“What’s the matter, Savage?” Gayal’s concerned voice came over the ship’s intercom. “Why are you no longer manning your gun?”
“Must be a malfunction of the timer!” he called out, shaking his head clear. “I’ll be back in harness in a minute. I’m not critical, anyway.”
Slowly he raised his head and looked around.
Koldon reclined opposite him, still deep within the guns. Gayal remained immobile at the helm, her body strapped in the forward chair. Stephen Wade’s body was similarly immobile in his chair behind hers.
Quietly Savage unstrapped himself and sat up. He got unsteadily to his feet, to which he could feel strength and circulation rapidly return.
The vessel was a modified pickup ship; aft, where the cabins would have been, though, were the amplifiers for The Hunter’s effort. Because they were all powered from the engines below, Savage went over to the red and yellow cables which led from the amplifiers into the deck. Taking out a piece of coiled copper wire and a pocketknife, he wrapped the wire around two live terminals on the master amplifiers, then took it down to the two cables.
Split seconds were all he had, he knew. Once he broke the cable, the copper wire must immediately touch it, or there was a chance that the automated mechanisms would free the others before the proper actions could take place.
He sweated nervously as he cut the yellow insulation from around the top cable. Below — exposed — were the massed cables he needed.
Putting the thick, rubber-lined glove over his left hand, he grasped the copper wire, bringing it out to full length.
“Savage? How’s it coming?” Gayal’s voice asked, sounding as mechanical as the ship, since it was actually the verbalization of her thoughts slowed to a speed which those not cybernetically linked to the machinery could understand.
“Okay!” he called to her. “One more minute!”
He held his breath and touched the copper wire to the exposed cable.
The lights dimmed, and the ship seemed to loose even the pulsation of the engines. That was all.
He wondered if something had gone wrong. He waited for a moment, then wrapped the coil around the cable so that it would stay, and went back into the command bridge.
Everything looked the same except for the dimmer lighting.
He had a dryness in his throat. “Gayal?” he called. “What is the position of the ship?”
There was no response.
“Gayal!” he shouted, his voice echoing around the walls. “What’s going on?”
Silence answered him.
The three forms on the bridge continued their rhythmic breathing but did not stir.
He went over to the manual controls and punched in.
“Break off! Break off!” be called into the transceiver. “Abort.” He flipped on the monitors overhead.
As soon as the Mind had been suddenly freed of Its blockage, it had reached out hungrily to take the opposition ships.
It had not done very well. A few lingered, but the bulk of The Hunter’s craft had gone into D. It had gotten one of the bigger ships, apparently, but the rest were too quick for it — a tribute to the training of their captains and their equipment. The cybernetically linked minds thought faster than the Mind.
The planetoid could no longer be held by one lone ship, and had started to move away. It was already in the gravity well of Rhambda, and so was trapped. In a short time, it would either become a new small moon of the planet or become the largest meteor in that planet’s history.
Slowly, deliberately, Savage took the ship away from Rhambda, feeding-in the coordinates which The Bromgrev’s surrogate had given him in the office back in Haven. Then he realized suddenly that he had not yet sent the signal. Well, that was all right, too. In good time.
The alarm bells rang abruptly, telling him he was near his destination. He looked up at the monitors and saw it — a dark planetoid in the outer reaches of the Rharnbdan system. A building of some kind sat on it — a rounded dome showed plainly under magnification. A disk lock was on top of a lower building to the rear of the dome.
Savage brought the ship to the disk and settled it gently down. Then he walked back to the airlock.
Equalization was achieved in a minute or two, and he opened the lock door unhesitatingly. A similar lock appeared just outside, and he pushed that open as well.
The second lock was the building’s — and it was obviously out of place. The geometry of the room and the hall that it opened on were like nothing he had ever seen before. The place had not been built for any race he knew — or could imagine.
He heard footfalls. Down the corridor plodded a sleek orange form, rather graceful, like a cheetah on the African plains. It was large for any cat — larger than any lion he had ever seen — but its squatness, box shape, and incredible muscles on all six of its limbs showed that its home world was much heavier than his.
It drew up near to Savage and halted, studying him for a moment.
“It is done, then?” asked the Rhambdan, telepathically.
Savage nodded. “I’ll send the signal. You reintegrate the pilot and gunner and take them to a decent place to recover.”
“Food may even be prepared to your specifications,” the cat informed him.
“Good. Prepare it for three and arrange for it to be served about an hour after the gunner and pilot have had the chance to revive.”
“It shall be done. The place is mostly automated; I have only to give the orders.”
“How many of you are there here?” he asked.
“Just me,” the cat answered. “This ensures against accidents happening to telepathic receptives who might be here.”
Savage nodded, and he and the cat re-entered the ship.
As Savage switched in the signals device, the Rhambdan fiddled with the pilot’s master control panel, removing it with brute strength. Savage noted that the Rhambdan’s forepaws were very much like small, shortfingered hands with long, nasty claws. It used all of its assets very competently.
It struck him as odd that, after all this, it was the first Rhambdan he had ever seen.
The signal sent, Savage helped the Rhambdan remove Gayal first, then Koldon, from the ship’s circuitry and from the ship physically. Both were still out, but the Rhambdan assured him that they would come around in no time.
Savage sent the cat off after situating the other two and telling the Rhambdan what needed to be done.
He stared at the still strapped-in form of Stephen Wade. It was silent, immobile except for an almost imperceptible rising and falling of the chest.
Savage strode over to a panel below his gunnery station and pressed a stud. A small compartment opened, and he removed his .38 and checked to see that it was loaded, clean, and ready to go.
Then he sat down to wait.
He soon grew impatient and uneasy. Rising, he looked out the lock, down that long, alien corridor. Nothing stirred. If the Rhambdan was coming back, it showed no inclination to return soon. That was good. He walked back over to the still silent form of Stephen Wade, The Hunter.
Wade opened his eyes and looked straight at Savage.
“It would have worked, you know,” Wade said softly. “If you’d connected the red cable I’d have been as shortcircuited as our two friends over there.”
“I know,” Savage replied. “Don’t think I didn’t consider it. Come to think of it, what made you so, damned certain that I wouldn’t?”
Hunter chuckled. “Savage, if you haven’t seen by now how transparent you are, you never will. I could still have destroyed you in that room, you know. But once I knew who— Hell, Savage, I told you before that you’re revenge-oriented with a onetrack mind. Considering what’s been done to you, you had to decide against The Bromgrev.” He stopped, and looked disdainfully, at Savage’s pistol. “I wish you’d brought something more reassuring than that primitive blunderbuss.”
“It will do the job,” Savage assured him. “Can you do yours?”
“I feel certain I can,” Wade replied. “The nature of this beast is that it will head in a direct line for Earth once it’s done. This will be tricky. But The Bromgrev thinks I’m caught in that contraption over there, and will have no choice but to come here personally to handle — er, to do what he plans in order to get rid of me. His ship will head here on a straight course — and I will be pulled back on a straight course. I should intersect the ship before I’m halfway home.”
“You might not get out before you’re caught, too, you know,” Savage pointed out, scratching an itch on his neck with the claw.
“You’re counting on it, aren’t you?” Wade replied, and grinned. “That is the plot, isn’t it?”
Savage said nothing.
“You know what gave it away, don’t you?” Wade said knowingly. “The hook.”
Savage looked at the metal claw at the end of his right arm bemusedly. “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“You got yourself made into Adonis but you kept the hook. It bothered me. Why would he keep that claw? I kept asking myself.”
“If it is so obvious,” Savage put in in an irritated tone, “why go on?”
“Because I’m going to screw you up. Other people have tried to beat me, you know. I’ve always won in the end. I’m going to get away with it, Savage: I’m going to kill The Bromgrev and survive to come after you.”
“The Haven computer puts your odds at under 9 percent of getting out before the cataclysm,” Savage pointed out. “You know that.”
“The computer only conjectures about me in my natural form. It has no real idea of my reflexes or capabilities. Insufficient data, Savage. The odds are in my favor.” He stopped as Savage turned with a jerk toward the door. “What’s the matter?” Hunter asked.
“Thought I heard someone in the hall,” Savage mumbled softly.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” Wade reassured. “I will know if anyone comes close enough to hear us.”
“I have confidence in the pistol, Wade — not you.”
“Suit yourself. It should be an interesting contest, really. We’re so much alike.”
“You’ve never loved anybody but yourself,” Savage snapped. “You’re the antithesis of humanity — in the broadest sense of that term. No, Wade, we are not alike.”
“Sure we are,” the Kreb taunted. “And we’ll grow more alike as you go along. Law of the jungle, Savage. Look what The Bromgrev became in his battle with me. He really was all that is good once, you know.”
“I wonder how much longer it will be?” Savage growled impatiently. “They should have left by now.”
“Why should they hurry? After all, as long as I’m a prisoner of the amplifiers, verified by our cat witness, there’s no rush. The Bromgrev was always orderly.”
Savage gave a mirthless chuckle; then pulled out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply. “You might answer me one thing, if there’s time.”
“Go ahead,” the other invited.
“Why can’t you just kill yourself? The Bromgrev could.”
“No, The Bromgrev cannot. That’s what you — or Bumgartner — are for. Oh, the doppelgangers, sure. Do you miss a cell when it wears off the skin? But suicide — real suicide. I don’t look forward to this, you know.”
“I thought it would be the highpoint of your overly long life,” Savage retorted sarcastically.
“In a way. But you’ve died only once. I have died thousands of — maybe more — times. That backlog will hit me when I go. It will produce the most horrible set of flashback sensations imaginable. If we are indeed both mad, it is that which did it. I don’t think my brother or myself could bring ourselves to do it.”
Savage shrugged off the idea. “Why haven’t you two simply had it out long ago — face to face?”
“Doesn’t do any good. We’re of equal strength and limitations. He’s tried it several times, in several ways — but it’s always been a draw. He beats me, then I beat him. Read your Bible. That’s why he’s so desperate to have pulled all this — and I’m gambling my life to end it.”
“Well, it’s—” Savage, started, but suddenly a high-pitched screech came through the cabin sound system.
“That’s it!” Wade cried excitedly. “The signal from my agents! The Bromgrev is away and in space! Do it! Do it now!”
Savage aimed the pistol, but hesitated.
“Do it!” Wade screamed. “She’s only one little girl!”
Savage fired.
STEP SIX
GAYAL GAVE A low moan and opened her eyes. They refused to focus for a few minutes, then the double images seemed to merge. Koldon was standing over her.
“My head is killing me,” she groaned.
“I know,” Koldon sympathized. “Mine’s only now getting down to a dull explosion. Just take it easy for a while.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Savage doublecrossed us,” Koldon replied. “I never did quite trust that man. Hunter blocked his mind, but you could see a tremendous amount of hurt and hate mixed in his eyes. I warned Hunter, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Savage — The Bromgrev?” she gasped plaintively. “I just don’t believe it!”
“I’m still not certain he is,” Koldon told her. “Somehow, I seem to get the idea that, in the game of Hunter and Bromgrev, Savage was playing, too. But he shorted out the cybernetics — that’s the only thing that could have caused what we went through.”
“But—” She raised herself up, then held her head and groaned again. “But where is he? And where is The Hunter? And where are we?”
“Wherever we are, it’s not any planet I’ve ever been on or heard about. The walls have that strange fluidity! And the doors! Most doors are built to accommodate the shape of the beings using them. But these…” He muttered something about hourglasses and tesseracts.
She saw what he meant. Bumgartner, Koldon, Vard, Valiakean, Earth, Savage — all alien. But the builders of this room had been so different that it was difficult to conceive of them existing in the same continuum. This was a total alienness beyond experience or description.
However, the beds, the curtains — these were “human” or real-world touches, lending some sanity to the surroundings.
“Now what do we do?” she asked the Quoark. She had never felt more helpless.
“We wait,” he replied.
A small speaker crackled to life like an ancient radio. “The game is over,” Savage’s voice came at them, echoing around the weird angles of the room. “There is nothing left but the explanation. If you two will join me, I have food prepared.”
The doorway opened impossibly, as if collapsing in and of itself until nothing was left of the folds. A long corridor was revealed.
“Shall we go?” Koldon asked.
Gayal nodded and got out of the bed. They both made their way through the door and down the hallway.
At the end, a similarly alien room had been made over into an almost conventional small dining room. It contained a table, linen, eating utensils, and dishes spread out before them. Savage was just finishing his meal. He looked up at them and smiled as they entered.
He looks older, much older, Gayal thought, almost as if he had the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.
“Go ahead and eat,” he urged them, motioning to the food. “It’s pretty good and compatible with all of us.”
Still they hesitated; then hunger overtook them.
Savage lit a cigarette and said nothing.
“Just what the — hell—?” Koldon started, between chews.
Savage cut him off. “Eat first. Then I’ll tell you everything you want to know. There’s plenty of time — now.”
The agony, the death, the trauma was subsiding. Already The Hunter could feel himself clear, sort, and grow. The power surged into him, and he fed deeply of the energy of the cosmos.
I am! he exulted. I am again!
He reached out and found the inhabitants of this pitiable rock they all occupied. Just four, he saw. They fulfilled their purpose. They were no longer relevant to him, and he quickly forgot their existence. The Pull began, that ancient geas laid upon him in times past by The Race, that curse that tied him to his planetary sphere.
Thousands of times before, he had been thus; and thousands of times before, he had resisted — in vain. Now, this time, he could choose a host from any along the route, defeating or delaying The Pull.
But he would not resist. He flew, taking the energy he needed from the stars that shone all around him. He soared confidently, triumphantly, seeing the universe as his race had seen it, joyous in the sudden return, if fleeting, to godhood.
To meet the ship, the fragile shell, which carried The Bromgrev to him.
“Right from the beginning,” Savage began, “I had. this feeling that things weren’t quite right. But it didn’t really all come together for me until one day in Wade’s office, when he told me the impossible stories of your escapes. Oh, they were real and dangerous to you — but they sounded like low-grade movie thrillers.
“And they were! That’s what tipped The Hunter that The Bromgrev was making his move. Suddenly I saw how The Bromgrev thought — and realized that your stories weren’t the only low-grade thrillers around. Everything I had experienced since going on that wartime patrol was like that — set up, contrived, like we were all unknowing actors in a plot, with the author’s heavy hand all around. Nothing rang true.
“I was a soldier, sent on patrol. But I was improperly briefed, and I was supplied with men who had no stomach for the mission and were ready to do anything to louse it up. Ultimately, I was faced with mutiny, and shot by a man — one of my own — named McNally. And then this same McNally made certain that my body, with its potentially incriminating evidence, got back to home base.”
“You were killed?” Gayal gasped. “But — you are not dead!”
“Yes. I am dead. I exist only because The Hunter ‘met’ me on a metaphysical plane and kept me from going to the place of the dead — and restored me to my body. My hand was left behind to the enemy — the only part of me that Hunter did not restore.”
“Yeah, that’s bothered us for some time,” Koldon put in. “When you remade yourself into your version of tall, dark, and handsome, why did you keep the claw?”
Savage smiled as if at a private joke. “Hunter understood — at least at the end. It was, well, my reminder and my symbol.”
“Of what?” they both asked simultaneously.
“That Hunter had limitations,” he replied. “It was something — one thing — he could not do with a wave of his hand. It made him less than godlike, more human — and, therefore, more vulnerable. He had limits. It may have been silly or stupid to retain it, but, for me, it was necessary. As long as it existed, a small part of me still belonged to me.” He took a sip of water and continued.
“I was part of the first step in Hunter’s master plan. All of it depended on figuring out who among the trillions of sentient beasties in the galaxy The Bromgrev was. Haven and The Hunter’s powers put one place offlimits to The Bromgrev’s agents and surrogates — and it was the nerve center of resistance to The Bromgrev’s conquests. The Hunter deliberately created a situation where only the physical presence of The Bromgrev would do.”
“I think I see,” Gayal interjected. “There was no way to tell who The Bromgrev was with all of those surrogate selves around to give the orders. So, rather than sifting through uncounted beings, hoping to come up with the right one, he brought The Bromgrev to him.”
“Right,” Savage agreed. “And I was part of the team he developed to identify The Bromgrev once be arrived.”
“But why come at all?” Koldon asked. “The Bromgrev was winning, wasn’t he? Why risk everything by exposing himself to danger?”
“Several reasons,” Savage replied. “Specifically, the sheer scope of conquering the known galaxy. How many millennia would it take? How many lives? And what would be left? Back in Vietnam we had an officer who once destroyed an entire village to ‘save’ it ‘from being taken over by the enemy.’ The enemy never took it over, all right — but who won? And, of course, there was the terrible hatred both had built up against each other in the eons they had been battling. A hatred, I think, transcending all bounds of logic and reason. They knew each other well.
“Also, The Hunter had been expelled from The Race and left behind, out of the godhood he coveted. The Bromgrev was the last, although degenerate, symbol of that race that cost him his glory— But, we’re getting away from the answers.” Savage paused to light another cigarette.
“I was part of the team The Hunter developed to identify The Bromgrev, once he arrived,” Savage continued. “I discovered early on in the game that the man who killed me — McNally — didn’t exist. The Hunter had arranged the patrol; The Hunter put Ralph Bumgartner, alias McNally, in there specifically to kill me and yet get my body out in one piece.”
“Bumgartner!” Gayal exclaimed. “But he was the one who rescued me! I—”
“Just another pawn in The Hunter’s little game,” Savage cut in. “I wasn’t certain until one of The Bromgrey’s agents lured me to a small town for a private chat. He put forth the proposition to change sides.”
“And you did!” Koldon spat.
“No. I didn’t,” Savage corrected him. “I never really had a side. Not one of theirs, anyway. The Bromgrev offered totalitarianism for the good of the galaxy, The Hunter offered an anarchy where he could play little tin god all he wanted. So I kept my options open until I saw what both games were — and, once I had all the answers in this game of galactic war, I started playing, too. Particularly when I saw that I had become, by accident or design, the pivot in both sides’s schemes.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Koldon put in, “After all, there were thousands of agents.”
“The Hunter went to too much trouble to recruit me just to discard me — and The Bromgrev went to even more trouble to talk to me personally when a phone call would have done the trick as well. So already things were moving toward me as the focal point for both sides.
“Then came you — not just the two of you, but many more. A lot of our people, trapped on planets with the enemy breathing down their necks, made almost impossible escapes. Why? The only answer was that you were supposed to escape.”
“I’ll have you know it wasn’t easy,” Koldon snorted. “Gayal and I both almost got killed!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be easy. Just — suspicious. A few of our people still got it — enough to show how hard it was. But the fact remains that so many hair’s-breadth escapes, coming one on top of another, made everyone a suspect. The Hunter saw The Bromgrev in each of you — as The Bromgrev intended.”
“So that’s it!” Gayal exclaimed. “We were camouflage for the real Bromgrev!”
“Sure,” Savage continued, “but The Bromgrev was smarter than we were. He sent all those suspects in the front door, then came in like a thief in the night, in a way totally unexpected.”
“You mean none of us was The Bromgrev?” Koldon gasped. “Then, who is?”
Savage smiled. “You both should have figured it out long ago. The clues were all around — and at least one mistake was as good as putting up a sign.”
The Bromgrev’s ship was in sight, on its way to kill a helpless Hunter.
But The Hunter was already there. Quickly, he matched velocities with the ship and dissolved into the energy field. He sensed them all within, and saw with satisfaction that the one he had identified as The Bromgrev was indeed there.
“The War will not end with the death of The Hunter,” he hears The Bromgrev say.
“I know,” agrees Ralph Bumgartner. “There is always conflict in the jungle, and this has disrupted the orderly flow. The War will go on.”
“The War will go on,” The Bromgrev intones.
The War ends here, Hunter thought with satisfaction, but they could not hear. He saw ahead the huge scoop of the engines, like the great gaping mouth of a monstrous beast. Slowly he began to change his shape, acquiring mass as he drew what he needed from the matter around him. One by one, slowly, methodically, The Hunter neutralized the safeguards by transmutation.
“Yes,” Savage told them, “both of you should have known The Bromgrev when I did.”
The others were thoughtful. Then, suddenly, Koldon banged his fist on the table, shaking the dishes. “Oh my God!” he exploded. “Jenny?”
“Yes…” Savage acknowledged in a low, sad tone. “Jenny. Not from the start — at least I have that.”
A deep hurt was in his face and manner, and they were hesitant to intrude upon it. Finally, Gayal broke the silence.
“But — but I don’t understand,” she said in a puzzled tone. “How could we have known?”
“Because of you, curse me for a fool!” Koldon snapped in an angry voice. But the anger was directed at himself. “Look,” he said more calmly, “do you remember when Jenny got her eyes? The training flight?”
Gayal nodded, but her face still betrayed puzzlement. “Remember, the Valiakean brought each of us in turn for her to see?” Koldon continued, getting excited again. “When she saw you she said—”
“She said I was blue,” Gayal recalled. “But I don’t see-”
“Jenny was blind from birth,” Savage reminded her. “She had no pupils. There can be no color for a blind person — not even the concept of color, to one who has never seen. Terms like ‘red’ and ‘blue’ have no meaning. You were blue and she saw you as such, but she should have had no way of knowing that blue was blue unless she’d seen blue before. Without pupils there was no way. Ergo, the only way she could have known that blue was blue was because it wasn’t Jenny.”
“And all this was based on that?” Gayal asked.
“Well, that was the clincher. But there were earlier slips — small ones, like mentioning the time without feeling the clock and the like — that led me to the suspicion that Jenny was The Bromgrev. And with that discovery everything fell into place for me — and saved our lives. For The Hunter would have killed us all, if he hadn’t been convinced that I would do his work.”
“Yes, I was wondering about that myself,” Koldon said. “Why was The Hunter so sure you’d be on his side?”
Savage grinned. “He knew me well. That’s why he picked me. I was bullheaded, self-centered, and revenge-minded. Never in my whole life had any woman paid any attention to me — because of my looks.
I never had had sex with a woman I hadn’t paid. But… Jenny couldn’t see the deformed exterior: she ‘saw’ me in different terms, and she accepted me. The only spark of human warmth I had ever known… and The Bromgrev took her away from me, killed her because it was a good move. There was no other way I could have acted — and Hunter knew it.”
“But how could The Bromgrev be Jenny?” Gayal said in an unbelieving tone. “How would he have the chance? And how could he know you two would fall in love?”
“Because he engineered the whole thing,” Savage answered. “You heard of my experiences with the Kah’diz — Charley or whatever — and how I met Jenny?”
They both acknowledged that they had.
“Well,” Savage continued, “that was the next of the things that didn’t add up. Charley was shot down during the attack on Earth — but why attack at all? The Bromgrey had to know that the defenses here were the strongest of the resistance, and he couldn’t afford to throw all his forces into the fight by withdrawing from the conquered places. He also knew that, even if he destroyed Earth, Haven would survive. The Hunter could escape, in any event, to begin it all over again. The entire reason for that attack was as a smokescreen to sneak The Bromgrev in!”
“Then The Bromgrev was—” Koldon began.
“Charley, of course,” Savage completed, nodding. “Oh, I seriously doubt if all that happened was planned in advance, but The Bromgrev was a master of improvisation.
“All The Bromgrev wanted to do was to get killed in the neighborhood. Don’t ask me why, but they can’t kill themselves. Something psychological, I think. After death, they have a period of time — apparently a good deal of time but still finite and predictable — to find a new host body. In order to have enough time to pick a really appropriate one, he wanted to die in as close proximity to Earth as possible. The Kah’diz form was a logical one. Imagine the Kah’diz’s power amplified and coupled to the unknown powers of the Kreb! It was ideal as a war identity — but not very good for infiltration.”