The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dawes and Carol left the clearing together, walking rapidly away without speaking, virtually without looking at each other.

He said to her finally, as they approached the circular row of bubble-houses, 'We'd better pick one out.'

'Pick any one you like - Mike.'

He glanced at them. The domes were empty, merely arching shelters against the downslanting winds, but they did provide a place to sleep if you didn't mind the ground. Colonists weren't supposed to mind little things like having to sleep on the ground until there was time to build beds.

He pointed at the bubble-house that adjoined Noonan's. It might be a good idea to have Noonan as a neighbor, Dawes thought. Just in case of trouble.

'Let's take that one,' Dawes said.

They walked toward it, Dawes carrying his own suitcase and hers, each with its twenty pounds of personal possessions. At the entrance to the dome he paused, wondering vaguely whether he should bother with the old ritual of carrying his wife across the threshold. He nearly put down the suitcases to turn to her; then, changing his mind, he simply walked inside the dome. She followed him in.

Within, the dome covered an area of perhaps two hundred square feet. There would be room for a bed and perhaps a clothes cabinet of some sort, not much else.

Plumbing would come a while later; until that time, they would have to make do with the nearby lake for washing and drinking.

'It isn't very impressive, is it?' he asked.

'No. Not very.'

'We'll fix it up. These domes are just temporary, just places to stay until we can begin building homes. We'll have a swell place some day, Carol.'

He smiled encouragingly at her. But she could not keep up the pretense; she sank down onto her suitcase and stared bleakly off into nowhere. Dawes began to wonder about the sleeping arrangements for the night. They would have to spread out all their clothes, he thought, and huddle together for warmth—

'I hadn't expected it to be like this,' she said suddenly in a toneless voice. 'I mean, my life, and all. I never really thought much about what I was going to do with myself.

But I didn't figure I'd end up in a little bubble on some other world.'

'Neither did I. Neither did any of us, Carol.'

'But we're here, aren't we?'

He nodded, After a moment, he said, 'What did you do, on Earth?'

'Do? Oh - I was a stenographer, Typist, mostly. For a construction firm in Oakland. I guess I was just waiting around to get married, when the time came. Well, I guess the time did come - sort of.'

Dawes was disappointed. He had never asked her before - he had never dared to speak much with her on the ship - but he had privately hoped she had been an actress, a writer, perhaps a singer. Someone with a talent, someone he could be proud of, someone who would stand out from all the other women. He decided he would have to be content with her slim prettiness, and let all else go.

She was, it seemed, just an ordinary girl, shyly innocent.

'I was going to college,' he said. 'Pre-med. Ohio State.

Well, that's all finished, too. We have to start all over, here on Osiris.'

He laughed - a nervous, brittle laugh. The door of the bubble-house was still open; he shut it, looking outside first. The last rays of Vega had long since faded from the sky. Night had come. Dawes admitted to himself that he felt afraid of what night would bring. Alone in this chilly plastic bubble with this frightened girl, free in the eyes of the universe to do anything with her he cared to, if she would let him—

The conversation refused to become self-sustaining. It kept running out of fuel; three or four times Dawes forced himself to start a new topic, but after ten minutes he let the interchange sputter to a total halt. They were silent a while, watching each other.

'It's like a blind date,' Carol said quietly, when a few moments had passed. 'You and me, put together like this.

A blind date that's for keeps.'

'Why did you say yes when I picked you?'

'What else could I do? I didn't want any of the others, the older men. You looked like somebody I could talk to, somebody I'd be happy with. Even if you are a little younger than me. It's better than going with one of those older ones.'

'I hope we're happy together, Carol.'

'I hope so, too. But - Mike, I'm afraid—'

There were tears in the edges of her eyes. Dawes realized that she was rapidly losing her nerve and might well go off into wild hysterics any moment. That wasn't the way he cared to spend his wedding night. And he wouldn't know how to handle her if she burst in tears.

He said as firmly as he could, 'We're going to have to make the most of things, Carol. You know what I mean. It's going to be this way, now that our number came up. You and me, together on Osiris, and no turning back. Not ever.'

She nodded. And then, after a frozen moment of silence, he found himself moving toward her, putting his arms round her thin shoulders, kissing her. It was a tender, tremulous sort of kiss, a tentative contact of dry lips, and it had hardly begun when it was interrupted suddenly by a harsh yell coming from the general direction of Noonan's bubble at the left.

He pulled back from her. 'Did you hear something a shout?'

'It sounded like it was Noonan. Do you think he's having trouble with Cherry?'

'I don't know. But—'

The shouts came again. And this time the words were unmistakable. Noonan was bellowing. 'Hey! Dawes! Dawes! Help!'

'Let's go see what's happening,' Dawes suggested.

He stepped outside the bubble, into solid moonless blackness. He blinked, trying to see.

After a moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw what was taking place.

Noonan and Cherry were outside their dome. They were surrounded by dark shapes, black forms against the blackness. Noonan was flailing at the shapes and shouting.

'Get away from me!' the big man cried. 'Hey, Dawes!

Run! Get help!'

Dawes froze, not knowing which way to turn. He heard Carol catch her breath sharply. His eyes, growing more accustomed to the dark, picked out the scene clearly now.

Six or seven dark stubby figures - unhuman figures clustered around the struggling forms of Noonan and Cherry Thomas. Dawes saw hunched, neckless heads, thick shoulders, corded arms. He was too sick to run. He stood where he was, listening to Noonan's cursing, Cherry's fear-sharpened voice, and the occasional croaking grunt of a smitten attacker.

Then he felt something cold and hairy touch him, and he heard Carol scream.

Other colonists were coming. Dawes fought, fought for the first time since forgotten childhood. He fought with arms and legs, whirled and butted with his shoulders, kicked out at chunky, heavily furred figures he could only partially see. His nails clawed into a musky-smelling hide.

He squirmed, wriggled, kicked again. And then he could fight no more. He was held tight, solidly clamped by thick alien arms.

'Mike!' Carol whimpered.

He felt a pang of inadequacy. 'I can't do anything, Carol. Not a thing. They've got me, too.'

'It's the aliens,' came Noonan's angry voice. 'The ones Matthews saw. Hostile aliens.' His booming cry seemed to carry all over the colony ground. 'Aliens I'

Dawes felt himself being hoisted from the ground.

Two powerful hands gripped his ankles, two his shoulders. He tried once again to resist, but it was like trying to break loose from the grip of a hydraulic press.

He swayed. He realized he was moving.

Dark shapes, and darker jungle. He was being carried toward the forest. He could see nothing, neither Carol nor Noonan nor Cherry.

After a while, he stopped trying to break free. The aliens were handling him gently enough. He simply could not move, but they were carrying him along at a steady pace. Too bad there was no moon, he thought. He could make out the shadowy shapes of trees bending above him, but all else was indistinct. He heard night-birds crowing harshly, mocking him from the treetops. Fear enshrouded him; he was too frightened even to be afraid, any more. Carried along in the soft alien grip, he offered himself up to fate, knowing he had no alternative.

The journey went on for more than an hour. Perhaps it was two hours; it might just as well have been two months. Dawes lost all sense of the passage of time. The forest was surprisingly thick for such a cold continent.

Dangling vines brushed his face, one of them leaving a nauseous trail of slime. His hands were in alien control; he could not even wipe his face. After a while the trail of slime, running down the left side of his face from eyebrow to the corner of his mouth, began to burn - whether for imaginary reasons or because of some chemically corrosive effect, Dawes could not tell. He twisted his head around and managed to rub some of the slime off on the shoulder of his shirt. But an inch or two remained, just to the left of his eye, tormenting him by its inaccessibility. He wondered if it would leave some sort of mark, perhaps a white scar or a puckering of the skin.

At last the trek through the forest came to its end. The aliens broke from the thicket and Dawes could see the bald, bare faces of jutting cliffs, the up thrust fangs of black rock that had looked so forbiddingly Gothic when he had first viewed them from the lip of the Gegenschein's hatch.

He began to feel the ascent. Going up the side of the mountain was a terrifying experience - the most terrifying since the actual kidnapping.

The aliens, his night-sharpened eyes perceived, had thick bluish pads on their palms and on the soles of their blunt feet. Suction pads.

The aliens gripped him firmly, at shoulders and feet, and started to ascend the naked face of the cliff. Dawes swung dizzyingly back and forth as they rose. They were climbing the unvegetated rock as if it were a ladder, and with each new upward thrust he canted out over the emptiness, wisely refusing to look down.

Then the upwardness ended, just when Dawes thought his mind would snap from the constant danger of the climb, and the aliens proceeded inward. Into a cave of some sort, that appeared to be hewn out of the face of the rock cliff.

Dawes' fertile imagination worked overtime. He pictured strange alien sacrificial rites taking place in this Haggardesque cave. Or vampire bats lurking in the darkness ahead, grateful for the sacrifice being brought to them.

But none of the dire perils he conceived came immediately to pass. The aliens simply left him in the cave.

They put him down with surprising gentleness, leaving him to lie in cold, moist sand, turned their backs on him, walked away. In the utter darkness he could see nothing at all.

He sensed other aliens moving about; he thought he could tell them by their ape-like shuffle. He wondered if the whole colony was to be carried off and deposited here in this cave. The survey team said the planet was uninhabited, he thought reproachfully. But Dave Matthews was right after all.

He thought about the interrupted kiss. Then, about the interrupted wedding night. Then, lastly, about the interrupted colony.

It had been such a brave start; the rearing of the stockade, the coupling off, the bubble-houses. Everything had been giving so well for the infant colony. But trouble had taken less than a day to descend on them.

He sat quietly in the darkness. The sound of sobbing was coming from a point somewhere to his right. As background noise he could hear the gentle murmuring sound of flowing water, as if there were a stream bubbling inside the borders of the cave.

'Who's there?' he asked. 'Who are you?'

'It's Carol. Is that you, Mike?'

Some of his fear ebbed away. At least, he thought, he was not alone!

'Yes. Where are you, Carol?'

'Sitting in sand, someplace. I can't see. What's going to happen to us?'

'I don't know,' Dawes said. 'Don't move. Stay right where you are and I'll try to find you. Damn this darkness, anyway!'

He looked around, trying to gauge the direction from which Carol's voice had come. But he knew that no vector would be accurate in here. The walls of the caves would have a distorting effect.

A voice he recognized as Noonan's broke in, saying, 'Dawes, is that you?'

It came from someplace deeper in the cave, behind him, highlighted by resonating echoes. 'Yes,' Dawes said loudly. 'And Carol's here, too. Anyone else?'

'I am,' said Cherry Thomas.

Her declaration echoed around the cavern. No other voices entered in. Staring unseeingly ahead of him, Dawes waited a moment, then said flatly when the echoes died, 'I guess it's just the four of us, then, up here in this cave. What the hell do they want with us?'

Nobody answered.

Outside the cavern mouth, somewhere to his right, the endless wind whipped around the mountains, whistling, moaning. Dawes shivered. In the darkness he could just barely see his own hand held before his face - and even then he could not really be sure whether or not it was imagination, not actual sight, that had put the image of the hand there. He had never experienced a darkness of such intensity before.

And he saw another darkness more clearly now - the darkness of a life that yanked a person out of his rightful place and threw him onto a strange world, and then when he had begun to carve some meaning and familiarity into the strangeness yanked him out again and tossed him in a windswept cave. He felt very alone, very young, more than a little frightened, just a little sick.

He started to crawl across the cold wet sands that formed the floor of the cave. Evidently the brook he heard ran not too deep under the sand, close enough to the surface to impart a chill, and came bubbling out a few hundred yards deeper in the cave.

No one spoke. There was steady sobbing, but he had little hint of a direction. He had no idea even of how large the cave was.

'Carol! Carol I' he called out.

On hands and knees he groped in the blackness. After minutes of uncertain scurrying, he felt a warm hand graze his, startling him a little. The hand found his wrist and tightened comfortingly.

Blindly he reached out. Arms gathered him in. He almost felt like sobbing, out of gratitude, out of shared terror.

He clung wordlessly to her in the darkness, gripping tight as if the girl were the one real thing in a universe of cobwebbed nightmares. 'Thank God,' he murmured.

Then he relaxed, and after a while he slept.