Collected Fiction, page 32
“Do you hear something? Listen.” Kathleen was still annoyed, but she cupped her ear with a small hand.
“Yes. I think so. A roaring, very low—”
“That’s it! Come on, quick!” Quade caught her arm and hurried her toward a cairn of rocks some distance from the bank. “It’s the Bore. The tide. Mars is dragging it around the planet, and we want to be high and dry when it gets here. Step it up, can’t you?”
“I—I’m hurrying—fast as I can!” Kathleen gasped, a sharp pain in her chest. The atmosphere, lacking in sufficient oxygen, had told on the two, and they were exhausted by the time they reached the summit of the mound. There they lay panting for breath and looking north along the Bore.
A great wave came sweeping up the channel. Thirty feet high, overflowing the banks and spreading out over the surrounding ground, it came rushing southward, and involuntarily Kathleen huddled close to Quade. The tidal wave smashed against the base of the cairn, and spray showered the two on its top.
Bill, cowering in the hollow of Kathleen’s arm, squeaked faintly and crouched down, hiding his head in ineffectual paws. The girl followed his example, and as the rocking thunder of mighty waters shook the ground, she shut her eyes and burrowed her face into Quade’s shoulder. Grinning, he put his arm around her:
The tide drove on south. In its wake came floating huge creatures like turtles, with tall webbed fins standing up like sails on their backs. Flat, reptilian heads lifted, peering around curiously as the things tacked and veered in the winds that the Bore lifted in its wake.
Kathleen had wriggled free.
“What are those?” she wanted to know.
Quade shrugged. “We don’t know half the forms of life that exist on the planets, much less the asteroids. Anyway, I don’t much care what they are. We’ll be at camp soon—and I can find out what Perrin was up to. Shall we get started, Kat?”
She nodded, and they picked their way down the mound. The rocks and moss were damp, but the flood had passed, though the channel was almost filled with a swiftly-racing stream.
The sun went down, and with its going Mars seemed to spring out in startling crimson radiance. Deimos and Phobos, the two satellites, were visible as tiny spots of light near the red planet. The air was colder now, and there was an ache in Kathleen’s chest that gnawed painfully, though she did not mention it to Quade.
She was watching her path carefully, to avoid stumbling in the eerie, reddish twilight, and so was Quade. The Bouncer seemed pleased at the semi-darkness, which was no hindrance to his strange eyes. He made frequent hopping excursions among the rocks, and at last returned with great haste and clung to Kathleen’s leg, making her stumble. She looked up.
Bill hid his face and shivered, declaring, “What’s this? There’s something coming!”
QUADE Stopped, peering into the gloom. Something certainly was coming—a great white giant that lurched toward them with startling speed. One moment it was a half-seen formlessness emerging from the shadows. The next it was towering above them, an eidolon of shaggy white fur from which two insanely grinning faces glared down at them from a height of thirty feet.
So sudden was its arrival that Quade scarcely had time to draw his gun before a treelike arm swooped down and scooped him up. He was smashed against a hairy, barrel-like chest with an impact that made him go weak and dizzy. He struggled feebly—and realized that his right hand was empty. A metallic thud sounded from below.
“Kate!” he called desperately. “Beat it! Quick! I’ve dropped my gun. Get to camp and—”
His breath was squeezed out as his gigantic captor whirled and bent. Abruptly he found Kathleen beside him, both of them cradled in the hollow of a great arm.
She was white-faced and shaking, and her stubborn little chin was trembling despite herself. Her breath was warm on Quade’s cheek as she gasped.
“Tony! Wha—”
“Hold it, kid!” he told her sharply. “No hysterics. We’re safe enough. I know what these things are.”
He tried to look down, but could see only a vague, rocky landscape jolting rapidly past as the giant lurched on into the red gloom.
“It’s a Hyclops,” Quade went on, trying to wriggle free and finding it impossible. The furry arm of the creature, thickly padded with rolls of fat, held him as firmly as though he had been squeezed between two mattresses. “Not dangerous. But its cubs are. We’re okay until we reach its den.”
Kathleen’s teeth were chattering. “What’ll happen then, Tony? Is it—bad?”
Quade forced a laugh he hoped didn’t sound artificial. “Not as bad as all that. Buck up!” He fell silent as a mass of matted fur was thrust into his open mouth, and, coughing and choking, he spat it out. “Ugh! Kate—look up, will you?”
She obeyed. “Yes? What—oh! It’s got two heads! I noticed that before, but I thought I was just seeing things.”
Above the grotesque, apelike body sprouted double heads, each with its own neck, joining at the shoulders. The skulls were naked, covered with rolls of fat that sagged loosely beneath pied, yellowish skin; and each face reminded Kathleen of that of a micro-cephalic idiot, though more bestial in contour. A single, luminous eye set in a pit of fat peered down from each head. An elongated muzzle protruded above a clownish, grinning mouth, filled with unpleasant-looking teeth.
“It looks like a lunatic!” Kathleen gasped. “I mean—they do. Tony, are they one or two?”
“Bi-sexual,” he told her. “Single body, and two heads, in one of which the male element predominates, and female in the other! Like an earthworm, you know. Hyclops, from Hydra—two or more heads—and Cyclops—one eye in the center of the forehead. I wish I had my gun.” At the note of despair in his voice Kathleen twisted around to stare at him.
“I thought you said—Tony, something’s going to happen, isn’t it? Something pretty bad?”
HE hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged, or tried to.
“I guess so. The Hyclops cubs are the nastiest, hungriest little devils on Ganymede. They’re born with the tempers of savages, and as soon as their eyes open, start killing and eating each other.”
“Then this—thing—is taking us to its den for food for its cubs?”
“Oh, no. Not intentionally, at any rate. It’s a funny thing”—Quade was trying to distract Kathleen’s attention so she would not see what was coming into view ahead—“usually only one Hyclops cub survives, the strongest one. As it gets older, it entirely loses its savagery. The adult Hyclops has the most highly developed maternal instinct of any animal. It’s also one of the dumbest.
“It sits around watching its cubs kill and eat one another, without making a move to prevent it, and then can’t figure out what’s happened to the little devils. So it goes out and kidnaps some other animal—and adopts it. Like a mother cat will adopt puppies, sometimes. Unfortunately, the poor beasts the Hyclops brings home get eaten by the cubs, so it’s a case of being killed with kindness. This two-headed gorilla that’s carrying us loves us both—don’t make any mistake about that. But the cubs—that’s different!”
Kathleen was looking down, her eyes wide and frightened. The Hyclops was descending the side of a steep hollow, at the bottom of which a couple of gleaming white forms moved sluggishly.
“Here it conies!” Quade whispered. “If I only had my gun!”
The Hyclops reached the floor of the pit and deposited its two captives, gently on the ground. Then it simply squatted on its haunches, folding its furry arms across its stomach, and watched them. Looking up at that incredible monster, with its two bloated; inanely grinning heads nodding, high above in the red twilight, Kathleen felt a little wave of hysteria sweep over her. Desperately she fought it back.
Quade gripped her shoulder.
“We’ll have to dodge the things,” he said curtly. “They can’t move fast on smooth ground, but if we tried to climb out of this pit, they’d have us like a shot. Come on!”
There were only two cubs, each about seven feet tall, miniature replicas of their parent. But these were lean and rangy rather than fat, and their naked, yellow faces wore vicious snarls rather than imbecile grins. They came purposefully loping forward.
Quade seized Kathleen’s hand and fled. It was an insane flight over cracking, gnawed bones that sprinkled the pit’s floor, under the brainlessly grinning gaze of the two-headed colossus! Mars was sinking toward the rim of the crater, and when it was gone, Quade knew, they could no longer escape from the night-seeing cubs.
The monsters made no sound as they followed the two human beings. An agonizing pain was burning into Kathleen’s chest, and she would have fallen if it had not been for Quade’s arm about her. She turned up a white, perspiring face to him. Her lips parted.
BUT before she could speak a voice from the shadows above.
“I can’t go on,” it said dispassionately. “I can’t, Tony. They’ll get us anyway.”
Quade looked around quickly, and saw a furry white object bound up, silhouetted against Mars. Something arced through the air toward him, and made a metallic clashing at his feet. He scooped it up, whirling swiftly.
The cold metal of the gun was familiar against his palm. Almost upon him was the bulk of the nearer cub, its monstrous heads nodding, paws clutching out toward him. Quade squeezed the trigger.
The creature exploded in his face. Fur and flesh and whitish, curiously aromatic blood spattered. Without pausing Quade fired another bullet at the other tub, which was racing forward.
His aim was good. There was only the parent Hyclops left now. Quade hastily dug another bullet out of his belt and clipped it into the pistol.
“Triple charge,” he said, dragging Kathleen after him up the side of the pit. “I don’t want to use it unless—” Grinning, the Hyclops arose. It paid no heed to the shambles at its feet but lumbered forward, intent on recapturing Quade and Kathleen. Quade steadied himself and shot the monster.
The recoil slammed him back against the girl, knocking them both down. Where the thirty-foot Hyclops had been were two furry legs, still twitching with reflex action.
Groaning, Quade got up, rubbing his shoulder, which had almost been dislocated. Kathleen scrambled up, averting her eyes from the ruined remnants of the Hyclops.
The Bouncer hopped into view and clung to Kathleen’s leg, squeaking gently. She bent to caress its head.
“You saved us that time,” Bill declared, with an entire lack of modesty. “Tony, I think you owe him an apology. He brought you your gun.”
Quade, still examining his shoulder, lifted an eyebrow.
“He got the Hyclops after us in the first place,” the Bouncer said inconsistently. “No apology necessary.”
A light sprang out, illuminating the scene in vivid detail. Quade whirled, involuntarily lifting his pistol.
“Hold it!” a voice hailed. “It’s Wolfe, Tony. Are you okay?”
With a sigh of relief Quade holstered the weapon. “We’re safe now,” he said in a swift aside to Kathleen. “Sure, Wolfe. Glad you’re here. Did you hear the shots?”
A raw-boned, lank figure carrying a flashlight hurried forward and gripped Quade’s hand. A mass of yellow hair tumbled over a thin, eager face and sharp blue eyes. Behind Wolfe was Peters, gaunt and hollow-cheeked, frowning anxiously.
“Camp’s just over the ridge,” Peters said. “There’s trouble, and lots of it. Who’s this?”
“It’s a mechanic,” Quade said quickly. “Let’s have your helmet, Peters.” He handed it to Kathleen, who slipped it over her brown curls. “Keep this quiet, boys. She’s a stowaway, and you know what that means.”
THE others nodded. “Right,” Wolfe said. “Come along, Tony. We’ll talk as we go. I thought I had bad news, but Peters just got here, and he’s got worse.”
Kathleen was hard put to it to match the long strides of the men.
“What about Perrin and Ghiorso?” Quade asked. Quickly he explained what had happened.
Wolfe whistled. “It’s Perin’s fault, the dirty swine. We landed on Ganymede and started to build the set muy pronto, and when we’d scooped out a pit for the amphitheatre—we hit radium! Lots of it—the biggest find since Callisto. Way I figure it out, Perrin sent you the message and then disabled our ship and our radio, so we were stuck. Then he hiked with Ghiorso.”
“What the devil!” Quade growled. “What was his game?”
Peters broke in. “He got back to the Moon in your cruiser and sold his information to Sobelin. The financier, you know—the boss of Star Mines Company. And Sobelin pulled some wires and got your option cancelled. He’s bought Ganymede lock, stock and barrel.”
Quade ruffled his hair with both hands.
“Lord, oh Lord! Did they—”
“We’ve been ordered off Ganymede. Von Zorn got wind of the affair, and he’s nearly crazy. Started a lawsuit against Sobelin in your name. You were working for the chief when the radium was found, and you had an option on the asteroid, so—”
“That means trouble,” Quade said. “Remember the old Sobelin-Transport scrap over Ceres? It was a regular war between the two companies, and they nearly wrecked Ceres before they’d finished. Nearly a thousand men killed on both sides before the government stepped in.”
“There’s nothing Washington can do here,” Peters declared. “It’s dirty politics, but legal enough. What’ll we do, Tony? That’s what I’m worrying about.”
Quade hesitated, snapped his fingers. “We’ll have to gamble. We’ll go back to Eros. It’s still my property for a few weeks. Is your ship repaired, Wolfe?” The lanky blond nodded.
“Yeah. I got the parts I needed from Peters.”
“Swell. We’re heading for Eros, then. All of us! We’ll beat Sobelin, Perrin, and the whole damn System if necessary. The set’s half set up—well, we’ll just have to rush and finish the job and take the pix before the ether eddy hits Eros. Come on!”
CHAPTER IV
DISSOLVE TO: Hollywood on the Moon
IN the next few days Kathleen came to know a new Tony Quade. He seemed like a machine, fired with inexhaustible energy. He had no need to drive the men, for they worked like demons, but he drove himself without pause. The job had to be done! The polar city—the Eros set—had to be completed! The sequence had to be filmed before the ether eddy wiped out the asteroid!
Blast out the lakes and canals—whittle down the peaks and mounds with atomic blasters—file them into the. shape of gigantic buildings, towering to the sky—faster, faster, faster!
And inexorably the ether eddy swept in from space, a black blot of nothingness. Quade had to cancel some of his plans. The central palace was left incomplete. Many of the lakes were dry. The node would be reached sooner than anyone had expected.
The deadline was close—too close. The two great ships and Quade’s little cruiser hung out in space at last, cameras grinding, while Eros revolved slowly beneath them. Quade kept casting worried glances at a little starless hole that was moving slowly across space toward the asteroid.
He was in the cruiser, with Kathleen beside him, the Bouncer squatting in a corner watching them with curious eyes. The girl had insisted on helping. She had mastered enough technique to learn how to operate one of the three-dimensional cameras. The revolving double-shutter provided the necessary stereopticon effect, and her main job was to keep the polar city within the range of the finder. Quade’s camera possessed a telephoto lens, which would bring the set into a magnified close-up view.
“It’s too late,” Bill said, hopping to Kathleen’s side and embracing her leg. “We waited too long.”
She turned worried eyes to Quade.
“Do you think so, Tony? Everything’s ready, you know.”
He pointed, “Look at the ether eddy. I cut the line too close, Kat. The explosion’s due now, but—”
The blot of shadow swept closer. The artificial polar city shone in the sunlight far below on the surface of the asteroid—and without warning it happened. A-little jet of smoke shot up, the forerunner of the explosion that would blast the city into space. Quade bent over his keyboard—
Eros was blotted out! It vanished—puffed out into nothingness! There was nothing spectacular about it; one moment it was there, spinning whitely among the stars—then it was gone as the eddy enveloped it. Quade cursed.
The eddy drifted on. Where it had been was only vacant, starlit space. A little puff of dust, that was all. Where Eros had revolved in its orbit was nothing.
“My luck,” Quade said bitterly. “Once in a thousand years the System gets an ether eddy. And it just has to do this.” He shut off the camera, stood up. “Well, it’s all over, Kate. I’d land you on Earth, but I haven’t enough fuel. And I couldn’t buy an ounce, now. You’re looking at the worst flop in the Galaxy.”
The Bouncer was cowering in a comer, scrubbing at his eyes with frantic paws. Kathleen glanced at it and turned a level gaze on Quade.
“Buck up, Tony. You’ve said that to me often enough. You’re not licked yet, are you?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “You’re darn right I’m licked. I don’t mind for myself so much, but there’s my crew—they’ve stuck with me for years. And you, too, kid—thought I could help you out. But—”
BILL was behaving strangely. The Bouncer scurried to the nose of the ship, pressing his face against the transparent portion, and then hopped back to cower in a corner. Kathleen eyed him.
“Tony,” she said suddenly, “do me a favor. Develop the film, will you?” Quade stared.
“What’s the use? It’ll just be blackness. Von Zorn can’t use that.”
“I’ve an idea. Please, Tony. The process takes only a minute.”
He shrugged.
“All right. Tell the gang to head for the Moon.” He unhooked a can of film and went into the rear compartment, while Kathleen turned to the televisor. Presently Quade called her.
“All set. Come in, Kate.”
