The Hub: Dangerous Territory by James H. Schmitz

Volcheme’s calculations were based entirely on that assumption. So far, nothing had happened to prove him wrong. The alien creature was still moving about the Depot. Wergard, before the multiple-view screen through which he had followed the earlier events of the day, reported glimpses of it every minute or two. And there were increasing indications of purpose in its motions. It had passed along this building once, paused briefly. But it had shown itself three times about the control section, three times at the main building. Its interest appeared to be centering on those points.

Until it ended its swift and unpredictable prowling, they could only wait here. Wergard was ready to slip over to a personnel lock in the barrier about the control building when an opportunity came. A gas charge would knock out the men inside, and the main barrier would open long enough then to let out their prepared shortcode warning. Their main concern after that would be to stay alive until help arrived.

Their heads turned sharply as the shortcode transmitter on the shelf before Danestar gave its chattering pickup signal. She stood up, snapped the headpiece of her radiation suit into position, collapsed the other instruments on the shelf, slid them into the suit’s pockets, and picked up the valise she’d brought back from Dr. Hishkan’s office.

” . . . where . . . is . . . it . . . I . . . want . . . it . . . ” whispered the transmitter.

“Pickup range still set at thirty yards?” Wergard asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“There’s nothing in sight around here.”

Danestar glanced over at him. He’d encased himself in the other radiation suit. A small high-power energy carbine lay across a chair beside him. His eyes were on the viewscreen which now showed only the area immediately around the building. She didn’t answer. The transmitter continued to whisper.

It wasn’t in sight, but it was nearby. Very near. Within thirty yards of the transmitter, of their hideout, of them. And pausing now much longer than it had the first time it passed the building.

” . . . who . . . has . . . it . . . where . . . is . . . it . . . ”

Her skin crawled, icy and uncontrollable. If it had any way of sensing what she held concealed inside the valise, it would want it. She didn’t think it could. No spying device she knew of could pierce the covering of the valise. But the egg-shaped alien instrument within—no bigger than her two fists placed together—was the heart and core of the specimen from the Pit, its black box, the part which must hold all significant clues to the range and penetrating power of its signals. Without it, the rest of the contents of that great boulder-shaped thing would be of no use now—to Volcheme or to the alien.

They waited, eyes on the viewscreen, ready to move. If the building was attacked and the creature showed it could force its way through the enclosing energy barrier, there was an unlocked door behind them. An elevator lay seconds beyond the door; and two levels down, they would be in the underground tunnel system where a transport shell waited. If they were followed, they could continue along the escape route Wergard had marked out, moving from barrier to barrier to slow the pursuer. Unless it overtook them, they would eventually reach the eastern section of the Depot, known as the Keep, where ancient defense screens formed so dense a honeycomb that they should be safe for hours from even the most persistent attacks.

But retreat would cost them their chance to make use of the control section. . . .

The transmitter’s whisper faded suddenly. For some seconds, neither stirred. Then Wergard said, relief sharp in his voice: “It may have moved off!”

He shifted the screen mechanisms. A pattern of half a dozen simultaneous views appeared. “There it is!”

On the far side of the control building, flowing purple fire lifted into view along fifty yards of one of the Depot’s streets like the back of a great surfacing sea beast, sank from sight again. Danestar hesitated, took the commband detector quickly out of her suit pocket, placed it on the wall shelf. She pressed a button on the little instrument and the projection field sprang into semi-visibility above it.

Wergard, eyes shifting about the viewscreen, said, “It’s still only seconds away from us. Don’t get too absorbed in whatever you’re trying to do.”

“I won’t.”

Danestar released the bulky radiation headpiece, turned it back out of her way. Her fingertips slipped along the side of the detector, touched a tiny adjustment knob, began a fractional turn, froze.

The visual projection she’d been hunting had appeared in the field before her.

A flickering, shifting, glowing galaxy of tiny momentary sparks and lines of light . . . the combined communication systems of a megacity might have presented approximately such a picture if the projector had presented them simultaneously. She licked her lips, breath still, as her fingers shifted cautiously, locking the settings into place.

When she drew her hand away, Wergard’s voice asked quietly, “What’s that?”

“The thing’s intercom system. It’s . . . let me think—Wergard! What’s it doing now?”

“It’s beside the control building.” Wergard paused. He hadn’t asked what her manipulations with the detector were about; she seemed to be on the trail of something, and he hadn’t wanted to distract her.

But now he added, “Its behavior indicates . . . yes! Apparently it is going to try to pass through the section barrier there!”

The viewscreen showed the ghostly, reddish glittering of an activated defense barrier along most of the solid front wall of the control building. Two deep-rose glowing patches, perhaps a yard across, marked points where the alien had come into direct contact with the barrier’s energies.

It hadn’t, Danestar thought, liked the experience, though in each case it had maintained the contact for seconds, evidently in a deliberate test of the barrier’s strength. Her eyes shifted in a brief glance to the viewscreen, returned to the patterns of swarming lights in the projector field.

The reaction of the creature could be observed better there. As it touched the barrier, dark stains had appeared in the patterns, spread, then faded quickly after it withdrew. There was a shock effect of sorts. But not a lasting one. Danestar’s breathing seemed constricted. She was badly frightened now. The section barriers did hurt this thing, but they wouldn’t stop it if it was determined to force its way through their energies. Perhaps the men in the control building weren’t yet aware of the fact. She didn’t want to think of that—

She heard a brief exclamation from Wergard, glanced over again at the screen.

And here it comes, she thought.

The thing was rising unhurriedly out of the street surface before the control building, yards from the wall. When it tested the barrier, it had extruded a fiery pointed tentacle and touched it to the building. Now it surged into view as a rounded luminous column twenty feet across, widening as it lifted higher. The top of the column began to lean slowly forward like a ponderous cresting wave, reached the wall, passed shuddering into it. The force field blazed in red brilliance about it and its own purple radiance flared, but the great mass continued to flow steadily through the barrier.

And throughout the galaxy of dancing, scintillating, tiny lights in the projector field, Danestar watched long shock shadows sweep, darken, and spread . . . then gradually lighten and commence to fade.

When she looked again at the viewscreen, the defense barrier still blazed wildly. But the street was empty. The alien had vanished into the control building.

“It isn’t one being,” Danestar said. “It’s probably several billion. Like a city at work, an army on the march. An organization. A system. The force field did hurt it—but at most it lost one half of one percent of the entities that make it up in going through the barrier.”

Wergard glanced at the projection field, then at her.

“Nobody in the control building had access to a radiation suit,” he said. “So they must have been dead in an instant when the thing reached them. If it can move through a section barrier with no more damage than you feel it took, why hasn’t it come out again? It’s been in there for over five minutes now.”

Danestar, eyes on the pattern in the projection field, said, “It may have been damaged in another way. I don’t know. . . . ”

“What do you mean?”

She nodded at the pattern. “It’s difficult to describe. But there’s a change there! And it’s becoming more distinct. I’m not sure what it means.”

Wergard looked at the field a moment, shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it. It’s a jumble to me. I don’t see any changes in it.”

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