War Against the Rull (16 page)

Diddy cringed a little from the needle, but he allowed the blood to be taken. Gil came forward. "Can I help?" he asked eagerly.

"Sure," said the man. "You take this around to my friend."

Gil was gone exactly as a boy would go—at a dead run. A minute ticked by, and then another minute; and then ...

"Ah," said the man, "here they come."

Diddy stared at the returning pair with a sickly grin. The Rull, who had been standing beside him, walked swiftly forward to meet the two. If the two spies said anything to each other, Diddy was unable to hear it. Actually, he took it for granted that there was a swift exchange on the light level. The communication, whatever its nature, stopped.

The man who had done all the talking came back to Diddy and said, "Kid, you've sure been valuable to us. It looks as if we're really going to make a contribution to the war against the Rulls. Do you know that air in there has an artificial gas mixed with it, a fluorine compound? Very interesting and very safe by itself. And even if a Rull with his fluorine metabolism should walk in there, he'd be perfectly safe—unless he tried to use the energy of his body on a blaster or communication level. The energy would act as an ionizing agent, bring about a molecular union between the fluorine in the air and the fluorine in the Rull body. The union wouldn't last long, being unstable, but neither would the Rull body."

Diddy did not fully understand. The chemical reactions of fluorine and its compounds had been discussed in a general way as part of his teaching, but this was something a little different.

"Very clever," said the spy with apparent satisfaction. "The Rull himself sets off the reaction which destroys him. But now, I gather that all you kids want to go inside and have a look around. Okay, in with you. Not you—" to Diddy—"not for a minute. I want to have a little talk with you. Come on over here."

He drew Diddy aside, while the "boys" rushed through the door. Diddy could imagine them spreading through the building, searching out secrets. He thought wearily, Surely somebody will do something, and quickly.

The Rull said, "Confidentially, kid, this is really an important job you've done for us today. Just to give you an idea, we've kept an eye on the research building pretty well all night. The staff here usually goes home around midnight. Since midnight a couple of workmen have gone into the place, installed some equipment, and left. They put a radio hook-up over the door, with a loud-speaker both inside and out. If I were a Rull, I'd wreck a thing like that, just as a precaution. Right now, except for you kids, the whole place is empty. You can see how much the people here have depended on the bacteria barrier keeping the Rull away."

He paused, then continued. "Of course the Rulls could spy out most of that information in advance, and if they finally got across the barrier they could set up guards all around the building, and so prevent even the most powerful armored forces from getting through to the defense of the building. It could be blasted, of course, from a distance and destroyed, but it's hard to imagine them doing that very quickly. They'd wait till they'd tried other methods.

"You see where that would take us. The Rulls would have an opportunity to search out some of the secrets of the building. Once outside, they could communicate the information to other Rulls, not in the danger area, and then each individual would have to take his own chance on escaping. That's bold stuff, but the Rulls have done similar things before. So you see, it all could happen easily enough. But now we've prevented it."

"Diddy—" it was a whisper from above and to one side of him—"don't show any sign that you hear this."

Diddy stiffened, then quickly relaxed. It had been proved long ago that the Rull electronic hearing and talking devices, located as they were inside sound-deadening shoulder muscles, could not detect whispers.

The whisper continued swiftly. "You've got to go inside. When you are inside, stay near the door. That's all. There'll be more instructions for you then."

Diddy located the source of the whisper. It was coming from above the door. He thought shakily, The Rull mentioned a radio being installed over the door—the whisper must be coming through that.

But how was he going to get inside when this Rull was so obviously delaying him? The Rull was saying something about a reward, but Diddy scarcely heard him. Distractedly, he looked

around. He could see a long line of buildings, some of them brightly illuminated, others in half darkness. The vast brilliance from the ship cast a long shadow where he was standing. In the sky above, the night seemed as black as ever.

There was no sign of the bright new morning, only hours away now. Diddy said desperately, "Gosh, I'd better get inside. The sun will soon be up, and I've still got a lot of places to look."

The Rull said, "I wouldn't waste much time in there. But take a look inside anyway. There is something I want you to do."

Quivering, Diddy opened the door. The Rull caught it before it could close.

"Let me get in there for just a second," he said.

He stepped in and reached up above the door, and yanked. Some wiring came down.

He stepped back outside. "Just thought I'd create a war condition for our little experiment. I just disconnected the wiring of that newly installed speaker system. You go in for a minute and tell me what the other kids are doing."

The door closed behind Diddy in its automatic fashion.

At the Security building, the admiral in charge shrugged regretfully at Jamieson. "I'm sorry, Trevor. We did the best we could. But they just wrecked our only hope of contact with your boy."

"What message did you plan to give him?" asked Jamieson.

"I'm sorry," the admiral replied, "that's classified."

From his cage in the trailer outside the building, the ezwal telepathed to Jamieson. "I read his mind. Would you like me to transmit to Diddy?"

"Yes," said Jamieson mentally.

To Diddy, the message that came was clear and direct—and so sharp that he confused it with a whispered speech. The message was: "Diddy, unless a Rull carries a weapon right out in the open, he's dependent on the energy from his cells. A Rull by his very nature has to go about without any clothes on. It's only his body that can produce the images of human clothes and human forms. I see that only two boys are in sight."

There
were
two, both of whom were bending over a desk on the far side of the room. For a moment Diddy wondered how they were seeing this scene. He had no time for speculation, for the next words came. "Take out your gun and shoot them."

Diddy put his hand in his pocket, swallowed hard and brought out the gun. His hand trembled a little, but for five years now
he had been trained for such a moment as this, and he felt awfully steady inside. It was not a gun that had to be aimed perfectly.

He fired a steady blue streak of flame, and he merely waved its nozzle toward where the Rulls were. They started to turn and collapsed as they did so. "Good shot," said the ezwal.

Diddy scarcely noticed that no sound accompanied the words. Across the room, what had been two apple-cheeked boys were changing. In death, the images couldn't hold. And though he had seen pictures of what was emerging; it was different seeing the dark flesh coming into view, the strange reticulated limbs.

"Listen—" the thought brought him out of that shock—"all the doors are locked. Nobody can get in. Nobody out. Start walking through the building. Shoot everybody you see.
Everybody/
Accept no pleas, no pretense that they are just kids. Careful track has been kept of every other real boy, and there are only Rulls in the building. Burn them all without mercy."

It was several minutes later that the ezwal reported to Jamieson : "Your son has destroyed every Rull inside the building. I've told him to remain inside, since an attempt is being made to kill those that are outside. He'll stay there until I tell him to come out."

On receiving that message, Jamieson gave a shuddering sigh of relief. "Thank you, my friend," he said silently. "That was an outstanding telepathic performance."

It was the admiral who wanted to talk to Jamieson, later. "It was really a tremendous victory," he said. "The Rulls on the outside fought it out with us in their usual brave fashion, but we changed the bacteria where they originally crossed the barrier, and so we had them trapped."

He hesitated, then said in a puzzled tone, "What I don't understand is, how did your boy know exactly when to use the blaster on them, without our telling him?"

Jamieson said, "I want you to remember that question when you receive my report on what happened."

"Why would you write a report on this incident?" the officer asked, puzzled.

"You'll see," said Jamieson.

It was still pitch-dark as Diddy caught a helicar at Cross 2 and flew to within a block of the hill, from which "Explorers" like himself had to watch the sunrise. He climbed the steps that led to the top of the hill and found several other boys already there, sitting and standing around. While he could not be certain that they were human, he had
a pretty strong conviction that they were. There seemed to be no reason why a Rull should participate in this particular ritual.

Diddy sank down under a bush beside the shadow shape of one of the boys. Neither of them spoke right away; then Diddy said, "What's your name?"

"Mart." The answering voice was shrill but not loud.

"Find the sound?" asked Diddy.

"Yep."

"So did I." He hesitated, thinking of what he had done. Just for a moment he had a sharp awareness of how wonderful was the training that had made it possible for a nine-year-old boy to act as he had acted. Then that faded from his fore-consciousness, and he said, "It's been fun, hasn't it?"

"I guess so."

There was silence. From where Diddy sat, he could see the intermittent glare of furnaces as the sky flared with a white, reflected fire. Farther along was the jewel-bright aura of light that partially framed the ship. The sky above was no longer dark, and Diddy noticed that the shadows around him were not dense any more, but grayish. He could see Mart's body crouched under the bush, a smaller body than his own.

As the dawn brightened, he watched the ship. Slowly, the metal of its bare upper ribs caught the flames of the sun that was still not visible from where they sat. The glare expanded downward, and sunlight glinted on the dark, shiny vastness of its finished lower walls, the solid shape it made against the sky beyond.

Out of the shadows grew the ship, an unbelievable thing, bigger than anything around it. At this distance the hundred-story Administration Building looked like a part of its scaffolding, a white pillar against the dark colossus that was the ship. Long after the sun had come up, Diddy stood watching it in exaltation of pride. In the glare of the new day the ship seemed to be gathering itself as if poised for flight. Not yet, Diddy thought shakily, not yet. But the day would come. In that far time the biggest ship ever planned and constructed by man would point its nose at the open spaces between the near stars and fly out into the darkness. And then indeed would the Rulls have to give ground.

At last, in response to the familiar empty feeling in his belly, Diddy went down the hill. He ate breakfast in a little "Instant" restaurant. And then, happy, he boarded a helicar and headed for home.

In the master bedroom, Jamieson heard the outer door of the apartment open. He caught his wife with her fingers on the
knob of the bedroom door. He shook his head at her gently. "He'll be tired," he said softly. "Let him rest."

Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be led back. To her own bed this time.

Diddy tiptoed across the living room and into the privacy of the Play Square. The door shut automatically behind him as he entered, and the lights switched on. A glance at the controls on the wall showed that the complex robot room was alert to his presence. It said, finally, "Your report, please."

"I found out what the sound was," said Diddy happily.

"What is it?"

When Diddy had answered that, the Play Square said, "You are a credit to my training. I'm proud of you. Now go to sleep."

As he crept under the sheets, Diddy grew aware of the faint tremor of the room. Lying there, he felt the quaver of his bed and heard the shudder of the absorbent plastic windows. Below him, the floor creaked ever so faintly in its remote, never ending rapport with the all-pervading vibration.

He grinned happily, but with a great weariness. He'd never have to wonder about the sound again. It was a miasma of The Yards, a thin smoke of vibration from the masses of buildings and metal and machines that tendriled out from The Way.

That sound would be with him all his life; for when the ship was finished, a similar, pervasive sound would shake from every metal plate.

He slept, feeling the pulse of the sound deep inside him, a part of his life.

Jamieson awakened at his usual hour; and he was in the act of slipping quietly out of bed when he remembered. He turned, looked down at his wife, and shook his head happily. She seemed to be resting well.

She and the boy should sleep for hours still. He turned and tiptoed into his dressing room. He ate breakfast alone and considered how the night's events might affect the long days ahead. That they would affect it, he was convinced.

The ezwal had proved itself. To have done so by saving his son was simply the result of his own determination to use every
possible means of helping the boy in his sustained period of danger.

Arrived at his office, Jamieson prepared a report on the night's action. He gave as his final conclusion that what had happened was as important as the completion of the ship itself. He wrote: "The usefulness of mental telepathy as a means of communication with the alien races which now provide so little aid against the common Rull enemy is of course a matter for careful experimentation. But that such a medium of communication exists at all is an outstanding event in the history of the galaxy."

He had the report duplicated, and he sent it by special messenger to everyone he could think of whose opinion would have influence.

The first response came that afternoon from a high Armed Forces figure.

"Were precautions taken to insure that the ezwal did not have mental access to anyone who knew the secrets of Interim Research?" (
Interim
was a code word meaning
Top Secret.)
"Is it possible that this particular ezwal should be destroyed as a matter of simple precaution?"

Jamieson read the message with a feeling that he was dealing with a form of insanity. Which of course he was. He had noticed the extremes to which military secrecy was sometimes carried.

He saw that the great man's reply had been sent to all the people to whom he had submitted his own report.

Galvanized, he prepared a reply which established on a basis of data which could be checked that the ezwal had not been near anyone who knew the actual scientific details of Interim Research. He pointed out that though his own knowledge had always been kept at a generalized minimum, the action of the Rull agents, in crossing the barriers, and in their other actions, had indicated a considerable knowledge of the bacterial-warfare methods being used against them; and that rather than condemn the ezwal for the small amount of data which he may have learned from us, we might be well advised to discover what he had learned from the Rull agents.

That was the one distortion in his reply. He knew from the experience of the giant adult ezwal on Eristan II that ezwals could not read the mind of a Rull. But this was not the moment to present negative information.

He continued. "It is also worth pointing out that it would require months, possibly years, to create again a circumstance whereby a young and willing ezwal falls into our hands. It is also worth pointing out that future relations with the ezwal race
will depend on how meticulously we handle ourselves at present. If they should ever become aware that we actually executed a baby ezwal knowing what we now do, the entire relationship would be instantly jeopardized."

Jamieson dispatched his reply, with copies to everyone. And since he still had the ezwal under his care, he took the precaution of having it moved to a new location, for the purpose—he wrote in his report—of making absolutely sure that it had no contact with anyone possessing valuable data. The report sheet was filed in his own office, for the record. Satisfied that the ezwal would not now be destroyed by some hasty action taken without his knowledge, he waited for further reactions.

There were several before the end of the afternoon. With one exception, they were acknowledgments only. The exception was from the individual who had responded earlier. It was a personal note to Jamieson, which read: "My God, man, was that monster you showed us a baby?"

That was the last attempt to destroy the young ezwal for legal or military reasons. A week went by.

Jamieson received a memorandum from Computer Division shortly before noon. "Some data is available on your request of the 10th instant, for names of races with which it has been impossible to establish communication."

He called Caleb Carson, arranged for the two of them to have lunch, with a view of spending part of the afternoon together at Computer Division.

Carson in the flesh was a lean, lantern-jawed individual who bore a strong resemblance to his famous explorer grandfather. There was a glow about him, an air of suppressed excitement, as if he knew secrets and had had experiences which he could not share with anyone.

Seated in the "Ship Room" of the government restaurant for executives, Jamieson told young Carson, "My purpose is to take the ezwal on one journey, to an alien planet, myself. I want to have the experience of using him at least once as a communication medium. Then I'd like to turn him over to you."

Caleb Carson nodded. He looked flushed and eager. He said, "I appreciate this, sir. You're giving me an opportunity to open up entire planets for co-operation with the galactic culture. I haven't operated on that level of things before."

Jamieson nodded but said nothing. He recalled his own feelings years before when he also had been assigned to a level of operations which involved using his own discretion in dealing
with entire planets. It was a little startling to realize that he had now reached the stage where he could sign authorization that would give others the same power.

... The power to commandeer spaceships.

. . . The power to sign agreements that would bind Earth for a

time.

... Power ...

He recalled his own impression of the men who had given him the right to function at such a level of things. He had thought that they were middle-aged. Was he like that? he wondered. He hadn't thought of it more than fleetingly before.

They began to discuss such details as how much freedom the ezwal should have for its own and everyone else's good. They finished lunch, took a last look at the ship—which was towering visibly through the transparent walls; and then, as they walked out, Carson said, "Do they actually plan to go to the Rull home planet with that ship?"

He must have seen, from Jamieson's expression, that he'd said the wrong thing. He sighed. "All right, let's pause at the guardhouse and see if I'm a Rull."

Jamieson nodded grimly. "And while we're about it," he said, "for your sake I'd better be checked also."

They went through the procedure in deadly earnest; were presently cleared, though—Jamieson knew—only for the time being.

In a world of Rull agents, who could mimic human beings, clearance was always a temporary thing. One wrong question, one suspicious action, and the test had to be repeated.

In a sense, a man need merely touch a Rull suspect to establish his humanness. But since few individuals were capable of dealing with a Rull, the prescribed procedure was to report one's suspicions at once to the authorities. The fact that Carson instantly volunteered to be checked almost of itself established that he was human. But the checkup had to be made just the same.

On their way down to Computer Division, Carson said briskly, "For the moment, at least, I can speak freely. On what basis is the Computer selecting alien races?"

Jamieson answered without hesitation. "Sheer alienness plus characteristics that might be useful in the Rull-human war. I'd like to test the ezwal's mental telepathy in extreme circumstances. We've had only one failure so far."

He explained about the inability to contact the Rulls, then went on. "Since there's some possibility that the Rulls are actually from another galaxy, I'm guessing blindly that all life in our Milky Way galaxy is somehow related."

Actually, no one could question such a speculation. Man had discovered myriad facts about life and how it functioned. What life was, or why, was still an unknown that grew more bewildering as the vastness of space was revealed to human beings who manned the far-reaching spaceships and penetrated ever deeper and looked farther into the unfathomable and apparently unending distances of the continuum. In such a universe men could at best make educated guesses. It seemed to Jamieson that he had noticed things about life which justified his own guess.

"Have you any race in mind?" Carson asked.

"No. I fed my requirements into the Computer. I'll let it decide."

They were silent the rest of the way down. A technician led them into a little room, and presently a ticker-tape typewriter began to click loudly. Jamieson looked at the first sentence, whistled softly to himself, and said, "I should have thought of them myself. The Ploians, of course. Who else in all this galaxy?"

"The Ploians!" said Carson, frowning. "Isn't that just a myth? Are we certain there is a Ploian race?"

Jamieson was cheerful. "No," we're not. But it's a perfect time to find out." He was excited. He had forgotten about the Ploians. It would certainly be a severe test for the ezwal, and for his own concept that there was a link between races in the same galaxy.

The specially constructed lifeboat slipped out of the cruiser into space and began to fall toward the planet of Ploia below, on a long, slanting dive. Jamieson kept the power on by remote control, braking the small ship gradually.

He watched the temperature and speed gauges, as the machine entered the tenuous outer reaches of the atmosphere, and continued applying a brake on its speed. As a result, only the outer walls of the lifeboat heated up.

It continued to descend at a normal speed through its electrical and electronic robots. It came down to less than forty miles above the surface of the planet falling now at about five thousand feet a minute. At twenty miles, Jamieson slowed it even more—until it was drifting along at less than thirty miles an hour. He was in the act of straightening its flight to a horizontal course when the airlock gauge reacted abnormally.

The airlock opened. And shut.

Jamieson waited expectantly.

Abruptly, the needles on his gauges reacted to a surge of power. Instantly, the lifeboat began an erratic and uncontrollable flight. The speed of its fall increased enormously. It twisted to and fro, as if it were out of control.

Jamieson touched one after another of his remote-control devices. The lifeboat continued its unstable flight unchecked. Not one of his electronic robots responded to anything he did during the moments that followed.

Tense but matter-of-fact, Jamieson leaned back to wait. He had expected this to happen. Now that it had there was nothing to do but allow certain conditions to be created by whatever agency had taken over the ship.

The conditions were achieved automatically as the lifeboat reached a level of twenty thousand feet above the green land below.

Aboard it, a machine that was not electrical in nature reacted to a barometer reading. As a result, a weighted wheel moved, and all the electrical power aboard the lifeboat shut off. Other purely mechanical devices were activated by the wind stream of a free fall. The airlock locked mechanically. Rockets boiled into fiery life, and presently the lifeboat, operating on nonelectrical machinery, was climbing back toward space.

Like a bullet in the full fury of its flight, it came shooting up into airless space. Jamieson watched it now through his viewers, with radar. At such distances, it was impossible to determine if whatever had got aboard had managed to resolve the mechanical problem of unlocking the airlock without the use of electric power. He doubted that it had. Accordingly, he had captured a Ploian.

The original Earth expedition had landed on Ploia approximately a hundred years before. Instantly, it found itself in a nightmare. The metal floor, metal furniture and simple metal objects lying around were suddenly conducting electricity as freely as if they were a part of the electrical system of the ship. Scientifically, it was a fantastically interesting phenomenon.

To the eighty-one men who were electrocuted in those first deadly moments, the manifestations were of no further interest whatsoever.

The hundred and forty other crewmen who happened not to be touching metal during those first moments were highly experienced and highly trained. Only twenty-two of them did not realize promptly that they were dealing with electrical phenomena. The twenty-two were later buried, along with the first unlucky group, in a land that was as green and virgin as the most primitive planet ever discovered by man.

The survivors tried first of all to take back control of their ship. They shut off all power. Reasoning that some kind of life organism had gotten aboard, they began a systematic housecleaning, using chemical sprays. When the entire ship was saturated, they turned on the power. After a moment, it went as wild as before. They tried all their chemical sprays in turn, without result. Boldly, they went outside, connected a hose to water, and set off the ship's sprinkler system. Every cubic inch of space inside was subjected to a pressurized stream.

That, also, had no effect. Indeed, whatever had come aboard was so sentient that it had observed how they started and stopped the dynamos. During one of the sleep watches, while half the men dozed uneasily, all the electrical machines started simultaneously. They had to cut connections, with power tools before that was brought under control.