Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense (17 page)

“We’re going to make it, aren’t we, magnificent master?” Tekkamaki asked hopefully as he sank to his knees and clung to the emaciated thighs inside his master’s tight leather pants. He smelled bowel movement.

“Shut up and let me steer,” Killov insisted, kicking his devoted servant away. “We will survive . . .” Killov promised. He kept muttering that over and over as the pink-cratered ground approached at a steep angle. “I
will
this wreck to hold together. I’m heading for that flat desert area. I
refuse to
die. We will
not
break up. We
will
land, and live.
I
will live, to kill Rockson.”

Tekkamaki sure hoped so; but judging by the speed at which the asteroid’s tumbled terrain was approaching, and by the scream of the parts flying off the broken spacecraft as it entered the strange world’s thin atmosphere, survival didn’t seem very likely.

Seventeen

K
arrak was a spectacular sight through the forward visi-screen of the saucer. “It looks,” said Scheransky, “like a huge Idaho potato.”

“Yeah,” Rock agreed, “a potato with dozens of craters spewing slow streams of ice particles and blue-white gas up from its pink skin.” Rockson was taking slow, regular breaths to steady his concentration as he moved the saucer in slowly and steadily toward the great asteroid of death. He could see crisscrossing dark lines all over the oblate sphere. “Those aren’t roads—just lines of stress, or fissures,” he guessed, “but it gives the place a road-map sort of look, doesn’t it?”

There was a grayish mist moving rapidly above most of Karrak. Perhaps that mist was an early sign of the thin atmosphere’s disturbance caused by the asteroid’s ever-closer approach to the earth, which hung like a huge blue-and-white beachball in the sky.

“Having a bit of trouble matching velocity with this babe,” Rock said. “It’s damned good to have all that LaBarre power. We never could have made it otherwise. That damned asteroid spins like a screwball thrown by some cosmic pitcher at that huge blue-white catcher’s mitt up there. When this ball impacts, that glove will blow apart.”

“And that,” finished Detroit, “would be the end of the brief and violent history of the major species on that beautiful world, us humans.”

Rockson ejected the spent rocket boosters the Frenchies had added to the craft, then lowered the saucer to ten-miles-altitude, circled Karrak slowly, in a spiral, so all the surface could be visually and radar scanned. The idea was to circle the potato-shaped planetoid searching for the geyser that was positioned to best deflect the asteroid, Rockson explained. “We can plant the nuke bomb, take off again, and set it off. If the explosion opens up the geyser, the thing, according to Schecter’s theory, can spew out more powerfully. The jet of gases will deflect the asteroid. At least, that’s the idea. It might work, it might not . . . but it’s our only chance.”

Rock made nearly one complete pass around Karrak before he saw what he wanted. “There,” he exclaimed in triumph. “See that large crater? That’s a dormant geyser. Right at the south pole of this hunk of shit. Right at the side that never points toward Earth. That’s where we deposit our nuke bomb.”

“But,” McCaughiin reasoned, “aren’t we trying to nudge the damned asteroid sideways? Why do you want to blast it at its far end? That would just speed it on its way toward Earth. Only make things worse.”

“Not really,” Rockson explained. “If we can speed up the asteroid, it will pass through the Earth’s orbit before Earth gets into the position to be destroyed. It’s actually the most efficient use of the nuke bomb. It will take advantage of the natural impetus of this little world. Hang on to something, we’re going down there, and remember, it might be rough. I never landed this thing before.”

Rockson deftly set the saucer down on the asteroid’s surface. Then an automatic sequence began that cut power and slid a ramp down to the surface. Rock smiled. “We don’t need spacesuits, and don’t have any, anyway—but the air is okay; we know that from the instrument readouts. So let’s go.”

The Freefighters bounded out into the chilly south polar air of the asteroid just seventy or eighty yards from the puffing geyser-crater that Rockson had picked for exploding.

In a short while, the nuke was manhandled over the rim of the crater wall and put in place. Then Rock and his men rushed back toward the saucer. They were laughing and exhilarated. For one thing, it was a miracle they were alive, but more than that, Karrak’s atmosphere seemed to have an inebriatingly high amount of oxygen, plus some trace amounts of nitrous oxide—laughing gas. Suddenly, it was all too much for Rockson. He fell behind his men, sat down on a blasted pink stone. His head spun like he was on a merry-go-round. And there came a vision. Rock suddenly saw, in place of blasted mountainsides and deep fissures of the dead world, a city of gleaming, jeweled spires, and a network of fantastic three-level highways passing through it, a highway streaming with sleek silver vehicles. In place of the geyser blowhole he saw a “dome of power,” a geothermic power station with high tension wires leading from it. The heat of the planetoid’s interior was tapped for all its power. Clean, free power. This was a wonderful world full of life, a vast high-tech civilization. And Rock saw tall, extremely noble-looking men and women—the ancient, wise Karrakans, moving about him, even through him, like he was a ghost.

Rockson knew these things couldn’t be. He’d circled the whole surface of this dead world. What was he seeing? Rock shook his head violently, trying to throw off the fuzzy feeling, to get his eyes and mind back in order. Still, the visions stayed. One of the blueish-faced Karrakans stopped and said to Rockson, in a hollow, echoing voice, “You see us as we were, stranger. Now seek the Pyramid of the Neuro-Dancer. It is twelve of your miles northwest. Set off your primitive explosive device, then go there and meet destiny.
Remember . . . remember . . . be pure.”

“Rock. What’s the matter, Rock?” It was Chen, shaking him by his broad shoulders, rubbing Rockson’s wrists. “For God’s sake,
breathe.
You’re white as a sheet. Wake up!”

Rockson heaved in a deep breath, and at last the vision faded, and the scarred, lifeless surface all around them was visible again.

“What happened?” Chen asked.

Rockson said, “Not . . . sure.” He explained that for an instant he had seen a different world. “I believe,” he said, “I saw a vision of this asteroid’s past. A vision of the glory days of Karrak, when it was inhabited. I saw a man, just before my vision faded. He told me to go to a pyramid. He gave directions. He implanted in my mind the pyramid’s image. But . . .
yes!
Remember that strange-shaped mountain that was partly covered by ice clouds that we passed just a few minutes before we set down? That was the pyramid.”

Rockson rushed his men back to the saucer without further explanation. He took off steeply, and then, when his craft was miles above the pink spitball of a world, he pressed the detonation button to set off the nuke they had left behind on the surface.

Whoom!
There was a brilliant white flash; and when it died down, a new and mighty geyser was pouring from the planetoid. “We did it! We did it!” Archer shouted. He was right; in a few more minutes, Rockson’s instruments confirmed that the asteroid was increasing in velocity. It would miss Earth.

“Now go home,
eeeat biiiggg steak,”
Archer said, slapping Rock on the back.

“Yeah, sure,” Rock said absentmindedly. “But first we check out the pyramid.”

Rockson, to everyone’s chagrin, delayed setting out for their home-world and circled Karrak again. He was frantically skimming the surface, looking for God-knows-what.

They were all beginning to think their wild-eyed commander had gone insane when Rockson shouted, “That’s the pyramid, the one I saw in my vision, only all tumbled down.”

“Rock, you’re wrong,” Scheransky objected. “There’s nothing down there except an old fallen-down hill. It looks a bit like a pyramid, I’ll grant you, but it isn’t. Maybe you got too much of the Karrak oxygen-rich air—”

“No,” Rock insisted, “it makes sense, if you think of it. The ancient inhabitants of Karrak would have some way of leaving a message for us. I saw their civilization—it was magnificent. They used the thermal power of this world to maneuver it anywhere they wanted to go. They sent this tiny world wherever they wanted. The whole damned asteroid is a natural spaceship. We have time now to explore. If we could see what they have in that pyramid! He . . . the Karrakan ghost . . . called it ‘the Neuro-Dancer.’ ”

“But,” Chen protested as Rock went in for a landing, “wouldn’t it have all been destroyed by time and the elements by now?”

“No. Their sort of machines, that kind of exquisite mechanism, would still be working automatically. Think about their great science: the asteroid would have passed by the earth, if mankind hadn’t screwed up Earth’s orbit with the explosions of all those nukes in World War Three, a hundred-plus years ago. Then Karrak would have been only affected by Earth’s gravity and swung by, like a slingshot, back to the outer solar system.”

Rock landed again. The ramp went down and they reluctantly followed him out. Clouds of pink-gray mists rose from a cratered surface.

“There’s the pyramid. Look at its
lines
—that mountain is an old pyramid. It’s ten times the size of Cheops in Egypt,” Rock said. “There’s a face, carved right on it. A human face! The Karrakans were like those ancient long-headed Inca gods you can see in those wall motifs in South America. I want to go in, get in somehow, take a look at what’s there. We have to find a door.”

Chen frowned and said, “You’re counting a lot on what you saw in your vision, Rock. It still looks like a pile of rocks to me.”

“Never mind what it looks like,” the wild-eyed Doomsday Warrior said, running forward. “Come on and help me find the door.”

Nearly everyone unencumbered himself of his heavy weapons to begin feeling around on the slanted wall of rocks for the door their commander believed was there.

Eighteen

I
t
stirred and awakened. Something was near, something alive, something that was necessary.
It
had slept there, in the sands by the Pyramid of Mu, for thousands of years, ever since the old ones had died, ever since the water had run out.
It
needed water to exist, and when there was no more water, it slowed down.
It
did not die.
It
hibernated through the long, long centuries—waiting, waiting for some water.

And now
It
sensed that water. An antenna uncurled from its head, went up through the sand, came out into the dry cool air. Yes! The dowser antenna bent toward some movement mere yards away. There were odd two-legged creatures there, creatures whose bodies were made almost entirely of water . . . water enough to quench its centuries of need, enough to restore it and let it live again.

Slowly, slowly the hundred-foot-long slug-caterpillar shifted the enveloping sand around it, struggled to push its blunt many-eyed spout up and out into the Karrakan air.

When its head did emerge, its many eyes were nearly blinded by the sun. They were hard to focus. But its six noses smelled the creatures, all right. The two-legged ones were over at the Pyramid.
It
started to pull itself up, slithering its eighteen-ton mass entirely out of the sand tomb where it had slept.
It
must be silent, the thing thought,
It
must sneak up on the creatures, keep them trapped against the wall of the great structure of the old ones. Then it could devour them, suck them dry, one by one . . .

“Rock, look out,” Chen yelled, catching their huge visitor’s appearance.

Rockson spun on his heels and gasped, “What the fuck
is
it?”

The creature eyed them with burning red eyes as large as basketballs. Its razor-toothed jaws opened wide enough to swallow a buffalo, thick saliva pouring down into the swirling sands. It was dark pink, scaled from the neck on down, with foot-thick red bands circling its body every five feet. Much of the creature still lay submerged in the sands, but from the size of the head and the car-sized claws that it flopped on each side to keep steady, Rock guessed the thing was a good hundred feet long. And it didn’t look to be any too friendly.

Archer reached behind him for his crossbow and swung it around, pulling out one of the two remaining arrows from his aluminum quiver. He quickly-fitted one into the firing slot.

The monstrous caterpillar kept watching them, savoring the moisture it was about to imbibe before taking the first bite. Archer let fly with the arrow, which buried itself just above the creature’s forward right claw. The thing let out a roar of pain, throwing its head high in the air so that the neck stretched almost straight up like a thick pink tree. Then it slammed down into the sand, disappearing within seconds beneath the surface, sending out clouds of dust in all directions from the explosive blast of its descent.

“Arrrcheeer Killllllll,”
the Freefighter said with a grin, putting the metal crossbow back around his shoulder.

“Great shot, mountain man, but I’m afraid it won’t be as easy as—” But Rockson’s words were cut off as the monster came up like a rocket from beneath them. Its pink, man-sized head slammed into them, throwing them up into the air.

Rock and Archer and all of the Freefighters were flying off in all directions. They fell to the surface spitting sand, staring at one another from about five yards apart.

The rifle Rock carried sank down in the sand some thirty feet away.

The caterpillar-slug disappeared again beneath the sand, but Rock knew it was only a matter of seconds before it made another appearance. It was playing caterpiilar-and-mouse with them, eager for some sport before the actual entrée.

Suddenly it reappeared some fifty yards out and came tearing at them, moving at lightning speed. It bore down on Chen, its steam-shovel jaws opened wide. The Chinese-American stared at the vision from hell, his body paralyzed. The Freefighter glanced over at Rockson for a split second as if to say good-bye, then forward again to see his scaly fate bearing down on him.