Son of the Stars Page 6

  “I think the next corridor back will show us what we want.”

  Clonar led them to one of the concentric, connecting hallways they had just passed. There, they passed along its curved route for a short distance and daylight appeared ahead and below.

  Clonar stood at the ragged edge of the floor and scanned the light over the ruin. It looked as if here had once been a great chamber filled with vast machines. It extended from where they stood to the center of the vessel at the right, and an equal distance on the other side. The skeletal sticks of main members hung to the floor of the ravine.

  “There’s the power plant, Captain Hornsby,” said Clonar, a bitter smile showing in the half-darkness. “There’s not a bolt that anyone could identify. All that is left of the ship consists of living and storage quarters and navigation and control rooms. I fear you will find little of interest in my ship, Captain.”

  For a long time Hornsby seemed to be studying the face of Clonar. “I hope you are not deliberately attempting to conceal items of military value to us,” he said thinly. “We intend to go over this ship with a fine-toothed comb and analyze every metal and every mechanical device. It would be to your advantage not to attempt to conceal anything.”

  “We can finish our tour through the ship and you can see for yourself.”

  “Proceed.”

  Ron had not realized the tremendous thing this ship could be. It had an immense volume that left him feeling completely lost as Clonar led them through the maze of corridors.

  He saw at close hand the chambers of various colorings that he had observed on the day of discovery.

  They were not harsh, and their mingling gave out a sense of pleasure and exuberance that seemed to say that Clonars race was of creatures who enjoyed life to the fullest.

  Clonar showed them endless storerooms stocked with specimen materials from hundreds of alien planets. He exhibited stores of photographs of planets that no Terrestrial telescopes had even seen. They showed strange and alien forms of life, nightmare creatures inhabiting worlds whose surface and atmosphere would be instant death to Earthmen exposed to it.

  There were laboratories in every field of science useful to such an exploring party.

  Ron wished with all his heart that he might have taken such a tour alone with Clonar before anyone else found out about the ship. There was mystery and wisdom here in such profusion that it made his throat ache with longing to know of these things and the worlds from which they came.

  But Hornsby was plainly bored by anything that he could not instantly classify as a “weapon.” And technicians were everywhere.

  During more than half the tour Ron caught a note of increasing agitation in Clonar’s voice and manner. By the time they were through he was visibly upset.

  And then he spoke of the matter. “What have you done with my people who were found dead within the ship?” he demanded harshly. “Where have you taken them?”

  “That was the first thing we took care of, naturally.

  We had to clean up the ship. It was in pretty horrible condition.”

  They were back near the central chamber now and Hornsby approached a door they had not entered previously. Inside, they saw a half dozen men working intently over benches. And then Clonar got a glimpse of the interior of that room and what the men were doing. He uttered a great cry in his own tongue, which split the air within the room and turned the heads of all who were there.

  He rushed in, shoving aside those who blocked him, moving from bench to bench. Behind him, Ron also saw. The bodies of those who had been killed in the crash were neatly laid out, and were being immersed in preservative for study.

  Ron felt something sick and cold within him. Then from the far end of the room came another cry of rage in an alien tongue. Clonar stopped beside a figure torn and mangled and in part decayed—but now carefully prepared like some specimen animal.

  “Ron—Ron!” called Clonar, and now there was a great sob in his voice. “Ron—come here—”

  Ron raced toward him and stood by the container over which he leaned.

  “My father,” he sobbed in rage. “My father—and here is my brother—”

  He turned slowly. With the majestic rage that fell upon him, every man in the room except Hornsby felt something of the magnitude of the desecration they had committed. Suddenly Clonar picked up a metal bar from a nearby table and hurled it down the length of the room. A man fell as it caught him across the side of his head. Ron cried out to Clonar.

  Clonar was beyond hearing now. He rushed toward the nearest man, picked him up bodily and hurled him across the room. Even Ron gasped at the awesome power of those muscles he had admired in Clonar.

  Hornsby vanished out the door, but the others gathered for a rush, picking up such weapons as they could find about them.

  “Stop it, Clonar! They’ll kill you!” Ron cried. Clonar met them headlong. He seized a club of packing case lumber from the nearest man and smashed it against the man’s head. The others hurled themselves upon him in a single overwhelming mass, and bore him down.

  For a moment that mass struggled like some writhing, shapeless animal. From its midst came the bellowing roar of Clonar’s rage in his native language.

  Then suddenly that roar was still. The mass was quiet. One by one, figures began to disengage themselves. When they all stood up, Clonar lay alone on the floor, his face a mass of blood and bruises.

  Ron knelt beside him. He was still breathing, and once his head rolled from side to side in the pain of his injuries.

  Hornsby appeared in the doorway, a gun in his hand. He lowered it as he grasped the situation.

  “Good work, men. Take him out.”

  Ron stood up, his bitter eyes holding them. “Good work!” he said. “You can be proud of this day’s work—you’ve beaten and robbed a man who came across light-years of space. A stranger, accidentally thrown upon our hospitality. His dead you have pickled like freaks from the bottom of the sea—the dead of a race that had possibly reached the stars before ours had left the caves. You should be very proud for—”

  “Shut up!” snarled Hornsby. “Shut up, and get out.”

  “What do you think you are going to do with him?”

  “We’ll take care of him, all right! Well patch him up and give him a taste of what it means to encroach on a military preserve. The best thing you can do, kid, is get out of here just as fast as you can. Ill give you exactly five minutes to be up the hill and on your way.”

  Chapter 7 Desperate Chance

  George Barron was already home when Ron arrived late in the afternoon. The MP’s and their jeeps i] were gone, too. Ron slumped wearily into a chair in the living room, across from his father. He asked about the guards.

  “I took care of that as soon as your mother got word to me,” said Mr. Barron. “Colonel Middleton is, shall we say—a little overzealous in the performance of his duties.

  “As soon as he got one look at the ship this morning he called the Base and ordered truckloads of equipment and technicians. I didn’t know about the guard business until your mother phoned.”

  “‘Overzealous’ is a mild way to describe Middleton and some of his men,” said Ron.

  In detail he told the story of what had happened at the ship.

  George Barron’s face became incredulous as he heard it.

  “What land of man is that Hornsby?” he exclaimed. “The same kind as Middleton—a blundering, stupid—”

  “Ron!”

  He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway near him.

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but you didn’t see what they did to Clonar. And the way they treated the remains of his father and brother I You’d feel just as bitter about it if you had seen it, too.”

  “That does seem dreadful,” she murmured. “Surely they didn’t need to do that!”

  “What happened finally to Clonar?” asked George Barron.

  “I’m not sure. They made me get out of there. Said they were
taking him to the VA hospital. He may be dead, for all I know. Dad—won’t you do something? Cant you do something?”

  “I’m almost ready to believe you had better judgment than I,” Mr. Barron admitted grimly. “I’ll call Middleton and see what can be done.”

  Mrs. Barron said, “Let me fix you something to eat. You look exhausted and dinner will be quite a while yet.

  “Thanks, Mom. A couple of sandwiches and milk will do fine. And a man-sized piece of that white cake I saw this morning.”

  Ron ate slowly, wondering what had become of Clonar. Wondering if Clonar would become so embittered by this experience that he would be full of hate for all Earthmen, including himself. When he was on the last of the cake, his father came in and sat across from him.

  “I got Middleton, finally,” George Barron said. “I think you can see Clonar in the morning. He’s in the VA hospital, all right.

  “But the Colonel is bitter about your going up there this afternoon. It didn’t help any.”

  “Clonar merely wanted to bury his dead. He had the right to do that!”

  “Of course he did. It’s just another example of the terrible misunderstanding that takes place when people fail to communicate properly with one another.”

  “It’s an example,” said Ron bitterly, “of what happens when men like Middleton and Hornsby are put in positions of a little authority.”

  “I can’t argue with you there, either. But Middleton said they are sending a general out from Washington to take charge. He’ll bring a large group of scientists to investigate the ship and Clonar. They may arrive tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Will they let Clonar come back here?”

  “I don’t think so. Middleton says he’s going to remain in custody of the military until they get all the information possible from him. He says Clonar is a national resource.”

  “Resource! We’ve got to get him out of there. You know Senator Clauson well enough to ask him to exert some pressure—and you know Representative Terrence pretty well, too.”

  “I can try—I will try, because I agree that Clonar’s rights have been violated. But I fear that Middleton’s view of him as a national resource will be a widely held one.

  “In times like these, when we’re concerned with rights on a global scale, there is sometimes the danger of forgetting the individual. The very struggle defeats its own purpose. But I’ll try. I promise you that, Ron.”

  Mrs. Barron came in as Ron finished putting the dishes away.

  “I almost forgot,” she said. “Anne called and said you’d been neglecting to give her reports on Clonar. I think she’d like to have you come over. She mentioned a swim this evening.”

  The mention of Anne’s name was like the sudden drawing of a curtain revealing the ordinary life of Longview, from which he seemed to have departed so long ago. The preoccupation with Clonar had almost blotted out all normal considerations of living.

  “I promised her I’d call her,” he said. “I should have done it this afternoon. I’ll get my swim trunks and drive over there.”

  “She and the rest of the gang will already be at Vogler’s Pool,” his mother said. “Anne said you should join them if you wanted to, and if you got home in time.”

  “O.K. Thanks, Mom.”

  After starting out he drove slowly. He didn’t actually want to go swimming. He didn’t feel much like seeing the rest of the gang and taking part in their horseplay.

  He did want to see Anne, however, and talk to her about Clonar. He felt as if just talking it over with her would remove some of the muddy enigma that clouded the problem now.

  As the throaty purr of Ron’s car was heard in the parking area among the other hot-rods and jalopies, a dozen loud yells were hurled his way from the bathers in the pool. He climbed out and waved as he ran toward the bathhouse.

  “Hurry up,” Stan Clark yelled. “Anne’s about to pine away.”

  Ron grinned faintly.

  Then another voice called, “Where’s your man from Mars? Why didn’t you bring him along?”

  He stopped cold, hesitated without turning, and then resumed his walk at a slow pace. So Anne must have told them! He’d forgotten to warn her not to. But he’d supposed she would see the obvious necessity of that.

  An angry resentment grew in him because of Anne’s indiscretion. He dressed quickly for the pool. Outside, he plunged in and swam to the spot where she sat on the bank kicking her feet in the water.

  “Hi, Ron!”

  With a rush of water, he drew himself up beside her. She said, “I heard you and Clonar went out to the ship this morning. What happened?”

  “Anne, you haven’t told them all about Clonar, have you?”

  “Shouldn’t I? He’ll be with us from now on.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Not yet, anyway. They can’t be made to understand in a few minutes. There’s this man-from-Mars stuff that some halfwit yakked about when I came in. Clonar can’t stand that sort of thing. You know that.”

  “I’m sorry, Ron. Rut I wonder if you’re not wrong, I don’t know of anyone more willing or able to accept and understand Clonar than this bunch from Long-view High. Think a minute. Wouldn’t he fit in here? Wouldn’t he be understood by Stan, and Marj, and Joe, and Harry, and Nancy, and all the rest? Even Con, the ‘man-from-Mars’ halfwit, could get it through his thick skull, I’ll bet.”

  As they sat talking, those whose names she had mentioned and a dozen others began to slowly congregate about them at the edge of the pool.

  “What is this that Anne’s been telling us?” said Stan. “She said you actually found a ship, a flying saucer, and somebody was still alive in it. What’s the story?”

  Ron hesitated. The anger he had felt toward Anne a moment ago began to die away. Perhaps she was right, he thought. Clonar had been introduced to the adult world with disastrous consequences. If Ron couldn’t make his own friends understand, then there was little hope for Clonar.

  He glanced into the faces about him. Mentally, he placed them beside the Middletons and the Hornsbys of the world. He and his gang were still awkward and unsure of themselves, although their loud mouths and cocky glances would never betray them. But they had no preposterous self-importances to build up. They had not yet reached the stage where you felt the need to grab for the man above while standing on the neck of the one below. These guys and gals could understand Clonar if anyone could, he thought. And Clonar could learn to understand them.

  After a long pause, he nodded. “Anne’s right.”

  Then briefly and sincerely he outlined what had happened, including the day’s tragedy. When he finished there was no snickering about men from Mars. And looking into their faces, there never would be, he thought warmly.

  “What are they going to do with Clonar?” asked Stan. “Keep him locked up for the rest of his life? That’s a heck of a thing to do.”

  “It is,” said Ron, “a heck of a thing. It makes your stomach roll over just thinking about it. Somehow, we’re going to get him out.

  “But when we do, he’ll be coming back here. He’s going to have to live with us, you and me. Here in this town. He’s going to have to learn how to spend his life with people like us. He’s had a rotten deal so far. I’d like to ask every one of you, personally, to show him that isn’t the kind of deal he’s going to get from here on out.

  “You can figure it for yourselves. He’s lost everything he ever had. He’ll never see his family again. Put yourselves in his shoes, and see how you’d like to be treated.”

  The faces were sober. Some of them were a little angry even, that he should have thought it necessary to deliver them a lecture. But they understood.

  “Bring him around,” said George Hamilton, who was vice-president of the Mercury Club. “We’ll give him a square deal. The guy who doesn’t will have to answer to the rest of us. Thanks for giving us the dope, Ron.”

  As if by mutual consent, they edged away again, churning the water, leaving Ron alone with A
nne.

  “You see,” she said, “you were wrong about them.”

  “I think I was. I’m sorry I got sore. How about a swim before we have to leave?”

  “O.K. Race you out to the float!” She flipped into the water as she spoke the words.

  He felt better the next morning as he and Anne and Pete started for the hospital on the north side of Long-view. It was a warm, sunny day with white fragments of cloud drifting swiftly in the upper winds.

  “Has Clonar told you anything about his world?” said Anne. “I wonder if it’s anything like this one.”

  “Yes, he’s told me quite a bit. Physically, the planet is much like this one. It would have to be, to produce a species so much like our own.

  “The gravity is almost the same, about eight or ten percent greater, which accounts for Clonar’s physical development. The atmosphere is much like ours, with a little higher percentage of nitrogen. There are chlorophyll-producing plants, and large bodies of water, and a sky very much like our own.”

  “How about the rotation of the planet?”

  “It moves about a much whiter sun than ours, but at a greater distance. Both the day and the year are longer there, Clonar says. As near as he can guess, his day is about half again as long as ours.”

  “It must be hard for him to adapt to ours.”

  “No. He’s used to the irregularity of space, where they become rather careless about length of days and nights. And he’s a pretty adaptable guy, anyway—provided you don’t try to adapt him by locking him up.”

  The hospital was a huge red building, still new-smelling. The Colonel had made arrangements, but there were many minutes of red tape unwinding before they finally got in to see Clonar, He was propped up, with his head bandaged. One eye was covered, but he smiled all over his face, as far as they could see, when they entered.

  “Ron! Anne!” he exclaimed.

  Ron grasped the six-fingered hand and slapped his fist against Clonar’s shoulder. “They treating you all right here, boy?”