Fear That Man

I

“We will be arriving in eleven minutes, Mr. Penuel,” the hostess said, smiling white-white teeth and sparkling blue eyes. “We drop from hyperspace in three minutes.”

“Thank you,” Sam managed to say between yawns.

She smiled, turned and walked up the aisle, trim legs flashing tan and smooth in the dim light of the passenger cabin.

Penuel… Penuel… It had been ten months now since Hurkos had destroyed the pink grub in Breadloaf’s office. Ten months since the empty tank beyond the wall had poured forth cold air like the maw of a frozen reptile giant. Still, he was not used to his name. Often, he never thought to answer to “Mr. Penuel.” It had been Breadloaf’s suggestion. Penuel was Hebrew for “the face of God,” and Alex was fascinated by the pun.

Penuel… Without Alex, he would still be just plain Sam — and just plain lost. He was still lost, surely, but a little less than he had been that night ten months ago. It had been Alex Breadloaf’s encouragement and camaraderie that had saved him in his direst moment. It had been Alex Breadloaf’s concern and influence that had gotten him the position as Congressman Horner’s aide, a position that swamped him with work and forced him to forget about all the problems plaguing him. He had answers now. Temporary answers, but answers good enough to let him live comfortably with himself as long as he didn’t get morbid or melancholy and start recalling his previous funk.

There was a subtle whining and a stiff, prolonged bumping as the giant liner slipped from hyperspace into the real thing.

Sam flipped the switch on the viewer in front of him and stared at the picture embedded in the back of the other seat. Blackness of space, everywhere… then, slowly, the ship’s cameras tilted down and to the left, catching the green haze-covered sphere that was Chaplin I, an Earth-type, advanced colony. It looked normal from this altitude, but there had been no radio report from either of Chaplin I’s cities. Three and a quarter million people were either sleeping, in dire distress and dispossessed of their broadcasting stations, or dead. The government on Hope wanted to rule out the last thing. Common sense ruled out the first. That left only the middle, and this ship had been rushed to the rescue.

What sort of rescue, no one knew.

It was generally believed that some new sort of Beast had mutated on Chaplin I, since it had been a nuclear target during the last war a thousand and more years ago. With this ugly possibility in mind, one of the top bounty hunting teams had been brought along, complete with a huge, armored, multi-weaponed floater provided by the government. Sam had not seen the bounty hunters, for they had been busy the entire trip checking out their equipment and making trial tests with the functioning of the floater instruments. Aside from them, the only other passengers were two reporters who, when they had discovered that he was merely a representative of Horner there only on a political mission in a political year, lost interest in him rather quickly. And, of course, there were thousands of tons of food, water, medicines, and fifty-five robodocs complete with hypodermic hands and two giant mother-system disease analyzers.

The cloud-shrouded planet spun below, holding menace.

“Unable to raise response,” the pilot said, his voice booming along the aisle.

Sam was just about ready to turn the screen off when a thin silver needle detached itself from the clouds below and spun up at them, lazily. It was much too thin for a spaceship. A moment’s observation told him it was an ancient, deadly, and accurate missile…

II

Raceship, ponderous, vast, worldship by any other name, vibrated and was alive with activity. Its corridors were its veins, throbbing wildly with the blood that was its crew, its charge, its slavemen. Slug-forms moved rapidly down the winding hallways, their yellow-white bodies stretching at their segments as if their insides wanted to move faster than their skins could manage. All this for the tune of the Racesong. Slug-forms foamed in and out of portals in the honeycomb structure of the great metal walls as they were called to various points to take another duty, perform yet another task. Seek on the tune of the Racesong. Crews of disposal workers pushed down the snaking corridors, regularly clearing the deck of those slugs who had been pushed to their ultimate point of tolerance and had folded over when their double hearts had burst under the strain of the push-push-push of their existence. The disposal crew heaped bodies-mangled by the tramp of other slugs who had not stopped or gone around the warm obstacle of their dead comrade — on magnetic powered carts that floated silently behind them, unloading the carts later at disposal chutes, dumping the stacks of slugs into the grinning mouth of the fire-bellied dragon furnace that would take care of them quite rapidly. All the while, slugs hurried by, slugs dropped and died. Even members of the disposal crew, to keep with their task, were pushed to great extremes and collapsed to become fodder for the dragon furnace themselves. All of this madness, all of this costly rush was a burden they gladly bore in chaos. They gained a strange solace in the fact that, though they might die, generations upon generations lay in the nests, constantly hatching — hatching faster, in fact, than the tremendous death rate could deplete their numbers. And when a surplus built up, Raceship would send off a Spoorship under its direction, and the empire would grow and be greater. There was joy in knowing each death contributed to the goal. This made them wildly happy, this feeling of a united goal to strive and die for.

And this maddening devotion was carefully structured and fostered by the Being in Ship’s Core.

III

The rocket had been non-apocalyptic, but it had torn a hole in the bottom of the ship that spelled certain death to everyone inside. Had it been a meteor, the ship could have evaded or destroyed it; but modern vessels were not equipped to defend themselves against seeker missiles, just as they were not equipped to fight in a peaceful world. They would crash now, spiraling downard to smash onto Chaplin I. Unless…

Unless, as Sam realized, they could reach the floater in the cargo hold, back where the bounty hunters were. If they could get into that and get it out of the ship before it crashed, they would save themselves. The floater could operate separately and bring them down safely.

A crackling, unclear and unintelligible, snapped through the shipcom as the pilot tried to say something the instruments would not let him say.

The ship spun faster and faster — down.

The ship screamed in expectation of the end.

Sam unbelted himself, gripped the seat in front, and pulled upward with a great deal of difficulty. He gained his feet and turned into the aisle when the ship took a more violent slant and almost knocked him down again. The hull moaned like a thousand banshees. The terrific stress of the multi-mile fall would start popping rivets shortly.

It was going to be an uphill fight — literally and figuratively. He had to grapple up the incline and reach the cargo-room hatch. Even there, it was not a certainty that he could open it under the vast pressures working against him. But he couldn’t just give up and die as the witless, shrieking reporters seemed to have done behind him. Panting, red-faced, with sweat streaming over his face and burning in his eyes, he fought his way, struggling over an ever-increasing inclination.

Something boomed, scraped loudly the length of the hill. The radar module had been torn loose and dragged along the ship.

Sam moved.

At the hatch, he braced his back against the seat to the right and tried turning the wheel that would open the portal. It wasn’t easy. He was fighting the pressure of their rapid descent and the heavy wheel. Now and again, the engines kicked in, trying to avert the fast approaching doom, and their jolting did nothing to help him. He felt like a moth trying to lift the candle and take it home. His heart pounded, and his eyes filled with tears. When he thought his chest was ready to break open like a nutshell and expel the meat of his heart, he felt the thump of complete revolution, and tugged on the door. He had just enough sense to pull his hands back as the great circular doorway swung violently backward, drawn by the forces of the plunging ship, and crashed into the wall. Beyond lay the storage chamber and the floater. The ramp into the round ball-like vehicle was open. They had seen him coming and understood his purpose and were delaying their escape.

Behind, the two reporters were fighting each other to be first to the floater after Sam. As a result, neither would make it in time.

Sam was halfway across the room when the deck buckled and tossed him face-first onto the metal plating, cutting his chin. He tasted blood, felt himself slipping backward toward the hatch, losing ground. He grabbed a cargo-fastening ring in the floor, held on. Forcing his vision to clear, he saw that the entry ramp was ten yards away, beyond a slight wrinkle in the deck. Surveying the rest of the floor, he found that he could work his way to the ramp by grabbing the cargo fastening rings and dragging himself over the last thirty feet. But his muscles were so terribly sore!

There was a booming in the front of the ship, and the door between the pilot’s cabin and the passenger area sealed itself with a loud sirening. The viewplate had smashed out of — or rather into — the pilot’s chamber, probably skewering the crew with thousands of slivers of plastiglass — including the blue-eyed hostess with the trim, tan legs. Soon, similar things would be happening to the hull and the rest of the ship. If they didn’t crash first. Which was a distinct possibility.

Reaching for the next ring, he began crawling up the deck. In a surprisingly short time, speed increased with the imminent presence of death, he had reached the runneled gangplank. Hands latched onto him, dragged him into the floater. He looked up to say thanks, saw that his rescuer was a man with the legs of a horse, and slipped willingly into blackness.

IV

Nests budded.

Nests bloomed rapidly, one after another like roses in a speeded stop-action film.

A new generation came forth, the uncountable generation of an uncountable cycle of generations. The new-hatched slugs worked their jaws rapidly, smashing their gums together, looking for some manner of nourishment. Web hangings flushed about them and guarded them against scraping harshly against deck plating or over raised bolts and seams in the skin of Raceship. Almost as one organism, the thousands of pink, young slugs, rising up and standing on only half their segments, mewed piteously — asking, asking, asking. The mists of shock-absorbent webs swayed with their crawling quest, shredded and came down around them. And the mists parted as the sacrifice slugs came forth from their places of waiting, glorying that their time was finally near, finally at hand, finally and gloriously to be consummated. They drew back and threw themselves at the young slugs, opening the pores of their first segments so that appetite-arousing juices could flow out and permeate the air with a delicious, dank heaviness. The baby slugs responded, whining insanely, gnawing their horny gums into the pulpy body of the elder sacrifice slugs, gnawing and tearing at the flesh, swallowing it in great shreds, foaming over the smell of blood. And still the sacrifice slugs came joyfully, to be fulfilled in purpose.

In the Ship’s Core, the Central Being turned to the other matters bothering It:

The slugs in the navigation and tracking quarters had come upon the form of another ship moving out and away from the vessel they had shot down shortly before. If this smaller thing should escape, Raceship might be in danger of discovery by the minions of mankind that swarmed in the galaxy ahead. There was great fury among the navigators and radar crews as they worked over the instruments, their pseudopodia grasping at the controls. The smaller ship, the chief tracker discovered, was a ball of some sort. Hollow. Yes, definitely hollow. At first, they feared it might be a bomb. But it moved away from Raceship, not toward it. Still, they must get it. It had greater speed, at this low altitude, than Raceship had, but the slug-form crew lifted the mountainous ship and set out in pursuit, coasting over the surface of Chaplin I, seeking to kill…

V

“Are you all right?” a small, china-tone voice whisper-spoke to him as he swam upward through the inkiness that seemed endless, thick, and sticky. But, after all, there was light, and he homed in on the words as if they were a small beacon that would lead him out of his fuzziness into clarity — a very pleasant, gentle beacon.

“He just passed out is all,” another, gruffer, voice said.

“You have no sympathy,” china-tone snapped.

Sam opened his eyes completely and found he was looking at a tiny, elfin face. Elfin! Pointed ears… small and delicate features… tiny but well-formed body… Wings! A pair of velvet-like wings fluffed gently behind her like sheets on a line, then drew shut. Their color matched the toga that fell to an end above her round and lovely knees. He remembered Hurkos and calmed himself. This was a mutant of some sort — whether a product of Nature or of the Artificial Wombs. A delightful mutation, to be sure. She was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.

“Are you okay?” she asked again, tiny lips parting slightly to let the little words out.

Sam groaned, tried to sit up.

“Don’t strain yourself,” she said, grasping his shoulders in her fine, shell hands in an effort to restrain him, her sculptured fingers pressing him back.

“I’m… okay,” he said, fighting off a headache that he knew could not successfully be fought off.

“I told you,” the gruff voice said.

Sam turned to the right, looked into the wide, handsome face of the man with the gruff voice. There was a wild mane of hair framing his head, partially covering his two large ears. Memories of being dragged into the floater by a man-horse came back to him. “I guess I should thank you for saving—”

“Wasn’t anything to it,” the man-horse said, flushing slightly and grinning.

“It was my life, though…”

“Don’t praise Crazy too much,” a third voice said. It was Andrew Coro, the man he had met briefly on Horner’s Earth ranch when a Beast hunt had been initiated some months ago. Coro stepped between the girl and the man-horse. “Things like that go to his head, and he gets impossible to live with.”

“Hmmph!” Crazy snorted.

“I haven’t met your… your colleagues, Mr. Coro.”

“Of course not,” Coro said. “I’m sorry. This is Lotus, our nursemaid, comforter, and spoiled friend. She’s also a famous botanist, but she’ll have you seeing plants in your sleep if you get her talking about it. Fair warning. This is Crazy Horse,” he continued, pointing to the other mutant before the elfin girl-woman could respond. “Crazy is our muscle, as you might have guessed — and a bit, I imagine, of our brains also. And me you know, Mr. Penuel.”

“Sam. And I’m pleased to meet you two. You did a fine job for Congressman Horner. Do you have anything for a headache?”

“It’s as makeshift as anything could be,” Andy said.

“It’ll do,” Crazy grunted, crossing his arms over his massive chest and shuffling his hooves on the metal deck.

“Sam? After all, you’ll be sitting there.”

Sam dropped into the homemade chair, fastened the seat belt. Crazy had taken a wall cot and bent it into the rugged form of a chair. Together, he and Coro had bolted it to the deck while Lotus had sewn a spare belt to it. He was reminded of the flexoplast chair in the jelly-mass ship. Suddenly things seemed to be revolving on a wheel, the playing of old events all over with just a few different characters. “I think it will do just fine.”

“Okay,” Coro said, turning and dropping into his own seat. “Now let’s find out what happened to those two colony-cities.”

Coro plotted the position of the larger of the two silent cities, Chaplin-Alpha, set the floater on a high speed, automatic course for the place. As they bobbled along at what seemed like a leisurely pace but was really a wild, lightning-fast streaking, Sam learned to know the trio by their personalities and not just by their physical appearances. Lotus was tender, greatly affectionate, and very proud of her two men. She was also a lever to maintain humility and tranquillity within the group. She did these last two things with humor, not with nagging, and Sam came to appreciate this very much in only minutes. Crazy was quick-witted, quick-temered, and extremely friendly. He seemed the type who would lend you everything he owned — then kick your head in if you proved no more than a thief. He had a bit of the boyish wonder at the marvelous everyday things in life, a quality which most men lose early and never manage to regain. And Coro… Coro was different altogether. He was friendly, to be sure, and there was nothing but kindness in his manner. But he was not as candid as Crazy and Lotus, not as easy to know. He was withdrawn, and a touch of melancholy tinted his dark eyes, giving him a perpetual look of hurt.

They were talking, despite Coro’s warnings, about botany, when he began reducing the floater’s speed and shifting from plotogram to manual control. “We’re almost there,” he said, interrupting Lotus as she related her adventures with a Porcupine Rose.

All four faced front. The conversation had been a diversion, a way to keep their minds off the missile that had torn up their ship, and to stop any questions about who might possibly have fired it in a world of pacifism. Suddenly the screens popped to life under Coro’s hands. The city of Chaplin-Alpha swam into clarity before them.

Rather, what had been Chaplin-Alpha…

Once a thriving metropolis. Now ashes. How blithely this peaceful society tripped into disaster! Never expecting anything like this because things like this just didn’t happen. In the old world, police and rescue teams would have come by the droves. But there had been no police for centuries, and no one had foreseen that the fifty-five robodocs would be shot down before they could land.

Ashes. A gray-white film like the thinnest veneer of snow lay obfuscating all. Rubble lay in mounds like camel humps. Here and there the girders of a building stood like broken, singed bones, some of their stone and mortar flesh still clinging to them. Some places, the rubble stretched in long rows where the buildings had fallen directly sideways to crumble and decay like the body of a huge animal.

Plants. Lotus knew what kinds. They grew snakily from the burned edges, searching through the rubble, seeking sustenance from the two million bodies that, certainly, lay smashed beneath. Some others, dark and with slender leaves like knives, were carbon-eaters, relishing the richness of their coveted food.

“The people—” Lotus began.

“Dead,” Coro finished.

“But how—”

“Killed.”

Everyone sat silent a moment.

“But men don’t kill,” Crazy insisted. “Not like this. And since the Breadloaf Shield and the death of God—”

Sam was slightly surprised to hear the casualness with which the man-horse mentioned the death of God. But then, the news media had splashed the story in depth and everywhere. Breadloaf had been interviewed to the point of exhaustion. Hurkos had become a minor celebrity on the variety-talk shows. Gnossos’ book On God’s Demise, was a runaway best seller on any world you could name. Breadloaf’s scientists had been badgered, bothered, pumped for opinions and facts. Only Sam had managed, with a great deal of difficulty, to keep his privacy intact. With this bounty of media coverage, the fact of divine expiration was a common piece of knowledge, unquestioned and — ten months after the act-generally unthought of. But what Crazy was saying was correct. Men should be less able to kill than ever. The perpetrator of aggression was gone. Man was saner than ever. This sort of atrocity should be impossible. Men should not have the ability to… and of course, Sam thought, men didn’t do it!

“Not men,” he said aloud.

“What?” they all said, almost together.

“I’ll wager that it wasn’t men. Not men as we know them.”

“Talk sense,” Coro said. “You’re worse than Crazy.”

Sam strained at his seat belt. “These… killers are from another galaxy, not this one. They might not be men at all.” His mind ran backward to the time in the ship when he still had only a first name and Gnossos had proposed the idea that he was being controlled by extra-galactic forces. Gnossos had been wrong then. But now the theory seemed to fit. He could think of no contradiction with what evidence they now had. Was he just as wrong as Gnossos? “It sounds crazy,” he said, trying to say it all aloud and give it more validity than it now had in the tenuous thought-concepts of his mind. “But think about it. First of all, we do not have men in this galaxy who could perpetrate such violence. Secondly, there is absolutely no way, even if an army of these men existed, that they could secure the weapons to level a city to ashes. They have to be from Outside.”

The others regarded him, trying to find some chink in the reasoning. Crazy spoke first: “But wouldn’t the God who gave us aggression give it to all intelligent species in the universe? I was under the impression that men were actually basically good and sensible and that their bad qualities came from God’s schizoid personality. Now wouldn’t this God from the higher universe control this entire universe?”

Sam started to answer, closed his mouth when he couldn’t think of anything to say. His reasoning seemed sound. When Hurkos had killed the pink grub, the holy worm, then all intelligent species in this universe should have benefited from it. Perhaps God had controlled only part of the universe and… But, no. He had been the entire higher dimension. There had been no other gods with him. That was a fact. Breadloaf’s scientists said it was a fact, and they were hard boys to find fault with. Accordingly, these extra-galactics should not be able to kill, void of blood lust.

But below, a city lay in ruin, concealing two million bodies.

“It must have been fast,” Coro said. “There don’t seem to be any survivors.”

“Let’s take a look at Chaplin-Beta,” Lotus suggested.

“It’ll be the same.” Coro began bringing the floater around in a one hundred and eighty degree turn.

Lotus folded her wings around her pert breasts, hiding her arms and shoulders in a shell of velvet membrane. “Let’s look anyway.”

Coro completed the turn, and all four of them gasped at once when they saw it: a mountain in flight. Rather, a plateau. It was a flat slab of a ship, miles across. The floater was a small pebble beside it, an infinitesimal grain of sand.

“What—” Coro started.

The vast ship was over three thousand feet high, and that was but a fraction of its length and equal to its breadth. It seemed to be a solid piece with no seams and no windows to break its perfect sheen. It appeared to be powered by some magnetic system, as the ground beneath it reverberated in answer to the silent call of its star-shattering engines. The only scars on the great bulk were three rows of tiny holes (tiny from where they sat, but very likely feet across when viewed closely), five hundred holes per row. From the center of the middle row of holes there was a puff of white, and a silver missile like the one that had downed their last ship came spinning lazily toward them.

“Dive!” Sam shouted.

Coro hit the controls, pushing the floater down under the missile.

The projectile whirred past, thrumming like a torpedo. Arcing delicately, it turned back on them, correcting its course.

“It’s self-propelled!” Coro gasped between his teeth like gas escaping from a split pipe. “And has its own radar!”

VI

In the shells of corridors and maze rooms directly out from the Ship’s Core, the mother-slugs were writhing in the throes of racial creation. Their great soft bodies bulged with the fat of readiness, their saucer-sized cataracted eyes glazed with the ecstasy of their purpose. Above and around them, the thin-shelled nodules of male sperm cells hung suspended in the web matter of the new nests, ripe and thick, waiting dumbly for contact with the reproductive segments of the huge mother-body worms. As if in unanimous accord, the hundreds of giant females began bumping and twisting more violently, writhing madly as their brains dissolved under the enzyme-hormones of sexual stimulation. The brain tissue bubbled and frothed, sizzling without heat, dissolving to form a nutrient atmosphere within the reproductive segment conducive to the fertilization of the male cell and the growth of the eggs into young. The intelligence and memory centers were the first to crumble so that there was no long and painful realization of what was happening to them. The end would be a form of glorious, prolonged orgasm for the mother-bodies.

Squirming and flopping heavily in fierce delight, they reared up, smashing the dangling sperm nodules planted there by mates they would never see, and bathed themselves in the soul fire of the male contribution. The raw, skinless, center segments each sported a brown nucleus throbbing on the surface in a primitive one-two, one-two rhythm. The center segments accepted the male fluid, shivered uncontrollably as it seeped sweetly onto the brown nucleus. The air was sweet and sickly, the web matter wet and heavy with the contents of the burst nodules. On hundreds of mother-bodies, the nuclei, permeated with sperm, began a slow but apparent sinking toward the center of the reproductive segment, there to lodge in the warmth of the rich protein bath that had once been a brain.

The mother-bodies curled and shook.

All segments, save the reproductive central ones, died and began the process of rotting.

A new generation was formed, now only zygotes. Someday, full-grown slugs.

From insanity, comes life…

In the war control room, furthest out from Ship’s Core, the slug crewmen prepared various battle programs to initiate against the spherical enemy who had suddenly disappeared from the radar screens though no missile hit had been made. This meant the enemy understood and employed anti-radar techniques. This made it more difficult than had been expected. They buzzed and they chattered, formulating death.

And in the Ship’s Core, the Central Being was, for the moment, unconcerned with the battle against the floating ball and the four humans; unconcerned, also and equally, with the mother-bodies and the cycle of reproduction, since both of these things were so natural, so a part of the general plan. But if truth be known and infinitesimal differences measured, it could be found that the Central Being held a greater deal of interest in the conception of new slugs than in any minor battle. Slugs were life. Life was a tool. Actually, It did not run the slugs as puppets, though strings were attached to be pulled and maneuvered whenever the occasion rose. Mainly, however, the Central Being was a planner of the major pattern, an architect of the overall purpose and methods of execution, not of the bothersome detail of day-to-day. In Its mind was the great plan of Raceship and of the one hundred and a half another hundred Spoorships that had been moved out to spread the plan and the hopes and the dreams. All the Raceverse lay before the Central Being and Its plans became — of necessity — plans in general, not specific. So It drew some strings some of the time, but rarely drew all strings at any one time. At this moment, It toyed with the plan to eliminate the beings of this galaxy. Ever since the Fall, when the Dimensional Vacuum had caused the Big Drop, It had seen Its duty — to Itself and to Raceship and its Spoorships. These strange, two-legged, two-armed, two-eyed beings were a challenge to the concept of Raceship and slug-form. And a challenge to what had conceived Raceship and slug-form. All of them, every last creature, had to be destroyed. It was an absolute prerequisite to the remainder of the plan of Raceship. These beings must die before the overall plan could continue with any degree of integrity. Simply: death to man. Small “m” intentioned.

VII

Coro quickly wiped the perspiration that had beaded on his forehead and was starting to trickle down into his eyes. “We have anti-radar gear because of the bats on Capistrano. It’s a necessity when you go out hunting multi-tonned radar-eyed things like those.” He thumbed the gear into full operation, jumped the sphere a hundred feet straight up.

Beneath them, the missile streaked back toward the mother ship. With luck, they would get to see it strike the mountainous vessel in a matricide thrust. There was one trouble with a weapon that was completely self-controlled. Sure, it cut down the duties of the war room when you were firing a thousand rounds a minute, but it also left open the possibility of the round returning to strike the gunman. With a yellow cloud of thick smoke, the missile struck the hull of the other ship, tearing a hole ten feet across in the thick metal hide. Even this, however, was a minor abrasion on that great body.

“I think this confirms the extra-galactic theory,” Sam said.

With anti-radar giving them a form of invisibility — temporarily, at least — Coro brought the floater in closer, buzzing only fifty feet over the top of the slab-like vessel. “Still, the death of God should have made them nonviolent tool”

“What now?” Lotus asked.

Sam was surprised that a woman had kept such superb composure through an actual malicious and deadly missile attack. Even he was stifling a scream, but she seemed perfectly willing to accept a flying mountain full of men — if, indeed, they were men — from another galaxy.

“Next? We go in,” Coro said very matter-of-factly. “We go inside the ship.”

All three turned to stare at him, mouths open, as if he were some strange curiosity.

“You’re insane!” Lotus said, almost as if she meant it literally.

“What good will going inside do?” Crazy said, scratching in his tumble of hair.

“He’s right,” Sam said after a moment of silence.

“Right?” Lotus held a hand up to her ear as if to block out this ridiculousness.

“Yes. Andy is perfectly correct. We don’t have the fire power in this floater to shoot them down. Besides, now that we are fighting intelligent creatures and not just Beasts, I am quite sure none of us could pull a trigger anyway. We are ingrained with pacifism. We are and have long been above war. Let’s face it: the only way we can hope to save ourselves and the rest of the galaxy is by first-hand analysis of the problem.”

“Well put,” Coro said.

“How many have to go in?” Lotus asked.

“Not you,” Coro said. “You’re too fragile for this job.” He saw her bristling at the remark and hastened to add a qualifying statement: “Besides, we need someone behind to ready the robodoc unit and prepare for us in case we get hurt in there. And Crazy will stay behind too. This is going to have to be an after-dark, hush-hush sort of thing. With those hooves, Crazy would make too much noise.”

“That’s fine with me,” Crazy said, turning to look back at the giant ship.

“Sam?”

“I’ll go,” Sam answered, wondering where he was finding the reservoir of courage, deciding it was a spill-over from Coro.

Coro brought the floater around, hugging the alien hull, and set a speed matching that of the ponderous vessel. “We wait until they set her down somewhere and until dark. She’s bound to set down for repairs from the missile strike. We take whatever equipment we can use or adapt to use, cut a hole in her side, go in, and find out what we can. All very simple.”

“And dangerous,” Lotus said, looking at both of them with eyes that cut deep and saw much. “Too dangerous.”

At the base of the towering monolith, they looked back toward the grove of trees where the floater lay. They had to strain their eyes to see the vague curve of the outer hull, and even then, it seemed to be a trick of shadows and not really a hard, worldly object.

“What next?” Sam asked, turning back to the impressive black hull before them, the seamless alien wonder.

Coro rapped the metal lightly with the handle of his knife. There was an almost imperceptible change in tone as they moved down the long flank, a tendency to hollowness. They repeated the process again to see if the same change hit them this time. It did. “We cut a hole — here,” Coro said, reaching behind into his backpack, struggling a hand-laser out, thumbed it to full intensity.

They wore space suits, and now, by mutual accord, they flipped the helmets shut and began relying solely on the air supply in the single tanks strapped on their left shoulder blades. There was no way of knowing if these creatures breathed an atmosphere similar to Hope Normal, and they were not about to be gassed by an outrush of foul air when they had cut through the plating.

The laser came on, a blue beam so dark that it was almost black. Coro began slicing into the plate before him. The metal gave to the irresistible cold heat of the beam, and a circular patch fell away. It was half an inch thick, but it was not the entire hull. Beyond lay another layer. They went through twelve in all — like chewing through a Danish pastry — before they were looking through the hull onto a dimly lighted corridor wide as a street in Hope. They were looking out at deck level.

“You first,” Coro said, providing a knee for Sam to stand on. “Then pull me up.”

By the time they were both inside and breathing heavily, the atmosphere analyzer strapped to Coro’s wrist indicated APPROX. HOPE NORMAL.

They took several steps into the corridor, about to take off the clumsy helmets, when their ears were assaulted with the teeming, multi-level rhythms of Racesong…

Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam…

Clutching at, clutching at, clutching at…

Identity…

Clutching identity in a swirling maelstrom.

Sam, Sam… Sam…

He felt buffeted by the harmonious winds, lifted and thrilled by the rhythms of the breezes of the overall song. In his ears, Racesong pulsed, and he could not fight the tiny, tinny vibrations that stirred his hammer, anvil, and stirrup, quivered them, befuddled them, used and yet denied them. It was not a song for him, not a song designed for men. Coruscating tones broke brilliantly against his mind, unaware that he was alien to them.

Sam, Sam… Sam…

The Racesong brought pictures that crashed like towering whitecaps against his mind, swirling backwater in his id, frothing his ego with stagnant foam. Between the impossible crests of the waves, the corridor of the extra-galactic ship was brought back to him in dimness, though he could not retain this picture of reality when the alien thought-song swept into his brain, waves like corundum wheels grinding away at his self-awareness. He could see Coro staggering against the wall, slumping down onto the floor, trying to hold the noises out with hands that merely conducted them.

Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam…

But after the moment of evanescence, came the waves:

Raceship’s purpose is an immensity beyond the comprehension of any one slug; it is not a tidal current but, indeed, the tide itself. Continents drift before it, and whirlpools of its making suck up islands. Raceship… RACEship… RACESHIP… raceSHIP… Always moving, always growing as more and more sections are thrust outward from the present hull, always putting more and more distance between the outside and Ship’s Core. Protect Ship’s Core, always… Raceship in the Raceverse…

Sam tried to raise his arms to shield his ears, useless but an instinctive necessity. Still, his arms raised and lowered jerkily like the arms of a puppet as the waves of chauvinistic propaganda swept him, leaving him in control of himself for only short moments at a time.

Spoorships coasting outward on invisible but ever-present currents of space, following strange flows and investigating all the eddies of Raceverse. Spoorships with shrines in the Core rather than a real central being…

Sam, Sam… Sam, Sam…

Coro was on his stomach, writhing in pain, face contorted. Pain? Pain?

Mother-forms, vomiting eggs from the rotting ruin of their sacrificial bodies, eggs round and smooth and gray, great clusters. All to support Raceship and to build outward to further insulate the Central Being in Ship’s Core and to fan the Spoorships that would carry the plan and desires of the Central Being into the unknown…

Pain? Pain? What pain? There was an overwhelming hypnotic something that swept him with the melody — but no pain. Pain for Coro? Pain?

Sam, Sam…

Clutching at, clutching at identity…

Id… Iden… I… Identi… Identity…

Webs, hanging. Webs. Giving of self to the young in the webs. The young: wide-jawed. Wide jaws: bite into pulpy flesh, gnash and gush blood through horny gums. Blood Bloodbloodblood for Raceship. The blood of patriots…

Coro wasn’t in pain, Sam realized. Coro was trying, in the short moments between waves of the alien song, to crawl toward the opening they had burned in the hull. Sam collapsed onto the deck, rolled onto his stomach. His eyes were swimming, hazed red as his temples throbbed with pain that was not so much pain as severe weariness. He tried crawling a few inches before the song crashed back again.

We thank the Central Being for goodness. We thank the Central Being for the continuation of the egg… egg… egg… egg…

Sam knew he wouldn’t make it. Coro had been closer to the hull, and he might. But Sam was lost. Each time, the crawling became more difficult. Each time, the lull between throbs of the song seemed shorter. He realized that he had to combat the song, not just crawl from it. He had to engage himself in some mental task and fight to concentrate on that task when the song was in full blast. If not, the alien thought-concepts would cripple his logic, crush his humanness from him. Quickly, before the next wave hit him, he struck upon a plan. He would trace the submelodies of the song, search the rhythm patterns for some clues. He would play detective to save his mind. He would concentrate on discovering what the Central Being was. He would have to cling to the detective role when the wave came. Over and over, he repeated to himself: What is the Central Being?

SHIP’SCORESHIP’SCORE

ship’scoreship’score

Central Beingº ºSHIP’S

CORESHIFSCOREship’s

coreship’scorecentra

lbeingº ºSHIP’s…

Sam came into the trough between waves, back into reality. His nerves vibrated now, almost to the tune but raggedly nearly beyond control. His mouth was a dirty, dry rag, his tongue a lump of wiped-up dirt. He dragged against the deck, inches only. He was so very tired. Mentally and physically. The undercurrents of the Racesong were opening before him as he traced them under the crest of their influence, to seek the identity of the Central Being. Even the first bars of the submelodies hinted at the Central Being’s true nature. But he refused to believe it. Refused absolutely.

Central Being, Central Being

Ship’s Core

She-hips Co-ore

being… being… being…

Coro was almost to the hole. Sam pushed himself as hard as he could. His mind was spinning with what he had found, twisting and turning to seek a way to discount the submelodies and what they revealed. Coro was out of the hole, tumbling into the tall grass outside, away from the influence of Racesong.

being…

core of being…

core of… core of…

BEING!

Sam felt strong hands on his wrists. Then he was being pulled from the ship, dragged brutally across the fine sharp edges of the crude portal and onto the ground. Racesong faded and did not return. But it was — in one way — too late for him. He knew the answer. Maintaining his sanity, he had found out what the Central Being of Raceship was.

And, loudly, in the night, he screamed.

VIII

Coro used the medikit preparedermics, injecting him with alternating doses of semi-sedatives and mild stimulants, rocking his body in a chemical cradle to bring him back from the screaming and the blackness that bubbled in his mind. But it wasn’t an easy trip. He had succeeded in getting out of Raceship physically intact, but his mental arrangement had suffered severe blows under the uncensored realization of the nature of the Central Being. But for Coro’s expert chemical manipulation, he might have let the desire to scream run rampant and run on.

“What is it?” Coro asked, holding him as an ancient might have held an epileptic, careful that he could not damage himself if he tried again to thrash about. They were still under the overwhelming shadow of the alien monolith, pebbles next to the mountain. “What’s the matter?”

“The… Central Being,” he managed. His lips were strangely dry, cracking and sore. His tongue felt swollen and furry.

“The what?”

Briefly, he detailed the basics he had learned, holding out on the scream-causer.

“It’s alien,” Coro said, his voice fatherly and comforting. “But what is there to scream about? I’ve seen Beasts with stranger methods of reproduction and—”

Sam forced himself to a sitting position, colder than he should have been with the warm breezes fluffing the night. “No. Not just the physical setup of the ship. That’s strange enough. But that isn’t what — what set me off. It’s the Central Being — what the Central Being is.”

“What is it, then?”

Sam opened his mouth, closed it and wet his lips. “The Central Being — God,” he said with some difficulty.

“Impossible! He’s dead!”

“The old God is dead. Our God is dead.”

“Then He didn’t rule the entire universe? There was another God who—”

“No,” Sam said, waving a hand limply to cut off the questions. He wanted to throw up, to chuck out his meals and his memories. But the latter could not be forced away, and the former would have to be held down if only for the sake of convenience. “He did rule all of the universe. Every speck of it!”

“But—”

“But there was a God above Him in yet another universe, a higher dimension. Look at it as a ladder, Andy. We are the bottom rung. Above us was our God — whom we killed. Above that God was this one with a pocket universe of slug ships. When we killed our God, our Keeper, our Master, we destroyed the dimension above us, because He was that entire dimension. The gap created in the ladder caused a sliding down of the rungs. We have meshed with the third rung, and this new God with the slug-forms is in our midst.”

“And as warped as the God on the second rung.”

“Exactly.” He was feeling better as he shared the horror, his cheeks flushing to ward off the cold that was really a cold from within.

“And what does this new God want?”

“To… destroy us.” He recalled all the lines of thought that had been radiating from the Central Being, flooding through the counter-melodies of Racesong. “Destroy us. Wipe us out to the last man, woman, and child.”

“Why?”

“To preserve Its self-importance. We are creatures It never conjured into existence. We are beyond Its control, really, because It is not our God and It is not measurably better than we are. It cannot annihilate us, for It isn’t that powerful. But It can direct Its creatures, the slug-forms, to do the job for It. Since they are vicious fighters and we do not have the power to strike back, it should not be a difficult chore.”

“We have to get back to the floater,” Coro said, standing and helping Sam to his feet. “We’ve got to get word back to Hope somehow. A warning.”

They were nearly halfway across the meadow before they heard the noise and saw the whoosh of blue light that gushed from the weapons of the slug-forms surrounding the floater. A steel net had been dropped over the ball, magno-connected to ground pegs spaced every three feet. A tough, tight enclosure, quickly and silently thrown up — even more quickly clamped shut. Lotus and Crazy had probably been achored before they had realized something was happening.

“The hypnodarts,” Coro whispered, dropping to his knees in the high grass.

They knelt, only their heads visible above the grass, and stripped themselves of all unnecessary equipment, equipment which would have been necessary had the Racesong not prevented them from exploring Raceship. Then, nervously, they screwed together the two parts of the dart rifles. It was a humane weapon. It caused sleep, but not the ultimate sleep of death. It was, really, the only sort of weapon they could have brought themselves to use against intelligent creatures. Each rifle had a clip of forty darts which slid easily into the butt of the weapon, just above the powerpack.

Running crouched, rifles at ready in the event they were spotted prematurely, the blue explosions of the slugs’ weapons neon-flashing in the dark, Sam was thinking of Hurkos. Of Hurkos clubbing that pink slug that teetered on the edge of the Shield, that wormy thing that had been God. He remembered the stinking mush of fluids that had spilled from the rips Hurkos had made in its hide. He remembered it writhing in death agony. Clubbing, clubbing, clubbing with a vicious, spiteful swing of the arms. Clubbing… But he was not going to kill! Only put them to sleep. Just sting them for a split second and then give them a nap. And he was saving the lives of the two Mues inside the floater, he argued with himself. Yes. Of course. That must be the way to think of it.

Wind: cold.

Light: blue.

Night: dark.

These three things swam and erupted through one another, cold-dark-blue/blue-dark-cold like a psychedelic toto-experience show, throbbing through the grass that licked them like a thousand tiny tongues as the scene of violence ahead became plainer, clearer, uglier and uglier.

The slug laser weapon was concentrated on the hull, and although Crazy and Lotus had begun to spin the ship under the net, the beam would soon trace a black line around the sphere and slice it in half.

Sam fought the weariness that ached in every joint of his body. Fatigue, he told himself, was one of those mental disorders you could overcome with the proper tools of concentration. But concentrate as he would, his legs still throbbed madly, and his lungs heaved like sacks full of hot coals suddenly come to life.

“Here,” Coro said.

They dropped to the earth at the edge of the grass, staring across five yards of open ground to the trees and the indentation in the forest where the floater spun and was fired upon. “What now?” Sam asked, his throat dry and cracked like his lips.

Coro wiped perspiration from his forehead despite the cool breezes playing inside their minds and bodies. “I count… fourteen. But there may be more hidden in the trees. Don’t start fanning your rifle right off. That wastes too many darts. But look how they are standing. They all have their backs to us. If we pick them off, moving inward, the boys in front won’t realize the boys behind are going down.”

“I don’t know about my aim—”

“The gun will handle most of that. You just sight through the keyhole bubble here. The gun will correct for the rest.”

They dropped to their bellies, crawled forward the last few feet until their heads were exposed beyond the tall grass. Sam raised his gun, sighted. The nearest slug on his side was a dozen feet away. His finger encircled the trigger, and he felt things rising in his stomach. Then he forced himself to think about all those guns from the jelly-mass ship — and that he knew how to work them. And they were to kill; these were only to drug. He pulled the trigger, closing his eyes with the soft whuff of discharge.

When he opened his eyes, the slug was lying on its side, fuzzy, thin lids closed over its eyes, still alive but out of action for a while. Coro had gotten two in the same time. Carefully, Sam raised his gun again, sighted in on another slug. Whuff! This time he didn’t close his eyes. The dart spun forth, buried itself in the tender flesh of the slug-form. The alien started to turn, a pseudopod lashing around to clutch the dart in bewilderment, then it was toppling sideways off its snake-like locomotion tail and onto the ground, its eyes staring fixedly at nothing for a moment before fuzzy lids closed over them.

It was like a game, really.

The slugs were like little cardboard targets, five feet high and relatively easy to hit. When you were on target, they fell over almost instantly. And the blue lights flashed almost as if in notice of a score.

The game neared its end. Six slugs remained standing, still oblivious to the eight unconscious comrades behind. Then Sam fired on the next closest of the gross creatures, caught it in the middle of the back. It bent convulsively, straightened to pluck the dart from itself, and toppled forward. Forward! It struck the slug in front of it a glancing blow. That slug turned to see what was the matter, saw the bodies, and sounded the alarm.

“Fan them now!” Coro hissed.

Sam swung the barrel of the rifle back and forth, not bothering to aim any longer.

Three more slugs toppled to the ground before they could swing their own weapons up.

Another dropped, four darts in its chest.

The two aliens operating the beam weapon swung it off the floater and toward the open meadow, playing the blue fire over the men’s heads and setting the grass on fire behind them. Sam sighted on one of the remaining duo, but they both fell as Coro fanned a burst of darts and caught them in midsection.

The beam winked out.

“Hurry!” Coro snapped. “They might have gotten a message back to their ship.”

They were up, running.

“The net!” Sam shouted.

Coro nodded. Together they hefted the heavy beam-projector, palmed what seemed to be the control panel. Blue light burst out of the nozzle, humming. Carefully, they sighted on the cables linking the net to magno-pegs, burning through the heavy strands. Eventually the net slid off the ball, pulled downward by its own weight. They dropped the weapon and ran up the ramp that had opened in the side of the floater to welcome them like the tongue of a favorite dog.

“Thank the stars!” Lotus said, coming into Coro’s arms, her wings fluffed out and fluttering slightly, beautiful in the warm yellow light of the cabin. Sam felt as if he were intruding on something private. But after a few messy and misplaced kisses of joy, the two separated.

“Thought you’d never get here,” Crazy said, getting out of Coro’s pilot seat and into his own chair. “I have the floater ready. We better move, and fast. There’s another detachment of those worms leaving the mother ship.”

They all turned to stare at the viewplate. A block of yellow light shone where a port had opened in the giant vessel’s side. Coro climbed into his chair, keeping his eyes on the screen.

“Where to?” Sam asked as he crawled into his makeshift berth.

“Anywhere,” Lotus said, shivering with disgust. “Anywhere that’s not near those… those…”

“Agreed,” Coro said between clenched teeth.

The floater groaned, leaped. The screen showed a spinning night scene that tumbled and flopped as they moved across the forest, low to the tops of the trees and with full anti-radar gear in operation. As they moved, Coro and Sam tried to explain what they found.

“We have to go on to Hope,” Coro said finally.

“Easier said than accomplished,” Lotus noted. “We don’t have a starship.”

“Don’t be so negativistic,” Coro said, smiling a thin smile that almost wasn’t. “We might have a ship. It is a small chance, but we just might be able to get one.”

IX

Food-slugs as large as houses lay pulsating against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air. Patches of white spotted the most bulbous portions of the giants, the areas of new flesh tender and undeveloped, as yet inedible. The smaller slug-forms tending them moved through the tremendous bulks in sanitary linen frocks, their pseudopods testing the toughness of skin near the connection junction where flesh of food-slug met nutrient tubes in the wall. They occasionally took small instruments out of pockets in the nightgown garments they wore, plunged them into the food-slugs and took readings as the cancerous masses throbbed mindlessly, adding cell after cell after cell at a rate that was almost visible. The food deck stretched into the distance, filled to overflowing with the ponderous behemoths that neither thought nor felt nor moved nor laughed. But merely were. A team of butchers slithered down the main avenue between stalls. A forty-car train of magno-carts floated behind them. The butchers stopped at each food-slug that had grown beyond a mark on the floor that was used to make a quick judgment on their readiness. With precision, they used cauterizing lasers to slice huge steaks from the fleshy giants, hefting the fluid-oozing slabs onto the carts and moving ahead — trimming, cutting, butchering for the great crew of Raceship.

The reek of life fluids spilled was constantly sucked away by enormous ceiling fans, replaced by perfume-heavy air.

The Central Being examined the work in progress, watched as the skins of the cancerous slugs formed and covered the wounds the butchers had left, as skin on other food-slugs bulged and stretched and reformed to accommodate the ever-increasing supply of meat and fat. And the Central Being approved. This was fine. This was a goodness. And when the gargantuan steaks were spitted and roasted for the crew, when the fat dripped into the fire and sizzled and bloated the air with its fumes, then the crew would also see it as a goodness and would give thanks to the Central Being. This was the plan sliding on polished runners. Only briefly did the Central Being think of the annoying creatures in the floating ball. They were gone now and certainly not worth the bother of a protracted chase. Besides, within the day, the ship would be lifting and setting course for the world called Hope. The center of these creatures’ empire. From there, destruction of this blasphemous species would be swift and most gratifying…

Food slugs as large as houses pulsated against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air.

X

“Just as I thought,” Coro said. “They wouldn’t destroy those.”

Beyond the safety fence was the vast expanse of concrete that was Chaplin-Alpha’s spaceport, and the tall, phallic starships, mute dragons making silent testimony to the greatness of the race that had built the city of Chaplin- Alpha.

The city that was now in ashes, Sam reminded himself. The city behind the rolling green hills. The rolling green hills that belied the horror the other-dimensional God and its slug-forms had wrought.

The aliens had left the starships untouched. In fact, some of the ships sported crews of slug-forms clinging like fleas on a dog’s back. There were four slugs to each crew, and they seemed to be painting the hulls black to match the Raceship. These vessels would not be large enough to serve as Spoorships, but they would do the slugs well for survey craft — and possibly as battleships against the race that had made them.

Coro settled the floater behind the fence, into the shadows and the grass, cut all power and unstrapped himself. “We just have to go get one.”

“How?” Lotus asked.

“We have dart guns. If we have just a little bit of luck besides, we’ll have it made.”

“Without the luck?” Crazy asked.

“It’s been a pleasant association,” Coro said, smiling another of his non-smiles.

Minutes later they stood before the fence, each carrying a rifle armed with a clip of forty drug darts. The darkness would only shield them for half a dozen feet beyond the fence. Then, once onto the concrete runway, they would be held in the glare of the triple polyarcs, small, clear targets on the sea of smooth, featureless grayness that offered no place for concealment.

“Now comes an unpleasant choice,” Coro said, hunkering down and staring through the chainlink.

“What?” Sam asked, getting down next to him.

“Do we take the nearest ship — which has a four-slug crew working on it? Or do we go to the next ship — which has no crew, but which is three times as far from us?”

“I don’t like the slugs,” Crazy grumbled, shaking his massive head, hair twirling madly for a moment.

“Neither do I,” Sam said. “But we risk three times as much by going to the more distant ship. I opt for the closest vessel and the use of the drug darts.”

“Agreed,” Coro said. Then: “Agreed?”

It was, and swiftly. With a hand-laser torch like the one they had used to cut through the hull of the Raceship, they began work on the links of the safety fence. Within minutes they were through, hugging the shadows on the other side where they were thin and shallow. Ahead lay the runway, too bright for comfort. If there were only some cover, some little thing between here and the ship, some stopping point to catch breath. But there wasn’t.

“Together,” Coro said. “Run as fast as you can to the bottom of the ship, then stay with it like it was a lover, ‘cause it offers at least a little bit of shade. From there, we can pick off the painting crew on the mobile scaffolding and use it to get to the portal. Ready? Move!”

Sam’s lungs pounded as he raced across the concrete, gray swimming about him almost as if the deck were liquid, night air biting his cheeks and making them red. He wished he could move as fast as Lotus, but then she seemed to be just skimming the ground, flying more than she was running. He felt so small and so easily seen, naked on an endless plain of nightmare lights. But he couldn’t let himself think about that — or about one of the aliens’ beams picking him out and charring him into a smoldering, writhing mass of human flesh, spouting blood from ears and nose, eyes red with burst vessels. Those were not scenes to be imagined. Only run. Run, run, run until your chest is bursting and your legs are throbbing like footless stumps. Run, run…

But by expecting the worst, he felt spiritually exulted when they arrived at the bottom of the starship unharmed and apparently unnoticed. They stood, still together, with their backs pressed against the cold, cold metal of the hull, sweat on their backs seeming to turn to ice. Breaths pounded in and out of four sets of lungs. Four hearts thumped too fast.

“Carefully again,” Coro said between labored suckings of air.

Quietly, gently they moved along the base of the ship, sliding next to the scaffold wheels. The lace-work steel shot up eighty feet. At the top, spray guns blasted black paint onto the gleaming metal.

“Drop back and fire,” Coro said.

And they did. Darts spurted out of four guns, and the slugs slumped quickly under the hail of needles, dropping spray machines onto the platform beside them. But even the loud clunkings from this didn’t seem to draw any unwanted attention.

“Up,” Coro said curtly, boarding the ramp of the scaffold and climbing quickly through the shadows of the metal piping.

At the top, they stepped over the slugs and reached the controls of the mobile scaffold. Coro experimented, found the proper operational procedure, and began moving them toward the main portal to the control cabin of the vessel. The machine hummed softly as it moved, a hum reminiscent of Racesong. They were almost to the portal when the beams burst bluely against the hull, announcing their loss of secrecy.

“Cover me!” Coro shouted, holding onto the controls.

The machine suddenly seemed to be moving so damnably slow! Moving slowly toward a port that was abruptly so distant as to seem an impossible quest. The other three turned, kneeling on the platform. There was no cover for them up here, nothing to intercept the beams that flushed outward from the weapons of a block of guards racing across the port deck.

“Can’t you move this thing any faster?” Lotus called.

“It’s at top speed already,” Coro shouted. “They didn’t design it for racing!” A beam smashed inches above his head, pitting the thick metal of the starship.

“Dammit!” Lotus snapped, angry at the machine, herself, all of them for not being able to move faster.

Sam fired a few darts, saw that the slugs were still too far away. The darts dropped lazily, snapping against the concrete thirty yards short. He stopped and watched the advancing guards. There appeared to be an even dozen of them, rolling like snakes, their black and yellow uniform cloaks fluttering idiotically behind them. Costumed worms, he thought. On their way to some ludicrous Halloween ball. Their anterior segments gripped the concrete and thrust them on. Their pseudopods gripped the sleek, powerful-looking rifles that spat the blue beams.

“Just another minute!” Coro called.

There was a blue explosion next to Sam. He fell flat against the platform, hugging it as if he could melt into it by virtue of the heat of his fear. They’re trying to kill me, he thought. They are purposefully trying to blow off my head. He clutched the dart gun, wanted to retch. The others fell flat and began shooting. The guards were close enough now, and they dropped almost as one as the first wave hit them. Seven fell with the initial round. The other five turned, abruptly anxious to seek cover, went down as the trio fanned them with darts.

Sirens wailed from the polyarcs. More slugs appeared between the ships that dotted the port deck. They rolled about, buzzing in confusion, then came to grips with the situation, armed themselves, and moved toward the starship with cold purpose.

Clunk! The scaffold jerked to a stop. “Someone help me with this portal!” Coro shouted.

Sam jumped and ran to the circular hatch. Together, they gripped the large primary handle, twisted it in the direction of a series of red arrows. When it clicked and could be moved no further, they turned to the second wheel and twisted it counterclockwise. The noise on the port deck below was much louder and much closer. A spatter of beams boiled over the plating, leaving shallow pits in the ship’s thick hide.

“Not much more,” Coro groaned between breaths.

Sam began to croak an answer, was flung from his feet and tossed against the hull, smashed back to the deck of the scaffold. A beam had caught his arm, leaving a four-inch wound. The gouge was an inch deep along his biceps. Blood gurgled out, matted in his shirt. Pain throbbed through every nerve and erupted nova-like into his brain. “I’m all right,” he managed to hiss to Coro. “Go on. Hurry!”

Coro turned back to the portal, strained at the wheel to move it the last few crucial inches.

Lotus and Crazy had used all the darts in their own guns just as the door swung open with a sigh. Slugs were clambering up the ramp while others stood on the deck below firing a murderous barrage that pitted metal and singed clothing and skin.

“Go ahead,” Crazy bellowed, grabbing Coro’s unused rifle. “I’ll hold them off a few more seconds, then leap in after you.”

Coro pulled Lotus — she was reluctant to go before Crazy — to the portal and shoved her through, jumped for Sam and helped him in. A hail of beams chipped at the rim of the hatch.

Crazy fired wildly, his hair bouncing.

Coro turned, opened his mouth to call; his mouth stayed open — in a scream. A beam caught Crazy in the chest, tore him open to the crotch and spilled his insides all over the scaffolding. For a split instant the boyish face looked surprised. Then the eyes fluttered shut. He swayed and toppled over the edge of the scaffold, hooves kicking.

XI

Like a needle sinking through a jar of Stygian syrup, the starship slid silently through the thickness of hyperspace, set on a course for Hope. Lotus lay huddled on a bunk, her wings crumpled carelessly beneath her, her cheeks stained with tears. It had taken both of them to hold her down and hypo enough c.c.’s of sedatives into her to put her to sleep. She wanted to leap out onto the platform, get Crazy back inside — even though he was dead. Dead. A word she couldn’t connect with Crazy, a word distant and unreal. Now, at last, she slept.

Sam stretched out on a bunk, anxious to catch a little nap before they reached Hope and the trouble ahead. A little nap, perhaps, before the longest nap…

Blackness… Blackness…

Concussion! Brilliance! A rectangle of nova-light!

The door had burst open, and the shadow-clad figure of a man stood there, framed in the doorway against the burning background of light. His eyes gleamed madly in darkness. Slowly he advanced.

Who are you?

There was no answer from the shadow-man.

Who are you!

There was a guttural, awful snarling from the man, the snarls of an animal. He was large as an ox, shoulders as wide as an ax handle, hands like chiseled rocks.

Desperately, Sam palmed the light switch, heart thumping like the heart of a bird. Light fired the room — but the flickering light of a strobe. On… off… on… off. The approaching giant was a pulsating, cardboard-like creature in the weird light.

On, off, on, off…

His face was a twisting mass of shadows.

The face of… of…

Who are you?

The face of Buronto! Black Jack Buronto! A leer split the all too familiar face. Hands reached out to grab, tear, strangle.

Don’t touch me! Please, please, don’t touch me!

On, off, on, off, the strobe threw flickering blacknesses and sporadic waves of yellow light over the snarling colossus. The hands fidgeted as they reached out for his throat and…

… and then Buronto wasn’t Buronto any longer. Buronto was a slug, segmented and pulpy. There was a laser weapon in his pseudopods. Slithering, hissing, he moved toward the bed and…

… and then the slug was Buronto once more, leering and…

… and then it was the slug, slithering…

Buronto-slug-Buronto-slug-on-off-on-off—

He woke, squeals of terror stuck in his throat, squirming to pass the constricted muscles in his neck and emerge as full-bodied screams. But he knew! He knew how they could fight the Central Being even though they were not violent men. He had the whole goddammed answer!

“Sam!” Coro was saying, shaking him.

With more than a little effort, he forced the grogginess from his mind, sat up. “Andy, I’ve got it! I know how we can stop the Central Being! I know just exactly what we can do!”

“I hope you do,” Coro said. “ ‘Cause I just picked them up on our screens. They’ll reach Hope about two hours after we do.”

XII

The Inferno was just as he remembered it. It assaulted the senses like a thousand pile drivers pounding concrete. It washed, slithered, scraped, chipped, sanded, sheared the mind, split the senses open to an expanded, brighter awareness. Letting the atmosphere of the place pick them and carry them like flotsam in the winds of eternity, they moved along the wall toward an empty table. A clown in an imagi-color suit that was purple to Sam, green to Coro, and blue to Lotus, sprang from the floor, wiggled insanely large plastic ears, and popped out of sight just as an ebony and silver cloud passed with two naked acrobats performing a complicated series of head-, hand-, and shoulderstands.

“Here,” Sam said, raising his voice above the music, and squinting through the perfumed clouds. He pulled out a chair for Lotus. She was wide-eyed, taking in the wonders of the bar. She had forced herself to recover — externally, at least — from Crazy’s death, and she seemed a bit more like her old self. If old selves can be resurrected from the ashes of pain and change. Sam and Coro sat down also.

“What—” Coro began.

“Drinks first,” Sam said, holding up his hand.

“We only have two hours,” Coro said. “Less than two!”

“And drinks will relax our nerves, which are, as you bear testimony to, nearly ready to snap.” He took their orders and punched the robotender for them, depositing the correct change. He also pressed the button requesting a human waiter’s attention. A few moments later, a thin man with eyes like those of an eagle and a long nose pointing to a longer chin, came to their table. “I would like you to find someone for me,” Sam said.

“Sir?”

“Buronto.”

“Who is—”

“Black Jack Buronto. Is he here?”

“Yes,” the waiter said reluctantly, and suspiciously.

“I’d like to see him. Would you tell him that, please?” He placed a bill on the table and shoved it toward the waiter.

“Look, Buronto isn’t just a tourist attraction, mister. He’s—”

“I know all about him. I once knocked him out in a fight.”

The waiter drew back, started to say something, grabbed the bill, and scurried away through the crowd.

“What was that all about?” Coro asked. “Who is this Buronto?”

Sam explained the nature of the man they were after. There was no police force on Hope, no army, no navy, air force, or marines. No fighting force at all and absolutely no possibility of putting one together. But there was the masochist killer, Buronto. Wasn’t he their only chance?

“And you knocked him out in a fight?” Lotus said. Her eyes pierced him as if they were electronic knives, cutting into his bone marrow, flipping through each cell of his mind.

“I was… more or less… under hypnosis at the time. Delirious, really.”

“And this is the killer,” Coro said, visibly shivering.

Buronto was shoving his way through the crowded room, heedless of whether men fell off chairs when he passed or not. He was still the giant Sam remembered, eyes wild and flaming as they had been in the dream, huge jaw set grimly, hands constantly clenching and unclenching.

“His voice,” Sam said swiftly, suddenly realizing these two knew nothing of the anachronism, not wanting a scene like the last one he could remember in the Inferno. “It’s… well, girlish. Don’t laugh. He’d just as soon kill you as let you laugh at him.”

“Oh now, just for laughing—” Coro began.

“I mean it. He would kill. The sooner you understand that, the better.”

“You wanted to see me?” Buronto asked, stepping next to their table, fists balled and rammed against his hips. “What do you—” He paused, his eyes widening, his nostrils dilating. “I know you!” He coughed with rage, choking on his own gall. “You’re the damned punk who—”

“Sit down. Sit down. That’s over and done with. I have a proposition for you now.”

“You’re the squirt who—”

“Sit down and talk this instant or I’ll kill you on the spot!” Sam hissed.

The big man looked startled. It was a long gamble, but he didn’t know that Sam had been hypnotized. As far as Buronto was concerned, this was a killer, like himself, a man who fought back harder and better than he could. He sat.

“That’s better,” Sam said. “Now, I’m going to ask you to do something for me.”

Buronto laughed, still playing the role of the man who is too big to be bought, too powerful to want to bargain, too awesome to shove.

“Shut up,” Sam said evenly. He had to impress Buronto with the arrangement of things the way he saw them. That was: Sam as the boss, Buronto as the loyal sidekick. Never for a single moment could the giant get the idea that he was more powerful than Sam. That would be dangerous. That would be deadly.

“Now look here,” Buronto said, though more hurt than angry.

“I don’t want to have to get forceful, Jack,” Sam said, placing a ridiculously small hand on the enormous shoulder. He could feel the man’s muscles looped like cables of steel beneath the shirt. “Don’t force me to get aggressive. No need for that at all, Jack. There’s something in this for you — something that I’m sure you’ll enjoy, something that will easily make it worth your time and effort.”

“I don’t need money,” Buronto said, staring around the table, his eyes fastening on Lotus and looking up and down her tiny form, his gaze lingering on her pert breasts, her slim shoulders, the graceful curve of her neck, full lips, deep, deep eyes. But he got hung up in the eyes and looked quickly away.

“It isn’t money,” Sam said, hunching over in a more conspiratorial manner. “It’s something you will really enjoy.” He dropped his voice even lower. “It’s the only thing that money can’t buy any more.”

Buronto looked at him. Their eyes met and held like magnets. Sam could feel the hatred boiling in those eyes, frothing and foaming, held back only by curiosity and willpower. “The only thing I would truly enjoy at this moment,” Buronto growled through clenched teeth, “would be gutting you and ripping out your heart.”

Lotus gasped and Coro made a choking sound. Buronto looked at them, grinned at their weakness, his broad, perfect teeth almost carnivorous.

Sam laughed. It wasn’t easy, and he was afraid it sounded a bit forced. But he laughed anyway. He brought his hand down on Buronto’s shoulder with every bit of force he could muster, trying to make it seem casual. The friendly slap jolted the giant, and he looked at Sam with fear in his eyes as well as hatred. Good. As long as he fears me, Sam thought, as long as he misunderstands my abilities and powers, some sort of order can be maintained. But if he only knew how my hand stings! “I’m sure you would like to kill me, Jack. Oh, I’m just positive of that.” His gorge was rising. Vomit stung the back of his throat. With great concentration, he forced it back down, but the bitter taste remained in his mouth. “But don’t try it unless you count on the tables being reversed and your death being the main attraction.”

Lotus swallowed half her drink in a single gulp, batted her eyelashes to hold back tears as the strong liquor burned down her throat.

“But you hit it partly right, Jack. I can give you the chance to kill. Not me, of course. Others. Others who—”

Buronto’s eyes narrowed, and he grabbed one fist in the other as if cracking a large nut. “You’re crazy!”

“Hardly.”

“Impossible.”

“No.”

Buronto looked at the three of them, searching for some sign that it was a put-on, a ruse to make fun of an Unnatural. It wasn’t entirely comforting not to find such a sign. His voice rose an octave with the excitement. “The medics would narco-dart me and keep me in drug stupor the rest of my natural life!”

“No, they wouldn’t.”

Silence a moment.

“Okay,” Buronto said at length. “You have me hooked. What the hell is the deal?”

Sam explanied. Several times, he had to threaten Buronto to keep him still and quiet enough to listen. The giant refused, at first, to believe it. Extra-galactics. Slug-forms. Raceship. Too much for him and his limited concepts. But after much cajoling and a mass of detailed testimony, he was more willing to believe though still somewhat skeptical. “Well, anyway,” Sam said, “you’ll see for yourself in—” he looked at his watch. “You’ll see for yourself in less than ten minutes.”

“That soon?” Coro asked, his eyes popping open wide.

“You said two hours,” Sam replied. “That gives us just eight minutes.”

“Purgatory is supposed to be longer than that,” Lotus joked. But it wasn’t particularly funny.

Then, abruptly, there was a fierce booming, a whine of metal cooling, and the street outside was alive with a gush of crimson flame. Centuries-old walls cracked open and tumbled before the onslaught.

“They’re early,” Sam said.

Buronto was on his feet, moving toward the door. They followed. The room had suddenly become a place of panic and not a place of entertainment. People shoved and kicked to be the first outside, the first to break for an escape from whatever terrible business was occurring. Buronto stepped aside and let them rush out, aware — as they were not — that it was a great deal safer in the Inferno than on a street where fire ate the asphalt and buildings dissolved in deafening roars.

In moments the bar was empty, save for the four of them. They stood in the doorway, watching the black magno-sleds that cruised above the street and between the spires of Hope. There were four slugs per sled, one to steer, one to man the heavy-duty laser cannon, and two to fire laser rifles. They swept down the long avenue, burning down the masses of fleeing people.

“You see?” Sam said.

Buronto’s mouth hung open. “They… they’re killing!”

“And you can kill their Central Being and get your kicks while still playing it legal. Up and up. No sweat. What do you say?”

Buronto turned, stared, eyes flaming with desire that had washed away most of the fear and hatred. “But why don’t you do it? You kill. Why not save the kicks for yourself?”

Sam had anticipated that question ever since he had begun their conversation. At first it had thrown him, the possibility of the giant asking that. He had gone through a dozen answers, considering each and the effect it would bring about, finally rejecting eleven of them. It was no use trying to fake the giant. No sense in putting him on. If Buronto thought for one moment that he was being used, and realized that Sam was afraid and unable to kill, he would turn on them and the end would be swifter and bloodier than anything the slugs could manage. “Because,” he said, smiling what he hoped was rather an evil and superior smile, “it is dangerous. You may have to fight your way from Ship’s Core. The Central Being may be ten times more powerful than we can imagine. Your chances in a battle with It are probably no better than fifty-fifty. I like to kill sure. But not enough to risk dying for the pleasure.” But you, Sam thought, are willing to die for that pleasure. Or risk fifty-fifty odds for it. Fool that you are, you’ve swallowed the slimy bait, and you’re ready to run to hell and back with the line.

A blue explosion tore four floors from the middle of a nearby office complex. The top part wiggled, fell. Stone crashed down on the streets, huge hunks of it smashing into the surging crowds that were trying to run from the slugs. Truck-sized plastic mortar blocks tore off heads, ripped limbs free, crushed others beyond identification. Sam saw one man split down the middle by a sliver-like portion of a steel beam. Blood fountained up and gushed over the sidewalk as the man fell forward — one half slightly to the left, the other half slightly to the right, organs spread in between. The people were like animals in panic. Mindlessly, they fled first one direction, then the other. The slugs were moving down both ends of the avenue, cutting them down in a murderous crossfire that would insure total annihilation.

Bodies piled up at a frightening rate, torn and mangled, charred unrecognizable or, when struck directly by a sizzling beam, burned down to the bones with a few pieces of black raggedy flesh clinging to the skull and ribs.

“Okay,” Buronto said. “I’ll do it.”

It was certainly not patriotic fervor that drove him to the decision. He seemed thrilled by the carnage outside. Every eruption of gore seemed to set his eye adance with new flames until they glowed almost like the eyes of a cat at night. Or was that his imagination? Sam wondered. The giant actually seemed to ooze violence.

“Good.” Sam smiled, holding his stomach in check. “Now is there any way out of here besides the front door? That looks particularly unhealthy at the moment.”

“Yes,” Buronto said. “Wait just a minute.” He leaped from the doorway into the turmoil of the street.

“Come back!” Sam shouted convulsively.

“You’ll be killed!” Coro bellowed even louder.

But the roar of the one-sided battle outside had smothered their protests.

A sled was landing a hundred feet from the Inferno, and the slugs were starting to debark, rifles hanging from pseudopods, to search the buildings for those who had had the presence of mind to stay inside and hide. Buronto reached the sled before the slugs could set tail to ground. He brought a boulder fist down on the dome-segment head of the nearest slug as it tried futilely to bring its rifle around. The fist crushed cartilage, smashed in on brain tissue. Orange blood spouted through Buronto’s fingers. As quickly as he could, he grabbed the falling slug, using him as a shield, and wrenched the rifle from its already limp pseudopod. A blast from another alien’s rifle caught the dead slug instead of Buronto, ripped a deep hole in it. And by that time the giant had the stolen gun under control.

He fanned the sled party. Blood fountained up in three separate places, drenching the street with a slick film of dull orange. Flesh caught fire and bloomed like gasoline, then subsided to a steady yellow blaze. The slugs either fell instantly or slithered about in circles until the fire had so consumed them that they were not even capable of postmortem muscle spasms.

A second sled drifted across the roofs, and its aft laser shot a long beam at Buronto, just barely missing him. He fell behind the empty sled, raised his gun, caught the alien marksman in the midsection and blew him in two. Thick alien blood rained down and spattered across the window of the Inferno.

“He’ll never make it!” Coro shouted over the chaos.

“It’s horrible,” Lotus said, clutching her lover.

“He’ll make it,” Sam snapped. He has to, he thought. He’s our only chance. And, dreams of Hope, how low have we gone and how desperate our situation when our only hope is a madman, a masochist, a vicious killer! He stared grimly at the destruction. His stomach was beyond vomiting now. The destruction was too great, the killing too overwhelmingly horrible to affect him. It was a dream, an unreality of ghastly proportions but an unreality just the same. That was the only way his mind could accept what he was seeing.

Further down the street, a woman burst into flames, her hair a wild torch…

A child fell, went under trampling feet that bruised, cut, killed unknowingly in blind panic…

Buronto was holding a beam on the guidance module of the second magno-sled. Suddenly there was a curling of black smoke seeping from the underslung bubble, and the sled began hobbling out of control. The slugs on it wrestled against it, found it was a losing battle. The sled started a climb, then choked off and plunged into the wall of another building, pushing fire and debris ahead of it. There were screams from the men and women inside the building. Fire gushed up through the ten floors of the place, singeing away the screams.

Mounting the sled, Buronto fiddled, determining the method of operation, raised the vehicle and turned toward the Inferno.

“Get back!” Sam shouted as the giant guided the sled on a collision course with the doorway.

There was a pregnant pause while the alien craft accelerated, then a birth of ear-shattering noise as wood disjointed from plastiglued sockets and the wall around the door shattered and fell inward.

“Get on!” Buronto was shouting. “Get on! Hold fast!”

They boarded, held tightly to the small railing; Buronto gunned the machine, tore through a plastiglass window at the rear of the building, the front of the sled shattering it before them. The shards, sharp and dangerous, showered into the air just as they passed through, fell back after they had passed and were speeding silently down the alleyway, ten feet above the ground.

Buronto clutched the rifle in one hand as if it were a tiny pistol — or a toy from some more violent time. With the other hand, he steered the sled. “Where to?” he called over his shoulder.

“We have the starship hidden,” Sam said. “We figured they would take over the spaceport, so we landed in the Five Mile Park. They shouldn’t bother with that.”

At the end of the alley, another sled and four slugs appeared. They seemed not to notice, for the moment, that these were humans and not other slugs. They came fluttering down the narrow passage, swiftly closing the blocks between them. Buronto raised the rifle, fired straight-on at the pilot of the other sled. The alien was flung apart like a doll, tossed from the sled in pieces. One of the others went for the controls, but the sled bucked before it could reach them, went out of control. It slammed back and forth from wall to wall, still advancing. One of the slugs — at a moment of extreme tilt — slid over the edge, grabbed the railing with pseudopods to pull itself back aboard. The sled swung into a wall again, crushing it, severing it in half and dragging it another fifty feet, leaving an orange smear along the building blocks.

“We’re going to crash!” Lotus shouted, throwing her small hands over her eyes — but peeking through her slender fingers.

Buronto pulled on the stick, lifted the sled. They grabbed and fought the sharp upward slant. The out-of-control craft careened toward them. Buronto took the sled even higher, pushing the drive into whining protest. But the other craft started climbing too. And there was just not any room in which to dive.

XIII

The Central Being was overwhelmed by Hope. Hope the planet; Hope the city. The other planet — what had it been? — Chaplin, yes, was interesting. But here — the architecture, the parks, the ports. It was so — the Central Being reluctantly admitted — beautiful. But the forces of evil were often beautiful, often overwhelming. But only gaudiness, never any depth. The Central Being willed Itself to forget the surface shimmering and glittering and to concentrate on other things. Such as the success of the raiding parties and destruction teams. The purpose of the raiding parties was to kill in their assigned areas and leave buildings and other artifacts intact as much as possible so that later historical teams could photograph and catalog the culture. The destruction teams, on the other hand, were concerned with nothing but death. Kill, burn, ruin, crush, obliterate. Both were doing well in their respective areas. In fact, the entire blasphemous race should be wiped from the slate of existence in another month. This world would be bare in another twelve hours. Then on to smaller colony worlds. The easy marks…

XIV

Sam gritted his teeth, fought against closing his eyes. His ears, already booming with noise, anticipated the crash. No, that was blood rushing. His own blood. Fear blood. The alien sled climbed almost equal with theirs. The distance between closed rapidly.

Twenty yards…

Ten…

Five…

There was a sickening crunch, a severe jolt, and they were rushing past the other sled toward the end of the alley a few blocks further on. Behind, the other sled smashed into the wall, bearing its headless passengers, and crashed into the street. They had had the advantage of being four feet higher when they met the other sled. It had been a deadly encounter for the slugs, their heads sheared away by the bottom of the sled. But they had gotten away untouched, miraculously.

Buronto roared with laughter. A laughter, somehow, too deep for his fragile voice. The added depth of bloodlust.

“Land here!” Sam shouted a while later, his voice almost washed away by the whistling wind and the booming of the slaughter progressing in the depths of the center city behind them.

Buronto brought the sled to a jolting halt, gouging out five feet of grass at the entrance to the park. They clambered off and through the gate just as a slug stepped from behind a free-form aluminum statue.

“Watch it!” Coro shouted, catching the movement first.

Buronto brought his gun around, smashed the barrel into the slug’s head, brought it up, down again. Up and down, up and down. Blood sprayed out with every swing.

“That’s enough!” Sam shouted.

Buronto laughed, spittle flecking the corners of his lips. He poked the narrow barrel through the middle of the alien’s chest as if it were a bayonet, gouged the soft flesh, twisted and tore as orange blood poured down the gun and over his hands.

“I said that was enough!” Sam shouted even louder, his face red with disgust.

Buronto looked up, got angry, then realized who he was talking to. He still had that minimum of fear. Besides, this was the man who had given him the chance to kill. “Hurry up, then,” he snapped shrilly.

Sam realized the savage lust of the giant was pushing any thought of servile obedience further and further from his mind. That last had sounded much like an order, not an agreement. “I’ll say who is to hurry and when!” Sam roared.

Buronto looked at him, looked away. “There’ll come a day—”

“But it’s damn far off!” Sam snapped. “Now, let’s hurry.”

They moved briskly through the park. The green trees, leafy and rustling with the passage of the wind, the grass as green as a finely woven carpet, the flowers multi-hued and full-bloomed, all belied the horror transpiring in the streets beyond, denied the death and pain Buronto had perpetrated in their midst only moments before.

The ship was where they had left it, almost invisible, half submerged in a large pond, the other half well-hidden by thick masses of Spanish moss strung from the trees like beards. They slopped through the water, activated the portal, and entered the last free ship on Hope.

“Now do you understand?” Sam asked, staring the giant down.

The lights on the control console flashed, pulsated, flooded the room with weird currents of color. Coro sat bent over the monitoring devices, occasionally rubbing a hand across dry lips. The time had come. Almost. Very near. Blessed be the time. Frightening too. Lotus sat beside Coro, a hand on his arm, pointing now and then to different dials and scopes.

“I understand,” Buronto growled.

“No indiscriminate killing. We have to sneak in. If we’re confronted with the choice of killing a guard or sneaking past him — we sneak.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Or you either?” Buronto said, laughing slyly.

“It’s a matter of necessity,” Sam said wearily. They had been through it ten times now. He could think of no blunter, more forceful manner of putting it. “If you start killing everything that moves, the Central Being will have us pegged and dead before we’re anywhere near It. It’ll blow your head off the first moment It knows you’re in Raceship. It’ll win, Buronto. And you’ll be real dead.”

“Okay, okay. I got it well enough. Play it pansy. Gentility is the byword. No rough stuff until we bump off the big boy. But then, mister, I am going to have myself a lot of fun with the slugs.”

“And you’ll have earned it.”

“You too, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ll be twice as bloody about it, I’ll bet.”

“Most likely,” Sam said, leering false-heartedly. “Twice as bloody.” He wondered how he would handle Buronto after the mission was completed — if it was completed. It was going to be a tight situation. A kill-crazy giant running amok with a laser rifle. How could he control him? If he refused to kill after the Central Being was disposed of, then Buronto would realize his masochism was a front, a trick. What would the giant’s reaction be to that? Or, rather, not what would it be — but how fast would it come? Well, that was a problem he would have to think about later. Later, when he was driven to the wall.

“They seem settled for the duration, Sam,” Coro said, turning from the controls. “Raceship hasn’t moved since we’ve been monitoring it. But the battle is raging beyond belief. Millions of people have died. I wish we hadn’t waited for dark.”

“But it is dark now,” Sam answered, standing, stretching. “And we have a much better chance with darkness as a cover.”

Buronto went to get their weapons and a laser hand-torch.

“Look, Sam,” Coro said, moving close and whispering. “He frightens me. And—”

“Me too.”

Coro hesitated. “Yeah. I see. He may be hideous, but he’s the best-looking chance we have. But do you really think he can kill this Central Being that easily?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Our God was weak and easy to dispatch because Breadloaf’s Shield had drained Him of His strength over the centuries. This God has not been drained.”

“Then why the devil—”

“He doesn’t have to kill God,” Sam said, pulling the black hood of the nightsuit over his head.

“What? I don’t understand this at all.”

“Oh, he may kill God. He just might. But it isn’t necessary. If we can get him in there and let God kill him, I think—”

But Buronto had returned with a rifle for each of them and a cutting torch. “Let’s go,” he said.

The two of them stepped quietly through the portal into the black blanket of night…

XV

Raceship had settled in the vast wild game reserve that stretched forty-seven miles on a side behind the Congressional Archives. It took a great deal of space to park a boat that big, and as he and Buronto stood among the still forms of oak trees looking at the vessel, Sam wondered how many animals had been crushed by its descent. And how many tourists.

“They came in that?” Buronto asked.

Sam grinned. It was a difficult thing to do under the circumstances of the moment. “Scare you?” Delicately, delicately lead on the brute…

“Nah! But, Mother, how big!”

The black hull loomed so high overhead that it was difficult to tell just where it ended and the night began. Trees had been snapped off around its base and were jutting outward like splintered toothpicks. The earth had settled under the tremendous weight, and the ship now rested in a pit of its own making.

“Put these in your ears,” Sam said, handing two plugs to the giant.

“What for?”

“There’s an hypnotic command constantly played in the ship. You go in there without earplugs and you’ll be blubbering like a helpless idiot in seconds.”

“But how do we talk?”

“There’s a micro-miniature receiver, transmitter, and amplifier in the tip. It touches the bones of your ear, picks up the vibrations of your own voice from your jaw, and transmits them to me. Mine does the same. Just whisper, and I’ll hear you. Of course, we won’t hear anything else.”

Hesitantly, the big man followed suit, inserting the tight-fitting plugs.

“Now hold your head here,” Sam said, producing a small tin.

“Why? What’s that?”

“Sound-proofing jelly.”

“I’ll put it in myself.”

“Very well.” Sam dipped his fingers into the thick goo, smeared it over the back of the plug and the rest of his ears, handed the tin to Buronto.

“Remember,” Sam said, “when we get inside, no useless—”

“Killing,” Buronto finished. “Don’t worry. Just lead me in.”

“Just to the Ship’s Core,” Sam said. “I’ll take you there, but you won’t catch me fighting this thing.”

“I’m not scared!” Buronto snapped, a child being tested.

“Let’s go.”

They moved from the oaks, crouched and running, darting from one patch of growth to another. They reached the ship without incident. Fifteen minutes later, the laser torch had burned through all the layers of the hull… And the snout of a laser rifle punched through the hole, aimed directly between Sam’s eyes.

There was a blue blast. Sam was falling before he realized he had not been shot. Buronto had burned the alien down. The slug leaned out, hanging for a moment on the edge of the ragged hole, its flesh tearing on the shards of metal poking like fingers from the rim of the crudely cut aperture. The rifle dangled in its pseudopod, trembled almost as a living thing itself, then fell out onto the grass. The slug gurgled, swayed, tore itself further on the metal, then toppled out also, sprawling full-length at their feet. There was a yard-long gash on its side. Things spewed from it, wet and orange.

“Okay that I killed it?” Buronto asked snidely.

Sam coughed, got up. “Yes. Fine. Very good.”

Buronto laughed, half at Sam’s embarrassment, half at the pile of gore he had made.

“It seems to have been a solitary guard,” Sam said, peering into the dimly lighted corridor. “But let’s hurry just the same.” He pulled himself over the sill, disappeared into the ship.

Buronto climbed in after.

Blessed be the time. The time is near.

“This way,” Sam hissed. “Gun at ready, but—”

“No killing unless necessary.”

“Exactly. You learn well. Slow, but well.”

Halfway down this corridor, Sam planted a small transmitter behind the edge of a jutting beam. He looked at his watch-screen. There was a yellow blip near the edge. That was the transmitter. The screen coordinates had been set so that, once they reached a position where their own blips (green) were in the center of the screen, they would be in the middle of the ship, somewhere near Ship’s Core. They moved on.

Though powerful and ruthless, the aliens were unimaginative. The ship was void, in the corridors at least, of any decoration or special styling. Solid gray walls, floors, and ceilings. One step brought them past the same sights as the last hundred had. The last thousand.

There was one danger with the earplugs. They could not hear the Racesong, but neither could they hear the slugs coming. Two aliens slithered into view at the end of the corridor, cloaks of shimmering purple material falling behind them and trailing a few feet on the floor. “Back!” Sam whispered.

They stood against the wall, pressing as tight as they could to its cool surface. The slugs came on, apparently talking, oblivious of their presence. They walked right past the two men… and whirled! Something had registered — but too late. Buronto brought his gun up, then hesitated as if he wasn’t certain whether he should fire or not.

“Yes!” Sam shouted. “Before they call for help!”

Blue-blue-blue-blue. And it was over. The slugs were spattered across the floor, a few scraps of their bodies on fire, tiny yellow flames licking the rich fat.

“We have to move faster now,” Sam said. “They find these bodies and we’re sunk.”

They moved, faster now. Sam thought how dreamlike the last encounter had been. Without sound, it had all been a grotesque parody of reality. Death without sound. Murder without screaming. Certainly, the time was coming.

Eventually, after many steps and many turns, the wall to their right turned from gray to a brilliant bronze. They clung to the glittering metal and followed the wall. In a few minutes, they discovered they had walked in a large circle.

“We’re here,” Sam croaked, mouth suddenly dry, every nerve now sharp with fear.

“Where?”

“Ship’s Core. It’s right inside this glittering wall — not more than two hundred feet in diameter.”

Buronto stepped ahead of Sam to a door they had passed twice during their circumnavigation of the chamber. “I’m going to get it over with.”

So you can kill the slugs for fun, Sam thought. So you can gleefully romp through rivers of nice, thick, orange blood.

Buronto twisted the knob, almost broke it off. The door hummed, lifted to reveal a shimmering blue chamber hung with webs and permeated with mists. There seemed to be darker hulks concealed in the fog, looming like icebergs. As Sam watched from the hall, Buronto stepped through the doorway, rifle at ready.

XVI

Buronto stepped further into the chamber. At ten feet, the mists started to close in on him. At fifteen feet, they concealed his legs, his hips, the back of his head.

The floor was spongy, pores beginning to open in it. It bounced as he stepped on it.

“I’m here!” the giant shouted defiantly.

A muffled echo was the only answer.

Then the floor heaved, and the room was alive.

It bucked, swayed, and Buronto went down. Wildy, he blasted it, boring holes through the sponge, holes that immediately healed over and were full again. He tried to stand, but the body of God served as a mat for no creature. Down he went, floor seeming to un-gel and clutch at him. He sank into it, kicked and tried pulling free.

Sam leaned against the wall, gripping himself with his arms. This God was more powerful than the last, undrained. It was able to heal Itself where the other whimpered and died. More powerful, but ruling this vastly shrunken universe: one ship and spoors. He watched Buronto’s flesh peel away under the acidic touch of the floor that now resembled a tongue. All in silence, all deadly and still. A play seen through other eyes. And God was winning…

But, Sam hoped, in winning, God would also lose.

Buronto struggled to his feet again, fighting mightily against this much superior force, fighting with panic. Half his face was a bloody pulp. He held the beam on the floor, screaming steadily. Here comes the devil to the gates of Heaven, cursing and spraying foam, tossing the lightning bolts of his black power to tumble down the equal blackness of the divine light…

The floor bucked again. Buronto fell. And this time, he did not get up. The floor frothed, boiled about him, and when the foam steamed away, there were only fragments of steaming, bubbling bone. No worry now about how to handle Buronto. Now all he had to worry about was whether or not the trick had worked. It should have — given one fact as a truth! God must be, like the other God, a sado-masochist by nature, liking to give pain — the omnipotent fist ringed with smiling lips. Surely, the very nature of God demanded that He be a liker of pain and a giver of much of it. If this was true in this case, as it had been with the God Hurkos had killed, then the problem was over. God was now insane.

Only one way to know for sure. Take out the earplugs…

Grabbing them, he ripped them free. The rush of sound almost knocked him down. But no Racesong. Racesong was dead. This was nothing more than a mad, ugly babbling. God had been crushed — mentally, not physically.

Steps in consideration of a program to drive a god over the brink: 1) Assume the god is somewhat insane already (sadistic, masochistic, and a bit paranoid); 2) Bring a killer into the presence of the god, and invite the god to murder the man; 3) The god commits the murder, but in grasping for the radiation of pain, in searching hungrily for the issuance of tortured suffering, the god encounters joy at pain and exultation over oncoming death. Because the god is killing a masochist, not a normal creature.

Sam had gambled that Buronto’s joy at dying only for the pain — not for some great cause — would be too alien for the Central Being. It was accustomed to the purpose of the race and would assume any race to have a purpose. A confrontation with a creature like Buronto, one enjoying the pain and dying without cause or reason, would disrupt the divine creature’s basics for reasoning. It would throw Its tight, compact scheme of things to the blazes. And there would be nothing to take their place. Once the idea of purposelessness had planted itself, insanity lay only a breath away.

Perhaps that’s part of our superiority, Sam thought, trying to catch his breath. Perhaps man’s purposelessness, our aimless wandering, keeps us strong and sane enough to handle all things. Men, living as best suits us at the moment, outlive all great causes and plans.

Stumbling, so very tired, he moved back the way he had come, back toward the hole in the hull.

Around him, slugs weaved, inundated by the babble.

Racesong was gone.

Some of them moved toward him, menacingly waving rifles, but turned away or dropped the guns in confusion. There was no hypnotic command to kill. No submelody demanding murder. They were lost without the Racesong, without a guiding voice. They could see no real reason to kill now. They were beginning the same long climb man had almost finished. Gradually, they would become saner.

He passed the bodies Buronto was responsible for.

A hundred yards from the hole they had made, he became aware of a slug following him. He turned, stared at it.

It mewed, not angrily.

He turned.

It moved next to him, mewing.

“Go away, dammit!” he shouted.

It mewed, mewed, somehow crossing language barriers with the question it was asking — the question that still lurked somewhere in his own soul.

“Leave me!”

Mewing, water through a flute…

“There will be more gods,” he said, vomit suddenly touching the back of his throat. He threw up on the wall, leaned heavily against the gray metal. He gagged, cleared his throat. “There will be more rungs falling down the ladder now.” He was talking to a hundred ghosts, living and dead, to Gnossos, Hurkos, Buronto, Coro, Lotus, Crazy, all the dead people in the gore-splattered streets of Hope. They tumbled before him, insubstantial. “There will be more gods. But the ladder is structured like a pyramid, each rung smaller than the last, each god more provincial, less awesome. We’ll whip them, sooner or later. We’ll swat them like flies, those awful, ponderous universe-rulers. We are not property, damn it! We are not property! Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

The slug touched him, called sweetly in hissing tones.

“I am not yours,” Sam spit through tightened lips. He turned and staggered toward the hole again.

The slug followed.

At the hole, he turned to it, his face flushed with an anger that had suddenly become undirectable.

It mewed.

“Dammit!” he roared. “Dammit to hell — if there is a hell. Man is his own god. He has to be, if there was ever any purpose.” His mouth quivered, his eyes streamed tears. “And I am not your god!”

He fell through the hole and onto the grass. The slug did not follow.

In the city, the gutters were clogged with the flow of blood as it poured silently into the sewers. The stars were bright. The sky was without a roof. And darkness spoke to the wind.