“Thought you’d never get here,” Crazy said, getting out of Coro’s pilot seat and into his own chair. “I have the floater ready. We better move, and fast. There’s another detachment of those worms leaving the mother ship.”
They all turned to stare at the viewplate. A block of yellow light shone where a port had opened in the giant vessel’s side. Coro climbed into his chair, keeping his eyes on the screen.
“Where to?” Sam asked as he crawled into his makeshift berth.
“Anywhere,” Lotus said, shivering with disgust. “Anywhere that’s not near those… those…”
“Agreed,” Coro said between clenched teeth.
The floater groaned, leaped. The screen showed a spinning night scene that tumbled and flopped as they moved across the forest, low to the tops of the trees and with full anti-radar gear in operation. As they moved, Coro and Sam tried to explain what they found.
“We have to go on to Hope,” Coro said finally.
“Easier said than accomplished,” Lotus noted. “We don’t have a starship.”
“Don’t be so negativistic,” Coro said, smiling a thin smile that almost wasn’t. “We might have a ship. It is a small chance, but we just might be able to get one.”
IX
Food-slugs as large as houses lay pulsating against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air. Patches of white spotted the most bulbous portions of the giants, the areas of new flesh tender and undeveloped, as yet inedible. The smaller slug-forms tending them moved through the tremendous bulks in sanitary linen frocks, their pseudopods testing the toughness of skin near the connection junction where flesh of food-slug met nutrient tubes in the wall. They occasionally took small instruments out of pockets in the nightgown garments they wore, plunged them into the food-slugs and took readings as the cancerous masses throbbed mindlessly, adding cell after cell after cell at a rate that was almost visible. The food deck stretched into the distance, filled to overflowing with the ponderous behemoths that neither thought nor felt nor moved nor laughed. But merely were. A team of butchers slithered down the main avenue between stalls. A forty-car train of magno-carts floated behind them. The butchers stopped at each food-slug that had grown beyond a mark on the floor that was used to make a quick judgment on their readiness. With precision, they used cauterizing lasers to slice huge steaks from the fleshy giants, hefting the fluid-oozing slabs onto the carts and moving ahead — trimming, cutting, butchering for the great crew of Raceship.
The reek of life fluids spilled was constantly sucked away by enormous ceiling fans, replaced by perfume-heavy air.
The Central Being examined the work in progress, watched as the skins of the cancerous slugs formed and covered the wounds the butchers had left, as skin on other food-slugs bulged and stretched and reformed to accommodate the ever-increasing supply of meat and fat. And the Central Being approved. This was fine. This was a goodness. And when the gargantuan steaks were spitted and roasted for the crew, when the fat dripped into the fire and sizzled and bloated the air with its fumes, then the crew would also see it as a goodness and would give thanks to the Central Being. This was the plan sliding on polished runners. Only briefly did the Central Being think of the annoying creatures in the floating ball. They were gone now and certainly not worth the bother of a protracted chase. Besides, within the day, the ship would be lifting and setting course for the world called Hope. The center of these creatures’ empire. From there, destruction of this blasphemous species would be swift and most gratifying…
Food slugs as large as houses pulsated against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air.
X
“Just as I thought,” Coro said. “They wouldn’t destroy those.”
Beyond the safety fence was the vast expanse of concrete that was Chaplin-Alpha’s spaceport, and the tall, phallic starships, mute dragons making silent testimony to the greatness of the race that had built the city of Chaplin- Alpha.
The city that was now in ashes, Sam reminded himself. The city behind the rolling green hills. The rolling green hills that belied the horror the other-dimensional God and its slug-forms had wrought.
The aliens had left the starships untouched. In fact, some of the ships sported crews of slug-forms clinging like fleas on a dog’s back. There were four slugs to each crew, and they seemed to be painting the hulls black to match the Raceship. These vessels would not be large enough to serve as Spoorships, but they would do the slugs well for survey craft — and possibly as battleships against the race that had made them.
Coro settled the floater behind the fence, into the shadows and the grass, cut all power and unstrapped himself. “We just have to go get one.”
“How?” Lotus asked.
“We have dart guns. If we have just a little bit of luck besides, we’ll have it made.”
“Without the luck?” Crazy asked.
“It’s been a pleasant association,” Coro said, smiling another of his non-smiles.
Minutes later they stood before the fence, each carrying a rifle armed with a clip of forty drug darts. The darkness would only shield them for half a dozen feet beyond the fence. Then, once onto the concrete runway, they would be held in the glare of the triple polyarcs, small, clear targets on the sea of smooth, featureless grayness that offered no place for concealment.
“Now comes an unpleasant choice,” Coro said, hunkering down and staring through the chainlink.
“What?” Sam asked, getting down next to him.
“Do we take the nearest ship — which has a four-slug crew working on it? Or do we go to the next ship — which has no crew, but which is three times as far from us?”
“I don’t like the slugs,” Crazy grumbled, shaking his massive head, hair twirling madly for a moment.
“Neither do I,” Sam said. “But we risk three times as much by going to the more distant ship. I opt for the closest vessel and the use of the drug darts.”
“Agreed,” Coro said. Then: “Agreed?”
It was, and swiftly. With a hand-laser torch like the one they had used to cut through the hull of the Raceship, they began work on the links of the safety fence. Within minutes they were through, hugging the shadows on the other side where they were thin and shallow. Ahead lay the runway, too bright for comfort. If there were only some cover, some little thing between here and the ship, some stopping point to catch breath. But there wasn’t.
“Together,” Coro said. “Run as fast as you can to the bottom of the ship, then stay with it like it was a lover, ‘cause it offers at least a little bit of shade. From there, we can pick off the painting crew on the mobile scaffolding and use it to get to the portal. Ready? Move!”
Sam’s lungs pounded as he raced across the concrete, gray swimming about him almost as if the deck were liquid, night air biting his cheeks and making them red. He wished he could move as fast as Lotus, but then she seemed to be just skimming the ground, flying more than she was running. He felt so small and so easily seen, naked on an endless plain of nightmare lights. But he couldn’t let himself think about that — or about one of the aliens’ beams picking him out and charring him into a smoldering, writhing mass of human flesh, spouting blood from ears and nose, eyes red with burst vessels. Those were not scenes to be imagined. Only run. Run, run, run until your chest is bursting and your legs are throbbing like footless stumps. Run, run…