The Giants From Outer Space Part 12

Pink stood up. He took a drink from the bottle and handed it to Circe.

His face was radiant with success. "Toast the last slim chance, honey,"

he said, voice cracking with relief. "We just found out what we needed to know." He retrieved the bottle after she had downed a gulp, gave it to the dazed Jerry. "Cheer up, boy," he said. "You didn't get your pink skin plugged for nothing. Now listen." Rapidly he outlined Circe's plot, then the additions he had concocted. "See why I had to do it?" he asked finally.

"Yeah. Yes, I see." Jerry blinked. "Would you spray a little sulfaheal on this hole, Pink? It hurts.... Okay, I give in. I'm with you. It's a mad notion, but I sure can't better it. I'm with you." He looked at Circe, who was already busy with sulfaspray and bandages. "But can we trust this wench, Captain? She could be a wonderful decoy for 'em."

"She's in the clear, Jerry; if we hadn't been so blasted rattled we'd have realized it long ago. There was a test she could have pa.s.sed in two seconds that would have eliminated all this fat-headed suspicion."

"What?"

"Holy Holmendis, boy--_lead_! If she were alien, the touch of lead would have crisped her up with pain and paralysis." Pink opened the door then, and the first tide of officers coming to Jerry's rescue were halted at sight of Circe tending his wound. Pink said to Jerry, and to them all, "While I was standing in the hall, I took a cartridge out of this Derringer, and rubbed the lead across the back of her neck. She never winced. That vouches for her, doesn't it?"

Jerry said, "It does. Heaven forgive us for a pack of drooling imbeciles! It does indeed."

Circe stood up. She came to Pink and stared him in the face. "So that was it," she said quietly. "You were testing me. And I thought it was a caress. Oh, you--" Then she hauled off and smacked Captain John Pinkham square in the left eye.

It hurt like sin, but Pink could hardly blame her. So he apologized, without words. He took her in his arms and kissed her soundly.

And Circe kissed him back.

CHAPTER XVII

The _Elephant's Child_ rested on the surface of the asteroid Oasis, a waterless, airless, cold and gray ball as uninviting as any solid body in the universe. At the entrance to Air-lock One, the officers stood in a tight group listening to Pinkham; their s.p.a.cesuits were fastened on, only the helmets remaining to be donned; their gloves were the modified digitmits which enabled the wearers to hold small objects and to operate machinery or firearms.

There were seven officers, and now three crewmen in s.p.a.cesuits joined them. Jerry, whose wound was nearly healed already, thanks to the sulfaspray, pa.s.sed out guns from the captain's collection. Each man carried a handgun, or, in two cases a long rifle. The ammunition for all amounted to one thousand two hundred and five rounds, in the main handgun cartridges. Pink had decided against using the Kentucky rifle, which was difficult for a modern man to load.

At each belt hung half a dozen curious objects, shaped like bottles but of a dull gray color and rough surface texture. These sloshed and gurgled when the men moved.

Pink concluded his instructions on the use of the weapons and the gray bottle-things. "Remember," he said, "keep in touch by your radio, and don't travel more than a mile from the ship if you can help it. Try the lure first, then when the containers are full, the guns. Be sure to keep at least one portion of lure for emergency; don't use it all." He grinned. "And don't drink any of the lure."

The men laughed, easing tension. Pink went on. "You'll have some trouble adjusting to the gravity--our average weight will be six or seven pounds, or, in Jerry's case, three or four." They chuckled again.

"Remember we don't know how they'll react, so keep your minds open and use your own judgment in everything. Now let's go."

As he turned and activated the sliding panel that covered the first chamber of the air-lock, and they all settled their helmets down onto their shoulders and fastened them, an eleventh figure joined them, its helmet already in place. Jerry, shaking his head reprovingly, handed this one the last weapon, a small automatic from the so-called "Gangster Age" of America. Then they went into the air-lock and the door shut tight behind them.

In the control room, Jackson and a few others watched tensely on the viewscreen as one by one the landing party jumped to the planetoid. He looked at his watch. "Two hours," he said. "Oh my G.o.d, I hope they make it!" For in precisely two hours, if they had not returned to the ship, Jackson was to blow it to metallic dust, and all the remaining humans with it.

Forty miles above the surface of the small world, the _Diogenes_ and the _Cottabus_ cruised at a good rate of speed, to keep their hulls free of hitchhiking giants while watching the progress of the expedition.

On the floor of Pinkham's quarters, the dying alien lay alone and cursed weakly at the sly and crafty doublecross he had so stupidly fallen for.

He called upon a number of strange G.o.ds to curse these mortals; among the names he uttered was that of a deity called Allah.

In dressing room B, a technician discovered a crewman who was sitting against a wall rubbing his skull. "Somebody bopped me," said the man glumly. "I'm supposed to go out there and blast giants, dammit. Who could have swiped me so hard?"

Pink took an experimental hop. It should have carried him, at Terra gravity, about two feet. He soared over a hillock and came down gently on a plain of rock that looked like lava; his hop had carried him some scores of yards. He felt for an instant like a kid let loose on a wonderful playground. Then he snapped into it and began to scan the terrain for signs of life.

To the right was the mountain they had seen from the descending ship, with its irregular rows of gaping holes which suggested caves and therefore possible habitations. It wouldn't take more than five minutes to reach them at an easy amble, or a minute at a brisk walk; about a mile away, they seemed.

Then with a horrified start he remembered the giant who had been atop his ship. Washington Daley had been delegated to deal with it--and Pink had forgotten, had not even glanced back to see how his lieutenant was making out! He whirled neglecting caution, and fell on his face. Luckily he came down like a big bulky feather, and caught himself and bounced up again, a rubber ball of a man on this alien world Oasis.

He was just in time to see the giant, bending forward over the front of the ship, begin to blur and stream downward toward the tiny figure of the human who stood below him. In a moment he resembled a cloud of tobacco-smoke, drawn into the gray container in Daley's hand. He vanished entirely, Daley clapped on the sealing lid, and gave a triumphant wave to his captain. Pink blew out a breath of grat.i.tude and remorse; he'd have to be on his toes from now on, really vibrant with watchfulness. Laxity in one thing could lose this weird battle.

Strung out in a straggling line of erratically progressing units, the men of Earth headed for the caves. In a time so short as to be faintly ridiculous, they were moving up the mountainside. The gaping holes _were_ caves, and obviously deep ones. Pink stood at the entrance of one for a moment, checking on the number of his men; then he waved a hand over his head, and entered the great den. Behind him came another figure, one whose slimness told him it was probably Jerry.

Their chest lamps lit up the interior, which was as gray, k.n.o.bby, and featureless as the outside world. Pink held his Colt .44 in his right hand, one of the bottles in his left. The technicians of the _Elephant's Child_ had worked like drudges over those bottles....

Every bottle of liquor aboard had been requisitioned. The liquid had been poured into plastic containers; only a few spoonfuls had been left in each bottle.

Then lead, melted down and beaten into sheets, was wrapped around each bottle, forming a thin and c.h.i.n.kless layer over all the gla.s.s but the lip; and the lead was painted with tough plastikoid paint, which covered it with a film one-twentieth of an inch thick. Caps of lead were made for the bottles. At the end of a couple of hours, they had sixty-six bottles, gla.s.s inside, lead covered, and topped off with plastikoid which would conceal the presence of lead from any known test short of X-ray.

Each of the eleven men carried six of these bottles, then, actually lead containers, but apparently plastikoid; the lead stoppers were concealed in joerg-hide bags. If the giant who had been beaten in the s.p.a.ceship was a criterion, the enemy would not recognize the presence of lead until it actually touched them--and then, thought Pink, with a quick prayer, it would be too late for them.

Beaming the radio to a distance of ten feet, he said, "Hey, Jerry, want to lay a bet on who bags the first brute?"

"Sure. Twenty bucks says I get him. And don't call me Jerry," said the sweet, quiet, and thoroughly startling voice of organicus officer Circe Smith.

CHAPTER XVIII

I didn't have to do it, Pink thought. I could have changed the orders when I saw that no giants were in sight. We could have blasted the one on top of the _Elephant's Child_ and taken off and got out of range of 'em and gone back to Earth. We were free in that instant, when Daley caught the alien and corked it up in the lead bottle with the liquor that drew it. We shouldn't have come out here to the caves. We should have left Oasis to itself.

He knew that he had squelched this idea before it was born, because he had longed for a good fight; he recognized this alien life-form as unclean, and he'd wanted to stamp it out, or make a dent in its numbers anyway. So he'd gone ahead with the project, and now here was Circe, risking her life to be with him, and if anything happened to her he'd kill himself ... well, at least he'd mop up the giants who'd drawn him here, he'd make a pogrom, a ma.s.sacre to avenge her....

She isn't dead, boy, he told himself. She's just in danger. Don't get distracted.

"Stick close," he told her shortly. "I'll whale the pants off you when we get back for this trick, but for now, stay close and keep your eyes open."

Then he tuned his radio outward. "Report," he said. His men checked in.

Nothing had been sighted thus far.

So it was Captain Pinkham's luck to meet the first alien.

Rounding a turn, he saw that the cavern enlarged, became a huge grotto; seated around its walls, staring at one another in the uncanny silence of this airless place, were many of the giant life-forms. Only one was near him, and this monster was first to see him; it leaped at him with the abruptness of perfect muscular control, its feet a little off the floor of the cavern--Pink recalled that these things could levitate themselves in s.p.a.ce.

There was no time to use the lure of the bottle. He threw up his old revolver and fired point-blank, catching Circe by the arm and hurling her to one side as he did so. The giant recoiled as at a wall, doubled and thrashed in agony. Pink, rooted to the spot, waited to see the effects. Would one slug of lead be enough? And evidently it was, for suddenly the thing fell and writhed futilely on the ground, flinging its arms wide with diminishing strength. In a moment it was helpless, its only motion a slight heaving as its life retreated far within the gigantic bulk. Its red eyes glowed at him malevolently in the glare of his chest-lamp.

Strangely enough, none of the others had seen him yet, nor had any of them moved from the sitting posture. Swiftly he unhooked four of his six bottles and set them in a row on the rock floor. Circe returned, having bounced like a bit of india-rubber a dozen yards before checking herself. "You big bully," she said over the radio, and, her tuning being for distance, Daley in another cave said "What? Who?" in a startled tone.

Pink dragged her, five pounds of resistance on the tiny planet, and plunked her down behind a rock. "Sit tight," he said urgently. "Keep the gun handy. And check that you haven't spilled any alky--we'll need all the bottles we can get." Then he turned and shone his beam full on the traps he had set out. One of the aliens was bound to spot them soon.