Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (10 page)

He
nodded. "That's about the size of it."

She shrugged. "Well, we just have to get
on the way to
Cefor
, then."

"Not
me. If I'm going to die, I'll die here."

She shot a puzzled glance at him. "I
don't understand you. You used to be a hero. You've done harder things than
this trek to
Cefor
. You got medals for it."

He smiled bleakly. "No, you don't
understand. I told you
I
was no hero. Before the war I was nothing,
nobody. I'd tried a few things and failed in them all. I tried crime two or
three times, and failed in that too. When the war started I realized it was my
last chance. In peace I had nothing to look forward to but starvation or jail.
So I thought I'd buy me a job. I became a professional hero. I didn't give a damn
if I died. But if I got through
I
was
pretty sure of some sort of job. Civilians aren't grateful for long, but a
collection of every medal they mint ought to be a recommendation just after the
war, I thought. And I was right. I had my choice of jobs. I joined an importing
firm and I've done well.

"I was a hero once, but that was when I
had to risk my life to buy a life worth living. I bought it and paid for it.
But when you gamble like that, you do it only once. I'm not going to throw away
all I worked for trying to get through to
Cefor
.
Sure, I know the
Greys
. I beat them before. But that
was then. Now I'd rather stay here and take my chance of being rescued than
give them another crack at me."

She looked steadily at him for a long time. Then she shook her head.
"Maybe I'm wrong to say it," she murmured, "but you weren't
twisted before. You're only twisted now. You've gone soft."

"Sure I've gone soft. I risked my life
time and again so that one day I'd have a chance to go soft."

"Well, if you won't go, I must."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Please yourself."

She made a gesture of disgust. "Heaven
knows I never thought I'd appeal to chivalry. I never cried off or made excuses
because I'm a woman. But—"

"It doesn't matter. The
Greys
will get
whoever tries it."

"I
thought the war was over."

"Sure it is. But out there you won't
find the civilized
Greys
. The
Greys
who will get you never signed any treaty. They won't attack the cities, but
they'll attack anything or anyone outside."

She turned to the closet that contained the
oxygen suits. "I might as well go now."

Warren watched her as she shook out the
plastic envelope, obviously unfamiliar to her, and tried to climb into it. Then
he put his hand on her arm.

"I can't let you go without telling you
exacdy
why you shouldn't," he said.

She
shook his arm off and struggled with the suit.

"First of all, though it's only a
detail," he remarked, "you don't wear heavy clothes under that. You'd
sweat
off pounds before you'd gone a hundred yards.
Most of us used to wear nothing but the suit, but if you don't like that, wear
something light and loose."

She
began to take off the suit again.

"You'll have no difficulty in finding the city," he said.
"It's right up the hill. Keep on the incline and you can't go wrong. If
you have to make a detour, just get back on the slope as soon as you can."

He paused. "You'll have even less
difficulty in finding the
Greys
."

She waited for him to go on, hating him but
utterly dependent on his knowledge of Venus.

"No native Venusians have any sense of
smell," he said. "So to replace scent in hunting they have a sense
that feels thought."

He saw her start, and grinned. "They can
locate anything that thinks. They're not telepaths. They don't know what you
think, any more than dogs hearing voices know what's being said. They just know
there's thinking going on in such-and-such a direction, and from the land of
thinking they know the kind of creature that's doing it. So it doesn't matter what
you think about, they'll pick you up."

He smiled again, cruelly, she thought.
"When they do find you, they won't kill you right away. They'll follow you
and let you catch a glimpse of one of them now and then and harry you and
frighten you half to death. But they'll let you get right to the gates of
Cefor
. Ever seen a cat torturing a mouse? The
Greys
are just like that. At the very last minute, when
you think you're safe, they'll drag you off into the forest and torture you to
death. Maybe they'll let you escape two or three times. But at last they'll
tire."

She twisted from him
angrily,
certain she had heard all that would be of any use
to her. She left the room to go to her cabin and change her clothes. But as
silently as a cat he had followed her.

"Listen carefully to what happens
then," he said, "for
it's
very
important."

She tried to pass him, but he leaned with one
arm on either side of her, holding her against the wall.

"They won't let you die. They'll mutilate you with their knives so
that you're bound to die, so that the best doctors on Earth, Venus and Mars
couldn't save you, so that you're in agony but will still live quite a while.
Then they'll take you to the nearest city—in this case,
Cefor
.
They'll leave you there. It amuses them that we humans don't kill our own
people, even when they want to die. You'll die in a hospital bed, heavily
drugged but still not enough to stop all the pain."

He let her go, for she was listening again,
in horrified fascination. "But that isn't important," he said
casually. "What is important is that you can tell them about us. We'll all
be grateful to you. We may erect a statue to you. You'll die, but in dying you
can save us."

He turned and left her then. She stared after
him in horror, her horror for the
Greys
a little
less strong than her horror for him.

Warren was waiting at the airlock as she came
back. He grinned at her. She was almost literally sick. The worst of it was
that he was almost certainly right. She had to make the effort, as no one else
would make it. He knew that. He could afford to let her do it. And he would be
saved. She would tell them at
Cefor
about the ship.
He wasn't alone. There were other lives to be saved.

Warren surveyed her and nodded. "You're
all right," he said. "Can you use a gun?"

She nodded involuntarily. "Take
another," he said. "They won't give you time to reload." He gave
her a gun, which she slipped in her belt. She had changed into lounging pajamas
which were enveloping but so thin she shivered in the normal temperature of
the ship. Over them the plastic suit covered her loosely, completely, held
firmly by the belt that contained her weapons.

Unwillingly she addressed
him. "Is there
no
way of screening thoughts from the
Greys
?"

"Only by thinking like a Grey yourself.
Only about half a dozen people ever learned
to do it—and they can't keep it up for long."

She fought a shrieking urge in her to beg him
to go instead of her. She believed all he had said—she expected to die. But
she also believed that if she stayed where she was she would die. No one else
would go.

"Good luck," said Warren.

Blindly, insanely she struck at him. But he
evaded her blow and helped her into the airlock.

When she went out, the heat met her as if an
oven door had been swung open. The ship's hull was insulated against both cold
and heat. Usually it was cold it kept out, but on Venus it was damp warmth.
Virginia's suit was supposed to afford some sort of insulation, but before she
was out of sight of the ship she was wet all over with sweat.

She took one last look at the ship as she climbed up the slope. It was
only fifty yards away. She could still turn and go back. She was beginning to
realize something that stemmed from what Warren had said. She could always find
Cefor
—but she couldn't find the ship again once she
lost sight of it. Going downhill might land her anywhere along the perimeter
once she had lost all sense of direction—which would be almost at once.

She tried to think calmly of Warren. He must have known from the first
that if he wouldn't try to get through to
Cefor
, she
would. She wasn't the sort to sit still and wait for death.

And the savage, inhuman
customs of the
Greys
ensured that only one had to go.
Hate for Warren crawled in her stomach. The worst of it was
,
she believed he might have got through safe. She still believed in his
competence. Somehow, if he had had to, he would have reached safety.

But he didn't have
jto
risk it. There was someone
to risk it for him. A girl, but that didn't matter to a man who had lost pride.

She walked on for what seemed hours, until
she was as wet as if she had just stepped out of a hot bath. Her watch showed
sixty-three minutes since she left the ship. She had been walking briskly.
Over four miles.
She had always been a good walker, and the
slighter gravity helped.

Then she struck the forest, beginning again
on the slope.
Venusian
trees were like those of Earth
in that they consisted mainly of a thick trunk, but that was all the resemblance.
You could push an arm through them, and they closed round it. But they weren't
dangerous. A man could walk right through them, if he was strong.

Virginia began to hope, despite herself, that
she wouldn't see any
Greys
. She fell into the rhythm
of her stride, walking like an automaton. She was tough. She could do twenty
miles without coming to the end of her strength. The only difficulty was the
eternal slope. But even that she became accustomed to.

She had done ten miles, she reckoned, when
ahead of her, right in her path, she saw a Grey. He was facing her, only twenty
yards away. Her gun came up and she fired, but she was not surprised when he
faded into the mist and disappeared, unharmed.

So it had started. There would be a lot of
this, according to Warren. The
Greys
were humanoid,
like half-finished men. They had no hair, but they had arms, legs, feet, a
trunk and a head. Everything about them was rounded off—shoulders, thighs,
feet. They were a uniform grey all over, and invisible on their own planet at
anything more than twenty yards.

They
could be in plain sight, and only had to turn or move back a step to disappear
completely.

She began to plan. Perhaps she could beat
them, on what Warren had told her. Nothing mattered, apparently, until she was
almost at
Cefor
. She would have to save herself till
then.
Greys
could run
a
little faster than most humans, but not much. And she used to be able to
do the hundred yards in well under twelve seconds. Civilized
Greys
had civilized weapons, but these were probably
unarmed except for knives. If she could pick her time right for a dash to the
city, she might make it.

She began to reel
a
little and slowed her pace, knowing she was observed. Perhaps she might
trick them into leaving the final attack till too late. She could rest
a
little now. It was only the last mile that mattered.

She staggered and fell. She rose slowly, in
artistic fatigue. But she almost jerked into her sprint when she saw four
Greys
calmly watching her from only ten yards.

She shot rapidly, and one of them fell. The
others didn't appear to care. But they disappeared, if only just beyond her
range of vision.

She ran a little then, in terror that was
only a little less real than she pretended. But the control she still had on
herself enabled her to stumble on tiredly at hardly more than walking pace.

Her hopes were beginning to rise. Twelve
miles; she was still fresh; and the
Greys
must think
her almost out on her feet. They must let her see
Cefor
or their devilish torture wouldn't be complete. And if they let her get that
far, she might be able to dash for the gates and then hold them off until men
came out, attracted by her shots.