"What is it?" asked Circe. Her lovely face was a trifle pallid. "I feel odd—and you all look pale."
Then it struck Pink. None of the others, even Daley, had recognized what was happening. He did not dare waste a second in telling them. He tore the door open and leaped into the corridor.
Deliberately he tried to draw as much oxygen into his lungs as he could. It was growing rarer every instant; but never mind trying to conserve it—the life of everyone aboard depended on his reaching the atmospheria. For the air in the spaceship was rapidly degenerating, becoming unbreathable as what remained of the good stuff was inhaled and thrown off as useless gases....
Either the atmospheric system had gone on the blink by itself, he thought, which was a hell of a long shot and too much of a coincidence, or else the alien, experimenting, had turned it off by accident.
Maybe the brute didn't need oxygen. Of course he didn't! His brothers outside sure didn't have any. Then, if he were independent of it, but could stand living in it, the probabilities were that he didn't breathe at all; that his metabolism was geared to ignore the elements in which he lived.
Just possibly he was taking this way to kill them off in a particularly fiendish fashion.
Silently Pink cursed the architect who had designed theElephant's Childwith the armaments room in the bow and the atmospheria back near the crew's sector, a thousand feet of passageways off. Every door he flung open took another bit of strength from his aching limbs. As he passed a mirror, he had a glimpse of his face. His face was flushed now, the grim-set lips were bluish, his eyes seemed to bulge from his head.
He began breathing through his mouth. It may have been imagination, but he thought the air had a foul taste, like a sea full of putrid fish.
Pink fell to his knees. Abruptly his strength had waned to almost nothing. He was horrified to realize how swiftly the air was going bad. He had to get to the system! He struggled up, staggered forward like a drunk. His heart, pounding wildly a moment before, now seemed to be slowing, weakening.
He found himself singing....
"Blast off at two, jet down at threeOn the dead dry dusty sphereWhat sort of a life is this for me,A veteran rocketeer?"
"Blast off at two, jet down at threeOn the dead dry dusty sphereWhat sort of a life is this for me,A veteran rocketeer?"
Great God, was he crazy? Singing, shouting the words to that old song that Circe had brought back to his mind. Using up what amounted to his last drops of energy and air. God, God, help me, he thought wildly; make me shut up. But the maddened outer part of his brain kept him singing.
"I, who have seen the flame-dark seas,Canals like great raw scars,And the claret lakes and the crimson treesIn the rich red soil of Mars!"
"I, who have seen the flame-dark seas,Canals like great raw scars,And the claret lakes and the crimson treesIn the rich red soil of Mars!"
Then he fell, and this time he could not get up.
He would lie here and die, horribly, gasping for breath where there was nothing to breathe but death. The mind that had made him sing, that had thought of Circe longingly and of what he must do to save her and all his friends, that blacked out, fell into a pit of ebony walls and ink at the bottom, blackness and nothing left anywhere....
Somewhere deep in his skull, some unknown cranny blazed with the light of knowledge. He had only a few yards to go. He had to make it. This knowledge crept out and through his body, raised cold swollen hands and made them grasp at a wall, forced the feet of this dead man to scrabble for purchase on the floor of the passage. Pinkham knew that he was moving, but it was as if he were sitting on a distant planet and knowing it; there was no realization that this was he, Captain Pinkham, clawing upward and shoving himself on. He looked at himself curiously, rather proud and a little contemptuous. What a fool, what a damn fool, he thought.
Here was a door. The half-blind thing that was Pink groped for the handle, recognizing dimly that if this were not the atmospheria, then it was all over.
He opened the door and fell at full length on the carpet. Instinct rolled him over and hauled him to his knees, and he said admiringly and far away on that planet of death, By God, this is a man! Through a red haze he saw that he was in the first of the two small rooms that made up the atmospheria. He lunged forward, falling, jerked convulsively upward, plunged down a mile and smashed his face into the carpet, felt pain that for a moment brought him out of his stupor. He was making for the master switch that controlled the nitrogen-oxygen-ozone-etcetra that poured continuously through the great ship when all was well. From a great distance he could see that the switch was shoved up; only by breaking a steel band of superb tensility could the alien creature have pushed that switch up, for Pink carried the key to the band on his master ring, hanging at his belt. It looked like viciousness, either of knowledge that this was the humans' finish, or of ignorance flaring into anger. What abeast....
He gathered himself like a mortally wounded lion. He launched his perishing frame at the switch, hands clawed to drag it down to the normal position.
He could not feel whether he even touched the wall, for his senses were obliterated. He lay on his face and knew that he would not get up again.
Idly, he wondered whether he had managed to reach the switch.
Then the final flame of intelligence winked out, and it was night and unrelieved blackness, and he fell asleep.
Jerry blinked. He opened his eyes and blinked again.
Had Pink made it to the atmospheria?
He must have, for the air was sweet and normal once more. So either Pink or Joe Silver had saved them. The others had all dropped along the way; he had passed Daley's motionless form some yards back there—now he looked, and saw the senior lieutenant sitting up against the wall.
Jerry rubbed his forehead gingerly. What a headache!
By the time he managed to stand, shakily, Joe Silver had appeared in front of him. Before Jerry could ask questions, the big man said hoarsely, "Must have been the captain.Ipassed out before I made the door." He shook his own head, which evidently ached too. "The blasted door is now locked. I can't get in."
The three of them went toward the atmospheria, Calico and Sparks following slowly. Before they reached it, the door opened and the alien thing emerged, stooping to clear the lintel. In its tree-thick arms lay Pinkham, apparently lifeless, his head dangling.
"Aside, mortals," the beast mouthed at them, and added, grotesquely, "goddammit!" They dropped back, it passed them and turned a corner and vanished. "Wait," said Daley urgently, "don't follow it yet." He switched on the passage intercom screen. "We'll spy on it with this. If Pink's alive, we mustn't anger the brute."
Tense, they watched the image of the stranger as it prowled through the ship, carrying their chief. It passed Randy Kinkare, and they saw him shrink away, a noise of terror gurgling in his gullet. The lipless Kinkare had reason to be afraid.
The giant took Pinkham into his own quarters and laid him on a foam-couch. Then it sat down in an angle of the wall, and its gruesomely human-like body swelled until it occupied much of the free space in the cabin.
"To scare him if he wakes," breathed Bill Calico.
"Isn't it frightful enough?" asked Jerry. "I have an idea: if the Rabelaisian types outside are at their normal size, which seems logical, then this one may be uncomfortable, having to go around all compressed to eight feet."
"Could be ... let's advance," said Daley. "We'll wait just outside Pink's door. Then if it tries anything—"
"Yeah?"
"We'll make a protest," finished Daley. "Somehow, we'll make a strong protest."
They left the screen, a few seconds before Captain Pinkham groaned and opened his eyes.
The alien regarded him with its habitual expression of overpowering slyness. "Why did you nearly die?" it asked. "Was it something I did?"
When Pink could trust himself to speak without gibbering—it was horrifying to see half his room filled by this bronze-yellow balloon of evidently solid flesh—he said, "Naturally it was something you did, you big ape. You turned off our air."
"Air?" It compressed its lips. "Ah, I remember air. A substance needed on Earth for life. We never understood it."
"Don't you breathe?" asked Pink. "Don't you take any element into your system and mix it with your blood and then—oh, you haven't any blood." He paused. "But don't you needanyoutside element to sustain life?"
"No. Nor do we eat."
"But you are organic life?"
"Of course. A life which you cannot understand, I see. A life impervious to anything beyond it, indestructible and eternal."
I think you're lying, said Pink to himself. Nothing in the universe is indestructible ... or at any rate, unalterable. Everything has its Achilles heel, even the atom.
The monster spoke, half to itself. "That, the locked switch was the air, then. I thought it was the air-lock." It laughed. Pink thought it had a pretty primitive sense of humor. "Not the air-lock, but the air."
"You wanted to let your friends into the ship," accused Pink. The beast nodded. "Didn't you know that opening the air-locks without sealing off their compression rooms would kill all the humans aboard?"
"No," it said. "I want you alive. Some of you. To teach us the working of this rocket."
"Spaceship," corrected Pink without thinking. Then, "Why do you want the ship?"
Its eyes glowed fire at him. "To return to Earth," it hissed. "To return to our own planet!"
"Yourplanet!"
"As much as yours, mortal." It leaned forward, obscuring practically all the room for him. "Show me how to open the air-locks," it said.
"In a swine's eye."
"With safety to yourself, naturally," it said impatiently, "Come, show me."
"Find the machinery yourself. Experiment. Knock us all off. You'll be stuck out here with a ship you can't operate."
It plucked him off the foam-couch and hurled him against the wall, jarring him in every bone. "Show me how," it roared. "Thou zed, thou cream-faced loon—" Shakespeare? wondered Pink—"show me the controls!"
Pink dived behind a stationary chair. He drew his useless pistol and threw it at the being's face; it rebounded to the floor. He snatched up a vase of ever-blooming Jovian lilies, sent them after the gun. The monster reached for him, snarling. He leaped over its hand, hurdling it as if he were a boy crossing a fence. On the far wall were many weapons.
When he made Captain, and was given theElephant's Childas his flagship, he had transferred all his belongings to it, so that nowhere in the galaxies would he ever feel at home save here. Among his keepsakes was the collection of antique weaponry handed down to him by his father, whose grandfather had bought them in the long ago from many museums. Gradually he had added to the collection, souvenirs of the planets he had explored. They were bracketed on the wall. Zulu war clubs and Kentucky muskets. Martian spear-guns and antiquated jet-pistols; a Derringer, a Colt .44, a blowpipe from an unknown Pacific island.
The alien giant was too swollen to turn swiftly. Pink reached the wall display. He tore down an assegai, whirled and thrust it at the monstrous, contorted face, searching for the eyes.
He was a mouse, bedeviling a cat with a broom straw. The thing batted his spear aside, brushed him with its fingers in a powerful swat, smashed him against his desk. A corner caught him, and he felt a rib snap. The pain enraged him.
In that desk he kept his other collection, ammunition for those weapons: it was his boast that he had at least six rounds for every projectile-thrower there. Some of it had been painstakingly fashioned in modern times from the old formulae, some miraculously preserved through the centuries. On strange planets he and Jerry used to have target practice with the ancient toys.
Now the agony and the fear forced him into a gesture. He would die in this room, for certainly he'd never tell the giant where to find the air-lock switches; he had to go down fighting, and if to fight this impervious lout was the most futile of gestures, at least he would make it a glorious one!
Fumbling, he tore open a drawer and clutched a box out of it. This was the ammunition for the Colt revolver. Gripping it in his left hand, he jumped aside as the beast put out a hand for him. He fled across the room, his ears cringing from the titanic yells of fury behind him. Now he had to get the Colt .44 from the wall.
It took him three horrible minutes of dodging and bounding to reach the weapons again. He snatched at the revolver, missed, made another desperate grab as he dropped to the rug; the second time he had it. He crawled under a chest which stood twenty inches off the floor. Luckily the alien was trying to catch him, not slay him, for it could long since have smeared him into jelly with a piece of furniture for a bludgeon.
Feverishly he loaded the chambers of the Colt. For a moment his scattered wits could not recollect just how to operate this special weapon. Then he remembered.
The fingers of the monster, sausage-sized and disgusting in their parody of humanity, came groping beneath the chest. Pinkham wormed back and came up behind it, staring into the red eyes.
With a concentration of power that he had not known he could summon, he shot out from behind the chest and vaulted onto the top of his enormous desk.
The alien, lips curling, straightened till its head brushed the ceiling. It reached out for him.
In the last split second, Pink had a vision of himself, and instead of a glorious gesture, it seemed to him suddenly that he was making an awful ass of himself. Like a man before a firing squad thumbing his nose....
Nevertheless, he aimed the Colt full into the gargantuan face before him, and pulled the trigger.
The dawn-man, a thing like a wet rat, bared its teeth at the dinosaur.... The Cro-Magnon faced a horde of hulking Neanderthals with a grin.... The Crusader stood with a broken sword and brandished the hilt at the charging Saracens.... The Apache drew his knife to fight a double-troop armed with carbines.... The American flung his empty M-1 in the faces of forty Japanese ...toujours le beau geste. Captain Pinkham, standing in his cabin aboard the spaceshipElephant's Childadrift in Star System Ninety, leaned forward and pulled the trigger to the two-century-old, out-moded, laughable popgun of a Colt .44 firing once and twice and again and again into the face of the bronze-yellow space-dwelling giant.
The being loomed over him, and a scream like the death-wail of a meteor lanced into his eardrums and made him gasp with anguish. He pumped the last slug into the enemy and launched himself side-long, without much hope of landing anywhere but in a bushel-sized palm. He was actually surprised when he found himself on the rug. He scrambled for cover, but before he reached it, it dawned on him that he might not need it.
The alien had sunk to its knees, was making a convulsive effort to rise but obviously lacked the strength! Somehow, and God alone knew how, Pinkham had wounded the beast!
He drew back to the wall, watching. The agony of the big humanoid was doubling it over and throwing it upright as though a volcano were erupting in its belly. It flung out an arm, struck a foam-chair, which shattered explosively. Pink put more feet between them. The convulsions were like those of a harpooned whale. Yet the creature did not seem able to move from its knees. Finally, perhaps a minute after the first throes, it collapsed all at once, a crumpled titan. Pink cautiously opened the door, just as Daley was reaching for the handle.
"What in hell did youdo?" shouted the lieutenant.
"Shot him with a revolving-chamber pistol of the mid-19th Century," said Pink. His rib was hurting and his flesh felt bruised all over. He grinned. "Figure that one, boy. Atomic disintegrator doesn't work, antique powder-using firearm does. I'm too beat to know why."
"It's crazy," said Joe Silver flatly. They all stood around the alien, which was sprawled on its back. The red eyes gleamed, but no muscle moved in the great body. They looked for signs of the wounds, for holes or dissolving matter, for anything different; there was nothing. "What if—" began Silver.
"This can wait." Pink took a deep breath, which hurt, and cleared his throat. "There's plenty to be done. Jerry, check your scanner and detectors for possible damage. Sparks, get on the radio toCottabusandDiogenes; tell 'em everything, and warn them to come in cautiously. Kinkare, Daley, see what you can do with the space drive."
He walked to the chest and picked up the box of Colt cartridges. He loaded the weapon again. "This works—and for now I'm not asking why. I'll stay with this scum of the void and try to get something out of him that'll clear things up. Bill, you determine our position and give it to Sparks; then start checking all the other equipment for bugs." He looked at Joe Silver. "You collect the bodies of the dead officers and prepare them for space burial."
"Why me?" blurted Silver.
Pink gave him a long look. "Because it's an officer's job. Because I tell you to. And Silver—"
"Yeah?"
"I have decided that this is no longer a grade A emergency."
Joe Silver said stiffly, "Yes, sir."
Pink activated the intercom screen, told the crew briefly what had happened. Then he raised the mutiny gates, giving a sigh of relief. "Get going," he told his officers.
"What about the girl?" asked Jerry suspiciously. "She could still be one of them."
"Leave her with me. I have six bullets in this thing and forty-eight more after that." He looked at Circe, who was pale and weary. "Sit down, O. O. Smith," he said gently. "I think you're all right. But you realize we can't chance anything till we have proof."
"I understand," she said listlessly, and dropped into a foamseat, staring at the fallen giant. The others trooped out.
With the door shut, Pink walked to the head of the creature; it was a swollen and hideous head, but by rights it should have been even more hideous, should have had half a dozen wounds. The yellow hide was unmarked. Pink said, "You're alive. Can you speak?"
"Certainly." The lips barely moved. "I am but immobilized for the moment."
"What caused it?"
The being sneered at him without answering. Pink said, "I can keep you in this state for a long time, chum. And when we've shown our heels to your brothers, I'm going to dump you out an air-lock and let you drift around between the stars."
He knelt beside it. "What did you do to the space drive?"
There was a long pause. Then it evidently made up its mind. "The drive should be in working order now. Your men will discover so when they try it. As with the other contrivances, I merely placed a temporary stasis on the protons of certain atoms, which rendered them futile. There should be no damage by this time."
Echoing his words, Pink heard the first throbbing murmur of the activated piles. He looked without conscious volition at Circe, and they exchanged smiles of vast relief.
"You'll be popping out that air-lock sooner than I'd hoped," said Pink to the giant. Then he was startled by a great peal of harsh laughter.
"Oh, you pigmy!" shouted the alien. "You flea-brained besotted fool! Your ship is out of control even now, and your hours are numbered on one hand. You've lost, and haven't the brains to see why!"
And, thought Pink, listening to the mirthless laugh while a chill sought out his belly, the monster's words did not sound remotely like a bluff.
He knew something hidden from the captain, and even in his captivity he felt himself master of theElephant's Child.
Why? Why? Why?
Then Pink turned and looked at Circe.
Pink woke from a sweating nightmare. He rolled over and his bandaged ribs creaked with a twinge. He had slept nearly a round of the clock; the other ships must be nearing the asteroids. He got up and dressed quickly, wondering who was watching Circe now, holding the revolver on her, praying that if she should change form, the old-fashioned gun would paralyze her as it had the giant.
The giant. He had to check on that devil immediately. He called his quarters on the intercom, and Lieutenant Daley's image waved at him reassuringly. The monstrous entity had not moved; its eyes still gleamed with malevolence.
"Your hours are numbered on one hand," said Pinkham to himself. "How many fingers on that mitt, I wonder?"
And even yet he did not believe the thing had been bluffing.
He ate a brisk breakfast in the mess hall, then stalked off to his own room, trying to analyze what he now knew of the giants' nature; but Circe's face intruded in his mind. He was in love with her. If she were an alien, then he was in love with the remarkable illusion she had created, of beauty and something more: of a deep integrity of soul that shone in her eyes and touched every word she uttered. And if thatwerean illusion, then he was a cynic and quite likely a positive misanthrope from this day forward.
"Get a slug of coffee," he told Daley. "Then hare back and we'll have some brandy. It looks like a busy day." Daley went out, giving him the Colt as he left.
Sparks reported theCottabusandDiogeneshad joined their routes and would be alongside within half an hour. Pink sat down and looked at Circe, asleep on the couch. He switched his gaze after a while to the enemy, who watched him steadily. It said, "A favor, Captain."
"No," he told it.
"Only a sip, a drop of brandy to wet these cold lips!"
"Cold lips, cold heart: old proverb." For the first time in his life, Pinkham wanted to torture someone. "You bastard," he said grimly, "you murdered eleven men, eleven good officers, and spoiled Kinkare's face for him. And you want a drink of brandy."
"Rubbing alcohol, then. Only a touch on my mouth. Drop it in my eye if you wish," said the thing pitifully.
"No—hey, wait a second. You told me your breed doesn't eat or drink. You don't need any outside element. Why the alcohol?"
It heaved what was possibly a sigh. "I can absorb certain portions of the carbon atoms ofal-kuhl," it said. "It is the greatest pleasure known to my race. And, save for the paltry drops of gin in that bottle yesterday, I have not—let us say 'tasted'—it for some hundreds of years!"
"Al-kuhl?" repeated Pinkham.
"The Arabic slips easily from my tongue after all those years," said the thing, half to itself.
Arabic! "You weren't lying," said Pink, "when you told us you came from Earth, then."
"I was not lying. Give me some alcohol, Captain."
"No. How do I know it won't revive you?"
"My word on it."
Pink gave the hardest and briefest bark of laughter ever heard on the spaceways. It became silent. Finally he leaned forward to stare at it. "Your eyes have faded," he said. "By God, I think you aren't paralyzed. I think you're dying!"
After another silence it said, "Yes. I am dying."
"I couldn't be happier," said Pinkham viciously. "I even hope it's painful."
"It is not. The only pain came with the passage through my molecules of the l—" it halted abruptly.
"Ah," said Pink, hefting the Colt. "Of the lead. It had to be that, of course; but thanks for reassuring me. Your tribe's allergic to lead in a rather high degree."
The flames leaped in its eyes. "I haven't told you anything so valuable," it said, with a kind of weak bravado. "There are too many of us, too few of you, and not enough lead in this whole system to conquer us. You have found the secret, but you'll never carry it back to Earth. My people shall go there instead, when they have sucked the methods from your broken body."
"When will you die?" he asked it. In spite of his hatred, humanity was rising in him. It was beaten and he was too much of a man to crow for long.
"I hear remorse in your tone," said the alien. "For the love of God, then, give me some alcohol."
He remembered the headless corpse of Wright. He said, "No."
Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed. It began to talk to itself in a monotone, a sort of feverish delirium.
"I never thought of it, at least not often, for I steered my mind away from it; but once a decade or every thirty years I would remember, perhaps one of us would say, 'Oh, to have a flagon of palm wine,' and then the agony of desire would wrack me until I must fight my body and tear it proton from proton so that I hurt badly and the remembrance would leave me.Al-kuhl, al-kuhl!Why in all the universe must there be this one combination of stupid elements which drags every fleck of yearning from me like water wrung from a cloth? My race needs nothing, nothing—we long for nothing—we are the only self-sufficient beings in creation—why do we remember theal-kuhl?"
"Like akeef-smoker," said Pinkham quietly. "You don't long for anything else." After a little he added, "And you fear nothing save lead."
"True," said the being distractedly. "If it were not for lead and alcohol we would be perfect gods."
"Who are you?" Pink asked, conscious that his throat was constricted with excitement. "When did you leave Earth? Why don't I recognize you, out of history? What are you called?"
He had tried too hard. The alien rolled its dimmed eyes at him. "I wish I could smile now," it said through motionless lips. "Ah, if I could only smile knowingly! You will die today with that curiosity unslaked."
He was balefully angry at that; he leaped to his feet, thrusting out the revolver. "If I throw another slug into you, it just might hurt some more," he roared.
"I would rather die in pain than see your questions answered. I know well that curiosity is the worst torment to an Englishman."
"I'm not English," said Pink.
"It's all the same. I might as well have said 'human.'"
Pink recalled that he had the Colt, and so could take a few chances. "I'll trade you. One drop of brandy for each answer."
It considered. Then, without budging, it gave the effect of a shrug. "Why not? You'll be dead soon."
"You're so sure," said Pink.
"Look at your scanner."
There was something in the words that sent Pink racing. He was only just in time to see the finish of all his new-born hopes.
TheCottabusandDiogeneswere approaching at a slowing pace; theElephant's Childhad deactivated her drive to wait for them. Whether the captains of the sister ships saw them or not, Pink could not tell; but a number of the space giants, so reduced in size as to be mere blots on the screen, hovered in the area.
As the ships gradually lost speed, a giant appeared atop each, growing rapidly from eight feet to a thousand, till they straddled the great ships like riders on Shetland ponies.
The thing on the floor chuckled. "We are much more comfortable at that size, you see, Captain. We don't like to cramp our molecular structure into these puny dimensions. We can get into bottles—but we prefer to expand as you see." Then it laughed. "Yes, there is one of us on your own flagship at this instant, where he has been waiting, compressed, till the others caught their seats. Your ships are captured as surely as in a net. You cannot dislodge them, as you know. You must carry them to Earth so, or capitulate and let them inside."
There was no scrap of fear that he would carry these devils to Earth, naturally. But for the moment, Pink could see no sure way to escape the doom that now lay over him and all his men. They would have to remain in this asteroid belt ... perhaps forever.
The three spaceships lay together in the void.
In theElephant's Child, 57 men, seven officers, and Circe Smith were seated in the demolished recreation room, which was the only place besides the mess hall with enough chairs to accommodate them all. Radio communication with the other ships was handled over an extension set connected to the main radio room by a triple quancord laid down with furious energy by Sparks.
"What we need, and need fast, is this," said Pinkham. "A method by which we can project lead, in pellets or spray or any damn form, with accuracy, using our platinum guns. There aren't any other weapons that will fire from within."
"As you know, we've tried a few methods. One of the gunners of theCottabuswent into an air-lock and tossed a lead ball at the giant on theDiogenes, using a sling-gun. He found the range was too long; and when the captain attempted to bring theCottabusnearer, the thing onDiogenessimply reared his ship up by shifting his weight backward. So long as they can maneuver our ships as easily as toy boats, we can't use that simple method.
"ThenDiogenestried to smash our giant off his perch by simply ramming him headlong. Take a look at the screen and you'll see thatDiogeneshas a dented nose for her pains. Five men died in that try."
"Captain," said a hydroponics engineer, "isn't it possible that, if we keep trying to oppose these aliens, they may simply tear their way into the ships and retaliate?"
"Quite possible. Their strength is equal to picking theElephant's Childapart, I'm sure." He glared at the men. "Listen: I don't have to pull punches with you. The chances of our getting rid of these giants and making it to Earth are damned remote. There may be a chance, though, so we have to keep trying for it.
"The most important thing we have to do is keep this life-form of the asteroids from going to Earth. We of the armada are a terrible danger to mankind, through no fault of ours. We're so many Typhoid Marys, potential carriers of something worse than any disease. Even if we're all killed, the giants might manage to learn the control of the ships, and take them to Terra alone.
"So if we can't wipe out the enemy, our only course is to destroy ourselves and our ships. Every officer in the armada has instructions to blow up his ship if the giants should break into it. The thing is so important that I've issued orders to do that even though the use of lead-thrower weapons might conquer the invaders.
"If giants seize a ship and it is not destroyed within five minutes, the other two will turn their platinum guns on it.
"Any questions?"
Jackson, who was spokesman for the crew, answered promptly, "No questions, sir."
"Okay. Now let's have the technicians' report."
A lean, angular man rose. "I've checked all the books, Captain. There is no way to substitute a charge of lead for the war-head in the curium shells."
There was a stillness. "You mean we can't shoot lead at the giants except with the few handguns in my possession," said Pink heavily.
"That's right, Captain."
"The giants are too alert to be caught that way," said Bill Calico. "I have an idea—not much of a one, but it's a try."
"Let's have it."
Jerry waved a hand. "Please remove O. O. Smith first."
Circe flared, "I think you're just afraid I'll get your job, you incompetent—"
"Take her out," said Pink to Joe Silver.
Calico then outlined his plan. Pinkham said at once, "I'll relay it to the other ships. We'll try it immediately." They all nodded agreement. Pink bent over the radio; he gave the co-captains instructions in an ancient language which they all knew, but which he felt sure would baffle any eavesdropping giants—an old, old tongue known as Pig Latin.
The officers and men scattered to their stations. Pink and Jerry took Circe to the captain's quarters, where Pink took his seat for the plan's direction, Jerry holding the Colt on Circe and the dying giant.
The space drives of the three ships were activated, and in side-by-side formation they moved slowly forward, as Pink watched keenly for a sign of objection from the gigantic "jockeys" atop them. None so far ... probably they thought Pink was under the instructions of their brother inside. Five minutes went by. Eight. Fifteen.
The largest asteroid in this part of the belt appeared ahead; it was roughly fourteen miles in diameter. The ships dipped their noses as if to pass well under it. They drew very close. Pink bent to his speaker and bellowed, "Now!"
As one, the auxiliary jets of each ship roared into life.CottabusandDiogenesleaped out beside their flagship, and like three hotshot pilots buzzing an airdrome, the captains took the enormous spacecraft hurtling for the surface of the asteroid. Passing beneath it—or, thought Pink irrelevantly, while every nerve and sinew concentrated on the dangerous task, perhaps they were flying over it upside down—they brought their years of training and experience to bear on the problem of missing that knobbed gray surface by the smallest margin possible.Diogenesactually scraped her superstructure, with a noise that made every hair on her captain's neck stand upright; the others missed the planetoid by no more than a foot or two. Then they were clear and again in the void.
According to orders, they slowed at a distance of four hundred miles, and eagerly scanned one another in their viewscreens for signs of the giants.
Pink gave a loud shout of relief, and took a second to realize that his co-captains had each groaned....
The riders onCottabusandDiogeneshad vanished, and were undoubtedly back there by the asteroid, reconstituting their bashed-up bodies angrily. But Pink now heard, with a sinking heart, that his giant was still with him. It had leaned backward from the knees, lying flat on the hull which it had gripped with legs and arms. Somehow it had grasped Pink's plan in time to prepare itself. The asteroid had flattened its face and chest like a plane smoothing wood, and it was now forming itself anew, with, so they told Pink, a truly malicious scowl on its reformed lips.
Jerry was standing with a hand on Pink's shoulder; he had forgotten Circe in the tenseness of the bid for freedom. She came up on the other side and put her own hand on the captain's other shoulder. He was startled, and realizing that she could have killed or captured them both, had she wished, chalked up another doubt in his mind against the theory of her alienness.
"Please come outside," she said urgently. "I want to suggest something to you."
He rose at once and followed her to the door, while Jerry frowned and the dying giant watched him out of faded red eyes. In the hall, she said, "You're almost licked, Captain. It's time for desperation measures." Pink laughed, but before he could ask her what the hell theyhadbeen trying, she hurried on. "Find out where the home of these monsters is; it must be an asteroid. Then go there. Land and get out with your guns. They will think our friend in there brought us to them—and you'll have the advantage of surprise. You have about a dozen firearms that will take lead bullets. That's enough for twelve of us. I think we'd stand a chance of success."
"And if they murder us all? What about the ship?"
She said, "Leave orders to blow it up if we fail."
Pink scratched his jaw. The girl had something, or the nucleus of something, there. He saw other possibilities in it—it was tantamount to suicide, but there was nothing else left to try. He said, "If we live through this, Circe, I'll see you make lieutenant!"
"I'd rather make ... well, never mind." She turned to go into the room. He wondered if she had had Joe Silver in mind.
He said to the alien, "Where's your home planetoid?"
"Why?" it asked, mockery still in its weak voice.
"I'm capitulating. I want to make a deal with your people."
It said, "Ah, the human has sense after all. Our home is the largest of the asteroids, as you call them. The one you said at supper last night had a diameter of 440 miles. We call it Oasis—and a poor one it is, when we remember Earth."
Jerry said, astounded, "What?" His narrow face worked with surprise.
"Shut up, Jerry." Pink still had things to find out. "Can you tell your race, telepathically, what we're doing? I don't want them to lose patience and tear up the hull. We have a very angry gent atop us."
"It's the girl," snarled Jerry, before the alien could answer. "She's got you fooled like a—like a—good Lord, Pink, are you so crazy about her you can't see she's been waiting to put this idea in your head all this time?"
"Jerry," he said through his teeth, "shut your damn mouth. I'm captain of theElephant's Child."
Jerry was aiming the Colt at him; accidentally, Pink hoped. Then the O. O. said, "If I have to blow out your guts to save us, Pink, I will." His tortured features writhed with pain. "Oh, hell, boy, wake up!"
"Give me one more minute, before you fly off the handle and make an ass of yourself—and a mess of me." Pink had to have that minute. It was so vital he couldn't save himself from the angered Jerry with the one phrase that would explain everything. "Jerry, one lousy minute."
"Just tell me you don't mean it about giving in."
He couldn't. My God, he couldn't. There was too much of a chance that this brute on the floor was telepathic with its own kind. "I have to do it, Jerry," he said.
"Then I have to tie you up till you're sane," said Jerry. "First, though, I've got to make sure about this girl." The muzzle of the gun traveled toward Circe, steadily, remorselessly.
Pink had no alternative; the lives of all his men hung in that teetering balance. He jerked his right hand, and the tiny gambler's gun, the antique Derringer he had hidden up his sleeve for emergencies, slid down into his palm. Instinctively his forefinger caught the trigger and with sorrow and determination he shot Jerry high in the chest, below the clavicle and a safe distance from the lung. Jerry staggered back, a look of amazement spreading over his face; he fired the Colt wildly, putting a slug into the floor. Then he sat down, making hurt, uncomprehending noises. Circe took the gun from his hand.
Pink heard a babble from the intercom. He grasped that some of his officers must have seen the occurrence. He still hadn't much more than a minute.
"Circe," he snapped, "turn off that intercom and then lock the door." To the giant he said, "Well, can you tell your friends?"
"I would have doubted you, had you not eliminated your objecting officer," it told him. "Now I will say that I cannot communicate with my race through thought transference; but if you head for Oasis, you will be safe."
Pink breathed a little easier. He snatched down a bottle of whisky and twisted off the cap. There was another fact he must learn. He knelt and presented the bottle to the inert lips. "Have a slug," he said.
"You are sensible," said the being with satisfaction. "Pour it into my mouth or my eye; I can absorb it through any orifice." Pink poured rapidly. The liquor ran down over the yellow hide.
"No, no," gurgled the monster. "Slowly! I absorb it far more slowly than you do—"
Pink stood up. He took a drink from the bottle and handed it to Circe. His face was radiant with success. "Toast the last slim chance, honey," he said, voice cracking with relief. "We just found out what we needed to know." He retrieved the bottle after she had downed a gulp, gave it to the dazed Jerry. "Cheer up, boy," he said. "You didn't get your pink skin plugged for nothing. Now listen." Rapidly he outlined Circe's plot, then the additions he had concocted. "See why I had to do it?" he asked finally.
"Yeah. Yes, I see." Jerry blinked. "Would you spray a little sulfaheal on this hole, Pink? It hurts.... Okay, I give in. I'm with you. It's a mad notion, but I sure can't better it. I'm with you." He looked at Circe, who was already busy with sulfaspray and bandages. "But can we trust this wench, Captain? She could be a wonderful decoy for 'em."
"She's in the clear, Jerry; if we hadn't been so blasted rattled we'd have realized it long ago. There was a test she could have passed in two seconds that would have eliminated all this fat-headed suspicion."
"What?"
"Holy Holmendis, boy—lead! If she were alien, the touch of lead would have crisped her up with pain and paralysis." Pink opened the door then, and the first tide of officers coming to Jerry's rescue were halted at sight of Circe tending his wound. Pink said to Jerry, and to them all, "While I was standing in the hall, I took a cartridge out of this Derringer, and rubbed the lead across the back of her neck. She never winced. That vouches for her, doesn't it?"
Jerry said, "It does. Heaven forgive us for a pack of drooling imbeciles! It does indeed."
Circe stood up. She came to Pink and stared him in the face. "So that was it," she said quietly. "You were testing me. And I thought it was a caress. Oh, you—" Then she hauled off and smacked Captain John Pinkham square in the left eye.
It hurt like sin, but Pink could hardly blame her. So he apologized, without words. He took her in his arms and kissed her soundly.
And Circe kissed him back.
TheElephant's Childrested on the surface of the asteroid Oasis, a waterless, airless, cold and gray ball as uninviting as any solid body in the universe. At the entrance to Air-lock One, the officers stood in a tight group listening to Pinkham; their spacesuits were fastened on, only the helmets remaining to be donned; their gloves were the modified digitmits which enabled the wearers to hold small objects and to operate machinery or firearms.
There were seven officers, and now three crewmen in spacesuits joined them. Jerry, whose wound was nearly healed already, thanks to the sulfaspray, passed out guns from the captain's collection. Each man carried a handgun, or, in two cases a long rifle. The ammunition for all amounted to one thousand two hundred and five rounds, in the main handgun cartridges. Pink had decided against using the Kentucky rifle, which was difficult for a modern man to load.
At each belt hung half a dozen curious objects, shaped like bottles but of a dull gray color and rough surface texture. These sloshed and gurgled when the men moved.
Pink concluded his instructions on the use of the weapons and the gray bottle-things. "Remember," he said, "keep in touch by your radio, and don't travel more than a mile from the ship if you can help it. Try the lure first, then when the containers are full, the guns. Be sure to keep at least one portion of lure for emergency; don't use it all." He grinned. "And don't drink any of the lure."
The men laughed, easing tension. Pink went on. "You'll have some trouble adjusting to the gravity—our average weight will be six or seven pounds, or, in Jerry's case, three or four." They chuckled again. "Remember we don't know how they'll react, so keep your minds open and use your own judgment in everything. Now let's go."
As he turned and activated the sliding panel that covered the first chamber of the air-lock, and they all settled their helmets down onto their shoulders and fastened them, an eleventh figure joined them, its helmet already in place. Jerry, shaking his head reprovingly, handed this one the last weapon, a small automatic from the so-called "Gangster Age" of America. Then they went into the air-lock and the door shut tight behind them.
In the control room, Jackson and a few others watched tensely on the viewscreen as one by one the landing party jumped to the planetoid. He looked at his watch. "Two hours," he said. "Oh my God, I hope they make it!" For in precisely two hours, if they had not returned to the ship, Jackson was to blow it to metallic dust, and all the remaining humans with it.
Forty miles above the surface of the small world, theDiogenesand theCottabuscruised at a good rate of speed, to keep their hulls free of hitchhiking giants while watching the progress of the expedition.
On the floor of Pinkham's quarters, the dying alien lay alone and cursed weakly at the sly and crafty doublecross he had so stupidly fallen for. He called upon a number of strange gods to curse these mortals; among the names he uttered was that of a deity called Allah.
In dressing room B, a technician discovered a crewman who was sitting against a wall rubbing his skull. "Somebody bopped me," said the man glumly. "I'm supposed to go out there and blast giants, dammit. Who could have swiped me so hard?"
Pink took an experimental hop. It should have carried him, at Terra gravity, about two feet. He soared over a hillock and came down gently on a plain of rock that looked like lava; his hop had carried him some scores of yards. He felt for an instant like a kid let loose on a wonderful playground. Then he snapped into it and began to scan the terrain for signs of life.
To the right was the mountain they had seen from the descending ship, with its irregular rows of gaping holes which suggested caves and therefore possible habitations. It wouldn't take more than five minutes to reach them at an easy amble, or a minute at a brisk walk; about a mile away, they seemed.
Then with a horrified start he remembered the giant who had been atop his ship. Washington Daley had been delegated to deal with it—and Pink had forgotten, had not even glanced back to see how his lieutenant was making out! He whirled neglecting caution, and fell on his face. Luckily he came down like a big bulky feather, and caught himself and bounced up again, a rubber ball of a man on this alien world Oasis.
He was just in time to see the giant, bending forward over the front of the ship, begin to blur and stream downward toward the tiny figure of the human who stood below him. In a moment he resembled a cloud of tobacco-smoke, drawn into the gray container in Daley's hand. He vanished entirely, Daley clapped on the sealing lid, and gave a triumphant wave to his captain. Pink blew out a breath of gratitude and remorse; he'd have to be on his toes from now on, really vibrant with watchfulness. Laxity in one thing could lose this weird battle.
Strung out in a straggling line of erratically progressing units, the men of Earth headed for the caves. In a time so short as to be faintly ridiculous, they were moving up the mountainside. The gaping holeswerecaves, and obviously deep ones. Pink stood at the entrance of one for a moment, checking on the number of his men; then he waved a hand over his head, and entered the great den. Behind him came another figure, one whose slimness told him it was probably Jerry.
Their chest lamps lit up the interior, which was as gray, knobby, and featureless as the outside world. Pink held his Colt .44 in his right hand, one of the bottles in his left. The technicians of theElephant's Childhad worked like drudges over those bottles....
Every bottle of liquor aboard had been requisitioned. The liquid had been poured into plastic containers; only a few spoonfuls had been left in each bottle.
Then lead, melted down and beaten into sheets, was wrapped around each bottle, forming a thin and chinkless layer over all the glass but the lip; and the lead was painted with tough plastikoid paint, which covered it with a film one-twentieth of an inch thick. Caps of lead were made for the bottles. At the end of a couple of hours, they had sixty-six bottles, glass inside, lead covered, and topped off with plastikoid which would conceal the presence of lead from any known test short of X-ray.
Each of the eleven men carried six of these bottles, then, actually lead containers, but apparently plastikoid; the lead stoppers were concealed in joerg-hide bags. If the giant who had been beaten in the spaceship was a criterion, the enemy would not recognize the presence of lead until it actually touched them—and then, thought Pink, with a quick prayer, it would be too late for them.
Beaming the radio to a distance of ten feet, he said, "Hey, Jerry, want to lay a bet on who bags the first brute?"
"Sure. Twenty bucks says I get him. And don't call me Jerry," said the sweet, quiet, and thoroughly startling voice of organicus officer Circe Smith.
I didn't have to do it, Pink thought. I could have changed the orders when I saw that no giants were in sight. We could have blasted the one on top of theElephant's Childand taken off and got out of range of 'em and gone back to Earth. We were free in that instant, when Daley caught the alien and corked it up in the lead bottle with the liquor that drew it. We shouldn't have come out here to the caves. We should have left Oasis to itself.
He knew that he had squelched this idea before it was born, because he had longed for a good fight; he recognized this alien life-form as unclean, and he'd wanted to stamp it out, or make a dent in its numbers anyway. So he'd gone ahead with the project, and now here was Circe, risking her life to be with him, and if anything happened to her he'd kill himself ... well, at least he'd mop up the giants who'd drawn him here, he'd make a pogrom, a massacre to avenge her....
She isn't dead, boy, he told himself. She's just in danger. Don't get distracted.
"Stick close," he told her shortly. "I'll whale the pants off you when we get back for this trick, but for now, stay close and keep your eyes open."
Then he tuned his radio outward. "Report," he said. His men checked in. Nothing had been sighted thus far.
So it was Captain Pinkham's luck to meet the first alien.
Rounding a turn, he saw that the cavern enlarged, became a huge grotto; seated around its walls, staring at one another in the uncanny silence of this airless place, were many of the giant life-forms. Only one was near him, and this monster was first to see him; it leaped at him with the abruptness of perfect muscular control, its feet a little off the floor of the cavern—Pink recalled that these things could levitate themselves in space.
There was no time to use the lure of the bottle. He threw up his old revolver and fired point-blank, catching Circe by the arm and hurling her to one side as he did so. The giant recoiled as at a wall, doubled and thrashed in agony. Pink, rooted to the spot, waited to see the effects. Would one slug of lead be enough? And evidently it was, for suddenly the thing fell and writhed futilely on the ground, flinging its arms wide with diminishing strength. In a moment it was helpless, its only motion a slight heaving as its life retreated far within the gigantic bulk. Its red eyes glowed at him malevolently in the glare of his chest-lamp.
Strangely enough, none of the others had seen him yet, nor had any of them moved from the sitting posture. Swiftly he unhooked four of his six bottles and set them in a row on the rock floor. Circe returned, having bounced like a bit of india-rubber a dozen yards before checking herself. "You big bully," she said over the radio, and, her tuning being for distance, Daley in another cave said "What? Who?" in a startled tone.
Pink dragged her, five pounds of resistance on the tiny planet, and plunked her down behind a rock. "Sit tight," he said urgently. "Keep the gun handy. And check that you haven't spilled any alky—we'll need all the bottles we can get." Then he turned and shone his beam full on the traps he had set out. One of the aliens was bound to spot them soon.
When one did, it came at them with a rush, snarling soundlessly as it sought the source of the illumination. Towering over the insignificant bottles, it halted, shuddered, stared down—Pink held his breath—and the incredible disintegration and flow of the body happened. The giant entered the bottle, leaving not a trace of its thousand-foot carcass outside. Restraining a desire to leap out and cork up that bottle, Pink waited. The movement of this alien had caught the red eyes of others; they advanced, some hurrying and some cautious, till two more had scented or sensed the alcohol and poured into bottles. Pink kept his eyes on the little containers. Beside him, Circe gazed with horrified fascination at the coming gargantuas....
A trio of them were misting now; this was the test. One empty bottle remained. What would happen, Pink wondered; was one giant per bottle the maximum content? The three streaked down, like smoke sucked into a vacuum cleaner. They jetted into the bottles, and again nothing was left outside. Pink said "Good," in a mutter, and forced himself to wait longer. The more the merrier. How long would it take them to soak up the alcohol? His captive had said the process was slow. How slow? How long did he dare wait?
He caught eight more, then the next hesitated, looking around for the source of light. Either he was capable of more resistance to the seductive element, or the bottles were now full of churning, lapping aliens. There were more of them approaching, but he didn't dare wait any longer. He jumped forward, potting at the foremost.
It went down thrashing, and he shot over it into the yellow of them. Emptying the Colt, he reloaded hastily and plugged or nicked another half dozen. By then he was standing over the bottles. Nothing had emerged yet. He stooped to slam on the caps.
With horrible speed two giants pounced for him; he saw them out of the corner of his eye. Then they slammed full length to the rock, and he knew that Circe's automatic was in action. He corked the last bottle and slung it on his belt, put down the two remaining containers. Then he turned and made a mighty jump away from them, dragging Circe with him. The aliens came on.
Some of them could withstand the pull of the liquor, and some could not. There was a phalanx of them coming, for a good third of the growth's population had seen the disturbance by now. Any who appeared to be passing by the bottles, he and Circe shot; those who hesitated by them and were drawn in exchanged their liberty for their lives, because in two minutes Pinkham had feverishly capped them into the leaden prisons. He hooked them onto his belt and said into the mouthpiece before his lips, "Go for the entrance, baby. I'll cover you."
"No!" she snapped back. "You are not going to sacrifice—"
"Sacrifice, nuts!" he yelled. "This is part of the plan you'd have heard if you hadn't sneaked into the landing party at the last minute. Get going!" He was reloading as he spoke.
She ran, almost flying down the cave-tunnel with great leaps that covered many yards each. He fired three times at the giants who now loomed above him; then he was running too, stretching his legs and throwing every ounce of power and panic in his frame into the incredible jumps. And apparently he had the advantage over the brutes, for he began to outdistance them; their mass being greater, he was helped by the lack of gravity.
Then a rock crumbled under his toe, he was thrown off balance, his momentum shot him full tilt against the wall of the passage, and his head cracked sharply against the inside of his helmet. He knew that he was losing consciousness, and that he had fallen and was rolling straight into the path of the raging aliens.
Thought came to him before feeling. Pink lay in a hazy world of shifting ideas, of coagulating and disintegrating forms of cerebration. He was not wholly unaware of what had happened, but his groping mind was more concerned with piecing together certain facts and fancies, reaching conclusions he felt were of the first importance. If his body were in danger, it must help itself, for Pink had other fish to fry.
As he sank into thick-witted stupor, then fought up to the light of reason, feeling his mind ebb and flow with ideas and mad conjectures, it came to him that he knew the truth of the giants, and had not stated it to himself before in so many words. He had deliberately shied away from it, in fact, for it stank of fantasy, of crack-brained superstition and imbecilic fairy tales....
Admit it, he told himself, giggling in the far reaches of his brain. Admit it. You know about these critters, Pink.
Yes. I know about them. They are the djinn.
The djinn that Solomon ruled, conquered, and put down. The enormous entities of Arabian Nights tales, whose habits and character and shrewd-canny-gullible ways of thinking were all set down in the books and marveled at by people even yet, hundreds and hundreds of years after they had been written. Marveled, sure, but marveled only at the imaginations that had produced them. And it wasn't imagination at all. It was the real actual goddam solid thing.
The djinn had been at once a triumph and a sad mistake of nature. They were the ultimate in physical perfection, needing nothing, living perfectly independently, huge and strong and yet able to assume the tiniest proportions when needed. Wounds were nothing, for their makeup was such that their molecules compressed away from weapons, to ooze back into place when danger was past. They controlled the forces of the atom, at least to the extent of ability to freeze protons, and probably they could do many more stunts in that line.
All their powers, being far in advance of man's, had been misunderstood and misinterpreted in the old days. So when a djinni let his atoms flow into the most convenient shape for getting into bottles for alcohol or for passing an obstruction he didn't care to demolish, it seemed to men that he turned into a cloud of smoke. Hadn't Pink used that simile to himself?
The fact that they could levitate, probably by control of the force of gravity, and fly through the thin upper air, by some process Pink only dimly understood, was certainly enough to stamp them as minor gods in Arabia and all the other countries they had infested.
Sure, they were a triumph of nature; but also a colossal failure. For they were, despite their scientific powers, too stupid for pity, too insensitive for compassion, and too egocentric for tolerance. Their nature was that of the most depraved human being. Consequently they'd been beaten. In spite of their terrific strength, they'd been beaten by puny, unscientific, bumbling man.
How?
Well, Solomon had known about the lead. He'd sealed them in copper bottles with stoppers of lead, and Pink would bet a buck those bottles had been lead-lined, too. Solomon hadn't gone far enough, of course; he'd thrown the bottles into the sea, and sometimes they'd washed up and been opened. For bait, he must have used alcohol, too, since it was the Achilles heel of the djinn.
Had he nailed the entire breed of djinn in his lifetime? It seemed likely, for the legends stopped soon afterwards, didn't they? Pink wasn't sure. Anyway, there sure as hell weren't any djinn on Earth today.
How had they gotten out here, all the way to Star System Ninety? That was beyond conjecture. How come the first brute he had contacted, old Ynohp the phony Martian, spoke a kind of messed-up Shakespearian lingo? God only knew.
Now he'd discovered them, anyway, and they wanted to go back to Earth. If they got hold of theElephant's Child, they might do it. He couldn't let them succeed ... but then the crew was going to blow up the ship in two hours.
Two hours!
Pinkham's mind beat wildly at the prison of lethargy and dimmed consciousness. How long had he lain here? Wherewashe lying? Did the giants, the djinn, have him? And Circe?
Circe. Making the most intense and painful effort of his life, Pink dragged his eyes open and tried to sit up. He had to find Circe.
He saw nothing, and there was a weight on him that held him flat on his back. Either his lamp was broken, or he was blind.
Sensibly, though it cost him untold hell to be sensible, Pink lay quietly until he felt all his faculties under control. Then he made an abrupt and violent attempt to sit up. Whatever it was that was holding him down rolled off. He managed to get to his knees, one hand on the rock beneath him, and then arms were thrown around him and a body pressed against his.
The horror of absolute blackness and the unknown predicament he was in proved just a little too much for him. Captain Pinkham gave a loud, long scream of fear.