Killdozer! (48 page)

“I sure do. But listen, he’s very intelligent. I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us plenty.”

“You can bet he’s intelligent,” said Zinsser. “He’s probably above average on his planet. They wouldn’t send just anyone on a trip like that. Jack, what a pity we don’t have his ship!”

“Maybe it’ll be back. What’s your guess as to where he comes from?”

“Mars, maybe.”

“Now, you know better than that. We know Mars has an atmosphere, but it’s mighty tenuous. An organism the size of Mewhu would have to have enormous lungs to keep him going. No; Mewhu’s used to an atmosphere pretty much like ours.”

“That would rule Venus out.”

“He wears clothes quite comfortably here. His planet must have not only pretty much the same atmosphere, but the same climate. He seems to be able to take most of our foods, though he’s revolted by some of them—and aspirin sends him high as a kite. He gets what looks like a laughing drunk when he takes it.”

“You don’t say. Let’s see, it wouldn’t be Jupiter, because he isn’t built to take a gravity like that. And the outer planets are too cold, and Mercury is too hot.” Zinsser leaned back in his chair and absently mopped his bald head. “Jack, this guy doesn’t even come from this solar system!”

“Gosh. I guess you’re right. Harry, what do you make of this jet gadget?”

“From the way you say it cuts wood … can I see that, by the way?” Zinsser asked.

“Sure.” Garry went to work on the jet. He found the right studs to press simultaneously. The casing opened smoothly. He lifted out
the active core of the device, and, handling it gingerly, sliced a small corner off Zinsser’s desk top.

“That is the strangest thing I have ever seen,” said Zinsser. “May I see it?”

He took it and turned it over in his hands. “There doesn’t seem to be any fuel for it,” he said musingly.

“I think it uses air,” said Jack.

“But what pushes the air?”

“Air,” said Jack. “No, I’m not kidding. I think that in some way it disintegrates part of the air, and uses the energy released to activate a small jet. If you had a shell around this jet, with an intake at one end and a blast tube at the other, it would operate like a high-vacuum pump, dragging more air through.”

“Or like an athodyd,” said Zinsser. Garry’s blood went cold as the manager sighted down into the jet orifice. “For heaven’s sake don’t push that button.”

“I won’t. Say—you’re right. The tube’s concentric. Now, how on earth could a disruption unit be as small and light as that?”

Jack Garry said, “I’ve been chewing on that all day. I have one answer. Can you take something that sounds really fantastic, so long as it’s logical?”

“You know me,” grinned Zinsser, waving at a long shelf of back number science-fiction magazines. “Go ahead.”

“Well,” said Jack carefully. “You know what binding energy is. The stuff that holds the nucleus of an atom together. If I understand my smattering of nuclear theory properly, it seems possible to me that a sphere of binding energy could be produced that would be stable.”

“A sphere? With what inside it?”

“Binding energy—or maybe just nothing … space. Anyhow, if you surround that sphere with another, this one a force-field which is capable of penetrating the inner one, or of allowing matter to penetrate it, it seems to me that anything entering that balance of forces would be disrupted. An explosive pressure would be bottled up inside the inner sphere. Now if you bring your penetrating field
in contact with the binding-energy sphere, the pressures inside will come blasting out. Incase the whole rig in a device which controls the amount of matter going in one side of the sphere and the amount of orifice allowed for the escape of energy, and incase that further in an outside shell which will give you a stream of air induced violently through it—like the vacuum pump you mentioned—and you have this,” and he rapped on the little jet motor.

“Most ingenious,” said Zinsser, wagging his head. “Even if you’re wrong, it’s an ingenious theory. What you’re saying, you know, is that all we have to do to duplicate this device is to discover the nature of binding energy and then find a way to make it stay stably in spherical form. After which we figure out the nature of a field which can penetrate binding energy and allow any matter to do likewise—one way.” He spread his hands. “That’s all. Just learn to actually use the stuff that the long-hair boys haven’t thought of theorizing about yet, and we’re all set.”

“Shucks,” said Garry. “Mewhu will give us all the dope.”

“I hope so, Jack. This can revolutionize the entire industrial world.”

“You’re understating,” grinned Jack.

The phone rang. Zinsser looked at his watch again. “There’s my call.” He sat down, answered the phone, and while he went on at great length to some high-powered character at the other end of the line, about bills of lading and charter service and interstate commerce restrictions, Jack lounged against the cut-off corner of the desk and dreamed. Mewhu—a superior member of a superior race, come to Earth to lead barbaric humanity out of its struggling, wasteful ways. He wondered what Mewhu was like at home among his strange people. Young, but very mature, he decided, and gifted in many ways; the pick of the crop, fit to be ambassador to a new and dynamic civilization like Earth’s. And what about the ship? Having dropped Mewhu, had it and its pilot returned to the mysterious corner of the universe from which they had come? Or was it circling about somewhere in space, anxiously awaiting word from the adventurous ambassador?

Zinsser cradled his instrument and stood up with a sigh. “A credit to my will power,” he said. “The greatest thing that’s ever happened
to me, and I stuck by the day’s work in spite of it. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. Let’s go have a look at him.”

“Wheeeeyouwow!”
screamed Mewhu as another rising plane passed over their heads. Molly bounced joyfully up and down on the cushions, for Mewhu was an excellent mimic.

The silver man slipped over the back of the driver’s seat in a lithe movement, to see a little better around the corner of a nearby hangar. One of the Cubs had been wheeled into it, and was standing not far away, its prop ticking over.

Molly leaned her elbows on the edge of the seat and stretched her little neck so she could see, too. Mewhu brushed against her head and her hat fell off. He bent to pick it up and bumped his own head on the dashboard, and the glove compartment flew open. His strange pupils narrowed, and the nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes as he reached inside. The next thing Molly knew, he was out of the car and running over the parking area, leaping high in the air, mouthing strange noises, and stopping every few jumps to roll and beat with his good hand on the ground.

Horrified, Molly Garry left the car and ran after him. “Mewhu!” she cried. “Mewhu, come
back!”

He cavorted toward her, his arms outspread. “W-r-r-row-w!” he shouted, rushing past her. Lowering one arm a little and raising the other like an airplane banking, he ran in a wide arc, leaped the little tarmac retaining wall, and bounded out onto the hangar area.

Molly, panting and sobbing, stopped and stamped her foot. “Mewhu!” she croaked helplessly. “Daddy said—”

Two mechanics standing near the idling Cub looked around at a sound like a civet-cat imitating an Onondaga war whoop. What they saw was a long-legged, silver-gray apparition, with a silver-white mustache and slotted eyes, dressed in a scarlet robe that turned to indigo. Without a sound, moving as one man, they cut and ran. And Mewhu, with one last terrible shriek of joy, leaped to the plane and disappeared inside.

Molly put her hands to her mouth and her eyes bugged. “Oh, Mewhu,” she breathed. “Now, you’ve done it.” She heard pounding
feet, turned. Her father was racing toward her, with Mr. Zinsser waddling behind. “Molly! Where’s Mewhu?”

Wordlessly she pointed at the Cub, and as if it were a signal the little ship throttled up and began to crawl away from the hangar.

“Hey! Wait! Wait!” screamed Jack Garry uselessly, sprinting after the plane. He leaped the wall but misjudged it because of his speed. Hie toe hooked it and he sprawled slitheringly, jarringly on the tarmac. Zinsser and Molly ran to him and helped him up. Jack’s nose was bleeding. He whipped out a handkerchief and looked out at the dwindling plane. “Mewhu!”

The little plane waddled across the field, bellowed suddenly with power. The tail came up, and it scooted away from them—cross-wind, across the runway. Jack turned to speak to Zinsser and saw the fat man’s face absolutely stricken. He followed Zinsser’s eyes and there was the other plane, the big six-place cabin job, coming in.

He had never felt so helpless in all his life. Those planes were going to collide. There was nothing anyone could do about it. He watched them, unblinking, almost detachedly. They were hurtling but they seemed to creep; the moment lasted forever. Then, with a twenty-foot altitude, Mewhu cut his gun and dropped a wing. The Cub slowed, leaned into the wind, and
side-slipped
so close under the cabin ship that another coat of paint on either craft would have meant disaster.

Jack didn’t know how long he had been holding that breath, but it was agony when he let it out.

“Anyway, he can fly,” breathed Zinsser.

“Of course he can fly,” snapped Jack. “A prehistoric thing like an airplane would be child’s play for him.”

“Oh, Daddy, I’m scared.”

“I’m not,” said Jack hollowly.

“Me, too,” said Zinsser with an unconvincing laugh. “The plane’s insured.”

The Cub arrowed upward. At a hundred feet it went into a skidding turn, harrowing to watch, suddenly winged over, and came shouting down at them. Mewhu buzzed them so close that Zinsser went flat on his face. Jack and Molly simply stood there, wall-eyed. An enormous cloud of dust obscured everything for ninety interminable
seconds. When they next saw the plane it was wobbling crazily at a hundred and fifty.

Suddenly Molly screamed piercingly and put her hands over her face.

“Molly! Kiddo, what is it?”

She flung her arms around his neck and sobbed so violently that he knew it was hurting her throat. “Stop it!” he yelled; and then, very gently, he asked, “What’s the matter, darling?”

“He’s scared. Mewhu’s terrible, terrible scared,” she said brokenly.

Jack looked up at the plane. It yawed, fell away on one wing.

Zinsser shouted, his voice cracking. “Gun her! Gun her! Throttle up, you idiot!”

Mewhu cut the gun.

Dead stick, the plane winged over and plunged to the ground. The impact was crushing.

Molly said quite calmly, “All Mewhu’s pictures have gone out now,” and slumped unconscious to the ground.

They got him to the hospital. It was messy, all of it, picking him up, carrying him to the ambulance—

Jack wished fervently that Molly had not seen; but she had sat up and cried as they carried him past. He thought worriedly as he and Zinsser crossed and recrossed in their pacing of the waiting room that he would have his hands full with the child when this thing was all over.

The resident physician came in, wiping his hands. He was a small man with a nose like a walnut meat. “Who brought that plane-crash case in here—you?”

“Both of us,” said Zinsser.

“What—who is he?”

“A friend of mine. Is he … will he live?”

“How should I know?” snapped the doctor impatiently. “I have never in my experience—” He exhaled through his nostrils. “The man has two circulatory systems. Two
closed
circulatory systems, and a heart for each. All his arterial blood looks veinous—it’s purple. How’d he happen to get hurt?”

“He ate half a box of aspirin out of my car,” said Jack. “Aspirin makes him drunk. He swiped a plane and piled it up.”

“Aspirin makes him—” The doctor looked at each of them in turn. “I won’t ask if you’re kidding me. Just to see that … that thing in there is enough to kid any doctor. How long has that splint been on his arm?”

Zinsser looked at Jack and Jack said, “About eighteen hours.”

“Eighteen
hours?”
The doctor shook his head. “It’s so well knitted that I’d say eighteen days.” Before Jack could say anything he added, “He needs a transfusion.”

“But you can’t! I mean, his blood—”

“I know. Took a sample to type it. I have two technicians trying to blend chemicals into plasma so we can approximate it. Both of ’em called me a liar. But he’s got to have the transfusion. I’ll let you know.” He strode out of the room.

“There goes one bewildered medico.”

“He’s O.K.” said Zinsser. “I know him well. Can you blame him?”

“For feeling that way? Gosh no. Harry, I don’t know what I’ll do if Mewhu checks out.”

“That fond of him?”

“Oh, it isn’t only that. But to come so close to meeting a new culture, and then have it slip from our fingers like this, it’s too much.”

“That jet—Jack, without Mewhu to explain it, I don’t think any scientist will be able to build another. It would be like … like giving a Damascus sword-smith some tungsten and asking him to draw it into filaments. There the jet would be, hissing when you shove it toward the ground, sneering at you.”

“And that telepathy—what J. B. Rhine wouldn’t give to be able to study it!”

“Yeah, and what about his origin?” Zinsser asked excitedly. “He isn’t from this system. It means that he used an interstellar drive of some kind, or even that space-time warp the boys write about.”

“He’s got to live,” said Jack. “He’s got to, or there ain’t no justice. There are too many things we’ve got to know, Harry! Look—he’s here. That must mean that some more of his people will come some day.”

“Yeah. Why haven’t they come before now?”

“Maybe they have. Charles Fort—”

“Aw, look,” said Zinsser, “don’t let’s get this thing out of hand.”

The doctor came back. “I think he’ll make it.”

“Really?”

“Not really. Nothing real about that character. But from all indications, he’ll be O.K. Responded very strongly. What does he eat?”

“Pretty much the same as we do, I think.”

“You think. You don’t seem to know much about him.”

“I don’t. He only just got here. No—don’t ask me where from,” said Jack. “You’ll have to ask him.”