"Nothing very serious," the medic said. "Just a routine checkup to
clarify some points we're interested in."
"All right," Sherri said. "You won't find anything the matter with
him." She left.
"Come with me, Captain," said the medic politely. He unlocked the cell
door and, equally politely, drew a needle-beam pistol. "Don't try
anything, please, sir. I have my orders."
Silently, Wayne followed the medic into the lab. Several other medics
were standing around watching him, with Stevelman, the head man, in the
back.
"Over this way, Captain," Stevelman called.
There was a box sitting on a table in the middle of the room. It was
full of sand.
"Give me your hand, please, Captain," the medic said tonelessly.
In a sudden flash of insight, Wayne realized what was in the box. He
thought fast but moved slowly. He held out his hand, but just as the
medic took it, he twisted suddenly away.
His hand flashed out and grasped the other's wrist in a steely grip. The
medic's fingers tightened on the needle-beam, and managed to pull the
trigger. A bright beam flared briefly against the lab's plastalloy
floor, doing nothing but scorching it slightly. Wayne's other hand
balled into a fist and came up hard against the medic's jaw.
He grabbed the needle-beam pistol from the collapsing man's limp hand
and had the other three men covered before the slugged medic had
finished sagging to the floor.
"All of you! Raise your hands!"
They paid no attention to him. Instead of standing where they were, they
began to move toward him. Wayne swore and, with a quick flip of his
thumb, turned the beam down to low power and pulled the trigger three
times in quick succession.
The three men fell as though they'd been pole-axed, knocked out by the
low-power beam.
"The whole ship's gone crazy," he murmured softly, looking at the three
men slumped together on the lab floor. "Stark, staring, raving nuts."
He took one step and someone jumped him from behind. The needle-beam
pistol spun from his hand and slithered across the floor as Wayne fell
under the impact of the heavy body. Apparently the whole Medical Corps
was out to knock him down today.
He twisted rapidly as an arm encircled his neck, and rammed an elbow
into the newcomer's midsection. Then he jerked his head back, smashing
the back of his skull into his opponent's nose.
The hold around his neck weakened, and Wayne tore himself loose from the
other's grasp. He jumped to his feet, but the other man was a long way
from being unconscious. A stinging right smashed into Wayne's mouth, and
he felt the taste of blood. Hastily he wiped the trickle away with the
back of his hand.
With his nose pouring blood, Wayne's antagonist charged in. His eyes
burned with the strange flame that had been gleaming in Boggs's face out
on the desert in the valley. He ploughed into Wayne's stomach with a
savage blow that rocked Wayne back.
He grunted and drove back with a flurry of blows. The other aimed a wild
blow at Wayne's head; Wayne seized the wrist as the arm flew past his
ear, and twisted, hard. The medic flipped through the air and came to
rest against the wall with a brief crunching impact. He moaned and then
lapsed into silence.
* * * * *
Quickly, Wayne grabbed the gun off the floor and planted his back to the
wall, looking around for new antagonists. But there was evidently no one
left who cared to tangle with him, and the four medics strewn out on
the floor didn't seem to have much fight left in them.
Wayne crossed the room in a couple of strides and bolted the door. Then
he walked over to the box of sand. If it contained what he suspected--
He stepped over to the lab bench and picked out a long steel support rod
from the equipment drawer. He placed the rod gently against the sand,
and pushed downward, hard. There was a tinny scream, and a six-inch
needle shot up instantly through the surface.
"Just what I thought," Wayne murmured. "Can you talk, you nasty little
brute?" He prodded into the sand--more viciously this time. There was a
flurry of sand, and the football-shaped thing came to the surface,
clashing its teeth and screaming shrilly.
Wayne cursed. Then he turned the needle gun back up to full power and
calmly burned the thing to a crisp. An odor of singed flesh drifted up
from the ashes on the sand.
* * * * *
He stooped and fumbled in Stevelman's pocket, pulling out a ring of
keys.
"They better be the right ones," he told the unconscious medic.
Holstering the needle gun, he walked over to the medical stores cabinet,
hoping that the things he needed would be inside. He knew exactly what
he was facing now, and what he would have to do.
He checked over the labels, peering through the neatly-arranged racks
for the substance he was searching for.
Finally he picked a large plastine container filled with a white,
crystalline powder. Then he selected a couple of bottles filled with a
clear, faintly yellow liquid, and took a hypodermic gun from the rack.
He relocked the cabinet.
Suddenly a knock sounded. He stiffened, sucked in his breath, and turned
to face the door.
"Who's there?" he asked cautiously, trying to counterfeit Stevelman's
voice.
"Harrenburg," said a rumbling voice. "I'm on guard duty. Heard some
noise coming from in there a while back, and thought I'd look in.
Everything all right, Dr. Stevelman? I mean--"
"Everything's fine, Harrenburg," Wayne said, imitating the medic's thin,
dry voice. "We're running some tests on Captain Wayne. They're pretty
complicated affairs, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt
again."
"Sure, sir," the guard said. "Just a routine check, sir. Colonel
Petersen's orders. Sorry if I've caused any trouble, sir."
"That's all right," Wayne said. "Just go away and let us continue, will
you?"
There was the sound of the guard's footsteps retreating down the
corridor. Wayne counted to ten and turned back to the things he had
taken from the cabinet.
The bottles of liquid and the hypo gun went into his belt pouch. He
tucked the big bottle of white powder under his left arm and cautiously
unbolted and opened the door. There was no sign of anyone in the
corridor. _Good_, he thought. It was a lucky thing Harrenburg had
blundered along just then, and not two minutes later.
He stepped outside the Medic Section and locked the door behind him with
the key he'd taken from Stevelman. After turning the needle gun back to
low power again in order to keep from killing anyone, he started on
tiptoe toward the stairway that led into the bowels of the ship.
After about ten paces, he saw a shadow on the stairway, and cowered in a
dark recess while two crewmen passed, talking volubly. Once they were
gone, he came out and continued on his way.
It took quite a while to get where he was going, since it involved
hiding and ducking two or three more times along the way, but he finally
reached the big compartment where the water repurifiers were. He climbed
up the ladder to the top of the reserve tank, opened the hatch, and
emptied the contents of the jar into the ship's water supply.
"That ought to do it," he said to himself. Smiling, he carefully smashed
the jar and dropped the fragments down the waste chute. He surveyed his
handiwork for a moment, then turned and headed back.
He hadn't been seen going down, and he didn't want to be seen going out.
If anyone even suspected that he had tampered with the water supply, all
they would have to do would be to run the water through the purifiers.
That would undo everything Wayne had been carefully preparing.
* * * * *
He made his way safely back up to the main deck and headed through the
quiet ship toward the airlock. He wasn't so lucky this time; a guard saw
him.
"Where you goin', Captain?" the guard demanded, starting to lift his
gun. "Seems to me you ought to be in the brig, and--"
Wayne made no reply. He brought his gun up in a rapid motion and beamed
the man down. The guard toppled, a hurt expression on his face.
Wayne raced to the airlock. He didn't bother with a spacesuit--not
_now_, when he knew that the air was perfectly harmless outside. He
opened the inner door, closed it, and opened the outer door.
Then, grinning gleefully, he pressed the button that would start the
pumping cycle. The outer door started to close automatically, and Wayne
just barely managed to get outside and onto the ladder before it clanged
shut. As soon as the great hatch had sealed itself, the pumps started
exhausting the air from the airlock. No one could open the doors until
the pumping cycle was over.
He climbed down the ladder and began walking over toward the western
wall. He would have to keep away from the ship for a while, and the
rocks were as good a place as any to hide out.
* * * * *
It was dark. Fomalhaut had set, leaving the moonless planet in utter
blackness, broken only by the cold gleam of the stars. The lights
streaming from the portholes of the _Lord Nelson_ gave a small degree of
illumination to the valley.
The valley. It was spread out before him, calm and peaceful, rippling
dunes of sand curling out toward the mountains. The valley, he knew, was
a betrayer--calm and quiet above, alive with an army of hideous vermin a
few feet below its surface.
He started to walk, and moistened his lips. He knew he was going to get
awfully thirsty in the next few hours, but there was not the slightest
help for it. There hadn't been any way to carry water from the ship.
"I can wait," he told himself. He stared back at the circular bulk of
the _Lord Nelson_ behind him, and his fingers trembled a little. He had
known, when he joined the Corps, that space was full of traps like this
one--but this was the first time he had actually experienced anything
like this. It was foul.
Something slammed into his boot sole, and this time Wayne knew what it
was.
"Persistent, aren't you!" He jerked his foot up. This monster hadn't
stuck as the other one had, but he saw the tip of the needle-beak
thrashing around wildly in the loose sand. Wayne thumbed the gun up to
full power, and there was a piercing shriek as the gun burned into the
sand. There was a sharp shrill sound, and the odor of something burning.
He spat.
The little beasts must be all over the floor of the valley! Scurrying
frantically, like blood-red giant crabs, sidling up and down beneath the
valley, searching upward for things to strike at. How they must hate his
metamagnetic boots, he thought!
He kept on walking, expecting to feel the impact of another thrust
momentarily, but he was not molested again. _They must be getting wise_,
he thought. _They know they can't get through my boots, and so they're
leaving me alone. That way they don't call attention to themselves._
A new, more chilling question struck him:
_Just how smart are they?_
He had made it to the wall and was climbing up the treacherous slope
when the airlock door opened, and someone stood outlined in the bright
circle of light that cut into the inky blackness. An amplified voice
filled the valley and ricocheted back off the walls of the mountains,
casting eerie echoes down on the lone man on the desert.
"CAPTAIN WAYNE! THIS IS COLONEL PETERSEN SPEAKING. DON'T YOU REALIZE
THAT YOU'RE A SICK MAN? YOU MAY DIE OUT THERE. COME BACK. THAT'S AN
ORDER, CAPTAIN. REPEAT: COME BACK. THAT'S AN ORDER!"
"I'm afraid an order from you just doesn't hold much weight for me right
now, Colonel," Wayne said quietly, to himself. Silently he went on
climbing the escarpment, digging into the rough rock.
He kept on climbing until he found the niche for which he had been
heading. He dragged himself in and sat down, as comfortably as possible.
He began to wait.
* * * * *
Dawn came in less than three hours, as Fomalhaut burst up over the
horizon and exploded in radiance over the valley. With dawn came a
patrol of men, slinking surreptitiously across the valley, probably with
orders to bring him in. Wayne was ensconced comfortably in his little
rock niche, hidden from the men in the valley below, but with a perfect
view of everything that went on. The wind whistled around the cliffs,
ceaselessly moaning a tuneless song. He felt like standing up and
shouting wildly, "Here I am! Here I am!" but he repressed the perverse
urge.
The patrol group stood in a small clump in the valley below, seemingly
waiting for something. Moments passed, and then it became apparent what
that something was. Hollingwood, the metallurgist, appeared, dragging
with him the detector. They were going to look for Captain Wayne with
it, just as they had searched out the double-nucleus beryllium.
Wayne frowned. It was a possibility he hadn't thought about. They could
easily detect the metal in his boots! And he didn't dare take them off;
he'd never make it back across that hellish stretch of sand without
them. He glanced uneasily at his watch. _How much longer do I have to
keep evading them?_ he wondered. It was a wearing task.
It looked as though it would be much too long.
The muzzle of the detector began to swing back and forth slowly and
precisely, covering the valley inch by inch. He heard their whispered
consultations drifting up from below, though he couldn't make out what
they were saying.
* * * * *
They finished with the valley, evidently concluding he wasn't there, and
started searching the walls. Wayne decided it was time to get out while
the getting was good. He crawled slowly out of the niche and wriggled
along the escarpment, heading south, keeping low so the men in the
valley wouldn't see him.
Unfortunately, he couldn't see them either. He kept moving, hoping they
wouldn't spot him with the detector. He wished he had the metamagnetic
hand grapples with him. For one thing, the sharp rock outcroppings
sliced his hands like so much meat. For another, he could have dropped
the grapples somewhere as a decoy.
_Oh, well, you can't think of everything_, Wayne told himself. He
glanced at his watch. How long was it going to take?
He heard the scrape of boot leather on a rock somewhere ahead of him. He
glanced up sharply, seeing nothing, and scowled. They had spotted him.
They were laying a trap.
Cautiously, he climbed over a huge boulder, making no sound. There was
one man standing behind it, waiting, apparently, for Wayne to step
around into view. He peered down, trying to see who it was. It seemed to
be Hollingwood, the dignified, austere metallurgist.
Wayne smiled grimly, picked up a heavy rock, and dropped it straight
down, square on the man's helmet. The plexalloy rang like a bell through
the clear early-morning air, and the man dropped to his knees, dazed by
the shock.
* * * * *
Knowing he had just a moment to finish the job, Wayne pushed off against
the side of the rock and plummeted down, landing neatly on the
metallurgist's shoulders. The man reeled and fell flat. Wayne spun him
over and delivered a hard punch to the solar plexus. "Sorry, Dave," he
said softly. The metallurgist gasped and curled up in a tight ball.
Wayne stood up. It was brutal, but it was the only place you could hit a
man wearing a space helmet.
_One down_, Wayne thought. _Fifty-eight to go._ He was alone against the
crew--and, for all he knew, against all fifty-nine of them.
Hollingwood groaned and stretched. Wayne bent and, for good measure,
took off the man's helmet and tapped him none too gently on the skull.
There was the sound of footsteps, the harsh _chitch-chitch_ of feet
against the rock. "He's up that way," he heard a deep voice boom.
That meant the others had heard the rock hitting Hollingwood's plexalloy
helmet. They were coming toward him.
Wayne sprang back defensively and glanced around. He hoped there were
only five of them, that the rule of six was still being maintained.
Otherwise things could become really complicated, as they hunted him
relentlessly through the twisted gulleys.
He hated to have to knock out too many of the men; it just meant more
trouble later. Still, there was no help for it, if he wanted there to be
any later. He thought of the bleached bones of the crew of the _Mavis_,
and shuddered.
It was something of an advantage not to be wearing a helmet. Even with
the best of acoustical systems, hearing inside a helmet tended to be
distorted and dimmed. The men couldn't hear him as well as he could hear
them. And since they couldn't hear themselves too well, they made a
little more noise than he did.
A space boot came into view around a big rock, and Wayne aimed his
needle-beam at the spot where the man's head would appear.
When the head came around the rock, Wayne fired. The man dropped
instantly. _Sorry, friend_, Wayne apologized mentally. _Two down.
Fifty-seven to go._ The odds were still pretty heavy.
He knew he had to move quickly now; the others had seen the man drop,
and by now they should have a pretty good idea exactly where Wayne was.
He picked up a rock and lobbed it over a nearby boulder, then started
moving cat-like in the other direction. He climbed up onto another
boulder and watched two men move away from him. They were stepping
warily, their beam guns in their hands. Wayne wiped away a bead of
perspiration, aimed carefully, and squeezed the firing stud twice.
_Four down. Fifty-five to go._
* * * * *
A moment later, something hissed near his ear. Without waiting, he spun
and rolled off the boulder, landing cat-like on his feet. Another
crewman was standing on top of a nearby boulder. Wayne began to sweat;
this pursuit seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, and it was beginning
to look unlikely that he could avoid them forever.
He had dropped his pistol during the fall; it was wedged between a
couple of rocks several feet away.
He heard someone call: "I got him. He fell off the rock. We'll take him
back down below."
Then another voice--ominously. "He won't mind. He'll be glad we did it
for him--afterwards."
"I'll go get him," said the first voice. The man stepped around the side
of the boulder--just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunking
into his midsection.
"Oof!" he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.
_Five down. Fifty-four to go._ It could go on forever this way.
"What's the matter?" asked the man who had replied to the first one with
those chilling words.
"Nothing," said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman's
voice. "He's heavy. Come help me."
Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man's beam gun. He took
careful aim.
When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam went
wide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. He
pounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with a
woozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, then
came in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground.
He took a deep breath.
_Six down and only fifty-three to go._
* * * * *
He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the
valley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that Colonel
Petersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.
As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A spacesuited figure
scrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of the
valley floor.
It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that one
of the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needle
upward into Sherri's foot. But her stride never faltered.
As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock door
and took aim with a gun.
Wayne thumbed his own needle-beam pistol up to full and fired hastily
at the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would only
stun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinned
in satisfaction.
_Seven down. Fifty-two to go._
He kept an eye on the airlock door and a finger on his firing stud,
waiting to see if anyone else would come out. No one else did.
As soon as Sherri was safely up to the top of the precipice, Wayne ran
to meet her.
"Sherri! What the devil did you come out here for?"
"I had to see you," she said, panting for breath. "If you'll come back
to the ship before they beam you down, we can prove to Colonel Petersen
that you're all right. We can show them that the Masters--"
She realized suddenly what she said and uttered a little gasp. She had
her pistol out before the surprised Wayne could move.
He stared coldly at the pistol, thinking bitterly that this was a hell
of a way for it all to finish. "So they got you too," he said. "That
little display at the airlock was a phony. You were sent out here to
lure me back into the ship. Just another Judas."
She nodded slowly. "That's right," she said. "We all have to go to the
Masters. It is--it--is--is--"
Her eyes glazed, and she swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and
swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it
from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as she fell.
He wiped his forehead dry. Up above, the sun was climbing toward the top
of the sky, and its beams raked the planet below, pouring down heat.
* * * * *
He glanced at his wristwatch while waiting for his nerves to stop
tingling. Sherri must have been the last one--the drug must have taken
effect at last, and not a moment too soon. He decided to wait another
half hour before he tried to get into the spaceship, just the same.
The huge globe of the _Lord Nelson_ stood forlornly in the center of the
valley. The airlock door stayed open; no one tried to close it.
Wayne's mouth was growing dry; his tongue felt like sandpaper.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to sit quietly, watching the ship
closely for the full half hour, before he picked up Sherri, tied his
rope around her waist, and lowered her to the valley floor. Then he
wandered around the rocks, collecting the six unconscious men, and did
the same for them.
He carried them all, one by one, across the sand, burning a path before
him with the needle beam.
Long before he had finished his task, the sand was churning loathsomely
with the needles of hundreds and thousands of the monstrous little
beasts. They were trying frantically to bring down the being that was so
effectively thwarting their plans, jabbing viciously with their upthrust
beaks. The expanse of sand that was the valley looked like a pincushion,
with the writhing needles ploughing through the ground one after
another. Wayne kept the orifice of his beam pistol hot as he cut his way
back and forth from the base of the cliff to the ship.
When he had dumped the seven unconscious ones all inside the airlock, he
closed the outer door and opened the inner one. There was not a sound
from within.
_Fifty-nine down_, he thought, _and none to go_.
He entered the ship and dashed down the winding staircase to the water
purifiers to change the water in the reservoir tanks. Thirsty as he
was, he was not going to take a drink until the water had been cleared
of the knockout drug he had dropped into the tanks.
After that came the laborious job of getting everyone in the ship
strapped into their bunks for the takeoff. It took the better part of an
hour to get all sixty of them up--they had fallen all over the ship--and
nestled in the acceleration cradles. When the job was done, he went to
the main control room and set the autopilot to lift the spaceship high
into the ionosphere.
Then, sighting carefully on the valley far below, he dropped a flare
bomb.
"Goodbye, little monsters," he said exultantly.
For a short space of time, nothing happened. Then the viewplate was
filled with a deadly blue-white glare. Unlike an ordinary atomic bomb,
the flare bomb would not explode violently; it simply burned, sending
out a brilliant flare of deadly radiation that would crisp all life
dozens of feet below the ground.
He watched the radiation blazing below. Then it began to die down, and
when the glare cleared away, all was quiet below.
The valley was dead.
When it was all over, Wayne took the hypodermic gun from his pouch,
filled it with the anti-hypnotic drug that he had taken from the medical
cabinet, and began to make his rounds. He fired a shot into each and
every one aboard. He had no way of knowing who had been injected by the
small monsters and who had not, so he was taking no chances.
Then he went to the colonel's room. He wanted to be there when the
Commanding Officer awoke.
* * * * *
The entire crew of the _Lord Nelson_ was gathered in the big mess hall.
Wayne stared down at the tired, frightened faces of the puzzled people
looking up at him, and continued his explanation.
"Those of you who were under the control of the monsters know what it
was like. They had the ability to inject a hypnotic drug into a human
being through a normal space boot with those stingers of theirs. The
drug takes effect so fast that the victim hardly has any idea of what
has happened to him."
"But why do they do it?" It was Hollingwood, the metallurgist, looking
unhappy with a tremendous bruise on his head where Wayne had clobbered
him.
"Why does a wasp sting a spider? It doesn't kill the spider, it simply
stuns it. That way, the spider remains alive and fresh so that young
wasps can feed upon it at their leisure."
Wayne glanced over to his right. "Lieutenant Jervis, you've been under
the effect of the drug longer than any of us. Would you explain what
_really_ happened when the _Mavis_ landed?"
The young officer stood up. He was pale and shaken, but his voice was
clear and steady.
"Just about the same thing that almost happened here," Jervis said. "We
all walked around the valley floor and got stung one at a time. The
things did it so quietly that none of us knew what was going on until we
got hit ourselves. When we had all been enslaved, we were ready to do
their bidding. They can't talk, but they can communicate by means of
nerve messages when that needle is stuck into you."
Nearly half the crew nodded in sympathy. Wayne studied them, wondering
what it must have been like. They _knew_; he could only guess.
"Naturally," Jervis went on, "those who have already been injected with
the drug try to get others injected. When everyone aboard the _Mavis_
had been stung, they ordered me to take the ship home and get another
load of Earthmen. Apparently they like our taste. I had to obey; I was
completely under their power. You know what it's like."
"And what happened to the others--the eight men you left behind?" asked
Colonel Petersen.
Jervis clenched his teeth bitterly. "They just laid down on the
sand--and waited."
"Horrible!" Sherri said.
* * * * *
Jervis fell silent. Wayne was picturing the sight, and knew everyone
else was, too--the sight of hordes of carnivorous little aliens
burrowing up through the sand and approaching the eight Earthmen who lay
there, alive but helpless. Approaching them--and beginning to feed.
Just when the atmosphere began to grow too depressing, Wayne decided to
break the spell. "I'd like to point out that the valley's been
completely cauterized," he said. "The aliens have been wiped out. And I
propose to lead a mission out to reconnoitre for the double-nucleus
beryllium."
He looked around. "MacPherson? Boggs? Manetti? You three want to start
over where we left off the last time?"