Chapter V

"Two laps around the track and then to the showers!" yelled Greene, his fingers dancing over the rocket release and snapper buttons.

Leaning back against the rudder bar, Pritchard grinned. "You forget the passes along the river banks. They make it four laps."

Then he threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but he couldn't make much through the welter of rising dirt columns.

They came around the mountain in a tight curve. As they flattened for a run on the meadow they could see things scurrying for the water. The meadow itself was a churned and pitted mess. Bodies were thickly strewn everywhere.

"There she is!" yelled Sturgis. "You were right, chief. See her--over by the mountain?"

A tiny figure, mounted on a six-legged equine, was riding furiously back and forth. The defense arc was swelling outward, as her "people" rose to the offensive and began charging the demoralized attackers.

Then the two cruisers were racing through their run on the as yet unstrafed portion of the meadow furthest from the mountain. Sturgis's craft bucked as it rode the shock-waves from Greene's rocket blasts. As they shot in a wide curve around the other side of the mountain Pritchard said, "We'd better skip our last pass. Let's just sit down and work in close. I don't want her to get away."

They cut jets and floated in over the jungle, side-slipping to lose speed. With feather-light fingers at their controls, the cruisers skimmed the trampled meadow grass and touched down their wheels. As they rolled, Pritchard and Sturgis flung open cockpit windows and let bright fire from their flamers spew over the ground, while Greene and Kemp sprayed right and left with their snappers.

Things struggled in the crisping, burning grass, crackling and roasting. Even as he turned the nozzle this way and that, Pritchard's face was a mask of disgust. All around the slowing ships, Cornelia's "people" galloped and raced with a vengeful, slaying lust.

"All out," said Pritchard. "Everybody take a flamer. We'll have to burn a path to the girl."

They climbed out and began walking toward the mountain four abreast, flame billowing ahead of them. There seemed to be only dead things in their path.

Then, suddenly, the girl was there, astride a magnificent six-legged equine type of animal, shaggy of coat and rather broad in the head. She had ridden around the wall of fire and her mount was trembling and shaking its head.

They turned off the flamers and stared up at her. Rumbling, whinnying sounds came from the equine's throat. She grunted and cooed back, as if soothing it. Then she turned her eyes on the men below.

"We wish to thank you." Her pale face was drawn and there was a suspicion of tears in her voice. "You came just in time."

She seemed small and absurdly girlish perched on that long back. Those inadequate strips of hide were still her only covering.

Pritchard nodded shortly. "If you'll be so good as to keep your be--people--out of our way, we'll sterilize this island. Just burn off all the cover and see to it there's none of them left. Why don't you herd your--uh--friends over onto what we've already--"

"That won't be necessary," she cut in. "They'll all be gone in another minute."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"The One is probably calling them off."

"The--what?"

She put her face in her hands. Pritchard frowned his puzzlement. How had so helpless a child managed to survive in a world like this?

"I'd like very much to know what this is all about, Miss Boyce," he said gently. "In fact, the reason we happened along is that we are looking for you. We thought you might be able to explain what happened last night."

As he told her, she lifted her face from her hands and her brimming eyes grew round. Before he had finished describing what they had found in the blower, she was shaking her head in despair.

"This is all your doing. This world was at peace until you came. Now The One is aroused. You see, it was The One that went into your ship--"

"The One?" A crispness came into his voice. "Miss Boyce, I think you'd better start at the beginning and give us a complete explanation. Just exactly what is this 'One' you keep talking about?"

* * * * *

She closed her eyes again. A slight shudder ran through her body and she shook her head dazedly.

"The One," she murmured, "is after us all now. It began by entering your ship. Then It sent Its people against mine--against me. It won't stop until It has destroyed us all, and It--It's something I'd just as lief not describe.

"My people call it something which I have translated as 'The One'. To them, it means 'first', or 'leader', or something like that. It was in control of all the people here on Thisbe when the Survey arrived, and I'm afraid It still is. It wants to remain in control. You see, It's quite intelligent."

"I can believe that," Pritchard said. "It not only figured out how to get into the ship, but it also figured out how to find McManus."

"Oh, no, I don't believe it just went after him. Wasn't his cabin the nearest to the place it entered?"

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it was."

"Oh, you don't understand The One as I do," she cried. "It would never be satisfied with just one. It came into your ship to feed on all of you. McManus was just the first person It found. From what you tell me, It wasn't even finished with him. There wouldn't be--anything--left...."

"Then why did It go away?"

"I couldn't tell you. Perhaps when your blower short-circuited, it arced a little. The One is very sensitive to fire. But It's not through. It will come back, one way or another."

"I think we can deal with it if it does," Pritchard smiled. "And it sent these unpleasant things at you? How can it do that?" He shot an appraising glance around the torn and bloody meadow with its mounds of dead and dying things.

When he turned back the girl was weeping. Sobs she could not suppress were shaking those nut-brown, rounded shoulders. "It has some kind of mental control," came her muffled voice. "Besides, they fear It dreadfully. Oh, my people, my poor people."

"Well, now, look," soothed Pritchard, "it's all over now. You'd better come back with us. I guess you've learned you can't make people out of all these animals. Besides, you've got an interesting story to tell the Board--"

"D-damn the B-B-Board," she said a little unsteadily. "Then you'll take me with you?"

Pritchard smiled his broadest smile. "But of course!"

"Then let's hurry," she pleaded. "We have so little time."

"Why? What's the hurry?"

"The One! The One!" she burst out in sudden anxiety. "It'll come for us any minute, don't you understand?"

"Okay, okay," soothed Pritchard. He and the others were smiling at her excitement, when her equine suddenly reared so suddenly that she tumbled off. They started to her assistance, but she landed light as a cat on her feet. She stared wildly about her.

The equine uttered a growl and galloped off. The girl remained crouched, her eyes darting in every direction.

"Now what?" said Pritchard.

"The One," she breathed. "It's somewhere near. My sextuped would never have bolted like that otherwise."

"Oh, for Pete's sake," said Pritchard, taking her arm. "Come on--"

"Say, Mr. Pritchard, what's that thing over there?" Kemp pointed off to his left.

"Oh, God, no...." Cornelia's voice was a quavering moan.

Pritchard glanced where the stocky lad was pointing. What appeared to be an exceptionally tall and unusually red grass blade was wavering gently, as if bending to a mild breeze, about fifty yards off.

"Hell," muttered Sturgis, "that face is familiar."

Pritchard started walking toward it, the others following him. "Let's fan out a bit," he said, "until we see what this is."

"Come back, come back," came the girl's agonized whisper behind them. "Don't go near...."

They ignored her. At a distance of ten yards Pritchard halted. They all watched with consuming curiosity.

The slender red thing was growing. Or, rather, it was pouring out of the ground, crumbs of dirt sticking to its glistening scarlet wetness, its delicately tapering tip now some ten or twelve feet in the air.

Pritchard shifted the flamer tank on his shoulders and started to say, "I think--", when a maned gorilla loping across the meadow some hundred yards away gave a sudden scream and broke into a wild, shambling run in the other direction. Another animal gave bellowing voice, and another--and abruptly there was commotion, spreading over the island toward the mountain.

Pritchard cleared his throat. "Get around it, boys. Let it keep coming, but when I say the word give it a lick of fire."

The waving red spire stood some fifteen feet high now. As he circled into his position with the others, he noticed two things simultaneously. Another little scarlet tip was questing up through the trampled grass close to the first one. And, out of the corner of his eye he could see the animals that were Cornelia's people streaming either way along the base of the mountain, in a frenzied rout to get to the river on the other side.

Then Cornelia's hands were clenching his arm, her voice panting hysterically in his ear. "Run, Pritchard! You don't know what you're up against. Oh, believe me," she sobbed, "please, please, please believe me. This is The One."

His eyes focusing on the growing scarlet tips--the second one had grown almost as high as the first--Pritchard smiled indulgently. "We're going to stay for the fun," he said. "What happened to all your friends? Stampeded, didn't they?"

She opened her mouth to reply but her answer was cut off by Greene's sudden scream.

Greene screamed as McManus had screamed last night. Screamed and sank writhing to his knees. Some kind of frothing slime was running down over his shoulders and chest, dissolving the acid-repellent cordron jacket, running down over Greene from what had been his head.

From between the bases of the now thick, tall red tongues, another jet of liquid squirted toward Sturgis. He leaped sideways and it missed him clean. "Holy Damn!" he shouted.

Pritchard gripped the flamer's trigger. "Give it hell!" he roared.

* * * * *

Three streams of fire converged in a ball of flame on the twin red spires. They disappeared in the rippling, booming fire.

"Hold it!" Pritchard shut off his flamer and the others followed suit. Holding the nozzle before him, he walked to the place where the things had been.

There was nothing there, except a hole where the tangled grass had been disturbed, and a kind of pit in the ground, into which loose dirt was still dribbling. He backed a step and turned the flamer on, playing fire into the pit and around it. Then he shut it off.

"You fool," came the girl's voice at his elbow. "You damned fool. You just won't believe me, will you?"

Pritchard lifted his gaze toward what had once been Cadet Greene. Richard Harrison Greene, a rollicking lad from the Cumberland Gap. Thomas Guilfoyle McManus, a man with a red-haired soul. McManus, first, and, now, Greene. The hunter's face was turned to stone.

"Keep your eyes peeled," he said harshly to the others and stalked off to the place where the squirt of liquid had landed after missing Sturgis. Some thirty feet from where it had been ejected, there was no grass but a four-foot smear where the ground bubbled and frothed. The stench hovering over this spot was incredible, even to the man who had encountered it before.

He turned to confront Cornelia who had followed him. "I don't know whether I can get it through your thick head or not," she bit out, "you've simply got to get out of here. You can't--"

"Get this through _your_ thick head, Miss Boyce," said Pritchard between clenched teeth. "This thing, whatever it is, has killed two of my men. I'm quite ready to believe it is intelligent, possibly the most intelligent organism on this planet. But it's a killer just the same and we're going to kill it. None of your idealistic theories are going to stop us, either."

She stared at him, beginning to shake her head a little wildly. "You can't kill it! That's what I'm trying to tell you. It can't be k--"

There was a sudden crash. Cornelia whirled and screamed. The three men and the girl stood transfixed.

Over by the river one of the jet cruisers was on its side, resting on a crumpled wing. The other was forty feet in the air, and rising, held in the coil of an impossible red monstrosity rearing its long wet self into the sky.

It was a worm, a very long, thin worm at least a hundred feet long, not counting what remained underground. It towered some fifty feet into the air, about thirty-five feet more of it wrapped around the cruiser. At its tip two fifteen-feet-long feelers writhed and wriggled, as if still smarting from the scorching they had received.

The coil slipped a little. The cruiser, looking more than ever like a beetle at this moment, slid slowly out and fell. And again it crashed into the cruiser on the ground and rolled ponderously off it.

"Good ... God!" came Sturgis's voice shakily at Pritchard's elbow. The Chief Hunter was still too appalled to speak. He stared as the worm's rope-like body came curving down out of the sky, down to the cruisers again. Seeing how that red length alternately thinned to a one-foot thickness and swelled again to three feet and more as it oozed around the cruiser that had remained on the ground, he had a vision of how it had entered the _Apollo_, shrinking itself to a mere six-inch thread that poured through the intake port, seeping along the duct, swelling, bulging at McManus's air-grill ... and coming out of the ground, probably close to the ship, it had evaded the radar field.

Cornelia's agonized face swam before his eyes. He felt his body shaking in the grip of her slender hands. Words--

"--fool, run! _Listen to me!_ It's busy smashing your ships. We have a chance. Run--to the mountain! Oh, dear God...."

At first he was like a sleep-walker. They turned him around and pushed him into a stumbling run, but his head turned back, his eyes large and almost vacant on that scene by the river.

Then he was running. It was a good two hundred yards to the mountain, but the grass was mashed to a springy tangle under their feet and they had only to skirt the thickly-strewn bodies. The girl took the lead, the men not far in the rear, the nozzles of their flamers flapping out behind them.

A crash, followed by a dull roar, came to them. They shot quick glances over their shoulders. The fuel tanks of one of the cruisers had let go and fire was blooming from the now distant beetle. The worm was arching wildly away, and then sinking in a curve to the ground.

"How fast--can it go--on the--surface?" panted Pritchard.

"Much faster--than under--ground!" Cornelia muttered.