“You’ll have to go fast, because if the alien defeats me it is bound to leave the tower and get all the machines going again. And when you get to the Seeker jump into it and blast off. You have flown a light aircraft, haven’t you?”
Petra nodded. “I’ve done about twenty hours or so in the family Cessna.”
“That’s good. The Seeker is a tricky beast to land, but all you’ll have to do is go straight up. Just point her at the sky and burn your way up into space. The Quarantine Police will pick you up in no time and you can tell them everything that happened down here. Some day, if there’s any justice in this universe, the authorities will get around to doing something about the monster. Doesn’t that make sense?”
In spite of her instinctive feeling that it would be wrong to let Jan venture into the black tower alone, Petra had to go along with his reasoning. More important than any individual human life was the need to make public the knowledge that Verdia itself was a perfectly normal world, and that a single alien invader had been responsible for all the tragedies that had occurred beneath its leaden skies.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said slowly, unable to disguise her fears for Jan’s safety. “But don’t take any chances in there, Jan. Don’t get yourself killed.”
He gave a wry grimace, briefly squeezed her shoulder, then turned away and walked towards the tower. As he stepped over clumps of yellow moss, he—in preparation for the ordeal to come—banished all pretence of cool rationality from his mind and yielded to the primitive side of his nature. It was now a personal duel with the alien. The monstrous thing skulking in the black tower had murdered Bari Hazard and hundreds of other human beings. It had made many attempts to kill Petra and himself, and he hated it with a special, private passion which could only be satisfied in one way. The old way. It was all a question of whether or not his courage would sustain him after he had entered the dark tower to face his enemy…
When he was about ten paces from the black structure a door in its base—one he had not previously noticed—swung open to receive him.
He tightened his grip on the grey sword. What sort of creature was he going to find within? Would it resemble something which had crawled out from under a rock, but swollen to gigantic proportions? Or would it be so nightmarish in its alienness that nothing in his previous experience could be compared with it?
Jan’s heartbeats sounded like thunder in his own ears as he reached the foot of the tower.
Carefully threading his way through the webwork of wires which shrouded the black monolith, he reached its base and paused just outside the threshold of the open door. There was total darkness inside—even the misty flashes of lightning failed to reveal any detail of what lay inside, beyond the door.
This is madness, he thought. I’ll be meeting the beast on its own ground…giving it every advantage…
He took a tentative step forward and stood on the threshold of the black opening, then paused again, trying to force his mind into action, trying to gain some foreknowledge of his unseen adversary.
Logically speaking, it was possible to deduce quite a lot about any creature simply by studying its environment. The complete blackness within the tower, for instance, probably meant that the creature had no eyes. Any organism which had natural radar would have no need for organs of sight.
By the same token, any creature which drew its sustenance directly from geomagnetic forces, and which could command metal objects to do its bidding, might have no need for hands. But if that were the case—how had it built the tower in the first place? Had it made use of the ancient Verdians’ machines to construct its lair before it destroyed their city?
Jan did not think so. The tower was completely smooth and seamless, as though carved from one enormous block of obsidian. In fact, at close range it looked less like a building than something which had grown organically…
From the corner of one eye, Jan saw the door beside him give a single preliminary quiver.
My God, he screamed inwardly as the terrible truth hit him, the tower IS the alien!
He threw himself backwards as the door slammed like a savage mouth, its edge sending him spinning to the ground. As he sprawled there, sick with horror and shock, he saw the edges of the door flow and disappear as it was re-absorbed into the body of the parent creature. It had been a trap specially created for him, and he had all but walked into it.
Filled with a yammering desire to put distance between himself and the monstrous being, Jan scrambled to his feet and backed away. He could sense the monster’s fury and frustration—waves of hatred were telepathically battering at his mind—and suddenly he was aware of a terrible new danger.
The wires he and Petra had woven in a net around the alien were beginning to twitch and writhe.
Jan realised belatedly that the alien, having decided to lure him and perhaps. Petra to their deaths, had in its cunning allowed them to think it was helpless inside the improvised Faraday’s Cage. But the missile guidance wires had metal cores, and the monster could exert the telekinetic powers which remained to it on anything made of metal.
Now the wires were slithering like snakes, beginning to unwind and fall away from the alien’s vast bulk. As soon as it had stripped away the radiation-proof cocoon it would again have control of its army of tanks and bulldozers. The deadly hunt would begin all over again—and this time there could be only one conclusion. The untiring metal juggernauts would not stop until their enemies were dead.
In a blind reflex of hatred, Jan dodged through the living wires, unslung his bow and reached over his shoulder to his quiver. It contained only one arrow. His face a white mask of fury and loathing, he nocked the red-fletched arrow and drew the bow.
He aimed it at the towering black hulk of the alien—then came the bleak realisation that the weapon was too puny to have any effect. A thousand such arrows would have no effect.
He lowered the bow, frantically turning his head from side to side like a cornered animal as he tried to solve the ultimate problem, to escape from the final predicament. Conventional weapons would be useless against a monster as huge and as powerful as the alien. He doubted if even a laser cannon would harm it. What was needed was sheer power…the sort of power which was unleashed by a nuclear bomb…the sort of power that came from the…”That’s it!” Jan cried aloud.
He turned on his heel and scanned the formation of tanks which enclosed the alien. Most of them had fired off their missiles during the orgy of blind destruction two years earlier, but at last he picked out one which still had a finned missle on its quadruple launcher.
Sobbing with gratitude, he sprinted to the inert vehicle and leaped up on to its sloping front end. The missile itself must have had a serious internal malfunction, otherwise it would not still be in place, but Jan’s interest was not in the missile itself.
He knelt at its full reel of guidance wire, snatched out his knife and cut through the wire just behind the missile. His fingers trembling with urgency, he tied the wire to his sole remaining arrow. He stood up and drew the bow. There was no time for careful aiming, but it did not matter—for his target was the sky itself.
He released the arrow, saw the needle of brilliance flick out from its tail, then he threw the bow aside, jumped down from the tank and ran towards Petra.
“Run!” he shouted. “For Christ’s sake, run!”
Without wasting time on questions, she darted away, the fear he had communicated to her lending her the strength for a burst of speed Jan could not match. He could not take time for a backward glance as he bounded across the plaza, away from the dark silhouette of the alien, but in his mind’s eye he saw the arrow ascending on the powerful thrust of its micro-rocket. He visualised it penetrating the lowlying cloud ceiling, the trailing wire creating a pathway for billion-volt electrical potentials…