Microcosmic God (38 page)

The Big One thrust up a tentacle, waved it and let it slump back. The last few drinks were getting Barry down. He was long past the stage where he knew what he was doing.

“Hey! My pal wants more! Come on—fill ’em up! He’s a big feller—he needs a man-size drink. Couple o’ you guys give me a hand!”

Two stalks immediately appeared beside him. He gave no thought to the fact that he was possibly leading them to their deaths. The three began breaking coconut shells and pouring the contents into the pit.

Now just why this happened I could not say. Perhaps the Big One was allergic to alcohol. Perhaps it tripped up his coordination so that he couldn’t control a movement once it started. But suddenly, with a wheezing roar, the Big One rose up out of his lair.

It is all but impossible to describe that sight. The proboscis alone
was fully one hundred and twenty feet long, and it rose straight up in the air, twisting slowly, and then fell heavily to the ground. It lay on the floor of the crater, reaching from the center pit all the way up and over and well down the hill. If it had fallen on Barry it would have crushed him instantly beyond all semblance of a man. And it didn’t miss him by much. The two tips of the proboscis were out of sight now, but the whole mass, eighteen feet thick, pulsed and twitched with the violent movement that must have been going on at the extremity.

Barry fell back aghast, in that instant cold sober. Ahniroo’s message cut through his awed horror:

“The bristles, master! Cut the bristles!”

Barry drew his knife and ran to the edge of the pit. The actual body of the thing, that thick ovoid part, was just visible, and he could see the bristles—the powerful muscled projections by which the creatures, all of them, burrowed. But the flesh about the Big One’s bristles was soft and flabby—it had been decades since he had been able to use them. Barry leaned over and hacked hysterically at the base of one of them. The steel slid through the layers of tissue, and in a moment the bristle hung loose, useless. Barry flung himself aside to avoid a foul gush of ichor, and drove for the other bristle. He couldn’t do as much to this one; it sank into the side of the pit, trying to force the great body back into the hole. The earth yielded; the bristle whipped up through the ground and smacked into the Big One’s side. That was its last anchorage, and its last refuge was gone.

Immediately the crater was alive with the wavering stems of Ahniroo’s kind. Like ants around a slug, they fastened to the gigantic body, dragged and tore at it, tied it to earth. Barry danced around it, his mind drink-crazed again; he waved a full coconut shell aloft in one hand and with the other cut and slashed at the prone monster. He laughed and shrieked and sang, and finally collapsed weakly from sheer exhaustion, still murmuring happily and humming to himself.

Ahniroo and some others carried him back down and laid him on the beach. They washed him and put soft leaves under his body.
They fed him continuously out of the huge stock of coconut shells. They almost killed him with kindness. And for his sake, I suppose, they shouldn’t have left him on the beach. Because he got—rescued.

A government launch put into the cove to survey, since these days you never can tell what salty little piece of rock might be of military value. They found him there, dead drunk on the beach. It was quite a puzzle to the shore party. There he was, with no footprints around him to show where he’d come from; and though they scoured the neighborhood of the beach, they found no shelter or anything that might have belonged to him. And when they got him aboard and sobered him up the island was miles astern. He went stark raving mad when he discovered where he was. He wanted to go back to his worms. And he’s been here ever since. He’s no use to anyone. He drinks when he can beg or steal it. He’ll die from it before long, I suppose, but he’s only happy when he’s plastered. Poor devil. I could send him back to his island, I suppose, but—Well, it’s quite a problem. Can I, as the representative of enlightened humanity in this part of the world, allow a fellow human being to go back to a culture of worms?

The American shuddered. “I—hardly think so. Ah—governor, is this a true yarn?”

The governor shrugged. “I’ll tell you—I was aboard that launch. I was the one who found Barry on the beach. And just before we lost sight of the island, some peculiar prompting led me to look at the beach again through my glasses. Know what I saw there?

“It was
alive!
It was one solid mass of pale-green tentacles, all leaning toward the launch and Barry. There was an air about them—the way they were grouped, their graceful bending toward us—I don’t know—that made me think of a prayer meeting. And I distinctly heard—not with my ears, either—‘Master, come back! Master!’ Over and over again.

“Barry’s a god to those damned things. So are the rest of us, I imagine. That’s why they were too frightened by us to show themselves when we went ashore there. Ah, poor Barry. I should send
him back, I suppose. It’s not fair to keep him here—but damn it, I’m a man! I can’t cater to a society of—Ugh!”

They sat silently for a long while. Then the American rose abruptly. “Good night, governor. I don’t
—like
that story.” He smiled wryly and went inside, leaving the old man to sit and stare out to sea.

Late that night the American looked out of his bedroom window uncomfortably. The ground was smoothly covered with a rather ordinary lawn near the governor’s house. Farther back, there was night-shadowed jungle.

I
WAS TAKING
No. 14
back to the base when it happened. The figures painted on her scarred molyb hull didn’t mean we had fourteen ships. It was one of the four cans—and I means cans—that comprised our charter service. In the six years we had been operating, we had bought and rebuilt seventeen wrecks, and had seen the end of thirteen of them. One more just at this time would finish us. We couldn’t stay in business with less than four spaceships, what with the sudden influx of mining machinery into the asteroid belt and the competition of two more freight lines in our territory. And here I was about to wash the old
Kelli NX
.

The purple light had flashed on. There were half a dozen signals of the sort on the little one-man cargo carrier—warnings for lowering air pressure, fuel shortage, synth-grav system troubles—I always thought that was a funny one. You’d fly up off the deck plates, and smack your sconce on the overhead, and when you came to, the silly signal light was on to tell you something was wrong with the synth-grav!—even humidity changes and fuel shortage. But the big purple light on the forward bulkhead was something different again.

It was a very bright and a very pretty shade of purple and it said, in effect, “Somewhere around here is an atomic power plant whose U-235 is just at the ticklish point where the disintegration will be too fast for its ordinary energy output. There is about to be an explosion that will make a light bright enough to read a postage stamp by from here to the moons of Mars; and if there is anyone around here just now he’d be foolish to loiter.”

Out here in space, you know, it wouldn’t make any noise. I wasn’t afraid of being startled. Nor was it the kind of an explosion that would butter me over the bulkheads, the way they put it on toast in cafeterias—with a brush. Because there wouldn’t be any bulkheads.
Or any me. There would be a lot of light and heat and a squib in a trade journal about Rix Randolph, expressman, and how he had been a little careless with his ’235.

Now it was perfectly evident what I had to do. Also that I had to do it fast. Cut off my power, stop the uranium action. Just possibly the disintegration would slow a trifle, enough to lower the output below the danger point. And if that didn’t work—bail out. Slip into the ancient but reliable spacesuit strapped to the bulkhead there and get away in one sweet hell of a hurry. I don’t know why I thought there was any choice in the matter. The suit was fueled and provisioned for twice the distance from here to either Terra or Port of Eros.

I hopped to the control panel, threw over the three levers that controlled the neutron-streams and their generator. The whisper of escaping steam faded out of the water jackets, and my stomach lurched as acceleration cut out. I looked up at the purple light again. It was still on.

Too late!

I ran to the bulkhead, opened the chest plates of the spacesuit, climbed in, got the arms controls working and flipped the switch that lowered the helmet, closed the plates, and cut down the artificial gravity of the floor plates. It seemed to take an eternity to operate, though it could only have been a couple of seconds; and in that couple of seconds I did a lot of thinking.

That purple light, for instance. There were some bright boys in the ship-designing business, and they had even these old cans nicely enough equipped. The warning device was a result of the labors of that Edison of the spaceways, old Dr. Fonck. He’d invented the attachment to a U-235 plant that emanated a static quench-field to act as a governor to the neutron-streams that activated the uranium. It made the neutron-streams that much more inefficient, but who cared about that with all that power to throw around? The important thing was that it blanketed the disintegration to some extent. If the thing was going to blow up with the fury that only an atomic explosion or a supernova can show, it would at least start to blow up slowly. That is, when the reaction started to accelerate beyond
control, the quench-field got in the way of the countless millions of neutrons, tending to add a positron to them, and convert them into useless, harmless hydrogen nuclei. It meant a slowing down of the whole process, until the neutrons came too fast. Then—lights out.

But at the same time it gave the poor sucker in the ship, or wherever else the plant was, a few minutes grace in which to get away from there. It also gave that purple light a chance to tell him about it. Not much of a warning, of course. Once that kind of a reaction starts, it can’t be stopped. The signal was rather like tying a guy to a chair and then telling him, “See that dark character over there? He has a gun aimed at your head and is about to pull the trigger.” You were grateful for the warning; at least you’d know about it before you were shot. Maybe even some miracle would happen to untie you. But in the case of the atomic explosion, it would have to be a miracle in speed.

I thought of something else as I released the suit with me inside it from the bulkhead straps. It was the ship, the business—all it meant to me. I was partners in it with my brother, and it had been killing work. Years of it, borrowing for a measly new piece of equipment; twenty-hour stretches with welding arcs and pressure testers, trying to make our old tow-ins spaceworthy; cutting out competition by going profitless, working for nothing and half-starving besides, just to keep the little service extant. With my hand on the air-lock door I paused. I knew that. This was the finish of the business. I knew that. It wouldn’t finish the way I would if I stayed here another two minutes. Not fast and clean like that. There would be desperate councils of war with my brother. Bankruptcy proceedings. Sheriff’s sales. Months of litigation. No job in the meantime. Relief. I’d never taken something for nothing in my life.

I slumped against the door and flipped open my face plate.

The neutron-field wasn’t confined to the power compartment. It was a spherical field about the ship, not directly attached to the power plant. Didn’t have to be. As long as it was as close as possible to the plant, as long as it was most concentrated near the neutron-streams, it had its delaying effect on the inevitable explosion. I watched the forward bulkhead glumly, and the light over it. It would
come roaring up from there. I wondered vaguely if I would be able to see it coming. Bail out, chowderhead, I told myself desperately. The business is gone; why do you have to go, too? But I didn’t move. What’s the use of saving a skin if the very guts are gone out of it? I couldn’t go on any more. I knew I shouldn’t run out on my brother this way, but—What would he do in my place? What would anyone do? Fonck himself couldn’t stop it now. No atomic plant can generate a quench-field powerful enough to stop its own explosion. My face was clammy. I decided I didn’t want to see it coming, and walked over to the forward bulkhead.

When I did so the purple light dimmed. I stared at it, shook my head. Maybe my eyes—no. It remained dim, but it wasn’t getting any dimmer. The other lights looked all right. I walked back to the after companionway, looked along it. Those lights were O.K., too. Now what—Oh! Oh! Now the purple light was brilliant! Any second now. I stumped over to the forward bulkhead again. I’d meet it halfway—damn the miserable, stupid business and the balky relic of a ship anyway! They’d finish Rix Randolph but they’d find him on his feet! I knew what it felt like now to die with a grand gesture.

I stood with my legs apart, eyes closed, fists clenched, directly under the purple light. I wish that little French girl in Port of Eros could see me now, I thought. “All right,” I said steadily. “I’m—ready.”

Nothing happened for about ten seconds. About that time I discovered I’d been holding my breath. I let it out with a whistle. Still nothing happened. All of a sudden I felt like a melodramatic damn fool. Which I was. I opened my eyes. The purple light was dim, almost out.

“I got to get out of here!” I screamed, and headed for the air lock, slid the door open. As I whirled to close it, I saw the light gleam out brightly again. I stopped dead, fighting with myself, fighting fear with curiosity.

Every time I got near the forward bulkhead the light grew dim. Every time I drew away from it it got brighter. Now—why?

I went, like a fear-frozen sleepwalker, over to the light. It dimmed. “No!” I breathed. “Don’t tell me—Bodily aura? Hell, that’s ghost story stuff! But—” It certainly looked like it, though. Well—why
not? A man was a hunk of matter; matter was a mess of electric charges, positive, negative, neutral. Was I, by some crazy chance, made up of precisely the right combination of electric charges to increase the quench-field around the U-235 up there? Aw, it was crazy! But—The light did dim when I approached the power plant. The indicator was extraordinarily sensitive—had to be, to record the atomic acceleration in there fast enough to do any good. Maybe then if I got close to it—crawled in next to the plant, it would swing the scales!