The Silence of Gom Read online

Without a word Bell let go of the arm by which he had pulled the mutant and slammed his clenched fist against the wall. He felt it first give under his punch like a loose rubber sheet and then it promptly bounced back. Bell got up on his knees and flung himself full force against the wall but his luck was no better than hers was. Obviously something had indeed changed the texture of the flounders in the meantime.

  "Stand back!" Bell shouted. "We'll have to shoot our way out!"

  However before he could aim his thermo-beamer, it began to rustle and rasp behind him. Bell didn't let the noise deter him but the others looked back and Marshall shouted: "They're after us! They're leaving the walls, the ceiling and the floor in droves. Hurry up!"

  Bell fired. The changed substance of the flounders was unable to withstand the hissing blast of the raygun and Bell burned out a hole big enough for Goratschin's huge body in a hurry.

  A few seconds later they were on the other side.

  Then they noticed the same rustling grating noise they had heard in the room they just left and they saw by the light of their helmet-lamps gobs of flounders float down from the ceiling, slide down the walls and detach themselves from the floor. The hole, which Bell had burned out behind them, suddenly grew larger. Some of the flounders that had combined to form the thin wall rearranged themselves to extend the opening to the floor in order to permit access to the other flounders poised for attack in the other room.

  "Keep going!" Bell ordered. "We've got to try to find the entrance on the surface through which we came in."

  They strenuously pushed the two-headed mutant in front of them. Bell kept his thermo-beamer handy and shot at the Gom beings without hesitation whenever they crowded too closely around them. There was still no hint why the flounders acted in this manner. They had no weapons—neither natural nor artificial ones. They had no arms, no legs and no teeth. Yet nobody had any illusions as to their ability to conquer an opponent after they had seen what they did to the chewed up spacesuit of Goratschin.

  Shoving the heavy body of the mutant before them, they reached the center of the room. Betty used the searchlight to illuminate every inch of the room but was unable to find the hole through which they had entered. Marshall assisted with the search while Bell and the two teleporters held the advancing flounders in check with short bursts of low-yield energy.

  After one minute it had become clear: the hole no longer existed. The flounders had moved in to close it up.

  "Bell's forehead broke out in sweat. "We must dig another shaft," he decided. "Let's get cracking! Put Ivan next to the wall over there!"

  He rushed ahead and put his raygun to work. He disregarded the heat exuding from the melting stone which now was not carried away by a cooling storm. The outside temperature climbed to nearly 600°F, raising the heat inside the spacesuits to more than 100° despite the heat controls working at capacity.

  But the temperature also got too much for the flounders. They formed a semi-circle around the group who watched Bell blasting away and at the same time kept a wary eye on the flounders, ready to shoot if they attacked anew.

  The exit grew deeper foot by foot. First Goratschin was pushed in behind Bell and the others followed. When the flounders started to move in behind them, Marshall blasted them with a steady fire and killed so many that the others lost interest in the pursuit. Meanwhile Bell remembered that he would have to slant his shaft upward in order to get to the main tunnel. He tried to guess the proper angle and began to cut steps into the rock.

  The extra work didn't matter much more since Marshall had apparently succeeded in preventing the flounders from following them. Nonetheless Betty maintained that the telepathic command to continue the attack remained in effect without pause. Therefore Marshall stayed behind—on the first step to avoid any unnecessary risk from the flounders. Bell had cut each step about one foot wide and five feet high. Marshall was able to lie down comfortably by pulling in his legs a little.

  Above him Bell, Betty and the two teleporters climbed up on the steps they labored to build, dragging the unconscious Goratschin with them. After awhile he saw only the irregular swinging of their lamps. His own shone straight ahead into the shaft. Nothing happened in the next quarter hour. But finally his helmet-mike began to pick up the creepy scraping, sending shudders down his spine.

  The flounders were on the march!

  Marshall calmly watched them as they moved into the light-cone of his lamp. He couldn't judge whether they noticed the light. In any case the grating noise continued unchanged. He held his gun in his hand, ready to shoot, but he waited patiently till the first flounder reached the step. He wanted to trigger his gun because he was certain that the step would not hamper its advance and that it soon would creep up on it. But he didn't press the trigger when he saw that the odd creature touched the rock with its forward edge, slid back a few inches and stopped its motion completely.

  Other flounders crept closer and slid over each other since the shaft was rather narrow. But none of them behaved differently from the first one. They all collided with the stone, fell back and remained motionless a small distance away. Marshall tried an experiment. He put his weapon down for a moment, picked up the uppermost flounder, making sure that none of the others stuck to it, and lifted it up to his step while he moved up one more step.

  The Gom creature was almost as big as the top of the step. He watched as it wandered in confusion a few inches back and forth and skidded against the stone underneath his foot. Then it slid backward till it hung over the edge of the step. When more than half of its body extended into the air, it lost its balance. It flipped over and fell on top of its fellow creatures lying at the bottom of the lowest step.

  Marshall picked up the flounder once again and placed it on the first step as before. It was repugnant to his scientific mind to draw far-reaching conclusions from a single experiment.

  However, he was distracted in the middle of his investigation. At first he thought he'd heard a scream. But when the strange noise was repeated, he realized that it was a telepathic signal. In contrast to the jumbled impulses emanating from the circular rooms, the strong hostile signal calling the flounders to attack and the distant but easily understandable thoughts of his comrades, the latest message gave the impression of coming from a brain which was similar to that of humans, albeit extremely awkward, the gist of it simply being: "Help us! Kill the aliens!"

  Marshall knew Betty would hear the call as clearly as he did but he assumed Bell could use all their weapons when it came to a confrontation. He was convinced the call originated from the flounders—or to be precise: from the total collective of flounders assembled in this place—and was directed to a brain that did not respond well to the telepathy of the Gom creatures, thus resembling in this respect the human brain too.

  Fanning his fire he killed all the flounders crowded around the lowest step. Then he turned around and clambered up the steps, rushing to the best of his ability. On his way he communicated with Betty. Betty had also received the call for help and immediately informed Bell. But so far there was no indication that anyone intended to come to the aid of the flounders.

  • • •

  Bell had already given up the hope of ever reaching the horizontal tunnel through which they had made their way into the subterranean layout when the front wall of the man made shaft broke into large pieces under big sizzling shots and suddenly a dark hole with ragged edges opened up. The room behind it seemed to have a low air pressure. A sharp gust of hot air almost propelled Bell through the hole and hurled dust and stones around him.

  At the same moment Betty heard the desperate cry: "They're in the western reservoir!"

  She was not quite certain that what she had understood as 'western' actually meant 'western.' But that was how she translated it to Bell.

  "Suppose," Bell growled, "they mean us by 'they and aliens,' then we'll soon be very busy. I'm curious who the flounders down there expect to help them."

  He hadn't finished sayin
g the two words "down there" before the light of one of the helmet-lamps fell on a wall of the spacious room in which they stood. Most of these walls, as well as the floor, consisted of bare rocks but at the spot which Ras Tschubai now illuminated was some kind of a curtain made of the dark shiny substance of the flounders' bodies. Bell didn't doubt for a moment that the odd curtain covered an exit—probably to a shaft serving the ventilation and maintaining the constant temperature of the subterranean system.

  He looked in dismay at the unconscious Goratschin and grumbled: "It's hopeless, we've got to drag him out. Over there!"

  He pointed to the curtain. Tako Kakuta crawled to the curtain and threw a punch at it but found that the bodies of the Gom creatures had as yet lost nothing of their newly-acquired elasticity. Bell's fusillade quickly turned the lacquer disks into hissing vapors and fiery drops which cascaded to the floor where they solidified. Bell held the unconscious mutant by the left arm while he fired and hastily dragged him forward when the hole was big enough to show the endless depth of a dark tunnel behind it.

  But a second later he recoiled in horror. There they came through the tunnel: stomping cohorts with legs like columns, carrying bulky, massive bodies. Bodies with 4 arms and round heads from which dull eyes bulged with a blank stare. At least 20 of them, Bell estimated. They stooped forward as they approached since they were 10 feet tall whereas the tunnel was only 6 feet high. They carried weapons, each of which was so heavy that Bell and everybody else would have trouble lifting one of them.

  They were Bios—repulsive artificial creations that were bred by the Aras on Laros. Bell had once caught sight of them on Laros, making him wish he would never get embroiled with them in earnest.

  At the moment, however, it didn't look as if his wish would be granted.

  3/ OF SUPER-GOM & MULTI-BIOS

  Marshall felt Bell's terror as he rested, breathing heavily, on one of the steps. He tried to get up and hurry on but his arms buckled and failed to support him. As he stayed down he tried to determine if the new opponents radiated any impulses. Bell's thoughts made it apparent that he was facing a group of Bios. Their makers, the Aras, had provided them with a slight measure of intelligence—just enough of what they required for functioning as willing and undemanding slaves.

  But for the time being Marshall perceived only the various terror-stricken thoughts of his comrades. When his arms supported him again he raised himself up and climbed under groaning two more steps. Then he was forced to pause again. While he took another breather he received the first signal from the new enemy: "We've reached them!" The telepathic answer came back promptly: "Kill them! They're destroying the climate control system!"

  And Bell's order followed swiftly: "Fire! Drive them back!" The first salvo seemed to be effective; Bell's thoughts were triumphant but Marshall sensed that he no longer held any hope for the final success.

  Then and there Marshall was struck by an idea. He called Betty, who answered at once although the skirmish that had broken out required all her concentration. "They're weak telepaths, Betty!" Marshall transmitted. "We'll have to try to influence them."

  "Do you think we can do it?" Betty asked.

  "Let's give it a try!"

  "I've already tried to wrench their weapons from their ghastly clutches—but they're terribly strong and I can't concentrate enough."

  Betty had two different parapsychological gifts: she was a telepath as well as a telekin. Given enough time, she was able to break up a mile-high mountain into its elements without touching it. However she lacked time and the Bios apparently held their weapons tighter than a mountain its stone. "We want to drive them back into the tunnel," Marshall proposed after Betty had quickly described the situation to him.

  "We want to give them orders to turn around and not to harm Bell."

  Shaken by fear, Betty agreed. "Bell has driven them back a few feet. We now have taken up positions at both sides of the exit so that they'll have to come in to do their shooting. Now... now they're attacking again!" Marshall forced himself to be calm. "Let's begin, Betty! Give it all you've got, girl!"

  • • •

  Reginald Bell was pretty sure that he was about to fight the last battle of his life. The weapons of the Bios were so powerful that he and his little band would be doomed once the Bios succeeded in leaving the tunnel and gained access to the reservoir. At the initial onslaught Bell had killed two Bios with deft shots, which had scared the others so much that they retreated into the tunnel. Yet it could only be a matter of a few moments, despite the fact that their brains were so primitive, till they got the idea that there was no need for them to open themselves to a direct attack. They could burn a second shaft through the rock and enter the reservoir at any place of their choice.

  "They're coming again!" Betty warned.

  Staying close to the ground, Bell stuck his helmeted head just far enough past the wall to see the Bios move in. They held their weapons with the two forward arms. The others were hanging down and swinging from their odd shapeless torsos.

  Bell slid his hand holding his weapon around the edge of the wall and winked encouragingly to the two teleporters. "Let 'em come within 15 feet, boys! That's the deadliest range."

  Gradually he increased the pressure on the button which turned on the continuous fire as he observed the Bios lifting their weapons and touching the triggers. Suddenly the first one stopped in his tracks. Since the tunnel was so narrow that they had to march behind each other, the next one bumped into him. But he stood fast and could not be thrown off balance. His wide jaw dropped open as if he had to gasp for air and, his dimwitted looking face took on an expression momentary of bewilderment.

  The Bios wore no spacesuits. Their bodies were so crude and undiversified that it mattered little to which kind of environment they were exposed as long as the purely mechanical stress was not excessive. Bell saw clearly how the legs of the first colossus began to quaver. He took a step to the side and awkwardly turned around. Bell heard him utter a barely articulated cry and then the entire heap got into reverse motion and retreated with plodding steps into the dark tunnel.

  Bell stared at them, dumbfounded. He crept forward a little and shone his lamp into the tunnel, watching the Bios disappear after a few moments.

  "They're beating it!" Betty rejoiced telepathically so that nobody but John Marshall could notice it.

  Marshall breathed easier and suddenly found strength again to climb up a few more steps. A few minutes later he saw their faint light and he soon crawled, severely panting, into the large hall where Bell and his fighting team had so miraculously survived the attack of the Bios.

  Of course Bell was quickly informed how the 'miracle' had come about. He shook his head in astonishment and muttered: "As you know, Marshall, I've always been a little skeptical toward you mutants..." He looked at Marshall and, winked an eye. "But I must say my respects!"

  Marshall waved him off. "Now I'll see what else I can do for our common good," he mused, causing everybody to listen attentively.

  "Did you get another inspiration? How about telling us where the flounders are hiding our 3 lost buddies?"

  Marshall shook his head. "No, not that. I hardly believe we'll be able to find them, relying on our resources alone. These installations down here seem to be immense."

  He paused as if reflecting about something. "No," he finally continued, "I've given the subject of the flounders some more thought. By the way, don't you think we ought to find a better name for them? As individuals they're at best semi-intelligent. But by joining physically with others they can form units of any size, enabling them to perform remarkable feats, as you've already witnessed."

  "Yes, of course," Bell replied, "and something else."

  "Namely?"

  "The floun... or how shall we call them? The Goms? How do you like that? Well, they must be in touch with the Aras on Laros. Otherwise they couldn't have obtained help from there."

  "Right! Do you have any idea why they do i
t?"

  "Not the slightest," Bell confessed.

  "Think for a moment of Goratschin!" Marshall suggested. "Obviously the Goms were in the process of ingesting him. Then think of the Goms that suddenly dropped down from the ceiling. Don't you get the impression that we were in some kind of a birth-station and that the Goms attempted to feed their embryos—or whatever you want to call their fetus—with organic substances?"

  Bell looked startled. "Right! That could be the explanation. Go on, mastermind!"

  Marshall went on undaunted. "The Goms are therefore specially suited to assimilate organic substances—presumably not limited to their birth-stations. You remember how our Gazelle disappeared. The fully grown Goms probably devour them too. Now what could be more ideal for the Aras than obtaining the substance they need for the creation of the Bios right here on Gom? Here they've a natural source and on Laros they'd have to build complicated facilities to accomplish the same purpose. I'll go further than that: the Aras have located their Bio fortress on Laros for the only reason that the Goms are in convenient reach."

  A silence occupied with many thoughts followed. Finally Bell commented. "You may be right. It all sounds very plausible." He suddenly threw up his head. "But..."

  "But I mentioned I might be able to do something for us. Is that it?"

  "Precisely!"

  Marshall had guessed his thoughts and smiled. "Very well. In the meantime we've found out that we're now inside an air-reservoir of the climate control system. Evidently the Goms multiply best at the temperature of 57.3°F., which we measured a few hours ago. The way I picture such a climate system, there must be somewhere a vacuum chamber to equalize the increase of the air pressure and for the adiabatic reduction of overheated air. Don't you agree?"

  Bell grinned: "Your deductions are very convincing. We're obliged to follow you implicitly."

  Marshall thanked him for the compliment with a smile. "Now we should make it our business to find this vacuum chamber," he proposed, "but we have to watch out for the Bios."