Part 2

"There is a manner of animal life on Aldebaran IX which it is necessary that we subdue. It is a form of flying animal, quite large, which feeds through a suction action, ingesting matter with tremendous force, as it flies. This action not only nourishes the beast, it also forms the fuel for the ejection of waste gases that are its power for flight, jet propulsion, in essence. The animal is omnivorous, quite fast in flight, and leaves an area barren in its trail. It also defies all manner of remote observation. It came upon us in the Essex completely by surprise, though all our scanners and force beams were activated. It was the cause of the death of the entire crew. I alone was inside the Essex at the time. I escaped with the mere loss of an eye. How I managed to be the one to survive I cannot say. Perhaps it was fated that way. But, gentlemen, had we been prepared, had we been firmly entrenched and adequately armed, this beast would have presented no threat at all. We were not prepared then. Now we are. You are probably all familiar with the arsenal manifest. It was for this reason that I ordered the arms we now have on board.

"There has never been a reward without a hazard for men to face. This, then, is our hazard. And I assure you, no man has ever been within reach of so vast a reward. Is there anything else I can tell you? Mr. Rogers will establish a manner of arms distribution and a system of defense positions once we make landfall. We will bring the Algonquin down on a site I have already determined. The site where the Essex met her fate."

Here, Kingsford stopped speaking. Several of the men shifted slightly. There was some clearing of throats, but no voices.

"Are there no questions, then?" Kingsford asked. Again, no one spoke. Perhaps they were awed by the sight Kingsford presented. He had been seen by no one on board since the commissioning but myself and a junior officer who piloted the shuttle at Alpha Centauri X. They knew him without the eye patch or the beard. He seemed to have aged twenty years since the departure. He had worn the false eye during the commissioning ceremony, and now, with the eyepatch and the beard, his face was darker, his expression pained.

* * * * *

Perhaps the men chose to accept Kingsford's optimism in the face of the fate of the Essex, considering that they were now in orbit about Aldebaran IX, and little more could be done but effect a landing. Anything else could constitute mutiny, and the alternative was the fortune Kingsford promised each man.

"Good," Kingsford said. He smiled. "Now, as you might imagine, I have a personal interest in this animal we will hunt." He motioned to the eye patch. "I left this behind me last time. Not to mention a crew of forty-two men." Here he paused in the way I had grown to know. His eye again focused on no particular object. After a time, he continued. He drew a paper from his tunic. "This, Mr. Rogers, is to be posted where all crew members can read it. I believe it will explain itself. Post it after we land." He handed me the sealed paper.

"Gentlemen," Kingsford said, "I thank you for your service. Are you with me in this business of Aldebaran IX and its flying animal?"

He smiled broadly. The men looked at one another, then slowly began to smile. Pierce, the armorer, made his way to Kingsford, his hand extended.

"Sir," he said, as Kingsford grasped his hand and shook it, "it's been too long since I've been on a good hunt. I'm with you all the way."

"Good," Kingsford said. "You are Pierce, am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Pierce."

That started it. The crew moved in on Kingsford, all shook his hand and pledged to do their share. After a long while, the camaraderie quieted down, and Kingsford excused himself, requesting Throne and me to join him in his cabin.

Kingsford sat down behind his desk and drew a chart from a file. He slid it across the desk so that Throne and I could see it.

"This is a photographic chart of one hemisphere of Aldebaran IX, gentlemen. I have marked the area in which the Essex was operating. There are many landmarks which you can use for triangular bearing to establish the exact position of the site. These are also marked, as you will note. Prior to the Essex landing, we dropped shuttles at many random points about the planet and drew cores and meter readings. This area proved to possess the greatest density of high percentage ore. It seems natural that we light here again. Do you have sufficient data here, Mr. Throne?"

Throne moved the chart closer to himself and studied it quietly for a moment. "I should think so, sir," he said. "This red marking, here. Would that indicate a mountainous area?"

Kingsford leaned over the chart. "Yes," he said.

"Good," Throne said. "Then I understand the markings."

"Is there anything else I can tell you?"

"No, sir. This chart seems complete enough. I'll have the ship dropped from orbit and scan the surface. We should be able to pick up check points to match the chart all right."

"Or you can activate the counters, Mr. Throne. This ship is equipped with long range equipment. The point of highest incidence of count will be your mark."

"Yes, sir. Will you be at the controls?"

"For the landing, yes. Mr. Rogers and I will be in the control room shortly."

"I'll get to this immediately, then," Throne said.

He left the cabin and Kingsford shifted his gaze to me. "You seem disapproving of my methods, Mr. Rogers."

"Not really, sir. Just your timing. You can hardly call it fair to have kept to yourself during all these months."

"Perhaps, but remember one thing, Mr. Rogers. You have been my buffer during all these months. You are a conspirator to the silence. I think that my address to the crew brought them very much over to my side, don't you?"

"They haven't had time to think," I said. "Or maybe they don't know how to, or prefer not to. They might wonder why you waited until now to tell them about your hunting plans. They might begin to feel, much as I do now, that this whole trip should never have taken place."

"No, Mr. Rogers. It had to take place. It had to."

"Why?"

Kingsford didn't answer right away. He looked at me quietly for a time. Then a slow smile spread across his face.

"For the betterment of mankind, Mr. Rogers," he said. "You see, I believe that the crew of the Essex met a fate that was destined long before preliminary surveys of Aldebaran IX were even projected. Before, even, men developed the power to travel into space. It was a warning. That is my belief, and my faith."

He was interrupted by the communications buzzer. They had scanned the planet and matched the chart. Throne had located the landing site and we were awaited in the control room. We both stood.

"I take it, Mr. Rogers, that you are not with me in this Aldebaran venture."

"I am Executive Officer aboard this ship, Captain. I know the meaning of performing my duties. But if you are looking for moral approbation in all of this, I cannot give it. The way I put it all together, I think it would be less a waste if we were to raise ship right now and set a course directly for Earth."

"Why? Are you afraid, Mr. Rogers?"

"No. It's just that I'm not given much to the idea of playing God."

Kingsford stopped at the door. "I seem to have underestimated you, Mr. Rogers," he said. He opened the cabin hatch and stepped through.

* * * * *

The setting down went off without a hitch, and the job of establishing Kingsford's precautionary system began. I was the first out of the ship, meeting the density of the atmosphere for which Kingsford had prepared me. It was thick, yet not oppressive like the heavy tropical atmosphere on Earth. It did not restrict movement, the gravitational force being less than that of Earth. One seemed to counter-balance the other to give a man equal physical capabilities to those on Earth. With Pierce, I scouted the area within a few miles of the ship, chose certain high grounds for emplacements and watches, then returned and began the deployment of the arms and crew to the chosen spots. I worked out a schedule of rotation so that the outer emplacements would be manned for no more than three hours by any one group. During this entire operation, there was no sign of animal life on the planet. The climate seemed sub-tropical and vegetable life proportional to this climate abounded. Fruit trees and plains of grass, forests and spots of dense undergrowth, much like the greenery of a dozen planets I had seen. But there was no sound, and absolutely no discernible movement of air. The mountain chain I had seen noted on Kingsford's chart stood off in the far horizon, and the land about us was all rolling hills and plains.

During the apportioning of arms, I remembered Kingsford's paper to be posted. I got it from my cabin and read it. It was a public statement in which Kingsford offered ten percent of his captain's share to the first man to spot the quarry. This reduced the potential benefits to the heirs of the Essex's crew by ten percent. I noted the fact, but gave it little thought. It was Kingsford's affair. I opened the general communications switch and read the statement to the crew. The response was electrifying. Shouts and cheers from every quarter of the ship. The general air of a group of sportsmen on a chase rapidly took over the whole feeling of the expedition, and, as executive officer charged with posting the watch, I was approached by most of the crew members with entreaties and even bribes by each, to be assigned to the outermost emplacements. Kingsford's methods certainly bore results. It kept everybody from thinking, but I do not believe that this was his intention.

I did not see Kingsford for almost two days. While I busied myself with the elaborate mechanisms of warning and defense, he and the small group of geologists and reaction engineers, who also insisted on drawing guard duty, went through the mechanics of erecting the loaders and converters, then the refining equipment for reducing the ore to its pure state, and the reactor that would further refine the prize to its absolute, the purpose for the whole expedition, a cargo of plutonium such as man had never seen.

During the two days of setting up the defense system, I grew to feel quite comfortable on Aldebaran IX. I roamed the hills and depressions, brought back certain fruits and vegetables and subjected them to tests and discovered that they were entirely palatable. Perhaps these pastoral musings were a premonition on my part or simple scientific curiosity. I have never dwelt too long on it.

The planet cycle of Aldebaran IX is relatively short, about seventeen hours as measured on Earth. We grew accustomed to relatively short, but intensive periods of work and the remainder of the time was spent in sheer luxuriance at the idea of being out of doors after so many months in space. No sign of Kingsford's quarry appeared, and the excitement of the hunt began to dwindle somewhat among the crew. I, myself, lost much of my feeling of apprehension, and began to relax in the foretaste of future wealth. The reactor was completed on the second day, and the production of the man-made element began. The second night, I dined with Kingsford.

* * * * *

As my tension had relaxed, quite the opposite, it seemed, had happened to him. He was more brooding than ever, more responsive to the slightest sound. He ate practically nothing and said little. Late in the evening, he began to speak, seemingly for the first time aware that he had a guest.

"You wonder about my monster, Mr. Rogers, don't you?"

"Yes. I do wonder a bit."

"So do I. Do you still think it would be less waste if we had returned without making landfall?"

"I'd imagine it was a bit soon to say."

"Do you understand now, Mr. Rogers, why I maintained my silence about this place? Why I spoke little of the Essex and her crew? You have noticed, I am sure, that absolutely no vestige of either the crew of the equipment is to be seen. Only a newly green pasture where there was a desert when I escaped. Such is the devastation to which we might be subjected, except for your excellent defense pattern. A devastation so complete as to leave no sign of devastation whatsoever. Have you ever seen anything like it, Mr. Rogers?"

"No."

"This," he said, indicating the eye patch. "This is the only sign that forty-two men perished within five kilometers of this spot. And I have returned now. Now the waiting."

"I don't understand." I said.

"I told you once that I believe all this of Aldebaran IX was fated. I believe also that Aldebaran IX was so composed of uranium to be found and exploited for the complete betterment of mankind. That is the irony. For two hundred years, now, we have spoken of unleashing the atom for the betterment of mankind. But what more has come of it than a highly developed science of the destruction of mankind, and the gradual debasing of the entire universe. Man must warrant his own betterment, Mr. Rogers, and it is therefore that Aldebaran IX was placed well within the reaches of Hell, a very deceptive Hell, but Hell no less. Man was meant to have achieved god-like proportions before he would discover this place. The men of the Essex were not god-like, believe me. Nor are the men of the Algonquin. Nor are you.

"Aldebaran IX is a world not meant for men to walk upon. It is a disguise. There are gardens and deserts, jungles and plains. But there are no oceans. The ocean here is the atmosphere. Should I have told the men of the Algonquin that in this ocean swims a Leviathan that defies the very existence we claim, Mr. Rogers? This is our adversary. This is the killer of the crew of the Essex. This is the sum total of man's stumbling blocks, his barrier to his own betterment. A giant, half the length of the Algonquin, almost its girth, with eyes each as large as a man.

"Kill him, Mr. Rogers, and you have conquered man's evil. You will see him. You will see why this had to be."

I could say nothing. I believed then that he was more than a little mad, but he had instilled a strange fear in me. I wanted to be away from all of this. I wanted no part in this undoing of man's evil.

"I can only say that I feel that a man should be given a choice of participating or not in this madness," I said, the words sounding very dry and brittle.

"No, Mr. Rogers. No. Give man a choice and he will refuse."

"I must go now, Captain Kingsford. It's time I made my rounds of the emplacements."

"I'll join you, Mr. Rogers," he said, and we left the ship together. I never entered the hatch of the Algonquin again.

* * * * *

We spent the entire night covering the perimeter of the defense positions. The emplacements were spaced at about half-mile intervals, each covering the other, and each manned by two of the crew. We had armed each position with a fixed base nuclear rifle of recoilless design, as well as small arms for the individual men. The night was pervaded by a heavy silence, broken only by the distant humming of the refinery and the reactor. The men at the emplacements spoke little. The spirit of the hunt, as I have said, had dwindled, but there was a feeling about this night that hung over all of us.

Along toward first light we were heading back into the center of the camp, having completed a full circuit of the perimeter on foot. The suits we wore were light enough, despite the helmets we needed for communications, but there was still the feeling of restriction, even without the face plates. I was tired. I had gone almost twenty hours without sleep. As we walked, Kingsford held a hand to his head just above the eye patch. He had a headache and his good eye was red. He stopped a moment to rub the eye and take a cigarette from a packet in his tunic. He offered me one and struck his lighter so that we could light the cigarettes. Suddenly, he held his hand very still.

"Look, Mr. Rogers," he said. "Look. The flame. How it flickers. The air is moving. The air is moving, Mr. Rogers."

I turned my head up automatically, but detected no change in the stillness. Kingsford studied the flame and began to smile. Then my headset came alive with a voice.

"Captain. Captain Kingsford. This is Pierce. It's blowing up a breeze here. It's becoming a wind as I speak. The sun has not quite risen, but it's almost light enough. I don't see anything, but I feel the wind. It's stronger each second."

We could feel it now. Gradually at first, then stronger, the air began to stir and move in the direction of Pierce's emplacement. Other positions began to report the movement in the air. Then the first light of Aldebaran broke over the horizon in a brilliant red glow and we heard Pierce again.

"I see it," he called. "It's like a ship. It seems bigger than the Algonquin. Captain, it's moving toward us, but not directly at us. I make the distance to be about seven miles, but I can't be sure. I don't know how big it is. What's its size, Captain?"

"Has it a long snout and sort of a funnel at the front?" Kingsford demanded.

"Yes, sir. It's moving very fast and there's a cloud rising before it, and the cloud is disappearing into the funnel. I can hear it now. It must be closer than I thought. Lord, it's huge. The wind is much stronger now. It's getting difficult to breathe."

"And the eyes, Pierce. Can you see the eyes?"

"No, sir. But we can't breathe too well here now. It's coming closer. Closer."

We could see it now. It was moving in a direction generally toward the camp, but if it maintained its course, it would bypass us by a good distance. It was huge. Much greater than Kingsford had described, at least so it seemed. Slender at the front and tapering to a huge girth near its tail. A great billow of dust rose before its path, disappearing in the bugle-like snout. The wind increased far beyond any I'd ever known, and then I could see the eyes.

"You see, Mr. Rogers," Kingsford shouted. "It has expected us. It is grown. Six times its size, Mr. Rogers. The men of the Essex nurtured it well. Ha!"

* * * * *

The men at all positions were calling over the communications, but none had fired their weapons yet.

"Commence firing," Kingsford shouted his order. He turned to me. "There, Mr. Rogers. There is your Leviathan." I could barely hear him for the wind. Then I realized that it was only because we had the communications on that I could hear him at all, though he was but two feet from me.

"Stop them, Captain," I shouted. "If we don't fire, it will pass us."

"No, Mr. Rogers. Hear this, men. The shot that fells the beast gets another ten percent of my share. Now, Mr. Rogers. Now I get my eye back, and the men of the Essex, and the right to bring the fruit of this Hell back to Earth. Now is the moment all mankind has waited for. Now. Will you deny me that? Will you, Mr. Rogers?"

* * * * *

I couldn't answer. It was too late. One of the emplacements had brought its weapon to bear and fired at what seemed point blank range. The sound was deafening above the roar of the wind. I felt the wind tear at my clothes and saw the blinding flash and then heard the sound of the detonation. Kingsford stood firm through all this. "Again," he shouted. "Again." Then he fell forward, the wind tearing at him. I fell to my knees then, the wind dragging at me, and felt a mound at my side. It was the base of a projection of stone. I undid my waist clasp and secured myself to the projection and reached out to Kingsford. I grasped his wrist and hung on as I saw the flame and smoke whirled away and sucked into the funnel of the monster as it turned toward the center of the camp. Kingsford was like a limp rag, dragging in the wind against my hand. The animal had veered directly toward the camp site. It was over the ship. It dwarfed the Algonquin, easily ten times its size. I saw solid objects floating toward its funnel mouth. I was deafened by the roar of the wind now, but I saw that the objects were men and equipment. I thought I heard screams, but it must have been the roaring of the wind. Then I saw both its eyes, huge yet blind, and everything about me rushing toward the mouth of the funnel. Then the ship began to come apart and I could see nothing in the devastating clouds of dust and smoke that surrounded me, a solid mass fleeing at unbelievable speed toward a center I could no longer determine. Once, during this horror, I felt a weight lifted from the strain on my body. I did not realize at once that it was Kingsford being torn away from my grasp. After that, I gave myself up to what might be. I could no longer breathe, no longer see, no longer feel, but by some monstrous miracle, the stone projection to which I was clasped held securely and only in semi-consciousness was I aware of the gradual diminution of all sound and wind, and a slow returning to silence of this vast hell of a planet. Some time later, I opened my eyes to the magnificent glare of early morning sunlight in full splendor.

Nothing about me had remained. Of the men, the emplacements, the conveyors, refinery or reactor, indeed of the Algonquin herself I saw nothing more. Only a plain. A vast, arid plain, where once there had been forty some men and myself, a ship that mirrored the pinnacle of human technology, and the semblance of a habitable, arable land. I was alone.