Triplanetary Page 9

  CHAPTER IX

  Specimens

  Only too well founded was Costigan's conviction that the submarine ofthe deep-sea fishes had not been able to prevail against Nerado'sformidable engines of destruction. For days the Nevian lifeboat with itsthree Terrestrial passengers hurtled through the interstellar voidwithout incident, but finally the operative's fears were realized--hisfar-flung detector screens reacted; upon his observation plate layrevealed Nerado's mammoth space-ship, in full pursuit of its fleeinglifeboat!

  "On your toes, folks--it won't be long now!" Costigan called, andBradley and Clio hurried into the tiny control room.

  Armor donned and tested, the three Terrestrials stared into theobservation plates, watching the rapidly enlarging pictures of theNevian space-ship. Nerado had traced them and was following them, andsuch was the power of the great vessel that the nearly inconceivablevelocity of the lifeboat was the veriest crawl in comparison to that ofthe pursuing cruiser.

  "And we've hardly started to cover the distance back to Tellus. Ofcourse you couldn't get in touch with anybody yet?" Bradley stated,rather than asked.

  "I kept on trying until they blanketed my wave, but all negative.Thousands of times too far for my transmitter. Our only hope of reachinganybody was the mighty slim chance that our super-ship might be prowlingaround out here already, but it isn't, of course. Here they are!"

  Reaching out to the control panel, Costigan shot out against the greatvessel wave after wave of lethal vibrations, under whose fiercelyclinging impacts the Nevian defensive screens flared white; but,strangely enough, their own screens did not radiate. As if contemptuousof any weapons the lifeboat might wield, the mother ship simply defendedherself from the attacking beams, in much the same fashion as a wildcatmother wards off the claws and teeth of her spitting, snarling kittenwho is resenting a touch of needed maternal discipline.

  "They probably won't fight us, at that," Clio first understood thesituation. "This is their own lifeboat, and they want us alive, youknow."

  "There's one more thing we can try--hang on!" Costigan snapped, as hereleased his screens and threw all his power into one enormous pressorbeam.

  The three were thrown to the floor and held there by an awful weight, asif the lifeboat darted away at the stupendous acceleration of the beam'sreaction against the unimaginable mass of the Nevian sky-rover; but theflight was of short duration. Along that pressor beam there crept a dullrod of energy, which surrounded the fugitive shell and brought it slowlyto a halt. Furiously then Costigan set and reset his controls, launchinghis every driving force and his every weapon, but no beam couldpenetrate that red murk, and the lifeboat remained motionless in space.No, not motionless--the red rod was shortening, drawing the truant craftback toward the launching port from which she had so hopefully emerged afew days before. Back and back it was drawn; Costigan's utmost effortsfutile to affect by a hair's breadth its line of motion. Through theopen port the boat slipped neatly, and as it came to a halt in itsoriginal position within the multilayered skin of the monster, theprisoners heard the heavy doors clang shut behind them, one afteranother.

  And then sheets of blue fire snapped and crackled all about the threesuits of Triplanetary armor--the two large human figures and the smallone were outlined starkly in blinding blue flame.

  "That's the first thing that has come off according to schedule."Costigan laughed, a short, fierce bark. "That is their paralyzing ray;we've got it stopped cold, and we've each got enough iron to hold itforever."

  "But it looks as though the best we can do is to stalemate," Bradleyargued. "Even if they can't paralyze us, we can't hurt them, and we areheading back for Nevia."

  "I think Nerado will come in for a conference, and we'll be able to maketerms of some kind. He must know what these Lewistons will do, and heknows that we'll get a chance to use them, some way or other, before hegets to us again," Costigan asserted confidently--but again he waswrong.

  The door opened, and through it there waddled, rolled, or crawled ametal-clad monstrosity--a thing with wheels, legs, and writhingtentacles of jointed bronze; a thing possessed of defensive screenssufficiently powerful to absorb the full blast of the Triplanetaryprojectors without effort. Three brazen tentacles reached out throughthe ravening beams of the Lewistons, smashed them to bits, and wrappedthemselves in unbreakable shackles about the armored forms of the threehuman beings. Through the door the machine or creature carried itshelpless load, and out into and along a main corridor. And soon thethree Terrestrials, without armor, without arms, and almost withoutclothing, were standing in the control room, again facing the calm andunmoved Nerado. To the surprise of the impetuous Costigan, the Neviancommander was entirely without rancor.

  "The desire for freedom is perhaps common to all forms of animate life,"he commented, through the transformer. "As I told you before, however,you are specimens to be studied by the College of Science, and you shallbe so studied in spite of anything you may do. Resign yourselves tothat."

  "Well, say that we don't try to make any more trouble; that weco-operate in the examination and give you whatever information we can,"Costigan suggested. "Then you will probably be willing to give us a shipand let us go back to our own world?"

  "You will not be allowed to cause any more trouble," the amphibiandeclared, coldly. "Your co-operation will not be required. We will takefrom you whatever knowledge and information we wish. In all probabilityyou will never be allowed to return to your own system, because asspecimens you are too unique to lose. But enough of this idlechatter--take them back to their quarters!"

  And back to their inter-communicating rooms the prisoners were led underheavy guard.

  True to his word, Nerado made certain that they had no moreopportunities to escape. All the way back to far-distant Nevia thespace-ship sped, where at once, in manacles, the Terrestrials were takento the College of Science, there to undergo the physical and psychicalexaminations which Nerado had promised them.

  Clio and Costigan learned that the Nevian scientist-captain had noterred in stating that their co-operation was neither needed nor desired.Furious but impotent, the human beings were studied in laboratory afterlaboratory by the coldly analytical, unfeeling scientists of Nevia, towhom they were nothing more nor less than specimens; and in full measurethey came to know what it meant to play the part of an unknown, lowlyorganism in a biological research. They were photographed, externallyand internally. Every bone, muscle, organ, vessel, and nerve was studiedand charted. Every reflex and reaction was noted and discussed. Metersregistered every impulse and recorders filmed every thought, every idea,and every sensation. Endlessly, day after day, the nerve-wrackingtorture went on, until the frantic subjects could bear no more.White-faced and shaking, Clio finally screamed wildly, hysterically, asshe was being strapped down upon a laboratory bench; and at the soundCostigan's nerves, already at the breaking point, gave way in anoutburst of Berserk fury.

  The man's struggles and the girl's shrieks were alike futile, but thesurprised Nevians, after a consultation, decided to give the specimens avacation. To that end they were installed, together with their earthlybelongings, in a three-roomed structure of transparent metal, floatingin the large central lagoon of the city. There they were leftundisturbed for a time--undisturbed, that is, except by the continuousgaze of the crowd of hundreds of amphibians which constantly surroundedthe floating cottage.

  "First we're bugs under a microscope," Bradley growled, "then we'regoldfish in a bowl. I don't know that...."

  He broke off as two of their jailers entered the room. Without a wordinto the transformers, they seized Bradley and the girl. As thosetentacular arms stretched out toward Clio, Costigan leaped. A vainattempt. In midair the paralyzing ray of the Nevians touched him and hecrashed heavily to the crystal floor; and from that floor he looked onin helpless, raging fury while his sweetheart and his captain werecarried out of their prison and into a waiting submarine.