The Number of the Beast Read online

  “Running news retrieval, Boss.”

  “Report!”

  “Reuters, Straits Times, Singapore. Tragic News of Marston Expedition. Indonesian News Service, Palembang. Two bodies identified as Dr. Cecil Yang and Dr. Z. Edward Carter were brought by jungle buggy to National Militia Headquarters, Telukbetung. The district commandant stated that they will be transferred by air to Palembang for further transport to Singapore when the commandant-in-chief releases them to the Minister of Tourism and Culture. Professor Marston and Mr. Smythe-Belisha are still unreported. Commandants of both districts concede that hopes of finding them alive have diminished. However, a spokesman for the Minister of Tourism and Culture assured a press conference that the Indonesian government would pursue the search more assiduously than ever.”

  Zebbie whistled tunelessly. Finally, he said, “Opinions, anyone?”

  “He was a brilliant man, Son,” my husband said soberly. “An irreplaceable loss. Tragic.”

  “Ed was a good Joe, Jake. But that’s not what I mean. Our tactical situation. Now. Here.”

  My husband paused before answering, “Zeb, whatever happened in Sumatra apparently happened about a month ago. Emotionally I feel great turmoil. Logically I am forced to state that I cannot see that our situation has changed.”

  “Hilda? Deety?”

  “News retrieval report,” announced Gay.

  “Report!”

  “AP San Francisco via satellite from Saipan, Marianas. TWA hypersonic-semiballistic liner Winged Victory out of San Francisco International at twenty o’clock this evening Pacific Coast Time was seen by eye and radar to implode on reentry. AP Honolulu US Navy Official. USS Submersible Carrier Flying Fish operating near Wake Island has been ordered to proceed flank speed toward site of Winged Victory reentry. She will surface and launch search craft at optimum point. Navy PIO spokesman, when asked what was ‘optimum,’ replied ‘No comment.’ Associated Press’s military editor noted that submerged speed of Flying Fish class, and type and characteristics of craft carried, are classified information. AP-UPI add San Francisco, Winged Victory disaster. TWA public relations released a statement quote if reports received concerning Winged Victory are correct it must be tentatively assumed that no survivors can be expected. But our engineering department denies that implosion could be cause. Collision with orbital debris decaying into atmosphere or even a strike by a meteor could repeat could endrep cause disaster by mischance so unlikely that it can only be described as an Act of God endquote TWA spokesmen released passenger list by order of the Civil Aerospace Board. List follows: California—”

  The list was longish. I did not recognize any names until Gay reached: “Doctor Neil O. Brain—”

  I gasped. But no one said a word until Gay announced:

  “End running news retrieval.”

  “Thank you, Gay.”

  “A pleasure, Zeb.”

  Zebbie said, “Professor?”

  “You’re in command, Captain!”

  “Very well, sir! All of you—lifeboat rules! I expect fast action and no back talk. Estimated departure—five minutes! First everybody take a pee! Second, put on the clothes you’ll travel in. Jake, switch off, lock up—whatever you do to secure your house for long absence. Deety—follow Jake, make sure he hasn’t missed anything—then you, not Jake, switch out lights and close doors. Hilda, bundle what’s left of that Dutch lunch and fetch it—fast, not fussy. Check the refrigerator for solid foods—no liquids—and cram what you can into Gay’s refrigerator. Don’t dither over choices. Questions, anyone? Move!”

  I gave Jacob first crack at our bathroom because the poor dear tenses up; I used the time to slide sandwiches into a freezer sack and half a pie into another. Potato salad? Scrape it into a third and stick in one plastic picnic spoon; germs were now community property. I stuffed this and some pickles into the biggest freezer sack Deety stocked, and closed it.

  Jake came out of our bedroom; I threw him a kiss en passant, ducked into our john, turned on water in the basin, sat down, and recited mantras—that often works when I’m jumpy—then used the bidet—patted it and told it goodbye without stopping. My travel clothes were Deety’s baby tennis shoes with a green-and-gold denim miniskirt dress of hers that came to my knees but wasn’t too dreadful with a scarf to belt it. Panties? I had none. Deety had put a pair of hers out for me—but her size would fall off me. Then I saw that the dear baby had gotten at the elastic and knotted it. Yup! pretty good fit—and, with no telling when our next baths would be, panties were practical even though a nuisance.

  I spread my cape in front of the refrigerator, dumped my purse and our picnic lunch into it, started salvaging—half a boned ham, quite a bit of cheese, a loaf and a half of bread, two pounds of butter (freezer sacks, and the same for the ham—if Deety hadn’t had a lavish supply of freezer sacks I could not have salvaged much—as it was, I didn’t even get spots on my cape). I decided that jams and jellies and catsup were liquid within Zebbie’s meaning—except some in squeeze tubes. Half a chocolate cake, and the cupboard was bare.

  By using my cape as a Santa Claus pack, I carried food into the garage and put it down by Gay—and was delighted to find that I was first.

  Zebbie strode in behind me, dressed in a coverall with thigh pockets, a pilot suit. He looked at the pile on my cape. “Where’s the elephant, Sharpie?”

  “Cap’n Zebbie, you didn’t say how much, you just said what. What won’t go she can have.” I hooked a thumb at the chopped-up corpse.

  “Sorry, Hilda; you are correct.” Zebbie glanced at his wrist watch, the multiple-dial sort they call a “navigator’s watch.”

  “Cap’n, this house has loads of gimmicks and gadgets and bells and whistles. You gave them an impossible schedule.”

  “On purpose, dear. Let’s see how much food we can stow.”

  Gay’s cold chest is set flush in the deck of the driver’s compartment. Zebbie told Gay to open up, then with his shoulders sideways, reached down and unlocked it. “Hand me stuff.”

  I tapped his butt. “Out of there, you overgrown midget, and let Sharpie pack. I’ll let you know when it’s tight as a girdle.”

  Space that makes Zebbie twist and grunt is roomy for me. He passed things in, I fitted them for maximum stowage. The third item he handed me was the leavings of our buffet dinner. “That’s our picnic lunch,” I told him, putting it on his seat.

  “Can’t leave it loose in the cabin.”

  “Cap’n, we’ll eat it before it can spoil. I will be strapped down; is it okay if I clutch it to my bosom?”

  “Sharpie, have I ever won an argument with you?”

  “Only by brute force, dear. Can the chatter and pass the chow.”

  With the help of God and a shoehorn it all went in. I was in a back seat with our lunch in my lap and my cape under me before our spouses showed up. “Cap’n Zebbie? Why did the news of Brainy’s death cause your change of mind?”

  “Do you disapprove, Sharpie?”

  “On the contrary, Skipper. Do you want my guess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Winged Victory was booby-trapped. And dear Doctor Brain, who isn’t the fool I thought he was, was not aboard. Those poor people were killed so that he could disappear.”

  “Go to the head of the class, Sharpie. Too many coincidences…and they—the ‘Blokes in the Black Hats’—know where we are.”

  “Meaning that Professor No Brain, instead of being dead in the Pacific, might show up any second.”

  “He and a gang of green-blooded aliens who don’t like geometers.”

  “Zebbie, what do you figure their plans are?”

  “Can’t guess. They might fumigate this planet and take it. Or conquer us as cattle or as slaves. The only data we have is that they are alien, that they are powerful—and that they have no compunction about killing us. So I have no compunction about killing them. To my regret, I don’t know how. So I’m running—running scared—and taking the three I’m certain are in danger
with me.”

  “Will we ever be able to find them and kill them?”

  Zebbie didn’t answer because Deety and my Jacob arrived, breathless. Father and daughter were in jump suits. Deety looked chesty and cute; my darling looked trim—but worried. “We’re late. Sorry!”

  “You’re not late,” Zeb told them. “But into your seats on the bounce.”

  “As quick as I open the garage door and switch out the lights.”

  “Jake, Jake—Gay is now programmed to do those things herself. In you go, Princess, and strap down. Seat belts, Sharpie. Copilot, after you lock the starboard door, check its seal all the way around by touch before you strap down.”

  “Wilco, Cap’n.” It tickled me to hear my darling boning military. He had told me privately that he was a reserve colonel of ordnance—but that Deety had promised not to tell this to our smart young captain and that he wanted the same promise from me—because the T.O. was as it should be; Zeb should command while Jacob handled space-time controls—to each his own. Jacob had asked me to please take orders from Zeb with no back talk…which had miffed me a little. I was an unskilled crew member; I am not stupid, I knew this. In direst emergency I would try to get us home. But even Deety was better qualified than I.

  Checkoffs completed, Gay switched off lights, opened the garage door, and backed out onto the landing flat.

  “Copilot, can you read your verniers?”

  “Captain, I had better loosen my chest belt.”

  “Do so if you wish. But your seat adjusts forward twenty centimeters—here, I’ll get it.” Zeb reached down, did something between their seats. “Say when.”

  “There—that’s about right. I can read ’em and reach ’em, with chest strap in place. Orders, sir?”

  “Where was your car when you and Deety went to the space-time that lacked the letter ‘J’?”

  “About where we are now.”

  “Can you send us there?”

  “I think so. Minimum translation, positive—entropy increasing—along Tau axis.”

  “Please move us there, sir.”

  My husband touched the controls. “That’s it, Captain.”

  I couldn’t see any change. Our house was still a silhouette against the sky, with the garage a black maw in front of us. The stars hadn’t even flickered.

  Zebbie said, “Let’s check,” and switched on Gay’s roading lights, brightly lighting our garage. Empty and looked normal.

  Zebbie said, “Hey! Look at that!”

  “Look at what?” I demanded, and tried to see around Jacob.

  “At nothing, rather. Sharpie, where’s your alien?”

  Then I understood. No corpse. No green-blood mess. Workbench against the wall and flood lights not rigged.

  Zebbie said, “Gay Deceiver, take us home!”

  Instantly the same scene…but with carved-up corpse. I gulped.

  Zebbie switched out the lights. I felt better but not much.

  “Captain?”

  “Copilot.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been well to have checked for that letter ‘J’? It would have given me a check on calibration.”

  “I did check, Jake.”

  “Eh?”

  “You have bins on the back of your garage neatly stenciled. The one at left center reads ‘Junk Metal.’”

  “Oh!”

  “Yes, and your analog in that space—your twin, Jake-prime, or what you will—has your neat habits. The left-corner bin read ‘Iunk Metal’ spelled with an ‘I.’ A cupboard above and to the right contained ‘Iugs & Iars.’ So I told Gay to take us home. I was afraid they might catch us. Embarrassing.”

  Deety said, “Zebadiah—I mean ‘Captain’—embarrassing how, sir? Oh, that missing letter in the alphabet scared me but it no longer does. Now I’m nervous about aliens. ‘Black Hats.’”

  “Deety, you were lucky that first time. Because Deety-prime was not at home. But she may be, tonight. Possibly in bed with her husband, named Zebadiah-prime. Unstable cuss. Likely to shoot at a strange car shining lights into his father-in-law’s garage. A violent character.”

  “You’re teasing me.”

  “No, Princess; it did worry me. A parallel space, with so small a difference as the lack of one unnecessary letter, but with house and grounds you mistook for your own, seems to imply a father and daughter named ‘Iacob’ and ‘Deiah Thoris.’” (Captain Zebbie pronounced the names ‘Yacob’ and ‘Deyah Thoris.’)

  “Zebadiah, that scares me almost as much as aliens.”

  “Aliens scare me far more. Hello, Gay.”

  “Howdy, Zeb. Your nose is runny.”

  “Smart Girl, one gee vertically to one klick. Hover.”

  “Roger dodger, you old codger.”

  We rested on our backs and head rests for a few moments, then with the stomach-surging swoosh of a fast lift, we leveled off and hovered. Zebbie said, “Deety, can the autopilot accept a change in that homing program by voice? Or does it take an offset in the verniers?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Same ell-and-ell two klicks above ground.”

  “I think so. Shall I? Or do you want to do it, Captain?”

  “You try it, Deety.”

  “Yes, sir. Hello, Gay.”

  “Hi, Deety!”

  “Program check. Define ‘Home.’”

  “‘Home.’ Cancel any-all inertials transitions translations rotations. Return to preprogrammed zero latitude longitude, ground level.”

  “Report present location.”

  “One klick vertically above ‘Home.’”

  “Gay. Program revision.”

  “Waiting, Deety.”

  “Home program. Cancel ‘Ground level.’ Substitute ‘Two klicks above ground level, hovering.’”

  “Program revision recorded.”

  “Gay Deceiver, take us home!”

  Instantly, with no feeling of motion, we were much higher.

  Zeb said, “Two klicks on the nose! Deety, you’re a smart girl!”

  “Zebadiah, I bet you tell that to all the girls.”

  “No, just to some. Gay, you’re a smart girl.”

  “Then why are you shacked up with that strawberry blonde with the fat knockers?”

  Zebbie craned his neck and looked at me. “Sharpie, that’s your voice.”

  I ignored him with dignity. Zebbie drove south to the Grand Canyon, eerie in starlight. Without slowing, he said, “Gay Deceiver, take us home!”—and again we were hovering over our cabin. No jar, no shock, no nothing.

  Zebbie said, “Jake, once I figure the angles, I’m going to quit spending money on juice. How does she do it when we haven’t been anywhere?—no rotation, no translation.”

  “I may have given insufficient thought to a trivial root in equation ninety-seven. But it is analogous to what we were considering doing with planets. A five-dimensional transform simplified to three.”

  “‘I dunno, I just work here,’” Captain Zebbie admitted. “But it looks like we will be peddling gravity and transport, as well as real estate and time. Burroughs and Company, Space Warps Unlimited—‘No job too large, no job too small.’ Send one newdollar for our free brochure.”

  “Captain,” suggested Jacob, “would it not be prudent to translate into another space before experimenting further? The alien danger is still with us—is it not?”

  Zebbie sobered at once. “Copilot, you are right and it is your duty to advise me when I goof off. However, before we leave, we have one duty we must carry out.”

  “Something more urgent than getting our wives to safety?” my Jacob asked—and I felt humble and proud.

  “‘Something more urgent.’ Jake, I’ve bounced her around not only to test but to make it hard to track us. Because we must break radio silence. To warn our fellow humans.”

  “Oh. Yes, Captain. My apologies, sir. I sometimes forget the broader picture.”

  “Don’t we all! I’ve wanted to run and hide ever since this rumpus started. Bu
t that took preparation and the delay gave me time to think. Point number one: We don’t know how to fight these critters so we must take cover. Point number two: We are duty-bound to tell the world what we know about aliens. While that little isn’t much—we’ve stayed alive by the skin of our teeth—if five billion people are watching for them, they can be caught. I hope.”

  “Captain,” asked Deety, “may I speak?”

  “Of course! Anyone with ideas about how to cope with these monsters must speak.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t have such ideas. You must warn the world, sir—of course! But you won’t be believed.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Deety. But they don’t have to believe me. That monster in the garage speaks for itself. I’m going to call rangers—real rangers!—to pick it up.”

  I said, “So that was why you told me just to leave it! I thought it was lack of time.”

  “Both, Hilda. We didn’t have time to sack that cadaver and store it in the freezer room. But, if I can get rangers—real rangers—to that garage before ‘Black Hats’ get there, that corpse tells its own story: an undeniable alien lying in its goo on a ranger’s uniform that has been cut away from it. Not a ‘close encounter’ UFO that can be explained away, but a creature more startling than the duckbill platypus ever was. But we have to hook it in with other factors to show them what to look for. Your booby-trapped car, an arson case in Logan, Professor Brain’s convenient disappearance, my cousin’s death in Sumatra—and your six-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry.”

  I said, “Excuse me, gentlemen. Can’t we move somewhere away from right over our cabin before you break silence? I’m jumpy—‘Black Hats’ are hunting us.”

  “You’re right, Sharpie; I’m about to move us. The story isn’t long—all but the math—so I taped a summary while the rest of you were getting ready. Gay will speed-zip it, a hundred to one.” Zebbie reached for the controls. “All secure?”

  “Captain Zebadiah!”

  “Trouble, Princess?”

  “May I attempt a novel program? It may save time.”

  “Programming is your pidgin. Certainly.”

  “Hello, Gay.”

  “Hi, Deety!”

  “Retrieve last program. Report execute code.”