"We are chastened," murmured Jerry, feeling a bruised shin.
"And now what?" asked Joe Silver. "Ordinary weapons are as much use tous as spitballs." He sat down. "Let's figure out what else to try.Somewhere there's an answer."
They all sat down, Pink said, "Remember Wolf 864?"
"Sure," said Daley, who had been on that expedition with Pinkham whenthey were young cubs out of jetschool. "Friendly natives, kind ofvegetable-animal life, and we murdered half of them unintentionally. Wehad to get out and never go back."
"How?" asked Circe. "How did you kill them?"
"Germs. The common ordinary non-toxic germs we carry in our systems allthe time. It was a massacre--and of a queer, sweet kind of beast. Theyhad no tolerance for our microbes."
"I volunteer to find the alien and breathe in his face," said Jerry."Somebody hand me an onion," he added.
The conversation went on. It grew aimless to Pink, a bunch of boyswhistling by a graveyard, eight prisoners speculating on their escapewhen they had no real knowledge of their jailer. He fiddled with theintercom, saw that the crew had gathered by the mutiny gates and werewaiting tensely, puny weapons in their hands. He spoke a few words ofencouragement to them. 57 men--whom he hated to see die. Somehow he hadto save them.
It was about half an hour afterwards that he first discovered he wasbreathing too shallowly.
CHAPTER XI
"What is it?" asked Circe. Her lovely face was a trifle pallid. "I feelodd--and you all look pale."
Then it struck Pink. None of the others, even Daley, had recognized whatwas happening. He did not dare waste a second in telling them. He torethe door open and leaped into the corridor.
Deliberately he tried to draw as much oxygen into his lungs as he could.It was growing rarer every instant; but never mind trying to conserveit--the life of everyone aboard depended on his reaching theatmospheria. For the air in the spaceship was rapidly degenerating,becoming unbreathable as what remained of the good stuff was inhaled andthrown off as useless gases....
Either the atmospheric system had gone on the blink by itself, hethought, which was a hell of a long shot and too much of a coincidence,or else the alien, experimenting, had turned it off by accident.
Maybe the brute didn't need oxygen. Of course he didn't! His brothersoutside sure didn't have any. Then, if he were independent of it, butcould stand living in it, the probabilities were that he didn't breatheat all; that his metabolism was geared to ignore the elements in whichhe lived.
Just possibly he was taking this way to kill them off in a particularlyfiendish fashion.
Silently Pink cursed the architect who had designed the _Elephant'sChild_ with the armaments room in the bow and the atmospheria back nearthe crew's sector, a thousand feet of passageways off. Every door heflung open took another bit of strength from his aching limbs. As hepassed a mirror, he had a glimpse of his face. His face was flushed now,the grim-set lips were bluish, his eyes seemed to bulge from his head.
He began breathing through his mouth. It may have been imagination, buthe thought the air had a foul taste, like a sea full of putrid fish.
Pink fell to his knees. Abruptly his strength had waned to almostnothing. He was horrified to realize how swiftly the air was going bad.He had to get to the system! He struggled up, staggered forward like adrunk. His heart, pounding wildly a moment before, now seemed to beslowing, weakening.
He found himself singing....
"_Blast off at two, jet down at three On the dead dry dusty sphere What sort of a life is this for me, A veteran rocketeer?_"
Great God, was he crazy? Singing, shouting the words to that old songthat Circe had brought back to his mind. Using up what amounted to hislast drops of energy and air. God, God, help me, he thought wildly; makeme shut up. But the maddened outer part of his brain kept him singing.
"_I, who have seen the flame-dark seas, Canals like great raw scars, And the claret lakes and the crimson trees In the rich red soil of Mars!_"
Then he fell, and this time he could not get up.
He would lie here and die, horribly, gasping for breath where there wasnothing to breathe but death. The mind that had made him sing, that hadthought of Circe longingly and of what he must do to save her and allhis friends, that blacked out, fell into a pit of ebony walls and ink atthe bottom, blackness and nothing left anywhere....
* * * * *
Somewhere deep in his skull, some unknown cranny blazed with the lightof knowledge. He had only a few yards to go. He had to make it. Thisknowledge crept out and through his body, raised cold swollen hands andmade them grasp at a wall, forced the feet of this dead man to scrabblefor purchase on the floor of the passage. Pinkham knew that he wasmoving, but it was as if he were sitting on a distant planet and knowingit; there was no realization that this was he, Captain Pinkham, clawingupward and shoving himself on. He looked at himself curiously, ratherproud and a little contemptuous. What a fool, what a damn fool, hethought.
Here was a door. The half-blind thing that was Pink groped for thehandle, recognizing dimly that if this were not the atmospheria, then itwas all over.
He opened the door and fell at full length on the carpet. Instinctrolled him over and hauled him to his knees, and he said admiringly andfar away on that planet of death, By God, this is a man! Through a redhaze he saw that he was in the first of the two small rooms that madeup the atmospheria. He lunged forward, falling, jerked convulsivelyupward, plunged down a mile and smashed his face into the carpet, feltpain that for a moment brought him out of his stupor. He was making forthe master switch that controlled the nitrogen-oxygen-ozone-etcetra thatpoured continuously through the great ship when all was well. From agreat distance he could see that the switch was shoved up; only bybreaking a steel band of superb tensility could the alien creature havepushed that switch up, for Pink carried the key to the band on hismaster ring, hanging at his belt. It looked like viciousness, either ofknowledge that this was the humans' finish, or of ignorance flaring intoanger. What a _beast_....
He gathered himself like a mortally wounded lion. He launched hisperishing frame at the switch, hands clawed to drag it down to thenormal position.
He could not feel whether he even touched the wall, for his senses wereobliterated. He lay on his face and knew that he would not get up again.
Idly, he wondered whether he had managed to reach the switch.
Then the final flame of intelligence winked out, and it was night andunrelieved blackness, and he fell asleep.
CHAPTER XII
Jerry blinked. He opened his eyes and blinked again.
Had Pink made it to the atmospheria?
He must have, for the air was sweet and normal once more. So either Pinkor Joe Silver had saved them. The others had all dropped along the way;he had passed Daley's motionless form some yards back there--now helooked, and saw the senior lieutenant sitting up against the wall.
Jerry rubbed his forehead gingerly. What a headache!
By the time he managed to stand, shakily, Joe Silver had appeared infront of him. Before Jerry could ask questions, the big man saidhoarsely, "Must have been the captain. _I_ passed out before I made thedoor." He shook his own head, which evidently ached too. "The blasteddoor is now locked. I can't get in."
The three of them went toward the atmospheria, Calico and Sparksfollowing slowly. Before they reached it, the door opened and the alienthing emerged, stooping to clear the lintel. In its tree-thick arms layPinkham, apparently lifeless, his head dangling.
"Aside, mortals," the beast mouthed at them, and added, grotesquely,"goddammit!" They dropped back, it passed them and turned a corner andvanished. "Wait," said Daley urgently, "don't follow it yet." Heswitched on the passage intercom screen. "We'll spy on it with this. IfPink's alive, we mustn't anger the brute."
Tense, they watched the image of the stranger as it prowled through theship, carrying their chief. It passed Randy Kinkare, and they saw himshrink a
way, a noise of terror gurgling in his gullet. The liplessKinkare had reason to be afraid.
The giant took Pinkham into his own quarters and laid him on afoam-couch. Then it sat down in an angle of the wall, and its gruesomelyhuman-like body swelled until it occupied much of the free space in thecabin.
"To scare him if he wakes," breathed Bill Calico.
"Isn't it frightful enough?" asked Jerry. "I have an idea: if theRabelaisian types outside are at their normal size, which seems logical,then this one may be uncomfortable, having to go around all compressedto eight feet."
"Could be ... let's advance," said Daley. "We'll wait just outsidePink's door. Then if it tries anything--"
"Yeah?"
"We'll make a protest," finished Daley. "Somehow, we'll make a strongprotest."
They left the screen, a few seconds before Captain Pinkham groaned andopened his eyes.
The alien regarded him with its habitual expression of overpoweringslyness. "Why did you nearly die?" it asked. "Was it something I did?"
When Pink could trust himself to speak without gibbering--it washorrifying to see half his room filled by this bronze-yellow balloon ofevidently solid flesh--he said, "Naturally it was something you did, youbig ape. You turned off our air."
"Air?" It compressed its lips. "Ah, I remember air. A substance neededon Earth for life. We never understood it."
"Don't you breathe?" asked Pink. "Don't you take any element into yoursystem and mix it with your blood and then--oh, you haven't any blood."He paused. "But don't you need _any_ outside element to sustain life?"
"No. Nor do we eat."
"But you are organic life?"
"Of course. A life which you cannot understand, I see. A life imperviousto anything beyond it, indestructible and eternal."
_I think you're lying_, said Pink to himself. Nothing in the universe isindestructible ... or at any rate, unalterable. Everything has itsAchilles heel, even the atom.
* * * * *
The monster spoke, half to itself. "That, the locked switch was the air,then. I thought it was the air-lock." It laughed. Pink thought it had apretty primitive sense of humor. "Not the air-lock, but the air."
"You wanted to let your friends into the ship," accused Pink. The beastnodded. "Didn't you know that opening the air-locks without sealing offtheir compression rooms would kill all the humans aboard?"
"No," it said. "I want you alive. Some of you. To teach us the workingof this rocket."
"Spaceship," corrected Pink without thinking. Then, "Why do you want theship?"
Its eyes glowed fire at him. "To return to Earth," it hissed. "To returnto our own planet!"
"_Your_ planet!"
"As much as yours, mortal." It leaned forward, obscuring practically allthe room for him. "Show me how to open the air-locks," it said.
"In a swine's eye."
"With safety to yourself, naturally," it said impatiently, "Come, showme."
"Find the machinery yourself. Experiment. Knock us all off. You'll bestuck out here with a ship you can't operate."
It plucked him off the foam-couch and hurled him against the wall,jarring him in every bone. "Show me how," it roared. "Thou zed, thoucream-faced loon--" Shakespeare? wondered Pink--"show me the controls!"
Pink dived behind a stationary chair. He drew his useless pistol andthrew it at the being's face; it rebounded to the floor. He snatched upa vase of ever-blooming Jovian lilies, sent them after the gun. Themonster reached for him, snarling. He leaped over its hand, hurdling itas if he were a boy crossing a fence. On the far wall were many weapons.
When he made Captain, and was given the _Elephant's Child_ as hisflagship, he had transferred all his belongings to it, so that nowherein the galaxies would he ever feel at home save here. Among hiskeepsakes was the collection of antique weaponry handed down to him byhis father, whose grandfather had bought them in the long ago from manymuseums. Gradually he had added to the collection, souvenirs of theplanets he had explored. They were bracketed on the wall. Zulu war clubsand Kentucky muskets. Martian spear-guns and antiquated jet-pistols; aDerringer, a Colt .44, a blowpipe from an unknown Pacific island.
The alien giant was too swollen to turn swiftly. Pink reached the walldisplay. He tore down an assegai, whirled and thrust it at themonstrous, contorted face, searching for the eyes.
He was a mouse, bedeviling a cat with a broom straw. The thing battedhis spear aside, brushed him with its fingers in a powerful swat,smashed him against his desk. A corner caught him, and he felt a ribsnap. The pain enraged him.
* * * * *
In that desk he kept his other collection, ammunition for those weapons:it was his boast that he had at least six rounds for everyprojectile-thrower there. Some of it had been painstakingly fashioned inmodern times from the old formulae, some miraculously preserved throughthe centuries. On strange planets he and Jerry used to have targetpractice with the ancient toys.
Now the agony and the fear forced him into a gesture. He would die inthis room, for certainly he'd never tell the giant where to find theair-lock switches; he had to go down fighting, and if to fight thisimpervious lout was the most futile of gestures, at least he would makeit a glorious one!
Fumbling, he tore open a drawer and clutched a box out of it. This wasthe ammunition for the Colt revolver. Gripping it in his left hand, hejumped aside as the beast put out a hand for him. He fled across theroom, his ears cringing from the titanic yells of fury behind him. Nowhe had to get the Colt .44 from the wall.
It took him three horrible minutes of dodging and bounding to reach theweapons again. He snatched at the revolver, missed, made anotherdesperate grab as he dropped to the rug; the second time he had it. Hecrawled under a chest which stood twenty inches off the floor. Luckilythe alien was trying to catch him, not slay him, for it could long sincehave smeared him into jelly with a piece of furniture for a bludgeon.
Feverishly he loaded the chambers of the Colt. For a moment hisscattered wits could not recollect just how to operate this specialweapon. Then he remembered.
The fingers of the monster, sausage-sized and disgusting in their parodyof humanity, came groping beneath the chest. Pinkham wormed back andcame up behind it, staring into the red eyes.
With a concentration of power that he had not known he could summon, heshot out from behind the chest and vaulted onto the top of his enormousdesk.
The alien, lips curling, straightened till its head brushed the ceiling.It reached out for him.
In the last split second, Pink had a vision of himself, and instead of aglorious gesture, it seemed to him suddenly that he was making an awfulass of himself. Like a man before a firing squad thumbing his nose....
Nevertheless, he aimed the Colt full into the gargantuan face beforehim, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER XIII
The dawn-man, a thing like a wet rat, bared its teeth at thedinosaur.... The Cro-Magnon faced a horde of hulking Neanderthals with agrin.... The Crusader stood with a broken sword and brandished the hiltat the charging Saracens.... The Apache drew his knife to fight adouble-troop armed with carbines.... The American flung his empty M-1 inthe faces of forty Japanese ... _toujours le beau geste_. CaptainPinkham, standing in his cabin aboard the spaceship _Elephant's Child_adrift in Star System Ninety, leaned forward and pulled the trigger tothe two-century-old, out-moded, laughable popgun of a Colt .44 firingonce and twice and again and again into the face of the bronze-yellowspace-dwelling giant.
The being loomed over him, and a scream like the death-wail of a meteorlanced into his eardrums and made him gasp with anguish. He pumped thelast slug into the enemy and launched himself side-long, without muchhope of landing anywhere but in a bushel-sized palm. He was actuallysurprised when he found himself on the rug. He scrambled for cover, butbefore he reached it, it dawned on him that he might not need it.
The alien had sunk to its knees, was making a convulsive effort to risebut obviously lacked
the strength! Somehow, and God alone knew how,Pinkham had wounded the beast!
He drew back to the wall, watching. The agony of the big humanoid wasdoubling it over and throwing it upright as though a volcano wereerupting in its belly. It flung out an arm, struck a foam-chair, whichshattered explosively. Pink put more feet between them. The convulsionswere like those of a harpooned whale. Yet the creature did not seem ableto move from its knees. Finally, perhaps a minute after the firstthroes, it collapsed all at once, a crumpled titan. Pink cautiouslyopened the door, just as Daley was reaching for the handle.
"What in hell did you _do_?" shouted the lieutenant.
"Shot him with a revolving-chamber pistol of the mid-19th Century," saidPink. His rib was hurting and his flesh felt bruised all over. Hegrinned. "Figure that one, boy. Atomic disintegrator doesn't work,antique powder-using firearm does. I'm too beat to know why."
"It's crazy," said Joe Silver flatly. They all stood around the alien,which was sprawled on its back. The red eyes gleamed, but no musclemoved in the great body. They looked for signs of the wounds, for holesor dissolving matter, for anything different; there was nothing. "Whatif--" began Silver.
"This can wait." Pink took a deep breath, which hurt, and cleared histhroat. "There's plenty to be done. Jerry, check your scanner anddetectors for possible damage. Sparks, get on the radio to _Cottabus_and _Diogenes_; tell 'em everything, and warn them to come incautiously. Kinkare, Daley, see what you can do with the space drive."