“And as warped as the God on the second rung.”
“Exactly.” He was feeling better as he shared the horror, his cheeks flushing to ward off the cold that was really a cold from within.
“And what does this new God want?”
“To… destroy us.” He recalled all the lines of thought that had been radiating from the Central Being, flooding through the counter-melodies of Racesong. “Destroy us. Wipe us out to the last man, woman, and child.”
“Why?”
“To preserve Its self-importance. We are creatures It never conjured into existence. We are beyond Its control, really, because It is not our God and It is not measurably better than we are. It cannot annihilate us, for It isn’t that powerful. But It can direct Its creatures, the slug-forms, to do the job for It. Since they are vicious fighters and we do not have the power to strike back, it should not be a difficult chore.”
“We have to get back to the floater,” Coro said, standing and helping Sam to his feet. “We’ve got to get word back to Hope somehow. A warning.”
They were nearly halfway across the meadow before they heard the noise and saw the whoosh of blue light that gushed from the weapons of the slug-forms surrounding the floater. A steel net had been dropped over the ball, magno-connected to ground pegs spaced every three feet. A tough, tight enclosure, quickly and silently thrown up — even more quickly clamped shut. Lotus and Crazy had probably been achored before they had realized something was happening.
“The hypnodarts,” Coro whispered, dropping to his knees in the high grass.
They knelt, only their heads visible above the grass, and stripped themselves of all unnecessary equipment, equipment which would have been necessary had the Racesong not prevented them from exploring Raceship. Then, nervously, they screwed together the two parts of the dart rifles. It was a humane weapon. It caused sleep, but not the ultimate sleep of death. It was, really, the only sort of weapon they could have brought themselves to use against intelligent creatures. Each rifle had a clip of forty darts which slid easily into the butt of the weapon, just above the powerpack.
Running crouched, rifles at ready in the event they were spotted prematurely, the blue explosions of the slugs’ weapons neon-flashing in the dark, Sam was thinking of Hurkos. Of Hurkos clubbing that pink slug that teetered on the edge of the Shield, that wormy thing that had been God. He remembered the stinking mush of fluids that had spilled from the rips Hurkos had made in its hide. He remembered it writhing in death agony. Clubbing, clubbing, clubbing with a vicious, spiteful swing of the arms. Clubbing… But he was not going to kill! Only put them to sleep. Just sting them for a split second and then give them a nap. And he was saving the lives of the two Mues inside the floater, he argued with himself. Yes. Of course. That must be the way to think of it.
Wind: cold.
Light: blue.
Night: dark.
These three things swam and erupted through one another, cold-dark-blue/blue-dark-cold like a psychedelic toto-experience show, throbbing through the grass that licked them like a thousand tiny tongues as the scene of violence ahead became plainer, clearer, uglier and uglier.
The slug laser weapon was concentrated on the hull, and although Crazy and Lotus had begun to spin the ship under the net, the beam would soon trace a black line around the sphere and slice it in half.
Sam fought the weariness that ached in every joint of his body. Fatigue, he told himself, was one of those mental disorders you could overcome with the proper tools of concentration. But concentrate as he would, his legs still throbbed madly, and his lungs heaved like sacks full of hot coals suddenly come to life.
“Here,” Coro said.
They dropped to the earth at the edge of the grass, staring across five yards of open ground to the trees and the indentation in the forest where the floater spun and was fired upon. “What now?” Sam asked, his throat dry and cracked like his lips.
Coro wiped perspiration from his forehead despite the cool breezes playing inside their minds and bodies. “I count… fourteen. But there may be more hidden in the trees. Don’t start fanning your rifle right off. That wastes too many darts. But look how they are standing. They all have their backs to us. If we pick them off, moving inward, the boys in front won’t realize the boys behind are going down.”
“I don’t know about my aim—”
“The gun will handle most of that. You just sight through the keyhole bubble here. The gun will correct for the rest.”
They dropped to their bellies, crawled forward the last few feet until their heads were exposed beyond the tall grass. Sam raised his gun, sighted. The nearest slug on his side was a dozen feet away. His finger encircled the trigger, and he felt things rising in his stomach. Then he forced himself to think about all those guns from the jelly-mass ship — and that he knew how to work them. And they were to kill; these were only to drug. He pulled the trigger, closing his eyes with the soft whuff of discharge.
When he opened his eyes, the slug was lying on its side, fuzzy, thin lids closed over its eyes, still alive but out of action for a while. Coro had gotten two in the same time. Carefully, Sam raised his gun again, sighted in on another slug. Whuff! This time he didn’t close his eyes. The dart spun forth, buried itself in the tender flesh of the slug-form. The alien started to turn, a pseudopod lashing around to clutch the dart in bewilderment, then it was toppling sideways off its snake-like locomotion tail and onto the ground, its eyes staring fixedly at nothing for a moment before fuzzy lids closed over them.
It was like a game, really.
The slugs were like little cardboard targets, five feet high and relatively easy to hit. When you were on target, they fell over almost instantly. And the blue lights flashed almost as if in notice of a score.
The game neared its end. Six slugs remained standing, still oblivious to the eight unconscious comrades behind. Then Sam fired on the next closest of the gross creatures, caught it in the middle of the back. It bent convulsively, straightened to pluck the dart from itself, and toppled forward. Forward! It struck the slug in front of it a glancing blow. That slug turned to see what was the matter, saw the bodies, and sounded the alarm.
“Fan them now!” Coro hissed.
Sam swung the barrel of the rifle back and forth, not bothering to aim any longer.
Three more slugs toppled to the ground before they could swing their own weapons up.
Another dropped, four darts in its chest.
The two aliens operating the beam weapon swung it off the floater and toward the open meadow, playing the blue fire over the men’s heads and setting the grass on fire behind them. Sam sighted on one of the remaining duo, but they both fell as Coro fanned a burst of darts and caught them in midsection.
The beam winked out.
“Hurry!” Coro snapped. “They might have gotten a message back to their ship.”
They were up, running.
“The net!” Sam shouted.
Coro nodded. Together they hefted the heavy beam-projector, palmed what seemed to be the control panel. Blue light burst out of the nozzle, humming. Carefully, they sighted on the cables linking the net to magno-pegs, burning through the heavy strands. Eventually the net slid off the ball, pulled downward by its own weight. They dropped the weapon and ran up the ramp that had opened in the side of the floater to welcome them like the tongue of a favorite dog.
“Thank the stars!” Lotus said, coming into Coro’s arms, her wings fluffed out and fluttering slightly, beautiful in the warm yellow light of the cabin. Sam felt as if he were intruding on something private. But after a few messy and misplaced kisses of joy, the two separated.