Invaders of Space

CHAPTER NINE

VERY often, in a series of events, exactly what happens is less important than when. The most painstaking of plans may collapse because the parts of the plan do not keep to schedule. Larsen's contrivance for securing forty million credits in interstellar credit notes should have been foolproof. No such scheme had been anticipated and provided against. The plan was perfect, allowing for every normal and predictable contingency except that the Theban's antiquated engines would signal approaching breakdown when they did. That had happened after the castaways supplies on Carola had been destroyed, and before the Theban landed on Hermas to wait for the Danae's coming as a derelict.

Warning of a coming breakdown at any other time whatever would have let the scheme go through. Without the destruction of the supplies on Carola - that is, if the Theban had gone on to Formalhaut for repairs before smashing the caches on Carola - the castaways, on arrival there, would have had no suspicions. When the Theban arrived they'd have welcomed it, they would have been murdered, and the Theban would have gone away with the money.

Again, if the Theban had landed on Hermas on schedule to wait for the coming of the derelict liner, she wouldn't have had Horn on board, because her engines would have given no signs of disaster. She'd have picked up the Danae, found the money gone, and headed for Carola. And she'd have broken down on the way. She'd have become a derelict herself on the way to Carola. In any case, the castaways on Carola would have died if the Theban's engines hadn't acted up exactly when they did. Earlier, they'd have been murdered. Later they'd have starved. But in one case the Theban's crew would have been enriched, and in the other it would have died when the tramp ship's air gave out. The thing that counted was when things happened, not where or why or how.

A matter of scheduling operated now, while Horn distastefully buried the Theban's engineer as well as he could. If he hadn't taken time for the burial, he'd have got to the beacon clearing quite half an hour before he did. Which would have had consequences. They might have been fatal ones, or they might not. But entirely different things would have taken place.

In any event, Horn buried the engineer, after a fashion. Then he retraced his steps, seemingly leaving a wild beast's tracks behind him. He headed for the beacon and the Theban. He didn't accept the invitation offered by the music to enter into negotiations with Larsen. That would tell Larsen where he was. If he left no man tracks by the walkie-talkie when he used it, the presence of animal tracks instead might hint at false hoofs and false trailmaking. Anyhow, Horn did not use the walkie-talkie as Larsen wanted him to. Which was good.

On the other hand, Horn had finished burying the engineer at just about the time the murder party got back to the ship. Since there were only so many men aboard the Theban, that was bad. Then, it was very late afternoon, close to sundown. If the engineer-led party had got back a little later, its members would have refused to go out in the dark and the night. That would have been good. But yet again -

The Danae's captain fussily organized the shelter under the big fallen tree. Naturally, he organized it as he thought things should be. This was neither good nor bad. But after he got things as tidy as possible, he announced that the crewmen and his own junior officer would join in making themselves as presentable as possible. They could not do much, but they could shave.

This was very, very, very bad.

They shaved in sequence, using the Danae's captain's own battery-operated pocket razor. He'd carried it in the tidy, flexible-plastic case that was watertight so perspiration would not affect the motor. The razor worked admirably. It shaved neatly and expeditiously and cleanly - and it made a spark disturbance which could be picked up at a distance of several miles by a walkie-talkie in operation.

It was the scheduling which made all this appalling. At any time no walkie-talkie was turned on, it would not have mattered. But the razor was used while one walkie-talkie played Dauda music to call somebody to it, and another one listened for what that somebody might say.

Horn, who was somebody, did not say anything. But the razor, which was not somebody, made the whining noise of a small electric motor, and Larsen heard it. Naturally!

It took only minutes to get a bearing on the motor whine which was the noise of a battery razor. It took no longer to get a second bearing. The giant fallen tree was no more than two miles from the Theban. In the rain the fugitives had marched at random. Horn knew he might have approached the space tramp. He'd worried about it. But the giant deadfall was miraculously what they needed. It had been better than he'd faintly hoped for, in the rain.

So he and the Danae's captain and everybody else had done their very best and behaved quite reasonably. But they'd happened to do reasonable things at unreasonable moments. Horn took time to conduct a funeral. The captain tidied up a treetrunk and then shaved. The Theban's full complement of men was in the ship at that very instant. It was the scheduling of thee events that made the trouble.

Horn reached the beacon clearing later than he'd expected. A second hunting party had left the ship while he followed the tracks back from a previous excursion that he couldn't know about. When he arrived, the storm clouds had retreated far to the west. They were dense and dark and they did not go to the horizon. The sun sank down behind them. Oddly, there were no brilliant colourings in the sunset today. The thick rainy season clouds were practically opaque. They cut off the sunshine before it reached the angle that produces sunset splendour.

Twilight fell. Horn made his way around the edge of the clearing, so he would seem to have approached from the west. He'd planned to arrive earlier. No spaceman likes to stay aboard his ship aground. Here there was nowhere to go and nothing to do, but from time to time somebody ought to come out of the ship, if only for some fresh air. With everybody finding some money, one might expect eager sallies after more currency. Horn had counted on that. But nobody came out of the ship.

He was disappointed. He'd meant to snipe at any man who came out of the Theban, and imprison the crew. They weren't wholly desperate yet because they still hoped to find the castaways and the money - and himself. But if a blast rifle were likely to open up on any man who poked his nose around the air lock door, the situation would be wholly changed again. And again the initiative would be Horn's and the problem Larsen's.

He grew irritated that nobody showed for him to fire at, while the light grew fainter and would presently shut off as if someone had flipped a switch.

Then, just as he began to consider alternative offensive possibilities, he saw a group of figures all the way over at the opposite side of the clearing. They came out of the jungle and made their way towards the ship. Horn strained his eyes. There were too many of them to be crewmen. There were more of them than the entire crew of the Theban. He saw two small figures. Children. The majority of the figures bore burdens. They made their way despairingly towards the Theban, with other marchers behind them. Horn made out blast rifles in the hands of the unburdened figures.

The Danae's castaways were captured. Guided by the whining static of a pocket battery razor, a hunting party from the ship had moved through twilight which made them almost as fearful as their quarry. They'd come silently - what few sounds they made masked by continued drippings from the trees - and they'd rushed the giant fallen tree after cries from inside it told them exactly where the fugitives were.

Again an element of timing was decisive. The interior of the hollow tree had had an occupant before the castaways took it over. Far back, where the rotted part of the toppled tree was smallest, a creature of Carola's night had slept through the day. It slept through the rain. Later, though, it awoke. It became uneasy because of movements nearby.

Then, when twilight fell, the castaways prepared to move their tiny fire to where it couldn't possibly attract any night-creature. Carrying the smouldering punk, they approached the night thing in its hiding place. It was terrified. When they were within feet of it, it bellowed and rushed for the open air. It toppled people. It toppled the glowing coals. It made a horrific bleating noise which called forth screams from the women and squeals of excitement from the two children. Then it found the exit and bolted into the night.

And within seconds the Theban's hunting party rushed the doorway through which the beast had fled. Blaster bolts set parts of the rotted ceiling aglow. A blaster shot knocked out the castaways' one weapon. It glowed red, then yellow, then incandescent white. But where it had fallen was dry and there was no explosion of steam.

And the castaways were captured. The crewmen of the Danae looked very unhappy. Two of the women desperately prepared to defend their children to the death. The red-haired mate rasped commands. He found the piled-up parcels of currency. He needed orders from Larsen about the disposition of the captives, but the currency was too much for four men to carry.

He loaded it on the prisoners. He was in a great hurry, because darkness was on the way. He and the three crewmen from the tramp ship herded their captives ahead, leaving the hollow tree to burn behind them. Presently there would be flames, leaping out into the night. Some nearby stuff might catch. But there was no danger of a widespread forest fire; the jungle was too wet. Tomorrow, or perhaps tonight, there'd come torrents from the sky that could douse any conflagration, no matter how fierce.

But the men of the Theban were literally afraid of the dark. Some of them had had experiences the night before that made them desperately anxious not to meet any night creature on the trail back to the ship. They drove their loaded captives ahead. If any monster did lurk in ambush, it would seize upon a prisoner at the front of the column, rather than an armed crewman at the rear.

Horn, waiting on the western side of the beacon clearing, saw the dispirited, despairing captives march slowly towards the ship. He'd had a perfectly workable plan in mind to increase the tension inside the ship to where it might become intolerable. He'd meant simply to snipe. He'd confine the crew in a ship they couldn't lift and that he'd prevent them from leaving. And he'd let them know about the beacon, so the necessity for leaving would be past avoiding. Horn estimated that, considering everything, they should give up in two days.

But the Danae's crew and passengers, including Ginny, now straggled hopelessly towards the Theban on the beacon clearing of Carola.

Horn never remembered beginning to run. He simply found himself racing crazily across the clearing in the new-fallen night. He was unable to see the marching band clearly enough to aim at Theban crewmen alone. He couldn't fire into the clump of people. If he beat them to the air lock, he'd still be one man against four crew members, and he must take great care lest a shot kill a castaway, while his enemies could cut him down with blast rifles shooting three hundred bolts a minute.

But he didn't beat the party to the ship's port. He was three hundred yards away when the milling group about the landing fin began to dwindle. It was now black dark. Wholly inadequate starlight did show the stubby bulk of the Theban against the sky, but there was only a confusion of blackness where loaded figures were forced to enter the ship. By the time Horn was two hundred yards away, there was only blurred movement.

He was a hundred yards away, unable to gasp even a cry of desperation, when the exit port of the air lock clanged shut.

He arrived at it seconds later. He beat on it. But this was a time of tumult and confusion inside, and his pounding went unheard. It would take minutes for the clamourous boasting of the returned hunters to be subdued by roared orders from Larsen. It would take more minutes for Larsen to become satisfied that the parcels of currency were found, and to have them piled up by the captives.

The captives themselves would cause more disorder. They would have to be killed eventually, but murder in cold blood was not especially attractive to men who had forty million credits in currency to gloat over, and who wanted to revel in their stupendous good fortune. Murder was simply not yet an appealing idea. Besides, three of the prisoners were women.

A Theban spaceman ripped open a package of currency. Hundred and five-hundred and thousand-credit notes fluttered to the floor. He picked up notes and threw them crazily into the air to fall where they would. Other men tore at other parcels of cash. They made a snowstorm of money. They pelted each other with handfuls of it, laughing hysterically. They were intoxicated, drunk, drugged by the possession of inconceivable riches.

The captain of the Danae looked shocked. He must have known that his life was forfeit to the necessity of the Theban's crew, but he was shocked at this treatment of money. Larsen gazed at it with burning eyes.

Outside the airlock, Horn was filled with despair and with accumulating horror at this disaster. The particoloured moon of Carola rose swiftly in the west, as a crescent. It raced across the sky, waxing with unseemly haste until it was half full, scattering radiance upon the clearing. There was the fifty-foot wall of foliage ringing the artificially barren clearing like an irregular precipice. Single trees reached above it. Some of them were angular zigzags of wood with pompoms of foliage at every joint. Some were straight leafy spires which had no branches at all.

The bright and rapidly moving light shone on horror, too. There were the carcasses of the beasts Larsen had slain when they came to stare at the ship's cargo lights. Some of the carcasses were swollen now, but there was movement among them. Writhing, undulating discs of greyish-green horror fed upon them. They glistened as the particoloured moon moved overhead. The dead animals were not pleasant to look at, but the horrors that squirmed upon and around them, feeding through many mouths, embracing the things they ate and making sucking noises.... They penetrated, suddenly, even into Horn's frantic state of mind.

As of the moment, Larsen was wholly victorious. He had the castaways as captives in his ship, and he had the currency shipment. He also had Horn essentially at his mercy. And he knew it. From the information gived by the now-dead engineer, Larsen had undoubtedly learned of Ginny's special status in Horn's mind. Larsen would know that so long as Ginny was unharmed, Horn would do whatever was demanded.

With Ginny in his hands, Larsen could make Horn surrender. He could make Horn tune the Theban's engines to as complete dependability as such ancient mechanisms could attain. True, Larsen couldn't know when that perfection was real and when it was illusory. But while he held Ginny captive he had Horn at his mercy too.

This victory was still too new to be fully realized. Larsen now stood staring with hot eyes at money. Shaken out of its tightly wrapped parcels, there were bushels of it. It fluttered in the air, piled up a foot deep on the floor. The members of the Theban's crew were drunk with triumph and half crazy with rejoicing. Not one had yet realized that this was too much money to be divided or shared, too much to gamble with. Spinning and showering in the air, its final possession was yet to be determined, and only Larsen realized how that was likely to be arranged.

His eyes burned. But even he was only exploring what such loot amounted to. It would take time for him to work out every detail. But he must let his crewmen gloat and rejoice insanely. They had, for the time being, no ability to think of anything but their triumph. They tore the money parcels open, shouting. They flung thick handfuls - hundreds of thousands of credits - of money in each other's faces as if it were confetti. They tossed double armfuls towards the ceiling of the crew's quarters and let it shower down upon them. They howled when one of their number slipped upon piled-up money and fell to the floor. They began crazily to bury him in money, howling with laughter at the excruciating humour of the practice.

Outside the air lock, Horn drew back, making inarticulate noises of frustration. Ginny was in the Theban. She'd been in there a minute. Two. Perhaps three minutes. She'd been in the ship a hundred and eighty seconds, together with the other castaways and some forty million credits in currency. A part of Horn's mind gibbered over what might happen to her presently.

But there was a cold and acid-thinking part of his brain that spoke icily. No man, drunk with joy over riches, will turn to unrelated enormities until his first intoxication has worn off. The crew of the Theban hadn't yet realized that now they must set about murdering each other. It was evident that none of them could play fair with another when so much money was at stake. But for now they thought exclusively of the money. Two of their number literally wallowed in it, laughing foolishly and throwing the printed credit notes about as if splashing in water. It would be some while yet before they realized what must soon happen.

Danger to the prisoners would not begin for a while yet. It might be delayed again when these men, so rich in stolen money, began to suspect each other of plots and counter-plots, and of murders intended which must be prevented by other murders committed first. Or the prisoners might be seized upon as a distraction, to pretend that no such ideas were entertained by anyone. Their fate might be debated and carried out simply to delay the crewmen's destruction of each other. But in the far, deep recesses of his mind, every man of the Theban's company actually knew that their number would be cut down by murder until no more than two, and more likely one, bloody-handed survivor owned all the riches now strewn on the floor.

These savage, frigid thoughts went through a part of Horn's mind that the rest of it ignored. He battered at the air lock, crying out raging curses. But the cold and acidly logical part of his mind went on. It predicted that for minutes yet there would be happy delirium within the ship. Only when some traces of calm returned would his hammering on the air lock door be heard. But in time even men half crazy with riches would notice vaguely that there was something calling for attention. Oh, yes! The door.

The separate, emotionless part of Horn's mind told him what he must do. It didn't suggest this action or that. It told him what must happen when the air lock door was opened. It told him to do this and that, to bring about the action.

He went to the pile of animal carcasses with their writhing cover of many-mouthed beasts. These were somehow more revolting because they not only hunted, lying in wait on the ground, and fastened themselves to branches to trap tree-dwelling creatures, but were also carrion eaters, devouring meat they had not killed themselves. All carnivorous animals despise the caters of rotten meat. Man is a carnivore. Even now and even in his present frenzy, Horn despised the beast he chose by dim starlight and poked with the muzzle of his blast rifle. It flung flailing tentacles up with strictly reflex ferocity, and seized the rifle barrel. It wound itself, slavering, upon the metal. It constricted, making feeble growling noises, trying in blind malevolence to begin to devour the thing that had touched it.

Horn ran with it towards the Theban, standing tall in the starlight. He swung the blast rifle in a wide vertical arc, with a jerk at the end. The glistening horror slipped off. It soared, and hit the plating of the Theban with a wet and disgusting sound. It fell to the ground, squirming.

He ran back, stabbed at the centre of another wet and writhing beast with the rifle. The thing made noises and clung, all its mouths vainly haggling at the metal weapon. Horn carried the beast away from the mass of its fellows. He swung it. It hit the Theban's landing fin.

Horn was not an edifying sight, just then, nor did the noises he made sound particularly human as he ran back and forth and back and forth, ferrying things that looked like fungus to where he could hurl them a last forty or fifty feet to strike the spaceship and flail wildly, hating everything, where they fell from it.

Not all acted in exactly the same manner. One swung some of its snaky arms, while others clung to the rifle. One of those arms tried to encircle Horn's wrist. He stopped long enough to lean his wrist on the ground and stamp on the thing that gripped it. It let go, making bubbling noises, but its other arms clung to the blast rifle until Horn flung this beast after the rest.

There were a dozen of the monsters about the air lock when Horn began to beat upon the door again. Five were piled together, struggling brainlessly to envelop each other, within two yards of his feet. There were other single ones, and pairs and triads of them, no farther away.

The castaways and the money and the hunting party that had brought joy to the Theban had now been inside the ship for more than five minutes. And, save for Larsen, no member of the Theban's crew was wholly sane because of his rejoicing. Still, half crazed with blissful ownership of riches, the crew's rejoicing was not quite as frenzied as it had been. And somebody heard the steady, resumed battering on the air lock door.

One crewman continued to roll on the floor, flinging handfuls of money about him. But the game was suddenly flat and foolish. Somebody was battering at the air lock door. Anything might have happened. The banging was resolute and determined.

Someone said, "Somebody's outside."

Nobody asked who. Nobody checked to see who it might be. The man who'd been rolling in the money got up and went clattering to open the door. He didn't think. He went - and other men followed him - to let in one of their number who hadn't been gleefully insane over the possession of millions and millions and millions of credits in currency, now strewn crazily on the floor of the crew's quarters.

The man who'd been rolling in money zestfully brushed a credit note from his clothing as if it were trash. He opened the outer air lock door. "We left you out!" he babbled gleefully. "Come in an' have a few millions."

From the darkness outside, Horn said in a thick, strangled voice, "I'm Horn. Tell Larsen I'll make a deal to run your engines now. Tell him!"

It was a shock to those who heard him. It was joyful, a glorious shock. All by itself it was intoxicating to know that Horn would return and the engines would run and the Theban could take to space again.

Larsen, even, was jolted by this superlative ending of everything that was left to be done. He rasped, "Bring him in!"

Men flung the air lock door wide. The light in there was faint. It did not illuminate the ground. Men babbled zestfully, tipsy with rejoicing and triumph and the end of everything they had worried about up to now. From now on they might have other things to worry about, but for the moment they knew purest relief and satisfaction.

"C'mon!" "C'mon in!" "Come look what we got!"

Above, Larsen's voice snarled, "In there!"

It wasn't intended for Horn but for the prisoners, to drive them into a nearly empty hold where they could be locked up safely until the disorganization of the crew wore off or was otherwise adjusted. Larsen had a stun pistol only, but his captives didn't realize the difference, in their despair. It wouldn't have mattered, anyhow. They filed numbly into the hold. But Larsen suddenly snapped, "Not you!" He caught Ginny's arm and jerked her back, then drove the others on. It was utterly dark there. They stumbled. The two children began to cry. Larsen kicked the door shut and put the locking dogs in place.

From below came more voices of men at the air lock door.

"C'mon! Larsen says -"

Larsen said, raging coldly, "Tell him I've got his girl here! Tell him to come in!"'

Babblings. A voice reported, still gleeful because of money a foot deep in the crew's quarters, "He says he wants to make his deal first!"

Larsen considered a bare second. Then he grinned savagely. "Get him!" he commanded from above. "Don't kill him! He won't dare fight. I've got his girl! Go get him!"

Whooping, men leaped down. Two of them. One landed on a writhing, gristly tentacle which whipped around his ankle and bit him. Then a beast, all flailing arms, reared up and embraced him horribly and squeezed. He shrieked. A second man stumbled as he landed and a glistening snakelike thing flashed around his neck and pulled him over backwards. The other men in the air lock seized weapons normally racked by the air lock door. They jumped down, the safeties snapped off the blasters. The blasters made their snapping sounds. Men in motion were seized by pairs and triple monsters who separated from each other to compete for living food.

Men went zestfully into battle. They had killed these beasts for sport. It was instinct to kill a beast in defence of a man. But their eyes were not fully accustomed to the darkness outside the ship. They attacked the monsters with perhaps excessive confidence.

Horn leaped up into the air lock and slammed the door shut behind him. He raced for the companion ladder, blast rifle ready.

The inside of the ship was suddenly and remarkably silent. Men outside fought the writhing monsters. It was practically butchery, but that was because the men fought together, with confidence, and the grey-green creatures fought by instinct only, and singly. But yet it was remarkable that the inside of the ship was so still. There was no sound through the closed air lock door. There was only the sound of Horn's footsteps on the companionway, and the panting of his breath.

Ginny's voice came to him, faintly and desperately, "Don't come! Don't! He's ready."

Horn reached the next landing. It was the stores-messroom-galley level. The ship's lights burned steadily, making the room quite bright. And Larsen stood waiting, with Ginny before him. He had one of her arms twisted behind her back. He grinned at Horn. Horn couldn't shoot. Nobody could risk a blaster bolt at Larsen, standing behind the white-faced girl. The odds were too great that Ginny would get the bolt.

Larsen thrust a weapon around her waist. He pulled the trigger.

Horn heard the waspish humming sound of a stun pistol, which is as effective as a blaster at short range, and very much less messy. He felt the intolerable pins-and-needles prickling sensation of a stun pistol beam. He heard it and felt it for only the fraction of a second, of course. In that small fraction of time, though, he knew such fury, such infinite hatred, and such despair as would make any man go mad if it lasted as long as a minute.

He felt himself falling.

Then he felt nothing.