* * *
The night was cool. Wind rustled in the ground vegetation and the occasional patches of trees. Otherwise the slopes were quiet. The sky was covered with cloud layers through which the Mooncat drifted invisibly. In the infrared glasses Dasinger had slipped on when he started, the rocky hillside showed clear for two hundred yards, tinted green as though bathed by a strange moonlight; beyond was murky darkness.
“Still all right?” Duomart’s voice inquired from the wrist communicator.
“Uh-huh!” Dasinger said. “A little nervous, but I’d be feeling that way in any case, under the circumstances.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said. “You’ve gone past the two and a half mile line from the generator. From what that Graylock monster said, you should have started to pick up its effects. Why not take your shot, and play safe?”
“No,” Dasinger said. “If I wait until I feel something that can be definitely attributed to the machine, I can keep the kwil dose down to what I need. I don’t want to load myself up with the drug any more than I have to.”
A stand of tall trees with furry trunks moved presently into range of the glasses, thick undergrowth beneath. Dasinger picked his way through the thickets with some caution. The indications so far had been that local animals had as much good reason to avoid the vicinity of Hovig’s machine as human beings, but if there was any venomous vermin in the area this would be a good place for it to be lurking. Which seemed a fairly reasonable apprehension. Other, equally definite, apprehensions looked less reasonable when considered objectively. If he stumbled on a stone, it produced a surge of sharp alarm which lingered for seconds; and his breathing had quickened much more than could be accounted for by the exertions of the downhill climb.
* * *
Five minutes beyond the wood Dasinger emerged from the mouth of a narrow gorge, and stopped short with a startled exclamation. His hand dug hurriedly into his pocket for the case of kwil injectors.
“What’s the matter?” Duomart inquired sharply.
Dasinger produced a somewhat breathless laugh. “I’ve decided to take the kwil. At once!”
“You’re feeling . . . things?” Her voice was also shaky.
“I’ll say! Not just a matter of feeling it, either. For example, a couple of old friends are walking towards me at the moment. Dead ones, as it happens.”
“Ugh!” she said faintly. “Hurry up!”
Dasinger pressed the kwil injector against the inside of his elbow and held down the button for a measured second. He stood still for some seconds more, filled his lungs with the cool night air, and let it out in a long sigh.
“That did it!” he announced, his voice steadying again. “The stuff works fast. A quarter dose . . .”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“It wasn’t too bad till just now. Then suddenly . . . that generator can’t be putting out evenly! Anyway, it hit me like a rock. I doubt you’d be interested in details.”
“I wouldn’t,” Duomart agreed. “I’m crawly enough as it is up here. I wish we were through with this!”
“With just a little luck we should be off the planet in an hour.”
By the time he could hear the lapping of the lake water on the wind, he was aware of the growing pulse of Hovig’s generator ahead of him, alive and malignant in the night. Then the Fleet scout came into the glasses, a squat, dark ship, its base concealed in the growth that had sprung up around it after it piled up on the slope. Dasinger moved past the scout, pushing through bushy aromatic shrubbery which thickened as he neared the water. He felt physically sick and sluggish now, was aware, too, of an increasing reluctance to go on. He would need more of the drug before attempting to enter the Antares.
To the west, the sky was partly clear, and presently he saw the wreck of the Dosey Asteroid raider loom up over the edge of the lake arm, blotting out a section of stars. Still beyond the field of the glasses, it looked like an armored water animal about to crawl up on the slopes. Dasinger approached slowly, in foggy unwillingness, emerged from the bushes into open ground, and saw a broad ramp furred with a thick coat of mold-like growth rise steeply towards an open lock in the upper part of the Antares. The pulse of the generator might have been the beating of the maimed ship’s heart, angry and threatening. It seemed to be growing stronger. And had something moved in the lock? Dasinger stood, senses swimming sickly, dreaming that something huge rose slowly, towered over him like a giant wave, leaned forwards. . . .
* * *
“Still all right?” Duomart inquired.
The wave broke.
“Dasinger! What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Dasinger said, his voice raw. He looked at the empty injector in his hand, dropped it. “But something nearly did! The kwil I took wasn’t enough. I was standing here waiting to let that damned machine swamp me when you spoke.”
“You should have heard what you sounded like over the communicator! I thought you were . . .” her voice stopped for an instant, began again. “Anyway,” she said briskly, “you’re loaded with kwil now, I hope?”
“More than I should be, probably.” Dasinger rubbed both hands slowly down along his face. “Well, it couldn’t be helped. That was pretty close, I guess! I don’t even remember getting the injector out of the case.”
He looked back up at the looming bow of the Antares, unbeautiful enough but prosaically devoid of menace and mystery now, though the pulsing beat still came from there. A mechanical obstacle and nothing else. “I’m going on in now.”
From the darkness within the lock came the smell of stagnant water, of old decay. The mold that proliferated over the ramp did not extend into the wreck. But other things grew inside, pale and oily tendrils festooning the walls. Dasinger removed his night glasses, brought out a pencil light, let the beam fan out, and moved through the lock.
The crash which had crumpled the ship’s lower shell had thrust up the flooring of the lock compartment, turned it into what was nearly level footing now. On the right, a twenty-foot black gap showed between the ragged edge of the deck and the far bulkhead from which it had been torn. The oily plant life spread over the edges of the flooring and on down into the flooded lower sections of the Antares. The pulse of Hovig’s generator came from above and the left where a passage slanted steeply up into the ship’s nose. Dasinger turned towards the passage, began clambering up.
* * *
There was no guesswork involved in determining which of the doors along the passage hid the machine in what, if Graylock’s story was correct, had been Hovig’s personal stateroom. As Dasinger approached that point, it was like climbing into silent thunder. The door was locked, and though the walls beside it were warped and cracked, the cracks were too narrow to permit entry. Dasinger dug out a tool which had once been the prized property of one of Orado’s more eminent safecrackers, and went to work on the lock. A minute or two later he forced the door partly back in its tilted frame, scrambled through into the cabin.
Not enough was left of Hovig after this span of time to be particularly offensive. The generator lay in a lower corner, half buried under other molded and unrecognizable debris. Dasinger uncovered it, feeling as if he were drowning in the invisible torrent pouring out from it, knelt down and placed the light against the wall beside him.
The machine matched Graylock’s description. A pancake-shaped heavy plastic casing eighteen inches across, two thick studs set into its edge, one stud depressed and flush with the surface, the other extended. Dasinger thumbed experimentally at the extended stud, found it apparently immovable, took out his gun.
“How is it going, Dasinger?” Miss Mines asked.
“All right,” Dasinger said. He realized he was speaking with difficulty. “I’ve found the thing! Trying to get it shut off now. Tell you in a minute . . .”
He tapped the extended stud twice with the butt of the gun, then slashed heavily down. The stud flattened back into the machine. Its counterpart didn’t move. The drowning sensations continued.
Dasinger licked his lips, dropped the gun into his pocket, brought out the lock opener. He had the generator’s cover plate pried partway back when it shattered. With that, the thunder that wasn’t sound ebbed swiftly from the cabin. Dasinger reached into the generator, wrenched out a power battery, snapping half a dozen leads.
He sat back on his heels, momentarily dizzy with relief, then climbed to his feet with the smashed components of Hovig’s machine, and turned to the door. Something in the debris along the wall flashed dazzlingly in the beam of his light.