Sometime during the night the door of the truck opened and another body
was laid beside Ivy on the floor. Until then Ivy had believed that
whatever was going to happen at the end of this ride would be reserved
for her, and she thought she knew what that happening would be. With
the addition of this new body, however, which was also a girl, Ivy was
not so sure.
She was completely paralyzed and she could not move a finger. Beside
her the other girl did not move either. But she, this other one, was
also young and pretty, and Ivy began to think through her terror.
Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the
thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons
was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping
for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy
and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The
only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted
into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream.
Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before
morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable.
At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the
rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out.
She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill,
toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to
look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered
at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately.
All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They
were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with
large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them
an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which
was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie
regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that
there was something here which was more than just abduction.
She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a
floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the
presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she
had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now.
After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off.
* * * * *
Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole
station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon
had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the
forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he
bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come
up first, there would be nobody in it either.
"Web."
"Yep?"
"Did you check the space suits?"
"Yep," Web said wearily. "And I counted 'em. They're all here. All in
the lockers, never been touched."
"How about the escape pod?"
"That's here too. But they couldn't have got away in that anyway. Radar
would have seen it."
Dundon was silent. In the background Web could hear an argument going
on. Some of the really high brass were with Dundon now, listening in.
Well, Web said to himself gravely, but with a trace of cheer breaking
through, the rest is their problem. I've done my job. I think right now
I had better go home.
He called to Falk, to let him know that he was coming, and began to
retrace his steps, reeling in his radio wire. Falk didn't acknowledge
his call, so he called again.
"Joe," he said happily, "I'm a-comin'. Let's clear out o' here."
Falk didn't answer.
"Joe?" Web said.
Nothing.
"Joe?"
He stopped dead in his tracks.
"Dundon," he said thickly.
There was nothing from Dundon either.
He was completely alone.
* * * * *
In the face of emptiness, surrounded by nothing, as alone as any man
will ever be, Web waited. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Within his
suit the thumping of his heart was an endless chain of bombs. He
decided that he had to get out. He was all the way up the turret before
his mind cleared and the unrushing wave of claustrophobia fell away,
and he realized what had happened.
Falk hadn't answered. But then, neither had Dundon.
"Well hell," he said aloud, sweating, "so the radio got disconnected."
The whole thing had gone blank. Now, if it was just Falk who hadn't
answered....
Weakly, he leaned against the airlock, breathing with huge gulps. A
plug was out in the rocket, or down at the base, or a tube was blown,
and for this reason he had very nearly made a fool of himself. For all
he knew they could hear him. He began to talk anyway, questioning,
liking the sound of his voice in the really absolute silence.
He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day,
and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a
few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the
metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on
to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were
lifted strangely.
Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He
slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi.
Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars.
"Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid
his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other.
But he didn't say anything.
Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and
inside the helmet was nothing.
Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed
it.
This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts.
Around him moved the whirling stars.
I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said.
* * * * *
The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor
particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a
spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space,
warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin
did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a
short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the
Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms
ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with
great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the
deaths of the forty-seven men--for death it was--or the death of Joe
Falk.
And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the
turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched,
in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes.
The first set of eyes--which were more or less human in structure,
differing only in their purple color--belonged to Kunklin and Prule.
They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon,
and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going
in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the
station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had
a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens
would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the
satellite.
But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled.
"A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having
noticed the empty suit of Falk--the arms of which had begun to float
out helplessly, like a beggar--Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a
delighted interest.
Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two,
grunted darkly.
"They put up a space station right in the midst of being plundered,
poor devils. They must have walked right into it."
It was Kunklin's turn to be sombre.
"There's been killing."
"Undoubtedly," Prule growled with disgust. "The Faktors could not allow
these people to be in space. They would see too much. Note the empty
suit...."
It was at this point that Web stepped out of the turret and saw Falk.
Kunklin watched curiously.
"A Faktor?"
"No. One of the people of this planet. Note the primitive equippage."
Pause. "This is extraordinary."
"You mean because he's alive?"
"Of course. The others are dead. Why is this one still alive?"
Kunklin was the younger one, cocky and in many ways indolent, but he
had by far the quicker mind.
"He is alive," Kunklin said swiftly, "because he is a Galactic. Let us
go down."
The second set of eyes that was observing the satellite did not see Web
come out of the turret. The brain behind those eyes was rejoicing as it
approached the satellite. The plundering was very nearly done. All that
remained now was a brief investigation, and then destruction of this
station, and the bone and blood and magnificent flesh of these people
would remain in free supply below, unwarned and unaware.
The alien landed on the skin of the doughnut, switched off his gravity
pack, and walked cheerfully around toward the turret.
And at the turret, of course, Web Hilton was still sitting, slowly
regaining his mind. It was at that moment occurring to Web that if
there was a logical explanation for all this it would not be found up
here, or by him, and he was just then considering the quickest way down
to Earth--via rocket or escape pod in the station. He had not quite
made up his mind when he saw the alien.
It is difficult to say which of them was the most surprised.
The alien had been under the impression that anything human that had
been on the satellite no longer existed. Indeed, there was no possible
way that anything human could exist on the satellite. So therefore, Web
Hilton was not human. The alien was shocked.
But for Web, who had recently undergone some extraordinary events, this
was by far the most fantastic of all. For the alien was an adaptation.
An artificial oxygen-producing mechanism in his chest, together with
silicone-adapted skin and a number of similarly ingenious devices,
enabled the alien to walk freely in space, which he did clad only in
a short white cloth and a gravity pack. And what Web saw come walking
toward him over the surface of the station, in open space, with the
moon and the stars for a background, was a naked man. The alien wore no
space suit.
The door behind him was open, Web fell back into the turret.
When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a
very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside
himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from
outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web.
"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down
the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he
did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges,
but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For
the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the
appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had
first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now,
because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one
thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as
the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had
destroyed Falk.
Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him.
You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out
there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are
alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out.