The Giants From Outer Space Part 5

"If he wants us alive, and we can't fight him, I think we're better off dead," said Jerry through his teeth.

"h.e.l.l. Where there's life there's hope."

"I suppose you're right," said Pink slowly. His muscles ached, his hands grasped ceaselessly at the air; he was a man of action, his desire for combat throttled by incapability. "Twenty-some hours before the other ships get here. If our deductions are on the beam, he won't do anything till then. He wants the whole armada."

Then, with a snarl of static, the intercom came to life.

At first they heard a jumble of voices. "What's wrong?" "Nothing works...." "Are all the officers dead?" It was the crew, beyond the barriers of the mutiny gates, evidently trying to get into communication. Over and over one voice said, "h.e.l.lo, Captain Pinkham.

Come in, Captain Pinkham."

Pink took two strides and flipped the switch of the visiograph. Tuning it first to one crew station and then another, he told them succinctly what bad happened. "Don't panic, for G.o.d's sake. The mutiny gates are for your protection. If they work, you may be able to do something later, regardless of what happens to us."

Their somber faces looked out of the screen at him. "Let us in, Captain," pleaded one big repairman. "We'll mob the critter."

"No use, Jackson. Stand by." He turned the dial of the visiograph into the officers' section, scanned one room after another. No alien being appeared. "I wonder if he's in here with us?" said Pink half-aloud.

Jerry came to him. "I have an idea," he said quietly. Then he whispered at length into Pinkham's ear.

"It won't work. He knows what he's doing."

"How do we know that? If he needs us, he's ignorant of s.p.a.ceships. Look at the intercom--he turned it off, by some means, then turned it on when he found out what it was. The s.p.a.ce drive must have been easy to guess at; likewise the life-scanner. But the intercom's a lot of complex machinery that only adds up to a television-telephone communication system. However he snarls the stuff, it's instantaneous and simple for him to do. I think he just took a crack at everything that looked important. Now he's experimenting, learning the ship, finding out what he threw out of joint. Obviously he doesn't give a d.a.m.n if we talk to the crew!"

"You could be right."

"So if I do what I want to, it'll confuse h.e.l.l out of him. It may give us an advantage. And we'll certainly learn something."

"It's worth a try." Pink looked at Jerry, his closest friend. "I'll send Silver to do it," he said.

Jerry shook his lean head. "This is my baby, Pink." Then he opened the door and went out, closing it behind him.

Pinkham said levelly, "Daley, come here." He whispered the plan into his lieutenant's ear. Daley said admiringly, "Good deal. And I think that's sense--he can't know much about the ship. I'll bet he was hiding in that bottle, casing Sparks's equipment and learning how to operate it. The quick look he got at the rest of us on our jobs before he started playing hob must have given him the barest, scantiest idea of things. So Jerry's notion could work."

"Or it could blow up," said Pink dismally. "Go tell the others. Whisper it, in case our guest is in here." He struggled briefly with his deepest feelings. "Don't tell Circe. We can't be sure of her yet."

"Roger." Daley left him alone at the intercom. Pinkham set the dial to show the large room toward which Jerry was making his way....

Somewhere beyond their ken, the incredible beast from the void made another decision, or tried another experiment; and the life-scanner flickered into working order again. Joe Silver saw it first. Its screen blinked, then its alarm b.u.t.tons glowed vividly. Without the ship, at a vast distance but approaching rapidly, were an untold number of organic ent.i.ties, life-sources that reacted upon the scanner like approaching aircraft on a radar set. They could be s.p.a.ceships, slugjet suits, or anything that contained the intangible thing called life. And the sister ships of the _Elephant's Child_ were still too far away to register.

"Great Jupiter!" bellowed Joe Silver, pointing. "What now?"

CHAPTER VIII

O. O. Jerry Jones crept along the last ramp. Why the devil was he skulking like this? Habit, he grinned ruefully to himself; the habit of primitive man who crouched and slunk in the presence of danger, no matter what kind.

And the old preservation instinct was also giving him all sorts of reasons to knock this silly business off, and go back to the protection, however illusory, of the control room. For instance, said the sly instinct, if this alien is telepathic, as you so neatly proved to yourself, then doesn't he know all that you and your pals know about a s.p.a.ceship?

Shut up, Jerry told himself. I was wrong. He can't be telepathic, or he wouldn't bother to keep us alive after he's combed our brains.

"Couldn't he have some physical use for you all?" said the instinct.

Get thee behind me, Satan, he growled in his mind.

He opened the door of the room he was seeking.

Where to start? One wall was banked with books; never mind them. Another wall was covered with strange-looking projections, tubes and spouts and wheels and levers, behind a long table of plastikoid. There? Good enough.

He had a momentary pang as he picked up a spanner from the rack of tools by the door....

Then he was across the room and smashing wildly at levers, spouts, wall tanks, faucets; beating metal into sc.r.a.p, crushing shining aluminum to scarred uselessness; he did not rest his arm until the whole wall was a ruin of beaten metal and broken gla.s.s. Then he turned his attention to the third wall.

Here was a giant turntable, rack on rack of sh.e.l.lacked alloy discs, mysterious-appearing charts and cabalistic signs. These he wrecked as methodically and ruthlessly as he had the first, but now there were tears glistening in his eyes. He ended the destruction with a moan of sorrow.

He paused to snap on the intercom. Pink's worry-lined face appeared.

"How'm I doing?" Jerry asked his captain.

"Great so far. Calico is crying like a child."

"I have news for you," Jerry said. "So am I." Then he turned to the last wall. Before it spread a long array of mechanical devices: large boxes on spindly legs, with gla.s.sed tops and brilliant colors splashed across their surfaces; taller, narrower cases with crooked levers and viewplates on which were small designs and words. There was a kind of double cage with tiny cubes therein. There were great wheels with many numbers. Almost all were attached to the wall by electric cords, though some were entirely mechanical and others ran on self-generated power.

Jerry began at one end and pa.s.sed down the line, shattering gla.s.s and snapping wooden legs with his spanner.

He had almost finished when the door burst open and the tall humanoid form of the stranger appeared. A blast of rage almost lifted Jerry off his feet. The being came at him, its motion a flowing tigerish pounce.

The spanner was twitched from his hand flung across the room. He backed against the wall, bloating with fear in spite of himself. The creature swelled above him.

"Wh.o.r.eson knave!" it bawled angrily. "What are you doing?"

"Making d-d-d.a.m.n sure you don't take the ship anywhere," said Jerry, croaking a little. "Now t-try and run it!"

He was suddenly lifted off his feet and dangled helplessly a yard off the floor. "Fix them," snarled the alien thing into his face. He had time to realize that its grip was extremely powerful, whatever its molecules and atoms might be made of. "Reconstruct them, or you die."

"Don't be an idiot," Jerry told it, making up his mind that he was as good as dead and might as well go out like a man. "There isn't a single spare part aboard for any of these devices." He managed a sick grin. "If you're so smart, you _know_ I'm telling the truth."

Pinkham called from the screen of the intercom. "That's true, whatever-you-are. Those things are useless to you now."

The alien took Jerry by the chest, wrapping one hand around his back to do it; slowly it exerted pressure, and Jerry realized that it must have elongated the hand enormously to encompa.s.s him so. He also knew that his rib cage would shortly collapse. He shrieked.

Then Circe, the girl from the asteroid, was gazing from the screen, horrified. "No!" she screamed at the being. "You can't kill him for only wrecking the--"

"Shut up!" squealed Jerry.

"The recreation room!" she finished.

Abruptly he was dropped to the floor, where he lay gasping, ma.s.saging his bruised sides. The thing above him said, "Recreation room?"