That brought me up short. “And where do you come off with the authority to say what I can or cannot do?”
“If you remember, I have charge of the responsibility of morals on this ship. I feel that if you returned from Sigma-9 it would be demoralizing….”
“For God’s sake, Judge, what are you afraid of?”
“Suppose you bring the Destroyer back with you?”
“The Destroyer?”
“Yes, the green-eyed creature that is wrecking — ”
I interrupted him. “Well, at least you’re off blaming it on the One-Eyes. I’m going, Judge.”
I wasn’t paying too much attention to him because I was both frightened and furious.
I got to the boat, locked the locks behind me, unplugged my ears, opened my eyes, and radioed myself clear. The triple ports swung back and I barreled out into the sand. The meter read three point seven. The Sigma-9 grew in the view screen like a shimmering egg.
The robot receiver announced: “Your ears are unplugged”—I switched on my radio — “and your eyes are seeing.”
The hatch opened up, and as I drifted into the lock, the sand meter swung down. The tunnel attached itself, and as I stepped out, my stomach retreated against my backbone in fear of what I might find. I felt a slight mental tingling, which I assumed at first was part of my own anticipation. I walked up the empty corridor and the tingling grew stronger until, as I was walking toward the navigation offices, I realized there was something ringing in my head like a buzzer. I turned toward the City Plaza, wondering where on the road to destruction I was.
Suddenly I saw a few people ahead. They were staggering silently away from me. One fell, then two more. The others wove to the side; one leaned against a column for a moment, then slipped to the ground as well.
I tried my belt radio, thinking maybe I could zero in on where the remaining forces of the City were held up. When I turned the switch, the buzzing left my head and became real. Just as I was trying to figure out what to do, the hum on the speaker began to rise and fall and then resolved itself into a voice. “Who are you?”
“Huh?” I said in surprise, and wanted to know — though I didn’t say it — who the hell are you?
“I am the Destroyer. Your people call me the Destroyer. Who are you, come to hunt the Destroyer?”
It was weird. I thought maybe somebody who’d lost their nuts had gotten hold of what communications devices were left.
“Where are you?” I demanded. The radio wasn’t two-way, but in my frustration, I guess I must have forgotten it. I remember I called out, “Where are you? I’m trying to help you!”
And the radio blared out in the oscillating voice: “I’m here.”
Then it happened. I think most of it happened in my head. Things just went crazy — emotions, thoughts, impressions — and through the whirling chaos around me, something great and shimmering staggered into the concourse, the form of a man — naked, huge, but like some sort of ghost, with flowing eyes.
The thing startled me, so I just cried out, “Stop that!”
And it stopped. My head jarred back into place on my shoulders, and I could see the figure glittering, fading, disappearing, and reaffirming itself across the shattered wreckage over the plaza.
“I am here,” it repeated, but this time the voice reverberated from the vague area of its head.
“What are you doing!” I demanded, and was only then struck by the impossibility that I had all along been communicating.
“Help me,” it said. “I–I don’t know.”
“You’re killing us,” I cried. “That’s what you’re doing!”
“I approached slowly,” it said. “Very carefully into their minds — but they died screaming. Their minds are not big enough.” It swayed and staggered, gaining form and losing it like a dream.
My heart was pounding, though I was beginning to recover. “But you’re not killing me,” I said.
“You told me to stop. I’m not in your mind now, just the image in your eyes and ears.”
I wasn’t too sure what it was talking about, so I said, “Well, bring your image a little closer; but don’t do anything that will…hurt my mind. I want to see you.”
Three steps carried him across the floor till he stood, green-eyed and towering, above me.
“You don’t really see me,” he said. “I took this image from their minds, to try to come closer with. But their minds break up even when I come slowly.”
“And what about me?” I asked, unsure what I was really talking about.
“I came to you fast, and you yelled stop; so I stopped.”
“Oh,” I said, “well, thanks.” I remembered what coming fast had meant. Suddenly I remembered. “Where is Captain Alva?”
“He’s dead, and so are most of the others…there; they are all dead now.”
“All…?”
“They didn’t say stop.”
Suddenly it hit me. “Well then, you stay stopped, damn you! All? What in the — Don’t move ever again! Why didn’t you stop anyway? What the hell do you think you are?” I screamed it, and maybe some more besides; I don’t remember. When I stopped, I was quivering, both mad and scared.
It didn’t say anything; it just shook there in front of me. At last I could only ask, “What are you?”
And more softly, as if it had understood on a deeper level, it repeated, “I don’t know.”
Then it occurred to me to ask: “Where are you from?”
“Outside, outside the City. I exist in the — the sand, you call it, the meson fields outside the starships.”
“You’re — ” The idea came to me as something too big trying to fit in the too-small space of my head. “You’re…a living being from the sea and the sand?”
He nodded.
I had been going up until now on a hysterical drive that had battered up against what it met without question. But now the impossibilities began to flood my mind and I struck at them with questions.
“But who — how — how can you communicate with me?”
“I can’t, really,” it explained. “I took apart their minds, and I know your words and your images, but your minds are too small for me. I can’t really communicate with you, but I know what you are thinking. I took the image so you could see something of me. But I took the image from your people.”
I let the breath, which had somehow stopped, come back into my lungs. “I see.”
“I did not realize,” it went on, “that you were alive until just now when you told me to stop. That was the first time any of you addressed me directly.”
Again I nodded.
“The image comes to me of one of your people breaking open an anthill to see what is inside. That is how I broke open your ships. I saw the confusion, but I did not realize it was wrong until you told me.”
“You are a very different sort of life-form than we are,” I said. “Are your people common all over interstellar space?”
“No people. There is only me.”
“You must be very lonely,” I said.
“Lonely?”
And I actually heard the rising inflection of interrogation.
“I…lonely,” and then something odd happened. The room began to quiver around me, and for a moment I thought the chaos was going to begin.
“Yes, I am very lonely. But I did not know it until you told me the word.”