America 2040 - Golden World Part 29

"Didn't know any better? They're savages." Mandy's voice rose. "They deserve to be wiped off theface of the planet."

"I know how you feel," Jacob said.

"Apache Oneto control. " Mandy spoke into the communicator.

"Go, Mandy," Rodrick said.

"Are you going to let these savages get away to attack again without warning?" she asked.

Rodrick was silent for a moment. "How are you, Mandy? Are you injured?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Duncan, they killed over two hundred people. You must kill them. You must wipe them out totally."

"Mandy, I want you to relax. As soon as we can we'll get you back here," Rodrick said.

"Don't try to humor me," she hissed. "I saw it. I saw them ax down women and children."

"Jacob, will you please take the communicator from Dr. Miller?" Rodrick asked. "Control out."

Grace Monroe, still in her wedding dress, came onto the bridge ahead of Max.

Max took a look at the pictures being transmitted by the scouts, scratched his mussed hair, and said, "Must be hydrogen. One burst of fire, and they'd go up like blazes."

"Clay Girard put an explosive round into one up north," Rodrick said. "It didn't burn."

"Helium?"

"Or something we don't know about, Max."

"And spears," Grace said, shaking her head. "It doesn't make sense."

"That's why I'm not ordering them to be exterminated," Rodrick said. "We might have to kill a few of them, because there's a fleet of them twice this size moving in from the sea."

"Fascinating," Grace said. "Humanoid?"

"Arms and legs like sticks, like the ill.u.s.trations from Stoner's Valley. Huge, protruding, faceted eyes.

Almost like insect eyes," Rodrick said.

"We must contact them," Grace said. "They're an intelligent, alien race. We're the ones who have invaded their planet."

"I'm more than willing to talk," Rodrick said, "if we can find a way to make them understand."

"Capture one," Max suggested. "Let Grace have a go at him with her translation machine."

"I won't endanger anyone," Rodrick said. "Fair enough."

"Let's find out what the fleet coming in from the sea makes of antiaircraft fire," Rodrick said. "Fire control and Mopro." Paul and Mopro reported. "When the fleet from the sea closes, put up a curtain of air bursts, high explosives. Do not shoot to hit. Just put a curtain of bursts in front of them."

It happened quickly. The fleet from the sea, riding the prevailing winds, closed fast, and there was a roar of sound as theSpirit of America 's weapons joined Mopro's.

"Well, they're not dumb," Max said, as the fleet veered northward, Jack Purdy'sDinahmite keeping between the fleet and Hamilton City.

"Apache One, " Rodrick called. "We want live prisoners. Put a hole in a gasbag and bring it down. Then use stunners. Try to pick one close to the city. We'll send out a capture party by crawler."

"Roger," Jacob said. "I think I've got the leader spotted, Cap'n. His s.h.i.+p is all red. The others are painted blue and white, like clouds and sky."

"You should be putting explosive rounds into the gondolas," Mandy complained, as Jacob flew to the red airs.h.i.+p and put a hole a yard wide in the gasbag. The s.h.i.+p quickly settled. Before it hit the ground, stickmen began to leave it on their gliding wings, andApache One joined the other scouts in low-level runs to stun each of the flyers as he hit the ground.

The remaining s.h.i.+ps of the fleet allowed the wind to blow them toward the west. Jacob keptApache One in position until the crawlers from Hamilton reached the scene and began to load the stunned stickmen.

Duncan Rodrick helped lift one of the stickmen, who was light, weighing only about sixty pounds, with hard, scaly skin. The eyes were like the enlarged eyes of an insect. One had suffered a broken arm in landing, and a yellowish liquid oozed from the compound fracture.

Each captive was immobilized with many bands of tape around arms and body and legs.

"Skipper," Paul Warden said when the stickmen were all loaded, "it looks as if we're going to have to share this planet with a race evolved from insects."

IV.

THE WHORSK.

TWENTY.

Grace Monroe had changed to slacks and blouse. Max thought she looked more beautiful than ever with her musing, thoughtful face bent toward a stickman lying, carefully trussed, on an examination table. Maxhad helped her attach the brain scanner on the pointed, hairless head. He took his eyes off Grace and watched the feedback being made by a marker on a roll of paper.

"High nodes," he grunted. "I think he's coming around."

Adam Hook, the colony's sergeant at arms, a short, round man with a bulldog face, was standing at the foot of the examination table, well armed, ready for anything. The strength of the stickman was not known. Max, too, wore a sidearm.

"I want to take a look at Mandy," Grace said. "Call me when he's conscious, will you, Max?"

"Happy wedding day," Max said, saluting, but he grinned. He knew that everyone was pitching in. His fellow groom, Duncan, was south of the city, with a medical party and a heavily armed guard, doing a distasteful ch.o.r.e. Over two hundred bodies, some of them in shocking states of mutilation, had to be bagged and returned for burial. Hamilton's cemetery was going to be well populated, and far sooner than anyone had imagined. One-sixth of the strength of the colony had been decimated in one hour.

Mandy's hospital bed was empty. Grace walked rapidly to the operating room, and there she was, in white, limping around, one knee swollen to twice its normal size.

"Mandy, what the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?" Grace demanded.

"We tried to keep her out," said Dr. Robert Allano.

"I feel better working, Grace," Mandy said. "I'm all right. Tired. That's all."

The stickman with the broken arm was lying on the operating table. "All we could do was put the break back in place," said Dr. Norman Jacks, the top bone specialist on the Life Sciences staff. "That stopped the oozing of fluid."

"Dr. Miller," a young lab technician said, "we've done some preliminary a.n.a.lyses on the fluid from this thing's wound. It's more hemolymph than blood. I think we're going to find that he breathes through his skin, taking in oxygen through many spiracles directly to the interior organs."

"Judging from that, Dr. Jacks," Grace said, "we should find no interior bone structure to speak of."

"We haven't had a chance to dissect one," Jacks replied, "but I did a little discreet probing while I set this one's broken arm. Apparently there's an exoskeleton only, with perhaps, I'd guess, some cuticular core in the larger, weight-bearing areas to give additional strength."

"They always said that insects, particularly the c.o.c.kroach, would be the only survivors of a nuclear war on Earth," Allano said. "Here the insect kingdom didn't have to wait."

"They'll be bringing in the ones I killed when we were attacked," Mandy said, in a dull, matter-of-fact voice.

"We'll know more about them when we can dissect one."

"Mr. Miller," asked the young lab technician, "you really killed some of them?"

"I wish I had had a laser cannon," Mandy said nastily. Her bitterness caused Grace to look at her, toexamine her tired, set face. She knew that Mandy was a strong woman, but, after all, she'd lost her husband and witnessed terrible atrocities.

"Its taking them a long time to come out of stun," Allano remarked. "The exoskeleton is tough and hard to rupture, but inside they're apparently relatively fragile."

"Mandy," Grace suggested, "why don't you come on back to your room and let me give you a sedative.

You're out on your feet. "

"In a little while," Mandy said. "Thank you."

Grace went back to the other examination room. Max was listening to Adam Hook recount an interesting murder investigation from when he was a New York detective. The brain waves of the stickman were stronger. Before Hook finished his story, the eyes of the stickman began to glow, and suddenly the table shook as he tried to escape the bands of strong tape that had been wrapped all around him, pinioning his arms to his sides, immobilizing his legs.

Grace stood at a careful distance and saw the thing's mouth open to show bony, serrated ridges of teeth, and she leaned forward eagerly when sounds began to come from the open mouth. At first the sounds came loudly, and rapidly, then there was a silence. Facets of the eyes seemed to change color.

"I think he's looking us over," Grace said. The glowing eyes jerked from one side to the center, pointing directly at her. "Yes, we have his attention. "

"Esseehavisatenshun," came from the stickman's mouth.

"Either he has natural ability to mimic sounds, or he's one smart b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Max said.

"Max, I want him freed," Grace said.

"Not a chance, " Adam Hook said. "Sorry, Doctor."

"Then lets put him in a detention cell," she suggested. "We can talk with him through the grill."

"What do you think, Adam?" Max asked.

"He can't come through a steel grill," Hook said.

They eased the bound stickman onto a litter, and carried him to one of the never-before-used detention cells. They put the litter on the bunk, and Hook stood by, stunner at the ready, as Max cut off the tape, starting at the creature's feet. The stickman lay quite still, the glow of his eyes following Max's movements. When the tape was removed, Max and Hook backed out of the cell and closed the steel grill. The stickman sat up, stood, seemed to s.h.i.+ver, and then the yellow glow centered in his large, ovate eyes, and he kept that glow directed toward them as he pulled out the one chair with a three-fingered hand and sat down.

Grace had brought a plastic bottle of water with her. She took off the cap, poured water into her hand, and drank it. She extended the bottle toward the stickman.

"Water?" she asked. "Water?" She poured more in her hand and held her hand out. "Water," the stickman echoed, extending his own hand. She opened a little door in the grill and handed the bottle through. The stickman sniffed, tasted carefully, and then turned the bottle up and drank deeply.

"Max, would you please get the translation computer?" Grace asked.

When the small black box was in place, she herself had found a slate board and chalk. She began with numbers, making diagonal slashes on the board and counting as she marked. She looked at the stickman, who had his hard-skinned, skull-like face pressed to the grill, yellow eyes glowing.

"Onetwothree," the stickman repeated for her. "No," she said. She pointed to him. "You. You say." She turned on the computer to record and a.n.a.lyze his sounds.

The stickman made three distinct sounds, a mixture of clicks and whistles.

"Now we'll count to ten," she told him, turning up the recording volume.

"h.e.l.l, Grace," Max said. "It'd be faster teaching him English. He catches on fast."

"But we'd know nothing about his thought processes," Grace said.

"You just want to give your d.a.m.ned machine a workout, "Max protested.

She smiled. "Well, maybe so."

"Let's work on this tomorrow," Max said, leering.

"Max-"

"I know. I know," he said, sighing.

Jackie Garvey Rodrick had also changed from her wedding gown and had reported to the bridge to relieve Ito Zuki. She was in touch with the team that was picking up the bodies at the site of the ma.s.sacre and with the scouts who were keeping an eye on the airs.h.i.+ps, which had begun to beat their way toward the Renfro Mountains.

Clay and Cindy had been recounting their adventure to a thoroughly frightened Betsy McRae. Of course, neither of them mentioned that there'd been quite a kiss when things had looked very bad.

The medical team began to bring back the bodies of Rocky Miller and his unfortunate group. It was decided that there would be one ceremony for everyone, after interment.

Mandy Miller collapsed during the dissection of a dead stickman and had to be put to bed, where she slept soundly for hours and awoke screaming.

The scouts began a rotation watch on the air fleet, with half of them coming back to Hamilton to sleep and rest.

It was dark when Duncan Rodrick walked onto the bridge of theSpirit of America to find Jackie drinking coffee and chatting with Renato Cruz on radio. Cruz was circling the fleet of lighter-than-airs.h.i.+ps, which was, he reported, in the process of landing on a sheltered plain. Jackie didn't see Rodrick come in. He stood in the shadows-she had turned on only one dim light-and listened to her, watched her graceful movement as she lifted her coffee cup.

Finally, he said, "Hi, Mrs. Rodrick."

She jumped. "Lord, I didn't know you were there."

"Jackie, I'm sorry. Not much of a wedding day, was it?"