe that his first instantaneous impressions had been so vividly correct. The form of the creature was a blobby globe. At the front of the globe, a huge maw as wide as the bulk and lined with hundreds of small, sharp teeth. Two armlike appendages extended forward from beside the maw; they were occupied with gathering and scooping up dozens of the slug animals, which had been herded into the clearing. The small animals waited patiently to be captured and then, unresisting, they allowed themselves to be shoveled into the maw. And behind the maw, in the hump of the globular body, huge muscles writhed with a swallowing motion. Behind the engorged belly at the rearmost extension, excrement was training out in a sort of obscene tail, even as the creature ate. In that instant, intent on destruction. Plank readied the small weapons
aboard the scout. But fast as his electronic reflexes were, the creature was faster. A vast mental roar filled his mind, paralyzed him for that microsecond in which the creature below continued to exist. Then there was quiet. Below him in the clearing, the remaining slug creatures began to nibble foliage. The only evidence of the monster was a reeking pile of the glutinous substance covering large areas of the landmasses of the planet. The thing was gone. Instantly, Plank blinked the scout out into the space between the planet and its sun where the dark ship with Hara and Heath waited. He came out into normal space within 100 meters of the ship, just in time to see it begin to break into colorful planes and disintegrate. Although the loss was a pain in his non-existent heart, he acted instantly, blinking toward the Pride. He boarded and checked. He was alone. The ship was intact. Hara was gone. He had insisted on tracking the tiger and the beast had consumed, not the hunter, but the one most dear to him. Plank screamed into the emptiness of the ship. It was a hoarse whisper of a scream, emerging from his non-existent, fume-scarred throat. It was a sound of desperation, of pain, of mortal agony. And then it was silent. He took but a few seconds to decide his course. Below him, the planet that once had teemed with life was barren. Only a few of the small animals remained on scattered islands. They had come, led to the planet by his instruments. He had surprised one of them and he had failed. He had been too slow to take advantage of the surprise, but if he ever had another chance, he'd be faster. He longed to have Hara near, to be able to tell her, look, we have at least some answers. They are the thing of a nightmare, not some benevolent superior form of life. They had me find that planet to provide them with a meal. And the flesh of those slug animals is surprisingly similar to the flesh of those on… Earth. Was it next? So the choice was whether or not to blink directly home. All this passed through his mind in a few seconds, before the message came. He had no communicator on the Pride, but he heard/felt the words. Plank, said the voice in his head, you were naughty. You interrupted us during our favorite game. For that you should be punished, but since you were good and faithful in bringing us the others, we will forgive, even as we enjoy. Pushing the power to the limit, using the longest blinks possible, Plank flashed through space. His destination was not Earth. The voice of the
tiger was in his ears and he knew, instinctively, the point of origin of that voice. He was sure, as sure as he'd ever been of anything, that he'd meet his tiger again on the tinker-toy planet. CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Pride's memory banks held the coordinates for the route back to the tinker-toy planet, but the trip was still time consuming. Plank would not allow himself to think that he might arrive too late. He found it difficult to believe that a race that could create near miracles could be represented by the thing he'd seen on Plank's World. Nor could he accept the evidence which told him that the super-being, that thing of maw and belly and teeth, had emptied a planet of life in a period of weeks. A horror was there that was almost comical. The plot, he told himself, wouldn't even be acceptable for a kiddies' horror show back home. The monster that ate the world. Indeed. And yet a monster had eaten a world. A sane man just cannot believe that a being who considers man a mere meal exists in the galaxy. But how else to explain? There was the suggestion, made in the endless hours of speculation during the trip to Plank's World, that the other victims of the disappearances had, like Plank, been integrated into ships. Which, to Plank's mind, was only the least of several evils. Hara a starship? For the first time he allowed himself to assess his own situation. Since his awakening inside the new Plank's Pride, he had been able to forestall such self-examination because he'd been busy. He had had purpose. Foremost in his mind was the overwhelming urge to find home. Then the vital business of trying to discover a few whys, a time made tense and desperate by the implied threat to his race. Now, as he waited through the brief periods of recharging at the end of each blink, he pondered. Was it all bad, this being disembodied? He was never hungry. He suffered no pain, not even minor headaches or muscle soreness. And out there was a universe waiting to be explored. Under certain circumstances, he reasoned, his state could even be considered desirable. He entertained thoughts of the Pride and another ship, which would be Hara, blinking into endless distances side by side to unravel the age-old questions. But that was far too platonic. He was, after all, a man. He had loved Hara as a man loves a woman and had looked forward to a normal lifetime with her. He could, even as a disembodied brain, know desire.
And now that she was, at best, like him, he felt a terrible loss, which drove him to push the generator to peak operation. Frenzied repair operations began in the ship's computer as he overloaded circuits and blew them in his wild rush toward the tinker-toy
planet. He did not abandon hope. That, he knew, was another very human trait. Man hopes until the last possible instant. He clings to life and to hope even as he feels himself being devoured by a faster and stronger adversary. He would not consider Hara dead. He would not allow himself to believe that the thing he'd seen on Plank's World had, to use the words of the message he'd received, «enjoyed» her. He would arrive before that enjoyment. Somehow, he would save her. And hidden underneath that hope, was a red, glowing anger and the resolution to take revenge, to ruin, to destroy, to burn and blast and crumble. He had only one plan. Simple confrontation. No time for involved actions. Moreover, a creature that could instantly disappear without mechanical aids, that could send messages into his brain from distances, would, in all probability, be able to foresee his actions, perhaps read his mind. Maybe he would be destroyed at the instant of his first encounter. And yet, the thing had seen his small ship, had had opportunity to destroy if it were capable of instant destruction. Was he merely being tolerated? He had been called, in effect, a servant. «Good and faithful.» Well, man had long since given up being a servant. Man, and John Plank in particular, was not geared for servitude. Better to rush into instant oblivion than to admit that he lived to serve, to scout new planets for the provision of a gory meal for a monster. He blinked into planetary atmosphere. Leaving the Pride in orbit, and using his mobile form as eyes and ears, he shot down in the small scout toward the construction that had contained the communications device. Once again the planet was quiet. And it was so large, so cluttered with the wild constructions… He knew that it would take years to do a thorough search, and he began in familiar territory. The communications area was empty. As before, there were functioning things draining power and accomplishing no known purpose. The communications bank, itself, was inactive. Plank used it, sent his thoughts outward. No reply came back, nothing to indicate one way or the other that he was being heard. He knew, roughly, the communications procedure now. As a test, he sent orders to any communications device, anywhere, to answer his contact. He reasoned that if other ships were out in space, ships like the dark one that had followed him during his wanderings, he would receive a response. The communications banks, he reasoned, were merely tools for control of various unmanned vehicles. They, apparently, did not need mechanical things to make communication possible. His orders went out and there were no replies. He tried mental communication. There was no response. Since it would be impossible for him to cover the planet in anything
short of years, he decided on drastic action. If they chose to ignore him, he would force them into some action. With a hand weapon, a rather respectable tool of destruction based on the laser principle, he began systematically to destroy banks of equipment in the communications complex. The smashings, the burnings, the noise of ruin were a comfort to him, and he began to enjoy his task. He left the communication bank and its power source untouched, but everything else in the huge complex was in smoking ruins when he went outside and boarded the scout. With its larger weapons, he began to raze entire constructions. First he would scan a particular mass of metals and plastics. He did not want to run the risk of killing Hara or Heath with his own weapons. Then, after determining that the construction contained no
life, he would use all the power of the scout battery to blast it. He worked in an ever-widening circle, leaving the building housing the communications complex at the center of the area of destruction. Hours later, the devastation behind him was impressive and ahead of him was the huge, long building he knew must be an acceleration chamber. He was taking a bead on the installation. No. It was a single word, leaping into his brain. He readied the weapons. No. He was, he knew, in communication. It was no longer possible for them to ignore him. He had, at last, reached them, was threatening something that obviously was valued. He blasted a subsidiary annex of the atomic installation and waited. Do not force us to destroy you. «Then we talk,» Plank said aloud. When no response came, he readied his weapons once again. As he activated them, he felt a wrench inside himself, and as the deadly beams shot out, the landscape was changed, the beams striking and burning not the atomic installation, but an oddly contoured mass of metals he had not seen before. He had been shifted instantaneously. He did not recognize the area. He blinked upward for a view to orient himself. He was above an entirely separate landmass, but still on the planet. By way of experiment, he blasted two more installations and got no response. He blinked back toward the area of the accelerator, began to take aim once more on the installation and again found himself in a different area before the weapons could be discharged. He withdrew and sent a missile from the Pride downward toward the accelerator. The missile ceased to exist just before impact. When Plank aimed all weapons aboard the Pride downward, threatening total destruction of the planet, he felt that slight distortion in time and space and all was blackness. He existed now inside the mobile form. He had no contact with the
Pride. In the total darkness, he tried to reach up, out, and was blocked. He did not know how he could exist without contact with the one human thing remaining to him, his brain, but he was existing and, as he soon
discovered, he was still in the scout ship. He activated instruments by feel, and at first, the readings puzzled him. Then he knew. The scout was encased in solid rock. He could measure vast mass all around him, above, below, on all sides. Still, he was not dead. He had to believe that they did not want him dead; otherwise, with the vast powers they had displayed, they could have destroyed him easily. He waited. He thought messages, pleading for contact. There was nothing. Angered, he readied all weapons. Discharging them, he imagined, would do small damage to his solid stone encasement, but would have
serious effect on the scout and all its contents, including the mobile form. He poised to activate. He took a deep breath and discharged all beams at once. Into open air. He was orbiting the planet. Instantly he punched the coordinates of the area of the accelerator and began firing as he came out of the short blink. He had no way of knowing how effective his actions were, he knew only that he had to do something. Hopelessly outclassed, he could only hope to gain the attention of those who could so easily manipulate him. Again, his blast leveled unimportant constructions in another area of the planet and again he tried to gain the area of the accelerator. He was naked. He stood, in his mobile form, in the center of a large area. The surface underneath him was dirt. Uneven walls surrounded the arena— that was the effect, a large dirt area enclosed by walls. He heard a low, coughing growl and turned to see the tiger come, running low and
swift, from an opening in the near wall. It was a beast out of Earth's past, huge, saber-toothed, hot-eyed. The tiger paused, went down onto its belly, tail switching, hot eyes regarding him as it crouched there, 15 meters away, waiting. Like a house cat stalking a sparrow, the tiger crawled closer, hugging the ground. Then it charged, powerful muscles thrusting, claws digging into the soft dirt, tail switching violently. Plank met the charge head-on and was bowled over, the cat's claws raking his body. He rolled to his feet and the cat, having gone over the top of him, whirled and shot out a heavy front paw, claws extended. Plank avoided the blow and danced away. He felt no pain. The body of his mobile form had been slit open by the initial charge, but, although the interior seemed fleshlike, there was no blood. The cat charged, and trying to avoid the rush, Plank was toppled by a heavy blow and felt the huge teeth sink into his thigh. He punched for the
cat's eyes, fingers extended stiffly. He found his target and the cat released its hold on his thigh with a roar. The beast rolled him, its massive weight
too much for Plank to resist. He saw the blow coming, felt the impact of it, a massive foreleg delivering the blow to his head; then he looked into the maw of the giant cat as the jaws closed over his face and he heard the crunch, smelled the rancid animal breath. He felt his bones giving way. And he was in space in the scout, looking down onto the quietness of the tinker-toy planet. He punched the coordinates instantly, saw the accelerator an
d activated the weapons. He was suspended, hands and legs chained to a stone wall. This time he felt pain. The weight of his body pulled, the metal rings around his arms suspending him, cutting into his flesh. He screamed. Unbearable waves of pain swept through his arms. He had been hanging for an eternity and an eternity awaited him, an eternity of pain. He fainted only to revive to the deadening, terrible pain. He could not feel his hands. His fingers would not move. He screamed again. He begged. He sobbed in his agony as the slow hours crawled. He willed himself to die, but he knew that he would not. After an age of it he felt the merciful blackness begin to creep over him once again, and below him the planet was cold, metallic, wildly covered with the insane constructions. He punched and fired. He was back in the arena with a sword in his hand. A giant in armor advanced on him. His small weapon was knocked aside by the first blow. His left arm was severed by the next swing and the force of the blow sent him crashing to the dirt. He looked up into the bearded face: it was a face out of his childhood, Goliath, the giant from a picture story of the Bible. And, lo, Goliath proceeded to sever his other arm, then his legs. Waves of agony coursed through him, but he did not faint until, a legless, armless torso, he writhed in the dirt, his blood gushing, making the dirt wet and dark. And then the blade of the giant was raised, swung down and before blackness he felt his head roll in the dirt. It took a moment for his mind to recover from the remembered pain, but it was only a moment before, stubbornly, hopelessly, he reenacted the punching of coordinates, the blink, the reading of weapons charge and the firing. Chained to a table, helpless, he was surrounded by them, hundreds of them. He had always hated rats. They closed in, their eyes glowing in the
