Anything You Can Do! by Randall Garrett (smart books to read .txt) 📗

There were plenty of bones down here. Mannheim had said that the tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit the island during the Holocaust. Thousands had crowded underground after the warning had come, and they had died when the bright, hot, deadly gas had roared down through ventilators and open stairwells.

There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still sealed after all this time. But the rats, wiser than they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the tin plate. After a while, oxidation would weaken a can to the point where some lucky rat could bite through it and find himself a meal. Then he could move the empty can aside and gnaw the next one in the pile, and the cycle would begin again. It kept the rats fed almost as well as an automatic machine might have.

The tunnel was an endless monochromatic world that was both artificial and natural. Here, there was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic tile; over there, on a little hillock of earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In one place, he had to skirt a pool of water; in another, climb over a heap of rust and debris that had once been a subway car.

One man, alone, walking through the dark towards a superhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade.

A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been useful, but that would have required a greater knowledge of the Nipe's biochemistry than anyone had. The same applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics.

The only answer was a man called Stanton.

And the voice near his ear said: "A hundred yards to go, Barbell."

"I know," he whispered. "He hasn't moved?"

"No."

Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead? Stanton thought. If his heart had stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me.

Ahead the tunnel made a curving turn, and there was a large area that had once been a major junction of two tunnels, one below the other. The Nipe had taken over a part of that area to build his home-away-from-home.

Stanton approached the turn and took off the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe's lair to illuminate the tunnel. He put the goggles on the trackway. He wouldn't need them again.

He went on around the curve, slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight down here in the tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet.

Cautiously, he lifted himself up to the platform, where long-gone passengers had once waited for long-gone trains. Now that he was out of the trench that the tracks lay in, he could move more easily. He moved away from the tracks.

"Barbell! He's heard you! Watch it!"

But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked off the communicator and threw it away. He didn't want any encumbrances now.

And then, as fast as any express train that had ever moved in these underground ways, the Nipe came around a corner thirty feet away, his four violet eyes gleaming, his limbs rippling beneath his centipede-like body.

From fifteen feet away, he launched himself through the air, his outstretched hands ready to kill.

But Stanton's marvelous neuro-muscular system was already in action.

At this stage of the game, it would be suicide to let the Nipe get close. He couldn't fend off eight grasping hands with his own two. He leaped to one side, and the Nipe got his first surprise in ten years when Stanton's fist slammed against the side of his snouted head, knocking him in the opposite direction from that in which Stanton had moved.

The Nipe landed, turned, and charged back toward the man. This time, he reared up, using his two rear pairs of limbs for locomotion, while the two forward pair were held out, ready to kill.

He got surprise number two when Stanton's fist landed on his snout, rocking his head back. His own hands met nothing but air, and by the time he had recovered from the blow, Stanton was well back, out of the way.

He's so small! Stanton thought wonderingly. Even when he reared up, the Nipe's head was only three feet above the concrete floor.

The Nipe came in again—more cautiously, this time.

Stanton punched again with a straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of his head, below the lower right eye. One of the Nipe's hands came in in a chopping right hook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with a gasp of pain.

The Nipe didn't use fists. He used his open hand, fingers together, like a judo fighter.

The Nipe came forward once more, and as Stanton danced back, the Nipe made a grab for his ankle, almost catching it.

There were too many hands to watch! Stanton had two advantages: weight and reach. His arms were almost half again as long as the Nipe's.

Against that, the Nipe had all those hands; and with his low center of gravity and four-footed stance, it would be hard to knock him down. If Stanton lost his footing, the fight would be over fast.

Stanton lunged suddenly forward and planted a left in the Nipe's right upper eye, then followed it with a right uppercut to the Nipe's jaw as his head snapped back. The Nipe's four hands cut inward from the sides like sword blades, but they found no target.

Backing away, Stanton suddenly realized that he had another advantage. The Nipe couldn't throw a straight jab! His shoulder—if that's what they should be called—were narrow and the upper armbones weren't articulated properly for such a blow. He could throw a mean hook, but he had to get in close to deliver it.

On the other side of the coin was the fact that the Nipe knew plenty about human anatomy—from the bones out. Stanton's knowledge of Nipe anatomy was almost totally superficial.

He wished he knew if and where the Nipe had a solar plexus. He would like to punch something soft for a change.

Instead, he tried for another eye. He danced in, jabbed and danced out again, The Nipe had ducked again, taking it on the side of his head.

Then the Nipe came in low, at an angle, trying for the groin. For his troubles, he got a knee in the jaw that staggered him badly. One grasping hand clutched at Stanton's right thigh and grasped hard. Stanton swung his fist down like a pendulum and knocked the arm aside.

But there was a slight limp in his movement as he back-pedaled away from the Nipe. That full-handed pinch had hurt!

Stanton was angry now, with the hot, controlled anger of a fighting man. He stepped in and slammed two fast, hard jabs into the point of the Nipe's snout, jarring the monster backwards. This time, it was the Nipe who scuttled backwards.

Stanton moved in to press his advantage and landed a beaut on the Nipe's lower left eye. Then he tried a body blow. It wasn't too successful. The alien had an endoskeleton, but he also had a hide that was like somewhat leathery chitin.

He pulled back, out of the way of the Nipe's judo cuts.

His fists were beginning to hurt, and his leg was paining him badly where the Nipe had clamped on to it. And his ribs—

And then he realized that, so far, the Nipe had only landed one blow!

One punch and one pinch, he thought with a touch of awe. The only other damage he's inflicted has been to my knuckles!

The Nipe charged in again, then he leaped suddenly and clawed for Stanton's face with his first pair of hands. The second and third pairs chopped in toward the man's body. The last pair propelled him off the floor.

Stanton stepped back and let him have a right just below the jaw, where his throat would have been if he'd been human.

The Nipe arced backwards in a half-somersault and landed flat on his back.

Stanton backed up a little more, waiting, while the Nipe wriggled feebly for a moment. The Marquis of Queensbury should have lived to see this, he thought.

The Nipe rolled over and crouched on all eight limbs. His violet eyes watched Stanton, but the man could read no expression on that inhuman face.

"You did not kill."

For a moment, Stanton found it hard to believe that the hissing, guttural voice had come from the crouching monster.

"You did not even try to kill."

"I have no wish to kill you," Stanton said evenly.

"I can see that. Do you ... Are you...." He stopped, as if baffled. "There are not the proper words. Do you follow the Customs?"

Stanton felt a surge of triumph. This was what George Yoritomo had guessed might happen!

"If I must kill you," he said carefully, "I, myself, will do the honors. You will not go uneaten."

The Nipe sagged a little, relaxing all over. "I had hoped it was so. It was the only thinkable thing. I saw you on the television, and it was only thinkable that you came for me."

Stanton blinked, stunned. What was the Nipe thinking? But, of course, he knew. And he saw that even his brother's return had been a part of the plan.

"I knew you were out in the asteroids," the Nipe went on. "But I had decided you had come to kill. Since you did not, what are your thoughts, Stanley Martin?"

"That we should help each other," Stanton said.

It was as simple as that.

Stanton sat in his hotel room, smoking a cigarette, staring at the wall, and thinking.

He was alone again. All the fuss, feathers, and fooferaw were over. Farnsworth was in another room of the suite, making his plans for a complete physical examination of the Nipe. Yoritomo was having the time of his life, holding a conversation with the Nipe, drawing the alien out and getting him to talk about his own race and their history. And Mannheim was plotting the next phase of the capture—the cover-up.

Stanton smiled a little. Colonel Mannheim was a great one for planning, all right. Every little detail was taken care of. It sometimes made his plans more complex than necessary, Stanton suspected. Mannheim tended to try to account for every eventuality, and, after he had done that, he would set aside reserves here and there, just in case they might be useful if something unforeseen happened.

Stanton got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at