Hunt the Space-Witch! Seven Adventures in Time and Space Read online

  He paused outside the building, thinking.

  Around him, Earthmen hurried to their homes. Night was falling. The stars blanketed the sky, white flecks against dark cloth. Many of those stars swore allegiance to Darruu. Others, to Medlin. Which was right? Which wrong?

  A block away, five fellow Darruui lurked, ready to come to his aid if he had any trouble in killing the Medlins. He doubted that he would have trouble, if the subsonic were as effective as Carver seemed to think.

  For forty Darruui years he had been trained to hate the Medlins. Now, in a few minutes, he would be doing what was considered the noblest act a Servant of the Spirit could perform—ridding the universe of a pack of them. Yet he felt no sense of anticipated glory. It would simply be murder, the murder of strangers.

  He entered the building.

  The Medlin headquarters were at the top of the building, in a large penthouse loft. He rode up in the gravshaft and it seemed to him that he could feel the pressure of the tiny subsonic generator in his thigh. He knew that was just an illusion, but the presence of the metal bead irritated him all the same.

  He stood for a moment in a scanner field. A door flicked back suddenly, out of sight, and a strange face peered at him—an Earthman face, on the surface of things at least.

  The Earth man beckoned him in.

  “I’m Armin Moulton,” he said in a deep voice. “You’re Harris?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Beth is waiting to see you.”

  The subsonic has a range of forty feet in any direction, Harris thought. No one should be closer to you than three feet.

  He was shown into an inner room well furnished with drapes and hangings. Beth stood in the middle of the room, smiling at him. She wore thick, shapeless clothes, quite unlike the seductive garb she had had on when Harris first collided with her.

  There were others in the room. Harris recognized the other Medlin, Coburn, and the giant named Wrynn who claimed to be a super-Earthman. There was another woman of Wrynn’s size in the room, a great golden creature nearly a foot taller than Harris, and two people of normal size who were probably Medlins.

  “Well?” Beth asked.

  In a tight voice Harris said, “He’s dead. I’ve just come from there.”

  “How did you carry it out?”

  “Disruptor,” Harris said. “It was unpleasant. For me as well as him.”

  He was quivering with tension. He made no attempt to conceal it, since a man who had just killed his direct superior might be expected to show some signs of extreme tension.

  “Eight to go,” Coburn said. “And four are in another hemisphere.”

  “Who are these people?” Harris asked.

  Beth introduced them. The two normal-sized ones were disguised Medlins; the giant girl was Wrynn’s wife, a super-woman. Harris frowned thoughtfully. There were a hundred Medlin agents on Earth. Four of them were right in this room, and it was reasonable to expect that two or three more might be within the forty-foot range of the concealed subsonic.

  Not a bad haul at all. Harris began to tremble.

  Beth said, “I suppose you don’t even know who and where the other Darruui are yourself, do you?”

  Harris shook his head. “I’ve only been on Earth a couple of days, you know. There wasn’t time to make contact with anyone but Carver. I have no idea how to do so.”

  He stared levelly at her. The expression on her face was unreadable—it was impossible to tell whether she believed he had actually killed Carver.

  “Things have happened fast to you, haven’t they?” she said. She drew a tridim photo from a case and handed it to Harris. “This is your next victim. He goes under the name of Reynolds here. He’s the second-in-command; first-in-command now, since Carver’s dead.”

  Harris studied the photo. It showed the face of the bald-headed man who had inserted the subsonic beneath the skin of his thigh.

  Tension mounted in him. He felt the faint rasp rasp rasp in his stomach that was the agreed-upon code; Carver, waiting nearby, wanted to know if he were having any trouble.

  Casually Harris kneaded his side, activating the transmitter. The signal he sent out told Carver that nothing had happened yet, that everything was all right.

  He handed the photo back to Beth.

  “I’ll take care of him,” he said.

  I press the neural nexus in the left hip and render them unconscious. Then I kill them with the disruptor and leave.

  Very simple.

  He looked at Beth and thought that in a few minutes she would lie dead, along with Coburn and the other two Medlins and these giants who claimed to be Earthmen. He tensed. His hand stole toward his hip.

  Beth said, “It must have been a terrible nervous strain, killing him. You look very disturbed.”

  “You’ve overturned all the values of my life,” Harris said glibly. “That can shake a man up.”

  “You didn’t think I’d succeed!” Beth said triumphantly to Coburn. To Harris she explained, “Coburn didn’t think you could be trusted.”

  “I can’t,” Harris said bluntly.

  He activated the concealed subsonic.

  The first waves of inaudible sound rippled out, ignoring false flesh and striking through to the Medlin core beneath. Protected by his three-foot shield, Harris nevertheless felt sick to the stomach, rocked by the reverberating sound-waves that poured from the pellet embedded in his thigh.

  Coburn was reaching for his weapon, but he never got to it. His arm drooped slackly; he slumped over. Beth dropped. The other two Medlins fell. Still the subsonic waves poured forth.

  To his surprise Harris saw that the two giants still remained on their feet and semiconscious, if groggy. It must be because they’re so big, he thought. It takes longer for the subsonic to knock them out.

  Wrynn was sagging now. His wife reeled under the impact of the noiseless waves and slipped to the floor, followed a moment later by her husband.

  The office was silent.

  Harris pressed his side again, signalling the all clear to the five Darruui outside. Six unconscious forms lay awkwardly on the floor.

  He found the switch that opened the door, pulled it down, and peered out into the hall. Three figures lay outside, unconscious. A fourth was running toward them from the far end of the long hall, shouting, “What happened? What’s going on?”

  Harris stared at him. The Medlin ran into the forty-foot zone and recoiled visibly; he staggered forward a few steps and fell, joining his comrades on the thick velvet carpet.

  Ten of them, Harris thought.

  He drew the disruptor.

  It lay in his palm, small, deadly. The trigger was a thin strand of metal; he needed only to flip off the guard, press the trigger back, and watch the Medlins die. But his hand was shaking. He did not fire.

  A silent voice said, You could not be trusted after all. You were a traitor. But we had to let the test go at least this far, for the sake of our consciences.

  “Who said that?”

  I did.

  “Where are you? I don’t see you.”

  In this room, came the reply. Put down the gun, Harris-Khiilom. No, don’t try to signal your friends. Just let the gun fall.

  As if it had been wrenched from his hand, the gun dropped from his fingers, bounced a few inches, and lay still.

  Shut off the subsonic, came the quiet command. I find it unpleasant.

  Obediently Harris deactivated the instrument. His mind was held in some strange stasis; he had no private volitional control.

  “Who are you?”

  A member of that super-race whose existence you refused to accept.

  Harris looked at Wrynn and his wife. Both were unconscious. “Wrynn?” he said. “How can your mind function if you’re unconscious?”

  Chapter Six

  Gently Harris felt himself falling toward the floor. It was as if an intangible hand had yanked his legs out from under him and eased him down.

  He lay quiescent, ey
es open, neither moving nor wanting to move.

  The victims of the subsonic slowly returned to consciousness as the minutes passed.

  Beth woke first. She stared at the unconscious form of Wrynn’s wife and said, “You went to quite an extent to prove a point!”

  You were in no danger, came the answer.

  The others were awakening now, sitting up, rubbing their foreheads. Harris watched them. His head throbbed too, as if he had been stunned by the subsonic device himself.

  “Suppose you had been knocked out by the subsonic too?” Beth said to the life within the giant woman. “He would have killed us.”

  The subsonic could not affect me.

  Harris said, “That—embryo can think and act?” His voice was a harsh whisper.

  Beth nodded. “The next generation. It reaches sentience while still in the womb. By the time it’s born it’s fully aware.”

  “And I thought it was a hoax,” Harris said dizzily. He felt dazed. The values of his life had been shattered in a moment, and it would not be easy to repair them with similar speed.

  “No. No hoax. And we knew you’d try to trick us when we let you go. At least, Wrynn said you would. He’s telepathic too, though he can only receive impressions. He can’t transmit telepathically to others the way his son can.”

  “If you knew what I’d do, why did you release me?” Harris asked.

  Beth said, “Call it a test. I hoped you might change your beliefs if we let you go. You didn’t.”

  “No. I came here to kill you.”

  “We knew that the moment you stepped through the door. But the seed of rebellion was in you. We hoped you might be swayed. You failed us.”

  Harris bowed his head. The signal in his body rasped again, but he ignored it. Let Carver sweat out there. This thing is bigger than anything Carver ever dreamed of.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Don’t you know what will happen to Medlin—and Darruu as well—once there are enough of these beings?”

  “Nothing will happen. Do you think they’re petty power-seekers, intent on establishing a galactic dominion?” The girl laughed derisively. “That sort of thinking belongs to the obsolete non-telepathic species. Us. The lower animals. These new people have different goals.”

  “But they wouldn’t have come into existence if you Medlins hadn’t aided them!” Harris protested. “Obsolete? Of course. And you’ve done it!”

  Beth smiled oddly. “At least we were capable of seeing the new race without envy. We helped them as much as we could because we knew they would prevail anyway, given time. Perhaps it would be another century, or another millennium. But our day is done, and so is the day of Darruu, and the day of the non-telepathic Earthmen.”

  “And our day too,” Wrynn said mildly. “We are the intermediates—the links between the old species and the new one that is emerging.”

  Harris stared at his hands—the hands of an Earthman, with Darruui flesh within.

  He thought: All our striving is for nothing.

  A new race, a glorious race, nurtured by the Medlins, brought into being on Earth. The galaxy waited for them. They were demigods.

  He had regarded the Earthers as primitives, creatures with a mere few thousand years of history behind them, mere pale humanoids of no importance. But he was wrong. Long after Darruu had become a hollow world, these Earthers would roam the galaxies.

  Looking up, he said, “I guess we made a mistake, we of Darruu. I was sent here to help sway the Earthers to the side of Darruu. But it’s the other way around; it’s Darruu that will have to swear loyalty to Earth, some day.”

  “Not soon,” Wrynn said. “The true race is not yet out of childhood. Twenty years more must pass. And we have enemies on Earth.”

  “The old Earthmen,” Coburn said. “How do you think they’ll like being replaced? They’re the real enemy. And that’s why we’re here. To help the mutants until they can stand fully alone. You Darruui are just nuisances getting in our way.”

  That would have been cause for anger, once. Harris merely shrugged. His whole mission had been without purpose.

  But yet, a lingering doubt remained, a last suspicion. The silent voice of the unborn superman said, He still is not convinced.

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Harris murmured. “I see, and I believe—and yet all my conditioning tells me that it’s impossible. Medlins are hateful creatures; I know that, intuitively.”

  Beth smiled. “Would you like a guarantee of our good faith?”

  “What do you mean?”

  To the womb-bound godling she said, “Link us.”

  Before Harris had a chance to react a strange brightness flooded over him; he seemed to be floating far above his body. With a jolt he realized where he was.

  He was looking into the mind of the Medlin who called herself Beth Baldwin. And he saw none of the hideous things he had expected to find in a Medlin mind.

  He saw faith and honesty, and a devotion to the truth. He saw dogged courage. He saw many things that filled him with humility.

  The linkage broke.

  Beth said, “Now find the mind of his leader Carver, and link him to that.”

  “No,” Harris protested. “Don’t—”

  It was too late.

  He sensed the smell of Darruu wine, and the prickly texture of thuuar spines, and then the superficial memories parted to give him a moment’s insight into the deeper mind of the Darruui who wore the name of John Carver.

  It was a frightening pit of foul hatreds. Shivering, Harris staggered backward, realizing that the Earther had allowed him only a fraction of a second’s entry into that mind.

  He covered his face with his hands.

  “Are—we all like that?” he asked. “Am I?”

  “No. Not—deep down,” Beth said. “You’ve got the outer layer of hatred that every Darruui has—and every Medlin. But your core is good. Carver is rotten. So are the other Darruui here.”

  “Our races have fought for centuries,” Coburn said. “A mistake on both sides that has hardened into blood-hatred. The time has come to end it.”

  “How about those Darruui outside?”

  “They must die,” Beth said.

  Harris was silent a moment. The five who waited for him were Servants of the Spirit, like himself; members of the highest caste of Darruui civilization, presumably the noblest of all creation’s beings. To kill one was to set himself apart from Darruu forever.

  “My—conditioning lies deep,” he said. “If I strike a blow against them, I could never return to my native planet.”

  “Do you want to return?” Beth asked. “Your future lies here. With us.”

  Harris considered that. After a long moment he nodded. “Very well. Give me back the gun. I’ll handle the five Darruui outside.”

  Coburn handed him the disruptor he had dropped. Harris grasped the butt of the weapon, smiled, and said, “I could kill some of you now, couldn’t I? It would take at least a fraction of a second to stop me. I could pull the trigger once.”

  “You won’t,” Beth said.

  He stared at her. “You’re right.”

  He rode down alone in the gravshaft and made his way down the street to the place where his five countrymen waited. It was very dark now, though the lambent glow of street-lights brightened the path.

  The stars were out in force now, bedecking the sky. Up there somewhere was Darruu. Perhaps now was the time of the Mating of the Moons, he thought. Well, never mind; it did not matter now.

  They were waiting for him. As he approached Carver said, “You took long enough. Well?”

  Harris thought of the squirming ropy thoughts that nestled in the other’s brain like festering living snakes. He said, “All dead. Didn’t you get my signal?”

  “Sure we did. But we were getting tired of standing around out here.”

  “Sorry,” Harris said.

  He was thinking, these are Servants of the Spirit, men of Darruu. Men who think of Darruu’s galactic dom
inion only, men who hate and kill and spy.

  “How many were there?” Reynolds asked.

  “Five,” Harris said.

  Carver looked disappointed. “Only five?”

  Harris shrugged. “The place was empty. At least I got five, though.”

  He realized he was stalling, unwilling to do the thing he had come out here to do.

  A silent voice said within him, Will you betray us again? Or will you keep faith this time?

  Carver was saying something to him. He did not hear it. Carver said again, “I asked you—were there any important documents there?”

  “No,” Harris said.

  A cold wind swept in from the river. Harris felt a sudden chill.

  He said to himself, I will keep faith.

  He stepped back, out of the three-foot zone, and activated the subsonic generator in his hip.

  “What—” Carver started to say, and fell. They all fell: Carver, Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson, slipped to the ground and lay in huddled heaps. Five Darruui wearing the skins of Earthmen. Five Servants of the Spirit.

  He drew the disruptor.

  It lay in his hand for a moment. Thoughtfully he released the safety guard and squeezed the trigger. A bolt of energy flicked out, bathing Carver. The man gave a convulsive quiver and was still.

  Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson.

  All dead.

  Smiling oddly, Harris pocketed the disruptor again and started to walk away, walking uncertainly, as the nervous reaction started to swim through his body. He had killed five of his countrymen. He had come to Earth on a sacred mission and had turned worse than traitor, betraying not only Darruu but the entire future of the galaxy.

  He had cast his lot with the Earthmen whose guise he wore, and with the smiling yellow-haired girl named Beth beneath whose full breasts beat a Medlin heart.

  Well done, said the voice in his mind. We were not deceived in you after all.

  Harris began to walk back toward the Medlin headquarters, slowly, measuredly, not looking back at the five corpses behind him. The police would be perplexed when they held autopsies on those five, and discovered the Darruui bodies beneath the Terran flesh.

  He looked up at the stars.

  Somewhere out there was Darruu, he thought. Wrapped in its crimson mist, circled by its seven moons—