by Zach Hughes
stays here on the Pride. I just use the mobile form as an eye. I have no idea of the range of this thing. If your brains are down there on the planet we might lose contact as we put stellar distances between these forms and the actual brain tissue.» Plank busied himself scanning the planet below with life-detector gear. For long minutes, the surface was silent. Then, acting on a sudden hunch, he directed the gear toward the two artificial bodies. «Ah,» he said. «He took the direct method and put them right with your bodies.» «That's both good and bad,» Heath said. «It makes things neat, but we'll have to be careful. You can send your mobile form into a dangerous situation and know that if it is destroyed, you're still alive.»
«We'll be careful,» Plank said. «Now let's see if that thing is still on the planet.» He set coordinates into a weapons bank and fired a single beam downward toward the accelerator, which the creature had been so anxious to defend. A portion of the accelerator disintegrated. Carefully Plank played the beam, making rubble of the entire installation. He got a great
deal of satisfaction out of the job, lingering over it, reducing the rubble to fine grains of sand. «That's enough, John,» Hara said, finally.
«Yes,» he said, «but I'd like to hear its roar when it returns and finds its favorite toy gone.» He began to set up the series of blinks that would carry them home, back to Earth. When all was ready, the sequence programed into the computer so that the trip would be automatic, he paused. «This is its home base,» he said. «Down there somewhere we could discover a lot about the thing if we had the time. It's obvious that it's gone. There's probably enough scientific information down there to make man its equal, over a period of time, but on the other hand, how much of its power does it draw from its home base?» «I think I follow you,» Hara said. «You're wondering if we should look to the future and try to preserve valuable information, or destroy the planet now on the small chance that the monster would be handicapped if cut off from its home base.» «We're not sure there'll be a future,» Heath said. Plank aimed a dozen killer missiles downward, each missile capable of driving into the planet's molten core. The explosions shattered a world, spewed magma into empty space, cooling even as the planet shattered. «It valued some of the installations enough to become very angry when I attacked them,» Plank said, in wonder. «And yet it went off and left them unguarded. Doesn't make sense.» As he directed the movement of the Pride he realized that many things didn't make sense. True, they were dealing with an alien mind, a mind of vast power, but the inconsistencies bothered him. The monster's chief form of enjoyment seemed to be eating, and according to its own words, it
did not need to eat. It had, apparently, used up the supply of the little food creatures, or at least thought it had, until Plank stumbled onto a world, previously untouched. A rational being, loving the «game» as much as the monster, would have used the creatures of Plank's World for seed stock. The monster leaped immediately into an orgy of gluttony and would have extinguished the life of the planet if Plank had not surprised him in the southern islands. That shortsighted orgy of eating was the act of an irresponsible mind. The act of a child. The act of a madman. And the great battle of the tinker-toy planet, in retrospect, was almost farcical. The monster had drawn on the childhood horrors in Plank's mind; it had taken Plank only a brief time to realize that none of the dangers he faced were real. Plank had been given a visual demonstration of the ability of the creature to move through space. At such speeds, with those powers of observation, the entire galaxy could have been given a minute search in what was to the creature a relatively short period of time, perhaps about 250,000 years. At any time during that period, there would have been enough men on Earth to provide a meal. But the creature had not made the diligent search necessary to locate one small planet far out toward the fringe of the galaxy. During the conflict on the tinker-toy planet, when Plank persisted in his stubborn efforts to destroy something the monster valued, there resulted what could only be described as a temper tantrum. The creature had joined Plank's efforts to destroy, doing much more damage in a few minutes than Plank had done in hours. And Plank remembered that petulant tone of voice when he was asked, «Why can't you be nice?» The enemy had vast power. The enemy could blaze a sun and move planets and shift men around with the power of its mind, but the enemy had a short attention span. The enemy, in a hurry to enjoy its favorite game, had left his home base unprotected, and that base was now drifting rubble in space. If a hope existed, the hope was in the creature's arrogance.
All-powerful, it felt it could divert his attention from its «servants,» leaving them to their own devices. Perhaps it would make one fatal mistake. Obviously it felt man to be the ultimate game, much more desirable than the food creatures. If the enemy were engrossed enough in its «enjoyment,» then Plank might have a chance. The problem was two-fold: to quickly find the creature on Earth and to quickly destroy it. But destroy it with what? With its own weapons? Surely it would be attuned to its own. Surely the creature would have, in that fantastic range of mental powers, a sense that would warn it if it were about to be attacked with weapons of its own making. There was even time for some philosophical questioning. Was the nature of all intelligent life warlike? For centuries man had made war on himself. Alone on his small world he had killed his fellows, finding new ways to maim and kill as technology developed. For three-quarters of a century there had been no war, and yet the arms development had gone on. Each ship that went into space was armed. The laser beams of Earth were akin to the beams mounted on the weapon pods of the Pride, though not so deadly. Man's atomic missiles were almost as destructive as the planet-killing missiles Plank had fired from the Pride. So the ancestors of the remaining member of another race must have fought among themselves. They had no enemies in space, other than themselves. But there was the barrier. Had an enemy come from intergalactic distances? Had the creature's race lost and been confined to the home galaxy? As long as man had understood the nature of the galaxy, scientists had predicted millions of habitable planets. Man's theory of the origin of life
made it logical that life had arisen on thousands of those life-zone planets. Man had sent messages into deep space, had built giant observatories to
try to detect signals from other intelligences, and all along there had been only the creature. Only two intelligent species in a galaxy? One of them so arrogant that it considered the other to be mere fodder? Both races warlike. Both adept at killing. And now one outnumbered the other by billions to one. It seemed that there must be a way for superior numbers to win. One thing was certain, man would not quietly await being swept into the maw of that thing. He would fight. CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Eater chose the tailored, densely populated landscape of Equatorial Africa as his beginning point. It appeared in a population band between contoured rows of natural jungle. There the rich farms were surrounded by neat villages, compact, dense with people. When it first materialized in a village square there were screams of terror and then silence. Attempts to flee were frozen in midstride. Quietly, docilely, the people of the village waited for the pawlike appendages to scoop them up. A force closed down over the village, cutting it off. When communications ceased from the first village, the utility companies sent technicians. The technicians did not return or report. Residents of nearby areas knew only that calls to the village were unanswered. In the village, itself, houses were opened as if they were nutshells, the morsels plucked from within. The Eater moved across farmlands, plucking isolated tidbits. It crushed his way through a dividing growth of carefully tailored jungle to numb a second village, leaving emptiness behind. Men
sent in to investigate the sudden and total cutoff of contact with the first village sent out the alarm. Viewing the creature from the safety of a flyer, the first to see it could not believe their eyes. Their early reports were received with amusement, then anger. Communications ceased from a second farm village, and reports that the first village had been devastated, that there were no survivors, were convincing. Although Cen
tral Africa had no army, as such, forces were available. Armored ground vehicles went into the area. A close watch was kept. Contact was lost with the vehicles when they reached the area of the second village. When the Eater moved on, the tanks were found, opened
like nuts, their crews missing. The second village was empty. In the streets were reeking mounds of a glutinous substance. The Eater had depopulated an area of roughly ten square kilometers,
cleaning the area of all animal life, when the first service team, called in from the nearest base in the Sahara, made an overflight, filming as they went. The pictures were classified and seen only by top government officials. Public panic was to be avoided. Nevertheless, efforts were begun to organize evacuation of the areas of Central Africa surrounding the Eater. As the hours went by, a pattern seemed to be established. The Eater moved in an ever-widening circle. It left no life behind. The first attack from the air utilized explosive rockets fired from a ship that flew in low. Both rockets and ship were destroyed by the force of explosions that came prematurely. Attacks from a higher level resulted in explosions of the missiles in the air before they reached the ground and the Eater. Ground assault was greeted with equal disaster: the vehicles that neared the Eater's area succeeded only in stalling, to be quickly cracked and depeopled.
Antique artillery, firing high explosive shells, was ineffective. The shells merely exploded before entering the area of the monster. Lasers flared against a protective shell of force surrounding it. Now word was spreading. People outside the numbing zone of the Eater's mind saw and fled, screaming. Roads were packed with ground vehicles with disastrous results. Collisions led to a full-scale panic. Man fought man in his efforts to flee and behind him, moving with a steady slowness, the Eater continued his favorite game. In desperation, the service sent a small nuclear missile homing in on the Eater. The resultant air burst added the problems of drifting radioactivity. But it was a short-lived problem, as the bomb was fairly clean, and the area most threatened by the radioactivity was being rapidly emptied either by panicked flight or by the Eater. Jungle areas surrounding the thing were impregnated by low-flying aircraft carrying flammables, then ignited. The Eater rolled through a sea of fire only to begin a feast on the few remaining members of still another village. Now the world knew and mobilized. A fleet of spaceships, flown down hastily from the moon bases, used man's most sophisticated weapons, firing from high and low, some ships destroyed by their own weapons, as projectiles detonated prematurely. Beams were simply flared by the field surrounding the Eater and, when the all-out effort had failed, man fell back and concentrated on clearing people from the areas surrounding the Eater. The world was in a state of shock when the Pride blinked out into normal space and started monitoring broadcasts. Plank, knowing the
location of the Eater, moved the Pride over him, keeping to the limit of his close viewers. He did not want his presence known, not yet. On the trip home he had formed one plan; it had to work. It was the last chance. From the reports they had monitored, he knew that Earth's best efforts had failed. Plank was sickened to see the people waiting, dumbly, docilely, to be crammed into the maw of the Eater. Were they no better than the slugs? Why were they so unresisting? But he, too, had felt the power of that alien mind. The weapon was prepared. The scout had been turned into a bomb, laden with the warheads of missiles from the Pride's arsenal. From deep space, praying that the single-minded enjoyment of the creature would prevent detection, he sent the range finding signals, checked and doublechecked. He would have only one opportunity. His hope was that the Eater, intent on its game, would not sense the incoming blink of the scout. The small ship would be blinked directly into the mass of the Eater,
the effect of that, in itself, destructive. Then at the instant of blinking out, the warheads would detonate. The surrounding area would suffer, of course, but evacuation was proceeding and the population was minimal. Lives would be sacrificed, but not on the scale that would follow if the Eater were allowed to reach the coastal areas of the continent where people were congregating to await transportation from the continent. They stood together, three ex-humans in artificial bodies crafted by the creature below them. They were silent as Plank finished his preparations and prepared to trigger the scout into its final blink. «Now,» Plank said, beginning the mental order that would send the scout into its final blink. No, he heard. The word was in his mind. He felt a surge of frustration, as he tried desperately to complete the order. He was frozen. Time was at a standstill. He knew, then, that the Eater was all-powerful, that he had detected them, had frustrated them once again. We cannot allow that, the voice in his mind continued. Plank felt both
relief and wonder, because the voice was not that of the Eater. It is, after all, of us. Plank felt a small wrench of movement and looked out with his ship's eyes to see a starfield totally unfamiliar to him. Instantly he directed a
chart check, but there was nothing to relate with the charts. The entire sky had changed. The closeup viewers showed a blue planet, at orbital distance, a planet he'd never seen before. The final effort, the last hope, had failed. He wanted to hit something, longed to have his own fists back, if only to be able to bang one of them into a wall. When in doubt, he thought desperately, strike out. Look for something to hit. He moved his mind to direct the ship to close on the planet below. The ship, however, was already in movement, and he had no control. He was cut out of the command circuit. «What is it, John?» Hara asked. «I heard the voice. Is it another one of them?» «I don't know,» Plank said, «but I have a feeling we'll know very soon.» The ship was closing rapidly. Below them, the planet was growing. The viewers showed a natural landscape of great beauty. Large oceans, wide plains, mountains and lakes. Plank tried to use the scanners and was still blocked from his own ship. He had no way of knowing what sort of life awaited them on the planet, but he was certain life was there. Someone, some force, was directing the ship down toward the foothills of a huge, snow-capped range of mountains at the center of an elongated landmass. CHAPTER SIXTEEN The low, rolling hills were on fire with color, thousands of blossoms on the bushes and trees like part of a landscape painted by a master of composition. Nothing was out of place. Plank had the feeling that he was in the midst of a huge formal garden, not a stylized, symmetrical garden, but a garden of cunning naturalness. Some of the trees were fruited, bearing delicate blooms and delicious-looking fruits at the same time. In the open spaces beneath the trees, a lacy green ground cover allowed no intruding rock, no detracting patch of soil to show. Insects buzzed happily from bloom to bloom. The ship's ears picked up melodious pipings that seemed to originate from brightly colored birds flitting gracefully about. The outside temperature was 24 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere was oxygen-based and astoundingly free of impurities. The sky was clear blue, accented by beautiful white clouds, carrying no threat of rain. The Pride had settled into a small clearing at the base of a valley between two hills, near a clear stream that ran over smooth, water-worn stones into languid pools. In no mood to sit quietly and appreciate the beauty, Plank paced, in his mobile form, and remembered the Eater back on Earth, remembered the dazed and mute acceptance of the people. Ease yourself, the voice said in his mind, he has been removed. Hara darted a quick glance at him, indicating that she, too, had heard the voice. Heath muttered under his breath. You may walk, the voice told them. We think you will enjoy it. «Do we have a choice?» Plank snarled. There was no reply. He opened a
lock, and they went out into the idyllic countryside, feeling the lacy ground cover give beneath their feet. They did not question or discuss their direction. They seemed to know. They walked along by the stream, climbed beside a small waterfall to the high point of the valley. The view was breathtaking. Across another small glen ahead of them, a steep hill shot upward
