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Past the ranked combat units, high and grim in the lightless place, the tu
I studied the landscape, realizing for the first time that my field of vision included the entire circumference of the horizon. Nothing stirred, all across the barren waste. Here and there the ruins of a combat unit showed dark against gray dust. The flaring purple sun was low over the far ridges now; a profusion of glittering stars seemed to hang close overhead. I didn't know in what direction the alien headquarters might lie. I picked a route that led across level ground toward a lone promontory and started toward it.
Chapter Thirteen
From my vantage point atop the conical hill, I saw the tips of saw-toothed peaks that formed a wide ring around my position, their bases out of sight over the near horizon. My sense of scale was confused by the strange aspect reality assumed through unfamiliar senses. Instinct told me that the shattered slab before me was perhaps five yards long; I stirred it with my treads, saw it bound away, flip lightly over, and sink to rest, stirring coarse dust that boiled up, dropped back like mud under water.
I was no better at judging my own size. Was I a vast, multiton apparatus, or a tiny fighting machine no bigger than a one-man jet-ped? The horizon seemed close; was it really only a mile or two away-or was my visual range so far extended that a hundred miles seemed only a step?"
Self-analysis wasn't getting me any closer to my objective-alien intelligence. Perhaps beyond the shelter of the wide crater I would see some indications of life. I headed for a cleft between steep cliffs. I churned up through dust that fountained behind me, and gained the pass. The view ahead showed the same sterile rock and dust that I had left behind. I went on down the slope, out across the plain, skirting burned-out machines, some of fantastic design, others like my own grim body. I passed small craters-whether natural formations or the results of bombardment, I couldn't tell. The distant babble of confused commands was a background to the crackle of star-static. I felt neither hunger nor fatigue-only a burning desire to know what lay beyond the next ridge-and a fear that I might be found and destroyed before I had taken my revenge for what had been done to me…
The strange machine appeared suddenly at the top of a sheer cliff that ran obliquely across my route. It saw me at the same instant that I saw it. The machine pivoted, depressing its guns to bear on me. In place of the simple markings of the battle units I had seen, there were complicated insignia painted in garish color across its hull. I halted, waiting.
"IDENTIFY YOURSELF!" the familiar voice of my Brigade commander boomed in my mind.
"Unit Eighty-four of the line, combat ready…" As I reported, I extended a probing impulse across the insubstantial not-space, touched the shape of the mind behind the voice. With an instantaneous reflex, it struck at me. The slave circuits of my brain resonated with the power of the blow-but in that instant I had seen the strange workings of the alien mind, sca
"Who are you?" I demanded.
It gibbered, writhed, fought to escape. I held it tighter-like gripping a lashing snake in bare hands.
"Answer, or I destroy you!"
"I am Zixz, Centurion of the line, of the Nest of the Thousand Agonies Suffered Gladly. What Over-mind are you?"
"Where do you come from?"
"I was spawned in the muck beds of Kzak, by order of the Bed-master-"
"You're not human; why were you installed in a machine?"
"I was condemned for the crime of inferiority; here I expiate that fault."
"What world is this?"
The reply was a meaningless identity-symbol.
"Why do you fight this war?"
The alien mind howled out its war slogan-as incomprehensible as an astrologer's jargon. I silenced it.
"How many Brigades are engaged?"
"Four thousand, but not all are at full strength."
"Who is the enemy?"
The symbol that the alien hurled at me was a compound of horrors.
"Where is your headquarters?" I demanded.
I caught an instant's glimpse of twisted towers, deep caverns, and a concept: the Place That Must Be Defended Then the alien lunged against my control, shrieked an alarm I tightened my grip-and sudden silence fell. Cautiously, I relaxed. A few threads of dying thought spiraled up from the broken mind; then it winked out like a quenched ember. I had killed the Centurion Zixz…
And into the void, a thunderous command roared.
"COMMAND UNIT ZIXZ! REPORT YOUR BRIGADE!"
Quickly, I shaped a concept, counterfeiting the dead Centurion's mind-pattern: "Brigade strength ninety-one; ready for combat."
"YOUR NEST WILL SUFFER, FOOL! THE OVER-MIND DOES NOT COMMAND TWICE! ORDER YOUR UNITS INTO ACTION! CLOSE THE GAP IN THE BATTLE ARRAY!"
"Delayed by necessity for destruction of defective unit," I countered. "Proceeding as ordered."
"COMMAND UNIT ZIXZ! I PROMISE LIQUID FIRE ACROSS THE MUCK BEDS OF KZAK FOR THIS DERELICTION! TO THE ATTACK-"
I broke in, still feigning the mind-voice of Zixz:
"Massive enemy flanking attack! New weapons of unfamiliar capability! Nondetectible units assaulting me in overwhelming numbers…" But while I transmitted the false report to the Over-mind, I extended a delicate sensing line, brushed over the other, felt out the form of a mighty intelligence, vastly more powerful than that of Zixz. And yet the structure was familiar, like that of the Centurion, magnified, reinforced. And here was the primary volitional path…
I moved along it as lightly as a spider stalking a gnat. I came into a vast mind-cavern, ablaze with the power of a massive intellect.
"REINFORCEMENTS DISPATCHED!" the great mind roared. At this close range, it was deafening. "RELEASE TO YOUR HOME NEST IF YOU HOLD! PROCEED WITH ADDITIONAL DATA!"
Busily, I concocted fantastic mass and firepower readings, fanciful descriptions of complex and meaningless enemy maneuvers; and while I held the Over-mind's attention, I searched-and found its memory vaults.
There was the image of a great nest, seething with voracious life-a nest that covered a world, leaped to another, swelled through an ever-increasing volume of space, driven by lusts that burned like living fire in each tiny mote.
I saw the outward-writhing pseudopods of this burgeoning race as they met, slashed at each other with mindless fury-and then flowed on, over every obstacle, changing, adapting to burning suns and worlds of ice, to the near-null gravity of tiny rock-worlds and the smashing forces of titan collapsed-matter stars.
The wave reached the edge of its galaxy, boiled up, reached out into the void. Defeated, it recoiled on itself, churning back toward galactic center-stronger now, more ruthless, filled with a vast frustrated rage that shrieked its insatiable needs, devouring all in its path-and coming together at last in an eruption of mad vitality that rent the very fabric of space…
And from the void at the heart of the universe, the wave rolled out again, tempered in the fires of uncounted ages of ravening combat, devouring its substance now in a new upsurge of violence that made the past invasions seem as somnolent as spawning pools.