by Anthology
Gerry pointed the gun, expecting her enemy to vanish. It did, promptly and thoroughly. The woman whirled. Two blue globes, now ten feet in diameter, were bearing down on her.
The interior body within the outer membrane had not expanded, and was still about six inches in diameter.
Gerry fired. The pellet hit the nearer of the things. Anesthetic gas spurted in a compact cloud. It did not a bit of damage. The globe expanded still further and advanced purposefully.
Gerry tried the explosive pistol. It was equally useless, for an entirely different reason. True, it blew the sphere to fragments, but when Gerry turned, six new ones, large and bluish, were stealthily approaching.
"It isn't real," Gerry said desperately to herself. "I'm going insane."
She suddenly thought of the audiophone. As she was about to use it, the nearest of the monsters arrested her attention.
On its aquamarine surface a picture was forming. It took shape, color, and size.
A three-dimensional reproduction of Gerry Carlyle appeared there.
"Good Lord," the woman whispered. "Are they intelligent, after all?"
Cautiously, she eyed her double. The reproduction of herself bent into a hoop-shape and began to roll rapidly forward.
On the screen of the globe's bluish outer membrane, the scene was amazingly vivid and realistic.
Then the pseudo-Gerry rose and began to walk, stiffly and jerkily. Gerry herself caught the idea. The monsters moved about by rolling. They must be wondering why this strange visitant did not progress in the same manner.
An idea occurred to Gerry. If she could make friends with the creatures, even lure one to the ship, it would be a considerable achievement.
She lifted one arm in the immemorial gesture of peace.
It was misunderstood. The nearest of the globes expanded to twenty feet, jumped forward, knocked Gerry flat. She clawed out her gun and blew it to bits, while trying to rise.
Another sphere materialized in the empty air above her. It smashed on her helmet, knocking the weapon from her hand. Its outer membrane folded elastically around the woman's space suit. She was lifted, struggling frantically.
The sphere began to roll up a gravel dune. Gerry caught flashing alternate glimpses of light and darkness.
She managed to turn on the audiophone and yell for help.
There was only a faint buzzing sound. The device was broken. The banging it had received had disrupted its delicate mechanism.
Catch-'em-Alive Carlyle had been caught — alive!
Chapter XXIII.
Mad World
Gerry wasn't missed from the ship immediately. There was too much to be done. Not even Tommy Strike noticed that she was gone until considerable time had elapsed. By that time, of course, it was too late.
"I've learned the value of a getaway," Quade told Tommy, in the midst of a hubbub of repair. "If we run into real trouble, we want to be able to scram. There's no use filming and capturing life-forms if we get stuck on the comet when it gets close to the Sun."
Strike nodded. "Right you are. But things ought to be well under control by now, eh?"
"They are. Where's your side-kick?" Quade demanded.
"I'll find out." Tommy went away. When he returned he looked puzzled, worried. "She's gone. And a suit's gone, too."
Quade swore helplessly. He turned to an audiophone and sent out a QRZ call.
"Calling Gerry Carlyle. QRZ-QRZ-Calling Gerry Carlyle."
There was no response.
"Well," Quade said at last, "we'll make sure she's not in the ship. But I feel pretty sure she isn't."
"She doesn't answer the call," Strike observed. "That means she can't."
There was orderly confusion. Presently a half-dozen men issued from the ship, clad in grotesque lightweight armor, flexible but airtight. Quade and Tommy Strike led the group.
"We can't take the ship," the movie man pondered. "The repairs aren't finished, and it's too bulky to maneuver easily. I want no chances of a crack-up till the final take-off. We'll have to depend on our legs. The portocars are no good on this gravel."
"Which way?" Strike asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine. Can't see much from here." Quade took a periscope from his kit, stretched it out, and peered through the eyepiece. "No soap. There's a high dune. Let's go up there."
They did. But nothing was visible.
"Let me — " Strike began. He paused. His jaw dropped. He glared down into the valley they had just left. "Gerry."
The others followed the direction of his shaky, pointing finger. Gerry Carlyle was down there, her red hair disheveled within the transparent helmet. Clad in bulky space armor, she came running in panic up the slope.
But she wasn't getting anywhere!
Her legs pumped up and down. Her body was bent forward at a sharp angle. Racing as hard as she could, it was all she could do to stay in one place.
Then she vanished.
Strike and Quade looked at each other, gasped, stared back to the valley. Bleak, desolate, and empty, it lay washed in the white glare of the surging skies.
"It was Gerry, wasn't it?" Tommy gulped.
"Like Alice," Quade replied, completely flabbergasted. "She had to run faster and faster to keep in one spot… What sort of place is this, anyway?"
"Think it could have been a mirage?" Strike asked hopefully.
Quade led the way down the slope. He pointed to unmistakable footprints, dents in the gravelly ground.
"Mirages don't do that. It was solid. Gerry Carlyle was there, and she vanished."
Without warning, the tower materialized. Fifty feet away it sprang into sudden existence. A high, huge monolith of black, stone or metal, it was featureless, save for a gaping door and a gleaming bright sphere at the summit. As unexpectedly as it had come, it disappeared.
"Phantoms," Quade said helplessly. "But three-dimensional, solid, real. Radio transmission of matter?"
"That tower!" Strike said. "We saw something like it from the air."
"It was back in that direction, Chief," one of the men broke in. "Not too far to walk."
"Okay," Quade replied. "Hop to it. Remember, we're in a cyanogen atmosphere. Helmets on at all times. Keep your guns ready." He called the ship and told Morgan his plans. "Take charge till we get back. If we don't make it before the deadline, take off without us."
None of the other men made any objection to this. Grimly they shouldered their packs and followed Quade and Strike down the valley.
It promised to be a dull journey. But that was only at first. Strike was the one who first caught sight of the blue sphere.
It rested on top of a dune, motionless, resembling some strange form of plant life. Warily they approached it. It was a ten-foot globe of translucent membrane, with a black nucleus inside that floated in some liquid.
"Think it's alive?" Strike asked.
"If it is, it breathes cyanogen. If it breathes."
Quade reached out to touch the thing — and it vanished.
It stayed vanished. Five minutes later the men gave up and continued their journey. Soon after this they encountered another sphere, similar to the first, but reddish instead of blue.
Quade approached within a few feet. Cautiously, trying not to make any sudden motion, he turned on his audiophone broadcaster. He made conciliatory noises. The globe shivered, and a picture formed on its surface.
It was a duplicate of Quade.
"It's a mirror," Strike said softly.
"No. Look at that."
The image of Quade was moving. It extended its arms and bowed, though the original made no motion. It jumped up and down, and then vanished as the membrane went blank. The picture had been perfectly distinct, three-dimensional.
Another picture formed. This time it showed the space ship.
It also vanished. The sphere increased in size like an inflated balloon, and the men sprang back in alarm. But no hostile move was made. Instead, the thing disappeared.
In its place stood a model of the space ship. It was no more than six feet high, but complete in each detail.
This vanished, also. The original sphere, or a duplicate of it, reappeared. It shrank to a few inches and was gone.
"I will be damned," Quade said, slowly and emphatically. "It can't be happening. The thing's a super motion-picture projector."
"Intelligent?" Strike asked.
"Dunno. That membrane — I've a hunch it's composed of evolved, highly adaptable cells, which take the place of our own normal senses. Respiration, vision, and so forth may be accomplished by those cells. Communication — they seem to do it visually, by projecting pictures of thought-images on their membranous surface."
"But how can they vanish like that? And assume different shapes? That thing took the form of our space ship. Maybe of Gerry, too."
Quade made a despairing gesture. "Too deep for me, Strike. I think the key's in that black tower we saw. Let's get going."
An eternity of plodding, laborious marching ensued. Overhead white fires of the comet blazed, twisting in strange, titanic tides. The terrain underfoot was monotonous beyond description. Inside the suits, the men perspired and swore under their breath.
A creature like prehistoric Tyrannosaurus Rex leaped from nowhere. It stood kangaroo-like on its hind legs atop a dune, and stared around, its reptilian, flat head revolving slowly. It was at least twenty-five feet high. But that wasn't the most amazing part of the apparition.
Strike seized Quade's arm.
"That's a Venusian whip," he yelped. "A Venusian monster! Here — on the comet."
"You're crazy," Quade said.
Then he saw it. His eyes bulged. "It — it can't be real," Strike said desperately. "It can't be."
The whip settled the problem by sighting the men. Flicking out its long, prehensile tongue, it charged down the slope. The thunder of its progress shook the ground. It was certainly no phantom. Strike jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired. The giant reptile flung back its head, hissed with ear — shattering shrillness. But still it continued its onrush.
The men were well-trained enough not to give way to panic. They scattered, each unlimbering his weapon. They evaded the monster's charge, but the prehensile tongue flicked out like greased lightning and rasped over Quade's suit as he sprang away. The guns bellowed out with staccato roars.
The whip, its head blown completely off, ran around in a vast circle. It took a long while before the minor brain in the tail-end of its spine brought it the realization that it was dead. Then, abruptly, it toppled over. The great tail continued swishing, the muscles twitched under the scaly hide.
"Phantom?" Quade said bitterly. "I don't think so. It isn't vanishing, is it?"
"I don't get it," Strike mused. "A Venusian life-form on the comet. Somebody else might have forestalled us. But why bring a whip here?"
There seemed to be no solution to the problem. Nor was it possible to examine the giant carcass closely. Muscular reaction still made it a bundle of potential dynamite, twitching and jerking as it did at unexpected intervals. So the men resumed their march.
They were unquestionably nervous, and Quade could not blame them. He himself jumped slightly when Strike cried out: "Say, I just thought of something. How can an oxygen-breathing whip live in a cyanogen atmosphere?"
There was no possible answer to that, of course.
The next arrival was the red sphere, or a duplicate of it. It appeared on the summit of a dune, rolled down toward the Earthmen, and suddenly hesitated. From empty air around it appeared a dozen bluish globes, converging on the original one. They formed a milling, chaotic group of bubbles. When they drew away, the red one was gone. A deflated, punctured skin lay on the gravel, and colorless ichor was running out of it.
A score of reddish globes materialized from the air. The blue ones began to roll rapidly away, the newcomers in furious pursuit. Both groups scooted over a rise and disappeared, this time in a somewhat more logical manner.
"Didn't see us, I guess," Strike said.
"No… The blue ones seemed down on the red ones, and vice versa. Two different tribes or species, perhaps. But the color seems to be the only difference."
"I wonder it they're intelligent," Strike persisted.
"It's difficult to say," Quade replied thoughtfully as he trudged on, plowing through the gravel. "It doesn't seem so, but their thought-processes may be so entirely alien to ours that there's probably no common ground to meet on. There are vast gaps even between the System's planetary life-forms.
"Originally the Arbermius spores, drifting through the void, may have created life. But adaptation and environment played a tremendous part. Besides, I doubt if any sort of spore could get through this comet's coma. Microscopic bodies, shoved around by radiation, would be repelled by the electronic barrier. I told you we might run into almost anything here. We're outside normal boundaries — almost outside our known Universe."
"Are you telling me?" Strike replied bitterly. "Look! I might swallow a whip, but — this is too much."
Quade didn't believe what he saw. The other men were stupefied with amazement. They had topped a dune. In the valley beneath them squatted a vast bulk. It was alive, but it wasn't homogeneous. It was a freak, a sport, and an impossible one.
It had the body of an elephant, gaudily striped with a zebra's markings. It had the neck of an ostrich, unduly elongated. Its thin, awkward legs resembled those of a giraffe. And atop that lean, gawky neck was — the head of Tommy Strike.
It was quite unmistakable, to the last freckle and lock of disordered hair falling over the tanned forehead. It looked into space with a wildly vacuous air, turned toward the Earthmen. The colossal hulk writhed, struggled. For a second it stood erect. Then the frail legs splintered, and the torso came crashing down. It struggled in agony.
Incontinently, it vanished.
"All right," Quade said to the befuddled Strike. "That settles it. The whip was a known life-form. This wasn't."
"The component parts were."
Quade refrained from the obvious rebuttal. "Yes. But nothing like that, in toto, ever existed in any universe. It was created, somehow, and it disappeared into thin air. The question is how?"
"Dunno. I think the question's why?"
Quade resumed his forward march.
"The answer to both is in the black tower, I'm certain. It shouldn't be far away now."
They saw it long before they reached it, a colossal structure rearing from the gravelly surface of the comet. It seemed entirely deserted. It was a duplicate of the phantom monolith that had appeared some time before. The same gateway yawned uninvitingly. The same shimmering, metallic sphere crowned the summit, crawling with unknown but potent force.
"Those red and blue globes never built that," Strike said emphatically. "It was built by hands, or their equivalent."
"Maybe the ancestors of our little friends did it," Quade said. "That tower may have stood there for a long, long time. Besides, it might have been built by machinery."
"Machines? Why should the globes use 'em? That outer membrane of theirs serves every purpose. They probably absorb food through it, if they don't acquire it in this screwy atmosphere by respiration."
"That could be, of course. Meanwhile, let's go down and investigate."
Furtively, they sneaked to the threshold of the tower and peered in. A huge bare chamber gaped before them. It was lit by dim, pale fluorescence, and seemed to stretch up and eternally. The interior of the tower was hollow. But far above Quade caught the gleam of metal.
"Machine up there —"
He was interrupted by a cry from Strike.
"Gerry!"
The woman lay across the vast room, stretched unconscious on the floor.
Strike raced toward her, the others not far behind. He knelt beside the woman, examining her oxygen apparatus. Quickly he turned a valve.
Gerry's face was flushed. Her lips were moving, and her eyes stared blankly, unseeingly. For a se
cond, Strike imagined that the creatures of the comet had afflicted her with some weird disease. Then he recognized that this was merely delirium.
"Back to the ship," Quade commanded. "Two of you carry her."
"It's too late," Tommy Strike grunted. "Here come our little friends."
Dozens of the blue spheres were rolling across the threshold into the huge room. More and more of them flooded in. Inexorably they bore down on the trapped Earthmen.
Strike gently lowered Gerry to the floor and whipped out his gun. The others had already drawn. But none fired till the hostile intentions of the intruders became unmistakable.
Then Quade's explosive bullet blew one of the blue globes to fragments. A staccato blast of gunfire instantly boomed and echoed through the cyanogen atmosphere within the tower, when his men followed his lead. A dozen of the enemy vanished, collapsing like split bladders. Curiously enough, some of them continued their disappearance, dematerializing like ghosts. Others remained.
But more of them appeared. Quade and his companions were forced back against the inner wall. They had plenty of ammunition, but it was impossible to withstand the irresistible tide of the globes.
"Where in hell are they coming from?" Strike yelled.
On they came, more and more of them, till the floor of the tower was covered with bluish balls, ranging in size from two to ten feet.
Quade switched on his audiophone and called Morgan, at the ship.
"What's up, Chief?" Morgan asked, hearing the commotion.
"Come after us, quick," the cameraman said quietly. In a few succinct sentences, he explained the situation, pausing at times to take pot-shots at the monsters.
"Can't do it," Morgan said. "One of the engines just went out. It'll take hours to fix. We'll come and get you on foot."
"No," Quade snapped. "Stay in the ship. Get that engine fixed. Those are definite orders."
He had no time to say any more. Some of his men were already down, and the globes were rolling over them. Strike stood straddle-legged above Gerry's unmoving form, a gun in either hand. The remnant of the men were clustered together. Backed helplessly against the wall, they were surrounded by the advancing hordes. Abruptly, unexpectedly, there came a breathing space.
