Space Beagle- the Complete Adventures Page 9

  The engineer strode in briskly, and placed a misshapen thing of metal on one of the tables. “Nothing definite to report yet—but I found this in the main physics laboratory. What do you make of it?”

  Morton frowned down at the fragile-looking object with its intricate network of wires. There were three distinct tubes that might have been muzzles running into and through three small, round balls, that shone with a queer, silvery fight. The light penetrated the table, making it as transparent as glassite. And, strangest of all, the balls irradiated, not heat, but cold.

  Morton put his hand near, but the cold was of a mild, water-freezing variety, apparently harmless. He touched the metal ball. It felt as chilled metal might feel.

  “I think we’d better leave this for our chief physicist to examine. Von Grossen ought to be up and around soon. You say you found it in the laboratory?”

  Pennons nodded; and Morton carried on his thought: “Obviously, the creature was working on it, when he suspected that something was amiss—he must have suspected the truth, for he left the ship. That seems to discount your theory, Korita. You said that, as a true peasant, he couldn’t even imagine what we were going to do.”

  The Japanese historian smiled faintly through the fatigue that paled his face. “Honorable commander,” he said politely, “a peasant can realize destructive intentions as easily as you or I. What he cannot do is bring himself to destroy his own property, or imagine others destroying theirs. We have no such limitations.”

  Pennons groaned: “I wish we had. Do you know that it will take us three months at least to get this ship properly repaired after thirty seconds of uncontrolled energization. For those thirty seconds, the ship created a field in space millions of times more intense than the energization output. I was afraid that—”

  He stopped with a guilty look. Morton grinned: “Go ahead and finish what you were going to say. You were afraid the ship would, be completely destroyed. Don’t worry, Pennons, your previous statements as to the danger involved, made us realize the risks we were taking; and we knew that our lifeboats could only be given partial antiacceleration; so we’d have been stranded here a million years from home.”

  A man said, thoughtfully: “Well, personally, I think there was nothing actually to fear. After all, he did belong to another universe, and there is a special rhythm to our present state of existence to which man is probably attuned. We have the advantage in this universe of momentum, which, I doubt, a creature from any other universe could hope to overcome. And in the world of man there is no just place for a creature that can even consider laying its eggs in the living flesh of other sensitive beings. All other intelligent life would unite against such a distinctly personal menace.”

  Smith shook his head. “There is no biological basis for your opinion, and therefore it falls in the category of ‘things darkly spoken are darkly seen.’ It dominated once, and it could dominate again. You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting apparently that he lives on meat, enslaves his neighbors, murders his opponents, and obtains the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe.”

  “By Heaven!” replied the other, “no creature is ever getting on board this ship again, no matter how harmless he looks. My nerves are- all shot; and I’m not so good a man as I was when I first came aboard the Beagle two long years ago.”

  “You speak for us all!” said Morton.

  M33 IN ANDROMEDA

  It wasn’t intelligence that permitted the creature to rule a galaxy. It had other ways of accomplishing that—and of making life exceedingly precarious for interstellar explorers.

  The night whispered, the immense night of space that pressed against the hurtling ship. Voiceless susurration it was, yet somehow coherent, alive, deadly.

  For it called, it beckoned and it warned. It trilled with a nameless happiness, then hissed with savage, unthinkable frustration.

  It feared and it hungered. How it hungered! It died— and reveled in its death. And died again. It whispered of inconceivable things, wordless, all-enveloping, muttering flow, tremendous articulate, threatening night.

  “This is an opinion,” said somebody behind Morton. “The ship ought to go back home.”

  Commander Morton did not turn from the eyepiece of the telescope through which he was peering. But he found himself waiting for others of the score of men in the control room, to echo the empirical statement of him who had already spoken.

  There was only silence. Very slowly, then, Morton forgot the spectators, and concentrated on the night ahead, from which the disturbing sibilation was coming, stronger -with each passing minute.

  Lights were out there, a great swirl of them, an entire galactic system. Lights still so far away that the electronic telescope could only brighten, could not begin to enlarge the needle-sharp points of brilliance that made up the myriad units of the wheel-shaped universe.

  Morton grew conscious of Gunlie Lester turning away from the other eyepiece; the astronomer said in a blank tone:

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing. Basically, that system of stars looks no different from our own great galaxy. The thing is incredible. Vibrations almost palpably strong, overflowing the entire space-time continuum of a galaxy with two billion suns.”

  He stopped, finished more quietly: “Commander, it seems to me this is not a problem for an astronomer.”

  Morton released Ms own eyepiece, said grimly: “Anything that embraces an entire galaxy comes under the category of astronomical phenomena. Or would you care to name the science that is involved?”

  Gunlie Lester said nothing; and Morton turned toward the men who sat in the cluster of seats alongside the chromatic splendor that was the control board. He said:

  “Someone suggested a few seconds ago that we turn around and go home. I would like whoever did so to give their reasons.”

  There was no reply; and, after a little, that was astounding. Morton frowned at the very idea that there was anyone aboard unwilling to acknowledge an opinion however briefly held, however quickly discarded.

  He saw that the others were looking at him; and several of the faces had startled expressions on them. It was the long, thin, bony Smith who said finally, diffidently:

  “When was this statement uttered, chief? I don’t recall hearing it.”

  “Nor I!” echoed half a dozen voices.

  “Eh!” said Morton sharply. Abruptly, he was tense, alert; his great shoulders squared; his eyes narrowed to steel-gray pin points. His voice rapped across the silence:

  “Let me get this straight. There was such a statement, or there wasn’t. Who else heard it? Raise hands.”

  Not a hand came up; and Morton held himself stiff as a board, said tautly:

  “The words spoken were, as I remember them: ‘This is an opinion. The ship should go home.’ Notice the unusual, the almost formal phrasing. There is suggestion in that wording of something alien striving to be casually human.

  “I admit,” he went on, “that is a great deal to deduce from such small evidence, but in moments of crisis quick opinions are better than none at all.”

  His gaze, steady and cold, swept the thoughtful faces before him. He finished quietly:

  “I think, gentlemen, we had better face the fact that we have entered somebody else’s stamping ground. And it’s SOME somebody.”

  There was silence in the control room. But Morton noted with satisfaction that it was a silence of tight-lipped tensing against danger. He said softly:

  “I am glad to see that no one is even looking as if we ought to turn back. That is all to the good. As servants of our government and our race, it is our duty to investigate the potentialities of a new galaxy, particularly now that the dominating power in the new system knows we exist. Its ability to project a thought into my mind indicates that it has already observed us, and, therefore, knows a
great deal about us. We cannot permit that type of knowledge to be one-sided.”

  He finished on a harder tone: “I should say we were very wise indeed to spend seven months in the space between our galaxy and this one repairing the damage caused by that scarlet beast. There was some suggestion, I believe,, of heading for a planet, and doing our fixing up in more congenial surroundings. In our wisdom, we played safe—But now, Kellie, as our sociologist, what do you think of the environment we’re heading into?”

  His gray gaze fixed on the bald-headed man, who adjusted his pince-nez, and said:

  “That’s a large order, commander. But I would say we are merely entering a civilized galaxy, and these whispers are simply the outward signs like coming out’ of a wilderness into an area under cultivation.”

  “Some cultivation,” said Smith in a mournful tone. He hunched his long, bony body back into his seat. “Beg your pardon. As a biologist, I haven’t any business in this conversation.”

  “You have every business,” said Morton. “This is life with a capital L. But go on, Kellie.”

  Kellie said: “Remember, man, too, has left his imperishable imprint on his own galaxy. If he desires he can light fires that will be seen a hundred galaxies away; at his touch suns flash into Nova brilliance; planets leave their orbits, dead worlds come alive with green and wonderful verdure; oceans swirl and rage where deserts lay lifeless under’ blazing suns.

  “And even our presence here in this great ship is an emanation of man’s power, reaching our farther than these vibrations around us have ever dared to go.”

  The long-faced Smithugave a dry laugh, said: “Man’s imprints are almost always linear. When he acts in three dimensions, he is restricted to planets, and even there, he is, for all practical purposes, confined to the flat bosom of the land. His ships that cross the sea leave a gentle swell, which merges with the tide and, after an hour, cannot be traced by the finest instruments in the universe.

  “His ships that fly the air likewise leave no trail in the wind. When they have passed, they might as well not have been for all the record they make.

  “How can you, therefore, speak of such things in the same breath with this? Man, these pulsations are alive. We can feel them; and they mean something; they’re thought forms so strong, so all-pervading that the whole of space whispers at us.

  “This is no tentacled pussy, no scarlet monstrosity, no single entity, but an inconceivable totality of minds speaking to each other across the miles and the years of then-space. This is the civilization of the second galaxy; and if a spokesman for that galaxy has now warned us to go away, all I can say is we’d better watch out.”

  Kellie said: “Merely a different form of imprint. Man— ugh!”

  The exclamation had in it a terrible quality of dismay. As Morton stared at the sociologist in amazement, Kellie snatched his atomic gun. He was not a young man, but the speed of that draw showed reflexes of spring steel.

  Almost straight at Morton, the intolerable energy from that gun belched. There was a thunder howl of agony behind Morton, then a crash that shook the floor.

  The commander whirled, and stared with a sense of insanity at a thirty-foot armored beast that lay half a dozen feet to one side of him. As he stood there, half-paralyzed, a red-eyed replica of the first beast materialized in midair, and landed with a thud ten feet away. A third, devil-faced monster appeared, and half slid off the second, rolled over and over—and got up, roaring.

  A second later, there were a dozen of the things.

  As the first attack came, Morton drew his own gun, and, desperate, leaped toward the others, who were backed against the towering control board.

  Guns raged even as he reached them. The beast roaring redoubled in intensity; metallike scales scraped metal walls and metal floors; claws rattled and paws thudded.

  Morton paid no attention to the firing, or the frightful bellowing. Ignoring any possible danger from the side, he ran along the lowest tiered walk; and, in a moment had thrown the switch that activated the multiple energy screen around the outer walls of the ship.

  As he turned to help his friends, a hideous shadow loomed beside him. Too late he brought up his gun. A three-foot mouthful of eight-inch teeth lashed forth to embrace him—and dissolved in a spray of violet fire from a gun somewhere to Morton’s left.

  A minute after that, the fight was over; and Morton turned to the young man who had saved his life.

  “Thanks, Grosvenor,” he said quietly. “That was fast, efficient work. If that is what Nexial training does for a man, I’ll have to see to it that more of it is put into use around this ship.”

  The young Nexialist flushed. “I’m afraid my training had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to turn and see your danger. Besides—

  “Besides, you were the efficient one, sir. By throwing the multiple energy screen around the ship, you prevented more of the beasts from getting through. And, after that, naturally, it was simple for us to kill those already inside.”

  Morton smiled, and put his great arm across the young man’s slighter shoulders. Here was, he realized now that the immediate danger was over, an opportunity not to be missed.

  Grosvenor was a problem. He was the first of the new, young supermen——so the radiopress called the graduates of.Nexial training—but just what to do with him, how to use his all-around qualifications had been a puzzle from the day he was posted aboard the ship.

  The Space Beagle swarmed with experts, who knew so much about their special subjects that they could not but regard a Jack-of-all-trades as an incomplete development.

  For the first part of the trip, Grosvenor had absolutely nothing to do. Morton had noticed him occasionally, a lonely, aloof young man who existed on the outermost fringes of the ship’s violent intellectual life. When the assistant of the astrogeologist was killed by a scarlet monster that boarded the ship, Grosvenor agreed to be substitute. But he did so without comment, seemed instead to withdraw further into his shell of reserve. He—

  Morton forced the brief reverie out of his mind. “O.K.,” he said, “we were all heroes. But now let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  He did not let go of the young man, but drew him along, diffidence and all. They treaded then way gingerly among squirming remnants of monster bodies, Morton issuing orders in his quietest voice.

  He fell silent finally, as a quaver of reaction set in. He thought: This must be a dream; it couldn’t be real. These things transported alive across light centuries!

  But a sick odor thickened the air. He kept slipping on the bluish-gray slime that was beast blood. The shining-ness of disintegrated matter mingled with the air he breathed, bringing a sense of suffocation.

  It was real, all right.

  As Morton’s commands bore fruit, cranes floated in, and began to remove carcasses, communicators buzzed with a crisscross of messages; and finally the picture was complete.

  The reptilian creatures had been precipitated only into the control room. The Sensitives registered no material object such as enemy ship, or anything similar. The distance to the nearest star on the outer fringe of the second galaxy was a thousand light years, two hours journey at top speed.

  Around Morton, men cursed as those scanty facts penetrated.

  “A thousand light years!” Selenski, the chief pilot, ejaculated. “Why, we can’t even send astroradio vibrations that far.”

  Another man said sharply: “Really, Commander Morton, is it wise to spend time and energy clearing up this mess, and generally concentrating on the inside of the ship, when it is the outside that matters? Come to think of it, you seemed to lose all interest in the outside the moment you had thrown the switch activating the multiscreen. Extremely dangerous, in my opinion.”

  Morton half turned, wearily. He was startled to realize that the criticism jarred him. He thought: “I’m upset, and if I am, so are the others.”

  Consciously squaring his great shoulders, he faced his critic, a construction tech
nician, named Delber, a tall man with glasses. Morton said strongly:

  “Are you serious?”

  The other frowned. “Why, y-yes. A detailed study of space segments for trivia effects would seem simple precaution. This thing is BIG.”

  Morton said: “Do you realize that the multiscreen is the greatest defense ever devised by man? Either we can move behind its protecting vault calmly oblivious of all extrania, or else nothing can protect us.”

  Beside Morton, Grosvenor said fiercely to Delber:

  “That screen, sir, is flawless not only mechanically but mathematically. It provides an infinite overlapping series; and that’s a literal statement of its action.”

  The objector bowed sardonically first to Grosvenor, then to Morton. “In the face of such an ardent argument from one who knows all about every subject, I yield my opposition.”

  Grosvenor flushed, then turned pale before the satire. He walked off rapidly to one side. Morton half started after him, then stopped himself.

  This was no time to nurse the sensitive ego of a bright young Nexialist. A council of war was the imperative necessity of the moment.

  When the men were assembled, Morton pushed his bulk along one of the control board tiers overlooking the room. He began:

  “We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a mess; and we’re going deeper. I need hardly point out that for one ship to confront a galactic civilization of any real proportions has no relation whatever to our past dangers from individual super beasts.

  “For the moment, we’re safe behind our superb defenses, but the nature of the menace requires us to set ourselves limited objectives. Not too limited. We must find out why we are being warned away. We must discover the nature of the danger and of the intelligence behind it, and it is just possible we can interpret up to a point what has happened. The facts are as follows: