"What is it?" asked Circe, her voice wild with fright. "Pink, darling, what is it? Are you hurt?"
It was Circe who was holding him. Sobbing with relief, he said into the radio, "No, no, baby, I'm fine, I'm wonderful."
Her answering cry was a tiny sound of joy and affection. "I wish I could kiss you," she said, "but there are two spacesuits in the way."
He found her hand and squeezed it hard. "I wish I could see you, Smitty," he said, "but either I'm blind or—"
"Oh, I should have told you at once. I turned off our chest-lamps."
"But where are we?"
"Not far from where you fell." Her hand was a comfort in his, as much so as a squad of Space Marines marching down to greet them would have been. "You flew past me like a kicked football, Pink, and I veered off to see if you were okay. When you fell and didn't move, the first thing I did was snap off the lamps. About a second afterwards, the giants went past. They have a weird kind of glow in the dark. I think they could have seen us—certainly they don't exist blind in this ink-pool—but there's a ridge of rock and we were pretty well hidden behind it. I dragged you about forty feet and found this hole and we've been lying here ever since."
"The others," he said, remembering.
"I've been in touch with Daley all the time. He and Calico ran into a lot of trouble and Calico got a broken leg. Joe Silver took him back to the ship. Daley and Jerry found each other and fought off a horde of giants. Every man got all his bottles full of 'specimens' and then used up most of his lead. Sparks—" she hesitated a moment—"Sparks is dead. So is Randy Kinkare."
Pink said quietly into the dark, "I don't think Randy would mind that. He didn't have much of a face left."
"Whatever that first one did to burn him, that's the weapon they used on him and Sparks. Both of them were burnt to a...."
"Okay," he said. "Okay, okay."
"So Daley said they'd try to find us; but everyone got mixed up in the caves, and there hasn't been a sign or sound of anyone for half an hour."
"Half an hour?" The flesh chilled down his back. "How long have I been out?"
"I don't know. A couple of hours."
"My Lord! TheElephant's Childis to be blown up two hours from the minute we left her!"
"Daley said Silver was going to countermand that order."
Pink groaned heavily. "He can't! Jackson had my absolute command on it, and Jackson would see himself and Silver and the whole lot of them dead before he'd fail to carry out a command of mine. That was important; we calculated that two hours was more than enough to expend all the ammo, and that if we weren't back by then, the hull would be crawling with giants. Every bullet aboard came out with us. We couldn't take the chance of the ship blasting off with giants on her, maybe in the form of gnats or smoke or—no," he finished, "Silver, if he tried to change my order, is either dead or unconscious or in the brig right now." He lifted his left hand. "I've got to check the time," he said, and for an instant switched on the dial of his glove watch.
It was a hundred and two minutes after landing time.
He had eighteen minutes to get back to theElephant's Child.
He beamed his radio to its fullest extent. "Daley," he said. "Daley, come in. Jerry. Cohan. Caleskie. Kole. Come in, anyone."
"Kole here, Captain. I'm on the plain. It was all fouled up in that cave."
"What can you see?"
"They've got the big trap out of the ship," said the distant, tinny voice of the crewman. "What a waste of good liquor! Beg your pardon, Captain."
"Giants?" Pink asked.
"About a million of 'em, all headed for the trap. We should have tried it first. Did you know Caleskie got his?"
"No, I didn't know. We had to suck them out into the open before they could spot the trap, Kole. Is Lieutenant Daley in sight?"
"I saw him a while back, sir. He was headed out of a cave with the O. O. But it turned out they were going the wrong way, because I—"
"Thanks, Kole. Report aboard ship. Don't get mixed up with the giants."
"They won't bother me, sir. It's like a bunch of big bees tearing after a vat of nectar out here. They don't even see me."
"What did he mean?" asked Circe. "A trap?"
"Plastikoided lead box, twelve by twelve feet. All the alcohol in the ship was poured into it an hour after we left, and they set it outside as far from the ship as they could safely go. I didn't know it would work, but it was a try. It still doesn't affect Jackson's orders. I didn't know, I still don't know, but that some of the djinn can resist the stuff."
"Thewhat?" she asked, startled.
"Never mind. We've got about a quarter hour to get back. Where in blazes is Daley?"
A small, weakened voice said in his ear, "I'm here, Pink. Jerry too. But he's out cold. I don't feel so hot myself."
"Daley!" he roared. "Where are you?"
"Big cave, about size of Texas. Came across it trying to find our way out. Lot of giants here. One of them saw us and picked us up and banged us together. I think he must be saving us for a hearty lunch. He's sitting ten feet off watching us."
"Your guns, boy!"
"No good. All the slugs are gone. Pink," said the weak, worried voice, "do you know what time it is? You better hightail it for the ship."
"I'm coming after you," said Pink.
"Don't be a heroic son of a space cook, Pink!"
"Shut up and lie still." He switched his radio to close quarters. "Honey, you make for theChild. I'll pick up the boys and be right with you."
"You're crazy," she said flatly. "I wouldn't leave you if—"
He had switched on his chest lamp and drawn out a pen and paper from his pocket kit. "I'm going to write Jackson a note countermanding the order. Take it to him."
"You're wasting your time," she said grimly. "If you're going into the cave, I'm going too."
"You fathead, you can save the ship by taking this note."
"You're doing it to save me. I won't. What happens to you happens to me."
"My God the whole damn ship—"
"Doesn't matter to me if you're gone, Pink." Her voice was strange, half-hysterical and oddly loving. "I don't know why I feel this way about you, Pink. I've never been in love before. If I hadn't been stranded, I'd be old enough to be your mother. You're a big cold dedicated spaceman, but I love you. Lead the way, if you're going to make a fool of yourself."
In that moment Pink learned wisdom, for he gave up his attempt at a note and bounded to his feet. Some well-spring of instinct had told him that a man could never argue a woman out of anything.
"Got your automatic?"
"And a full clip left."
"Come on, baby."
They ran down the cavernous corridor, grotesque tiny fleas making unbelievable leaps. In seconds they had entered the grotto.
Many, too many giants were still there. Some of them seemed not to have seen anything of the hectic occurrences, others were standing in small groups (if anything formed of thousand-foot beings could be called small, thought Pink as he rocketed along) motioning hugely to one another.
"Stay close," he called to Circe. She was moving as fast as he, her light frame an asset. They ran down one side of the cavern, ignoring giants who did not at first notice them. Pink beamed out his radio and said, "Daley! Locate yourself." "I'm in the cavern."
"You ape," said Daley, "why'd you come? We're in front of an entrance that's the middle one of three. Spot it?"
"I see four sets of three," said Pink, heading for the nearest as his heart sank.
"Sorry, I can't see any more than these. Be careful, old boy." There was a pause. "We have twelve minutes left," said the senior lieutenant calmly.
The first of the triple entrances—had they been built, or were they natural?—was at hand. Three gigantic djinn sat near them. The ground, uneven as a lava flow solidified, might have concealed a score of humans. Pink gave a high leap, surveyed the terrain as he floated down. Nobody here. But a giant saw him.
Pink shot him in the ankle and dived like a skin-swimmer between his legs. He had lost Circe. He pivoted, wide-eyed, and saw her beneath the skyscraper torso of a bending giant. Their lamps were drawing attention now. He saw her shoot the titan and fly off at a tangent, disappearing behind others of the enemy.
Sixth sense warning prickled his neck. He whirled again to pot at a groping hand the size of a ten-story house; the hand contracted, bunched, groped outward and was hidden as the body fell upon it. Pink saved himself by a frantic backward shove that jolted him into the wall. Circe sped by and he followed, shouting into his radio. They joined hands and aimed for the next entrances, a mile down the hall.
Four speeding djinn abruptly barred their path, express-flying down on them.
"I know how a fly feels," gasped the girl. "I'll never wield another swatter."
Pink had emptied his Colt. He tried reloading on the run, or rather, he thought wryly, on the bounce, but it was a tricky job. And he had only about a dozen shells left.
Circe shot another angry monster. If lead took just two seconds longer to work on those immense systems, Pink realized, he and Circe would have been squashed long since. They had fought down half the hall, past three of the triple entrances, and now there was only one to check on. If Daley and Jerry weren't there, they might as well give up; the ship would go scattering into the void in about five minutes.
They had to watch backwards as well as before them. The giants were nearly all in motion now, the milling of such throngs of them having caught the vacant stares of those who had been gaping at nothing.
And suddenly there was Daley, standing before them and holding the limp spacesuited form of Jerry Jones in his arms. "Hey, Pink," he said, "down here."
Pinkham blasted two foemen in the hands as they grasped for him. "Like fighting giant redwoods," said Circe indistinctly, panting. They joined the two officers, jumping and digging in their heels to halt sharply.
"We have to make for that," said Pink, waving across the grotto at the invisible hole which led to the plain. "Straight through these dam Alps of aliens." He shot over Circe's head. "How you feeling?"
"Little rocky," said Daley.
"Take the Colt, then." He shoved it into the lieutenant's hand and hoisted Jerry like a rag out of Daley's arms. "Come on," he barked. "And don't get slapped. That's an order." He ran.
Their combined chest-lamps beamed out a couple of miles as they headed for the home stretch. Across the light passed the giant djinn, moving to waylay them, standing mountain-steady to intercept. Circe rocketed into the lead and led them on a zigzag course that avoided the vast parodies of human feet which barred the way like river dams.
They had had uncanny luck thus far. Why? Probably the giants were sluggish from long inactivity. Too, Pink knew, it's hard to hit a small darting object that's not more than one-one-hundred-and-sixty-sixth of your size. And the lead slugs of their guns had turned many sure captures into escapes.
But now the guns were empty.
"Feet," said Pink, quoting an ancient joke, "feet, do your stuff!"
Circe was amazing, dodging and pirouetting and even hurdling the gross feet when they couldn't be side-stepped. Pink gamely followed her lead, Jerry now slung over his shoulder. There was panting in his ears—Daley must be having tough going. Then he recognized the deep wheezing breaths: they were his own.
"Daley?" he gasped.
"Right behind you, Pink."
The mouth of their corridor was in sight. Then there were djinn, a row of them standing side by side with feet firmly planted to make a barrier. My God, he thought, this is it! Circe vanished, he did not see where. The feet were there, and arms reaching down for him. He pitched sideways, flipped by a questing finger; crashed on his shoulder, rolled, still miraculously hanging onto Jerry. The brashest course was the only one. He gathered himself and jumped onto a toe. It was as hard as the rock. And this thing, he said irrelevantly in his mind, this massive piece of solidity can vaporize into a gin bottle! He slid down the toe and scuttled ratlike under the lofty legs and was in the clear. The tunnel, itself an astoundingly high cave, appeared directly before him.
There was no time now to look for Circe and Daley, vital though their safety was to him. He carried Jerry into the tunnel and loped with multiyarded strides for the plain. He could not see any lamp-glare but his own. But he could not stop. Humanity in that instant overcame all his private desires. There were fifty-eight souls who would be blotted out if he didn't make theElephant's Childin two minutes. Sixty-one, if you counted Daley and Circe and Pink himself. In less than one of those minutes he had traversed the tunnel and come out above the plain.
The ship was still there. Some distance away from it stood the big trap, and even yet giants were speeding toward it from all points of the compass. Pink gasped a breath and launched himself out and down the steep hillside. He took it all in that one jump. As he was landing, a curiously weightless man on this tiny planetoid, Jerry came to life and writhed suddenly in his arms, upsetting his balance. Pink fell and his left ankle shrieked with pain as it turned under him and was smashed into the gray rock by his dropping body and Jerry's.
He sprawled full length and knew his ankle was broken or sprained. Jerry rolled free and collapsed, sighing into his radio. Pink tried to stand and the ankle buckled. Horrified, he looked at his glove watch.
He had seventy seconds.
Pink bellowed, "Jerry!" He yelled it so loudly that his ears protested at the helmet echoes. Jerry said groggily, "Wha?"
"Stand up!"
Jerry sat up and at once fell flat again. "Judas priest, I can't. That you Pink?"
"We've got to make the ship," he bawled, twisting with pain.
"Make it what?"
"If you want to live, son—stand up!"
Jerry got to his knees. "I'm sick, Pink."
He had used up six seconds. He had to try it on his own. Jerry was too far gone to function properly.
Pink stood up. His teeth were grinding together like millstones, but he didn't stop. He knew pain and dread and rage that shook him. He faced the ship, and stood on his good leg and bent his knee and gave a tremendous hop.
As he fell on his face, an unknown number of yards nearer, a great alien passed him, the mighty sole slamming the rock a few feet from his prone body. Pink struggled upright and balanced on the right leg and made another hop. This time he didn't fall when he lit. Praying thankfully for the two seconds that saved, he sprang again. And fell, painfully.
It was a useless piece of bravado. It was impossible to reach the ship. He got up and leaped. He fell. He forced himself up and sprang and didn't fall and sprang and fell.
He couldn't waste a blink of time in looking at the watch or yelling with agony or even praying now. He went through his routine automatically, his mind a thing of terror. Eons seemed to pass him by as he hopped over the djinn-infested gray rock plain.
A superb spring took him abreast of the big lead vat. What wild scenes of delirium were going on there he could not even imagine. He hopped twice more and was at the ship.
At any instant, at this very second the ship would blossom into red-white carnage of metal and flesh and death. Impossibly Pink stood on his good leg and aimed for the scanner-port which he knew, or hoped, connected with the screen in the control room where Jackson sat.
Now theElephant's Childwas done, Jackson was shoving the switch over, now it would all disintegrate in his face. He flew through space and struck the hull flat; all the perishing strength in him glued his body, his fingers in their thin gloves, to that curving surface. His great helmet, with the crest insignia of comets and spears that marked him as the captain, hung for a short time directly in front of the scanner-port.
He shook his head violently, back and forth, back and forth.No, he screamed in his mind, wishing insanely that his radio were constructed so that it could be heard in the ship.No, he shook,no, no!
Then his precarious grip on the smooth side slid off, and Captain Pinkham fell lightly but finally to the asteroid.
He lay there unresisting. He had done his best, absolutely his damned best. Let it blow. Let it blow.
After a while he looked at his glove watch. It was two minutes past the time for explosion.
He had saved theElephant's Child.
He turned and looked across the plain and saw, beyond the great trap into which giant-smoke was settling, two figures come running toward him with unearthly strides. One of them halted and gathered Jerry into its arms. The other reached Pink and knelt beside him and hugged him tightly. Pink laughed, a passionate sound of relief. Circe said, "You made it, darling. You made it!"
The air-lock began to open.
The djinni on the floor said, "I concede this battle to you, Captain. I have seen the ending on the screen. But there are others out there, on Oasis and in the void. We'll win to Earth some day in spite of this victory."
Pink, snugly ensconced in a foam-chair with his sprained ankle propped up, his surviving officers seated around him, and Circe on the arm of the deep chair, took another drink of lemonade. He made a face, almost asked for brandy, and remembered. He said, "Maybe the same way you came to these asteroids?"
"No, not that. That way went only in one direction, through the fourth dimension, I think. The people of the continent you call Atlantis built that way for our use, though much against our desire; and the machine they made was so fearful that its use sank their whole land into the sea. They were a great, scientific people, and we have not their skill."
"Atlantis too," Jerry said. "Now we've heard everything, all but the Little People and Pan."
The djinni did not seem to hear him. Its eyes, like dead coals now in the yellow face, rested on Pink. "It was clever of you to recognize us from history."
"You go into bottles, speak Arabic, fly and are humanoid in form. I should have guessed your race hours before."
"We are not humanoid. You are djinnoid. We came before you in evolution."
"How do you know?" asked Daley.
"Our legends ... I cannot tell, being no more than six or seven thousand years old myself. But we are told we predate man."
"When were you relegated to this belt?" asked Jerry, who was still a little pale. "You were around in Solomon's time."
"Yes. He caught and trapped most of my race—we are not so numerous as you cursed rabbits—by the same means you used. One great vat he collected, after some years of the bottles, and sealed up a multitude of my folk and cast them off a ship; somehow the currents dragged the box to Atlantis. There my people were freed, and set about to conquer the land. But the Atlanteans captured them after several decades and, having constructed the terrible machine, sent them off to this forsaken hole in space. The cataclysm the machine made—evidently they hadn't been so clever as they thought, may Allah rot their souls!—set off volcanic action, which eventually sank their country. It was never very large, anyway...."
"How do you know this?" asked Pink. He was a bit breathless; at any moment the being might decide to shut up and die. He had to satisfy his curiosity about the space-dwellers.
"I was one who escaped Solomon. I made my way to England after a few centuries of wandering, of being a minor deity here and there, and in England in the late seventeenth century I met a brother. He had been on Atlantis, and hovering above it had seen the exiling of our race and the death of the land. Together we determined to find the machine, repair it if need be, and bring back our people. We thought they were somewhere in the bowels of the earth, or perhaps held invisible in the machine itself.
"We felt we were the last djinn at liberty. We went under the sea—"
"How?" This was Bill Calico, nursing a broken leg on the couch.
"We are oblivious to our surrounding elements, so long as they are not too dense for us to penetrate. After a year or two we found the machine. It was partially destroyed, but so simple that we easily repaired it. We could not see how it could make our race vanish, but as we are indestructible except by lead, and the Atlanteans did not know of that metal, we knew that they had vanished rather than died. When we had the machine fixed, I volunteered to try it out and see what happened. He was to reverse it and draw me back shortly."
The monstrous thing sighed. "It was too complex for us. First I found myself floating a mile or so off Oasis, and then my friend joined me. His adjustments had failed. The cursed machine had relegated us both."
"God bless Atlantis," murmured Circe.
"I presume you are taking the bottles and the great vat of lead back to Earth?" it queried slyly.
"Not on your life," said Daley. "As soon as we're out of System Ninety, we'll drop 'em into the void. Your damn tribe will be marooned properly this time."
"But they are alive in those prisons!" it shouted, its eyes momentarily reddening again. "Such compression is most irksome to them, and they must constantly shift about to keep clear of the lead in the stoppers. It's inhuman!"
"You're right," said Pink grimly. "It's djinnlike."
"How did you learn English?" asked Jerry suddenly. "Modern English, I mean."
"You forget; when you brought me aboard, in the guise of a Martian, you handed me a lingoalter. It was simple to speak the English of the 17th century into it and listen as modern speech came out."
"That's another thing. That Martian suit—how'd you get it?"
"They had come this far. We found the suit, with its occupant long turned to dust. We kept it for such emergencies. When the space ships foundered nearby a few years ago, we refrained from molesting this woman, thinking that she might some day be a fine decoy."
"You watched me in the suit," said Circe.
"We did. We had not seen a human in a long time." The djinni paused, then said, "The Martians had space travel when Earthmen were barbarians. They came to Terra, and we, sensing danger in them, drove them out. We saw to it that the Martians would tell tales of the horrors of Earth life, and never come back."
"By God," said Pink, "that's why they never colonized Earth, though they had spaceships! It's one of the biggest problems we've known."
"Then I've solved it for you. Will you do me a favor in return?"
"What?"
"Have you any lead left?"
"A little."
"Then lay it on my chest, and give me a quick death."
"Get it," Pink said to Daley. The lieutenant started a protest. Pink said, "My Lord, can't we afford to be merciful now? After all that slaughter?" And Daley went to find the lead.
Circe said, "Why do you want to go to Earth so badly? What's there that you want? You're such an independent form of life...."
"Atmosphere," said the djinni.
"But you don't breathe!"
"We do, however, talk; and we cannot hear each other in a vacuum. We wanted to find Earth again and know the pleasure of communication. On Oasis we had to talk with our hands." It groaned, grotesquely human in its agony. "Can you imagine living for centuries without the joy of conversation?" it asked pitifully.
Circe shook her head. "I don't much blame you," she said in a small voice.
Daley came back. He handed a small rough bar of lead to Pink. The Captain's mind seethed with questions he longed to ask; but the reaction of the battle was settling in with vengeance, and he could not see this great paralyzed brute live on because of his own more or less idle curiosity. He bent forward from the chair. "Sorry," he said, and dropped the bar onto its chest.
"Wait!" said Jerry. "How did you know how to spellphony?"
The djinni made a small hissing noise that had something in it of contentment. Its eyes turned jetty, and they knew it was dead.
"It died happy," said Daley to the slim O. O. "It knew it was leaving us a problem that we'd never solve. What a—what a malicious character it was!"
"Poor devil," said Circe. "No conversation for five hundred years!"
Four days later Pinkham and Circe stood quietly before a scanner screen, Pink leaning on a cane, and watched the great lead vat and then the multitude of bottles go tumbling into space. "We are giving them a chance of survival," mused Circe. "There's about one chance in a billion that some day they'll be found and released again."
"I wonder," said Pink, "if they did predate man in evolution? Or if they were originally native to another planet that expelled 'em? There were always legends of giants and ogres and djinn and demons on earth, myths that started to die out about the time this late friend of ours left the globe for good. Maybe the djinni developed side by side with man, but was limited because of his flaws. There are a million life-forms in the universe so alien to man as to be unexplainable, and a lot of them are right home on Terra."
Circe shook her dark head. "Is the whole thing real, Pink? Or is it a fantasy we've uncovered out here in the void?"
"Every damn thing about them is scientifically possible. But I know how you feel—it seems like a fairy story. If so many good guys weren't dead back there, I'd disbelieve it myself." He scowled a moment, then looked at her and brightened. "Honey," he said, "remind me that I have to send a radio message to Earth as soon as we're close enough."
"Radio message? What?"
"A sort of temperance warning, that's all." He grinned. "It goes like this:If you find any bottles, don't open them!"