All Judgment Fled (19 page)

 

 

Judging by the condition of the bodies, the majority of the other animals
had been unable to defend themselves against the terrible horn and tentacles
of the Twos, although a small number must have escaped through gaps torn
in the mesh, otherwise there would have been only one species infesting
the Ship. But there was one large, caterpillar-like animal who had never
had a chance. All McCullough could tell from its remains was that it had
no skeleton to speak of, its body being surrounded by great bands of
muscle, and its head section, which was heavily boned, contained four
manipulators or feelers of some kind in addition to the usual sensory
equipment. Its hide was pale gray and very smooth, like that of a walrus.

 

 

In a nearby enclosure, however, the Twos had met something which even
they could not stand against. For a long time McCullough and the others
stared at the drifting Two carcasses, stripped of all edible tissue so
that little more than the bony carapace remained, and at the cluster of
tiny holes punched through the half-inch-thick shell.

 

 

It was Berryman who spoke first.

 

 

"And now," he said gravely, "we are looking for an emotionally disturbed
alien with a machine gun . . ."

 

 

But they all had far too much to do before the Twos began arriving for
lunch to give this new development the discussion it deserved.

 

 

The first step was to disconnect the wiring from the electrified sections
of mesh -- it would not be a good thing to be accidentally electrocuted
while doing battle with the Twos. Then from the small or more damaged
food dispensers they stripped lengths of cable and metal piping and
threaded these into the torn sections of mesh, repairing and reinforcing
their cage's sides and barring its severely warped doors. They did not
make any provision for evacuation if their plan went wrong, although
it was obvious that they were all thinking about it while they worked
and talked loudly about the probable effects of shutting off the Ship's
animals from what must be the only source of food and water.

 

 

All the other dispensers had been wrecked, accidentally by the Twos or
deliberately by the men.

 

 

"Poisoning them would be safer," said Berryman when their cage had been
made as secure as possible, "if we knew what was toxic to them and if we
had some of it . . ."

 

 

"Too slow," said McCullough.

 

 

"Six inches of cold aluminum alloy," said Drew, "is toxic to everything."

 

 

"Company," said Hollis.

 

 

Three of the tentacled e-t's and a pair of the white-furred flying
carpets had arrived and were heading toward their cage. It became a
civil war almost at once.

 

 

As soon as the furry Type Three came within striking distance, a Two
lashed out with its tentacle, the bony tip ripping a six-inch gash in
the white fur. While the Three flapped helplessly in the center of the
corridor, the Two steadied itself against the mesh and launched a second
and more deadly attack, this time crisscrossing the pelt with deep and
visibly widening channels which oozed bright red. The Three began to
undulate rapidly until it was fluttering like a thick, bloody flag in
a high wind. Then suddenly it was just a tattered, lifeless rag and its
attacker, a very messy eater, began to feed.

 

 

Meanwhile the second Two was not having things all its own way. Somehow
the furry animal had managed both to evade its attacker's tentacles and
to attach itself to the Two's unprotected back where those four deadly
weapons could not be brought to bear. At first McCullough thought he was
seeing the e-t version of the old adage about holding a tiger by the tail,
but then he saw that the furry body of the Three was squeezing down and
between the roots of the threshing tentacles where the Two's eyes were
situated, blinding it, and then extending further onto and across the
underbelly until it blocked the breathing apertures.

 

 

When the Two was dead, the furry animal did not try to eat it, but
instead undulated over to the mesh. Possibly it was a vegetarian.

 

 

During the fight, the unoccupied Two had attacked the mesh, probing and
worrying and slapping at it with horn and tentacles, then bouncing back
to the corridor wall net to hurl itself carapace first like a living
cannonball against the wire. McCullough had wondered how the animals
had been able to break out of their cages in the first place, since the
security arrangements had seemed adequate for such a relatively small
life-form, but as the mesh twanged and bulged inward under the onslaught
of this single, angry specimen, he was no longer puzzled. Finally the
Two, tired of beating its head against the mesh, insinuated a couple of
feet of one of its tentacles in an attempt to pull the wire apart.

 

 

Immediately Drew gripped the tentacle, planted both feet firmly against
the mesh and pulled the Two hard against the wire while the spear in his
other hand drove forward in a single, twisting, lethal stab. The beast's
tentacles threshed briefly and were still, then there was another Two
charging the mesh, and another.

 

 

The dispenser began making soft, chuffing sounds. It emitted a slow,
untidy jet of water and a series of gray round objects of the size
and shape of a large orange from a spigot which had had its teat chewed
off. The round objects had the consistency of porridge, Berryman reported
when one of them hit the side of his head, and added that the smell and
taste -- it had splattered forward onto his nose and lips -- were not
entirely unpleasant.

 

 

They became too busy to talk shortly after that; the job of killing Twos
was not as easy as Drew had made it appear.

 

 

They were badly hampered by weightlessness, which forced them either to
hold onto a Two or to twist their feet through the mesh to use their
spears effectively. But very often the Twos presented far too many
tentacles, and anchoring themselves by twisting a foot into the mesh
was asking to have it smashed by the hard tip of a tentacle or impaled
on a horn. Without some form of support, their aim suffered and most of
the force behind their thrusts was expended on getting through the mesh,
so that what little remained was enough only to push the Twos away and
inflict superficial injuries if any. The reaction from such a lunge
sent the men spinning helplessly so that they were in as much danger
from the spears of their friends as the horns of the Twos.

 

 

"This is a stupid plan," gasped McCullough as he knocked away a spear
which was coming at his face.

 

 

"Since it was your plan," said Berryman from the other side of the cage,
"I must decline to comment."

 

 

"Hold still, everyone," said Drew. "I want to try something . . ."

 

 

During the few minutes' pause while he explained and demonstrated his
idea, the mesh, particularly the places which had been patched and
reinforced, took a savage beating. Reinforcing cable stretched and
snapped, lengths of piping buckled and began slipping out of position,
and it would be only a matter of time before the Twos were inside the
cage with them.

 

 

Following Drew's instructions, they launched themselves like ungainly
swordfish from the panel of the dispenser, arms extended stiffly before
them and hands gripping their weapons. They jumped in unison so as to
minimize the danger of spearing each other, the idea being to aim themselves
in the general direction of their target and at the last moment guide
the tip of their spears through the mesh. The creatures possessed
enough weight and inertia not to be pushed away before a deep wound
was inflicted and, since the combined length of arms and spear was much
greater than that of the e-t's horn or tentacles, there would be little
danger of retaliation.

 

 

It worked.

 

 

After the first few abortive attempts it became a drill. They each chose
a target, kicked themselves away from the food dispenser cabinet,
and the three targets died. But there were always more to take their
places, squeezing tentacles through the wire, jabbing with that long,
obscene horn and gobbling like frantic turkeys. For McCullough it became a
continuing nightmare of killing the same Two over and over again. He had
lost count of the times they had launched themselves from the dispenser,
now slippery with a scummy mixture of food, water and e-t blood, to dive
through air that was like a thick soup of the same recipe, to kill that
Two once again.

 

 

A number of the white-furred Threes had squeezed between the Twos and
were clinging to the wire and absorbing -- McCullough could not see
exactly how -- the streamers and gobbets of water and food drifting toward
them. There were even two of them inside the cage, having wriggled through
a loosened patch, flapping and undulating through the air like great furry
sting-rays. All the men had been careful not to kill the type Three aliens
-- after seeing how one of them had dealt with a Two they considered them
allies rather than enemies. In addition, not killing them introduced a
certain amount of discrimination into the exercise so that they could
think of it as being something less than a brutal, bloody massacre.

 

 

McCullough tried to think of other things while the slaughter proceeded.

 

 

Between mealtimes the animal enclosure had been surprisingly clean, so that
the dispenser cabinet must also fulfill the duty of a waste-disposal unit.
But while the waste water and food would no doubt be reprocessed, the
material which could not be reclaimed would be pumped to the outer
hull and disposed of, which meant that the plumbing associated with
the waste-disposal system would be metal piping which, because it did
not have to carry an electrical current, would not have to be insulated
at any point between the dispenser and the hull outlet. As soon as this
was all over they would be able to hook onto it with their suit antennae
and contact Walters.

 

 

He felt rather pleased with himself for being able to reason things out
like this while engaged in the not quite routine job of killing Twos. Then
suddenly there were no more targets. The still-living Twos were retreating
along the corridors, dragging the bodies of their dead friends with them
when they could so that they would not go hungry, and the dispenser, which
had ceased producing half an hour since, went dramatically into reverse.

 

 

Heavy protective panels slid aside to reveal large openings covered
with safety grills. Drifting food, water and other debris moved toward
the openings, picking up speed as they went. So great was the force of
suction that the air made a high-pitched whistle as it went through
the grill and within a few minutes the cage was clear. But there was
more to come. From the eight corners of the enclosure a thin, foaming,
sharp-smelling liquid spurted out, immediately followed by eight
high-pressure sprays of water. By the time the dispenser had shut itself
off, the men and the two furry Threes inside the cage were like the air,
clean, fresh and slightly damp.

 

 

Outside the cage dead Twos drifted and spun slowly, stiff-tentacled,
like fossilized starfish. Above, below and all around them the mesh was
thick with them, as if it was some kind of alien flypaper which had not
been changed for too long a time.

 

 

Berryman linked his antenna to the dispenser plumbing and made contact
with Walters. He tried to speak but obviously could not get a word in
edgeways. Watching, McCullough saw him close his eyes tightly as if
there was something he did not want to see, something much worse than
the ghastly spectacle all around them. Finally he spoke.

 

 

"We're in trouble," he said dully. "Walters is -- upset. Brady has been
working on him again, and that girl. She sounds a nice girl, he says,
but she confuses him. The first supply rocket is off course. She didn't
actually tell him that we were bad boys and if we didn't start doing
as we were told again the other two might miss as well. It was just
that public opinion was touchy and it was difficult to make promises
when the men at the Ship kept messing things up. He says she mentioned
some very personal stuff, material he never expected to hear mentioned,
privileged information. He's thinking of all the people who have heard
everything she said -- the men on the Venus station and all their people
in Russia. Everybody will soon know. He's very unhappy about it."

 

 

Berryman stopped and took a deep breath. Fatigue and tension made it
into a tremendous, ludicrous yawn, but nobody laughed. He went on, "So he
blabbed everything to Brady. Your new theory, our plans, everything. He
says he couldn't help it. He says he wants to be a
good
boy again
so's they'll let him go home . . ."

 

 

 

 

chapter eighteen

 

 

For three days they barricaded themselves inside the dispenser cage during
mealtimes and killed Twos. As expected, the number of e-t casualties
diminished sharply each day. This was, of course, due to the fact of there
being ample food available outside the cage in the form of previously
slain animals. On the fourth day they tried a different approach.

 

 

A series of food caches were built up in compartments opening off the
corridors leading from the enclosure to one of the hull airlocks. By this
time they had discovered how to turn off the food dispensers at will
and they had towed the dead e-t's to the nearest lock and dumped them
into space, so that the Twos which remained in the Ship were becoming
very hungry.