War Against the Rull

by A. E. van Vogt

  He steadied himself and fumbled under the overlapping edge of the walk with his hand. Swiftly, he ran his fingers under the metal. He touched something. The tiny blaster came easily into his hand, and he slipped it into his pocket in a single synchronized motion. Then, weak from reaction, he sat there. He grew aware of the vibration of the metal on the bones of his thighs. His special shoes had absorbed most of that tremor, and he had been so intent on the weapon that he hadn't noticed immediately. Now he did. Ever so slightly, his body shook and shivered. He felt himself drawn into the sound. His muscles and organs hummed and quivered. Momentarily, he forgot the Rulls, and for that moment it seemed immeasurably strange to be sitting here on the raw metal, unprotected and in tune with the sound itself. He'd guessed the vibration would be terrific under the ship of ships. The city of The Yards was built on metal. But all the shock-absorbing material with which the streets and roads were carpeted couldn't muffle the ultimately violent forces and energies that had been concentrated in one small area. Here were atomic piles so hot that they were exploding continuously with a maximum detonation short of cataclysm. Here were machines that could stamp out hundred-ton electro-steel plates.

  For eight and a half years more, The Yards would exist for this colossal ship. And then, when it finally flew, he would be on it. Every family in The Yards had been selected for two purposes—because the father or mother had a skill that could be used in the building of the ship, or because they had a child who would grow up around the ship. His father, being top government personnel, had been included by request.

  In no other way, except by growing up with it, would human beings ever learn to understand and operate the spaceship that was rising here like a young mountain. In its ninety-four hundred feet of length was concentrated the engineering genius of centuries, so much specialized knowledge, so much mechanical detail, that visiting dignitaries looked around in bewilderment at the acres of machines and dials and instruments on every floor, and at the flashing wall lights that had already been installed in the lower decks.

  He would be on it. Diddy stood up in a shaking excitement of anticipation—just as the two Rulls emerged from behind the pillar.

  "Let's go!" said Jackie. "We've fooled around long enough."

  Diddy came down from his height of exaltation, "Where to?"

  Gil said, "We've been tagging along after you. Now, how about your going where we want to go for a change?"

  Diddy did not even think of objecting. "Sure," he said.

  The neon sign on the building said, "RESEARCH," and there were a lot of boys around. They wandered singly and in groups. He could see others in the distance, looking as if they were going nowhere in particular. Could any of those others be Rulls? Could they all be? But that was silly; he mustn't let his imagination run away with him.

  Research. That was what they were after. Here in this building, human beings had developed the anti-Rull bacteria of the barrier. Just what the Rulls would want to know about that process, he had no idea. Perhaps a single bit of information in connection with it would enable them to destroy a source material or organism, and so nullify the entire defense. The Play Square had intimated that such possibilities existed.

  All the doors of "Research" were closed, unlike those in the other buildings they had seen.

  Jackie said, "You open up, Diddy."

  Obediently, Diddy reached for the door handle. He stopped as two men came along the walk.

  One of them hailed him. "Hello there, kid. We keep running into you, don't we?"

  Diddy let go of the door and turned to face them. They looked like the two "men" who had originally brought him to the barrier and who had made the bacteria test on him. But that would be merely outward appearance. The only Rulls inside the barrier of all those in Solar City would be individuals who had been immunized against the particular bacteria which he had isolated for them at that one part of the barrier.

  It would be a coincidence if both The Yards agent images had belonged to that group. Accordingly, these were probably not the same. Not that it mattered.

  The spokesman said, "Glad we bumped into you again. We want to conduct another experiment. Now, look, you go inside there. Research is probably protected in a very special fashion. If we can prove our idea here, then we'll have helped in making it harder for the Rulls to come into The Yards. That'll be worth doing, won't it?"

  Diddy nodded. He was feeling kind of sick inside, and he wasn't sure he could talk plainly in spite of all his training.

  "Go inside," said the Rull, "stand around for a few moments, and then take a deep breath, hold it in, and come out. That's all."

  Diddy opened the door, stepped through into the bright interior. The door closed automatically behind him. He found himself in a large room. I could run, he thought. They don't dare come in here. The absence of people inside the room chilled the impulse. It seemed unusual that there was no one around. Most of the departments in The Yards operated on a round-the clock basis.

  Behind him, the door opened. Diddy turned. The only Rulls in sight were Jackie and Gil standing well back from the door, and other boys even farther away. Whoever had opened the door was taking no chances on getting a dose of anything, dangerous or otherwise.

  "You can come out now," said the man's voice. He spoke from behind the door. "But remember, first take a deep breath and hold it."

  Diddy took the breath. The door shut automatically as he emerged, and there were the two Yard police waiting behind it. One of them held up a little bottle with a rubber tube. "Exhale into this," he said.

  When that was done, the Rull handed it to his companion, who

  walked quickly around the corner of the building and out of sight.

  The spokesman said, "Notice anything unusual?"

  Diddy hesitated. The air in the building, now that he thought of it, had seemed thick, a little harder to breathe than ordinary air. He shook his head slowly. "I don't think so," he said.

  The Rull was tolerant. "Well, you probably wouldn't notice," he said; then he added quickly, "We might as well test your blood too. Hold up your finger."

  Diddy cringed a little from the needle, but he allowed the blood to be taken. Gil came forward. "Can I help?" he asked eagerly.

  "Sure," said the man. "You take this around to my friend."

  Gil was gone exactly as a boy would go—at a dead run. A minute ticked by, and then another minute; and then ...

  "Ah," said the man, "here they come."

  Diddy stared at the returning pair with a sickly grin. The Rull, who had been standing beside him, walked swiftly forward to meet the two. If the two spies said anything to each other, Diddy was unable to hear it. Actually, he took it for granted that there was a swift exchange on the light level. The communication, whatever its nature, stopped.

  The man who had done all the talking came back to Diddy and said, "Kid, you've sure been valuable to us. It looks as if we're really going to make a contribution to the war against the Rulls. Do you know that air in there has an artificial gas mixed with it, a fluorine compound? Very interesting and very safe by itself. And even if a Rull with his fluorine metabolism should walk in there, he'd be perfectly safe—unless he tried to use the energy of his body on a blaster or communication level. The energy would act as an ionizing agent, bring about a molecular union between the fluorine in the air and the fluorine in the Rull body. The union wouldn't last long, being unstable, but neither would the Rull body."

  Diddy did not fully understand. The chemical reactions of fluorine and its compounds had been discussed in a general way as part of his teaching, but this was something a little different.

  "Very clever," said the spy with apparent satisfaction. "The Rull himself sets off the reaction which destroys him. But now, I gather that all you kids want to go inside and have a look around. Okay, in with you. Not you—" to Diddy—"not for a minute. I want to have a little talk with you. Come on over here."

  He drew Diddy aside, while the "boys"
rushed through the door. Diddy could imagine them spreading through the building, searching out secrets. He thought wearily, Surely somebody will do something, and quickly.

  The Rull said, "Confidentially, kid, this is really an important job you've done for us today. Just to give you an idea, we've kept an eye on the research building pretty well all night. The staff here usually goes home around midnight. Since midnight a couple of workmen have gone into the place, installed some equipment, and left. They put a radio hook-up over the door, with a loud-speaker both inside and out. If I were a Rull, I'd wreck a thing like that, just as a precaution. Right now, except for you kids, the whole place is empty. You can see how much the people here have depended on the bacteria barrier keeping the Rull away."

  He paused, then continued. "Of course the Rulls could spy out most of that information in advance, and if they finally got across the barrier they could set up guards all around the building, and so prevent even the most powerful armored forces from getting through to the defense of the building. It could be blasted, of course, from a distance and destroyed, but it's hard to imagine them doing that very quickly. They'd wait till they'd tried other methods.

  "You see where that would take us. The Rulls would have an opportunity to search out some of the secrets of the building. Once outside, they could communicate the information to other Rulls, not in the danger area, and then each individual would have to take his own chance on escaping. That's bold stuff, but the Rulls have done similar things before. So you see, it all could happen easily enough. But now we've prevented it."

  "Diddy—" it was a whisper from above and to one side of him—"don't show any sign that you hear this."

  Diddy stiffened, then quickly relaxed. It had been proved long ago that the Rull electronic hearing and talking devices, located as they were inside sound-deadening shoulder muscles, could not detect whispers.

  The whisper continued swiftly. "You've got to go inside. When you are inside, stay near the door. That's all. There'll be more instructions for you then."

  Diddy located the source of the whisper. It was coming from above the door. He thought shakily, The Rull mentioned a radio being installed over the door—the whisper must be coming through that.

  But how was he going to get inside when this Rull was so obviously delaying him? The Rull was saying something about a reward, but Diddy scarcely heard him. Distractedly, he looked

  around. He could see a long line of buildings, some of them brightly illuminated, others in half darkness. The vast brilliance from the ship cast a long shadow where he was standing. In the sky above, the night seemed as black as ever.

  There was no sign of the bright new morning, only hours away now. Diddy said desperately, "Gosh, I'd better get inside. The sun will soon be up, and I've still got a lot of places to look."

  The Rull said, "I wouldn't waste much time in there. But take a look inside anyway. There is something I want you to do."

  Quivering, Diddy opened the door. The Rull caught it before it could close.

  "Let me get in there for just a second," he said.

  He stepped in and reached up above the door, and yanked. Some wiring came down.

  He stepped back outside. "Just thought I'd create a war condition for our little experiment. I just disconnected the wiring of that newly installed speaker system. You go in for a minute and tell me what the other kids are doing."

  The door closed behind Diddy in its automatic fashion.

  At the Security building, the admiral in charge shrugged regretfully at Jamieson. "I'm sorry, Trevor. We did the best we could. But they just wrecked our only hope of contact with your boy."

  "What message did you plan to give him?" asked Jamieson.

  "I'm sorry," the admiral replied, "that's classified."

  From his cage in the trailer outside the building, the ezwal telepathed to Jamieson. "I read his mind. Would you like me to transmit to Diddy?"

  "Yes," said Jamieson mentally.

  To Diddy, the message that came was clear and direct—and so sharp that he confused it with a whispered speech. The message was: "Diddy, unless a Rull carries a weapon right out in the open, he's dependent on the energy from his cells. A Rull by his very nature has to go about without any clothes on. It's only his body that can produce the images of human clothes and human forms. I see that only two boys are in sight."

  There were two, both of whom were bending over a desk on the far side of the room. For a moment Diddy wondered how they were seeing this scene. He had no time for speculation, for the next words came. "Take out your gun and shoot them."

  Diddy put his hand in his pocket, swallowed hard and brought out the gun. His hand trembled a little, but for five years now he had been trained for such a moment as this, and he felt awfully steady inside. It was not a gun that had to be aimed perfectly.

  He fired a steady blue streak of flame, and he merely waved its nozzle toward where the Rulls were. They started to turn and collapsed as they did so. "Good shot," said the ezwal.

  Diddy scarcely noticed that no sound accompanied the words. Across the room, what had been two apple-cheeked boys were changing. In death, the images couldn't hold. And though he had seen pictures of what was emerging; it was different seeing the dark flesh coming into view, the strange reticulated limbs.

  "Listen—" the thought brought him out of that shock—"all the doors are locked. Nobody can get in. Nobody out. Start walking through the building. Shoot everybody you see. Everybody/ Accept no pleas, no pretense that they are just kids. Careful track has been kept of every other real boy, and there are only Rulls in the building. Burn them all without mercy."

  It was several minutes later that the ezwal reported to Jamieson : "Your son has destroyed every Rull inside the building. I've told him to remain inside, since an attempt is being made to kill those that are outside. He'll stay there until I tell him to come out."

  On receiving that message, Jamieson gave a shuddering sigh of relief. "Thank you, my friend," he said silently. "That was an outstanding telepathic performance."

  It was the admiral who wanted to talk to Jamieson, later. "It was really a tremendous victory," he said. "The Rulls on the outside fought it out with us in their usual brave fashion, but we changed the bacteria where they originally crossed the barrier, and so we had them trapped."

  He hesitated, then said in a puzzled tone, "What I don't understand is, how did your boy know exactly when to use the blaster on them, without our telling him?"

  Jamieson said, "I want you to remember that question when you receive my report on what happened."

  "Why would you write a report on this incident?" the officer asked, puzzled.

  "You'll see," said Jamieson.

  It was still pitch-dark as Diddy caught a helicar at Cross 2 and flew to within a block of the hill, from which "Explorers" like himself had to watch the sunrise. He climbed the steps that led to the top of the hill and found several other boys already there, sitting and standing around. While he could not be certain that they were human, he had a pretty strong conviction that they were. There seemed to be no reason why a Rull should participate in this particular ritual.

  Diddy sank down under a bush beside the shadow shape of one of the boys. Neither of them spoke right away; then Diddy said, "What's your name?"

  "Mart." The answering voice was shrill but not loud.

  "Find the sound?" asked Diddy.

  "Yep."

  "So did I." He hesitated, thinking of what he had done. Just for a moment he had a sharp awareness of how wonderful was the training that had made it possible for a nine-year-old boy to act as he had acted. Then that faded from his fore-consciousness, and he said, "It's been fun, hasn't it?"

  "I guess so."

  There was silence. From where Diddy sat, he could see the intermittent glare of furnaces as the sky flared with a white, reflected fire. Farther along was the jewel-bright aura of light that partially framed the ship. The sky above was no longer dark, and Diddy noti
ced that the shadows around him were not dense any more, but grayish. He could see Mart's body crouched under the bush, a smaller body than his own.

  As the dawn brightened, he watched the ship. Slowly, the metal of its bare upper ribs caught the flames of the sun that was still not visible from where they sat. The glare expanded downward, and sunlight glinted on the dark, shiny vastness of its finished lower walls, the solid shape it made against the sky beyond.

  Out of the shadows grew the ship, an unbelievable thing, bigger than anything around it. At this distance the hundred-story Administration Building looked like a part of its scaffolding, a white pillar against the dark colossus that was the ship. Long after the sun had come up, Diddy stood watching it in exaltation of pride. In the glare of the new day the ship seemed to be gathering itself as if poised for flight. Not yet, Diddy thought shakily, not yet. But the day would come. In that far time the biggest ship ever planned and constructed by man would point its nose at the open spaces between the near stars and fly out into the darkness. And then indeed would the Rulls have to give ground.

  At last, in response to the familiar empty feeling in his belly, Diddy went down the hill. He ate breakfast in a little "Instant" restaurant. And then, happy, he boarded a helicar and headed for home.

  In the master bedroom, Jamieson heard the outer door of the apartment open. He caught his wife with her fingers on the knob of the bedroom door. He shook his head at her gently. "He'll be tired," he said softly. "Let him rest."

  Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be led back. To her own bed this time.

  Diddy tiptoed across the living room and into the privacy of the Play Square. The door shut automatically behind him as he entered, and the lights switched on. A glance at the controls on the wall showed that the complex robot room was alert to his presence. It said, finally, "Your report, please."

  "I found out what the sound was," said Diddy happily.

  "What is it?"

  When Diddy had answered that, the Play Square said, "You are a credit to my training. I'm proud of you. Now go to sleep."