The Earth Gods Are Coming (5 page)

He took the key of the arms cabinet off its hook and opened the cabinet door. Sammy had left his post, quivering with eagerness, and stood now at Inglis' elbow. Before Inglis could bawl him out, Sammy said, "Better have that rifle now, Roy. Just in case their hostiles."

"There is plenty of time to arm ourselves, Sammy. Just nip back to your post, will you? You never know what might be happening whilst you're away."

Sammy stared at him, eyelids half lowered. "Sure, Roy," he said eventually. "Sure."

Not for the first time Inglis wondered if he had done the right thing in adopting first names and relaxing discipline. It had seemed natural, at the time; but he well knew the mystic of discipline and the fragile basis on which it rested. Well, these were modern people, educated, from a scientific civilization. If they couldn't hold together like a civilized people—then perhaps they wouldn't be worth saving, after all.

By the time the sail had become recognizable as a two-masted vessel with high rectangular sails, a low forepeak and an impossibly tall quarterdeck and poop structure, lavishly carved and painted, the control cabin ship was in a posture of defense. The crew had eaten, the fire was out, and everyone sat or stood at their action stations assigned by Inglis, holding the weapons best suited to them.

Quiet lay over the ship. The slap of waves and the scent and run of the sea sounded full of liquid consonants in sibilant contrast to the long-drawn vowels of the wind in the rigging. A thin high trumpet note keened from the alien vessel.

"Roy!" M'Banga said, urgently. "Beyond the vessel-there are more. Lots morel"

"I see them, M'Banga." Over the horizon had appeared a forest of shining shapes. The wind before which
Swallow
was running and against which the two-masted alien was tacking, was bringing them down onto a vast mass of shipping.

"Not ships," Toni piped. "That's a city. A sea city!"

"Well, if they're friendly," Inglis said. "They'll help us find Commander Varese."

The vessel they had first seen was swinging on the last leg of her tack, turning about, preparing to run up alongside. A second and third vessel, all alike with only variation in coloration to differentiate them, cut in from the opposite beam, boxing off
Swallow.
The alien ships were being handled with a casual precision that spoke eloquently of the seafaring qualities of these people, whoever they might be. The tall narrow sails were flipped from quarter to quarter in tacking with the utmost speed and judgement, they were lowered and raised on the masts by yards sliding on shining metal rings. More ships broke from the main fleet—or floating city—to bear up towards this stranger sailing down upon their city.

Inglis spoke forcefully to his crew. "I want no one firing until I give the word. These aliens are puzzled—more puzzled than we are, I imagine. We must make friends. If we antagonize them, I don't think we'll stand much of a chance." He stared around, letting his eyes linger on each human face. "Is that understood?"

"Yes, Roy," and "Okay, skipper," sounded.

The nearest alien ship was foaming in now, running free before the wind, her sails only halfway up the masts, their feet gathered into smartly laidout bundles. Aboard
Swallow
men and women licked dry lips and stared at the alien decks, trying to see clearly what manner of people these aliens were.

A vast, dark chill shadow fell over all the sea, taking the color and the sparkle from the scene.

Every head went back, every eye looked up—alien and human.

Inglis stared up. He felt the weakness of despair seize him.

"The Evil Ones!" someone shouted.

Above their heads hung the enormous bulk of the alien battleship that had shot them down. Rows of lighted ports stretched away, fore and aft, curving slightly with the hull. Barbettes swung, pointing the dark snouts of gigantic weapons downwards. The sheer size of the ship, poised above their heads, induced an intolerable feeling of claustrophobia.

Inglis felt completely defeated. Into his mind the words of Admiral Rattigan echoed, "Make very sure that they do not find out from you where Earth is. It may well be necessary that, in the last extreme, to prevent them finding, you may have to—"

And of himself, saying confidently, "I understand."

But had he understood?

Here was the challenge, here and now. Those aliens up above wanted to know what ship it was they had shot down; they wanted to know who was, to them, their Evil Ones. And in all the other aliens about, there was no hand that could be raised to help.

A hatch shone out, yellow in the black hull. A flier showed, began to lower. Inglis lifted his rifle, released the safety. He would say goodby to his friends aboard here, one by one, with a bullet for each.

Only then did he remember the charts, the charts that would infallibly show the aliens the way to Earth. The flier dropped, sliding down the air towards the gaggle of alien ships and the Terran control section masquerading as a ship.

And, in the sail of that pitiful ship, flapped the charts that would betray the Earth.

-

Fire!

That was the answer. Fire. It was the only answer in a situation that had, whatever action he took, death as its final and inevitable outcome.

He reckoned without the one trait of aliens that would be well-nigh predictable; their unpredictability. A different set of logical premises, a different slant on looking at facts to build of them an alien structure, would result in actions that to another set of logical conclusions be utterly beyond comprehension.

As Inglis leaped down into the waist of the control room ship, seeking the burning glass to rekindle the fire in the celestial globe cup support, a vibrating tingle began in the air above. Everyone else stood or sat as though frozen by the chill of horror. Only Inglis moved, scrabbling up the lenses, turning them to catch the sun and fire the few scraps of kindling.

In that electric air tremor a voice began to speak He recognized the amplification, the mechanical frenzy of the reproduction. This was someone speaking into a microphone over a hookup where the gain had been turned up full so that the bass thrummed and the treble shrilled.

What the voice said he could not understand. The language was liquid, full of trills and runs with few glottal stops to impede the flow of sound.

The kindling was refusing to catch; a tiny whiff of blue smoke lifted and he blew carefully, and saw only the black of burned embers. He tried again, the fear of failure lumping in his throat.

"Roy! Look at the people on the ships!" Gerda was calling to him, pointing. He spared a single swift glance from his task.

The decks of the alien sailing ships were empty of life; no figures moved there. Then he heard the massive series of plops in the water, all about, and understood. Every alien had incontinently dived overboard.

M'Banga raged down from the helm, seized an axe and slashed the mainsail sheets. The patchwork sail slid in a smother down the mast.

The voice from above boomed and thundered on ... there was a misty roaring and the Four Caves filled with light and the veiled powers nodded and rubbed their tails ..."

Inglis put one hand to his head, forgetting the fire, forgetting the ship and its betraying sail made from the charts of Earth that would show the Evil Ones the way to attack his home, forgetting, even, what he was doing here. He saw Linda rotating her abdomen in. a highly interesting way, and then realized with a despairing sense of sanity sliding away that Gerda was undulating too, so was Toni and Ranee and even the square chunk of Hannah was attempting to wriggle non-existent hips.

He tried to call out something, what he did not know; but some force had thrust a wedge into his mouth, stifling speech. He stared about him wonderingly, not really believing what he saw, fearing that he had broken completely under the strain. Yet he was perfectly and sanely conscious that what he saw was going on, was a part of real life and was most certainly, and unhappily, not a figment of his overtaxed imagination.

Wet forms were climbing back aboard the clustering alien sailing ships. They formed a solid mat around
Swallow
now, hemming her in. The alien ships all possessed large and formidable bumpers which fended one off from another and gave strength to the supposition that the ships habitually passed considerable amounts of time riding lashed together. All noise, from sea and ships and rigging, was lost in the battering wash of mechanically amplified vocal vibrations flowing down from above. The alien flier had halted now and hung motionless. From it the voice continued.

"... dance so that you may understand the revelations that sigh like windswept rainclouds from the four clouds a sign is vouchsafed unto you ..."

At that precise instant Inglis, looking at M'Banga, saw the dark man's great smoothly-muscled body begin to undulate as the women were undulating. Inglis started back from the hearth. He could feel in his own body the premonitions of the dance that had possessed all the little aliens on their ships and that was driving the Terran girls into a sinuous hula-hula. He made a supreme effort. He held himself rigid. He felt his muscles binding one against another as they did in limbering exercises.

He opened his mouth, gasping for breath. He formed words, he forced the words out; he expelled them like shot from a cannon.

"Stop! Stop dancing!" He called all his crew by name, checking them, holding them, commanding them.

He was sweating with it now. He staggered across the deck, feeling as though he was moving through viscid mud. He caught Gerda by the shoulders, feeling the smooth satiny skin under his fingers. "Keep still, Gerda! Hold it! Fight it!"

M'Banga, now had grappled Toni. Sammy, taking full advantage of the situation, had Linda in a bear hug that proved more effective than Inglis' own gentlemanly grasp on Gerda. He shifted his grip, shouting frenziedly at the girl. Her face, so near his own, was wide-eyed, open-mouthed, sheening with sweat. Her hair blew around his eyes. He gripped her tighter, seeing Sammy and M'Banga gradually quieting their girls and Hannah dealing stolidly with Ranee. Anton, clawing up with his broken arm from the midship section, stared about wildly.

He had left Belita, and Inglis shouted at him.

Belita!

Sheer horror possessed Inglis then. He stared down the deck and saw Belita; the dying woman was struggling to rise. She had thrown off her coverings and the bandages across her chest stained a deeper and darker red even as Inglis watched. The girl's life blood was pumping out as she tore her wounds open with the violence of her movement.

Looking at her, feeling still that force playing all along his muscles and jerking the slim body of Gerda between his grasping arms, Inglis saw Belita's face stiffen, tauten, and then fall slack. Anton leaped for her. Her jaw hung flaccidly. She went on with that sinuous undulation of the hips, but Inglis knew that she was dead.

A dead woman, dancing a macabre hula-hula! Dead, yet dancing zombi-like in the grip of an alien power.

For that now was what was happening. Inglis had to recognize that. A potent power that could make the dead dance.

Inglis looked away, tried to take in what was going on about him. Small wet figures, haphazardly clothed in odd shaped pieces of brilliantly colored material, were dancing and gyrating and shaking their tails aboard the alien sailing ships. Inglis tried to concentrate. The aliens he could see, the native inhabitants of the planet, were about five feet tall and appeared to possess two legs and two arms, although this was difficult to determine with all the bedlam about. But one thing was sure, they all had long, thick, heavy tails, like those of the Earthly beaver, and these were flapping about like gale-whipped flags.

Inglis thought he had begun to understand.

The voice above was now making more and more sense. What it said he still could not comprehend in terms of language; but the images and visions and the illusions of the words were strong, and growing stronger with every second.

"... the distant banners flare and beckon and from the misty ghoul-eyed ones the Four Caves will give up their ancient secrets and every denizen of the sea will rejoice with one heart and mind ..."

Inglis had it now. Propaganda! Crude, muscle-jerking and synapse-jolting propaganda. But however raw and primitive it was, he was caught in the power it generated, held into the same pattern of gyration and dance by the machine-fabricated mental control pouring down from the flier hovering above.

Gerda's hip-wiggling was gradually quieting under his shouted, desperate commands. He could feel her body trembling like the flank of a winning racehorse. He dared not look at Belita; but he could see Anton and Anton had not dared approach the dead dancing woman.

The struggle continued, there on the deck of the control room ship, surrounded by the flapping sails and swaying hulls of the beaverlike alien's sailing ships.

"... go now and spread the word of the great visitation so that all may join in the wonders of the Four Caves and rejoice that you have been chosen as the people dear to the hearts of the banner-waving, misty-eyed ancients in their mighty wisdom ..."

He was staggering forward, his body aching, his legs twitching as those of a frog twitch when electricity passes through it, feeling nothing in him but an abysmal ache and a great longing for vague and wondrous deeds and visions that would not come quite clear in his mind.

Gerda and Linda had stopped swinging their hips. Both girls stared about and then, together, collapsed, held up only by Inglis and Sammy. Hannah had been little affected and had now calm control of Ranee. Toni had been dealt with by M'Banga, and, now, she whirled from him, sobbing, to collapse as the other girls had done. M'Banga stood, stiffly erect, both his hands outstretched, gripping tightly onto nothing. Sammy was being sick over the side and Anton was yelling with pain of his broken arm.

Suddenly, the power had gone and sanity had crept back into the world.

He looked up. The flier was lifting. As he watched it dwindled in size, shrank to a black streamlined shape outlined against the yellow light from the hatch. The doors of the hatch rolled shut. In all that immense flank only the rows of portholes now showed to break the sweep that denoted the speed and power contained within it. The alien battleship of the Evil Ones moved slowly ahead, rising, gaining speed, beginning to push aside restraining air with that familiar supersonic wail. The ship became a black dot vanishing against the sky.

Into the silence washed back the plunk of waves, the creak and groan of wood and the flap of sails. A shrill liquid cluttering began from the alien sailing ships.

Inglis shut his eyes, pressed hard until the sparks flew, opened his eyes and began to shout.

"Sammy, no time to be sick! Look at Anton's arm. M'Banga, sort out the girls, revive them, make them comfortable. Hannah, if you feel fit enough, help M'Banga." He began to lash his crew on, giving them orders and tasks that would keep them occupied. He didn't want them to begin to explore the feelings he knew must exist in their minds, the vague and yearning emotions that spilled formless colors and desires in his own brain and that had been generated by the alien mental control. Terrans were familiar enough with the tricks of mechanical and electronic control of the brain. That he could recognize what had happened took away none of the horror.

If only he could rid himself of the fuzzy cap of blurring vagueness that stultified his mind and thinking processes. Giving orders, reorganizing the ship and her crew and devising plans to deal with the next emergency—the aliens and their sailing ships—were difficult processes, demanding a conscious effort for each thought. It was like trying to work out abstruse calculations after an all night binge. His mind kept flying off on tangents that led, excruciatingly and tantalisingly to misty veiled shapes inhabiting four caves, shot through with the green murkiness of the undersea.

"The girls are completely exhausted," M'Banga reported. They had been laid out on clothes, made comfortable; all had a bloodless and waxen quality about their skins that worried Inglis. Then he saw that Sammy and Anton, too, were yellow in the same way and his own hands, held with that damned tremble he could not quell before his face, were like yellow claws. M'Banga was gray. They were all in a state of semi-shock. The girls had suffered most through their physiology; the female anatomy was more suited to that seductive hip-wriggle than the male. Glancing over the side, Inglis realized why they had all been undulating and hip-swinging like that.

One of the alien commands had been to rub tails, and the small forms of the sailors crowding the ships were still at it. As he looked at them he saw their broad, flat, meaty tails curving about, sliding one against another, slapping hard, slipping, caressing—no doubt that was a racial characteristic of friendship, like a handshake, and the tail-less humans had been trying to wave their residual bones in time to the tune called from the flier.

"A real coccygeal kick," M'Banga said, rubbing the affected part tenderly. "Ow! I'm sore."

"Does your head feel as though you'd been drinking solidly all night?" asked Inglis.

"All night? I'd say at least a week on the bottle would have been needed to produce what I've got."

Sammy came across. "I need a drink," he said, unconsciously carrying on the sense of the conversation, although they knew he meant water. "I've patched up Anton. Luckily for him the knots and bandages held."

The three men drank in the sunshine. The water was cool and sweet from the condenser. Inglis took a cupful across to the girls and M'Banga followed.

Gerda was conscious. She tried to smile, pushing up on her elbows. A little wind frolicked with her short hair, pulled at the scraps of cloth about her body.

"Drink this, Gerda. How do you feel?"

"Empty," she said, pouting her lips to the cup. She drank in long uneven swallows. "I feel... I feel ashamed."

Sammy was tending Linda. M'Banga, after a quick inspection of Ranee who was still unconscious, was feeding water to Toni as one might a favorite budgerigar.

"Don't say anything about it, Gerda. It was bad for all of us. It was the alien ..." Inglis paused. He had been about to call the aliens in their spaceship another, more familiar name, but for the moment it eluded him. It would come back. "It was their mental-control equipment. That's all. It's over now. You get some rest while we find out what these other little aliens intend to do."

He rose, lifting the empty cup, turning to look again across to the clustering tall ships. They all moved sedately to the swell. There were no white caps on the waves. The fleet moved up and down all together in stately motion. On the decks the small aliens were simmering down. They had stopped their frenzied dancing and tail salutations; evidently the power had exercised a more lasting effect on them. One or two heads appeared at the bulwarks.

They had tiny, inquisitive faces, with large stiff sets of whiskers, like cats. Their button noses and large, luminous eyes were set in roughly the places they might have been expected. Their mouths appeared to be covered with an extension of the whiskers, or maybe the long and silky hair that covered their bodies. The gaudy scraps of cloth about their energetic persons were attached without rhyme or reason. Without reason, that is, to a Terran, Inglis realized.