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Title: Six Frightened Men
Author: Robert Silverberg
Dubious author: Randall Garrett
Release date: May 26, 2021 [eBook #65446]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX FRIGHTENED MEN ***
SIX FRIGHTENED MEN
By Randall Garrett
It was an unexplored planet and anything
could happen--yet none of us expected to face a
creature impossible to fight, let alone kill....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1957
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You put your life on the line when you join the Exploratory Wing of the
Space Corps. They tell you that when you sign up. The way they told it
to me, it went like this:
"You'll be out there on alien worlds where no human being has ever
set foot--worlds which may or may not have been inhabited by hostile
alien creatures. You take your life in your hands every time you make a
planetfall out there. Still interested?"
"That's old stuff," I said. "You don't think I'd join up if it was an
old ladies' tea party, do you?"
Which was how I happened to be crouching behind a
fantastically-sculptured spiralling rock out on the yellow wind-blasted
desert of Pollux V, huddling there with the fierce sweep of sand
against my faceplate, looking at the monster that barred my path.
The thing was at least sixty feet tall and all eyes and mouth.
The mouth yawned, showing yellow daggers a foot long. As for the
eyes--well, they burned with the cold luminosity of an intelligent and
inimical being.
I didn't know what the thing was. One minute I'd been examining an
interesting rock formation, a second later I was hiding behind it,
watching the ravening thing that had appeared out of nowhere.
Other members of the expedition were sprawled here and there on the
desert too. I could see Max Feld, our paleontologist, curled in a tight
plump little ball under an outcropping of weathered limestone, and
there was Roy Laurence, the biochemist, flat on his stomach peering at
the thing incredulously.
Back behind me were three others--Don Forster, Leo Mickens, Clyde
Hamner. That made six. The two remaining members of the team, Medic
Howard Graves and Anthropologist Lyman Donaldson, were back at the
ship. We always left a shift of two back there in case of trouble.
And trouble had sure struck now!
I saw Laurence swivel in the sand and stare goggle-eyed at me. His
lips moved, and over my helmet radio came: "What the hell is it, Phil?
Where'd it come from?"
I'm a morphologist; I'm supposed to know things like that. But I could
only shrug and say, "A thing like that could only come from the pits of
Hell. I've never seen anything like it before."
* * * * *
I hadn't. We had been fine-combing the broad windswept plain in front
of the ship, looking for archaeological remains. The planet was
uninhabited, or so we thought after running a quick check--but Max Feld
had discovered relics of a dead race, an exciting find, and we had all
fanned out to help him in his search for more.
We had been heading toward a flat mountain wall that rose abruptly from
the desert about a mile from the ship when--from nowhere--the creature
appeared, towering above the desert like a dinosaur dropped from the
skies.
But no dinosaur ever looked like this one. Sixty feet high, its skin a
loathsome gray-green quivering jelly with thick hairy cilia projecting,
its vat-like mouth gaping toothily, its cold, hard eyes flicking back
and forth, searching for us as we flattened ourselves out of sight, it
was an utterly ghastly being. Evolution had gone wild on this planet.
And we were cut off from the ship, hemmed between the mountain wall and
the creature.
"What are we going to do?" Clyde Hamner whispered. "He's going to smell
us out pretty soon."
As he spoke, the monster began to move--_flowing_, it seemed, like some
vast protozoan.
"I'm going to blast it," I said, as it oozed closer to us. Cautiously,
I lifted my Webley from its shoulder-holster, turned the beam to
_Full_, began to squeeze the firing-stud.
A bright white-hot beam of force leaped from the nozzle and speared the
creature's eye. It howled, seemed to leap in the air, thrashed around--
And changed.
It became a boiling mass of amorphous protoplasm, writhing and
billowing on the sand. I fired again into the mass--again and again,
and the alien creature continued to shift its form. I was cold with
horror, but I kept up the firing. My bolts seemed to be absorbed into
the fluid mass without effect, but at least I had halted the oozing
advance.
It reached one final hideous stage: a giant mouth, opening before us
like the gate of hell. A mouth, nothing more. It yawned in front of us--
Then advanced.
I felt noxious vapors shoot out, bathing my thermosuit, and I saw
a gargling larynx feet across. I fired, again and again, into the
monster's throat.
My companions were firing too. We seemed to have halted the thing's
advance. It paused some twenty feet from us, a wall of mouth.
Then it disappeared.
It blinked out of sight the way it had come--instantaneously. For a
moment I didn't realize what had happened, and fired three useless
charges into the space where the monster had been.
"It's gone," Hamner exclaimed.
My hands were trembling--me, who had stood up to Venusian mudworms
without a whimper, who had fought the giant fleas of Rigel IX. I was
shaking all over. Sweat was running down my entire body, and the wiper
of my faceplate was going crazy trying to blot my forehead.
Then I heard dull groans coming from up ahead. One final grunt, then
silence. They had been coming from Max Feld.
Looking around cautiously, I rose to my feet. There was no sign of the
creature. I ran to where Max lay.
The plump paleontologist was sprawled flat in the sand, face down. I
bent, yanked him over, peered in his facemask. His eyes were open,
staring--and lifeless.
* * * * *
It wasn't till we got back to the ship that we could open his spacesuit
and confirm what I thought I saw on his face.
Doc Graves pronounced it finally: "He's dead. Heart attack. What the
devil did you _see_ out there, anyway?"
Quickly I described it. When I was finished the medic shivered. "Lord!
No wonder Max had an attack. What a nightmare!"
Donaldson, the anthropologist, appeared from somewhere in the back of
the ship. Seeing Max's body, he said, "What happened?"
"We were attacked on the desert. Max was the only casualty. The thing
didn't touch us--it just stood there and changed shape. Max must have
died of fright."
Donaldson scowled. He was a wry, taciturn individual with a coldness
about him that I didn't like. I could pretty much guess what he would
say. No expression of grief, or anything like that.
"It's going to look bad for you, Doc, when it's discovered we had a man
with a weak heart in the crew."
The medic stiffened. "I checked Max's heart before we left. It was as
good as anyone's. But the shock of seeing that thing--"
"Yeah," Don Forster said angrily. "You'd have been shivering in your
boots too if that thing had popped out of nowhere right over _your_
left shoulder."
"Keep your remarks to yourself, Forster. I signed on for the
Exploratory Team with the same understanding any of you did--that we
were going into alien, uncharted worlds and could expect to meet up
with anything. Anything at all. Fright's a mere emotional reaction.
Adults--as you supposedly are--should be able to control it."
I felt like hitting him, but I restrained myself. That ordeal out on
the desert had left me drained, nerves raw and shaken. I shrugged and
looked away.
"Well?" Hamner said. "What do we do? Go home?"
It was said half as a joke, but I saw from the look on young Leo
Mickens' face that he was perfectly willing to take the suggestion
seriously and get off Pollux V as fast as he could.
To forestall any trouble, I said, "It's a tempting idea. But I don't
think it would look good on our records."
"You're right," Hamner agreed. "We stay. We stay until we know what
that thing is, where it came from, and how we can lick it."
* * * * *
We stayed. We spent the rest of that day aboard ship, having called off
the day's explorations in memory of Max. The bright orb of Pollux set
about 2000 ship time, and the sky was filled with a glorious sight: a
horde of moons whirling above. The moons of Pollux V were incredible.
There were _one hundred_ of them, ranging in size from a hunk of rock
the size of Mars' Deimos to one massive high-albedo satellite almost
a thousand miles in diameter. They marched across the sky in stately
order, filling the Polluxian night with brightness.
Only we didn't feel much sense of wonder. We buried Max in a crude
grave, laid him to rest under the light of a hundred moons, and then
withdrew to the ship to consider our problem.
"Where'd it come from?" Doc Graves asked.
"Nowhere," I said. "Just nowhere. One second it wasn't there, next
second it was. It vanished the same way."
"How could that be?" Donaldson asked. "Matter doesn't work that way;
it's flatly impossible."
Holding myself in check, I said, "Maybe so, Donaldson. But the thing
was _there_."
"How do you know?" the anthropologist persisted, sneering a little.
"You sure it wasn't a mass illusion of some kind?"
"Damn you," Forster shouted, "_You_ weren't there. We were--and we saw
it. _Max_ saw it. Ask _Max_ if it was there!"
Evenly, Donaldson said, "On the basis of your description, I'm
convinced it must have been an illusion. I'm willing to go out there
and have a look first thing in the morning--either alone or with any of
you, if you can work up the courage. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," I said. "I'll go with you."
* * * * *
The next morning we left the ship, clad in thermosuits, armed to the
teeth--at least I was. I carried a subforce gun and a neural disruptor;
Donaldson scornfully packed only the prescribed blaster.
We crossed the flat plain together, without speaking. I led the way,
looking back nervously every few paces, but there was nothing behind me
but Donaldson. We made a complete reconnaissance of the area, picked
up a few interesting outlying fossils--Donaldson thought they might be
relics of the dead race of Pollux V--and reached the bare face of the
mountain without any difficulties.
"Well?" Donaldson asked sneeringly. "Where's your monster this time? He
afraid of me?"
"So it didn't show up," I snapped. "That doesn't prove anything. For
all we know it might jump us on the way back to the ship."
"So it might. But I doubt it. For one thing, I've been checking
footprints in the sand. I've counted six tracks--one each for you,
Feld, Hamner, Laurence, Forster, and Mickens. Unfortunately, that
doesn't leave any for your monster. There's no sign of him anywhere."
I was a little startled by that. I glanced around. "You're right," I
admitted, frowning. Licking dry lips, I said, "There ought to be some
trace--unless the wind's covered it."
"The wind hasn't fully covered the traces of you six yet," Donaldson
pointed out with obstinate logic. "Why should it obliterate only those
of your nemesis?"
I scowled, but said nothing. Donaldson was right again--but I still
found it hard to convince myself that what we had seen was only an
illusion.
On the way back to the ship, I formulated all sorts of theories to
explain the creature. It was a monster out of subspace, generated by
etheric force; it was a radiation-creature without tangible physical
body; it was--
I had half a dozen conjectures, each as unlikely as the next. But we
returned to the ship safely, without any trouble whatever. I was sure
of one thing: the creature was real, no matter what hell-void had
spawned it.
* * * * *
When we returned, I saw the tense faces of the men in the ship ease.
"All right," Donaldson said. "We've both been out there and come
back. I say we ought to investigate this place fully. There's been a
high-level civilization here at one time, and--"
"Suppose it's this monster that killed off that civilization?" Forster
suggested.
"Then it's our duty to investigate it," I had to say. "Even at the cost
of our lives." Here I agreed with Donaldson; monster or no, it was our
job to fathom the secrets of this dead world.
We agreed to explore in twos, rather than risk the customary
complement of six all at once. Two men would go out; five remain
within, three of them space-suited and ready to leave the ship to
answer any emergency call.
Mickens and Forster drew the first assignment. They suited up and
left. Tensely, we proceeded about our shipside duties, cataloguing
information from our previous stops, performing routine tasks, busying
ourselves desperately in unimportant work to take our minds off the men
who were out on that desert together.
An hour later, Forster returned. Alone.
His face was pale, his eyes bulging, and almost before he stepped from
the airlock we knew what must have happened.
"Where's Mickens?" I asked, breaking the terrible hush in the cabin.
"Dead," he said hollowly. "We--we got to the mountain, and--God, it was
awful!"
He sank down in an acceleration cradle and started to sob. Doc Graves
fumbled at his belt, drew out a neurotab, forced it between the boy's
quivering lips. He calmed; color returned to his face.
"Tell us about it," Hamner urged gently.
"We reached the back end of the plain, and Leo suggested we try the
mountain. He thought he saw a sort of cave somewhere back in there, and
wanted to have a look. We had to go over that sharp rock shelf to get
in there.
"So we started to scale the cliff. We were about a hundred feet up, and
going along a path maybe four feet wide, when--when--" He shuddered,
then forced himself to go on. "The monster appeared. It popped out of
nowhere right in front of Leo. He was taken by surprise and toppled
over the edge. I managed to hang on."
"Were you attacked?" I asked.
"No. It vanished, right after Leo fell off. I went down to look at him.
His facemask had broken. I left him there."
I glanced around at the tight-jawed, hard faces of my crewmates. No one
said a word--but we all knew the job that faced us now. We couldn't
leave Pollux V until we'd discovered the nature of the beast that
menaced us--even if it cost us our lives. We couldn't go back to Earth
and send some other guys in to do the job. That wasn't the way the
Exploratory Wing operated. We had a tradition to uphold.
* * * * *
We drew lots, and Hamner and Donaldson went out there to recover
Mickens' body. They encountered no hazards, and brought young Mickens'
shattered body back. We buried it next to Max's. The monster had taken
a toll of two already, without actually touching either.
It was almost like some evil plan unfolding to wipe us out one by one.
I didn't like it--but I didn't have anything too concrete to base it
on, not till the fifth day.
I was teamed with Donaldson again, and I felt strangely confident
about our safety. So far the monster had yet to materialize any time
Donaldson was out on the plain. That fact had been in the back of my
mind for quite a while. It was the only clue I had.
We prowled over the plain, which by now had been pretty well
finetoothed, and then I suggested we try the cave where Mickens had met
his fate.
"I don't like the idea," Donaldson said, eyeing the narrow shelf of
rock we would have to walk across. "You remember what happened to
Mickens, and--"
I laughed harshly. "Don't tell me you're beginning to believe in this
monster of ours?"
"Of course not. Mickens simply had an attack of vertigo and toppled
off; Forster's active imagination supplied the monster. But that shelf
looks treacherous. I'd just as soon not go up there."
"You're not talking like an Exploratory Wing man, Donaldson. But it's
okay with me if you want to wait down here. That cave might be a
goldmine of artifacts. We ought at least to have a look."
His hard face dropped within his mask. "No--I couldn't let you go
alone. You win," he said. "Let's try the cave."
We began the climb--and it was, I saw, a deadly road. It narrowed
dizzyingly--and while the drop was only a hundred feet, which a man
could survive if he landed right, spacesuits weren't made to take falls
of that sort. And without a suit, a man was instantly dead on this
methane-ammonia atmosphere world.
We were about ten feet out on the ledge, I in the lead and Donaldson
behind me, when I heard him gasp.
"Great God! There it is!"
I felt him lurch against me in sudden terror, nearly heaving me into
the abyss, but somehow I steadied myself, dropped to my knees, hung on.
I turned.
He had avoided a fall too. But I saw no monster.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"It came out of the air right next to me--just popped out of the
void and vanished again. I saw it, though." His voice was hoarse. "I
apologize for everything I've said. The thing is real. If it weren't
for your sure footing we'd both have gone the way Mickens did."
He seemed almost hysterical. There was no sign of the monster, but I
wasn't going to take any chances out on this ribbon of rock with a
hysterical man.
"Let's go back," I said. "We'll try to get to the cave some other time."
"All right," Donaldson said, shaken. We turned and inched our way back
along the shelf to safety, and half-ran to the sanctuary of the ship.
But once we were inside and I was thinking clearly again, I began to
sprout some suspicions.
* * * * *
I reasoned it out very carefully. Every time Donaldson had gone out
previously, the monster had failed to show. There wasn't another man
aboard ship who hadn't had some encounter with the thing. And some of
them were remarking about Donaldson's apparent luck.
So this time we're out on the shelf, and the monster _does_ show
up--but Donaldson's the only one who sees him, after staunchly denying
its existence all along. It seemed to me that it might only have been
pretense, that he had faked seeing the monster for some reason of his
own.
I didn't know what that could be. But I had some ideas. Donaldson,
after all, had been a member of the first party to explore Pollux V,
the day before the exploration that killed Max. I had remained on the
ship while that group had been out.
Suppose, I thought, Donaldson had found something on that first trip,
something that he hadn't bothered to tell the rest of us about.
Something he might want badly enough to kill all of us for.
It was pretty far-fetched, but it was worth a try. I decided to explore
Donaldson's cabin.
Ordinarily we respected privacy to an extreme degree aboard the ship.
I had never been in Donaldson's cabin before--he never invited anyone
in, and naturally I never went uninvited. But this was a special case,
I felt.
The door was locked, but it's not hard to coerce a magneplate into
opening if you know how they work. Donaldson was in the ship's lab and
I hoped he'd stay out of my way till I had a good look around.
The room was just like any of ours, filled with the usual things--a
shelf of reference books, a file of musictapes, some minifilms, other
things to help to pass away the long hours between planets. It seemed
neat, precise, uncluttered, just as Donaldson himself was crisp and
reserved.
I moved around the room very carefully, looking for anything out of the
ordinary. And then I found it.
It was a black box, nothing more, about four inches square. It was
sitting on one of his shelves. Just a bare black box, a little cube of
metal--but _what_ metal!
Beyond the blackness was a strange unearthly shimmer, an eye-teasing
pattern of shifting molecules within the metal itself. The box had a
sleek, alien appearance. I knew it hadn't been in the cabin when we
left Earth.
With a sudden rush of excitement I realized my mad guess had been
right. Donaldson _had_ found something and kept news of it back from
the rest of us. And perhaps it was linked to the deaths of Max Feld and
Leo Mickens.
Cautiously I reached out to examine the box. I lifted it. It was oddly
heavy, and strange to the touch.
But no sooner did I have it in my hands when the door opened behind me.
Donaldson had come back.
* * * * *
"What are you doing with that?" he shouted.
"I--"
He crossed the cabin at top speed and seized the box from my hands. And
suddenly the monster appeared.
It materialized right in the cabin, between Donaldson and me, its vast
bulk pressing against the walls. I felt its noisome breath on me,
sensed its evil reek.
"Donaldson!"
But Donaldson was no longer there. I was alone in the cabin with the
creature.
I backed away into the far corner, my mouth working in terror. I tried
to call for help, but couldn't get a word out. And the beast squirmed
and changed like a vast amoeba, writhing and twisting from one grey
oily shape to another.
I sank to the floor, numb with horror--and then realized that the
monster wasn't approaching.
It was just staying there, making faces at me.
Making faces. Like a bogeyman.
It was trying to scare me to death. That was how Max Feld had died,
that was how Leo Mickens had died.
But I wasn't going to die that way.
I rose and confronted the thing. It just remained in the middle of the
cabin, blotting everything out behind it, stretching from wall to wall
and floor to ceiling, changing from one hell-shape to another and
hoping I'd curl up and die.
I stepped forward.
Cautiously I touched the monster's writhing surface. It was like
touching a cloud. I sank right in.
The monster changed, took the dragon form again--much smaller, of
course, to fit the cabin. Teeth gnashed the air before my nose--but
didn't bite into my throat as they promised to do. Nervelessly I stood
my ground.
Then I waded into the heart of the monster, right into its middle with
the grey oiliness billowing out all around me. There seemed to be
nothing material, nothing to grapple hold of. It was like fighting a
dream.
But then I hit something solid. My groping hands closed around warm
flesh. I started to squeeze.
I had a throat. A living core of flesh within the monster? It might be.
I constricted my fingers, dug them in, heard strangled gasps coming
from further in. I couldn't see, but I hung on.
Then a human voice said, "Damn you--you're choking me!" And the monster
thinned.
Through the diminishing smoke of the dream-creature, I saw Donaldson,
and I was clutching his throat. He still held the black box in his
hand, but it was slipping from his grasp, slipping....
He dropped it. It clattered to the floor and I kicked it far across
the cabin.
The monster vanished completely.
* * * * *
It was just the two of us, there in the cabin. I heard fists pounding
on the door from outside, but I ignored them. This was between me and
Donaldson.
"What is that thing?" I asked, facing him, tugging at his throat. I
shook him. "Where'd you find that hell-thing?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" he wheezed.
My fingers tightened. Suddenly he drew up his foot and lashed out at
my stomach. I let go of his throat and fell back, the wind knocked out
of me. As I staggered backward, he darted for the fallen box, but I
recovered and brought my foot down hard on his outstretched hand.
He snarled in pain. I felt his other fist crash into my stomach again.
I was almost numb, sick, ready to curl up in a knot and close my eyes.
But I forced myself to suck in breath and hit him.
His head snapped back. I hit him again, and he reeled soggily. His
neat, precise lips swelled into a bloody mass. His fists moved hazily;
I blackened one of his eyes, and he groaned and slumped. Fury was in my
fists; I was avenging the honor of the Exploratory Wing against the
one man who had broken its oaths.
"Enough ... enough...."
But I hit him again and again, till he sagged to the floor. I picked up
the black metal box, fondled it in my hands. Then, tentatively, I threw
a thought at it.
_Monster._
The monster appeared in all its ugliness.
_Vanish._
It vanished.
"That's how it works, isn't it?" I said. "It's a thought projector.
That monster never existed outside your own mind, Donaldson."
"Don't hit me again," he whined. I didn't. He was beneath contempt.
I threw open the door and saw the other crewmen huddled outside, their
faces pale. "It's all over," I said. "Here's your monster."
I held out the black box.
* * * * *
We held court on Donaldson that night, and he made full confession.
That first day, he had stumbled over an alien treasure in the cave
beyond the hill--that, and the thought-converter. The idea came to him
that perhaps, as sole survivor of the expedition, he could turn some of
the treasure to his own uses.
So he utilized the thought-converter in a campaign to pick us off
one by one without aiming suspicion at himself. Only his clumsy way
of pretending to see the creature himself had given him away; else he
might have killed us all.
Our rulebook gave no guide on what to do about him--but we reached a
decision easily enough.
When we left Pollux V, taking with us samples of the treasure, and
other specimens of the long-dead race (including the thought-converter)
we left Donaldson behind, on the bare, lifeless planet, with about a
week's supply of food and air.
No one ever learned of his treachery. We listed him as a casualty,
along with Max and Leo, when we returned to Earth. The Exploratory
Wing had too noble a name to tarnish by revealing what Donaldson had
done ... and none of us will ever speak the truth. The Wing means too
much to us for that.
And I think they're going to award him a posthumous medal....
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX FRIGHTENED MEN ***
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