by Zach Hughes
Angela felt protest rising again, sensed that something was very wrong, tried to overcome the powerful sense of well-being that engulfed her. She moved toward the drone control panel, forcing each step. Her limbs were heavy. Her feet seemed to be anchored in thick, heavy mud. She lifted a control helmet.
"Better let Kirsty do it, Angel," Josh said. "She's more accustomed to the peculiarities of each drone."
"Yes, all right," Angela said.
Kirsty had switched away from the drone that rested atop the dark cube of metal on the other side of the world. She was directing one of the returning drones to reverse direction and go down to the surface again.
"I'll just monitor," Angela said, and her movements became more free.
She put out her hand and touched a switch and felt the control contact with the drone atop the cube. She braced herself and gave the order. Thedrone shifted position and on the screen a bright speck of fire appeared as it extended the nozzle of a molecular cutting torch and began to slice into the metal of the cube.
"Angela, what the hell—" Josh began. The rest of his question was cut off by a flare of light on the screen as the drone disintegrated.
Angela made one small sound as she toppled to the deck. Josh bent over her, removed the helmet. He cried out harshly, a painful, strained male scream. The beautiful emerald eyes had been exploded out of their sockets. Blood ran from her ears and her nose, and her skull, as he extended his hand and touched her, was soft. He withdrew his hand quickly and looked at his fingers. They were covered with blood and something else, a white paste. It was as if her brain had exploded inside her skull, shattering and pulping the bone, oozing out into her long, blonde hair.
Before either Kirsty or Sheba could react, Josh was at the console. He punched in a quick order, took weapons control, and within seconds a laser beam lanced downward, curved around the horizon. Kirsty, guessing what Josh intended, focused another viewer on the cube of metal on the far continent. She gasped as she saw that it was already almost hidden by ice.
The laser beam exploded on target. It was some time before the viewers could see through the resulting cloud of steam and fragments. When the view was clear, there was a large crater where the cube had been, and even as Josh and the others watched the ice began to melt and cover the crater with a swiftly forming lake of clear water.
Josh was searching out the next target. Once again the beam lanced down and there was another crater and an expanding area of melt as another cube was destroyed.
Kirsty put her arms around Josh and tried to pull his hands away from the console. "Captain," she said, "that's enough."
"They killed her," Josh said, his voice full of agony. "The bastards killed her."
"Captain, please," Kirsty begged, as another cube and the mass of ice surrounding it was vaporized. "You can't do this. You've got to stop it."
With great effort, Josh controlled his rage. He fell to his knees beside Angela. There was a great deal of blood on the deck.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When the Watcher was alerted for the second time, the planet had made less than one orbit around its sun since the last trespass. A check of systems, the first priority from the day of the beginning, showed need for nourishment in distant ganglia. A healing flow of electrons swept outward to bring all extensions to full readiness within seconds.
The second intrusion was at the site of the first. Such exact positioning could not be accidental. The Watcher waited. Unlike the first one, the second intruder made no immediate attempt at penetration or exploration. There was time for a thorough study of the aliens and their craft. It only took a moment to determine that the occupants of the ship were the same as the first pair. The spaceship was more interesting. The propulsion system was of the same unknown type as that of the smaller ship. The drive, itself, was of simple construction, but it had taken a full concentration of reasoning power to determine that the plant utilized magnetic-radiative power, the energy of the stars. The small ship had been impressive. This second, large ship was even more advanced and required much study. A stream of observations flowed along lengthy ganglia and was stored.
The life-support systems of the two ships told the Watcher much about the physiology of the two life-forms even before a careful probe of thought patterns was initiated. The forces of creation had allowed prodigious latitude in the variety of life-forms but the basic mechanics of intelligent life were that the development of intelligence had not been confined to one planet more blessed than others, as it had once been believed. But then, the very existence of the Watcher and the necessity for eternal vigilance was conclusive testimony to the doctrine of parallel creation.
The intruders, like the first two, breathed oxygen and were carbon based. They were bipedal. In short, they were alien only by definition, not in construction or appearance.
The Watcher waited. Certain aspects of their science were disturbing.
The apparently easy discovery of the smaller ship by the newcomers raised questions. Tendrils of energy penetrated the ship's hull and began to search out a pathway through a more formidable barrier, the natural defense of the aliens' consciousness.
The first ship had been equipped with sophisticated subsurface exploration machinery. It was a mining vessel in search of ores. The function of the second ship was not so easily determined. It had complex communication equipment and carried weapons which, if properly applied, could do damage to sensory ganglia near the surface.
The question that most needed answering was how the large vessel so easily located the smaller one. The planet's ice hid more than one secret.
During the first few years of the Watcher's vigil more than one ship had strayed onto the ice, and a few had come deliberately. They had, of course, been silenced, and their repose had gone undisturbed, along with that of the Sleepers, across the millennia while the planet swam its path around the sun and the disc of the galaxy rotated ponderously. As the centuries slipped past, nothing puzzled the Watcher beyond a simple demand for silencing—and not even that for thousands of years—until the second intruder landed next to the icy tomb of the early trespassers.
How did the second alien ship locate the first so quickly and so precisely? The silencing of the first intruders had been quick and effective.
No call had gone out into space from the meddler's voice communications system.
It was possible that the larger ship contained metal detection equipment more effective than any known to the Watcher. The relatively tiny amount of metal in the first ship could not be easily sorted out from the mass of ore that lay under her, at least not by any method known to the Watcher. The Watcher consulted a vast store of information and confirmed the first belief that the smaller ship could not have communicated its whereabouts.
The answers lay within the minds of the interlopers. The Watcher pushed and probed with invisible tendrils to find that the defensive shell of the female's mind was stronger and more difficult to deceive than that of the male. Penetration came when the male realized that the frozen mass at his feet was the bodies of his parents. In that moment of great emotion the alien mind lost tension. The Watcher noted the entity's feeling of lossand fear as nothing more than pure data.
The alien's defenses were back in place quickly. Entry could be forced, but not without massive damage. The use of force would preclude any opportunity to gain the information needed to answer the Watcher's questions. The Watcher waited, probing softly, soothingly. The emotion that the aliens identified as sorrow gave the Watcher entry into the female's mind. Tendrils of energy tested and cataloged, but the needed answers were still hidden.
The Watcher's pure intellect was not clouded by the enigmatic brew of hormonal and glandular secretions. The Watcher's thoughts sped along indestructible circuits and did not have to depend on the electrochemical interchanges through biological material. The Watcher searched for a point of weakness and found it in the female's emotions. Soon tendrils found the same small chink in the ma
le's defenses. The Watcher did not have to understand emotion to utilize it. The Watcher did not feel superior. It is a wise intellect that knows its limitations and its origins.
However, it was good that the Watcher was not weakened by the distractions of emotion, and even more fortunate that the reproduction mechanism of the aliens was quite similar to that of the Sleepers and, therefore, familiar. It was through that pathway that the Watcher moved.
It was a simple matter to chart the workings of the reproduction system and to stimulate certain areas of the brain.
The Watcher moved into the libido of the female's mind and dictated an arousal. Next, the ebullient passions of the male were the Watcher's target, and so intense was the stimulation that the desired results were achieved and the two aliens were locked together with the flow of hormonal juices dominating both mind and body. The Watcher penetrated. The functions of the small black box in the heart of the ship's reason center were noted, thus answering the most important question.
This piece of technology was new to the Watcher, but the Watcher did not know the feeling of surprise. There was only acceptance. In the future silencing would have to be performed more quickly with specific attention being given to the black box.
The same device was in place on the second vessel, but now the Watcher knew and could check the broadcast bands utilized by the emergency device. No signal was being sent, but that did not mean that one had not been sent before the Watcher scanned the spectrum. It wasnecessary to take steps to assure that a future trespasser would not be able to locate the two ships through a signal from the black box. The Watcher sent silence into the ship's reason center and searched out the black box.
Within seconds all molecular motion in and around the instrument was slowed. For millennia that method of silencing had been sufficient, but now the Watcher went further. The force of silence was intensified. The black box crumbled into dust.
Even while taking quick and positive action to prevent a signal being sent from the ship, the Watcher had been seeking. The coming of the second ship had not been accidental. There was a family tie between the two sets of aliens. The first two had come seeking metals. The second two had come because of the family ties. There were other members of the family. The family tie had brought a second ship, therefore it would bring a third. An additional danger was represented by the signal sent by the black box of the first ship. The Watcher searched. The transmission that had been picked up by the larger ship was still traveling outward through space, but with each passing moment it was becoming more diffuse and it was less likely that it would be detected by another ship in the vastness of the galaxy. That threat diminished, there remained the probability that other members of the family would come looking.
The Watcher decided on immediate action. Orders traveled swiftly along sensitive ganglia. On a mountainside, where the ice cover was relatively thin, melting occurred. Long dormant circuits were activated. A
hum of power came from the fusion engine of an extension. A door rolled away and the extension soared, hovered, and flashed out of existence to travel the long route traced by both of the aliens' ships. Those ships, the first to disturb the sleep of the ice planet in millennia, had come a long way, not only in space but in time. The mission of the extension was twofold.
The minds of the aliens, drugged by hormone stimulated electrochemical activity in the synapses of the brain, were open for the taking. The Watcher knew all.
The silencing was not designed or intended to be merciful, for that concept was unknown to the Watcher. Silencing was simply quick. In the throes of mindless, artificially stimulated passion the male and female stiffened as one. Cold lanced through soft flesh. The flow of blood ceased.
Liquids solidified. Cells burst. The aliens died so quickly that their lastthoughts were storms of erotic fulfillment.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The space arm of the Department of Exploration and Alien Search traced many of its traditions back to Terra II, the planet that was also called New Earth. There the stranded travelers from Old Earth, having lost all stored data in the crash landing of their primitive ship, had begun the long, arduous climb back into space. With only the knowledge held in the frail chalice of memory, their task was to rebuild the technological culture that had sent man into the near space of Old Earth on bellowing pillars of explosive fire. They had the good seeds of Old Earth, wheat and corn and other grains, root vegetables and leaf vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries; and they had the living embryos of the familiar and useful animals of their world, sheep, cattle, and horses. Where man went there was the animal that he had first domesticated, the dog. And with his old friend beside him man began the long journey back.
According to those who held the belief put forward by the one piece of Old Earth knowledge that survived the first and only Terran settlement among the stars, the Bible, God had chosen the rich, friendly planet that was to be called New Earth. The soils were fertile, the land masses extensive. There were mountains and oceans and native flora that was not hostile to the transplanted animals and Earth vegetation. The raw materials were there for the eventual rise of industry and technology.
The way back was not to be traveled swiftly, although the result of the crash of the starship was not a return to savagery. Crude metal tools were made from the broken shell of the ship and from the intact laboratory came draft animals to pull wooden plows. So the culture fell not to barbarism but to the level of subsistence farming. Many of those who survived knew the theory of refining iron from ore, but the ship's metallurgist, and most of the other scientific specialists, had been killed in the crash. The technical library had disappeared forever, along with the rest of the electronically stored knowledge of mankind, with the destruction of the ship's computer system.
Everyone knew that there was such a thing as an electric light bulb, butthe technology needed to make it possible to push a switch and say, "Let there be light" had to begin with something as basic as making a wheel.
When you have only crude tools, and you haven't the means or the skills to work metals, you can make wooden wheels and mount them on wooden axles and build a frame atop them and you have a wagon, but that's just one tiny step toward the generation of electricity.
As the centuries came and went, progress was faster than it had been in the rise of mankind on Old Earth, because it was known that it was possible to push a switch and flood a room with light, because the knowledge of what once was— although dimmed by time and dilution—was both a goal and a goad. The relatively small group of space travelers had obeyed the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply.
Explorers mapped a continent. Ships sailed the oceans and spread man to the other land masses. With the growth of technical knowledge the resources of the planet were utilized. Steam engines replaced sails on the seas and the internal combustion engine was not far behind.
And then man was back in the sky, reaching with accelerated eagerness toward space. Somewhere out there, its exact location long since forgotten, was Home. Earth. The Mother Planet. The myth. All knowledge of the original planet had been passed down by word of mouth in the beginning, and the telling had been colored by the fears and bitterness of the original exiles. Old Earth was a place of savagery. It was a world of war and death. Diverse peoples who spoke languages understood only by themselves sought to dominate others, to take spoils and exact tribute.
Old Earth was a planet of carnivores. Man, himself, was the most dangerous of all. The cities of Old Earth were walled and men had to be ready at all times to defend what was theirs. It was to escape the cycle of wars and destruction that the original settlers had set forth into the unknown. To prevent the reinstitution of war as policy, the old ones taught peace, but they remembered. Although there was no threat to man on New Earth from members of his own race or from carnivorous animals, the first settlement had a thorn barricade. On Old Earth a nation had to be capable of defending itself or fall prey to the first aggressor who cam
e along. This basic philosophy was so much a part of man that as technology developed and population grew New Earth organized an army and a navy.
In defense of having armed forces on a planet populated by one unified people those who were elected to govern pointed upward, toward the darkness of space. "We came through the distances," they said. "Othersmight, as well."
The most common explanation for the army and the navy was that it gave the young ones something to do during two to four critical years in their development. When, as they had on Old Earth, the thundering rockets began to maul their way out of the atmosphere, a new service was organized. The space arm became The Service. Members of The Service tested the first ship to be equipped with a blink generator. Man had managed, once again, to reach out to the stars.
Later, when a small explorer ship happened into the sac in which swam the Dead Worlds, xenophobia was given new impetus. The people who had destroyed an entire family of worlds, actually cooling the interior fires of planets, were out there somewhere. Those fearsome beings with weapons which man could only imagine could come sweeping out of the depths of space at any time. X&A ships went armed, and because of the Dead Worlds there was developed a weapon as awesome as that which the killer race had used to cool the fires of the Dead Worlds, the planet buster. One missile, one planet. One titanic convulsion and there was a new asteroid belt where once there had been a world.
To man's eternal shame, the planet buster was used in the Zede War, a conflict that pitted man against man once more. The Zede worlds boasted the finest technology in the galaxy, and, although they were outnumbered by those loyal to the United Planets Confederation, they were close to victory when "in the interest of freedom and the dignity of mankind" the United Planets began to fire the deadly, planet destroying missiles.
So it was that the Service had its roots in the history of what the mutants of Old Earth called The Old Ones, the original race of man as represented by those few who managed to escape Earth before The Destruction. When a sailing ship of the New Earth Navy lost a man while at sea, his body was consigned to the deep with due ceremony. Traveling in the broad cavity of space was, in many ways, similar to sailing wide seas. In each instance distance was a factor, and time was required to conquer that distance. When a man died far from land on one of the old sailing ships, he was sewn into a hank of sail and given to the sea. There the materials contained in his body were returned to the earth through decay. In deep space a ship was far from home. Aboard a relatively small vessel, such as the Erin Kenner, no method had been provided for storing a dead body. Even on larger ships keeping a body aboard would have beenentirely too destructive of crew morale. Better to consign the dead to the sea, to the sea of space.
