Part 2

The Captain's legs gave way as they struck the ground and he sprawled awkwardly.

"Geeze Cap, you really burnt your hands. What's the matter, are you sick? What happened to your eye?" As he extended his hand, the Captain's body leaped away. As it lunged forward again, net swung high, his shirt slipped back, making Hogan's expression change from surprise to bug-eyed horror. Netting a strong man did not prove as practical as the thing may have imagined. Mouthing obscenities, Hogan shook loose, scooped up his rifle and fled. As he reached the cover of a cylindrical, he whirled, fired, missing an easy, motionless target in his haste, and fled again. The thing unslung the rifle and started in pursuit.

Hogan's tracks were easy to follow in the dust, but where whirling wind from the cross streets had swept them away, the thing followed as confidently as ever. It was not hunting by sight. After they exchanged shots and crossed over the trail the party had made on entering the city, it became obvious that Hogan was leading it straight to the spheroid. The Captain's brain cursed him silently. The fool!

As he topped the last rise, the thing stopped him abruptly. There, gleaming in the sunshine was the spheroid. Before the entry hatch two tiny figures gesticulated. Hogan was telling Templar all about it. Shivering, the thing pulled the shirt up over his head again. Then it dallied, still shivering, obviously searching for a plan of action.

Didn't expect anything like that did you? the Captain thought. He tried to speak and did manage to drool a little. Then it started him down the hill, freezing his left hand at waist level long before he could grab. Real terror struck the Captain now. The thing was going to try some sort of bluff. It was going to try to take the ship.

"Here he comes," shouted Templar.

It waved the Captain's left arm and broke into a run. Templar ran to meet it. But Hogan ran after Templar and grabbed his shoulder. Templar shook him off.

"Stop," Hogan screamed. "I tell you, he's a murdering maniac."

But Templar ran to the Captain.

"Put your arm over my neck, sir. Gee you've hurt your eye terribly."

But the Captain gave no sign of understanding. He pulled back suspiciously when Templar reached for his arm.

"Sir, are you all right? I think Hogan is almost crazy enough to shoot us. He's gone absolutely mad."

Covering them with his rifle, Hogan came closer, his dust-streaked face aquiver with indecision. "He's nuts Temp. Look at his face. Why doesn't he speak?"

Shoot me you fool, the Captain's brain screamed. Beneath its hood the thing quivered violently, but it held the Captain's body under perfect control.

* * * * *

Hogan jammed his rifle muzzle against the Captain's head. "Speak, damn you, speak. What's on your back? You see Temp, he's so crazy he can't even speee--"

Violently the Captain's body grappled for possession of the rifle. With a blinding flash it went off between them. Over and over in the dust they rolled, while Templar danced about and did nothing. As the Captain's hands clamped on Hogan's windpipe he saw Templar had finally picked up the rifle. Surely he must see the thing on his back. Shoot me, you fool.

Gasping, Hogan tore loose and swung his fist against the Captain's teeth. Lunging, he drove his knee into the Captain's stomach.

In that moment Templar made his decision. He slammed down the rifle barrel on Hogan's skull.

Gently, the Captain's hands took the rifle away from Templar. They pointed the muzzle at his belly and signalled for him to lie down. When Templar stared uncomprehending, they fired a blast near his cheek. By the time the Captain's hands had finished trussing Templar with his own trousers and belt, the blue-eyed young man had noticed the thing on his Captain's neck--and quietly gone mad.

After binding Hogan's unconscious bulk, it dragged both of them into the spheroid. There it frantically opened drawers, thumbed through illustrations in books and manuals, pulled levers and pressed buttons indiscriminately, as though it was looking for a clue to guide its further actions. It had dropped its net by the control dome. Now it seemed to be searching for some more effective means of taking men alive. The auto-electric gun manual held its attention, especially the circuit diagrams that showed how the deadly stream of electrons might be widened into a stunning spray. Unfortunately there was even a line drawing of a man stunning and tying a venupod. It stared for a long time at the accompanying frequency tables. The setting-numbers on the receiver of the gun, the corresponding numbers on the table, the logic of mathematics made the thing's inability to read words quite immaterial.

When Spencer clambered through the hatch, the diffusion ray stunned him in his tracks. Quickly it leaped out and stunned Ives and Kwatahiri. After the Captain's hands had bound them with climbing ropes, they lay on the floor of the spheroid, their limp bodies gradually stiffening with horror as the effects of the ray wore off. As their voices began to curse and argue and plead, night descended. But it did not need to turn on the lights.

By morning the men were moaning for water, and the thing seemed to notice the Captain's increasing weakness. It freed him to see what he would do to help himself.

The Captain lunged for the water faucet, but, as the cool water trickled before his eyes and the men on the floor cried out for it, the Captain was thinking. Taking down the small bottle of poison intended for zoological specimens, he poured a few drops into a glass; not much, his stomach would throw back a large dose before it had time to take effect. He had seen that Ives had already rubbed his wrist bonds thin. In a few hours Ives would be free to help the others.

As the Captain raised the glass, the thing quivered and forced his arms down. It made him kneel beside Hogan, hold the glass to Hogan's lips. The still-dazed man drank greedily.

While Hogan was dying, a slow process, it savagely punished the Captain's eye. But he welcomed the pain. Even the thing was unable to control the heaving of his chest or the tears coursing from his good eye.

Spencer raised his head: "Captain, if you can hear me, I want you to know that we understand what has happened. We are still with you, if you are there. If you have to kill us to beat this thing, that's all right."

After that, it gave the Captain no more freedom. With much hesitation and quivering it filled a clean glass and gave his four surviving men water. Then it carefully examined the food in the refrigerator. But Ives was the only one who would eat. After a safety-waiting period, it stuffed the Captain's mouth with only those kinds of food that Ives had eaten.

When the sun began to slant into the open hatchway, the Captain felt the thing's body take on a new motion, a slow, regular rolling motion that increased in speed as it sat his body beside Ives and bent his back until the thing touched Ives' neck. When Ives ceased screaming, the Captain's body rose and turned. On Ives' neck clung a tiny replica of the thing.

By late afternoon it had also made Templar and Kwatahiri hosts. Only Spencer seemed conscious, his wide gray eyes watching the Captain's every move. When it tried again to feed him, he clenched his teeth and turned his head away. But the others chewed and swallowed mechanically.

When it went back to the refrigerator, the Captain managed to deflect his left hand so that it drew out a can of beer instead of a grapefruit. A vague hope arose in the Captain's brain as his hands clumsily punched a hole in the can. The thing filled a glass and knelt before Spencer.

Drink it, drink it, drink it, the Captain's brain shouted.

Spencer stared at the Captain's face for a long time as though he was trying to read something there. Then he opened his lips and gulped the beer.

When the thing sat the Captain down at the table, he noticed the grenade lying between the screw driver and the artichoke. So near but yet so far, if he could only pull the pin. But his hands moved past the grenade to the screw driver. The screw driver was the thing's beer can punch. Using the wrench for a hammer, it raised a geyser of beer. Of its own free will it raised the can to the Captain's lips.

The beer was bitter, stinging pleasure, cold in the throat, warm in the belly. He put it away fast and reached for another can. After a slight hesitation it freed his hands to punch the holes, one to take the gush of beer, one to keep it flowing. It fizzed in his mouth and bubbled out of the corners and over his chin. A cold stream crept down his neck to his collar bone. The third can he drank more daintily. With the fourth he felt the thing relax. Its weight sagged a bit as though it was feeling the effects of the alcohol in his bloodstream, and it let his hands relax upon the table.

Gently he glided his left hand toward the grenade, but the hand froze, then curled back for another can of beer. His right hand was a trifle unsteady as it raised the can to his lips. On the next can he forgot to punch the second hole and gulped the golden pleasure in erratic jets until he was sucking an empty can. Both he and it were game for another. He could feel the beer bubbling and trying to come back up. He could feel the tautness of his grinning lips, the limpness of the weight upon his neck. Gradually he edged his left hand toward the grenade, but the thing curled it back for another can.

Opening this can was troublesome and he forgot about the grenade. His wife smiled at him across the table. Soon they were floating down through blue warmth toward Earth so green and soft beneath.

"S' bedtime," he mumbled. The sound of his own voice sat him up straight. He remembered where he was and his smile went away. Then he felt it coming back again with his teeth hard beneath it. Very cautiously he slid his right hand up his cheek and back over the short hair on his neck until his fingers touched the thing's shrinking tissue. It slid his hand away and quivered in gentle admonition.

"Please," his voice whispered, "it will feel so good." And his hand tried again, like a gentle lover.

Across the room Spencer's eyes glistened wide in the gathering dusk. Templar moaned softly in his sleep. The faucet dripped loudly. And the Captain's fingers closed about something smooth and yielding, yet plump with blood, a tick ripe for the bursting.

With a great brassy shout he drove his fingers through it. As his nails gouged through writhing jelly, the agonies of the thing's short-circuiting nervous system became hammer blows upon the base of his skull. Frantically, with numbing fingers, he tore at the connecting nerve links. He was a Siamese twin whose partner was death.

The floor spun by. A blazing nova, then galaxies of stars burned out his optic nerve and darkness struck. For an instant infinity equalled zero.

Then his good eye opened and puzzled at the mountain so close its wrinkled gray surface was a blur. As he raised his cheek from the floor the mountain became Hogan's trouser leg. The Captain felt his throat constrict. Painfully word-pictures forced themselves upon him. Hogan, Grimes, Hogan, Grimes, they whirled in a tightening circle of hysteria.

"Captain," Spencer's quiet voice broke the chain of self-recrimination. "Can you hear me, Captain?"

The Captain leaped erect and brushed a nasty mess of skin and jelly from his shoulder.

Think about it later; let the court of inquiry think about it, he told himself. You're their Captain, man. Act like one.

Swiftly he untied Spencer. Then, kneeling beside each of the three unconscious men, he carefully extracted the thing's progeny from their necks, twisting and bullying the tiny parasites until they drew in their nerve extensions and came loose in his hands.

In the icebox between the celery and the beer cans they resembled three over-ripe avocados as their frantic pulsations died away and the cold made wrinkles in their skins.

"When are you going to kill them?"

"The trans-galactic biology teams will want them alive. We will keep them in suspended animation the way the thing survived so long until we reach--" The Captain's voice faltered as he readied Templar's hypo; Ives was already groaning and trying to sit up, but he wanted Templar to awaken more gently. "--Earth."

"Earth," Spencer repeated solemnly. "Earth, Earth, Earth." Suddenly he smiled and the Captain's smile joined him.

They were going home.