The Galaxy Primes by Edward Elmer Smith (short novels to read TXT) 📕

was a perfect job. He would not have—could not have—questioned it himself, except for one highly startling fact. It was of an event that had not happened and never would!

And after breakfast, at some distance from the others, "That is my girl, Brownie! You're firing on all forty barrels. You're an Operator, all right; and it takes a damn good one to lie like that with her mind!"

"Thanks to you, Clee. And thanks a million, really. I'm me again—I think."

Then, since Belle was looking, she took him by both ears, pulled his head down, and kissed him lightly on the lips. The spontaneity and tenderness were perfect at that moment. Clee's appreciation was obvious.

"I know I said you'd have to kiss me next time," Lola said, very low, "but this act needs just this much of an extra touch. Anyway, such little, tiny, sisterly ones as this, and out in public, don't count."

CHAPTER 3

Lola and Garlock went to town in the same taxi. As they were about to separate, Garlock said:

"I don't like those hell-divers, yellow, green, or any other color; and you, Brownie, are very definitely not expendable. Are you any good at mind-bombing?"

"Why, I never heard of such a thing."

"You isolate a little energy in the Op field, remembering of course, that you're handling a hundred thousand gunts. Transpose it into platinum or uranium—anything good and heavy. For one of these monsters you'd need two or three micrograms. For a battleship, up to maybe a gram or so. 'Port it to the exact place you want it to detonate. Reconvert and release instantaneously. One-hundred-percent-conversion atomic bomb, tailored exactly to fit the job. Very effective."

"It would be. My God, Clee, can you do that?"

"Sure—so can you. Any Operator can."

"Well, I won't. I never will. Besides, I'd probably kill too many people, besides the monster. No, I'll 'port back to the Main if anything attacks me. I'm chain lightning at that."

"Do that, then. And if anything very unusual happens give me a flash."

"I'll do that. 'Bye, Clee." She turned to the left. He walked straight on, toward the business center, to resume his study at the point where he had left off the evening before.

For over an hour he wandered aimlessly about the city; receiving, classifying, and filing away information. He saw several duels between guardians and yellow and green-bat monsters, to none of which he paid any more attention than did the people around him. Then a third kind of enemy appeared—two of them at once, flying wing-and-wing—and Garlock stopped and watched.

Vivid, clear-cut stripes of red and black, even on the tremendously long, strong wings. Distinctly feline as to heads, teeth, and claws. While they did not at all closely resemble flying saber-toothed tigers, that was the first impression that leaped into Garlock's mind.

Two bow-legged guardians came leaping as usual, but one of them was a fraction of a second too late. That fraction was enough. While the first guardian was still high in air, grappling with one tiger, the other swung on a dime—the blast of air from his right wing blowing people in the crowd below thither and yon and knocking four of them flat—and took the guardian's head off his body with one savage swipe of a frightfully-armed paw. Disregarding the carcass both attackers whirled sharply at the second guardian, meeting him in such fashion that he could not come to firm grips with either of them, and that battle was very brief indeed. More and more guardians were leaping in from all directions, however, and the two tigers were forced to the ground and slaughtered.

Since six guardians had been killed, eight guardians marched up the street, dragging grisly loads. Eight bodies, friend and foe alike, were dumped into a manhole; eight creatures squatted down and cleaned themselves meticulously before resuming their various patrols.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, Garlock felt Lola's half-excited, half-frightened thought. "Clee, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear."

"There's something coming that's certainly none of my business—maybe not even yours."

"Coming," and with the thought he was there. "Where?"

She pointed a thought, he followed it. Far away yet, but coming fast, was an immense flock of flying tigers!

Lola licked her lips. "I'm going home, if you don't mind."

"Beat it."

She disappeared.

"Jim!" Garlock thought. "Where are you?"

"Observatory. Need me?"

"Yes. Bombing. Two point four microgram loads. Focus spot on my right—teleport in."

"Coming in on your right."

"And I on your left!" Belle's thought drove in as he had never before felt it driven. Being a Prime, she did not need a focus spot and appeared the veriest instant later than did James.

"Can you bomb?" Garlock snapped.

"What do you think?" she snapped back.

A moment of flashing thought and the three Tellurians disappeared, materializing five hundred feet in air, two hundred feet ahead of the van of that horrible flight of monsters, drifting before it.

Belle got in the first shot. Not only did the victim disappear—a couple of dozen around it were torn to fragments and the force of the blast staggered all three Tellurians.

"Damn it, Belle, cut down or get to hell out!" Garlock yelped. "I said two point four micrograms, not milligrams. Just kill 'em, don't scatter 'em all over hell's half acre—less mess to clean up and I don't want you to kill people down below. Especially I don't want you to kill us—not even yourself."

"'Scuse, please, I guess I was a bit enthusiastic in my weighing."

There began a series of muffled explosions along the front; each followed by the plunge of a tiger-striped body to the ground. Faster and faster the explosions came as the Operator and the Primes learned the routine and the rhythm of the job.

Nor were they long alone. The roaring, screaming howl of jets came up from behind them; four Arpalones appeared at their left, strung out along the front. Each held an extraordinarily heavy-duty blaster in each of his four hands; sixteen terrific weapons were hurling death into the flying horde.

"Slide over, Terrestrials," came a calm thought. "You three take their left front, we'll take their right and center."

As they obeyed the instructions, "They don't give a damn where the pieces fly!" Belle protested. "Why should we be fussy about their street-cleaning department? I'm starting to use fives."

"Okay. We'll have to hit 'em harder, anyway, to keep up. Five or maybe six—just be damn sure not to knock us or the Arpalones out of the air."

Carnage went on. The battle-front, while inside the city limits, was now almost stationary.

"Ha! Help—I hear footsteps approaching on jet-back," Garlock announced. "Give 'em hell, boys—shovel on the coal!"

A flight of fighter-planes, eight abreast and wing-tips almost touching, howled close overhead and along the line of invasion. They could not fire, of course, until they reached the city limits. There they opened up as one, and the air below became literally filled with falling monsters. Some had only broken wings; some were dead, but more or less whole; many were blown to unrecognizable bits and scraps of flesh.

Another flight screamed into place immediately behind the first; then another and another and another until six flights had passed. Then came four helicopters, darting and hovering, whose gunners picked off individually whatever survivors had managed to escape all six waves of fighters.

"That's better," came a thought from the Arpalone nearest Garlock. "Situation under control, thanks to you Tellurians. Supposed to be two squads of us gunners, but the other squad was busy on another job. Without you, this could have developed into a fairly nasty little infection. I don't know what you're doing or how you're doing it—we were told that you weren't like any other humans, and how true that is—but I'm in favor of it. I thought there were four of you?"

"One of us is not a fighter."

"Oh. You can knock off now, if you like. We'll polish off. Thanks much."

"But don't the boys on the ground need some help?"

"The Arpales? Those idiots you have been thinking of as 'guardians'? Which they are, of course. Uh-uh. Besides, we're air-fighters. Ground work is none of our business. Also, these guns would raise altogether too much hell down there. Bound to hit some humans."

"Check. Those Arpales aren't very intelligent, you Arpalones are extremely so. Any connection?"

"'Way back, they say. Common ancestry, and doing two parts of the same job. Killing these fumapties and lemarts and sencors and what-have-you. I don't know what humanity's job is and don't give a damn. Probably fairly important, some way or other, though, since it's our job to see that the silly, gutless things keep on living. We have nothing to do with 'em, ever. The only reason I'm talking to you is you're not really human at all. You're a fighter, too, and a damn good one."

"I know what you mean," and the three Tellurians turned their attention downward to the scene on the ground.

The heaviest fighting had been over a large park at the city's edge, which was now literally a shambles. Very few people were to be seen, and those few more moving unconcernedly away from the center of violence. All over the park thousands of Arpales were fighting furiously and hundreds of them were dying. For hundreds of the sencors had suffered only wing injuries, the long fall to ground had not harmed them further, and their tremendous fighting ability had been lessened very little if at all.

"But I'd think, just for efficiency if nothing else," Garlock argued, "you'd support the Arpales some way. Lighter guns or something. Why, thousands of them must have been killed, just in this last hour or so."

"Yeah, but that's their business. They breed fast and die fast. Everything has to balance, you know."

"Perhaps so." Garlock was silenced, if not convinced. "Well, it's about over. What happens to the bodies they're dumping down manholes? They can't go down a sewer that way?"

"Oh, you didn't know? Food."

"Food? For what?"

"The Arpales and us, of course."

"What? You don't mean—you can't mean that they—and by your thought, you Arpalones, too—are cannibals!"

"Cannibals? Explain, please? Oh, eaters-of-our-own-species. Of course—certainly. Why not?"

"Why, self-respect ... common decency ... respect for one's fellow-man ... family ties...." Garlock was floundering; to be called upon to explain his ingrained antipathy to such a custom was new to his experience.

"You are silly. Worse, squeamish. Worst, supremely illogical." The Arpalone paused, then went on as though trying to educate a hopelessly illogical inferior, "While we do not kill Arpales purposely—except when they over-breed—why waste good meat as fertilizer? If a diet is wholesome, nutritious, well-balanced, and tasty, what shred of difference can it possibly make what its ingredients once were?"

"Well, I'll be damned." Garlock quit.

Belle agreed. "This whole deal makes me sick at the stomach and I think my face is turning green too. But I'm devilishly and gleefully glad, Clee, that I was here to hear somebody give you cards, spaces, and big casino and still beat the lights and liver out of you at your own game of cold-blooded logic!"

"We gunners must go now. Would you like to come along with us and see the end of this particular breeding-hole of sencors?"

At high speed the seven flew back along the line of advance of the flying-tiger horde; across a barren valley, toward and to the side of a mountain.

An area almost a mile square of that mountain's side was a burned, blasted, churned, pocked, cratered and flaming waste; and the four helicopters were still working on it. High-energy beams blasted, fairly volatilizing the ground as they struck in as deep as they could be driven. High-explosive shells bored deep and detonated, hurling shattered rock and soil and yellow smoke far and wide; establishing new craters by destroying the ones existing a moment before.

While it seemed incredible that any living thing larger than a microbe could emerge under its own power from such a hell of energy, many flying tigers did; apparently being blown aloft along with the hitherto undisturbed volume of soil in which the creatures had been. Most of them