All Judgment Fled (25 page)

 

 

McCullough took a blow on the shoulder which nearly paralyzed his arm,
and suddenly there was a Two with its tentacles around his head and
shoulder and its horn only inches away from his face. He let go his spear
and grabbed for the horn with both hands. It was dry and hot and felt
like rough wood. The whole twitching mass of its underbelly was oily
with alien sweat or saliva and the stink made him want to vomit. The
room rotated slowly around them as their struggles made them spin.

 

 

Berryman swam into sight beside a dying Two. He was terribly wounded and
large, red bubbles were forming and breaking away from his abdomen and
chest. A Three was trying to spread itself over him so as to stanch the
flow of blood, and wriggling because Berryman, an expression on his face
that was almost sublime, kept running his fingers through the fur on its
back. The pilot swung into sight three or four times before McCullough
saw that he had died. And still the doctor gripped the Two's horn and
tried desperately to push it away.

 

 

But it clung and tightened its hold and hung above his head like a
vile, alien umbrella. His legs were encircled and another Two swarmed
awkwardly along his body. He tried to kick it away but it was too high
up. Then he saw that there was a Three on its back, the flat, furry body
oozing between the Two's tentacles, blinding and smothering it in tight,
clinging fur until it drifted away dead.

 

 

But the Threes were fluttering and flapping all over the compartment,
unwilling for some reason to come to his aid. His spear was drifting a
few feet away, but he dared not let go of the horn for even a second
and expect to live. The Two kept changing its grip and each time the
horn came a little closer. His arms were very tired . . .

 

 

". . . In general terms its psychological troubles stem from loneliness,
grief, and fear caused by its being surrounded by enemies. It must feel that
there is nobody who cares whether it lives or dies.
"We know so little about this being that curative therapy is beyond
us. But if its basic needs are enough like ours, and if its mental
condition has not already reached the point of no return we might,
by our actions alone, show it that . . ."

 

 

McCullough tried to count slowly to ten. He thought that if he could just
hold off that horrible yellow horn for ten seconds, he would be able to do
it for another ten seconds. But the muscles in his back were cracking and
his arms felt as if they were on fire. He closed his eyes tight because
he was horribly afraid of seeing as well as feeling himsef being killed.

 

 

" . . . And eventually make it realize that it isn't alone and that
someone, us, is trying to help it . . ."

 

 

The noise in that confined space was incredible. McCullough jerked
open his eyes to see chunks of tentacles and shell being torn off his
Two. Then he saw why the Threes were so excited, the weapon with its
odd double stock and very ordinary magazine and barrel, and the being
who was holding it.

 

 

He saw, too, the four manipulators encircling the alien's head, three of
which were so badly damaged that it was a miracle it was able to hold the
weapon at all, and the awful, Two-inflicted scars running the length of
its body. He looked last at its eyes and for a long time neither of them
did anything. Then the alien pushed its machine gun away and McCullough,
now that his taped report had come to an end, began calling Hollis and
Walters on his suit radio.

 

 

 

 

chapter twenty-three

 

 

Both supply rockets with their water, food and spare spacesuits went
off course.

 

 

When he told him about it, Walter's voice was strained. McCullough
could imagine the pilot's feelings -- the fear of how the doctor might
react, his pleas for help which the pilot could not possibly give him,
and Walter's own, personal fear of the long voyage home with Hollis
in a vehicle which had already passed the time limit for operational
safety. When the pilot went on speaking, his cheerfulness was obviously
forced.

 

 

He said, "Brady feels terrible about this. He says you did the right thing
despite his and everyone else's opposition. He's sorry for the things
he said to you and he says he deserved everything you said to him. He --
well, he's beginning to sound like Churchill -- the debt owed you by the
whole of humanity, the immeasurable social and scientific advances this
First Contact will bring about, and so on. He wishes there was only some
way to bring all of us back . . ."

 

 

The pilot broke off, then said awkwardly, "You said earlier how terrific
a thing it would be to travel to another solar system . . ."

 

 

McCullough and Hollis looked at each other and the alien watched both
of them. They were in the antechamber of the generator blister where
the physicist had just completed repairs, and the e-t had followed them
there as it followed them everywhere. Sometimes the being made noises
at them or waved its mandible or they exchanged sketches. But mostly it
just hung there and watched everything they did.

 

 

It was possible that the being was security conscious or anxious lest
they commit further acts of sabotage, but McCullough did not think so. To
his way of thinking, the e-t was simply glad of the company, any company.

 

 

To Walters he said, "It seemed like a fine idea at the time, but I
wasn't thinking straight just then. No doubt someone will bust a gut to
get going, and it'll happen soon if, as I'm convinced, we can duplicate
the Ship's drive. But I prefer to go home."

 

 

"But sir . . ."

 

 

"Hollis' suit is still in one piece, and I have an idea. Last week it
would not have been a good idea . . ."

 

 

. . . Because last week Berryman and Drew were alive and both P-ships
would have been needed to get them home . . .

 

 

By the time he had finished explaining, Walters was much happier. The
pilot said briskly, "Two days should be enough for the job, but I'll
contact Brady at once asking for a course based on a four-day countdown
-- that will give us time to check our ship. And -- and I'll tell them
we want return tickets for three!"

 

 

He had to explain his idea to the alien then, but that was not too
difficult because the old adage about a good picture being worth two
thousand words held true even among extraterrestrials. But the result was
that the alien stuck even closer to him from then on, especially when
Hollis was working on P-One. And it kept forcing things on him, things
like odd pieces of equipment, the lovely, glowing murals and carvings,
books and film spools as well as food and water. McCullough explained
graphically about fuel reserves and weight allowances and knew that the
alien understood, but it still continued to give him things.

 

 

Then early in the second day, Hollis completed his work on P-One. On
the Ship a large cargo hatch swung open and Walters, moving very slowly
and carefully, edged toward it. The two P-ships were docked nose to nose
and Hollis had stripped P-One of all its projecting antennae, collectors
and sensory equipment and had completely removed the return fuel tanks
and motors so that the bare command module would fit, just nicely,into
the large cargo lock.

 

 

Walters slid the stripped-down P-One into the cargo lock, detached
it from P-Two and withdrew. The outer seal was closed and pressure
restored. Hollis, McCullough and the alien began transferring quantites
of food, water, artifacts, photographs and sketches which they had placed
in the corridor into the module section. Then they wedged it firmly into
the lock chamber -- a present from Earth for a culture an unguessable
number of light-years away -- and suddenly it was time to go.

 

 

It had been relatively easy to exchange simple concepts via sketch pad,
but there was no way at all for him to tell what it was thinking during
those last few minutes in the airlock. It was just a great, fat caterpillar,
an LSD nightmare with too many eyes and mouths in all the wrong places,
for him to be able to read such a subtle thing as a facial expression --
and the problem cut both ways. All he could do was look at it for a few
minutes while it looked at him, them follow Hollis into P-One.

 

 

The cargo hatch swung open, air whistled into space and Walters came
edging back with P-Two. He docked, they transferred themselves and their
stores and artifacts into P-Two and drifted away again. The cargo hatch
closed, Walters used steering thrust briefly and the great Ship fell
slowly away from them.

 

 

For a long time McCullough did not speak. He was thinking about the
alien he had just left and its Ship and the beings who had sent her out,
and wondering what they would think of his people -- the people who had
left three of their dead aboard, killed while trying to clear the Ship
of a particularly nasty form of vermin. And in one of the cargo locks
there was a human artifact, a tiny, ridiculous, fragile shell which had
carried three human beings more than fifty million miles out to their
Ship. He did not know what they would think about his people, but that
P-ship should tell them a lot.

 

 

Walters had completed a last altitude check and was listening to Control
during the last few seconds of the countdown when the generator blisters
on the Ship glowed suddenly. In an instant it had shrunk from sight.

 

 

Hollis gave a great sigh of relief. "I was worried in case I'd botched
the repair job," he said. Then he looked closely at McCullough and added,
"Don't worry, Doctor, our friend will be all right. It's going home."

 

 

Walters was moving his lips silently. Suddenly he pressed the thrust
button and said, "So are we . . ."