The invaders straightened, staring. The face of the bronzed, strong man went white, the lines of it blurring into slackness. The white-haired man swayed on his feet.

  "The radiation's getting me, Randsome," he whispered. "I'm having hallucinations."

  "No. No 3 I see it, too." The eyes of the bronzed man burned into Son's. "A man, naked in open space."

  He stumbled forward, his gaze fixed on the powerful body outlined against the stars. Son watched him come, conscious of a curious pulsing excitement. Anger, resentment, fear for the Light, and something else. Something like the first time he had spoken to Aona through the Veil.

  The bronzed man stopped before him. His lips moved in that odd way they had. Son heard his mind speaking, faintly. "What are you?"

  "I am Son," he answered simply. "What do you want with the Light?"

  Again he heard the faint mind-voice. "You can't understand me, of course. I don't know what you are, god or demon, but don't try to stop us!"

  "But I do understand. You can't go down there."

  Ransome turned. "Dick." he said, "Lord only knows what this — this creature is, or what it will do. But we've got to get down there and study this thing. If it tries to stop us, I'll kill it."

  Dick nodded his white head. His face was lined and very tired. "Surely nothing will stop us now," he said. "Not now."

  "I'll cover you," said Ransome. Dick slid down into the crevice. The bronzed man drew something from his belt and waited. Son stepped forward, anger and fear cording his muscles.

  The dark man said, "I don't want to kill you. I have no right to kill you, because of what you are. But the thing down there is going to be destroyed."

  Son stopped, quite still. A great flaming pulse shot through him. And then he gathered himself. The spring of his corded thighs carried him full over the crack down which the white-haired man had gone. One long arm reached down. The hand closed angrily on smooth glass.

  The helmet shattered. Son had a momentary glimpse of a lined, weary face upturned, faded eyes staring in unbelieving horror. Then the flesh of the face split into crimson ribbons, and the body under the spacesuit altered strangely.

  Son got up slowly, feeling strange and unsteady in his thoughts. He hadn't wanted to destroy the man, only to make him come back. He became aware, then, of Ransome, standing with a metal thing in his hand staring at him with eyes like the savage dying red stars.

  "It didn't touch him," Ransome's mind was saying. "A heat ray strong enough to fuse steel, and it didn't touch him. And Dick's dead."

  Ransome hurled the gun suddenly into Son's face. "Do you know what you've done?" his mind shouted. "Dick was a physicist — about the only one with any knowledge that hasn't died of old age. He might have found the way to destroy that thing. Now, if our weapons don't work on it —

  "The effect is accelerating. Every child born since the Cloud is horribly susceptible. There isn't any time any more for anything. There won't be anyone to follow us, because now there's no time to learn."

  Ransome stepped close to Son. His head was thrown back, his face a grim hard mask, streaked suddenly by little shining things that ran from those savage eyes. "You don't know what that means, do you ? You don't know how old Dick was with his white hair and his wrinkles. Thirty-six! Or me. I'm nineteen — nineteen. And my life is already half gone.

  "All over the Solar System it's like that, because of this hellish thing that came in the Cloud. We've hunted the System over for five years, all of us that could, for a thing that wouldn't react to any test or show on any instrument. And when we found it—"

  He stopped, the veins knotted across his forehead, a little muscle twitching in one lean cheek. Then, very calmly, he said, "Get him, boys,"

  Son jerked around, but it was too late. The five who had stayed in the ship were all around him. For a long time Son had been conscious only of these two men, and the strange confusion in his mind — a confusion made worse, somehow, by those mysterious crystal drops running from Ransome's eyes. They caught him, somewhere, deep.

  Ropes of light metal fell around him. He fought like a Titan in the naked blaze of the sun. But they were experts with their ropes. They caught his wrists and ankles, dividing his power, baffling him with tenuous cords of elastic strength.

  Son knew that his mass was still sufficiently in phase to be subject to such laws as gravity and tension. He fought. But presently he was spread-eagled on the burning metal, helpless.

  The man with the face like beaten metal and the sullen eyes said, "We were watching from the ship. We thought we must be crazy when we saw this — man standing out here. Then we thought you might need help.”

  He stopped, staring at Son. "The heat ray didn't touch him."

  "No," said Ransome quietly. "That's how he got Dickson."

  The one with the strange green face snapped, "Dickson's dead?"

  Ransome nodded. "Down in the crack there. We were trying to get down to study the light. He — it didn't want us to go –"

  The green-faced one said, "My God!"

  "Quite. Arun, you and one of the boys guard the ship. Teck, you mount guard here with the other. Greenough, come with me."

  One of the round-faced ones stepped forward. His eyes were light blue, oddly empty in spite of their brightness. He looked down at the crevice where Dickson's body was, and his mind said, "I'm afraid. I don't want to go down there. I'm afraid."

  "Come on, Greenough," Ransome snapped. His lips started to move again, and stopped abruptly.

  Son caught the thought, "Got to hurry. God knows what this radiation will do to us, right on top of it."

  "Sir," said Greenough jerkily, "what if there are more like him down there?"

  Ransome turned his grim, hard face on the boy. Son felt again that force, the strength that pulses between the stars. "Well," said Ransome, "what if there are?''

  He turned and slid down into the crevice. Greenough closed his pale, scared eyes, licked his lips, and followed. Teck, the man with the sullen eyes, laughed, a biting mind-sound as hard as his jaw-line. "Hell of a gunnery officer."

  Arun said absently, "He's only eleven." His eyes, purple-black and opaque as a dark nebula, swung jerkily from Son to the crevice where Dickson lay, and then back again.

  Teck was a big man, as big as Son, but Arun topped him by a foot. He was very slender, moving with a queer rubbery grace.

  "What if we can't do it?" he said suddenly. "What if our weapons won't work on it any more than they did on him?"

  "Then," answered Teck evenly, "the last generation of mankind will die of old age within fifty years." His sullen gaze roved over Son, over and over, and his mind was whispering to itself.

  "Mutation," he said abruptly. "That's it. Complete change of cellular structure, metabolism, brain tissue, everything. Mutation in the living individual. I wonder how long — "

  "Look at that green light," whispered Arun. "Remember how it filled the whole sky when we came into the Cloud? Cosmic dust, the scientist said. Temporary effect. But it stayed, when the Cloud went away."

  His long thin arms came up in a blind sort of gesture. "We were millions of miles away, then. What will it do to us now?"

  Teck studied his hands. "We're not aging, anyway. Concentrated effect is probably different. Feel anything?"

  "Deep. Deep inside me. I — "

  "Your cellular structure is different from ours, anyway."

  Arun swayed slightly, watching the green light pulse up from below. Beads of sweat ran down his face.

  "Yes," he whispered. "Different. You know how the Cloud affected us on Tethys. If our lifepan were not almost three times as long as your — "

  He bent suddenly over Son, and more of the strange shining things were trickling out of his eyes. "For five years we've watched our people die, hunting for this tiling. Dickson was our only chance. And you, you damned freak — "

  He lifted his long arms again, as though to cover his head. "I'll get back to the ship now," he said abruptly, and turned.

  Teck hesitated for a heartbeat, scowling at Arun. Then he stepped in front of him, the thing they called a heat gun in his hand. "Sit down, Arun."

  "You heard Ransome's orders." The Tethysman was trembling.

  "In the Martian Drylands, where I come from," murmured Teck, "men sometimes get what we call esht — desert-fear. They take other men's water and vaards, and run away. You're the engineer, Arun, and even without me to do the navigating…Sit down, Arun."

  The Tethysman sat, a fluid folding of thin length. The two round-faced boys stood by, not moving nor speaking, the fear so strong in their minds that Son could hear it. He saw and heard all this with a small part of his brain. Most of it was thinking of the Light and the men working their way down to the odd hole where it lay among the tangled ships.

  This talk of age and years and dying and humanity meant nothing to him. In all his universe there was only himself, the wheel, the sun, the distant stars, and Aona. There was no day or night, no time. He was angry and afraid, full of hatred and resentment and a queer tearing at his throat, as though he had lost some vital part of him — the Light. Were they going to take the horrible way of destruction that Aona had told him of? Or did they know another way?

  He tensed his corded body against the metal ropes, and his mind cried out "Aona!" as though he were seeing her vanish forever beyond the Veil.

  The Martian said, softly, "He used to be human. I wonder — " He leaned forward suddenly. "Can you hear me?"

  Son answered, "Yes." He was beginning to realize something. The mouth movements of these men had something to do with speaking, and their clearest, loudest thoughts came with them.

  Teck must have caught the motion of his eyes, for he cried out. "Yes! But you can't speak, because you don't breathe air. Probably lost both lungs and vocal cords. You must be a telepath. I'll bet that's what you are!"

  The Martian's dark-iron mask of a face was eager his sullen eyes full of little sparks.

  "You hear me think, is that it? Nod your head once, if you do."

  Son hesitated, studying the men with narrow eyes. If he talked with them, he might find, out just how much they knew. He nodded.

  Teck was quite still for a moment. Arun sat rigid, staring with eerie, purple eyes at the Light. "How long have you been here?" asked Teck.

  Son shook his head.

  "Where did you come from?" Again Son shook his head, and Teck asked, "You know no other place than this?" Again the negative.

  Teck drew a long breath. "You must have been born here, then in one of the first ships swept up by the magnetic force of this thing as it passed through the Solar System. Then your ship cannot have been wrecked. Probably the counter-pull of some planet saved it as our new Elker drive saved us from perishing.”

  His deep eyes blazed. "Your body was the same as mine, once. How long would it take to change me to a being like you?"

  Arun got up suddenly. "I've got to get back to the ship."

  Teck's gun hand was steady. "Sit down!"

  Arun's thought rose tightly. "But I've got to! Something's wrong — "

  Teck's gun thrust forward menacingly. Arun sat down again, slowly. The green light wavered around him, making his face curiously indistinct.

  Teck's thought hammered at Son. "You know what the light is?"

  Son hesitated, sending Aona a rapid question.

  Her mind said, "No! Don't tell, Son. It might help them destroy it."

  He shook his head. "No."

  Teck's lips drew back. "You're lying," he said, and then whirled around, his dark hard face taut. Arun had risen, and the single wild shriek in his mind stabbed Son's brain so that he writhed in his shackles. The two boys backed off, their faces white and staring. Even Teck drew back a bit, and his gun hand trembled.

  Arun was changing. Son watched tensely, forgetting for a moment even his agony of fear for the Light. The lines of the green, smooth face of the Tethysman blurred and shifted in the green light, like something seen under water. Strange writhing tremors shook his whole body.

  His mind cried out with his moving lips: "Something's happening to me. Oh, God! And all for nothing — "

  He staggered forward. His eyes were night-black and luminous, horribly steady in that blurred face, fixed on Son. Son knew, lying there chained, that he was in deadly peril. Because Arun was on his own plane, though a little past him.

  "All for nothing — mankind lost," wailed the thought-voice. "I'm going blind. No. No! I'm seeing — through — "

  His scream shivered cold as space along Son's nerve-channels. The tall rubbery form loomed over him, bending closer…

  One of the boys fainted quietly, rolling like an ungainly bundle into a deep shaft between two wrecks. Teck caught his breath. "I'm not through with him yet," he muttered, and raised his gun.

  The glassite helmet melted and ran. The head and the glowing purple eyes beneath it were untouched. And then no one moved, nor spoke, Arun's head and face quivered, merging imperceptibly into the blurred darkness of the Veil.

  Aona cried out suddenly, "He's coming through!" And then, "No! The change was too swift. Too many atoms in transition. He's caught — "

  Shivering against Son's mind, like the single wild shaft of a distant comet, came Arun's thought.

  "No, not here! Not here — between!" And then he was gone. His spacesuit crumpled down, quite empty. Teck swayed, the dark hardness of his face bleached and rigid. "What did Arun mean — 'between?' "

  Son lay quite still, hearing Aona sob beyond the Veil. He knew. Aona told him. Between universes — the darkness, the nothingness, the nowhere. He felt the cold dark crawling in his mind.

  Teck laughed suddenly, biting and defiant. His deep eyes were fixed on Son, sprawled like a young god in the raw blaze of the sun. "By the gods," he whispered, "it's worth the risk!"

  Greenough came stumbling up out of the crevice.

  He looked more like a child than ever. His round face was dazed and bewildered, screwed up strangely. Even to Son, there was something terrible and unholy in that child's shallow-eyed face on a man's strong body. Teck drew a slow breath. Son felt a dark, iron strength in him, different from the strength of the bronzed Ransome, that was like the beat of space itself, but great, too.

  Great — and dangerous.

  "What did you find out?" asked Teck. "Where's Ransome?"

  Son's brain burned within him with fear, though he saw that the green Light was still unchanged.

  "Down there," said Greenough, and whimpered. He blinked his eyes, moving his head and pawing at his helmet as though to clear it.

  "I only looked at it a minute. It was too little and too big all at once, and I was frightened."

  Teck caught him by the shoulders and shook him roughly. "Look at what?" he demanded. "What's happened?"

  "At the light." said Greenough, in a faraway voice. "We found it inside a ship. We could look right through the metal. I only looked a minute because I was frightened. I was frightened, I was — "

  Teck's strong hands snapped his teeth together. "What was it?"

  Greenough's shallow eyes wandered to his. "Ransome says it's part of another universe. He's still there, looking. Only — "

  Greenough's voice broke in a little hiccup. "Only he can't see anymore."

  Son felt a great surge of relief. The Light was safe, so far. Greenough slipped suddenly from Teck's hands, sitting wide-legged on the hull. "I'm scared," he said. "I want Mama." Big slow drops ran down his cheeks, and again Son was stirred by something deep and strange.

  Teck turned slowly to Son. "He was six years old when the Cloud came. You can build a man's body in eleven years, but not his brain." He was silent, looking down with deep, intense eyes.

  He spoke after a bit, slowly and deliberately. "So it's part of another universe. Diluted by distance, its radiation speeds human metabolism, causing swift age. Concentrated. it changes the human organism into an alien metabolism, alien flesh. Slim almost made it through, but his peculiar chemical balance destroyed him You must be in the same transition stage but much slower, being passed by the changing of your basic vibratory rate into an other space-time continuum."

  Son couldn't hide the sudden flicker it his eyes. He hated this dark Martian suddenly, this man who guessed so much. "So it's true," said Teck. "Confirmation of the old conception of coexisting universe; on different vibratory planes. But how would you know, unless — unless you can talk to that other universe?"

  He laughed at the bitter look in Son's blue eyes. "Afraid, aren't you? That means you have something to hide, or protect." He dropped suddenly to one knee, catching his fingers in Son's fair hair.

  "Look at me. I want to watch your eyes. You do know what that light is, and how it can be destroyed. If I could get a body like yours, and still not cross over. Do you feed on the green light, or on the sun?"

  The question came so quickly that Son’s eyes flicked to the canopy of fire overhead before he could stop them. Teck sat back on his heels with a long, slow sigh.

  "That's all I needed," he murmured "Your friends on the other side evidently can't help you, or you'd be free now." He rose abruptly. "Greenough! You, there sailor! Help me get this loose hull-section, over here."

  The two pale, empty-eyed boys rose obediently and helped. The heavy metal plates, uptilted by the force of the original crash, were not far from Son. They had only to heat the bottom with cutting torches and bend it.

  Son lay, then, in black, utter dark. "Now then," said Teck. "Back to the ship, both of you."

  The boys stumbled off across the broken ships. Son could see them, out in the glare beyond his prison shadow. Teck waited until their backs were well turned. The beam of his heat gun flickered briefly, twice. Two crumpled shapes fell and were still.

  Teck turned, smiling tightly.

  "No need to have a whole race of supermen." He inspected the spiderweb of metal ropes that bound Son, and nodded, satisfied. "When you get hungry enough for energy, you'll tell me how to destroy the light. And then — " His hard dark face was cut deep with triumph, his eyes fierce with dreams. "After I destroy the light, the aging process will stop. People will start to live again. And I'll be virtually a god, untouchable, impervious."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38