His mind shied away from the thought.
It was silent. His headache seemed to be affecting his vision, somehow.
Either that or the landing pad wasn't cool yet. When he looked toward
the--toward the white formations at the edge of the pad, they seemed to
waver slightly near the ground. Heat waves still, he decided.
Nimbly, and with a pleasant sense of being home again, he scrambled
down the ladder and stood on the ground, tiny beneath the clumsy shape
of _Phoenix I_.
About halfway between the edge of the pad and his ship stood a tiny
cluster of thin, upright poles. From their bases he could see black,
snakelike cables twisting off toward the edge, shifting in his
uncertain vision. He walked toward them.
The silence was so complete it was unnatural. It was almost as if his
ears were plugged, rather than the simple absence of sound. Well, he
supposed that was natural, after all. He had lived with the buzzing
purr of the Skipdrive and the thunder of the rockets so long, any
silence would seem abnormal.
As he drew closer to the upright rods, he saw each one was topped with
a bulge, a vaguely familiar....
They were microphones! They were just like the microphone in _Phoenix
I_, the one he had fooled with.
He was sincerely puzzled. All that transmit-receive gadgetry in the
ship had been foolish, but what was he to think of finding it here on
his landing pad? It didn't make any sense. He was getting the uneasy
sense of confusion again. The headache was becoming almost unbearable.
He walked over to the cluster of microphones. That was probably the
place to start. He took the neck of one in his hand and pulled it, but
it didn't move smoothly, as the one on his control chair had. It simply
tipped awkwardly toward him.
Suddenly he felt something on his shoulder, and looked around quickly,
but could see nothing. The pressure on his shoulder remained, and he
vaguely brushed at it with his hand. It went away.
He set the microphone back upright and looked back at his ship. There
was another pressure on his opposite shoulder, sudden and harder than
the first had been. He slapped at it, and stepped back, uncertainly.
One of the microphones tipped toward him, but he hadn't touched it. He
took another step backwards, and felt something close tightly around
his left arm. He snapped his head to the left, but there was nothing
there.
He twisted sharply away to the right, and the motion freed him, but
his shoulder hit something solid. He gasped, and his throat tightened
again. He raised his hand to his head. The headache was getting worse
all the time.
Something touched him on the back.
He spun, crouching.
Nothing.
He stood straight again, his eyes wide, panting from the fear that was
beginning to choke him. His fists clenched and unclenched as he tried
to puzzle out what was happening to him.
The air closed abruptly around both arms simultaneously, gripping so
tightly it hurt.
He shouted and twisted loose and started to run back toward the ship.
He stumbled against an invisible something, fell against another, but
it kept him upright and prevented his falling. Several times as he
ran, things he could not see brushed him, touched him on the shoulders
and back.
By the time he scrambled up the ladder, his breath was short, and
coming in little whimpers. The headache was the greatest pain he
thought he could ever have known, and he wondered if he were dying.
He had to kick at invisible things that clutched at his feet on the
ladder, and when he reached the edge of the port he stood kicking and
flailing at nothing until he was certain none of the--creatures, things
were there.
He shut the port swiftly and ran breathlessly up to the control room.
He threw himself into the padded chair.
Finally he lowered his head into his hands and began to weep.
2.
Night.
The land turned gray and silver and white under the chill light of
the rising moon. The buildings of Gila Lake Base IV were sharp and
distinct, glowing faintly in the moonlight as if lit somehow inside the
concrete walls.
On the landing pad, _Phoenix I_ squatted darkly, clumsily. The moon
washed its bulbous flanks with cascading light that flowed down the
long surfaces of the hull and disappeared into the absorbent blackness
without trace. Tiny prickling reflections of stars glinted from the
once-polished metal.
At the edges of the Base, where wire meshes stretched up out of the
desert dividing the things of the desert from the things of men,
nervous patrols paced forlornly in the night.
One of the blockhouses at the inner edge of the landing area presented
two yellow rectangles of windows to the night. Inside the blockhouse
were two men, talking.
One of the men was in uniform, and his collar held the discreet
star-and-comet of a staff officer, SpaServ. He was young for his rank,
perhaps in his early forties, with gray eyes that now were harried. He
sat on the edge of his desk regarding the other man.
The second of the two was a civilian. He was slumped in an oddly
incongruous overstuffed chair, with his legs stretched out straight
before him. He held the bowl of an unlit pipe in both hands and sucked
morosely on the stem as the SpaServ brigadier talked. He was slightly
younger than the other, but his hair was beginning to thin at the
temples. He had sharp blue eyes that regarded the tips of his shoes
without apparent interest. Colin Meany was his name, and he was a
psychiatrist.
Finally General Banning finished his account of the afternoon, raised
his hands in a shrug, and said, "That's it. That's all we have."
Colin Meany took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded the
tooth-marked bit curiously. He shoved it in his coat pocket and walked
over to the window, looking out across the moon-flooded flat to the
looming, ominous shape of _Phoenix I_. He stood with his hands clasped
behind him, rocking gently back and forth on his toes.
"Ugly thing," he said casually.
Banning shrugged. The psychiatrist turned away from the window and sat
down again. He began to fill his pipe.
"Where is he now?" he asked.
"In the ship," the general told him.
"What's he doing?"