Fiction Complete, page 21
Misner laughed, delighted.
“You don’t give up easy, do you?”
“I try to rise to a challenge,” Bill agreed modestly. “And I think I can talk them into helping us, one way or another. The creepers and vot-pickers aren’t as excitable as the runners and walkers. I’m pretty sure they’ll listen to reason, even if the PIFFLs won’t. Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this show on the road.”
“How many tractors do we have?” Bill asked as they pulled up at the personnel hatch in the storage room.
“About thirty-five assembled and operating.”
“Each one’ll need a driver and a gunner. Seventy creepers. I hope we can get that many.”
“Get as many as you can, and while we’re waiting for the dome to heat up I’ll get the mechs to check the tractor motors and take the governors off. I’d rather not have the zaps learn how to do that; they have too much fun with those vehicles as it is. . . . What about our friends here?”
“I want to talk to Gort, and we’d better hold on to the GLANSTROP. We may need him to communicate with the zaps in the Assembly Burrow.”
Jerry went to call the mechs, and Bill dragged Gort outside. The sun beat brutally down, and he snatched a drink from Gort’s canteen as the vot-picker regained consciousness. The zaps gathered outside the station stared at them and milled around uncertainly, but they made no attempt to offer violence. Gort sat up and shook himself in the Irdran equivalent of a stretch.
“I need your help,” Bill said abruptly, afraid the native might take off before he could talk to him. “Please hold still and listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“Somehow we’ve got to make the PIFFLs simmer down and give us a chance to settle our differences like rational beings. It isn’t rational for them to threaten to attack the domes without giving us a chance, and we can’t leave Irdra unless Galaxy Center tells us to. We physically can’t get off the planet otherwise—we have no transportation. These speeders are going to stir up more trouble than they bargained for, if we don’t get them under control. If Elphinstone dies in the Assembly Burrow and Willoughby gets the wind up, he could holler for help to the nearest Union world with troops on it. I don’t have to draw you a picture of what could happen then, do I?”
“I can visualize it,” Gort admitted. “But how can we get the PIFFLs to calm down? They’re past listening to reason.”
Bill described what he had in mind.
“You can go along with me on this, can’t you?” he urged. “This way nobody gets hurt. And if it doesn’t work—well, you can always tear the domes down later.”
“All right,” Gort agreed, albeit somewhat grudgingly. “I’m not in favor of violence myself, and I expect most of the creepers would cooperate. I’ll beam the ones I know and tell them to pass the word.”
Gort beamed, and Bill watched for the arrival of the creepers. They began appearing by ones and twos, and he led a few of them into the dome to see if they would be able to start work. It was still chilly for them, and they complained of feeling sluggish.
“How about a little chocolate?” one of them suggested. “That should warm us up.”
Bill broke out a carton from the SpEms stacks and distributed meager amounts, then sought Jerry to inform him that his workers were present and ready to start work.
The tractors were ready and the air conditioners and lengths of tubing were piled up, waiting. Jerry was in a heat-suit, but he was losing precious time as more and more creepers surged through the hatch and he found himself unable to move and speak quickly enough to direct them.
As soon as he decided the engineer felt frustrated and impatient enough to try anything, Bill offered him a flask of vot-juice. Jerry sipped cautiously.
“Hm. Not bad. Well, here goes nothing!”
He swallowed a respectable draught and shed his suit. As the vot-juice took effect, he brightened visibly and was soon racing about supervising the creepers and straightening out minor difficulties as they arose. The creepers were brightening up visibly too—more than their initial interest and enthusiasm would seem to warrant. They were working efficiently enough, bolting the freezers on the tractors, sealing the plastic ducts over them, cleverly arranging reins so the gunners could swing the tubing to aim the cold air; but the whole procedure appeared to amuse them highly. Even Gort and the messenger from GLANSTROP, who were to accompany Bill and Jerry on the command car and were not actively involved with this part of the project, displayed mounting hilarity.
Jerry conferred with Bill, puzzled.
“You’ve associated with these guys more closely than I have,” he said. “What’s wrong with them? Is it too hot in here? They’re getting the job done, but they act like they’re drunk.”
“Drunk!” Bill gasped. “The chocolate!”
Jerry stared at him, appalled.
“You gave them chocolate? How much?”
“Only a little, to the first few who came in. . . . Do you suppose they’ve been helping themselves?”
The briefest of investigations proved that they had indeed been helping themselves—generously, if not lavishly. The engineer put a stop to further consumption in the colorful if ungrammatical language he had scraped up during his long hours at the construction site, but the damage had been done. The creepers were overstimulated, and no doubt about it. They were, in fact, whizzing.
“Do you think we can depend on them in the condition they’re in?” Jerry asked uneasily.
“Only too well,” Bill groaned. “You hear that chant over there? It’s all about a bunch of whizzers mopping up on a bunch of night-creatures.”
One of the creepers climbed on top of an air conditioner and pretended to freeze his companions, ululating a yell that hit the roof with primitive ferocity. His fellows rattled with laughter and applauded him to further performance. Bill grabbed Jerry’s arm.
“Are those freezers ready enough to go? Inspect them, pass them if they can hold together long enough to get Elphinstone, and let’s move out of here before one of those clowns decides that joke would be even funnier if the cold air were actually blowing!”
“You’re so right!” Jerry agreed fervently, and hurried off.
The zaps were getting out of hand. It was too late now to calm them down, as Gort pointed out when Bill asked him to try.
“Why worry?” the vot-picker breezed, rattling happily. “What if they have identified with Luro’s army exterminating the night-creatures? The result will be the same: They’ll chase everybody away from your domes and attack the Assembly Burrow to save Luro—only it’ll be that dumb Glaxie. What more could you want?”
“I could want them to act responsible while they’re doing it!” Bill shouted. “Look at them! They’re like a gang of kids! Who knows what they’ll do when they get outside?”
“Why worry?” Gort repeated, unable to appreciate Bill’s concern. “You said yourself the freezers won’t kill anybody. They’ll just put the chill on ’em so they can’t make trouble.”
He skipped away to join a group which was performing what seemed to be a war dance. Bill had visions of his makeshift cavalry crumbling to nothing before he could get them mounted, let alone functioning as required. He hauled Gort off the conga line and complained about this. Gort waved a fist cheerfully.
“I’ll take care of it,” he announced, bubbling with confidence. “You got one of those things you thrips use to holler at people with?”
Bill dug a bullhorn out of his command-car supplies and gave it to him. Gort raised it to his mouth and uttered an obscene noise that echoed and re-echoed through the dome. It achieved instant silence.
“HEY, YOU THRIPS! WE GOT TO GO TO THE RESCUE! WHOSE FREEZER ISN’T READY? . . . SO WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? LINE UP! AS SOON AS YOU’RE IN PLACE, OUR PAL BILL’LL GIVE THE SIGNAL AND WE’LL RESCUE LURO. WE’LL SHOW THOSE FATHEADS WHO’S GONNA RULE THE WORLD!”
A cheer went up. As if by magic, gunner-driver teams sorted themselves out and began arranging themselves and their equipment neatly in front of the portal.
“If you’re gonna identify, identify!” Gort shouted to Bill. “They’ll do what you tell ’em now. And don’t worry about the chocolate. It’ll wear off in about an hour. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be even better this way.”
He climbed onto the command car, the GLANSTROP popped out of nowhere to join him, and Jerry raced up.
“I can’t believe it, but we’re all set! We can start any time you’re ready!”
“We’re as ready now as we ever will be. Open the port when I tell you, then hurry back. I don’t want to let those slap-happy tractor-jockeys get too far ahead of me!”
As Jerry sped to comply, Bill faced his troops with mingled pride and misgivings.
XXII
They were lined up in ranks before the portal, tractors snarling like tigers on leash, their antennae flattened against their backs, mouth-shields clamped tight as vises, eyes slitted; as coldly menacing as the Teutonic knights braced for the charge across the ice in Alexander Nevsky. Bill raced up beside them, bellowed through the bullhorn:
“ALL RIGHT, YOU GUYS! YOU ALL KNOW WHAT TO DO?”
A full-throated roar responded.
“JERRY! OPEN THE PORT!”
The huge door creaked up, a curtain rising on the greatest Irdran drama in centuries. Drivers leaned forward tensely over steering sticks, gunners grasped the reins of their weapons in tense fingers . . . the port locked in place with a snap . . . for a second all paused to gather themselves together . . .
“CHARGE!”
With a war scream unheard since Before the Change, the legion burst forth. The zaps outside the station took one brief glance, breathed one brief collective gasp of horror, and with one accord attempted to teleport elsewhere. Wild, skirling cries like the shriek of eagles slashed through the air as the warriors rode them down and cleared the area—so fast that the hundreds of zaps assembled there seemed to have been blown out like candles.
Maddened drivers spun the now-ungoverned tractors around, throwing them back on their half-tracks like stallions rearing, searching out stragglers, gunners belted in place swinging with the snouts of their weapons, the keening of the air conditioners mingled with the roar of the engines and the myrmidons’ yells sounding like all the devils in hell let loose on holiday.
The zaps who had not succeeded in disappearing instantly lay where the jets of cold air struck them, in imminent danger of being run over-proof that the makeshift weapon was effective. Bill stopped his own vehicle to wave his host on to the village, but they had taken the initiative on their own and were already blasting toward it, out of control. Jerry clapped his hands over his eyes.
“Oh, my God!” he cried. “They’ve turned into ravening beasts! It’s the chocolate! What have we done? Don’t tell me—I don’t want to know! How are we going to stop them?”
Bill had no time to waste on conversation, pushing the tractor at full speed after the creepers as they swept through the village, natives scattering and diving into the handiest burrow before their onslaught. Every ounce of his energy and attention was devoted to driving. In the back, Gort and the GLANSTROP clung to whatever they could find to hang on to, yelping steadily with excitement. Bill could hardly see where he was going in the huge clouds of dust stirred up by his cohorts. He cut around to the side, spacing them as best he could, thanking Providence that his vehicle had been souped up enough to give him some advantage even at the incredible speeds the zaps were squeezing from their less limber mounts. Ahead he could see the boulders marking the Assembly Burrow and the throng of besiegers, petrified with fear, cut off from all hope of refuge as the storm bore down on them.
“Hey, you! GLANSTROP!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Beam your friends in there! Tell ’em to get the seals off and get those damn doors open! Hurry! Those creepers are out of their skulls!”
The messenger’s antennae whipped up, his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth-shields gritted with the intensity of his effort. He must have succeeded in communicating the urgency of the request, and whiz zers must have been stationed at the doors, for it was only a matter of seconds before first the main entrance, and then the back one, cracked open. The terrified would-be attackers no sooner glimpsed the first tiny openings than they leaped at them, prying them open and pouring into the burrow like water into a funnel as the creepers avalanched upon them in a tangle of screaming brakes and scraping fenders, turning the air blue as they bellowed each other out of the way. Bill raised the bullhorn, turned it to highest volume, and uttered a short prayer.
“HALT!”
His shout cracked like thunder, lifting the startled drivers a good six inches into the air. They slammed to a stop and peered at him through the dust, mouthshields wide with astonishment.
“WADDEYOU THRIPS THINK YOU’RE DOING? YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO STOP TROUBLE, NOT MAKE MORE! ALL RIGHT, SPLIT UP! HALF AT THE BACK DOOR, HALF AT THE FRONT! FREEZER NOZZLES IN THE TUNNELS! I WANT THOSE HOTHEADS COOLED BEFORE THEY START KILLING EACH OTHER IN THERE!”
Mildly chastened, the creepers did as they were told. Bill drove up to the front entrance, waited a few minutes, then signaled for the coolers to turn off and listened. A few faint cries could still be heard.
“Give them another ten minutes’ worth,” he directed. “That should knock ’em out.”
“So far, so good,” Jerry said, having nerved himself to watch the excitement. “But how long can you keep them out?”
“As long as we want,” Bill said. “We’ll close the doors and leave a few machines inside to hold the temperature down. Even if it should rise a little and they come to, it ought to keep ’em sluggish enough so they can’t do each other much harm. . . . You got the heat-suit for the Elf? And SpEms? Okay, we’ll make a try for him. They ought to be in dreamland by now.”
He got down from the tractor and had the creepers turn off engines and air conditioners. Nothing could be heard from the inner depths, so he raised the bullhorn to his mouth.
“ELPHINSTONE! CAN YOU HEAR ME? THIS IS JUDSON. YOU CAN COME OUT NOW. IT’S ALL OVER!”
A tiny squeak cheeped from the dark interior.
“CAN YOU MAKE IT? DO YOU NEED HELP?”
Another squeak.
“Looks like I’ll have to go in after him,” Bill sighed. “He sounds pretty weak. If I go in there full of vot-juice, Tin liable to pass out myself, though. Can you reverse the exchanger so it’ll heat instead of cool?”
“Easy as pushing a button,” Jerry said, doing so.
Bill squirmed into the suit, switched the. heat-exchanger on, grabbed a lantern from the tractor, and slid down the ramp. The floor was littered with unconscious bodies, like heaps of kindling scattered by a high wind. He picked his way through them, calling at intervals, only occasionally hearing a feeble moan in answer, until he had worked his way nearly through the huge cavern which was the Assembly Room proper. He had never seen it before, but he could guess that it was enormous, as the light from his torch was swallowed in its depths. He nearly fell over a low dais, and at the sound of his comments a heap of zaps, piled on one another like cordwood, stirred.
“Help,” issued a weak voice from under them.
He lifted the tranced Irdrans aside and discovered Elphinstone at the bottom of the pile. The unfortunate poliscientist could barely lift his head.
“Tried . . . to kill . . . me . . . and Zletz,” he croaked, and fell back, unconscious.
Bill dragged him to the exit. As he struggled to maneuver Elphinstone’s two-hundred-and-then-some pounds up the stairs, the creepers began to crowd forward, uttering a harsh, rasping sound, blood-curdling in its ferocity.
“Back off, you guys!” he shouted at them, hoping desperately that they had had time to simmer down from the hysteria of the attack. “I told you we’d take care of him. He’s my responsibility!”
They let him past, unwillingly, muttering, and he dragged his burden to the tractor and propped it in what little shade the vehicle afforded. He climbed out of the suit he was wearing, then unfastened Elphin stone’s.
“Hand me your canteen, will you, Gort?”
“You’re not going to give him vot-juice!” Jerry protested.
“He can’t get much worse off than he is,” Bill said. “He needs food, too, and how’s he going to eat with a suit on? Besides, I want to rev him up enough so we can talk to him. I don’t think I’d have the patience otherwise. Don’t worry; it probably won’t hurt him. It hasn’t done you any harm, has it?”
He poured a few drops into Elphinstone’s mouth. The poliscientist jerked back, then gulped thirstily.
“That’s enough for now,” Bill decided, pulling the canteen away with considerable difficulty.
The vot-juice did help. Elphinstone perked up like a wilting plant in the rain, and although he was still slightly glazed from shock, he breathed more easily, his color came back, he looked more comfortable, and, most conveniently, he was able to understand zapspeed speech and to express himself rapidly enough to make conversation bearable. Revived, he gazed at his savior with tearful gratitude.
“Judson! Thank God you got here in time! They wanted to kill me!” He buried his face in his hands with a dry sob. “You can’t imagine what it was like! I’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life! Those demons, coming at me—their glittering eyes . . . those frightful claws reaching for me . . . Has my hair turned white?”
Bill reassured him on this point.
“Why do they hate me? What have I done? I meant them no harm.”
“They’ve got a different opinion,” Bill informed him. “You’re the persona most non grata on this whole planet, including Zletz.”
“Coordinator Zletz! Where is he? You didn’t leave him down there, surely?”
“Surely. When I explain matters to the zaps they’ll be sure to keep him handy in case he’s needed to testify against you. Besides, I couldn’t carry both of you, and he’s the zaps’ meat.”
“I wish you hadn’t put it like that!” Elphinstone wrung his hands. “If you had only seen them! I fully expected to die in the most horrible manner!”
