by Zach Hughes
The Watcher saw all, recorded all, and while functioning on several different levels probed into the mind of the man to whom access had been attained. The emotions which were known to the man as anger and sadness were still in dominance. It was a simple matter to keep the man to his purpose. The group of four entered the larger of the two ships, the empty specimen collector floating along easily in front of one of the crewmen.
* * *
"So far so good," Josh radioed to the Erin Kenner. "We have the bodies from Old Folks. We're going into the Fran Webster for the others." He avoided calling the dead by name. That would have been too painful. He led the way. When he saw David and Ruth frozen in sexual union, his throat was so dry that he could not swallow.
Pat was feeling the cold. His lips were numb. He looked at the frozen mass, the female legs locked around the back of the man, all of it made more than obscene by the damage done when freezing cells expanded and ruptured.
"Cap'n, what in hell are we up against?" Pat asked.
Josh shook his head.
"Kirsty Girard swept this ice ball from pole to pole looking for life signals," Pat said. "She didn't find any."
"Well, it will be up to the big brains from headquarters to figure it out,"
Josh said. "Let's do it."
Once again the cutting beam of a molecular disrupter was used to separate the frozen bodies from the deck. Once again four men strained and slipped and grunted to put the mass in the specimen bin.
"Erin Kenner, "Josh sent, "this is the captain. Mission accomplished.
We're coming up."
"Acknowledged, Captain," said Kirsty Girard from the Erin Kenner.
The crewmen started the bin toward the hatch. Josh looked around and felt his anger surge again. The Fran Webster had been a beautiful ship.
His brother had worked hard for decades to be able to own such a masterpiece of the shipbuilders' craft and it had been taken from him without apparent reason. At the moment that seemed almost as offensive as David's death. Four members of the Webster family had come to DF-2 without warlike aims and they were dead. He took one last look around.
The beautifully constructed instrument panel of the Zede Starliner was distorted by a layer of clear ice. The ship was dead. Even the residual power in the blink generator had been drained away, and that was damned odd. As long as a generator was within view of a star it collected and held power.
Suddenly the image of a star cluster with sterile orbiting planets flashed into his mind and he looked over his shoulder quickly as he felt a flush of disease. Killing a blink generator down to cold stop was not nearly as difficult as cooling the molten core of a world, but the images were similar.
He saw that the crewmen were almost at the hatch. Pat was directly behind them. He shrugged his shoulders under the load of the thermal shield and took one step.
One of the crewmen cried out in surprise as the hatch was filled with whiteness that resolved itself into humanoid shape.
"Captain?" said the other crewman as the white figure moved.
"Watch it," Pat Barkley yelled, trying to bring the muzzle of his saffer to bear on the thing in the hatch.
"Fire," Josh ordered, lifting his own rifle only to find the body of one of the crewmen between him and the hatch.
The explosion was contained within the hull of the Fran Webster. A
shock wave rushed past the white figure in the hatch without displacing it.
It leapt forward and pushed the floating specimen bin out of the way. The four men had been tossed about by the explosion. Quickly the extension opened the visors of the thermal shells and with its fist smashed the helmets of the E.V.A.s.
Josh Webster was conscious when he looked up into the icy face, saw a pair of glowing eyes, saw dexterous fingers moving toward the visor of his shell.
"Kirsty," he whispered, as he nudged open the communicator with his chin.
"Yes, Captain."
"Kirsty—" He could not form the words he was bellowing in his mind.
He was thinking, "Shoot, shoot, shoot. Blast him, Kirsty. Max force."
He said, "Kirsty, we're coming up."
"That's an affirmative," Kirsty said. "We have the launch on viewer."
The cold ended Josh's agony of self-blame.
* * *
"Bridge, Weapons."
"Go, Weapons."
"Kirsty, I'm getting ghost images on short-range detection."
"Show me," Kirsty said.
A viewer came to life. Against a black background a glowing image moved.
"Mass about two hundred pounds," Weapons said. "Size roughly three by six feet. And the sonofabitch is invisible, it seems."
"What shows it?"
"Infrared only."
"Shoot it," Kirsty said.
"Shoot it?"
"Now," Kirsty ordered.
A lance of fire went out from the bow of the ship. There was a distant flare.
"Scratch one ghost," Weapons said.
"There are others?"
"Only seven."
"Shoot them, too," Kirsty ordered.
"Aye, aye," said Weapons.
This time it was not so easy. The ghost images had begun a frantic dance of movement that flitted them from side to side in all directions, but one vector of their movement kept them coming toward the ship.
"Kirsty," Weapons said, "three down. The others are closing. I suggest we up shields."
"Can't. The launch is just ten minutes away from the lock," Kirsty said.
"That's going to be cutting it close. There's another wave of those things coming up out of atmosphere. I hate to be the one to tell you this, Lieutenant, but my guess is that we're under attack."
"The captain will be aboard in nine-minutes-five seconds. As soon as we have the launch inboard, we'll blink the hell out of here," Kirsty said.
"Erin Kenner," said Josh Webster's voice, "prepare to accept launch entry."
"Lock is open, Captain," Kirsty said.
Kirsty looked at Sheba and winked. "Don't you think I'm pretty cool under stress?"
"Magnificently so," Sheba said, with one of her blazing smiles.
"Inside I'm a quivering mass," Kirsty said. "Hurry, Captain, hurry."
The minutes were eternal until the ship vibrated ever so slightly with the landing of the launch in its cradle. Kirsty closed the outer hatch and lock, fed air into the cradle chamber. "Hold onto your stomach," she said, as she pushed in a blink that took the Erin Kenner six light-years away from DF-2.
"That's funny," Kirsty said.
"I'm not sure I want to know," Sheba said.
"The beacon we just planted is dead," Kirsty said.
"Kirsty," said Weapons in a high, excited voice, "we've got contact. Size and mass consistent with the ship we blasted back on DF-2."
"Hostile action?"
"Not at the moment."
"Get it in your sights and hold it there," Kirsty said. "If it so much as burps, blast it." She buzzed Engineering. "We're going to have to pick up that blink beacon and see what went wrong with it. Stand by to take it aboard."
There was only silence.
"Engineering?"
Silence.
Behind her the door to the corridor that led past the engineering cubicles to the launch cradle was flung open. She whirled. Her first impression was of overwhelming blackness from which glowed two glaring eyes, then she saw a head, an articulated neck, long, hinged arms extending toward her from a powerful armored torso. She screamed as icy, hard fingers dug into her shoulder, penetrating flesh, shattering bone.
The other hand seized her under the chin and pulled. Her neck snapped and tendons tore. As she fell to the deck Sheba tried to run, but a second black, armored extension leapt with startling swiftness to block her way.
* * *
Sheba knew with chilling certainty that Josh was dead. On the deck Kirsty Girard was also dead, although her legs were jerking in ragged rhythm. The two things, machines, black demons
, stood motionless, their glaring eyes unblinking.
She couldn't believe how calm she was. "Listen," she said, "whoever you are, whatever you are, listen. We did not come here to harm you or to disturb you in any way. We came looking for my mother and father and my sister and brother."
The extension that had killed Kirsty lifted one arm.
"You're going to kill me, too, aren't you?" Sheba asked.
There was only silence. The extension took one step forward, its metal foot brushing aside one of Kirsty's limp arms.
"It's all senseless," Sheba said. "We meant you no harm. The other members of my family meant you no harm."
Now both of the extensions moved slowly toward her.
"Just tell me why," she said, still eerily calm. "Why do you kill us when we came with no ill will?"
Suddenly she laughed. At first it was a thoroughly feminine, throaty sound, a sound that had and would for many years to come excite the libidos of men who watched her on holofilm. She laughed because she knew why she was calm. She was merely playing another scene. More than once she had faced fictional death in some holofilm drama, and this was nothing more than a continuation of her make-believe life.
But as the extensions moved closer, the laugh became brittle and shrill and then faded.
"Why?" she asked, as one black, hinged arm reached out to her. "Just tell me why."
The voice spoke in English, but it was flat and uninflected. "Let them sleep," the voice said, "for when they awaken, the universe will tremble."
She screamed just once. One of the extensions seized her arm, its sharp, metal fingers penetrating. Her pain was brief, however, for the other armored extension seized her head in both hands and simply ripped it away from her neck.
* * *
"This is Weapons. What the hell is going on?" One of the extensions left the bridge to seek out the voice. The other studied the controls for a few moments, pushed buttons, set the ship's computer to spewing out data regarding the drive and the ship's operations. Black, sharp fingers punched in calculations. The outside lock opened. Within minutes the ship extension floated into the lock with the Erin Kenner's blink beacon clamped to its side. To make room it smashed into the ship's launch. In the control room the black extension punched instructions into the computer. The Erin Kenner blinked.
And, as had been calculated, she came out of nonspace in the heart of the nearest star. The insignificant mass of ship, extensions, and flesh both dead and alive became a part of the reaction in the nuclear furnace.
* * *
Inside the hull of the Fran Webster the tiny flux engine of the specimen container purred on, suspending the bin three feet above the deck. Two animated extensions soared to the site and nudged the other specimen container into the ship. Ice began to hide the exposed metal once more.
The animated extensions returned to the chamber below the ice. The Watcher was busy for a time. The barren rock that had been exposed by the aliens' weapons took on a coating of ice. Alternate routes of communications had minimized the damage. All sensors were working at just under ninety percent efficiency. That level matched the Designers' age deterioration charts and was acceptable.
The Watcher waited. The only evidence to indicate that the Erin Kenner had ever been to DF-2, as the aliens called it, was the dead bodies of the captain and four crewmen inside the Fran Webster. The Watcher considered destroying both the bodies and the pieces of equipment from the Erin Kenner, but decided that the risk of bringing the attention of the government of Man to DF-2 was outweighed by the need to keep the bodies of members of the Webster family to lure that last link in the chain of necessary silencing within reach. Once the last member of the family was silent, the peace that had blessed the planet for millennia would return.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sarah Webster de Conde raised her voice to emphasize a specific criticism of the chairman of the Educational Oversight Board. The screen of the voice recorder recognized the change in modulation and printed the words in boldface. She paused, consulted her notes before going on. She was dressed in a loose fitting jumpsuit. Her hair was hanging free. She was alone in the house and she was feeling just a bit sorry for herself, for Pete and the kids were at the local shopping pod watching Sheba as Miaree on a giant holo-film stage while she was spending her Sunday afternoon preparing still another speech to be delivered to still another assemblage of parents of T-Town schoolchildren.
There were times when she regretted having decided to enter politics.
She liked people well enough, and enjoyed her moments in the spotlight, but the campaign was making unanticipated demands on her time. She hadn't yet resigned as leader of Cyd's Young Explorer group, but her assistant leader had been going it alone. Pete had hired a driver to chauffeur Petey and Cyd to dance class, Space Scouts, groundball practice, visits to friends. There were six million people in Tigian City and itseemed that all of them had children in school and wanted to hear Sarah de Conde's solutions to the problems that plagued the school system.
She was speaking about discipline. Her words appeared on the screen as she spoke. She was moderately well pleased with the way it was going.
Most of the time she spoke without notes or rehearsal, but the speech on Monday night was especially important. At least a thousand parents from T-Town's most troubled district would be in the hall.
"Discipline is not punishment," she was saying when the screen went black and flashed her name.
SARAH. SARAH. SARAH. SARAH.
She shook her head in exasperation and reset the machine.
SARAH. SARAH.
"Oh, damn," she said. She pounded on the side of the screen.
HELP US, SARAH. HELP US.
The words were in boldface caps.
HELP US. HELP US.
She felt momentary panic, for in addition to the words on the screen there were images in her mind. Joshua and Sheba. David and Ruth. She leapt to her feet and turned the voice recorder off. A soft, musical chime announced that there was someone at the door. She touched the communicator on her desk.
"Yes, who is it, please?" she asked.
"My name is Vinn Stern," a pleasant male voice said. "I'd like to speak with Mrs. de Conde. I'm a friend of Sheba Webster."
"One moment," she said. She switched on the front door viewer, saw a rather handsome, well dressed man. She opened the front door.
"Sorry to bother you on a Sunday afternoon, Mrs. de Conde," Vinn Stern said. "I just wanted to know if you've heard from Sheba in the last few months."
"No, I haven't," Sarah said. "Do you work with Sheba?"
"I was scientific adviser on her last picture," Vinn said.
Sarah sighed inwardly. First the voice recorder goes crazy, she thought, and now this. "You'd better come in, Mr. Stern."
"Thank you."
"May I offer you something?" she asked, as she led him into the rather sternly furnished room which Pete called his audience hall. The chairs were hard and uncomfortable, the decor stark. It was a room designed to encourage callers to state their business and seek more pleasant surroundings.
"No, thank you," Vinn said. He sat on the edge of a hard chair. Sarah sat primly, knees together, hands in her lap.
"I had assumed that Sheba was either at her home on Selbel or working somewhere on another film," Sarah said.
"She stowed away on her brother's X&A ship," Vinn said.
Sarah laughed. "That sounds exactly like Sheba. Poor Joshua." She leaned forward. "But you must tell me all about it."
"We'd just finished the picture, The Legend Of Miaree. Captain Webster's ship arrived. They talked about your other brother and your sister, and your parents, of course, and Captain Webster told us that he was going out to look for them. When the ship left the planet where we'd been filming, Sheba disappeared, and I was pretty worried until I found a note pasted to the mirror in my bedroom stating that she was going to sneak aboard the Erin Kenner."
"You and Sheba were—" She left th
e question unfinished.
"Friends," he said. He grinned. "I had the brass to hope that we could be more." He brushed back a forelock of thick, dark hair. "Mrs. de Conde, I'm a bit anxious about her. It's been six months. The studio has not heard from her. I can't get much out of X&A, but they did condescend to tell me that the Erin Kenner was on routine exploration duty and, since she was in unexplored areas, there were no communication routes."
"It is my impression that when an X&A explorer goes into new territory it leaves blink beacons behind it," Sarah said.
Sarah, Sarah, help us. Come.
She shook her head quickly.
"Yes," Vinn said.
"Mr. Stern, I don't think there's anything I can do."
"Your husband is on the T-Town Board of Governors," Vinn said. "He could reach a higher source at X&A."
"Yes," she agreed. "Yes, I'll ask him to make inquiries. Are you staying in T-Town?"
He gave her the name of his hotel, rose. She offered her hand. "When I have something to tell you, I'll call you, Mr. Stern."
"I just hope that I'm not worrying you without reason," he said.
"No." She heard the voices, Josh's voice, Sheba's voice. We need you, Sarah. "It's time to be concerned, I think."
"Once again let me apologize for disturbing you on Sunday afternoon,"
Vinn said, as she walked him to the front door.
* * *
Sarah got lost twice in the labyrinthine corridors of X&A headquarters before she found the office of Staff Colonel Jefferson Watch. Pete's position and influence had secured an appointment quickly, but when she was shown into Watch's office by a polite Service rating she realized that Pete de Conde's request had not been given serious priority. Colonel Watch was a man in the middle fourth quarter of his life. Sarah knew enough about the Service to understand that she'd been steered to a man who was serving out his last few years before retirement, a man who had been pushed aside in the fierce competition for top command.
In spite of his wrinkles and white hair, Watch was an impressive man.
He rose from his desk, a smile showing that he'd availed himself of the finest dentures available.
