The Onslaught from Rigel Part 33

"Gloria!" he called.

"Right here," came the cheerful answer from two cages down. "This is a swell thing you got me into. How do we get out of here?"

"Have you got a pin or needle of any kind?" he asked.

"Why--yes. Turn your back." She did something mysterious among her feminine garments and held up an open safety-pin for him to see across the intervening cage.

"Stick your arm through the bars and see if you can toss it down the track. If I don't get it, you'll have to blast your way out with the light-gun, but I don't like to do that. Don't know how many shots it holds and we need them all."

She swung with that underarm motion which is the nearest any woman can achieve to a throw. The pin struck the gleaming car-rail, skidded, turned and came to rest before Sherman's cage. He reached for it, but the ape-man in the cage, who had been watching with interested eyes, was quicker. Fending Sherman off with one huge paw, he reached one of his feet through the bars for the object and held it up before his eyes admiringly.

Sherman grabbed, but this only fixed the ape-man in his evident opinion that the object he held was of value. He gripped it all the tighter, turned an amiable face toward Sherman and gibbered. Losing patience at this unfortunate contretemps when time was so precious, the aviator lifted an iron foot and kicked him, vigorously and with purpose, in the place where kicks do the most good. The ape-man pitched forward, dropping the fascinating pin, then rose and came toward Sherman, his expression clearly indicating his intention of tearing the American limb from limb. The cage was narrow: the ape-man the bigger of the two.

Sherman thought hard and fast. The oil-ball!

He leaped for the lectern, s.n.a.t.c.hed it open, seized the ape-man's oil-ball and held it aloft as though to throw it out into the corridor.

With a wail of anguish the simian clutched at the precious object.

Sherman squeezed it enough to let a little stream run forth, holding it just out of his reach, and as he stabbed for it again, tossed it back into a corner of the cell. The ape-man leaped upon it covetously, and Sherman bent over the bars, fumbling in his nervous haste to unlock them.

Luckily the safety-pin fitted. With a subdued click the bars swung inward and he was out in the corridor. Another moment and Gloria was free also.

"Any more people in here?" Sherman called. Three voices answered and he hurried from cage to cage, setting them free as the warning blue lights that prohibited shouting began to flicker around the roof.

"Come on," he called, "we must get out of here, quick!"

They hesitated a moment between the two doors, chose that at the upper end. As they raced through it, they heard a panel clash somewhere. The La.s.sans were investigating.

They were in one of the pa.s.sages through which the cars ran, with alternate bars of light and dark across it marking the termination of side-pa.s.sages. "Look!" said Gloria. Into the cage-room they had just quitted a car was coming, its featureless front gliding noiselessly along the track. "In here," said Sherman, pulling the others after him down the nearest lighted pa.s.sage.

Followed by the other four Sherman followed it steadily along to the right, where it ended at a door.

"What now?" said someone.

"In," decided Gloria. "Likely to be a cage-room as not."

Sherman searched for the inevitable finger-holes, found them and pressed. The door swung back on--

A La.s.san reclining at ease on one of the curious twisted benches beside which stood a tall jar of the same yellow-flecked green material they had seen the others devouring. The room was blue-domed but very small, and its walls were covered with soft green hangings in pendulous drops.

A thought-helmet was on the elephant-man's head; its other end was worn by one of the mechanical people whose back was to the door as they entered, and who appeared to be working some kind of machine that punched little holes of varying shape in a strip of bright metal.

As the five Americans pressed into the room, the La.s.san rose, reached for his ray-gun, but Gloria pushed the one she held into his face and he relaxed with a little squeal of terror, while Sherman reached into his pouch and secured the weapon.

As he did so the La.s.san reached up and snapped loose the thought-helmet; the metal figure turned round and gazed at them.

"Marta!"

"The boy friend!"

The La.s.san was very old. His skin was almost white and seamed with sets of diminutive wrinkles, and as he regarded the two mechanical people, locked in each other's embrace an expression of puzzlement and distaste came over his features, giving place to one of cool and lofty dignity as he perceived that Gloria did not mean to kill him on the spot. Lifting his trunk, he motioned imperiously toward the thought-helmet which Marta had cast aside, then set the other end of it on his own head.

To the invading Americans, crowded into the little room, it seemed for a moment as though they had somehow burst into a temple. Sherman's face became grave, and following the La.s.san's direction, he picked up the helmet and fitted it on his head. The thought that came through it gave a feeling of dignity and power such as he had never experienced before; almost as though it were some G.o.d talking.

"By what right," it demanded, "do you invade the room of scientific composition? Why are you not in your cages? You know you will receive the punishment of the yellow lights in the greater degree for this unauthorized invasion. Save yourself further punishment now by retiring quietly. You can take my life, it is true, but I am old and my life is of no value. Think not that I am the only La.s.san in the universe."

"Sorry," Sherman gave him back, "but this is a rebellion. You are not familiar with the history of this planet, or you would know that Americans can't be anybody's slaves. Let us go in peace and we will let you return to your own planet."

"Let us go!" came the La.s.san's answer. "Your obstinate presumption surprises me. Do you think that the La.s.sans of Rigel, the highest race in the universe will let go where they have once grasped?"

"You will or we'll jolly well make you," replied the American. "Do you think your silly green globes are going to do you any good? The last one fell beside us tonight."

Sherman could sense the sudden wave of panic in the La.s.san's thought at this unexpected answer. He had evidently a.s.sumed that they were from the underground labor battalions and were not familiar with events outside.

But he rallied n.o.bly.

"And do you imagine, foolish creature of a lower race, that the green globes are our last resource? Even now I have perfected a device that will wipe your miserable people from the planet. But if it did not, rather would we La.s.sans perish in the flames of a ruined world than abandon a task once undertaken; we who can mold the plastic flesh to enduring metal and produce machines that have brains; we who can control the great substance that underlies all life and matter."

"Well, here's one task you're going to abandon," Sherman thought back.

"We, who can call lightning from the skies, are going to give you a terrible sock on the--trunk, if you don't. If you doubt it try and find how many La.s.sans live after today's battle. Go on back where you came from. You're not wanted in this world."

"You know, or should know, the law of evolution," replied the La.s.san.

"The weaker and less intelligent must ever give way before the stronger.

By the divine right of--" his flow of thought stopped suddenly, changed to a wild tumult of panic. Sherman looked up. Round the rim of the blue dome, where it stood above the hangings, a string of lights was winking oddly, in a strange, uneven rhythm. "G.o.d of the La.s.sans, deliver us!"

the thought that reached his own was saying. "The tanks are broken--the light is loose!" Then suddenly his mind was closed and when it opened again it had taken on a new calmness and dignity and a certain G.o.d-like strength.

"I do not know how or where," it told Sherman, "but an accident has happened. Perhaps an accident produced by your strange and active race.

The connections have broken; the tanks of the substance of life in the bowels of this mountain have broken and the whole is set free. It is hard to see the labor of centuries thus destroyed; to see you, creatures of a lower race, inherit a world so divinely adapted to the rule of intelligence.

"For in this accident the whole of our race must perish if you have told the truth about the destruction of our green globes. We called in all the La.s.sans from your world for the work of the destruction of your armies. Yes, you told the truth. Your mind is open, I can see it. We are lost.... There is no hope remaining; it means destruction or the metal metamorphosis for every living La.s.san, and there will be none to endow them with the life in metal we have given you.

"Perhaps it was our own fault. Your curious race, for all its defects, has certain qualities of intelligence, and above all that strange quality of activity and what you call courage. If we could have summoned up the same activity; if we had possessed the same courage to attack against odds, this would not have happened. It is our failure that we have depended too much on naked intellect; learned to do too many things through the hands of our servants. Had La.s.sans been at the controls of our fighting s.h.i.+ps, instead of the automatons we used, you would never have conquered them so easily.

"Be that as it may. We have lost and you have won. I can show myself more generous than you would have been, and thus can gain a victory over you. If you would escape, follow the car-track straight on to where it forks; then take the left-hand turning. If you would be restored to your former and imperfect and repulsive form (though I cannot conceive why you should, being permanently fixed in beautiful and immortal metal), do not run away, but await the coming of the substance of life in the outer hall or pa.s.sage, being careful not to approach it too closely or to touch it, so that you may receive the emanation only. It is this emanation, surrounding our s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p that produced your present form, which we changed to machinery by our surgery; and it so acts on the metal of which you are composed that it will reverse the case. As for me I am old and tired; already the walls of this place tremble to the coming of my doom. Leave me, before I regret what I have told you."

He reached his trunk up and disconnected the thought-helmet, and standing up, with a certain high dignity, pointed to the door.

Relieved of the helmet Sherman could hear a confused roaring like that on the day when Marta Lami and he had short-circuited the mining machine. "Come on," he called to the rest, dropping the helmet. "h.e.l.l's let loose. We've got to hurry."

Outside the roaring was perceptibly louder and seemed to be approaching.

As they leaped down to the track a faint glow was borne to them redly along the rail. The ape-men in the cage-room they had escaped from were howling and beating the bars of their cages, with no blue lights to forbid them.

The track was slippery--Marta Lami and the three they had released from the cage room, unshod. Sherman gripped her by the hand. "Hurry, oh, hurry," he panted, pulling her along.

They pa.s.sed another pa.s.sage, down which a door stood open. The soft light that normally illuminated the place was flickering wildly, they caught a glimpse of three or four La.s.sans within, stirring wildly, rus.h.i.+ng from place to place, trying this connection and that. The dull sound behind them increased; the track grew steeper.

"What about the rest?" gasped Gloria, running by his side.

"Don't know," he answered. "They did something. The whole place is coming down."