Fear That Man

its course.

“It’s self-propelled!” Coro gasped between his teeth like gas escaping from a split pipe. “And has its own radar!”

VI

In the shells of corridors and maze rooms directly out from the Ship’s Core, the mother-slugs were writhing in the throes of racial creation. Their great soft bodies bulged with the fat of readiness, their saucer-sized cataracted eyes glazed with the ecstasy of their purpose. Above and around them, the thin-shelled nodules of male sperm cells hung suspended in the web matter of the new nests, ripe and thick, waiting dumbly for contact with the reproductive segments of the huge mother-body worms. As if in unanimous accord, the hundreds of giant females began bumping and twisting more violently, writhing madly as their brains dissolved under the enzyme-hormones of sexual stimulation. The brain tissue bubbled and frothed, sizzling without heat, dissolving to form a nutrient atmosphere within the reproductive segment conducive to the fertilization of the male cell and the growth of the eggs into young. The intelligence and memory centers were the first to crumble so that there was no long and painful realization of what was happening to them. The end would be a form of glorious, prolonged orgasm for the mother-bodies.

Squirming and flopping heavily in fierce delight, they reared up, smashing the dangling sperm nodules planted there by mates they would never see, and bathed themselves in the soul fire of the male contribution. The raw, skinless, center segments each sported a brown nucleus throbbing on the surface in a primitive one-two, one- two rhythm. The center segments accepted the male fluid, shivered uncontrollably as it seeped sweetly onto the brown nucleus. The air was sweet and sickly, the web matter wet and heavy with the contents of the burst nodules. On hundreds of mother-bodies, the nuclei, permeated with sperm, began a slow but apparent sinking toward the center of the reproductive segment, there to lodge in the warmth of the rich protein bath that had once been a brain.

The mother-bodies curled and shook.

All segments, save the reproductive central ones, died and began the process of rotting.

A new generation was formed, now only zygotes. Someday, full-grown slugs.

From insanity, comes life…

In the war control room, furthest out from Ship’s Core, the slug crewmen prepared various battle programs to initiate against the spherical enemy who had suddenly disappeared from the radar screens though no missile hit had been made. This meant the enemy understood and employed anti-radar techniques. This made it more difficult than had been expected. They buzzed and they chattered, formulating death.

And in the Ship’s Core, the Central Being was, for the moment, unconcerned with the battle against the floating ball and the four humans; unconcerned, also and equally, with the mother-bodies and the cycle of reproduction, since both of these things were so natural, so a part of the general plan. But if truth be known and infinitesimal differences measured, it could be found that the Central Being held a greater deal of interest in the conception of new slugs than in any minor battle. Slugs were life. Life was a tool. Actually, It did not run the slugs as puppets, though strings were attached to be pulled and maneuvered whenever the occasion rose. Mainly, however, the Central Being was a planner of the major pattern, an architect of the overall purpose and methods of execution, not of the bothersome detail of day-to-day. In Its mind was the great plan of Raceship and of the one hundred and a half another hundred Spoorships that had been moved out to spread the plan and the hopes and the dreams. All the Raceverse lay before the Central Being and Its plans became — of necessity — plans in general, not specific. So It drew some strings some of the time, but rarely drew all strings at any one time. At this moment, It toyed with the plan to eliminate the beings of this galaxy. Ever since the Fall, when the Dimensional Vacuum had caused the Big Drop, It had seen Its duty — to Itself and to Raceship and its Spoorships. These strange, two-legged, two-armed, two-eyed beings were a challenge to the concept of Raceship and slug-form. And a challenge to what had conceived Raceship and slug-form. All of them, every last creature, had to be destroyed. It was an absolute prerequisite to the remainder of the plan of Raceship. These beings must die before the overall plan could continue with any degree of integrity. Simply: death to man. Small “m” intentioned.

VII

Coro quickly wiped the perspiration that had beaded on his forehead and was starting to trickle down into his eyes. “We have anti-radar gear because of the bats on Capistrano. It’s a necessity when you go out hunting multi- tonned radar-eyed things like those.” He thumbed the gear into full operation, jumped the sphere a hundred feet straight up.

Beneath them, the missile streaked back toward the mother ship. With luck, they would get to see it strike the mountainous vessel in a matricide thrust. There was one trouble with a weapon that was completely self- controlled. Sure, it cut down the duties of the war room when you were firing a thousand rounds a minute, but it also left open the possibility of the round returning to strike the gunman. With a yellow cloud of thick smoke, the missile struck the hull of the other ship, tearing a hole ten feet across in the thick metal hide. Even this, however, was a minor abrasion on that great body.

“I think this confirms the extra-galactic theory,” Sam said.

With anti-radar giving them a form of invisibility — temporarily, at least — Coro brought the floater in closer, buzzing only fifty feet over the top of the slab-like vessel. “Still, the death of God should have made them nonviolent tool”

“What now?” Lotus asked.

Sam was surprised that a woman had kept such superb composure through an actual malicious and deadly missile attack. Even he was stifling a scream, but she seemed perfectly willing to accept a flying mountain full of men — if, indeed, they were men — from another galaxy.

“Next? We go in,” Coro said very matter-of-factly. “We go inside the ship.”

All three turned to stare at him, mouths open, as if he were some strange curiosity.

“You’re insane!” Lotus said, almost as if she meant it literally.

“What good will going inside do?” Crazy said, scratching in his tumble of hair.

“He’s right,” Sam said after a moment of silence.

“Right?” Lotus held a hand up to her ear as if to block out this ridiculousness.

“Yes. Andy is perfectly correct. We don’t have the fire power in this floater to shoot them down. Besides, now that we are fighting intelligent creatures and not just Beasts, I am quite sure none of us could pull a trigger anyway. We are ingrained with pacifism. We are and have long been above war. Let’s face it: the only way we can hope to save ourselves and the rest of the galaxy is by first-hand analysis of the problem.”

“Well put,” Coro said.

“How many have to go in?” Lotus asked.

“Not you,” Coro said. “You’re too fragile for this job.” He saw her bristling at the remark and hastened to add a qualifying statement: “Besides, we need someone behind to ready the robodoc unit and prepare for us in case we get hurt in there. And Crazy will stay behind too. This is going to have to be an after-dark, hush-hush sort of thing. With those hooves, Crazy would make too much noise.”

“That’s fine with me,” Crazy said, turning to look back at the giant ship.

“Sam?”

“I’ll go,” Sam answered, wondering where he was finding the reservoir of courage, deciding it was a spill- over from Coro.

Coro brought the floater around, hugging the alien hull, and set a speed matching that of the ponderous vessel. “We wait until they set her down somewhere and until dark. She’s bound to set down for repairs from the