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“I think you’re right, Sam,” Barbara said, perhaps as much to reassure herself as to console Ristin.
“Out of the way, there,” an officer in Navy uniform yelled at Yeager. “And get those damned things into the cabin we’ve set up for them.”
“Yes, sir,” Yeager said, saluting. “Uh, sir, where is this cabin? Nobody told me before I got here.”
The Navy man rolled his eyes. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He grabbed a passing sailor by the arm. “Virgil, take this guy and his pet Lizards up to cabin nine. That one can be locked from the outside-here’s the key.” He turned to Barbara. “Who are you, ma’am?” When she gave him her name, he checked a list, then said, “You can go along if you like, since you don’t seem to mind being around these things-they give me the creeps. Anyway, you’re in cabin fourteen, just up the corridor. I hope that’s all right.”
“Sure-why not?” Barbara said. The Navy man looked at her, looked back to the Lizards, rolled his eyes again. He obviously didn’t want to have anything more to do with them than duty required.
“Come on,” Virgil said. He had an engaging hillbilly twang, and seemed more curious than repelled by the Lizards. Nodding to Ristin, he said, “You speak English?”
“Yess,” Ristin answered, fixing him with a baleful stare. “You are sure this-thing-will not fall over into the water?”
“Yup.” The sailor laughed. “Hasn’t yet, anyhow.” Just then, other sailors cast off lines at stern and bow. The ship’s engine roared into life, making the deck vibrate. Ristin and Ullhass both glared at Virgil as if they’d just convicted him of perjury in their minds. Black smoke poured from the Caledonia’s twin stacks. She slowly pulled away from the Navy Pier.
Back on the pier, some of the soldiers who’d done stevedore duty waved farewells. More, though, were too worn to do anything but stand or sit at the end of the pier. Yeager wondered how many of them had any idea why the cargo they’d loaded onto the freighter was so important. A handful if any, he guessed.
He was looking back toward Chicago when he saw flames and dust and smoke spurt up from an explosion, and then from another and another. Oddly flat across a widening stretch of water, the blasts reached his ears at about the same time he heard the screaming jets of the Lizard fighter-bombers.
The antiaircraft gunners on the Navy Pier started firing for all they were worth. All that accomplished was to draw the Lizards’ attention to them. One of the planes zoomed along the length of the pier, turned loose a couple of bombs. The AA fire cut off as sharply as a chicken’s squawks when the cleaver comes down.
The Lizard plane shot over the Caledonia, so low Yeager could see the seams where pieces of its skin were joined together. He breathed a sigh of relief when it screamed out over the lake.
Along with his charges, Virgil had stopped to watch the enemy aircraft again. Now he said, “Let’s get you movin’ again.” But he kept his head cocked, as Yeager did, listening to the sound of the jet engine. Worry crossed his face. “I don’t much like that it’s-”
Before he could say comin’ back, a sharp bark rose above the scream. Yeager had been under fire often enough to make his reaction almost reflexive. “Hit the deck!” he yelled, and had the presence of mind to knock Barbara down beside him.
Cannon shells raked the Caledonia from starboard to port. Glass shattered. Metal screamed. A moment later, so did men. The Lizard pilot, happy with the strafing run, darted westward toward his base.
Something hot and wet splashed Yeager. When he touched it, his hand came away smeared with red. He looked up. There on the deck, a little in front of him, lay Virgil’s still-twitching legs. A few feet away were the soldier’s head and shoulders and arms. Nothing but that red smear was left of the parts in between.
Ullhass and Ristin stared at the ruin of what had been a man with as much horror as if they’d been men themselves. As Yeager did, Barbara Larssen looked up into carnage. She was as smeared with blood as he, from her wavy hair to her pleated skirt: and beyond-a neat line between silk-covered pink and crimson on her calf showed just how far down the skirt had gone.
She saw what was left of Virgil, stared down at the slaughterhouse survivor she’d become. “Oh God,” she said, “Oh God,” and was noisily sick on the deck in the middle of the blood. She clung to Yeager and he to her, his hands digging like claws into the firm, marvelously unbroken flesh of her back her breasts pressing against his chest as if they grew there Her head was jammed down into the hollow of his shoulder He didn’t know if she could breathe and he didn’t care. In spite of the stink of the blood and the puke he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in all his life and from the way his hard-on rubbed her leg and she didn’t pull away but moaned and just shoved herself to him harder than ever he knew she wanted him too and of course it was crazy and of course it was shock but he didn’t care about that either, not one bit.
“Move,” he growled to the Lizards in a voice not his own. They skittered round the pieces of poor dead Virgil. He followed, still clutching Barbara, hoping desperately he could find the cabins before the moment broke.
The numbers on the doors of the first corridor he ducked into showed him he’d been lucky. He opened cabin nine, marched Ullhass and Ristin in, slammed the door behind them, turned the key. Then, almost running, he and Barbara hurried up the echoing metal hallway to fourteen.
The cabin was tiny, the bunk even tinier. Neither of them cared. They fell on it together. She happened to land on top. It could have been the other way round just as easily.
His hand dove under her skirt. He stroked her smooth thigh above the top of her stocking, then yanked at the crotch of her panties. At the same time, she pulled his pants down just far enough. She was so wet, he went deep into her the moment she impaled herself on him.
He’d never known such heat. He exploded almost at once, and in the first instant of returning self-consciousness feared he’d been too quick to satisfy her. But her spine was arched, her head thrown back; she made little mewling noises deep in her throat as she quivered above him. Then her eyes opened. Like him, she seemed to be coming to herself after a hard bout of fever.
She scrambled off him. He hastily put his trousers to rights. They’d both left bloodstains on the blanket that covered the bunk. Barbara stared wildly around the cabin, as if really seeing it for the first time. Maybe she was. “Oh God,” she moaned, “what have I gone and done to myself now?” But of that there could be no possible doubt.
Sam took a step toward her, made as if to take her in his arms. He said what countless men have said to women after lust takes them by surprise: “Darling, it’ll be all right-”
“Don’t you call me that,” she hissed. “Don’t you touch me, don’t you come near me.” She backed as far away from him as she could, which wasn’t very far. “Get out of here this instant. I never want to see you again. Go back to your damned Lizards. I’ll scream. I’ll-”
Yeager didn’t wait to find out what she’d do. He left the cabin in a hurry, closed the door behind him. By sheer dumb luck, the corridor was empty. Through the steel door, he heard Barbara start to cry. He wanted to go back in and comfort her, but she couldn’t have made it any plainer that she wanted no comfort from him. Since they were quartered right down the corridor from each other, she’d have to see him again, and soon. He wondered what would happen then.
“It’ll be all right,” he said without much conviction. Then, shoulders slumped, he walked slowly along the corridor to see how Ristin and Ullhass were. They didn’t have to worry about the whole business of male and female; out of sight was truly out of mind for them. He’d never thought he’d be jealous of that, but right now be was.
17
A Lizard threw open the door to the Baptist church in Fiat, Indiana. The people inside jerked their heads around in surprise and alarm; this was not a usual time for the aliens to bother them. They’d learned a basic lesson of war and captivity: anything out of the ordinary was frightenin
g.
Jens Larssen started with the rest, though as he already faced the big double doors he didn’t have to spin toward them. He’d been standing around kibitzing a game of hearts. Sal the waitress was going for it-trying to take the queen of spades and all the hearts and stick all three of her opponents with twenty-six points each. He didn’t think she had the cards to make it, but you never could tell-she played like a barracuda.
He never found out what happened with the hand. The Lizard stalked into the church, automatic weapon at the ready. Two others covered it from the doorway. The creature hissed, “Piit Ssmiff?”
Larssen needed a second to recognize his alias in the alien’s mouth. As the Lizard started to repeat it, he said, “That’s me. What do you want?”
“Come,” the Lizard said, which might have come close to exhausting its English. A jerk of the gun barrel, however, was hard to misconstrue.
“What do you want?” Larssen said again, but he was already moving. The Lizards were not long on patience with captives.
“Good luck, Pete,” Sal called softly as he headed out toward the doorway.
