Cautiously she peered out from behind a bush and gave a short gasp of surprise. She had expected almost anything but what she saw coming toward her.
It was huge-between three and four meters tall, with incredible shoulders and bulging muscles. Its chest and arms were vaguely reddish in color, and humanoid-that is, a human muscleman. The face was huge and ugly: almost an oval, with a broad, flat nose with flaring nostrils, and a mouth permanently set in anger, two long, sharp fangs protruding out of the corners. The ears were large and looked vaguely like great seashells, although they came to a point at the top. A mane of dark blue-black hair sat atop the head, coming to a point between two nasty-looking, sharp horns nearly a meter long.
But it was the eye that commanded attention. It looked like one huge humanlike eye right above the nose and dead center below the forehead. A closer look showed it to be segmented in some way, as if the eye were actually a collection of eyes with one great lid.
From the waist down the creature was covered in thick, wooly rustred hair, the great muscled legs ending in elephantine hoofs. It wore a single garment, a dirty white wool brief around the crotch that did little to disguise the male sex organ that was proportionate to the figure’s great size. It seemed to growl and grumble as it approached steadily, fearing nothing and looking as fierce as any wild thing Mavra had ever seen.
It stopped, seemed to sniff the air, looking first one way and then the other. She worried that it might catch her scent, and found herself almost unconsciously pressing back, crouched and wound up like a coiled spring, although she wondered if anyone could outrun such a monster.
And then she saw the strange thing. The creature had a band made of some sort of skin wrapped around its left arm; attached to it had to be what it appeared-a massive wind-up type wrist watch.
For the first time Mavra realized she was seeing one of the dominant races of this strange place.
The wind shifted slightly, and the creature seemed to lose the scent it had been trying to localize. It turned its attention back to the passenger module. For a moment it just stood there, looking the thing over as if wondering what to do, then it approached, not cautiously but with great confidence. Clearly this thing had nothing to fear in its own land.
The creature was almost as tall as the module, and it looked the alien thing over critically, as if puzzled by it. Then it seemed to spy the open hatch and tried to pull itself up to it. This proved a failure, and after several tries the thing gave a massive roar of rage and hit its right fist into its left palm in a very human gesture of frustration.
Just then a second cyclops came into view and roared to the first one. The sounds seemed brutish and animalistic to Mavra, but she knew it must be some form of speech. Animals don’t use or need wrist watches.
The newcomer approached, and off in the distance Mavra thought she heard the roars of several more. They had obviously not landed in a densely-populated area-luckily!-but investigators were now steadily arriving, along with the curious, on the scene.
The second one came up to the first and started spewing a whole series of snarls and grunts, with appropriate gestures. The first, slightly taller and broader, responded in kind, pointing to the module, the open hatch, and making all sorts of circles with his hands.
After a while a third one appeared, and a fourth, and a fifth. Two of the newcomers were females, Mavra noted. They were almost a meter shorter than the males, making them only three meters tall, and, unlike the males, they didn’t seem as muscular-perhaps capable of uprooting medium-sized trees, but not of tearing sheet metal like paper. They also seemed a bit bowlegged, squatter, and had small, rock-firm breasts. They had no horns, either, but they shared the male’s permanently nasty expressions and seemed to have fangs that were a bit longer than their brothers’. There may have been a half-octave difference in their speech, but considering the grunts, groans, growls, and yowls these things made, nobody but they would ever know.
One of the females was also wearing a watch, and two of the newcomers, a male and a female, seemed to be wearing some jewelry-made of bones, Mavra noted-dangling from their ears and around their necks. Perhaps insignia of rank or tribe, she guessed.
The first male roared so loudly it panicked birds for a quarter-kilometer around; he gestured to the others. They first tried to boost him up on top of the module, but the surface was too slippery for him. Then they took another tack. They went around to the other side and started pushing, the big one counting cadence of sorts. The module rocked, rocked again, and, on the third try, rolled over on its side. One of the females picked up a rock almost the size of Mavra Chang and wedged it under the module while the others held it steady.
The big one then went back around and roared approval. The open hatch was now at about his eye level, and he peered in, curiously. A massive arm reached out, went into the hole, and there was a terrible crunching noise. The hand came out clasping a seat, ripped from its solid connections to the floor, and he looked at it. One of the females pointed a clawed finger at the seatrest, and the others nodded. One of the other males stooped down a little and held his hand just above his knee. Mavra could guess the conversation. They were estimating the size of the creatures who had ridden it in.
That did it, she decided, and slowly slunk back into the woods. No use getting caught by a wind change. Those folks were obviously bright even if primitive, and the assembly of giants was becoming a convention rather quickly. She didn’t want any introductions until she knew what those giants would eat.
Nikki spotted her first. “Over here!” she called, and Mavra ran to them.
“Mavra! Thank god!” Renard exclaimed with real feeling, and hugged her. “We heard all that roaring and growling and we didn’t know what had happened!”
Quickly she told them about the cyclops. They listened in growing awe and terror.
“We’ll have to get away from here pretty quickly,” she explained. “They already know we’re around.”
The other two nodded. “But-which way?” Nikki asked. “We could be going toward one of their cities or something and never know it.”
Mavra thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. We know the whole world isn’t like this-we even saw some of the nearby places before the visuals went out. There’s an ocean and some mountains to the east of here, definitely not these folks’ kind of turf. We saw such terrain on the way in, remember?”
“But which way’s east?” Renard asked her.
“The planet’s rotation was basically west-to-east,” Mavra reminded him. “That means the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I’d say it’s getting close to evening now, so that places the sun over there, and east is this way.” She pointed, and said, “Let’s go.”
They had no choice. They followed her into the woods. Behind them, the roaring and bellowing continued.
“We should stick to the woods as long as possible,” she told them as they went. “It’ll be harder for those big babies to follow or track us.”
They agreed with that and proceeded on for some time, saying little to one another because there seemed to be nothing to say. Nikki, because of her bulk, had the toughest problem, but she was bearing up well, all things considered. She had only one complaint.
“I’m starving,” she moaned during every one of their frequent rest periods.
Renard was getting a little hungry himself. The sun was getting low, the shadows deepening into dusk. “Maybe I could stun one of those little animals we keep seeing,” he suggested. “A short burst with the pistol, that’s all.”
Mavra thought it over. “All right. Try it. But-make sure you see something and make sure you’re on stun. We don’t want to set any forest fires here.”
Almost as if cued by the conversation, one of the critters they’d been talking about rustled around in the underbrush. It was large-almost a meter long-but low, with a thin snout, some bushy whiskers, and beady little rodent’s eyes.
Renard calculated from the noise where it would come out into a clear spot and set and aimed his pistol. The thing seemed oblivious to the risk, and finally appeared where it was supposed to. Renard pressed the trigger stud.
Nothing happened.
The little creature turned to them, chattered what might have been an insult, and scurried off into the
“What the hell?” Renard exclaimed, befuddled. He looked at the pistol, tapped it, looked at the charge meter. “No charge!” he said, amazed. “It should be three-quarters full!” He started to throw the pistol away, but Mavra reached out and took his arm, stopping him.
“Keep it,” she told him. “Remember, our ship didn’t work here either. Maybe no machines will. The pistol might be useful later, when we get to the sea. Even if it isn’t, nobody else will know it’s empty. It might prove useful as a bluff.”
Renard wasn’t so sure, but he wasn’t about to question the woman now. He bolstered it.
“Looks like we go to bed hungry,” he said. “Sorry, Nikki.”
The girl sighed, but could say nothing.
“I’ll find us some food tomorrow, I promise,” Mavra found herself saying, and she half-believed it. She’d been in hopeless and impossible situations many times, and every time something had happened to straighten things out. She was a survivor. Nothing lethal ever happened to her.
“We’ll stay the night right here,” she told them. “We can’t risk a fire, but I’ll take first watch. When I can’t take it anymore, I’ll wake you, Renard. Then you do the same with Nikki.”
The other two both protested, but Mavra was in charge and she was firm. “I won’t fall asleep this time,” she promised.
They settled down as best they could. Only Mavra was dressed for this sort of thing. Nikki, who had had only the filmy noncovering standard to New Pompeii and some sandals, had discarded the sandals long before, as had Renard. They had also abandoned wearing the covering, is it caught on the branches and bushes. Mavra had buried the sandals rather than leave a trail, but she had made them carry their clothing as some sort of protection against the dampness of the ground.
With the two as settled as possible, Mavra removed her devices from the compartment in her boot and checked each out. Without the power pack they didn’t help much, and the power pack, as expected, didn’t work. She abandoned the project.
Darkness descended like a blanket, and her eyes went to infrared.
Nikki was sound asleep almost instantly, but she could hear Renard twist and turn, and finally sit up.
“What’s the problem?” she whispered. “Too much for one day?”
He came over to her, carefully. She was almost invisible in her dark clothing.
“No, it’s not that,” he whispered back. “I was just thinking, and feeling a little. It’s starting to get to me.”
“The situation?”
“The sponge,” he responded flatly. “I’m in a great deal of pain right now-it’s like a yearning agony that courses through your whole body.”
“All the time?” she asked, concerned.
He shook his head. “It comes in waves. This one’s pretty bad. I don’t know if it’s getting to Nikki yet, but if it doesn’t it will.” He paused for a moment, then let the words come, those words that were unarguable and inevitable.
“We’re dying, Mavra,” he said flatly.
She accepted the statement, but not its finality. Sponge was an abstract thing to her, and she’d almost forgotten about their problem.
“What’s it do, Renard?” she asked him. “And how long does it take to do it?”
He sighed. “Well, brain cells are the first to go. Each time one of these little attacks comes on-and each one gets worse-you lose some of your body cells, and some of your brain cells. It’s kind of a slowdown rather than a death. I’ve seen it hi others. You still have all your memory, but you become less and less able to use it. Thought processes, reasoning, all become harder and harder to do. The barely possible today becomes the impossible tomorrow. Like getting dumber and dumber as time goes on. How long the process takes varies with the individual, but, well, the rough rule is that you lose ten percent of your capacity per day, and that can never be reclaimed, even if you get more sponge later-which isn’t likely. I was always a pretty smart fellow-I used to teach, you know-but I can already tell that something is happening. I’m ten percent dumber than yesterday, but that doesn’t really mean much if you start reasonably high. But if you have an IQ of around 150, well, figure out the time.”
Mavra did. If Renard had been a 150 capacity yesterday, he was a 135 today. Okay, not really noticeable. But that meant 122 tomorrow, 110 the day after, putting him at about average ability. Then the deterioration really started, though. 110 would become 99, and 99 would be 89. That was slow-what was that, four more days? Then 80 in five, 72 in six-a low-grade moron. 65 in a week, about the mental and motor levels of a three-year-old child. After that-perhaps an automaton, or some sort of animalistic type, since memory would still be there, it was ability that was being attacked.
“Nikki?” she wondered.
“Less time, I’m sure. Maybe a day or two less to the critical point,” Renard responded.
Mavra thought for a moment. A week, no more, maybe less. She wondered what it was like, living with the knowledge of an inevitable, creeping death sentence. Did Renard really believe such a thing could happen to him? No one could conceive realistically of their own death, she once read. But as the process continued, and you knew it continued, the frustration and fear would mount.
She reached over, gently took his arm. He moved next to her. Suddenly, with her lightning speed, she pricked his arm with some of the hypnotic fluid and injected a full load. He started hi surprise, then seemed to go limp.
“Renard, listen to me,” she commanded.
“Yes, Mavra,” he responded, sounding something like a little child.
“Now, you will trust me completely. You will believe in me and my abilities completely, and do what I say without question,” she told him. “You will feel strong and good and well, and you will not feel any pain, longing, ache, or agony from the sponge. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mavra,” he repeated dully.
“Furthermore, you will not think of the sponge. You will not think you are going to die, or fall apart. The thoughts just will not enter your mind. When you wake up each morning, you will not notice yourself as being any different than you have ever been, nor will you notice any difference in Nikki. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mavra,” he agreed.
“Okay, then. Now you will go over to your place and lie down and get a really good, deep, dreamless sleep, and wake up feeling wonderful with no memory of this conversation, but you will do as I have told you. Now-go!”
He broke free from her and went back over to where his clothing was spread out, lay down, and in seconds was sound asleep.
The suggestion wouldn’t last, of course. She knew that. She would have to renew it every once in a while, and now she’d have to try the same thing on Nikki, also putting thoughts of her consuming hunger out of her mind.
But it would only make her problem easier, not theirs. They would continue to deteriorate, to disintegrate, until she would no longer be able to control them or influence them.
Six days maximum to that point.
Emotion welled up in her. Somewhere, someone on this crazy world knew how to help them, could help them, would help them. She had to believe that. Had to.
Six days.
She moved silently over to Nikki Zinder.
SOUTH POLAR ZONE, THE WELL WORLD
It looked like any major businessman’s office. There were maps, charts, and diagrams all over the walls, some strange-looking furniture, and a massive U-shaped desk that concealed large numbers of controls and also contained writing implements, communications devices, and the like. There was even a pistol of a strange sort in the upper left-hand desk drawer.
But the creature who sat behind that great desk, looking at a series of maps spread out before him, was not a human being in any sense of the word, although he definitely was strictly business.
He had a chocolate-brown human torso, incredibly broad and ribbed so that the chest muscles seemed to form squarish plates. A head, oval-shaped, was equally brown and hairless except for a huge white walrus mustache under a broad, flat nose. Six arms, arranged in threes, were spaced evenly in pairs down that torso and attached, except for the top pair, on ball sockets like those of a crab. Below that strange torso it all melted into an enormous brown-and-yellow striped series of scales leading to a huge, coiled serpentine lower half. If outstretched, the snakelike body would easily cover over five meters.
The creature used his lower pair of arms to spread out what proved to be a map of the southern and eastern hemisphere of the Well World. It looked like an odd assembly of perfectly equal hexagrams printed in black, with surprinting hi a variety of colors to show topography and water areas. While the lower arms kept the map spread wide, the upper left arm ticked off various hexes with a broad pencil, while the upper right hand jotted down notations on a pad with a different pencil.
The middle left hand punched an intercom to one side.
“Yes, sir?” a female voice asked politely.
“I’ll need close-ups of hexes twelve, twenty-six, forty-four, sixty-eight, and two hundred forty-nine,” he told the secretary in a deep, rich bass voice. “Also, kindly ask the Czillian ambassador to call on me as soon as possible.” He switched off without waiting for acknowledgment.
The creature studied the map again and tried to think. Nine sections total. Nine. Why did that strike a bell?
A buzzer sounded. He flipped a switch on a different intercom to his right. “Serge Ortega,” he answered curtly.
“Ortega? Gol Miter, Shamozan,” came a thin, reedy voice Ortega knew was coming from a translator device.
“Yes, Gol? What is it?” He glanced quickly at his map. Oh, yes, the three-meter-diameter tarantulas. Memory is the first thing to go, he told himself sourly.
“We have a plot on the new satellite. It’s definitely artificial; some of the shots from the North Zone telescopes have been fantastic. We did some spectroanalysis. The atmosphere is a pretty standard Southern Hemisphere mix, heavy on the nitrogen and oxygen, lots of water vapor. The pictures and our stuff match up pretty good. The thing is divided hi half, with some sort of physical-not energy-bubble over it about two or three kilometers from the surface. That’s why we can’t get much surface detail. Too much distortion. Definitely green stuff all over, though, like somebody’s garden, and some really vague stuff that could be buildings. As if somebody’s got their own little private city-world there.”
Serge Ortega thought a moment. “What about the other half?”
“Not much. Raw rock, mostly standard metamor-phic stuff. Probably the only part of the original natural object left. Except about halfway between equator and south pole, where there’s some kind of huge, shiny disk-shaped object practically built into the thing.”
Ortega frowned. “Propulsion unit?”
“I doubt it,” replied the giant spider. “This thing doesn’t seem to have been built for travel. That bubble is supported by an atmospheric renewal unit for sure. It undulates. Anything other than regular oribital movement would collapse it. There’s a point near the edge on one side that has a lot of radiating energy, though, and a funny pattern not consistent with the rest. Could be an airlock, maybe a small spaceport.”
Ortega nodded, mostly to himself. “That fits. But how the hell did it get here?”
“Well, that disk’s aimed at the Equatorial Barrier no matter what position. Either the Well brought it here or they brought themselves instantly to the Well, or so our scientists say.”
Ortega didn’t like that. Anybody fooling with the Well was fooling with the very nature of everybody’s reality. This sort of thing was not supposed to happen, he told himself grumpily. Two of his stomachs were developing ulcers from it all, he could tell.
“It’s my guess that they don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into,” the snake-man said. “Kind of clear that they wound up here, saw the Well, decided to check it out, flew too low over a nontech hex, and lost power.”