New Lamps by Robert Moore Williams (best beach reads txt) 📖

Kus Dorken's mouth, scooping it up in handfuls and cramming it down his foe's gullet.

Tal Bock got to his feet. The scream that ripped from his lips was pure triumph. Utterly naked, he stood beside the body of his victim, shaking his fist at the roof of the cavern, screaming defiance at the universe.

Ronson fervidly hoped that the radiation flowing through the Martian would strike him dead. The scream went into silence. Tal Bock's gaze fell on the leper, he moved in that direction. Viciously he kicked the leper.

The sick Martian slipped from his squatting position and lay inert.

Ronson moved forward. With all the strength that he possessed, he hit Tal Bock behind the ear. As he struck the blow, the super-sonic note screamed through him.

Ronson's blow knocked Tal Bock sprawling. Like a gigantic cat, the Martian came to his feet.

Ping!

Tal Bock moved toward Ronson in little short steps. He was like a cat getting ready to pounce. The grin on his face said he was going to anticipate destroying this human.

Ping!

Tal Bock lost his footing. He fell heavily and tried to rise. A confused expression was on his face. The effort to rise was more than he could manage. Collapsing, he lay without moving.

"Jim! Here! Quick!" The voice came from the shrubbery. His first thought was that he was hallucinating. Jennie Ware and Sam Crick could not be there in that shrubbery, fully clothed, Jennie beckoning frantically to him, Crick with a needle gun in his hand.

They came to him, on the run. Jennie caught one arm, Crick caught the other. Supporting him between them, they ran through the shrubbery. In the opposite wall, a hole showed, an honest opening, not a light-swirling mirage. Inside it, Crick swung shut a door. A Martian lay on the floor of the tunnel.

"How—how did you get here?" Ronson gasped.

Crick nodded to the Martian on the floor. "We persuaded Tocko to bring us. He knew a little more about this place than he ever let on. After he brought us here, we gave him a needle, to keep him quiet while we rescued you." The tall adventurer grinned as he spoke.

"Come on, Jim. We know the way out of here. If we get out before they discover what has happened—" The girl was all frantic motion moving toward escape.

"I'm not going," Ronson said.

"What?" the girl gasped.

Ronson turned to Crick. "Do you have an extra gun?"

"Of course. But, Jim—"

"Lend it to me, will you? I may need it before I'm finished here."

"Eh?" Crick was startled.

Ronson explained what he meant. Crick's face grew grim. He took an extra needle gun out of his coat pocket. "I guess maybe you could use a little help on this job, Jim. Eh, Jennie?" He glanced at the girl.

Fear was on her face. She wanted to run, to get away, forever, from this place of horror. But some things were more important than running.

"We'll make it a threesome," she said.

"Good girl!" Ronson spoke.

A passage circled the oval cavern. With Ronson in the lead, they followed it until they came to the spot from which the radiations were being poured into the cavern. Here was a large room. The passage led directly into it.

Inside the room was a tremendous array of complex electrical apparatus. Ronson had never seen anything as good as this in even the best laboratories back on Earth. He could not even guess the purpose of most of the equipment, it had been designed by a Martian mind and constructed by Martian hands—with a Martian goal in view.

Set in the middle of the room were the control panels of the equipment. Directly above the panels was a smoky visio screen that revealed dimly what was happening in the cavern. Just rising from his place at the controls was—the Messenger.

He looked up and into the muzzle of the needle gun Ronson was holding. A tiny startled reaction played across his poised face, disturbing the many wrinkles there, then was gone. A smile replaced it.

"Ah, yes. I had just discovered you were missing and I was starting to look for you."

Behind him, Ronson heard Jennie Ware catch her breath. He knew she was thinking that they should have run while they had the chance.

"We saved you the trouble, Les Ro," Ronson said.

The startled reaction was more pronounced this time. "You guessed?"

"That Les Ro and his Messenger were one and the same? It was obvious when you did not need to communicate what I had said to Les Ro. How many others are here with you?"

The question was important. Their own survival depended on the number of Martians here.

The startled reaction was very real this time. "No one else is here?"

"You are alone!"

"I am alone. Many times I have longed—"

"Watch him Jim." Crick whispered. "This doesn't smell right to me."

"Do you mean to tell me that you alone built this apparatus?" Ronson gestured toward the array of equipment in the room.

"This? This is only a part. It was a long task. Many weary years I have spent here—"

"He's telling the truth, Jim," Jennie Ware whispered.

"But one pair of hands, to build all of this." Shock was in Ronson, perhaps even greater shock than he had experienced in the cavern. He stared at Les Ro. Respect was in him and admiration, if not liking. "Then you are indeed a genius. The rumors were partly right, after all."

"Thank you."

"But why couldn't you get someone to help you?"

Sadness showed on Les Ro's face. "You have seen the people in the drinking room below. Which of them could understand how an electron circles in its orbit? Many times I have tried to train the brightest of them. The result was inevitable failure. That is why, when you came—" Longing came into Les Ro's eyes.

"Watch him, Jim," Crick whispered.

"I know it doesn't track," Ronson said. His voice grew grim and hard. Bitterness boiled in it. He was facing his own frustration here, in the failure of his deep hopes in coming to this place. A touch of pain moving through his chest told him what that failure meant to him. He gestured toward the cavern. "Out there I saw Martians destroying each other. In this, they were wiser than they knew. The ones who died quickly were lucky. The choice was between a quick death and slow, horrible death from the radiation pouring through that place."

Pain and consternation showed on Les Ro's face. He seemed to hear only Ronson's last words. "How did you detect the radiation?"

"With this." Ronson nodded toward his watch.

"This is wonderful. You humans actually have a reliable method of detecting radiation! I have striven so hard to build such a device. Let me see it." He moved toward Ronson as if nothing else were of any importance in comparison to the detector.

"Stand back. Kus Dorken and Te Hold and the leper would not have thought the radiation pouring through them was wonderful, if they had known about it. Nor will Tal Bock, before he dies."

Real pain darkened the fine patina of the Martian's face. "Do you really believe this of me?"

"I saw it happen," Ronson answered. "I was there. I saw Tal Bock destroy Kus Dorken—"

"One moment, please." Les Ro's hand moved among the controls. Ronson's hand tightened on the trigger. He held off firing. Somewhere a relay thudded home. Power surged. The wall in the front of the room began to glow with light.

"Wait, please! Walt!"

The leper came first through the swirling mistiness. He walked erect, his back straight and his head up. The light of eager anticipation was still in his eyes but something new had been added now—realization.

"But Tal Bock killed him. I saw it," Ronson whispered.

"No," Les Ro gently negated. "When Tal Bock attacked him, I put him into a trance condition, to save him."

Ronson hardly heard the answer. His eyes were fixed on something else. "The sores—" The sores were not gone but they had diminished in size. Replacing the rotten tissue, new flesh had already begun to form.

"This is what he asked, when he came to me," Les Ro said. "This is what he got."

"But this is a miracle."

Again Les Ro denied the statement. "This is natural law in operation, though to you the laws may be unknown. Watch."

The leper would have dropped to his knees and kissed Les Ro's hand, but the Martian forbade it, sending him to wait elsewhere.

Te Hold came through the swirling light—a Te Hold who was without fear. Then, Kus Dorken came. He was still spitting sand out of his mouth but the bluster and the bravado and the anger were gone from him. He was a new Kus Dorken. Inside, he had been subtly changed. Flowing outward, the change showed on his face as a gentle kindliness.

"He was a killer when I saw him first," Jennie Ware said. "Now—he looks like a saint."

Les Ro smiled at her. "He will be a saint, from now on. He knows how to be one, now. As to Tal Bock, he has not yet recovered from your needles. When he does recover, he will come out of the cavern a saint too."

"But why didn't you tell me about this?" Ronson whispered. "Why did you just thrust me, and presumably the others too, in there without warning. Why didn't you tell us?"

"To have told you, might have defeated my purpose, or prolonged its achievement. I put all who come to me in the cavern. There, the killer will try to kill, the coward will run, the brave man will fight. As the killer tries to kill, he will use the reaction patterns he has known all his life. As he uses them, I throw bursts of energy at him. I disconnect the kill patterns. The energy penetrates right down to the levels of the cells, and even goes lower than that, changing old patterns—"

"New lamps for old," the girl whispered.

Ronson was silent. His thinking was perturbed, almost bewildered. What Les Ro had said made sense. Reaction patterns had to change down to and through the cellular level. If the patterns were struck by bursts of radiant energy—but this was the method nature used! This was the method of the something they had sought but which had always eluded them. The change in the cells that was called cancer—again pain flicked through his chest—more often than not this change was brought about by radiant energy operating on cellular structure! Les Ro had organized this something, this wild talent of nature, and was making it do useful work.

"But it did not work for me," Ronson protested.

"Human cellular structure and Martian cellular structure are different," Les Ro answered. "This is the first opportunity I have had to work with humans. More time is needed to produce the changes in them. That is all." A beatific smile lit the face of the old Martian. It went slowly away as his eyes came to focus on the girl. Ronson turned, gasped when he saw what she was doing.

She was stripping herself. Without embarrassment and shame, she took off her clothes. She stood before them, naked.

"A human woman!" Les Ro said.

"Outside, I'm a woman," Jennie Ware answered. "But inside I've got more of the organization of a man than a woman. The result has been that all my life there's been a fight within me. Instead of being a woman, I have only succeeded in being a bitch, all jangle of nerves, always trying to do what the men did, but knowing I really couldn't, because I was a woman. I'm tired of this. I'm sick and tired of it!" Her voice grew frantic for a moment. Then she was calm again.

"I want to be a woman. Do you think that if I went in there—" she gestured toward the cavern, "that you could help me be a—woman?" The appeal in her eyes and in her voice begged for one answer.

"I have never worked with a human woman—"

"Then use me as a guinea pig!" As if the answer were predetermined, her chin up, with not a look behind her, she moved through the misty light and out of sight—like Eve stepping into the Garden of Eden in the dawn of a new world.

Les Ro's hands moved over the switches.

Jim Ronson dropped the needle gun. For a split second, he hesitated. Then he walked toward the swirling light.

Les Ro's voice stopped him. "When you are cured, my son, when you are finished in there, come back, and we will work together on the problems of your world and mine. This I have dreamed of since the first day I began work here, that someone with sufficient intelligence might come to work beside me."

Ronson smiled, nodded. As he stepped into the mistiness, Les Ro's face beamed at him, enhaloed, like a