Chapter IV

Just as Ivy could feel the ability to move returning, the old men came for her. She realized with despair that they knew quite well how long the paralysis would last. They helped her to her feet and walked her out of the building. Their hands were dry and raspy and surprisingly strong.

Outside it was late in the morning and the sun was high. She was on the side of a mountain, looking down into a peaceful valley. They led her around the low building into a shaded area farther up the mountain, where she saw several more buildings, much smaller than the first. The first, she thought, was a clearing house.

"How do you feel?" said the man on her left, grinning. "Do you feel very good?"

He stressed the 'good' for a reason she did not understand. Apparently the word meant something to him. His grin was wide and his teeth showed remarkably white and firm. The other old man was grinning too.

"I'm hungry," she said. She did not ask these men why she was here. She thought she knew, and if she didn't she would find out soon enough.

"Very soon," the first man said, "if you are good enough."

Now again she did not know what he meant, but this was more obvious. The way he spoke, his grin fading, was particularly horrible. Before she had a chance to say anything more she was ushered into one of the small buildings beneath the trees.

She found herself in a room with several terrified girls, and two more of the old men. These looked even older and were much more businesslike.

One by one, too frightened to struggle, the girls were stripped. Like doctors, the two old men examined them clinically. There was an oldness, a foul and slimy something about these gaunt men that was almost overpoweringly horrible. She wanted to run, or to scream, or just to fight, but she held herself in and waited for the right moment.

She was allowed to take her clothes off herself, was pushed and prodded for several grisly moments. At last she was led naked into another room, where a massive machine of glass and metal was wheeled into place above her, and set to a deep, jarring hum. After a few seconds she was given back her clothes. Then she was taken outside into the sun again, where the other girls stood waiting.

The same two old men took her arms.

One bent over and looked closely into her eyes, his nose almost touching hers. He was grinning now with great joy.

"You were good enough," he said happily, "now you will eat."

She stared at him, revolted as his dry rough hand ran down her arm. Then she saw something which made her understand.

Five girls had been in the building with her.

Only three had come out.

* * * * *

The controls of the escape pod were pre-set. It checked its fall with controlled, measured bursts, fell quickly and steeply until it bounced off the atmosphere. Once in the air the stubby wings took hold and the pod began to glide, blasting from time to time to slow itself down. There was no light in the pod, and Web rode all the way down in a silent, rushing, horrible blackness. He had plenty of time to consider the fact that the pod had never been used before. It had never even been tested. Well, he thought philosophically, if it did not work he would undoubtedly never feel the end.

That did not help at all. He waited, falling.

Not long before the pod hit he began to hear the air scream past, and he braced himself. The braking rockets cut loose for the last time. There was one great rending crash, a series of enormous pops like corks being pulled on the biggest bottles in the world, and a really awful, shattering, bone-mangling impact. And then the pod was down.

In the last moment Web had closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw light streaming in through a large crack above him.

It's all busted up, he told himself dazedly. Better get out. He unbuckled his straps and poked himself fearfully. The hammock had held well enough, but it had been designed for a much smaller man. When the pod hit he had sort of flowed over the edges of the hammock, there were long numb lines all over his body.

But the pod might just possibly decide to burn. He crawled out painfully, but as quickly as possible.

Outside it was mid-afternoon. A desert afternoon. The sun was high and white-hot, blinding. He closed his eyes, trying to accustom himself to the glare. He thanked both God and the engineers that the pod had apparently come down where it was supposed to come down--in the great empty area in Arizona. Radar would have followed him down, therefore rescue trucks were already on their way. They would cross the rough terrain in a couple of hours. A helicopter should be here even sooner. He breathed deeply and a bit more easily, beginning to feel much better.

It occurred to him at last that he still had on his space suit. He took off the helmet, regretted it almost instantly.

The air-scorched skin of the pod by his side was glowing a brisk cherry red, radiating slow thick waves of boiling air. Web walked quickly away in the sand. The October sun was hot, but the pod was even worse. He looked around in the desert, beginning now to feel very tired, looking for a place to shelter himself, to rest until the relief came.

He walked off over the nearest rocky hill, searched among the huge boulders. Distances were deceptive. He had walked quite a way before he found two gray slabs which leaned together and formed a dark opening beneath. He made sure that he could see enough of the desert to know when the relief trucks came. Then he crawled inside.

He had just settled himself to wait, his eyes closing, when the pod blew up.

The sound came at him like a thundering wall. He whirled to face the desert.

Where the pod had been rose an enormous, greasy, ball-topped cloud. The explosion was overwhelming. The whole land shook as the concussion rolled over him, the sky and the air were black around him. After a while the dirt and the rocks began to rain down in a heavy brown splatter and he huddled in the rocks.

Atomic. They were after him.

He started to rise, agonized and tensed, thinking about the aliens and about radioactivity. But before he reached his feet his mind took hold of him and he stopped.

There was no where to go. If he stepped out into the open he would be seen at once, seen from practically any distance. He looked up into the sky, past the tall black column of smoke. Nothing.

He sat. Maybe they hadn't followed him down. They might not have had time for that. Friction was friction, they could travel through the air no faster than he could. So probably what they had done was send some kind of missile after him. It could not have come down much faster than the pod, it would have burned up, so what it had done was give him just enough time to get out. He thanked God that he had.

He leaned weakly against a rock. After a moment he crawled as deeply as he could into the darkness. There was still no place to go. The aliens might be very close, and he could take no chance on missing the relief trucks.

He was becoming rapidly very tired. If he did not want to have to walk all the way out of the desert, he would have to stay right here. Boy, he said to himself painfully, wearily, you got big trouble. He sat down to brood, too tired to remind himself that he had volunteered for this business.

In a few moments he was deeply asleep.

* * * * *

When he awoke it was dark and quite cool and the stars were out. He was instantly alert, peering off into the blackness, listening for the rescue trucks. He crawled out from the rocks and stood up, peered off into the night.

There was no moon, but off in what would be the east was the first bluish glow of the rising sun. That told him at least how long he had slept, and he kicked himself. It was somewhere between four and five in the morning. The truck would have been here long ago.

He walked away from the rocks, looking for a high point on which to stand. They wouldn't have gone away, damn it, they'd have enough sense to stay and look around. Although if they thought he had been in the pod....

Holy smoke, he said with a sad despair, I've got to walk home.

He hadn't eaten for a day and a half. He hadn't had anything to drink either, or even a cigarette. He was beginning to feel it. He made his way up through the rocks to a high, flat bulge, stretched himself up and peered out hopefully.

The trucks rose up about a mile away. Three black hulks, vague and square and unmoving.

Web shouted out hoarsely, with relief and delight. He stumbled back down the rocks in the darkness, reached the soft sand and began to run like a sprinter. They'd waited, bless 'em. The sound of a human voice would be, at this moment, magnificent. He could taste the hot coffee as he ran, the steaming hot coffee and the rolls. They were probably all around him, searching. He shouted.

Nobody answered. It was becoming light quite quickly and although the ground was still dark the silhouettes of the trucks stood out black and clear as he came over the last rise.

He stopped in his tracks, kicking up sand.

The trucks were wrecked.

He crouched tensely, feeling for a gun that wasn't there.

Nothing moved in the blackness around him. The trucks were all black and empty. After a moment of waiting in the deep silence he moved forward slowly.

The first truck had crashed head on into a flat rock wall. The second lay on its side in a steep ditch to the right of the road. The third lay right behind it. The only one that was apparently untouched was the halftrack.

It was standing alone halfway up a sand hill to the south, its nose pointed up at a sharp angle. All of the trucks were empty. But in the half light he couldn't be sure.

He walked up to the halftrack, looking for the bodies.

There weren't any. When he had looked around for a few moments, he realized what had happened. The men had all disappeared.

He was a little more ready for it now, but it was by no means easy to take. On the seat of the halftrack he found two fatigue caps, two twill shirts, two pairs of pants.

On the floor were the shoes and socks. The men had disappeared rapidly, while the trucks were still moving.

Web looked up into the sky.

None of the stars were moving.

But the aliens would be coming back soon. He climbed into the halftrack, threw out the clothes and started the engine. The thing had stalled, probably, running off by itself up a hill. He was lucky. The motor turned over. He was going quickly away, in no particular direction, when he remembered food.

He stopped the halftrack and looked in the back.

Towing apparatus, to take the pod back.

He groaned.

The second truck had burned, was still hot, but the third was intact. He found some K-rations and an untouched thermos, opened the thermos immediately and gulped down a huge draught of pleasantly warm coffee. With the coffee in him he felt much better and began to think.

He would have to get out of here damn fast.

But where? In the least likely direction.

Which was?

In the opposite direction to the base?

No. At right angles. Better yet, at any old angle. Neither directly toward home, nor directly away. Not by any means toward the nearest town.

So just run.

But first cigarettes--and money.

He rifled the first pair of pants he found, then another. The second had belonged to an officer. In a moment of sudden clarity, realizing the uselessness in town of the overalls he now wore, he took the full uniform with him. He did not think about the man that had been in them. He was coming fully awake now, beginning to realize the jam he was in. He had as much chance of getting out of this desert alive as a crippled snail.

He started up the halftrack and drove off over the sand at an even eighteen miles an hour.

* * * * *

"There he goes," said Kunklin. "What is that thing he is driving?"

"Extraordinary," Prule agreed. "You'd think that even with their primitive technology these poor souls would have reasonably comfortable conveyances."

"And faster," Kunklin said. "The Faktors will be back."

"Where are they now?"

"North. They reason, obviously, that he has slipped through on the ground. They are taking no chance on the bong having missed, which is characteristically thorough. They are fanning out from the North, beginning to ring the desert."

"There is no hurry then. If the Faktors think he is a Galactic they will be very discreet, very cautious."

Kunklin turned from the eyepiece, his handsome face lighted with interest.

"Listen, now there's a thing we'll have to discuss. Could this man be a Galactic?"

"Fully? No, of course not," Prule sniffed. "A Galactic run from a Faktor? Humph!"

"But he undoubtedly has Galactic blood," said Kunklin cheerfully, "else how do you explain his escape from the satellite?"

"True," said Prule seriously, "but that is not particularly extraordinary. He has Galactic blood. So do hundreds of humanoid peoples on hundreds of worlds. As long as we allow tourists to visit any world they choose, whether it's aware of us or not, we will continue to find people with traces of Galactic blood. This is a failing of human nature which I expressly--"

But Kunklin was grinning widely.

"You mean his father?--"

"Or mother," Prule said dourly. "Either party might well have been at fault. It is not difficult to conjecture. A tourist drops in on this planet, notes the--ah--male or female, as the case may be--to have a certain measure of attraction, and the normal processes ensue. Most likely, of course the tourist was his father. A Galactic mother would have done--ah--whatever it is that--ah--well of course."

Prule, who was something of a moralist, became somewhat flustered. Kunklin, who was young and handsome and no moralist at all, grinned lecherously.

"Well, by Cosmos! This is really cute. I'll bet he doesn't even know!"

"In all probability. Since the laws decree silence, it is not likely that even his mother knew."

Kunklin looked back at the halftrack, chortling.

"Well, really, we have to look after him. Blood brother, I think the phrase goes."

Prule drew himself up with great dignity.

"Agent Kunklin, we must look after them _all_. There must be no more killing. First the satellite, then the trucks, then the helicopter--"

"Was there a helicopter?"

"Yes. I was too late to save it. Although I did remove the small Faktor ship that destroyed it."

Kunklin brooded.

"Well now, really, it's about time we did something, don't you think?" Prule said.

Kunklin nodded.

"Yes. Unfortunately, there is only one thing we can do."

"Use the Earthman? Um. I had expected that."

"What other course is there? They think he's a Galactic. They'll try to get him in any way possible, to stop a patrol ship from arriving on the scene. And we, already here, have no way of knowing where on this planet they are, where they've cached their--uh--spoils. Hence we must follow the Earthman."

"Well, after all, it is his planet," Prule said.

"His _women_," Kunklin corrected.

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon the halftrack struck a road. It climbed up onto it and Web pressed full speed to thirty. He had considered hiding the halftrack somewhere during the day and going on at night, but there was really no place to hide, and the aliens would probably double back and find the halftrack missing and come looking for it very soon, and they could probably see in the dark anyway. So he got out of the desert as quickly as he could.

In all, three separate scouting crews found him in the first four hours. They died silently, above him, without him being even slightly aware of their existence.

He had plenty of time to think. The big mystery, of course, was why in hell he hadn't disappeared along with everybody else. The damn things certainly wanted to kill him, or why had they followed the pod down? Well somehow, they had missed him. And he had been so doggone lucky up until now that he was beginning to feel invulnerable. He considered the whole business from beginning to end, trying to figure out what they were and why they wanted nobody in the satellite.

They wanted no Earthmen in space.

Then why didn't they just blow the thing up?

Maybe they were worried about starting a war. Maybe--yes--they wanted nobody up there because anybody up there could see what they were doing, would give an alarm, but a full scale war would be the worst thing that could happen, because they were undoubtedly somewhere on Earth right now, and they would be caught in the middle of it.

After that much thinking he was through. In the end, of course, there was no way of knowing, but whatever it was they wanted it was certainly pretty bad. Bad enough to kill him, which was all the bad he needed.

He pushed the halftrack at full speed down the road.

In the next town he stole a car. He did it quite simply, not bothering to explain, because he was in something of a hurry. He approached the car he wanted as it was standing at the curb, as its owner, a small, beefy man with a greasy shirt, was just getting out. He took the keys away from the man and took the car.

At the first town he came to he parked the car quickly, headed for the nearest phone booth, and tried to call Dundon.

He couldn't get through. Neither Dundon nor the colonel were "available," and there was no one else there who knew who he was, or what he was doing. And he could take no time to explain. Dundon and the Colonel were probably out looking for him. He swore thoroughly, but all he could do was leave his name, and ask for the message to be left that he had called, and was in the town of Huntsville. It was a heck of a situation, but he was stuck. Who would send an escort for a drunk-sounding second lieutenant?

He walked out of the booth, realizing that he must forget about the car outside, and now that he had spent a few consecutive seconds in one place he felt a deep nervousness beginning. He searched through the people around him, expecting any moment the coming of wide, white eyes and knifelike noses. But the people here were all apparently human.

Although you couldn't know. Easy to disguise eyes with contact leases.

He left a store, found a hotel room. He could not seek safety with the police. They would all disappear. Anyone he went to would disappear. There was nothing to do now but hide. He lay down on a bed and waited.