the indentation in the forest where the floater spun and was fired upon. “What now?” Sam asked, his throat dry and cracked like his lips.
Coro wiped perspiration from his forehead despite the cool breezes playing inside their minds and bodies. “I count… fourteen. But there may be more hidden in the trees. Don’t start fanning your rifle right off. That wastes too many darts. But look how they are standing. They all have their backs to us. If we pick them off, moving inward, the boys in front won’t realize the boys behind are going down.”
“I don’t know about my aim—”
“The gun will handle most of that. You just sight through the keyhole bubble here. The gun will correct for the rest.”
They dropped to their bellies, crawled forward the last few feet until their heads were exposed beyond the tall grass. Sam raised his gun, sighted. The nearest slug on his side was a dozen feet away. His finger encircled the trigger, and he felt things rising in his stomach. Then he forced himself to think about all those guns from the jelly-mass ship — and that he knew how to work them. And they were to kill; these were only to drug. He pulled the trigger, closing his eyes with the soft
When he opened his eyes, the slug was lying on its side, fuzzy, thin lids closed over its eyes, still alive but out of action for a while. Coro had gotten two in the same time. Carefully, Sam raised his gun again, sighted in on another slug.
It was like a game, really.
The slugs were like little cardboard targets, five feet high and relatively easy to hit. When you were on target, they fell over almost instantly. And the blue lights flashed almost as if in notice of a score.
The game neared its end. Six slugs remained standing, still oblivious to the eight unconscious comrades behind. Then Sam fired on the next closest of the gross creatures, caught it in the middle of the back. It bent convulsively, straightened to pluck the dart from itself, and toppled forward. Forward! It struck the slug in front of it a glancing blow. That slug turned to see what was the matter, saw the bodies, and sounded the alarm.
“Fan them now!” Coro hissed.
Sam swung the barrel of the rifle back and forth, not bothering to aim any longer.
Three more slugs toppled to the ground before they could swing their own weapons up.
Another dropped, four darts in its chest.
The two aliens operating the beam weapon swung it off the floater and toward the open meadow, playing the blue fire over the men’s heads and setting the grass on fire behind them. Sam sighted on one of the remaining duo, but they both fell as Coro fanned a burst of darts and caught them in midsection.
The beam winked out.
“Hurry!” Coro snapped. “They might have gotten a message back to their ship.”
They were up, running.
“The net!” Sam shouted.
Coro nodded. Together they hefted the heavy beam-projector, palmed what seemed to be the control panel. Blue light burst out of the nozzle, humming. Carefully, they sighted on the cables linking the net to magno-pegs, burning through the heavy strands. Eventually the net slid off the ball, pulled downward by its own weight. They dropped the weapon and ran up the ramp that had opened in the side of the floater to welcome them like the tongue of a favorite dog.
“Thank the stars!” Lotus said, coming into Coro’s arms, her wings fluffed out and fluttering slightly, beautiful in the warm yellow light of the cabin. Sam felt as if he were intruding on something private. But after a few messy and misplaced kisses of joy, the two separated.
“Thought you’d never get here,” Crazy said, getting out of Coro’s pilot seat and into his own chair. “I have the floater ready. We better move, and fast. There’s another detachment of those worms leaving the mother ship.”
They all turned to stare at the viewplate. A block of yellow light shone where a port had opened in the giant vessel’s side. Coro climbed into his chair, keeping his eyes on the screen.
“Where to?” Sam asked as he crawled into his makeshift berth.
“Anywhere,” Lotus said, shivering with disgust. “Anywhere that’s not near those… those…”
“Agreed,” Coro said between clenched teeth.
The floater groaned, leaped. The screen showed a spinning night scene that tumbled and flopped as they moved across the forest, low to the tops of the trees and with full anti-radar gear in operation. As they moved, Coro and Sam tried to explain what they found.
“We have to go on to Hope,” Coro said finally.
“Easier said than accomplished,” Lotus noted. “We don’t have a starship.”
“Don’t be so negativistic,” Coro said, smiling a thin smile that almost wasn’t. “We might have a ship. It is a small chance, but we just might be able to get one.”
IX
Food-slugs as large as houses lay pulsating against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air. Patches of white spotted the most bulbous portions of the giants, the areas of new flesh tender and undeveloped, as yet inedible. The smaller slug-forms tending them moved through the tremendous bulks in sanitary linen frocks, their pseudopods testing the toughness of skin near the connection junction where flesh of food-slug met nutrient tubes in the wall. They occasionally took small instruments out of pockets in the nightgown garments they wore, plunged them into the food-slugs and took readings as the cancerous masses throbbed mindlessly, adding cell after cell after cell at a rate that was almost visible. The food deck stretched into the distance, filled to overflowing with the ponderous behemoths that neither thought nor felt nor moved nor laughed. But merely were. A team of butchers slithered down the main avenue between stalls. A forty- car train of magno-carts floated behind them. The butchers stopped at each food-slug that had grown beyond a mark on the floor that was used to make a quick judgment on their readiness. With precision, they used cauterizing lasers to slice huge steaks from the fleshy giants, hefting the fluid-oozing slabs onto the carts and moving ahead — trimming, cutting, butchering for the great crew of
The reek of life fluids spilled was constantly sucked away by enormous ceiling fans, replaced by perfume- heavy air.
The Central Being examined the work in progress, watched as the skins of the cancerous slugs formed and covered the wounds the butchers had left, as skin on other food-slugs bulged and stretched and reformed to accommodate the ever-increasing supply of meat and fat. And the Central Being approved. This was fine. This was a goodness. And when the gargantuan steaks were spitted and roasted for the crew, when the fat dripped into the fire and sizzled and bloated the air with its fumes, then the crew would also see it as a goodness and would give thanks to the Central Being. This was the plan sliding on polished runners. Only briefly did the Central Being think of the annoying creatures in the floating ball. They were gone now and certainly not worth the bother of a protracted chase. Besides, within the day, the ship would be lifting and setting course for the world called Hope. The center of these creatures’ empire. From there, destruction of this blasphemous species would be swift and most gratifying…
Food slugs as large as houses pulsated against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air.
X
“Just as I thought,” Coro said. “They wouldn’t destroy those.”
