by Ryder Stacy
But the thing had not finished having its fun. It veered to the side at the last second, slapping Chen with one of its five-foot-wide claws. The force of the two-ton appendage knocked the slender man twenty feet into the air. He landed, dazed, just yards from Rockson, and began to go under the quicksand-like surface. Rock reached over and wrapped his arm around Chen’s chest, keeping them both above the stirred-up sands. Another claw-swipe knocked out Archer.
There was an eerie silence. They knew it was down there, they knew it would come up again. “Should we run for it?” Cohen half-whispered to his commander.
“Everyone walk slowly, steadily toward the pyramid, try to get up on the rocks, maybe it can’t climb—”
But there was no time.
The hell monster surfaced again about a hundred yards away, and again lifted its long, almost graceful neck. The multiple red eyes in its head burned with thirst. It came at them. Rockson sensed this was going to be the last time. He searched frantically, looking for any kind of weapon. His pistol was gone and so was his rifle, but he suddenly noticed the small emergency pack strapped to the side of his belt. He flipped the canvas pack open and, stepping furiously to keep standing upright in the sinking sand, glanced inside. There, at the bottom, beneath syringes and some cartridges, was a gun of some kind. He pulled it out—a flare pistol, but only one shell. He knew the charge wouldn’t even make a dent in the creature’s thick armor. He’d have to wait until the last possible second, use it just right. A chance. A small chance.
The thing bore down on them, opening its dripping jaws, sand escaping in long lines from the foot-and-a-half-long triple rows of dagger teeth. It was going to swallow them all with a few quick bites—a mere snack; a moist one, though.
It built up speed, the head lowering down to the sand to swoop them into waiting jaws. The flaming red eyes made contact with Rock’s mismatched blue and violet eyes. The Doomsday Warrior could see the murderous, primitive hunger in them. The curved teeth glistened from the thin rays of the diffused sun, trying to burn through the pinkish-gray cloud cover. The Doomsday Warrior waited and waited until the thing was just yards away, until he was able to see straight down the dark throat of the unearthly killer. Holding the flare gun straight out in front of him, he fired into the monster’s maw. The flare tore into the innards of the thing and exploded with a roar, sending out a storm of sparks and a burning white light. The creature threw its head back and let out a blood-curdling scream. It tried to bring its immense mouth down again, but something was wrong. It seemed confused, its brain no longer functioning.
The explosion had severed its spinal cord. The great neck swung back and forth wildly and then slammed down into the sand. The immense body jerked violently, the claws and tail going into death spasms. It moved for about a minute and then was still, bizarrely motionless in the tumbled sands. It slid slowly past them, just feet away.
Archer suddenly came out of his stupor from the slap of the claw. He shook his head in confusion, as if trying to shake his brain cells into place. He looked up at Rockson, panic in his wide brown eyes, and then saw the thing that lay dead in the sand alongside them, like a giant swollen fire hose from hell.
“Roooocksoon—thiiing killl,” he growled, ready to escape again, slipping in the sands.
“No, it’s dead,” Rock said softly. “The hunter got captured by the game.” Archer looked skeptical as he struggled to his feet. He could hardly believe that something so gargantuan, so fierce, could have been killed. Chen came over and kicked the thing’s side. Yes, it was dead, dead as cold stone, stiffening in the cool air as the pale sun lit up the immense rounded side with a garish ochre light.
Nineteen
They composed themselves, found most of their weapons, and looked over at their monster-killing leader.
Rockson went back over to the wall of the pyramid. He just felt around the smooth bronzelike door and found an indentation. He pressed it and the door creaked open sideways, like an elevator door. It was dark inside, very dark. Rock started to enter. “You’re welcome to join me, friends,” he said.
“Wait,” Detroit cautioned. “Shouldn’t we put a guard on the saucer?”
“Why bother? Nobody’s here who could fly the thing,” Chen reminded, “so relax. Monsters eat living things.”
They entered very slowly, shining their flash-beams forward. Rock moved the beam of his flashlight to the walls and ceilings and whistled. “You get a real feel for how well made this place is.”
“Spooky,” Archer complained.
In no time at all they came to a dead end and found no way to go any further. Rock hesitated to blast with Detroit’s grenades, and they continued to search for a way beyond the barrier of stone.
Archer grew tired and leaned his big bulk against the smooth gray-block wall. He must have pressed something, for suddenly he was gone. “A swivel door,” exclaimed Chen. The Chinese Freefighter had been the only one who’d seen what happened.
Archer was inside and they were outside, Chen explained.
“Hey, Arch, where are you?” Rock shouted, though he didn’t know if he could be heard.
“The swivel-door was here,” Chen said, and put his weight to the wall. Archer came around again, and this time Rock caught the door’s edge, arresting its movement. They entered the surprisingly well-lit interior while the mountain man complained about “trick doors” and “spooks.”
“No one except you could have found it, Arch. You’re smart as hell, aren’t you?” Rock complimented him, figuring that maybe it was time to make Archer less uncomfortable. The simple giant hated tombs and pyramids.
“Smaaart? Yes! Me smart!” Archer laughed, and pounded Rockson on the shoulder, sending him several feet forward.
The corridor was long, and it bent upward, though not steeply. There were no steps or railings, no decorations, just gray, smooth walls. Then there was another door. Rockson pressed against the surprisingly earthlike ornament of eagles-on-trees embossed on the door. When he touched a tongue of one of the eagles, the door moved. It swung inward this time, admitting them into a vast chamber. Here sunlight came down in a hazy shaft from high above, and many boxlike structures, yards high, lay beneath inches of dust, the dust of eons. The place was the size of six cathedrals. “Might as well step in,” Rock said, though he didn’t like the look of two gryphon statues on either side of the portal. Gryphons, Rockson remembered, ate only virgins. None of his men qualified. Still, the monkey-faced, heavily fanged winged-lion creatures had an ominous presence. The stone gargoyles seemed to be watching Rockson. This feeling of being watched was, he decided, the effect of the richly oxygenated air of the asteroid. Still, caution was the word.
“Shotpistols out,” Rockson said. “Detroit, pull a grenade. We go in s-l-o-w-l-y.”
They moved in about ten feet, making deep footprints in the dust. Everything was silent. Suddenly a ray of brilliant white shot out of the mouth of the gryphon on the left, and just as fast the beam of light incinerated Halpur and Williams in one brilliant flash.
“Duck!” Rock screamed, and only that word, plus a shove, prevented Detroit from being hit by the second raybeam. The black man did get a searing burn in his forearm, however. A ray came from the other gryphon, too, as the stone creature adjusted its gaze. Both gryphons now inexplicably faced the remaining Freefighters. Rockson felt numb all over. Halpur, Williams, dead! Time seemed to move more slowly. With a nauseating feeling in his gut, and a chill of disbelief, Rockson nevertheless started firing his weapon. The other Freefighters also let off shots. The massive combined weapons fire destroyed the gryphons, but not before another pair of death beams cut down Gooligan, reducing him to a pile of white ash.
It was all over, but everyone still alive kept firing their shotpistols and Liberators at the blasted-apart gryphons, sending pieces of stone and metal up into the air. “Stop! It’s over!” Rock called out. And it was. The Doomsday Warrior went over to the piles of ashes that were his loyal friends. He reache
d out for the dust, still warm from the life that had been in it. He let it sift through his fingers and bowed his head and wept, wept a long time.
The other Freefighters moved to form a protective ring around Rockson, but he was right: there were no more deathrays. The guardians of Mu had done their deeds and ceased to exist.
Everyone was affected by the loss of their five friends. Still, after a while they got up and carefully went to inspect the shattered ruins of the gryphons. The statues’ bases were all that remained. “I blame myself,” Rock mumbled. “I should have been more careful.”
“Or maybe,” interrupted an eerie, ethereal, and strangely-accented voice coming out of nowhere and everywhere, “you should have said that you were entering the Temple of Mu in peace.”
Chen spun his weapon around, firing at where he suspected the voice had come from. His shots passed right through the source of the voice. Their visitor was walking toward them, but she wasn’t solid. The beautiful apparition had a semi-transparent quality.
Rock stood, jaw open, utterly flabbergasted. He stared wide eyed at someone he knew, a robed human figure-long, blond hair, flawless complexion, the spitting image of the saintly angel he knew as Pruzac. She was floating over the floor, a few inches above it.
“Rockson?” Chen asked. “Is it a ghost?”
“I am not a ghost,” Pruzac said. “I am a friend of Rockson.”
“Yes,” he said in a whisper. “We—know each other. I met her at the Glowers’ settlement. You don’t have to fear.”
“But,” Chen insisted, “she’s not . . . a real person.”
Pruzac smiled warmly. “Rockson is right. Besides, I’m not vulnerable to bullets. It would be easier to converse if you could all hold your fire. Please, there is no more harm coming to you now. I can not be held responsible for the guardians’ actions. None of you spoke to them of your intentions. The guardians of Mu are . . . were automatic, They were meant to destroy not humans, but . . . others. They were meant to destroy evil things. It is too long a story for now. Suffice it to say that we . . . the Karrakans, that is . . . expected a visit by such evil ones. The guardians were a reasonable precaution. Several times in the past, nonhuman races have attempted to enter this pyramid, to steal the knowledge in the Neuro-dancer. That is forbidden by the old ones, for this place is for humans only. No other may plumb its secrets or absorb its powers. The Neuro-dancer is the final creation of the asteroid dwellers, a living machine. It is a link that allows the daring one attached to it to create what one thinks. It can give ultimate knowledge or ultimate power. You choose.”
Rock moved forward warily and stuck his hand through Pruzac’s robe. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just thin air. Are you a projection? Are you here?”
“Yes and no. I am dead, and this place is dead. I walk between the worlds. Do you not remember our communion? I came to warn you . . . that the guardians would be activated when you came into the chamber of the Neuro-dancer. I came too late.”
“Never mind. Can you bring back our friends?” Scheransky asked. “Can you UNDO what has happened to—”
She shook her head sadly and said, “I am sorry to say the rays are real, though I am like to a specter. Your friends have joined the universe as particles. But,” Pruzac said, lifting a long white hand at Detroit, “I can mend your arm.” She pointed. Without a second’s delay his wound healed.
Detroit worked his arm and said, “It doesn’t even hurt any more. You’re a real angel!”
She continued to explain, “I will be your guide, to protect you. But I am not an angel. I can make mistakes. I can . . . understand the use of the equipment here. What is it you wish to access, Rockson?”
Rockson had many questions for her, but every second of delay meant the earth was moving past the asteroid. He didn’t know the range of the saucer, but the sooner he got what he came for, the better. Rock was stunned by that thought. What had he come here for? The answer was “destiny.”
“Yes,” Pruzac said. “I understand.” She had read his mind. “I will show you. There is urgency . . . you must take a message, take an understanding back to Earth. Without this knowledge, Earth will soon be destroyed. Not by any asteroid, but by ignorance . . . I must immediately show you the Neuro-dancer. You will become one with it and engage the circuits to bring the knowledge in you up to full power. Come quickly; it is no little thing to become a person-of-knowledge.”
“Don’t go,” Archer insisted, “I no trust ghosts.”
But Rockson went with Pruzac, saying, “It will be all right, and she’s right. I know it is . . . necessary.”
As Rock moved along with Pruzac, all the giant square constructions about the immense chamber began coming alive, humming to life. Rock could sense the very air becoming charged with a presence. It was the Neuro-dancer. Everything, the whole place!
Pruzac led him up to a dais, one like an altar in a church. He was standing before a strange, peaceful-looking statue, a statue of a seated blue-granite man. The face of the man was like Buddha, but the body was that of a pharaoh. “The center of power,” she smiled.
He was directed up a side stair by Pruzac and told to sit in the statue’s lap. He sat. Then a whirring . . . and Rock felt a great exultation. He was to be . . . to be . . . raised. He wished it.
Tentacles had issued from the statue, and these living lines of power touched him tenderly, wrapped about his head. Yet he feared not. It was necessary. “These are the neural attachments for your brain,” Pruzac said. “There will be slight pain, but it is harmless. The Neuro-dancer will attach to your skull, go inside your head and link up. You will be able to interact with the Neuro-dancer by direct thought. Guard yourself from stray thoughts,” she cautioned. “Concentrate on finding out what is necessary to save the earth.”
Rockson let it happen; he let the million tiny tentacles enter him.
Slowly . . . almost painlessly . . . the world disappeared.
“I don’t like it. Rock looks dead,” insisted Chen.
“He’s not dead,” Detroit said, feeling the pulse in the neck of the pale man who lay in the statue’s lap. There were a thousand or more tiny pinpricks all over the Doomsday Warrior’s face and skull. Some bled slightly. But he breathed; breathed beneath the mass of throbbing slimy threads that had entered his head.
It had been an hour since Rockson had been led away by Pruzac. Rockson had been attached to the Neuro-dancer—some sort of machine or computer inside the huge statue. This much Detroit knew because Pruzac had told him so before she disappeared. But what would happen now? Detroit wasn’t at all sure. Had Rockson found out the secret of mankind’s survival? Would he now understand what had to be done to save the earth? Could he articulate that secret? Would he survive?
The Doomsday Warrior was coming around. He twitched violently in the lap-seat of the stone pharaoh. Then his eyes opened.
“Rockson, are you okay?” Archer asked, a simple enough question.
To Rockson, it was an absurd one. He’d been in another reality, a place where “okay” and “not okay” were meaningless concepts. He’d undergone a consciousness expansion wider than any that could have been induced by drugs or any other means. This experience had been even more powerful than his communion with Pruzac back in the Glowers’ tent. He was now a million times smarter than before; his memory went back a billion years. Rockson came to know all this in short flashes, flashes of understanding that stunned him, yet were easy to accept. He heard the voice of Archer again and laughed. “Yes! I am fine. But the world is sick! Earth is sick!”
He took a deep breath and stood up unsteadily. His friends helped him down from the statue. He asked to be helped outside the pyramid.
Only when he and his remaining men were out on the pink-tinted surface did he speak. His words were strange.
“Here is the knowledge,” he said. “Here is the message that could, if anyone listened, save the earth.” Rockson said, “Mankind has gained victory over medieval superstitions; science
has cast away natural philosophy and refused to use the way of thinking based on any embracing vision. The deductive method gave way to the inductive method of gathering facts and formulating theories. In this way, Earth’s people have denied vision-based methods and concepts and all considerations of purpose, or right, or beauty. Because thought lacked a scientific basis, religious and ethical ideals were undermined. Science triumphantly progressed from success to greater success: steam, electricity, radio, lasers, nukes, rockets, genetic engineering. By the twenty-first century, it was clear that this development was fraught with unpleasant consequences. The unimpeded progress of science became a threat to mankind’s survival. Scientific knowledge brought about a loss of orientation. It explained ‘what’ and ‘how,’ but it did not explain ‘why’ and ‘for what purpose.’ It claimed these questions weren’t scientific. The continuing accumulation of knowledge without purpose leaves vital aspirations unfulfilled: the profound need to know who we are, to know our origin, fulfillment, and the nature of reality. That is the crisis.
“We must bring science’s logic and methodology into accord with layers of reality lying so deep that they cannot be contacted by the ordinary senses. We must attempt to restore well-forgotten concepts such as purpose, wholeness, aliveness, and the hidden order of the universe.” As his men stood and gaped, he went on.
“There is a way to do this: One of the characteristics of thought is its power. This power draws us, holding us captive. The aim of the Neuro-dancer is to open the world of thoughts. When I directly experienced the field, the energy, and the content of thoughts and I opened all these aspects, I was no longer blindly participating in the world of the mind. This is real freedom and strength, for I know now that we are not bound to suffering and trapped by emotionality. We can overcome; don’t you see?
“Opening the world of thought does not depend on a Neuro-dancer, but on direct experience. If I can communicate with my own mind, I can open thoughts, through thoughts. The starting point is to see that we are not free, that we are trapped in the field of emotions and thoughts! The more deeply I understand this, the more easily I can cut through the bonds that restrict. The easier this cutting through becomes, the deeper my understanding grows. Eventually I can directly touch the meaning of knowledge, finding the source of it, and true meaning and value. I will explain this all mathematically to Schecter and to other great thinkers.”
