They rode a two-place tractoscooter together, with Joanna driving the
rugged, almost-springless vehicle recklessly out over the expanse of
the growing station toward the scene of incipient disaster. Lynne hung
onto her perch with both hands, her lips white as they rocketed over
grassland that had looked level on the vidarscreen, but proved in
reality to be savagely bumpy and uneven.
Joanna, dominated as she was by a desperate concern for the safety of
her cattle, did not realize her recklessness until she had braked the
vehicle, almost in the midst of the zombie-driven beasts. She plucked a
long bullwhip from a boot at her side, and a stunner from the dashboard
pocket in front of her. She marched boldly toward the herd, which had
ceased all movement and was regarding her with massed, owlish eyes.
Then, suddenly, she stopped and turned to Lynne, a look of utter
consternation on her face. “Lynne!” she exclaimed. “What a _ferkab
marlet_ I am. I completely forgot about the baby! Are you all right?”
“So far everything’s _purt_,” said Lynne, reassured by her own
lack of distress. She was all right, she decided, and felt relief flood
through her. “Get on with it, Joanna,” she urged. “I needn’t tell you
how important it is.”
Alarm rang like an old-fashioned radar _ping_ in her brain, and
she swung about just in time to see a long-haired musk-ox rising from
the tall grass in which he had been lying concealed, and advancing on
the tractoscooter they had just abandoned.
She experienced a chilling sense of triumphant malice as the shaggy
beast reared and brought its forefeet viciously down on the dashboard
and steering apparatus of the vehicle. Instantly the scooter was
wrecked beyond immediate hope of repair.
Fear became so much a part of Lynne she could feel its copper taste at
the base of her tongue.
“Joanna!” she cried, her voice strangely weak. “Look behind you.”
The girl turned, her eyes narrowed in desperate rage. Raising the
stunner she felled the zombie-ridden creature with a perfect shot
between the eyes, and watched it collapse beside the vehicle it had
wrecked.
“That should put you to sleep for a while, you _czanworm_,” she
said, furiously.
Lynne had turned again. The massed herd was advancing remorselessly
now, spear-headed by an even larger creature. She recognized it as the
leader she had seen in the vidar screen in Joanna’s office. There was
still blood on its horns, and tumultuously heaving flanks. Lynne could
feel the triumphant malice pouring from the zombie in control, and an
even greater horror came upon her.
“Joanne,” she called desperately, wondering in an extremity of panic,
what had possessed her to expose herself to so great a danger at such a
time. She had no doubt at all concerning the deadliness of the danger.
And it was increased immeasurably seconds later when the dark girl
swung about and fired pointblank at the menacing ovebos. As the echoes
of the blast died she hurled her weapon away with a Martian curse.
“Forgot to recharge it,” Joanna said bitterly. Swinging about and
whirling the bullwhip about her head, she advanced straight toward the
herd, cracking the whip at them, the flicks sounding like a series of
rifle-shots.
Some of the cattle shifted uneasily and refused to come forward. Here
and there a steer even turned and broke away. But the leader, and those
close behind him continued their inexorable advance.
Lynne got a flash of a too-familiar alien thought, and cried aloud,
“Careful, Joanna, they’re going to stampede.”
The leader executed an odd, an un-oxlike little shuffle. Then he
lowered his bloody horns for the charge.
Lynne Marcein, at that moment of great peril, became telepathically
hyper-acute. She received, sifted, analyzed, and identified a series of
terrifying mental impressions which came in such quick succession that
they seemed dreamlike and unreal. There was Joanna, whatever fear she
felt sublimated to outrage at the grotesque derelictions of the animals
whose breeding and care was her job. Joanna was going to use her whip
until the stupid, insane creatures turned and fled in blind panic.
But the creatures were neither stupid nor insane. At least, the
brains and beings that controlled them were not craven. They were as
determined as Joanna to destroy her, an obstacle in the path of their
appalling urge for such degenerate pleasure as their bovine embodiment
would permit. She caught the mass urge to destroy, and instantly
thereafter the driving mental force of the leader with his gore-soaked
horns.
By concentrating telepathically on the leader, Lynne automatically
shut out all other minds from her consciousness. This was a weapon
that would have stood all telepaths in good stead when the zombies
threatened their sanity with mass possession. For the Martian
aborigines, standing alone, lacked the strength to overpower and
possess a human TP brain. Their power lay in numbers, not in the
individual mind.