The Giants From Outer Space Part 6

"Sure. The soda fountain, the phonograph, and the pinball machines and games."

Then Pinkham had encircled her throat with one arm, clamped his other hand on her mouth, and dragged her back. But the damage was done.

The alien gave another of those mirthless peals of bull's laughter.

"Clever," he said. "Oh, clever little man." Then he plucked Jerry off the floor once more.

_I'm going to die now...._

The brute set him on his feet, twisted him toward the door, and gave him a brisk, forceful pat on the backside that sent him staggering. He gained his balance and ran into the corridor. It was more humiliating than had he been slain.

CHAPTER IX

"It didn't work, but it taught us a few things."

"You're right. It taught us that this b.i.t.c.h can't be trusted. Either she's in league with _it_, a sister or brother of it, or else she's so stupid that she's a menace to our survival."

"Oh, you blithering jacka.s.s!" said Circe indignantly to her fellow organicus officer. "How could I guess what your plan was? n.o.body told me. All I knew was that you were going to be murdered for doing a perfectly harmless--"

"She's right," said Joe Silver. "We ought to have told her."

"Shut up," said Pinkham savagely. "Any more of that and I'll figure she's corrupted you or addled your brains, and I'll toss you into the brig, Silver."

"You try it you pigsqueak," shouted Silver, who measured half an inch over Pink's six-foot-three. "Captain or not, this is a grade A emergency and we're all needed. I'll pull the Mars Convention on you if you try to shut me up."

"He's right," said Daley to the captain. "Mars Convention says that in a grade A emergency any officer above Second Watch is equal to the captain or commander, Pink." Then he turned to Silver, grinned, and lashing out with a hand the size of a spaniel, caught his under-lieutenant on the ear. It knocked Silver sprawling. "That's for slanging at your superiors," he said quietly. "And the Mars Convention says I can do _that_."

Silver got up and blinked. He seemed dazed and for the first time in his s.p.a.ce life, uncertain of himself. He looked at the others and recognized himself as a minority here. "Okay," he said, "okay, I'm outvoted. But I say the girl is only suspect, by no means convicted of anything but ignorance of the plan."

Kinkare, unable to speak through his bandaged mouth, nodded strongly.

Circe glared defiance at Pinkham. "Next time, for G.o.d's sake tell me what you have in mind," she said. "Not that I'd let you sacrifice poor Jerry, anyway."

"Women," said Jerry. "Women on a ship. Jonahs. Sentimental imbeciles."

"I'll knock your teeth down your scrawny throat," began Joe Silver, and "Quiet!" roared Pinkham. "We're quarreling like kids. What's to be done now!"

"I was saying it taught us a few things," said Daley. "Let's figure them out. The thing's evidently not telepathic. It can't run a s.p.a.ceship, or it wouldn't have been so worked up over the ruin of the soda fountain, which must have looked pretty vital to its inexperienced eyes. It's definitely tangible, for it picked Jerry up."

"It also murdered eleven men," said Pink. "That's tangible enough too."

"It's d.a.m.ned intelligent, for it must have spotted Jerry on the intercom, which means it was working it. It also speaks a very funny breed of English. 'Wh.o.r.eson knave,' for example. n.o.body here ever called anyone that."

"Wh.o.r.eson knave is Shakespearean," said Jerry.

"And, to finish what I've deduced, the monster is as strong as a couple of men, at least." He grinned at Jerry. "Not that you needed me to deduce that."

Randy Kinkare was staring at the life-scanner screen. Now he beat a tattoo on the arm of his chair, pointed so that they all looked. The flecks of light that indicated organic life had thronged in toward the ship; not so numerous as the stars, they were still too many to count.

One object on the screen was large now, large enough to be identified.

It approached the ship at a slow but steady rate, and they gasped as they saw it was another of the human-like figures.

"His brothers," said Pinkham. "That must be their natural form, then."

It grew and grew. It seemed it must now be touching the scanner's outside cell; but no, it grew even greater. At last it could not be seen in its entirety, then only its face showed. It was a hideous face, twisted with sardonic malice. The face grew. When it stopped, only one enormous eye filled the screen.

Jerry cleared his throat. "Do you know what that means?" he asked. "It means that, at a conservative estimate, the critter is--"

"Go on," said Daley impatiently, when Jerry's silence had lengthened intolerably.

"It must be at least one thousand feet tall," said the O. O.

There was a long, unbroken stillness, a hush of horror and disbelief in the control room.

Finally Circe said slowly, "I think I'm going to faint."

And she did.

CHAPTER X

The long-unused armaments room was half the width of the ship away. They went toward it silently, seven men and a girl, praying that their visitor would not meet them or spot their furtive advance on the intercom. They slunk into the gunroom and Pink, coming last, ran the heavy emergency bolt across the door behind him.

The armaments officer was dead, of course. Pink said quietly, "Who knows the principles of these weapons?" Daley and Joe Silver raised their hands. "Activate the viewers, then."

Two walls darkened and became the silver-flecked night of s.p.a.ce; it was as if they had become suddenly transparent. Half a dozen of the void-giants showed near the _Elephant's Child_, hovering or slowly drifting around the bow of the ship.

"Now," said the captain, "if only our friend in the bottle has left us our guns--train 'em on those monstrosities and fire every forward battery simultaneously."

The lieutenants, seated in foam-chairs behind the double banks of the gun controls, manipulated instruments that were very like the sights on common atom-pistols. Thin blue lines moved across the reflected picture of the s.p.a.ce beyond the ship's nose, steadied and centered on the nearest giants. Silver glanced at Daley, who said, "Count o' three, Joe."

Every man leaned forward, scowling at the screens. The nearest s.p.a.ce-soarer squinted full in their faces, as though he could actually see them as they were scanning him. Coincidence, but--Pink shuddered.

"One," said Daley. "Two."

The _Elephant's Child_ rocked wildly up and back as thirty platinum guns, the heaviest type in the known universe, fired their h.e.l.l-projectiles--great sh.e.l.ls whose inconceivable destructive power was released by the splitting of the curium atom. In flight, the ship would have absorbed the tremendous recoil automatically; stationary as she was, it bucked her over like a blown leaf.

The sh.e.l.ls, set to explode at the very closest range that safety permitted, flashed upon the twin screens like bursting suns. Human eyes looking directly at such a bombardment would have crisped in their sockets; even on the screens their glare was too bright for comfort.

The men blinked, peered sharply for signs of the effect on the giants.

Pink felt disappointment, so biting and gut-curdling that he nearly vomited. For at first the sh.e.l.ls seemed to have had little effect except to hurl the giants back a mile or so from the ship. Then, as they slowly surged forward toward it again, he saw that they had not escaped whole.

One lacked an arm; another had, half his head blown away; a third drifted in without the lower half of his torso. The expressions of their bronze-yellow faces were not of pain, however, but only of rage.