The Best Of A. E. Van Vogt: Volume 2 Part 17

Hanardy led the way, his heavy body trembling. He had the feeling that he had made an admission that spelled victory for the Dreegh. But there was no turning back. If this creature was a Dreegh, then resistance was useless. He knew that intuitively.

"If I could only be sure," Hanardy thought miserably.

And the stupid thing was that he was sure. As sure, it seemed to him, as he could ever be. But he wasn't sure enough even to make the attempt to save his own life. As things stood, he'd have to go through with this farce until the Dreegh--satisfied that all was well--destroyed them all in his own good time.

4.

It was twenty minutes later.

... After they had found the little black room to be merely a drab closet where the professor had always kept certain tools, but otherwise empty.

"Where was it stored?" Madro demanded of Hanardy. "I mean the energy that Leigh got."

Hanardy pointed unhappily at the metal wall inside the closet.

"Are you saying the energy was in the wall?"

The question once more disturbed Hanardy's sense of the reality of his own thoughts, and so he simply stood there, shaken, as Pat and Professor Ungarn pressed forward and with a portable instrument tested the wall.

Madro did not join them, nor did he again look into the little room. Hanardy felt an inner tremor as the Dreegh, ignoring what the father and daughter were doing, turned and strode toward him.

"Steve," he said, "I want to talk to you."

He glanced back, raised his voice, "I'm going to take Hanardy for a little private questioning."

"All right!" That was Pat. But neither she nor her father turned. Madro had not waited. His fingers gripped Hanardy's arm firmly at the elbow. Shrinking, Hanardy realized the other's intent.

A test!

To determine how vulnerable he was.

To the death--if he were that weak.

Even as Hanardy had these awarenesses, Madro drew him away from the storeroom and around a corner. Hanardy kept looking back, not daring to call for help but yet hoping that the professor and his daughter would be motivated to follow.

His final view of them showed them still inside the closet, and the professor was saying, "A series of tests on this wall should--"

Hanardy wondered what they would think when they found him gone--and dead.

Madro drew Hanardy along the side corridor and into a room. He closed the door, and they were alone. Hanardy still not resisting.

Madro stood there for a few moments, tall, lean, smiling.

"Let's settle this once and for all," he said softly. "Myself--against whatever ability you were endowed with."

And because Hanardy had begun to have fantasies, had nurtured a tiny hope that maybe it was true, that maybe something great had rubbed off on him--as Professor Ungarn had implied--for a few seconds, Hanardy actually waited for that something inside him to handle this situation.

That was all the time he had--seconds. The speed of Madro's attack, and the total violent intent of it, instantly defeated that waiting reaction.

He was lifted effortlessly, grabbed by one foot, held like a rag doll, and incredibly was about to have his head dashed against the near wall--when, with a primitive survival spasm of effort, Hanardy kicked with his other foot, kicked hard against the wrist of the hand by which Madro held him.

For that moment, for that one attack, it was resistance enough. The Dreegh let him go. Hanardy fell--the slow-motion fall of less than Earth gravity. Far too slow for the speed of Madro's second attack.

In his awkward, muscle-bound way, only one of Hanardy's dragging legs actually struck the floor. The next moment he was caught again by fingers that were like granite biting into his clothes and body--Madro obviously neither heeding nor caring which.

And there was no longer any doubt in Hanardy's mind. He had no special ability by which he might defeat the Dreegh's deadly intent.

He had no inner resources. No visions. He was helpless. His hard muscles were like putty in the steely grip of a man whose strength overwhelmingly transcended his own.

Hanardy ceased his writhings and yelled desperately, "For Pete's sake, why all this murder when there's only five women Dreeghs and four men left? Why don't you Dreeghs change, try once more to become normal?"

As swiftly as it had started, the violence ended.

Madro let him go, stepped back and stared at him. "A message!" he said. "So that's your role."

Hanardy did not immediately realize that the threat was ended. He had fallen to the floor. From that begging position he continued his appeal. "You don't have to kill me! I'll keep my mouth shut. Who'd believe me, anyway?"

"What's normal?" The Dreegh's voice was cold and demanding. The radiation from him--uncleanness--was stronger.

"Me," said Hanardy.

"You!" Incredulous tone.

"Yeah, me." Hanardy spoke urgently. "What ails me is that I'm a low-lifer, somehow. But I'm a normal lug. Things balance out in me--that's the key. I take a drink, but not because I have to. It doesn't affect me particularly. When I was in my teens once I tried taking drugs. h.e.l.l, I just felt it didn't fit in my body. I just threw it off. That's normal. You can't do that with what you've got."

"What's normal?" Madro was cold, steady, remote.

"You're sick," said Hanardy. "All that blood and life energy. It's abnormal. Not really necessary. You can be cured."

Having spoken the strange words, Hanardy realized their strangeness. He blinked.

"I didn't know I was going to say that," he mumbled.

The Dreegh's expression was changing as he listened. Suddenly he nodded and said aloud, "I actually believe we've been given a communication from the Great Galactic. A twelfth-hour, last-chance offer."

"What will you do with me?" Hanardy mumbled.

"The question," came the steely reply, "is what is the best way to neutralize you? I choose this way!"

A metallic something glittered in the Dreegh's hand. From its muzzle a s.h.i.+mmering line of light reached toward Hanardy's head.

The s.p.a.ceman flinched, tried to duck, had the cringing thought that this was death and stood there expecting at the very least a terrible shock.

He felt nothing. The light hit his face; and it was as if a pencil beam from a bright flashlight had briefly glared into his eyes. Then the light went, and there he stood blinking a little, but unhurt so far as he could determine.

He was still standing there when the Dreegh said, "What you and I are going to do now is that you're going to come with me and show me all the places on this meteorite where there are armaments or small arms of any kind."

Hanardy walked ahead, kept glancing back; and there, each time he looked, was the long body with its grim face.

The resemblance to Thadled Madro was visibly fading, as if the other had actually twisted his features into a duplication of the young male Klugg's face, not using makeup at all, and now he was relaxing.

They came to where the Ungarns waited. Father and daughter said nothing at all. To Hanardy they seemed subdued; the girl was strangely pale. He thought: "They do know!"

The overt revelation came as the four of them arrived in the main living quarters. Professor Ungarn sighed, turned and--ignoring Hanardy--said, "Well, Mr. Dreegh, my daughter and I are wondering why the delay in our execution?"

"Hanardy!" was the reply.

Having uttered the name, as if Hanardy himself were not present, the Dreegh stood for a long moment, eyes narrowed, lips slightly parted, even white teeth clamped together. The result was a kind of a snarling smile.

"He seems to be under your control. Is he?" That was Pat Ungarn, in a small voice. The moment she had spoken, and thus attracted the Dreegh's attention, she shrank, actually retreated a few steps, as he looked at her.

Sween-Madro's tense body relaxed. But his smile was as grim as ever. And still he ignored Hanardy's presence.

"I gave Steve a special type of energy charge that will nullify for the time being what was done to him."

Professor Ungarn laughed curtly. "Do you really believe that you can defeat this--this being--William Leigh ... defeat him with what you have done to Steve? After all, he's your real opponent, not Hanardy. This is a shadow battle. One of the fighters has left a puppet to strike his blows for him."

Sween-Madro said in an even tone, "It's not as dangerous as it seems. Puppets are notoriously poor fighters."

The professor argued, "Any individual of the race known to lesser races as Great Galactics--which was obviously not their real name--must be presumed to have taken all such possibilities into account. What can you gain by delay?"

Sween-Madro hesitated, then: "Steve mentioned a possible cure for our condition." His voice held an edge in it.

There was a sudden silence. It settled over the room and seemed to permeate the four people in it.

The soundless time was broken by a curt laugh from Sween-Madro. He said, "I sensed that for a few seconds I seemed--"

"Human," said Pat Ungarn. "As if you had feelings and hopes and desires like us."

"Don't count on it." The Dreegh's voice was harsh.

Professor Ungarn said slowly, "I suspect that you a.n.a.lyzed Steve has a memory of mental contact with a supreme, perhaps even an ultimate, intelligence. Now, these earth people when awake are in that peculiar, perennially confused state that makes them unacceptable for galactic citizens.h.i.+p. So that the very best way to defend yourself from Steve's memory is to keep him awake. I therefore deduce that the energy charge you fired at him was designed to maintain in continuous stimulation the waking center in the brain stem.

"But that is only a temporary defense. In four or five days, exhaustion in Hanardy would reach an extreme state, and something in the body would have to give. What will you have then that you don't have now?"

The Dreegh seemed surprisingly willing to answer, as if by uttering his explanations aloud he could listen to them himself, and so judge them.

He said, "My colleagues will have arrived by then."

"So then you're all in the trap," said Professor Ungarn. "I think your safest bet would be to kill Pat and me right now. As for Steve--"

Hanardy had been listening to the interchange with a growing conviction that this melancholy old man was arguing them all into being immediately executed.

"Hey!" he interrupted urgently. "What are you trying to do?"

The scientist waved at him impatiently. "Shut up, Steve. Surely you realize that this Dreegh will kill without mercy. I'm trying to find out why he's holding off. It doesn't fit with what I consider to be good sense."

He broke off, "Don't worry about him killing you. He doesn't dare. You're safe."

Hanardy felt extremely unsafe. Nevertheless, he had a long history of accepting orders from this man; so he remained dutifully silent.

The Dreegh, who had listened to the brief interchange thoughtfully, said in an even tone that when his companions arrived, he, Hanardy and Pat Ungarn would go to Europa. He believed Pat was needed on such a journey. So no one would be killed until it was over.

"I'm remembering," Sween-Madro continued, "what Steve said about the Great Galactic noticing something. I deduce that what he noticed had to do with Steve himself. So we'll go to s.p.a.ceport and study Steve's past behavior there. Right now, let's disarm the entire place for my peace of mind."

Clearly, it would not be for anyone else's.

From room to room, and along each corridor, silently the three prisoners accompanied their powerful conqueror.

And presently every weapon in the meteorite was neutralized or disposed of. Even energy sources that might be converted were sealed off. Thus, the meteorite screens were actually de-energized and the machinery to operate them, wrecked.

The Dreegh next cut off escape possibilities by dismantling several tiny s.p.a.ce boats. The last place they went, first Hanardy, then the professor, then Pat, and finally Sween-Madro, was Hanardy's s.p.a.ce freighter. There also, all the weapons were eliminated, and the Dreegh had Hanardy dismantle the control board. From the parts that were presently lying over the floor, the gaunt man, with unerring understanding, selected key items. With these in hand, he paused in the doorway. His baleful gaze caught Hanardy's s.h.i.+fting eyes. "Steve!" he said. "You'll stay right here."

"You mean, inside my s.h.i.+p?"..

"Yes. If you leave here for any reason, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"

Hanardy glanced helplessly toward Professor Ungarn and then back at the Dreegh. He said, "There's some work the professor wanted me to do."

"Professor Ungarn,"--it was the vampire's harsh voice cutting across Hanardy's uncertain protest--"tell him how unimportant such work is."

Hanardy was briefly aware of the old man's wan smile. The scientist said wearily, "Pat and I will be killed as soon as we have served our purpose. What he will eventually do with you, we don't know."

"So you'll stay right here. You two come with me," Sween-Madro ordered the professor and his daughter.

They went as silently as they had come. The airlock door clanged. Hanardy could hear the interlocking steel bolts wheeze into position. After that, no sound came.

The potentially most intelligent man in the solar system was alone--and wide awake.

5.

Sitting, or lying down, waiting posed no problems for Hanardy. His years alone in s.p.a.ce had prepared him for the ordeal that now began. There was a difference.

As he presently discovered when he lay down on his narrow cot, he couldn't sleep.

Twenty-four earth hours ticked by.