Adventures on Other Planets Read online

  Pascal disappeared into shadow and did not emerge again. Lowry followed cautiously. If he could get close enough to take him from the rear—

  He became aware that the scraping of Pascal’s feet had ceased. He halted, straining his ears, and heard nothing but the hiss of pumps, the fainter bass drone of the storm vibrating up through the solid rock. Lowry began to sweat, wondering whether Pascal had only stopped to listen or maniac caution had prompted him to take off his shoes.

  Pascal came upon him without warning from a side alleyway, creeping soundlessly on bare feet. The weapon in his hands bore straight at Lowrys head.

  “It grows legs and fins and changes its shape,” Pascal said. His voice was slurred and indistinct, barely intelligible. “Why shouldn’t it look like a man—”

  Lowry stepped back involuntarily, and at the same instant Pascal fired.

  Accident saved Lowry, the split-second chance of treading upon the particular shadow in which the alien had chosen to hide. It had spread itself inches thick on the floor, assuming the shape and shade of the shadow that contained it—under Lowry’s weight it convulsed and shot away with galvanic suddenness, throwing him heavily.

  The blue-white lance of the electrobolt raved over his head, crisping his hair by its nearness.

  He had a dizzy glimpse of the alien scuttling away into the maze of alleys, its body flowing and changing shape as it fled. Pascal’s obsession took on a certain fearful logic that left Lowry amazed and uneasy—the perfect mimic, it could take any shape it chose. Perhaps even his own?

  The clatter of Pascal’s empty charge-hull on the floor roused him. He got to his feet and ran at top speed into the canyoned shadows of the storeroom, knowing that Pascal followed with the electrobolt gun freshly charged.

  He might have known that Gail and the others would not wait indefinitely on the upper level. Lowry saw them before he was halfway to the stairwell, the three of them sharply outlined against the stairway lights while they peered about for him.

  “Get back upstairs!” Lowry shouted. He halted and hugged the shadow of a frost-rimed plankton tank, searching the maze for a sight of Pascal. “Pascal’s gone mad—he’s shooting at anything that moves!”

  He was too late. Walt Griswold had already started for the sound of his voice, Gail and Nadine at his heels.

  “Marvin!” Nadine called. Her voice echoed through the big room, ringing back in hollow volleys from the metal walls. “Marvin, it’s Nadine! Please—”

  Pascal appeared from the last direction Lowry had anticipated, creeping between a peripheral row of plankton tanks and the stairwell. The weapon in his hands moved jerkily, following the shift of his eyes from one to the other while he chose his target. There was not the slightest spark of reason behind the wild shine of his eyes.

  Without hesitation Lowry sprang out of his concealment into the full glare of light, shouting to attract Pascal's attention.

  Pascal turned on him, and Lowry threw himself flat. The blue lightning of the electrobolt shattered a crate over his head, spilling an unrecognizable jumble of debris. Lowry lay half stunned by the dispersion shock, a pungent stink of charred leather burning his throat. Swamp boots, he thought with a sort of detached irritation. A whole yea/s stock, shot to hell. . . .

  He shook off the giddiness of near electrocution and shouted at the three frozen by the stairwell: "Upstairs-run, for God’s sake, before he reloads!”

  They ran, the storeroom echoing to the rush of their feet. Walt reached the stairwell first, half dragging Nadine Pascal with him, and vanished upward. At the bottom tread Gail turned to look for Lowry in the darkness, stumbled and fell headlong.

  Lowry burst out of his shelter and caught her up.

  The click of Pascal’s reloading cut him off from the stair as effectively as a barbed wall. He could not go up; the seconds needed to climb to the upper level would give Pascal time to fire and to spare.

  The inner doorway to the vehicle garage yawned invitingly. Lowry turned without pausing and lunged through it into a darkness dominated by the shadowy hulks of the three crawlers. If he could shut the doors in time behind him—

  When he turned he found Pascal bulking huge in the opening, silhouetted blackly against the glare of storage room lights.

  The one chance that had been open to him came to him then, and he cursed himself bitterly because it was too late to use it.

  But not too late, perhaps, for Gail.

  He faded back into the darkness and lifted her high over the metal rim of the nearest crawler’s bucket seat. "Keep down,” he whispered urgently. "I'll try to open the outside port and let in the howler. It's the only way to stop him.''

  He threw a glance toward the doorway and saw Pascal move warily in a few inches and stop, the electrobolt gun raised. "Don't worry about me,” he begged. His lips brushed Gail's ear; she was crying softly with terror, and he could feel her trembling in the darkness. "I'll be all right----”

  The outer port creaked sharply behind him. A sudden humming of gears sounded, laboring to force the heavy curved plates of the vehicle lock open against the outside wind. The port cracked, widened, let in the hurricane's spume-wet breath. The high scream of wind through the narrow opening drowned all other sound.

  The alien hovered amorphously in deeper shadow by the port, crouching ready while the opening grew.

  In the confusion Lowry had forgotten the creature completely; his first reaction at seeing it now was a quick rush of hope. If Pascal burned it down he would be left with an empty gun, and Lowry might have a chance of beating him down before he could reload.

  Then Lowry placed himself with characteristic empathy in the alien’s place and felt a sick heat of shame in his face. The thing hadn't asked for this. It had pulled him out of the howler and had done its best to meet them in friendly fashion. It had not once turned on Pascal, even in the darkness of the storage room when it must have had every opportunity; and it made no move now, but waited quietly for the port to open enough to let it through. Lowry saw at once that it would be too late; the port mechanism worked with agonizing slowness against the pressure of the howler outside.

  Pascal found the switch by the garage doors then, and the lights blazed on.

  Pascal came inside, skirting the front shockrail of the crawler where Gail hid. His pale eyes blinked against the glare of light, almost immediately found the alien by the port and went intent. Even above the rising howl of the storm Lowry heard the big man’s indrawn dhhh of satisfaction.

  Pascal sidled between crawler and wall, moving toward the alien.

  Lowry stepped between them.

  "Wait, Pascal,” he said.

  He had to shout to make himself heard above the wind. He kept his hands down, forcing himself to stand quietly before the wild erratic current of intention that twitched at Pascal's face. “Think a minute, man! You can't know—”

  Pascal took another step forward. The electrobolt gun in his hand bore equally on Lowry and on the alien behind him.

  Gail's crawler lurched into sudden motion, turbines howling. Lowry had a stunned glimpse of his wife standing up recklessly, wheeling the heavy machine straight at Pascal.

  It was over so quickly that Lowry was never certain later just what really happened. Pascal whirled, his elec-bolt gun flicking from Lowry to Gail. The blue lightning of its discharge deafened Lowry and blinded him briefly.

  He took with him into his momentary blindness a dull nightmarish memory of Gail tumbling headlong from the crawlers seat, her slender body twisting grotesquely before it struck the floor.

  Out of the darkness he heard the crawler’s grinding crash of collision, a grating of metal on metal hardly muffled by the obstruction of Pascal's body between shockrail and wall. Pascal managed only the beginning of a scream; then the air from his collapsing lungs surged up through throat and mouth with a wet, explosive sound. The turbines roared and stalled. The breath of the hurricane screamed in through the wide-open port like a vast echo of Pascals
dying; it plastered Lowry's shirt against his back and dissipated the stench of ozone and exhaust fumes.

  When his sight returned, Pascal's body hung over the shockrail of the crawler, cut almost in two. There was no sign of Gail nor of the alien.

  Somehow he forced himself through the rush of wind to brace himself against the rim of the port. He looked outside. Light from the garage illuminated the storm-washed ramp with stark, merciless clarity.

  The alien was 30 yards away, loping swiftly against the full sweep of the hurricane. It was not alone. It had extruded a pinkish coil of tentacles to hold the burden it carried—Lowry made out a wild fluttering of Gail's white blouse, the familiar dark banner of her hair whipping in the wind. . . .

  “GailI" he screamed. “Gail—”

  He fought the wind like a madman, but its bellowing weight overpowered him and drove him back. He clung finally in shivering impotence to the cold metal framing of the port and watched with the rain lashing his face and streaming over his numb body.

  The ship came in low between alien and dome, settling so close that he could make out the stains of sea-bottom mud still clinging to its under side. Above the howl of wind he heard the faint metallic clang of an airlock opening and closing.

  The ship blasted up with a white actinic glare that left him blinded again, his vision reduced to a darkness shot with whirling prismatic pinwheelings of light.

  When he could see again Gail was stumbling through the port with the storm at her back, her bare white arms reaching out toward him for support. Stunned to dumb acceptance by repeated shock, he caught her and drew her inside.

  . not hurt,” her voice sobbed incoherendy in his ear. “Hostage . . . released me. ...”

  Someone on the second level closed the port behind them.

  “Its all right now,” Lowry said into the warm silence that fell upon them. “The thing's gone. It's all over ”

  After that they held each other tightly without further need of speaking, the two of them apart from the rest of the world.

  .... period of reparation will be short, the Surveyor ended its recording. Return for me on call, when the brief life-span of the male shall have canceled my obligation.

  It turned away from the broken body on the floor and went outside into the storm, the plastic flow of its transformation already under way. Before the ship cleared the dome it was hurrying back to the man in the dome's open port, its new form complete to the minutest detail of dark flying hair and white blouse fluttering in the wind.

  THE END

  THE SOUND OF BUGLES

  Robert Moore Williams

  The ship from earth arrived in midaftemoon. Kennedy, working himself and his two assistants into nervous exhaustion setting up recording instruments around the rectangle of white sand, saw the ship come in. At first he was afraid it was going to land in the rectangle where the Martians, at this moment, were forbidding even a fly to trespass, but the pilot changed course slightly and set it down, with much blowing of landing jets, less than a quarter of a mile away.

  Kennedy was relieved. It had taken a lot of talking and, considering the language difficulties involved, a lot of arm waving and picture drawing, to get Tryor to give him permission to set up his recording instruments so near the rectangle.

  The Martian had not fully liked the idea of the recording instruments and Kennedy suspected that if Tryor had really understood their purpose, which was to trace the lines of force flowing from the machinery that must be hidden somewhere here in this city, and thus locate the machinery itself, he would have liked it even less. Kennedy wondered what the Martian would have said, and done, if some blundering human had landed a space ship in this restricted area.

  For that matter, why had the ship landed here at all? Traxia was a small, unimportant city, well off the routes of even the tourists rich enough and hardy enough to make a trip to Mars.

  Watching, he saw the port swing open. Three men emerged.

  For a few minutes they stared around, looking at the city set like a small jewel in a cup in the desert, looking at the sand and the sun and at the range of low hills off to the south, accustoming themselves to the lesser gravity of the Red Planet, then they spotted Kennedy and his two assistants. One flung up an arm to point. Kennedy swore. Of course, newcomers would head straight toward the nearest humans in sight, in fact, the only humans in the city of Traxia.

  “Probably to ask us for a road mapl” he said. He had no time to answer questions. And no interest in answering them. But the three men were moving toward him with sure purposefulness.

  They came up, three stalwart fellows in trim uniforms, straight to him. “Beg pardon,” their leader said. “Were looking for Mr. John Kennedy. Could you tell us where to find him?”

  Kennedy stared at them. He had never seen them before. But he had seen the likes of them brawling in the streets of the New York Space Port, drunk and raising Cain, and in Mars Port, and in Moon Port, where the glass of the enclosed city area looked up at the frozen sky. The breed was the same all over.

  ‘Tm John Kennedy,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Mr. Doak’s compliments, sir. He will see you in his cabin, immediately,” said the spokesman.

  “Mr. Doak? And who is he? Your captain?”

  Varying shades of surprise showed on the faces of the three men. “You don’t know Mr. Doak? He—he's the owner.” The speaker seemed astonished to learn that anybody lived in the system who didn’t know Doak.

  “I don’t know him,” Kennedy said. “I don’t know that I want to know him—”

  Behind him, he heard Blount stir protestingly. Blount and Anders were his two assistants.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Blount said. “He’s a financier, or something like that. He put up the money to finance Threl-keld’s investigation of the ultra-drive for UN.”

  “Come to think of it,” Anders spoke for the first time. “I think he put up part of the money to finance us.”

  “Uh,” Kennedy said. He was a field man for the UN Council of Science and he was responsible to the Council and to nobody else. The Council paid him and furnished the money for his work. It was their job to find the money and his job to do the work, a division of labor which satisfied him. But if Doak had put up part of the money, he felt he had to be nice to the fellow, for the sake of the Council.

  “I’m busy now,” he said, his eyes straying to the rectangle of sand where the Martian guards stood elbow to elbow. “Tell Mr. Doak I’ll see him tomorrow.” He turned back to his instrument.

  It was a magnetic detector and it was designed to detect and to trace lines of magnetic flux now present—or soon to be present—in this area. He was aware of the man speaking again.

  “But Mr. Doak said immediately”

  “I’m busy now. He’ll have to wait.”

  “Mr. Doak is not used to waiting.”

  “Then he’ll have to get used to it.”

  “But this is important,” the man from the ship insisted. “I’ll say it isl” Kennedy said, glancing up at the rectangle of white sand.

  Blount cleared his throat. “I don’t want to urge you, but Anders and I can take care of everything here.”

  “Et tu, Brute,” Kennedy said. He was perplexed and indignant. It was most important that he stay right where he was, but it was also important that he do nothing that might shut off part of the flow of funds to the Council. He glanced at his watch. Thirty-three minutes before the deadline Tryor had set.

  “All right,” he said, impatiently. "But I've got to be back here in 20 minutes.”

  Swearing under his breath, he stalked off across the sand toward the waiting ship. The three men followed him. The lines of Martians guarding the rectangle watched without obvious curiosity. What were the doings of this brawling race to them, who-had inherited a thousand centuries of traditional wisdom? And something else, which they had never revealed to any man.

  Doak was a big man with heavy shoulders and a thick neck on which h
is bullet-like head sat like an impatient gargoyle. His face was the face of a frog that had huffed and puffed and huffed and puffed and blown himself up until he was as big as a man. They shook hands. Doak seemed to think it was the thing to do.

  The cabin was richly furnished, with a big desk with a row of push buttons on it, and a swivel chair, both bolted to the floor. There was a viewport with the sun screen open, so that the city of Traxia and the rectangle of sand and the Martian guards and Blount and Anders were visible.

  “You wanted to see me?” Kennedy said. He would be polite if it killed him.

  “Yes, yes. I read a copy of your report."

  “You read my report?” Kennedy repeated the words, in a whisper, to make certain he had heard them just right.

  “Yes. Your report to the executive committee of the Council on your preliminary investigations on Mars.” Doak gestured toward the viewport. “It was very interesting. In fact, it was the reason for my coming here.”

  Tm glad you found it interesting,” Kennedy said. “It was also marked TS—Top Secret. Or I thought it was marked that way,”

  “It was so marked,” Doak said.

  “Are you on the Executive Committee? Any report marked TS and addressed to a committee is usually read only by the members themselves.”

  Doak showed no signs of embarrassment.

  “That is true. However a few of us—” he hesitated.

  "VIPs,” Kennedy supplied. “Very Important Peoples. I get it.” His voice took on a cutting edge and he stared with obvious distaste at the man sitting across the desk from him. In the back of his mind, a cloud no bigger than a mans hand, was the sudden feeling of fear.

  Out of the comer of his eyes, he could see the rectangle of sand, and beyond that the city of Traxia.

  A garden spot, a city of bright crystal domes of rose and amethyst and coral and sky blue, a city of winding walks that curved in and around the low domes in eye-delighting variety. A flower garden, where bloomed in carefully tended plots every exotic flower that had ever put forth blossoms into the thin air of this ancient planet.