A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

As they shook hands, Grosvenor said, “How long will it take to roll out the atomic cannon?”

“About an hour, perhaps a little longer. Meanwhile, we’ll have the big vibrators to protect us….”

The reappearance of the men brought Ixtl up to the seventh level with a rush. For many minutes, he was an abnormal shape that flitted through the wilderness of walls and floors. Twice he was seen, and projectors flashed at him. They were vibrators as different from the hand weapons he had faced so far as life from death. They shattered the walls through which he jumped to escape them. Once, the beam touched one of his feet. The hot shock from the molecular violence of the vibration made him stumble. The foot came back to normal in less than a second, but he had his picture of the limitations of his body against these powerful mobile units.

And still he was not alarmed. Speed, cunning, careful timing and placing of any appearance he made — such precautions would offset the effectiveness of the new weapons. The important thing was: What were the men doing? Obviously when they had shut themselves up in the engine room, they had conceived a plan, and they were carrying it out with determination. With glittering, unwinking eyes, Ixtl watched the plan take form.

In every corridor, men slaved over furnaces, squat things of dead-black metal. From a hole in the top of each furnace, a white glare spewed up, blazing forth furiously. Ixtl could see that the men were half blinded by the white dazzle of the fire. They wore space armour, but the ordinarily transparent glassite of which it was made was electrically darkened. Yet no light-metal armour could ward off the full effect of that glare. Out of the furnaces rolled long, dully glowing strips of material. As each strip emerged, it was snatched by machine tools, skilfully machined to exact measurements, and slapped on to the metal floors. Not an inch of floor, Ixtl noted, escaped being enclosed by the strips. And the moment the hot metal was down, massive refrigerators hugged close to it and drew its heat.

His mind refused at first to accept the result of his observations. His brain persisted in searching for deeper purposes, for a cunning of vast and not easily discernible scope. Presently, he decided that this was all there was. The men were attempting to energize two floors under a system of controls. Later, when they realized that their limited trap was not effective, they would probably try other methods. Just when their defensive system would be dangerous to him, Ixtl wasn’t certain. The important thing was that as soon as he did regard it as dangerous, it would be a simple matter to follow the men about and tear loose their energization connections.

Contemptuously, Ixtl dismissed the problem from his mind. The men were only playing into his hands, making it easier for him to get the guuls he still needed. He selected his next victim carefully. He had discovered in the man he had unintentionally killed that the stomach and intestinal tract were suitable for his purposes. Automatically, the men with the largest stomachs were on his list.

He made his preliminary survey, and then launched himself. Before a single projector could be turned towards him, he was gone with the writhing, struggling body. It was simple to adjust his atomic structure the moment he was through a ceiling, and so break his fall to the floor beneath. Swiftly, he let himself dissolve through that floor also, and down to the level below. Into the vast hold of the ship, he half fell, half lowered himself. He could have gone faster, but he had to be careful not to damage the human body.

The hold was familiar territory now to the sure-footed tread of his long-toed feet. He had explored the place briefly but thoroughly after he first boarded the ship. And, in handling von Grossen, he had learned the pattern he needed now. Unerringly, he headed across the dim-lit interior toward the far wall. Great packing cases were piled up to the ceiling. He went through them or around them, as it suited him, and presently found himself in a great pipe. The inside was big enough for him to stand up in. It was part of the miles long system of air conditioning.

His hiding place would have been dark by ordinary light. But to his infra-red-sensitive vision, a vague twilight glow suffused the pipe. He saw the body of von Grossen, and laid his new victim beside it. Carefully, then, he inserted one of his wiry hands into his own breast, removed a precious egg, and deposited it into the stomach of the human being.

The man was still struggling, but Ixtl waited for what he knew must happen. Slowly, the body began to stiffen. The muscles grew progressively rigid. In panic, the man squirmed and jerked as he evidently recognized that paralysis was creeping over him. Remorselessly, Ixtl held him down until the chemical action was completed. In the end, the man lay motionless, every muscle rigid. His eyes were open and staring. There was sweat on his face.

Within hours, the eggs would be hatching inside each man’s stomach. Swiftly, the tiny replicas of himself would eat themselves to full size. Satisfied, Ixtl started up out of the hold. He needed more hatching places for his eggs, more guuls.

By the time he had put a third captive through the process, the men were working on the ninth level. Waves of heat rolled along the corridor. It was an inferno wind. Even the refrigeration unit in each space suit was hard put to it to handle the superheated air. Men sweated inside their suits. Sick from the heat, stunned by the glare, they laboured almost by instinct.

Beside Grosvenor, a man said suddenly, harshly, “Here they come now!”

Grosvenor turned in the direction indicated, and stiffened in spite of himself. The machine that was rolling towards them under its own power was not big. It was a globular mass with an outer shell of wolfram carbide, and had a nozzle that protruded from the globe. The strictly functional structure was mounted on a universal bearing, which, in its turn, rested on a base of four rubber wheels.

All around Grosvenor, men had ceased work. Their faces pale, they stared at the metal monstrosity. Abruptly, one of them came over to Grosvenor and said angrily, “Damn you, Grove, you’re responsible for this. If I’m due to get irradiated by one of those things, I’d like to punch you one in the nose first.”

“I’ll be right here,” said Grosvenor in a steady voice. “If you get killed, so will I.”

That seemed to take some of the anger out of the other. But there was still violence in his manner and tone, as he said, “What the hell of nonsense is this? Surely there must be better plans than to make bait out of human beings.”

Grosvenor said, “There is another thing we can do.”

“What’s that?”

“Commit suicide!” said Grosvenor. And he meant it.

The man glared at him, then turned away muttering something about stupid jokes and moronic jokesters. Grosvenor smiled mirthlessly and went back to work. Almost immediately, he saw that the men had lost their zest for the job. An electric tension leaped from one individual to another. The slightest untoward action on the part of one person brought the others tautly erect.

They were bait. All over the various levels, men would be reacting to the death fear. No one could be immune, for the will to survive was built-in in the nervous system. Highly trained military men like Captain Leeth could put on an impassive front, but the tension would be there just under the surface. Similarly, people like Elliott Grosvenor could be grim but determined, convinced of the soundness of a course of action and prepared to take their chance.

“Attention, all personnel!”

Grosvenor jumped with the rest as that voice came out of the nearest communicator. It took a long moment before he recognized it as belonging to the commander of the ship.