All that long night Jamieson waited and watched. There were times when he dozed, and there were times when he thought he was dozing, only to realize with a dreadful start that the horrible darkness had played devil's tricks on his mind.
The darkness during the early part of the night was like a weight that held them down. Not the faintest glimmer of natural light penetrated that Stygian night. And when, at last, they made a fire from their pile of brush, the pale, flickering flames pushed but feebly against the pressing, relentless force of the darkness and seemed helpless against the cold.
Jamieson began to notice the cold, first as an uncomfortable chill that ate into his flesh, and then as a steady, almost painful, clamminess that struck into his very bones. The cold was noticeable, too, in the way white hoarfrost thickened on the walls. Great cracks appeared in the rock; and not once but several times sections of the ceiling collapsed with a roar that threatened their lives. The first clatter of falling debris seemed to waken the woman from a state of semi-coma. She staggered to her feet; and Jamieson watched her silently as she paced restlessly to and fro, clapping her gloved, heated hands together to keep them warm.
"Why not," Jamieson asked, "go up and build a fire against the gryb's body? If we could burn him—"
"He'd just wake up," she said tersely, "and besides, his hide won't burn at ordinary temperatures. It has all the properties of metallic asbestos—conducts heat but is practically noncom-bustible."
Jamieson was silent, frowning; then he said, "The toughness of this creature is no joke—and the worst of it all is that our danger, the whole affair, has been utterly useless. I'm the only person who has a solution to the ezwal problem, and I'm the one you're trying to kill."
"I don't really suppose it matters," she said. "What's the use of you and I arguing on this subject? It's too late. In a few hours that damn thing that's got us sealed in here will wake up and finish us. There's nothing we've got that can hold it back one inch or one second."
"Don't be so sure of that!" Jamieson said. "I admit the toughness of this monster has me worried, but don't forget what I've said: these problems have been solved before on other planets."
"You're mad! Even with a blaster, it's touch and go getting
the gryb before it gets you. Its hide is so tough it won't begin to disintegrate until your heart's in your boots. What can we do against a thing like that when all we've got is a knife?"
"Let me have the knife," Jamieson replied. "I want to sharpen it" His face twisted into a wry smile. Perhaps it didn't mean much, but there was a tone of acceptance of him in her voice.
The sustained darkness of that night, the insistent crackle of the palely flickering fire seemed to become more and more alive as the nervous hours twitched by. It was Jamieson who was pacing now, his powerful body restless and tense with anxious uncertainty.
It was getting distinctly warmer; the white hoarfrost was melting in places, yielding for the first time to the heat of the spluttering flame; and the chill was no longer reaching clammily through his heated clothes.
A scatter of fine ashes lay on the ground, indicating how completely the fuel had burned away; but even as it was, the cave was beginning to show a haze of smoke fumes, through which it was difficult to see properly.
Abruptly there was a great stirring above them, and then a deep, eager mewing and a scrambling, scratching sound. Barbara Whitman jerked erect from where she had been lying. "It's awake," she gasped, "and it's remembered."
"Well," said Jamieson grimly, "this is what you've been longing for."
From across the fire, she stared at him moodily. "I'm beginning to see that killing you will solve nothing. It was a mad scheme."
A rock bounded down and crashed between them, missing the fire, then vanishing noisily into the darkness beyond. There followed a horrible squeezing, a rasping sound as of brittle scales scraping rock, and then, terribly near, the drumming sound as of a monstrous sledge hammer at work.
"He's breaking off a piece of rock!" she said breathlessly. "Quick! Get into a concavity against the wall. Those rocks may come tumbling down here, and they won't miss us forever. What are you doing?"
"I'm afraid," said Jamieson in a shaky voice, "I've got to risk the rock. There's no time to waste."
His leather-covered hands trembled with the excitement that gripped him as he hastily unfastened one of the glove extensions. He winced a little as his hand emerged into the open air and immediately jerked it over the hot flame of the fire.
"Phew, if s cold. Must still be ninety below. I'll have to warm this knife or it'll stick to my skin."
He held the blade into the flame, finally withdrew it, made a neat incision in the thumb of his bare hand and wiped the blood onto the knife blade, smearing it on until his hand, blue with the cold, refused to bleed any more. Then he quickly slipped it back into his glove. It tingled as it warmed, but in spite of the pain he picked up a flaming faggot by its unburned end and walked along into the darkness, his eyes searching the floor. He was vaguely aware of the woman following him.
"Ah," said Jamieson, and even in his own ears his voice sounded wrenched from him. He knelt quiveringly beside a thin crack in the rock. "This'll be just about right. It's practically against the wall, protected from falling rocks by this projecting edge of wall." He glanced up at the woman. "The reason I had us camp here last night instead of farther down was because this ledge is nearly sixty feet long. The gryb is about thirty feet long from tail to snout, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, this will give it room to come down and walk a few feet; and besides, the cave is wide enough here for us to squeeze past it when it's dead."
"When it's dead!" she echoed with a faint moan. "You must be the world's prize fool!"
Jamieson scarcely heard her. He was carefully inserting the handle of the knife into the crack of the rock, wedging it in. . He tested it.
"Hm-m-m, it seems solid enough. But we'll have to make doubly sure."
"Hurry," Barbara exclaimed. "We've got to get down to the next level. There's just a chance that there is a connection somewhere below with another cave."
"There isn't! I went down to investigate while you were sleeping. There are only two more levels after this."
"For heaven's sake, it'll be here in a minute."
"A minute is all I need," Jamieson replied, struggling to calm his clamoring heart, to slow the convulsive gasping of his lungs. "I want to pound these slivers of rock beside the knife to brace it."
And Jamieson pounded while she danced frantically from one foot to another in a panic of anxiety. He pounded while that scrambling from above became a roaring confusion, so near now that it was deafening. He pounded while his nerves jangled and shook from the hellish bass mewing that blasted down from the ravenous beast.
And then, with a gasp, he flung aside the piece of rock with which he had been hammering, and they lowered themselves recklessly over the edge—just as two great glowing eyes peered down upon them. The firelight revealed the vague outlines of a Hark fanged mouth, a thick, twisting tongue; and then there was a scaly glitter as the monstrosity plunged downward right onto the fire.
Jamieson saw no more. He let go his hold and skittered downward for nearly twenty feet before he struck bottom. For a minute he lay there, too dizzy to realize that the scrambling noise from above had stopped. Instead there was a low grunting of pain, and then a sucking sound.
"What in the world?" the woman said, puzzled.
"Wait!" Jamieson whispered tensely.
They waited what must have been five minutes, then ten— half an hour. The sucking sound above was weaker. An overtone of wheezing accompanied it, and the grunts had stopped. Once there was a low, hoarse moan of agony.
"Help me up," Jamieson whispered. "I want to see how close it is to death."
"Listen," she snapped, "either you're mad or I'm going to be. For heaven's sake, what's it doing?"
"It smelled the blood on the knife," Jamies
on replied, "and began to lick it. The licking cut its tongue into ribbons, which whipped it into a frenzy, because with every lick more of its own blood would flow into its mouth. You say it loves blood. For the last half hour it's been gorging itself on its own blood. Primitive stuff, common to many planets."
"I guess," Barbara Whitman said in a queer voice after a long moment, "there's nothing now to prevent us getting back to the Five Cities."
Jamieson stared with narrowed eyes at her vague shape in the darkness. "Nothing except—you!"
They climbed in silence to where the gryb lay dead. Jamieson was aware of Barbara watching him as he gingerly removed the knife from where it was wedged into the rock. Then, abruptly, harshly, she said, "Give me that!"
Jamieson hesitated, then handed the knife over. Outside, the morning greeted them, bleak yet somehow more inviting. The Sun was well above the horizon, and something else was in the sky, too: a huge red ball of pale fire, sinking now toward the western horizon. It was Carson's Planet.
The sky, the world of this moon, was lighter, brighter; even the rocks didn't look so dead or so black. A strong wind was blowing, and it added to the sense of life. The morning seemed cheerful after the black night, as if hope were once again possible.
It's a false hope, thought Jamieson. The Lord save me from
the stubborn duty sense of an honest woman. She's going to attack.
Yet, the attack, when it came, surpassed his expectations. He caught the movement, the flash of the knife, out of the corner of his eye and whipped aside. Her strength astonished him. The knife caught the resisting fabric of the arm of his electrically heated suit, scraped a foot-long scar on that obstinate, half-metallic substance, and then Jamieson was dancing away along a ledge of firm rock.
"You silly fool," he gasped. "You don't know what you're doing."
"You bet I know!" she said, panting. "I've got to kill you, and I'm going to in spite of your silver tongue. You're the devil himself for talking, but now you die."
She came forward, knife poised, and Jamieson let her come. There was a way of disarming a person attacking with a knife, providing the method was unknown to the attacker. She came at him silently; her free hand grabbed at Jamieson, and that was all he needed. Just a damned amateur who didn't know knife fighters didn't try for holds. Jamieson snatched at that striking hand, caught it with grim strength and jerked the woman past him with every ounce of his power. As she hurtled by him, propelled by her own momentum as well as by that arm-wrenching pull, Jamieson twisted along with her. At the last instant he braced himself for the shock and sent her strong young body spinning along like a top.
Frantically, the woman fought for balance. But there was no mercy in that rough ground. Jamieson made a strong leap and caught her as she started to fall over a section of upjutting rock. Caught her, held her, took the knife from her numbed fingers.
She looked up at him, and her eyes were suddenly wet with tears. Jamieson saw, relieved, that the hard surface was gone from her and that she was a woman again and not an agent of destruction. On faraway earth, he had his own intensely feminine wife, and so from profound personal experience, he knew that she had given in and that from now on the danger was from the unfriendly planet and not from his companion.
All that morning Jamieson scanned the skies. She evidently expected no help, but he did. In the "west" Carson's Planet was engulfed by the blue, dark horizon of its moon, an age-old cycle repeating. The strong wind died, and there was quiet upon that wild, fantastic land.
About noon he saw what he had been looking for during all
the morning hours—a moving dot in the sky. It came nearer and took the outline of a small aircraft.
It circled down, and he saw with relief—but actually as he had anticipated—that it was from his own battleship. A hatch opened. An officer glanced down. "We looked for you all through the night, sir. But evidently you didn't think to carry any equipment we could detect."
"We had an unfortunate accident," said Jamieson quietly.
"You told us you were going to the uranium mines—which is in the opposite direction."
"All is well now, thank you," said Jamieson noncommittally.
A few moments later they were flying toward the safety and comforts of civilization.
Once aboard the great ship, Jamieson considered seriously what, if any, counteraction he should take, as a retaliation for the murder attempt that had been made against him. Two points were important. These people were too angry to understand mercy. They would misinterpret it as fear. And they were too prejudiced to accept punishment as justified.
His final decision was to do nothing. Make no complaint. File no charge. Regard it as another purely personal experience. He felt a sharp sadness as he came to that thought. It was a little hard for the rational men of the Earth Administration to realize that periodically the enemy was not the Rulls but other men. It was a weakness in men, for which there could never be an adequate reckoning. For entire groups of people, or for individuals, to sink below the necessary standards of courage and good sense—perhaps someday an adequate punishment would be devised in some superhuman court of justice. On that distant day, the accused would stand before the bar, and the charge would be: self-pity, excessive grief, inability to feel shame or guilt, failure to live up to human potentiality.
Barbara Whitman, in her own confused fashion, had realized something of that truth. And so, she had stayed to take the risks with him. But it was a mixed-up solution for a problem that could exist only in a world of fallen people.
Sometimes, as now, awareness would come to Jamieson of how vast was the number of human weaklings in a universe menaced by the remorseless Rull enemy.
En route to Earth, Jamieson sent a message ahead, inquiring if Commander McLennan had successfully landed with the captured mother ezwal and her cub.
The first reply was brief: "Slow ship. Not yet." The second answer came two weeks later, only a day before the super-fast ship which carried Jamieson was due to reach Earth. Its import was electrifying. "News announcement received a few hours ago that the McLennan ship was about to crash out of control in the Canadian north. Both ezwals expected to die in the crash. No further information about personnel of ship."
"Oh, my God!" said Jamieson aloud, in anguish. The message slipped out of his hands and floated to the floor of his suite.
8
The grim face of Commander McLennan turned toward the two officers. "Absolutely out of control!" he said. "The ship will strike Earth in fifteen minutes somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska, perhaps as far west as the Peninsula."
He straightened, squaring his shoulders. "There's no help for it," he went on more calmly. "We checked the ship for damage as well as humanly possible in space, arid none showed." His voice became crisp. "Carling, get the men started into the lifeboats, then make contact with the Aleutian Military Base. Tell them we've got two ezwals aboard, which may live through the crash. It won't quite be a free fall; residual antigravity will prevent that, even though the main power is dead. It means they must track this ship with every radar unit they've got, so they can pinpoint the spot where it hits and let us know quickly. If those monsters should get loose on the mainland, there's no telling how many people they'd kill. Got that?" "Yes, sir!" Carling started away on the double. "Just a minute!" McLennan called after him. "Get this across—it's important—the ezwals are not to be harmed unless they do get loose. Bringing them here is a top-priority mission, and they are wanted by the government alive if possible. No one is to enter the wreck until I get there. That's all. Brenson!" The white-faced younger officer stiffened to attention. "Yes, sir!"
"Take a couple of men below and see that every companion hatch above the main hold is closed and secured. That might hold those beasts a while if the cage breaks open. If they survive the crash at all, they ought to be plenty groggy, at least. Now get going, and be at the lifeboats in five minutes—no longer!" Brenson blanched whiter still. "Yes, sir!" he sai
d again, and was gone.
For McLennan there were vital things to do, valuable papers to retrieve. And then the time was up. As he approached the center lifeboat station, the whistling of air along the outer hull bad become audible. Carling saluted him nervously. "All the men are aboard the lifeboats, sir—except Brenson." "Damn Brenson What's he doing down there? What about the men with him?"
"Apparently he went alone, sir. All the men are here." "Alone? What the devil— Send somebody after him! No, never mind—I'll go myself."
"Excuse me, sir!" Carting's face was anguished. "There's no time! If we don't put off in the next two minutes, the slip stream may wreck us! Besides, there's something about Brenson you didn't know, sir. He was the wrong man to send below, I'm afraid."
McLennan stared. "Why? .What about Brenson?" "His older brother," said Carling, "was in the Colonial Guard, stationed on Carson's Planet, and was torn to bits by ezwals."
From above the young ezwal there sounded the terrible snarl of his mother; and then her thought, as hard and sharp as crystal: "Under me for your life! The two-legged one comes to kill!"
Like a streak, he leaped from his end of the cage, five hundred pounds of dark-blue monstrosity. Razor-clawed prehensile paws rattled metallically on the steel floor, and then he was into blackness under her vast form, pressing into the cave of yielding flesh that she made for him. He clamped himself to her flexible, incredibly tough skin with his six hands, so that, no matter what the violence of her movements, he would be there safe and sound, snugly deep in the folds between her great belly muscles.
Her thought came again. "Remember all the things I've told you. The hope of our race is that men continue to think of us as beasts. If they suspect our intelligence, we are lost. And someone does suspect it. If that knowledge lives, our people die!"
Faster came her thought. "Remember, your worst weaknesses are those of youth. You love life too much. You must accept death if the opportunity comes to serve your race by so doing."
War Against the Rull Page 7
