Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 (8 page)

 
          
But
no ray came to smite him. Instead, the other craft bunched at his sides. He
could see them through the ports to starboard and port. They wove closer and
closer, as hunting wasps might close in upon a succulent spider. It was too
late to do anything but try to run.

 
          
But
one of the pursuers maneuvered just ahead, swifter than he and with confident
agility.
No way out there, nor to either side.
Perhaps
he could drop away beneath, gain the earth and seek cover. Darragh pulled the
bead down on the perpendicular arm; but they dropped with him. A whole storm of
vibrations stirred the floor beneath him, the curved bulkheads,
the
air he breathed. And from below came spiralling another
tormentor, a craft almost spherical and much larger than his. Again he raised
the bead and sped straight
forward,
again he was
overtaken and surrounded in flight.

 
          
They
came close, almost nuzzling him. They were driving him along a certain course.

 
          
He
cursed every Cold Creature piloting that swarm around him, as fervendy as
earlier he had prayed for guidance and fortune. He went ahead because
¹
he must. Once more he tried to plummet down, and actually gained the clouds;
but, when he had fallen through, he could see his hunters and herders all
around, flying more swifdy and skilfully than he could hope to fly. And the
vibration was more intense, more maddening than ever, seeming to rattle him
inside
die
cabin like a pea in a gourd. He clung to
the uppermost arm of the controls to keep himself steady.

 
          
Below
was ground, brown patches that seemed scalded and barren, with belts and clumps
of woods between. Up ahead he saw a great blue-gray sheet of water, stretching
far out to the northern horizon, and at the shore and upon hills to either side
were tufts of timber. There
rose
at almost the water's
brink, dead ahead of him, a great plump dome.

 
          
An artificial structure?
A haven of these
Cold People?
But it dwarfed the trees and the hills to nothing—it was
like a mighty mountain, at least five miles in diameter and fully two miles
high. As he swept toward it, he thought he could make out a pocking of ports—thousands
of ports or entrances. Nearer now, in the midst of his escorting foemen, and he
could see great veinlike abysses, that might be the cracks of great doorways ever
to slighdy ajar.

 
          
Surely,
this was a capital city of
Earth
's conquerors, a dome so much larger and more complex than those he had
seen in southern regions that they would be like buttons beside a parasol. And
that flock of ships, darting and crowding around him, was forcing him toward
it. Ever the vibration shook his fugitive craft,
tingling
his nerves and making his hair brisde, driving him half wild.

 
          
He
tried to swerve aside; his controls did not respond. That meant that something
had taken hold of his vessel from outside, was guiding it. His speed checked.
He felt himself drop, felt the sickening tilt of the floor as it slanted
forward. Out of the port he looked at the dome, close in, as he approached it
in utter helplessness.

 
          
A
round black pit opened suddenly in the great structure's swelling flank, as a
dark passionless eye might open in a spacious face to stare at him. The pit was
black for only a moment—then, deep within it, a green glare sprang out, and
seemed to hurl itself upon him.

 
          
This is going to be the finish,
Darragh
said hastily in his heart.
This is the
goodbye wave of the fortune that kept me alive and brought me all the way up
here.

 
          
That
green radiance must surely be the explosion-ray of which he had heard utterly
terrible tales. He seemed to be getting time enough to draw himself up
straight, into a position of pride and defiance worthy of Spence or Capato, to
die like a man.

 
          
But
he was not dying. He was not exploding.

           
The floor still tilted, the craft
still slid downward. But Darragh was alive inside it. He did not even feel
discomfort. Those vibrations were gone from him and from around him. Then he
knew that the ship was standing still, as though pedestalled upon the beam of
green light that involved it.

 
          
All
around him, things had turned green, as if the light mushroomed there, flowing
in at every port of the cabin. He himself seemed clamped in that braced erect
posture he had achieved, unable to stir hand or foot, barely able to breathe.
But he could see and think.

 
          
A
new sense came into him, as of lightness, of rising from the slanted floor.
That was it; the floor was trying to drop from beneath him. The green beam was
dragging him and the ship down to earth, down into the great round door in the
dome.

 
          
Seconds
later, he jarred to a standstill.

           
At once the green fight was gone
from around him. All was dark outside, and the soft lights of his cabin, the
little flecks on map and diagram, had blinked out.

 
          
Some
inspiration of saving himself compelled him to thrust on his goggles and scarf,
to drag his gauntlets upon his hands, to pull the hood over his head again.
Then he dived at the sail that once before had been a shelter to him, and
wriggled under it and into it.

 
          
He
made that squirming crawl for a hiding place just in time. There were clanking
noises at the hatchway at the side. A protesting scrape, then an abrupt
ping,
and the fastenings yielded as
though somehow pulled open from outside. The hatchway moved open, and Darragh
heard a heavy, dragging noise.

 
          
Cold
Creatures were coming in.

 
          
At the first
opening of the hatchway
there had rushed in a wave of deadly cold that smote like a club. It pushed
through Darragh's thick-wadded leather clothing, nipping and
tingling
his skin beneath. This, he knew, must be the temperature that best suited the
comfort of the Cold People, a temperature in which they throve while the most
vigorous man would freeze in it.

 
          
Peeping
once more through a half-open fold of the sail, he saw that there was light in
the cabin, either turned on at the switches or somehow fetched in from outside.
Three of the Cold Creatures had entered, unarmored and confident. Each of these
held in one tentacle a curious little ray-weapon, no larger than a pistol but
manifestly intricate of operation. Darragh could see the surface integuments of
the things, smooth and waxy, rippling with
motion,
and
in the midst of each bladdery body the dull cold gleam of that incomprehensible
organ of lif e and sense.

 
          
They
did not seem to have any thought of where Darragh himself might be; their first
attention was to their two dead fellows. Around these they crowded, and there
was
a
complex fluttering of
tentacles, as though they conferred and argued in that sign language of theirs.
One of them prodded experimentally at the deep saber-slash in the pilot
creature, and indicated this to his fellows. All their tentacles groped at the
wound, then drew away to flourish and tremble in new discussion. They seemed to
be at a loss to account for that wound.

           
Finally both bodies were lifted—the
tentacles of the Cold People moved with amazing strength and deftness, even
with such heavy bulks—and passed them out through the hatchway into the grasp
of others.

 
          
Then
the things inside began to explore. Darragh's scattered possessions were
scooped up, examined, passed from tentacle to tentacle. One of the creatures
picked up Darragh's string bag and dumped out the last few pieces of tropical
fruit. They fell to the floor with hard whacks, like lumps of wood; plainly
they had frozen solid, even in the short time since the ship had come inside
the dome. Another of the Cold Creatures lifted its ray-apparatus, and from its
muzzle jutted
a
pencillean ray of
sickly pale light upon
a
banana.

 
          
That
banana exploded, as violently as a cannon cracker, leaving only a puff of vapor
that vanished in an instant, without even dampness to show where it had gone.
That pale ray, then, was the destroyer, something entirely different from the
green light that had bound and carried Darragh into this prison.

 
          
Again
the destroyer-ray pointed at a fruit and exploded it; to another and another. A
moment later, the neighbor of the operator put out protesting tentacles. Plainly
it urged its companion to desist. The rest of the fruits must be kept for
examination, not destroyed.

 
          
Not
destroyed, at least, until later.

           
Other tentacles gathered them up and
passed them outside. Then a grasp was laid upon the sail, dragging it from
Darragh, wadding it up to be given to those waiting beyond the hatchway.
This,
said Darragh to himself again as he lay exposed, must
be his finish. He lay quiet on the stinging cold of the floor, feeling no terror
or despair, only an utter exhaustion, as he waited for the ray of death. But it
did not come.

 
          
Instead,
he felt the touch of those palmlike tentacle-ends upon his legs and body. They
took hold of him, hard and elastic and facile. He was being lifted, moved,
carried
. No attack as yet. Maybe he did not seem alive to
them. Completely encased in leather breeches, jacket, moccasins and gloves,
with the hood and goggles and scarf to hide his face and head, he might have
been some sort of image or effigy, something that would excite only mystified
curiosity.

 
          
He
was passed from one creature to the next, and from that one to the one beyond,
like a bucket in the hands of a line of amateur firemen. Out through the
hatchway he was bodily shoved. Looking upward, he could see nothing but a pale
ceiling that had a frosty gleam to it—crystals of ice, he supposed—and he could
hear nothing at all. More tentacles received him. He did fancy that it was
colder, if anything, outside the ship than inside. Then he was flung down
roughly, like a bale of clothing, upon the doubled fabric of that palm-leaf
sail. He dared to peer stealthily about.

 
          
The
ship, he could see, had settled into'a great chamber with a flat floor, smooth
curved sides and a ceiling that was made in two pieces, like jaws, that could
open and shut. Over floor, sides, and ceiling was a sheath of hard, white frost
crystals. Hooded lamps gave radiance, showing him that in all directions opened
the mouths of tunnels, darker than the chamber itself. Nowhere could he see the
source of that green ray that had captured him and drawn him down-perhaps it
was emitted by some apparatus that could be moved. In the center of the floor
was the ship, and at the hatchway were a dozen of the Cold People, eagerly
giving their attention to what was going on inside.

 
          
More
things were being passed out from the cabin. There came Darragh's saber. This
drew more attention than had any single discovery up to now. All of the
observers gathered around their companion who held the saber, then hunched over
to where lay the two dead bodies.
No doubt but that they
connected that gleaming, well-sharpened blade with the fatal stab in the body
of the pilot.

 
          
It
was high time to get away, anywhere, while for a moment there was no
observation toward his position. Darragh rose suddenly to his knees, gave a
great spring, found his feet, and darted into the nearest of the passageways.

 
          
Commotion
boiled up behind him, a great slapping and wriggling of swift, heavy bodies.
Something shot gleamingly past him—a cold, narrow streak of the colorless
explosion-ray. It missed him, but the wall it grazed seemed to fluff away in
sudden steam, and a buffet like that of a sudden gust of high wind almost
hurled Darragh flat.

 
          
He
floundered to keep his feet under him, turned and plunged into a side opening,
and made a turn around the curve beyond. That was the way to dodge their cursed
murdering rays—keep angling away, even into the interior of this unthinkable
frozen hive. If they should catch him in a straightaway tunnel or an open
space, they could bring their rays to bear. He would be done for, like a
scrambling bug under a showering spray of insecticide.

 
          
He
was tired and confused, but his strong, long legs made swift leaping strides.
The tunnel widened as he ran along it, then brought him out into a great
courdike opening with a luminous ceiling high overhead. A row of machines
whirred here, like a battery of looms, with Cold Creatures pottering here and
there among the spinning wheels and hurrying dark belts. Darragh did not
stop,
he slowed his pace only long enough to locate the
mouth of another corridor on the far side. Then he crossed the floor past the
bank of machinery in desperate leaps. He reached the new tunnel and flung
himself into it almost before those machinists could turn toward him.

 
          
But
what, he found half of an instant to ask himself, would be the end of all this
headlong dash? For all his length and hardness of limb, for all his splendid
young strength and health, he was already puffing. His head whirled, and blood
beat in his ears. The cold nipped and dragged at him, like
a
living foe trying to throw him down. His breath clouding out
through the
scarf,
fell around him in shimmery
crystals as he ran. He wanted to stop, but he knew that stopping would be fatal.
The cold would fell him and finish him.

 
          
He
ran more slowly despite himself, and reached another open space, a mere lofty
chamber at which tunnels crossed. In the instant that he slowed up to choose a
new route, a patrol of Cold People moved into view across the way, ready for
him.

 
          
Three
held ray-throwers and stabbed the beams toward him, making steamy furrows in
the clotted frost of the floor. He stopped still, once again recognizing the
futility of escaping death longer. But the rays did not touch him. One played
past him to the right, like
a
stream
from a hose; another flicked the tunnel-way from which he had emerged, cutting
off his retreat in that direction. Perforce he turned to his left, and into
that passage.

 
          
One
inside, he ran again, his breath beginning to sob in his laboring lungs.

 
          
But
no ray blasted him, and even in his weariness he swifdy outdistanced the things
that had thus menaced him. On shaking legs he ran until he reached another open
space, this time as large as a public square.

 
          
Along
its walls were ranged shantylike little structures, of dull metal or smooth
concrete, and direcdy across his path ran a single rail of supports. As he came
into the open,
a
flat one-wheeled
car came into view along this rail, smoothly whispering. It stopped, and down
from it hopped three Cold Creatures. They, too, had rays, and these rays began
to glow, weaving and crossing around him.

 
          
He
stood still and glared.

           
"Why don't you finish me, damn
you?" he yelled hoarsely at them.

 
          
But
the rays, two of them crossed, only crept toward him.

           
This was some complicated
cat-and-mouse game. Darragh had heard all his life that the Cold People were
merciless in their warfare, but never that they were wantonly cruel. He wished
for a gun, for arrows, for his lost saber, that he might charge and perhaps
kill yet again before he was exploded into atoms. Closer crept the crossed rays
... closer.

 
          
He
could stand still and perish, or he could keep running. One of the alleys was
still open to him, and he swung around and staggered into it. He was fagged and
fainting, but he ran.

 
          
The
single rail went along this passage, and after a moment he heard that
one-wheeled car behind him. He snatched a backward glance. The three tormentors
followed, but not swifdy, not so closely as to overtake him. Once or twice a
ray came flicking, as a herdsman might crack a whip over a refractory animal.
He must keep moving somehow, stay ahead of their car, their rays. Up ahead,
this tunnel, too, widened.

 
          
Another
crossing of ways, but here both side exits were guarded by inexorable squads of
helmet-shaped devils with poised ray-weapons.

 
          
He
had come more than a mile, at a speed that made him sweat inside his leather
despite that ineffable cold. Again and again he had been sure that his last
moment had come, but teasingly it had delayed.
Now ...

 
          
Now
it could delay no longer. Darragh was running toward a blank wall at the end
of the last tunnel. Frost ridged the partition, hung in shaggy beards before
him. Behind him came the Cold People, three of them on the car that rode the
rail, the others hitching nimbly along on their pseudopods.

 
          
Darragh
swung around to face them. He was utterly happy to stand still.

 
          
"All
right, get it over with!" he found wind and strength to croak. "Kill
me and be damned to the last one of you! I'm through making sport
for .
.

 
          
His
drooping shoulders touched the wall, and the wall slipped beneath it. One of
the Cold Creatures was at a stand of levers at the side of the tunnel, was
pressing one down to open some sort of a panel. Blackness came through behind
Darragh,
a blackness
almost palpable, and a wave of
cold that surpassed anything he yet had felt. He reeled and caught his breath.

 
          
He
heard the lapping of liquid behind him. Turning, he gazed down into a ditch.
Along it flowed swift, steaming water—no, not water. Water could not flow here,
at many degrees below zero.