by Jeff Sutton
Puzzled over what mode the attack might take, he selected a position in which it would be virtually impossible to catch him by surprise. Neither could the alien strike through the mind power unless he located him through the eyes of a host. Even then, his position near the vital equipment would make such an attack extremely hazardous.
Step by step, he reviewed the possible actions that might occur. The alien was certain to dispatch another host to the scene. Woon? Of the known hosts, Woon alone had abstained from the fray. But whoever the emissary, he would have to capture him while remaining outside his visual field, use him to contact the alien—tell the alien he was doomed to die in the furnace of the green-white sun. And carefully, just for an instant, he'd have to allow the alien to penetrate his mind, glimpse a possible escape route, then break the connection—trust to luck. But if he let the alien inside his mind, even for a fleeting moment, could he thrust him out again? He preferred not to think of that.
But where was the alien? Fidgeting, he felt the tension gather in his muscles, the sweat course down his body. In the script that he'd mentally written, everything depended on the alien's response. The alien would do this and this and this; it had all seemed so coldly logical. Now there was no alien, no response. Could aliens just fade away? At another time he might laugh; now he just wondered. This alien might do almost anything!
He fought to bring his reasoning under control. The brief maneuver through unspace had brought him far closer to the blazing sun than he'd anticipated. Too close? He thought not, for if the alien destroyed the ship, the sun's vast gravitational tides would pull him to a fiery death. Certainly the alien would know that. In a perverse way, it would force the alien into the role of protecting the ship. Keim had to smile at the irony of it. But time suddenly was racing. If the alien didn't dispatch a host soon, he'd have to make the contact. How? Of the hosts he'd known of, only Captain Woon yet lived. Or did he?
The question startled him. If the alien acquired his hosts through the eyes of other hosts, what power would he have if the hosts were all dead? The mind power, certainly—he'd demonstrated that. But without hosts he couldn't pinpoint it, use it against a mere individual; he could use it only randomly, as he had in Yozell's quarters. Blind, he could destroy forests, level hills, wreck planets; but he couldn't use the power selectively in the absence of visual guidance. But if that were true, how had he acquired his first host? He couldn't even guess.
As the minutes passed, Keim felt his desperation building. He had to locate Woon, use him to contact the alien. That Woon was alive, he was certain; the alien would need him to guide the Alpha Tauri to a safe destination. Could Woon be in his small cabin off the bridge? Keim reached for the dart gun, then remembered he'd emptied it—had hurled it at Coulter. The laser was worthless; he needed Woon alive.
Duvall? He felt a flicker of excitement. If Duvall could locate the captain, knock him out with a sleep dart, bring him to the bridge, revive him… It could work! He could contact the psychmedic through Lara, if he could reach her! Glancing at the flaming image of the sun in the telescreens, he wondered if enough time remained for all that had to be done.
"Lara?" He called her telepathically. When no answer was forthcoming, he tried again. He stemmed his panic, probed with his mind. Silence. What could have happened. Burl Ashford! The name rolled like thunder into his awareness. Yet Ashford had shown no sign of the taint. Or had the alien perfected his robots? The possibility chilled him. Perhaps he should forget the alien, try to locate the others, flee in the lifeboats. His present gamble seemed sheer futility. What was his function, his reason for being? To kill aliens, or to live? But such speculation was madness; he had to kill the alien. No compromise was possible. But to kill him, he had to find him. Or he could wait. Wait and die in the blazing green-white sun.
He glanced at the console. Although he couldn't see the dial faces, he knew the needles on the rad meters would be dangerously near the red lines. What if the cooling system broke down under the heat load? He shook his head. He couldn't afford to think like that. If he did, there were a thousand possibilities, each of which could spell total disaster. He'd have to meet each emergency as it came.
All at once he felt calm, coldly calm. If he were to stand any chance of saving the ship, saving Lara, he'd have to contact the alien—face him with only his mind as his major weapon. Although he couldn't hope to win by sheer intellect—that was patently impossible—there were other factors. Courage was one, the willingness to die another. If he died, it would mean little or nothing to his race. Death, therefore, was a personal loss. But what did death mean to that strange entity that called itself Uli? What was death to a near-immortal? Frightening, he hoped.
"Uli!" He shouted in the silence of his mind. "This is Roger Keim on the bridge. You are going to die, Uli! Do* you hear that?" He listened, listened while the long seconds dragged out. But of course Uli couldn't hear him except through a host. Where was Woon? Someone had to find him.
"Lara?" He tried again to reach her, both telepathically and clairvoyantly. The strange screen in his brain remained blank. He switched his attention to Duvall. A jumble of thought, heavy with emotion, swirled through his consciousness. Duvall and Robin Martel! Closing his eyes to the telescreens, his ears to the groaning of the cooling system, he tried to make sense of the mishmash.
Duvall panicky. Robin close to hysteria. Burl Ashford! Something about Ashford. Ashford and Lara! The fragments that reached him were so laden with emotion as to be all but undecipherable. Good God, what about Lara? He felt cold and sweaty at the same time.
He called her again, fought to stem his fear at the silence. He probed the surrounding area with no better result. The corridor above rewarded him with a flood of thought. He got the shimmery mental image of three figures. Two held lasers or bolt guns, he couldn't tell which. Their minds were alive with fear.
Escape! They were trying to escape! Escape from what, the alien? From the ship! He knew without quite knowing how he knew. Perhaps they'd sensed the vertiginous transfer to normal space, had reasoned that the Alpha Tauri had emerged near a planetary system. He concentrated on one of the figures, trying to isolate his mental processes from the others. They were trying to reach the lifeboats! He felt his stomach muscles tighten. The image in his mind grew smaller and smaller and smaller until it vanished in a pinpoint of light.
He shifted his probe to locate the men who had been hiding in the cavernous storeroom. No sign of life. He could locate neither the man who had been hiding in the galley nor the one in the forward hold. Yet vague, random fragments of thought did reach him; mostly they came amid swirls of tension and terror.
How much longer could he wait? He became aware that he was bathed in sweat; it clung in beads to his brow, dripped and stung his eyes. His hand on the laser was. wet. The harsh groaning of the cooling system indicated it was near the critical overload point.
He flicked a fast glance at a telescreen, appalled at the flaming green-white image that all but filled it. Worse, the rad needles were edging into the red. His margin of safety had all but reached the vanishing point. If the Alpha Tauri's radiation shields failed… A buzzer sounded.
He jerked his gaze to a blinking red light on the console. The numeral "four" flashed on a readout display. What was four? Casting a quick glance around to make certain no one was approaching, he dashed toward the panel. The legend beneath the readout instruments read LIFEBOATS.
Lifeboat Four! Someone had launched a lifeboat! He felt a quick dismay. It was possible, just possible, that a lifeboat might reach the innermost planet… if that planet were in the right part of its orbit! He hadn't ascertained that. But it was not probable. ) And it was extremely improbable that such a close-in planet would be habitable.
Suppose other crewmen got the same idea? He felt suddenly jittery. The Alpha Tauri carried but four of the giant craft. Lose them all and his plan was shot.
He studied the communication panel and turned a switch. A green "on
" light flashed. "Lifeboat Four, Lifeboat Four," he called. "This is Roger Keim on the bridge. Come in, Lifeboat Four." He waited, then repeated the call. The communicator emitted a burst of static.
"Roger!" The call broke hoarsely through the speaker. "Escape while you can! Wain the others! Duvall wouldn't listen. Roger, can you hear me?"
Burl Ashford! Keim felt a surge of incredulity. Then Burl hadn't fallen prey to the alien. He felt a wild hope for Lara. "Return to the ship," he shouted.
"No, no, no," Ashford gabbled wildly. "It's a death ship, Roger! There's an alien. My God, they're dead, all dead…"
"Where's Lara?" he broke in.
"Lara…" A long groan came over the communicator. Abruptly Ashford's voice was cut off; only the low humming in the speaker remained. Keim gazed impotently at the instrument. Ashford, for whatever reason, had broken the connection.
He switched on the exterior videos that were used during inflight rendezvous and docking. The lifeboat flared into view aft on the starboard side. Its course was slowly diverging from that of the Alpha Tauri. Did Ashford have the slightest idea where he was headed? Keim thought not. But one thing was certain: his destination was death.
He tried to contact Lara again, failed, and switched his concentration to Duvall. Snatches of conversation came through. As if clicking the switch of a telescreen, a mental image took form, shimmered crazily before settling down. He had the impression of two ghostly blobs in a long, dark corridor. The focus moved in, sharpened, and he recognized Robin Martel's frightened face. Duvall's countenance, haggard and worried, took form more slowly. But where was Lara?
For one sick moment he feared that Ashford might have forced her to accompany him, then violently rejected the possibility, more from his inability to harbor it than from any basis of logic. She had to be aboard! Reluctantly he tore his thoughts from her.
Where was the alien? He felt a frantic urgency at the high whine of the cooling system. A swift glance showed the rad needles riding in the red. Did the alien know what was happening? If so, and if he could live in space, why hadn't he destroyed the ship? Or did he realize he'd be caught in the flaming sun's gravitational tides? A buzzer sounded.
He jerked his gaze toward the console as the numeral "two" flashed on the readout panel. Two lifeboats gone, two left! He stifled his panic. The starboard video revealed the craft emerging from its docking well. He tried to contact it on the communicator without success, then desperately attempted to probe the small boat clairvoyantly. A ghostly image danced in his mind. He had the impression that it was of the three crewmen he'd contacted earlier.
The small boat swung slowly, pointing its bow at a right angle to the Alpha Tauri's flight path. In the immensity in which it rode, it was but a small mote. He wondered at the desperation—or was it sheer panic?—of those who manned it. Accelerating, the lifeboat grew smaller and smaller, finally lost in the eternal night.
He felt a quiet despair. The certainty of what the alien might attempt when he discovered that the ship was plunging directly toward the heart of the green-white sun, the plans he had committed to that certainty, seemingly had gone awry. Did lack of action mean that the alien was incapable of action? Were all the hosts dead? It didn't seem probable that the alien would leave himself that defenseless. Woon, he thought. Woon lived. But why was the alien waiting?
He debated the question uneasily. If the alien didn't make his presence known very shortly, but one course of action remained: do nothing, allow the Alpha Tauri to plunge to its death in the vast radiation field of the green-white sun. Before he died, he'd like to see Lara.
"Lara?" He screamed the name telepathically, tried to envision her clairvoyantly. "Lara? Lara? Lara?"
"Roger!" The name came faintly. "Roger, here" Whirling, he saw her running toward him across the bridge.
THIRTEEN
"Lara!" Keim sprang to meet her. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I…" She stared past his shoulder at the telescreen—at the flaming green-white sun that sent its coronal streamers raging against the ebon sky. Her eyes swept back, caught his. Icy fingers touched his brain. Startled, he whirled toward the passageway. It was deserted.
"Roger…"
"The alien," he rasped.
"The ship! You have to…"
"Quiet!" He listened intently and scanned the bridge; no movement, no visible danger, yet the iciness was still there. An alarm inside him shrilled of danger. The alien had come, but where was he? In what form?
He looked wildly around. Lara's eyes, blue and now strangely empty, were fixed squarely on him. Her face held a vacuous expression. Suddenly the iciness assaulted him with a force that was almost physical. Transfixed, he returned her stare while trying to reject what he knew to be true: she was a host! A.flash of insight told him that Ashford had been the carrier.
The thought vanished as cold needles stabbed at his brain; fiery pain leaped out along his nerves. Tiny, unidentifiable memories jiggled into existence flicking elusively, dancing in and out of his consciousness. Visual memories that were his, yet not his. The alien was entering his mind!
He fought against it violently. The iciness flooded in, receded, flooded in again. Two beings! Two beings were battling for possession of his mind! No, he was battling against a second being. The alien! Visual memories flared anew. He saw…
… the planet of a purpling sun, awesome buildings that rose from a dying surface—within them row after row of strange, egg-shaped bodies, each immobile in a silver urn… .
"No, no," he shouted, but the vision remained, mingling with his own memories, becoming part of him. Dimly, he was aware of Lara's eyes—large, blue, blank, unmoving eyes—that looked at him, into him, through him. And the strange beings in the urns were part of him, and he of them.
Each commanded the lives of a thousand planets through the minds of hosts; each contemplated the death of a million sun systems as nuclear fires were banked, as the edge of the universe died; each was secure in the knowledge that a chosen few of their kind, propelled by the combined* mind force of their race, were plunging through the abyssal deeps toward the galaxy-rich heart of the universe to begin anew the life that first had flowered in that dawn of the Prime Creation; each. …
Not his memories! Not his! He groped wildly, caught by the sense of something terrifying entering his mind, his body. Something alien! Instinctively he fought to reject it, thrust it out, but it clung tenaciously—clung and bored and spread. Visual memories danced in its wake, jelled, clarified and…
Linked telepathically with his companions, whose minds in reality were one mind, a race mind, he was speeding through the gulfs of space. Tlo, Glomar, Xexl, Zimzi—nine in all—each on a diverging course. Periodically messages passed between them. He was. …
Only it wasn't he! It was the thing in his mind! Uli! He fought desperately, wildly, trying to thrust it out. Lara's face hung like a painting before his eyes. Icy needles stabbed. A thousand tentacles probed deeper and deeper and deeper and…
Eternities died. Thoughts from far behind, faint whispers that came as he plunged through infinities at the velocity of light times ten thousand, whispers that grew weaker and weaker and weaker as the purpling sun grew darker, as towering buildings disintegrated into the dust of time. …
"Not my memories," he screamed. Why was he shouting against himself, denying his heritage? His heritage, his! He remembered…
He sped on, one of nine, his mind recording the birth
and death of matter. Zimzi colliding with an errant wanderer in intergalactic space; Omegi dying in a vast nuclear storm; Yilill in the implosion of a collapsing star island. Death came again and again and again, and he was alone. Alone of his kind in the universe! If he should die! To not be—the fright screamed in his mind as he rushed through immeasurable time, immeasurable space. Ahead, a flat sliver of light in the endless darkness. Eternities passing. The sliver growing, taking form as a galaxy, discus-shaped with spiral arms, a billion suns. It was the one! Her
e the Qua race would be born anew. Here. …
"Keim, save the ship!" The electrifying cry crackled in his brain, obliterated the memories, brought back his own fragmented consciousness of being. From so deep within him haft the command come that he would have taken it for his own had it not been for the use of his name. Something was in his mind! He tried to pinpoint it. isolate it, sever it from his consciousness. He had the impression of a small, egg-shaped body huddled in a dark chamber. Dimly he knew what the chamber was, where it was.
"Keim!"
"No!" He screamed the word silently, defiantly, while he fought to retain control of the last of his reasoning processes. A fragment of his mind, hidden behind barriers, looked out at the alien, defied him. He tried to throw up more barriers, save that last spark.
"Save the ship or die," part of his mind screamed.
"You'll die with me," the voice from behind the barrier cried.
"You have no intention of dying, Keim!"
"No?" The remaining spark of rational being suddenly was wary.
"You forget, I'm in your mind. You intend to frighten me into attempting to escape by lifeboat, then putting the ship back into unspace."
Keim groaned with despair at the ease with which the alien had seen through his scheme. He had to keep his thoughts in that small part of his mind that he still controlled—that part that crouched behind the barrier. He had to build the barrier higher, stronger, shut out that other part—that part that screamed for him to do the alien's bidding. That's where Uli was hiding—in the corridors of his brain. "I won't go into unspace," he gasped. "We'll both die! Do you hear that, Uli? We'll both die!"
A pain seized the calves of his legs; the muscles knotted, drove him to his knees. The briefest glimpse of Lara's frightened face showed it filled with a horrible awareness of what was happening. She knew! In passing from her mind to his, the alien had left her free!
He struggled to cap the thought, hide it. If she could escape, there was a chance—an almost microscopic one— that he could yet trick the alien. He could twist his plan… But he couldn't think it. He couldn't, couldn't!
