Collected short fiction, p.431
Collected Short Fiction, page 431
A smile softened the general’s thin, gray face.
“Maybe it was a boulder,” he said. “I know you’re certain, but men in the Guard have imagined things before. The Outside is strange, mysterious, hostile. It is easy to let it get on your nerves.”
“But,” Shane insisted, “it did move, sir!”
The general smiled tolerantly.
“If it will help your peace of mind, Shane, I have ordered the north patrol from Key West doubled.” He took an envelope out of his blue uniform. “And here are photographs made this morning of the hills in Sector Forty-one-B.”
Eagerly Shane scanned the prints. There were the sharp-lit, black-shadowed hills. There was the winding pass. But the stone that had moved was gone! In a low voice he told General Whitehall that.
“Now you’ve got to believe me, sir!” he protested.
“It is the duty of the Guard to watch for any possible danger to the Ring, from within America or from the Outside. In view of your report, this sector will be watched with the utmost attention.”
“But still, sir,” Barry challenged, “you don’t believe me!”
THE general shook his head.
“I’ve served fifty years in the Guard,” he said almost forgetting to be gruff. “In that time there have been several similar reports, yet no actual threat to the Ring has ever materialized—from Outside. Personally I think you are letting your imagination play tricks on you.”
He moved to go.
“That doesn’t mean your report will be ignored,” he explained. “But I am going to advise Captain Steadman that you be relieved of active flight duty for three months. Key West is a good place to rest. Perhaps that is what you need.”
Tears of angry humiliation stung Shane’s eyes. He blinked hard.
“Yes sir,” he gulped. “Thank you, sir.”
Two weeks later Shane was back at Key West. Captain Steadman assured him that nothing unusual had been reported since his accident, from Sector 41-B or anywhere else. The men made good-natured jokes about seeing rocks and other inanimate things that moved.
Shane rented a little boat and learned to sail. He had been relieved of duty and there was nothing else to do. He began to wonder whether the general wasn’t right, if it hadn’t been his nerves. Sun and salt air and the pleasant occupation of sailing might help them relax.
But he couldn’t help returning to the Ring. It was strange to sail along the brink of that abrupt, wet precipice, looking down upon the dry coral and the dead, brown weed and the white, gleaming sand. His searching gaze could rove far across that parched, harshly lit waste, even to the bare hills that had once been Cuba. Nowhere was there anything that moved.
But he did find the moving boulder—inside the Ring!
He had sailed along the barrier for thirty miles. Tacking back toward the low, green blots of the mangrove keys, he crossed a coral shoal. The water was clear as glass. Against the white coral sand he saw a dark, jagged boulder that was crawling steadily toward the land.
Barry Shane could hardly breathe. His tanned body suddenly felt cold and his hand trembled on the tiller. As the moving object tipped into deeper water, he saw it well enough. It looked like the same boulder that he had seen lurching through the hills in Sector 41-B. It was a disguised machine!
Somebody had solved the old problem. Somebody had found his greatest dream, had learned to go and come at will through the Ring, without any disastrous explosions of air.
Or was it somebody? Cold dread tingled up and down his spine. Perhaps it was something. The Outside was a gulf of forbidden mystery. The passing Dwarf might have peopled it with alien beings. It was a fantastic speculation.
He forgot it—and suddenly remembered the riddle of the vanished newspaper.
Here was the secret he wanted. His cold tenseness passed. He felt oddly calm.
This was the moment he had lived for. Whatever it might bring, he was ready.
HE let out more sail and the little boat heeled as he tacked toward the palm-fringed mangrove keys. He estimated the direction in which the crawling rock had moved and drew a line on his chart.
When it came to land, he would be waiting.
Of course he had no weapon. He grinned at the dark sub-tropic jungle ahead. After all, he didn’t know what sort of weapon might be needed. The little camera slung to his belt might be equipment enough. Film, anyhow, couldn’t be accused of imagining things.
He sailed along a broad coral beach, past a straggling line of cocoanut palms, and pushed the boat into concealing mangroves. The stalking monorail towers were half a mile away. A car sighed along the high rail, a silver blur of speed. But this was jungle wilderness.
A big-kneed cypress was festooned with blue morning-glories. A lone sea-grape spread its odd broad leaves. Mosquitoes hummed and silent black sand-flies settled painfully on his skin.
Out among the waxen-leafed mangroves a rattler whined.
Hidden, he waited. He fought mosquitoes as he watched and listened. The Sun went down. The shallow sea changed through a thousand shades of blue and aquamarine and became a calm mirror for the purple night.
He began to wonder if his eyes had tricked him. His impulsive plan seemed a little foolish. Perhaps General Whitehall was right about the tricks of imagination.
After all—
A muffled humming sounded over the black water! Something splashed. At last a faint phosphorescence outlined a dark, jagged shape that was lumbering up the beach. It was the same boulder that he had seen in the hills Outside! Deliberately it crawled across the open stretch of coral sand and went crashing into the dark tangle of mangroves.
The little camera trembled in Shane’s hand. He opened the diaphragm wide and snapped half a dozen shots. The film was ultra-sensitive. Perhaps it would show something. He ran to where the boulder had crossed the beach, ventured to strike a shaded match. In the white sand were the unmistakable prints of caterpillar tracks.
He snapped the camera again and peered toward the humming in the jungle.
Shuddery dread tried to seize him. He fought it off, caught his breath and groped for reason.
Did this disguised machine have a crew of men? Had some group of Americans built it to slip through the Guard and the Ring, to reach the mineral wealth of the Outside? Or was it operated by some alien, unimaginable invaders? Another idea struck him. Had human beings somehow managed to survive beyond the Ring? That seemed impossible. In two hundred years, he remembered, there had been no evidence of life Outside—except that vanished newspaper.
Shane decided to follow that crawling boulder into the jungle. He couldn’t be certain that his photographs would show anything by starlight alone. If he didn’t follow it, the machine might go back into the sea before he had learned the answers to any of those desperate questions. Crouching, he stepped out upon the road the heavy tracks had made.
Flash!
A point of painful violet winked at him and was gone. It wasn’t bright, yet it hurt his eyes. His body tingled and his muscles went limp. A terrible hand closed with agonizing pressure on his heart. He couldn’t breathe. The camera fell out of his hand and he dropped flat.
CHAPTER IV
The Outsider
A CRUSHING weight lay on Shane’s chest. The beat of his heart was agonized and slow. It took all his will to draw a tiny gasp of breath. His tingling body was numb and useless. That dull violet flash had somehow completely paralyzed him. His senses weren’t much impaired. Above the slow throb of his pulse he heard the muffled hum of that disguised machine. The crashing in the mangroves came near again and the damp rough coral trembled under him. He knew the machine was coming back.
His eyes were dim and aching. It was hard to move them and the focus was blurred, but he saw the dark, jagged bulk lurch into the range of his vision. It stopped and the humming ceased. Metal clanged hollowly. A dim, tall thing emerged.
He strained his throbbing eyes, forgot the agony of his heart and the labor of breathing. The tingling over his body was suddenly a deep chill. His fancy tried to paint an alien monstrosity. Then his heart went on and he breathed again, for a low human voice had spoken.
“Hullo.”
That was all. A tiny light dazzled Shane. He could neither close his eyes, nor turn them away. He felt hands going through his pockets and heard a familiar click as the stranger opened his camera, but there was nothing he could do.
Strong hands lifted his lax body and he was completely powerless to resist. He couldn’t even keep his head from being bumped painfully against the top of the low doorway. He was carried into the machine and dropped unceremoniously upon a hard, narrow bunk.
The air had a faint, sharp, chemical smell. There was a clang as the door closed. The shoes of his captor grated on a metal floor. There were no voices and he guessed that the man was alone.
Glaring blue lights came on, but Shane, from where he had been dumped, couldn’t see his captor. A bare metal wall and a tangle of tubes and cables above him were all he saw. He tried to speak, but his paralyzed vocal cords made no sound. Breathing still took all his efforts.
“Lieutenant Barry Shane.” That startled him, until he realized that the man must be reading from the identification card in his wallet. “Division Eleven, Ring Guard, Key West Base.”
The hard voice puzzled him. The accent was queer, too careful. Suddenly he thought he understood, froze to a cold touch of horror. That accent, he was certain, wasn’t American. His captor was an Outsider!
“Lieutenant,” the voice told him, “you will do.”
But Shane scarcely heard. His brain spun as he tried to think. The impossible was true. Somehow—somewhere—men had survived Outside. What would they be like, after two centuries? Did this mean a friendly visit, or armed invasion?
The footsteps moved away. Motors hummed and the machine lurched into motion. A radio blared abruptly, modulated, picked up a newscast. Laboring to breathe, Shane thought of all that an unsuspected enemy could learn about American affairs, defenses and the language, by listening to the radio.
WATER slapped against the hull.
The radio went silent. Shane knew that the machine had crawled back under the sea.
He tried to fight the paralysis that numbed him. Desperate necessity spurred him. He had to find out who the Outsiders were and what they planned. He had to escape with his warning. He struggled for control of his body and slowly the paralysis ebbed.
First he was able to wink his smarting eyes. Then he could move his lips and finally manage to shift his cramped arms. The pain left his heart and it was easier to breathe. At last he ventured to move his head.
He could see a little more of the machine’s interior. The machine was all metal. There was no wood, no plastic. The bolts and screws all had curious triangular heads. Evidently the builders of this machine had been out of touch with America for a long time, he thought.
Then he saw, pasted on the metal wall, a bathing-girl cover from a popular magazine published in Chicago Corporation. He could see the date—three years ago. Perhaps this wasn’t his captor’s first trip into the Ring!
Still he couldn’t see the Outsider. Desperately Shane’s eyes searched for some possible weapon. He found a thick brass cylinder, clipped to the wall above him, that looked like a fire extinguisher. Perhaps that would serve, but the paralysis still gripped his hands and his feet. It seemed that only the deeper nerves, which had not completely ceased to function, were recovering. He couldn’t even close his fingers yet. The attack would have to wait.
Despair seized him when the humming motors stopped. There was only the whir of a fan and a slow hissing, perhaps from oxygen valves. Hastily Shane rolled his head back where it had been and deliberately lay still.
Shots rang on the metal floor. Strong hands rolled him over on the bunk. His eyes blinked against the unshaded blue light. For the first time he saw his captor. He lay there, staring. There was nothing else that he could do.
The Outsider was about Shane’s own height. He wore tight trousers and a close-belted tunic of some unfamiliar lustrous gray material. His bearing was erect and military. He had coppery hair and a stiff, reddish little toothbrush mustache. His tanned face was rather handsome. Shane couldn’t help thinking that he would look well in the blue of the Ring Guard.
“You’re coming out of it,” the man said, his voice so crisp and rapid that Shane almost forgot the accent. Its stacatto tempo reminded him a little of a certain radio announcer. “I believe that you’re precisely the sort of man I came for, but I want to talk to you, Lieutenant.”
He lifted Shane’s head almost gently and thrust a pillow under it. “Can you speak?”
Shane opened his mouth in a pretense of feeble effort. He drew another gasping breath and tried to make his face convey a mute apprehension.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the tall man said. “Some of your motor nerves are paralyzed, but the ray didn’t reach your heart, or anything vital. The short-circuiting is temporary, due to a reversible change in the myelin nerve-sheath. You’ll be better soon.”
HE moved Shane’s arm to a less cramping position. “Comfortable? Let me introduce myself. I’m Captain Glenn Clayton. As soon as you are able to speak, I am going to be forced to ask you for certain information. If you supply it, you will be treated with the dignity that a fellow-soldier deserves.” Captain Clayton didn’t say what would happen if the information were not supplied. His efficient and aggressive manner suggested that he was confident it would be supplied sooner or later. It occurred to Shane that that paralyzing light would be an effective instrument of torture, even though it left no mark.
What, he wondered, was Clayton captain of? Probably he himself was more anxious to obtain information than the other man. But his hands and feet were still useless and Captain Clayton looked hard, ruthless and alert.
“Soon you’ll be able to talk,” Clayton said. “I’ll tell you now what I want to know—everything about America. Particularly I want to know about the Barrier—the Ring, you call it. The location and defenses of the Ring Cylinder and the numbers, disposition and equipment of the Ring Guard. Your capture was very fortunate for my purpose, Lieutenant.”
He moved out of Shane’s sight, came back with two pairs of bright, jingling handcuffs and a big, queer-looking gun.
“I must ask you to submit to these,” he said. “You’ll soon be recovering and repeated use of the paralysis beam would be permanently injurious to your nerves. Then we’ll be free to talk without interruption about your Ring and the Guard.”
He bent and caught Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s hands were numb and dead. He couldn’t even clench them into effective fists. His feet were lifeless, too, and this lean fighting man was too grimly watchful to give him any real chance. The thick bright tube, Shane guessed, was the paralysis gun.
But Clayton’s words somehow sent his mind back to the Ring Guard Academy. He thought of the old gymnasium, with its faint peculiar smell of stale sweat and disinfectant and the hard mats on the plastoid floor. The physical combat instructor’s dry, precise voice seemed to be rasping again:
“Now we shall take up the case of attack against an armed opponent, when both hands and feet are fettered or otherwise incapacitated. Like all combat it is a question of the intelligent use of the weapons available. In this case, those weapons are weight, the massive muscles of the back and legs, the grasping power of the teeth—”
Barry Shane forgot this strange machine. The hard bunk under him became a sweat-stale mat and Captain Glenn Clayton was only another Guard cadet. He twisted off the bunk. His butting head struck aside the weapon. His teeth caught a firm hold of the flesh and skin above Clayton’s wrist. His feet were useless, so he had to come down on his knees, but even that put him under his opponent. His head went down and he heaved.
Clayton tried to fight. His left fist, with the jingling manacles in it, struck painfully against the side of Shane’s head. But pain didn’t matter now. Anyhow, his skin was still too dead to feel sharply.
In fractions of a second it was ended. Clayton went over his head and struck the metal wall behind the bunk. He dropped upon it, rolled off on the floor and lay there.
THE rest of it was more difficult than that. Using his elbows and his knees, Shane scraped the manacles out from under Clayton. With his teeth he pushed the open jaws over Clayton’s wrists and closed them with the pressure of his knees. With the second pair he secured Clayton’s ankle to the rail of the bunk.
By the time that was done, Shane was able to stand on his tingling feet. A little life had come back into his hands. He picked up the weapon Clayton had dropped and tried it on the wall. A thin blade of dull violet stabbed out when he pressed the thumb-key. He knew that this was the paralysis gun.
With stiff, numb fingers he searched Clayton’s pockets. He found a ring of keys, a metal-handled knife and a thin platinum case that evidently took the place of a wallet. Nothing about Clayton was made of leather. His shoes and his belt were of a gray pliant synthetic. His only adornment was a heavy platinum ring. Clayton remained unconscious, breathing heavily.
Shane’s numbed fingers managed to open the platinum case. A fabric pocket contained a dozen platinum coins. Shane read the inscription on one.
“New Britain—161—ten pounds.” On the reverse, beside a crouching lion: “Always England.”
Shane whistled softly and stared down at the tall officer. This was astounding. These precisely milled coins, together with the machine and Clayton himself, meant that a strong culture existed Outside. If New Britain, whatever and wherever it was, had been strong enough to survive Outside, it was strong enough to be a possible menace to the Ring and to America. Shane’s visit didn’t exactly have the manner of a peaceful expedition.
Under the pocket Shane found a picture. He almost whistled again. He forgot his prisoner, staring at the picture. It was enameled in color on the inside top of the case. It showed a girl with violet eyes and red-brown hair. The red lips were smiling, but the eyes seemed oddly grave.
