Title: Vengeance From the Past
Author: Krepps, Robert W.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Vengeance From the Past" ***


               Ray Rollins fought to preserve the Space
             Station--and Earth--from an enemy mankind had
             forgotten. An enemy in hiding, awaiting its--

                       Vengeance From The Past!

                         By Geoff St. Reynard

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                            September 1954
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It started during the program. The little noises were there but I
didn't pay any attention to them, and I don't know now whether I
thought they were the wind and the rain or maybe some realistic sound
effects on tv. Of course they were the small sounds made by the two
things that wanted to get into my house. They tried the doors, turning
the knobs and pressing their bodies against the panels, and then they
prowled around testing the windows. They were as silent as cobras but
windows pushed or doors shoved will make some noise and so the little
creaks were there but I paid no attention to them.

Then I got the feeling that someone was looking at me.

Nuts. My background as a fiction writer was getting under my skin.
Someone watching me, my God, from where? The French windows behind
me? Who'd be out in this downpour? I was glad my wife Nessa was asleep
upstairs. With a baby on the way she needed her rest. Just to ease my
rippling spine, I'd give a quick glance over my shoulder.

I did.

I saw a face like a gigantic mask. Enormous skull, low brow, small
chin and thick-lipped mouth; wide cheeks and a mass of tumbled gray
hair crowning the hatless head. Suggestion of a body like a gorilla's
clad in dark broadcloth. Hands pressed flat on the glass, short thumbs
and long fingers thick as country sausages. Worst of all the ghastly
thing, two thinned eyes that caught the light of the tv lamp and shot
it back at me as glowing crimson oblongs of animal hate. This creature,
standing rock-steady beyond the full-length windows that were
streamed and blurry with the driving rain, this beast, this--

I closed my eyes tight and then opened them. It was gone into the rain,
an optical illusion! It had really spooked me there for an instant, the
old marrow was still cold from the first grisly shock.

I turned and started watching the set again. I started to chuckle to
myself. I heard the French windows snap and groan a little with the
wind. Then I heard the fretful sound of a strained and snapping bolt.
_That_ wasn't the wind! I jumped to my feet and whirled around. I froze
where I stood. A hulking brute with a mask for a face was coming for me
and then I saw the face was a face and not a mask at all.

Another man behind the horror said sharply, "Don't touch him, Old One!"
and those paws with the sausage fingers fell reluctantly. I backed up
two steps and the tv set held me from going any further. The second
intruder passed the horror and thrust out his hand, which was about as
big as a hand can be without becoming an outsize foot; it took me a
moment to realize that he meant me to shake it. When I didn't move, he
grinned and said in his deep voice, "Don't know me, Ray?" and then I
did know him. I was happier not remembering him, I wished I could stop
knowing who he was, but now I did and I knew I was likely going to be
dead before sunup, because he was Bill Cuff.

I did shake hands with him. I'm five-feet-ten and weigh one-sixty
and I'm about as rugged as the average guy, or more so, because I
play handball and used to be a pro footballer before I got married;
but if I'd angered Bill Cuff he might have picked me up and torn me
into little scraps like a piece of bond paper. He was the strongest
man I ever knew. And for a couple of years he'd been badly wanted by
the police, because he had murdered at least a dozen people. I shook
hands with him. I didn't like it but I wasn't going to pander to my
preferences just then.

"Sit down, Ray," Bill said, as if it had been his house. "Sit down, Old
One." This to his companion.

The thing with the face sat on the floor, folding down without effort
till his hams rested on his heels. I sat on the couch. Bill Cuff walked
up and down the room. He kept his voice pitched low as he talked and I
knew that Nessa wouldn't hear a thing if she happened to be awake. I
watched Cuff. He moved back and forth like a great panther brooding in
its cage and planning an escape. There was something so easy in those
movements of leg and body that the effect wasn't altogether human.
Which wasn't surprising, in view of what he proceeded to tell me....



                              CHAPTER II


"You remember, Ray, the week I disappeared? You remember how I killed
the two museum guards and the three cops, and afterwards the eight or
ten searchers who were pursuing me through the swamp? It made headlines
all over this country and the rest of the world too. Jack the Ripper
had a grandson. Bill Cuff the mad berserker was unleashed on the world,
breaking men's backs and twisting their heads in a nightmare of murder.
Where would he strike next?

"And then I didn't strike, and they said I must be dead, drowned in the
swamplands.

"I wasn't dead: obviously. I'd been discovered by a muster of the Old
Companions, and was living in their HQ, an ancient wooden house in the
center of the swamps. I was learning the history of my race, and the
plans that it had for its future.

"My race, yes....

"Ray we are the Neanderthals...."

I didn't laugh at him, hearing Bill Cuff say that so soberly. I
couldn't. Not with the _thing_ sitting on the floor watching me; the
thing that had stepped right out of a museum reconstruction of the
Stone Age! Cuff went on talking.

"My memories came at me in a flood, remembrances of the dawn of time. I
fled in retrospect from the encroachments of Man, he who was a little
like me but so vastly different; Man who gradually, painstakingly wiped
out my breed. Or so he thought. He forgot the matings, the myriad
couplings of Neanderthal bucks with human women. He forgot that dark
blood runs stronger than light, that the bestial is stronger than the
civilized, that a drop of wolf-blood will often make a dog a ravening
brute, that one small dilution of Neanderthal carries down through
years and centuries to crop up again, full-fledged and vigorous, time
after time in an otherwise placid strain.

"The Neanderthal died, but his seed was carried in the bodies of Homo
sapiens, and after a period cropped out in violent flowering as the
Pict. Luck brought out the great strain in force, and banding together
in the isles, we were a race apart once more. Then time conquered us
a second season; the Picts were vanquished and their pitiful remnants
bred once more into the watery outlander life-form, that of Man.

"Then in later ages we discovered ourselves as different, but never
could make of ourselves a dominant race: so we were hunted in ones
and twos, and when our ancient blood cried for vengeance on Man, we
slew him and died alone. We were the so-called werewolves and the
vampires, the ghouls, the ogres, the incubi and succubi, the Good Folk
and changelings and devils of the woods. We who always fought Man,
unknowing what we were or why we fought, we formed the basis of every
legend that told of horrible alien things lying in wait beside every
path and in every fen and bog and desolute place.

"In the eighteenth century we were the raging madmen of Bedlam.

"Late in the nineteenth, science unwittingly came to our aid. The
Neanderthal man emerged from dry bones as a beast, a manlike animal
who had fallen to make way for Homo sapiens. And gradually those of us
who had the dawn brain, the remembrance of glories far past, realized
that we were not mad, but poor deluded men who thought ourselves
different--we _were_ different. We were the descendants and inheritors
of the Neanderthal, he who came before man and was in many ways
better, stronger, more savagely intelligent and possessed of much
higher capabilities. We were not men, and the time was coming when we
would no longer need to masquerade as men. We were coming into our
inheritance!"

Bill Cuff halted in front of me and his face, broad, heavy-boned,
topped with thick black hair and carrying an expression of cruel and
truculent power, now lit up with malignant glee. I felt a cold chill.

"And all this I remembered in a space of two days!

"What I remembered best was the hate.

"We hated you--oh, God, how we hated! Imagine the hate you'd feel
toward a race from Mars that came and overran your planet and stamped
out your folk till only a pitiful handful were left. Man had come and
usurped _our_ earth, hadn't he? So the blood remembered, and hated."

Bill Cuff laughed suddenly.

"Ray, I'm not mad, as you were just thinking. I offer you that as
proof: we are to a degree telepathic. All of us. Yet _men_ are not.

"It's true. _We are the Neanderthals. We are not human. And we have
returned to take back our inheritance, which is the world!_"



                              CHAPTER III


He allowed me to sit without speaking for the space of about ten
minutes. I needed that time. I had to go all over what he'd said,
consider each statement, try to forget that it sounded like fantasy,
try to realize that Bill Cuff and Lord knew how many others of the
so-called Old Companions believed this yarn with their whole energies.
I had to take the tale and consider it in its entirety, as a broad
concept which might be true, and then I had to grit my teeth and look
at the significance of it as if by some incredible, wild chance it
_were_ true....

The significance was horrible, of course, but it was doubly or rather
trebly awful for me personally, because Bill Cuff was my cousin.

His father, who'd died before Bill was born, had been my mother's
brother.

And the reason I say it was trebly bad for me was that upstairs my wife
Nessa lay asleep, and stirring in her was our child.

And if Bill Cuff was right, then that child and I myself came of a race
that was only partly human; and neither of us could call ourselves by
the proud title of Man.

At the end of ten minutes, the creature called Old One roused himself
and gave a grunt. It seemed to be a two-syllable word, but of no
language I ever knew.

Bill Cuff nodded and replied, "Yes he does, Old One," showing that it
had actually conveyed meaning. I looked again at that ferocious mask,
and I think I began believing Bill Cuff's story with an intelligent
awareness of its truth, right them. Old One was a Neanderthal. Only a
blind idiot could have doubted it.

"Now here's the reason I've come here to tell you this," began Bill
Cuff, and I waved a hand to stop him.

"I know why," I said huskily. "We're cousins. You think the same blood
may run in my veins."

"It does without a doubt. You see, I've checked on my mother, who's
still living; and she isn't a carrier. So it was my father--your uncle.
And you may not have the memory, Ray, but you have the blood. You're
Neanderthal too."

"So you want me to come out to the swamps and join you?"

Bill Cuff flung himself onto the couch beside me, leaning near,
breathing into my face. His breath smelled like raw meat, or maybe it
was my imagination. He said, his voice a rumbling growl, "No, that
isn't why I came. I want to find Howard. And I think you know where he
is."

My belly contracted and my palms that were already damp became clammy.

I got up and paced the room nervously. My brain was clanking and
buzzing in a kind of scrambled gear.

       *       *       *       *       *

Howard Rollins was my brother. He was a scientist, a top-flight brain;
serious where I'm flippant, keen where I'm fuzzy, and high-IQed where
I'm sort of upper-middle-minded. He'd been working for the government
since the establishment of Oak Ridge. Right at that moment he was on
a small heavily forested scrap of land off the Maine coast, a bit of
wind-swept earth called Odo Island. I knew what he was doing and it
was as important as the atom bomb, or maybe even more so. I knew these
things because Howard trusted me. I said to Bill Cuff, "He's on Pompey
Island."

Cuff's gray eyes glinted. I noticed now that Old One's eyes were
exactly the same color. "_Cachug_," said Cuff, or some damn fool grunt
that sounded like it, and Old One got up and went out of the French
windows into the wind and rain, lurching like a clothed gorilla. Then
my cousin turned to me once more.

"We know what he's doing, Ray; but we couldn't find out where he was
doing it. We have Old Companions in the government, but none who were
placed in your position, who'd know where Howard was despite the heavy
curtain of secrecy. So I had to risk coming into the city to see you."
He seemed to listen then, to sounds which I couldn't hear. He grinned.
"Now," he said, "how soon can you wind up your affairs for, say, a
week?"

"Right now," I said, almost without thinking. "I have six scripts
completed--"

"Then you'll meet us in Boston tomorrow afternoon--five sharp beside
the City Hall on School Street."

"Wait a minute," I protested. "What--"

"We'll explain everything then. Don't worry, Ray. You deal fairly
with us and we'll deal more than fairly by you. If you're telling me
the truth, if you play ball, you'll be the first member of the Old
Companions accepted in spite of lack of dawn memory. A proud thing," he
said, drawing himself up to his impressive full height, "a very proud
thing, Ray." The flame of a fanatic shone in the gray eyes, and then
he had turned and was gone and I was staring at the dead tv set and
licking my lips that were dry as tomb-dust.

When I was sure they had both gone, I crossed to the French windows
and secured them with a chair, and then I went to the phone. I had
to call the police right away, of course; I was believing the mad
Neanderthal story, but I knew that the light of morning might force me
to discredit it; nevertheless, Bill Cuff the multiple murderer had been
here, and the cops would have to know. Thank God I'd given my cousin
the wrong address for Howard! I picked up the phone and started to dial
the police.

To this day I don't know why I racked the phone before I'd finished
dialing. Some hunch, I don't know what it was. I stood there in the
diffused radiance of the tv lamp, still trembling from my recent
interview with that ripper and his apeman sidekick, and for a few
minutes I didn't do anything but breathe heavily, and then I turned and
raced up the stairs.

Not until I saw the empty bed, the blanket and sheet on the floor, the
open window, not till then did I face the fact that Bill Cuff would
never have left me without taking along a hostage.

Nessa was gone!



                              CHAPTER IV


I caught the seven a.m. train for Boston. I hadn't slept or even lain
down all night. The sole conclusion I'd come to was that I didn't dare
ask for help in this job, not yet at any rate. I would be jeopardizing
Nessa's life.

I had thought of the police. But they'd had two years to find Bill Cuff
and failed. One hint that they were looking for him, and he with his
crazy Old Companions would stamp out my wife's life as off-handedly
as I'd squash a beetle. I'm a law-abiding citizen and I respect the
enforcers of the law; but this was a special case. I'd done my civic
duty other times, but now I was on a one-man crusade. I had to save
Nessa. If I could chop down Cuff, well and good. But Nessa came first.

As the train shot along through countryside scattered with dying autumn
foliage, swept with intermittent rains, I thought of my brother Howard
and his work. On Odo Island he and six other top-grade brains were
creating a space station for the United States--a man-made moon, the
first jump to the stars--and equally important, a lookout post from
which we could keep tabs on all of Earth.

A lot of the heavy forest on Odo was false; it couldn't be detected
from the air, and the formation of the island prevented its being seen
from the sea, but plenty of that green was only a big canopy shielding
the small air field on which a great wheel-shaped space station had
already been put together. 237 feet across, it would in the near future
be carried off the earth, towed by the enormous three-stage rockets
which were already waiting in hiding along the eastern coast of the
States. One thousand miles up--one thousand _plus_--it would then
become a satellite of Terra.

Odo was guarded by its coast, a real rock-bound wreckers' paradise,
and by six brace of anti-aircraft guns. There were forty Marines
based there, six scientists, and eighty-odd workmen. Everyone had
been screened back to his grandparents, and evidently none of the Old
Companions had been able to worm in, since Bill Cuff hadn't known where
the artificial moon was being constructed.

Pompey Island was about twelve miles to the south of Odo. There wasn't
anything on it but trees and the only chuckle I could muster during
that whole train ride was at the picture of Bill Cuff at the head of
a hundred Neanderthal men (all clad in mammoth skins and carrying
stone-headed clubs) landing on Pompey and roaring over it in search of
my brother and his metal moon.

I had no idea why I was to meet Cuff in Boston. For all I knew, Nessa
might be held in New York, in Alabama, or in Evanston, Illinois. But I
had to go to Boston, because I had no other lead whatever. I couldn't
form plans because I was so totally in the dark. I just had to do what
I could. And I had to be ready to think like lightning when I did meet
Cuff and find out what was happening.

Just as we drew into the station, I used an old writer's trick: I
swallowed a couple of dexedrine tablets so that for a few hours my
fatigue would lie down and I'd have a kind of false vigor of intellect
and muscles. I'd be mighty tired by morning, but for now I'd be at
peak. I got off and took a taxi to a hotel near School Street. I bathed
and shaved and checked my automatic and the extra clips in my jacket;
then I ate an early supper and walked over to City Hall.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the nose of five o'clock a gray car drew up and one of the men in
the back seat rolled down the window and gestured me over. I got in
beside the driver and we moved away into the traffic. Nobody said
anything until we had left Boston behind and were almost into Lynn.
Then Bill Cuff said from the back seat, "You seem pretty calm, Ray,"
and laughed. "That's the blood," he said admiringly. "That's the dark
blood. A _man_ would be fizzing and twitching and babbling his head
off."

I had determined not to think any further than the rescue of Nessa. I
wasn't going to bog down in speculations as to my humanness, or the
truth of this whole theory of Cuff's; but even so, the chills chased
over me when he said _man_ like that. Wasn't I altogether human? Would
I, too, eventually experience the dawn brain's awakening, the revulsion
against humanity, the reversion to pre-historic emotion?

I said as casually as possible, "Seems you don't trust the dark blood
any further than you could spit it, Bill."

"Not in you, not yet. I'm sorry about Nessa. She was a sensible
precaution. You wouldn't think much of my wits if I hadn't taken her."

"Where is she?" I held my breath tensely.

"You'll see her at the end of the trip."

"And when's that?" My breathing relaxed a trifle.

"Few hours."

"He wants to know too much," said the driver. I looked over at him. He
was a thick, short, shallow-templed fellow, gray of eye and straight of
thin-lipped mouth. He had ears like a baby elephant's long unkempt hair
draping over them. I could smell his breath three feet away.

"Shut up, Trutch," said Bill Cuff impatiently. "He's my cousin."

"But has he the dawn brain? Are you sure he--"

"Shut up. Just shut up," said Bill, and his voice was like that of a
maniac holding himself in with a terrible effort.

"I don't think you ought to tell him things like--" persisted Trutch,
and then Bill Cuff had leaned forward and given him a hell of a wallop
on the side of the head with his open palm. The driver jerked forward
and grunted and then he was quiet, as the car lurched and recovered. We
were doing fifty. Cuff said, "Shut up! When I tell you that, do it!"

There were two other men in the back. One of them growled, "Easy, Bill.
We live by the primal rage, but you must control it."

       *       *       *       *       *

I turned and put my arm across the back of the seat and looked at the
man who had spoken. He was another of the short and stocky breed.
His eyes were snapping gray gems in a face as tan as a boot. He had
more hair piled on top of his long skull than I ever saw on anyone
but a movie actor: it was bright yellow, not gold but sulphur yellow,
and slicked with oil. His features were broad and at the same time
vulpine, the thickened muzzle of a fox. I had meant only to glance
at each of them in turn, but my gaze was held by this Old Companion.
His expression was good-humored and yet he radiated evil, an old,
old wickedness commingled with piercing intelligence. When at last I
managed to tear my eyes from him, I knew that this was the worst of my
enemies. I could not have defended that by logic, but neither could I
have been argued out of it. I would have faced five giant Bill Cuffs
rather than this yellow-haired creature.

"My name is Skagarach," he said to me, bringing my eyes back to him
involuntarily. "I am third leader in our muster of the Old Companions.
You have met the second leader, Old One. That is the truth of our
folk. In time, in generations, we shall all look so, and the effete
refinements of Homo sapiens will be gone." He glanced at Bill Cuff, who
towered beside him, watching me. "Bill is first leader. In two years
he has become so. He killed nineteen of us to gain that leadership."
Skagarach smiled, cunningly and drily. I gathered that he was not fond
of my cousin. And that was my first piece of real hope.

"The man at the wheel," he went on, "is called Trutch. As far as I know
he has no other name. The fourth is Vance." This last was a young
fellow, about as wide as he was high, with the usual gray eyes.

"Are the eyes a distinguishing characteristic?" I asked.

"Some ninety per cent of us have them. You do yourself. But every
gray-eyed man is not Homo-Neanderthal by any means."

"How _do_ you--we--tell each other apart from men?"

"Actions: Cuff killed insanely, from a human viewpoint, that is, and
then answered our telepathic call. Occasionally we have only actions,
not mental communication, to judge by, and then we find the one who has
gone berserk and test him. Sometimes the dawn brain returns to an Old
Companion without the gift of telepathy."

"Suppose I were to say that I remembered being a caveman. How would you
test that?"

Skagarach and Bill Cuff grinned. The other two seemed without humor.
"Go ahead, tell us what you remember," said my cousin.

"I don't--but suppose I say, I remember hunting a mammoth...."

"You would be lying. You'd recall other things--mating with human
women, being stalked to your death, fighting the upstart Man. You
would have flashes of other centuries, of being named werewolf,
vampire, hobgoblin, ogre, bugbear and demon. Always the violence, the
antagonism to man, the slaying and being slain. Not the common everyday
life, but the high and savage points."

"I see. You give me a swell opportunity to lie to you," I told him
candidly. I had nothing to lose, for I wouldn't bother lying. I had a
hunch it wouldn't do me any good in this swift job I had to do.

"There are other checks on you," said Skagarach. He leaned forward
suddenly. "Truthfully--_do you_ have stirrings when I say those things?
Does your brain murmur the least surprise of faintest recognition?"

"Truthfully," I said, "no."

"Never mind," said he, sitting back again. "It took me 17 years to
develop the memory fully. Others are given it by a knock on the head,
or even, as Cuff here, gain it full-blown in a few days with no
stimulus from outside. You be patient, Ray. It will come."

_And when it does, if it does_, I thought, _I hope I have the strength
to kill myself before I stop being a man and turn into one of these
pre-historic horrors!_

Then I remembered that they claimed telepathic powers. I glanced from
one to another. Either my sudden thought hadn't reached them, or they
hadn't minded its implications. I said tentatively, "Can you read the
thoughts of other men?"

"_Men_, not other men," said Trutch viciously.

"Yes," said Skagarach.

Now I had spent a good many years around actors, and damned good ones
at that. This Skagarach was an actor from the word go, but I believed
that I was a better one. So I said carelessly, "Can you tell what I'm
thinking?" and allowed my face to assume the tiniest lines of worry,
the smallest indications of fear possible to the facial muscles.
Skagarach said immediately, "You're fretting over your wife."

It was a good guess. He knew his book of reactions and signs inside and
out. The only trouble was that I had at that moment been concentrating
intently on a chocolate milk shake and a cheeseburger. I had even been
saying the words over in my mind. So I knew that he had been trying to
convince me of the truth of a lie, and that was another flake of hope
for me.

It was a good thing for me that I had those few minute hopes. They were
_all_ I had.



                               CHAPTER V


In the late dusk of evening the car pulled off the road and rattled
over a field full of boulders and stopped at the top of a high
cliff overlooking the sea. We all got out and stretched our cramped
legs. Bill Cuff walked along the edge of the foreland until he came
to a trace of path. He called to us and we followed him down the
nearly-sheer face of the promontory, myself trying not to look at the
dark foam spattered sea so far beneath our feet.

At the base of the promontory was a beach. It had looked tiny from
above; I found that it was large, for the ocean had long ago hollowed
out a great cavelike place in the rock, and the beach ran back under
the land for several hundred feet. There were dim blue searchlights
set up at intervals, which would not have been seen from any distance;
no ship would come closer than a mile to the coast here, and so the
presence of Old Companions in the cavern would be kept secret.

Old Companions....

Great God! What a horde swarmed in that hidden hole, across that
rock-canopied beach! There were about two hundred of them. The majority
were duplicates, in breadth of frame and depth of chest, of Trutch
and Vance. The faces were handsome or ugly, grotesque or plain, yet
all held the concentrated savagery of my four escorts. Many had arms
longer than normal. Some were so deformed that their gait as they
crossed the sand on various errands was almost that of an ape that
swings along on its knuckles. Again, several were tall and personable,
like Bill Cuff.

They were all dressed darkly, in gray broadcloth or black wool jackets,
crepe-soled shoes, no ties and no hats evident. Some of them were
carrying things--submachine guns, handguns, even hand grenades--from
broken crates to the six big boats that lined the water's edge. Others
were giving orders in voices that were almost without exception gruff
and barking. And everywhere I looked I caught the stare of gray eyes:
eyes that took the blue glow of the searchlights and threw it back
condensed and changed, so that from many dark faces there gleamed at me
thin ovals of orange and crimson and green luminescence.

Now I knew for sure that the tale of the recrudescent apemen was no
fable. Now the focused animal hatred of this pack washed over me like
an unclean sea-wave full of crawling horrors and I realized fully and
beyond a doubt that Bill Cuff's story was true, and that here in this
cavern might well be the start of the finish of the human race.

"Where's Nessa?" I asked Skagarach. I spoke to him rather than to my
cousin because I had a plan and this could well be the start of it.

"She's back there, I suppose," he said, gesturing to the rear of the
beach. "First come and see the boats." He led me toward the dockless
rim of the sea, and Bill Cuff came after us, glowering at him. I'd
presumed he would hate any assumption of authority on Skagarach's part.
The thing they called the primal rage bubbled near the surface in Bill
Cuff.

       *       *       *       *       *

The boats were very like LCPs, with big bow ports closed by movable
ramps. Skagarach said, "Yes, very like LCPs," which of course was not
mind-reading, but intelligent guessing of my first thought. "We ground
them on the beach, then they can be backed off easily, because of their
specially designed propellors and rudders. The power comes from a
reactor operating with thermal neutrons, and late refinements have made
it almost wholly silent. This is the perfect transportation for us."

"To Pompey Island, naturally," I said.

"Naturally," said Bill Cuff in a surly tone. "We're going to pay Howard
a visit."

"But what good will that do?"

"Don't be a burbling, maundering, congenital idiot, Ray," said Bill
irritably. "That space station is the answer for us. With it we'll
command the world."

"But how will you get it into the sky?"

"The same way the _men_ were going to do it. Tow it with three stage
rockets." He relaxed his expression of potential murder, and gripped
me by the shoulder. His hand was like a bear trap. "There are musters
of the Old Companions lying in wait near every rocket station on the
seaboard. As soon as we've secured possession of the space station,
they'll know it; and within fifteen minutes the rockets will be on the
way to Pompey."

"Oh, wait a minute," I said. I was consumed with impatience to see
Nessa, but the sheer incredibility of this plot had to be coped with
now. These men were stark crazy.... "If I dared to write up a yarn in
which three-stage rockets were flown to an island and from there into
the sky with a 237-foot-broad space station, my publisher would slit my
throat with a rolled-up contract! Vampires are easier to believe than a
wacked thing like that."

"Ray," said Bill Cuff, and suddenly from the growl in his voice I
realized that I had been taking liberties with a savage cave-brute,
"Ray, do we seem like fumblers to you?"

"No," I said.

"How do you think the _men_ were going to do it?"

"I don't know, but I presumed they'd dismantle the station, after
testing it, and tow it in parts into space, where they'd reassemble it."

"Dead wrong. They were going to carry it to the thousand-mile mark by
three-stage rockets, yes; but as a whole, not in parts."

"I didn't think it could be done."

"It can with the rockets they have. There've been improvements since
you read about rocketry last, Ray." Cuff looked superior. As if he'd
had something to do with the improvements, instead of squatting
somewhere in a swamp. "And that isn't all. Those rockets are going
to be towed themselves--from their bases to the site of the man-made
moon--by smaller vehicles built on the principles of the VTO planes."

VTO--Vertical Take Off. Yes, it was remotely conceivable....

"But all this thud-and-blunder business," I protested, turning to
Skagarach. "You're dealing with the highest product of man. And you
figure to take it over by a series of ambushes, wild attacks in the
night, and in general the heavy hand of the apeman. It's straight out
of a nut hatch."

Then Bill Cuff hit me. I saw the swing coming, and the trunklike arm
sweeping round and up with a fist like a boulder on the end of it, and
I started to duck, and then the mountain collapsed on my skull and the
blue lights went out, _wham_!



                              CHAPTER VI


I came gradually out of a scarlet fog into a jet-black well. My head,
which was aching abominably, was pillowed on something soft and warm
and slightly moving. I heard mutters of guttural voices, the slap of
waves on metal. I licked my dry lips and tasted salt. Blood? No, ocean
salt. We were at sea. I was a little chilly. I shivered, tried to see
something, and made out the dim figure of a person above me. The sky
was moonless and inky. I was lying with my head in this person's lap. I
breathed deep and said quietly, "Nessa?"

"Yes, Ray."

I didn't have words. I reached up and touched her face with my fingers,
and she bent and we kissed. "You okay?" I said then.

"I'm okay," said Nessa. That was all. For now, that was enough.

"Anybody near us?" I looked up at her tense face.

"I am," said Skagarach. He moved into my vision, and I sat up, head
pounding, and stared at him until I could make out his foxy features.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath. "Cuff is on the primitive side.
So are we all ... but there ought to be limits. There was no sense in
hitting you."

"I don't get it," I said. "Why is that big murder-machine the first
leader, and not you, Skagarach?"

"Ah," he said. "Ah, yes. Some of us wonder about that too." For all his
obvious intelligence, he was a sucker for a one-two compliment to the
jaw.

"That was an awful belt he gave me," I said. Something had just
occurred to me. "It kind of addled my brains. Lord, I'd like to hit him
back for that!"

"Ray?" said Nessa uncertainly. She knew me for a strictly
non-aggressive joe since I'd quit football.

"I feel--I feel furious," I said, and I hissed it low and aimed it at
Skagarach. "I never had so much yearning to pulverize someone."

Skagarach leaned over and peered into my eyes. "Don't sit on it," he
said. "Let it fume, let it rage. It may well be the primal anger. Let
it have its way. Only--I don't suggest you hit Cuff."

"Not with my fists, anyway," I agreed. "Maybe with a gun butt."

"Let the rage bubble," he said, laughing almost without sound. "You'll
do, Ray Rollins; I believe you'll do." He sat down, staring ahead.

I found Nessa's hand and squeezed it reassuringly. She must have been
baffled by the things I'd said. Then I took up with Skagarach where
I'd left off on the beach. "All this hand-to-hand combat rot," I said.
"Where will that get you--us? Dealing with rockets and space stations,
and doing it with submachine guns, after all. It's race suicide."

"You're thinking on the wrong tack. We are the primeval beings,
yes; and we're facing, and prepared to use, the farthest reaches of
scientific achievement. But look, Ray: if an intelligent caveman came
among a group of moderns, and saw a gun lying there, and was taught how
to use it, which would be the bright thing to do--snatch it and use it
on them, or wade in with his fists?

"We intend to blot out Homo sapiens and we shall do it. But not with
stone clubs, not with revolvers. No, we'll lay hands tonight on man's
greatest weapon, the only weapon which can be turned against the whole
globe: the space station. You object to our primitive methods. You're
not thinking deeply enough. The pure science of the station, the
rockets and the VTO tugs buffaloes you. You can't see a horde of men
with handguns and grenades capturing those awesome devices."

"That's right, I can't."

"Why not? There is no more problem here than there is attacking a bank
vault, or an outpost of soldiers. So far as the government knows, there
is no secret army within its borders! They haven't the faintest notion
that _we_ exist, an army of manlike non-men.

"It's the broad conception that stumps you, Ray. So picture each
operation by itself. The storming of the rocket ports--by quite
adequate troops of ours, well-armed and savage. Then the towing of the
rockets, by VTO tugs, to Pompey Island--this done by technicians and
scientists who are not men, but Neanderthals. Then the locking of the
space station to the rockets, and the takeoff for outer space. Sixty of
us in these boats, plus twenty waiting with other musters at the rocket
stations will man that moon. From attack on Pompey to blast-off from
Terra should take from one to three hours."

"You are insane," said Nessa in a shocked voice.

"No," said Skagarach seriously, "we are sane. But we have fought for
the existence of our race through too many thousands of years, in too
many lands and too many ages, to have mercy now that our hour is at
hand."

       *       *       *       *       *

I felt as though I'd been dropped into icy water. Skagarach wasn't
kidding. And Bill Cuff was worse than he.

And I had lied to them. I could picture in brain-shattering detail what
they would do to Nessa when they discovered that; for my lie could blow
up their whole scheme. They'd torture her, not me, for they needed me.
I looked at the thought and I couldn't stand it.

I did the most cowardly thing a man could do: I stood up and betrayed
my country, my world, and my entire breed. But I did it because I knew
exactly how much I could take before I cracked--and while I might
withstand their worst for a little while, they would inevitably do
things to Nessa which I could not take.

"Skagarach," I said, "I won't try to fool you. I don't have any dawn
memory. As far as I know I never ranged the fens or slew the upstart
Man in the ages past." I was talking like him. He was an overwhelming
personality. "But I know this: I feel a terrible, inchoate anger
against almost everything. I think it must be what you call the primal
rage. And I also feel a hell of a strong kinship with you, if not with
Bill Cuff. I lied to you. My brother and the space station aren't on
Pompey. They're on Odo Island."

"Well," he said easily, "well, I thought you might have been trying
to outwit us. I thought we might have to flay your woman an inch at a
time to make you talk. But by God, that knock on the cranium fixed you!
Congratulations--and welcome to the Old Companions." He chuckled. "If
you wonder why we trusted your first word to such an extent, I'll say
that we knew the moon was on one of these islands. We knew that if it
wasn't Pompey, it wouldn't be too damned far." He started forward in
the boat. "I'll change our course," he said.

And it was at that moment that I realized something. I had turned
traitor because I couldn't let my wife be maltreated. I had counted on
a feeble plot, a one-in-a-thousand chance that I would be able to beat
the Old Companions; and I'd known quite well that I was only excusing
myself for my craven weakness. Only now did I remember that the real
answer, the only thing a _man_ could have honorably done, was to kill
Nessa and myself immediately--to grip her and leap into the sea, and
dive deep and deeper until we both drowned. Then my wife would have
been safe from them, and I would be dead with a clean conscience.

But it was much too late to think of that now.

I flung myself down beside her, put my arms around her waist, and began
softly and vividly cursing myself for the prize fool and the biggest
yellow-livered skunk of all time.



                              CHAPTER VII


We came in toward the shores of Odo Island at ten minutes to midnight.
Bill Cuff and Skagarach and Trutch and I were sitting on the top of the
bow ramp in the lead boat, straining our eyes toward the small forested
bit of earth ahead. Starshine showed us a broken coastline of rock that
didn't look passable, not for a monkey. I said so. Bill Cuff muttered,
"We can make it."

Behind us crowded the cave beasts, each of them equipped with at least
one weapon; some had grenades slung in belts over their shoulders,
others carried .45 revolvers, tommyguns, and rifles. Skagarach had
apologized for not giving me a gun. He said that of course they
couldn't trust me that far yet. I said it was okay. I had my own
automatic and thank God they hadn't discovered it.

Bill Cuff said now, "Tell them to bring the boats in just under the
rocks, Skagarach."

Yellow-hair nodded and then after a moment had passed and he had not
moved, I said, "He isn't doing it," to Bill in a tone of inquiry.

"He's done it. He telepathed it to them."

"Why didn't you?" I asked. Cuff, looking very annoyed, stared away from
me, and Skagarach laughed maliciously. "He can't telepath as smoothly
as I, I'm afraid."

"Then why is he first leader?" I asked, chancing another swat on the
head.

Bill Cuff, however, only stared at Skagarach evilly and said, "Because
I'm the strongest of us all, and the smartest."

"That's not my opinion," said Skagarach.

"I'll show you proof if you want it," shouted Cuff angrily, but the
yellow-haired one shook his head. "Not now, not now. This is our night."

The boats slid in beneath the walls of rock and the pilots skilfully
halted them inches from the island. There was no way to go ashore
except to leap to the rock and clutch and clamber upward. The rock
wasn't sheer, but it was rough and cold and if not actually dangerous,
at least mighty uncomfortable. At midnight the first Neanderthal--Bill
Cuff--jumped from the first boat, and at 12:06 two hundred of us stood
on the island of Odo.

It was very dark here, darker than it had been on the sea; there were
trees everywhere. But I found I could see outlines without trouble, if
not actual features within those outlines. Looking around me, I saw in
this way the figure of a woman, and knew it was Nessa.

"Nessa! How did you get here?" I said, shocked. "You oughtn't to
climb--"

"Trutch carried her on his back," said Cuff. "Now shut up. Here we go."

As we moved off toward the center of Odo, I grasped my wife's arm. She
seemed to draw away slightly. "What is it?" I whispered.

"I don't know. I--they've told me what this is about, and you seem to
be one of them," she said uncertainly.

What to do? Reassure her? In the midst of these keen-eared, ravening
animals? "I don't know," I said. "I don't really know where I stand.
Except that I feel mad clean through." That was for the Old Companions'
benefit. At the same time I gently squeezed her arm twice, and catching
her eye, winked. But in the dimness of the forest, I couldn't be sure
she'd seen it.

We moved along an autumn-smelling trail that wandered through trees
from which leaves fell in a constant erratic shower. The air was cold,
a touch of sea-wind pimpling my flesh. I was in the forefront of the
horde, with Cuff and Skagarach, Old One and Trutch and my wife Nessa.
Now a scout came running back toward us, his gait a half-ape, half-dog
loping. He spoke to Cuff in the hoarse brief gutturals of their
primitive tongue.

"Trip-wires ahead," Cuff said. "Tell 'em, Skagarach."

       *       *       *       *       *

The first warning devices, evidently: wires that would set off signals
in the headquarters of the Marines, doubtless, when anyone stumbled
across them. Bill Cuff laughed. We marched on until the scout halted
us with a gesture. Bill picked up Nessa and ran forward and leaped
into the air, graceful, a great cat of a man. There were four wires
at varying heights. Warned of them, we cleared them all. I would have
touched one, but Trutch was at my side watching me.

Now we slowed our pace while more scouts prowled ahead. In about five
minutes we were halted again, this time by an eight-foot fence of
barbed wire whose strands were only inches apart. "Oh, for God's sake,"
said Cuff, "they plant barbed wire in the woods and leave the trees
hanging over it. How knuckleheaded do they think an enemy'd be? Climb
up and jump over." He looked at Nessa. "I think we'll leave you here,"
he said slowly. "Ray cherishes your safety--and I might want a check
on his loyalty. Trutch, keep her safe." The big-eared, lank-haired
brute folded a paw over her wrist and dragged her to one side. I said
sharply, "Treat her easily, you damn orangutan!" and started after
them, till someone's open hand caught me on the chest and shoved me
rudely on my tail. I got up and Nessa was gone.

We moved into the trees. I shinnied up a smooth trunk for a couple of
feet. Topping the fence, we launched ourselves into space--we looked
like dark monkeys pouncing on a farmer's garden--and came to earth with
soft thuds and here and there a jolted grunt. We went forward once more.

Now the trees were thinner and up ahead there were strange gleams and
reflections in a darkness that appeared deeper than that which we had
left behind. Of course, the canopy that looked like forest from the
sky; and beneath it, the buildings and the field and the man-made
moon. My blood grew a little colder. The incredible consequences of
this expedition, if successful, hit me with the kick of a shod hoof.
The end of man ... _the end of man_ ... words so staggering you
couldn't actually take them in. The end of man. Thanks to me....

The Old Companions were bunched, two hundred strong in a great knot of
dimly-seen figures. Bill Cuff said to Skagarach, "Have them spread out.
We go in from this side on a wide front."

Skagarach sent the mental order, and the crew thinned and left us. "You
stick with Vance," my cousin said to me. "Just do as you're told. He'll
keep you near me, but out of my hair." He bent toward me. "No funny
stuff," he said malignantly. "No whooping and hollering to wake 'em up,
Ray, boy. No last-minute regrets."

"No, Bill, no regrets." The falsehood of the century, I thought.

Vance carried a big .45 Colt. He was the squat young lug I'd met in the
car. He prodded me with the barrel of his weapon and waved me off to
the right. Now we were in a line, barely visible to one another, and we
began to move slowly over the level ground, crouching, being as silent
as so many shadows. I stepped on a stick and broke it and Vance dug
his revolver painfully into my ribs.

_I had to warn the humans!_ My fate and--yes, even Nessa's, didn't
matter worth a tinker's dam. All the important personal conceits and
fears and longings were flushed out of me now. If I'd been a coward,
I was now not a strong man, but simply a _man_, and I'd been absorbed
into my race and made its representative. If I was torn apart by these
throwbacks it wouldn't even hurt.

But I didn't have an idea in my head.

       *       *       *       *       *

We neared the field, and its diffused lighting, so like that in the
blue cavern, showed me and my fellow attackers the shapes of monstrous
unknown creations of metal, of square housings and low machine shops
and sheds and barracks. Vance drew a little ahead of me. I heard him
cock his Colt. And the idea I had determined to have came to me. It
wasn't much of an idea. But the instant it struck me I put it into
action, because I was facing great brute force and had no time for
complex plots or civilized reasoning.

I took one swift step forward and smacked Vance behind the shoulder as
hard as I could, an overhand blow with every ounce of muscle I could
summon. At the same time I drew my automatic from beneath my jacket.

The reflex I'd hoped for was Vance's instinctive yank on the trigger of
that .45. Instead he moved to the side, swung his upper torso around,
and fired point-blank at me.

His slug scorched along my ribs under the left arm, a leaden chunk of
fire; I fell sideways and snapped a shot back at him. It was luck; I
blew in his eye and tore out the back of his head.

He fell on top of me, and I squirmed around and shoved his body away.

At the sound of the shots every Old Companion leaped forward. That
saved my skin. I hurled Vance off me, leaped up, and ran on to catch
the Neanderthals, my torn side shrieking in pain.

A form cut across before me and a hand clamped on my arm while our
forward charge continued. Skagarach's fox-face dipped sidelong toward
me and he said, "What was it? Who did it?"

"I think it was Cuff," I panted.

"_What?_"

"Looked like him. Whoever it was, he scored on me."

"Bad?"

"Not very."

"It couldn't have been Cuff," he growled, half to himself. "Primal rage
isn't primal idiocy!"

"Somebody was idiotic," I said. We were nearing the field and the
lights were brightening. I could see men running from the barracks and
the sheds.

"We'll find out who it was. By God!" he said, lifting his voice. "When
this is done, you'll see the fool's head torn from his shoulders!"

Then the field lit up around us and the machine guns started to chatter.

It must have been automatic, the banks of searchlights must have
been triggered by our vanguard crossing electric eyes on the edge
of the field. But the Marines, warned by my shot, were at their gun
emplacements and ready. Several dozen Neanderthals died in that first
couple of seconds before we all went to earth. I heard the choking
screams and the thunk of bullets striking flesh. I dove to the ground.
The air whined just over my head and I knew I hadn't hit dirt an
instant too soon.

I hoped that Bill Cuff, that magnificent target, had been chopped in
half....

Cuff's grenaders got into action then. There was the crump-crump and
the screeching as grenades tore holes in earth and sandbags and metal
and men. A Neanderthal stood up just in front of me and peered forward
against the lights' glare to check on the damage, and as I looked up
at him I saw the entire top of his skull explode as a dozen slugs hit
it. There were more grenades and then a tommygun opened up. I crawled
forward.

Only the powers that be know why there were only forty Marines on Odo
Island. There should have been four hundred. I suppose they counted
on the dead secrecy to guard it. That, and the assurance that no
foreign power could get within fifty miles of the place. Who could have
foreseen Neanderthals from a past age in crepe-soled shoes?

The Marines took a fearful toll of the Old Companions before they were
obliterated. Within four or five minutes they had been overpowered and
smashed into the bloody earth; but no more than seventy Neanderthals
stood over their bodies and looked toward the great wheel-shaped
satellite. I was sick to see that Bill Cuff and Skagarach were among
them. And Old One, the true primordial brute, was there, though his
left arm hung useless and dripped gore.

Then, before any of us could even speak, the sheds and barracks erupted
more men: the eighty workers, hard strong men--and they too were armed.

My hopes soared, even as the submachine guns began to talk in staccato
bursts of ear-piercing sound.



                             CHAPTER VIII


The workers were inadequately armed. A few revolvers and little ammo.
Lead pipes and with things that looked like weapons but were actually
odds and ends of tools they'd snatched up when they'd heard the battle
start. They were armed with guts, but it wasn't enough.

They swept across the field, dropping and struggling up, bulling ahead
to come to grips with an enemy they didn't understand, couldn't fathom.
Perhaps a score of them survived the tommyguns, got in amongst the
Neanderthals. I saw one big fellow grab two ape-necks and smash the
brutish skulls together, and even thirty feet off I could hear the bone
splinter. When that man went down writhing I was as shocked as though
he'd been my brother.

Where _was_ Howard, anyway?

No one was watching me. I stepped swiftly backward, turned and ran for
the satellite. There was no hiding place there worth a damn. I stood
against its gleaming silver side towering high above my head. I saw
the end of the fight; even had my chance to take a small crack at the
devils myself. A workman was brawling with a carbine as Old One came up
behind him lifting him over his head and bringing his body down across
an uplifted knee. There was a hoarse scream and then a loud crack as
the man's back snapped. I lifted my automatic and shot the creature
through the heart.

I looked for Skagarach then, and for my cousin, but they weren't in
sight. I shoulder holstered my gun. The last worker now had been
dropped and the Old Companions came toward the great wheel and me.

There were--I counted, automatically and hopefully--there were some
fifty or more on their feet. Bill Cuff strode ahead of the horde,
untouched and grinning wolfishly. And there was the ugly figure of
Skagarach beside him.

I tackled Cuff immediately. "Skagarach says I can't have a gun, but I
sure could have used one just now," I said, hoping he hadn't seen me
firing the gun now, safely out of sight under my shirt.

Bill looked wickedly at Skagarach. Then he pulled a revolver from his
belt and stuck it out to me. "Take it, you earned it."

Skagarach smirked; but his gray eyes flashed sullen hate at the big
man, and I hoped anew that I could split them and make a rebellion in
the ranks of the Neanderthals.

"I am second leader now," said Skagarach loudly, "as Old One is dead. I
should have a voice in decisions such as that," and he gestured toward
the gun I held. "However, I think Ray has earned it, too. Now let's
get to business. We have to let the other musters know at once, so the
three-stage rockets will come to Odo as fast as possible," he said,
lifting his voice until it was a hoarse bellow. "Everyone quiet. This
is a distance job, and difficult."

Bill Cuff watched him impatiently as the fox-face crinkled into furrows
of thought. Then he said to me, not bothering to lower his voice, "You
might think they'd have radioed for help, or that the scientists would
be doing that now. Well, we've got hand-jammers on the LCPs that have
been working since we touched the coast." Hand-jammers, invented only
this year, tiny boxes that could jam radio, phone, television, in fact
any method of communication from one spot to another. Odo was therefore
isolated!

"Won't silence be suspicious?" I asked him. "Don't you suppose they'll
begin to wonder, over on the mainland?"

"Hell, no. Too dangerous to keep up steady communications to a place
that's supposed to be as dead secret as this hunk of rock. You can bet
only emergencies would make 'em radio from here." He laughed. "You see,
we laid our plans well."

       *       *       *       *       *

I had just thought of something, something big. I blurted it out before
I'd more than recognized it as a possibility. "Here, Bill, for God's
sake, how do we know this thing is ready to leave the earth?" I pointed
to the metal moon. "How do we know it won't just come apart when we try
to lift it?"

"There again," said Cuff, as Skagarach gave him a dirty look and
obviously tried to concentrate, "we haven't just presumed, or taken our
chances. We've been watching the three-stage rockets--and for two days
they've been ready to go in an instant's notice. And two of our fellows
reported that they had stand-by orders; they're on the rocket crews,"
he added smugly.

Skagarach said, "I've established contact with Milo. Now will you clamp
your goddam jaws shut!"

Bill Cuff nearly hit him. I caught Bill's eye and gave a grin, as one
who would say, Let the jerk strut, _you_ can handle him later. Then,
Bill turning away, I winked at Skagarach. Both ends had to be played
against the middle fast and furious in this game.

"All right," said Skagarach finally. "Milo will keep touch while they
make their moves, and so will Summers from post three. Now we have to
get into this thing."

Cuff, overbearingly, shouted orders; and the Old Companions scattered
to look for the entrance. A strange thing happened then, a weird thing
to watch. Two of them remained standing before us as the others left.
Cuff shouted at them. They did not move. Skagarach shook them by a
shoulder each, and they collapsed without a sound. They had died on
their feet, of wounds sustained in the fight. I was glad to see two
more gone and at the same time I felt a chill at the tenacity of such a
race.

A cry announced that the door had been found. We three ran over. There
was a portable ramp running up to the sleek side. A door like that in
a commercial plane showed its outline above the incline. Eagerly Cuff
and several others leaped upward. And now they hit their first real
unexpected obstruction, for the door could not possibly be opened from
the outside. Not without TNT. It had been closed from within and it
stared blindly at the Old Companions and in a moment they began to
snarl and curse.

I turned away from them so that they wouldn't see my face, which I
knew must be hopeful; and across the brilliant field toward us I saw
a man and a woman approaching. The man, or rather brute, was the
gray-eyed Trutch. The girl was my wife Nessa, and she was walking as
though she were in pain.



                              CHAPTER IX


I ran and caught her in my arms. "Nessa! What is it?"

"I twisted my ankle," she murmured, not looking at me. "This man made
me walk anyway." Then I'd knelt and lifted her in both arms. "Don't
bother," she said, struggling half-heartedly. "I can go alone."

She believed that I was a beast-man myself, and with Trutch flapping
his elephant ears alongside us, I couldn't tell her different. And of
course, she might be right at that....

"You feel all right otherwise?" I asked her, gently. She nodded. She
was pale and haggard and her hair hadn't been brushed for twenty-four
hours, but for all that she was the most beautiful woman in America.
The feel of her in my arms gave me strength. I carried her over and set
her lightly on the ramp. The leaders were still fumbling around the
door.

Then suddenly the door of the space station swung open.

I got a little sick.

My brother Howard stood there. He stood erect and his slight,
white-smocked figure looked oddly noble above the dark-clad
Neanderthals. He held his arms up; some of the Neanderthals raised
their guns.

Howard said slowly, "No, don't do it. Please don't do it. You don't
understand. This is security for all of us!"

They glanced at one another, Cuff's brows drew into a scowl, and then
Skagarach, the best brain of the lot, cried, "Don't harm this man!"
and leaped forward, stood with his body against the door so that it
could not be closed. "He's necessary to the operation--he's vital."
The Old Companions muttered and the weapons lowered. Skagarach said to
Howard, "You think we've come to destroy the satellite. You believe
we're aroused citizens, or religious fanatics, bent on halting the
experiment. You're wrong."

That was, of course, the reason why my brother had opened the door: to
keep what he thought were ordinary people from wrecking the man-made
moon. From within the wheel he had seen them conquer the guards and
workers, and by their plain clothes had imagined them to be a bunch of
fanatics who couldn't stand the idea of a policeman in the sky.

If the Old Companions had worn uniforms, Howard might have kept that
door shut, and the whole Neanderthal plan would have collapsed. But he
thought he could reason with these creatures.

Skagarach pushed past him and disappeared in the station. Bill Cuff,
herding Nessa and Trutch and me ahead of him, followed, and the Old
Companions trooped up the ramp behind us. Howard had seen me and was
walking at my side. "If they don't want to destroy it, what _do_ they
want?" he kept repeating. I kept my mouth grimly shut. I couldn't
explain it to him now, I couldn't begin to. "What are you doing here,
Ray?" he asked then, and again I was stuck for an answer.

Trutch bent close to me, smirking. "Why, he brought us here," he said.

The important Old Companions assembled in what was intended to be the
scientists' main living room, a section of the wheel lined with fold-up
bunks and empty tv screens. From what little knowledge I had of the
theory of the space station, I could identify the air purification
system's tubes, the emergency geiger counters, the oxygen vents and,
through a partly-open locker door, a space suit. The tv screens were
either for communication within the ship or connected with the cameras
that would be trained on Terra 24 hours a day.

"Where are the others?" Bill Cuff asked Howard. "The other scientists?"

"Throughout the wheel."

"Good. They won't be hurt. You're all going to come in handy for us;
three of our experts were killed on that field," said Cuff, his face
dark and his teeth clenched so tightly I could hear them grind together.

"Who the hell planned that suicidal charge?" I asked.

"Our leader," said Skagarach drily. "Mister Cuff."

       *       *       *       *       *

The primal rage, my last hope, welled and subsided in Cuff as plainly
as mercury in a thermometer. With what must have been a really superb
effort he said in a quiet voice to Howard, "I'll fill you in, cousin,
on what's happening," and proceeded to do so concisely and accurately.

Howard became pale, but bending forward he followed Cuff with attention
and didn't open his mouth until Cuff had finished. Then he said just
two words. "My God!" He looked at me. "And you're with them?" he asked.

"What else? I have the dark blood," I said. He made as if to say
something, and then looked at Cuff.

"So do you," Bill told him.

Skagarach said, "I think Summers has been killed. Milo is being shelled
with mortars, but his muster is winning. We should have the three-stage
rockets here within half an hour."

The other scientists, five men ranging from thirty to fifty years old,
had been brought in by Neanderthals. Cuff glanced at them now and
then said to Howard, "I want you to take us on a tour of the station
immediately. I want you to show me and Skagarach, and our technical
officers, exactly how everything is worked, from the H-bomb launchers
to the refuse outlets. Eventually you'll come over to us, Howard; but
for now you've got to show us under pressure, I realize." His eye
roamed the room. He pointed to the tallest scientist, a man nearly as
bulky as Bill Cuff himself. "What's his job?"

"Communications technician," said Howard blankly.

On the words, Cuff was out of his chair, hurtling across the room; he
shot his great arms out and gripped the astounded scientist by the
throat and the top of his head. Whirling, he flying-mared the man over
his shoulder, and as the scientist's heavy frame nearly touched the
floor, Cuff perked upward again, so that the whole body was snapped
like a blacksnake whip. There was a terrible cracking sound and the
man's form went limp. Cuff dropped the body to the floor and stepped
over it.

"Only an example, Howard," said the Neanderthal easily. He came back to
his seat. Nessa was sobbing hysterically, and all the men were white as
chalk.

Skagarach said, "Probably unnecessary, but vivid enough," and laughed.
Cuff said, "All right, Howard, will you show us the station?"

"Do it," I said to my brother in a low tone. He looked at me and his
eyes were a little wet. He shook himself and said, "Come on," in a dull
voice. Howard was not afraid of anything, I know, but Cuff's unvoiced
threat, to act with each of the other scientists in turn as he had
with the communications technician, appalled my brother and dulled
his reasoning--even as Nessa's danger had dulled mine in the boat.
We followed him through an automatically operated door into the next
chamber.

For half an hour we worked through the space station, Howard pointing
out in an emotionless voice the personnel quarters, control room,
the gauge panels, fuel storage tanks (for the small rocket clamped
to the center spoke of the wheel and reserved for emergency flight
back to Terra), the space suits and the many instrument panels. We
saw television cameras so powerful that from the 1,000-mile altitude
they could pick up movements as small as those made by a single man on
a prairie. We saw the astrodome, the oxygen supplies, the air blower
pump, the air locks and moon-to-earth radios; the recreation area and
the radar equipment. Everything that would support life in space.

Last of all we saw the weapons: the levers that would release the
hell-bombs and guided missiles, the aiming mechanisms, the terrible
arsenal that was to threaten the world and keep it under control, at
the benevolent mercy of the men who lived within the wheel.

Bill Cuff exulted. "In five days," he said, and then stopped. I knew
what he meant. In five days all the Neanderthals on earth would be
congregated in specified sanctuaries, and mankind would die. These
projectiles would mop up the cities and towns, and the Old Companions
would then sweep over the countrysides, slaying what remained of Homo
sapiens.

One thing which we'd been shown had given me an idea. One of those
hundreds of gadgets and mechanisms.

Queerly enough, I wouldn't ordinarily have thought of it as a weapon.

It was the air blower pump.



                               CHAPTER X


Skagarach said, "They're here!" so sharply that it startled all of
us, even Cuff. He continued more quietly. "They've brought down two
of the rockets and the third will be here soon." He went on, and the
other Old Companions crowded around him, listening eagerly as he told
of the battles as the news was telepathed to him. I looked quickly for
my guard, Trutch. He was turned with his back to me. I moved swiftly
across to where Howard stood talking to Nessa. They saw me coming and
their faces hardened. I started talking in a monotone, pitching my
voice to reach them alone.

"Do you two still think I'm pulling a quisling?" I drew my automatic
and handed it to Howard. "Put that away, quick. Now listen. We're going
to whip these cave bastards. Don't ask questions, just answer, and make
it fast. How do you run the air blower pump up to full capacity?"

Howard looked puzzled but not quite so uncertain of me. He gave me
brief explicit instructions.

"And what would the effect be?" I asked.

"About a hundred-and-twenty-mile gale through the whole ship," he
answered. As he talked I was handing him the extra clips for my gun
and he was stowing them in his pockets. Even Nessa looked hopeful now.
I flicked a glance every second or two at the huddling Neanderthals.
There were a dozen of them here; the others were stationed throughout
the satellite.

"Now," I said, "what would make this metal moon vibrate?"

"Vibrate? Nothing--wait. If you extended the solar mirrors, it wouldn't
exactly vibrate, but it would move. The mirrors are under the hub, and
extending them while we're on the ground would lift the wheel gradually
up, likely tilt it, unless the mirror system broke under all this
weight."

"Can you extend them?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Check your watch. 1:36 a.m. In ten minutes, you will have eluded
these apes and you'll start the mirror mechanism. Take Nessa if you
possibly can. When you've done it, come a-blasting."

"What?"

"Start gunning the apes."

Then Skagarach called to me, and I went over to him. "My brother's
mad," I said. "I mean he's angry about this."

"What carrier of the dark blood wouldn't be?" said Skagarach loftily.

I said, "I think he'll come around to us eventually."

Trutch had come to my side again, frowning angrily at me. Skagarach
said, "Let him alone, you fool, he's all right. Go watch his brother."
And Trutch hulked over to Howard and Nessa.

I turned to Bill Cuff, "How soon do we take off?"

"As fast as the other musters can couple the rockets to the station,"
he said. "Shouldn't be too long. Why?"

"I was thinking maybe we could watch them at it."

"How?"

"On the viewplates back there," I said, jerking a thumb over my
shoulder. "At least two or three of us could watch." The wheel had been
closed and sealed by the air locks, but by opening the small view ports
we would be able to see all around us, while we sat before screens that
transferred the ports' vistas to us in the cabin.

Skagarach said, "Come with us," and he and Bill Cuff strode off. I kept
pace with them, hoping the rest of the job would be as easy as this.
We passed through two sections of the wheel and entered the viewing
room and took seats before the scanners. Bill fiddled with the dials
as I cast a look at the next door, some dozen feet from where I sat.
Just beyond it was the air blower pump. I checked the time. I had six
minutes.

       *       *       *       *       *

The screens flashed to life. We saw the field around us, and two
gigantic rockets, silver with thick blue bands dividing each into three
sections, the three-stagers that would shortly hurtle us out beyond the
atmosphere. Skagarach began working with the control panel too. At last
we had a complete view of all sides of the wheel.

Many Old Companions, from the musters which had captured the rockets
and brought them here by VTO tug, were hurrying from wheel-side to
rocket, working under the orders of their experts to attach all
components together. This was a purely mechanical job, but I doubted
that it would be done quite so quickly as my comrades seemed to
believe. I saw at least two fumbling attempts to clamp a single
connection that failed miserably. Skagarach scowled and Cuff told him
to telepath Milo to get down to business. They both breathed heavily
through their nostrils.

Then I started to needle them.

It was a hell of a job, doing it without making them enraged with _me_.
First I would ask Skagarach's opinion on something, then Cuff would
sneer at it, and I would give Cuff a gentle push toward anger. It was
like taking two wildcats, one in each hand, and teasing them so that
they'd fly at each other's throats--ignoring the man who was actually
baiting them. Sweat sprang out on my face and my hands were moist.

What did it was an inspired reference to telepathy. That was Cuff's
sore spot. He turned to Skagarach, eyes narrowed, big hands working
malevolently, and I looked at my watch and saw I had six seconds to go;
I said, "But isn't telepathy the major need of a first leader?" with
innocence dripping from my voice, and Skagarach laughed harshly and
said a sane being would presume it was, and then Bill Cuff leaned over
and hit him in the mouth.

Skagarach recoiled, spat, and then lashed back with a fist that, if
smaller than Cuff's, was still larger than anything you'd care to have
sock you in the nose. Then they were growling like dogs and trying to
strangle one another.

I didn't count on this for a finish fight; I knew it must have happened
often enough before, the meeting of these two brutal creatures; and
I thought they were at bottom too dependent on each other, Cuff for
Skagarach's telepathic powers and the yellow-hair for my cousin's
primordial power, ever to actually fight to the death. But this was all
I'd gambled for, this infuriated scuffle.

I leaned across the great board of instruments. The revolver I'd been
given was in my hand, reversed. I struck the master switch twice, hard,
with the butt of the gun. The second blow knocked it out of alignment
and the screens went blank.

At that instant the space station shuddered, like a live thing
beginning to arouse from sleep, and the floor vibrated a little
beneath my feet. Howard had reached the switch of the solar mirrors,
and gradually they were pushing out from the underside, pressing the
ground, raising the wheel into the air. I wondered how long it would
take them to reach their full extent or to break off. I prayed it would
be a few minutes at least....

At the first sensation of movement, the titans had frozen, Skagarach in
the act of drawing back a fist, Cuff with his hands twined in the long
oily hair of the fox-faced Neanderthal. In a split second they were on
their feet and leaning over the control panels.

"The viewers are dark!" yelled Skagarach.

"We've taken off!" I shouted in the same instant.

"They couldn't." That was Bill Cuff, jiggling a useless lever
furiously. "Unless you ordered them too, you damn--"

"I did no such thing!" screeched Skagarach. If the viewers had been on,
they would have seen that we were still on the ground. If Howard hadn't
started the mirrors out, they'd have discovered my sabotage on the
screens. The gamble had thus far panned out. Now I had to make the last
try. I shoved open the door at my elbow, dashed into the chamber which
held the air blower pump. Yelling wildly, "_What'll we do now?_" _I_
followed Howard's instructions for bringing the blower to full power.
Then I leaped into the other room again.

They were so demoralized that I might have shot them both in that
moment. Something held me from it. I think it was their inhuman
strength, the knowledge that these two were the highest product of a
race that was not human. Despite the dark blood I knew ran in my body
too, I could not feel that I was Neanderthal; and I could not tackle
the two toughest Neanderthals at the outset of the private war I had
begun. I was--well, I must face it, I was _scared_.

As the blower vents started to pour a hurricane of air into the
chambers of the great wheel, I leaped past them, flicked on the
intercom switch, and bellowed, "Hit the bunks! Lie down and strap
yourselves in! _Fast!_"

Skagarach had time for one approving look in my direction. "Good
Companion!" he said. "You will do!" Then the three of us broke for the
next room and the bunks.



                              CHAPTER XI


I had no intention of flinging myself onto a bunk. I let them do
it, ran into the next chamber and hurled the door closed behind me.
My order had carried throughout the station. In each of the rooms,
otherwise soundproof, my order to lie down had been heard and followed.

I had counted upon the gradual raising of the wheel by the mirrors, and
the tremendous pressure of the hundreds of blower vents, to create the
illusion of upward motion. I had counted also on the Old Companions
having no more idea than the average man in the street of what actually
happened when a space ship took off. When the jet of one of those air
vents hit a Neanderthal in the face, he naturally believed it to be the
pressure on him of an accelerating motion straight up. And he listened
to my broadcast advice, and hit for the bunks.

In the first room I found five Neanderthals, all hastily buckling
straps across themselves and whining fearfully. I had no more time for
mercy, no more inclination for it than had these beasts themselves.
Standing in the center of the chamber, I rotated slowly and put a
bullet into each ugly face. Then I pounced on the next door.

Here there were four, and I suddenly realized I had no more than one
bullet left in the revolver. I saw a tommygun beside a bunk. I went
for it, knelt, and as my fingers touched it a hand came down on the
back of my neck and clutched ferociously.

"What you doing?" snarled the Old Companion, lifting me and breathing
into my face.

Seconds count, seconds.... I knew that after a minute or two of nothing
but slow vibration and hurricane breeze, Skagarach or somebody would
realize that we were still anchored to Terra. The machine gun was in my
hand now. I brought up its muzzle like a lance jerked underhand; the
sight tore the beast's chin and lip, turned up his nose and the blood
gushed. He recoiled, and I had the weapon in my hands and was stepping
back and the chattering began. I made a massacre and went on.

There was a scientist among the Old Companions in the next section of
the wheel. My illusion must have been _good_--he had strapped himself
down too! I sprayed the bunks with leaden death and then roared at him:
"Come on! Get a couple of guns and come on! We are taking over this
moon!"

There were three small chambers next with perhaps a dozen Old
Companions shivering in them, and I left those chambers a
gore-spattered, reeking ruin. The trembling of the station had slowed
now, but the great wind that swept every corner still held the
terrified brutes to their straps and beds. I picked up another of the
scientists and was joined by the first one. Three of us marched through
gleaming steel and chrome, soft white light and antiseptic cleanliness,
marched at triple time and dealt death from heated barrels and rattling
magazines.

We met Nessa and Howard. By now my arms were trembling and the sweat of
fury and work was half blinding me. I grinned at them and took time to
rub a sleeve across my eyes. "We're winning," I said. Nessa said _ohh_
in a tiny sound of heartfelt thanksgiving. Howard said, "I managed to
knock out that broad homely chap," which for some reason struck me as
funny, and I passed them, laughing aloud. They followed me.

The fake was wearing thin. Now we found Neanderthals on their feet,
puzzled and still frightened, but beginning to wonder why they were
able to stand at all if we were in flight. Now we found enemies who, if
given the chance, shot back. Now it was no pogrom, but a war.

Yet gradually we worked our way through the wheel, and although two of
our scientists dropped, we had surprise and luck with us.

I came to a door that I could not open. Tucking the gun under my arm--I
had long ago run out of ammo for the first, and found myself another in
the grasp of an Old Companion with a scarlet smear for a face--I hurled
my shoulder against the thick steel of the panel. It opened grudgingly.
What had held it was the corpse of a Neanderthal. I had come full
circle, not even noticing that I had passed through the control room
and the chamber where Cuff and Skagarach should have been lying. The
Old Companions were dead or dying, those of this muster at least, but
the two most dangerous had vanished.

I made sure that Howard was armed. The last two scientists had now
joined us. I sent the three of them back along our bloody route, and
with Nessa held protectively against my side I went forward, scouting
cautiously and examining every compartment. I met Howard on the
opposite side of the wheel.

We had not found Bill Cuff nor the yellow-haired fox.



                              CHAPTER XII


"They couldn't have left the station," said Howard again. We were
sitting in the red-spangled recreation room, avoiding the sight of the
Neanderthal bodies by looking at one another, and drinking whiskey
and water that my brother had produced from a wall compartment. "No,"
he said, as I started to protest, "I tell you I locked the outer door
when you all came in, throwing the switch that's camouflaged beside it,
and nobody but one of my own men could possibly have discovered it.
Besides, if they'd gone out, the door would be open. You can't close it
from the outside."

"But I checked every hiding place--"

"Ray," he said gently, "you couldn't check every one in less than an
hour. You can't even see most of them."

"Judas priest! Then we're locked in with those two--and outside there
are Lord knows how many more, whimpering for our blood!"

"As for those outside," said my brother slowly, "we could blow them
up--while nothing short of an atomic explosion could break into the
wheel."

"How could we blow them up?"

"I showed you. The atom cannons, the weapons that were meant to repel
any hypothetical enemy attack when the station is freewheeling in
space. There are gun ports on every curve, Ray." He sighed. "Two hours
ago I was a peaceable man, I was here because I loved peace above
everything else. Now I want to keep on killing people."

"They aren't people, they're cave beasts. They admit to being
non-human."

"Yes. They make a good case for it, too. But it's too much like
shooting sitting ducks, or fish in a barrel, for my taste."

"If you'd seen them gunning those poor workers, you wouldn't talk about
sitting ducks. They're merciless. And by the way," I said, "why didn't
you see that? Why didn't you cut loose with your wonder weapons during
the fight?"

"Ray, this wheel is soundproof. It was only by chance that I happened
to glance out, by way of a viewer, as you came up the ramp. And of
course then I wasn't fully aware of the extent of the killing, or I
might have used the guns instead of trying to talk to them." Howard
sighed again. "I'm not the violent sort. I guess I wouldn't have
thought of the guns anyhow." He looked thoughtfully at me. "I wonder
why the Marines didn't radio to us when it began?"

"The Old Companions are hand-jamming the island."

"Oh." He glanced at the corner, where Trutch lay, bound hand and foot
and grimacing at us. He was our only prisoner. "It's a fairy tale," he
said. "It's _unreal_!"

"It won't be so unreal if the other Neanderthal musters succeed in
blasting us out into an orbit, Howard."

Nessa began to cry. I wouldn't have known it, she did it so silently,
but I happened to see a tear glisten on her cheek. "What is it, honey?"
I asked, going to her.

"The baby," she whispered, and then she was choked and couldn't speak.
But it hit me at once: acceleration would at the least lose us our
child, and probably also kill my wife.

I jumped up. "Come on, all of you," I snapped. "Stick together and
follow me quick. We've got to lay that field waste, before we're
catapulted into the void. And don't lag, because Cuff could take any
one of us between two fingers and snap us in half."

Howard led us to the control room of the armory. Here the viewers
hadn't been affected by my sabotage. We saw the field again, and the
three-stage rockets--they had all been brought to Odo by this time--in
the last moments of their attaching. The solar mirrors had slowly
collapsed, letting the great wheel down to earth again. It didn't look
as if we had more than a couple of minutes to go. Howard sat down, his
movements irritatingly deliberate, and began to point out the trigger
assemblies, the sighters, and the ammo reserve levers.

I waited till I got the set-up, then shoved him aside and sat down in
his place. "This is my job, son," I said. "Allow me the dirty work. I
feel just savage enough to enjoy it."

       *       *       *       *       *

I sprayed the field with a hail of dumdum slugs from the supermachine
guns; then, when I'd picked off everyone in sight, I turned to the
atomic heat throwers. I couldn't use the explosive shells and rockets
because of what the concussion and fragmentation might do to the
space station itself, so I trained the heaters on the top third of
each rocket in turn, and simply melted it into thick silvery goo. The
lower portions I avoided, for fear of setting off the stored fuel. The
three-stage rockets, naturally, carried no weapons. They couldn't fight
back. It was wholesale murder, but I kept at it. It was their deaths,
or that of mankind.

At last I leaned back. "That's it," I said. "All but for Cuff and
Skagarach, that's it." _And the thousands of Old Companions hidden all
over the world_, I thought; but that was a problem for the future, and
for better men than I.

Nessa said, "I want to speak to Ray. Alone. Please."

"Be careful," I said to Howard, as he and the three scientists moved
out of the armory chamber. Then I was standing to face my wife.

"Ray," she said quietly, "I know why you told them about Odo. I didn't
know at the time because I was confused by your wild talk. I just
thought you'd become one of _them_. I know now you did it to save me
from torture." She put her slim hands on my shoulders. "I don't have to
ask this, I don't need reassurance on it--but I want to hear you tell
me. It's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, Nessa. I banked on beating them, but I didn't honestly have an
idea that I could. Still I knew that I couldn't see them touch you."

"You stacked the human race against me, and picked me. I suppose that's
quite terrible," she said, and she was crying and laughing all at once,
"but if you think I'll ever reproach you for it, you're insane. I
think it must be the finest compliment a girl ever received. If I could
love you any more than I did before today, Ray, I would."

Then she was in my arms....

When she had finally freed herself, she said, "Is it true what Cuff
said, that you're related to him and to those monstrosities?"

I nodded. I couldn't very well lie to her when the facts were there.
"It is true."

"And our baby will be--"

"Yes. But the story of the 'dark blood' has to be proven to us before
we start worrying," I lied. That was bravado and she recognized it, but
she looked happier. "I don't care if you're half sabretooth tiger, I
love you."

I reached for her again. Then I caught a flicker of something in the
edge of my eye and whirled.

Bill Cuff was baring his teeth at me not two yards away.



                             CHAPTER XIII


My right index finger tightened on the trigger of a gun that wasn't in
my hand. I'd left it lying beside the controls of the outside armament.

Skagarach's yellow mop showed behind Cuff. Like a tin soldier, mindless
but destined to fight with or without weapons, I stepped toward Cuff.
I saw that he had no gun either. But Skagarach held a big .45.

Nobody spoke. I knew by instinct that they realized now who their
betrayer had been. They wanted to shred me up with their hands; they
wouldn't use lead on Ray Rollins. I had taken two steps and was up to
Bill Cuff and abruptly a rage overcame me that rivaled their vaunted
primal ire. What the hell were they doing here? How dared these two
things that ought to have been eons dead and turned to dust come into
this room when I was telling my wife that I loved her? I saw my finish
in Cuff's gray smoldering eyes and I would not stand for it. With a
mad suddenness I hit Bill Cuff in the pit of the stomach while his
hands dangled motionless. It should have folded him over like an axed
sapling. He coughed once, and then he reached out and took me.

I had seen what he could do with those hands. But even as he lifted me
free of the floor, I wrenched up a punch from my waist that caught him
smack in the right eye. It was a lucky blow for it hurt him in the only
vulnerable spot in all that magnificent frame. He yelled and clenched
his grip tighter, but he dropped his head and shook it, squinting the
injured eye. I rabbit-punched him at the base of the skull, just
behind the ear. It wasn't a good rabbit-punch by any means, for I was
in agony with the bite of those fingers of steel in my flesh, but it
added to his pain and one of his hands left me for an instant.

[illus]

I was still dangling in midair. Now I hurled all my weight sideways,
and he lost his grip and grabbed for me again. I fell to the floor and
twisted between his legs, diving for the control board where my pistol
lay.

Something crashed in my ear. I felt that my skull was flying apart,
splintering off to the corners of the earth. I rolled like a shot hare
and fought to keep my senses. I seemed to go down into red nothingness
and struggle back up to the white light of the chamber, and discovered
that Cuff was just turning around to me, and I had barely stopped
rolling. I was against the curved wall.

Skagarach had shot at me and my head was ringing. I had lost my
bearings for no more than a second.

I jumped to my feet and already the noise and pain was fading. My head
must have been creased. I saw Nessa step in front of the yellow-haired
beast and then almost by reflex I did what I'd have done years before
on the football field. I collected my strength and hurled myself at
Cuff's shins in a flying tackle.

He was a brawler, a magnificent piece of muscle, but his technique was
to pick people up and tear them apart. At fighting this way, falling
and being walloped himself, he wasn't so good. What I had to do was
avoid being gripped by those bear-traps of his, and whittle him down.
Maybe I could do it, if Skagarach would let me.

As I catapulted out of the way of a flailing paw, and gained my feet
again, I saw Skagarach fling Nessa to the side, swearing in gutturals.
I was standing by the control board and my heavy revolver lay within
reach of my hand. I snatched it and the basic infuriated male animal
was uppermost in me and I didn't even recognize what I held. It wasn't
a gun, it was a heavy projectile. I threw it at Skagarach as he aimed
his own weapon at me. My gun crashed into his face. He dropped as if
he'd been shot.

Shot! My God! I'd thrown a loaded revolver away!

       *       *       *       *       *

Bill Cuff was up and the room was too tiny for ducking purposes. I
eluded one massive arm but the other enfolded me from behind and the
giant hand clasped my shirt front. I aimed a kick for his groin, and
saw the fist coming in time to duck and catch the blow slanting on the
side of my face. I thought my cheek had been ripped off.

He still had me fast but I jammed down my heels and thrust my whole
body backwards. The cloth went to hell, and I was free.

He bore down like a bulldozer. I was in a corner, unable to dive
under his hands or between his legs, unable now to avoid those deadly
fingers. I backed and there was a stool behind me. My groping hands
discovered nothing to snatch and throw. Without reasoning I leaped up
and landed on the stool, a short thing about twelve or fourteen inches
high. Then the football period came back again, and I could almost see
the field before me and the men pushing in to stop me from making that
punt....

I swung my right foot back in a short arc and swept it forward and
up, old science and old muscles responding to my need, and neatly and
viciously I drop-kicked Bill Cuff under the chin.

His head jerked back and there was a report like a .22 rifle going off.
He crumpled down into himself like a granite pile collapsing. I knew
without looking close that he was good and dead.

I jumped off the stool, over his body. Skagarach had managed to get
to his knees, holding his pistol limply and staring at me with blood
trickling down his face. I leaped at him and he brought up the gun
and shot wildly. Then I was on top of him and there was another shot
and his foxlike face smoothed out and became loose, and his gray eyes
rolled back till the yellow whites showed. I got slowly to my feet. It
was all done.

Taking Nessa and holding her trembling body close to mine, I turned to
the door and opened it. The three scientists were sitting in the next
room, smoking and waiting for us. The soundproof door had kept our riot
secret.

Howard gazed at us and smiled. "The love feast all finished?" he asked.

I nodded.



                              CHAPTER XIV


After what seemed a long time our radio came on. The Army had
landed, the Old Companions in the boats were overwhelmed, and their
hand-jammers put out of commission. Thankfully we prepared to leave the
bloody metal moon.

As we walked toward the door, Howard snapped his fingers. "Good Lord, I
remember what it was!" he said to me. "I know what I had to tell you.
You seemed pretty worried about our being related to Bill Cuff."

"Well, aren't you?"

"Hell," he said, "I thought you knew about that business years ago.
Everyone else in the family did. Bill's father was supposed to be our
mother's brother, right?"

"Sure," I said blankly.

"A lot of nonsense," Howard said irritably. "Uncle John was dead a year
before Bill was born. As far as we know, Bill's father was a traveling
salesman."

It took ten minutes for it to sink clear in. Then I started to
celebrate my release from the horrible mental bondage. I did it in a
quiet way. I sat in the plane that was taking us home, and I held Nessa
very closely.

I was human. Our child would be human. Nothing else could matter at all.

There was a lot of work to be done even yet, of course. The Old
Companions had to be ferreted out, dug from their holes, sought
in cities and swamps and villages and caves. In that work we had
unexpected help: there are traitors to every cause, good and bad, those
who'll turn coat when the going gets rough, and even the boasting
Neanderthals were no exception. Our turncoat was the captive Trutch.
He had a prodigious memory and he had been high in the councils of the
Cuff muster. He named names and located HQs. He was like a cur, savage
in a pack but now, standing alone in a cage, fawning and eager to
please.

Trutch's reward, when the last of the recrudescent cavemen had been
tracked and found and annihilated, was his life. He was sterilized and
given a farm all for himself--an extremely well-guarded farm, for even
when they were gone the Old Companions left an aura of unease and fear
on the land.

It's over now. It can't happen again; we'll be on the watch for the
primal rage, the wakening dawn memory in those who may remain as
carriers of the dark blood. The man-made moon rides high in space by
day and night, watching the world with unfailing vigilance.

My brother Howard is up there as I write.

And Nessa is in the nursery putting our infant son to bed. I hope that
one day he'll join many other men in space.

That's the future--our _real_ future--and heritage....



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Vengeance From the Past" ***

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