A Star Above It and Other Stories

by Chad Oliver

  “They’ll show up, Dale,” Carlson said.

  Dale Jonston hoped so with every atom of his being. If only Troxel would come barging in, with his smile and one of his countless jokes about the weather. He could see him, in his mind’s eye, sprawled in his chair, saying seriously, “It’s like I always say, Dale. Everybody talks about Mark Twain but nobody does anything about him—”

  His thoughts came to an abrupt end as the door banged open. A wet, bedraggled caricature of a man stumbled into the room, his clothes soaked with mud. It was Dr. Moreland.

  “I tried to stop him,” Moreland choked. “I tried to stop him.”

  Carlson and Burks helped the psychologist to a chair. His eyes were bright and he was breathing with difficulty. Jonston went around and stood by his side, one hand on his rain-drenched shoulder.

  “Try to tell us what happened, Doc,” he said.

  “It was Troxel,” Dr. Moreland whispered, taking a deep breath. “I was worried about his psych report and went around to check on him. And … and—”

  Carlson handed him a drink. Moreland gulped it gratefully. “Go on,” Jonston said.

  “He wasn’t in his room. I found him right after he knifed the sentries—he went out the main gate into the storm. I … I tried to follow him, catch him, but … the storm—”

  “I understand,” Jonston said, a sick feeling in his heart. “Did he have anything with him—any weapons?”

  “I … I think he was carrying something. I tried to get him but the swamp—Dale, it’s … it’s horrible out there—”

  Jonston listened to the hammer of the rain on the roof. The lightning hissed down on the swamps and the thunder rolled heavily through the black skies. He could feel the cold sweat on his forehead.

  “There’s just one thing to do,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there and get him.”

  Dale Jonston tried not to think of Troxel as his friend. He was just a factor in a problem that had to be solved. That wasn’t an easy way to look at it, but it was the only way. He knew that Troxel, as junior officer at the Post, had access to the arsenal. There were atomic bombs in the arsenal—and when there’s a madman at your door with an atom bomb it’s already later than you think.

  Copters were useless in the storm that raged across the face of the planet, and the ship from Earth wasn’t due for another two months. Dale Jonston smiled without humor. It was strictly a family affair.

  “We’ll never find him out there,” Lin Carlson said. “Never in a million years.”

  “We’ve got to find him.”

  “A man might live for a while in that storm,” Carlson pointed out. “But he could never locate anyone else—he couldn’t see two feet in front of him. And if the person being hunted doesn’t want to be found—”

  “I’ll find him,” Jonston said.

  “You? You can’t go out there—you’re in charge here.”

  “That’s why I’m going.”

  “Don’t throw your life away, Dale,” Carlson said. “It’s all very well to be a hero, but what good will it do? You’ll go out there into that swamp full of worms and we’ll all be worse off than we are now.”

  Jonston smiled. “Don’t worry, Lin. I’m not going to throw a fit of heroics for dear old Terra—I think as much of my hide as the next man. I think I can find Troxel or I wouldn’t go. You see, I’m not going alone.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Very simple, really—Lkani. He can cross those swamps and he must have some way to see where he’s going. If he’ll help us—”

  “I think you’re making a grave mistake,” Dr. Moreland said, shaking his head. “To put the safety of this Post into the hands of a savage—after all—”

  “Lkani is not a savage,” Carlson interrupted angrily. “A man of your education, Dr. Moreland, should certainly have better sense than to—”

  “Knock it off,” Jonston said wearily. “This is hardly the time for an argument.”

  He looked at the lines of tension in Carlson’s face and at Dr. Moreland’s too-bright eyes. He felt the strain himself—it was like sitting on a powder keg while a paranoiac looked at the fuse and played with a cigarette lighter. There was no longer any time for discussion. He had to act.

  “O.K., Burks,” he said. “Start firing magnite flares across the Hills of the Dead where Lkani and his people are. Get with it.”

  Burks left and Jonston settled back and tried to relax.

  “What do we do now?” Carlson asked.

  “Cross your fingers, friend. That’s all—just cross your fingers.”

  The storm lashed at the Post with new fury as if challenging any man to go against it in mortal combat. Jonston thought of Tom Troxel out there, sick and dangerous. This is the price you pay, his mind whispered. This is the price you pay for your ticket to the edge of forever.

  The hours passed. The faces of the men were white with strain. Any minute, any second, the blast could come. And they could only sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

  The telecom buzzed.

  “Jonston here.”

  “It’s the native chief, sir—Lkani. He’s at the main gate. He says—”

  “Never mind what he says. See that he’s comfortable—I’ll be right down.”

  He flipped off the telecom and got to his feet.

  “Can’t I go along?” Carlson asked. “Maybe I—”

  “Thanks, Lin—but if one man can’t do this job then two men or a dozen can’t do it either. You hold the fort.”

  “Well—good luck.”

  “I still think—” Dr. Moreland began, then thought better of it.

  Dale Jonston, already dressed in boots and plastic slicker, hurried out of his office and down the tunnel to the main gate. The rain pounded gleefully on the roof, sensing a victim. Lightning burned furiously through the storm. Jonston shivered. If they couldn’t find Troxel—

  Lkani was there waiting for him. His blue face was glistening wet in the cold light of the sentry house.

  “I saw your flares,” he said.

  “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, friend,” Jonston said. “We’re in a mess.”

  He explained the situation to the native, wasting no time. Lkani listened carefully, nodding his head from time to time. The storm howled mournfully around the log house and the rain came down in torrents.

  “I understand,” he said finally. “I will try to help you, of course—but it will not be easy.”

  “If you ever want a medal, Lkani, I’ll get you a dozen or so.”

  “I’m afraid they would be of little use to me,” Lkani smiled. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Two of the sentries opened the gate and a wet hell blasted in. Dale Jonston’s heart hammered in his throat. He looked at Lkani and tried to smile. This, emphatically, was it.

  Shoulder to shoulder, the two men walked out into chaos.

  The thick mud sucked at his feet and the rain pounded his body. Dale Jonston’s skin crawled under the cold lashing of the wind and he noticed wildly that the rain smelled like metal. Like standing under Niagara in a raincoat, he thought numbly.

  He couldn’t see; he plodded on in a nightmare fantasy of unreality. He was afraid and his stomach felt hollow and cold. He held closely to Lkani’s arm and forced himself to keep going. Where? Somewhere—anywhere that Lkani went. Through the storm, through the sea of rain, through the darkness.

  The rain choked in his lungs. He couldn’t think but his mind was spinning with livid images. And questions—questions that screamed in his head, questions that had no answers. How could any man, sane or not, stay alive in this shrieking attack of the elements? How long could he take it? How could Lkani find his way through the swamp—how could he know where he was going, much less how to get there?

  A man might live for a while in that storm, Carlson had said. But he could never locate anyone else.

  Jonston gasped for breat
h and pulled his feet through the muck. Lightning sizzled through the wet air and hissed into the swamp behind them. The thunder crashed with an ear-splitting roar. It was too much for any man to take—but Jonston kept his head down and went on. There was no other way to go.

  His mind began to think about the thousands of slithering white worms that undulated through the swamp and terror crept like ice through his veins. His feet were tense and uncertain in the mud, as though he were walking through the ocean surf back on Earth with jellyfish between his toes.

  Lkani stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” Jonston yelled above the pounding of the storm.

  Lkani pointed and Jonston followed his arm. There was something in the muck, something dark. Jonston knelt against the force of the rain and rolled it over.

  Troxel. Troxel—with his neck cut almost in half by a knife.

  Dale Jonston got numbly to his feet and stood there swaying in the blast of the storm.

  “Tom,” he whispered.

  That was all. There was no time for anything else. He had to whip his mind into action, had to think. Lkani was silent in the wind-driven downpour, waiting. Jonston clenched his fists. THINK. The rain hammered at his face.

  Troxel was dead in the swamp, knifed. He hadn’t killed himself, that was obvious. In all probability, he hadn’t killed the sentries, either. Troxel wasn’t the man they were after. O.K. Someone had cracked, and it hadn’t been Troxel. Who, then?

  Jonston thought back. He shook his head, half in anger and half in fear. He had been tricked, neatly and completely. Feinted out of position like the greenest cadet.

  “Dr. Moreland,” he breathed.

  Of course. It was Dr. Moreland who had made out the psych report on Troxel, Dr. Moreland who had “seen” Troxel knife the sentries, Dr. Moreland who had come in wet from the swamp, Dr. Moreland who had been afraid to call in Lkani.

  And he was inside the Post and he outranked every other officer.

  Dale Jonston looked down at the thing that had been his friend and made himself think the problem through. He ignored the thunder that blasted through the darkness, ignored the choking rain, ignored the cold wind that whistled through his slicker. Think—

  Dr. Moreland had cracked under the strain of the storm and too many tense mental problems of others. He wasn’t a villain; he was sick. But he had to be stopped. He had tricked Jonston out of the Post and he had killed three men with a knife. He couldn’t go on like that, Jonston realized. He would either have to stop killing altogether, which wouldn’t be likely, or—

  Or he would have to destroy the entire Post, himself included. How could he do that? There were atomic bombs in the arsenal—but Jonston doubted that Dr. Moreland could get into the arsenal alone. Even though he outranked the other officers, he was a psychologist and would have no business in the arsenal. The other men were not fools; they would become suspicious and that wouldn’t do. What else then? Jonston shivered. The atomic pile, used to power the mining tools. There would be guards in the arsenal, or supply men at least, because they were on the alert for an attack from without. But the atomic pile—Moreland could get to it—could tamper with it.

  No man in his right mind would alter the pile, of course. But that was just the point. Moreland was no longer sane.

  Dale Jonston could visualize the scene—Moreland in the room with the pile, warning the others that they must not approach him. Yes, Moreland would have to let them know what he had done—have to taunt them with his cleverness and feel like God with the power in his hands. A working knowledge of psychology was not by any means restricted to the psychologists in the Extra Terrestrial Service—it was standard equipment.

  Lightning hissed into the swamp again and the rain slammed down harder with the push of the thunder. Jonston smiled coldly. All right, genius, he thought. You’ve figured out what you should have known all along—now what are you going to do about it?

  He put his mouth next to Lkani’s ear and hollered above the storm. If this didn’t work—

  “Lkani, Moreland’s going to detonate the pile. It will destroy your people as well as mine. What can we do?”

  Lkani was tall and dark in the driving rain. His steady eyes measured Jonston carefully.

  “Just think the facts of the situation,” a voice spoke clearly in Jonston’s stunned brain. “Then follow me.”

  Dale Jonston stood there staring.

  So, his mind whispered, he can read minds, too.

  The storm lashed out at them with sentient fury and the darkness covered the two men like a shroud.

  No matter what men say, and no matter how good an act they may put on for the world, there is within all men a pragmatic core that always knows what the true score is. And within that core, despite their outward egotism, men usually underestimate themselves. Dale Jonston would never have believed for a minute that he could take what he was taking and go on asking for more. But he could—and he did.

  He didn’t think about it. He just kept plodding forward, holding on to Lkani’s arm and pulling first one foot and then the other out of the eternal mud. The rain beat at him and the wind tore at his clothes. He felt as though his lungs were on fire and his eyes burned in his skull. Every second he expected the blinding flash from the Post—the flash and the end.

  But they were moving away from the Post, he sensed. Toward the Hills of the Dead. He shuddered, feeling the unthinkable coils of the great white worms slither past them in the darkness. Why didn’t they attack? There was just one answer—Lkani. Lkani was the answer to a lot of questions.

  The footing became a little surer under them as the clinging muck turned into firmer stuff. Jonston realized that they would never have got through at all if Lkani had not known how to avoid the bottomless pits and suckholes that must have made up the greater part of the swamp. That Moreland had gone as far as he had was a miracle of a singularly unwelcome variety.

  They were climbing now, he knew. Climbing into the Hills of the Dead where the natives buried their lifeless friends and the wind whistled through the mountains. Torrents of rain water gushed in mighty rivers down the hillsides and lightning hissed in the sky. Jonston held on.

  Suddenly, it was over. They were out of it and Dale Jonston could only stand numbly and wait for feeling to return to his battered body. He stood there, soaked to the skin, and looked out at the raging storm. Gradually, he became aware of the fact that he was in a cave. Someone put a bowl of hot liquid in his cold hands and he drank it mechanically.

  Lkani thought ahead and they were waiting.

  The fluid was strong and warm and good, like a cross between a heavy soup and a sweet liquor. It picked him up amazingly and he began to feel almost human again.

  “We haven’t much time,” Lkani said.

  “I’m O.K.—let’s go.”

  They started into the cave and Dale Jonston noted with surprise that the air was dry and warm. There must be some sort of a force field across the cave entrance, he reasoned. Simple natives indeed! And yet the smooth floor of the cave seemed to be completely free from mechanical contrivances of any sort; the blue-skinned people cooked over roaring wood fires and evidently made their homes in smaller, branching caves. Force fields and caves, mind reading and a primitive social structure—Dale Jonston shook his head at the mounting paradoxes.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Can’t explain,” Lkani answered shortly. “Trying to keep the man from pulling the rods on that pile.”

  Coercive thought projection, Jonston’s mind observed.

  He followed Lkani without comment through the cave. The sounds of the storm were muted by distance now, but far ahead of him he could hear the muffled roar of a swollen underground river. He tried not to think of Moreland at the Post—face too pale, eyes too bright, with his finger on the trigger of eternity. If that pile cut loose—

  It was all up to Lkani now. Dale Jonston accepted the situation as it was, without trying to assert a meaningless aut
hority of his own. He knew superior intelligence when he saw it and he was ready to co-operate. He followed the native tensely and kept his eyes open. Lkani, he noticed, had picked up a tubular device of some sort that looked like an uncommonly thick flashlight with a pistol grip attached.

  Primitive man, Jonston thought, laughing at himself.

  The sound of the river was closer now, and they quickened their steps. Why are we going alone? Jonston wondered. Why don’t the rest of them come with us? A part of his mind sensed the truth: I’ve got to be the one who does the job. Lkani will make it possible, but I’ve got to do it. Why?

  They passed a branching cave that was larger than the others and Jonston looked inside. It was brightly lighted from within and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a slim tower of silver that strained toward the dark heavens above.

  A spaceship—in a cave!

  Lkani went on and Jonston stayed right behind him. Abruptly, the air turned cold and moist; there was no gradation from warm to cold—it was just suddenly and precisely cold. There was still light in the cave, coming from a faint mineral glow in the rocks.

  Jonston shivered and kept on going, his mind beginning to stagger under the strange import of the things that he had seen. The churning roar of the river washed chillingly through the damp cave and phantom echoes shuddered among the rocks.

  Time, he knew, was running out.

  The river hissed by like a great serpent below them, fat and swollen with tons of rain and hurling itself angrily at the walls of its rock prison. Dale Jonston stood with Lkani and looked uneasily at the narrow ledge of sharp rock that wound along above the boiling torrent.

  “That the way?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance.

  Lkani nodded and swung down to the ledge, holding carefully to the metal tube. Jonston trembled in his wet clothes and followed him.

  “You’ve got me all wrong, friend,” he panted. “I’m an ETS man—not the Human Fly.”