SPECIMENS
Only too well founded was Costigan's conviction that the submarine of
the deep-sea fishes had not been able to prevail against Nerado's
formidable engines of destruction. For days the Nevian lifeboat with
its three Terrestrial passengers hurtled through the interstellar void
without incident, but finally the operative's fears were realized--his
far flung detector screens reacted; upon his observation plate they
could see Nerado's mammoth space-ship, in full pursuit of its fleeing
lifeboat!
"On your toes, folks--it won't be long now!" Costigan called, and
Bradley and Clio hurried into the tiny control room.
Armor donned and tested, the three Terrestrials stared into the
observation plates, watching the rapidly-enlarging picture of the Nevian
space-ship. Nerado had traced them and was following them, and such was
the power of the great vessel that the now inconceivable velocity of the
lifeboat was the veriest crawl in comparison to that of the pursuing
cruiser.
"And we've hardly started to cover the distance back to Tellus. Of
course you couldn't get in touch with anybody yet?" Bradley stated,
rather than asked.
"I kept trying, of course, until they blanketed my wave, but all
negative. Thousands of times too far for my transmitter. Our only hope
of reaching anybody was the mighty slim chance that our super-ship might
be prowling around out here already, but it isn't, of course. Here they
are!"
Reaching out to the control panel, Costigan viciously shot out against
the great vessel wave after wave of lethal vibrations, under whose
fiercely clinging impacts the Nevian defensive screens flared white;
but, strangely enough, their own screens did not radiate. As if
contemptuous of any weapons the lifeboat might wield, the mother ship
simply defended herself from the attacking beams, in much the same
fashion as a wildcat mother wards off the claws and teeth of her
spitting, snarling kitten who is resenting a touch of needed maternal
discipline.
"They probably wouldn't fight us, at that," Clio first understood the
situation. "This is their own lifeboat, and they want us alive, you
know."
"There's one more thing we can try--hang on!" Costigan snapped, as he
released his screens and threw all his power into one enormous pressor
beam.
The three were thrown to the floor and held there by an awful weight as
the lifeboat darted away at the stupendous acceleration of the beam's
reaction against the unimaginable mass of the Nevian sky-rover; but the
flight was of short duration. Along that pressor beam there crept a dull
red rod of energy, which surrounded the fugitive shell and brought it
slowly to a halt. Furiously then Costigan set and reset his controls,
launching his every driving force and his every weapon, but no beam
could penetrate that red murk, and the lifeboat remained motionless in
space. No, not motionless--the red rod was shortening, drawing the
truant craft back toward the launching port from which she had so
hopefully emerged a few days before. Back and back it was drawn;
Costigan's utmost efforts futile to affect by a hair's breadth its line
of motion. Through the open port the boat slipped neatly, and as it came
to a halt in its original position within the multi-layered skin of the
monster, the prisoners heard the heavy doors clang shut behind them, one
after another.
And then sheets of blue fire snapped and crackled about the three suits
of Triplanetary armor--the two large human figures and the small ones
were outlined starkly in blinding blue flame.
"That's the first thing that has come off according to schedule."
Costigan laughed, a short, fierce bark. "That is their paralyzing ray,
we've got it stopped cold, and we've each got enough iron to hold it
forever."
"But it looks as though the best we can do is a stalemate," Bradley
argued. "Even if they can't paralyze us, we can't hurt them, and we are
heading back for Nevia."
"I think Nerado will come in for a conference, and we'll be able to make
terms of some kind. He must know what these Lewistons will do, and he
knows that we'll get a chance to use them, some way or other, before he
gets to us again," Costigan asserted, confidently--but again he was
wrong.
The door opened, and through it there waddled, rolled, or crawled a
metal-clad monstrosity--a thing with wheels, legs and writhing tentacles
of jointed bronze; a thing possessed of defensive screens sufficiently
powerful to absorb the full blast of the Triplanetary projectors without
effort. Three brazen tentacles reached out through the ravening beams of
the Lewistons, smashed them to bits, and wrapped themselves in
unbreakable shackles about the armored forms of the three human beings.
Through the door the machine or creature carried its helpless load, and
out into and along a main corridor. And soon the three Terrestrials,
without arms, without armor, and almost without clothing, were standing
in the control room, again facing the calm and unmoved Nerado. To the
surprise of the impetuous Costigan, the Nevian commander was entirely
without rancor.
"The desire for freedom is perhaps common to all forms of animate life,"
he commented, through the transformer. "As I told you before, however,
you are specimens to be studied by the College of Science, and you shall
be so studied in spite of anything you may do. Resign yourselves to
that."
"Well, say that we don't try to make any more trouble; that we cooperate
in the examination and give you whatever information we can," Costigan
suggested. "Then you will probably be willing to give us a ship and let
us go back to our own world?"
"You will not be allowed to cause any more trouble," the amphibian
declared, coldly. "Your cooperation will not be required. We will take
from you whatever knowledge and information we wish. In all probability
you will never be allowed to return to your own system, because as
specimens you are too unique to lose. But enough of this idle
chatter--take them back to their quarters!"
Back to their three inter-communicating rooms the prisoners were led
under heavy guard; and, true to his word, Nerado made certain that they
had no more opportunities to escape. To Nevia the space-ship sped
without incident, and in manacles the Terrestrials were taken to the
College of Science, there to undergo the physical and psychical
examinations which Nerado had promised them.
Nor had the Nevian scientist-captain erred in stating that their
cooperation was neither needed nor desired. Furious but impotent, the
human beings were studied in laboratory after laboratory by the coldly
analytical, unfeeling scientists of Nevia, to whom they were nothing
more or less than specimens; and in full measure they came to know what
it meant to play the part of an unknown, lowly organism in a biological
research. They were photographed, externally and internally. Every bone,
muscle, organ, vessel, and nerve was studied and charted. Every reflex
and reaction was noted and discussed. Meters registered every impulse
and recorders filmed every thought, every idea, and every sensation.
Endlessly, day after day, the nerve-wracking torture went on, until the
frantic subjects could bear no more. White-faced and shaking, Clio
finally screamed wildly, hysterically, as she was being strapped down
upon a laboratory bench; and at the sound Costigan's nerves, already at
the breaking point, gave way in an outburst of berserk fury.
The man's struggles and the girl's shrieks were alike futile, but the
surprised Nevians, after a consultation, decided to give the specimens
a vacation. To that end they were installed, together with their Earthly
belongings, in a three-roomed structure of transparent metal, floating
in the large central lagoon of the city. There they were left
undisturbed for a time--undisturbed, that is, except by the continuous
gaze of the crowd of hundreds of amphibians which constantly surrounded
the floating cottage.
"First we're bugs under a microscope," Bradley growled, "then we're
goldfish in a bowl. I don't know that...."
He broke off as two of their jailers entered the room. Without a word
into the transformers they seized Bradley and Clio. As those tentacular
arms stretched out toward the girl, Costigan leaped. A vain attempt. In
midair the paralyzing beam of the Nevians touched him and he crashed
heavily to the crystal floor; and from that floor he looked on in
helpless, raging fury while his sweetheart and his captain were carried
out of their prison and into a waiting submarine.