THE GULFERS
Ross carried it clear to Commandant Padora, at FedGov Security
headquarters.
At that level, the conversation didn't last long.
"And just what is your mission, Mr. Ross?" The commandant's voice rang
chill, even through the com-set.
Ross ran his tongue along dry lips. "To recover Doctor Tornelescu's
notes and formulae pertaining to the life catalyst at the earliest
possible moment, sir."
"To the best of your knowledge and belief, does Cheng hold those
papers?"
"No, sir."
"Does the Hall girl?"
"No, sir."
"Do either of them know what's become of the batch of prepared catalyst
allegedly taken from Tornelescu's laboratory?"
"Not so far as I know, sir."
"The situation seems clear enough to me, then." Commandant Padora's
tongue bore a scalpel edge. "You hold the rank of special agent in
this organization, Mr. Ross. That entails a certain obligation. Among
other things, it means that when you're assigned a mission, you carry
it out, without quixotic sidetrips to rescue maidens in distress."
Ross flushed even in the darkness of the com-booth. "Yes, sir."
"To save time for both of us, then, I suggest that from now on you
remember you're masquerading under the name and in the garb of Lewis
Thigpen for one purpose only: to decoy Tornelescu's killer out of
hiding."
"Yes, sir."
"Then get on with it! That's an order!"
Ross swore beneath his breath as the line went dead. Savagely, he
dialed another number.
A brisk male voice: "FedGov Building Seven."
"Get me Pike Mawson's office."
"That's Department of Litigation, sir. One moment."
A female voice: "Department of Litigation, Adjudicator Mawson's office."
"Let me talk to Mr. Mawson."
More time out. Then: "Adjudicator Mawson speaking."
"Thigpen here."
"Thigpen, Lewis Thigpen?" The adjudicator's voice grew brusque and
chill. "I'm afraid you have the wrong party, sir. I don't know anyone
named Thigpen."
"Listen, Mawson--"
"Murderers are hardly to my taste, sir. Even if I did know Thigpen,
it would be my greatest pleasure to turn him over to Security for
immediate prosecution."
Angrily, Ross slammed up the com-set and stalked forth from the booth.
Outside, the street was empty, without even a transor in sight. Turning
right, Ross strode grimly towards the nearest avenue. His face was set
in bitter, deep-hewn lines, but no hesitation showed in his carriage or
his manner. Rather, an air of hard, aggressive recklessness now marked
him. Tension was in his stance, his movements--the sort of surging
drive that calls for quick release in action.
Only then, of a sudden, close behind him, a power-unit crescendoed from
hum to thunder. Wheels screamed as they scraped a curb.
Ross dived sidewise by reflex, not even glancing backward.
Careening, a vanster hurtled across the spot where he'd stood, then
rocked back into the street and raced out of sight.
The man in the control-seat was the same one who'd appeared close by
Zoltan Prenzz' apartment.
Tight-lipped, Ross picked himself up and brushed the dust from his
clothes, then continued warily on to the avenue.
Here there were transors. In seconds, Ross was on his way to the old
port quarter and Naraki's.
The place was a kabat-dive, as Cheng had said; the clientele cold-eyed,
hard-faced, seclusive.
Ross started drinking.
Three kabats later, a lounger with the dark, lethal look of Malya blood
about him passed Ross' elbow. "Ramp 9-D, Thigpen."
It was deftly done, with unmoving lips. To all outward appearances, the
man hadn't even spoken.
* * * * *
The ramp held a freighter with a space-pocked, time-battered hull
that hid a high-capacity neutron drive capable of powering a Grade IX
cruiser.
Ross boarded the ship in bleak silence, with questions neither asked
nor answered on either side. Pausing at the galley, he gulped food till
he could hold no more, then slumped down in a bunk to sleep out the
trip in a state of something close to complete exhaustion.
And then, seemingly in seconds or minutes rather than hours, the craft
was ramping again, dropping down amid the cliffs and crags and craters
of a bleak asteroidal landscape.
Still blinking the sleep from his eyes, Ross stumbled through a
cargo-shaft, into a vast, cave-concealed shelter.
There were corridors, after that, and shaft-lifts; and, finally, a
long, narrow, cell-like room with a barred door.
The two men who'd guided Ross shoved him in; slammed shut the
self-locking door behind him.
Grim-faced, Ross turned.
"Thigpen!" Veta Hall ran towards him, out of the shadows at the far
end of the room. Gladness rang in her voice; shone from her face. "You
came! You came!"
"Did I have a choice?" Ross' smile held little mirth. "I got you into
this, Veta; trussed you up in a sack like a pigeon for Cheng to grab.
The least I can do is try to get you out."
"Don't worry, Thigpen. You can get her out."
Igor Cheng speaking, this time.
Ross turned sharply.
The scar-faced, black-browed smuggler-slaver-outlaw stood just beyond
the barred door, lips peeled back in a death's head grin. His thumbs
were hooked in his broad belt, and his expression was that of a man
well-satisfied with his world.
Ross' face went wooden.
"You ready to talk?" Cheng prodded.
"Would I be here if I wasn't?"
"Well, where's that formula? Let's see it!" Cheng thrust a hairy hand
between the bars.
Ross shrugged. "Did you think I'd be fool enough to bring it with me?"
"Then what--?"
"You'll have to take us to it."
"Where?"
"Venus. That place you crashed me."
Cheng leaned on the bars--brutal face darkening; scar livid. His voice
came out a snarl: "Don't try it, you starbo! Don't try it!"
Ross met the slaver's glare coldly. "What shouldn't I try?"
"That yodor Venus business!" Cheng gripped one of the doorbars with
thick fingers. "My pickup crew brought in a gorvide detector. We went
over every inch of your carrier; that whole section we traveled. And
all we came up with was this!"
Reaching into a pocket, he brought out Ross' doloid identification band
and tossed it down on the floor of the cell.
Momentarily, Ross' eyes narrowed a fraction; that was all.
"You take that too good, you zanat!" the slaver observed. "You held too
tight on it. So maybe you better start off this party by saying who
Stewart Ross is, and how you got your picture on his bracelet."
Ross shook his head, a fraction too swiftly. "I've never seen it
before."
"Don't waste your breath, starbo!" Cheng leaned on the bars. "I call
the turn here, and I say you talk--about Tornelescu's formula; that
band, there; anything at all. You can do it quick, or you can hurt
awhile first. Make up your mind."
"In that case--"
"You're still stalling. You came here to stall." The slaver's scar
twitched. "You thought you'd send me off on some ban-crazy run, while
you sneaked away with the girl. Only it won't work." A fragmentary
pause. "Where's that formula?"
"I don't know--"
"I said, it won't work!" Cheng gestured to his men. "Strip the lousy
chitza. See if it's in his stuff."
A brief flurry of struggle; then a search--the thorough kind of search
that took account of every seam, every stain; coins, flamer, writer,
pad.
It netted nothing.
Cheng said, "Good enough, Thigpen. I'm glad you're this stubborn. It
gives me a chance to loosen you up."
He turned to his men. "Bring 'em in."
Wordless, Ross pulled on his clothes. A light sheen of sweat glistened
on his forehead.
Cheng said to Veta, "This zanat was good on the one end. He got all
those people for old Tornelescu--the ones the doc tested the catalyst
on. They say he even did the work, too; squirted the stuff in with an
aeroderm. By the reports on the show-screen, he must have killed over
two thousand."
Cheng's helpers came back, rolling a wheeled case so broad it
completely blocked the barred doorway.
"Like I said," the smuggler smirked, "this boy's good on the one end.
Now we'll see how he fits on the other."
He stepped back, out of the way. His men rolled the case up tight to
the door, then lifted a sliding hatch at the end.
Slithering sounds came from the case. Then, quickly, a strange,
grey-black form slid through the open hatch, between the door's bars,
and down onto the floor of the cell.
Veta drew a swift, noisy breath. Her voice cracked. "_Gulfers--!_"
The sweat on Ross' forehead began to bead. A greyness came to the
corners of his mouth.
Now a second of the creatures slithered down onto the floor. Then a
third, and a fourth.
* * * * *
There was a horror in the creatures' very shapelessness. Flat,
sprawling, like six- or seven-foot patches of dampness, they undulated
over the floor in an erratic, wave-like pattern, closer and closer to
Ross and the girl.
Tight-lipped, a step at a time, his arm about Veta, he drew back to
the far end of the narrow room.
Fumbling in her shoulder-bag, the girl brought forth her vocorn pipe.
Without a word, she began to play a strange, wailing tune.
As if by magic, the gulfers' wave-patterns lost their erratic touches.
Now they moved smoothly, in a sort of hideously-rhythmic dance.
Beyond the barred door and the wheeled cage, Cheng laughed harshly.
"That's it!" he jeered. "See who lasts longer, the girl or the gulfers!
There's plenty of time!"
Veta's face paled. The smooth flow of her music grew ragged.
Instantly, the gulfers once again moved forward.
Ross drew back yet another step; threw the girl a quick look.
Her fingers, her hands, her whole body was shaking. Horror crawled in
her eyes--but not for an instant did she lift them from the advancing
gulfers, even though she swayed as if on the verge of fainting.
Ross held her close; braced her. But she only shook harder. Her piping
had lost all traces of pattern, of rhythm. Far from halting the
gulfers, it now seemed to draw them, incite them.
Beyond the barred door, Cheng laughed again in fierce, sadistic triumph.
Ross gripped Veta tighter. "Stop it, girl! Stop the piping!"
She gave no sign that she'd heard him. After a moment, he reached
down ... pulled the pipe from her lips.
Now, for the first time, she tore her eyes from the hideous things on
the floor. "No, no! Let me pipe! They'll come--they'll engulf us!"
Ross said gently, "They'll come anyhow. You can't stop them. So now
it's time I tried."
"Time--you tried--?"
"Yes. Just as soon as I tell you something."
Some of the blank horror left Veta's eyes. "Tell me--? What?"
Low-voiced, Ross said, "I don't want us to die with you thinking I'm
Lewis Thigpen. That bracelet Cheng found was mine. My name's Stewart
Ross, and I'm a Security Agent. Actually, Thigpen died of a heart
attack before Tornelescu was killed. But whoever murdered Tornelescu
doesn't know that. He's geared to go after Thigpen, because the
catalyst formulas and notes use a code for ingredients, and Thigpen's
the only one who knew it. So we figured a fake Thigpen would draw the
killer out of hiding."
He stopped abruptly. "I wanted you to know." And then, staring down at
the gulfers as moment by moment they closed in: "Here. Give me your
pipe."
But Veta's fingers tightened about it. "No. Not till I've told you
something too, Stewart. You see, I had to help Mawson. It was the only
way I could keep my brother Sanford out of Venus Barracks. But I didn't
dare tell you. Mawson--he could have had Tornelescu murdered. And he
sent Cheng after you, too, thinking you were Thigpen. Only I think
he'd seen Thigpen someplace or other, so when he saw you, he knew you
weren't the right man--"
Ross broke in, "I'm sorry, Veta. There's no more time for talk. For
real, we either do or die right now."
A gulfer brushed his foot as he spoke. Shuddering, Ross' jerked back
hard against the room's rear wall, twisting the vocorn pipe from Veta's
hand.
Then, like lightning, his arm whipped back, and forward, hurling the
instrument the length of the narrow room, straight at the barred door
and Igor Cheng.
It was close, a near miss. But Cheng ducked as it hit.
Simultaneously, Ross dived bodily across the encroaching gulfers.
He didn't clear the last, but he was rolling when he landed. Before the
creature could get a grip and wrap itself about him, he was on his feet
and lunging for the barred door. Arms extended, thrusting between the
heavy rods, he threw his whole weight on the wheeled cage just beyond.
The cage rolled back, away, gaining momentum with every turn of the
wheels.
Something brushed Ross' leg. He whirled as a gulfer started to surge up
about his ankle.
* * * * *
Bending double, Ross caught the monster by one edge and, with a mighty
heave, sent it flapping and slithering between the door's bars, out
into the anteroom beyond.
The thing almost hit Cheng. With an oath, the slaver leaped away.
"The cage!" he roared. "Bring back that cage!"
His aides leaped to obey.
Ross snatched up a second gulfer; hurled it after the first.
Cursing and dodging, Cheng's men raced the cage back, striving to block
the door.
Kicking through the bars, Ross knocked it out of alignment. Then,
grappling with another gulfer, he swung it so it fell on the far side
of the closest man.
A hoarse yell. The burly, bullet-headed outlaw leaped back against the
bars in his effort to escape contact with the monster.
Fast as a striking vrong, Ross caught the man by the throat with one
hand and clawed out his victim's light-pistol with the other.
The first beam he fired scorched the corridor wall less than a foot
from Igor Cheng's head. The second dropped Cheng's other helper in his
tracks.
The slaver sprinted away like a scared ban.
Ross' voice crackled. "All right, you! Do you live or die?"
But now, equilibrium recovered, his prisoner only sneered. "Go ahead.
Shoot. A fat lot of good it'll do you, locked up there in that room."
Ross' nostrils flared. He dug the pistol deep into the other's broad
back.
But Veta caught his arm. "No, Stewart! No! That's not the way!"
And then, to the guard: "Look, Burrage: this is your chance as well as
ours."
"My chance--?" The man's eyes rolled as he tried to look far enough
round to see her.
"Yes, of course." Veta moved closer. "Did Cheng tell you a batch of
Tornelescu's life catalyst was stolen, along with the formulas?"
"It was--?"
"Yes, and it's worth millions--more money than you can even count."
"Where is it?"
"Porforio, on Ganymede."
"Millions, you say--?" The man called Burrage was almost drooling. "I
could get you out of here and down to Ganymede for that."
"Then do it," Veta said. And, to Ross: "Here, let me have that." She
levered the light-pistol from his hand.
"Hurry! Blast the lock!" Burrage grated. "Another minute, and Cheng may
be back!"
"Of course," Veta nodded. "It's just that there's one other detail I
want clear before we break out. About Stewart, here."
Ross stared. "What--?"
Coolly, Veta leveled the pistol at his belly. "I'm sorry, Stewart," she
said, "but you're coming as a prisoner.
"You see, the man who has that batch of catalyst is my brother, Sanford
Hall!"