I shut up, unconvinced. I expected us all to be clicks in a Geiger counter any second. Slugs, fighting as individuals, fought with gamecock recklessness—perhaps because they were really not individuals. Why should they be any more cautious about one of their own ships? They might be more anxious to keep it out of our hands than to save it.
We had just reached the car and spoken to Mary when the still-damp little snottie came trotting up. He halted, caught his breath, and saluted the Old Man. “The commander says that you are to have anything you want, sir—anything at all!”
From his manner I gathered that the answering dispatch had probably been spelled out in asterisks, accompanied by ruffles and flourishes. “Thank you, sir,” the Old Man said mildly. “We merely want to inspect the captured ship.”
“Yes, sir. Come with me, sir.” He came with us instead, having difficulty making up his mind whether to escort the Old Man or Mary. Mary won. I came along behind, keeping my mind on watching out and ignoring the presence of the youngster. The country on that coast, unless gardened constantly, is practically jungle; the saucer lapped over into a brake of that sort and the Old Man took a shortcut through it. The kid said to him. “Watch out, sir. Mind where you step.”
I said, “Slugs?”
He shook his head. “Coral snakes.”
At that point a poisonous snake would have seemed as pleasant as a honey bee, but I must have been paying some attention to his warning for I was looking down when the next thing happened.
I first heard a shout. Then so help me, a Bengal tiger was charging us.
Probably Mary got in the first shot. I know that mine was not behind that of the young officer; it might even have been ahead. I’m sure it was—fairly sure, anyhow. It was the Old Man who shot last.
Among the four of us we cut that beast so many ways that it would never be worth anything as a rug. And yet the slug on it was untouched; I fried it with my second bolt. The young fellow looked at it without surprise. “Well,” he said, “I thought we had cleaned up that load.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“One of the first transport tanks they sent out. Regular Noah’s Ark. We were shooting everything from gorillas to polar bears. Say, did you ever have a water buffalo come at you?”
“No and I don’t want to.”
“Not near as bad as the dogs, really. If you ask me, those things don’t have much sense.” He looked at the slug, quite unmoved, while I was ready as usual to throw up.
We got up out of there fast and onto the titan ship—which did not make me less nervous, but more. Not that there was anything frightening in the ship itself, not in its appearance.
But its appearance wasn’t right. While it was obviously artificial, one knew without being told that it was not made by men. Why? I don’t know. The surface of it was dull mirror, not a mark on it—not any sort of a mark; there was no way to tell how it had been put together. It was as smooth as a Jo block.
I could not tell of what it was made. Metal? Of course, it had to be metal. But was it? You would expect it to be either bitterly cold—or possibly intensely hot from its landing. I touched it and it was not anything at all, neither cold nor hot. Don’t tell me it just happened to be exactly ninety-eight and six-tenths. I noticed another thing presently; a ship that size, landing at high speed, should have blasted a couple of acres. There was no blast area at all; the brake around it was green and rank.
We went up to the parasol business, the air lock, if that is what it was. The edge was jammed down tight on the little mud turtle; the armor of the tank was crushed in, as one might crush a pasteboard box with the hand. Those mud turtles are built to launch five hundred feet deep in water; they are strong.
Well, I suppose this one was strong. The parasol arrangement had damaged it, but the air lock had not closed. On the other hand the metal, or whatever the spaceship’s door was made of, was unmarked by the exchange.
The Old Man turned to me. “Wait here with Mary.”
“You’re not going in there by yourself?”
“Yes. There may be very little time.”
The kid spoke up. “I’m to stay with you, sir. That’s what the commander said.”
“Very well, sir,” the Old Man agreed. “Come along.” He peered over the edge, then knelt and lowered himself by his hands. The kid followed him. I felt burned up—but had no desire to argue the arrangements.
They disappeared into the hole. Mary turned to me and said, “Sam—I don’t like this. I’m afraid.”
She startled me. I was afraid myself—but I had not expected her to be. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Do we have to stay? He did not say so, quite.”
I considered it. “If you want to go back to the car I’ll take you back.”
“Well…no, Sam, I guess we have to stay. Come closer to me.” She was trembling.
I don’t know how long it was before they stuck their heads over the rim. The youngster climbed out and the Old Man told him to stand guard. “Come on,” he said to us, “it’s safe—I think.”
“The hell it is,” I told him, but I went because Mary was already starting. The Old Man helped her down.
“Mind your head,” he said. “Low bridge all the way.”
It is a platitude that unhuman races produce unhuman works, but very few humans have ever been inside a Venerian labyrinth and still fewer have seen the Martian ruins—and I was not one of the few. I don’t know what I expected. Superficially the inside of the saucer was not, I suppose, too startling, but it was strange. It had been thought out by unhuman brains, ones which did not depend on human ideas in fabricating, brains which had never heard of the right angle and the straight line or which regarded them as unnecessary or undesirable. We found ourselves in a very small oblate chamber and from there we crawled through a tube about four feet thick, a tube which seemed to wind down into the ship and which glowed from all its surface with a reddish light.
The tube held an odd and somewhat distressing odor, as if of marsh gas, and mixed with it faintly was the reek of dead slugs. That and the reddish glow and the total lack of heat response from the wall of the tube as my palms pressed against it gave me the unpleasant fancy that I was crawling through the gut of some unearthly behemoth rather than exploring a strange machine.
The tube branched like an artery and there we came across our first Titanian androgyne. He—let me call it “he”—was sprawled on his back, like a child sleeping, his head pillowed on his slug. There was a suggestion of a smile on the little rosebud mouth; at first I did not realize that he was dead.
At first sight the similarities between the Titanian people and ourselves are more noticeable than the differences; we impress what we expect to see on what we do see, as a wind-sculptured rock may look like a human head or a dancing bear. Take the pretty little “mouth” for example; how was I to know that it was an organ for breathing solely?
Conceded that they are not human and that, despite the casual similarities of four limbs and a head-like protuberance, we are less like them than is a bullfrog like a bullpup; nevertheless the general effect is pleasing, not frightening, and faintly human. “Elfin” I should say—the elves of Saturn’s moons. Had we met them before the slugs we call titans possessed them I think we could have gotten along with them. Judged by their ability to build the saucers they were our equals—if they did build them. (Certainly the slugs did not build them; slugs are not builders but thieves, cosmic cuckoos.)
But I am letting my own later thoughts get in the way. When I saw the little fellow I managed to draw my gun. The Old Man, anticipating my reaction, turned and said, “Take it easy. It’s dead—they are all dead, smothered in oxygen when the tank ruined their air seal.”
I still had my gun out. “I want to burn the slug,” I insisted. “It may still be alive.” It was not covered by the horny shell we had lately come to expect but was naked, moist and ugly.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. It can’t possibly
hurt you.”
“Why not?”
“Wrong chemistry. That slug can’t live on an oxygen breather.” He crawled across the little body, giving me no chance to shoot had I decided to. Mary, always so quick with a gun, had not drawn but had shrunk against my side and was breathing in sharp little sobbing gasps. The Old Man stopped and said patiently, “Coming, Mary?”
She choked and then gasped, “Let’s go back! Let’s get out of here!”
I said, “She’s right. This is no job for three people; this is something for a research team and proper equipment.”
He paid no attention to me. “It has to be done, Mary. You know that. And you have to be the one to do it.”
“Why does she have to do it?” I demanded angrily.
Again he ignored me. “Well, Mary?”
From somewhere inside herself she called on reserves. Her breathing became normal, her features relaxed, and she crawled across the slug-ridden elfin body with the serenity of a queen going to the gallows. I lumbered after them, still hampered by my gun and trying not to touch the body.
We came at last to a large chamber. It may have been the control room, for there were many of the dead little elfin creatures in it, though I saw nothing resembling (to my eye) instruments or machinery. Its inner surface was cavitated and picked out with lights much brighter than the reddish illumination and the chamber space was festooned with processes as meaningless to me as the convolutions of a brain. I was troubled again with the thought—completely wrong, I know now—that the ship itself was a living organism.
The Old Man paid no attention but crawled on through and into another ruddy-glowing tube. We followed its contortions to a place where it widened out to ten feet or more with a “ceiling” overhead almost tall enough to let us stand erect. But that was not what caught our eyes; the walls were no longer opaque.
On each side of us, beyond transparent membranes, were thousands on thousands of slugs, swimming, floating, writhing in some fluid which sustained them. Each tank had an inner diffuse light of its own and I could see back into the palpitating mass—and I wanted to scream.
I still had my gun out. The Old Man reached back and placed his hand over the bell of it. “Don’t yield to temptation,” he warned me. “You don’t want to let that loose in here. Those are for us.”
Mary looked at them with a face too calm. Thinking back, I doubt that she was fully conscious in the ordinary sense. I looked at her, glanced back at the walls of that ghoulish aquarium, and said urgently, “Let’s get out of here if we can—then just bomb it out of existence.”
“No,” he said quietly, “there is more. Come.” The tube narrowed in again, then enlarged and we were again in a somewhat smaller chamber like that of the slugs. Again there were transparent walls and again there were things floating beyond them.
I had to look twice before I could fully make out and believe what I saw.
Floating just beyond the wall, face down, was the body of a man—a human, Earth-born man—about forty to fifty years old. He was grizzled and almost bald. His arms were curved across his chest and his knees were drawn up, as if he were sleeping safe in bed—or in the womb.
I watched him, thinking terrible thoughts. He was not alone; there were more beyond him, male and female, young and old—but he was the only one I could see properly and he got my attention. I was sure that he was dead; it did not occur to me to think otherwise—then I saw his mouth working—and then I wished he were dead.
Mary was wandering around in that chamber as if she were drunk—no, not drunk but preoccupied and dazed. She went from one transparent wall to the other, peering intently into the crowded, half-seen depths. The Old Man looked only at her. “Well, Mary?” he said softly.
“I can’t find them!” she said piteously in a voice like a little girl’s. She ran back to the other side.
The Old Man grasped her arm and stopped her. “You’re not looking for them in the right place,” he said firmly. “Go back where they are. Remember?”
She stopped and her voice was a wail. “I can’t remember!”
“You must remember…now. This is what you can do for them. You must return to where they are and look for them.”
Her eyes closed and tears started leaking from them. She gasped and choked. I pushed myself between them and said, “Stop this! What are you doing to her?”
He grabbed me with his free hand and pushed me away. “No, son,” he whispered fiercely. “Keep out of this—you must keep out.”
“But—”
“No!” He let go of Mary and led me away to the entrance. “Stay there. And, as you love your wife, as you hate the titans, do not interfere. I shan’t hurt her—that’s a promise.”
“What are you going to do?” But he had turned away. I stayed, unwilling to let it go on, afraid to tamper with what I did not understand.
Mary had sunk down to the floor and now squatted on it like a child, her face covered with her hands. The Old Man went back to her, knelt down and touched her arm. “Go back,” I heard him say. “Go back to where it started.”
I could barely hear her answer, “No…no.”
“How old were you? You seemed to be about seven or eight when you were found. It was before that?”
“Yes—yes, it was before that.” She sobbed and collapsed completely to the floor. “Mama! Mama!”
“What is your mama saying?” he asked gently.
“She doesn’t say anything. She’s looking at me so queerly. There’s something on her back. I’m afraid, I’m afraid!”
I got up and hurried toward them, crouching to keep from hitting the low ceiling. Without taking his eyes off Mary the Old Man motioned me back. I stopped, hesitated. “Go back,” he ordered. “Way back.”
The words were directed at me and I obeyed them—but so did Mary. “There was a ship,” she muttered, “a big shiny ship—” He said something to her; if she answered I could not hear it. I stayed back this time and made no attempt to interfere. I could see that he was doing her no physical hurt and, despite my vastly disturbed emotions, I realized that something important was going on, something big enough to absorb the Old Man’s full attention in the very teeth of the enemy.
He continued to talk to her, soothingly but insistently. Mary quieted down, seemed to sink almost into a lethargy, but I could hear that she answered him. After a while she was talking in the monotonous logorrhea of emotional release. Only occasionally did the Old Man prompt her.
I heard something crawling along the passage behind me. I turned and drew my gun, with a wild feeling that we were trapped. I almost shot him before I realized that it was the ubiquitous young officer we had left outside. “Come on out!” he said urgently. He pushed on past me out into the chamber and repeated the demand to the Old Man.
The Old Man looked exasperated beyond endurance. “Shut up and don’t bother me,” he said.
“You’ve got to, sir,” the youngster insisted. “The commander says that you must come out at once. We’re falling back; the commander says he may have to use demolition at any moment. If we are still inside—blooie! That’s it.”
“Very well,” the Old Man agreed in unhurried tones. “We’re coming. You go out and tell your commander that he must hold off until we get out; I have vitally important information. Son, help me with Mary.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” the youngster acknowledged. “But hurry!” He scrambled away. I picked up Mary and carried her to where the chamber narrowed into a tube; she seemed almost unconscious. I put her down.
“We’ll have to drag her,” the Old Man said. “She may not come out of this soon. Here—let me get her up on your back, you can crawl with her.”
I paid no attention but shook her. “Mary,” I shouted, “Mary! Can you hear me?”
Her eyes opened. “Yes, Sam?”
“Darling—we’ve got to get out of here, fast! Can you crawl?”
“Yes, Sam.” She closed her eyes again. I shook her again. “Mary!”
“Yes, darling? What is it? I’m so tired.”
“Listen, Mary—you’ve got to crawl out of here. If you don’t the slugs will get us—do you understand?”
“All right, darling.” Her eyes stayed open this time but were vacant. I got her headed up the tube and came along after her. Whenever she faltered or slowed I slapped at her. I lifted and dragged her through the chamber of the slugs and again through the control room, if that is what it was. When we came to the place where the tube was partly blocked by the dead elfin creature she stopped; I wormed my way past her and moved it, stuffing it into the branching tube. There was no doubt, this time, that its slug was dead; I gagged at the job. Again I had to slap her into cooperation.
After an endless nightmare of leaden-limbed striving we reached the outer door and the young officer was there to help us lift her out, him pulling and the Old Man and me lifting and pushing. I gave the Old Man a leg up, jumped out myself, and took her away from the youngster. It was quite dark.
We went back the long way past the crushed house, avoiding the jungle like brake, and thence down to the beach road. Our car was no longer there; it did not matter for we found ourselves hurried into a “mud turtle” tank—none too soon, for the fighting was almost on top of us. The tank commander buttoned up and the craft lumbered off the stepped-back seawall and into the water. Fifteen minutes later we were inside the Fulton.
And an hour later we disembarked at the Mobile base. The Old Man and I had bad coffee and sandwiches in the wardroom of the Fulton, some of the Wave officers had taken Mary and cared for her in the women’s quarters. She joined us as we left and seemed entirely normal. I said, “Mary, are you all right?”
She smiled at me. “Of course, darling. Why shouldn’t I be?”
A small command ship and an escort took us out of there. I had supposed that we were headed back to the Section offices, or more likely to Washington. I had not asked; the Old Man was in no mood to talk and I was satisfied simply to hold Mary’s hand and feel relieved.