The Voyage of the Space Beagle Read online

  The minutes went by. And still Coeurl restrained himself. Still he lay there watching, aware that the men knew he watched. They floated a metal machine from the ship to the rock mass that blocked the great door of the building. His fierce state noted all their movements. Even as he shivered with the intensity of his hunger, he saw how they operated the machinery, and how simple it was.

  He knew what to expect finally when the flame ate incandescently at the hard rock. In spite of his preknowledge, he deliberately jumped and snarled as if in fear.

  From a small patrol ship, Grosvenor observed the action. It was a role he had assigned himself, watching Coeurl. He had nothing else to do. No one seemed to feel the need of assistance from the one Nexialist aboard the Space Beagle.

  As he watched, the door below Coeurl was cleared. Director Morton and another man came over together. They went inside, and disappeared from view. Presently their voices came through Grosvenor’s communicator. The man with Morton spoke first.

  “It’s a shambles. There must have been a war. You can catch the drift of this machinery. It’s secondary stuff. What I’d like to know is, how was it controlled and applied?”

  Morton said, “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

  “Simple,” said the other. “So far, I’ve seen nothing but tools. Almost every machine, whether it’s a tool or a weapon, is equipped with a transformer for receiving energy, altering its form, and applying it. Where are the power plants ? I hope their libraries will give us a clue. What could have happened to make a civilization crash like this?”

  Another voice broke through the communicators. “This is Siedel. I heard your question, Mr Pennons. There are at least two reasons why a territory becomes uninhabited. One is lack of food. The other is war.”

  Grosvenor was glad that Siedel had used the other’s name. It was another voice identified for his collection. Pennons was chief ship’s engineer.

  Pennons said, “Look, my psychological friend, their science should have enabled them to solve their food problems, for a small population at least. And failing that, why didn’t they develop space travel and go elsewhere for their food?”

  “Ask Gunlie Lester.” It was Director Morton. “I heard him expounding a theory before we landed.”

  The astronomer answered the first call. “I’ve still got to verify all the facts. But one of them, you’ll agree, is significant by itself. This desolate world is the only planet revolving around that miserable sun. There’s nothing else. No moon. Not even a planetoid. And the nearest star system is nine hundred light-years away. So tremendous would have been the problem of the ruling race of this world that in one jump they would have had to solve not only interplanetary but interstellar-space flight. Consider for comparison how slow our own development was. First, we reached the moon. The planets followed. Each success led to the next, and after many years the first long journey was made to a near-by star. Last of all, man invented the anti-accelerator drive which permitted galactic travel. With all this in mind, I maintain it would be impossible for any race to create an interstellar drive without previous experience.”

  Other comments were made, but Grosvenor did not listen. He had glanced towards where he had last seen the big cat. It was not in sight. He cursed under his breath for having let himself be distracted. Grosvenor swung his small craft over the whole area in a hasty search. But there was too much confusion, too much rubble, too many buildings. Everywhere he looked there were obstacles to his vision. He landed and questioned several hard-working technicians. Most recalled having seen the cat “about twenty minutes ago.” Dissatisfied, Grosvenor climbed back into his lifeboat and flew out over the city.

  A short while before, Coeurl had moved swiftly, seeking concealment wherever he found it. From group to group he sped, a nervous dynamo of energy, jumpy and sick from his hunger. A little car rolled up, stopped in front of him, and a formidable camera whirred as it took a picture of him. Over on a mound of rock, a gigantic drilling machine was just going into operation. Coeurl’s mind became a blur of images of things he watched with half-attention His body ached to be off after the man who had gone alone into the city.

  Suddenly he could stand it no longer. A green foam misted his mouth. For a moment, it seemed, no one was looking at him. He darted behind a rocky embankment and began to run in earnest. He floated along with great, gliding leaps. Everything but his purpose was forgotten, as if his brain had been wiped clean by some magic, memory-erasing brush. He followed deserted streets, taking short cuts through gaping holes in time-weakened walls and through long corridors of mouldering buildings. Then he slowed to a crouching lope as his ear tendrils caught the id vibrations.

  Finally, he stopped and peered from a scatter of fallen rock. A two-legged being was standing at what must once have been a window, directing the beams of his flashlight into the gloomy interior. The flashlight clicked off. The man, a heavy-set, powerful individual, walked off swiftly, turning his head alertly this way and that. Coeurl didn’t like that alertness. It meant lightning reaction to danger. It presaged trouble.

  Coeurl waited until the human being had disappeared around a corner, then he padded into the open, faster than a man could walk. His plan was clearly made. Like a wraith he slipped down a side street and past a long block of buildings. He turned the first corner at great speed, leaped across an open space, and then, with dragging belly, crept into the half-darkness between the building and a huge chunk of debris. The street ahead was a channel between two unbroken hills of loose rubble. It ended in a narrow bottleneck, which had its outlet just below Coeurl.

  In the final moment he must have been too eager. As the human being started to pass by below, Coeurl was startled by a tiny shower of rocks that streamed down from where he crouched. The man looked up with a jerk of his head. His face changed, twisted, distorted. He snatched at his weapon.

  Coeurl reached out and struck a single crushing blow at the shimmering, transparent headpiece of the space suit. There was a sound of tearing metal and a gushing of blood. The man doubled up as if part of him had been telescoped. For a moment his bones and legs and muscles combined almost miraculously to keep him standing. Then he crumpled with a metallic jangling of his space armour.

  In a convulsive movement, Coeurl leaped down upon his victim. He was already generating a field that prevented the id from being released into the blood. Swiftly, he smashed the metal and the body within it. Bones cracked. Flesh spattered. He plunged his mouth into the warm body and let the lacework of tiny suction cups strain the id out of the cells. He had been at this ecstatic task about three minutes when a shadow flicked across his eye. He looked up with a start, and saw that a small ship was approaching from the direction of the lowering sun. For one instant, Coeurl froze, then he glided into the shelter of a great pile of debris.

  When he looked again, the small vessel was floating lazily off to the left. But it was already circling, and he saw that it might come back toward him. Almost maddened by the interruption of his feeding, Coeurl nevertheless deserted his kill and headed back towards the space ship. He ran like an animal fleeing danger, and slowed only when he saw the first group of workers. Cautiously, he approached them. They were all busy, and so he was able to slip up near them.

  In his search for Coeurl, Grosvenor grew progressively dissatisfied. The city was too large. There were more ruins, more places of concealment than he had first thought. He headed back finally to the big ship. And was considerably relieved when he found the beast comfortably sprawled on a rock sunning himself. Carefully, Grosvenor stopped his ship at a vantage height behind the animal. He was still there twenty minutes later when the chilling announcement came over the communicator that a group of men who were exploring the city had stumbled over the smashed body of Dr. Jarvey of the chemistry department.

  Grosvenor took down the direction given, and then headed for the scene of the death. Almost immediately he discovered that Morton was not coming to look at the body. He heard
the Director’s solemn voice on the communicator. “Bring the remains to the ship.”

  Jarvey’s friends were present, looking sober and tense in their space suits. Grosvenor stared down at the horror of tattered flesh and blood-sprayed metal and felt a tightening in his throat. He heard Kent say, “He would go alone, damn him!”

  The chief chemist’s voice was husky. Grosvenor recalled having heard that Kent and his principal assistant, Jarvey, were very good friends. Somebody else must have spoken on the private band of the chemistry department, for Kent said, “Yes, we’ll have to have an autopsy.” The words reminded Grosvenor that he would miss most of what was going on unless he could tune in. Hastily, he touched the man nearest him and said, “Mind if I listen in to the chemistry band through you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Grosvenor kept his fingers lightly on the other’s arm. He heard a man say in a shuddering tone, “The worst part of it is, it looks like a senseless murder. His body is spread out like so much jelly, but it seems to be all there.”

  Smith, the biologist, broke in on the general wave. His long face looked gloomier than ever. “The killer attacked Jarvey, possibly with the intention of eating him, and then discovered that his flesh was alien and inedible. Just like our big cat. Wouldn’t eat anything set before him—” His voice trailed into thoughtful silence. He went on finally, slowly, “Stay, what about that creature? He’s big enough and strong enough to have done this with his own little paws.”

  Director Morton, who must have been listening, interrupted: “That’s a thought that has probably already occurred to a lot of us. After all, he’s the only living thing we’ve seen. But, naturally, we can’t execute him just on suspicion.”

  “Besides,” said one of the men, “he was never out of my sight.”

  Before Grosvenor could speak, the voice of Siedel, the psychologist, came over the general wave. “Morton, I’ve been talking by touch to a number of the men, and I get the following reaction: Their first feeling is that the beast was never out of their sight. And yet, when pinned down, they admit that maybe he was for a few minutes. I, also, had the impression that he was always around. But, thinking back over it, I find gaps. There were moments, probably long minutes, when he was completely out of sight.”

  Grosvenor sighed, and deliberately remained silent now. His point had been made by somebody else.

  It was Kent who broke the silence, He said in a fierce voice, “I say, take no chances. Kill the brute on suspicion before he does any more damage.”

  Morton said, “Korita, are you around?”

  “Right here at the body, Director.”

  “Korita, you’ve been wandering around with Cranessy and Van Home. Do you think pussy is a descendant of the dominant race of this planet?”

  Grosvenor located the archaeologist standing slightly behind Smith and partly surrounded by colleagues from his department.

  The tall Japanese said slowly, almost respectfully, “Director Morton, there is a mystery here. Take a look, all of you, at that majestic sky line. Notice the architectural outline. In spite of the megalopolis which they created, these people were close to the soil. The buildings are not merely ornamented. They are ornamental in themselves. Here is the equivalent of the Doric column, the Egyptian pyramid, and the big Gothic cathedral, growing out of the ground, earnest, big with destiny. If this lonely, desolate world can be regarded as a mother earth, then the land had a warm, a spiritual place in the hearts of the inhabitants. The effect is emphasized by the winding streets. Their machines prove they were mathematicians, but they were artists first. And so they did not create the geometrically designed cities of the ultra-sophisticated world metropolis. There is a genuine artistic abandon, a deep, joyous emotion written in the curving and unmathematical arrangements of houses, buildings, and avenues; a sense of intensity, of divine belief in an inner certainty. This is not a decadent hoary-with-age civilization but a young and vigorous culture, confident, strong with purpose. There it ended. Abruptly, as if at this point the culture had its Battle of Tours and began to collapse like the ancient Mohammedan civilization. Or as if in one leap it spanned centuries of adjustment and entered the period of contending states.

  “However, there is no record of a culture anywhere in the universe making such an abrupt jump. It is always a slow development. And the first step is a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred. Inner certainties cease to exist. Previously unquestioned convictions dissolve before the ruthless probings of scientific and analytical minds. The sceptic becomes the highest type of human being. I say that this culture ended suddenly in its most flourishing age. The sociological effects of such a catastrophe would be an end of morality, a reversion of bestial criminality unleavened by a sense of ideal. There would be a callous indifference to death. If this — if pussy is a descendant of such a race, then he will be a cunning creature, a thief in the night, a cold-blooded murderer who would cut his own brother’s throat for gain.”

  “That’s enough!” It was Kent, his voice curt. “Director, I’m willing to act as executioner.”

  Smith interrupted sharply. “I object. Listen, Morton, you’re not going to kill that cat yet, even if he is guilty. He’s a biological treasure house.”

  Kent and Smith were glaring angrily at each other. Smith said slowly, “My dear Kent, I appreciate the fact that in the chemistry department they would like to put pussy into retorts and make chemical compounds out of his blood and his flesh. But I regret to inform you that you’re getting ahead of yourself. In the biology department we want the living body, not the dead one. I have a feeling the physics department would like to have a look at him, also, while he’s still alive. So I’m afraid you’re last on the list. Adjust yourself to that thought, please. You may see him a year from now, certainly not sooner.”

  Kent said thickly, “I’m not looking at this from the scientific point of view.”

  “You should be, now that Jarvey is dead and nothing can be done for him.”

  “I’m a human being before I’m a scientist,” Kent said in a harsh voice.

  “You would destroy a valuable specimen for emotional reasons?”

  “I would destroy this creature because he is an unknown danger. We cannot take the risk of having another human being killed.”

  It was Morton who interrupted the argument. He said thoughtfully, “Korita, I’m inclined to accept your theory as a working basis. But one question. Is it possible that his culture is a later one on this planet than ours is in the galactic-wide system we have colonized?”

  “It is definitely possible,’ said Korita. “His could be the middle of the tenth civilization of his world; while ours, as far as we’ve been able to discover, is the end of the eighth sprung from Earth. Each of his ten will, of course, have been built on the ruins of the one before it.”

  “In that case, pussy would not know anything about the scepticism that made us suspect him as a criminal and a murderer?”

  “No, it would be literally magic to him.”

  Morton’s grim laugh sounded on the communicator. He said, “You get your wish, Smith. We’ll let pussy live. And if there are any fatalities, now we know him, it will be due to carelessness. There’s a possibility, of course, that we’re wrong. Like Siedel, I also have the impression that the creature was always around. We may be doing him an injustice. There may be other dangerous creatures on this planet.” He broke off. “Kent, what are your plans for Jarvey’s body?”

  The chief chemist said in a bitter voice, “There’ll be no immediate funeral. The damned cat wanted something from the body. It looks to be all there, but something must be missing. I’m going to find out what, and pin this murder on that beast, so you’ll have to believe it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Back on the ship, Elliott Grosvenor headed for his own department. The sign on the door read, “SCIENCE OF NEXIALISM.” Beyond it were five rooms measuring altogether forty by eighty feet of floo
r space. Most of the machines and instruments that the Nexial Foundation had asked the government for had been installed. As a result, space was rather cramped. Once through the outer door, he was alone in his private preserve.

  Grosvenor seated himself at his work desk and started his brief to Director Morton. He analysed the possible physical structure of the catlike inhabitant of this cold and desolate planet. He pointed out that so virile a monster should not be regarded merely as a “biological treasure house”. The phrase was dangerous in that it might make people forget that the beast would have its own drives and needs based on a non-human metabolism. “We have enough evidence now,” he dictated into the recorder, “to make what we Nexialists call a Statement of Direction.”

  It took him several hours to complete the Statement. He carried the wire to the stenography section and put in a requisition for an immediate transcription. As head of a department, he got prompt service. Two hours later, he delivered the brief to Morton’s office. An under-secretary gave him a receipt for it. Grosvenor ate a late dinner in the commissary, convinced , that he had done what was possible to him. Afterwards, he inquired of the waiter where the cat was. The waiter wasn’t sure, but he believed the beast was up in the general library.

  For an hour, Grosvenor sat in the library watching Coeurl. During that time, the creature lay stretched out on the thick carpet, never once moving his position. At the end of the hour, one of the doors swung open, and two men came in carrying a large bowl. Following close behind them was Kent. The chemist’s eyes were feverish. He paused in the middle of the room, and said in a weary yet harsh voice, “I want you all to watch this!”

  Though his words included everyone in the room, he actually faced a group of top scientists who sat in a special reserved section. Grosvenor stood up and had a look at what was in the bowl carried by the two men. It contained a brownish concoction.