«How long you been aboard, Doctor?» «Long enough to give up trying to figure out what the hell all your cute little bells and whistles mean,» he said. «The signal tone means that our guests are arriving,» Ursy said. The small shock of the gig's lock making contact vibrated through the deck under Ursy's feet. She activated the air lock viewers. Erin Kenner stepped through the lock first and, on seeing her face, Ursy frowned in thought. It was Erin, all right, but she looked as if she were sedated. The young man who followed her into the Rimfire's lock had the same vacuous expression on his face. Only the third occupant of the lock, a small, blond-headed dog, seemed to have any animation. The dog shivered when Rimfire's outer hatch clanged shut and stood on his hind legs, begging Erin to pick him up. «Well, Lieutenant, shall I zap the poor bastards now?» the doctor asked. «Zap away,» Ursy said, turning on the sound pickups. She heard the little dog yipe in surprise when the ultrashock hit him. He leapt into the air and turned one hundred and eighty degrees to see what had attacked him from the rear and then, perhaps remembering that he'd felt the odd sensations before, stood quivering. «They-are-using-ultrashock,» Erin Kenner said without expression. «It-is-normal-procedure.» «Who is she explaining it to?» the doctor asked. «You don't get into space without having been cleaned out with ultrashock.» CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE It was not the female alien who panicked when the reinforced ultrasonic vibrations began to beat against her. She heard and felt Erin Kenner's explanation. Denton Gale was a member of a class of people who had not been, despite the assertion of the chief medical officer aboard Rimfire, cleaned out inside by ultrashock before going into space. Before joining Erin in Mother Lode, Dent's one venture into space had been aboard a passenger liner, and paying customers on passenger liners did not have to undergo the discomfort of ultrashock. The feeling of being internally electrified came as a surprise to Denton Gale, and to the male alien, since he could not extract from Denton's mind knowledge that it did not have. The ultrashock was, of course, harmless to humans—and to little dogs, for that matter. It was in standard use throughout the United Planets sector as both a cure and a prevention of disease, and it was deadly to unwanted invaders of the human body as the originating machine changed frequencies at the rate of several times per second. The He and The She were alien to the bodies they inhabited. They were not microlife, not cells gone bad nor virus, but they were alien and the vibrations of the ultrashock threatened to break their attachment to the minds of their two carriers. The female, able to take warning from Erin's knowledge of the treatment, braced herself and clung to Erin, knowing that the force that was battering her would cease quickly. The male felt threatened and, as was his nature, lashed out. His anger sought the mind that was directing the attack against him. The medical sub-captain made an odd sound in his throat. Ursy Wade felt lightning flash through her and looked quickly to see if the ultrashock machine had shorted out or blown up. She couldn't breathe. Stabs of pain went horizontally and vertically throughout her entire body. She saw the doctor sink to the floor, saw the flesh begin to melt from his bones. His face fell away before he contacted the floor, leaving a partially exposed skull from which two eyeballs, looking as if they were twice normal size, stared out. Ursy tried to scream, but no sound came. She fought the pain and reached for the control panel just vacated by the doctor. Her hand hit the ultrashock lever and that saved her life, for the alien, about to lose his grasp on the living thing to which he had attached himself, was seeking relief, striking out at the next nearest living being. His full force of deadly will was being turned toward Ursy. When he felt the battering force cease, he pulled back. That give Ursy a moment. She gasped in a breath and her fingers flew over the control console. Rimfire's systems obeyed. Several things happened with a speed that left the aliens in the air lock raging. While it was true that space-going man did not spend time and resources providing himself with ways to commit suicide and destroy his ship, he had given considerable thought to completing the second stated intent of X&A's mission, the finding of alien life. Alien life did not necessarily have to be intelligent life, nor did it have to be of interest. The first explorers to encounter a Tigian tiger had learned as much, while discovering that an alien animal might have little respect for human life. The lock to which Julie Roberts had directed the gig from Murdoch's Plough was the capture and hold lock. It had been designed to imprison a beast as strong and as fierce as a Tigian tiger and, at least in theory, things that strained the imagination, up to and including what many scientists thought to be a definite possibility, a life-form consisting of pure force. Ursy Wade had seen a shipmate die a horrendous death, with his flesh melting away from his bones. Her fingers were given extra urgency by the feeling that her own flesh was beginning to slip. She hit the «Secure All» switch on the control panel. Doors of durasteel clanged closed at the inner hatch. The air in the corridor outside the lock sizzled and hissed as incredible power was drawn from the ship's Blink generator to be concentrated in the intricate webbings of circuitry installed between the triple bulkheads of the air lock and create a field of force that would have withstood the direct strike of a lightning bolt. The female alien felt the presence of the force field too late. The lash of her anger, at an intensity that would have vaporized more than half of the Rimfire's crew, was absorbed by the field. The male joined her in an effort to smash the walls of their prison. «Enough,» she said. She was weeping in frustration, for once she had possessed the power to reduce the entire ship to its constituent subatomic particles. «Rest,» he said. «We will need our energy later.» «I want a med-crew here, now,» Ursy Wade ordered. She was trembling. Her limbs were weak. Her eyes ached. On the deck, the doctor's blood was pooling. The air filters had cranked up to remove the meaty smell of it. The door burst open and a med-tech skidded to a halt. The doctor had fallen onto his back. His white skull peered out from sagging folds of bloody flesh. «Captain,» Ursy said into the communicator. «I have activated 'Secure All.' « «I'll be right there,» Julie Roberts said. «May I suggest 'Full Alert'?» Ursy said. «We've got us some bad mothers here.» Within five seconds she heard the ship's speakers sounding «Alert-Interior.» She'd heard the signal in drills, but never had she thought, not even in her wildest nightmares, that anything threatening could gain access to Rimfire's interior. Julie Roberts ran into the room where the med-team was examining the doctor and where Ursy was glued to the viewers showing the interior of the air lock. Julie saw Erin Kenner and a handsome young stud standing almost at attention, faces blank of emotion. Her heart gained a beat in sympathy when she saw the little dog cowering at Erin's feet, looking up pleadingly. «Put me on,» she told Ursy, pointing to the communicator. «All ship.» Ursy flipped switches, gave central communications an order, nodded to the captain, who said, «Now hear this. We have secured in air lock forward two an unknown force. To the eye it looks as if the lock is occupied by a man and woman, the woman being ex-lieutenant Erin Kenner, who served aboard this vessel in the recent past. Neither Kenner nor the man is armed. However, there has been one casualty of a particularly violent nature. My orders to you are to be alert, to stay at your stations.» Since Rimfire was on Full Alert, the airtight doors that isolated her various compartments were already closed. «Since we are dealing with an unknown killing force that penetrated the bulkheads of lock forward two before the force field could be activated, my orders are this. Should Erin Kenner or her companion escape the security of lock forward two, all force is authorized to destroy them. Stand by for visuals.» Ursy's fingers flew. The blank faces of Erin and Dent were shown on all viewers throughout Rimfire. «Now hear this,» Julie said, still talking to the entire crew. «We intend, at this time, to try to make contact with the occupants of the air lock. I will leave the audio and visual channels open so that you may see and hear what happens.» She nodded to Ursy, said, «Put me through to them.» «You're on,» Ursy said. «Erin?» Julie said softly. Erin Kenner slowly turned her eyes toward the speaker at the top of the lock's inner hatch. «Erin, do you hear me?» «I hear you,» Erin said in a flat, unmodulated voice. «Erin, we know you are not alone in the lock.» «Yes. Denton Gale, my friend, is with me,» Erin said woodenly, as the alien directed, for the being was still searching frantically for a way out. «And there are others, Erin,» Julie said. There was a visible flash of force that seemed to emanate from Erin's eyes. Julie jerked backward in spite of herself, then recovered. «It would be just about as easy to penetrate the force field that surrounds you as it would be to escape the gravitational pull of a black hole,» Julie said calmly. The alien ceased her attempt to break through to the arrogant human. «We know you are there,» Julie said. «Can we talk? We might discover that we have common ground. You live. We live. We are both creatures of intelligence.» The She laughed through Erin's lips. The sound was sarcastic, brittle. «I think I detect a certain arrogance,» Ursy Wade said, keeping the communicator open. «But think about this, sweetie. You're the one who's got her ass locked up inside durasteel walls and a force field, not us. So who the hell is the most intelligent?» The alien stormed. Mop crawled away to cringe against the bulkhead at the back of the lock. Both Erin and Dent swayed with the force of the blast of anger and frustration. «Look at baby,» Ursy said, «someone licked the red off her candy.» A scream of pure anguish howled from Erin Kenner's lips and then all was quiet. «Since our detection instruments show two living bodies aboard the Mother Lode, « Julie Roberts said, «I assume that you are present —» She paused, rolled her eyes at Ursy. «How do you say this?» «They're present only in spirit?» Ursy said. «We are here,» the alien said, speaking with Erin's lips, but without hesitation, emphasizing the word, «here.» «Who are you?» Julie asked. «You would not understand.» «Let me try,» Julie said. «I am—» «You're right,» Ursy said, breaking into a rolling sound that continued on for long, long seconds, «we don't understand. Is that a name or a confession?» The She was thinking more clearly. They had been robbed of the full extent of their greatness, but not by mental pygmies like the arrogant humans. While it was true that they were unable to break the field of force and the durasteel walls that enclosed them, there were other means of taking charge. «My name is Legion,» she said.
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