People Minus X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

For Ed, the world seemed to rock as Les leaped. Les was not strong now and was still in his convalescence. And maybe he had been wavering and unsure, or even wrong in his past choices. But at this moment he was not at all in doubt, though the attack he made could have been pure, wild fright.

"Father, indeed! I'll kill you—Phony!" he screamed. Then he was grappling with Loman with all the strength that muscle and emotion could muster.

For that moment at least, he was Ed Dukas's ally, willing or otherwise. For he held Loman's attention diverted. And because of Les's attack Loman's neutronic aura remained turned off.

Ed leaped and jetted, his tiny Midas Touch a scarcely visible spark as it flamed. He landed on the fabric near the back of Loman's neck and at the base of his helmet. Holding tight, Ed let his weapon flare again, this time using it to blast a tiny hole. He braved the violent spurt of energy from the dissolving rubberized fabric and then the moment of exposure to radiation and heat as he crept through. Now he floated in Loman's private atmosphere, within the great oxygen helmet, as Loman's struggle with Les went on.

Now was the time to test a plan: the speck-sized man against a being of human dimensions—comparatively as huge as a mountain. And it was android against android, advantage against advantage.

Loman's lungs, active now to give breath to a chuckle of triumph, breathed Ed in deeply. With his full equipment still lashed to his shoulders, he tumbled down through moist and faintly ruddy gloom. When the air currents quieted, he clung, a sharp splinter of obsidian rising and falling in his hand, as he cut through soft tissue.

Thus he reached a small artery and was borne along by the flow within it. It was a world of warm, buried rivers. Dim, rosy light sometimes found its way through the walls of flesh. Or was it, still the radioactive glow that Loman's body, adapting to the shortage of oxygen, had shown on Mars? But its physical structure, apart from its substance, remained human: the disklike red blood corpuscles pumped along in the gloom.

Only wait now to be circulated to the right position. Ed knew when he passed the great thumping valves and chambers of Loman's heart. But, no, this was not the place for action. He could feel himself rising now. Good! Was the darkness within the skull denser than elsewhere? Ed forced his way into constantly narrowing channels. Around him he still saw very dimly the living cells themselves. Here they had long, interlocking filaments. They were the brain cells, beyond question.

He dared not use his Midas Touch here. The fluid at its very muzzle would have exploded. But he had grenades of much the same function. Set the fuse of one and leave it lodged here.

Before Ed was pumped back to the huge lungs, he felt the heavy concussion. Then came the wild gyrations of the colossus. A spark of atomic incandescence had exploded within its head, opening arteries to hemorrhage and destroying surrounding tissue with heat and radiation. A demoniac vitality of body might linger on, but a mind was dead. Had total death come quickly, all movement ceasing, Ed might have had to tunnel his way tediously from the gigantic corpse.