Stories Complete, page 9
“No!”
“All right. Then who or what are you?”
“Please, Vince. You’re not being fair. I’m. . . . I’m——”
Brandt Lyle coughed. Idly he rolled the barrel of his weapon across his fingers. “I’ll be glad to answer that question if you want me to,” he drawled.
Vince scowled. All right, you answer it, then!” he barked.
The man with the gun pursed his lips. “Be glad to,” he said. “She’s. . . .”
“No!” Lois moved suddenly, catching Brandt Lyle off balance. Before he could raise a hand to stop her, she had raked a double row of long red nails down his face. The man moved back, scowling through the red slashes that jumped out on his cheekbones. Lois continued to assault him—swarming all over him, beating against his thick chest with tiny balled fists.
Vince watched the man’s arm come up, felt his own fingers close mechanically around the base of one of the metal statues on the dressing table. Over the girl’s shoulder, he caught the brief flicker of light that ricocheted off the barrel of the man’s weapon. Then a lethal hiss of white-hot flame seared past his shoulder, followed by the smell of ozone, and the pungent odor of burnt flesh.
He moved quickly, rushing the other man—swinging the heavy metal statue toward him in a long tight arc. With a dull thud, the jagged end caught Brandt Lyle just above the temple. Slowly Lyle’s knees collapsed under him. He sank to the floor, where he lay very, very still.
Vince bent over then, picking up Lyle’s weapon and turning him over in a single movement. The dark head rolled around, thudding against the unyielding floor, and a pair of vacant black eyes stared up at him. They were unblinking eyes, completely free of all emotion. The man was dead.
Vince got up, placing the anode pistol on the dressing table. At the foot of the bed Lois lay in a black, lacy heap. He picked her up and placed her gently on the bed. She was breathing, but a widening crimson stain splotched the entire right side of her abdomen. She was hurt—hurt bad. He had just started to examine the would when she opened her eyes.
“Vince?”
He laid a hand on her forehead. “Don’t try to talk now. baby. Just lie still. There should be some medical supplies in the building. I’ll have you fixed up in less than no time.”
“No, don’t go.” Though half-whispered and barely audible, the words were emphatic.
Vince started to get up. “I’ll only be gone a minute. You want to live, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to live, Vince.” she whispered. “We both know that. I just want you to stay with me now.”
Vince laid a hand on her arm.
“Vince?”
“Yes.”
“Vince, I lied to you about what happened here.”
He stared down at her. She looked very small and fragile lying on the bed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said thickly. “All that matters now is for you to get well again.”
“Yes, Vince, it does. I knew all the while where they went. I was selfish, that’s all. I didn’t want you to know about—about me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vince said. “I told you it didn’t matter. I want you just the way you are. That’s why it’s important to me that you get better. Now tell me, where do they keep the medical supplies?”
Lois forced a wan smile, then grimaced. “I won’t tell you. First you’ve got to listen to me. They did go out to the perimeter, Vince. All the way out to the edge—to the Paroma system. Two years ago—” she nodded toward the spot where Brandt Lyle lay—“he came back from the perimeter and told the whole story. That’s when everyone left.’ ”
Vince searched her face. “Why?” he asked.
Lois closed her eyes for ten full seconds, then opened them again. “Lyle came back here and told them about it—about all those other ships, all thirty-seven of them. They weren’t lost, Vince. They were out there. They still are. . . . You go there, too, Vince, in Lyle’s ship. It’s out on the desert, just outside the North Gate. Go in that.”
Vince gulped. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said doggedly. “I’m staying here with you. Everything I want is right here.”
“There’s more there, Vince. That’s why I didn’t want you to know about it. I knew you’d leave me then.”
“What could I possibly have there that I don’t have here?” he asked.
Lois didn’t answer.
Vince shook her gently by the arm. “What?” he repeated. When she didn’t answer, he worked his fingers down the length of her arm. For a full minute, he searched vainly for the beat of her pulse. Then he got up, white-faced and staring dazedly at the still form.
Quietly he reached over and pulled the sheet up over her face.
Nothing is quite so final as death.
V
The orange sun of Mercedes had already dropped behind Gallion’s pastel-colored building-fronts when Vince Conway laid down the spade and stood over the freshly-turned earth-sod outside the Governor’s Mansion. Quietly, and half to himself, he murmured a short rough prayer over the remains of Lois Burbank.
Now, in bewildered indecision, he sat on the ground and stared at the grave, wondering what his next move should be. He abruptly felt very much alone—more so even than when he had buried the crew of the “Orion Girl.” Out there you expected to be alone. It was something the mind could rationalize. But here? He turned and peered down the naked streets of the city, where thin lengthening shadows from tenantless buildings fought with the last rays of the waning sunlight. The evidence of civilization was all about him. Yet the people responsible for it had left for something better—something out in the Paroma System, Lois had said. Now she was dead—and he was alone again.
He got up. The dull afterglow of Mercedes was gone now. It was night on Gallion, a fantastic night, the kind of night found only far out on the perimeter. Pressed against the horizon, the building line was blacked out almost to the point of invisibility. Only at rare intervals did the faint pinpoint of a far-off galaxy stab through the gloom. Yet overhead—overhead like an almost-invisible rainbow—the Milky Way, dense, sharply-defined, and almost five-hundred light-years thick, cut a brilliant white swath across the heavens. Vince Conway stared at it till his neck hurt. Somewhere deep down near the bottom of the soupy-white bridge, lay a tiny infinitesimal speck of brilliance that gave light and warmth to a planet of green fields and salty oceans. It would be nice to go back to Terra again. It would be nice to simply close one’s eyes, then open them and find yourself in the middle of the Oak Ridge business district.
Experimentally he squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. Overhead, the stars looked a little brighter, the horizons a little darker, and the silence closed in a little tighter. There was no other change.
He was running again then—running down the center of the broad, dark avenue that led to the North Gate. Under his feet was the soft scrapings of sand blown in from the flatlands, and on either side, the gloomy canyons of buildings slammed back the echo of his footsteps. Just ahead now was the gate. Panting and white-faced, he plunged through it.
Brandt Lyle’s ship was there—just where Lois had said it would be. . . . Half a mile out in the desert it stood, its outline silhouetted against the stars and its nose pointed at the heart of the galaxy. From a distance it appeared to be one of the cheap stock jobs that roll off the Sirius III assembly lines, but as he got closer, he began to make out the shallow-S curve in her rudder stanchions: A General Motors job—probably custom-built right in Detroit.
He caught his breath in the hollow of the rudder stanchions, staring up into the cold muzzles of the jets. Then he reached up, caught the boarding ladder and began to climb. Inside the open air-lock, he poked a switch. The lights—every light in the ship—burst into a dazzling brilliance, so bright that he had to shut his eyes from the unaccustomed glare. He forced them open—forced himself to look at the light. The glare was softer now. So was the feeling of complete and utter solitude that had possessed him earlier. Now he was on familiar ground, his feet anchored on something he could understand.
Typical of all General Motors craft, the lock door led directly into a center-hall corridor arrangement that bored through the ship’s innards till it reached the control room high up in the nose-section. While in flight, the gravity stimulators in the floor of the door-flanked corridor gave the illusion of a true up-and-down effect. But now the corridor floor yawned upward like the side of a deep oblong well. On the other side—the ceiling side—a metal ladder was secured. Vince climbed it, up past the chart-room, the galley, the sleeping quarters, and finally up to the control room. Here, too, he found improvements. The entire cabin was apparently mounted on a universal joint that swiveled inside a solid piece of blister glass to compensate for normal gravity when necessary. He sat down in the big bucket-seat, staring at the strangely-placed, yet generally familiar row of gadgets on the panel board.
It was a good ship, one that could easily reach Cygni or one of the more populated systems where accomodations to Terra would be available. With luck, he could reach Cygni in about thirteen months. Not too long. . . . just another thirteen months of travel. . . . another thirteen months of solitude. . . . another thirteen months of loneliness.
He supposed he should be used to the loneliness by this time; yet the thought of another hermitage gnawed at him. Being alone is something you never quite get used to. Even after the conscious mind receeds into a shell of resigned apathy, the loneliness is still there—a little more dormant, perhaps, but still there, prodding at the dark corners of the subconscious, and waiting for that first flicker of human companionship, when it can burst forth again, stronger than ever.
That was how the encounter with Lois Burbank had affected him. She had been a strange girl—strange, yet vitally alive. Vibrant. Maybe she did have a few skeletons scattered about the galaxy, but then, who hasn’t? Certainly not an all-but-broken-down spaceman with over twenty-five hundred light years of crud in his wake.
The trip back would have been a lot different if Lois were with him. A lot different. She’d have been regular, too—not the type who’d whine over the sudden pressure of a seven G acceleration, or use her own boredom as an excuse to throw her weight around. She was cut out of better material than that. Leave the wistful and demure women for the spaceport clerks and cargo loaders. They had time for it. Lois had been his type of girl.
And now she was dead.
Go out to the Paroma System, she’d said just before she died. That was all. No hint of what he might find there. Just the brief statement of fact.
The idea touched off a train of thought. In principle it was ridiculous—as ridiculous as bisecting a circle around the circumference. Yet in an odd way it made sense. The occupants of the frontier planet of Gallion had left. According to Lois they’d left for something better—something out in the Paroma System. What? A higher level of intelligence, perhaps? Some hitherto unknown raw material? He didn’t know.
One thing was sure, however. If the place were a Utopia big enough to warrant a blanket evacuation, there must by now be some means of travel between it and the thick parts of the galaxy. And if so, then the quickest way back to Terra would be via Paroma.
It was a big decision to make—thrusting himself back to the very threshold of deep space.
He made it.
VI
The absolute blackness of space was a cold silent thing, that stretched away from the forward blister glass to the very borders of infinity.
Vince Conway flicked a quick glance at the control board, then reached over and inched the acceleration dial another two notches. The ship lurched forward, pinning his shoulder-blades deep into the foam-cushion seat-back. Slanted obliquely on the chart table in front of him, the bright orange pip of Mercedes gleamed in the rear-view screen. And buried somewhere in its glare, was the planet Gallion. Once again, he pressed the acceleration dial. Again the ship leaped forward, pyramiding its speed. In the rear-view screen, he watched Mercedes, along with the bright swath of the Milky Way, flicker momentarily, then fade out like the finale of a video program.
Viso one!
Off to his right now, was the Yeandro System, where he’d spent five years of solitude. He didn’t like to look that way. Yeandro—now distorted to a thin star-streak by post-lightspeed—held too many unpleasant memories.
Out ahead was Paroma, just barely visible to the naked eye.
Impatiently, he pressed the dial again. . . . And again. . . . He kept it up until he had racked up a velocity of three times the speed of light. Then he locked the controls and got up.
For several minutes he stretched his arms, trying to work out the stabbing twinges of acceleration ache. Then he walked back through the corridor. He hadn’t had a chance to explore the ship properly before he left. Time had been too short. He’d been too impatient to get away. He walked slowly, past the galley, the sleeping quarters, and what might pass for a lounge. It was all laid out in a familiar pattern. Further back—all the way back to the ship’s guts. There, in the store room, only feet away from the big pile guards, he found something different.
It was some sort of machine—a completely unfamiliar machine. It stood on a green metal base, about fifteen feet long and half as wide. One side was almost completely covered with levers and switches that bore no markings. Atop the squat base were two silver globes about four feet in diameter, smooth-looking, except for what looked like the eyepiece of an old fashioned telescope that was mounted into each one.
He stepped up to the queer-looking device, peering first into one of the eyepieces, then the other. He saw—nothing. . . . He started to twist some of the dials, then thought better of it. The machine was probably some new innovation to space travel—something he had no idea how to operate. To experiment with it trillions of miles out in space might be—probably would be—risky. Almost warily he stepped back from the machine. Perhaps in the ship’s library, there’d be some material that would give him a clue.
He’d just started back along the corridor when the entire ship shuddered sharply. Through the tunnel-like walkway, the alarm-bell’s clang crashed against his eardrums. Under his feet he could feel the floor vibrating.
Then without warning, all five pile engines cut out simultaneously!
He didn’t remember racing back to the control room. His first recollection was one of checking circuits, of trying to prime the lines that fed the huge thrust engines. It was risky, but so was hurtling into dead space on a dead pile.
He first saw it from the very edge of his eye. . . . Something just off the port blister—something that shouldn’t be there. He blinked, hard, then caught his breath. It was a ship—another ship!
There was no way of telling the size of the craft unless one took into consideration the countless tiers of portholes that lined the ball-shaped hull. Vince Conway did just that—and stared at it incredulously. It was a ship all right—but what a ship! It was right out of this galaxy!
It moved toward him then, suddenly, like some silver planet encountered in free fall. Closer it came, expanding until its very size eclipsed his entire vision. Then it stopped. He could make out the ports clearly now—twelve rows of them, also what looked like a lock door near the ship’s equator.
He waited—waited for the door to open. It didn’t. Instead he was aware of a dull hum that seemed to fill the entire cabin. The hum stopped abruptly, and words came to him. It wasn’t telepathy. They were spoken words, high pitched words, and they came from somewhere behind him.
“Do not be frightened, Mr. Conway,” the voice said. “We mean you no harm.”
Vince wheeled. In the center of the cabin was a man—at least the features were those of a man. His build approximated that of a nine year old boy. He was attired in what appeared to be a metallic-looking, one piece garment that gleamed to a bright yellowish-green where the glow from the overhead lights struck it. A headpiece of the same material, with an attached needle-pointed spire, completed the weird attire. Except for his impossible method of entry, he might have been a Terran youngster garbed in a bizarre Christmas outfit.
“Who—who are you?” Vince Conway’s lips framed the words without uttering a sound.
The small figure before him bowed from the waist. “Permit me to introduce myself,” he said in a voice that might have come from Vince’s half-remembered nephew. “My name is Lhathu. I am a resident of what you Terran’s refer to as ‘Bounty.’ More specifically, it is the tenth planet of Paroma.”
Vince swallowed hard. There was something about the little fellow. Something that—despite his obvious advanced knowledge—made him appear almost humble.
“I was told to come to Paroma,” Vince heard himself saying. “I was told that. . . .”
The dwarfed figure nodded. “We know,” he said politely. “If you will permit us, we will be glad to deliver you safely to ‘Desire,’ and your fellow Terrans.”
“Desire?”
The small man’s smile was almost imperceptible. “Desire is your fellow Earthmen’s name for the planet. Actually it is Paroma III.”
While he spoke Vince watched the little man stupidly. The whole incident was too incredible. For over three-hundred years now man had been conquering alien worlds. Thousands of them. Strange worlds—worlds of gaunt walking-things, of giant man-eating insects, of fish that thrive in the deserts, and worlds of creeping reptiles that slither through swamps the size of a whole planet. And never—never until now—had man encountered any living thing that even approached a reasonable degree of intelligence. But now. . . .
“Will you excuse me now?” the tiny figure said thinly. It was more than a question. Despite the patronizing overtones, it was a statement. Moreover it was emphasized—emphasized by the fact that the colorfully-garbed man disappeared then. There was no puff of smoke. No clap of thunder inside the cabin. Just the abrupt realization that he was no longer there.
Vince stared dully at the spot he had occupied.
Then, from off to the right of the ship, he was aware of a brilliant flash of light. It rose in intensity—expanding like the fat nova of a fission bomb. He turned his eyes away from the light, back to where the ball-shaped ship had been.
