Complete Short Fiction, page 298
“Woman?” said Marenson.
Jerred shrugged. “I don’t know who it was. My agent didn’t report to me till the following morning. He had no opportunity to listen in.” Marenson nodded, and said: “Try to see if there were any eyewitnesses to my kidnaping, then we’ll get a court order and find out from Clugy and his son who the woman was.”
“You can count on us to do everything possible,” said the detective heartily.
“I expect results,” said Marenson, and broke the connection.
His, next call was to his apartment. The visiplate did not brighten, and after the proper length of time, a recorder sighed at him:
“Mr. and Mrs. Marenson have gone to Paradise Planet until August 26th. Do you wish to leave a message?”
Marenson hung up, shaken, and went quietly out of the hut.
The fear that had come faded before his determination not to be alarmed. There must be a rational explanation for Janet’s departure. He couldn’t quite see how the Yevd could be involved.
He was annoyed that his mind had leaped instantly to that possibility.
A minute later, wearily, he unlocked the door of the hut. Inside, he removed his boots and sprawled on the bed. But he was too restless to relax. After less than five minutes, he got up with the intention of going to Clugy’s office, and waiting there for the man to return. He had a lot of hard things to say to Ira Clugy.
Outside, he stopped short. Climbing up to his hut, he hadn’t realized what a vantage point he had. The hill reared up a hundred feet above the jungle and the main part of the camp. It gave him an unsurpassed view of a green splendor, of the endless, shining forest. Clugy had chosen his camp site well. Lacking the higher mountains hundreds of miles to the south, he had nevertheless found in the hilly jungle country a sizable semimountain that sloped gradually up until it was about eight hundred feet above the main jungle. The hill where Marenson stood was the final peak of the long, jungle-robed slope.
Marenson saw the glint of rivers, the sparkling color of strange trees; and, as he looked, something of his old feeling for this universe of planets beyond Earth stirred within him. He glanced up at the famous and wonderful Mira sun, and the thrill that came ended only when he thought of his situation and his purpose. Grimly, he started down the hill.
Both Clugy and his son were in the office when Marenson entered it a few minutes later. The spaceman stood up. He seemed curious rather than friendly. “Peter was telling me about you being here,” he said. “So you thought you’d come and look the territory over personally, eh?”
Marenson ignored the comment. Coldly, he made his accusation. He finished, “You may think you’re going to get away with this trick, but I assure you that you aren’t.”
Clugy gazed at him in astonishment. “What’s all this nonsense?” the spaceman demanded.
“Do you deny you had me kidnaped?”
“Why, certainly, I deny it.” Clugy was indignant. “-I wouldn’t pull a fool stunt like that in these days of authorized lie detector tests. Besides, I don’t work-that way.”
He sounded so sincere that for a moment Marenson was taken aback. He recovered swiftly. “If you’re so positive,” he said, “how about coming down right now to the camp magistrate’s office, and taking an immediate test.”
Clugy frowned at him. He seemed puzzled. “I’ll do just that,” he said. He spoke quietly. “And you’d better be prepared to take such a test yourself. There’s something funny about this whole business.”
“Come along!” Marenson said.
Clugy paused at the door. “Peter, keep an eye on the office till I get back.”
“Sure, Pop.”
The man’s swift acceptance of the challenge was in itself convincing, Marenson thought as he walked along at Clugy’s side. It seemed to prove that he actually had accepted the ruling of his union. His part in this affair must have ended the very night of their argument.
But then, who had seized on the situation? Who was trying to take advantage of the quarrel? Yevd? There was no indication of it. But then who?
The two tests required slightly less than an hour and a half. And Clugy was telling the truth. And Marenson was telling the truth. Convinced, the two men gazed at each other in baffled amazement. It was Marenson who broke the silence.
“What about the woman who called up your son the night before you left Earth?”
“What woman?”
Marenson groaned. “You mean to tell me you don’t know anything about that either?” He broke off with a frown. “Just a minute,” he said, “how come Peter didn’t tell you?”
His mind leaped to a fantastic possibility. He said in a hushed voice: “I think we’d better surround your hut.”
But the superintendent’s office, when they finally closed in on it, was empty. Nor was Peter discoverable at any of his usual haunts.
“Obviously,” said Clugy, his face the color of lead, “when he heard me agree to a lie detector test, he realized the game was up.”
“We’ve got to trace this whole thing back,” Marenson said slowly. “Somewhere along the line a Yevd was substituted for your son. He came with you to Solar City, and took no chances on being caught by one of the several traps we have around The Yards to catch Yevd spies. I mean by that, he stayed in his room, and apparently communicated with other Yevd agents by visiradio. That woman who called the Yevd who was impersonating your son was probably another Yevd, and there’s still another one of them impersonating me—”
He stopped. Because that other one was with Janet. Marenson started hastily for the radio hut. “I’ve got to contact Earth,” he called over his shoulder to Clugy.
The radio hut was a shambles. On the floor, with his head blown off, was a man—Marenson couldn’t be sure it was the operator. There was blood splattered on dozens of instruments, and the whole intricate machinery of an interstellar radio system had been burned by innumerable crisscrosses of energy from a powerful blaster.
Marenson did not linger in the radio hut. Back in Clugy’s office, he paused only long enough to find out from that distracted man that the nearest radio station was in a settlement some nine hundred miles to the south.
“It’s all right,” he said to Clugy’s offer of a requisition for a helicar and pilot. “I signed one myself this morning.”
A few minutes later he was in the air.
The speed of the machine gradually soothed Marenson. The tenseness went out of his muscles, and his mind began to work smoothly again. He stared out over the green world of the jungle, and thought: The purpose of the Yevd is to slow down procurement of lymph juice. That’s the important thing to remember. They must have struck first at the source of the juice, and did an easy imitation of a boy. That was their usual tactic of interference at the production level. Then a new factor came into the situation. They discovered that Ancil Marenson, head of the procurement department, could be fitted into an enlarged version of their sabotage plan. Accordingly, two Yevd who looked like human beings gassed him and put him aboard the Mira freighter.
At the same time, a Yevd image of Marenson must have continued on to the office, and later that day the duplicate and Janet had probably departed together for Paradise Planet.
But why did they let me live? Marenson wondered. Why not get me completely out of the way?
There was only one reasonable explanation. They wanted to make further use of him. First of all, he must establish his presence, and his authority, and then—and not till then—he would be killed. And another Marenson image would order Clugy to transfer his camp to the distant mountain. In that fashion they would convince the willing Clugy that Marenson, having come to see for himself, had recognized the justice of Clugy’s arguments.
Marenson felt himself change color—because that stage had arrived. All they needed from him was his signature on the order to Clugy. And even that could possibly be dispensed with, if they had managed to obtain some copy of his signature in the time available to them. But how would the attempt on him be made?
Uneasily, Marenson gazed out of the small helicar. He felt unprotected. He had been hasty in leaving the camp. In his anxiety to secure the safety of Janet he had exposed himself in a small ship which could be destroyed all too easily. I’d better go hack, he decided.
He called to the pilot, “Turn back!”
“Back?” said the man. He sounded surprised.
Marenson waved and pointed. The man seemed to hesitate, and then—he turned the machine upside down. With a crash, Marenson was flung to the ceiling of the craft. As he scrambled and fought for balance, the machine was spun once again. This time he had hold of a crossbar, and he came down more-easily. He struggled to pull out a blaster.
The helicar was plummeting down towards the jungle now, and the pilot was jerking it violently to and fro. Marenson guessed his purpose and his identity, and felt ill. What a fool he had been to rush so blindly into this trap. The Yevd, knowing that he would try to send a radio message, must have killed the regular pilot—and simply waited for that simpleton Ancil Marenson to do what it expected him to do.
Marenson had-a glimpse of trees terribly near. And realized the enemy’s plan. A crash landing. The weak human being would be knocked unconscious, or killed. The Yevd, a carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-fluorine life form, would survive.
The next moment, there was a thump that shook his bones. During the seconds that followed, he seemed to be continuously conscious. He was even aware that the branches of strong trees had broken the fall of the ship, and so possibly saved his life. More vaguely, he knew when his blasters were taken from him. The only period of blur occurred when he was dropped to the ground from the helicar.
When his vision cleared again, he was in time to see another helicar come down in a nearby open space among the trees. The image of young Peter Clugy stepped out of it, and joined the image of the pilot. The two Yevd stood looking down at him.
Marenson braced himself. He was as good as dead, but the will to meet death standing up and fighting made him try to climb to his feet. He couldn’t. His hands were tied to his legs.
He lay back weakly. He had no memory of having been tied. Which meant that he was wrong in believing that he had not been unconscious. It didn’t matter, of course. With sick eyes he gazed up at his captors.
“What happened to the real Peter Clugy?” he asked finally.
The two Yevd merely continued to look at him, bleakly. Not that an answer was needed. Somewhere along the line of their moves to this point, Clugy’s son had been murdered. It was possible that these two individuals did not even know the details of the killing.
Marenson changed the subject, and said with a boldness he did not feel: “I see I made a slight personal error. Well, I’ll make a bargain with you. You release me, and I’ll see to it that you get safely-off the planet.”
The two images wavered ever so slightly, an indication that the Yevd were talking to each other by means of light waves above the human vision level. Finally, one of them said:
“We’re in no danger. We’ll get off this planet in our own good time.”
Marenson laughed curtly. The laugh sounded unconvincing in his own ears, but the fact that they had answered him at all was encouraging. He said savagely: “The whole game is up. When I called Earth, the merest suspicion that Yevd were involved set in motion a far-flung defense organization. And, actually, my call was not necessary. The discovery that Yevd were involved was made in connection with my wife, Janet.”
It was a shot in the dark, but he was desperately anxious to find out if Janet were all right. Once more, there was the faint unsteadiness in the human images, that indicated conversation. Then the Yevd who was imitating Peter Clugy said:
“That’s impossible. The person who accompanied your wife to Paradise Planet had instructions to destroy her if she showed the faintest sign of suspicion.”
Marenson shrugged. “You’d better believe me,” he said.
He was tingling. His own analysis had been confirmed. Janet had gone of? on her vacation with someone she thought was her husband. It was a characteristic of Yevd imitating human beings that they liked to be with a real woman or man who would be able to do things for them. There were so many things that a Yevd could do only with great difficulty, so many places where it was dangerous for an individual Yevd to go. Thus the image of Peter Clugy had taken the risk of living with the real Peter’s father, and the image of Ancil Marenson had gone along with the real Janet.
The pilot Yevd said: “We don’t have to worry too much about any small group of human beings. Long married couples are not demonstrative with each other. Days go by without kissing. In other words, the person imitating you is protected from discovery by contact for at least a week. Our plan will be accomplished by then.”
Marenson said: “Don’t be a couple of fools. I can see you’re going to be stupid and make us all die. That’s where this kind of stuff is so depressing. We three will die. And no one will care. It’s not as if we’ll be heroes, any of us. You’ll be burned, trying to escape, and I—” He broke off. “What’s your plan for me?”
“First,” said young Clugy’s image, “we want you to sign a paper.”
He paused; and Marenson sighed. His analysis of the situation had been so completely right—too late.
“And if I don’t?” he asked. His voice trembled the faintest bit.
“Your signature,” was the reply, “would merely make things easier for us. In doing what we have done, we had to act swiftly, and so none of our people capable of imitating a signature is available on this planet. That can be rectified in a few days, but fortunately for you, we want quicker action. Accordingly, we are in a position to offer you the choice of signing or not signing.”
“O.K.,” said Marenson ironically. “My choice is—I don’t sign.”
“If you sign,” the Yevd went on in an inexorable tone, “we’ll kill you mercifully.”
“And if I don’t?”
“We leave you here.”
Marenson blinked. For an instant it seemed a meaningless threat. And then:
“Yes,” said Peter’s image with satisfaction, “leave you here for the lymph beast’s, progeny. I understand they like to burrow into the flesh of anybody they catch—a very weight-reducing experience.”
He laughed. It was a human laugh, a remarkable reproduction considering that it was done by light wave activation of a sound box it carried in its abdomen.
Marenson did not answer immediately. Until this instant, he had taken it for granted that the Yevd knew as much about the habits of those deadly dangerous creatures as did men. Apparently, their information was vague, accurate as far as it went, but—
“Of course,” said Peter Clugy’s image, “we won’t really go away. We’ll just go over to the ship and watch. And when you’ve had enough, we’ll get your signature. Does that meet with your approval?” Marenson had caught a movement out of the corner of one eye. It seemed a little more than a series of shadows very close to the ground, more like a quiver in the soil than anything substantial. But the perspiration broke out on his forehead. Dark forest of Mira, he thought, alive until the young of the lymph beast—He held himself very still, looking neither to the right nor to the left, neither at the Yevd nor at the shadow things.
“Well”—it was the Yevd image of the pilot—“we’ll stick around and have a look at some of these creatures we’ve been hearing so much about.”
They were moving away as the speaker reached that point. But Marenson did not turn, did net look. He heard a jerky movement, and then bright flashes lit up the dark corridor under the trees. But Marenson did not even roll his eyes. He lay still as death, silent as a log. A thing slithered across his chest, paused while he grew half-paralyzed with fright’—and then moved on with a gliding movement.
The lights flashed more brilliantly now, and more erratically. And there were thumping sounds.as if heavy bodies were frantically flinging themselves around. Marenson didn’t have to look to realize that the enemy pair were in their death throes.
Two more Yevd were discovering the hard way that human beings were interested in the brainless lymph things because they were as dangerous to man’s cunning opponent as to man himself.
For Marenson, the effort to remain quiet was a special agony, but he held himself there until the light was as spasmodic as a guttering candle, and as dim. When the glow had completely died, and when there had been silence for more than a minute, Marenson permitted himself the exquisite luxury of turning his head slightly.
Only one of the Yevd was in his line of vision. It lay on the ground, a long, almost black, rectangular shape, with a whole series of reticulated arms and legs. Except for the appendages, it looked more like a contorted bar of metal than a thing of flesh. Here and there over its surface, the body glittered with a black, glassy sheen, evidence that some of the light-controlling cells were still alive.
In that one look, Marenson saw no less than seven discolored gashes in the part of the Yevd body that he could see—which meant that at least seven of the young lymph beasts had crawled inside. Being mindless, they would be quite unaware that they had killed anything or that there had been a struggle.
They lived to eat, and they attacked any object that moved. If it ceased moving before they reached it, they forgot about it instantly. Utterly indiscriminate, they attacked leaves drifting in the wind, the waving branch of a tree, even moving water. Millions of the tiny snakelike things died every month making insensate attacks on inanimate objects that had moved for one reason or another. Only a very small percentage survived the first two months of their existence, and changed into their final form.
In the development of the lymph beast, Nature had achieved one of her most fantastic balancing acts. The ultimate shape of the lymph beast was a hard-shelled beehivelike construction that could not move.
