The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter XXIV
Impassively, oblivious of the invasion about them, the workers kept on at their machines like ants when their nest is broken open. Sherman and Gloria dodged around one of them, avoiding the direct line of sight of the robot who worked at it and walked rapidly toward the door giving on the car-tracks. The man on duty had no weapon, but paid them no attention, being occupied in watching a car just sliding in to the station. “It's a shame” began Gloria, but “Shoot!” insisted Sherman and the light-ray struck him in the back of the neck fusing head and neck to a single mass. As he sank to the floor he turned partly over.
“Good heavens, it's Stevens!” said Gloria, “the man who organized the rebellion against Ben Ruby in New York and brought the dodos down on us.”
“Never mind. Hurry,” her companion urged in a fever of activity. The doors of the car were opening and half a dozen mechanical men stepped out, mostly with the foolish visages and shambling steps of the ape-men, but two whose upright walk proclaimed them human.
“Listen, everybody,” called Sherman, quickly. “We're from outside. We're trying to bust up this place. Get back in the car, quick, and come help us.” Suiting the action to the word, he leaped for the first compartment, reached it just as it was closing and wedged himself inside.
The car had a considerable run to make. In the dimly-lighted compartment, Sherman was conscious of turns, right, left, right again, and of a steady descent. He wondered vaguely whether he had taken the right method; whether the cage rooms lay near one another or were widely separated. At all events the diversion in the hall of the green globes would hold the attention of the Lassans for some time, and the short-circuiting of so many lines would hamper their methods of dealing with the emergency…
The car came to a stop. Sherman heard a door or two open, but his own did not budge, and he had no needle to stir it. He must wait, hoping that Gloria had not been isolated from him. She had the ray-gun at all events, and would not be helpless. Then the door opened again.
He was released into a cage that seemed already occupied, and one look told him that his companion was an ape-man.
“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, snatched 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 Lassans were investigating.
They were in one of the passages through which the cars ran, with alternate bars of light and dark across it marking the termination of side-passages. “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 passage.
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 Lassan 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 Lassan 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 Lassan reached up and snapped loose the thought-helmet; the metal figure turned round and gazed at them.
“Marta!”
“The boy friend!”
The Lassan 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 Lassan'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 god 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 Lassan 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 Lassan's answer. “Your obstinate presumption surprises me. Do you think that the Lassans 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 Lassan's thought at this unexpected answer. He had evidently assumed that they were from the underground labor battalions and were not familiar with events outside. But he rallied nobly.
“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 Lassans 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 Lassans 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 Lassan. “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. “God of the Lassans, 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 god-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 Lassans 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 Lassan, 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 Lassans been at the controls of our fighting ships, 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 passage, 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 space ship 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. “Hell'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 passed another passage, 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 Lassans within, stirring wildly, rushing 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.”
As they rounded a corner the track forked before them. Remembering the Lassan's parting instructions, Sherman led them to the left, passed another passage mouth, and they found themselves in a small blue-domed hall, empty save for a single car that stood on the track. There was just room to squeeze past it where the passage began again at the other end. And as they made it the roaring sound changed to a series of explosions, sharp and clear. The ground trembled, seemed to tilt; the car slid backward into the passage they had just vacated.
Ten feet, twenty-five feet more—and they were on the platform leading to the hall of the green globes. Sherman swung himself up, offered a hand to Marta. In a moment the others were beside them and they were darting for the door. The ground was trembling again, shock after shock. Something fell with a crash as they raced across the platform and into the hall.
Within, all was confused darkness and a babble of sound. A dodo screamed somewhere. An ape-man ran past them, gibbering, mad with fright, and dived to the track. Sherman ran across the hall, followed by Marta and the three he had released. Gloria halted.
Behind them something fell with a crash; ape-men ran gibbering with fright.
“Murray!” she cried, “Murray!” and then lifted the light-gun and sent a pencil of fire screeching to the roof. There was an answering shock as something tumbled from the ceiling.
“Murray!” she called again, at the top of her voice. Behind them, through the platform something fell with a crash and a long red flame licked through the door, throwing tall shadows and weird lights across the bedlam within.
“Here!” came a voice, and Gloria turned to see Murray and Ben running toward her.
“Come on,” she said, “hurry. The works is busted.”
They made the doorway just as Sherman was pulling Marta up the six-foot step. Ben and Murray lifted Gloria in their arms, tossed her up. The red flame in the background had given place to a white one, and a boiling white mass of something was sending a long tongue creeping across the floor.
Willing arms snatched at those of Ben and Murray, pulling them upward to safety. They turned to run down the tunnel.
“No!” cried Sherman. “Stick! It's all right. The old bloke told me so.”
There was another explosion and a great white cloud rolled toward them above the liquid tide. Then they lapsed into unconsciousness.
Murray Lee yawned and sat up.
The others lay around him in curious piled attitudes as though they had dropped off to sleep in the midst of something. He noted, with a shock of surprise, that Ben Ruby's face, turned in his direction, was not metal, but good, honest flesh and blood. He gazed at his own hands. Flesh and blood likewise. He looked around.
The hall of the blue dome had vanished. A tangled mass of rock, cemented in some grey material, was before them, obscure in the darkness. At the other end was the passage, its ceiling fallen here and there, its sides caved in. But a stream of light showed that an opening still led to the outside.
He bent over and shook Gloria. She came to with a start, looked about her, and said with an air of surprise, “Oh, have I been asleep? Why, what's happened to you Murray? You need a shave.” Then felt of her own face and found it smooth again.
“For Heaven's sake!” she ejaculated.
The sound brought the rest bolt upright. Sherman looked round at the others, then at the passage, and smiled with satisfaction.
“That old Lassan,” he remarked, “told me the metal evolution would reverse if we got the emanation without letting the stuff touch us. Well, he was a sport.”
“Yes, but—” said Marta Lami, standing up and feeling of herself. “Look what they did to us. My toes are flexible and my figure bulges in such queer places. I'll never be able to dance again. Oh, well, I suppose it doesn't matter—I'll be marrying the boy friend anyway.” She took Sherman's hand and he blushed with embarrassment.
“Good idea,” said Murray Lee and looked hard at Gloria.
She nodded and turned her head.
“Ho hum,” said Ben Ruby. “The dictator of New York seems to be de trop. How does one get out of here?”
'The End