A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

“The wasp!” a man gasped. “You’re right, Smith. The sooner they’re dead the better!”

It was Captain Leeth who gave the command. “To the engine room!” he said. “We—”

A swift, excited voice clamouring into the communicators interrupted him. A long second went by before Grosvenor recognized it as belonging to Zeller, the metallurgist.

“Captain — quick! Send men and projectors down to the hold! I’ve found them in the air-conditioning pipe. The creature’s here, and I’m holding him off with my vibrator. It’s not doing him much damage, so — hurry!”

Captain Leeth snapped orders with machine-gun speed as the men swarmed toward the elevators. “All scientists and their staff proceed to the air locks. Military personnel take the freight elevators and follow me!” He went on, “We probably won’t be able to corner him or kill him in the hold. But, gentlemen” — his voice became grave and determined — “we’re going to get rid of this monster, and we’re going to do so at any cost. We can no longer consider ourselves.”

Ixtl retreated reluctantly as the man carried off his guuls. The first shrinking fear of defeat closed over his mind like the night that brooded beyond the enclosing walls of the ship. His impulse was to dash into their midst and smash them. But these ugly, glittering weapons held back the desperate urge. He retreated with a sense of disaster. He had lost the initiative. The men would discover his eggs now, and, in destroying them, would destroy his immediate chances of being reinforced by other ixtls.

His brain spun into a tightening web of purpose. From this moment, he must kill, and kill only. He was astounded that he had thought first of reproduction, with everything else secondary. Already he had wasted valuable time. To kill he must have a weapon that would smash everything. After a moment’s thought, he headed for the nearest laboratory. He felt a burning urgency, unlike anything he had ever known.

As he worked, tall body and intent face bent over the gleaming metal of the mechanism, his sensitive feet grew aware of a difference in the symphony of vibrations that throbbed in discordant melody through the ship. He paused and straightened. Then he realized what it was. The drive engines were silent. The monster ship of space had halted in its headlong acceleration and was lying quiescent in the black deeps. An indefinable sense of alarm came to Ixtl. His long, black, wirelike fingers became flashing things as he made delicate connections deftly and frantically.

Suddenly, he paused again. Stronger than before came the sensation that something was wrong, dangerously wrong. The muscles of his feet grew taut with straining. And then he knew what it was. He could no longer feel the vibrations of the men. They had left the ship!

Ixtl whirled from his almost completed weapon and plunged through the nearest wall. He knew his doom with a certainty that found hope only in the blackness of space.

Through deserted corridors he fled, slavering hate, a scarlet monster from ancient, ancient Glor. The gleaming walls seemed to mock him. The whole world of the great ship, which had promised so much, was now only the place where a hell of energy would break loose at any moment. With relief, he saw an air lock ahead. He flashed through the first section, the second, the third — and then he was out in space. He anticipated that the men would be watching for him to appear, so he set up a violent repulsion between his body and the ship. He had a sensation of increasing lightness as his body darted from the side of the ship out into that black night.

Behind him, the porthole lights were snuffed out and were replaced by an unearthly blue glow. The blue first flashed out from every inch of the ship’s immense outer skin. The blue glow faded slowly, almost reluctantly. Long before it died away completely, the potent energy screen came on, blocking him forever from access to the ship. Some of the porthole lights came on again, flickered weakly and then slowly began to brighten. As mighty engines recovered from the devastating flare of energy, the lights already shining grew stronger, others began to flash on.

Ixtl, who had withdrawn several miles, drove himself nearer. He was careful. Now that he was out in space, they could use atomic cannon on him and destroy him without danger to themselves. He approached to within half a mile of the screen, and there, uneasy, stopped. He saw the first of the lifeboats dart out of the darkness inside the screen into an opening that yawned in the side of the big vessel. Other dark craft followed, whipping down in swift arcs, their shapes blurred against the background of space. They were vaguely visible in the light that glowed steadily again from the lighted portholes.

The opening shut, and without warning the ship vanished. One instant it was there, a vast sphere of dark metal. The next, he was staring through the space where it had been at a spiral-shaped bright splotch, a galaxy that floated beyond a gulf of a million light-years.

Time dragged drearily towards eternity. Ixtl sprawled un-moving and hopeless in the boundless night. He couldn’t help thinking of the young ixtls, who now would never be born, and of the universe that was lost because of his mistakes.

Grosvenor watched the skilful fingers of the surgeon as the electrified knife cut into the fourth man’s stomach. The last egg was deposited in the bottom of the tall resistance-metal vat. The eggs were round, greyish objects, one of them slightly cracked.

Several men stood by with drawn heat blasters as the crack widened. An ugly, round, scarlet head with tiny, beady eyes and a tiny slit of a mouth poked out. The head twisted on its short neck and the eyes glittered up at them with hard ferocity. With a swiftness that almost took them by surprise, the creature reared up and tried to climb out of the vat. The smooth walls defeated it. It slid back and dissolved in the flame that was poured down upon it.

Smith, licking his lips, said, “Suppose he’d got away and dissolved into the nearest wall!”

No one answered that. Grosvenor saw that the men were staring into the vat. The eggs melted reluctantly under the heat from the blasters, but finally burned with a golden light. “Ah,” said Dr. Eggert; and attention turned to him and to the body of von Grossen, over which he was bending. “His muscles are beginning to relax, and his eyes are open and alive. I imagine he knows what’s going on. It was a form of paralysis induced by the egg, and fading now that the egg is no longer present. Nothing fundamentally wrong. They’ll be all right shortly. What about the monster?”

Captain Leeth replied, “The men in two lifeboats claim to have seen a flash of red emerge from the main lock just as we swept the ship with uncontrolled energization. It must have been our deadly friend, because we haven’t found his body. However, Pennons is going around with the camera staff taking pictures with fluorite cameras, and we’ll know for certain in a few hours. Here he is now. Well, Mr, Pennons?”

The engineer strode in briskly and placed a misshapen thing of metal on one of the tables. “Nothing definite to report yet — but I found this in the main physics laboratory. What do you make of it?”

Grosvenor was pushed forward by department heads who drew in around the table for a closer look. He frowned down at the fragile-looking object with its intricate network of wires. There were three distinct tubes that might have been muzzles running into and through three small, round balls that shone with a queer, silvery light. The light penetrated the table, making it as transparent as glassite. And, strangest of all, the balls absorbed heat like a thermal sponge. Grosvenor reached out towards the nearest ball, and felt his hands stiffen as the heat was drawn from them. He drew back quickly.