Read Ebook: Attitude by Clement Hal Kolliker William A Illustrator

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Ebook has 304 lines and 25335 words, and 7 pages

nverters, and was applying a very slight first-order acceleration in its original line of flight--the barely perceptible weight was directed toward what Little had found to be the stern. Its direction changed by a few degrees on several occasions, but was restored each time in a few seconds. The intensity remained constant, as nearly as Little could tell, for several hours.

Then it increased, smoothly but swiftly, to a value only slightly below that of Earthly gravity. The alterations in direction became more frequent, but never sudden or violent enough to throw Little off his feet--he was now standing on the rear wall, which had become the floor. Evidently the ship's pilot, organic or mechanical, well deserved the name. For nearly half an hour by the watch, conditions remained thus; then the drive was eased through an arc of ninety degrees, the wall containing the hatchway once more became the ceiling, and within a few minutes the faintest of tremors was perceptible through the immense hull and the direction of gravity became constant. If this indicated a landing, Little mentally took off his hat to the entity at the controls.

The doctor found himself badly placed for observation. The hatch was about four feet above the highest point he could reach, and even jumping was not quite sufficient to give him a hold on the bars. He estimated that he had nearly all of his normal hundred and ninety pounds Earth weight, and lack of proper food for the last several days had markedly impaired his physical powers. It was worse than tantalizing; for suddenly, for the first time since he had regained consciousness in this strange spot, he heard sounds from outside. They were distorted by echoes, sounding and reverberating along the corridor outside, and evidently originated at a considerable distance, but they were definitely and unmistakably the voices of human beings.

For minutes the doctor waited. The voices came no nearer, but on the other hand they did not go any farther away. He called out, but apparently the group was too large and making too much noise of its own to hear him. The chatter went on. No words were distinguishable, but there was a prevailing overtone of excitement that not even the metallic echoes of the great hull could cover. Little listened, and kept his eyes fixed on the hatchway.

He heard nothing approach, but suddenly there was a faint click as the lock opened. The grille swung sharply inward until it was perpendicular to the wall in which it was set; then the side bars of its frame telescoped outward until they clicked against the floor. The crossbars separated simultaneously, still maintaining equal distances from each other, and a moment after the hatch had opened a metal ladder extended from it to the floor of the room. It took close examination to see the telescopic joints just below each rung. The metal tubing must be paper-thin, Little thought, to permit such construction.

The doctor set foot on the ladder without hesitation. Presumably, his captors were above, and wanted him to leave the room in which he was imprisoned. In this wish he concurred heartily; he was too hungry to object affectively, anyway. He made his way up the ladder to the corridor, forcing his shoulders through the narrow opening. The human voices were still audible, but they faded into the background of his attention as he examined the beings grouped around the hatch.

There were five of them. They bore some resemblance to the nonhumans of Tau Ceti's first planet, having evidently evolved from a radially symmetric, star-fishlike form to a somewhat more specialized type with differentiated locomotive and prehensile appendages. They were five-limbed and headless, with a spread of about eight feet. The bodies were nearly spherical; and if the arms had been only a little thicker at the base it would have been impossible to tell where body left off and arm began. The tube feet of the Terrestrial starfish were represented by a cluster of pencil-thick tendrils near the tip of each arm and leg--the distinction between these evidently lying in the fact that three of the appendages were slightly thicker and much blunter at the tips than the two which served as arms. The tendrils on the "legs" were shorter and stubbier, as well. The bodies, and the appendages nearly to their tips, were covered with a mat of spines, each several inches in length, lying for the most part nearly flat against the skin. These either grew naturally, or had been combed away from the central mouth and the five double-pupiled eyes situated between the limb junctions.

The beings wore metal mesh belts twined into the spines on their legs, and these supported cases for what were probably tools and weapons. Their "hands" were empty; evidently they did not fear an attempted escape or attack on the doctor's part. They made no sound except for the dry rustle of their spiny armor as they moved. In silence they closed in around Little, while one waved his flexible arms toward one end of the passageway. A gentle shove from behind, as the doctor faced in the indicated direction, transmitted the necessary command, and the group marched toward the bow. Two of the silent things stalked in front, two brought up the rear; and at the first opportunity, the other swarmed up one of the radial ladders and continued his journey directly over Little's head, swinging along by the handholds on the central beam.

Young Captain Albee was the first to speak coherently.

"It's good to see you again, sir. Everyone but you was accounted for, and we'd begun to think they must have filed you away in formaldehyde for future reference. Where were you?"

"How is it that you don't?" asked Albee. "We were attacked; we had a fight, of a sort. Did you sleep through it? That doesn't seem possible."

"I did, apparently. Give me the story."

"I still can't understand what knocked you out. They used no weapons--that annoyed me--and if you didn't put a suit on yourself I don't see how you lived when they opened up your room. The air was gone before they started going over the ship."

"I think I get it," said Little slowly. "Geletane. Four cylinders of it. Did you broadcast a general landing warning when you cut the second-order to examine that phony Bonanza? You didn't, of course, since we weren't in a gravity field of any strength. And the 'meteor' was magnetic, which made no difference to our berylium hull, but made plenty to the steel geletane cylinders, one of which I had unclamped for a pressure test and had left in the tester. I went on about my business, and the field yanked the cylinder out of the tester and against the wall. It didn't make enough noise to attract my attention, because I was in the next room. With the door open. And the valve cracked just a trifle--just enough. I didn't need a suit when these starfish opened my room; I must have been as stiff as a frame member. I had all the symptoms of recovery from suspended animation when I woke up, too, but I never thought of interpreting them that way. The next ship I'm in, see if I don't get them to rig up an automatic alarm to tell what the second-order fields are doing--"

"You might also put your geletane cylinders back in the clamps when, and if, this happy state of affairs eventuates," remarked Goldthwaite, the gloomy technical sergeant. "May I ask what happens now, captain?"

"I'm afraid it isn't up to me, Goldy," returned Albee. "But I don't suppose they plan to keep us in this corner indefinitely."

Probably they didn't, but Albee was beginning to doubt his own statement before anything else happened. The sun had risen so that it was no longer shining directly into the port, and the great chamber had grown darker as the shadow of the vast interstellar flier crept down and away from its outer wall, when a new party came through the air lock from outside. Two of the pentapods came first, and came to a halt on either side of the inner door; after them crept painfully the long, many-legged, gorgeously furred body of a Vegan. Its antennae were laid along its back, blending with the black and yellow stripes: the tiny, heavily lidded eyes opened wide in the effort to see in what, to the native of the blue star, was nearly total darkness. The line of guards penning in the Earthmen opened and formed a double-walled lane between humans and Vegan.

Albee stepped forward, and at the same moment the interior lights of the chamber flashed on. The Vegan relaxed for a moment as its eyes readjusted themselves; then its antennae snapped erect and began to sway slowly in the simple patterns of the sign language of its race.

"I assume that some of you, at least, understand me," it said. "Our captors, having learned a little of my language in the months I have spent here, hope to save themselves trouble by using me as an interpreter. Do you wish to acknowledge acquaintance with my speech, or do you think it better to act as though our races had never encountered each other? I was not captured near my home planet, so you might get away with such an act."

Most of the Earthmen had some knowledge of Vegan speech--the two systems are near neighbors, and enjoy lively commercial relations--and all looked to Albee for a decision. He wasted little time in thought; it was evident that they would be better off in communication with their captors than otherwise.

"We might as well talk," he answered, forming the signs as well as he could with his arms. "We should like to find out all you can tell us about these creatures, and it is unlikely that we would be given the chance to communicate secretly with you. Do you know where we are, and can you tell us anything about this planet and its people?"

"I know very little," was the answer. "I believe this world is somewhere in the Cloud, because the only time one of us was ever outside the fort at night he could see the Galaxy. Neither I nor my companions can tell you anything about the planet's own characteristics, for we have been kept inside the base which these creatures have established here ever since our capture. We move too slowly in this gravity to escape from them, and, anyway, the sun has not sufficient ultraviolet light to keep us alive. Our captors, we are sure, are not natives of the planet; they seldom venture outside the walls themselves, and always return before nightfall. Furthermore, they live on provisions brought by their interstellar ships, rather than native food.

"They have not told us the reason for our capture. They allow us to prepare everything we need for existence and comfort, but every time we try to divert supplies to the production of weapons, they seem to know it. They let us nearly finish, and then take it away from us. They never get angry at our attempts, either. We don't understand them."

"If they are so careful of your well being, why do they try to drive us crazy on a steady diet of lime juice?" interrupted Little.

"I could not say; but I will ask, if you wish," returned the Vegan. He swung his fusiform body laboriously around until he was facing one of the creatures who had accompanied him to the ship, and began semaphoring the question. The men watched silently; those who had not understood the preceding conversation were given the gist of it in brief whispers by their fellows. Little had not had a chance to ask if the others had been fed as he had been; their silent but intense interest in the answer to his question indicated that they had. The chronic slowness of Vegan communication rendered them all the more impatient to know the reason, as the black and yellow creature solemnly waved at the motionless pentapod.

There was a brief pause before the latter began to answer. When it did, the Earthman understood why an interpreter was necessary, even though both sides knew the same language. The arms of the creature were flexible enough in front-to-rear motion, as are human fingers; but their relatively great width hampered them in side-to-side waves, and put them at a severe disadvantage in using the Vegan language. The Vegan himself must have had difficulty in comprehending; the Earthman could not make out a single gesture.

Finally the interpreter turned back to the human listeners and reported the result of his questioning:

"The green liquid is all that our captors found in the canteens of your space armor. Since there was a large supply of it on your ship, they assumed it was the principal constituent of your diet. They have, however, salvaged practically all of the contents of your vessel, and you will be allowed shortly to obtain your foodstuffs, cooking equipment, and personal belongings, with the natural exception of weapons. I might add, from my own experience, that their unfamiliarity with your weapons will not help you much if you attempt to smuggle any from the stores. We never could get away with it."

"What surprises me," remarked Albee in English, "is that we are allowed at the supplies at all. These creatures must be extremely confident in their own abilities to take a chance."

"From what you told me of the hand-to-hand fighting, such confidence may be justified," remarked Little with a grin. "Didn't you say that they more or less wiped up the floor with the boys?"

"True," admitted the captain, "but there's no need to rub it in. Why are they so stuck up about it?"

"Stuck up? I was getting a strong impression that, as a race, they must be unusually modest." Albee stared at the doctor, but could not get him to amplify the remark. The Vegan interrupted further conversation, attracting their attention with a flourish of its long antennae.

"I am told that your supplies have been unloaded through another port, and are lying on the ground outside the fort. You are to accompany me and the guards to the pile, and take all the food you wish--you may make several trips, if necessary, to get it all to your quarters in the fort."

"Where is this fort, in relation to the ship?" asked Albee. "What sort of land is around it?"

"The ship is lying parallel to the near wall of the fort, about two hundred yards from it. This air lock is near the nose of the ship, and almost opposite the main valves of the fort. In front of the ship the ground is level for about a quarter of a mile, then dips down into what seems to be a heavily forested river valley. I don't know what lies beyond, in that direction; this sunlight is too dim for me to make out the details of objects more than a mile or two distant. I do get the impression of hills or mountains--you will be able to see for yourselves, outside. Your eyes are adapted to this light.

"In the other direction, toward the stern, the level plain extends as far as I can see, without any cover. Anyway, you'd be between the ship and the fort for the first five hundred yards, if you went that way, and could easily be cornered. I warn you again that these creatures will outguess you, but--good luck. I've told you all I know."

The black bodies of the guards had ringed them, almost statuesque in their motionlessness, during the conversation. As the Vegan concluded his speech, he had turned toward the lock; Albee had spoken as the men began to follow. The air of the planet was evidently similar to that of Earth, Vega Five, and the home planet of the pentapods, since both valves of the air lock were open. It had the fresh-air smell which the filtered atmosphere of a spaceship always seems to lack, and the men almost unconsciously squared their shoulders and expanded their chests as they passed down the ramp in the wake of the heavily moving Vegan. The scene before them caught all eyes; the interpreter's description had been correct, but inadequate.

The hull of the interstellar cruiser curved high above their heads. The lock chamber occupied a relatively tiny gondola that projected far enough, from its location well to one side of the keel, to touch the ground. The outside of the vessel gleamed with a brilliant silvery luster, in contrast to the coppery glow of the interior. The fort, directly in front of them, was an imposing structure of stone composition half a mile in length and two hundred feet high on the side facing them. The walls were smoothly polished, and completely lacking in windows.

It was evident that a thorough job of looting had been done on the Terrestrial warship. Food and medical supplies, bunks, kitchen equipment, blankets and miscellaneous items of field apparatus were included in the half dozen heaps laid out beneath the glistening black walls. Mixed in with the rest were hand tools and weapons, and Albee, in spite of the Vegan's warning, began promptly to make plans. At his orders, each of the men dragged a shoulder pack out of one of the piles and began filling it with containers of food and drink. The pile of lime-juice bottles was pointedly ignored until Albee, glancing at it, noticed that one case of bottles was not green in color. He went over for a closer look, then extracted one of the plastic containers, opened it and sniffed. His voice, as he turned to the watching men, was just a little louder than usual:

"Would anyone know where they found this stuff?" His eyes wandered over the faces of the crew. It was Sergeant Goldthwaite who finally answered, hesitantly.

"Not too easy to visit often, in flight," remarked the captain quizzically.

"I never visited it, sir--you can see it hasn't been touched. But you said we would probably touch at Ardome, and I was thinking it might be possible to get rid of it there."

"It probably would. But they have good customs inspectors, and war vessels aren't immune to search. I shudder to think of what would have happened to our reputation if we had made Ardome. Consider yourself responsible for this stuff."

The sergeant gulped. The case of liquor weighed eighty pounds, and could not possibly be crammed into a shoulder pack. He realized gloomily that the captain had inflicted about the only possible punishment, under the circumstances. He put five of the bottles into his pack and began a series of experiments to find out which way his arms went most easily around the case. A small group of pentapods regarded the struggle with interest, their spines waving slowly like a field of wheat in a breeze.

Albee watched, too, for a moment; then he went on, without altering the tone of his words:

"Most of you should have a decent supply of food by now. This planet probably has good water, since the vegetation and clouds appear normal. We should be able to live here without the aid of our generous captors, but we may have some difficulty in avoiding their well-meant ministrations. The Vegan said his people had never been able to fool these pincushions into letting them make or steal a weapon. Remembering that, use every caution in carrying out the orders I am about to give.

"When I have stopped talking, each of you count thirty, slowly, meanwhile working your way toward the handiest tool or weapon in the neighborhood. When you reach thirty, dive for the object of your choice and do your best to get to that forest. You have all, except the doctor, had some experience of the rough-and-tumble tactics of these creatures; the problem, I should say, is to get past them without a fight and into the open. I think we can outrun, on the level, any invertebrate alive. If someone is caught, don't stay to help him; right now, I want to get at least a small crew away from here, where we can work out at our leisure rescue plans for the unlucky ones. Don't all try to get guns; we'll find cutting tools just as useful in the woods. You may start counting."

Without haste, Albee counted over the contents of his pack, swung it to his shoulders. The guards, spines twitching slowly, watched. Reiser, the senior navigator, was helping one of Goldthwaite's engineers drag the ship's electric stove from a pile which chanced also to contain several ion pistols. Little picked up and tested briefly a hand flash, conscious of the fact that guards were watching him closely. The action had some purpose; the flash was almost exactly similar to the pistols. He tightened the straps of his own pack--and someone reached the count of thirty. Albee had chosen that number to give the men time enough to prepare, but not enough to get very far out of pace in the counting.

Almost as one, the human beings turned and sprinted for the bow of the warship. Almost simultaneously, the guards went into action, each singling out a man and going to work. Little, who had not experienced the tactics of the creatures, managed to avoid them for perhaps five yards; then one of them twined its tendrils about his wrist and literally climbed up onto his back. A moment later, the doctor was face down on the grass, arms and legs held motionless in the grip of the clumsy-looking, stubby limbs. The spines of his captor were not stiff enough to penetrate clothing or skin, but their pressure on the back of his neck was unpleasant. He managed to turn his head sufficiently to see what was going on.

Four men, who had been at the pile nearest the forest, had moved fast enough to avoid contact with their guards. They were now running rapidly toward the declivity; none of the creatures was in pursuit. Albee and a dozen others were practically clear, but one of these was pulled down as Little watched. One man found himself in a relatively clear space and made a dash. Guards closed in from either side, but realized apparently that they were not fast enough to corner the fellow. They turned back to other prey, and the runner was allowed to escape.

Goldthwaite had been in a bad position, with almost the whole group to fight through on his way to the woods. Apparently he never thought of disobeying orders, and going the other way. He dropped the case he had been trying to lift, seized a bottle from it with each hand and headed into the m?l?e. Curiously enough, he was the only one using weapons; the guards, festooned with implements snapped to their leg belts, fought with their bare "hands," and the men all ignored their guns and knives in the effort to run. Most of the pentapods at the sergeant's end of the group were engaged, and he got nearly halfway through the group before he was forced to use his clubs.

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