Chapter VIII

Stan ran to the other window and stared at the street below. It didn't seem any different than when he had come in a few minutes earlier. The wide boulevard of stucco houses, the shade trees and the lawns. And a few of the apes on the sidewalk, hurrying to work....

Only they weren't hurrying, he noticed after a moment. One man was halfway down the house steps across the street, a brief case under his arm. But he wasn't moving. He was frozen in mid-air, off-balance, one foot halfway down to the next step. A housewife had stopped in mid-stride two doors down, her shopping bag swung forward at an awkward angle. At the corner, a small Renault car was poised in the middle of the street, caught in the process of turning.

Further down the block, two small boys in short pants and berets had been playing catch. One was crouched, his hand out. The other was standing, one foot in the air and one upraised arm behind his head. Stan narrowed his eyes and located the ball. It was about ten feet from the thrower, crawling slowly through the air.

Even as he watched, the ball slowed and stopped, hovering twenty feet above the asphalt.

"The air!" Reynolds suddenly screamed. "It's getting hard to breathe!"

"It'll get harder!" Tanner said grimly. "This will last for about half an hour. Slow your breathing and whatever you do, move slow. You move too fast and the air friction alone will set your clothes on fire!"

He swung slowly forward and brought the butt of his heat gun against the glass. Small cracks lanced through the window but it didn't break. Tanner pushed against it and the pieces slowly folded outwards.

"We're in the fast field, Martin--and so are they."

"They?"

"Avis and her men. The ones who caught you flat-footed under the ramp the other day. They're the ones who put up the field, who killed Clark."

Clark. Avis, Stan thought, could probably speed things up as well as slow them down. Clark was to have stayed home today, to wait for them. Avis and her men had waited until everybody but Clark had left, then they had turned on the field and aged the house and Clark by a hundred years in five minutes. It explained the skeleton, it explained the dust, it explained the crumbling cellophane and the yellowed curtains that powdered at the touch.

And the day on the ramp in Chicago. Avis had speeded things up, then. What had seemed to him to take half an hour, had actually occurred in minutes.

"How come we're not standing still like the others?"

"Neutralizers--they're built into your belt. If they weren't, you could have died a long time ago. Our own fields shield Reynolds."

He broke off.

"_Here they come!_"

* * * * *

Across the street, a figure darted from one parked car to another. A man suddenly ran behind the car that was poised on the corner. Stan could make out other figures moving behind the windows across the street.

There was the familiar spanging sound and a series of holes stitched themselves in the fragments of glass left in the window frame, three inches from his cheek. There was an impression of speed and heat and a crackling sound as the tiny projectiles thudded into the plaster behind him.

A pale, violet glow flashed out from Tanner's window and one of the figures on the street suddenly raised its hands in agony as flames crisped its clothing and burned its flesh. It staggered a few feet and finally fell in a flaming mass, its screams of agony splitting the still air.

Stan let his breath out slowly. He hadn't got a good look at the figure and for one brief moment he had thought it was ... Avis.

Which was an odd way to feel about a woman who would gladly slit his throat, he thought.

"_One!_" Tanner said grimly.

Stan flamed one of the automobiles and narrowly missed a small figure which scuttled out from behind it. He stole a look at Tanner. The man's face was flushed and shining, a half grin of expectancy was painted on it.

He himself did it as a duty, Stan thought soberly.

But Tanner enjoyed killing.

The spanging sounds sounded harder. Outside the window frames, Stan could see gouts of concrete and stucco being chiseled out of the walls. There was practically nothing left of the frames themselves but splinters of wood, held in place by small lumps of disintegrating mortar.

They were taking the house apart, he thought. They were dissecting it as casually as you would a frog, until the entire front part of the room would be exposed and there would then be no place to hide.

He turned up a notch on his heater and sprayed the other side of the street with a wide angle beam. There was an abrupt cessation of noise and then it started in again, louder than before. The small bedroom was becoming foggy with concrete and brick dust.

He caught sight of a figure moving behind the shrubs across the street and took careful aim. There was a sharp cry and then he had to dodge quickly back inside the window. Something had grazed his cheek, cutting it so a thin stream of blood angled down from the cheek bone.

He waited a second and stole another quick look out.

Two men had taken refuge behind some trees, further down the block. He took aim, then hesitated. The frozen figures of the two boys who had been playing catch were directly in the line of fire.

He tightened his finger, then sweat crept into the corners of his eyes and he blinked for a moment. He took aim again ... and wavered slightly. The sweat was heavier now and he could feel it soak the shirt on his back. Once more ... only apes....

"What are you waiting for?"

Stan calmly chose another target.

"The apes that are hiding--they won't stay there forever. They'll move someplace else and when they do, I'll get them."

* * * * *

Tanner laughed and aimed out the window. A moment later, two blazing torches had crumpled to the asphalt. Almost simultaneously, the trees went up in flames and two fiery figures stumbled out from behind them.

"Don't ever let your emotions interfere with your better judgment," Tanner said shortly. "Mr. Ainsworth wouldn't like it. Neither would I."

Stan hardly heard him. It didn't mean anything to him one way or the other, he kept telling himself. They were apes.

Just apes.

"What will the apes say when this is over and they discover the shattered houses and the bodies?"

Tanner picked off another running figure.

"There'll be no bodies. The wind disperses the ashes as soon as the field is let up. As for the rest--the apes are ingenious in thinking up explanations. They never believe in anything they haven't seen themselves."

The room was thick with dust and the noise of the spanging; the front wall was holed in half a dozen different spots. Then there was a rush of figures across the street and Stan caught his breath. In the lead was Avis, black hair streaming, urging the others on....

Tanner suddenly ran to the back of the room and pushed the bureau and the bed over by the front wall. He stripped the closet and piled the clothes by the furniture.

There was a lull in the spanging and a quiet sobbing suddenly filled the room. Stan turned.

Reynolds had collapsed in a corner, half out of his mind with fear. Tears straggled down the big man's face and sobbing convulsed his chest.

Tanner gestured to the front wall. "Get over there, Reynolds!"

The frightened man half crawled, half stumbled over to the tumbled furniture.

"You wanted an explanation, didn't you?" Tanner asked sharply.

Stan knew what was coming. Reynolds had ended up by knowing too much. Which was just too bad for Reynolds.

Reynolds' frightened babbling gradually made sense.

"_Get me out of here, Mr. Tanner! Please get me out of here...._"

"Gladly," Tanner said grimly. He brought up the heater and a violet beam danced over the crouching man and the bureau and the piled clothing. There was a short, pitiful screaming and then flames shot high into the room and billows of smoke curled casually through the broken windows.

* * * * *

Something inside Stan felt sick and he cursed himself for his own weakness.

"Get the suitcase and let's go, Martin."

The suitcase.

It wasn't there. While they had been busy at the windows, Stan thought, somebody had stolen the case. Reynolds hadn't even seen them and even if he had--the ape was now beyond questioning.

"It's gone?" Tanner laughed. "Avis is an amateur, Martin. And a bungling amateur at that! She could have killed us again and instead she preferred the case! One call to Ainsworth and we'll replace that tomorrow!"

They were feeling their way down the back stairs when the thick feeling to the air disappeared. Suddenly the street was filled with screams as passersby noticed the instantaneously ruined house and the burning cars and the suspicious mounds of ashes that swirled up into the morning air.

A block away, Stan stopped and wiped the sweat and soot from his face. Tanner looked at him sharply. "Something wrong?"

"Yes, there's something wrong!" Stan swung around and grabbed Tanner by the lapels, crossing his hands so the cloth was drawn tight around Tanner's throat and his knuckles dug into the flesh.

"I haven't been getting the answers," he said in a thin voice. "The girl's no ape--she knows too much, her weapons are too far advanced, her men are too well organized!" His voice started to shake with nervous reaction. "I'm supposed to be running the operation down here and I don't even know what's going on!"

"The answers should have occurred to you," Tanner said, his face a mask. "We're not the only ones who want this planet, Martin!"

Not the only ones! Stan relaxed his grip and let his arms hang limply at his side.

"Avis is an Aurelian," Tanner went on. "Her system and ours have fought many bloody battles for this planet. We're still fighting them--down here, now." He paused. "You haven't been told everything--operators are fed knowledge bit by bit, when they can fit it in. As a Thuscan agent, Martin, you're told just as much as the high command thinks necessary!"

His voice softened, became more persuasive. "We kill but not blindly, Stan. This is an important war--it's a war for an entire planet. We have to be brutal but the stakes are high. We're fighting to capture this planet for our own ... flesh and blood."

"I'm sorry," Stan whispered. "Forget what I did."

He wouldn't make the same mistake again, he thought. He'd do what he was told and he wouldn't forget that Avis and all of her kind were his implacable enemies, the enemies of his people.

But there was still something that bothered him.

In talking to him, Tanner had sounded like somebody he had heard once before....