Time Travel Omnibus, page 395
Frantically he pounded and yelled again, but there was still no answer. He stepped back and heaved his shoulder against the door—but his suit acted as a cushion and the door was solid.
Precious seconds trickled away as he lumbered down the corridor again and grabbed up a sledge from the emergency kit on the bulkhead. That did the trick. The latch gave with the second blow, and the door flew open.
Crawford whirled to face him, backed against the farthest wall like a trapped animal.
“Come on man! There, isn’t a second!”
But Crawford’s eyes only stared madly, and his lips moved soundlessly in a twisted, emaciated face. The voice in Brad’s ears was Fay’s, in frantic pleading:
“Please, Brad, please! Before it’s too late . . . you’ve done your best!”
Then Brad knew why his shouting was in vain. Crawford’s space-suit still lay on his bunk, with its radio helmet. He grabbed one of the man’s arms, motioning toward the door. But Crawford pulled away savagely, still hugging the wall.
Time ticked on.
Brad stepped in again and set himself for a hard, short right. But again his spacesuit impeded him, and the blow wasn’t solid. Crawford only staggered, stumbling away around the bunk.
Then Brad saw the hole in the bulkhead where a service panel had been removed: saw the small, heavy-bound chest which Crawford had been concealing. His mind sparked with a sudden supposition—with a possible explanation for all their troubles—and he reached out to take it.
But something straightened him up, froze him in mid-motion. Sound: that dread sound he had been anticipating and now couldn’t quite believe. The shrill, ear-splitting vibration of the alarm bell, amplified and re-amplified like the call of Judgment.
He whirled, and stared, and knew now he never could make it. His voice fought against the deafening clamor:
“Let ’er go, Spike, shove away! It’s now or never!”
He didn’t know whether his voice had carried. But he thought he heard a faint answering cry, a woman’s scream against the mechanical bedlam . . .
Then there was silence.
Brad hurled himself forward just as Crawford, blocking the door, raised his blaster . . .
TENSION had mounted steadily, unbearably, on the waiting lifeboat. Menace had become tangible: something you could measure from one breath to the next.
The passengers had allowed themselves to be herded aboard, strapped in place, and had felt the beginnings of panic. Still it had been with that sense of unreality, that feeling of disassociation, which is common to those trying to escape a danger they don’t understand. Then Brad’s urgency, as he set out on his rescue mission, had given it substance . . . and they waited now in quivering suspense.
Fay Fairchild, after her first futile cry of protest, had slumped back, was staring blankly ahead. Gus still mumbled, disclaiming his blame. Spike sat tensely poised by the controls, cursing softly and bitterly under his breath.
But these were only a background to the unseen drama which their earphones brought them. They heard Brad’s sharp, panting breaths as he raced down the passageway. They heard the desperate haste in his voice as he shouted to Crawford and pounded on the door. Then his grunts as he swung the sledge . . . and the long, ominous silence as he confronted whatever it was that he had found inside the cabin.
That, finally, had broken the girl’s control. She fought against the straps which held her, pleading to be released so that she could go to Brad’s aid. Spike himself was already half out of his seat, but Fay’s struggles brought him back to his senses, reminding him where his own duty lay.
“Leave those straps alone, dammit!”
“No . . . no! I won’t go without him!”
Sammy Mund groped out from behind and pulled her down.
“Please! Somebody go help him!”
“You heard his orders,” Spike growled unhappily.
More sounds . . . the grunt from Brad as he waded in, a thud and another grunt. The picture of struggle was as vivid as if they had actually seen the blows, but the outcome was as dubious as the silence which followed.
Then hell broke loose. Hell amplified and re-amplified, filling their helmets. Deafening them, stunning them with its shrill intensity until the sound was meaningless.
Spike knew, but still he hesitated. Above the uproar he heard Brad’s desperate shout—then his hand dropped slowly to the controls by his side.
He heard Fay’s final scream of protest as she twisted around again to look at him. He saw the disbelieving hatred dawning in her face—but he also saw again the grim promise that had been in Brad’s own eyes:
If you don’t, I’ll see you in hell myself!
Spike’s hand moved, and the outer hatch rolled back. There was a breathless jolt as the vacuum took hold—and then the spinning black chaos of space . . .
BRAD’S instinctive dive for Crawford had saved his life—at least for the moment. The clumsy bulk of the spacesuit had tripped him up again, but Crawford stumbled backward and a hole in the ceiling was the only damage.
However Crawford moved quickly and unimpeded, and he managed to escape Brad’s clutching hands. Brad scrambled desperately after him, knowing there was no chance now to draw his own blaster, or even to get to his feet. Again Crawford’s weapon swung down, again Brad’s lunge thrust him off balance so that the shot went wild.
This time Brad managed to hang on, hugging the man’s legs and driving him backward. Crawford chopped down with the heavy butt, but it glanced harmlessly off the hard-crowned helmet. The next instant he himself crashed back against the bulkhead.
The force of the blow stunned Crawford momentarily and knocked the gun loose. Crawford tried to regain it, but still Brad held on like a clumsy bear, knowing he was lost if the man got free again.
Crawford slugged and kicked and twisted—but if Brad’s suit was a hinderance it was also protection. He ignored the blows, still hanging on in his wrestler’s embrace, and gradually, slowly, forced Crawford to the deck by brute strength alone.
Then a quick twist, and he was over on top. His heavy, ribbed gloves found Crawford’s throat with clumsy groping. They gradually tightened as the man kicked and thrashed; they kept on tightening until the other was still.
For a moment Brad lay there, swimming in exhaustion and the sweat inside his suit. Then he staggered to his feet. Crawford was still alive, gurgling for breath, but any thought of him was gone from Brad’s mind. Instead there was only the pounding clamor of the alarm, and the desperate thought that there still might be time . . .
He lost his head, then. He ran like a madman back down the passageway, screaming against the gong’s bedlam for the others to wait.
The airlock door brought him up short. It was locked and immovable, the red showing above. He looked at the outside pressure gauge, too, and read its message. Then he turned.
He turned slowly and deliberately, his face a grim and ugly thing behind the visor. His blaster came to his hand with a single purpose; his feet moved as if by themselves to a single thought. There was one last thing he wanted, before the end.
But there wasn’t any end. There was only the gleaming walls of the corridor stretching interminably, like parallel lines that reached to infinity.
Space had lost its dimensions—and Time stood still.
IV
SIKE came to, with the worst hangover ever. He felt as if he had been drinking straight gin—on a roller coaster. He groaned, but it only added to the medley in his ears and then he realized where he was.
His hand went instinctively to the control by his side; it took him a moment longer to know that the only sense of motion was in his own spinning head. They had already landed. They were sitting still and solid on a desert landscape, and the sun was real above the transparent overhead.
The 15-G had done its work well. Functioning beyond the weakness of flesh, it had sped straight and true to its appointed goal. Powered by its grav-grids, informed by its searching radar fingers, directed by its auto-computer . . . it had weighed all the existence factors of its human cargo and had arrived infallibly at the best of possible answers.
The air pump whirred quietly away and the boat was at rest, proudly waiting, as if to say, “Well, I got you here, safe and sound. The rest is up to you.”
Spike stretched as if to attain the stature of his new responsibility. His eyes went shrewdly over the instruments and found satisfaction. Temperature, humidity, atmosphere, gravity, radiation . . . all within the limits of human tolerance. They might as well be sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert—the problems were going to be the same. Food and water, heat and despair.
Another possible menace occurred to Spike as he opened the hatch and dropped to the ground. His gun was ready as he walked cautiously out of the shadow of the lifeboat and looked around. The horizon’s curve showed the smallness of the world on which they had landed. Back beyond the boat a low range of barren rocks made jagged teeth in a brilliant sky. But there was no sign of movement or life on the floor of the desert.
Here and there was a giant cactus, twenty feet high with limbs like thorny spider legs. Smaller plants of another variety were scattered profusely about the boat. These were a mottled gray-green with strange jug-shaped bases and a single orange blossom like a mouth at the tapering top. The sand underfoot was vividly streaked, obviously rich in minerals—and the sun overhead was scorching.
Spike lifted off his helmet as he turned back toward the boat. Then an incredibly rich perfume reached his nose almost overpowering in intensity but definitely pleasant. It was a scent that intoxicated the senses and reached into the memory: the smell of roses in summer and the taste of strawberries and the coolness of his favorite bar, all rolled in one.
It was like . . . well, like being greeted by an aromatic brass band!
“How is it, Casey?” came Sammy Mund’s voice, ghostlike and anxious in the empty helmet slung over Spike’s shoulder.
“Talk about falling into a rose-bed! Come on out, all of you, and get a whiff of this!”
The passengers staggered out, and he hurried to assist them. One by one they filed out, stretching wracked limbs uncertainly and blinking in the dazzling sun.
THE elder ones had suffered most, of course, from the brutal deceleration. Elvira Kirkalnd, the middle aged teacher, yanked hastily at her helmet and was promptly space-sick. Several others followed suit, including the once glamorous Lola De Lao. Mrs. Reeves was still unconscious, and had to be carried out.
The last was Fay, her movements wooden and her face a mask. She stood looking at Spike with bitter eyes, while the others gathered around.
Spike took one hopeless glance up at the empty sky and then faced their accusing silence. His voice was as hard as his face. “The Captain and Mr. Crawford didn’t make it. The rest of us can consider ourselves lucky—so far.”
The girl said flatly: “You ran off and left him.”
“His own orders. You heard him.”
“You deliberately, cold-bloodedly, shoved away without him . . . without even trying to save him!”
“He knew the risk and he was willing to take it. But not at the expense of the rest.”
“You didn’t . . . you wouldn’t . . . even make a try!”
Spike straightened himself, and once again he seemed to gain in stature. He said quietly, “I thought enough of him to follow his orders, Miss Fairchild. He was a brave man and you don’t honor a man like that with false heroics. You just do your job the way he wants it.”
He paused and then raised his voice. “I did what I had to do—follow my orders. Captain Hunter gave me command of this party but if you want to choose another leader now.”
Fay’s eyes were empty again, empty even of the bitterness she had turned on Spike. The others looked at each other, still somewhat hostile but none of them wanting to accept the responsibility. There was a long silence and then Sammy Mund broke it up with a sudden shout. “Hey, something’s burning!”
Spike sniffed the air. There was a crisp, pungent smell now, and not a trace of that heavy sweetness he had noticed at first. He glanced toward the lifeboat, but his nose told him this was no smell of scorched metal or fabric. It was something animal. As if—and Spike grinned at himself for thinking in these terms—the heat of mutual antagonism, the collective fear reaction of the group, had taken on tangible substance.
Sammy Mund thought he had discovered the source. He pointed toward the rim of hills. From the highest point of the nearest ridge, a slender thread of smoke trailed upward.
But Spike knew it was far too distant to account for the odor. In fact, the burning smell was gone now, and a suggestion of fragrance had again replaced it. But what about the fire? What had caused it?
It couldn’t be volcanic; not at the very edge of a sheer outcropping of rock that rose so abruptly. And it was too small and concentrated for a brush fire even had there been brush to burn . . .
Dr. Bowers said slowly, “It looks almost like a campfire . . . or some sort of a signal!”
But who had made it? The little stranded group stared and muttered, until finally Spike spoke up again.
“There’s only one way to find out, and we’d better get organized.” He went on to make his suggestions, and since no one could offer a better plan, they accepted his leadership. Exploration was an immediate necessity, aside from the mysterious fire. The condenser on the lifeboat would provide only a minimum trickle of water in this atmosphere, and the emergency rations wouldn’t last forever. The sooner they knew what enemies they faced, if any, the better to fight them. . .
MRS. Reeves effectively interrupted things at this point by uttering a shrill scream and keeling over. Spike saw the puzzled, uncomprehending looks of those nearest to her as he went to her aid. Fay Fairchild also moved to assist the woman’s nurse, and quick results with the vial from the first-aid kit confirmed Spike’s guess. The stout widow had only fainted again.
But as she sat up, blinking at them, fear came into her face. “It moved! I saw it move!”
They all looked around, still puzzled. “That . . . it’s alive! I saw it, I tell you!”
She was pointing at the nearest of the pot-shaped plants. One of those strange three-foot gourds with the fat, rounded base and the slender tapering stem that ended in a bright orange orifice like an inside blossom. An elusive fragrance reached Spike’s nostrils again, but certainly the plant wasn’t moving. It looked like it had been rooted there forever in the brilliant sands of the desert.
Still the woman pointed with a shaking arm, and a very real horror was in her eyes.
Sammy Mund snorted. “Hell, Mrs. Reeves, you shouldn’t scare us like that! That’s only some sort of a screwy cactus plant.”
He moved over toward it. Spike yelled a warning, but he was too late. Still scoffing, Mund had grabbed the plant around its slender neck and had given it a hearty yank. He let go just as suddenly and fell back gasping—but not before the rest of them had seen it.
There were “roots” all right: a thick fringe of slender radiating roots such as you might expect of a desert plant. But the roots had been squirming, groping things, like the tentacles of some octopus torn loose from its mooring!
And as the “plant” fell back to the ground again it righted itself like a child’s Humpty-Dumpty. They could see the quick shifting of the. sand as the “roots” burrowed in again.
To Spike, who had seen many things on many planets, that in itself was no cause for alarm. Even on Earth many life forms crowded the borderline between “plant” and “animal.” But what had happened to Sammy Mund was another story. He was out cold—and he wasn’t the fainting type.
As Spike bent over him, close to the strange plant, he caught still another nostalgic odor. It took him right back to Earth—back to hospitals and operating rooms and a siege at the dentist’s. It was the heavy, sickening smell of anesthen, and so dense he could almost feel it.
He backed hastily away. It was as if the plant had responded to Sammy’s attack I with a deliberate defense of its own. Spike knew that even on Earth there were plants which gave off noxious odors to repel their enemies. But how about “plants” which could run the full range of scent as if at will? “Plants” capable of any odor from the heavy fragrance of wild roses to the heat of anger to a deliberate gas attack on a potential enemy?
Spike looked around. Fay Fairchild and Mrs. Reeves’ capable nurse had taken Mund in hand and he was responding to the emergency-kit stimulant. The others were staring at Spike, awaiting his explanation, but his eyes had gone beyond them.
He knew now without doubt that they were not dealing with anything “botanical” in the ordinary sense—but with living, sentient beings. For behind and around on every side the “plants” had moved in closer, to form a solid, surrounding ring!
FOR a moment they were all frozen into silence. Then, abruptly, one of the women screamed. Jones cursed, his fat face white with fear, and fumbled his blaster from the space-suit holster.
Spike’s own weapon was already poised, but he used it only to knock Jones’ gun aside. “Hold it! All of you!”
Gus said unsteadily:—“Those things are alive, Chief! They’ve got us surrounded.”
Spike nodded slowly, his eyes studying the fantastic circle of “plants”: “Sure, but they may be friendly. Let’s not fly off the handle.”
Sammy Mund was climbing angrily to his feet. “Friendly, hell! There was nothin’ friendly about that whiff of gas that I just got!”
“It was only defending itself. Their smell is friendly now.”
And indeed it was. The air was fragrant again—but still Spike wondered why he had put it that way. He hastened to defend himself.
“Look, we know they’re intelligent. At least they seem to know what they’re doing. Let’s say they use odor as a means of communication?”
