Alton's Unguessable

by Jeff Sutton

  "Roger!" Lara's scream came like an echo from far away.

  "Tell Duvall… the lifeboats!" A stunning force gripped him, paralyzed his nerves. He had the faint awareness of Lara being lifted, hurled against a bulkhead. Slowly she pushed herself to her feet, swaying, her face filled with shock. He jerked his gaze from her to put her beyond the alien's visual field.

  "Save the ship!" The command from one part of his brain thundered against the mental barricades of the other with a tidal power.

  "You'll die, Uli!" He hurled the threat definitely, knowing that his last resources for resistance fast were slipping away. Instantly he felt the pain rush back, knot his stomach muscles—a bright, fiery pain that ripped him through and through. His arms were thrust backward, bent upward in an excruciating double hammerlock that made the preceding pain seem little more than a vague discomfort.

  But he wasn't a host yet! Not a host! He clung desperately to that knowledge while he fought to regain control of his own awareness. He wouldn't succumb, not like the others! He'd die first, he'd… As suddenly as it had come, the pain vanished.

  "You'd kill the girl?" The sudden psychological shift caught Keim by surprise. Almost as quickly he realized that the alien had uncovered the deep feelings he held for her, was attempting to use them to serve his own ends. It also explained why the alien hadn't killed her outright as he had Henry Fong when he found no further use for him. Don't think that! He tried to mask the thought, but it was too late.

  "Exactly," the voice deep within his brain said. "She'll die the same way."

  "Not if you can't see her!"

  "I can force you to look at her, Keim!"

  "Lara, run, run, run…" He screamed the command telepathically as his body twisted violently around, his head jerked upward. He fought to keep his eyes closed but one lid flipped open, then the other. The briefest glimpse of Lara's slender figure disappearing down the stairwell told him she'd begun her flight before the warning call. "Too late," he croaked. The words bubbled from his lips.

  "It makes no difference, Keim. If the ship dies, she dies."

  Acquiesce, he thought, stall him, stall him. Give Duvall a chance. He tried to smother the thought by saying, "How can I? I can't move."

  "Move," the alien part of his brain commanded.

  Keim felt the iciness recede; but his muscles, locked in pain-searing cramps, remained immobilized. He tried to move an arm, a leg, groaned at the effort. But the pressure in his mind had lessened. Would Duvall understand? Would he figure it out? He tried to suppress the questions.

  "Understand what?" the voice inside him commanded sharply.

  "Lara?" He hurled the cry out. "The lifeboat! Tell Duvall…" His message was chopped short as his body was lifted, hurled violently toward the console. Halted in midair by an abrupt counterforce, he was left dangling above the deck before being dropped. His knees buckled and he sprawled flat, a wave of pain shooting through him. Another force turned him, brought him to a sitting position, snapped his head upward.

  "Look at the controls!" The command was a thunderclap in his brain. A small part of his consciousness told him not to look. Again his brain was a house divided—one part battling for survival against the other. The battle raged in each grotto, each corridor. He couldn't let the alien manipulate the controls by mind power! He had to keep his eyes away!

  "Look at the controls!" The thunderclap came again; his body was jerked upward, an abrupt movement that left him dangling in midair a few feet from the console.

  Don't look! Don't look! He screamed the order to himself, tried to will himself to obey it. Don't look! He heard the harsh noises from the air-conditioners, sharp cracklings from the expanding heat shields. His eyelids fluttered open and he forced them shut. Don't look!

  "Hurry," the alien cried. Keim sensed a panic behind the command and the absurd notion struck him that it made Uli seem almost human; at least he knew fear. Fear, that was it—he had to play on the alien's fear, buy time.

  As his lids flipped open, he managed to roll his eyes away from the red handle that could send the Alpha Tauri into unspace. He tried to focus his gaze on controls that had nothing to do with unspace. As his eyes moved relentlessly back, he jerked his head to the side. The instrument panel swept into view; the rad needles were high in the rad. Concentrate on the rad needles. He hady to buy time for Duvall.

  "You have no time." The voice in his brain held a taut, anxious note. "The girl will die unless you save her."

  "She won't die!" Keim felt suddenly exultant at the alien's failure to control him completely. Keep fighting, keep fighting.

  "Won't die?" The question held a distinct wariness. "Look!" Keim painstakingly wrenched his eyes toward the exterior videos. For what seemed an unending time, he saw only the smooth side of the hull and the lonely lights of stars beyond. "Lara?" he cried silently. "You're trying to trick me, Keim!"

  "No, wait!" He kept his gaze on the videos. "Lara?" he cried again.

  "Roger…" The name came as a faint whisper. A buzzer sounded.

  "What was that?" the alien demanded.

  "Wait" Keim repeated. The door to one of the docking wells opened and a lifeboat slid out, a frail sliver in the sea of space. "They're safe!" screamed Keim. "You'll die, Uli, and so will I, but they're safe!"

  "It's too late for the lifeboats, Keim. I know that from your mind."

  "You do?" He laughed mockingly.

  "I know your thoughts, Keim. The lifeboats are doomed."

  "You can't see into all of my mind, Uli. There's a small area you can't penetrate, where I am I. It can make the rest of my mind believe what I want you to believe."

  "You can't trick me, Keim!"

  "But I have." He laughed wildly. "I'm a T-man, Uli. You read only what I want you to read."

  "That's not true!" The startlement and fear in the denial gave Keim a flickering hope.

  "Three lifeboats have gone, Uli. Would they launch in the face of certain death?"

  "Put the ship into unspace!" The command crackled in his brain; his head jerked around. His lids flipped open and he rolled his eyes wildly. Knifing pains slashed his nerve trunks. "You'll die, Keim!" The threat held terror, panic.

  "That's what I've been telling you." He forced a wolfish smile, at the same time managing to jerk his head to one side. The small victory fueled his hopes.

  "Die, then," the alien screamed. Almost instantly an inner stillness came; the iciness receded and his mind gained a new clarity. The alien was gone! Gone without even waiting to take punitive action! Why hadn't the alien snapped his neck, killed him as he had Weber and Henry Fong?

  Suddenly he lay back, still and tense, listening to the thudding of his heart. What was it he sensed? His mind! Despite its clarity there was something there! A blockage, as if an intangible barrier had been erected that he couldn't penetrate. It was like the scent left in the lair of a wild beast long after the animal had gone. But like the wild beast, had he gone?

  He tried to rise, was horrified to discover that his cramped muscles refused to respond. Waves of pain and nausea accompanied every attempt to move. His muscles were locked, rigid. He felt them coiled in his arms, legs, in great cramped knots. He tried to relax in the hope the spasms would pass.

  What lay behind the barrier? "Die, then!" The alien's last words rushed back. Had the alien left the fragment in his mind to keep his body locked? The sweat sprang to his face. He couldn't move, couldn't reach the red handle-could do nothing but watch helplessly as the Alpha Tauri plunged toward the heart of the flaming green-white sun.

  No, wait, there was Lara! The alien hadn't known about her, had thought she was aboard the lifeboat with Duvall. "Lara!" He screamed the name desperately.

  "Roger, I've been trying to contact you!" Her answer was filled with a fright that verged on hysteria.

  "Where's Duvall?"

  "In the lifeboat, but I saw Captain Woon!"

  "Where?" His hopes soared.

  "Coming down from the bridge.
He must have been hiding in his cabin"

  The bridge! Keim felt a jolt. Why hadn't the alien had Woon kill him. Because he might have destroyed the ship at the first sign of Woon's coming, he thought. And Woon was the last of the hosts; the alien couldn't risk losing him. "Where's Woon now?"

  "I don't know. I ran as soon as I glimpsed him."

  Woon! He forced his eyes closed, tried to fix the captain's image in his mind. He had the sense of trying to peer through a dense fog, one in which tiny shadows leaped and dodged, appearing and disappearing in the camera of his mind's eye. He had to catch the shadows, hold them, tear away the shroud in which they were immersed.

  Tiny mental images flared, died, flared again. They came and vanished so quickly that he was uncertain whether or not they'd ever really existed. He had the impression that part of his mind—the fragment left by the alien to immobilize him?—was attempting to draw a veil over the images, blot them out.

  He riveted his attention inwardly more fiercely than ever. Movement in the fog! A running man! Woon! His face frozen and vacuous, his legs pumping with an odd mechanical precision, he was dashing along the corridor that led to Yozell's quarters. Where Uli was hiding! He could all but picture the small egg-shaped body in the small compartment.

  "Roger, what's happening. Are you all right?" Lara's words, impinging on his mind, broke the vision. At the same time, he became aware of their own predicament— the scant time they had left.

  "Come to the bridge, hurry!" Battling to move, he sensed that the invisible bonds no longer held him, but that his muscles failed to respond because of the hideous cramps. His entire body seemed aflame. Had he ejected the fragment that was the alien, or had he controlled it? Or had the alien withdrawn?

  That last hope burst like a bombshell inside him and, almost as quickly, died. He could still sense the spark of strangeness, even though it lay inert deep in his consciousness. But there was no time for that now; the harsh whine of the cooling system had grown too loud.

  Slowly, torturously, he straightened. Pulling himself up from the deck, he swayed, and toppled toward the communication console. Crashing against it, he managed to grasp the edge, keep from falling. Groping, he located a switch and flipped it, forcing his gaze back to the exterior videos. "Duvall, come in," he croaked. "Duvall!"

  "Here!" The psychmedic's reply was an anxious snap.

  "Hurry, get back in the ship!"

  "Has the alien… ?"

  "Hurry," he shouted. He kept his eyes glued to the lifeboat. Its nose swung in a sluggish arc until it pointed to-ward the docking well. As it slid inside, the exterior door closed behind it. Clinging to the edge of the console, Keim listened to the creak and groan of buckling plates, the whine of the cooling system. Although he couldn't see the rad needles, he knew they rode high in the red.

  Why hadn't the alien snapped his neck? He fought to keep his eyes on the videos. Caught with a fearful anxiety, he watched as if hypnotized. A minute passed, another, and another. He was beginning to despair when a buzzer sounded. A numeral flashed on the readout panel. An instant later a lifeboat slid from its docking well. Racing alongside the Alpha Tauri, it appeared incredibly small and fragile. Its movements sluggish and labored, it swung its bow outward from its flight path. Slowly it began to accelerate.

  What if the alien lived? He felt a fear close to panic. If the lifeboat escaped the green-white sun's gravitational field, the alien could live indefinitely in space. The brief glimpse he had into Uli's mind convinced him of that. Feeding on the sparse radiation of stars, he could move past suns and planets—penetrate deeper and deeper into the galaxy—until he eventually reached the Empire. Despite the growing heat, Keim shivered uncontrollably.

  But the alien couldn't escape! Regardless of the lifeboat's lateral headway, it was being dragged ever closer into the flaming sun. The alien was doomed! No power in the universe could prevent Uli's destruction now.

  "Roger?" Duvall's voice boomed from the speaker. "The alien's gone," Keim gasped. "He had Woon carry him to the lifeboat."

  "Woon," echoed Duvall.

  "He's as good as dead." Keim felt a quick dread. Billions and billions and billions of years,- and now to die in a flaming sun. Ashford, Woon, the three nameless crewmen—all would die with him in the same horrible way.

  He tried to rise, force his cramped muscles to give him the movement he needed to reach the red handle. Faint from the effort, he knew he'd never make it. Lara had better hurry. The thought scarcely had come when he felt himself hurled violently backward to the deck.

  The Alpha Tauri lurched underfoot, a slow movement followed by a sharp quake that rolled through the ship. The console jerked and danced before his eyes. With extreme effort, he jerked his gaze around to fasten it on the red handle; it seemed shimmery and far away. Sickeningly it came to him that the ship was breaking up under the combined stresses of heat^and the sun's gravitational tides.

  He held the shimmery red handle in his visual field. He had to push it up, push it up, push it up. The determination dinned in his mind as he tried to force himself up from the deck. The whine of the cooling system, the buckling of plates… He had to push it up!

  "Roger!" Lara's scream rang in his brain. "The mind power!"

  The mind power! The alien was trying to destroy the ship! Somewhere, in the lifeboat, he was taking his last moment of vengeance! The realization panicked him. Steady! He had to reach the red handle, push it up!

  Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself to his knees, his eyes clinging to their target. A wave of vertigo caught him, engulfed him in a dizzying stream of consciousness in which past and present and future merged as one.

  He was gazing at the edge of the universe, at the blackened ember of what had been the purpling sun, at the gigantic frozen planet that circled it—two ghosts in the midnight of space. Towering buildings disintegrated into dust; silver urns less than dust; a race buried in time.

  A dream that died.

  Dimly he realized that the terrible quaking had ceased, that the great flaming green-white sun had vanished from the telescreens. His last thought, as consciousness fled, was that the Alpha Tauri was back in unspace.

  FOURTEEN

  The tugging came, an insistent pulling at his arm that slowly penetrated his consciousness. He opened his eyes. His first awareness was of the hazy outlines of a man's face and shoulders bent over him; something was being done to his arm. Blinking to bring his eyes into focus, he realized the figure was Harlan Duvall.

  "Roger?" Lara's voice, low and worried, brought his head around; she was looking anxiously down at him. Trying to smile, he struggled to sit erect. Duvall pushed him back down.

  "Take it easy," he cautioned. "I'm giving you a triple injection of antiradiation serum."

  "Sure." This time he did smile. It felt good to be alive. And he had moved! He held up a hand, regarding it wonderingly before he let it drop. The muscles ached, but that was all.

  "Think you were dead?" asked Duvall.

  "Close to it." He looked at Lara again—drinking in her dark eyes, her oval face, the wistful way in which she regarded him. They were safe! The flaming green-white sun was gone, the alien was gone. It all seemed like a garish nightmare. Remembering the terrific buffeting the ship had taken from the mind power, it was a miracle it had held together.

  "We made it," he murmured wonderingly.

  "Thanks to you." Duvall drew the needles from his arm and applied a drop of skin seal.

  "To me?" Keim blinked at him.

  Duvall nodded. "You got this baby back into unspace just in time. It was about to come apart at the seams."

  "But I…" He cut the answer short, caught by a sudden stillness. He hadn't pushed the red handle up; he remembered that quite clearly. He'd been struggling to move his cramped muscles when he'd felt the vertigo that signaled the transfer from normal space.

  "But you did, Roger." It took him a second to realize that the speaker was Lara, that the words had come tele-pathically. She
continued, "I was still running toward the bridge when we went into unspace."

  "Impossible!" He eyed her quizzically. He'd been struggling to reach the console when the stars winked out, when the green-white sun vanished from the telescreens. He told her so.

  "Nevertheless you did," she persisted.

  "But how?" He gazed perplexedly at her.

  "Your mind." The answer was soft, pensive, wondering.

  "What about my mind?"

  "It's different. I don't know what, but I can sense it. You've… you've experienced clairvoyance, perhaps pre-cognition. This might be still another stage."

  "Say it! Say it!" He knew the impossible thing she was thinking, yet scarcely dared contemplate it.

  "The mind power, Roger." Her eyes held a touch of sorrow.

  "That couldn't be!"

  "How do you feel?" Duvall broke in. Unaware of the silent conversation that had been taking place, he eyed the telepath critically. Instead of answering immediately, Keim experimentally moved his Arms and legs, pushed himself to a sitting position. Aside from a few aches and pains, he felt quite normal.

  Normal? His body, yes, but what of his mind? Something was different! It was the strange presence, the thing he'd sensed before. Alien, yet not menacing; that was the difference. The part that the alien had left behind, he thought ruefully. Now, with the alien dead, perhaps it would be left with him forever.

  "Perhaps that's it," suggested Lara.

  He caught her eyes. "The mind power? Is that how

  i…r

  "It's possible, Roger." Her expression told him she was certain it was so. Aware that Duvall was eyeing him oddly, he struggled to his feet.

  "Feel fine," he exclaimed.

  "Take it easy for a while," Duvall counseled. He packed his medical kit before glancing up. "There are only a few of the crew left, but enough to get us back to the Empire. Robin's a good hand at math. She's certain she can master the astrogation."

  "The Empire." Keim gazed at the telescreens, at the black, empty, silent never-never space that science, for all its knowledge, couldn't quite explain. Somewhere—perhaps less than an atom in size and less than an inch away, if he were to believe one theory—blazed the great green-white sun in which the alien had died. So much for immortality.