Nine Rarities Page 5

  Richard, where are you now? Will you be here in a few minutes, Richard, with the convoy? Will you be thinking of us and the day we kissed goodbye in New York at the harbor, when I was on my way to nursing service in London? Will you remember how we kissed and held tight, and how you never saw me again?

  I saw you, Richard. Three weeks ago. When you passed by on Destroyer 242, oblivious to me floating a few feet under the water!

  If only we could be together. But I wouldn't want you to be like this, white and sodden and not alive. I want to keep you from all this, darling. And I shall. That's why I stay moving, I guess. Because I know I can help keep you living. We just killed a submarine, Richard. It won't have a chance to harm you. You'll have a chance to go to Britain, to do the things we wanted to do together.

  There was a gentle movement in the water, and the old woman was at her side.

  Alita's white shoulders jerked. "It — it was awful."

  The old woman looked at the sun caught in the liquid. "It always is— this kind of death. It always has been — always will be as long as men are at war. We had to do it. We didn't take lives, we saved lives — hundreds of them."

  Alita closed her eyes and opened them again. "I've been wondering about us. Why is it that just you and I and Conda and Helene and a few others survived the sinking. Why didn't some of the hundreds of others join us? What are we?"

  The old woman moved her feet slowly, rippling currents.

  "We're Guardians, that's what you'd call us. A thousand people drowned when the USS Atlantic went down, but twenty of us came out, half-dead, because we have somebody to guard. You have a lover on the convoy routes. I have four sons in the Navy. The others have similar obligations. Conda has sons too. And Helene — well, her lover was drowned inside the USS Atlantic and never came half-alive like us, so she's vindictive, motivated by a great vengeance. She can't ever really be killed.

  "We all have a stake in the convoys that cross and recross the ocean. We're not the only ones. Maybe there are thousands of others who cannot and will not rest between here and England, breaking seams in German cargo boats, darkening Nazi periscopes and frightening German crewmen, sinking their gun-boats when the chance comes.

  "But we're all the same. Our love for our husbands and sons and daughters and fathers makes us go on when we should be meat for fish, makes us go on being Guardians of the Convoy, gives us the ability to swim faster than any human ever swam while living, as fast as any fish ever swam. Invisible guardians nobody'll ever know about or appreciate. Our urge to do our bit was so great we wouldn't let dying put us out of action…

  "I'm so tired, though," said Alita. "So very tired."

  "When the war is over — we'll rest. In the meanwhile—"

  "The convoy is coming!"

  * * *

  It was Conda's deep, voice of authority. Used to giving captain's orders for years aboard the USS Atlantic, he appeared below them now, about a hundred yards away, striving up in the watered sunlight, his red hair aflame around his big-nosed, thick-lipped face. His beard was like so many living tentacles, writhing.

  The convoy!

  The Guardians stopped whatever they were doing and hung suspended like insects in some green primordial amber, listening to the deeps.

  From far, far off it came: the voice of the convoy. First a dim note, a lazy drifting of sound, like trumpets blown into eternity and lost in the wind. A dim vibration of propellers beating water, a bulking of much weight on the sun-sparkled Atlantic tides.

  The convoy!

  Destroyers, cruisers, corvettes, and cargo ships. The great bulking convoy!

  Richard! Richard! Are you with them?

  Alita breathed water in her nostrils, down her throat, in her lungs. She hung like a pearl against a green velvet gown that rose and fell under the breathing of the sea.

  Richard!

  The echo of ships became more than a suggestion. The water began to hum and dance and tremble with the advancing armada. Bearing munitions and food and planes, bearing hopes and prayers and people, the convoy churned for England.

  Richard Jameson!

  The ships would come by like so many heavy blue shadows over their heads and pass on and be lost soon in the night-time, and tomorrow there would be another and another stream of them.

  Alita would swim with them for a way. Until she was tired of swimming, perhaps, and then she'd drop down, come floating back here to this spot on a deep water tide she knew and utilized for the purpose.

  Now, excitedly, she shot upward.

  She went as near to the surface as she could, hearing Conda's thunder-voice giving commands:

  "Spread out! One of you to each major ship! Report any hostile activity to me instantly! We'll trail with them until after sunset! Spread!"

  The others obeyed, rising to position, ready. Not near enough to the surface so the sun could get at their flesh.

  They waited. The hammer-hammer churn-churn of ships folded and grew upon itself. The sea brimmed with its bellow going down to kick the sand and striking up in reflected quivers of sound. Hammer-hammer-churn!

  Richard Jameson!

  Alita dared raise her head above water. The sun hit her like a dull hammer. Her eyes flicked, searching, and as she sank down again she cried, "Richard. It's his ship. The first destroyer. I recognize the number. He's here again!"

  "Alita, please," cautioned the old woman. "Control yourself. My boy, too. He's on one of the cargo ships. I know its propeller voice well. I recognize the sound. One of my boys is here, near me. And it feels so very good."

  The whole score of them swam to meet the convoy. Only Helene stayed behind. Swimming around and around the German U-boat, swimming swiftly and laughing her strange high laughter that wasn't sane.

  Alita felt something like elation rising in her. It was good, just to be this close to Richard, even if she couldn't speak or show herself or kiss him ever again. She'd watch him every time he came by this way. Perhaps she'd swim all night, now, and part of the next day, until she couldn't keep up with him any longer, and then she'd whisper goodbye and let him sail on alone.

  THE destroyer cut close to her. She saw its number on the prow in the sun. And the sea sprang aside as the destroyer cut it like a glittering knife.

  There was a moment of exhilaration, and then Conda shouted it deep and loud and excited:

  "SUBMARINE!"

  "Submarine coming from north, cutting across convoy! German!"

  Richard!

  Alita's body twisted fearfully as she heard the under-water vibration that meant a submarine was coming in toward them, fast. A dark long shadow pulsed underwater.

  There was nothing you could do to stop a moving submarine, unless you were lucky. You could try stopping it by jamming its propellers, but there wasn't time for that.

  Conda yelled, "Close in on the sub! Try to stop it somehow! Block the periscope. Do anything!"

  But the German U-boat gnashed in like a mercurial monster. In three breaths it was lined up with the convoy, unseen, and squaring off to release its torpedoes.

  Down below, like some dim-moving fantasy, Helene swam in eccentric circles, but as the sub shadow trailed over her she snapped her face up, her hot eyes pulled wide and she launched herself with terrific energy up at it, her face blazing with fury!

  The ships of the convoy moved on, all unaware of the poisoned waters they churned. Their great valvular hearts pounding, their screws thrashing a wild water song.

  "Conda, do something! Conda!" Alita shivered as her mind thrust the thoughts out at the red-bearded giant. Conda moved like a magnificent shark up toward the propellers of the U-boat, swift and angry.

  Squirting, bubbling, jolting, the sub expelled a child of force, a streamlined torpedo that kicked out of its metal womb, trailed by a second, launched with terrific impetus — at the destroyer.

  Alita kicked with her feet. She grasped at the veils of water with helpless fingers, blew all the water from her lungs in a stifled s
cream.

  Things happened swiftly. She had to swim at incredible speed just to keep pace with submarine and convoy. And — spinning a bubbled trail of web — the torpedoes coursed at the destroyer as Alita swam her frantic way.

  "It missed! Both torps missed!" someone cried; it sounded like the old woman.

  Oh, Richard, Richard, don't you know the sub is near you. Don't let it bring you down to… this, Richard! Drop the depth charges! Drop them now!

  Nothing.

  Conda clung to the conning tower of the U-boat, cursing with elemental rage, striving uselessly.

  Two more torpedoes issued from the mouths of the sub and went surging on their trajectories. Maybe—

  "Missed again!"

  Alita was gaining. Gaining. Getting closer to the destroyer. If only she could leap from the waters, shouting. If only she were something else but this dead white flesh…

  Another torpedo. The last one, probably, in the sub.

  It was going to hit!

  Alita knew that before she'd taken three strokes more. She swam exactly alongside the destroyer now, the submarine was many, many yards ahead when it let loose its last explosive. She saw it come, shining like some new kind of fish, and she knew the range was correct this time.

  In an instant she knew what there was to be done. In an instant she knew the whole purpose and destiny of her swimming and being only half-dead. It meant the end of swimming forever, now, the end of thinking about Richard and never having him for herself ever again. It meant—

  She kicked her heels in the face of water, stroked ahead clean, quick. The torpedo came directly at her with its blunt, ugly nose.

  Alita coasted, spread her arms wide, waited to embrace it, take it to her breast like a long-lost lover.

  She shouted it in her mind:

  "Helene! Helene! From now on— from now on — take care of Richard for me! Watch over him for me!

  Take care of Richard—!"

  "Submarine off starboard!"

  "Ready depth-charges!"

  "Torpedo traces! Four of them! Missed us!"

  "Here comes another one! They've got our range this time, Jameson! Watch it!"

  To the men on the bridge it was the last moment before hell. Richard Jameson stood there with his teeth clenched, yelling, "Hard over!" but it was no use; that torp was coming on, not caring, not looking where it was going. It would hit them amidship! Jameson's face went white all over and he breathed something under his breath and clutched the rail.

  The torpedo never reached the destroyer.

  It exploded about one hundred feet from the destroyer's hull. Jameson fell to the deck, swearing. He waited. He staggered up moments later, helped by his junior officer.

  "That was a close one, sir!"

  "What happened?"

  "That torp had our range, sir. But they must have put a faulty mechanism in her. She exploded short of her goal. Struck a submerged log or something." Jameson stood there with salt spraying his face. "I thought I saw something just before the explosion. It looked like a… log. Yeah. That was it. A log."

  "Lucky for us, eh, sir?"

  "Yeah. Damn lucky."

  "Depth-charge! Toss 'em!"

  Depth-charges were dropped. Moments later a subwater explosion tore up the water. Oil bubbled up to color the waves, with bits of wreckage mixed in it.

  "We got the sub," someone said.

  "Yeah. And the sub almost got us!"

  The destroyer ran in the wave channels, in the free wind, under a darkening sky.

  "Full speed ahead!"

  The ocean slept quiet as the convoy moved on in the twilight. There was little movement in its deep green silence. Except for some things that may have been a swarm of silver fish gathered below, just under the waters where the convoy had passed; pale things, stirring, flashing a flash of white, and swimming off silently, strangely, into the deep green soundlessness of the undersea valleys….

  The ocean slept again.

  Final Victim.

  Amazing Stories (1946)

  Hunting a criminal is tough enough, but it's even tougher when it's on a bit of Hell's own rock in the void of space

  CHAPTER I

  The space-suited figure scrambled frantically over the edge of the ragged asteroid cliff, and lay panting from the exertion of the long climb upward. The pale face beneath the helmet was drawn in a tight grimace as it stared at the tiny Patrol ship on the plain below. No access to it now! He was trapped.

  The young man rose to his feet, stared down the steep ravine he had just traversed. He saw the plodding figure of the Patrolman coming up toward him. There was a frightening relentlessness about that figure. He caught a dull glint of metal and knew the Patrolman had drawn his atom-blast.

  "If only I hadn't lost my gun, down there!" And then he laughed bitterly, for he knew he never would have used it. He stepped out in plain sight, threw his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. His mind was awry with bitter thoughts. He had never killed anyone in all his life! But the Patrol thought he had, and that's what counted now. He was glad it was all over. He would surrender, go back and face trial though the evidence was all against him.

  Now the Patrolman's bulging, space-suited figure loomed up before him just ten yards away. He raised his hands still higher to make sure the other saw them.

  The Patrolman saw them all right. His lips parted in a wide grin beneath his Crystyte plate. He lifted his big hand, full of dull metal, and took careful aim at the young man limned against the cobalt heaven.

  There was something strange, and wrong, in the big Patrolman's grin. The youth waved frantically with his hands and screamed terrified words that only echoed inside his helmet until his eardrums rang. This was crazy! This couldn't happen! It was never in the Patrol's code to kill men in cold blood….

  His thoughts abruptly ceased. His helmet plate shattered inward and his face was a mask of red. He screamed, but it ended in a gurgling moan, as he tried with futile fingers to tear out the slug that was chewing at his brain. He sank to his knees, toppled over the cliff and did a crazy jerking dance as his gravity plates pulled him to the rock eighty feet below.

  Jim Skeel, Patrolman, still grinned.

  "Number fourteen," said he, and holstered his gun.

  Jim Skeel stalked triumphantly down to the base of the cliff. He exulted with all six-feet-four of his big sun-parched body. He felt the palms of his hands a little sweaty as he clenched and unclenched them, and a curious tremor came over him as he viewed the body lying there. The familiar pounding of blood was in his temples again, a hot, fierce pounding,

  FOR a long moment he closed his eyes tight and pressed hard fists against his temples and stood there trembling. But the fierce remembrance would not go away, as he knew it would not. Again the scene was with him that had haunted him through the years. Once again the flash of electro-guns tore through his tortured brain, and he saw defenseless men all about him dying and he heard their screams as they died….

  He stood quite still until his trembling stopped and that feeling went away. Then with his toe he nudged the young man's body so that it rolled over, and the pale leprous sunlight licked at the blood-masked features. "Pretty good shot," Skeel grunted. He bent and searched the body, retrieving all identification cards.

  A sudden dark shadow swept over the scene. Skeel looked up, startled. Then he knew what it was. Utter night had come without any warning, as it always did on these slowly rotating asteroids. Toward the caverns and crannies at the base of the cliff he glimpsed vague horrid things, pale and wriggling, with sensitive amoeboid tentacles where eyes should have been. He heard strange sibilances from these asteroid creatures who hated light but loved the dark and loved blood, which they got too seldom.

  Skeel arose hastily and hurried to his Patrol cruiser a short distance away. He looked back but once, and glimpsed scores of the vague nightmare shapes swarming over a prone human form there in the cliff shadow.

  CHAPTER II

>   Arriving at the Federation Patrol headquarters on Ceres Base, Skeel eased his solo cruiser into the glassite dome with an expert hand. None of the men spoke to him. They tried not even to look at him. But if Jim Skeel noticed this he gave no indication. He sauntered over to the door marked "Commander" and entered without knocking.

  Commander Anders looked up from his desk. At sight of Skeel his leathery jaw tightened a little. A look of distaste flashed into his steel gray eyes.

  "Reporting, sir," said Skeel. He carefully, a little too carefully, spread out the identification cards he had taken from the fugitive's pockets.

  Anders rose slowly to his feet. His knuckles were white as he placed his fists on the desk and leaned tautly forward.

  "You didn't capture the man?" Anders' voice was a monotone, as though he had asked that question more than once.

  "Sorry, sir. He's dead."

  "Dead." There was not much of surprise in Anders' voice. Then the voice and the gray eyes became simultaneously harder. "Did you kill him?"

  "Kill him, sir?" Skeel's eyebrows arched. "No, sir. I had to chase him clear to Asteroid 78 in the Lanisar Group, and there he — he fell off a cliff. I only had time to get his identification cards and get away, before the night creatures came swarming out. Sorry."

  Anders kicked his chair back against the wall and came surging around the desk. He was white-faced. "Sorry! You're not sorry, Skeel! In God's name, how do you have the ghastly nerve to come back here each and every time? How can you face me — no, more than that, how can you face your conscience? I wonder what goes on inside that riveted skull, behind that paper-mache expression of yours!" He paused and drew a breath. "What makes you kill, Skeel? How many does this make — eleven? Twelve?"

  Skeel sighed, and spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture. "You always were a long winded louse, sir. There are Miller's papers. And I didn't kill him. He fell off a cliff. Is that all, sir?"