by William Tenn
Walter had apparently developed a great liking for Eric. He answered the young man's questions with great good humor. "You remind me of a kid in the band I used to lead back with my own people," he said one night. "The kid asks me: 'Our burrows are in the walls of the Monster burrows, right? The Monster burrows are outside and all around us?' 'Right,' I tell him. 'Well, then,' he says, 'what's outside the Monster burrows?' I look at him as if he's crazy. 'What the hell do you mean?' 'I mean,' he says, 'maybe the Monster burrows are in the walls of even bigger burrows. Maybe there are creatures living in those burrows who'd make the Monsters look tiny. Maybe there are such things as Monster Monsters.' Ever hear anything as wild as that?" The Weapon-Seeker lay on his back and roared with delight.
"It's an idea," Eric said, intrigued. "Why is it wild?"
"Oh, kid, please! You know why. You can't have Monsters, and Monster Monsters a hundred times bigger, and Monster-Monster Monsters a hundred times bigger than that. You just can't have it. The whole thing has to stop someplace."
"All right. But suppose—"
"Stop supposing," the Weapon-Seeker admonished. "Stick to facts. They're tough enough and complicated enough. Tomorrow, we'll be heading into the burrow where the Monsters keep the weapon we're after. And don't ask me about that weapon!" he ordered, holding up his hands. "I told you, not a word about it until I see it and we get set to grab it up. I'll know it when I find it—that's my job. But your job is to lead the way, and you're going to need a good night's sleep."
"This burrow we'll be going into—" Eric began.
"And don't ask me about the burrow, either! It's the place where the Monsters keep their best and most powerful weapons. That's all you have to know. Now, for the sweet love of Alien-Science, will you let me get some sleep?"
Eric gave up. He lay on his side, as he did part of every sleep period, reviewing and reviewing. The conclusions came just as he began to doze. He was more convinced than ever that there was no specific weapon that Walter was leading them to, merely the hope of one. This burrow they were to enter, on the other hand...
A low, urgent call from the man on guard duty brought him and all the others awake.
When they saw what had startled the guard, they scrambled to their feet, faces turning pale, bodies sweating and shuddering with overwhelming fear.
Two hundred or so paces away, a Monster, one of the largest they'd ever seen, stood staring at them calmly. The great gray legs supporting the enormous gray body were set wide apart, as a man might stand to study carefully an interesting phenomenon. The extended neck waved slightly to and fro, bringing the head with its unblinking eyes first here, then there. The tentacles at the base of the head—they were quite long, Eric noticed, and a very light shade of pink—undulated in sympathy with the neck as if they too had some sort of eyes and were trying to see as well as they could. But there was no suggestion of imminent attack.
On both sides, there was a dead silence. Neither the trembling humans nor the gigantic, watching Monster made a sound. Eric found himself breathing rapidly: he made up his mind that if sudden panic developed, he would try to run in a different direction from the rest.
What did the terrifying creature want? What precisely was it looking at? And what was happening inside its alien mind?
Abruptly, it wheeled and presented its back to them. Then it strode away, off, off into the white distance. Despite its size, the floor shook only slightly as it went. They watched it until it was no longer visible. And the moment it was gone, everyone began to babble, more than a few hysterically.
"Walter," Arthur the Organizer called out. "What do you think? What was going on?"
They all turned to the Weapon-Seeker. He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I've never seen one of them do a thing like that before."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A council of war was held on the incident, to determine whether it should be allowed to affect their plans. There were three men in the council: Arthur the Organizer, who presided, Walter the Weapon-Seeker, since he alone knew anything at all about this area to which they had come, and the oldest member of the expedition, a white-haired and surprisingly spry old fellow by the name of Manny the Manufacturer, selected apparently out of deference to his age and nothing else.
Roy and Eric were asked to participate in a non-voting advisory capacity, it being presumed, Eric decided with a wry, internal giggle, that as scouts and front-burrowers they would know something the others did not about unusual circumstances and extraordinary dangers.
"We can go on or we can go back," Arthur the Organizer pointed out. "If we go back, we've failed and we don't have much. If we go on, we have to take it for granted that we might be—and please notice that I say no more than might be—walking straight into disaster."
Walter the Weapon-Seeker drummed on the floor with an impatient foot. "Sure. They'll be expecting us. And they'll be laying for us."
"Possibly. And then again, possibly not." Arthur held up a finger and faced each one of them in turn. "The Monsters don't think as we do: we have no reason to believe that they react as we do, or give alarms as we do. This creature might have been simply curious about us. The way it went on about its business would argue for that point of view. It's one of the things we must consider seriously."
"Consider!" the Weapon-Seeker spat. "Considering is your job, not mine. Doing something is my job. I say we go ahead and do what we started out to do."
"We don't have a choice, anyway," said Manny the Manufacturer. "If we go back without the weapon we came for, we spend the rest of our lives as outlaws. I don't think lives like that are worth a hell of a lot. And neither do most of the men. I say let's take our chances."
Arthur turned to his two front-burrowers. "Eric?"
Eric the Eye tried to give as much formal dignity as possible to his first opinion in a council. "I believe we should go on. As planned."
"Mind telling us your reasons?"
"Well," Eric unbent a bit. "If there's been an alarm, the Monsters know we're here. There's no nearby doorway into the burrows: we can't escape. They could be waiting for us both ways—whether we go on or whether we go back. At least if we go on, we stand a chance of getting something. And I agree with Manny that an outlaw's life is a pretty damn unappetizing prospect."
"Roy?"
The Runner shuffled and made a large, indeterminate gesture with his left hand. "There's this and there's that. There's a lot to consider. It's awfully easy for some people to sound off and say they know for sure what the Monsters are doing—that we should follow our original plans, no matter what. Some people still have hair all over their eyes. The only thing I heard that makes sense is what you said, Arthur—that we should consider. It sounds like an intelligent thing to do. I vote to do what you suggested: to consider."
"You don't have a vote," the Weapon-Seeker told him. "All you have a right to give is your opinion. What the kid said," he pointed to Eric with his thumb, "is about it. If they're laying for us, they're laying for us both ways, ahead and behind. Ahead is where we want to go. So let's go."
Arthur summed up. "The sense of this meeting is that at least two of you, Walter and Manny, feel we risk as much by turning back as by going on—and that there are substantial advantages to going on. I'm inclined to go along with that majority view, so long as we proceed with all the caution that these new circumstances make necessary. You see, Roy," he said placatingly, "it's not that we reject your advice, but in a democratic discussion you have to give a little and take a little. You can't always have your own way."
The tall, thin young man looked from Arthur to Eric, then pulled a spear out of his back sling and walked off to the head of the column.
"You give Eric some idea of what to look out for," Arthur suggested to Walter. "I'd like to start moving as soon as possible—before there's much more talk among the men."
"Right!" growled Manny the Manufacturer. "Let's get this expedition off the floor."
There wasn
't much that the Weapon-Seeker could tell him, Eric found out. It was now quite clear that Walter had only seen this new Monster burrow from the entrance, and very briefly. He could describe the first piece of Monster furniture in the place—and that was all.
From now on, Eric realized, he would really have to be an Eye.
He went through the archway into the burrow that was the goal of the expedition, Walter some thirty paces behind him. When he saw the succession of tall black rods standing on the floor, crisscrossed horizontally with dozens of other rods, he waved to the Weapon-Seeker, who passed the wave on to the men in his rear. Then the chunky chief scout pointed forward, giving Eric the order to move on.
Now came the hard part, the truly frightening part. At least, there were no Monsters about—none that he could see.
Eric swallowed. He left the archway, and the wall. He crept out into open Monster territory, where there was nothing but the harsh white light and stretching vistas of floor.
His heart began pounding. He found that his regular, cautious breathing was turning into noisy gasps. He felt exposed, terrifyingly vulnerable, completely alone. And lost—he felt as if he would be lost in that whiteness forever.
What was he doing here? He belonged back there, cowering against the blessedly safe wall!
But he put his head down and continued to creep forward. Another step. And another. Now he had to force himself to slow: he'd been about to burst into a mad dash at nowhere.
Easy. Another step. And don't look up—just as when you first came into Monster territory, days ago as an initiate warrior. Another step without looking up, without going wild with panic.
How far away was that rod-supported piece of Monster furniture? Did this floor go on forever? Another step. A great frightened gasp. Another step. And another—
He had arrived. His shoulder touched a rod. He flung his arm around it and hauled his mind back to calmness. He had arrived. He was near cover again. And at last he could look up.
Still no Monsters that he could see anywhere in the place. He held on to the rod with the crook of his elbow and signaled to Walter at the archway. Walter passed the signal on, shuddered, and then left the wall himself.
Eric watched him sympathetically for a moment, then turned back to examine the thing he was standing under. It was composed of these black rods, each as thick as his arm and each rising perpendicularly from the floor straight into the dizzy heights above. Every fifteen or so paces, another rod reared into the air. And at intervals, each many times the height of a man, there were the rods running across at right angles to the others.
Here and there, high among the rods, where a horizontal crossed a vertical, there was a small, semitransparent cube at the junction point. The light was sharply reflected from these cubes, making it difficult to look at them steadily, but some of them had strange shadows flickering inside them. Did the shadows have anything to do with a weapon they might be able to use?
Eric found it was impossible to stare upward very long; he looked back at Walter to see how the chief scout was progressing. Not well: the mans face was almost purple with the overseasoned mixture of effort and fear. His feet were beginning to splay; his knees were folding forward and down. He wouldn't make it.
Taking a deep breath, Eric flung himself away from the relative safety of the rod and leaped across the floor. By the time he reached Walter, the man had almost collapsed. He grabbed Eric's arm with both hands—his eyes were tightly shut by now—and would have pulled him down if fright had not so thoroughly loosened his muscles.
"The wall—" he babbled. "Give it up—let's get back to the wall!"
"Easy," Eric said. "Easy, Walter. We're almost there."
He guided the Weapon-Seeker the last few paces to the rod. Walter held on to the upright post as desperately as Eric had and fought for breath. It was no simple thing for a human being to leave the wall in Monster territory.
Fortunately, there were plenty of upright rods in this structure. They weren't thick, but they were solid: they would give the feeling of cover and at least the semblance of cover to all the men in the expedition. But he and Walter would have to distribute them down the rows of rods—no point in having too many men grouped around any one post. And they'd be dealing with panic-stricken lunatics who would tend to hang on as if for life itself to the first solid things they encountered.
Roy came across next. He had a hard time, but he didn't do nearly as badly as Walter. It was obvious that the younger the man, the more resilient he was psychologically, and the more capable of taking the shattering experience of negotiating open Monster territory. They guided Roy to a rod: he wound himself around it for a dozen tortured breaths before coming to and taking a look up, down, forward, backward.
The rest of the expedition came over in groups of three. They had their hands full with men who slumped to the floor and wound themselves up in tight little balls of refusal, with men whose eyes suddenly rolled up in their heads and who wandered jerkily off in this direction or in that, with men who started to run away and who would bite and kick and gouge when they were caught. But fully half of the men made it across by themselves.
When they had been distributed, one or two men to each upright post climbing above their heads into emptiness, Eric, Roy and Walter discussed the next move with Arthur.
"I think we'll stay here for a while and take a break for a meal," the Organizer decided. "Do you agree? I think we should. We'll wait till everybody calms down and comes back to normal. Meanwhile, do you three feel like going on ahead and taking a look at what we've got coming up? How many more open spaces—you know, problems we might be facing—anything that looks like a weapon—whatever strikes you as a good idea."
Eric and Roy followed Walter to the last row of standing rods. They shaded their eyes and stared across a long empty stretch of floor—to where there was another rodlike structure, very much like the one they were in.
"What do you think those shiny cubes are?" Eric asked, pointing. Here and there, high in the other structure, were semitransparent boxes just like the ones above them. A few contained liquid shadows.
"I don't know," Walter admitted. "But I intend to find out. They're what I noticed when I passed this way before. They look as if they might be useful. Only, how will we get up to them? Think a spry man might climb up one of these rods?"
Eric and Roy considered the height and the lack of handholds. They both shook their heads. The Weapon-Seeker nodded ruefully.
"Then there's only one thing to do. We go on until we find a structure low enough to climb. Monster furniture comes in all kinds of different sizes. We'll find a low one with some shiny boxes close to the floor. And we'll find other stuff, too. In this place, I have a real strong feeling—"
"Hold it!" Eric grabbed his arm. "Listen! Do you hear it?"
The short, heavy man listened anxiously for a moment, then shook his head. "Not a thing. What do you hear?"
But Roy had also tensed at Eric's warning and leaned forward alertly. "Something's coming this way. It's not much of a sound yet, mostly vibration. You can feel it with your feet."
The Weapon-Seeker listened again. This time he nodded rapidly. "Monsters. And more than one." He whirled to face the expedition, strung out at the bases of the rods behind them. Pointing his forefinger straight up in the air, he rotated one hand rapidly over his head. This, the most fearful alarm of all to any band, had to be given silently. It meant: "Monsters are upon us—up there—look out!"
No reaction from the others, and the three of them groaned to themselves. The members of the expedition were stuffing food into their mouths, taking swallows out of canteens, chatting together in low, friendly voices. No one was bothering to watch the scouts.
What a bunch, Eric raged hopelessly. Baby warriors, his uncle, Thomas the Trap-Smasher, would have called them.
The rumbling noises were getting louder. Walter made up his mind to dispense with expedition security precautions. "You damn fools!" he yelle
d. "Monsters! Don't you hear them?"
That got a reaction. Every man leaped to his feet, knapsacks and canteens rolling away. White faces turned rapidly in their direction, looked off to examine the brilliantly lit spaces above.
Eric slapped the backs of the two scouts on either side of him. "Let's get out of here," he said urgently. This was traditionally an every-man-for-himself situation among the peoples of the burrows. He pointed across the floor to the other rodlike structure. "There! They'll be after the bulk of the men in this one. Let's go!"
Without waiting for a reply, he darted out into the open. From the corners of his eyes, he was conscious as he ran of huge gray Monsters materializing out of the whiteness on all sides. Those things could move fast when they wanted to! And in relative silence, too—the floor was vibrating no more than it had this morning when the creature watching them had walked away.
He ran fast, forcing every bit of speed out of his legs, not at all aware now of the openness of the space he was on. The only thought in his mind concerned the Monsters all about him. Would he be stepped on? When? Would he feel it when it happened—or would it be over too fast?
A moment before he reached the other set of rods, somebody passed him and leaped into hiding among the posts of the structure. Roy the Runner, starting late, had the legs to make up for lost time. Then Eric was there too, cowering behind a rod. He watched Walter the Weapon-Seeker stumble the last couple of paces and fall gasping two rods away from him.
But the rest of the expedition was in trouble. The men scrambled about, mindlessly, shrieking, inside the rod structure they had quit. Five Monsters now stood around it in silence, making any escape to the outside almost impossible.
The Monsters had known where the expedition lay hidden—they had made directly for it. And they were doing something in an organized fashion. What?
Eric strained his eyes to see, but the movements of the gray bodies were unfamiliar and unclear. Suddenly, from each one of them, a long green rope dropped to the floor. The ropes seemed almost alive: as they lay on the floor they quivered and bits of darker color slid up and down their coils.
