The Best of AE van Vogt Part 3

The radio hut was a shambles. On the floor, with his head blown off, was a man-Marenson couldn't be sure it was the operator. There was blood splattered on dozens of instruments, and the whole intricate machinery of an interstellar radio system had been burned by innumerable crisscrosses of energy from a powerful blaster.

Marenson did not linger in the radio hut. Back in Clugy's office, he paused only long enough to find out from that distracted man that the nearest radio station was in a settlement some nine hundred miles to the south.

"It's all right," he said to Clugy's offer of a requisition for a helicar and pilot. "I signed one myself this morning."

A few minutes later he was in the air.

The speed of the machine gradually soothed Marenson. The tenseness went out of his muscles, and his mind began to work smoothly again. He stared out over the green world of the jungle, and thought:The purpose of the Yevd is to slow down procurement of lymph juice. That's the important thing to remember. They must have struck first at the source of the juice, and did an easy imitation of a boy. That was their usual tactic of interference at the production level. Then a new factor came into the situation.

They discovered that Ancil Marenson, head of the procurement department, could be fitted into an enlarged version of their sabotage plan. Accordingly, two Yevd who looked like human beings ga.s.sed him and put him aboard theMirafreighter.

At the same time, a Yevd image of Marenson must have continued on to the office, and later that day the duplicate and Janet had probably departed together for Paradise Planet.

But why did they let me live?Marenson wondered.Why not get me completely out of the way?

There was only one reasonable explanation. They wanted to make further use of him. First of all, he must establish his presence, and his authority, and then-and not till then-he would be killed. And another Marenson image would order Clugy to transfer his camp to the distant mountain. In that fashion they would convince the willing Clugy that Marenson, having come to see for himself, had recognized the justice of Clugy's arguments.

Marenson felt himself change color-because that stagehad arrived. All they needed from him was his signature on the order to Clugy. And even that could possibly be dis-pensed with, if they had managed to obtain some copy of his signature in the time available to them. But how would the attempt on him be made?

Uneasily, Marenson gazed out of the small helicar. He felt unprotected. He had been hasty in leaving the camp. In his anxiety to secure the safety of Janet he had exposed himself in a small ship which could be destroyed all too easily.I'd better go back, he decided.

He called to the pilot, "Turn back!"

"Back?" said the man. He sounded surprised.

Marenson waved and pointed. The man seemed to hesi-tate, and then-he turned the machine upside down. With a crash, Marenson was flung to the ceiling of the craft. As he scrambled and fought for balance, the machine was spun once again. This time he had hold of a crossbar, and he came down more easily. He struggled to pull out a blaster.

The helicar was plummeting down towards the jungle now, and the pilot was jerking it violently to and fro. Marenson guessed his purpose and his ident.i.ty, and felt ill. What a fool he had been to rush so blindly into this trap. The Yevd, knowing that he would try to send a radio message, must have killed the regular pilot-and simply waited for that simpleton Ancil Marenson to do what it expected him to do.

Marenson had a glimpse of trees terribly near. And realized the enemy's plan. A crash landing. The weak human being would be knocked unconscious, or killed. The Yevd, a carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-fluorine life form, would survive.

The next moment, there was a thump that shook his bones. During the seconds that followed, he seemed to be con-tinuously conscious. He was even aware that the branches of strong trees had broken the fall of the ship, and so possibly saved his life. More vaguely, he knew when his blasters were taken from him.

The only period of blur occurred when he was dropped to the ground from the helicar.

When his vision cleared again, he was in time to see another helicar come down in a nearby open s.p.a.ce among the trees. The image of young Peter Clugy stepped out of it, and joined the image of the pilot. The two Yevd stood looking down at him.

Marenson braced himself. He was as good as dead, but the will to meet death standing up and fighting made him try to climb to his feet. He couldn't. His hands were tied to his legs.

He lay back weakly. He had no memory of having been tied. Which meant that he was wrong in believing that he had not been unconscious. It didn't matter, of course. With sick eyes he gazed up at his captors.

"What happened to the real Peter Clugy?" he asked finally.

The two Yevd merely continued to look at him, bleakly. Not that an answer was needed. Somewhere along the line of their moves to this point, Clugy's son had been murdered. It was possible that these two individuals did not even know the details of the killing.

Marenson changed the subject, and said with a boldness he did not feel: "I see I made a slight personal error. Well, I'll make a bargain with you. You release me, and I'll see to it that you get safely off the planet."

The two images wavered ever so slightly, an indication that the Yevd were talking to each other by means of light waves above the human vision level. Finally, one of them said: "We're in no danger. We'll get off this planet in our own good time."

Marenson laughed curtly. The laugh sounded unconvinc-ing in his own ears, but the fact that they had answered him at all was encouraging. He said savagely: "The whole game is up. When I called Earth, the merest suspicion that Yevd were involved set in motion a far-flung defense organization. And, actually, my call was not necessary. The discovery that Yevd were involved was made in connection with my wife, Janet."

It was a shot in the dark, but he was desperately anxious to find out if Janet were all right. Once more, there was the faint unsteadiness in the human images, that indicated conversation. Then the Yevd who was imitating Peter Clugy said: "That's impossible. The person who accompanied your wife to Paradise Planet had instructions to destroy her if she showed the faintest sign of suspicion."

Marenson shrugged. "You'd better believe me," he said.

He was tingling. His own a.n.a.lysis had been confirmed. Janet had gone off on her vacation with someone she thought was her husband. It was a characteristic of Yevd imitating human beings that they liked to be with a real woman or man who would be able to do things for them. There were so many things that a Yevd could do only with great difficulty, so many places where it was dangerous for an individual Yevd to go. Thus the image of Peter Clugy had taken the risk of living with the real Peter's father, and the image of Ancil Marenson had gone along with the real Janet.

The pilot Yevd said: "We don't have to worry too much about any small group of human beings.

Long-married couples are not demonstrative with each other. Days go by without kissing. In other words, the person imitating you is protected from discovery by contact for at least a week. Our plan will be accomplished by then."

Marenson said: "Don'tbe acouple of fools. I can see you're going to be stupid and make us all die.

That's where this kind of stuff is so depressing. We three will die. And no one will care. It's not as if we'll be heroes, any of us. You'll be burned, trying to escape, and I-" He broke off. "What's your plan for me?"

"First," said young Clugy's image, "we want you to sign a paper."

He paused; and Marenson sighed. His a.n.a.lysis of the situation had been so completely right-too late.

"And if I don't?" he asked. His voice trembled the faintest bit.

"Your signature," was the reply, "would merely make things easier for us. In doing what we have done, we had to act swiftly, and so none of our people capable of imitating a signature is available on this planet. That can be rectified in a few days, but fortunately for you, we want quicker action. Accordingly, we are in a position to offer you the choice of signing or not signing."

"O.K.," said Marenson ironically. "My choice is-I don't sign."

"If you sign," the Yevd went on in an inexorable tone, "we'll kill you mercifully."

"And if I don't?"

"We leave you here."

Marenson blinked. For an instant it seemed a meaningless threat. And then: "Yes," said Peter's image with satisfaction, "leave you here for the lymph beast's progeny. I understand they like to burrow into the flesh of anybody they catch-a very weight-reducing experience."

He laughed. It was a human laugh, a remarkable repro-duction considering that it was done by light wave activation of a sound box it carried in its abdomen.

Marenson did not answer immediately. Until this instant, he had taken it for granted that the Yevd knew as much about the habits of those deadly dangerous creatures as did men. Apparently, their information was vague, accurate as far as it went, but- "Of course," said Peter Clugy's image, "we won't really go away. We'll just go over to the ship and watch. And when you've had enough, we'll get your signature. Does that meet with your approval?"

Marenson had caught a movement out of the corner of one eye. It seemed a little more than a series of shadows very close to the ground, more like a quiver in the soil than anything substantial. But the perspiration broke out on his forehead.Dark forest ofMira,he thought,alive with the young of the lymph beast- He held himself very still, looking neither to the right nor to the left, neither at the Yevd nor at the shadow things.

"Well"-it was the Yevd image of the pilot-"we'll stick around and have a look at some of these creatures we've been hearing so much about."

They were moving away as the speaker reached that point. But Marenson did not turn, did not look. He heard a jerky movement, and then bright flashes lit up the dark corridor under the trees. But Marenson did not even roll his eyes. He lay still as death, silent as a log. A thing slithered across his chest, paused while he grew half-paralyzed with fright and then moved on with a gliding movement.

The lights flashed more brilliantly now, and more erratically. And there were thumping sounds as if heavy bodies were frantically flinging themselves around. Maren-son didn't have to look to realize that the enemy pair were in their death throes.

Two more Yevd were discovering the hard way that human beings were interested in the brainless lymph things because theywere as dangerous to man's cunning opponent as to man himself.

For Marenson, the effort to remain quiet was a special agony, but he held himself there until the light was as spasmodic as a guttering candle, and as dim. When the glow had completely died, and when there had been silence for more than a minute, Marenson permitted himself the exquisite luxury of turning his head slightly.

Only one of the Yevd was in his line of vision. It lay on the ground, a long, almost black, rectangular shape, with a whole series of reticulated arms and legs. Except for the appendages, it looked more like a contorted bar of metal than a thing of flesh. Here and there over its surface, the body glittered with a black, gla.s.sy sheen, evidence that some of the light-controlling cells were still alive.

In that one look, Marenson saw no less than seven discolored gashes in the part of the Yevd body that he could see-which meant that at least seven of the young lymph beasts had crawled inside. Being mindless, they would be quite unaware that they had killed anything or that there had been a struggle.

They lived to eat, and they attacked any object that moved. If it ceased moving before they reached it, they forgot about it instantly. Utterly indiscriminate, they attacked leaves drifting in the wind, the waving branch of a tree, even moving water. Millions of the tiny snake-like things died every month making insensate attacks on inanimate objects that had moved for one reason or another. Only a very small percentage survived the first two months of their existence, and changed into their final form.

In the development of the lymph beast, Nature had achieved one of her most fantastic balancing acts.

The ultimate shape of the lymph beast was a hard-sh.e.l.led beehivelike constructionthat could not move.

It was difficult to go far into theMirajungle without stumbling across one of these structures. They were everywhere, on the ground and in trees, on hillsides and in valleys-wherever the young monster happened to be at the moment of the change, there the "adult" settled. The final stage was short but prolific. The "hive" lived entirely on the food it had stored up as a youngster. Being bis.e.xual, it spent its brief existence in a sustained ecstasy of procreation. The young, however, were not discharged from the body. They incubated inside it, and when the sh.e.l.l died ate what was left of the parent. They also ate each other, but there were thousands of them, and the process of birth was so rapid that a fairly large pro-portion simply ate themselves to comparative safety outside.

On rare occasions, the outer sh.e.l.l failed to soften quickly enough for the progeny to escape their own savage appet.i.tes. At such times, the total "born" was greatly reduced.

Marenson had no trouble. As soon as he had carefully examined his surroundings, he climbed to his feet-and stood silent and cautious while he made another prolonged investigation. In that fashion, step by step, he moved toward the helicar that stood in the little open s.p.a.ce just beyond where the first machine had crashed.

He reached it and a few minutes later was back at the camp. Clugy warned, and the entire camp finally on the alert, he took another pilot-guide-this time after both he and the pilot were tested for humanness-and flew to the distant pleasure town. News awaited him there.

The Yevd gang was caught. Janet had become suspicious of the Marenson image, and had skillfully aided in its capture. That put the security police on the trail, and it was a simple matter of following the back track of the persons involved.

It took another hour before Marenson was able to contact Janet on Paradise Planet. He sighed with relief when her face came onto the visiplate. "I was sure worried," he said, "when the Yevd here told me that my image was counting on the habits of old married couples. They evidently didn't realize why we were taking the trip."

Janet was anxious. "A police ship will be calling atMiratomorrow," she said, "be sure to get on it, and come here as fast as you can."

She finished, "I want to spend at least part of my second honeymoon with my husband."

WAR OF NERVES.

THEvoyage of thes.p.a.ce Beagle-Man's firstexpeditionto the great galaxy, M33 in Andromeda-had produced some grisly incidents. Not once, but three times, deadly attacks by aliens had been made against the 900-odd scientists under Director Morton, and the 149 military personnel commanded by Captain Leeth-all this entirely aside from the tensions that had developed among the men themselves. Hate, dislike, anxiety, ambition-of which Chief Chemist Kent's desire to be Director was but one example-permeated every activity aboard.

Elliott Grosvenor, the only Nexialist on the ship, sometimes had the feeling that even one more danger would be too much for the physically weary and emotionally exhausted men, who were now on the long return journey to Earth.

The danger came.

Elliott Grosvenor had just said to Korita, the archeologist aboard thes.p.a.ce Beagle: "Your brief outline of cyclic history is what I've been looking for. I did have some knowledge of it, of course. It wasn't taught at the Nexial Foundation, since it's a form of philosophy. But a curious man picks up odds and ends of information."

They had paused at the "gla.s.s" room on Grosvenor's floor. It wasn't gla.s.s, and it wasn't, by strict definition, a room. It was an alcove of an outer wall corridor, and the "gla.s.s" was an enormous curving plate made from a crystal-lized form of one of the Resistance metals. It was so limpidly transparent as to give the illusion that nothing at all was there-beyond was the vacuum and darkness of s.p.a.ce.

Korita half-turned away, then said, "I know what you mean by odds and ends. For instance, I've learned justenough about Nexialism to envy you the mind trainings you received."

At that moment, it happened-Grosvenor had noticed absently that the ship was almost through the small star cl.u.s.ter it had been traversing. Only a score of suns were still visible of the approximately five thousand stars that made up the system. The cl.u.s.ter was one of a hundred stat groups accompanying Earth's galaxy through s.p.a.ce.

Grosvenor parted his lips to say, "I'd certainly like to talk to you again, Mr. Korita."-He didn't say it.

A slightly blurred double image of a woman wearing a feathered hat was taking form in the gla.s.s directly in front of him. The image flickered and shimmered. Grosvenor felt anunnormaltensing of the muscles of his eyes. For a moment, his mind went blank. That was followed rapidly by sounds, flashes of light, a sharp sensation of pain-hypnotic hallucinations! The awareness was like an electric shock. The recognition saved him. He whirled, stumbled over the unconscious body of Korita, and then he was racing along the corridor.

As he ran, he had to look ahead in order to see his way. And yet, he had to keep blinking to break the pattern of the light flashes that came at his eyes from other images on the walls. At first, it seemed to him that the images were every-where. Then, he noticed that the woman-like shapes-some oddly double, some single-occupied transparent or translucent wall sections. There were hundreds of such reflecting areas, but at least it was a limitation. At least he knew where he had to run fastest, and where he could slow down.

He saw more men. They lay at uneven intervals along his line of flight. Twice, he came upon conscious men. One stood in his path with unseeing eyes, and did not move or turn as Grosvenor sped by. The other man let out a yell, grabbed his vibrator, and fired it. The tracer beam flashed on the wall beside Grosvenor. Grosvenor whirled, and lunged forward, knocking the man to the floor. The man-a Kent supporter-glared at him malignantly. "You d.a.m.ned spy!" he said harshly. "We'll get you yet."

Grosvenor didn't pause. He reached his own department safely, and immediately took refuge in the film recording room. There he turned a barrage of flashing lights against the floors, the walls and the ceiling.

The images were instantly eclipsed by the strong light superimposed upon them.

Quickly, Grosvenor set to work. One fact was already evident. This was mechanical visual hypnosis of such power that he had saved himself only by keeping his eyes averted, but what had happened was not limited to vision. The image had tried to control him by stimulating his brain through his eyes. He was up to date on most of the work that men had done in that field, and so he knew-though the attacker apparently did not-that control by an alien of a human nervous system was not possible except with an encephalo-adjuster or its equivalent.

He could only guess, from what had almost happened to him, that the other men had been precipitated into deep sleep trances, or else they were confused by hallucinations and were not responsible for their actions. His hope was that the woman-like beings-the enemy seemed to be feminine-were operating at a distance of several light years and so would be unable to refine their attempts at domina-tion.

His job was to get to the control room and turn on the ship's energy screen. No matter where the attack was coming from, whether from another ship or actually from a planet, the energy screen should effectively cut off any carrier beams they might be sending.

With frantic fingers, Grosvenor worked to set up a mobile unit of lights. He needed something that would interfere with the images on his way to the control room. He was making the final connection when he felt an un-mistakable sensation, a slight giddy feeling-that pa.s.sed almost instantly. Such feelings usually occurred during a considerable change of course and were a result of readjust-ment of the anti-accelerators. Had the course actually been changed? He couldn't stop to make sure. Hastily, Grosvenor carried his arrangement of lights to a power-driven loading vehicle in a nearby corridor, and placed it in the rear compartment. Then he climbed on and headed for the elevators.

He guessed that altogether ten minutes had gone by since he had first seen the image.

He took the turn into the elevator corridor at twenty-five miles an hour, which was fast for these comparatively narrow s.p.a.ces. In the alcove opposite the elevators, two men were wrestling each other with a life and death concen-tration. They paid no attention to Grosvenor but swayed and strained and cursed. Their labored breathing was a loud sound in the confined area. Their single-minded hatred of each other was not affected by Grosvenor's arrangement of lights. Whatever world of hallucination they were in, it had "taken" profoundly.

Grosvenor whirled his machine into the nearest elevator and started down. He was beginning to let himself hope that he might find the control room deserted. The hope died as he came to the main corridor. It swarmed with men. Barri-cades had been flung up, and there was an unmistakable odor of ozone. Vibrators fumed and fussed. Grosvenor peered cautiously out of the elevator, trying to size up the situation. It was visibly bad. The two approaches to the control room were blocked by scores of overturned loading-mules. Behind them crouched men in military uniform. Grosvenor caught a glimpse of Captain Leeth among the defenders and, on the far side, he saw Director Morton behind the barricade of one of the attacking groups. That clarified the picture slightly. Suppressed hostility had been stimulated by the images. The scientists were fighting the military whom they had always unconsciously hated. The military, in turn, was suddenly freed to vent its contempt and fury upon the despised scientists.

It was, Grosvenor knew, not a true picture of their feeling for each other. The human mind normally balanced in-numerable opposing impulses so that the average individual might live his life-span without letting one feeling gain important ascendancy over the others. That intricate balance had now been upset.

The result threatened disaster to an entire expedition of human beings, and promised victory to an enemy whose purpose could only be conjectured. What-ever the reason, the way to the control room was blocked. Re-luctantly, Grosvenor retreated again to his own department.

Carefully, but quickly, he tuned a wall communicator plate to the finely balanced steering devices in the fore part of thes.p.a.ce Beagle. The sending plate there was focused directly along a series of hair-line sights. The arrangement looked more intricate than it was. As he brought his eyes to the sights, Grosvenor saw that the ship was describing a slow curve which, at its climax, would bring it to bear directly on a bright white star. A servo-mechanism had been set up to make periodic adjustments that would hold it on its course.

Still he was more puzzled than alarmed. He shifted the viewer over to the bank of supplementary instruments. According to the star's special type, magnitude and lumi-nosity, it was just over four light-years distant. The ship's speed was up to a light year every five hours. Since it was still accelerating, that would increase on a calculable curve. He estimated roughly that the vessel would reach the vicinity of the sun in approximately eleven hours. Grosvenor's thought suffered a pause at that point. With a jerky movement, he shut off the communicator. He stood there, shocked, but not incredulous. Destruction could be the pur-pose of the deluded person who had altered the ship's course. If so, there was just about ten hours in which to prevent catastrophe.

Even at that moment, when he had no clear plan, it seemed to Grosvenor that only an attack on the enemy, using hypnotic techniques, would effectively do the job. Meanwhile- He stood up decisively. It was time for his second attempt to get into the control room.

He needed something that would cause direct stimulation to brain cells. There were several devices that could do that. Most of them were usable for medical purposes only. The exception was the encephalo-adjuster. Though import-ant medically, it had other uses as well. It took Grosvenor several minutes to set up one of his adjusters. Testing it consumed still more time; and, because it was such a delicate machine, he had to fasten it to his loading vehicle with a cushion of springs around it. Altogether, the prepara-tion required thirty-seven minutes.