A E Van Vogt - The Rull - uc.rtf

A E Van Vogt

The Rull

I

Trevor Jamieson saw the other space boat out of the corner of his eye. He was sitting in a hollow about a dozen yards from the edge of the precipice, and some score of feet from the doorway of his own lifeboat. He had been intent on his survey book, annotating a comment beside the voice graph, to the effect that Laertes III was so close to the invisible dividing line between Earth-controlled and Rull-controlled space that its prior dis­covery by man was in itself a major victory in the Rull-human war.

He had written: “The fact that ships based on this planet could strike at several of the most densely populated areas of the galaxy, Rull or human, gives it an AA priority on all available military equipment. Pre­liminary defense units should be set up on Mount Monolith, where I am now, within three weeks   

It was at that point that he saw the other boat, above and somewhat to his left, approaching the tableland. He glanced up at it, and froze where he was, torn between two opposing purposes. His first impulse, to run for the lifeboat, yielded to the realization that the movement would be seen instantly by the electronic reflexes of the other ship. For a moment, then, he had the dim hope that, if he remained quiet enough, neither he nor his ship would be observed.

Even as he sat there, perspiring with indecision, his tensed eyes noted the Rull markings and the rakish design of the other vessel. His vast knowledge of things Rull enabled him to catalogue it instantly as a sur­vey craft.

A survey craft. The Rulls had discovered the Laertes sun.

The terrible potentiality was that, behind this small craft, might be fleets of battleships, whereas he was alone. His own lifeboat had been dropped by the Orion nearly a parsec away, while the big ship was pro­ceeding at antigravity speeds. That was to insure that Rull energy tracers did not record its passage through this area of space. The Orion was to

head for the nearest base, load up with planetary defense equipment, and then return. She was due in ten days.

Ten days. Jamieson groaned inwardly and drew his legs under him and clenched his hand about the survey book. But still the possibility that his ship, partially hidden under a clump of trees, might escape notice if he remained quiet, held him there in the open. His head tilted up, his eyes glared at the alien, and his brain willed it to turn aside. Once more, while he waited, the implications of the disaster that could be here struck deep.

The Rull ship was a hundred yards away now and showed no signs of changing its course. In seconds it would cross the clump of trees, which half hid the lifeboat.

In a spasm of movement, Jamieson launched himself from his chair. With complete abandon, he dived for the open doorway of his machine. As the door clanged behind him, the boat shook as if it had been struck by a giant. Part of the ceiling sagged; the floor heaved under him, and the air grew hot and suffocating. Gasping, Jamieson slid into the control chair and struck the main emergency switch. The rapid-fire blasters huz­zaed into automatic firing positions and let go with a hum and a deep­throated ping. The refrigerators whined with power; a cold blast of air blew at his body. The relief was so quick that a second passed before Jamieson realized that the atomic engines had failed to respond. And that the lifeboat, which should have already been sliding into the air, was still lying inert in an exposed position.

Tense, he stared into the visiplates. It took a moment to locate the Ru!! ship. It was at the lower edge of one plate, tumbling slowly out of sight beyond a clump of trees a quarter of a mile away. As he watched, it disappeared; and then the crash of the landing came clear and unmistak­able from the sound board in front of him.

The relief that came was weighted with an awful reaction. Jamieson sank into the cushions of the control chair, weak from the narrowness of his escape. The weakness ended abruptly as a thought struck him. There had been a sedateness about the way the enemy ship fell. The crash hadn’t killed the Rulls aboard. He was alone in a damaged lifeboat on an impassable mountain with one or more of the most remorseless creatures ever spawned. For ten days he must fight in the hope that man would still be able to seize the most valuable planet discovered in half a century.

Jamieson opened the door and went out onto the tableland. He was still trembling with reaction, but it was rapidly growing darker and there was no time to waste. He walked quickly to the top of the nearest hillock a hundred feet away, taking the last few feet on his hands and knees. Cau­tiously, he peered over the rim. Most of the mountaintop was visible. It was a rough oval some eight hundred yards wide at its narrowest, a

wilderness of scraggly brush and upjutting rock, dominated here and there by clumps of trees. There was not a movement to be seen, and not a sign of the Rull ship. Over everything lay an atmosphere of desolation, and the utter silence of an uninhabited wasteland.

The twilight was deeper now that the sun had sunk below the south­west precipice. And the deadly part was that, to the Rulls, with their wider vision and more complete equipment, the darkness would mean nothing. All night long he would have to be on the defensive against be­ings whose nervous systems outmatched his in every function except, possibly, intelligence. On that level, and that alone, human beings claimed equality. The very comparison made him realize how desperate his situation was. He needed an advantage. If he could get to the Rull wreck and cause them some kind of damage before it got pitch-dark, be­fore they recovered from the shock of the crash, that alone might make the difference between life and death for him.

It was a chance he had to take. Hurriedly, Jamieson backed down the hillock and, climbing to his feet, started along a shallow wash. The ground was rough with stone and projecting edges of rock and the gnarled roots and tangle of hardy growth. Twice he fell, the first time gashing his right hand. It slowed him mentally and physically. He had never before tried to make speed over the pathless wilderness of the table-land. He saw that in ten minutes he had covered a distance of no more than a few hundred yards. He stopped. It was one thing to be bold on the chance of making a vital gain. It was quite another to throw away his life on a reckless gamble. The defeat would not be his alone but man’s.

As he stood there he grew aware of how icy cold it had become. A chilling wind from the east had sprung up. By midnight the temperature would be zero. He began to retreat. There were several defenses to rig up before night; and he had better hurry. An hour later, when the moonless darkness lay heavily over the mountain of mountains, Jamieson sat tensely before his visiplates. It was going to be a long night for a man who dared not sleep. Somewhere about the middle of it, Jamieson saw a movement at the remote perimeter of his all-wave vision plate. Finger on blaster control, he waited for the object to come into sharper focus. It never did. The cold dawn found him weary but still alertly watching for an enemy that was acting as cautiously as he himself. He began to won­der if he had actually seen anything.

Jamieson took another antisleep pill and made a more definite exam­ination of the atomic motors. It didn’t take long to verify his earlier di­agnosis. The basic gravitation pile had been thoroughly frustrated. Until it could be reactivated on the Orion, the motors were useless. The con­clusive examination braced him. He was committed irrevocably to this

deadly battle of the tableland. The idea that had been turning over in his mind during the night took on new meaning. This was the first time in his knowledge that a Rull and a human being had faced each other on a lim­ited field of action, where neither was a prisoner. The great battles in space were ship against ship and fleet against fleet. Survivors either es­caped or were picked up by overwhelming forces.

Unless he was bested before he could get organized, here was a price­less opportunity to try some tests on the Rulls—and without delay. Every moment of daylight must be utilized to the uttermost limit.

Jamieson put on his special “defensive” belts and went outside. The dawn was brightening minute by minute; and the vistas that revealed themselves with each increment of light-power held him, even as he tensed his body for the fight ahead. Why, he thought, in sharp, excited wonder, this is happening on the strangest mountain ever known.

Mount Monolith stood on a level plain and reared up precipitously to a height of eight thousand two hundred feet. The most majestic pillar in the known universe, it easily qualified as one of the hundred nature won­ders of the galaxy.

He had walked the soil of planets a hundred thousand light-years from Earth, and the decks of great ships that flashed from the eternal night into the blazing brightness of suns red and suns blue, suns yellow and white and orange and violet, suns so wonderful and different that no previous imaginings could match the reality.

Yet, here he stood on a mountain on far Laertes, one man compelled by circumstances to pit his cunning against one or more of the supremely intelligent Rull enemy.

Jamieson shook himself grimly. It was time to launch his attack—and discover the opposition that could be mustered against him. That was Step One, and the important point about it was to insure that it wasn’t also Step Last. By the time the Laertes sun peered palely over the horizon that was the northeast cliff’s edge, the assault was under way. The automatic defensors, which he had set up the night before, moved slowly from point to point ahead of the mobile blaster. He cautiously saw to it that one of the three defensors also brought up his rear. He augmented that basic pro­tection by crawling from one projecting rock after another. The machines he manipulated from a tiny hand control, which was connected to the visiplates that poked out from his headgear just above his eyes. With tensed eyes, he watched the wavering needles that would indicate move­ment or that the defensor screens were being subjected to energy opposi­tion.

Nothing happened. As he came within sight of the Rull craft, Jamieson halted, while he seriously pondered the problem of no resis­

tance. He didn’t like it. It was possible that all the Rulls aboard had been killed, but he doubted it.

Bleakly he studied the wreck through the telescopic eyes of one of the defensors. It lay in a shallow indentation, its nose buried in a wall of gravel. Its lower plates were collapsed versions of the original. His single energy blast of the day before, completely automatic though it had been, had really dealt a smashing blow to the Ru!! ship.

The over-all effect was of lifelessness. If it were a trick, then it was a very skillful one. Fortunately, there were tests he could make, not final but evidential and indicative.

The echoless height of the most unique mountain ever discovered hummed with the fire sound of the mobile blaster. The noise grew to a roar as the unit’s pile warmed to its task and developed its maximum kilo-curie of activity. Under that barrage, the hull of the enemy craft trembled a little and changed color slightly, but that was all. After ten minutes, Jamieson cut the power and sat baffled and indecisive.

The defensive screens of the Rull ship were full on. Had they gone on automatically after his first shot of the evening before? Or had they been put up deliberately to nullify just such an attack as this? He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble; he had no positive knowledge.

The Ru!! could be lying inside dead. (Odd, how he was beginning to think in terms of one rather than several, but the degree of caution being used by the opposition—if opposition existed—matched his own, and in­dicated the caution of an individual moving against unknown odds.) It could be wounded and incapable of doing anything against him. It could have spent the night marking up the tableland with nerve control lines— he’d have to make sure he never looked directly at the ground—or it could simply be waiting for the arrival of the greater ship that had dropped it onto the planet.

Jamieson refused to consider that last possibility. That way was death, without qualification of hope. Frowning, he studied the visible damage he had done to the ship. All the hard metals had held together, so far as he could see, but the whole bottom of the ship was dented to a depth that varied from one to four feet. Some radiation must have got in, and the question was, what would it have damaged? He had examined dozens of captured Ru!! survey craft, and if this one ran to the pattern, then in the front would be the control center, with a sealed-off blaster chamber. In the rear the engine room, two storerooms, one for fuel and equipment, the other for food and— For food. Jamieson jumped, and then with wide eyes noted how the

food section had suffered greater damage than any other part of the ship. Surely, surely, some radiation must have got into it, poisoning it, ruining

it, and instantly putting the Ru!!, with his swift digestive system, into a deadly position.

Jamieson sighed with the intensity of his hope and prepared to re­treat. As he turned away, quite incidentally, accidentally, he glanced at the rock behind which he had shielded himself from possible direct fire. Glanced at it and saw the lines on it. Intricate lines, based on a profound and inhuman study of human neurons. He recognized them for what they were and stiffened in horror. He thought, Where—where am I being di­rected?

That much had been discovered after his return from Mira 23, with his report of how he had been apparently, instantly, hypnotized; the lines impelled movement to somewhere. Here, on this fantastic mountain, it could only be to a cliff. But which one?

With a desperate will, he fought to retain his senses a moment longer. He strove to see the lines again. He saw, briefly, flashingly, five wavering verticals and above them three lines that pointed east with their wavering ends. The pressure built up inside him, but still he fought to keep his thoughts self-motivated. Fought to remember if there were any wide ledges near the top of the east cliff. There were. He recalled them in a final agony of hope. There, he thought, that one, that one. Let me fall on that one. He strained to hold the ledge image he wanted and to repeat, many times, the command that might save his life. His last dreary thought was that here was the answer to his doubts. The Rull was alive. Blackness came like a curtain of pure essence of night.

2

From the far galaxy had he come, a cold, remorseless leader of lead­ers, the yeli, Meesh, the un of Ria, the high Aaish of Yeel. And other ti­tles, and other positions, and power. Oh, the power that he had, the power of death, the power of life and the power of the Leard ships.

He had come in his great anger to discover what was wrong. Many years before, the command had been given: Expand into the Second Galaxy. Why were they-who-could-not-be-more-perfect so slow in carry­ing out these instructions? What was the nature of the two-legged crea­tures whose multitudinous ships, impregnable planetary bases and numerous allies had fought those-who-possessed-Nature’s-supreme­nervous-system to an impasse?

“Bring me a live human being!”

The command echoed to the ends of Riatic space. It produced a dull survivor of an Earth cruiser, a sailor of low degree with an I.Q. of ninety­six, and a fear index of two hundred and seven. The creature made vague

efforts to kill himself, and squirmed on the laboratory tables, and finally escaped into death when the scientists were still in the beginning of the experiments which he had ordered to be performed before his own eyes.

“Surely this is not the enemy.”

“Sire, we capture so few that are alive. Just as we have conditioned our own, so do they seem to be conditioned to kill themse!ves in case of capture.”

“The environment is wrong. We must create a situation where the captured does not know himself to be a prisoner. Are there any possibili­ties?”

“The problem will be investigated.”

He had come, as the one who would conduct the experiment, to the sun where a man had been observed seven periods before. The man was in a small craft—as the report put it—”which was precipitated suddenly out of subspace and fell toward this sun. The fact that it used no energy aroused the suspicions of our observing warship, which might otherwise have paid no attention to so small a machine. And so, because an investi­gation was made immediately, we have a new base possibility, and of course an ideal situation for the experiment.”

The report continued: “No landings have been made yet. as you in­structed; so far as we know, our presence is not suspected. it may be as­sumed that there was an earlier human landing on the third planet, for the man quickly made that curious mountaintop his headquarters. It will be ideal for your purposes.”

A battle group patrolled the space around the sun. But he came down in a small ship, and because he had contempt for his enemy, he had flown in over the mountains, fired his disabling blast at the ship on the ground—and then was struck by a surprisingly potent return blast that sent his machine spinning to a crash. Death almost came in those sec­onds. But he crawled out of his control chair, shocked but still alive. With thoughtful eyes, he assessed the extent of the disaster that had befallen him. He had issued commands that he would call when he wanted them to return. But he could not call. The radio was shattered beyond repair. He had an uneasy sensation when he discovered that his food was poi­soned.

Swiftly, he stiffened to the necessity of the situation. The experiment woidd go on. with one proviso. When the need for food became impera­tive. he would kill the man. and ~ survl\e until the commanders of the ships grew alarmed and came down to see what had happened.

He spent part of the sunless period exploring the cliff’s edge. Then he hovered on the perimeter of the man’s defensor energies, studying the lifeboat and pondering the possible actions the other might take against

him. Finally, with a tireless patience, he examined the approaches to his own ship. At key points, he drew the lines-that-could-seize-the-minds-of-men. There was satisfaction, shortly after the sun came up, in seeing the enemy “caught” and “compelled.” The satisfaction had but one drawback. He could not take the advantage of the situation that he wanted. The dif­ficulty was that the man’s blaster had been left focused on his main air­lock. It was not emitting energy, but the Rull did not doubt that it would fire automatically if the door opened.

What made the situation serious was that, when he tried the emer­gency exit, it was jammed. It hadn’t been. With the forethought of his kind, he had tested it immediately after the crash. Then, it opened. Now it didn’t. The ship, he decided, must have settled while he was out during the sunless period. Actually, the reason for what had happened didn’t matter. What counted was that he was locked in just when he wanted to be outside. It was not as if he had definitely decided to destroy the man immediately. If capturing him meant gaining control of his food supply, then it would be unnecessary to give him death. It was important to be able to make the decision, however, while the man was helpless. And the further possibility that the el/ed fall might kill him made the ~‘eli grim. He iidn’t like accidents to disturb his plans.

From the beginning the affair had taken a sinister turn. He had been caught up by forces beyond his control, by elements of space and time which he had always taken into account as being theoretically possible, but he had never considered them as having personal application.

That was for the depths of space where the Leard ships fought to ex­tend the frontiers of the perfect ones. Out there lived alien creatures that had been spawned by Nature before the ultimate nervous system was achieved. All those aliens must die because they were now unnecessary, and because, existing, they might accidentally discover means of upset­ting the balance of Yeelian life. In civilized Ria accidents were forbidden.

The Rull drew his mind clear of such weakening thoughts. He de­cided against trying to open the emergency door. Instead, he turned his blaster against a crack in the hard floor. The frustrators blew their gases across the area where he had worked, and the suction pumps caught the swirling radioactive stuff and drew it into a special chamber. But the lack of an open door as a safety valve made the work dangerous. Many times he naiiced while the air was cleansed, so that he could come out again

u~tiatinv chaiuhc; to which hc rcticatcd whcnc\ ci the heat ICI\Cs tiiiglc~——a nioie ‘chiable guide than ani in~Ii’uincnt that

ic v~aiehcd,

hc ~uii u a~ past the meridian ~ hen the metal plate l’inallv Idled ad ea~ c him an opening into the gra\ el and rock underneath. The

problem of tunneling out into the open was easy except that it took time and physical effort. Dusty and angry and hungry, the Ru!! emerged from the hole near the center of the clump of trees beside which his craft had fallen.

His plan to conduct an experiment had lost its attraction. He had ob­stinate qualities in his nature, but he reasoned that this situation could be reproduced for him on a more civilized level. No need to take risks or to be uncomfortable. He would kill the man and chemically convert him to food until the ships came down to rescue him. With hungry gaze, he searched the ragged, uneven east cliff, peering down at the ledges, crawl­ing swiftly along until he had virtually circumvented the tableland. He found nothing he could be sure about. In one or two places the ground looked lacerated as by the passage of a body, but the most intensive ex­amination failed to establish that anyone had actually been there.

Somberly, the Rull glided toward the man’s lifeboat. From a safe distance, he examined it. The defense screens were up, but he couldn’t be sure they had been put up before the attack of the morning, or had been raised since then, or had come on automatically at his approach. He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble. Everywhere on the tableland around him was a barrenness, a desolation unlike anything he had ever known. The man could be dead, his smashed body lying at the remote bottom of the mountain. He could be inside the ship badly injured; he had, unfortunately, had time to get back to the safety of his craft. Or he could be waiting inside, alert, aggressive, and conscious of his enemy’s uncertainty, determined to take full advantage of that uncer­tainty.

The Ru!! set up a watching device that would apprise him when the door opened. Then he returned to the tunnel that led into his ship, labori­ously crawled through it, and settled himself to wait out the emergency. The hunger in him was an expanding force, hourly taking on a greater ur­gency. It was time to stop moving around. He would need all his energy for the crisis. The days passed.

Jamieson stirred in an effluvium of pain. At first it seemed all-enveloping, a mist of anguish that bathed him in sweat from head to toe. Gradually, then, it localized in the region of his lower left leg. The pulse of the pain made a rhythm in his nerves. The minutes lengthened into an hour, and then he finally thought, Why, I’ve got a sprained ankle! There was more to it than that, of course. The pressure that had driven him here oppressed his life force. How long he lay there, partly conscious, was not clear, but when he finally opened his eyes, the sun was still shining on him, though it was almost directly overhead.

...