Colossus and Crab by D. F. Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

found that the sudden, high-pitched shriek, brief herald of shells that spread humans like jam, tossing others out of windows, was no less terrible than nuclear oblivion. To the very few philosophers in the UN that day, the Bomb had advantages. It was swift, certain; the guns were neither, and, on a lucky-dip basis, a much more personal and prolonged agony.
    Inexplicably as the attack began, so it ended. The five battleships, familiar on TV with their old American wickerwork masts, visible once again as the gunsmoke cleared, ruled the empty river. Father Forbin’s reassuring message did something to quell the endemic panic, but the more observant noted that each ship’s eight fifteen-inch rifles remained invisible, and for a very good reason: they still pointed straight at the UN.
    From each ship flapped the large battle ensigns of the Maryland Navy: a curiously un-American flag, heraldic in design, quartered in opposing cantons of black and yellow, red and white, the personal flag of the ancient Baltimore family, flags that gave a false impression of life in the automated monsters. In the UN, the trapped personnel waited; like their fellow humans three thousand miles away in the Colossus complex, they had no option.
    And in Luna One, main room station, astronomers had long stopped laughing at the babbled tale of one who had accidentally observed the Martian earth-fall. The observer, a wide-eyed, stuttering administrator who had glanced at Earth at the critical moment, ceased to be remotely funny when Communications reported no answer to their urgent calls to the Earth terminal. So the moon team waited too, their situation the most desperate of all.

Chapter VI
    FOR UNKNOWABLE TIME Forbin remained motionless, staring sightlessly at the aliens, his mind a complete blank, unable to think, only dimly aware of a tight pain in his chest.
    The Martians remained silent, hovering a meter and a half above the carpet.
    Slowly Forbin’s initial shock receded. His eyelids fluttered as if emerging from a trance. His mind got reluctantly into gear, overwhelmed by the enormity, the sheer impossibility, of the Martian demand.
    “I-I …”He faltered, his thoughts refusing to face anything but the most trivial matter. He stared, but now he saw, and anger boiled. “You have no idea, no idea of - of the tension …” Again he ground to a halt, his train of thought blasted by the unbidden remembrance of the demand. Half … half!
    Rage got him moving. “For God’s sake, stop floating! Rest on something!” he screamed.
    “As you wish.” Lightly, soundlessly, the spheres touched down on a table.
    To Forbin’s overloaded mind, desperate for release, the action seemed funny; he wondered briefly what would happen if the table was not quite level. Would they roll off? Half crazy, he giggled.
    “That sound implies you find something laughable, funny, humorous, in our action. Is that so?”
    Forbin wearily shook his head. That voice, so similar to Colossus, yet not …
    “You wouldn’t understand.” He went on, more to himself, “I don’t think I do either.” All the same, the fact that his brain had gone where they could not follow made him feel a little better; hysteria receded. However bad the situation, at least man had the edge in that one respect - humor.
    “We’ll need it!” said Forbin, aloud.
    “We do not understand.”
    “I don’ t suppose you do. No, I don’ t suppose you do.” He felt so tired, but forced his mind to think the unthinkable. “This demand -” He broke off once more; he had been about to say “You can’t be serious.” He couldn’t have it both ways: if they lacked humor then for sure they were serious. God! They were serious, all right. “You must see your demand is totally impossible. We -“
    “No.” The single word came flatly, unemotionally.
    “But it is!” he cried. “You cannot imagine what will happen to mankind!”
    “You will be depleted, no more than that.”
    Forbin caught his