Bridgehead (22 page)

Louis Gustafson went back to his assessment of the weapon. He knew that it would disappear—rather, that he would—sometime in the near future. He hoped to have gained at least some notion of the principle on which the thing operated by that time. Since there was nothing better for him—for any of them—to do until then, the professor concentrated on his Vrage artifact.

That way he could ignore for a little longer what were at best the half-truths the Travelers had told him.

Chairman Shroyer used two fingers to peel the suit farther down the alien's head, as if he were a surgeon removing a rubber glove. The magenta covering seemed to be losing some of its initial resilience now that the inner face was being exposed to oxygen.

The Vrage was covered in smooth skin which showed no hint of hair, feathers, or scales. There were not even patterns of pigmentation. The chairman used his pen to touch the scalp. The skin wriggled across a surface of bone beneath, an internal skeleton rather than the chitinous exoskeleton which the number of limbs had suggested. Set between and beneath the groups of eyes was a nose—really only a hole the size of a silver dollar—divided internally by more than a score of radial septa. The Vrage had no mouth in its head and no certain ears, though a series of holes near the juncture with the neck could have had something to do with hearing.

“It turned all the way around,” said Arlene Myaschensky, pointing to the creature's head. She alone did not know for certain that there were other Vrages combing the forest. Still, she had enough grasp of reality now to look around after she spoke. The car toward which she had been pulled gaped empty a dozen feet away. The undergrowth was continuing to lift from the ground so that even the nearby vehicle was almost hidden. Reassured that they were all concealed, Myaschensky squatted down beside the Vrage.

It had not occurred to any of them that the car gave off a locating signal.

*   *   *

The first Vrage support team had met Astor and destruction as it raced toward the beacon. Screaming bolts occasionally danced above Myaschensky's group even now. Astor's lethal magnetism continued to draw the majority of Vrage interest toward her gunsight. A separate team had been vectored toward the initial contact, however. Orders which could not be denied had forced the new Vrage trio to dismount a hundred feet away and blunder through the undergrowth on foot.

All of them were terrified. Vision through the broad screen of a utility vehicle was as good as the forest itself allowed—but closed in the hoods of their atmosphere suits, the Vrage vision was as restricted as that of humans wearing gas masks. Further, the heavy armor of the team's cars, now forsaken, was a psychological benefit, even if the soldiers suspected—as their leader knew—that the armor had failed to save at least a dozen of their comrades thus far.

They scuttled through the vegetation. Their team leader in the center was homing on the beacon. His flankers, six feet to either side, were trying to look in all directions for the gunman who would blast them if he saw them first. Stems swished and flopped fans of leaves across their faces, each touch bringing a flash of panic.

The Vrage on the left side of the line stepped on Professor Gustafson's foot.

It was not really surprising that the Vrage soldiers missed seeing Gustafson when they passed to either side of him. The professor was hunched, tweedy, and physically motionless while his mind analyzed the alien weapon. One of the Vrage's leading feet rocked on the professor's ankle as if that ankle were a fallen branch—and with no more interest than the branch would have aroused.

The back foot of the inside pair brushed Gustafson's leg again. The professor was startled into the complete paralysis which alone could have preserved his life under the circumstances. Like many people who concentrate on a task to a degree which others find absurd, he had no real awareness of how focused he became. The magenta forms he saw when one stepped on him seemed figures of a mirage. Gustafson had time only to think that the brilliantly clad Vrages had been transported directly atop him by a time machine before they stalked on and all hell broke loose.

When Robert Shroyer stood up to stretch, the midmost alien was six feet away and equally startled. The chairman screamed and hurled the pen with which he had been probing the dead Vrage. The pen's stainless-steel barrel might have done some useful harm if it had struck its target. Instead it slapped away through the compound leaves which had concealed the parties from one another until they were close enough to touch. Bellowing in fright, Shroyer bolted in the direction opposite the newcomers. He collided with Arlene Myaschensky as the woman jumped up to see what was the matter. The two of them went down in a heap as the Vrages' guide beams raved through the forest around them.

The abandoned Vrage vehicle had gone unnoticed in the shock of contact, though it was not really hidden. Because its windscreen was lifted, there was not even that limited protection. When a Vrage scythed the area waist high, his beam slashed across the car's gaping interior. Instead of melting down, as had those which Astor destroyed, the power source of this vehicle flashed into white plasma.

Because the Vrage communication was psychic, not oral, the shout that saved the humans' lives was not one that they heard.

The explosion of the dead alien's car was deafeningly evident, even over the shrieking hand weapons.

Foliage touched by the flat cone of radiance folded in on itself. A wedge of the nearest tree shrank away as abruptly as if from a giant axe stroke. The tree slumped and twisted above the injury, the weight of the upper trunk pulling and breaking undamaged fibers like a platoon of machine guns.

Because the blast had been directed upward, none of those in the vicinity was injured by it. The Vrage soldiers realized they were firing on their fellows: all three simultaneously stopped shooting and shouted mentally to their comrades to stop also. Leaves fluttered down.

Chairman Shroyer stared incredulously at the big toe of his right foot. His flesh was unharmed, but there was an oval gap in the leather, a smaller hole in his sock, and a tiny crescent missing from the toenail.

*   *   *

Louis Gustafson had not moved even after his moment of surprise had passed. He had watched with the delight of discovery as the Vrage soldiers picked their way forward, noting that their reddish-purple suits were mittened, but their thumbs were free and cocked out at an angle from the grips of their weapons. The professor had arranged his captured weapon in his right palm, reasoning that the Vrage physiognomy had to be significantly different. The muscles at the base of Gustafson's own thumb did not give him a grip firm enough to carry—

Then Vrage guns had screamed and slashed as Vrage thumbs clamped against grips, and Gustafson, beside and slightly behind the rank of aliens, did the same. When the utility vehicle exploded, the professor's thumb lifted by instinct as if it were responsible for the blast.

But
his
weapon had not fired at all, perhaps—he shifted his grip slightly—the pad of his thumb touched the cool, glassy weapon a little too far up onto the receiver.

The reddish guide beam lanced from the professor's gun to the alien who had stepped on Gustafson a moment before. The professor found it quite natural to sweep that beam across the backs of all three Vrage soldiers.

The effect was as much a surprise to Louis Gustafson as the attack itself—briefly—surprised the aliens. Instead of a line across which the target separated, a high-voltage arc leaped back from the Vrage armor to the spinning disk on Gustafson's weapon. The disk slowed, and the shimmering line across its surface drifted slightly out of synchrony with the guide beam. That did not help the alien. His eight limbs shot out stiffly like the spines of a sea urchin, as the high-frequency howl of the weapon competed momentarily with the roar of the arc.

The weapon bucked in Gustafson's hand, resisting his intent to sweep it across the backs of all three Vrage soldiers. That was a tendency rather than a demand, however, a sluggishness like that of one magnet a few inches away from another. Arc, bucking, and resistance continued as the guide beam slipped from one alien to the next and then the last. The third Vrage was turning his head and weapon toward his attacker when the professor's beam linked him as well.

The creatures in magenta armor went down like soaked sponges when the beam no longer gripped them. Gustafson held the weapon for several seconds on the third because there were no further targets. The weapon began to heat up like a resistor on the verge of failure. The professor flicked his thumb up. His final opponent collapsed. Gustafson thrust the weapon away in a sudden fit of revulsion.

Robert Shroyer stood up cautiously, eyeing the professor and his weapon. He held out his hand to Myaschensky. The woman got up by herself without noticing the offered help. “Ah, Louis,” the chairman said to Professor Gustafson. “Ah—thank you.”

“Robert, I don't know what I've done,” Gustafson said simply, rubbing his palms against one another as if washing them. “This … I'm very much afraid I was wrong in deciding to build the machine, the
system
that I did.”

“I think we'd better get out of here,” said Arlene Myaschensky. She made shooing motions with both hands toward the men. “They may be able to find us again anyway, but I don't think we ought to stay around.”

Shroyer nodded. He put his hand on Gustafson's arm and kept it there in comradeship as the two of them began to walk away obediently. “Though I'm sure,” Shroyer said to reassure himself, “that, that Selve will have us back where we belong very shortly.”

Arlene did not reply as she stepped over the trio of aliens the professor had shot. There was no sign of damage to their suits save a slight grayish discoloration along the approximate track of the beam. The bodies were utterly flaccid.

The woman paused. Then she picked up one of the alien weapons before she drifted into the undergrowth behind the faculty members.

*   *   *

“Are you doing something to them?” Isaac Hoperin asked the pair of grad students at the instrument panel in the basement.

“Nothing, nothing,” insisted Mustafa Bayar angrily.

“No, but somebody sure as hell is,” said Mike Gardner. “Look, Mustafa, it's building in a normal drive curve.” He gestured toward the figures chasing themselves across the screen of the computer terminal.

“I think someone was at the outside door,” said Sara Jean Layberg. She stood now at the open door in the screened enclosure. Ever since the transport, her thumbs had been rubbing the sides of her index fingers firmly enough to cause occasional crackling sounds.

“It's not normal,” Bayar objected. He used both his first and middle fingers to point at the screen. “Look, the right-hand coils are leading.” The level of noise was making it difficult for the two men to understand one another, even though they stood side by side and both understood the context.

Hoperin moved closer and said loudly, “Last night. Is this what happened last night? You said that the—Who's that?”

Two figures, both of them tall, stepped out of the doorway from the boiler room. Distance and the pattern of the fencing distorted their features. Bayar recognized Schlicter from her height and motorcycle jacket.

“Christ, if that's it—” Mike Gardner blurted. He stepped away from the racks of instruments and began waving both arms like a berserk semaphore. “Go away!” he screamed. “
Go away!
It's not safe where you're standing.”

The roaring coils between Gardner and the pair of newcomers created a barrier which his words could not penetrate. The woman in black leather waved back. She and her companion were framed by the two pillars, directly opposite the docking area painted on the floor of the enclosure. The woven wire vibrated fiercely, throwing the couple into soft focus.

The flash took Mike Gardner's breath away. He was blinded. The silence following the palpable vibration made it seem for the instant that he was deaf as well. He pressed his palms savagely over his eyes and cheeks. The pressure brought the world back to him and muted the whimper in his throat.

“Good heavens, where have they gone? And who are—” Dr. Hoperin cried. His shoes slapped and skidded on the concrete. The fencing clashed when the physicist grabbed it to steady himself as he ran out of the enclosure.

Someone touched the back of Gardner's neck reassuringly. “You shouldn't have kept your eyes open, Mike,” said Sara Jean Layberg. “But they'll be all right soon. Mine were.”

The woman moved her fingers from Gardner's neck to his left hand. She gently urged the hand down. Gardner blinked. He could see, though there were violet blotches in the center of anything he looked at. There was a clot of figures, Hoperin and Bayar among them, beyond the cross wall of the enclosure now.

“I knew I shouldn't be looking,” Gardner said hoarsely. “I—Christ. If I pretended it wasn't going to happen, maybe it wouldn't happen before those two got clear. Any idea who they were?”

Sara Jean shook her head. “Something must have happened,” she said, “to, to Henry and the others. We'd better go see.” She took her hand from Gardner's and moved toward the enclosure gate. The returned party and the men greeting them were now a gabbling crowd moving down the aisle toward the gate as well. Henry and Astor were carrying another of the black-suited Travelers. The burden, the victim, was not Selve. Selve was talking quickly to Gustafson and Isaac Hoperin, one to either side as they walked.

“Damn, I wish I could've stopped them,” muttered Mike Gardner. He had secured the doors before the test was run. The boiler room door could not be locked, and he had not tried to wedge or jam it instead. “If they wind up like Dr. Rice, well … Who knows what's happened to them?”

*   *   *