XII

 

 

“You’re going to be all right,” a comforting male voice was saying. Peter blinked his eyes open and found himself looking at a square-jawed face under a peaked naval cap.

“What—” he said, struggling to sit up. The man in the naval cap helped him, putting an arm behind his shoulders to support him. Peter shook his head dizzily, and looked about him.

He was sitting on the deck of the aircraft carrier. The ’copter was being shunted away on a trolley towards the elevators, and a group of men and women were clustered, talking excitedly, around the pilot. The pilot must have recovered more quickly. He was standing, although he looked pale.

“Something blanked you out,” the man was saying to Peter. “But you’re perfectly all right physically. Just a bit of shock is your trouble.”

“Blanked me out? Oh yes, I remember. When we were flying over the Alexandra. We found her!” Peter seized the other’s arm. “We found her! And that’s not all!”

“Easy now,” the man said soothingly. “We know already. Your pilot told us before you woke up. We’re developing the pictures now. Your autopilot brought the ’copter back and we landed you under remote control. Now what you need, I’d say, is a drink and a chance to relax for a bit. Suppose you come down to the messroom. Can you walk all right, you think?”

Peter tested his limbs gingerly. He had the illusion that he ought to be unable to move. His memory was full of a pain so excruciating it seemed he must have broken every bone in his body. But the pain was only in memory, he could move freely, and after a moment, normally.

“We don’t know what happened to you,” his companion said, watching him. “Whatever it was, it’s a cinch to be the same as what kept the other search parties from reporting the liner. What puzzles me is why the hell we haven’t lost anybody. If your ’copter hadn’t been on auto, you’d most likely have gone down in the sea.”

Peter frowned. “Maybe we weren’t meant to see as much as we did,” he suggested. “I don’t know what was going on. It looked like some crazy sort of ceremony, though. Maybe the creature was distracted, didn’t notice us till we’d come in quite close. Then he hit us with all he’d got because he was surprised.” He shrugged. “I’m just guessing. Did anybody tell my wife I was all right?”

“I’ll check.” The other turned away to make inquiries of one of the group surrounding the pilot. Peter went on testing his movements experimentally, his mind dazed by the power of the blow that had been struck at it.

The gray overcast seemed to lower at the sea. A chill wind was creaming the waves into hesitant foam, and in spite of its phenomenally efficient stabilizers the aircraft carrier was moving a little in the water. Over the broad gray landing deck he could see across to the Russian mother ship. The ’nef was being readied for another dive, and there was much bustle and activity. Above, a giant floatplane was circling prior to touching down. A fast launch pulled away from the side of one of the little survey vessels and headed towards the Cape Wrath.

“Yes, they told your wife you were all right.” The words drew him back from his contemplation of the scene. “She’ll be coming aboard in a little while. They didn’t say what had happened. Figured it was better not to worry her.”

“Good,” said Peter with relief. “Now I’d like that drink you suggested.”

 

It was puzzling that the aircraft had not plunged into the sea when its crew was struck unconscious … Had it not been for his absorption in the ceremony he had commanded, he would have treated it as he had treated other aircraft and the many ships that had passed, by installing a hint of pain in the minds of the pilots or helmsmen every time they began to turn toward his floating city.

For the time being, he had to be gentle, subtle, although it irked him to treat these coarse and inferior beings with such finesse. Still, there was no doubt they had learned much since they had been freed from their old yoke. Until he had a complete picture of the present situation, he would not take risks.

No doubt that ingenious flying machine incorporated some automatic device to make it continue straight and level if the pilot’s attention wandered. He knew from his own experience that these dull minds could not be made to concentrate except by regular lashing; automatic machinery was the logical compensation for their human shortcomings. At the mercy of the wind, though, the machine would soon have toppled and drowned its passengers.

He dismissed the matter and decided on his next move. It was time now to extend his retinue further still. He was on the way to his full strength now, and there was the matter of supplies for the subjects that remained. Though he had had the intractable ones thrown overboard as an example to the rest, he had not wanted to cut the numbers significantly. It was good to have many minds to control, it stimulated him.

They had exhausted the stores aboard, though, and they were hungry. If he had realized how few provisions there were aboard, he would have had the recalcitrants merely killed and used to supplement the meat supply, instead of giving them to the fish. Still, under his compulsion, they would serve to bring him to shore, and there he could pick and choose among millions. To shore … He sent for a man skilled in navigation as the humans counted skill, and demanded details of the coasts they could make for.

 

“Peter, you fool!” said Mary, throwing her arms round him. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me what you were going to do? You might have been killed!”

“All right, all right,” he said comfortingly. “I wasn’t, was I? I wouldn’t have gone up in that thing if I hadn’t been sure it was as safe as a bathynef, at least.”

“That’s not saying much, after what’s happened,” she tried to joke. But the words turned serious in her mouth.

“Dr. Trant! Mrs. Trant! Please …?” Lampion’s voice broke in on them, and they grew aware that everyone else in the operations room was impatiently waiting for them to take their places. They slipped into their chairs with a murmured apology, and Lampion coughed and looked round.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “you have all had a chance to study the pictures that have been brought back, I believe. I have some extra copies here, which I will pass around anyway.” He spread glossy enlargements on the table.

Peter had not needed to look at them. They showed precisely what he remembered; the crazy horseshoe of passengers and crew on the promenade deck of the liner; stewards beating trays, one unfortunate being seized and cast overboard … And, ghoulish in the center of it all, the indistinct but horrible shape of the creature that had come out of the sea.

“According to our latest information, the Queen Alexandra has begun to move. She has put about and is following a course which may or may not change, but which if extended will intersect the coast of the United States north of the Bahamas. Most probably, in northern Florida or Georgia. There can be little doubt that this is under the orders of the—sea creature.”

“Correction,” said Captain Vassiliev politely. “I think we have reason to doubt that it is a sea creature, have we not, Dr. Gordon?”

Gordon nodded. “The results aren’t all in yet, but the TV camera we have working at the two-thousand-fathom level has located an opening in the mud which seems to indicate a point at which something emerged from below. Around the opening we located various objects, probably metallic, which resemble oxygen storage canisters. The bathynef Pavel Ostrovsky has just a short while ago started down to investigate the site. It’s far below the levels at which we’ve dived so far, but two members of Professor Wong’s staff who have taken equivalent pressures in land-based tests are crewing for this dive, and both Ostrovsky and Wong think they should be able to stand it.”

Lampion nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Gordon. Well, the situation seems to be this. What we have discovered is a survivor of an extraterrestrial species which very probably invaded our planet upwards of a hundred thousand years ago. It enslaved human beings—this is assumed by analogy with current actions—and was then overwhelmed by the latest orogenic or mountain-building era. Their powers are unknown to us. The fact that this individual could emerge from some probably prearranged refuge after such a lapse of time and adjust to the changed situation with such speed suggests that we are facing a very dangerous opponent. Yes, Dr. Trant?”

Peter leaned forward. “I’ve experienced this power,” he said “I think we can assume it’s nonphysical, at least as we define physical. It is probably not limited to the mental infliction of pain, as witness the posthypnotic command we can deduce compelled Luke Wallace to steal the bathynef and return to set the alien free from its buried hiding place. In addition, we can presume that either it is equipped with technical devices of a high order, or that it is physically almost indestructible and could survive the pressure at two thousand fathoms as easily as at sea level.”

“Can we presume also that we have only one to deal with?” Vassiliev inquired softy. Lampion shrugged.

“A question that must be answered. For myself, I think we must assume so. Any other survivors are probably still under thousands of feet of ooze. Let us not multiply our problems.”

“At the moment we have one,” Vassiliev said. “What is to be done about this liner and its dangerous passenger?”

“Your opinion, please.” Lampion waved his hand vaguely.

Captain Vassiliev looked around the table, as though trying to make up his mind. At length he said, “A torpedo. Now. If necessary, with a nuclear warhead.”

Heads shook automatically. Someone murmured, “No. No.”

Vassiliev bent his head and spread his hands. “Very good. All I can say is that I am glad it is not the coast of Soviet Russia to which the ship is coming near.”

“We are all frightened of what might happen,” said Peter, thinking of the possible consequences. “But there are still several hundred people on the liner, whom we may be able to save. We’ve obviously got to kill the creature, or render it powerless somehow. If it means to come ashore, then it will very likely expose itself to some means of attack. It’s big, heavy, possibly clumsy. I doubt if it could stand, say, a shell from a forty-millimeter cannon if it were a direct hit.”

 

Officially, the Queen Alexandra was simply “missing.” The vast search operations had used the liner as a cover story. But it was not going to be long before the truth broke, that was for sure. If it could only be held back for another day or two, though, that would suffice.

These thoughts were running through Peter’s mind as he and a thousand others waited on the edge of the ocean. The liner was aiming for the Florida coast a little south of Jacksonville. It was as though a patch of blankness had progressed across the ocean, without anyone actually seeing her. There were press releases ready to state that the liner had been commandeered by mutineers. A thin story. It would hold for long enough to help their chances of success. Although the population was boiling with startled anger at the military occupation of an area backed off inland from this stretch of shore.

It was at least comforting that the creature had not made directly for a city. That implied that he felt his power to control human beings was limited, and that he preferred to come ashore in a relatively isolated spot.

The liner stood to nearly a mile offshore. It was nearly dark, but its lights showed brilliantly. Unless the creature had the power to sense the thoughts and intentions of human beings as well as their mere presence, he could not know of the ambush that awaited him. There would merely be individuals scattered, a few in groups, mostly separated, over several square miles.

It was hard to make out, even with binoculars, what was happening. Boats were being lowered, it seemed, and that was logical. But was the creature in one of them?

He was not. The first boats grounded on the beach. Their occupants, wild-eyed, drawn-faced, looked around superficially and then signaled back to the liner with the lamp. An advance party. Peter wished achingly that they could be kidnapped into freedom at once. But the creature had to be allowed to show himself. …

And he did.

Bowing, gesticulating, beating gongs and wailing, the miserables aboard the liner were carrying him on what looked like the top of a dining table upholstered with chair cushions, up to the largest lifeboat on the shoreward side. The range was too great for accuracy, probably, or the dark blob of the creature was too indistinct a target, so the gunners held fire. Peter wished he had Mary beside him, and then was glad that he had not, for he had not wanted her to take the risk this trip would involve, and she was better employed out at the Atlantica site.

The boat was lowered. As it descended, a hundred men and women, stripping off their clothes desperately, prepared to follow it down. They jumped, in a crazy human fountain, and vanished from sight. Sickly, the watchers prayed for them to reappear.

Some did not. But most did, and swam to the bow of the lifeboat to seize lines dangling in the water and begin towing it to shore. Peter’s nails bit deep into his palms with the fury he had to suppress.

The boat was still a quarter of a mile from shore, when there was a sudden muted explosion, and the first shell ripped the bows of the lifeboat above the water line. In an instant, six more fired together.

And that was all.

After the explosions, there were screams, and Peter had begun to hope they were the creature’s. He felt the anger and the pain just as he realized that they came from the shore around him, and he took two facts with him into the twilight consciousness which was all his mind could contain beside the pain.

The first was that the monster was unharmed. The second, that if his power to control human beings was truly limited, they had not found the limit.