“Colonel,” Helm spoke up. “He knows there’s something here! Maybe―”
“Let’s talk to him,” I said and reached to switch on the outside talker, but I felt unsure of my command of the Ylokk speech. Swft had given me some pointers on the grammar―it wasn’t too difficult―and between him and some cooperative prisoners we’d come up with a crash course in the basics, enough for a quickie hypno-tape. My time in the coder had been very short, though, with no time for the usual posthypnotics. I asked Helm if he knew the language. He didn’t.
Then Smovia came groping out of his cubicle, rubbing his head.
“I had the damnedest dream,” he muttered. “I was caught in a typhoon and turned inside out. It was as real as this is―realer! Believe me, I was relieved to wake up and find my duodenum back where it belonged. What’s going on―and what’s that?” He was staring at the infant Helm was still holding. Helm showed him the baby-rat face, now in the repose of sleep.
“We . . . we found it,” he explained. “It was―he was left in a fancy coach, sitting there in the mud. Poor little tyke.”
“What coach?” Smovia demanded. “What mud?” He glanced outside and saw no answers out there.
“What’s a baby doing here?” he wanted to know. “How did it get here? And where’s ‘here’?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “The pup was in a disguised shuttle, like this one―but not one of ours―and I don’t know, except that we’re well into Zone Yellow. We’ve moved from there: it’s a little more normal’ here.” I indicated the view of the road and the cottage.
“ ‘Zone Yellow’?” the doctor queried, at the same time taking the swaddled infant from Helm. “I seem to recall that. Didn’t you say it’s an interdicted area―not to be entered under any circumstances?” He sounded more exasperated than scared.
“Normally, yes. But the trails the Ylokk left lead directly into the Zone; so it was decided that we had to make an exception.”
“Why was it interdicted in the first place?” Doc asked me.
“We lost a shuttle, then others. After the third―the second two crews having been specially equipped and briefed―the decision was made to bypass the Zone in our exploration, and get back to it later, when presumably, we’d have improved our technology and could deal with whatever was swallowing our machines and crews.”
“If they couldn’t get back,” Smovia demanded, “what makes you think we can?”
“I don’t,” I told him. “Not necessarily, at least. But I’m hoping―expecting―to learn something that will do the trick.”
“Here―in this deserted village or whatever it is?” Smovia yelped, then diverted his attention to soothing the pup, which had awakened with a wail.
“My theory,” I told him, “is that the Zone is another Blight, brought about, like our own, by Net experimentation gone wrong, but perhaps less severe. There’s at least one island of relative normalcy here―the one our invaders came from. There may be others. I think we’re close. I haven’t done a complete analysis of the data our instruments have been storing, to find out if I’m right.”
“Then let’s do so―by all means,” Smovia urged. “At once, Colonel, if you don’t mind. Frankly, not knowing whether or not I’m to be added to the list of those lost in nowhere unsettles my digestion―not that I’ve had anything to digest lately. Shh, baby.” He switched his attention back to the tot in his arms. “It’s all right…” He paused and looked at me hopefully. “It is all right, isn’t it, Colonel Bayard?”
“Look!” Helm broke in. He was pointing at the view panel, where a small group of tall, lean, forward-leaning creatures had appeared. Their tracks in the mud led back to a meandering line that disappeared in the distance.
“It’s the rats!” Smovia gasped. “Probably looking for the baby! We’d better―”
Before he could finish that, one of the rats in the van of the group glanced our way, saw something that interested him, and alerted the others. They crowded together and started our way in a menacing fashion. Then one groped in his overcoat pocket and brought out a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver―the issue weapon of the NSS. Clearly he was a veteran of the invasion, and this was his loot. He aimed it at the Ylokk in red, who was standing with his back to them, until the weapon bucked in the vet’s long, narrow hand and the red one spun and fell on his back. The others at once scattered, ducking away in all directions and to the edge of our field of view.
“Colonel!” Helm blurted. “They murdered that fellow in cold blood!”
“I don’t know the temperature of his vascular fluids,” I countered, “but they shot him, all right.”
Smovia had crowded in to look over my shoulder. “We must help that―uh―fellow,” he decided. “The bullet struck him in the upper arm, I think. Probably he’s not fatally wounded.”
“Too bad, Doc,” Helm supplied. “We can’t. He’s out there and we’re in here.”
The group of Ylokk were back; ignored the wounded one; they were snooping around the shuttle, as if they sensed its invisible presence.
“Those fellows know we’re here,” Helm volunteered. “The rats!”
“But,” Smovia put in, “are they the kidnappers or did they come as rescuers?”
“They’re the kidnappers,” Helm stated. “You saw how they killed that fellow. They’re obviously criminals.”
“What if the one they shot was one of the kidnappers?” Smovia protested.
“Either way,” Helm replied, “we can’t just sit here and let him bleed to death.” He turned to me. “Colonel,” he said heavily, “couldn’t we get closer and use a hook to pull him in? That way―”
“You might be snatched into identity with the line,” I pointed out. “It depends on the entropic gradient, which is reading off the scale, you recall.”
The gang of Ylokk outside had moved entirely out of the wide-angle viewer’s field of vision.
“The boy is right,” Smovia said. “We must try. Have we a hook of some sort?”
“Standard equipment,” I told him. “A telescoping one, stored in the locker there.” The doctor got it out and was trying to maneuver it into a position in which it could be extended when Helm uttered a yell. I looked his way; the wounded Ylokk was crawling toward us. He got close and collapsed, one claw-like hand extended. I had to make a decision; that hand outstretched as if in appeal did it. I set up a closed-entropic field around the hatch and cycled it open. The wounded Ylokk groped as if puzzled, then a pointed snout appeared in the opening and I was looking at Swft, the general I’d last seen in the hospital. He recognized me a moment before I realized who he was.
“Colonel!” he gasped; he crawled inside another six inches and collapsed. Smovia had retreated with the baby, instinctively protective.
“We must…” Swft managed to gasp, and fell silent. Smovia came back, went to him, rolled him on his side, cut away his body-stocking, and began probing. He used an ugly-looking instrument and a moment later dropped a misshapen lump on a metal plate with a clatter that seemed too loud.
“Why the red longjohns?” I asked Swft.
“Caught unaware,” he gasped. “No time to don my uniform.”
“Clean wound,” Smovia commented. “No bones or major vessels involved. Nerves are all right, too, I should imagine. I don’t really know the anatomy very well, of course.”
Swft uttered a high-pitched moan and rolled on his side. Smovia muttered and rolled him back, asked Helm to hold him there, and began applying medication. “Have to hold off infection, and kill the pain as well,” he explained. He taped bandages in place and stood.