Way Station

28

The basement was huge. It stretched out into a dim haze beyond the lights which he had turned on, a place of tunnels and rooms, carved deep into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge.

Here were the massive tanks filled with the various solutions for the tank travelers; here the pumps and the generators, which operated on a principle alien to the human manner of generating electric power, and far beneath the floor of the basement itself those great storage tanks which held the acids and the soupy matter which once had been the bodies of those creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind them, as they went on to some other place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed of.

Enoch moved across the floor, past the tanks and generators, until he came to a gallery that stretched out into the darkness. He found the panel and pressed it to bring on the lights, then walked down the gallery. On either side were metal shelves which had been installed to accommodate the overflow of gadgets, of artifacts, of all sorts of gifts which had been brought him by the travelers. From floor to ceiling the shelves were jammed with a junkyard accumulation from all the corners of the galaxy. And yet, thought Enoch, perhaps not actually a junkyard, for there would be very little of this stuff that would be actual junk. All of it was serviceable and had some purpose, either practical or aesthetic, if only that purpose could be learned. Although perhaps not in every instance a purpose that would be applicable to humans.

Down at the end of the shelves was one section of shelving into which the articles were packed more systematically and with greater care, each one tagged and numbered, with cross-filing to a card catalogue and certain journal dates. These were the articles of which he knew the purpose and, in certain instances, something of the principles involved. There were some that were innocent enough and others that held great potential value and still others that had, at the moment, no connection whatsoever with the human way of life-and there were, as well, those few, tagged in red, that made one shudder to even think upon.

He went down the gallery, his footsteps echoing loudly as he trod through this place of alien ghosts.

Finally the gallery widened into an oval room and the walls here were padded with a thick gray substance that would entrap a bullet and prevent a ricochet.

Enoch walked over to a panel set inside a deep recess sunk into the wall. He reached in and thumbed up a tumbler, then stepped quickly out into the center of the room.

Slowly the room began to darken, then suddenly it seemed to flare and he was in the room no longer, but in another place, a place he had never seen before.

He stood on a little hillock and in front of him the land sloped down to a sluggish river bordered by a width of marsh. Between the beginning of the marsh and the foot of the hillock stretched a sea of rough, tall grass. There was no wind, but the grass was rippling and he knew that the rippling motion of the grass was caused by many moving bodies, foraging in the grass. Out of it came a savage grunting, as if a thousand angry hogs were fighting for choice morsels in a hundred swill troughs. And from somewhere farther off, perhaps from the river, came a deep, monotonous bellowing that sounded hoarse and tired.

Enoch felt the hair crawling on his scalp and he thrust the rifle out and ready. It was puzzling. He felt and knew the danger and as yet there was no danger. Still, the very air of this place-wherever it might be-seemed to crawl with danger.

He spun around and saw that close behind him the thick, dark woods climbed down the range of river hills, stopping at the sea of grass which flowed around, the hillock on which he found himself. Off beyond the hills, dark purple in the air, loomed a range of mighty mountains that seemed to fade into the sky, but purple to their peaks, with no sign of snow upon them.

Two things came trotting from the woods and stopped at the edge of it. They sat down and grinned at him, with their tails wrapped neatly round their feet. They might have been wolves or dogs, but they were neither one. They were nothing he had ever seen or heard of. Their pelts glistened in the weak sunshine, as if they had been greased, but the pelts stopped at their necks, with their skulls and faces bare. Like evil old men, off on a masquerade, with their bodies draped in the hides of wolves. But the disguise was spoiled by the lolling tongues which spilled out of their mouths, glistening scarlet against the bone-white of their faces.

The woods was still. There were only the two gaunt beasts sitting on their haunches. They sat and grinned at him, a strangely toothless grin.

The woods was dark and tangled, the foliage so dark green that it was almost black. All the leaves had a shine to them, as if they had been polished to a special sheen.

Enoch spun around again, to look back towards the river, and crouched at the edge of the grass was a line of toadlike monstrosities, six feet long and standing three feet high, their bodies the color of a dead fish belly, and each with a single eye, or what seemed to be an eye, which covered a great part of the area just above the snout. The eyes were faceted and glowed in the dim sunlight, as the eyes of a hunting cat will glow when caught in a beam of light.

The hoarse bellowing still came from the river and in between the bellowing there was a faint, thin buzzing, an angry and malicious buzzing, as if a mosquito might be hovering for attack, although there was a sharper tone in it than in the noise of a mosquito.

Enoch jerked up his head to look into the sky and far in the depths of it he saw a string of dots, so high that there was no way of knowing what kind of things they were.

He lowered his head to look back at the line of squatting, toadlike things, but from the corner of his eye he caught the sense of flowing motion and swung back toward the woods.

The wolf-like bodies with the skull-like heads were coming up the hill in a silent rush. They did not seem to run. There was no motion of their running. Rather they were moving as if they had been squirted from a tube.

Enoch jerked up his rifle and it came into his shoulder, fitting there, as if it were a part of him. The bead settled in the rear-sight notch and blotted out the skull-like face of the leading beast. The gun bucked as he squeezed the trigger and, without waiting to see if the shot had downed the beast, the rifle barrel was swinging toward the second as his right fist worked the bolt. The rifle bucked again and the second wolf-like being somersaulted and slid forward for an instant, then began rolling down the hill, flopping as it rolled.

Enoch worked the bolt again and the spent brass case glittered in the sun as he turned swiftly to face the other slope.

The toadlike things were closer now. They had been creeping in, but as he turned they stopped and squatted, staring at him.

He reached a hand into his pocket and took out two cartridges, cramming them into the magazine to replace the shells he'd fired.

The bellowing down by the river had stopped, but now there was a honking sound that he could not place. Turning cautiously, he tried to locate what might be making it, but there was nothing to be seen. The honking sound seemed to be coming from the forest, but there was nothing moving.

In between the honking, he still could hear the buzzing and it seemed louder now. He glanced into the sky and the dots were larger and no longer in a line. They had formed into a circle and seemed to be spiraling downward, but they were still so high that he could not make out what kinds of things they were.

He glanced back toward the toadlike monsters and they were closer than they had been before. They had crept up again.

Enoch lifted the rifle and, before it reached his shoulder, pressed the trigger, shooting from the hip. The eye of one of the foremost of them exploded, like the splash a stone would make if thrown into water. The creature did not jump or flop. It simply settled down, flat upon the ground, as if someone had put his foot upon it and had exerted exactly force enough to squash it flat. It lay there, flat, and there was a big round hole where the eye had been and the hole was filling with a thick and ropy yellow fluid that may have been the creature's blood.

The others backed away, slowly, watchfully. They backed all the way off the hillock and only stopped when they reached the grass edge.

The honking was closer and the buzzing louder and there could be no doubt that the honking was coming from the hills.

Enoch swung about and saw it, striding through the sky, coming down the ridge, stepping through the trees and honking dolefully. It was a round and black balloon that swelled and deflated with its honking, and jerked and swayed as it walked along, hung from the center of four stiff and spindly legs that arched above it to the joint that connected this upper portion of the leg arrangement with the downward-straddling legs that raised it high above the forest. It was walking jerkily, lifting its legs high to clear the massive treetops before putting them down again. Each time it put down a foot, Enoch could hear the crunching of the branches and the crashing of the trees that it broke or brushed aside.

Enoch felt the skin along his spine trying to roll up his back like a window shade, and the bristling of the hair along the base of his skull, obeying some primordial instinct in its striving to raise itself erect into a fighting ruff.

But even as he stood there, almost stiff with fright, some part of his brain remembered that one shot he had fired and his fingers dug into his pocket for another cartridge to fill the magazine.

The buzzing was much louder and the pitch had changed. The buzzing was now approaching at tremendous speed.

Enoch jerked up his head and the dots no longer were circling in the sky, but were plunging down toward him, one behind the other.

He flicked a glance toward the balloon, honking and jerking on its stilt-like legs. It still was coming on, but the plunging dots were faster and would reach the hillock first.

He shifted the rifle forward, outstretched and ready to slap against his shoulder, and watched the falling dots, which were dots no longer, but hideous streamlined bodies, each carrying a rapier that projected from its head. A bill of sorts, thought Enoch, for these things might be birds, but a longer, thinner, larger, more deadly bird than any earthly bird.

The buzzing changed into a scream and the scream kept mounting up the scale until it set the teeth on edge and through it, like a metronome measuring off a beat, came the hooting of the black balloon that strode across the hills.

Without knowing that he had moved his arms, Enoch had the rifle at his shoulder, waiting for that instant when the first of the plunging monsters was close enough to fire.

They dropped like stones out of the sky and they were bigger than he had thought they were-big and coming like so many arrows aimed directly at him.

The rifle thudded against his shoulder and the first one crumpled, lost its arrow shape, folding up and falling, no longer on its course. He worked the bolt and fired again and the second one in line lost its balance and began to tumble-and the bolt was worked once more and the trigger pressed. The third skipped in the air and went off at a slant, limp and ragged, fluttering in the wind, falling toward the river.

The rest broke off their dive. They made a shallow turn and beat their way up into the sky, great wings that were more like windmill vanes than wings thrashing desperately.

A shadow fell across the hillock and a mighty pillar came down from somewhere overhead, driving down to strike to one side of the hillock. The ground trembled at the tread and the water that lay hidden by the grass squirted high into the air.

The honking was an engulfing sound that blotted out all else and the great balloon was zooming down, cradled on its legs.

Enoch saw the face, if anything so grotesque and so obscene could be called a face. There was a beak and beneath it a sucking mouth and a dozen or so other organs that might have been the eyes.

The legs were like inverted V's, with the inner stroke somewhat shorter than the outer and in the center of these inner joints hung the great balloon that was the body of the creature, with its face on the underside so that it could see all the hunting territory that might lie beneath it.

But now auxiliary joints in the outer span of legs were bending to let the body of the creature down so it could seize its prey.

Enoch was not conscious of putting up the rifle or of operating it, but it was hammering at his shoulder and it seemed to him that a second part of him stood off, apart, and watched the firing of the rifle-as if the figure that held and fired the weapon might be a second man.

Great gouts of flesh flew out of the black balloon and jagged rents suddenly tore across it and from these rents poured out a cloud of liquid that turned into a mist, with black droplets raining from it.

The firing pin clicked on an empty breech and the gun was empty, but there was no need of another shot. The great legs were folding, and trembling as they folded, and the shrunken body shivered convulsively in the heavy mist that was pouring out of it. There was no hooting now, and Enoch could hear the patter of the black drops falling from that cloud as they struck the short grass on the bill.

There was a sickening odor and the drops, where they fell on him, were sticky, running like cold oil, and above him the great structure that had been the stilt-like creature was toppling to the ground.

Then the world faded swiftly and was no longer there.

Enoch stood in the oval room in the faint glow of the bulbs. There was the heavy smell of powder and all about his feet, glinting in the light, lay the spent and shining cases that had been kicked out of the gun.

He was back in the basement once again. The target shoot was over.