Invaders From Earth Read online

  Engel still was silent. His silence began to irritate Kennedy.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Scared speechless? Did the fact that Gunther caught us throw you into such a blue funk you can’t talk?”

  Still no answer. A cold worm of panic raced around the interior of Kennedy’s stomach, and he swiveled his neck to see if—

  He was right.

  One of Gunther’s final desperate shots had ripped a neat hole in Engel’s breathing-helmet. The bullet had entered on a sharp angle, puncturing the helmet just in front of the linguist’s nose, grazing his left cheekbone harmlessly —it left only a thin scratch—and passing out of the helmet below Engel’s left earlobe. That had been enough.

  Engel’s air supply must have rushed out in one moist, foaming burst. Blood had dribbled from his mouth and ears as the internal suit-pressure dropped from the 14.7 psi of the suit to the much lower external pressure. Engel’s face was blotchy, purled, swollen, eyes bulging, thin lips drawn back in a contorted, grotesque smile.

  He had died in a hurry. So fast that he had not even had time to grunt an anguished last cry into his open suit-microphone. And for half an hour Kennedy had ferried a corpse across the Ganymedean wastes, talked to him and chided him, and finally had lost his patience and his temper at the corpse’s continued obstinate silence.

  Kennedy compressed his lips into a thin, bitter scowl. Engel had been so proud of bis dictionary, so anxious to show it off to the visitor from Earth. And a couple of weeks later that dictionary had worked his death, as surely as if it had been the bullet that sent his air-supply wailing out into the desolate night of Ganymede.

  At least it had been a quick death, with no time for the man to languish in a prison somewhere and eternally curse the day Kennedy had come to Ganymede.

  He stopped by a wide-stretching lake whose “waters” glittered in the light of three whirling moons. Only they and vast Jupiter seemed to be watching as Kennedy gently lifted Engel’s oddly light body from the sled and carried it to where the dark liquid lapped the edge of the ragged shore.

  He waded out a foot or two into the lake and laid Engel face-down on the surface of the water. He drifted. Kennedy touched one gauntlet to the dead man’s boot and shoved, imparting enough force to send Engel floating slowly but inexorably out toward the middle of the lake.

  To Kennedy’s horror the body remained afloat for some minutes, spinning in a lazy circle as the currents of the lake played games with it. Face down, arms and legs hovering on the crest of the lake, Engel looked like an effigy, a straw dummy put out to drift. But finally the methane came bubbling in through the two holes in his breathing-helmet, and the spacesuit lost its buoyancy and grew heavy, filling with liquid until Engel slowly and gravely vanished beneath the surface.

  Kennedy remained there a moment in tribute. He had not known Engel at all; in the words of the Ganny poem, he was only a shadow of a man to Kennedy. The linguist had been a man without a past to him, just a face and a name and an ability to collect words and understand their meaning. Kennedy had not known how old Engel was, where he had been born or educated, whether or not he was married, where he lived when he was on Earth, what his hopes or aspirations were, his philosophy of life. And now no one of those things mattered. Engel had neither present nor future, and his past was irrelevant.

  Kennedy remounted the sled and continued on. The time was 0412; he would reach the village at about 0445, and according to his schedule that was the time at which the Gannys would begin to stir into wakefulness after their last period of sleep. He rode silently on, not thinking, not making any plans.

  He was still a mile from the village when he saw the Terran truck from the outpost, drawn up perhaps fifty or a hundred yards from the first houses of the village. He looked down on the scene from the row of razor-backed ridges that bordered the village on the south. When he was close enough, he could see clearly what was taking place.

  The villagers were lined up outside their houses, and four dark spacesuited figures moved among them. An interrogation was under way. They were questioning the villagers about Engel and himself, hoping to find out where they were hiding.

  As Kennedy watched, one of the spacesuited figures knocked a villager to the ground. The Ganny rose and stood patiently where he had stood before. Brutally the Earthman knocked him down again.

  Kennedy’s jaws tightened. Gunther was prepared to stop at nothing in the attempt to find him. Maybe he would move on to wholesale destruction of the village, when no information was forthcoming.

  With his chin he nudged the control of his suit-microphone and said, “Gunther?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Kennedy. Hold your fire.”

  “Where are you, Kennedy?”

  “On the hill overlooking you. Don’t fire. I don’t intend to make trouble.”

  He had no choice. He could not hide out on this frozen methane world for long, and the aliens, though they meant well, could not give him shelter, could not feed him. He would only be bringing pain and suffering to them if he tried to remain at large.

  “What are you doing up there?” Gunther asked.

  “I’m coming down. I’m surrendering. I don’t want to cause any more suffering. Got that? I’m surrendering. I’ll come down out of the hills with my hands up. Don’t hurt the villagers any more. They aren’t to blame.”

  He rose from the shed and slowly made his way down the side of the hill, a dark figure against the whiteness. He was no more than halfway down when Gunther’s voice said sharply, “Wait a minute! You’re alone. Where’s Engel? If this is some sort of trick—”

  “Engel’s dead. You killed him back at the airlock when we escaped, and I gave him burial in a lake back beyond the hills. I’m coming down alone. Hold your fire, Gunther.”

  14

  The corporation spaceship had not been intended as a prison ship, and so they had no facilities for confining him. Not that Kennedy was anxious to mingle with the men of the crew; reserved, aloof, a little shocked despite himself at the magnitude of what he had done, he rarely left the hammock during the long, tense trip back to Earth. He spent much of his time reading and as much as possible sleeping, or thinking about the Ganymedean culture of which he had had such a brief, tantalizing glimpse.

  He ate alone, and spoke to the other men aboard the ship only when necessary. They spoke to him not at all.

  The last few days before the departure of the supply ship had been unpleasant ones. Gunther had ordered Kennedy confined to the bare little dungeon-storeroom, with a guard constantly posted outside the door and meals brought in.

  Gunther had questioned him.

  “You’re accused on two counts. You gave weapons to the aliens and you murdered Engel. Right?”

  “I decline to answer that.”

  “The hell with that. Confess.”

  “I’m not confessing to hogwash like that. And don’t threaten to have me shot, Gunther. The agency knows I’m here.”

  “It could be an accident—a man cleaning his rifle. But I won’t do it. Let the Corporation take care of you. You’re not my responsibility. You go back to Earth when the ship leaves.”

  “As you please,” Kennedy said.

  “But I want a confession. Tell me why you gave guns to the Gannys!”

  “I didn’t. The Gannys wouldn’t know how to use them. And you killed Engel yourself, when we tried to get away.”

  “Who’ll believe that? Come on, Kennedy—confess.”

  Kennedy shrugged and refused. After a while, Gunther gave up.

  He had to admit to himself they were taking special care of him. Another man might have killed him on the spot, as a safety measure; Gunther was too smart for that. After all, Kennedy was an agency executive. This was too big a thing for Gunther to handle, and he knew it. He was tossing it back to the Corporation, letting them judge Kennedy and decide what to do with him.

  Sizer let him have a gravanol pill on the way out, which surprised him
a little; it was reasonable to expect that they’d leave a traitor to cope with the agonies of blast-off acceleration as best he could, without proffering the assistance of the pain-killing drug. They gave it to him, though, silently and ungraciously, but readily enough.

  He had never been a particularly thoughtful man. Intelligent, yes; quick-witted, yes; resourceful, yes. But thinking —evaluation of himself in relation to the world about him, understanding of the sea of events through which he moved—thinking had never been his strong point, as Marge had so frequently let him know. But now he had plenty of time to think, as the Corporation ship left the icy ball that was Ganymede far behind and coasted on toward Earth.

  They had taught him many things at Northwestern; he had responded to tutorial prodding magnificently, coming through with straight A averages for the entire four years. But no one had ever taught him where his loyalties belonged. And he had never bothered to find out.

  It was a world he had never made—but one that had given him thirty thousand a year at the biggest public relations firm there was, and he’d been content. He could have left well enough alone, he thought.

  The day of Earthfall came. Word passed rapidly through the ship, and Sizer, grim-faced now, with none of the cheerful affability of the earlier journey, came aft to offer Kennedy a gravanol pill. He accepted the pellet and the flask and nodded his thanks to Sizer. The Spaceman left.

  Kennedy looked carefully around, making sure no one was watching him. A wild plan was forming in his mind. He palmed the little pill and drained the flask of water; then he slumped back in the hammock as if drugged. He slipped the pill into his pocket.

  Deceleration began.

  He rode down into the atmospheric blanket fully conscious, the only man on the ship who was awake. The ship’s jets thundered, stabilizing her, decelerating her. Kennedy felt as if two broad hands were squeezing him together, jamming his neck against his spine, flattening his face, distorting his mouth. He could hear the currents of blood in his body. He gasped for breath like a hooked fish. It seemed that there was a mighty knuckle pressing against his chest, expelling the air from his lungs, keeping him from drawing breath.

  He drew a breath. And another.

  He swung in the cradle. Waves of pain shivered through him.

  He started to blank out. He fought it, clinging tightly to consciousness.

  And he stayed awake.

  The ship was trembling, shuddering in the last moments before landing. He did not look out the viewplate, but he knew the ground must be visible now, pitching wildly beneath the ship. He could picture the sleek vessel standing perched on a tongue of fire.

  They dropped down. Kennedy wiped a trickle of blood from his upper lip. He became abruptly aware of a roaring silence, and realized that the bellow of the jets had at last ceased.

  They had landed. And he had not blanked out.

  Now he rolled over and looked through the port as he began to unfasten himself. He saw people out there. A welcoming committee? He looked for Marge or Watsinski or Spalding, but saw no one he recognized, no familiar face. He blinked again, realizing the field was empty. Those were just maintenance men. The ship had returned under wraps of secrecy.

  What a blaster of a dream that was, he thought, and in the same moment he realized that it was no dream. He had spent three weeks on another world; he had discovered that the values he held to be true were false, and that the cause he had lent himself to was dedicated to wiping out a culture that had incredibly much to offer Earth. The Corporation did not hate the Gannys. They merely stood in the way of making profit, and so they had to go.

  A voice said quietly inside him, If you run fast enough they can’t touch you. It’s not too late. You didn’t commit any crime by talking to the Gannys. The Corporation hasn’t started making the law yet, dammit. Not yet.

  The big hatch in the wall of the ship was opening, and a catwalk was extruding itself automatically so the men in the ship could reach the ground twenty feet below. Very carefully Kennedy unlaced the webbing that held him in the deceleration cradle. He dropped one foot over the side of the hammock, then the other, and went pitching forward suddenly as the wall of the ship came sweeping up to meet him.

  He thrust out his hands desperately, slapped them against the wall, steadied himself. He waited a moment until his head stopped pounding and his feet were less rubbery: He glanced fore and saw the other crewmen still slumped in their cradles, groggy from the gravanol pills. It would be a few minutes yet before they awakened. And they never would have expected their prisoner to have risked, and made, a fully conscious landing.

  Kennedy smiled. Quite calmly he made his way forward to the hatch and lowered himself down the catwalk to the ground. Someone in the ship yawned; they were beginning to stir.

  The sun was warm and bright. He had forgotten the day, but he knew it would have to be somewhere near the end of July. The sickly heat of midsummer hung over the flat grounds of the landing field.

  A few maintenance men were moving toward the ship now, but they ignored him. Somehow he had expected welcomers, video cameras, a galaxy of flash bulbs—not an empty field. But the Corporation had probably preferred a veil of secrecy cast over the arrival.

  He made his way across the field and into the area beyond. He spied a taxi passing on the road and hailed it. He felt dazed by the heat after the chill of Ganymede, and the punishment of landing had left him wobbly.

  He opened the taxi and slipped into the passenger’s seat. He glanced out the window and looked back at the space-field. By now they were awake aboard the ship, and knew he was missing.

  “Step on it, driver. Take me to the city.”

  The cab rolled away. Kennedy wondered if he would be followed. It had been so simple to slip away, in the confusion of landing. One of the Ganny maxims he had learned was that through endurance of pain comes knowledge of truth, and therefore freedom. Well, he had endured pain and he had his freedom as a result of it. The unused gravanol pill was still in his pocket.

  He had slipped away from them. Like in a dream, he thought, where the figures reach out to clutch you but you slip through them like a red-hot blade through butter.

  They would hunt him, of course. Escape could never be this simple; the Corporation would spare no expense to get him and put him away. But if he only had a few days of freedom to accomplish some of the things he had to do, he would be content. Otherwise his surrender would have been pointless; he might just as well have spent his days as a fugitive on Ganymede.

  Where can I go? he wondered.

  Home?

  Home was the most obvious place. So obvious, in fact, that his pursuers might never suspect he would go there. Yes. Home was best. He gave the cabby the address and lapsed back into sullen somnolence for the rest of the trip.

  The house looked unusually quiet, he thought, as the cab pulled into the Connecticut township where he and Marge had lived so long.

  Maybe Gunther had radioed ahead. Maybe they had intentionally let him slip away at the spaceport, knowing that they could always pick him up at home.

  He gave the driver much too big a bill and without waiting for change headed up the drive into his garden.

  He found his key in his trouser pocket, pressed it into the slot, and held his right thumb against the upper thumb-plate until the front door slid back. He stepped inside.

  “Marge?”

  No answer. He half-expected an answering rattle of gunfire or the sudden appearance of the Corporation gendarmerie, but the house remained silent. Only the steady purr of the electronic dust-eater was audible. He went on into the living room, hoping at least to find the cat sleeping in the big armchair, but there was no cat. Everything was tidy and in its place. The windows were opaqued.

  The windows were opaqued! Kennedy felt a twinge of shock. They never opaqued the windows except when they expected to be away for long periods of time, on vacations, long shopping tours. Marge would never have left the windows opaqued in the middle
of the day like that—

  Suspicion began to form. He saw a piece of paper sitting on the coffee-table in the living room. He picked it up.

  It was a note, in Marge’s handwriting, but more shaky than usual. All it said was, Ted, there’s a tape on the recorder. Please listen to it, Marge.

  His hands trembled slightly as he switched on the sound system and activated the tape recorder. He waited a moment for the sound to begin.

  “Ted, this is Marge speaking to you—for what’s going to be the last time. I was going to put this in the form of a note, but I thought using the recorder would let me make things a little clearer.

  “Ted, I’m leaving. It’s not a hasty step. I thought about it a long time, and when this Ganymede business came up everything seemed to crystallize. We just shouldn’t be living together. Oh, it was nice at times—don’t get me wrong. But there’s such a fundamental difference in our outlook toward things that a break had to be made—now, before it was too late to make it.

  “You worked on the Ganymede thing casually, light-heartedly, and didn’t even realize that I was bitterly opposed to it. Things like that. I’m not leaving because of a difference in politics, or anything else. Let’s just say that the Ganymede job was a symptom, not a cause, of the trouble in our marriage. I hated the contract and what it stood for. You didn’t even bother to examine the meaning of it. So today—the day you left for space, Ted—I’m leaving.

  “I’m going away with Dave Spalding. Don’t jump to conclusions, though—I wasn’t cheating on you with Dave. I have my code and I live by it. But we did discuss the idea of going away together, and your leaving for Ganymede has made it possible. That’s why I wanted you to go. Please don’t be hurt by all this—please don’t smash things up and curse. Play the tape a couple of times, and think about things. I don’t want anything that’s in the house; I took what I wanted to keep, the rest is yours. After you’ve had time to get used to everything I’ll get in touch with you about the divorce.