I waited while five minutes crawled across the darkness. Feet scraped and voices muttered across the big room; lights swept the aisles, I pulled my feet in just in time. Someone came toward me; I held the gun ready, flattened myself half under a massive cooker. He passed me by two yards away, looking in the other direction. The voices and footsteps moved away to the far end of the room. Lights bobbed there. Some instinct said that for the moment the coast was clear. I crawled out, easy-footed it along, behind the big, dark ovens. Voices muttered in the distance; the door into the dining room opened, let in a wedge of dirty light, shut again. Feet came and went. They had not given up yet; maybe they had instincts, too, that told them they had not quite finished the job.
The archway beyond which I had left Ricia and Hayle was thirty feet away, and it meant crossing open ground. I got within ten feet of it before I realized a man was standing silently with his back to me, just inside the opening. I froze against the wall and waited, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back. Then he turned and disappeared. I followed, made the archway, saw him standing six feet away, looking past two bodies on the floor. In the first instant, I thought they were both dead; then I saw the glint of Hayle's eye, a tiny movement from Ricia. They were trussed in wire like giant, half-wound armatures. I slid around the edge of the wall, and Ricia saw me. The guard did not; his ears were tuned to some fancied sound from the ramp above. I could have taken him then, easily enough; then he stepped off, went up the ramp and out of sight.
I went to Ricia's side, knelt by her.
"He had a signaler. Do not let him see you! Go quickly!"
I was checking over the wires that bound her. There were hundreds of turns around her, cutting cruelly into her arms, her thighs, her ankles.
"No time for me, Mal! Listen! They spoke; they wait now for the instructions of their Primary. They do not know about you; they think that the old man and I are alone."
"I'll get these wires off."
"No! Find the one they call the Primary; he is their weakness! They spoke of the Chamber of the Dragon. I know the apartment they mean."
"The wires—"
"No time!" She cut me off. "There is a way out. Above the central bank of ovens there is a flue big enough for a man, I think. When you reach the kitchen above, go along the corridor to the far side, all the way to the end. There you will find a door decorated by carvings. He is there."
Someone was coming. I touched Ricia's face. "I'll be back," I said, then faded back against the wall, slipped through the archway and ran for cover.
It took me half an hour to work my way across to the big central unit. There was a wide hood above it. I climbed up, thrust my head and shoulders in; soot drifted down, and I resisted the impulse to sneeze. Metal handholds were set in the masonry. I used them, started up.
The kitchen above was laid out like the lower one, except that the units were bigger, designed to accommodate gargantuan haunches of meat. There were tables the size of badminton courts, pots big enough to render missionaries in platoons. I moved past them, through the door at the far end, along a dim-lit corridor at the end of which men came and went. The doorways gave me concealment. I advanced as a lone skirmisher, five yards at a time. The door Ricia had told me about was plain enough—a high double panel with a carved lizard with two heads spitting fire at a bare-legged man with a spear.
The traffic thinned. A single man emerged from the door, went away along the cross corridor. For the moment, the coast was clear. I did not pause to weigh odds; I dashed, made it to the door and through into dimness and stale-smelling warmth. A man jumped up as I came in, gaped at me for a moment—just long enough for me to swing on him, knock him back against the wall. I caught him, hit him again. He fought back, clawing at me with untrimmed fingernails, until I got my thumbs in behind the big tendons of his neck. I felt his larynx break, kept choking until he flopped a final flop and went limp. I lowered him, checked for a pulse, caught the last feeble flutter. Killing him bothered me no more than swatting a moth. He was one less live enemy at my back.
There was a heavy hanging across a doorway in the left wall. I flipped it aside, stepped through into an evil-smelling room hung with decayed splendor and almost filled by a vast bed on which a bloated caricature of a man sprawled, staring at me with bulging eyes.
I showed him the gun, moved across and put myself to the left of the entry. I had a weird sensation that I was reliving another confrontation. I could almost feel the pressure of the water beyond the walls. But this time it was ice, and the walls were old, old, reeking of time and forgotten things.
"Are you the same one?" My voice came out hoarse. He did not answer. I jammed the gun cruelly against one bloated foot and the giant leg twitched away. He wheezed, grunted. Thick fluid oozed from his slack mouth.
"You can talk." I aimed the gun at his head. "Who are you? What do you want from us?"
"I want. . . . only peace, and silence." His voice was a high, thin sigh. "Why do you hurt me?"
"Don't pull that on me; I know about you, remember? Or maybe he was your brother. There's not much keeping you alive, Fat Stuff, just my curiosity. Give me answers or it goes off now."
"I am the Primary," he squeaked. "Nothing must injure me."
I raked the gun sight down his gross thigh, as big around as a turbine shaft; it left a red weal across the doughy flesh. He gave a high squeal and quivered.
"Why did you kidnap me? What did you want with the girl?"
"Women are needed," he piped. "More women. Bring many women, I will pay you well."
I could feel sweat popping out on my face. A sense of unreality made the giant slug on the bed seem like some gross fantasy, a dream of greed and evil. I jabbed it again. "Talk, damn you!" I felt my voice rise, but it was not important; only the answers were important now. "Who are you? Why do you kill without warning? How did you get here?" What are you?"
There was a quick sound behind me. I whirled, dropped as a wire-fine beam of vivid light crackled across above my head, and then my gun bucked and roared in my hand and a man leaned in the doorway, clutched at the hanging with one hand, crumpled slowly, the heat gun still lanced across. Behind me, the fat one screamed—an infinitely high, pure note of agony that ululated on and on, wailed down the scale to a choking rattle and died away like a moan of utter bereavement.
The man in the doorway fell, and his gun bounced clear. Smoke was rising from the bedding. A foul odor choked me. I staggered to my feet, saw the gaping, char-and-crimson wound that curved erratically down across the quivering bulk of the creature on the bed, laying open the vast paunch like a split melon.
As I watched, something stirred in the depths of the wound. A glistening black shape wriggled there, thrusting. A blind tendril like the head of a great soft worm poked clear, a sheen of blackish red. I jerked the gun up, fired again and again, saw the writhing shape spatter, twist away, jerking and whipping with an unclean vitality as foot after foot of its hideous length emerged from the ripped abdomen. I was not aware of slamming another clip into the gun, but later I noticed the empty magazine on the floor where I had thrown it.
I pumped every round into the slug shape, and still it coiled out, yearning across the filth-spattered floor toward me and I backed until the wall stopped me, then dragged a heavy chest from the wall, toppled it on the frightful thing. Pinned, it whipped and beat its slimy coils against the floor. And on the bed, the fat man, like a great burst balloon, sagged, an empty bag.
Time seemed to stand still. I was in the outer room, still hearing the restless slap of the slug against the floor. A man stood near the door. I raised the gun, clicked it emptily at him. He made no move. His mouth hung slack; his eyes looked past me vacantly. I ran past him, knocked him aside. Out in the corridor, more men stood. As I watched, one staggered, fell against the wall. The others ignored him. None of them seemed to notice me. I pushed through them, found myself face to face with the man with the shriveled skin, the one I thought I had drowned.
"Who are you?" I hissed. I caught his coat, a rumpled brown suit, and shook him. His gaze turned on me from some remote distance.
"He is dead," he said.
"Who was he? What does it mean? What was that—thing?"
"Now the long dream dies," he said. Then the intelligence went out of his eyes. His mouth opened slackly. I shoved him away, ran on. No one tried to stop me.
Ricia and the Admiral lay where I had left them. Their guard was gone—wandered away, they said. The wires had made ugly marks on Ricia's skin, but she was able to walk. Hayle staggered at first, but after the first hundred yards he found his feet again.
We passed Womboids, a few standing, or moving aimlessly along in the dark, but most of them lying like firing squad victims. I turned one or two over; they were dead, without a mark on them.
"It's as though they'd forgotten how to breathe," Hayle said.
"Maybe they did" I said. "I think that somehow they drew their strength from the. . . . thing on the bed."
We tramped through the building, explored great halls and lavish apartments and vaulted corridors, and Ricia talked of the fetes and galas that she had known in the once-magnificent halls. We found the exit by accident; it was a sloping tunnel that led upward from wide double windows behind a terrace far up on the side of the tower. Half an hour later we stood on the ice crust under a dawn sky like spilled paint. Far away the sled was visible as a dark speck against the purple-and-red-dyed sky.
"We'll go to the house first for supplies," I said. "Then to the coast. Ricia's boat will be there. In ten days we'll be home. After that—I don't know."
"Omaha," the Admiral said. "CINCNAVOP is there, and they'll be operating, you can depend on it. I don't know how much sea power the Navy can still command, but it will be enough."
"If they believe us," I said.
"They'll believe me," Hayle declared. "I'll see to that."
We made the crossing in fifteen days; the weather was good—barring the eternal black-clouded skies and occasional falls of volcanic ash. We rested, ate and talked, and Ricia spent hours studying a one-volume encyclopedia we found aboard.
"I can understand why they thought they had to kill my party," Hayle said. We were sitting on the tiny afterdeck, smoking and watching another violent sunset. "We'd stumbled onto their hide-out—their Hidden Place, as they called it. But why the persecution of Ricia? She was no threat to them."
"I have a theory," I said, "that they recognized her for what she was—a member of the ancient race. Naturally, they'd want to question her."
"But that implied they knew. . . ."
"Certainly; the Primary spoke her language."
"I think," Ricia said hesitantly, "that he was. . . . of my people. Beneath the swollen body I thought I saw the likeness."
"You mean he—as an individual—was God knows how many thousands of years old?" Hayle snorted. "That's preposterous!"
"No older than Ricia." I smiled at her youthful face.
"That's different. She was in a low-energy comatose state. The Navy's been experimenting with similar techniques for years."
"They're not human, remember, Admiral—your own statement, I believe. They used humans. The slug thing that I killed—I think that was the Primary—not the swollen thing that served as host."
"Why did the others. . . . run down, when he died?" Hayle's voice was hoarse, as one speaking of the horribly dead.
"In some way, they were all linked to him. They existed to serve him."
"And what did he live for?"
"For the same reason we do—the instinct to survive. In our case, the race is made up of millions, billions of individuals. In his—I think he was the race: a single, immortal individual, supported like a queen bee by his Womboids."
"What for? They lived in secret; I think they must have inhabited that tower for ages—literally. They had no luxuries, not even comfort. They just lived, parasites on the human race. Perhaps we never would have discovered them, if the changes in the planet hadn't brought their Hidden Place to light. And if Ricia hadn't come on the scene, perhaps not even then."
"It seems they've been with us a long time," I mused. "I wonder where they came from, how they established their role in the first place."
"Perhaps they're invaders from some other world." Hayle half smiled. "Perhaps the flying saucers landed a million years ago. But, then, perhaps they've always been here, a product of the same slime that we came up from. Perhaps they learned to use us as hosts long before we were men."
"Strange—all that history to come to an end, because one creature died."
Hayle narrowed his eyes. With his beard trimmed and his cheeks beginning to fill out, he was looking like a tough old Navy officer again.
"They tried to keep him alive; they spent themselves like flies to protect him. Strange creatures—at once so deadly, and so inept. With all the technical wealth of the frozen city to draw on, one would think they'd have been more effective in surviving."
"I think they had no intelligence of their own," I said. "They used the brains of the human bodies they infested, just as they used their limbs. And remember, Admiral, they weren't human; their needs and drives weren't ours. They wanted nothing but a safe, dark nest for their Primary."
"Still, they ventured out; you saw them in Georgia, in Miami, in the Mediterranean. And the villa you found there—I suspect they had inhabited it for quite some time."
"Ricia's people knew them," I pointed out. "I suppose that house was built on shore, and somehow sealed before it sank."
"Those oldsters had an astounding technology." Hayle wagged his head. "Not like ours, but in some ways, surpassing ours—as witness the marvelous little communications devices Ricia has shown me. How could such knowledge have been lost so utterly?"
"That was a long time ago, Admiral. The ice came down, and ground everything to rubble before it. Weather and age and warfare and looting could account for the rest."
"And, do you not see," Ricia asked, "when human cities fell, the under-men alone, living long in their secret places, remembered the ancient wisdom. It would have made them kings among savage men. And they would have destroyed every reminder of man's former greatness."
"I wonder. . . ." Hayle puffed on his pipe. "What we know of the habits of ancient rulers seems to fit the pattern: impassive, long-lived, ruthless, worshipped as gods—and always the immense harem—and their treatment of women as inferiors, useful only for breeding. Perhaps it's from them that we derived our concept of sex as something secret and evil, surrounded with ancient taboos."
"A civilization that could build a city like Ricia's would have to leave some trace," I protested. "At least some legend, some tradition of knowledge."
Hayle was frowning. "There are anomalies," he said softly. "The ancient Arabs used storage batteries to plate their jewelry; the Greeks had an astronomical computer; even the bushmen and their boomerangs."
"There is another thing," Ricia said. "The minerals that your people have regarded as precious—the metals and stones. I think this is a racial memory of a lost technology. Silver is a conductor of electricity, better than copper. Diamond is a cutting tool; the ruby is necessary to the laser."
"And the fiber-reinforced metals," I suggested. "Sapphire 'whiskers' in a silver matrix, for example, and uranium."
"And gold, too," Hayle nodded. "Our satellites are plated with the stuff."
"Their value could not be explained by rarity alone," Ricia said.
"Hell, diamonds wouldn't be worth a dollar a pound if the supply weren't controlled by the producing governments," I pointed out. "And the same is true of most of the stones. Even gold is artificially supported. It was common enough among the South American Indians that they made ordinary drinking cups and ornaments from it."
"All this is theory," Hayle said. "When we've restored some degree of order to this catastrophe-wracked planet, then we'll investigate our cold-storage city. Perhaps then we'll learn the answers."
"Perhaps—and perhaps we'll never know. In a way, it's too bad the Primary is dead and his Womboids with him. There might have been a way to make him talk."
"We're well rid of the monster, and all his spawn," Hayle said harshly. "We will have our problems, God knows." He looked at the ruined sky. "But that's one curse we can live without."
Two days later we sighted the Louisiana coast. We made landfall west of a little town called Iowa, commandeered an abandoned car after digging it out of a mud bank. A few hours later we were on the outskirts of Omaha. Hayle took over, skirted the ruins of the city proper, took a winding route among black ash cones standing on the plain like chimneys, pulled up to a fence, much mended but still standing, surrounding a bare hundred-acre tract with a blockhouse and some sheds at its center. A squad of armed Marines watched us climb out of the car and come up to the gate. Hayle gave the password; the Marine sergeant used his talkie; then an officer came out of the blockhouse and looked us over. There was more confab; then they opened the gate, formed up a box around us, marched us across to the building.
Hayle looked impatient, but kept calm. I was still wearing my .45, so it must have been just routine. In the blockhouse they frisked us, looked the gun over, let me keep it. There were happy smiles and salutes all around when a fat Commodore arrived via elevator from somewhere below, greeted Hayle warmly, ushered us all into the car. He was bubbling with questions, but Hayle gave him the old Academy smile and said he would save it for the official briefing.
We stepped out into a wide, immaculate, gray-walled room packed with electronic gear. The Commodore took us across to an office with rugs, pictures, a big desk, pushed a buzzer on the desk, offered drinks. There was a tap, and three men came into the room, all portly, gray-haired desk sailors with adequate braid on their cuffs.
"Gentlemen," the Commodore was saying.
Ricia touched my arm. "Malcome!" she whispered in my ear. "The library says—"
Someone was holding out a hand to be shaken. I took it, nodded replies to introductions.
"Mal!" Ricia said urgently. "That one—in the center—he is one of. . . . them!"
I jerked as though a needle had hit me, remembering the dead Primary. Apparently the Womboids came in varieties. Perhaps through some kind of selective propagation, they developed some who could live independently. The Commodore was talking:
" . . . . after so many months. I'm sure, gentlemen, that we shall all be most interested in what Admiral Hayle can tell us of what he encountered in Antarctica."
I was watching the officer in the center of the three, an Oriental-looking fellow with dead-black eyes. He had stepped back half a pace. His hand went to a side pocket, he palmed something, raised his arm unobtrusively.
I jerked the .45 from its holster, shot him in the chest, heard his gun bark, shot again as he slammed back, put a third slug into his head before they landed on me. I tried to yell; Hayle was staring, saying something. Then the door burst open and Marines spilled in. I caught a glimpse of knuckles, and my interest in the proceedings faded in a shower of lights.
The courtroom was a converted office, but no less ominous for that. Armed Marines lined the walls; grim-faced officers in tieless whites or dungarees sat behind the long table. Admiral Hayle sat at one side, two Marines with drawn guns behind his chair. I was still dizzy; my head buzzed like a burned relay. It had not taken them long to get a court together.
The Commodore was at the center of the judge's table, reading out the charges. It seemed that I had wantonly committed mayhem on the person of one General Yin, a military observer from a friendly nation. There seemed to be other, vaguer charges as well, having to do with breach of security, sabotage, false representations, kidnapping, and treason. It did not interest me much. My head hurt too badly. I put a hand up to feel it, got a sharp crack across the arm from someone standing behind me.
I looked around. Ricia was not in sight.
"Where is she?" I came half out of my seat and was slammed down hard. The Commodore said something in a harsh voice; the other members of the board looked at me with impassive faces.
"Get up," a voice said behind me; a hard hand helped me, urgently. The Commodore glared. I looked across at Hayle. He was watching me, his face set in anger.
" . . . . brutal murder," the Commodore was saying. "Have you anything to say to this court before sentence is passed?"
Hayle was on his feet. "The man is in no condition to conduct his own defense. I'm warning you, Commodore, this kangaroo court—"
"You'll be seated or I'll have you removed from the courtroom!" The Commodore's face was blustery red. "I don't know your role in this murder plot, Admiral, but I can promise you we've no patience with traitors here."
"I've told you enough to make it plain that there's more to this than appears at first glance," Hayle stormed. "This man deserves a hearing!"
"He'll have his hearing! Be seated, sir!"
Hayle locked eyes with the Commodore, then sat.
"Where's Ricia, Admiral?" I called before a hand cuffed me.
"Shut up, you!" the man behind me barked.
"The woman is being cared for," the Commodore snapped.
"What happened to her?" I yelled.
"She was injured."
"Injured how? How badly?"
"Silence! If you have anything to say that bears on the issue here, speak up now!"
"I shot him because he wasn't human," I said. My voice sounded loud and hollow in my ears. Babble broke out. The Commodore gaveled it down.
"How did you learn that he was not human?" one of the board members asked. His eyes bored into me.
"I. . . . can't tell you." Somehow, it seemed important to keep Ricia's library a secret.
"How did you know of the city under the ice?" another demanded.
"I was taken there—by them."
"By whom? Who do you mean by 'them'?"
"The Womboids. They—"
"How did you learn of the secret place under the water?" a third queried coldly.
I opened my mouth to answer, paused, trying to remember. I had not mentioned the sunken villa to anyone here, other than the Admiral. My eye went to him. He frowned, shot a look at me, shook his head. I looked back at the solemn faces of the board, and suddenly I knew.
The Commodore was human. The rest were Womboids.
The questioning went on for an hour; I gave half answers, vague answers. I was stalling, hoping for something, I didn't know what. My head ached; it was hot in the room. Hayle had objected again and been forcibly silenced.
The Womboids fired questions at me in a merciless cross fire. It was apparent that they were probing to discover how much I knew about them, and how I had learned it, rather than investigating the circumstances of the shooting. Even the Commodore was looking puzzled. He pounded the table, called for silence.
"This investigation is wandering far afield," he snapped. "This court has no interest in these fantasies. The man is either out of his head or seeking to create that impression. The question is simply: are there extenuating circumstances which might justify or mitigate the crime he committed. The answer is clear: No!" He looked across at me under beetled brows.
"The accused will stand."
I got up.
"This court finds you guilty as charged," he said flatly. "The sentence is death by firing squad—to be carried out immediately."
The door burst open. Three young officers—two Navy men and one Marine—strode into the room, each with a machine pistol across his chest. I swung around to face them, felt my teeth clamp, bracing for the shock. They brought their guns up, leveled them. The utter stillness was shattered by the racketing burst of fire that lanced from their muzzles. I staggered, saw the bright surface of the judge's table explode in splinters, saw the blank faces behind it open in unheard cries as they tumbled down and away in a rising dust cloud of broken plaster.
The silence rang with echoes. The Commodore was still sitting, his face as gray as the wall. Some of the Marines groped for holstered guns, raised their hands as the machine pistols swung to cover them.
"Everybody stand fast," the Marine captain said. "We've been the victims of a plot, but it wasn't the prisoner who was plotting. Admiral Hayle, will you assume command, sir?"
Hayle stood. "With pleasure, Captain."
Ricia was propped up in a clean white bed, looking a little pale, but bright-eyed and smiling.
"It is nothing, Malcome. The bullet from the little gun struck me in the side, but they have tended me well."
"It could have killed you. Damn me for not listening—I could have shot him before he got the gun up."
"It does not matter, Malcome. We are alive—and safe. The secret of the Womboids is known now; they have no more power to hurt us."
"There's no telling how many cells of them there are. We finished one off in Gonwondo; I think most of the Mediterranean group were killed. Now this bunch. They seem to be able to communicate in some way, so they'll be on the alert."
"We'll get them," Hayle said. "Don't worry about that angle, Irish."
"How did you do it, Ricia?" I took her hand; it was warm and firm. "Nothing I said got through; even the Admiral couldn't get a hearing."
Ricia smiled. "I convinced the good surgeon that he must make a special examination of the dead colonel." The smile faded. "He found—anomalies. The library told me that the judges were of the enemy. The rest you know."
"Astonishing thing, that." Colonel Barker, the army surgeon who had removed the bullet from Ricia's ribs, had come in time to hear her remark. "His heart seemed perfectly normal, until I probed for the bullet." His face twisted at the memory. "I found a bloody great worm in it—alive, mind you. Damned thing seemed to have roots, of a sort. Ran all through the body. Microscopic, of course. Never have noticed 'em, but for the young lady."
"You're full of surprises, Ricia," Hayle said. "How did you get him to listen to you—and you telling him his business at that? What kind of special powers of the ancients did you use on him?"
"No special power of the ancients, Admiral Hayle. Only the power that all women have." She looked at me and smiled a dazzling feminine smile.
"A woman can always have her desire—if her desire is great."
I looked into her dark eyes and agreed.