Agent of Vega and Other Stories by James H. Schmitz

A slightly chilled breeze tickled the Metag’s back-spines for a moment. There was no nonsense about the Metag; but just the same, his conscience—like that of Cushgar generally—was riddled enough to be conducive to occasional superstitious chills.

“There they are, sir!” the adjutant announced suddenly, in an excited quaver.

The Metag stared unbelievingly.

* * *

It was as bad as the worst of the reports. It was worse! Secure behind the Glant’s defenses, the sight of a few thousand hostile cruisers wouldn’t have caused him a qualm—

But this!

There were a few small war vessels among them—none over six hundred feet long. But, so far as one could tell from their seared, beam-blasted exteriors, most of them had been freighters of every possible size, type and description. There was a sprinkling of dainty, badly slashed yachts and other personal space craft. No wonder they’d been mistaken for the murdered cold hulks of the centuries, swept along in a current of awful new life—!

But the worst of it was that, mixed up with that stream, was stuff which simply didn’t belong in space—it should have been gliding sedately over the surface of some planetary sea! Some, by Old Webolt, had wings!

And that one, there!

“It’s a house!” the Metag howled, in horrified recognition. “A thundering, Old-Webolt-damned HOUSE!”

House and all, the battered ghost-horde came flashing up at a pace that couldn’t have been matched by Cushgar’s newest destroyers. Ponderously and enormously, the Glant raced forward in what was, even now, an obviously futile attempt to meet them.

The adjutant was gabbling at his side.

“Sir, we may just be able to reach their flank with the grapnels before they’re past!”

“Get them out!” the Metag roared. “Full range! Get them out! We’ve got to stop one of them—find out! It’s a masquerade—”

They didn’t quite make it. Near the end of the van, a torpedo-shaped, blackened thing seemed to be touched for a moment by a grapnel beam’s tip. It was whirled about in a monstrous semicircle, then darted off at a tangent and shot away after the others. They vanished in the direction of Cushgar’s heart-cluster.

“That was a mistake!” breathed the Metag. “It’ll be telling them about us. If the main body deflects its course, we’ll never . . . no, wait! There’s one more coming—stop it! NOW!”

A slender, three-hundred-foot space yacht flashed headlong into a cluster of the Glant’s grapnels and freezers and stopped dead.

“And now!” The Metag passed a broad tongue over his trembling lips. “Now we’ll find out! Bring them in!”

Grapnels and tractors began to maneuver the little yacht in carefully through the intricate maze of passages between the Glant’s overlapping first, second, and third defense zones. There was nothing wrong with this ghost’s looks; it gleamed blue and silver and unblemished in the lights glaring upon it from a hundred different directions. It might have taken off ten minutes before on its maiden flight.

The Great Squid of space had caught itself a shining minnow.

“Sir,” the adjutant said uneasily, “mightn’t it be better to beam it first?”

The Metag stared at him.

“And kill whoever’s inside before we’ve talked to them?” he inquired carefully. “Have you gone mad? Does that look like a battleship to you—or do you think they are ghosts? It’s the wildest good luck we caught them. If it hadn’t come straight at us, as if it wanted to be caught—”

He paused a moment, scowling out through the screens at the yacht which now hung in a bundle of guide beams just above the Glant’s yawning intake-port. The minnow was about to be swallowed.

“As if it wanted to be caught?” he repeated doubtfully.

It was the last doubt he had.

The little yacht moved.

It moved out of the grapnels and tractors and freezers as if there weren’t any! It slid over the monitor’s spindle length inside its defenses like a horrible caress. Behind it, the Glant’s multiple walls folded back in a white-hot, thick-lipped wound. The Glant split down its length like a giant clam, opened out and spilled its flaming, exploding guts into space.

The little yacht darted on, unblemished, to resume its outrider position on the ghost-van’s flank.

Zone Agent Pagadan of Lar-Sancaya really earned herself a chunk of immortal glory that day! But, unfortunately, no trace of the Glant was ever discovered again. And so no one would believe her, though she swore to the truth on a stack of Lar-Sancaya’s holiest writings and on seven different lie detectors. Everyone knew what Pagadan could do to a lie detector, and as for the other—

Well, there remained a reasonable doubt.

“What about your contact with the ghosts—the invaders?” Cushgar called to the invincible Glant. “Have you stopped them? Destroyed them?”

The Glant gave no answer.

Cushgar called the Glant. Cushgar called the Glant. Cushgar called the Glant. Cushgar called the Glant—

Cushgar stared, appalled, into its night-sky and listened. Some millions of hostile stars stared back with icy disdain. Not a cry came again from the Glant—not a whisper!

The main body of the ghost fleet passed the spot twenty minutes later. It looked hardly damaged at all. In its approximate center was Zone Agent Zamman Tarradang-Pok’s black globe, and inside the globe Zamm lay in Deep Rest. Her robot knew its duty—it would arouse her the instant it made hostile contact. It had passed through a third of Cushgar’s territory by now, but it hadn’t made any as yet.

The main body overtook the eager beavers up front eight hours later and merged with them. Straggled groups came up at intervals from behind and joined. The ghost fleet formed into a single cluster—

A hell-wind blew from the Galaxy’s center on Cushgar’s heart; and panic rushed before it. The dead were coming: the slaughtered billions, the shattered hulks, the broken defenders—joined now in a monstrous, unstoppable army of judgment that outsped sane thought!

Cushgar panicked—and the good, solid strategy of centuries was lost. Nightmare was plunging at it! Scattered fleet after fleet, ship after ship, it hurled what it could grab up into the path of the ghosts.

Not a cry, not a whisper, came back from the sacrifices!

Then the remaining fleets refused to move.

* * *

Zamm was having a nice dream.

It didn’t surprise her particularly. Deep Rest was mostly dreamless; but at some levels it produced remarkably vivid and detailed effects. On more than one occasion they’d even tricked her into thinking they were real!

This time her ship appeared to have docked itself somewhere. The somno-cabin was still darkened, but the rest of it was all lit up. There were a lot of voices.

Zamm zipped up the side of her coverall suit and sat up on the edge of the couch. She listened a moment, and laughed. This one was going to be silly but nice!

“Box cars again!” a woman’s voice shouted in the control room as Zamm came down the passage from her cabin. “You crummy, white-whiskered, cheating old—” A round of applause drowned out the last word, or words.

“Lady or no lady,” the voice of Senator Thartwith rose in sonorous indignation, “one more such crack and I mow you down!”

The applause went up a few decibels.

“And here’s Zamm!” someone yelled.

They were all around her suddenly. Zamm grinned at them, embarrassed. “Glad you found the drinks!” she murmured.

The tall Goddess of Amuth, still flushed from her argument with Zone Agent Thartwith, scooped Zamm up from behind and set her on the edge of a table.

“Where’s a glass for Zamm?”

She sipped it slowly, looking them over. There they were, the tricky and tough ones—the assassins and hunters and organizers and spies! The Co-ordinator’s space pack, the innermost circle. There he was himself!

“Hi, Bent!” she said, respecting his mission-alias even in a dream. “Hi, Weems! . . . Hi, Ferd!” she nodded around the circle between sips.

Two score of them or more, come into Deep Rest to tell her good-by! She’d bought them all their lives, at one time or another; and they’d bought her hers. But she’d never seen more than three together at any one time in reality. Took a dream to gather them all!

Zamm laughed.

“Nice party!” she smiled. Nice dream. She put down her empty glass.

“That’s it!” said the Goddess Loppos. She swung Zamm’s feet up on the table, and pulled her around by the shoulders to look at the wall. There was a vision port there, but it was closed.

“What’s all this?” Zamm smiled expectantly, lying back in Loppos’ arms. What goofy turn would it take now?

The vision port clicked open. Harsh daylight streamed in.

The ship seemed to have set itself down in a sort of hot, sandy park. There was a huge gray building in the background. Zamm gazed at the building, the smile going slowly from her lips. A hospital, wasn’t it? Where’d she seen—?

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *