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Blodgett is a peaceful planet. The sun shines orangely, gentle breezes cool the brow, while the silent air is disturbed only slightly by the distant rumble of rockets from the spaceport. Very relaxing-but too much so for one like myself who must stay on guard, alert and aware at all times. And I admit that I was doing none of these things when the front door announcer bing-bonged. Hot water splattered my head and I was drowsy as a comatose cat.
“I’ll get that,” Angelina called out, loud enough to be heard over the splash of the shower. I gurgled an answer as I reluctantly turned the thing off and climbed out.
The drier blanketed me with warm air while the lotion mist tickled my nose. I hummed to myself with sybaritic joy, at peace with the world, naked as the day I was born-except of course for the few devices that I am never without. Voluntarily, that is. Life had its joys and, as I appreciated my stalwart body and rugged face in the mirror the touch of gray at the temples did add a distinguished note—I could think of nothing to worry about.
Other than the sudden angst that gripped me, chilling me to the bone. Was this a psi premonition? No, it was the ticking away of seconds. Angelina had been far too long at the door. Something was wrong.
I burst out into the hall and down it at a run. The house was empty. Then I was through the front door and bounding down the path like a pink gazelle, hopping desperately on one leg as I wrenched the pistol from my ankle holster, my eyes bulging in shock at the sight of my Angelina being bustled into a black ground car by two burly types. It pulled away and I risked a single shot at its tires, but could not fire again because there was traffic beyond.
Angelina! I ground my teeth with rage, fired more shots into the air so that the spectators who had been admiring my nude form now dived for cover. I managed to keep just enough peace of mind to memorize the numbers on the car.
Back in the house I thought briefly of calling the police, as any good citizen would, but since I have always been a very bad citizen I instantly dismissed the idea. Mighty is Slippery Jim diGriz in his wrath. Revenge would be mine. I turned on the comp term, mashed my thumbprint onto the ID plate, punched in my priority code, then the number of the kidnap car and asked for identification. Not a very complex task for a planetary computer and the answer appeared on the screen as soon as I hit the PRINT button.
When it did I dropped numbly into the chair. They had her.
This was far worse than I had imagined. Now, look, don’t go thinking that I am a coward. Quite the opposite, I say humbly. You are looking at a survivor of a lifetime of crime who has also survived another lifetime of crime-fighting after being drafted into the Special Corps, the elite galaxy wide organization that uses crooks to catch crooks. That I have stayed relatively sound in wind and body all these years certainly speaks well of my reflexes, if not my intelligence. It was now going to take all my years of experience to “tract my dear wife from this nasty situation. Thought was needed, not action and, though it was still early in the day, I cracked out a bottle of 140 proof Old Thought Provoker and poured a generous amount to lubricate my synapses.
With the first sip came the realization that the boys would have to be in on this one. Angelina and I, doting parents, had labored to shield them from the cruel facts of the world, but that time was over. Their graduation from school was still a few days away, but I was sure that this could be accelerated with the correct persuasion in the proper quarters. Strange to think they were almost out of their teens already; how the years slip by. Their mother—Angelina, my kidnapped treasure!--was as beautiful as ever. As for myself, I may be older but I am no wiser. The gray in my hair has not affected the lust for gold in my heart.
I did not waste a moment as I mumbled to myself nostalgically. Throwing on my clothes, kicking on my boots, stowing away about my person a number of lethal and technological devices, I dropped into the garage even as I closed the last closure. My bright red Firebom 8000 exploded into the drive as the door snapped open and hurtled down the road, scattering the dull citizens of the peaceful planet of Blodgett in all directions. The only reason we had settled on this bucolic world was to be near the boys while they were at school. I would be delighted to leave the place without a backward glance. Not only had it all the boredom of an agricultural planet, it was also infested by an octopus-like bureaucracy. Since it was centrally located among a number of star systems, and boasted a salubrious climate, the bureaucrats and League administrators had moved in to create a secondary economy of government offices. I preferred the farmers.
The farms gave way to trees as I burned down the road, then to the barren rock hills. There was a chill in the air at this altitude that went with the somber stone cliffs and, when I whisked around the final turn, the damp morning perfectly matched the rough finish of the high stone wall ahead. As the spiked portcullis rumbled slowly upward I admired, not for the first time, the letters hacked into the black slab of steel by the entrance.
DORSKY MILITARY BOARDING SCHOOL
AND PENITENTIARY
That my dear twins had to be incarcerated here! As a father I felt concern; as a citizen I suppose it was a blessing. What I thought was just good spirits in the lads, the rest of the world tended to frown upon. Before coming here they had been expelled from a total of 214 schools. Three of these schools had burned down under mysterious circumstances; another had blown up. I had never believed that the mass suicide attempt of all the senior masters at another school had anything to do with my boys; but vicious tongues will wag. In any case they had finally met their match, if not their master in old Colonel Dorsky. After being forcefully retired from the military he had opened the school and put his years of service, experience and sadism to work. My boys had reluctantly gained an education, served their term and in a few days would face the graduating ceremonies and parole. Only now things would have to be accelerated just a little bit.
As always I reluctantly surrendered my weapons, was Xrayed and spy-beamed, locked through the multiple automatic doors and released into the inner quad. Dispirited figures shuffled by, beaten down by the school’s foolproof and escapeproof system. But there ahead, crossing the ferroconcrete artificial grass, were two upright and brisk figures, unbent by any despair. I whistled shrilly and they dropped their books and ran up to greet me warmly. After which I rose Slowly to my feet and dusted myself off-then proved that an old dog can still teach the pups a trick or two. They laughed as they rubbed their sore spots and stood up again. They were a bit shorter than I was, taking after their mother there, but soundly muscled and handsome as gods. Many a girl’s father would be out buying a shotgun after they were released from school.
“What was that bit with the arm and elbow, Dad?” James asked.
“Explanations can wait. I am here to accelerate your graduation because something not too nice has happened to your mother.”
Their grins vanished on the instant and they leaned forward alertly, drinking in every word as I explained what I had seen, nodding in agreement.
“Right, then,” Bolivar said, “We go stir up old Dirty Dorsky and get out of here...”
“... and do something about it,” James added, finishing the sentence. They did this often, many times thinking as one.
We marched. In step, at a good doubletime of 120 paces to the minute. Through the great hall and past all the skeletons in chains, up the main staircase, splashing through the water running constantly down it, and into the Head’s office.
“You can’t go in there,” his secretary-bodyguard said, surging to his feet, 200 kilos of trained fighting flesh. We scarcely slowed and only broke step going over his unconscious body. Dorsky looked up growling when we came through the door, gun ready in his fist.
“Put it away,” I told him. “It is an emergency and I have come for my sons a few days early. Would you be so kind as to give them their graduation certificates and expiration of term-served papers.”
“Go to hell. No exceptions. Get out of here,” he suggested.
I smiled at the unswerving gun and decided that explanation would be more fruitful than violence.
“This is a bit of an emergency. My wife, the boys’ mother, was arrested this morning and taken away.”
“It was due to happen. You lead undisciplined lives. Now get out.”
“Listen, you dough-faced, moron-brained, military dinosaur, I came here for neither your sympathy nor malice. If this was an ordinary arrest the arrestees would have been unconscious soon after opening the door. Detectives, cops, military police, customs agents, none of those could stand before the wrath of my sweet Angelina.”
“Well?” he said, puzzled, but gun barrel still ready.
“She went along quietly in order to give me time. Time that I will need. Because I checked the license plate numbers and these thugs were agents for ...” I took a deep breath, agents for Interstellar Internal and External Revenue.”
“The income tax men,” be breathed and his eyes glowed redly. The gun vanished. “James diGriz, Bolivar diGriz, step forward. Accept these graduation certificates as token of your reluctant completion of all courses and of time served here. You are now alumni of Dorsky Military Boarding School and Penitentiary and I hope you will, like the other graduates, remember us with a little curse before retiring each night. I would shake your hands except my bones are getting brittle and I am laying off the hand-to-hand combat. Go forth with your father and join him in the battle against evil and strike a blow for me as well.”
That was all there was to it. A minute later we were out in the sunshine and climbing into the car. The boys left their childish possessions behind them in the school and entered the world of adult responsibility.
“They won’t hurt Mom, will they?” James asked. “They won’t live long if they do,” Bolivar said, and I distinctly heard his teeth grinding together.
“No, of course not. Getting her release will be easy enough, as long as we can get to the records in time.”
“What records?” Bolivar asked. “And why did Dirty Dorsky help so easily? That’s not like him.”
“It is like him because under that veneer of stupidity, violence and military sadism he is still roughly human like the rest of us. And like us, he regards the tax man as the natural enemy.”
“I don’t understand,” James said, then grabbed the handhold as we snarled around a tight bend just a micrometer from the edge of the vertical drop.
“Unhappily you will,” I told him. “Your lives have been sheltered up until now, in that you have been spending but not earning. Soon you will be earning like the rest of us and, with the arrival of your first credit, sweat of your palms and brow, the tax man will arrive as well. Swooping in ever smaller circles, screaming shrilly, until he perches on your shoulder and with yellow beak bites most of the money from your grasp.”
“You sure turn a nice simile, Dad.”
“It’s true, it’s true,” I muttered, swinging into the motorway and roaring into the fast lane. “Big government means big bureaucracy which means big taxes; there seems to be no way out of it. Once you’re involved in the system you are trapped, and you end by paying more and more taxes. Your mother and I have a little nest egg put aside for investing for your future. Money earned before you lads were born.”
“Money stolen before we were born,” Bolivar said. “Profits from illegal operations on a dozen worlds.”
“We didn’t!”
“You did, Dad,” James said. “We broke into enough files and records to find out just where all the money came from.”
“Those days are behind us!”
“We hope not!” both boys said in unison. “What would the galaxy be like without a few stainless steel rats to stir them up. We have heard your bedtime lectures about how bank robbery helps the economy. It gives the bored police something to do, the newspapers something to print, the population something to read about, the insurers something to pay off. It is a boost to the economy and keeps the money in circulation. It is the work of a philanthropist.”
“No! I did not raise my boys to be crooks.”
“You didn’t?”
“Well, maybe to be good crooks. To take only from those who can afford it, to injure no one, to be kind, courteous, friendly and irreverent. To be crooked just long enough to be enlisted in the Special Corps where you can serve mankind best by tracking down the real crooks.”
“And the real crooks we are tracking down now?”
“The income tax people! As long as your mother and I were stealing money and spending it there were no problems. But as soon as we took our hard-earned salaries in the Corps and invested them we ran afoul of the tax people. We made a few minor bookkeeping errors...”
“Like not reporting any of your profits?” James asked innocently.
“Yes, that’s the sort of thing. By hindsight it was rather foolish. We should have gone back to robbing banks. So now we are enmeshed in their coils, playing their games, getting involved in court actions, audits, lawyers, fines, jail terms—the whole mess. There is only one answer, one final solution. That is why your mother went away calmly with these financial vampires. To leave me free to cut the Gordian knot and get us out of this mess.”
“What will we have to do?” they asked in eager unison.
“Destroy all of our tax records in their files, that’s what. And end up broke—but free and happy.”
We sat in the darkened car and I nibbled nervously at my fingernails. “It’s no good,” I said at last. “I am racked with guilt. I cannot steer two innocents into a life of crime.”
There were snorts, indicating strong emotions of some kind, from the back seat. Then the doors were hurled open and slammed shut again just as quickly and I looked up in shocked surprise as they both stamped away down the night-filled street. Had I driven them away? Would they attempt to do the job on their own and bungle it? What disasters lay ahead? I was fumbling with the door handle, trying to make my mind up, when the footsteps grew louder again, returning. I stepped out to meet them when they came back, faces, grim and empty of humor.
“My name is James,” James said, “and this is my brother, Bolivar. We are adults under law having passed the age of eighteen. We can legally drink, smoke, curse and chase girls. We can also, if we choose, decide to break any law or laws of any planet knowing full well that if we are caught in crime we will have to pay the penalty. We have heard a rumor from a relative that you, crooked Slippery Jim, are about to break the law in a singularly good cause and we want to sign up for the job. What do you say, Dad?”
What could I say? Was that a lump in the old rat’s throat, a tear forming in his rodent eye? I hoped not; emotion and crime do not mix.
“Right,” I snapped, in my best imitation of a drill sergeant with piles. “You’re enlisted. Follow instructions, ask questions only if the instructions are unclear, otherwise do what I do, do what I say. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” they chorused.
“Then put these items into your pockets. They are bits of equipment which are sure to come in handy. Are you wearing your fingerprint gloves?” They raised their hands which glistened slightly in the streetlamp light. “Good. You will be happy to hear that you will be leaving the prints of the mayor of this city, as well as those of the chief of police. That should add a note of interest to an otherwise confusing situation. Now, do you know where we are going? Of course not. It’s a large building around the comer which you cannot see from here. The area HQ of the IIER, Interstellar Internal and External Revenue. In there are records of all their larcenous endeavors . .
“You mean yours, don’t you, Dad?”
“Larceny is in the eye of the beholder, my sons. They take a dim view of my activities, while I in tam look with loathing on their taking ways. Tonight we attempt to even the score. We do not approach the IIER building directly because it has many defenses since they know they are unloved. Instead we enter the building around this comer which, not by chance have I selected it, has a rear that adjoins our target building.”
We walked while I talked and both boys recoiled a bit at the lights and crowds ahead. Sirens screamed as official black groundcars drew up, television cameras churned away, searchlights fanned across the sky. I smiled at their hesitation and patted their back as we walked.
“Now isn’t that a lovely diversion? Who would consider breaking and entering in a setting like this? The opening night, the premier performance of the new opera Cohoneighs in the Fire.”
“But we’ll need tickets ...”
“Bought from a scalper this afternoon at outrageous prices. Here we go.”
We pushed through the crowd, surrendered our tickets, then made our way from here, not that I had any intention of listening to the bucolic mooing and lowing in any case. There were other advantages to the top of the building. We went to the bar first and I had a refreshing beer and was cheered to see that the lads ordered only nonalcoholic drinks. I was not so elated at other of their activities. Leaning close to Bolivar I took his arm lightly-then clamped down a tight index finger on the nerve that paralyzed his hand.
“Exceedingly naughty,” I said as the diamond bracelet fell to the carpet from his numb fingers. I tapped an exceedingly porcine woman on the shoulder and pointed it out when she turned. “I beg your pardon, madam. But did that bracelet slip from your wrist? It did? No, let me. No, my pleasure indeed, thank you, and may he bless you as well for all eternity.” I then turned about and slipped a steely gaze into James’s ribs. He raised his hands in the sign of peace.
“I get the message, Dad. Sorry. Just keeping in practice. For extra practice I put the wallet back in the gent’s pocket as soon as I saw Bolivar rubbing his numb arm.”
“That’s fine. But no more. We are on a serious mission tonight and want no petty crime to jeopardize our position. There, that’s the last buzzer. Down drinks and away we go.”
“To our seats?”
“Definitely not. To the gents.”
We each occupied a cubicle, standing on the seats so our legs would not reveal our occupation of the premises, and waited until all the footsteps had retreated and the last receptacle had been flushed. We waited even longer until the first waiting notes of the opera assaulted our ears. The rush of running water had been far more musical.
“Here we go,” I said, and we did.
A wet eye on the end of a damp tendril watched them leave. The tendril projected from the waste basket. The tendril was attached to a body that belonged in the wastebasket—or even more loathsome surroundings. It was bumpy, gnarled, ugly, clawed. Not nice.
“You seem to know your way around here pretty well,” Bolivar said as we went through a locked door marked “Private,” and along a dank corridor.
“When I bought the tickets this afternoon I let myself in and ran a quick survey. Here we are.”
I let the lads disconnect the burglar alarms themselves, good practice, and was chuffed to see that they needed no instruction. They even put a few drops of friction-freer in the tracks before slipping the window silently open. We gazed out into the night at the dark form of a building a good five meters away.
“Is that it?” Bolivar asked.
“If it is—how do we get there?” James said.
“It is—and this is how.” I slipped the gunlike object from my inside pocket and held it up by the looped and heavy handle. “It has no name since I designed and made it myself. When the trigger is pulled this projectile—shaped like a tiny plumber’s friend—is hurled forth with great velocity. It trails behind a thin strand of almost unbreakable monomolecular filament. What happens then, you might ask, and I will be happy to tell. The shock of firing switches on a massive-charge battery in the projectile that expends all of its power in fifteen seconds. But during that time a magnetic field is created here on the projectile’s tip that has enough gauss to hold up a thousand-kilo load. Simple, isn’t it?”
“Are you sure you’re not simple, Dad?” Bolivar asked, worried. “How can you be sure of hitting a piece of steel in the dark with that thing?”
“For two reasons, oh scoffing son. I discovered earlier today that each story of that building has a steel cornice over a steel beam. Secondly, with a magnetic field that strong it is hard to keep this thing away from any steel or iron. It turns as it goes and seeks its own nesting place. James, you have the climbing line? Good. Fasten one end to that sturdy-looking pipe, securely mind you since it is a long drop. That’s it, let me have the other end. You are both now wearing your gloves with the armored palms? Capital. It will do your muscles good to swing across this bottomless chasm. I’ll secure the line and twitch it three times when it is ready for you to cross. Here we go.” I raised the vital piece of gadgetry.
“Good luck,” they said as one.
“Thank you. The sentiment is appreciated, but not the idea. Stainless steel rats in the concrete wainscotting of society must make their own luck.”
Cheered by my own philosophy I pulled the trigger. The projectile zinged away and found a nesting place with an audible splat. I pressed the button that drew the monofilament tight-then dived headlong through the open window. Fifteen seconds is not a long time. I bent and extended my legs and started to spin and cursed and hit all at the same moment. All of the impact came on one leg and, if it were not broken, it certainly wasn’t feeling too good. This had not happened during the times I had practiced this maneuver at home. And the seconds were clicking away quite fast while I hung there numbly and swung about.
The nonfunctioning leg had to be ignored, hurt as it did. I tapped with my good leg and found the top of the window frame off to the left. I kicked out so I swung in that direction, letting out some line at the same time. This swung me out and brought me back in line with the window which I hit with my good foot with all my weight behind it.
Nothing happened, of course, since window glass is pretty tough stuff these days. But my foot found the windowsill and struggled for a purchase as my scrabbling fingers sought a grip on the frame. At which precise instant the magnetic field released and I was on my own.
It was a sticky moment. I was holding myself in place by three fingertips and one insecurely planted toe-tip. My other leg dangled limply like an old salami. Below me was a black drop to sure death.
“Doing all right, Dad?” one of the boys whispered from behind me.
I must say it took a certain amount of internal discipline to control the rush of answers that surged to my lips; boys should not hear that sort of language from a parent. With an effort I contained the words and strangled out something that sounded like fizzlesloop while I fought for balance. I succeeded, though my fingers were growing tired already. With careful patience I clipped the now-defunct gadget to my waist and wriggled my fingers into the pocket that held the glasscutter.
This was no time for subtlety or sloth. Normally I would have applied the suction cup, cut out a small section of glass, lifted it free, opened the latch, etc. Not now. One quick whip of my arm delineated a rough circle and, in a continuation of the same motion, I made a fist and punched the circle hard. It fell into the room, I burled the glasscutter after it-and reached in and grabbed the frame.
The glass hit the floor with a loud clang just as my toes slipped off the sill. I hung, dangling from one hand, trying to ignore the sharp edge of glass cutting into my arm. Then, ever so slowly, I bent my arm in a one-armed pull up—oh advantage of constant exercise—until, I could reach in with my other hand for a more secure grip.
After this it was a piece of cake, though the blood on my arm tended to interfere with arrangements. Getting my foot back on the windowsill, unlocking and opening the window—after disconnecting the burglar alarm—sliding through to drop, quite limply, onto the floor.
“I think I’m getting a little old for this sort of thing,” I muttered darkly to myself once my breath had returned. All was silent. The falling of the glass, loud though it had been to me, had apparently gone unheard in the empty building. To work. There was only silence now from the boys—that was professional, but I knew they would be worried. With my pinlight I found a secure anchor for the line, tied it and drew it tight, then twanged it soundly three times.
They were across in seconds.
“You had us worried,” one of them understated.
“I had me worried! One of you take this light and a medpak and see if you can do something about this cut on my arm. Blood is evidence as you well know.”
The slashes were superficial and soon bandaged; my numb leg hurt a good deal but was coming to life. I dragged it around in circles until some function was restored.
“That’s it,” I finally announced. “Now for the fun part.”
I led the way out of the room and down the dark corridor, walking fast in an attempt to get normal operation back into the leg. The boys fell a bit behind so that I was a good three meters ahead of them when I turned the comer. So they were still concealed when the amplified voice roared out.
“Stay where you are, diGriz. You are under arrest!”
Life is full of little moments like this—or at least my life is. I can hardly speak for anyone else. They can be disconcerting, annoying, even deadly if one is not prepared for them. Happily, due to a certain amount of foresight and specialized knowledge, I was prepared for this one. The blackout-gas grenade in my hand was flying forward while the voice was still yammering away. It exploded with a flat boom, the black cloud poured out and many people complained angrily. To give them something else to complain about I flipped a gunfight simulator into the smoke. This handy device bangs and booms away like a small war, while at the same time ejecting pellets of laughing gas concentrate in all directions. Sowing a certain amount of confusion I must add. I turned quietly back to the boys who were frozen in midstride, eyes as wide and staring as poached eggs. I put finger to lip and waved them back down the corridor out of earshot of the simulated battle.
“Here is where we part,” I said. “And here are the computer programming codes.”
Bolivar took them by reflex, then shook his head as though to clear fuzz from his brain. “Dad, would you tell us ...”
“Of course. When I had to punch the window out I knew that the sound, as small as it was, would be picked up by the security alarms. Therefore I switched to plan B, neglecting to tell you about it in case you might protest. Plan B involves my making a diversion while you two get down to the computer room and finish this job. Using my Special Corps priorities I managed to get all the details you will need to get access to the IIER memory files and to wipe them clean. A simple instruction to the brainless computer will destroy the files of all the individuals for light years around who are lucky enough to have their last names begin with the letter D. I see myself, at times, as a
“Dad!”
“I know, I’m sorry, I digress and ramble. After doing that you will also wipe the U and P files, in case they see some connection between my presence here and the destruction of the records. The selection of these other two letters is not by chance ...”
“Since dup is the most insulting word in Blodgett slang.”
“Right you are, James, your brain cells are really ticking over tonight. Your task complete, you will be able to exit from the ground floor by way of one of the windows and mingle with the crowd without being apprehended. Now isn’t that a simple plan?”
“Except for the fact you get arrested it’s a grand one,” Bolivar said. “We can’t let you do it, Dad.”
“You can’t stop me—but the sentiment is appreciated. Be sensible, lads. Blood is much easier to identify than fingerprints, and they have plenty of mine to play with back in that room. So if I escape now I am a fugitive on the run as soon as they make the analysis—beside the fact that they have already seen me. In any case, your mother is in prison and I do miss her and look forward to joining her there. With the tax records destroyed all they can hold me on is breaking and entering and I can post bail and jump it and we will all leave this planet forever.”
“They may not allow bail,” James worried.
“In that case your parents will easily crack out of the local crib. Not to worry. Go to your task and I’ll off to mine. Return home afterward and get some steep and I’ll be in touch. Begone.”
And, being sensible boys, they went. I returned to battle, pulling on goggles and inserting nose plugs. I had plenty of grenades-smoke, blackout, lachrymose, regurgitant—the IIR had made me throw up often enough and I wanted to return the favor—which I strewed about with great liberality. Someone began firing a gun, pretty stupid considering that he had a better chance of shooting his own people than of winging me. I waded into the smoke, found him, rendered him unconscious with sharp blow that would give him a goodsized headache as well, then took the gun away. It had a full clip of bullets which I emptied into the ceiling.
“You’ll never catch Slippery Jim!” I shouted into the noisy darkness, then led my pack of pecuniary pirates on a merry chase through the large building. I estimated how long it would take the boys to finish the job, added fifteen minutes as a safety precaution, then gratefully dropped onto a couch in the director’s office, lit one of his cigars and relaxed.
“I surrender, I surrender,” I shouted out to my stumbling, crying, puking pursuers, “you are too smart for me. Just promise that you won’t torture me.”
They crept in cautiously, their ranks swollen by the local police who had come to see what all the fun was about, as well as by a squad of combat troops in full battle gear. “All this for little me,” I said, blowing a smoke ring in their direction. “I feel flattered. And I want to make a statement to the press about how I was kidnapped, brought here unconscious, then frightened and pursued. I want my lawyer.”
Indeed they lacked any sense of humor and I was the only one smiling when I was led away. There was not too much rough stuff, too many people around for that, as well as the fact that it really went against the Blodgett personality. The best selling chewing gum on the planet was called Cud, and they really chewed it. Sirens screamed, cars raced and I was hauled off in irons.
Though not to prison, that was the funny part. We did reach the prison gate but were stopped at the entrance where there was a lot of shouting and even some fist waving. Then back into the cars and off again to the town hall where, to my surprise, the manacles were removed before I was led into the building. I knew something strange was happening when I was pushed through an unmarked door—with at least one boot toe helping me on my way. The door closed, I brushed my rumpled clothes, then turned and raised my eyebrows at the familiar figure in the chair behind the desk.
“What a pleasant surprise,” I said. “Been keeping well ... ?”
“I ought to have you shot, diGriz,” he snarled.
Inskipp, my boss, head of the Special Corps, probably the man with the single greatest amount of power in the galaxy. The Special Corps was empowered by the League to keep the interstellar peace, which it did in exemplary fashion. If not always in the most honest way. It has been said that you set a thief to catch a thief—and the Corps personified this ideal. At one time, before joining the Corps, Inskipp had been the biggest crook in the lenticular galaxy; an inspiration to us all. I am forced to admit that I too had led a less than exemplary life before my forced conversion to the powers of goodness. An incomplete conversion, as you may have noticed, though I like to feel that my heart is in the right place. Even if my fingers are not. I took out the blank pistol that I carried for just such occasions and pressed it to the side of my head.
“If you think I should be shot, great Inskipp, then I can but help you. Goodbye cruel world...” I pulled the trigger and it made a satisfactory bang.
“Stop horsing around, diGriz. This is serious.”
“It always is with you, whereas I believe that a certain amount of levity aids the digestion. Let me take that thread from your lapel.”
I did, and slipped his cigar case from his pocket at the same time. He was so distracted that he did not notice this until I lit up and offered him one as well. He snatched the case back.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Of course. Why else would you be here fixing charges and such. Where is my darling Angelina?”
“Out of jail and on the way home to curb your larcenous offspring. The morons on this planet may not know what has happened to their tax files but I do. However, we will forget that for the moment since a ship is waiting at the spaceport to take you to Kakalak-two.”
“A drab planet circling a dark star. And what will I find at this unpromising location?”
“It’s what you won’t find that counts. The satellite base there was the site of the biannual meeting of all planetary chiefs of staff of the League Navy...”
“You said was with a certain amount of accentuation. Should I believe... ?”
“You should. They have vanished without a trace. So has the satellite. We haven’t the slightest idea of what happened to them.”
“Will they be missed? I should think that a certain amount of jubilation will be beard below decks—“
“Save the humor, diGriz. If the press gets ahold of this just think of the political repercussions. Not to mention the disorganized state of our defenses.”
“That shouldn’t worry you too much. I don’t see any intergalactic warfare looming on the horizon just now. In any case—let me call home with a censored version of this information and off we go.”
Behind the air intake in the wall the creature hung, supported by sucker-equipped tentacles. It blinked large green eyes in the darkness and made muffled chomping sounds as it worked its needle sharp red teeth against its bony palate. It stank, too.
“There is something fishy here, Slippery Jim, and I don’t like it,” my Angelina said, eyes flashing fire from the viewplate. How I loved her fire.
“Never, my sweet!” I lied. “A sudden assignment, that’s all. A few days’ work. I’ll be back as soon as it is done. Now that the boys have graduated you must get out the old travel brochures and find a nice spot for us all to go for a holiday.”
“I’m glad you mentioned the boys. They slunk in a few minutes ago all bashed and dirty and tired and would not say a word as to what had happened.”
“They will. Tell them Dad says All Operations Go and they should tell you the entire story of our evening’s interesting adventures. See you soon, my sweet!” I blew her a kiss and switched off before she could protest again. By the time she had heard of the night’s nonsense I would be off planet and finishing this intriguing new assignment. Not that I cared much what happened to a few hundred admirals, but the mechanics of their disappearance should prove interesting.
It did. As soon as we were en route to Kakalak-two I cracked open the file, poured a large glass of Syrian Panther Sweat, a guaranteed coronary in every bottle, and sat down for a good read. I did this slowly, then a second time a little faster—then a third just to hit the high points. When I dropped the folder I saw that Inskipp was seated across from me, glaring, chewing his lip, tapping his fingers on the table and swinging his toe up and down
“Nervous?” I asked. “Try a glass of this—“
“Shut up! Just tell me what you think, what you’ve found out.”
“I’ve found out that we are going to the wrong place, for openers. Change course for Special Corps Main Station so I can have a chat with my old friend, Professor Coypu.”
“But the investigation—“
“Will accomplish nothing on the spot.” I tapped the file. “It’s all been done already. All of your military types assembled, usual radio traffic-then the warning shouts and the cryptic cry of ‘The teeth!,’ then nothing more. Your highly trained investigating team went there and found empty space and no remnant of the satellite nor any trace of what had happened. If I go there I would find the same thing. So take me to Coypu?”
“Why?”
“Because Coypu is the master of the time-helix. In order to find out what happened I am going to slip back in time just long enough to see what occurred on that fateful day.”
“I never thought of that,” Inskipp mused.
“Of course not. Because you fly a desk and I am the best field agent in the Corps. I will take one of your cigars as a reward for my sterling qualities, so often displayed.”
Prof Coypu was not interested. He clattered his impressive yellow buck teeth against his lower lip, shook his head no so emphatically that the few remaining long strands of gray hair dropped over his eyes, while at the same time making pushing motions with his hands.
“Are you trying to tell us you don’t like the idea?” I suggested.
“Madness! No, never. Since the last time we used the time-helix there has been nothing but temporal feedback along the static synergy curves ...”
“Please, Professor Coypu,” I begged. “Simplify, if you please. Treat me and your good master, Inskipp here, as if we were scientific imbeciles.”
“Which you are. I was forced to use the time-helix once to save us all from dissolution, then was prevailed upon to use it again to rescue you from the past. It shall not be used again—you have my word!”
Inskipp proved he was made of sterner stuff than any rebellious physicist. He stepped forward briskly until he and Coypu were in eyeball-to-eyeball contact—or rather nose-to-nose contact since they both had impressive honkers. Once in position he let fire a salvo of drill sergeant oaths followed by some very realistic threats.
“And as your employer if I say go—you go. Without a trace. You won’t be killed, we are not that cruel, but you will be back teaching first-year physics to moronic students on a back water planet so far from the civilized haunts of man that they think time machine means a watch. Going to cooperate?”
“You can’t threaten me,” Coypu blustered.
“I already have. You have one minute left. Guards!” Two anthropoid brutes in wrinkled uniforms appeared on each side of the little professor and seized him strenuously by the arms so that his toes dangled just clear of the floor. “Thirty seconds,” Inskipp sussurated. with all the warmth of a striking cobra.
“I’ve always wanted to run more calibrating tests on the time-helix,” Coypu backwatered quickly.
“Fine,” Inskipp relented. “Toes on deck, that’s it. This will be an easy one. You will flip our friend here about one week back in time, along with the means to return when his mission is accomplished. We will give you the coordinates and time to which he is to be returned. You need know nothing else. Are you ready, diGriz?”
“As ready as I will ever be.” I looked at the space suit and the pile of equipment I had assembled. “Suit up and let’s get going. I am as eager to see what happened as you are, and even more eager to return since I have done this time travel gig before and it is hard on the system.”
The coiled spring of the time-helix glowed greenly, with all the attraction of a serpent’s eye. I sighed and prepared myself for the journey. I almost wished that I had submitted myself to the clammy, corpselike embrace of the tax man.
Almost.
The mere fact that this was not my first trip through time did nothing to alter the uncomfortable sensations of the journey. Once again I felt the wrenching in a new and undescribable direction, yet again saw the stars whizzing by like rockets. It was very uncomfortable and lasted far too long. Then the sensations ceased as quickly as they had begun, the grayness of time-space vanished to be replaced by a healthy black universe speckled with stars. I floated in null-G, turning slowly, admiring the spectacle of the satellite station as it swung into view. I took a quick bleep with the radar unit on my chest and saw that I was ten kilometers away, just the spot where I should have been. The satellite was a good-sized one, studded with aerial arrays and blinking beacons, its many windows glowing With lights. Filled, I was sure, with rotund admirals swilling and swigging and occasionally doing a bit of military business- But they had a surprise coming which I was looking forward to. I tuned my radio to their time signal broadcast and found I was an hour later than our target time; Coypu would be interested in hearing that. But I still had almost five hours to kill before the moment of truth. For all the obvious reasons I could not smoke a cigar in the spacesuit—but I could still drink. And I had taken the simple precaution of draining the water from the suit’s tank and topping it up instead with a mixture of bourbon and water. Some 32,000 years earlier, on a planet named Earth, I had developed a taste for this beverage. Though that planet had long since been destroyed, I had brought back the formula and, after a certain amount of lethal experimentation, had learned to produce a potable imitation. I wrapped my lips around the helmet drinking tube and poted. Good indeed. I admired the brilliant stars, the nearby satellite, recited poetry to myself and the hours flew by.
Just five minutes before the important event was due to happen, I was aware of a sudden movement out of the comer of my eye. I turned to see another spacesuited figure floating nearby. Seated on a two-meter-long rocket-shaped object. I whipped out my pistol, I had insisted on bringing it since I had no idea what I would be facing, and pointed it at the newcomer.
“Keep your hands in sight and turn so I can see you. This gun is loaded with explosive shells.”
“Put it away, stupid,” the other said, back still turned to me while he worked on the control panel of the rocket. “If you don’t know who I am no one does.”
“Me!” I said, trying not to gape.
“No, I. Me is you, or some such. Grammar isn’t up to this kind of thing. The gun, blockhead!”
I closed my jaw with a clack and slid the pistol back into its holster. “Would you mind explaining ...”
“I had better since you, or I, didn’t have enough brains to think of this in the first place so a second trip had to be made. To bring this spacewarp leech along.” He looked at his watch, or I looked at my watch or something like that, then he (I?) pointed. “Keep the eyes peeled—this is really going to be good.”
It was. Space beyond the satellite was empty—then an instant later it wasn’t. Something large, very large, appeared and hurtled toward the satellite. I was aware of a dark, knobbed, elongated form that suddenly split open in the front. The opening was immense, glowing with a hellish light, gaping like a planet-consuming mouth lined with pinnacles of teeth.
“The teeth!” my radio crackled loudly, the single message from the lost—or to-be-lost—satellite, then the great mouth was chomping shut and the station vanished from sight in the instant. A streak of fire seared my vision and the white form of the spacewarp leech hurled itself forward at the attacker. None too soon, because there was the sudden shimmer of an operating warp field about the giant shape—then it was gone again.
“What was it?” I gasped.
“How do I know,” I said. “And if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Now get back so I can get back or you can, I mean—the hell with it. Move.”
“Don’t bully,” I muttered. “I don’t think I should talk to myself this way.” I triggered the switch on the case of the return time-helix. And, uncomfortably, returned.
“What did you find out?” Inskipp asked as soon as my helmet was opened.
“Mainly that I have to go back a second time. Order up a spacewarp leech and I’ll be happy to explain.” I decided against going to the trouble of getting out of the suit and putting it on again. So I leaned against the wall and took a long drag on my bourbon pacifier. InSkipp sniffed the air loudly.
“Are you boozing on the job?”
“Of course. It is one of the things that makes the work bearable. Now, kindly shut up and listen. Something really big appeared out of warpspace, just seconds away from the satellite. A neat bit of navigation that I did not think was possible but which obviously is. Whatever it was opened its shining mouth, all lined with teeth, and swallowed the admirals, space station and all...”
“It’s the drink, I knew it!”
“No it’s not and I can prove it because my camera was going all the time. Then, as soon as the thing had bad lunch, it zipped back into warpdrive and was gone.”
“We must get a spacewarp leech onto it.”
“That’s just what I told myself who came back with said object and launched it in the right direction.” Right on cue the leech was rolled in. “Great. Come on. Coypu, get me and this thing back to five minutes before zero hour and I will be able to get out of this suit. By the way, you were an hour out in my first arrival and I expect better timing on this run.”
Coypu muttered over the recalibration, set dials to his satisfaction, I grabbed onto the long white form of the leech and off I went again. The scenario was the same as the first time, only from a different point of view. By the time I had returned from the second trip I had bad enough of time travel and wanted nothing more than a large meal with a small bottle of wine and a soft bed for afters. I got all of these, including more than enough time to enjoy them, for almost a week went by before a report came in about the spacewarp leech. I was with InSkipp when the message arrived and he did a certain amount of eye-boggling and squinting at the sheet as if rereading would change it.
“This is impossible,” he finally said.
“That’s what I like about you, Inskipp, ever the optimist.” I plucked the message from his soggy fingers and read it myself, then checked the coordinates on the chart behind his desk. He was right. Almost.
The spacewarp leech had done its job well. I had fired the thing off in time and it had homed on the satellite gobbler and attached itself to whatever the thing was. They had tipped off together into warpspace where the leech simply held on until emerging into normal space again. Even if there had been multiple jumps the leech was programmed to stay close until it either detected atmosphere or the mass of a planet or a space station. At which point it had come unglued and drifted away; it was wholly nonmetallic and virtually undetectable. Once it had arrived it used chemical rockets to leave the vicinity of its arrival while it checked for a League beacon. As soon as it found the nearest one it had warped there and announced its arrival. Needless to say it had taken photographs in all directions when it arrived at its original target area. At that point the computers chortled over the star sights and determined the point in space from which they had been taken. Only this time the answer they came up with was impossible.
“Or very improbable,” I said, tapping the chart. “But if the location is correct I have the nasty feeling we are in for some trouble.”
“You don’t think it was just a coincidence that it was the admirals who got kidnapped?”
“Ha-ha.”
“Yes, I thought you would say that.”
To understand our problem you have to ponder the physical nature of our galaxy for a moment. Yes, I know it’s boring stuff and best left for the astrophysicists and other dull sods who enjoy this sort of thing. But explanation is necessary. If it helps, think of the galaxy as being shaped like a starfish. It isn’t really, but that’s good enough for this kind of simplistic stuff. The legs and center of the starfish are groups of stars, with some other stars in between the legs, along with space gas and random molecules and such. Hope I haven’t lost you because I know I’m confusing myself. Anyway, all of the League stars are situated in one arm right up at the top there, sticking straight up. A few other surveyed suns are near the hub and a scattered few more in the arms to the left and right. Got that? Okay. Now it seems that our toothy satellite-napper had come from the way down in the lower left leg.
Well why not, you might say, it’s all part of the same galaxy. Well, aha, I say right back. But it is a part of the galaxy we have never been to, have never contacted, have never explored. There are no inhabited planets way down there.
Inhabited by human beings, that is. In all the thousands of years that mankind has been hurtling around the galaxy we have never found another intelligent life form. We have found traces of long-vanished civilizations, but millions of years separate us from them. During the days of colonial expansion, the Stellar Empire, the Feudal Follies and such bits of nonsense, ships went off in all directions. Then came the breakdown and the bustup of communications for many thousands of years. We are coming out of that now. Contacting planets in all states of civilization—or lack of it. But we’re not expanding. Maybe we will again, someday, but meanwhile the League is busy picking up the pieces from the first expansion.
Except now there is a new ball game.
“What are you going to do?” Inskipp asked.
“Me? I’m going to do nothing except watch you issue orders to investigate this interesting situation.”
“Right. This is order one. You, diGriz, get out there and investigate.”
“I’m overworked. You have the resources of a thousand planets to draw upon, entire navies , albeit minus the admirals usually in charge, agents galore. Use some of them for a change.”
“No. I have the strong feeling that feeding a normal patrol ship into this situation will be like asking them to take a stroll through the guts of an atomic pile.”
“A confused description—but I get the message.”
“I hope so. You are the crookedest agent I know. You have a sense of survival that, so far, has made you unkillable. I am banking on that and the hideously twisted convolutions of your warped mind to get you through. So get out there and see what the hell is happening, and get back with a report.”
“Do I have to bring the admirals back?”
“Only if you want to. We have plenty more where they came from.”
“You are heartless and cruel, Inskipp, and as big a crook as I am.”
“Of course. How else do you think I run this outfit? When do you leave and what do you need?”
I had to think about that. I couldn’t go without telling my Angelina, and once she learned how dangerous it would be she would insist on coming. Fine. I’m a male chauvinist pig at heart, but I know true talent when I see it and I would rather have her with me than all of the rest of the Special Corps. But what about the boys? The answer to that was obvious as well. With their natural bent and inherited characteristics they were fit only for lives of crime or careers in the Corps. They would have to be blooded sometime and this looked very much like the time. So it was settled. I unglazed my eyes and realized that I had been muttering to myself for some minutes and that InSkipp was looking at me in a very suspicious manner and reaching slowly for the scramble button on his desk. I groped through my memory for the question he had asked me before I had sunk into my coma.
“Ahh, yes, hmmm, of course. I leave soonest, I have my own crew, but I want a fully automated grinder-class cruiser with all armaments, et cetera.”
“Done. It will take twenty hours to get one here. You have that long to pack and write a new will.”
“How charming of you. I will need but one psi call.”
I set it up with the communication center who were on to the operator on Blodgett like a flash and a line hooked through seconds later to Angelina.
“Hello, my sweet,” I said. “Guess where we are going for our holiday?”
“It’s a fine ship, Dad,” Bolivar said, running his eyes appreciatively over the varied controls of the L. C. Gnasher.
“I hope so. These grinder-class cruisers are supposed to be the best in space.”
“Central fire controls and all, wow,” James said, thumbing a button before I could stop him.
“You didn’t have to blast that hunk of space rock, it wasn’t doing you any harm,” I complained, switching the gun controls to my pilot’s position before he could Cause any more trouble.
“Boys will be boys,” Angelina said, looking on with motherly pride.
“Well, they can be boys with their own pocket money. Do you know how many thousands of credits it costs every time those energy cannon are fired?”
“No, nor do I care.” She raised one delicate eyebrow. “And since when have you cared, Slippery Jim, plunderer of the public pocket?”
I muttered something and turned back to the instrument displays. Did I really care? Or was it just fatherly reflex? No—it was authority! “I’m captain and the crew can but obey.”
“Shall we all walk the plank, dear?” Angelina asked in her most unreasonable tone. I changed the subject.
“Look. If you will all kindly sit over there I will order up a bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake and we will relax a bit before this mission begins and I start cracking the whip.”
“You’ve already told us the whole deal, Dad,” James said. “And could you make that a strawberry shortcake?”
“I know you all know all about what has happened and where we are going, but just what we will do when we get there is yet to be determined.”
“I’m sure you will tell us in due time, dear. And isn’t it a little early in the day for champagne?”
I punched busily at the catering controls and fought to organize my thoughts. All chiefs and no indians in this outfit. I must be firm.
“Now hear this. Order of the day. We blast off in exactly fifteen minutes. We will proceed with all due dispatch to the position in space determined by the spacewarp leech. We will emerge from spacewarp for exactly one point five seconds which will be enough time to make instrument readings of the surrounding volume of space. We will then automatically return to our last position and analyze our findings. We will then act upon them. Understood?”
“You’re so masterful,” Angelina murmured, then sipped at her champagne. There was no way of telling from her tone of voice just what she had meant by this remark. I ignored it.
“Then forward. Bolivar, I see by your school record that you had good marks in navigation ...”
“I had to. We were chained to the desks without food until we passed the test.”
“Details, details—that is all behind you now. Set up a course to our target area and let me review it before you actuate. James, you will program the computer to take the readings we will need upon arrival and get us out of there in the second and a half we will have.”
“And what shall I do, my love?”
“Open the other bottle, my sweet, and we will look on with pride while our offspring work.”
And work they did, with no complaints, and each did a fine job. There were no games now. This was reality and survival and they threw themselves into it with gusto. I checked and rechecked the results but could find no faults.
“A gold star for both of you. Take a double portion of cake each.”
“It rots the teeth, Dad. We would like some champagne instead.”
“Of course. In time for a toast. Here’s to success.”
We clinked glasses and sipped and I leaned across and pressed the flight button. We were off. Like all voyages there was absolutely nothing to do once the computer had been programmed. The twins prowled the ship with tech manuals until they had learned every detail of her operation. Angelina and I found far more interesting things to do and the days tiptoed by on little golden feet. Until the alarm pinged and we were ready for the last spacewarp. Once again we assembled in the control room.
“Dad, did you know we have two patrol boats aboard?” Bolivar asked.
“I did, and fine little craft they are. Get ready for the quick look as planned. After we suit up in combat armor.”
“Why?” James asked.
“Because you have been ordered to do so,” Angelina said and there was a steel edge to her voice. “Plus a moment’s rational thought would have given you the answer without asking.”
Thus reinforced, I felt my authority was firm and said no more while we all suited up. The combat suits, armored and armed spacesuits, would keep us alive if anything nasty was waiting at the other end.
Nothing was. We arrived, all of the instruments buzzed and clicked—and we were back to our starting point a hundred fight years’ distant. I made everyone stay armored up in case we had been followed, but we had not been. After a half an hour we climbed out of the suits and ran the results of our investigations.
“Nothing really close,” Angelina said, scanning the printout. “But there is a star system just two light years’ distant.”
“Then that’s our next target,” I said. “The plan is this. We are going to stay right here a nice distance from whatever is out there. But we’ll send in a spyeye to chart the system, look for inhabited planets, scout them as well, and send back continuous reports to a satellite receiver in orbit nearby. The satellite will be programmed to return here the instant anything happens to the spyeye. All right?”
“Can I program the spyeye?” Bolivar asked, speaking an instant ahead of his brother. Volunteers! My heart warmed and I gave them their assignments. With. minutes the machines were launched and, once they in were on their way, we sat down to dinner. We were just about finished with the meal when the satellite announced its return .
“That was fast,” Angelina said.
“Too fast. If something got the spyeye I think they, have some pretty good detection equipment. Let us see what it found out.”
I speeded up the recording until we got to the busy part. The star in the center of the screen rushed at us and became a burning sun in an instant. The figures on the second screen revealed that the system had four planets and that radiation consistent with communication and industrial activity was coming from four of them. The spyeye headed for the nearest world and skimmed low.
“My, oh my,” Angelina whispered, and I could only nod agreement.
The entire planet appeared to be a single fortress.
Mouths of great guns gaped upward from thick-walled fortresses; row after row of spaceships were lined up in apparently endless ranks. As the spyeye skimmed along countless war machines rolled up over the horizon. No bit of the planet’s natural surface seemed visible, just more and More machines of war.
“There, look,” I said. “That looks just like the spacewhale that swallowed up the admirals and their satellite. And another of the same—and another.”
“I wonder if they’re friendly?” Angelina said, and was barely able to smile at her own joke. The boys were goggle-eyed and silent.
The end came quickly. Four sudden blips on the radar, closing at headlong speed—and the screen went blank.
“Not too friendly,” I said, and poured myself a drink with a none-too-steady hand. “Make a recording of what we discovered and get it started on a relay back to base. Route it by the nearest base with a psiman so a condensed report can get back soonest. Then I would like someone to suggest a next step for us. Once we have made the report of what we have discovered we are on our own again.”
“And expendable?” Bolivar asked.
“You’re catching on, son.”
“Great,” James said. “On our own with orders from no one.”
I don’t know how much he meant it, but I was proud of my sons right then and there. “Any suggestions?” I asked. “Because if not I have the glimmerings of a plan.”
“You’re the captain, dear,” Angelina said, and I think she meant it.
“Right. I don’t know if you noticed it on the readout, but that star system is filled with spatial debris. I Suggest we find the right-sized hunk of rock and hollow it out and slip one of the patrol boats inside. If we shield it correctly there will be nothing to show that is different from the rest of the boulders floating around that system. Then ease it into orbit, check out the other planets, see if there are any satellites we can slip-up on, generally get more information so we can plot out a plan of attack. There must be someplace we can get closer to that isn’t armed to the teeth like that first planet. Agreed?”
After some discussion---since no one could come up with a better plan—it was. We moved out in space drive, radar blipping, and within an hour had found a cloud of rocks and stone, meteoric iron and interstellar mountains, apparently in elliptic orbit about the nearest star. I eased up slowly to the mass, matching velocities and picking out the one we wanted.
“There,” I announced. “Right shape, right size, almost pure iron so it will shield the ship within. Angelina, take the helm and bring us in close. Bolivar, you and I will suit up and slip over there in the patrol boat. We can use its guns to drill the hole we need. James will do communications at this end. Keep in touch with us and send over any special equipment we might need. It should be an easy job.”
It was. At minimum output the nose cannon on the patrol boat drilled neatly into the iron, sending out clouds of monatomic gas. When the hole looked deep enough I sealed my suit and went out to examine it for myself, drifting down the length of the silvery drill hole.
“Looks good,” I said when I emerged. “Bolivar, do you think you can ease her in, nose first, without breaking off too many pieces of that ship?”
“A piece of cake, Dad!”
He was as good as his word, and I stood to one side as the patrol boat slid silently by and vanished from sight. Now we could plant instrumentation on the surface, connect it through to the ship, cut another hunk of asteroid to plug the hole when we went in, arrange braces for the boat ...
I was facing the Gnasher as I floated there, and she was clearly visible as she stood by two kilometers away at the edge of the spatial debris field. Her ports glowed cheerfully in the interstellar darkness and I looked forward to getting back and getting my feet up after a good day’s work.
Then the black form appeared, blotting out the stars.
It was big and fast, very fast, and the mouthlike glowing opening appeared even as it rushed forward. Opening and engulfing the Gnasher and closing again, then vanishing. All in an instant while I could only stay mute in paralyzed silence. Then it was gone. The ship, Angelina, James. Gone.
I have had my bad moments but this one, without a doubt, was just about bottom. I was frozen there, fists clenched, staring in horror at the spot where the ship had been but an instant before. Up until this time the sticky moments in my life had, for the most part, involved me and me alone. This solitary danger clears the mind wonderfully, and promotes the gushing of the adrenals when instant action is needed for survival. But now I wasn’t threatened or in danger, or possibly dead—but Angelina and James were. And there was nothing I could do.
I must have made some sound while thinking this, undoubtedly a nasty one, because Bolivar’s voice rang in my ears.
“Dad? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
The tension broke and I dived for the ship, explaining what had happened as I shot into the airlock. He was whitefaced but in control of himself when I appeared in the control compartment.
“What do we do?” he asked in a much-subdued voice.
“I don’t know yet. Go after them of course—but where do we go? We need a plan...”
A high-pitched warble sounded from the communication equipment and I bulged my eyes in that direction.
“What is it?” Bolivar asked.
“A general psi-alarm. I’ve read about it in the training manuals but I never heard of it being used before.”
“As you undoubtedly know, radio waves travel at the speed of light, so that a message transmitted from a station one hundred light years away would take a hundred years to reach us. Not the speediest form of communication. So most messages are carried in ships from point to point. This is also the only form of communication that is exempt from Einsteinian laws. Psi, which appears to be instantaneous. So the psimen can talk to one another, brain to brain, without a time lag. All of the good ones work for the League and most of these for the Special Corps. There are electronic devices that can detect psi communication, but only at full strength and on a simple on-off basis. Every League ship is equipped with a detector like this, though they have never been used except in tests. To make them switch on every psiman alive broadcasts the same thought at the same time. The single word—trouble. When this psi-alarm. is received every ship spacewarps to the nearest broadcast station to find out what is wrong. We’re on our way.”
“Mom and James...”
“Finding them will take some thought—and some help. And, call it a nagging, hunch, but I have a feeling that this alarm is not unrelated to this present business we are involved in.”
Unhappily, I was right. We broke out near a repeater beacon and the recorded signal instantly blasted out of our radio.
“... return to base. All ships report for orders. Seventeen League planets have been attacked by alien forces in the past hour. Space war has opened on a number of fronts. Report for orders. All ships return to base. All ships...”
I had the course set even before the message had begun to repeat itself. To Corps Main Base. There was no place else to go. Resistance to the invaders would be organized by Inskipp and all of the available information would be there. I will not tell you how we felt as the days rolled by; Bolivar and I found the time bearable only by repeating that if outright destruction were planned the firepower we had seen could have easily demolished the admirals’ satellite and our ship. They wanted the people in them alive. They had to. We did not dare think why they wanted them. Just that they were prisoners someplace and that we would get there and free them.
I flew the ship by reflex as we broke out of spacewarp near the base. Slamming in at maximum G’s, reversing at the last possible moment, again at maximum reverse thrust, killing the controls as the magnetic grapples took hold, reaching the port while it was still opening. With Bolivar at my side all of the way. We went through the corridors at the same pace and into Inskipp’s office to find him sound asleep and snoring on his desk.
“Speak,” I commanded, and he opened a pair of the reddest eyes I have ever seen. Then groaned.
“I should have known. The first time I have tried to sleep in four days and you appear. Do you know what...”
“I know that one of those space-whales swallowed my cruiser along with Angelina and James and we have been bucketing back here in a patrol boat for some time.”
He was on his feet swaying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, we’ve been busy.” He staggered to a cabinet and gurgled dark liquid out of a crystal bottle into a glass, which he drained. I sniffed the bottle and gurgled myself the same amount.
“Explain,” I ordered. “What’s been going on?”
“Alien invasion—and let me tell you that they are good. Those space-whales are heavily armored battleships and we have never been able to dent one. We have nothing that can touch them in space. So all we can do is retreat. They’ve made no planetary landings yet that we know of, just bombardment from space, because our land-based units are strong enough to keep them off. We don’t know how long this will last.”
“Then we are losing the war?”
“One hundred percent.”
“How optimistic. You wouldn’t care to tell me who we are fighting?”
“Yes. Them, these!”
He flicked on the screen and stabbed the buttons and, in gorgeous color and three-dimensional reality, a loathsome form hung before us. Tentacled, slimily green, clawed and greasy, with far too many eyes sticking out in odd directions, as well as a number of other appendages best left undescribed.
“Uggh,” Bolivar said, speaking for all of us.
“Well, if you don’t like that,” Inskipp growled, “how about this—or this.” The slide show of slugs clicked by, creature after creature, each one more loathsome—was it possible?--than the one before. Hideous sqwitchy things, united only in their repugnancy.
“Enough,” I finally shouted. “A reducing diet of nausea. I won’t eat for a week after this. Which one of them is the enemy?”
“All of them. Let Prof Coypu explain.”
The recording of the professor appeared on the screen, and was quite an improvement over the creepycrawlies despite his gnashing teeth and lecture room manner.
“We have examined the captured specimens, dissecting the dead ones and brain-vacuuming the live ones for information. What we have discovered is rather disconcerting. There are a number of life forms involved, from different planetary systems. From what they say, and we have no reason to doubt them, they are involved on a holy crusade. Their single aim is to destroy mankind, wipe all representatives of our species from the galaxy.”
“Why?” I asked aloud.
“You will ask why,” the recorder Coypu continued. “A natural question. The answer is that they cannot bear looking at us. They consider us too loathsome to exist. There is much talk about not enough limbs, and we are too dry, our eyes don’t stick out on stalks, we secrete no nice slime, important guggy organs are missing. They consider us too disgusting to exist side by side with them.”
“They should talk!” Bolivar said.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I advised him. “But I agree with you in any case. Now shut up and listen to the professor.”
“This invasion was carefully prepared,” Coypu said, shuffling his notes and rattling his fingernails against is protruding teeth. “Since the invasion we have found many alien life forms lurking in dustbins, air conditioner vents, manholes, flush toilets, everywhere. They have obviously been observing us for a long time and massing reports. The kidnapping of the admirals was the first blow of the invasion, an attempt to disrupt our forces by removing their commanders. This left us very short of admirals, but chief petty officers were put in command of units lacking senior officers and the unit efficiency has doubled. However, we lack real intelligence of the enemy’s structures and bases since only small ships have been captured, manned by junior officers. It is suggested that more information be obtained ...”
“Oh, thanks very much,” Inskipp growled, cutting Coypu off in mid-suggestion. “I never would have thought of that myself.”
“I can do it,” I told him, and enjoyed the way the whites—or really the reds—of his eyes appeared as he rolled them in my direction.
“You? Succeed where all of our forces have failed?”
“Of course. I will abandon modesty and tell you that I am the secret weapon that will win the war.”
“How?”
“Let me talk to Coypu first. A few questions, then all shall be revealed.”
“We’re going after Mom and James?” my son asked.
“You betcha, boy. Top priority on the list, and at the same time we shall save the civilized galaxy from destruction.”
“Why do you bother me when I must work?” Coypu screeched from the comscreen, sputtering saliva and as redeyed as Inskipp.
“Relax,” I cajoled. “I will solve all your problems for you, as I have done in the past, but I must enlist Your aid to do so. How many different species of alien have you discovered so far?”
“Three hundred and twelve. But why. .
“I’ll tell you in a moment. All sizes, shapes and colors?”
“You better believe it! You should see my nightmares.”
“No thank you. You must have discovered the language they use to communicate with each other. Is it difficult?”
“You already speak it. It’s Esperanto.”
“Come off it, Coypu!”
“You can’t scream at me in that tone of voice!” he said hysterically. Then got control of himself, took a pill and shuddered. “Why not? They obviously have been watching us for a long time, learning all about us before they invaded. They would have heard a lot of our languages, then settled on Esperanto just as we did as the simplest, easiest and most efficient form of communication.”
“You’ve sold me. Thank you, Professor. Get some rest because I’ll be over there and you are going to outfit me to slip into the alien HQ and discover what is going on and to rescue my family, and maybe the admirals if I get a chance.”
“Just what the hell are you talking about?” Inskipp snarled, with Coypu’s screened image echoing the same words in an equally repellent tone of voice.
“Simple. At least for me. Prof Coypu is going to manufacture an alien suit, complete with built-in slimedripper, and I am going to get inside of it. They will welcome me as one of their own. It will be a new kind of loathy who has just heard of their crusade and who is rushing up to enlist. They’ll love me. I’m on the way, Professor.”
The technicians did a fast but excellent job. They stuffed the computer full of disgusting alien details, tentacles, claws, eye-stalks, feelers, everything, then programmed it to draw pictures of variations. Wow! Even Bolivar was impressed. We put a couple of them together and juggled the result around a bit and came up with one that would suit.
“That’s my Dad!” Bolivar said, walking around the thing and admiring it from all angles.
It looked roughly like a miniature tyrannosaurus rex with advanced leprosy and molting fur. A biped for the obvious reason that I was one. The heavy tail, which bifurcated into sucker-tipped tentacles at the end, both balanced the weighty device and contained storage space for the powerplant and equipment. An oversized jaw, just aswarm with yellow and green teeth, adorned the front of the head; a little bucktoothed too like its maker. Ears like a bat, whiskers like a rat, eyes like a cat, gills like a sprat—it really was loathsome. The front split open and I climbed carefully inside.
“The forearms are only lightly powered and fit over your own arms,” Coypu said. “But the heavy legs are servo-powered and follow the movements of your legs. Watch out for them, those claws can tear a hole in a steel wall.”
“I intend to try that. What about the tail?”
“Automatic counterbalance and it wags as you walk. These controls will enable you to thrash it about when you are not walking, make it look realistic. This switch is the automatic twitcher that moves the tail about a bit when you are sitting or standing for a long time. Watch out for this switch—it controls the recoilless seventy-five mounted in the head just between the eyes. The sight is here on your nose.”
“Wonderful. What about grenades?”
“The launcher is under the tail, of course. The grenades themselves are disguised as you-know-what.”
“A pretty touch. I see you have the warped kind of mind for this sort of business. Now let me close the zipper and you step back while I try it out.”
It took a bit of practice to move the hulking thing about naturally, but after a few minutes I got the knack. I stalked about the lab leaving a trail of slime wherever I went, gouging ruts in the steel deck with my claws, swishing my tail and knocking things about, and even poked my head into the firing range to let go a few shots with my headgun. Recoilless or not, I decided, as I took pills for the headache, to save this gun for real emergencies. As I went back to the lab a small treaded robot came out of a doorway and ran over my tail.
“Hey, get rid of that thing,” I called out as the PAIN IN TAIL signal flashed on my readout board. I aimed a kick at the robot which it easily dodged. Then it stopped in front of me and the turret with the optic lenses popped open and I found myself staring into Bolivar’s smiling face.
“Is one permitted to ask just what the hell you are doing in that thing,” one asked.
“Sure, Dad. I’m going with you. Servant-robot to carry your gear. Isn’t that logical?”
“No, it is not.” I marshalled my arguments and knew, even as I began, that this was one argument I was going to lose. I lost it—and was secretly glad. Although I feared for his safety, I could sure use someone to back me up. We would both go.
“Where?” Inskipp asked, looking with disgust at my alien suit when I climbed out.
“To that armed planet where they took the admirals. And, probably, Angelina and James as well. If it’s not their headquarters or main base or some such it certainly will do until the real one comes along.”
“You wouldn’t care to tell me how you plan to get there, would you?”
“Delighted. In the same patrol boat that we arrived in. But before we go I want the hull blown open fatally, then roughly patched. Knock it about inside a good deal, crunch some of the nonessential equipment to make it look good. Get plenty of blood from the slaughterhouse and sprinkle it all over. And, I don’t Eke to suggest this, but realism is what counts—do you have some spare human corpses?”
“Far too many,” he answered grimly. “And you want one or two of them, in uniform, aboard?”
“They may save our lives. I am going to go blasting in with that ship, radio blaring and lights flashing, and volunteer myself and my planet of creepies to the noble cause of humanity-destruction.”
“Which you just happened to find out about when your people captured this ship?”
“You catch on quick for someone your age. Get it done at once, Inskipp, because I want to leave about five minutes ago.”
Since this mission seemed to be. the single ray of hope in the unmitigated gloom of the losing war, we had the best of service. The battered patrol boat was loaded aboard a combat cruiser that blasted off the instant we were aboard. They ferried us to our destination, the nearest safe area to the enemy stars, then chucked us out. I navigated us around a massive cloud of dust, skirted a black hole or two to blur our trail, then scuttled into the arm of the galaxy that held the enemy.
“Ready, son?” I asked, poking my head out through the slit in the alien’s neck.
“Ready when you are, Slippery Jim,” the robot responded as the turret clacked down and locked into place.
I sealed up and reached out a clawed arm and shook his tentacle. Then got to work. Extra lights had been installed on the hull, of ugly, alien construction, and I switched these on so that we looked like a space-going Christmas tree. I then started the tape of the recently written anthem of my imaginary home planet and began broadcasting it at full volume on 137 wavelengths. Thus prepared we headed leisurely for the armored planet, wafted there on the strains of delightful groaning music.
Sliming and gurgling,
gnashing with crunch.
We’re the most sordid,
of the alien’ bunch.
“Kiu vi estas?” the gravelly voice said, the screen lighting up at the same instant to display a particularly repulsive alien physiognomy.
“Kiu mi estas? Ciuj konas min, se mi ne konas vin, belulo...”
I had decided to be arrogant, secure in a warm welcome, and very flattering—though calling this wormfaced echh “handsome” took some doing. But the flattery appeared to help, it preened a handful of tendrils with a damp tentacle, and continued in a more friendly tone of voice.
“Come, come, cutey. They may know who you are at home—but you’re a long way from home now. And there is a war on so we have to obey security regulations.”
“Of course, naturally, I am just filled with enthusiasm. Are you really fighting a war of extermination against the dry-stick-pink-black aliens?”
“We’re doing our best, gorgeous.”
“Well, count us in! We caught this ship sneaking up on our planet—we have no spacers but fire a mean combat rocket—and shot it down. We brain-sucked the survivors, learned their language, and discovered that all the attractive races in the galaxy had united against them. We want to join your forces, I am ambassador—so issue instructions for we are yours!”
Mighty nice sentiments,” the thing slobbered. “We’ll send a ship up to guide you in and the welcoming committee will make you welcome. But there is one question, sweety.”
“Ask away, handsome.”
“With eyes like yours—you are female, aren’t you?”
“Next year at this same time I will be. Right now I’m in neuter state halfway from he to she.”
“It’s a date then. See you in a year.”
“I’ll write it in my diary now,” I cooed and hung up and reached for the nearby bottle. But Bolivar the Robot was ahead of me and had poured a large glass which I sucked at through a straw.
“Am I wrong, Dad,” he asked, “or did that refugee from the sewage works have the hots for you?”
“Unhappily, my boy, you are right. In our ignorance my little disguise turns out to be the height of female pulchritude among the awful-awfuls. We must make it more loathsome!”
“That will probably make it more sexy.”
“You’re right, of course.” I insufflated feelingly through the straw. “I’ll just have to put up with their amorous attentions and try to turn it to some benefit.”
Our guide ship appeared moments later and I locked the automatic pilot onto its tail. We floated downward, through unseen minefields and defensive screens, to land on a metal pad inside a large fortress. I hoped this was the VIP field not the prison entrance.
“You’ll want your helmet, won’t you, Dad,” Bolivar said in a robotic tone of voice. Drawing me back from the brink of my sea of black thoughts.
“Right you are, oh good and noble robot.” I put on the gold-plated steel helmet with the diamond nebula on front and examined my image in the mirror. Delicious . “And best not to call me Dad anymore. It gives rise to some impossible biological questions.”
An improbable parade of slithering, hopping and crawling figures slopped up when we appeared through the lock, the Bolivar-robot carrying the carefully constructed alien luggage. One individual in slimy gold braid stepped out of the pack and waved a lot of claws in my direction.
“Welcome, stellar ambassador,” it said. “I am Gar-Baj, First Official of War Council.”
“A pleasure, I’m sure. I am Sleepery Jeem of Geshtunken.”
“Is Sleepery your first name or a title?”
“It means, in the language of my race, He Who Walks on Backs of Peasants With Sharp Claws, and denotes a member of the nobility.”
“A remarkably compact language, Sleepery, you must tell me more about it again—in private.” Six of his eighteen eyes winked slowly and I knew the old sex appeal was still at work.
“I’ll take you up on that my next fertile period, Gar. But for now—it is war! Tell me how things go and what we of Geshtunken can do to aid this holy cause.”
“It shall be done. Let me guide you to your personal quarters and explain as we go.”
He dismissed the onlookers with the wave of one tentacle, signaling me to follow him with another. I did, with my faithful robot rolling after me.
“The war goes as planned,” he said. “You would of Course not know, but we have been many years in the Planning stage. Our spies have penetrated all of the human worlds and we know their strength down to the last ray gun charge. We cannot be stopped. We have absolute control of space and are now preparing for the second phase.”
“Which is...?”
“Planetary invasion. After knocking off their fleet we’ll pick off their planets, one by one, like ripe cerizoj.”
“That’s for us!” I shouted, and raked great gouges in the metal flooring with my claws. “We Geshtunken are fighting fools, ready to lead the charge, willing to die in a cause that is just.”
“Just what I was hoping to hear from someone as well built as you, claws, teeth and such. In here, if you please. We have plenty of transport ships but can always use experienced troops—“
“We are death-defying warriors!”
“Even better. You will attend the next meeting of the War Council and plans will be drawn up for mutual cooperation. But now you must be tired and want to rest.”
“Never!” I chomped my jaws and bit a chunk out of a nearby couch. “I want no rest until the last dry enemy has been destroyed.”
“A noble sentiment, but we must all rest sometime.”
“Not the Geshtunken. Don’t you have a captive or two I could disembowel for a propaganda film?”
“We have a whole load of admirals, but we need them for brainsuck to aid in the invasion.”
“Too bad. I pluck legs and arms from admirals like Petals from flowers. Don’t you have any female prisoners—or children? They scream nice.”
This was the 64,000 credit question hidden among all the other rubbish and my tail twitched as I waited for the answer. The robot stopped buzzing.
“It’s funny you should ask. We did capture an enemy sp ship that was crewed by a female and a mate youth.”
“Just the thing!” I shouted, and my excitement was real. “They must need torture, questioning, crunching. That’s for me. Lead me to them!”
“Normally I would be happy to. But that is now impossible.”
“Dead... ?” I said, fighting to turn the despair in my voice into disappointment.
“No. But I wish they were. We still haven’t figured out what happened. Five of our best fighting things alone in a room with these two pallid and undersized creatures. All five destroyed, we still don’t know how the enemy escaped.”
“Too bad,” I said, simulating boredom now with the whole matter, swinging my tail around and scratching its scrofulous tip with a claw. “You have of course recaptured them?”
“No. And that’s the strange part. It has been some days now. But you do not wish to be bothered by petty worries. Refresh yourself and a messenger will be sent for you when the meeting is joined. Death to the crunchies!”
“Death to the crunchies yourself. See you at the meeting.”
The door closed behind him and the Bolivar-robot spoke.
“Where will you have the bags, mighty Sleepery?”
“Anywhere, metallic moron.” I lashed out with a kick that the robot scuttled back to avoid. “Do not bother me with such petty matters.”
I walked about the room, singing the Geshtunken national anthem in a shrill voice, managing to cover all parts of the room as I did so. In the end I plopped down and opened the zipper in my neck.
“You can come out and stretch if you want to,” I said. “These drips are really most trusting because I can detect no bugs, spies or optic pickups anywhere in these quarters.”
Bolivar exited the robot quickly and did some deep knee bends to the accompaniment of cracking joints. “It gets tight in there after a while. What next? How do we find Mom and James?”
“A good question that brings no easy answer to mind. But at least we know that they are alive and Well and causing the enemy trouble.”
“Maybe they left messages for us—or a trail we would follow.”
“We will look, but I don’t think so. Anything we might follow these uglies could as well. Crack out a bottle of Old Thought Provoker from your kit there and see if there is a glass in this dump. And I win think.”
I thought hard, but with little results. Perhaps the atmosphere was a bit off-putting. The wall hangings were of moldy green over flaking red paint. Half of the room was filled with a swimming-pool-sized mud wallow that brimmed over with steaming gray sludge that burbled and plopped up big bubbles from time to time that stank atrociously. Bolivar went exploring, but after almost being sucked under by the sanitary arrangements and having a quick look at the food supply—he turned as green as my alien hide—he was happy enough to sit and switch channels on the TV. Most of the programs revealed were impossible to understand, though loathsome to a great degree, or if understandable were depressing—like the current battle reports.
Neither of us realized that the TV was also the communicator until a bell pinged and the scene of space bombardment of a helpless planet gave way to the always repellent features of Gar-Baj. Luckily the diGriz reflexes were still operating. Bolivar dived aside out of the range of the pickup while I kept my back turned while I zipped up my neck.
“I do not wish to disturb you, Jeem, but the War Council meets and wishes your presence. The messenger will show you the way. Death to the crunchies.”
“ Yeah, yeah,” I muffled as his image faded, trying to get my head into the right position among the folds of plastic flesh. A grating sound issued from an annunciator by the door.
“Get that, robot,” I said. “Say I’ll be there in a moment. Then break out my train.”
When we issued forth, the monster who had been sent to fetch me goggled his eyes at the scene. Impressive too since he had a couple of dozen eyes that suddenly protruded a good meter on stalks.
“Lead the way, spaghetti head,” I ordered.
He went and I followed-followed in turn by my robot who held the free end of the train that was buttoned about my shoulders. This attractive garment was a good three meters of shining purple fabric picked out with gold and silver stars and edged with heavy shocking pink lace. Yummy! Luckily I didn’t have to look at the thing, but I pitied poor Bolivar who did. I was sure the locals would love it. Not that I needed a train, but it seemed the simplest way to keep Bolivar by me at all times.
The council was impressed, if globbles, slurps and grunts are meant to be flattery, and I went twice around the council chamber before taking the indicated seat.
“Welcome lovely Sleepery Jeem to our War Council,” Gar-Baj slobbered. “Rarely has this chamber been graced by such a gorgeous presence. If all the Geshtunken are like you—and good fighters too I am sure—this war will be won on morale alone.”
“A propaganda film,” something black, damp and repulsive gurgled from the far side of the room. “Let us share our pleasure with the troops in the field and reveal this lovely presence to all. Also let’s mention an the extra combat troops we will soon have.”
“Great idea! Wonderful!”
There were shouts of acclaim and joy from all sides accompanied by a feverish waving of tentacles, suckers, eye stalks, antennae, claws and other things too repulsive to mention. I almost lost my lunch but smiled and clattered my teeth together to show how pleased I was. I don’t know how long this sort of nonsense would have gone on if the secretary-thing had not hammered loudly on a large bell with a metal hammer.
“We have urgent business, gentlethings. Can we get on with it?”
There were angry shouts of “spoilsport”—and worse—and the secretary cringed. It was a repulsive creature, like a squashed frog with a furry tail and a sort of leechlike sucker where the head should be. It flapped its forearms apologetically, but nevertheless went right back to work when the shouting had died down.
“This four thousand and thirteenth meeting of the War Council will come to order. Minutes of the last meeting are available if any of you care. New business is battle order, logistic invasion plans, bombardment reserve management and interspecies food supply availability.” The secretary waited until the groans had died away before it continued. “However, before we begin we are asking our new member for a brief speech to be broadcast with the evening news. We are recording, Sleepery Jeem. Will you oblige us with your address...”
There was a lot of splattering slopping sounds from many tentacles, which I realized passed for applause, and I bowed into the camera’s eye, hitching my train up a bit as I did.
“Dear wet, slimy, soggy friends of the galactic cluster,” I began, then waited with eyes lowered coyly until the applause died away. “I cannot tell what pleasure beats in my four hearts to squat here among you today. From the moment we on Geshtunken discovered that there were others like us we oozed with eagerness to join forces. Chance made this possible and I am here today to say that we are yours, united in this great crusade to wipe the pallid pipestems from the face of our galaxy. We are known for our fighting abilities...” I kicked a hole through the lectern with the words and everything cheered. “... and wish to bring our skills to this holy cause. In the words of our Queen, the Royal Engela Rdenrundt, you can’t hold a good Geshtunken down—nor would you want to try!”
I sat down to more excited shouts and crossed my claws, hoping my little ruse had succeeded. No one seemed to have noticed. It was a long shot that might just work. Wherever Angelina was on this planet there was a chance that she might be able to get near a communicator. If so she might watch the news and if she did she would certainly recognize the name under which I had first met her, some years ago. A long shot, but better than nothing.
My fellow monsters were not really happy with work, but the sordid little secretary managed to drive them to it eventually. I memorized all the essentials of the various war plans and, being a newcomer, offered no suggestions. Though when I was asked how many combat troops we Geshtunken could field I gave inflated figures that got them all happy again. It went on like this for far too long and I wasn’t the only one who cheered when the secretary announced that the meeting was adjourned. Gar-Baj writhed up and laid what I can only assume was a friendly tentacle across my tail.
“Why not come to my place first, cutey? We can crack a crock of rotted slung juice and have a nibble or two of pyekk. A good idea?”
“Wonderful, Gar-baby, but Sleepery is sleepy and must get the old beauty rest. After that we must get together. Don’t call me—I’ll call you.”
I swept out before he could answer, the robot rushing after with the end of my train. Down the rusty corridors to the door to my own place, hurrying through it happily to escape the passionate embraces of my loathy Lothario.
But the door slammed shut before I could touch it and a blaster shot burned the floor next to me. I froze as a gravelly voice ground in my ear.
“Move and the next one is right through your rotten head.”
“I’m unarmed!” I shouted in a voice just as hoarse as that of my unseen attacker. “I’m reaching for the sky—don’t shoot!” Was that voice somehow familiar? Dare I risk a look? I was trying to make my mind up when Bolivar made it up for me. He popped open the robot and stuck his head out.
“Hi, James,” he called cheerily. “What’s wrong with your throat? And don’t shoot that ugly alien because your very own dad is inside.”
I risked a look now to see James lurking behind a piece of furniture, jaw and blaster hanging limply with astonishment. Angelina, tastefully garbed in a fur bikini, stepped in from the other room holstering her own gun.
“Crawl out of that thing at once,” she ordered, and I struggled free of its plastic embrace and into her decidedly superior one. “Yum,” she yummed after a long and passionate kiss was terminated only by lack of oxygen. “It has been light years since I’ve seen you.”
“Likewise. I see you got my message.”
“When that creature mentioned that name on the news broadcast I knew you were involved somehow. I had no way of knowing you were inside, which was why we came with the guns.”
“Well, you are here now and that is what counts, and I love your outfit,” I looked at James’s fur shorts, “and James’s as well. I see you go to the same tailor.”
“They took all our clothes away,” James said, in the same rough voice. I looked at him more closely.
“Does that scar on your throat have anything to do with the way you talk?” I asked.
“You bet. I got it when we escaped. But the alien that gave it to me, that’s where we got the fur we’re wearing.
“That’s my boy. Bolivar, crack a bottle of champagne out of our survival kit, if you please. We shall celebrate this reunion while your mother explains just what has happened since we saw her last.”
“Quite simple,” she said, wrinkling her nose delightfully at the bubbles. “We were engulfed by one of their battleships—I’m sure you saw that happen.”
“One of the worst moments of my life!” I moaned.
“Poor darling. As you can imagine we felt about the same way. We fired all the guns but the chamber is lined with collapsium and it did no good. Then we held our fire to get the aliens when they came to get us, but that was no good either. The ceiling of the chamber came down and crushed the ship and we had to get out. That was when they disarmed us. They thought. I remembered that little business you did on Burada with the poisoned fingernails and we did the same here. Even our toenails, so when they took our boots away it helped us. So we fought until our guns were empty, were grabbed, taken to a prison or a torture chamber—we didn’t stay long enough to find out—then we polished off our captors and got away.”
“Wonderful! But that was endless days ago. How have you managed since?”
“Very well, thank you, with the aid of Cill Airne here.”
She waved her hand as she said this and five men jumped in from the other room and waved their weapons at me. It was disconcerting yet I stood firm seeing that Angelina was unmoved by their display. They had pallid skins and long black hair. Their clothing, if it could be called that, was made of bits and pieces of alien skin held together by scraps of wire. Their axes and swords looked crude-but serviceable and sharp.
“Estas granda plezuro renkonti vin,” I said, but they were unmoved. “If they don’t speak Esperanto what do they talk?” I asked Angelina.
“Their own language of which I have learned a few words. Do gheobhair gan dearmad taisce gach seoid,” she added. They nodded in agreement at this, clattered their weapons and emitted shrill war cries.
“You made quite a hit with them,” I said.
“I told them that you were my husband, the leader of our tribe, and you had come here to destroy the enemy and lead them to victory.”
“True, true,” I said, clasping my hands and shaking them over my bead while they cheered again. “Bolivar, break out the cheap booze for our allies while your mom tells me just what the hell is going on here.”
Angelina sipped at her champagne and frowned delicately. “I’m not sure of all the details,” she said. “The language barrier and all that. But the Cill Airne appear to be the original inhabitants of this planet, or rather settlers. They’re human enough, undoubtedly a colony cut off during the Breakdown. How or why they came this far from the other settled worlds we may never know. Anyway, they had a good thing going here until the aliens arrived. It was hatred at first sight. The aliens invaded and they fought back, and are apparently still fighting back. The aliens did everything they could do to wipe them out, destroying the surface of this planet and covering it, bit by bit, with metal. It didn’t work. The humans penetrated the alien buildings and have lived ever since hidden in the walls and foundations.”
“Stainless steel rats!” I cried. “My sympathy goes out to them.”
“I thought it might. So after James and I escaped and were running down a corridor, not really sure where we were going, this little door opened in the floor and they popped out and waved us inside. That’s when the last alien guard jumped us and James dispatched him. The Cill Airne appreciated this and skinned him for us. Perhaps we couldn’t talk their language, but mayhem speaks louder than words. And that’s really about all that happened to us. We have been lurking around in wainscottings and putting together a plan to capture one of their spacers. And to free the admirals.”
“You know where they are?”
“Of course. And not too far away from here.”
“Then we need a plan. And I need a good night’s rest. Why don’t we sleep on it and do battle in the mom?”
“Because there is no time like the present and besides, I know what you have on your mind. Into battle!”
I sighed. “Agreed. What do we do next?”
That was decided when the door burst open and my paramour Gar-Baj came charging in. He must have had love on his mind, if the pink nighty he was wearing meant anything, so he was a little off his guard.
“Jeem, my sweet—why do you stand there unmoving with your neck open? Awwrrk!”
He added this last when the first sword got him in the hams. There was a brief battle, which he lost quite quickly, though not quickly enough. He was not completely in the room when the fight started and when his tail was cut off, the last bit, equipped undoubtedly with a rudimentary brain of its own, went slithering back down the corridor and out of sight.
“We had better make tracks,” I said.
“To the escape tunnel,” Angelina cried.
“Is it big enough for my alien disguise?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then hold all activity for a few moments while I think,” I said, then thought. Quickly. “I have it. Angelina—do you know your way around this monsters’ maze?”
“I do indeed.”
“Wonderful. Bolivar, it’s your chance to walk. Out of the robot and let your mother get in. Brief her on the controls and then go with the others. We’ll meet you at whatever place it is you have been staying.”
“How considerate,” Angelina beamed. “My feet were getting tired. James, show your brother the way and we’ll join you later. Better take along some chops from this creature you have just butchered since we have a few more coming to dinner.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“The admirals. We can free them with all this weaponry you have imported and I will lead them to safety in the subterranean ways.”
There was instant agreement on the plan. In the diGriz family we are used to making up our minds rather quickly, while the Cill Airne had learned to do the same in their constant war against the enemy. Some moldering floor coverings were thrown back to reveal a trapdoor that was levered up. I was beginning to think that the aliens were not very bright if they let this sort of thing happen under their very noses, or smelling tentacles or whatever. Bolivar and James dropped into the opening followed by our allies who exited with many shouts of Scadan, Scadan!
“It’s really quite cozy in here,” Angelina said, slipping into place in the robot. “Is there a closed-circuit radio for communication?”
“There is. Circuit thirteen there, a switch near your right hand.”
“I’ve found it,” she said, then her voice spoke into my ear. “You had better lead the way and I’ll give you instructions as we go.”
“Your slightest wish sends me forth.”
I stomped out into the corridor with the robot scuttling after. The severed section of tail had vanished. I kicked and buckled the metal door until it was jammed into its frame to confuse the pursuit as much as possible, then led the way down the metal corridor.
It was a long, and frankly boring, trip through the metallic city. The aliens did not appear to be good planners and the constructions themselves seemed to have just been added on with little reference to what had come before. One minute we would be walking down a rusty, riveted corridor with a sagging ceiling—and the next would be crossing a mesh-metal field under the open sky. Sometimes the walkways were used as watercourses as well and I would thrash along at great speed propelled by my wildly waving tail. The robot was too heavy for this and could only roll along the bottom. We passed through warehouses, factories—have you ever seen a thousand things like decaying alligators all working drill presses at once?--dormitories, and other locales that defy description. And everywhere were the loathies, chattering away in Esperanto and giving me a big wave as I passed. Very nice. I waved back and muttered curses inside the head.
“I’m getting a little tired of this,” I confided to Angelina on our closed circuit.
“Courage, my brave, we are almost there. Just a few kilometers more.”
A barred gate did eventually appear ahead, guarded by spear-bearing tooth-rattling creatures who began a great noise when I appeared. They banged their spears on the floor and shouted and chomped so strongly that bits of splintered teeth flew in all directions.
“Jeem, Jeem!” they cried. And “Geshtunken forever! Welcome to our noble cause!” They were obviously all fans of the evening news broadcast and had caught my shtick. I raised my claws and waited until the tumult died.
“Thank you, thank you,” I cried. “It is my great pleasure to serve beside nauseating creatures like yourselves, spawn of some loathsome world far out among the decaying stars.” They were prone to flattery and cried aloud for more. “During my brief time here I have seen things that creep, crawl, wriggle and flop, but I must say that you are the creepiest, crawlingest, wriggliest and biggest flop I have met yet.” Time out for hoarse shouts of repulsive joy, then I got down to business. “We on Geshtunken have seen only one shipload of pallid-crunchies which we instantly butchered by reflex. I understand you have a whole satellite load of them here. Is that true?”
“It is indeed, Jeem the Sleepery,” one of them spattered. I saw now that it had gold comets screwed into the sides of its head, undoubtedly denoting high rank of some kind. I addressed my questions in its direction.
“That is good news indeed. Are they in here?”
“Indeed they are.”
“You don’t have an old damaged one you don’t need anymore for me to disembowel or eat or something?”
“Would that I could to please one as cute as yourself, but, alas, no. All of them are needed for information purposes. And after that the roster is already full, highest rank first, with volunteer disembowelers.”
“Well, too bad. Is there any chance I can get a peep at them? Know your enemy and all that.”
“Just from here. No one is allowed closer without a pass. Just slip an eyeball or two through the bars and you’ll see them over there.”
One of my fake eyeballs on stalks did have a TV pickup in it and I slithered it through and turned up the magnification. Sure enough, there they were. And a scruffy lot too. They shuffled in little circles or lay on the deck, gray-bearded and gaunt, the rags of their uniforms hanging from them. They may have been admirals but I was still sorry for them. Even admirals were human once. They would be freed!
“Thanks indeed,” I said snaking back my eyeballs. “Most kind and I’ll remember you in my report to the War Council.”
I waved as we retreated and they all waved back and with all those flying tentacles it looked like an explosion in the octopus works.
“I am depressed,” I confided to my robot-wife as we rounded the next bend. “No way to get into them that way.”
“Be of good cheer,” she radioed. “And let’s try the next stairwell. If there is a level below this one then we can penetrate from beneath.”
“My genius,” I said, and clattered my claws lovingly on her metallic shoulder. “That is just what we shall do. And I believe that dead ahead is just what we are looking for. But how will we know when we are under the right spot?”
“We will know because I planted a sonic transponder while you were making your political speech to those slugs.”
“Of course! You had this in mind all the time. If it were anyone else I would be green with jealousy. But I writhe with pleasure at the ingenuity of my little wife.”
“Well, if you do, try not to phrase the praise in such male chauvinist pig terms. Women are as good as men; usually better.”
“I stand chastised, robot mine. Lead the way and I shall follow.”
We clattered and bumped down a slime-covered stairway into total darkness. Unused—even better. Angelina switched on some spotlights and we saw a massive metal door ahead that sealed off the foot of the stairs.
“Shall I bum it down?” she asked, poking her head out of the robot for a bit of air.
“No. I’m suspicious. Try out your detectors and see if there is any electronic life beneath the surface.”
“Plenty,” she said, sweeping it carefully. “A dozen alarm circuits at least. Shall I neutralize them?”
“Not worth the effort. Scan that wall there. If it’s clear we’ll go in around the door.”
We did. These aliens really were simpleminded. The burned-open wall led to a storeroom and the wall beyond this opened into the chamber the bugged door was supposed to guard. Easy enough to do for even an amateur cracksman and my opinion of the enemy IQ dropped a few more points.
“So this is why they didn’t want anyone cracking in here!” Angelina said, flashing her spotlight around.
“The town treasure,” I yummed. “We must come back and dip into it when we get a chance.”
Mountains of money stretched away in all directions, loot of a hundred worlds. Gold and platinum bars, cut diamonds, coins and notes of a hundred different kinds, money enough to build a bank out of, much less open one. My larcenous instincts were overwhelmed and I kicked open great bags of bullion with my claws and wallowed in the wampum.
“I know that relaxed you,” Angelina said indulgently. “But should we not get on with our rescue operation?”
“Of course. Lead on. I am indeed refreshed.”
She beeped her subsonic beeper and followed the pointing arrow. It led us through the treasure hoard and, after burning down a few more doors and walls, we reached the indicated spot.
“We’re right under a transponder,” Angelina said.
“Good.” I took a careful sight. “Then the barred gate will be here, and the prisoners just about here.” I paced off the distance carefully. “There were some chairs and debris right here, so if we approach from this spot we should be concealed when we come up. Is your drill ready?”
“Whirring and humming.”
“Then that’s the spot. Go.”
The drill arm extended and began grinding into the rusty ceiling. When the drill note changed Angelina switched off all the lights and drilled even slower in the darkness. This time when she dropped the drill a ray of light shone down through the hole. We waited silently-but there was no alarm.
“Let me get one of my eyes through the hole,” I said.
By balancing on tiptail and tiptoe I got my body up high enough to extend an eye stalk up through the opening. I gave it a 360-degree scan, then withdrew it.
“Really great. Junk all around, none of the admirals looking in our direction and the guards are out of sight. Give me the molecular unbinder and stand back.”
I climbed out of the alien outfit and up onto its shoulders where I could easily reach the ceiling. The molecular unbinder is a neat little tool that reduces the binding energy between molecules so that they turn to monatomic powder and slough away. I ran it in a big circle, trying not to sneeze as the fine dust rained down, then grabbed the metal disc as I closed the circle. After handing this down to Angelina I put a wary head up through the opening and looked around. All was well. An admiral with an iron jaw and a glass eye was sitting nearby, the picture of dejection. I decided on a little morale raising.
“Psst, Admiral,” I hissed, and he turned my way. His good eye widened and his jutting jaw sank in an impressive manner as he spotted my disembodied head. “Don’t say a word out loud—but I am here to rescue you all. Understand? Just nod your head.”
So much for trusting admirals. Not only didn’t he nod his head, but he jumped to his feet and shouted at the top of his voice.
“Guards! Help! We’re being rescued!”
I didn’t really expect much gratitude, particularly from an officer, but this was ridiculous. To traverse thousands of light years of space, through dangers too numerous to mention, to suffer the loving embraces of Gar-Baj, all of this to rescue some motheaten admirals, one of whom instantly tried to turn me in to the guards. It was just too much.
Not that I hoped for anything much better. You don’t live to be a gray-whiskered stainless steel rat without being suspicious at all times. My needle gun was ready, since I was alert for trouble from the guards, but I was also certainly prepared to get some from the prisoners as well. I flicked the control switch from “poison” to “sleep”—which took an effort of will, let me tell you—and pinged a steel needle into the side of the admiral’s neck. He slumped nicely, dropping toward me with arms outstretched as though for one last grab at his savior.
I froze, motionless, when I saw what was revealed on those skinny wrists.
“What’s happening?” Angelina whispered from below.
“Nothing good,” I hissed. “Absolute silence now.”
With a stealthy motion I lowered my head until just my eyes were above the rim of the opening, still concealed by the broken chairs, empty ration boxes and other debris. Had the guards heard the disturbance? certainly the other prisoners had. Two octogenerian officers tottered up and looked at the sprawled form of their comrade.
“What’s wrong? Fit of some kind?” one of them asked. “Did you hear what he shouted?”
“Not really. I had my hearing aid turned off to save the battery. Something about Mards Phelp, Meer Seen Plescu.”
“Doesn’t make sense. Perhaps it means something in his native language?”
“Nope. Old Schimash is from Deshnik and that doesn’t mean a thing in Deshnikian.”
“Roll him over and see if he’s still breathing.”
They did and I was watching closely and nodded approvingly when my needle dropped from Old Schimsah’s neck when it would be a couple of hours at least before he came to and told them what had happened. That was all the time I needed. Plans were already forming in my head.
Dropping back down, I grabbed the disc of metal so recently removed, smeared the edge with lepak glue—stronger than welding—and pushed it back up into place. There was a crunching sound as the glue set and the ceiling, not to mention the floor above, was solid again. Then I clambered back down and sighed heavily.
“Angelina, would you be so kind as to turn on some of your lights and to crack out a bottle of my best whiskey.”
There was light, and a sloshing glass, and patient Angelina waited until it had been lowered from my lips before she spoke.
“Isn’t it time you confided in your wife just what the hell is going on?”
“Pardon me, light of my life, I just had a bad moment there.” I drained the glass and forced a smile. “It started when I whispered to the nearest admiral. One look at me and he called the guards. So I shot him.”
“One less to rescue,” she said with satisfaction.
“Not quite. I used a sleeping needle. No one heard what he said so I slipped away and the opening is sealed, but that is not what is bothering me.”
“I know you haven’t been drinking, but you don’t sound too lucid.”
“Sorry. It was the admiral. When he dropped over I saw his wrists. There were red marks like scars around both of them.”
“So?” she asked in obvious puzzlement—then her face went suddenly pale. “No, it couldn’t possibly be?”
I nodded slowly, finding it impossible to smile. “The gray men. I could recognize their handiwork anywhere.”
The gray men. Just thinking of them sent a chill down my back—a back, I must add, that is not chill-prone very often. While I am strong and brave and stand up to the physical batterings of life quite well, I, like all of us, find it hard to resist direct assaults on my gray matter. The brain has no defenses once the inputs of the body have been bypassed. Plug an electrode into the pleasure center of an experimental animal’s brain and it keeps pushing the button that supplies the electric fix until it dies of hunger or thirst. Dies happily.
Some years ago, while involved in straightening out a little matter of interplanetary invasion, I had been cast in the role of experimental animal. I had been captured and secured-and had seen both of my hands cut off at the wrists. Then had lost consciousness and, when I came to, had seen the hands apparently sewn back on. With scars just like those the admiral had been sporting.
But my hands had never been cut off. The scene had been imprinted directly into my brain. Yet for me it had happened, along with a number of other loathsome things which are better forgotten.
“The gray men must be here,” I said. “Working with the aliens. No wonder the admirals are cooperating. Being firmly structured in the physical world of commands and obedience, they are perfect targets for brain stomping.”
“You must be right—but how is it possible? The aliens hate all humans and certainly wouldn’t work with the gray men. Nasty as they are, they are still human.”
As soon as she said it that way I saw the answer clearly. I smiled and embraced her and kissed her, which we both enjoyed, then held her at arm’s length since she was a great distraction to clear thought.
“Now hear this, my love. I think I see a way out of this entire mess. All of the details aren’t clear—but I know what you must do. Could you bring the boys and a crowd of those Cill Aime back here? Go up through the floor, shoot the guards, put the admirals to sleep, then carry them away?”
“I could arrange that, but it would be a little dangerous. How would we get them clear?”
“That’s what I will take care of. If I had this entire planet in a turmoil, no one knowing what was happening next or who to take orders from or anything—would that make the job easier?”
“It would certainly simplify things. What do you plan to do?”
“If I told you you might say that it was too dangerous and would forbid me. Let me say only that it must be done and that I am the only one to do it. I am off in my alien disguise and you have two hours to assemble the troops. As soon as things start falling apart make your move. Get them all to some safe spot, preferably near the spacedrome. I’ll get back to my sleeping quarters as soon as I can. Have a guide waiting there for me. But make sure that he knows that he is to wait no more than one hour for me to show up. What I have to do will be done by that time and I will get back. There should be no problems. But if there is and I’m not there he is to report right back to you. I can take care of myself as you know. And we can’t jeopardize everything by waiting for one person. When the guide reports back, with or without me, you go. Grab a spaceship then at the height of the confusion and leave this place.”
“And about time too. I’ll expect you back.” She kissed me but did not look happy. “You’re not going to tell me what you are going to do?”
“No. If I told you I would have to listen too and then I might not do it. But it does involve three things. Finding the gray men, turning them over to our alien friends—then getting out of it myself.”
“Well, you do that. But don’t skip any of the steps—particularly the last one.”
We climbed into our various disguises and departed quickly before we changed our minds. Angelina clattered off with knowledgeable tread and I thudded off in the opposite direction. I thought I knew the way but must have made a wrong turning. Looking for a shortcut back to the upper levels, I managed to fall through a rusted plate in the decking into what must have been a covered-over lake or underground reservoir. In any case I thrashed on for quite a while in the darkness, my course lit only by my glowing eyes, until I found the far end. There was no obvious way out but I settled that by dropping a grenade from my cloaca and flicking it against the wall with a twitch of my tail. It crumpled nicely and I crawled through the smoky opening back into the light of day. Just in time to see an officer with a patrol of nasties trotting up to see what was the trouble.
“Help, oh help, please,” I moaned, staggering in small circles with my claws pressed to my forebead. Thankfully, the officer was also a TV-news watcher.
“Sweet Sleepery—what is bothering you?” it cried aloud emotionally, showing me about five thousand rotten fangs and a meter or two of damp purple throat.
“Treachery! Treachery in our midst,” I cried. “Send a message to your CO to order an emergency meeting of the War Council—then take me there at once.”
It was done instantly, and they took me at my word by wrapping a thousand sucker-tipped tentacles around me and rushing me off my feet. This made the trip easier, and saved my batteries, and I was refreshed and relaxed when they finally dropped me at the door to the conference room.
“You are all repugnant lads, and I shall never forget you,” I shouted. They cheered and slapped their suckers against the deck with wet shlurping sounds and I galloped into the conference.
“Treason, treachery, betrayal?” I cried.
“Take your seat and make your statement in the proper form after the meeting is correctly opened,” the secretary said. But a thing like a purple whale with terminal hemorrhoids was more sympathetic.
“Gentle Jeem, you seem disturbed. We have heard that there has been mayhem in your quarters, and all we can find of the noble Gar-Baj is his tail which doesn’t say very much. Can you elucidate?”
“I can—and will, if the secretary will let me.”
“Ohh, get on with it then,” the secretary grumbled ungraciously, looking more and more like a squashed black frog with every passing moment. “Meeting called to order, Sleepery Jeem speaking re certain grave charges.”
“It’s like this,” I explained to the attentive War Council. “We of Geshtunken have certain rare abilities—in addition to being inordinately sexy, I mean.” They appreciated this last and there was a lot of squishy banging on the furniture and wet smacking sounds. “Thank you, and the same to you. Now one thing we can do is smell very good—yes, I know, we smell good too, sit down, boy, you’re in the way. As I was saying, my keen sense of smell led me to believe that there was something not strictly kosher about this planet. I sniffed out humans!”
Through the cries of shocked horror I heard shouts of “Cill Airne!” and I acknowledged them with a nod of my head.
“No, not the Cill Airne, the natives of this planet. I detected their traces at once, but they are like mouse droppings and I know the extermination corps is surely taking good care of them. No, I mean humans right here in our midst! We have been penetrated!”
That rocked them back and I let them shout and writhe a bit while I sharpened my claws with a file. Then I raised my paws for silence and there it was in an instant. Every eye, large, small, stalked, green, red or soggy, was on me. I walked slowly forward.
“Yes. They are among us. Humans. Doing their best to sabotage our lovely war of extermination. And I am going to reveal one to you—right now!”
My legs’ motors hummed and my power plant grew warm as I sprang into the air with a mighty leap. Sailing in an arc through the air, twenty meters or more. Graceful too. Landing with a horrible crunch that set my shock absorbers groaning. Dropping down crash onto the secretary’s desk which crashed nicely. Paws extended so that my claws sank through the secretary’s damp black hide. Picking him up and waving him about as he writhed and shouted.
“You’re mad. Let me down! I’m no more human than you are!”
That was what made my mind up. Up until this moment it had all been guesswork. The gray men were here, they must be disguised, and the only four-limbed creature other than myself was the secretary. In the position of power to run things, the only really organized alien I had yet encountered. But it was still just guesswork until he had spoken. Roaring with victory I hooked a recently sharpened claw into the front of his throat.
Dark liquid spurted out and he screamed hoarsely.
I gulped and almost hesitated. Was I wrong? Was I going to dismember the secretary of the War Council right in front of the council itself? I had a feeling they would not take that too well. No! It was for only a microsecond that I hesitated—then I tore on. I had to be right. I ripped out his throat, delicately sliced all around his neck—then tore his head off.
There was a shocked silence as the head bounced and squashed on the floor. Then a gasp from all sides.
Inside the first head there was another head. A scowling human head. The secretary was a gray man.
While the council was shocked into immobility the gray man was not. He pulled a gun from a gill slit and leveled it at me. Which of course I had been expecting and I brushed it aside. I was not as quick when be grabbed out a microphone from his other gill and began shouting into it in a strange language.
I wasn’t as fast because this was just what I wanted him to do. I gave him more than enough time to get out the message before I grabbed away the microphone. Then he kicked out and got me in the stomach and I folded, gasping and unmoving as he vanished through a trapdoor in the floor.
Recovering quickly I waved away all offers of aid.
“Care not for me,” I croaked, “for the blow was mortal. Avenge me! Send out the alarm to grab all the other black ploppies like the secretary. Let none escape! Go now!”
They went, and I bad to roll aside before I was trampled in the rush. Then I thrashed and expired, in case anyone was watching, and peeked through one half-closed eyelid until they were all gone.
Only then did I blow open the locked trapdoor and follow the gray man.
How could I follow him? it might be asked, and I will be happy to answer. During the struggle I had stuck a little neutrino generator into his artificial hide, that is how. A zippy neutrino can pass, undeflected and unstopped, through the entire mass of a planet. The metal of this city’s construction would surely not interfere with them in the slightest. Need I add that I had a directional neutrino detector built into my snout? I never go on a mission without a few simple preparations.
The illuminated needle pointed that way, and down. I went that way, and down at the first stairwell, because I wanted to find out just what the gray men were doing on this planet. My fleeing secretary would lead me to their lair.
He did one better than that. He led me to their ship.
When I saw light ahead I treaded more slowly, then peered from the darkness of the tunnel at a great domed chamber. In the center was a dark-gray spacer. While from all sides the gray men were appearing. Some running, undisguised, others still hopping and splotching in their alien garb. Rats leaving a sinking ship. All my doing. The confusion across the planet would now be at its height-and the admirals would be rescued. All working according to plan.
Though I hadn’t thought to find their ship. From the look of it they were making a hasty withdrawal, and this was too good an opportunity to miss. How could they be traced? There were machines that could be attached to make following the ship easy but, just for a change, I didn’t have one on me. An oversight. Particularly since the smallest weighed about ninety kilos. So what could I do?
My mind was made up for me when the metal net dropped and they swarmed all over me.
I was fighting, and doing well, when someone started on my head with a metal bar. I couldn’t move it away and the alien head got crushed in.
Mine, too, an instant later.
I woke up, gasping for air, muffled, trapped, blind. With the super headache of all time. Where I was, what had happened—I had no idea. I thrashed and writhed ineffectually until it made my head hurt more and I had to stop.
Little by little I dropped the mad-panic approach and tried to figure out what the situation was. First off, I wasn’t really choking to death; it was just the soft fabric over my head that had made me feel that way. If I lifted my face and turned it I could breathe all right.
So what bad happened? Through the waves of skull pain, memory finally returned. The gray men! They had trapped me in a net, then beat on my head until I had stopped moving. After that, blackout. What after that? Where did they have me?
It was only when I had tiptoed this far down memory lane that I realized where I was. I had been bashed and caught in my alien disguise. Apparently I was still bashed and caught in it. My arms were secured inside the mechanical arms, but by careful wriggling-and ignoring the effect this had on my head—I managed to get my right arm free and back inside the suit. With this I pulled the folds of plastic from in front of my face and realized that my head had slipped down inside the neck of the disguise. By wriggling and pushing even more I got my head further up near the optic unit and looked out at a metal floor. Very revealing. I tried moving my other arm and my legs but they twitched, nothing more. It was all very confusing and I was thirsty and sore and the aching head was still there.
Some bit of keen foresight had caused me to install a small spare tank next to the main water one. I found the nozzle for the water, drank all I needed, then threw the switch with my tongue that changed the liquid supply over to life-sustaining 110 proof whiskey. This woke me up quickly enough and, if it did nothing for the hammers in my head, it at least enabled me to ignore them a bit more easily. If I couldn’t move very much, at least I should be able to manipulate the eye controls. With some difficulty I got the one out on the stalk functioning and turned it around in a circle.
Interesting indeed. I very quickly saw that the reason I could not move was because heavy chains secured me solidly to the steel floor. They had been welded into place so there was little chance of escape. The room I was in was small and featureless, except for the rust on the metal and the fact that the ceiling was curved, concave. This reminded me of something and another suck at the whiskey unearthed the fact.
Spaceship. I was inside a spaceship. The spaceship I had seen just before the lights went out. The gray men’s ship and, undoubtedly, no longer grounded but in space and on the way somewhere. I had a good idea just where but I did not want to think about that depressing thought just yet. There was an unsolved question that had to be answered first. Why had they secured me inside my disguise?
“Because, dummy, they didn’t know it was a disguise!” I shouted. And instantly regretted it since my head echoed like a drum.
But it had to be true. The alien outfit was a good one designed to bear the closest inspection. They had jumped me and knocked me out. At no time had they any clue that I was other than what I pretended to be—just one more alien ugly. And they must have been in a big hurry; the crude welds that held the chain showed that. They had to leave the war planet before a couple of million slimy monsters dropped on them and ate them. Pack me aboard, weld me into place, blast off for an unknown destination, then take care of me later.
“Whoopee!” I shouted in the tiniest whisper. Then went to work to get out of the disguise.
It was a hard wriggle but I made it, crawling out through the open neck like a newborn moth from a chrysalis. I stretched and cracked my joints and felt much better. Better still when I had abstracted my needle gun from the disguise. Now, standing on the metal deck, I could feel the slight vibration of the drive. We were in space and going somewhere. Free of my chains, with a sturdy gun in my hand, I could face the fact I had ignored earlier. The odds were at least ten to one that we were going home. To the planet of the gray men.
That was not a very nice prospect—but the odds were also good that I could do something about it. Now, well before we landed and before someone came to see how I was doing. They would be tired, bashed about after their escape, possibly off guard. What I had to do must be done soonest. Which was fine by me. I switched the needle gun from “explosive” to “poison”—then on to “sleep.” While I was sure that the gray men deserved killing a thousand times over I just could not do it in cold blood. No executioner I. Knocking them out would do just as well for now. If I captured the ship I could chain them all and lock them up. If I didn’t win, the number of enemies remaining would make little difference.
“Onward, Slippery Jim diGriz, savior of mankind,” I said to cheer myself up. Then was instantly depressed again when I tried the handle on the small door and found it securely locked. “Thermite, of course, how could I be so forgetful,” I chided, and went back to the alien outfit. The dispenser still worked and a grenade plopped out and dropped to the deck. Then it was simply a matter of activating the sticky molecules on the end, pressing it to the lock—and setting it off. It burned nicely, filling the small room with a ruddy glow and plenty of dense smoke. Which would have started me coughing if I had not grabbed my adam’s apple and squeezed. Gasping, gurgling and turning purple I kicked the still glowing door with my boot and it swung open. I dived right after it, through and rolled and fell flat and poked the gun about in all directions. Nothing. An empty corridor, dimly lit. I permitted myself a single strangled cough which made me feel much better. Then I used the gun barrel to push the door shut again. Only a small warping of the lock on the outside revealed anything wrong. And a closed door might give me the extra moments I needed.
Which way? There were numbers stenciled on the doors and, if this were like a normal spacer, they would get lower in the direction of the bow and the control compartment. I went that way, toward the safety door in the bulkhead which opened as a man stepped through. A gray man. He looked up at me, eyes wide and mouth wider as he started to call out. My needle got him in the throat and he folded nicely. I crouched, ready, but the corridor beyond was empty. So far so good.
Pulling him through and closing the door again took but a moment. Now where should I stow the body? While puzzling over this one I quietly opened the nearest door and peeked into an even more dimly lit sleeping cabin. And that’s just what they were doing, a good dozen of the gray men, snoring away like troopers. They slept even more soundly after I had shot them. I dragged the original sleeping beauty in from the corridor and dumped him on a pile of discarded black alien disguises.
“Rest nice,” I told them as I shut the door. “You have had a long day, which is going to be even longer before I get you all back for trial.”
I could not have been unconscious very long. The discarded disguises and snoring men indicated that we had not been spaceborne for more than a few hours. There would be a crew manning the ship and the rest would be pounding the pillow. Should I try and find them all and put them into a sounder sleep? No, too dangerous, since there was no way of knowing how many there were aboard. And I could be surprised at any time and the alarm sounded. Far better to take the control room as soon as I could. Seal it off from the rest of the ship, then head for the nearest League station and call for help. If I could let them know where I was I could always immobilize the ship and hold out until the cavalry arrived. Great idea. Put it to work.
Gun ready, I tramped the corridors to the control end of the ship. There was a door labeled “communications” and I opened it and said good night to the man at the companel. He slumped and slept. Then the last door was before me. I took a deep breath. My flanks and rear were secured. The end of the job was in front of me. I let the breath out slowly, then opened the door.
The last thing I wanted was a shoot-out since the odds certainly were not in my favor. I stepped in and closed the door and locked it behind me before I counted the stations. Four of them-and all four occupied. Two necks were visible and I needed them and their owners relaxed. I stepped forward silently. The man in the flight engineer’s position looked around and caught a needle for his trouble. One remaining. The commander. I didn’t want to needle him since I wanted some conversation. Slipping the gun into my belt I stepped forward on tiptoe and reached for his neck.
He turned at the last moment—warned by something—but he was a little too late. I got the grip and my thumbs dug deep. His eyeballs bulged quite charmingly as he thrashed and kicked about for some seconds before going limp.
“Score sixteen to one for the good guys!” I cackled with pleasure, then did a little war dance around the room. “But finish the job, you daring devil, before celebrating too much.”
I was right, and I usually gave myself good advice. A drawer in the engineer’s desk yielded up a strong roll of wire which I used to secure the commander’s wrists and ankles, then added some more turns to tie his wrists to a pipe far from any controls. The other three men I laid out in a neat row beside him, before I tapped some questions into the computer.
It was a nice computer that worked hard to be cooperative. First it gave me our course and destination, which I memorized, and wrote down inside my wrist in case I forgot. If this destination was what I thought it was, then it had to be the home planet of these nasties. The Special Corps would be eager to know just where it was. They had a lot coming to them and I looked forward to helping deliver it. Then I asked for League bases, found the nearest, punched for a course, set it in and relaxed.
“Two hours, Jim, two short hours. Then the warpdrive cuts out and we will be within radio distance of the base. One brief radio message and that is the end of the gray men. Whoopee and chortle, chortle!”
Something itched my neck, someone looking at me, and I turned and saw that the commander was awake and glowering in my direction.
“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Or should I repeat it?”
“I heard you,” he said, in a drab, dull voice. Empty of emotion.
“That’s good. My name is Jim diGriz.” He remained silent. “Come, come, your name. Or do I have to look at your dogtags?”
“I am Kome. Your name is known to us. You have interfered with us before. We will kill you.”
“How nice to know that my reputation goes before me. But don’t you think your threat has an empty ring?”
“In what manner did you discover our presence?” Kome asked, ignoring my question.
“If you really want to know, you gave yourselves away. You people may be nasty but you have little imagination. The wrist-chopping-off routine works well—I should know—so you keep on using it. I saw the marks on one of the admirals’ wrists.”
“You did this alone?”
Who was questioning whom? But I might as well be polite considering our positions. “If you must know I am all alone now. But in a few hours the League will be onto you. There were four of us back there with the goppies. All of whom I am sure have escaped now, along with the admirals you treated so badly. They will report what has happened so you will have a nice reception committee waiting when you arrive. You and your people have not been very nice.”
“You are telling the truth?”
I lost my temper at this and treated him to some words he had never heard before. I hope.
“Kome, my friend, you are making me lose my temper. I have no reason to lie to you since I hold all the cards. Now if you will shut up and stop asking me questions I will ask you some of my own because there are things I would dearly like to know. Ready?”
“I think not.”
I looked up startled, because he bad raised his voice for the first time. Not in a shout, there was no anger or feelings in the words. He just spoke loudly, commandingly.
“This farce is at an end. We have found out what we need to know. You may all come in now.”
It was very much like a nightmare come alive. The door opened and gray men began to shuffle in slowly. I shot them but they kept coming. And the three officers I had placed on the floor stood up and came toward me as well. I emptied the gun, threw it at them and tried to run.
They grabbed me.
Good as I am at dirty fighting, hand-to-hand combat and general closeup nastiness, there is a limit. The limit being an apparently inexhaustible supply of the enemy. To make matters worse they really weren’t very good fighters. About all they did was grapple. It was enough. I knocked back the first two, slugged the next few, chopped a couple more-and they kept on coming. And, frankly, I was beginning to get tired. In the end they simply swarmed over me and overwhelmed me and that was that. Shackles were clicked into place around my wrists and ankles and I was tossed onto the control room floor. The sound led the battered away and the officers went back to their positions at the controls. Changing my course back to the original one, I noted with dark depression. When he had done this, Kome turned his chair about to face me.
“You tricked me,” I said. Not a bright remark but something that might get the conversation rolling.
“Of course.”
Laconic was the name of the game with the gray men. Never use a word when none would do. I pressed on, mainly out of a feeling of slight hysteria since I knew I was trapped and trapped well.
“You wouldn’t mind telling me why? If you can spare the time, that is.”
“I thought it would be obvious. We could of course use our normal mind control techniques on you, and this is what we originally planned to do. But we needed answers to some important questions at once. We have worked among the aliens for years and they have suspected nothing. We needed to know how you had discovered our presence. We of course have psychcontrol techniques for all races. It was when we were preparing brain attachments that we discovered your real identity. Metal skulls do not exist in nature. Your disguise was revealed. Your face resembled very much that of someone we have been searching for for many years. That was when I determined to use this ruse. If you were the man we were looking for we knew that your ego would not permit you to think that you had been tricked.”
“Your mother never met your father,” I sneered. A feeble response but the best I could do at the moment. Because I knew that he was right. I had been fooled right down the line.
“I knew that if you thought you had the upper hand you would answer questions that might take days to get out of you by other means. And we needed some instant answers. So we arranged the scene you played so well. Your hand weapon was charged with sterile needles. Everyone acted his role well. You best of all.”
“I bet you think you’re smart” was all I could come up with since, at that moment, I was feeling very defeated.
“I know I am. I have been organizing our field operations for many years—and they have only failed twice. You were to blame each time. Now that you have been captured your interference is at an end.” He signaled to two of his men, who picked me up. “Lock him away until we land. I do not wish to speak with him any longer.”
Low? Up until that moment I had never known what low was. Depressed, dispirited, out-thought, outfought, it was enough to bring out the suicidal in anyone. Except me, of course. Where there is life there is hope. Eureka! I was even more depressed after this minor surge of rebellion because I knew this time there was just no hope at all.
These people were too efficient. They hung my wristcuffs over a hook high on the wall and cut away my clothes, boots, everything, in a calmly depressing way. Then they cleaned me out, efficiently, operating like a vacuum cleaner klyster. All of the obvious devices, picklocks, grenades, blades, saws, were stripped from me first. Then they went over me again slowly with fluoroscopes and metal detectors removing, painfully, those other devices that were better hidden. They even X-rayed my jaws and removed a few teeth that had never been discovered before. When they were done I was pounds lighter and as bereft of helpful gadgetry as a newborn babe. It was all quite humiliating. Particularly when they took everything away and just left me lying there, naked, on the cold deck.
Which, I discovered, was getting colder all the time. When moisture began to condense on it I found myself growing blue and chattering with the chill. I began to howl and thrash about. This warmed me up a bit and eventually led to one of the gray men poking his head in the door.
“I am freezing to death!” I clattered through trembling teeth at him. “You are deliberately chilling the air to torture me.”
“No,” he answered with utmost blandness. “That is not one of our tortures. This ship was warmed when the ports were open and is now returning to normal temperature. You are weak.”
“I am freezing to death. Maybe you chilly chaps from your icebox world can live at this temperature—but I can’t. So give me some clothes or kill me quickly now.”
I think I half meant it. There really did seem to be little left to live for at this point. He thought about it for a bit, then exited. But returned fairly soon with four helpers and a padded coverall. They took off the fetters and dressed me. I made no protests while this was happening because one of them held a fully charged pistol, the muzzle of which he put directly into my mouth. His finger was bent, the trigger half pulled. I knew he meant it. I did not move or twitch while I was being dressed and the heavy boots slipped over my feet. The gun stayed there until the locks on the cuffs clicked shut once more.
It took days to reach our destination. My captors were the worst conversationalists in the galaxy and refused to respond to even my wittiest and most insulting sallies. The food was completely unpalatable but, I am sure, nourishing. The only drink was water. A portapotty took care of my sanitary needs and I was getting bored out of my skull. My thoughts were constantly on escape and many and fearful were the plans I devised. All of them useless, of course. Singlehanded, without a weapon, I would never be able to take control of the ship even if I could break out of this room. Which I could not. I was sinking into a coma of boredom by the time we finally landed.
“Where are we?” I asked the guards who came to get me. “Come on you chatterboxes, speak up. Would you be shot if you at least told me the name of the planet? Do you think I will tell anyone else?”
They thought about this for quite a while until one of them finally made up his mind.
“Kekkonshiki,” he said.
“You’re excused—but don’t wipe your nose with the back of your hand. Ha-ha.” I had to laugh at my own sallies. No one else would.
But it was ironic. Here I was, bearer of the information that would put an end to the gray men menace forever. The name of their world—and its location. And I couldn’t pass it on. If I had any trace of psi ability I could have the troops rushing there in a minute. I did not. I had tried and been psitested often enough in the past. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.
At least the unaccustomed action gave me something new to think about, to take my mind off of the depression that had depressed me for days. At last it was time to think about escape again.
Nor was I mad to consider it at this time. We had landed and would be leaving the ship soon. They were taking me some place where it was guaranteed not very-good things would happen to me. I did not yet know what they were and, as far as I was concerned, life would be far more peaceful if I never found out. We would leave this ship, and even for a very brief spell, we would be in transit. That would be the time to act. The mere fact that I did not have the slightest idea of what would be waiting outside was completely and totally beside the point. I had to do something.
Not that they made it very easy for me. I tried to act indifferent when they stripped off my chains and produced a metal collar and snapped it around my neck. Although my blood ran chill on the instant. I had worn that collar before. A thin cable ran from the collar to a small box that one of them held in his hand.
“No need to demonstrate,” I said in what was meant to be a light and bantering tone and certainly was not. “I’ve worn one of these before and your friend Kraj—you must remember Kraj?--demonstrated its working to me over quite a period of time.”
“I can do this,” my captor said, poising a finger over one of the many buttons on the box.
“It’s been done,” I shouted, pulling back. “Those very same words, I know, you never change your routines. You press the button and ...”
Fire washed over me. I was blind, burning to death, my skin aflame, my eyes seared out. Every one of my pain nerves switched on to full by the neural currents generated by the box. I knew this but it did not help. The pain was real and it went on and on and on.
When it ended I found myself lying on the floor, curled up, drained of energy and almost helpless. Two of them lifted me to my feet and dragged me, legs flopping, down the corridor. My master with the box walked behind, giving me a little tug on the neck from time to time to remind me who was in charge. I did not argue with him. I could stumble along by myself after a bit, but they still kept their hands locked tight on my arms.
I liked that. I fought hard not to smile. They were so sure I could not escape.
“Getting cold out?” I asked when we reached the airlock. No one bothered to answer me. But they were pulling on gloves and fur hats which certainly meant something. “How about some gloves for me?” I was still ignored.
When the lock door swung open I knew why the preparations. A swirl of snow was blown in on a wave of arctic air that chilled, then numbed. It certainly wasn’t summer outside. I was dragged forth into the blizzard.
Maybe not a blizzard, but some very heavy flurries. There was a blinding wave of flakes about us that was gone in a few moments. A thin sun shone down on the blindingly white landscape. Snow, nothing but snow in all directions. Wait, something dark ahead, a stone wall or building of some kind, obscured an instant later. We plodded on and tried to ignore the numbness in my hands and face. Yet our destination was still a good two hundred meters away. My body and feet were warm enough, but my exposed skin was something else again.
We were roughly halfway from the ship to our waiting warm haven when another miniblizzard swept down upon us, a roaring snow squall. Just before it hit I slipped and fell, pulling one of my captors down with me as he slid on the icy surface. He made no complaints, though the sadist holding the torture box did give me a quick blast of pain as a warning to watch my step. All done in silence. Silence on my part too because I had managed to get a loop of cable from the box over my shoulder when I went down and then caught it in my mouth. And bit it in two.
This is not as hard to do as it sounds, since under the caps of my front teeth were set serrated edges of silicon carbide. They were invisible to X-ray, having the same density as the enamel of my teeth-but were as hard as tool steel. The caps on my teeth chipped and splintered away as I ground down, chewing desperately before anyone noticed what was happening. The swirling snow concealed what I was doing for the vital seconds needed . The human jaw muscles can exert thirty-five kilos of pressure on each side and I was exerting, chomping and biting to my utmost.
The cable parted. As it did I twisted to the side and brought my knee up into the groin of the captor on my right. He grunted loudly and folded and released my arm. For a quick cross chop into the throat of the other man. Then my hands were free and I spun about.
The man behind me lost vital seconds depending on technology rather than on his reflexes. My back was to him all the time I was chopping up his partners. And he did nothing. Nothing that is other than push wildly at the buttons on the torture box. He was still pushing when my foot caught him in the pit of the stomach. As be fell I got under him so he collapsed onto my shoulder.
I did not stop to see who was doing the yelling as I staggered off with him into the snow-filled, stormbeaten, frozen wastes.
All of this may seem like madness—but what greater madness to go quietly to the slaughter at the hands of these creatures? I had been there once before and still had the scars. Now there was a good chance I would freeze to death. But that was also better than giving in to them. Plus the very remote chance that I might stay free for a while, cause them trouble, anything.
Nor was I as weak as I pretended to be; this had been only a simple ruse to get them off guard. Though now I was weakening—and freezing—very fast. My limp ex-captor weighed at least as much as I did, which necessarily slowed my pace. Yet I kept going, at right angles to our previous track, until I stumbled and fell headfirst into the snow. My face and hands were too numb to feel anything.
People were calling out on all sides, but none were in sight at the moment as the snow swirled down heavily. My fingers were like thick clubs as I pawed the man’s hat from his head and put it on mine. It was almost impossible to open the closures on his suit but I managed it finally. Then plunged my arms inside, pushing my hands up into his armpits. They burned worse than the torture bad, as feeling began to return.
Unconscious as he was, this chill clasp brought the gray man around. As soon as his eyes opened I pulled one hand out just long enough to make a fist and drive it into his jaw. He slept better then and I crouched there, half-covered with snow, until most of the pain had gone. One of the pursuers went by, very close, but never saw us. I felt no compunction in taking my captive’s gloves, though I noticed he was stirring again as I pushed off through the snowdrifts.
After this I ran hard, panting but still going on. I was no longer cold and that was the only solace. When the rushing snowflakes began to thin I hurled myself backward into a snowbank, sinking well below the surface. There were still a lot of shouts, but they were weaker and in the distance now. I lay there until my breathing slowed down and I could feel the sweat freezing on my face. Only then did I roll over carefully and poke an opening in the side of the snow near my face.
There was no one in sight. I waited until the snowfall started again, then ran on—full-tilt into a chainmetal fence. It vanished in the snow in both directions and rose up high above me. If it were wired for an alarm I had already tripped it so I might as well keep going. I clambered halfway up it, thought better of the idea—then dropped back into the soft snow below.
If an alarm had gone off they would be converging on this spot. I was not going to make it easy for them. Instead of going over at this place I hurried along the fence, running as fast as I could for what I hoped was at least ten minutes. I saw no one. Then I climbed the fence, dropped over it, and headed into the white wilderness. Running until I dropped. Then lay, half-buried in the snow until I got my wind back, before taking a cautious look in all directions.
Nothing. Just snow. No footsteps or marks of any kind. No bushes, trees, rocks or signs of life. A sterile white waste that went on and on for as far as I could see, delimitated only by the snow flurries on the horizon. One of them opened for a bit and I had a glimpse of the dark construction I had done all this to avoid.
I turned my back on it and shambled off into the driving blizzard.