The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04 Page 7

  "I guess I was wrong this time," Strike admitted. "I thought surely the twins were in telepathic communications all the time. And when that union was broken, the Emotionals would be like rudderless ships. It's a devil of a time to be finding it out, but it appears Gerry was right again. Not much use saying I'm sorry, Barrows."

  "Forget it, Captain. After all, they can't keep it up forever. They're flesh and blood; they'll tire eventually."

  Strike shook his head dubiously.

  "Rage looses a lot of adrenaline into the system. Angry men are stronger, more enduring, than normally. These playmates of ours won't quit until they drop from exhaustion."

  And so it seemed as the attack continued with uncanny lack of diminution. An irregular piece of metal dropped from the roof of the storage compartment, eaten through by an irregular circle of acid. Strike's lips drew down, in amazement.

  "Looks like nitric acid, and not poison, in those fangs. Though if bees secrete formic acid, and man secretes HCL, there's no reason why nitric couldn't be secreted." He locked the door between cabin and storage room as the rear of the plane, not having any insulation or soundproofing materials, would be eaten through first. "It's lucky they haven't the brains to know that acid is their best weapon. Perhaps they'll leave when it gets dark. Too cold for 'em."

  The sub-pilot fought for composure with every word.

  "It's thirty hours before darkness."

  The periodic wind had risen again, carrying its deadly freight of wandering bacteria. They were plastering gradually over the surface of the plane. Their acidulous toxins would speed the work of the Emotionals, who were apparently entirely impervious to infection and disease.

  Barrows broke out a pair of antiseptic helmets, in case the bacteria should slip through, then sat looking with unseeing eyes at the sign above the control panel:

  "Individuals have no part in this expedition. We are a TEAM!"

  Tommy Strike stared helplessly out on an utterly alien and hostile world, watching it bring all its untamed powers to bear in a terrible plan for his destruction.

  Chapter VIII.

  The Rotifer

  'When Gerry Carlyle first learned that Strike had gone out on his own, she simply smiled sadly.

  "Von Zorn's been after him. I know it. Von Zorn's cunning; he's sly. But he didn't reckon with Tommy's fundamental good sense. Tommy won't go far: he'll understand I'm right about these things. He'll be back shortly. Besides, I took the radio out of The Arkette just in case. He'll have to return!"

  After the passage of three hours and still no Tommy, Gerry chuckled tolerantly.

  "Just a touch of pride. He'll show up pretty soon. I know he wouldn't do anything to spite me because," with the incredibly fatuous faith of the young woman in love, "he loves me!"

  But when ten hours passed without a sign of the missing duo, Gerry finally felt the brooding sense of impending tragedy. The familiar iron came into Gerry's ' jaw. She crackled an order into the intra-ship communicator. Chief Pilot Michaels, a middle-aged gray eagle of an Englishman with thousands of flying hours to his credit, hurried in.

  "That man of mine," snapped Gerry, "has got himself into a jam, I'm afraid. We leave here in thirty minutes. Prepare to take off, Michaels. On the jump, now!"

  All was methodical confusion, then. Outstanding hunting parties were called in, a whiff of anesthetic quieted the tumultuous specimens in the holds, equipment was stowed away, a hundred and one details attended to with the efficient precision that marked all Carlyle-trained crews. In much less than the allotted half hour The Ark was ready to take off, her centrifuge whining with leashed power.

  The pilot house was cleared save for Michaels and Gerry Carlyle.

  "Will you set the course, Miss Carlyle?"

  "Straight northwest over the sea. All we can do is follow the general direction of the beam that Barrows set up before he and Tommy left. Surely not even Tommy is fool enough to leave the beam."

  "Righto." Michaels switched on the electronic telescope, gently lifted The Ark from the beach. "Might I inquire — d'you have a definite plan for locating the plane, or do we just shoot hit-or-miss?"

  Gerry opened a built-in cabinet, brought out and set up a simple-looking apparatus.

  "This is a capacity alarm," she said. "The son of one of the Zoo directors invented it. Intended it to be a meteor detector, but I forgot to try it out coming over. It'll have a real test now." She smiled grimly.

  There was a single upright metal plate, wired to the grid of an enormous vacuum tube. Several smaller tubes behind the detector tube made the instrument more sensitive. "It works," explained Gerry, "like an electric variable condenser —"

  "But I say, it has only one wall. Surely all condensers have two."

  "Exactly. Only in this case the second wall is formed by any metallic body which comes within a certain range. When I switch on the current, there'll be a perfect electronic balance in the vacuum-tube set-up. It will be upset by the approach of any metal, which naturally changes the capacity. Any such change is registered on the dial here, and rings an alarm bell."

  "Very ingenious," drawled Michaels. "Especially for Venus, which is poor in metals. Don't worry, Miss Carlyle; we'll find Mr. Strike all right. That's a pretty tough lad to hurt."

  "Don't be silly, Michaels. You don't think I look worried, I hope."

  Michaels smiled one of his rare smiles.

  "No, miss. You don't look worried. But I know." He squeezed her shoulder paternally. "Why don't you lie down and try to relax?"

  Gerry's lip quivered just once, then stiffened.

  "Familiarity with your captain isn't encouraged here, Michaels. Remember your place, please."

  Michaels knew this woman, even better than Strike did. So he simply saluted, nodded, "Righto, Miss Carlyle," and poured power into The Ark's giant centrifuges.

  About 800 miles out from the mainland, Michaels noticed a curious misbehavior among some of the instruments. He called Gerry's attention to it. "I daresay there's some sort of radiation hereabouts. Land —"

  His voice was drowned by a sudden clamor from the metal-detector alarm. Gerry sprang to the dial; it was jerking wildly.

  "Stop the ship!" she cried. "The plane is somewhere close by!"

  They both stared eagerly into the telescope's fluorescent screen, while the ship hovered, penetrating the mists.

  "Land, all right. Probably the so called Lost Continent." But there was no enthusiasm in Gerry's voice. The Arkette was not in sight.

  "I'll change the condenser capacity, shorten the range. Then we'll move slowly in one direction. If there's no response, we return and try another direction, until the alarm registers again. By repeatedly shortening the range, we'll find the plane."

  It didn't take long. Methodically casting about in the fog like a hound after a lost scent, they spotted The Arkette. It bore little resemblance to an airplane. Surrounded by a seething mass of strange six-legged furies, pitted and scored and completely broken in toward the rear where acids had eaten deep, splotched from nose to tail with hundreds of ugly bacteria colonies, it looked like nothing more than a nasty fester spot in the heart of a Venusian morass.

  Gerry Carlyle ordered The Ark down, then looked the situation over with iron-nerved calm. The sequence of events was not clear. The Intellectuals were an unrecognizable mess of decay already. Twelve-legs kicked feebly nearby as the drug wore off, bouncing gently around, apparatus dangling. While the Emotionals, tireless as machines, bit by bit were tearing the plane apart.

  "They can hardly be alive,' Gerry observed without a quaver. "But get the broadcasting room, Michaels. Have them try to get in touch with the plane. The Arkette has no receiver, so send the message on the beam carrier frequency. They'll pick it up through the acousticon, if — " She swallowed. "Tell Tommy to waggle the elevators if he — if he's alive."

  The message was sent, repeatedly. Gerry and every man in the crew watched intently for the answering signal from The Arkette. Minutes passed, a
nd it did not come. It never came.

  Sharp lines gradually etched themselves across the clear skin of Gerry's face.

  "Well, apparently I've killed the thing I love — " She spoke casually, too casually to deceive Michaels.

  "That's rot, Miss Carlyle," he said. "The fault is not —"

  Gerry whirled on him, and the chief pilot drew back suddenly embarrassed at the wild grief in her eyes.

  "None of your namby-pamby sympathy, Michaels!" she cried. "Tommy wasn't one for tears and soft words. He was a fighter, and if he's gone he'd want a fighter's epitaph. We're going to blast this hellhole back into the sea! Kranz!" she called into the annunciator. "Bring one of the cathode cannon to bear on that mob outside!"

  Michaels leaped forward.

  "Hold it, Kranz!" he snapped, and turned to his superior. "Wait, Miss Carlyle. They may be alive but unconscious. If you use the cathode cannon, it'll wipe out the plane and everything."

  Gerry bit her lip indecisively, almost carried away by her lust for revenge.

  "You're right, Mike. Same thing would hold true for the heat-ray, too. Best we could do would be to pick off one every now and then as he stepped back out of line with the plane."

  "The paralysis ray?"

  "Even worse. It's fatal to humans at very low power. And surely Tommy would have tried the hypo rifle."

  "Anesthetic gas?"

  "In this wind? Don't run wild, Mike; you're not thinking straight."

  Michaels subsided. After momentary silence, Gerry spoke half to herself.

  "A decoy would be useless. Because those devils have completely ignored that twelve-legged nightmare bouncing around out there. From the moment we arrived, they haven't been diverted an instant from their assault on the plane. But if something were to attack them-Michaels! Didn't one of the parties bring in some rotifera at the last minute?"

  "You mean those Venusian buzzardlike jiggers that eat everything? Yes, Miss."

  "Well, why not let one of 'em loose? It'll finish off those things out there and won't injure the plane."

  "An excellent idea, Miss, except that I fear even a rotifer would meet his match out there. Look at that armor plating over their bodies. Those claws. And judging from the plane's appearance, they secrete an acid, too. No, although the rotifer will tackle anything within reason, I'm afraid this job's too much."

  "Well, we're going to try it, anyhow."

  "Righto. But why not provide for defeat in advance?"

  "How so?"

  "If those beauties are going to eat the rotifer, instead of vice versa, let's give them a real bellyful. Pump the rotifer full of some poison that won't work immediately on the rotifier itself!"

  "Mike, you're marvelous!" Gerry turned to the annunciator. "Kranz! Have you heard what we've been saying? Then hop to it. Rout out all the poisons you can find in the stockroom. And hurry!"

  In five minutes Kranz' voice came fearfully over the wire.

  "Sorry, Captain. No poisons aboard, no lethal drugs. Just medicines."

  For an instant it seemed as if someone were about to suffer the wrath of Gerry Carlyle. But she controlled herself with an effort.

  "Of course there's no poison. We catch 'em alive. What use would we have for poisons. But there must be something, something-Medicine! There's gallons of lurninal in the store-room. The standard space-sickness remedy. You know what lurninal does, Mike? Affects strongly the autonomic nervous system, counteracts adrenaline. It destroys emotion. And if emotion is gone, all desire to kill is gone, too! Kranz? You —"

  "Coming up, Miss Carlyle," said the annunciator hollowly.

  The scheme was quickly put into effect. A huge hypodermic poured charge after charge of lurninal into the giant six-foot dough-gray ball. A gangway was thrust out from one of the rear ports, and the rotifer rolled quietly down. Once free, it paused uncertainly with its forest of stout cilia delicately exploring the air for vibrations. Then unerringly the blind devourer, the scavenger of Venus, rumbled straight toward the tumult that marked the wreck of The Arkette.

  Never in all their experience had the crew of The Ark seen a jungle battle carried on with such unbridled and appalling ferocity. The rotifer, though plainly functioning subnormally with so much lurninal inside it, took the initial advantage by virtue of surprise. There was a sharp clashing as the armored Emotionals were struck by the chitinous lorica of the rotifier, and two of the former vanished into the rotifer's vast gullet.

  The ruthless attack forced the Emotionals reluctantly to transfer their fury from the plane to the new enemy. When they did so, the conclusion was foregone. A hundred savage claws knifed into the chinks in the rotifer's, armor, ripped him apart in a dozen places. Acid seethed on the chitinous covering; being protein, it turned yellow and began to break down slowly. The rotifier fought like a bulldog, never moving backward an inch, but vicious fangs quickly devoured his exposed soft parts. Shortly all that remained were a few scattered chunks of flesh.

  The Emotionals, not relaxing in their fantastic fury an instant, returned to the crumbling plane. But perceptibly now they lost enthusiasm for the job. Presently one of them slumped quietly down in the mess and sat with face utterly blank, devoid of expression. Two or three others wandered aimlessly off into the fog.

  Emotion, for the time being, had completely left them; their intelligent counterparts were dead. They had no brains, no desires, no impulses of any kind. Their existence was a complete blank, save for simple nerve-responses to pain or heat or cold or hunger and the like.

  They stared foolishly at the havoc they had wrought, and drifted away without purpose into the fog.

  Gerry led the grim party of men and women from The Ark, but before they had covered half the distance the tangled mass of The Arkette suddenly shook violently and burst apart. A mighty shout went up as two disheveled figures staggered into view. They were dirty, bloodied where questing claws had found a mark, scorched where acids had seared them-but very much alive. Behind them frolicked a fuzzy gray duncerabbit, delirious with joy.

  In a devastating rush all the bitterness, the pent-up grief, the self-castigation, the hatred and determination for vengeance, drained away from Gerry's soul and left her weak and gasping with reaction. For one of her rare, brief moments, she was fragile and fearful and trembling for the man she loved.

  "Tommy!" she shrieked, and ran headlong into his arms. Strike's antiseptic helmet, which had protected his face from acid as well as infection, fell apart with the shock. He took every possible advantage of the situation, immediately and competently, while the crew stood around grinning. They quizzed and felicitated Barrows, who explained through chattering teeth that they'd been unable to signal as requested because the control wires had been eaten through with acid.

  The years of training reasserted themselves, however. Gerry pulled free and turned on her crew.

  "Discipline," she remarked frigidly, "must be maintained. You know the rule about leaving the ship during the periodic winds without antiseptic protection. You're all docked two days' pay, including myself. Now get back to the ship at once."

  The crew departed in haste.

  "As for you," Gerry scanned Strike in disapproval, "you've disobeyed your captain, broken practically every rule we have by going off on an unauthorized trip, insufficiently equipped, without even a radio. You've disrupted the expedition, thrown us off our schedule, very nearly cost us two lives."

  Strike nodded. "I deserve your very best tongue lashing. Loose the vials of your contumely."

  "This is, no joking matter, Tommy. Look at that plane. A total loss. Do you think even the London Interplanetary Zoo can afford to throw a few thousand away on every expedition just to convince some young hothead he's wrong? No, indeed. That's coming out of your salary."

  Strike squirmed. Gerry's clear voice was being heard and enjoyed by the entire crew. She continued with eloquence, cataloguing his sins with devastating point and accuracy.

  "And now I want your word of honor that you'll
never try a stunt like this again. No more lone-wolfing?"

  "All right, Gerry. But don't yell."

  "I'm not yelling. Furthermore, you're working for me only. No more contracts with Von Zorn?"

  "So you guessed that?" He sighed a bit. "All right; no more divided loyalties."

  "And no more —"

  Strike glanced at his watch, miraculously still working, and interrupted. "Time's up, Gerry. I've rated this verbal message, and I've taken it like a little gentleman. I've promised everything you want, but now the lecture is over."

  "Oh, is it? Tommy, I've just begun to tell you —"

  "Oh, no. You've finished telling me, because I'm about to employ the one sure method I know to stop you." He grinned.

  "Oh." Gerry was a little breathless. "Oh, dear, you're going to kiss me, aren't you?"

  SATELLITE FIVE

  Chapter IX.

  Cacus

  Tommy Strike let out a startled squawk and tried to leap aside. Then suddenly his legs folded limply beneath him, and he fell to the floor.

  "Blast it!" be howled at the man behind the desk. "Turn that thing off! You've crippled me for life!"

  The man behind the desk was past middle age, with rabbitlike eyes peering through thick lenses. On the desk-top before him rested a lead-gray box, the interior of which contained a bewildering array of weird tunes and coils. There was a portable power unit, and a Cameralike lens: now focused on Strike's lower body. The man fumbled for the activating switch, snapped it off.

  "Oh-so sorry, Mr. Strike. No harm intended. Just checking my-er-apparatus, seeing that it's in working order." Which explained nothing as far as his victim was concerned.

  Strike reassured himself that his legs were still sound, then advanced on the older man, who retreated around the desk in alarm with apology very plain on his face.

  "I've never struck a man as old as you," Strike said grimly, "but so help me, I've a good notion to clip you down!"

  It was at times like these when Tommy Strike was led to wonder, privately, if he had been really bright in allowing Gerry to argue him out of the independence of a trader's life — boring and ill-rewarded as it had often proved to be — to become her second-in-command and the so-called "Captain" of The Ark. Gerry — in one of her rare, very rare, melting moods could certainly wear a fellow down and Tommy had begun to suspect that where Gerry Carlyle was concerned he was sometimes not quite bright — a thought he kept very much to himself. Anyway be had made his bargain- even if it had been when he had been completely dazzled — and he was too stubborn now to admit that he should have waited a little before he mortgaged his future. At any rate-if Gerry thought that he was going to be one of her "yes men," she was very much mistaken.