Slowly, inexorably, the struggling
Earthman was metamorphosed into a Siamese
twin—a twin whose partner was jellied death.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories January 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before the Captain's feet fled ghosts of dust. Crackling with staticelectricity they fled before his body-charge. Ringing out through poolsof heat mirage they mushroomed up the toppled walls. In his ears theircrackling was laughter. In his brain he screamed at them.
Crazy dust ghosts, you are more self-willed than I.
His runaway feet splatted on and on over Hogan's deep-toed, runningbootprints in a race of death he could not stop. Crazy dust ghosts.They at least could settle and die. He had the thing on his back. Hehad it driving him endlessly on, his body burning with exertion, hisuncontrollable hands clutching the auto-electric rifle. He had alreadykilled one of his men.
Fool, Joe Hogan, at least stop and try to kill me. This way you areonly leading me to the spheroid. Then it will be able to kill you all.
Stop, stumble, anything damn you; now he was thinking at his feet. Butthey never faltered.
Suddenly the thing shifted its soft weight and drove his feet hard,hurling him face down behind a fallen girder an instant before Hogan'smanmade lightning clanged along the girder and flushed sparrows ofdust into the sky. Behind the dust the Captain's body leaped to anew location and bobbing from its cover fired, not blindly as ifdust-veiled eyes had aimed but deliberately, with the slow-squeezingaim of its organic radar. But its batsense was too late, for itquivered angrily on his neck.
As his body burst through the dust, the Captain's good eye caught thefaroff glint of sun on moving steel where Hogan fled into a jungle ofgirders. The Captain's long legs drove hard in pursuit, but after a fewhundred yards they began to stagger.
Bloodsucker, his thoughts rang, you are as stupid as a man. Keepdriving me this fast and you'll have a dead horse. And what will you bewithout me? Black gunk frying in the sun!
Perhaps I'll die soon, he hoped as his quivering legs rebelled and thecity misted before his good eye.
Angrily it jabbed his thumb into his blinded eye. But it could not spurfresh activity from his legs. No pain could do that now.
It let him walk awhile. Soon he crossed the blurry tracks his men hadleft when he led them into the dead city, unsuspecting.
Single file they had threaded among the collapsed dome-structures andoverthrown cylindricals, a segmented worm of men probing within avast and withered corpse. First the Captain, then Grimes, then Ives,Kwatahiri, Spencer with his hog-snouted prisma-reflex camera, finallyHogan, the worm's rear end. Six of them. The Captain had left Templarto "guard" the spheroid.
In the last city, where as in the preceding five they had found nosign of life except a scum of dried protoplasm thirty feet up on thesides of the buildings, Templar had begun to see "them". The Captainwinced every time he saw Templar's dark blue eyes superimposed on thewreckage ahead, eyes widening with unspeakable horror at something noone else could see. Templar had been too good a soldier to scream, butthe Captain was an old hand at spotting "symptoms", so Templar sat thisone out. And the Captain had made the long-awaited decision: after thiscity they were going home.
Orders are orders, but a good captain will not interpret them sonarrowly as to expend his men for no purpose. There is room forjudgment. He had been sent to ascertain if there were l