He knew his way too well. Soon the light would fade and there would be darkness, and that in turn would bloom into the violet glow of the Eyes’ radiation. Terror breathed with him as he walked, remembering the other time. The men behind him mustn’t see the terror. He had to set the example because he had been here before.
The darkness waxed thick and a stench came to meet him. The stench of dirty human bodies and the special stench of the creatures themselves. It hadn’t been so strong before. But the sodden air, heavy from the rain, had crept this way and held it inside the earth.
At the point where the glow should have sprung up to light the way, only a vague dimness met him. And it grew better as he progressed. “The men with lights,” he shouted, “turn them on.”
Light shafted out from behind him like horizontal pillars. He reached the bottom of the ramp and swung to the right.
In the cavern, he stepped carefully among the people who squatted there, staring at nothing, knowing nothing, vomiting and sighing. Sick, mindless and dying, they screamed at him with their silence to help, to revenge, to retch himself, but he picked his way through them, ignoring them. He had to set the example.
Against the far wall was the semicircle of limbed whales he had witnessed before. Different from before was their faintness of glow. They were weak from lack of radiation, but not dying, he reminded himself. Never dying, these creatures, for earth alone could support them, even if uncomfortably. The light of the lamps hit them suddenly and they were horrors.
Giant, bloated things, black and shiny, they watched him come with their now little eyes. Pig eyes—eight inches across, but still pig eyes in the bulk of their bodies.
The men stopped and he couldn’t blame them, but couldn’t let them spread fear to each other either. “Let’s work!” he shouted. Nothing could go wrong now, or earth was doomed under the promised assault of hypnotizing cells.
A boy grunted close to Kellroy. His head drew back, his mouth opened, and a cry of anguish echoed through the cavern. He fled, and his footsteps were loud as he made for fresh air.
Kellroy was quick to take control. “Get those stretchers spread out and start helping the Zines on. Move!”
The men didn’t respond, caught between panic and the need to obey. Linc and Kellroy acted together, grabbing the nearest stretcher and spreading it open by the semicircle of bloated things that waited and watched with their empty, alien eyes. As they did so, the other men spread theirs, too.
Together with three others, Linc and Kellroy reached for one of the creatures. Linc remembered the feel of the Eye he had pushed into the cage, and his hands didn’t want to touch the shiny black skin, but he forced them forward. He made contact, and the skin was cold—not slimy, but cold and hard, almost a shell. It was evolved to absorb and withstand the burn of radiation. It would have to be thick and protecting.
They heaved to lift the great form and barely raised it from the ground. As they shifted it to the stretcher, the appendages that were arms and legs flapped against them, and even with the strain of the weight, gooseflesh erupted on Linc’s skin. When the Zine was settled, Linc wanted to wipe his hands and shudder. He didn’t dare. Instead, he said inside his mind, “Are you comfortable?”
“Fairly,” the creature whispered back. “Get on with this. If your plan doesn’t work, and soon, we will demand a bomb.”
“Right away.” Linc mentally bowed and scraped.
He supervised the loading of the others and when it was done, a new problem arose. There was no path through the squatting people, and carrying the weight, the men couldn’t pick their way.
“Would you clear a path for us?” Linc asked the shape that housed a watery-blue Eye he thought he recognized.
“Walk over them,” was the answer.
He took the chance of angering the thing, and countered, “My men won’t do that. Neither will I.”
He got no answer, but almost immediately the crowded people rose and shuffled off to the sides. The ones who were too far gone into idiocy to obey themselves were pulled aside by the others. The path was clear.
“Thank you,” Linc said.
“It is of no importance. Get on with your promise.”
The men bent down, six to a stretcher, and hefted the Zines into the air, walking in a dirgelike rhythm toward the ramp. The people along the sides of the cavern paid them no attention. Their captors were leaving, but they didn’t know. They were free, but they didn’t care. They had nothing left to know or to care with.
Bearing the weight of the stretchers was exhausting, but they finally emerged into the sun. In the brightness of day, the creatures looked even more grotesque. Like huge, shiny seals, only lacking their sleekness and grace, but blubbery and bloated, they rode on their stretchers, blinking about with their reinstated eyes. They were obscenities in the forest, for they were not of earth, and it was impossible to believe that they were even of God.
One by one the men loaded them, three to a van, then climbed inside the cabs and jammed into the available cars to avoid riding with the things.
Linc found the blue Eyes he knew and clambered into the van. He had to ride with the creatures. He had no choice but to ride along and reassure them, thinking his lie, so they wouldn’t come looking for him mentally and unnoticed and catch him thinking the truth.
The ride was interrupted only once, when going over a bump a creature felt discomfort, and emitted a sound that was hair-raising. It was half-roar, half-yelping scream.
The lab, coming into sight, was a great relief. Linc was already worn from the mental battle, but primed himself for his greatest effort, and jumped down.
“You know the room we have prepared for them,” he told Kellroy. “See that they’re placed there gently. I’ll find Iverson and get their feast ready.”
“Will it be soon?” a whisper asked.
“Very soon. Don’t tax yourselves.”
He left quickly and strode the halls to Iverson’s office. The old man looked at him warily, wanting to ask, but not daring.
“We’ll have to chance it,” Linc answered his unspoken question. “I can’t tell if they’re tuned to me or not, but we’ll have to chance it. Have you got the piece of hot stuff?”
“All ready.” Iverson bobbed his head. “It’s in that shielded box over there. Now be sure you don’t stay one second in the room with it, or you’re as good as dead. The lead plating is ready. The men are ready. All that remains is for you to say the word.”
“I’ll say it soon enough. Are you all straight on your part?”
“Straight and eager. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. I thought it was gone forever. You’ll have your G’s when you need them.”
“They’re all in place,” Kellroy called as he stuck his head in.
Linc went to the corner and picked up the lead box by its carrying handle. “Here we go,” he breathed.
The men he passed on his way to the artificial gravity room where the creatures were housed wore strained faces and clenched fists. The tension was high and tight about him, and it rasped in his own voice as he whispered to them to get set.
He entered the artificial gravity room, keeping all thought of its formal name from his mind. It was full now—full of the shiny, nakedly glowing black bodies with their Eyes.
“I’ve brought it,” he said mentally.
“Only that?” one of them whispered back.
“It’s enough. You’ll see.”
He set the box close to the bulk of one of the Zines. “Don’t touch it yet,” he warned. “It’s not safe for me, and if you value me at all, you’ll let me get clear.”
“Get clear? What are your instructions then?”
“Wait until I leave the room and shut the door. Then one of you may open the box. There will be a great flux of radioactivity and you will have your feast. When you’re through with this box
—have used it up—call, and I’ll bring another.”
“Very well,” came the thought. And Linc caught a mental image of hunger, and salivation, and gluttony.
“We’ve shielded this room from the outside so none of your radiation can escape and harm us.” He began the biggest part of the lie, clouding it over, concentrating on dual thoughts—what he was communicating and joy and relief at being near safety. “By the same token, none of the radiation will be lost. You’ll have it all for yourselves. For added protection, we’re going to erect more shielding, so if you hear pounding, you’ll know what it is. We didn’t have time to complete the work this morning.”
His lie was accepted, for all he received in response was a hurry-up to get out so the meal could begin.
“When will you close the door so we may safely start?” he was asked, almost in unison.
“Right now. Forgive me for being so slow.”
He retreated from the room and closed the door, checking its seal and shielding. The radiation counter they had placed in the room immediately began to sputter. The box was open and the feast was beginning. He smiled. They would gobble it up quickly because they were hungry and thought more was forthcoming. He had carried the mental part off perfectly. Now there only remained the physical.
The men were already moving up to the walls with heavy shields of lead and fastening them into place. In an hour’s time the room would be secure against radiation. None would get out—and more importantly, none would get in. Not even the background radiation of the earth would penetrate these walls. The Zines would be cut off entirely from every source of food.
“Good,” he called to the men. “Work fast. Make it quick.”
As the radiation counter grew less active, indicating that the radiation in the room was dwindling fast, he hurried to Iverson’s little control room. The old man was seated before his panel, waiting for the signal.
“Now?” he shouted.
“Now!” Linc cried. “Let them have all five G’s!”
The lights blinked, and somewhere buried in the wall machinery started to whir. Inside the room, the gravities piled on top of each other, riveting the Zines to the floor. One, two, three, four, five! And now, Linc figured, it would require effort for them even to breath. With the energy they’d be expending they would soon use up the effects of their meal and be helpless. Then they would start down the road to starvation, unable to protest, unable to defend themselves. And, he prayed, unable to separate their cells and put through their threatened attack.
He caught Iverson’s hand in a hopeful clasp, and went back to help with the lead plates. He lifted one of the pieces into place and was just about to secure it when a cry broke out at his left. He dropped the plate, startled, and looked for its source.
The sight froze him. Sticking through the wall, grasping one of the workmen by the throat, was a bloated arm, one of the shiny, black arms of the Zines. It choked the man into unconsciousness and dropped him with a thud upon the floor. Beside it, an Eye popped through the wall, small and ugly, and expanding. It grew to fill its section of the corridor, and although it wasn’t focused on him, Linc could feel its hypnotic power spreading out.
It was fantastic, and the beginning of his worst fears. What the Eyes had done before, teleporting themselves over the earth, was nothing compared to this! They had never gone through solid matter. But this proved that they could, and that they hadn’t been bluffing in any of their threats.
They were here, in the corridor, and his work crew was being drained as men crumpled to the floor, crushed like dolls by the arms, or shuffled away, hypnotized. And the next step? He shuddered as he realized that the next step would be the appearance of the separate cells, in retaliation and revenge.
His only chance, and earth’s only chance, lay in the hope that the Zines wouldn’t realize the full consequences of this situation in time; that they would fight this battle as they had started it, with arms and flying Eyes, and not proceed to the separation into cells. If they did that, then the world was lost.
More arms were coming through. Unattached arms that ended abruptly at the neck, including shoulder muscles for strength. He had to move. He had to do something to protect his men. Where did the Zines get their strength? The gravity should have stopped them.
He grabbed up a length of metal piping and started down the row, banging away at the appendages, making every blow tell. Something grabbed him from behind and pulled him off his feet. It was an arm. He clawed at it, but its grip was beyond his strength. He cried for help, but none came. He was choking in its grasp.
Then Iverson’s face was before him, and the old man was hacking away at the arm with a pair of scissors. Watery blood spilled down the front of Linc’s shirt and he was free. Together, he and Iverson ran the row, pounding and slashing at the arms and the Eyes, closing their ears to the screams of the dying and the agony that engulfed them. Men were falling. Others were being led away. What had gone wrong?
A staccato barking swung him round. Ichabod was jumping up and down in the hall, his teeth snapping shut on air as he tried for an arm and missed his mark.
“What the devil!” Linc cried out. Before the exclamation was finished, his attention went past Ichabod, and there coming up behind the dog was Kelly, swiveling in stark fear, one hand over her mouth, as she dodged the arms and Eyes that swarmed among the men.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Their eyes met. Hers showed pure panic, and he started for her, pushing men and Zine arms aside, weaving in and out. A Zine hand emerged from the wall beside him and grabbed for his sleeve, but he slapped it back with a vicious stab of the pipe.
“Linc!” Kelly fell against him. He caught her up, and held her. “I didn’t know, Linc! I only wanted to be near you.”
“How did you get through the gate?” he demanded. “Didn’t the guard—”
“There wasn’t any guard.” She jerked away from him and screamed, “Ichabod! Stop it! Ichabod!”
The spotted dog had hold of one of the arms and was shaking his head back and forth, growling in his throat. The arm levitated and pulled the animal off his feet. He dangled by his mouth, and the growl changed to a whine. Linc caught him with one hand, and with the other smashed the shiny black claw. It dropped Ichabod into his waiting grasp.
“Now take him and get out!” He thrust the dog at Kelly. “Hurry!” This corridor was pandemonium, and he had to get her to safety.
She obeyed without question, dodging her way toward the door. Halfway down the corridor, an Eye stopped her. It was two feet long, and brown, but there was menace in it.
“Run, Kelly. Don’t look at it!” he commanded.
With a taking hold of herself that was visible even to Linc, Kelly ducked past the Eye and continued for the door. Then an arm, losing its clutch on a workman, arrowed for her and caught her about the shoulders. With a leap Ichabod sank his teeth into it, but it didn’t let go.
Linc raced to add his strength to Kelly’s struggle. The arm was leathery under his hands, and he tugged and pulled at it with desperate energy. Kelly was growing pale in its grip as it crushed her. Linc put his own teeth to the job, following Ichabod’s example, and at the first startled relaxing of the arm, he wrenched it from her. He grabbed up his pipe and struck until it winced and retreated. Then he took Kelly and ran with her to the door, shoving her through.
“Get to the car and stay there!”
She left at a run and he returned to the fight. Half of the workmen were either down or standing stupidly in hypnosis. He had misjudged somewhere. He had counted on the gravity making the Zines use energy so fast that they would be too weak to defend themselves. But he had been wrong, for here they were—parts of them—floating and sailing about the corridor, disembodied and gruesome.
The men who hadn’t been attacked by the flying arms, but concentrated on their work, were getting the last of th
e lead shields in place. But what good would that do if the Eyes weren’t subdued?
He went back down the row with his pipe, defending the still working men as best he could. He was exhausted; the muscles in his back and shoulders were like aching sponge, their strength on the fast ebb, pain coming up to take them over. Sweat streamed down his face and tears streaked his skin, but he fought on, for this was certainly his doing and he had to make it right.
An Eye settled before him. Before he could attack it, it began to change, and he stepped back. Before his gaze, it shrank. And one of the arms in his field of vision suddenly let go its hold on a workman to hang limply in the air. It faded back into the wall—back into the wall.
Just as he started to hope, another arm near him exploded. One second it was there and whole, and the next it had disintegrated into particles so small they were nearly invisible; and these, too, exploded until the arm was no longer there.
This was the moment then, and Linc trembled at the immensity of what he had seen. The arm had split into a multitude of separate cells, bent on destruction.
He started to order his men to give up the fight and save themselves, if they could, when a haziness appeared in the empty space where the arm had been. Gradually the space refilled, collecting into larger and larger particles until the arm was again before him. Its shape was whole, but it hung limp and weak. It glided to the wall and seeped slowly through, disappearing back into the room.
All along the corridor, the arms were retreating, tired and spent.
Iverson came up. “What’s happening?”
“I think we’ve made it, Doc. They’ve finally used up the radiation—all of it—and they’re stuck. They tried to make good on their threat too late. They haven’t enough energy left to split apart. The gravity took its toll.”
Iverson’s face was torn with disbelief that ached to turn into acceptance. “Then you think we’ve won?”
“Not us, Doc. Luck—God—and their own egotism. If they had split sooner, we’d be through now. Pray that they don’t rally!”
The Flying Eyes Page 16
