CHAPTER IX

I ran and caught her in my arms. "Nessa! What is it?"

"I twisted my ankle," she murmured, not looking at me. "This man made me walk anyway." Then I'd knelt and lifted her in both arms. "Don't bother," she said, struggling half-heartedly. "I can go alone."

She believed that I was a beast-man myself, and with Trutch flapping his elephant ears alongside us, I couldn't tell her different. And of course, she might be right at that....

"You feel all right otherwise?" I asked her, gently. She nodded. She was pale and haggard and her hair hadn't been brushed for twenty-four hours, but for all that she was the most beautiful woman in America. The feel of her in my arms gave me strength. I carried her over and set her lightly on the ramp. The leaders were still fumbling around the door.

Then suddenly the door of the space station swung open.

I got a little sick.

My brother Howard stood there. He stood erect and his slight, white-smocked figure looked oddly noble above the dark-clad Neanderthals. He held his arms up; some of the Neanderthals raised their guns.

Howard said slowly, "No, don't do it. Please don't do it. You don't understand. This is security for all of us!"

They glanced at one another, Cuff's brows drew into a scowl, and then Skagarach, the best brain of the lot, cried, "Don't harm this man!" and leaped forward, stood with his body against the door so that it could not be closed. "He's necessary to the operation--he's vital." The Old Companions muttered and the weapons lowered. Skagarach said to Howard, "You think we've come to destroy the satellite. You believe we're aroused citizens, or religious fanatics, bent on halting the experiment. You're wrong."

That was, of course, the reason why my brother had opened the door: to keep what he thought were ordinary people from wrecking the man-made moon. From within the wheel he had seen them conquer the guards and workers, and by their plain clothes had imagined them to be a bunch of fanatics who couldn't stand the idea of a policeman in the sky.

If the Old Companions had worn uniforms, Howard might have kept that door shut, and the whole Neanderthal plan would have collapsed. But he thought he could reason with these creatures.

Skagarach pushed past him and disappeared in the station. Bill Cuff, herding Nessa and Trutch and me ahead of him, followed, and the Old Companions trooped up the ramp behind us. Howard had seen me and was walking at my side. "If they don't want to destroy it, what _do_ they want?" he kept repeating. I kept my mouth grimly shut. I couldn't explain it to him now, I couldn't begin to. "What are you doing here, Ray?" he asked then, and again I was stuck for an answer.

Trutch bent close to me, smirking. "Why, he brought us here," he said.

The important Old Companions assembled in what was intended to be the scientists' main living room, a section of the wheel lined with fold-up bunks and empty tv screens. From what little knowledge I had of the theory of the space station, I could identify the air purification system's tubes, the emergency geiger counters, the oxygen vents and, through a partly-open locker door, a space suit. The tv screens were either for communication within the ship or connected with the cameras that would be trained on Terra 24 hours a day.

"Where are the others?" Bill Cuff asked Howard. "The other scientists?"

"Throughout the wheel."

"Good. They won't be hurt. You're all going to come in handy for us; three of our experts were killed on that field," said Cuff, his face dark and his teeth clenched so tightly I could hear them grind together.

"Who the hell planned that suicidal charge?" I asked.

"Our leader," said Skagarach drily. "Mister Cuff."

* * * * *

The primal rage, my last hope, welled and subsided in Cuff as plainly as mercury in a thermometer. With what must have been a really superb effort he said in a quiet voice to Howard, "I'll fill you in, cousin, on what's happening," and proceeded to do so concisely and accurately.

Howard became pale, but bending forward he followed Cuff with attention and didn't open his mouth until Cuff had finished. Then he said just two words. "My God!" He looked at me. "And you're with them?" he asked.

"What else? I have the dark blood," I said. He made as if to say something, and then looked at Cuff.

"So do you," Bill told him.

Skagarach said, "I think Summers has been killed. Milo is being shelled with mortars, but his muster is winning. We should have the three-stage rockets here within half an hour."

The other scientists, five men ranging from thirty to fifty years old, had been brought in by Neanderthals. Cuff glanced at them now and then said to Howard, "I want you to take us on a tour of the station immediately. I want you to show me and Skagarach, and our technical officers, exactly how everything is worked, from the H-bomb launchers to the refuse outlets. Eventually you'll come over to us, Howard; but for now you've got to show us under pressure, I realize." His eye roamed the room. He pointed to the tallest scientist, a man nearly as bulky as Bill Cuff himself. "What's his job?"

"Communications technician," said Howard blankly.

On the words, Cuff was out of his chair, hurtling across the room; he shot his great arms out and gripped the astounded scientist by the throat and the top of his head. Whirling, he flying-mared the man over his shoulder, and as the scientist's heavy frame nearly touched the floor, Cuff perked upward again, so that the whole body was snapped like a blacksnake whip. There was a terrible cracking sound and the man's form went limp. Cuff dropped the body to the floor and stepped over it.

"Only an example, Howard," said the Neanderthal easily. He came back to his seat. Nessa was sobbing hysterically, and all the men were white as chalk.

Skagarach said, "Probably unnecessary, but vivid enough," and laughed. Cuff said, "All right, Howard, will you show us the station?"

"Do it," I said to my brother in a low tone. He looked at me and his eyes were a little wet. He shook himself and said, "Come on," in a dull voice. Howard was not afraid of anything, I know, but Cuff's unvoiced threat, to act with each of the other scientists in turn as he had with the communications technician, appalled my brother and dulled his reasoning--even as Nessa's danger had dulled mine in the boat. We followed him through an automatically operated door into the next chamber.

For half an hour we worked through the space station, Howard pointing out in an emotionless voice the personnel quarters, control room, the gauge panels, fuel storage tanks (for the small rocket clamped to the center spoke of the wheel and reserved for emergency flight back to Terra), the space suits and the many instrument panels. We saw television cameras so powerful that from the 1,000-mile altitude they could pick up movements as small as those made by a single man on a prairie. We saw the astrodome, the oxygen supplies, the air blower pump, the air locks and moon-to-earth radios; the recreation area and the radar equipment. Everything that would support life in space.

Last of all we saw the weapons: the levers that would release the hell-bombs and guided missiles, the aiming mechanisms, the terrible arsenal that was to threaten the world and keep it under control, at the benevolent mercy of the men who lived within the wheel.

Bill Cuff exulted. "In five days," he said, and then stopped. I knew what he meant. In five days all the Neanderthals on earth would be congregated in specified sanctuaries, and mankind would die. These projectiles would mop up the cities and towns, and the Old Companions would then sweep over the countrysides, slaying what remained of Homo sapiens.

One thing which we'd been shown had given me an idea. One of those hundreds of gadgets and mechanisms.

Queerly enough, I wouldn't ordinarily have thought of it as a weapon.

It was the air blower pump.