Leaning back against the cool metal, he closed his eyes and worked at fighting his recalcitrant muscles. He couldn’t stay here. One way or another, he had to get moving. Otherwise, when the elevator got to this level its bottom would peel him off the wall as neatly as old skin off a beach-burned back.
“Help!” he streamed again. “Help!”
Now stop that and save your breath, Pinback. There’s nobody here to hear you, and nobody’s coming to rescue you. You’ve got to get out of this by yourself.
He was nearly to the hatchway on the other side, but it was still occupied by the twittering form of the alien. Making sure he was well set on his left leg, he kicked at it with his right, trying to force the creature back into the chamber beyond.
The alien bounced up and down violently in the portal, obviously agitated, but not struck sufficiently to be hurt. Pinback kicked at it again, and added some curses for added punch.
“Get out of there, you… go on, get out, move, you ignorant, stupid, ungrate…!”
Making an especially virulent gobbling sound, the alien leaped—not backward, but into the shaft. It landed on Pinback’s chest and immediately began scratching at him with its claws. The claws had little clutching power behind them, but it was still damned uncomfortable.
“No, no!” Flailing at it hysterically with both hands, he tried to beat it off without sacrificing his balance. He couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. If it got to his eyes…
Somehow he spun on the narrow ledge. Now he had his stomach and face pressed up against the wall. But the sudden twist had only temporarily dislodged the alien. It simply jumped free and reattached itself, this time to his upper back.
“Get off, get off!”
Still beating at it with little success, he started edging toward his right. Maybe it would leave him if he went back into the old hatchway. Taking another step, he arched his back slightly and took a good swat at the Beachball with his right hand. At the same time, it made a particularly strong wrench at his right side.
There was a loud, gobbling scream—from Pinback—as he slipped. Both hands caught the ledge as he slumped down. He hung like that, dangling over the seemingly bottomless shaft. Well, it was far from bottomless. But it was far too far away for him to risk a drop.
Grunting and twisting, he fought to get one leg back up on the ledge, swinging his body from side to side without much luck.
The alien had hopped free at the moment of falling and was now comfortably ensconced once more in the hatchway. It appeared to regard Pinback with interest, quivering and honking in its maddeningly unconcerned fashion.
Pinback had no trouble holding on—he’d been something of a gymnast in secondary school. No doubt with a little more effort he could get back up. At least, he thought so until he felt a frighteningly familiar light pressure on his shoulder blades.
“No… oh, no… I don’t want to play anymore. Get off. Get offfff!”
The alien’s weight was negligible. Its activities were not. After several moments of serene sizing-up, it started to squeeze at Pinback’s rib cage. The sergeant started to scream, but soon found himself laughing uncontrollably. Occasionally the laugh would dissolve into a scream for help.
“Stop… s-s-stop! That’s not… f-funny!” The alien continued its merciless tickling.
It shouldn’t have known what it was doing—certainly Pinback couldn’t recall any time when he’d done any tickling, or been tickled, in the alien’s presence. He might have forgotten something, though.
In any case, he had no time to ponder the possibilities of a carefully camouflaged alien intelligence suddenly coming to the surface. The tickling was weakening him in a way that hanging on couldn’t. At least nothing more could happen.
A mechanical voice drifted through the shaft.
“Attention, attention…”
“Arrghh… no!” Pinback howled.
“Elevator descending for midweekly proficiency check. Please clear the shaft.”
“You crazy bundle of crossed circuits—this isn’t midweek!”
“Your cooperation will be appreciated.”
Pinback’s gaze turned wildly upward. His laughter and his grip on the narrow ledge were fading fast. There was a muffled clank, followed by a whirring sound.
Above him, a smooth white panel began to grow larger—the bottom of the slowly descending elevator. His eyes widened. “Goddamn it!” Tears began to start from them, half from laughter, half from desperation.
Making a supreme effort, he somehow managed to get both arms up onto the ledge at the same time. This seemed to catalyze something in the Beachball’s mind. Whether bored with the tickling or disappointed at its lack of success in getting Pinback to let go, or for some incomprehensible reason known only to animated Beachballs, the creature floated free and jumped back into the hatchway.
With a smooth whine, to indicate that all its components were functioning perfectly, the elevator continued to descend, a wide white foot coming down to crush Pinback.
He struggled wildly, got his foot, then his right leg back onto the ledge. Now that the alien had decided to leave him alone, his strength was coming back. Fighting frantically, he managed to get himself onto the ledge. Hands pressed against the wall, he started to stand.
He was just taking a retreating step toward the hatchway when the elevator touched his face—and stopped. Having detected interference, the lift would pause for a second, then move downward in stages unless it encountered stiff resistance. Pinback would not supply stiff resistance.
It would peel him off the ledge in slow jerks.
Even as he thought, the elevator dropped another tenth of a meter, bunching up his face and shoving him backward so that he was arching over the shaft. Another drop; and it would be impossible for him to keep his balance.
Just to one side of his scrunched-up face he saw a single metal bar suspended from the bottom of the lift. Reaching for it desperately, he just got a hand around it when the elevator dropped again.
Swinging out into open space, he grabbed with the other hand, rested in open air as the elevator slid another notch downward. That last one would have sent him tumbling down the shaft. His present position would not last forever, either, but it was better than lying broken fifty or sixty meters below.
There was a soft click, the pitch of the whining motor changed slightly, and he found himself rising as the elevator started up: He’d had some vague hope that it would continue downward until he could drop free. Now he dared not.
“Help… for God’s sake, somebody, help!”
No one heard him, of course. And no doubt the malfunctioning elevator was stimulating no red warning light in the control room, so no one would be hurrying back here to check it out.
He wondered what the damn elevator would do next. How long did one of these automatic proficiency tests last, anyhow? It couldn’t keep going up and down, up and down, forever—though it showed no sign of stopping.
There was no logic to it. Like the rest of the instrumentation on the Dark Star, it was operating in a typically haphazard manner.
As for the alien—he looked upward, and if he twisted his body, so, he could just see around one edge of the elevator. There was a brief flash of red, which had to be the Beachball clearing the shaft with ease. It squeezed through the other side, and as Pinback passed that level, with its open hatchways—open, unreachable hatchways—he saw it scampering along back to where he had disturbed it. Back to the emergency airlock.
Imitative creatures have one other characteristic in common with man—they are intensely curious. If Pinback had gone to the trouble of trying to root it out of the place it had been exploring, then it followed that there must be something in that place of particular interest to Beachballs. Anyhow, it was no longer curious about Pinback, now dangling helplessly in the shaft behind it.