A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

Two men with drawn vibrators whipped around the nearest corner and slid to a halt at the sight of the apparition that snarled at them across the dead body of their companion. Then, as they came out of the momentary paralysis, Ixtl stepped into the nearest wall. One instant he was a blur of scarlet in that brightly lighted corridor, the next he was gone as if he had never been. He felt the transmitted vibration from the weapons as the energy tore futilely at the walls behind him.

His plan was quite clear now. He would capture half a dozen men and make guuls of them. Then he could kill all the others, since they would not be necessary to him. That done, he could proceed on to the galaxy towards which the ship was evidently heading and there take control of the first inhabited planet. After that, domination of the entire reachable universe would be a matter of a short time only.

Grosvenor stood in front of a wall communicator with several other men, and watched the image of the group that had gathered around the dead technician. He would have liked to be on the scene, but it would have taken him several minutes to get there. During that time he would be out of touch. He preferred to watch, and see and hear everything.

Director Morton stood nearest the sending plate, less than three feet from where Dr. Eggert was bending over the dead man. He looked tense. His jaw was clenched. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. Yet the words cut across the silence like a whiplash. “Well, Doctor?”

Dr. Eggert rose up from his kneeling position beside the body and turned to Morton. The action brought him to face the sending plate. Grosvenor saw that he was frowning. “Heart failure,” he said. “Heart failure?”

“All right, all right.” The doctor put up his hands as if to defend himself. “I know his teeth look as if they’ve been smashed back into his brain. And, having examined him many times, I know his heart was perfect. Nevertheless, heart failure is what it looks like to me.”

“I can believe it,” a man said sourly. “When I came around that corner and saw that beast, I nearly had heart failure myself.”

“We’re wasting time.” Grosvenor recognized the voice of von Grossen before he saw the physicist standing between two men on the other side of Morton. The scientist continued. “We can beat this fellow, but not by talking about him and feeling sick every time he makes a move. If I’m next on his list of victims, I want to know that the best damned bunch of scientists in the system are not crying over my fate but instead are putting their brains to the job of avenging my death.”

“You’re right.” That was Smith. “The trouble with us is we’ve been feeling inferior. He’s been on the ship less than an hour, but I can see clearly that some of us are going to get killed. I accept my chance. But let’s get organized for combat.”

Morton said slowly, “Mr. Pennons, here’s a problem. We’ve got about two square miles of floor space in our thirty levels. How long will it take to energize every inch of it?”

Grosvenor could not see the chief engineer. He was not within range of the plate’s curving lens. But the expression on the officer’s face must have been something to witness. His voice, when he responded to Morton, sounded aghast. He said, “I could sweep the ship, and probably wreck it completely within an hour. I won’t go into details. But uncontrolled energization would kill every living thing aboard.”

Morton’s back was partly to the communicating plate that was transmitting the images and voices of those who stood beside the body of the man who had been killed by Ixtl. He said questioningly, “You could feed more energy to those walls, couldn’t you, Mr. Pennons?”

“No-o!” The ship’s engineer sounded reluctant “The walls couldn’t stand it. They’d melt.”

“The walls couldn’t stand it!” a man gasped. “Sir, do you realize what you’re making this creature out to be?”

Grosvenor saw that there was consternation in the faces of the men whose images were being transmitted. Korita’s voice cut across the pregnant silence. He said, “Director, I am watching you on a communicator in the control room. To the suggestion that we are dealing with a super-being, I want to say this: Let us not forget that he did blunder into the wall of force, and that he recoiled in dismay without penetrating into the sleeping quarters. I use the word ‘blunder’ deliberately. His action proves once again that he does make mistakes.”

Morton said, “That takes me back to what you said earlier about the psychological characteristics to be expected at the various cyclic stages. Let us suppose he’s a peasant of his cycle.” Korita’s reply was crisp for one who usually spoke with such care. “The inability to understand the full power of organization. He will think, in all likelihood, that in order to gain control of the ship he need only fight the men who are in it. Instinctively, he would tend to discount the fact that we are part of a great galactic civilization. The mind of the true peasant is very individualistic, almost anarchic. His desire to reproduce himself is a form of egoism, to have his own blood, particularly, carried on. This creature — if he is in the peasant stage of his development — will very possibly want to have numbers of beings similar to himself to help him with his fight. He likes company, but he doesn’t want interference. Any organized society can dominate a peasant community, because its members never form anything more than a loose union against outsiders.”

“A loose union of those fire-eaters ought to be enough!” a technician commented acidly. “I… aaa-a-a….”

His words tailed into a yell. His lower jaw sagged open. His eyes, plainly visible to Grosvenor, took on a goggly stare. All the men who could be seen in the plate retreated several feet.

Full into the centre of the viewing plate stepped Ixtl.

He stood there, forbidding spectre from a scarlet hell. His eyes were bright and alert, though he was no longer alarmed. He had sized up these human beings, and he knew, contemptuously, that he could plunge into the nearest wall before any of them could loose a vibrator on him.

He had come for his first guul. By snatching that guul from the centre of the group, he would to some extent demoralize everybody aboard. Grosvenor felt a wave of unreality sweep over him as he watched the scene. Only a few of the men were within the field of the plate. Von Grossen and two technicians stood nearest Ixtl. Morton was just behind von Grossen, and part of the head and body of Smith could be seen near one of the technicians. As a group, they looked like insignificant opponents of the tall, thick, cylindrical monstrosity that towered above them.

It was Morton who broke the silence. Deliberately, he held his hand away from the translucent handle of his vibrator, and said in a steady voice, “Don’t try to draw on him. He can move like a flash. And he wouldn’t be here if he thought we could blast him. Besides, we can’t risk failure. This may be our only chance.”

He continued swiftly, in an urgent tone. “All emergency crews listening in on this get above and below and around this corridor. Bring up the heaviest portables, even some of the semi-portables, and burn the walls down. Cut a clear path around this area, and have your beams sweep that space at narrow focus. Move!”

“Good idea, Director!” Captain Leeth’s face appeared for a moment on Grosvenor’s communicator, superseding the image of Ixtl and the others. “We’ll be there if you can hold that hellhound three minutes.” His face withdrew as swiftly as it had come.

Grosvenor deserted his own viewing plate. He had been acutely aware that he was too far from the scene for the kind of precise observation on which a Nexialist was supposed to base his actions. He was not part of any emergency crew, and so his purpose was to join Morton and the other men in the danger area.