With the line of flight reasonably clear, Doc Chimp, complaining vigorously, was sent back to help the Scorpian. The two parties arrived at the ebony plain almost together, the chimp gibbering frantically, "Ben Line! Dr. Babylon! Please, wait for me! Don't leave this old monkey in this spooky place!"
In the faint light from the luminous, distant sky, Babylon could see that the robot had been sorely stricken. There were great gashes in its shiny surface, and the steam jets puffed only weakly and at strange angles; but it would not relinquish the net of objects it was bringing home. The chimpanzee had a net of its own, larger than Doc Chimp himself.
And then Ben Line Pertin cried out in dismay: "The lander! It's been hit!"
Clearly the towers had not suspended their attack while the party was in the ship. The lander's scoops lay bent, scorched, half-retracted on the ebony velvet sand. There were great rents in its hull; the pilot window was shattered; fuel had leaked and burned out of split tanks.
They would never get back to the orbiter in that.
A wartime sailor of centuries before, seeing his torpedoed ship go down in the middle of a shark-filled, stormy sea, must have felt as Babylon did at that moment. It was their link with the real, gentle world outside; and it was gone. "Jen!" Pertin roared in his ear. "Don't daydream— get inside!"
"For what?" Babylon managed; but Pertin did not answer, and then his hands were full. Pertin was already dragging himself in through the shattered hatchway, tugging at the unwieldy block from the ship. Babylon guided it, flailing desperately out of the way as one corner of it threatened to crush his foot between its own bulk and the fabric of the lander, and then they were inside. To what point, Babylon could not imagine. The thing would never fly! Its shattered hull might protect them for a brief time, but when the lightnings found them again it would be all ' over for it—and them.
And one struck almost at once. Babylon's muscles convulsed in a tetany of shock. Not more than a millionth of the energy of the discharge flowed through the hull and into him, but it was the worst pain he had ever felt. Dizzy and shaken, he felt himself thrust out of the way by the skinny arms of Doc Chimp, crowding in behind him. "Oh, Dr. Babylon," the chimp chattered, "what a terrible place this is! And now what?"
Pertin snapped brutally, "Shut up and help me with this stuff! You too, Jen! Come on!"
"What's the use?" Babylon demanded, but no one took the time to answer. Pertin was opening a gate in a locker behind the control couches, now smoldering faintly, and the chimp was thrusting the great block toward him. Cryptic lights raced and flashed in patterns over the gate, and Pertin exhaled a sigh of relief. "Get the damn Scorpian, Doc!" he ordered, tugging at the block from the ship. "Give a hand, Jen!"
Another bolt smote the ship, stunning Babylon. Doc Chimp rolled back into the lander on the heels of it, shoe- button eyes rolling in terror, chattering with fear. "Here he is, that clanking mass of "confusion," he gasped, as the Scorpian limped slowly after him, "but what we need him for I'll never know."
"Just shut up and bear a hand!" Pertin was opening the gate again—
For a moment Babylon's heart had leaped with hope— he recognized the box at last, a tachyon transmitter, their one remaining hope of escape. But when the gate opened and he saw what was inside, the hopeless anguish closed in again. The block was still there! Unchanged! The machine obviously had been too damaged to work, and they were doomed!
Queerly, Pertin and the chimp were pulling the block out and shoving the robot's bag of tricks in its place—glinting crystal rods and disks, ebon artifacts of geometrically strange shape, hexagons like the ones Babylon himself had brought. "But—but it's not working!" Babylon objected feebly.
The chimp stared at him, incredulously. Pertin did not answer: the lights flashed, the door opened again, the two wrestled the net sack out and turned to Babylon. "You next!" Pertin ordered.
"But—for what—"
"Dr. Babylon," the chimp chattered pleadingly, "will you get in?"
Unwillingly, Babylon bent himself double and allowed himself to be squeezed into the chamber—helped, at the last, by Pertin's firmly shoved boot. He felt the door slammed upon him.
For a timeless moment he was crushed into an unbearable position, in a chamber without light or air—
And then the door opened again.
He was dragged out by a creature that looked like a figure poked out of dough, sprouting tentacles that gripped him and pulled him free. The gloom of the wrecked lander was gone; he was in a harshly bright metal chamber, and as the Sheliak released him he flew across it and slammed into a wall.
He was alive. He was on the orbiter. Somehow he had been saved.
That was the greatest wonder. He was alive.
Dazed, Jen Babylon caught a cable and hung against the wall as a squirming, flailing Doc Chimp sailed at him, collided, scrabbled for a hold. Arms and legs grappling the cables, the chimp panted, "We made it, Dr. Babylon! Oh, this poor old monkey never thought he'd see this place again! Watch out!" Behind him, the smoking hulk of the Scorpian robot soared out of the tachyon chamber and crashed against the wall. It made no attempt to grasp a hold, and its jets steamed at random; it floated slowly out toward the middle of the chamber.
And that was all.
Doc Chimp moaned softly beside him and sprang out toward the chamber. There was a quick exchange with the doughy Sheliak, and then the chimp launched himself back . to the wall, his face working with woe.
"Oh, Dr. Babylon," he sobbed, "poor old Ben! That's the last of us. He didn't make it."
Babylon stared at him uncomprehendingly. "I—I don't see how any of us did," he managed.
The chimp's sobs turned into what was almost a giggle. "Tachyon transmission, Dr. Babylon," he said. "That's all. Confuses you, doesn't it?—but I thought you'd know, seeing you just came all that way from Earth."
"But the machine didn't work! I saw Ben take the block out again!"
"The original of the block," the chimp corrected. "It's still there, though the duplicate's here—probably slagged to a cinder by now, just like poor Ben. Just like the originals of you and me."
Babylon stared at him with horror. "Us?"
"The ones that stayed behind," the chimp explained, and giggled hysterically. "So you're beginning to understand, Dr. Babylon? And now you know how it feels! What it's like knowing you just died, ten thousand kilometers away!"
It was more than ten thousand kilometers.
The lander was a smoking ruin. That other Jen Babylon lay half stunned, with the dead body of the chimp behind him at the shattered door of the transmitter and the wrecked Scorpian robot lodged queerly across his legs, waiting for the final bolt that would end his pain. Had he made it to the orbiter? Did some "he" still live—somehow, somewhere?
His last thought, as the final bolt caught him, was that, even if the answer was yes, it did not ease the terror or the pain.
SIX
Something wakes me ...
Is it time?
I stretch out in my sleep and taste the troubling emanations from my watchers and my slaves. A ship has been invaded, an invader wiped out. There is nothing there to justify disturbing my sleep. But it is troubling.