Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 (6 page)

 
          
He
felt panic, and in the same moment he felt inspiration. He must hide, at once.
Frantically he glanced around. In a comer he saw the palm-fiber sails, loosely
bundled together. He dived for them and then into them, like a rabbit into its
burrow. He wriggled deep among the folds, turned around, and cautiously lifted
a corner of the fabric so that he could peer out.

 
          
As
he did so, a shiny-swaddled shape, indistinct in the dim red glow, came in
through the hatchway. It went humping across the floor, and as it cleared the
way another followed it in. This second one put out a tentacle, sleeved and
gloved, to slide the hatch shut. The first went forward in the ship and touched
some instruments that gave a faint vibrant clatter. The red light grew brighter
and paler. Then the floor beneath Darragh vibrated. It shifted. The ship was
taking off.

 
          
The
strengthening of the light gave Darragh his first clear view of the
compartment. It was no more than half the length of the vessel in extent, a
curve-walled chamber like the inside of an egg, some ten feet long. The rest of
the craft's interior must be occupied by the engines. Silent engines they were—
Darragh did not hear even the faintest purring of machinery in motion. There
was no furniture for the Cold People, who were not built to sit or to he, even
when in that motionless condition which for them must approximate sleep. Here
and there the bulkheads were pierced with glassed-in ports, and between these
were studded with strange instruments that might be gauges or chronometers, and
were furnished in several places with hatchlike panels that might be the doors
to cupboards.

 
          
The
gear that operated the craft was strange but, after Darragh had gazed at it for
moments, understandable.

 
          
Upon
a litde round pedestal of shimmery metal there lay, or was fastened, a
horizontal cross made of two wirelike rods, with the arms about a foot long.
From the intersection of the rods rose a third slender length, like the gnomon
of a sundial, but perpendicular. Each of the four arms of the cross, as well as
the upright fifth arm, was furnished with a beadlike object, more than an inch
in diameter and dead black in color. The position of these beads determined the
direction and speed of the craft.

 
          
Just
now, as Darragh judged, they were rising upward. The Cold creature at the
controls had its tentacle to the bead on the upright arm and held it nearly at
the top of the rod. And likewise they were going straight ahead; another
tentacle had advanced the bead on the forward arm of the cross, while those on
the other three arms remained at the intersection of the rods. Already they must
be soaring high above Haiti and the tropic heat, for upon Darragh's naked body
began to rise protesting areas of gooseflesh. He tried not to shiver or to
breathe heavily.

 
          
He
tried, also, not to curse himself for getting into the ship so confidently. Cursing
one's self was a waste of time, when one needed badly to find a way out of
mortal danger.

 
          
Mark Darragh was
young, tough and
healthy, but he was tropic-born and tropic-bred. Cold temperatures he had never
been made to endure, and here in this high-mounting aircraft it was growing
colder by the second. He groped frantically in his mind for some way of escape,
and yet another inspiration came to his mental hand.

 
          
He
had most sagely prepared a warm dress, an armor of his own against just such
shuddering chill. He himself had fashioned it of those two thicknesses of fine
deerskin, with a comforting layer of cotton down quilted between them. And he
had stowed it, as he well remembered, under the foredeck of his dugout when he
made ready to sail down the Orinoco.

 
          
But
it had been gone from the dugout when he had scrambled down into the open lock.
It must be here in this cabin, with his other gear. It must be. He widened the
crack of his vision between the folds of the woven sail.

 
          
There
was the bundle, sure enough—a great lumpy package of leather folded and bound
with strips of rawhide. In its center were the good moccasins, the gauntiets,
the goggles and the scarf. But it lay a sickeningly long four feet out of his
reach as he huddled there.

 
          
He
clamped his strong teeth together lest they chatter, and considered hunching
the sail a bit closer. But surely that would be noticed by one of the Cold
Creatures hunched so close to him, perhaps by both. While he wondered what to
do, it grew colder, degree by degree. The temperature, if he were able to read
whatever the Cold Creatures employed as a thermometer, must already
be
close to freezing.

           
Well, he had to get the
garments, that was
certain. He had to reach them, drag them
unobserved into his hiding, and there pull them over his suffering nakedness. A
shiver threatened to convulse his body, to make it thrash like a jumping-jack.
Desperately he fought it down. He wrapped both arms around himself in a
half-instinctive gesture to shut out the cold, and his left hand touched the
hilt of his saber, still slung over his shoulder.

 
          
That
suddenly gave him new hope. He dragged the weapon around to his front, and
began to draw the weapon, an inch at a time, down there under the sail. When at
last it was free of the scabbard, he pushed the fold of fabric a little wider.
His breath made a steamy cloud in the red-lighted air of the cabin.

 
          
Neither
of the Cold Creatures seemed to notice. One was paying close attention to the
controls; the other lounged lumpily at a port as though observing the night
outside. Darragh extended his arm into the open, and touched the bundle of
deerskin clothing with the point of his saber.

 
          
Painstakingly
he worked the blade under a strand of the rawhide that bound the package. As he
had done when leaving the dugout to explore on the shore of Haiti, Darragh
repeated a prayer to himself, but this time it was a prayer of deep and devout
thanks. Gendy he began to twitch the prize near to him.

 
          
At
that very instant, the Cold Creature at the port turned itself around with
ponderous smoothness, facing in his direction.

 
          
It
was impossible that the thing could not perceive. Darragh did not
move,
his hand with the saber and his arm from the elbow
downward in the open. Perceiving, the creature did not quite understand. Mildly
mystified, it began to hunch its bulk closer.

 
          
Darragh
lay huddled as though the chill of the air had indeed frozen him stiff. He
dared not unclasp his stiffened fingers from the saber hilt or turn betrayingly
under the palm fiber cloth; the least motion would have given
him
away
entirely. The monster inched toward him until it towered above the wadded sail
and the bundle of leather and the saber. Its strange sensory powers, whatever
they were, plainly were concentrated upon this curiosity. Darragh, crouching
where he was—like a mouse under
a
napkin—could
see through its transparent armoring drapery the glow and pulsation of its
central organ.

 
          
Now
it was observing that naked hand that emerged from the sail's depths. No doubt
but that it was aware what sort of creature owned such an extremity. A tentacle
reached down to twitch away the concealing sail; another fell down toward
a
pouch that hung to the armor fabric,
a
pouch that held some sort of weapon.

 
          
A ray-thrower, perhaps.

           
Darragh told himself not to die
quiedy. His lips dragged themselves from his clenched teeth as he quickly rose
to his knees and made a slashing cut with his saber.

 
          
The
thing divined the move and tried to sidle backward, but not in time. The point
of Darragh's saber snagged the protecting cloak and sliced
a
great smooth rent in it. And that was
all the
saber needed to do.

 
          
Staring,
Darragh saw the creature's tentacles relax, quiver and sag, saw a slumping of
the great gross pyramidal shape of gelatinous tissue that was the body. The afr
that to Darragh seemed torturingly cold was rushing through that slit he had
made in the armor, like a blast of murderous heat. Already the monster was
helpless, unconscious. Darragh, still upon his knees, the fighting grin stamped
upon his desperate brown face, watched while the inner organ grew dimmer,
feebler of
pulse,
and dark and motionless.

 
          
The
Cold Creature was dead. He knew that, and he knew why.

 
          
From
what little he had heard from men who had assembled knowledge about the
invaders, the Cold Creatures must have come from a planet not only bitterly
cold, but of an unchanging temperature. Like snakes and snails, the Cold
Creatures took their temperature from their surroundings, and did not have
within themselves any heat-regulating mechanism. But they were highly
organized mentalities. A very few degrees of heat beyond their margin of
endurance meant unconsciousness. If it continued, that unendurable degree of
heat, it meant death.

 
          
Darragh's
discoverer had died, within less than a minute— the first of the Cold Creatures
to die of a human hand since those pitifully unequal pitched battles of half a
century ago.

 
          
No
motion or menace from the operator a few feet away at the controls of the ship.
The drama of menace and sudden counter-attack and death behind it had gone all
unnoticed. Darragh felt a sudden surging flush of fierce, triumphant
exultation. Then he dragged the clothes to him and, crouching to hide behind
the silent bulk of the Cold Creature he had slain, drew his knife and cut away
the lashings. In trembling silence he drew on the wide breeches, tied the
belt-cord, and then lowered the quilted jacket down over his head. He dragged
the moccasins upon his numb bare feet, gratefully slid his hands into the
gauntiets, and pulled the hood over his ears and face. He drew a steamy breath
of comparative relief, and dared to peer cautiously around the shielding bulk
of his conquered enemy.

 
          
Still
the ship was mounting upward, its floor gendy tilted beneath him as he
crouched, and the temperature was dropping steadily. By now, as Darragh
judged, it was truly below the freezing mark. He had not won his swift victory
and secured his garments any whit too soon. But the quilted swaddling of
leather was sufficient. He strapped the goggles over his eyes, and wound his
nose and mouth in the grateful warmth of the woollen scarf. Then, very
gingerly, he wriggled back under the sail and propped up its edge so that he
could look out past the dead mass of his victim toward the other creature at
the controls.

 
          
He
found himself ready to accept his own congratulations at killing one enemy;
but, since he had done so, he must kill the other if it did not kill him first.
He could see the transparent pouch on the armor at its side, and in the pouch
the pistol-formed apparatus for throwing rays. So far luck had been richly on
the side of Mark Darragh, and he felt it would carry him further. But he would
launch the attack at the next clash, before this second enemy could muster its
devices against him.

 
          
Attack
he would, but not now, not until he had learned something more about how to
operate the ship. If he managed to kill the second creature, he must manage to
keep the speeding vessel from crashing with him. He glued his goggle-covered
eyes to the controls on which confidently skillful tentacle-tips slid beads
backward and forward to adjust speed and direction. Higher the craft was
mounting, and higher, toward the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. Darragh
felt the chill of the altitude, even through his thick garments of quilted
leather; his breath made frost in the woolen fabric he had stretched across his
mouth and nose, so that it was like a rigid mask of ice-cold tin.

 
          
At
last the creature at the controls began to pluck at its armor with free
tentacles, unfastening studs and clamps and dragging the fabric away. Its own
range of temperature-comfort was being reached up in these heights, judged
Darragh, something well below zero. With three tentacles the thing deftiy
folded the discarded armor into a compact
parcel,
and
with it the pouch with the weapon. Now; Darragh told himself, the time had come
for striking.

 
          
He
took his saber tightiy in his gloved right hand, rose cautiously upon his
moccasined feet behind the protecting carcass of the dead Cold Creature,
then
sprang around it and at the other.

 
          
The
thing was aware of him as he came out into the open. It had been fumbling at
the catch of a cupboard panel, as though to stow its folded armor away. But now
it slid clear of its controls and hurriedly strove to push a tentacle into the
pouch for its weapon. But Darragh got there first. A savage downward slash of
his saber struck the folded bundle of fabric and knocked it to the floor. He
kicked it away and out of reach.

 
          
Tentacles
shot out at him, seizing and grappling him with anaconda strength. At the same
time the floor tilted sickeningly, as though the ship was sliding out of the
horizontal.

 
          
But
Darragh struck again with his saber, and the blow went home. The whetted edge
pierced the massive translucent body as a knife pierces cheese. He shortened
the blade and stabbed, full into the glowing, throbbing central organ. As the
point pierced that vital spot, Darragh twisted the weapon and drew with it.
Deep within the sofdy tough substance of that squat, unlovely body, his edge
sliced the organ in two. The grip of tentacles fell away from him, and he
sprang clear.

 
          
Darragh
was master of the ship.