I have had my bad moments but this one, without a doubt, was just about bottom. I was frozen there, fists clenched, staring in horror at the spot where the ship had been but an instant before. Up until this time the sticky moments in my life had, for the most part, involved me and me alone. This solitary danger clears the mind wonderfully, and promotes the gushing of the adrenals when instant action is needed for survival. But now I wasn’t threatened or in danger, or possibly dead—but Angelina and James were. And there was nothing I could do.
I must have made some sound while thinking this, undoubtedly a nasty one, because Bolivar’s voice rang in my ears.
“Dad? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
The tension broke and I dived for the ship, explaining what had happened as I shot into the airlock. He was white-faced but in control of himself when I appeared in the control compartment.
“What do we do?” he asked in a much subdued voice.
“I don’t know yet. Go after them of course—but where do we go? We need a plan…”
A high-pitched warble sounded from the communication equipment and I bulged my eyes in that direction.
“What is it?” Bolivar asked.
“A general psi-alarm. I’ve read about it in the training manuals but I never heard of it being used before.” I punched a course into the controls. “As you undoubtedly know, radio waves travel at the speed of light, so that a message transmitted from a station one hundred light years away would take a hundred years to reach us. Not the speediest form of communication. So most messages are carried in ships from point to point. This is also the only form of communication that is exempt from Einsteinian laws. Psi, which appears to be instantaneous. So the psimen can talk to one another, brain to brain, without a time lag. All of the good ones work for the League and most of these for Special Corps. There are electronic devices that can detect psi communication, but only at full strength and on a simple on-off basis. Every League ship is equipped with a detector like this, though they have never been used except in tests. To make them switch on every psiman alive broadcasts the same thought at the same time. The single word—trouble. When this psi-alarm is received every ship spacewarps to the nearest broadcast station to find out what is wrong. We’re on our way.”
“Mom and James…”
“Finding them will take some thought—and some help. And, call it a nagging hunch, but I have a feeling that this alarm is not unrelated to this present business we are involved in.”
Unhappily, I was right. We broke out near a repeater beacon and the recorded signal instantly blasted out of our radio.
“…return to base. All ships report for orders. Seventeen League planets have been attacked by alien forces in the past hour. Space war has opened on a number of fronts. Report for orders. All ships return to base. All ships…”
I had the course set even before the message had begun to repeat itself. To Corps Main Base. There was no place else to go. Resistance to the invaders would be organized by Inskipp and all of the available information would be there. I will not tell you how we felt as the days rolled by; Bolivar and I found the time bearable only by repeating that if outright destruction were planned the fire power we had seen could have easily demolished the admirals’ satellite and our ship. They wanted the people in them alive. They had to. We did not dare think why they wanted them. Just that they were prisoners someplace and that we would get there and free them.
I flew the ship by reflex as we broke out of spacewarp near the base. Slamming in at maximum G’s, reversing at the last possible moment, again at maximum reverse thrust, killing the controls as the magnetic grapples took hold, reaching the port while it was still opening. With Bolivar at my side all of the way. We went through the corridors at the same pace and into Inskipp’s office to find him sound asleep and snoring on his desk.
“Speak,” I commanded, and he opened a pair of the reddest eyes I have ever seen. Then groaned. “I should have known. The first time I have tried to sleep in four days and you appear. Do you know what…”
“I know that one of those space-whales swallowed my cruiser along with Angelina and James and we have been bucketing back here in a patrol boat for some time.”
He was on his feet swaying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, we’ve been busy.” He staggered to a cabinet and gurgled dark liquid out of a crystal bottle into a glass, which he drained. I sniffed the bottle and gurgled myself the same amount.
“Explain,” I ordered. “What’s been going on?”
“Alien invasion—and let me tell you that they are good. Those space-whales are heavily armored battleships and we have never been able to dent one. We have nothing that can touch them in space. So all we can do is retreat. They’ve made no planetary landings yet that we know of, just bombardment from space, because our land based units are strong enough to keep them off. We don’t know how long this will last.”
“Then we are losing the war?’
“How optimistic. You wouldn’t care to tell me who we are fighting?”
“Yes. Them, these!”
He flicked on the screen and stabbed the buttons and, in gorgeous color and three-dimensional reality a loathsome form hung before us. Tentacled, slimily green, clawed and greasy, with far too many eyes sticking out in odd directions, as well as a number of other appendages best left undescribed.
“Uggh,” Bolivar said, speaking for all of us.
“Well, if you don’t like that,” Inskipp growled, “how about this – or this.” The slide show of slugs clicked by, creature after creature, each one more loathsome—was it possible?—than the one before. Hideous sqwitchy things, united only in their repugnancy.
“Enough,” I finally shouted. “A reducing diet of nausea. I won’t eat for a week after this. Which one of them is the enemy?”
“All of them. Let Prof Coypu explain.”
The recording of the professor appeared on the screen, and was quite an improvement over the creepy-crawlies despite his gnashing teeth and lecture room manner.
“We have examined the captured specimens, dissecting the dead ones and brain-vacuuming the live ones for information. What we have discovered is rather disconcerting. There are a number of life forms involved, from different planetary systems. From what they say, and we have no reason to doubt them, they are involved on a holy crusade. Their single aim is to destroy mankind, wipe all representatives of our species from the galaxy.”
“Why?” I asked aloud.
“You will ask why,” the recorded Coypu continued. “A natural question. The answer is that they cannot bear looking at us. They consider us too loathsome to exist. There is much talk about not enough limbs, and we are too dry, our eyes don’t stick out on stalks, we secrete no nice slime, important guggy organs are missing. They consider us too disgusting to exist side by side with them.”
“They should talk!” Bolivar said.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I advised him. “But I agree with you in any case. Now shut up and listen to the professor.”
“This invasion was carefully prepared,” Coypu said, shuffling his notes and rattling his fingernails against his protruding teeth. “Since the invasion we have found many alien life forms lurking in dustbins, air conditioner vents, manholes, flush toilets, everywhere. They have obviously been observing us for a long time and massing reports. The kidnapping of the admirals was the first blow of the invasion, an attempt to disrupt our forces by removing their commanders. This left us very short of admirals, but Chief petty officers were put in command of units lacking senior officers and the unit efficiency has doubled. However, we lack real intelligence of the enemy’s structures and bases since only small ships have been captured, manned by junior officers. It is suggested that more information be obtained…”
“Oh, thanks very much,” Inskipp growled, cutting Coypu off in midsuggestion. “I never would have thought of that myself.”
“I can do it,” I told him, and enjoyed the way the whites—or really the reds—of his eyes appeared as he rolled them in my direction.
“You? Succeed where all of our forces have failed?”
“Of course. I will abandon modesty and tell you that I am the secret weapon that will win the war.”
“How?”
“Let me talk to Coypu first. A few questions, then all shall be revealed.”
“We’re going after Mom and James?” my son asked.
“You betcha, boy. Top priority on the list, and at the same time we shall save the civilized galaxy from destruction.”
“Why do you bother me when I must work?” Coypu screeched from the comscreen, sputtering saliva and as red-eyed as Inskipp.
“Relax,” I cajoled. “I will solve all your problems for you, as I have done in the past, but I must enlist your aid to do so. How many different species of alien have you discovered so far?”
“Three hundred and twelve. But why…”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. All sizes, shapes and colors?”
“You better believe it! You should see my nightmares.”
“No thank you. You must have discovered the language they use to communicate with each other. Is it difficult?”
“You already speak it. It’s Esperanto.”
“Come off it, Coypu!”
“You can’t scream at me in that tone of voice!” he said hysterically. Then got control of himself, took a pill and shuddered. “Why not? They obviously have been watching us for a long time, learning all about us before they invaded. They would have heard a lot of our languages, then settled on Esperanto just as we did as the simplest, easiest and most efficient form of communication.”
“You’ve sold me. Thank you, Professor. Get some rest because I’ll be over there and you are going to outfit me to slip into the alien HQ and discover what is going on and to rescue my family, and maybe the admirals if I get a chance.”
“Just what the hell are you talking about?” Inskipp snarled, with Coypu’s screened image echoing the same words in an equally repellent tone of voice.
“Simple. At least for me. Prof Coypu is going to manufacture an alien suit, complete with built-in slime-dripper, and I am going to get inside of it. They will welcome me as one of their own. It will be a new kind of loathy who has just heard of their crusade and who is rushing up to enlist. They’ll love me. I’m on the way, Professor.”
The technicians did a fast but excellent job. They stuffed the computer full of disgusting alien details, tentacles, claws, eye-stalks, feelers, everything, then programmed it to draw pictures of variations. Wow! Even Bolivar was impressed. We put a couple of them together and juggled the result around a bit and came up with one that would suit.
“That’s my dad!” Bolivar said, walking around the thing and admiring it from all angles.
It looked roughly like a miniature tyrannosaurus rex with advanced leprosy and molting fur. A biped for the obvious reason that I was one. The heavy tail, that bifurcated into sucker-tipped tentacles at the end, both balanced the weighty device and contained storage space for the powerplant and equipment. An oversized jaw, just aswarm with yellow and green teeth, adorned the front of the head; a little bucktoothed too like its maker. Ears like a bat, whiskers like a rat, eyes like a cat, gills like a spratt—it really was loathsome. The front split open and I climbed carefully inside.
“The forearms are only lightly powered and fit over your own arms,” Coypu said. “But the heavy legs are servopowered and follow the movements of your legs. Watch out for them, those claws can tear a hole in a steelwall.”
“I intend to try that. What about the tail?”
“Automatic counterbalance and it wags as you walk. These controls will enable you to thrash it about when you are not walking, make it look realistic. This switch is the automatic twitcher, that moves the tail about a bit when you are sitting or standing for a long time. Watch out for this switch—it controls the recoilless seventy-five mounted in the head just between the eyes. The sight is here on your nose.”
“Wonderful. What about grenades?”
“The launcher is under the tail, of course. The grenades themselves are disguised as you-know-what.”
“A pretty touch. I see you have the warped kind of mind for this sort of business. Now let me close the zipper and you step back while I try it out.”
It took a bit of practice to move the hulking thing about naturally, but after a few minutes I got the knack. I stalked about the lab leaving a trail of slime wherever I went, gouging ruts in the steel deck with my claws, swishing my tail and knocking things about, and even poked my head into the firing range to let go a few shots with my headgun. Recoilless or not, I decided, as I took pills for the headache, to save this gun for real emergencies. As I went back to the lab a small treaded robot came out of a doorway and ran over my tail.
“Hey, get rid of that thing,” I called out as the PAIN IN TAIL signal flashed on my readout board. I aimed a kick at the robot which it easily dodged. Then it stopped in front of me and the turret with the optic lenses popped open and I found myself staring into Bolivar’s smiling face.
“Is one permitted to ask just what the hell you are doing in that thing,” one asked.
“Sure, Dad. I’m going with you. Servant-robot to carry your gear. Isn’t that logical?”
“No, it is not.” I marshalled my arguments and knew, even as I began, that this was one argument I was going to lose. I lost it—and was secretly glad. Although I feared for his safety, I could sure use someone to back me up. We would both go.
“Where?” Inskipp asked, looking with disgust at my alien suit when I climbed out.
“To that armed planet where they took the admirals. And, probably, Angelina and James as well. If it’s not their headquarters or main base or some such it certainly will do until the real one comes along.”
“You wouldn’t care to tell me how you plan to get there, would you?”
“Delighted. In the same patrol boat that we arrived in. But before we go I want the hull blown open fatally, then roughly patched. Knock it about inside a good deal, crunch some of the nonessential equipment to make it look good. Get plenty of blood from the slaughterhouse and sprinkle it all over. And, I don’t like to suggest this, but realism is what counts—do you have some spare human corpses?”
“Far too many,” he answered grimly. “And you want one or two of them, in uniform, aboard?”
“They may save our lives. I am going to go blasting in with that ship, radio blaring and lights flashing, and volunteer myself and my planet of creepies to the noble cause of humanity-destruction.”
“Which you just happened to find out about when your people captured this ship?” “You catch on quick for someone your age. Get it done at once, Inskipp, because I want to leave about five minutes ago.”
Since this mission seemed to be the single ray of hope in the unmitigated gloom of the losing war, we had the best of service. The battered patrol boat was loaded aboard a combat cruiser that blasted off the instant we were aboard. They ferried us to our destination, the nearest safe area to the enemy stars, then chucked us out. I navigated us around a massive cloud of dust, skirted a black hole or two to blur our trail, then scuttled into the arm of the galaxy that held the enemy.
“Ready, son?” asked, poking my head out through the slit in the alien’s neck.
“Ready when you are, Slippery Jim,” the robot responded as the turret clacked down and locked into place.
I sealed up and reached out a clawed arm and shook his tentacle. Then got to work. Extra lights had been installed on the hull, of ugly, alien construction, and I switched these on so that we looked like a space-going Christmas tree. I then started the tape of the recently written anthem of my imaginary home planet and began broadcasting it at full volume on 137 wave-lengths. Thus prepared we headed leisurely for the armored planet, wafted there on the strains of delightful groaning music.
Sliming and gurgling,
gnashing with crunch.
We’re the most sordid,
of the alien bunch.