Six Scifi Stories Read Online Free Page B

methodical effort to thin the herd. It had never occurred to him that the 'Zoids were choosing their victims in other than a random fashion.
    His newfound conscience shot him full of guilt. Until that moment, he had consoled himself with the knowledge that his brutal influence would at least lead to a redemptive outcome...but now, even that consolation was deflated. The 'Zoids were cleansing themselves of undesirables, and he was responsible for setting the pogrom in motion.
    He was no better than Hitler. There was a time when that wouldn't have bothered him a bit, but that time was long gone.
    Just when Luther hated himself as much as he thought possible, he found that he could hate himself even more.
    He hated the 'Zoids almost as much. Though their crimes had been instigated by him, he believed that the seeds of savagery must have been within them all along. He didn't believe that the notion of systematic extermination of undesirables had dawned on them overnight, springing solely from his influence.
    The 'Zoids were just as bad as he was, or as he had been. Looking at them was like looking in a mirror, and he was sick of what he saw.
    Suddenly, Luther wanted one thing more than anything in the universe.
    "So when do I go home?" he said, grabbing the pack of cigarettes. "You promised I'd leave before the invasion."
    "Two days," said Boraf, picking up a fresh knife from a table and shuffling toward the door.
    "Isn't that cutting it kind of close?" said Luther. "The invasion's supposed to start in two days."
    Boraf slapped the door and its component eels slithered apart. "No worry," said the 'Zoid. "Luther go fast ship. Leave early."
    Luther frowned. "You sure I'll get out in time? We had a deal, remember?"
    "Fast ship," said Boraf. "Get away go Earth fast."
    "Why not leave tomorrow?" said Luther. "You don't need me here anymore."
    "Ship ready two days," said Boraf, shuffling out the door. "Now Boraf go make many Ectozoid kill."
    As the door closed, Luther lit his cigarette. All of a sudden, he had a bad feeling about his future.
    Â 
    *****
    Two mornings later, Luther found himself riding a giant centipede.
    He and Boraf sat in a bubble that was either grown from the creature's back or attached there, he couldn't tell which. It was the same type of transportation he had ridden from the spaceport to Boraf's house-mound upon his arrival...apparently, the local version of a taxi.
    Sunlight gleamed off the creature's ruby carapace as it scuttled through the streets, neatly winding its segmented length around bends and corners. Giant antennae danced from its head like fishing poles, constantly twitching and flickering in the air.
    As the centipede taxi hurried them through the maze of the city, Luther noticed that the mayhem of the past week had finally subsided. The orgy of killing had seemed to die away in the middle of the night, from what he could hear from inside Boraf's house-mound, and now he didn't see a single murder underway anywhere. It was as if someone had given a signal, and all the 'Zoids had stopped killing at once.
    Stopped killing and headed for the spaceport, apparently. All along the centipede's route, Luther saw 'Zoids shuffling in the same direction that the taxi was traveling. The further the taxi went, the more 'Zoids filled the streets...until, at the spaceport, the centipede was packed in all around by a vast crowd of jellyfish, all shambling toward the cluster of massive, globular spacecraft steaming on the launch pads.
    It got so crowded that the centipede had to slow from a scuttle to a crawl, though it never stopped moving. When the 'Zoids didn't get out of its way voluntarily, the creature simply plowed through them, shoving them aside or nosing them under its hundred-legged bulk.
    Before long, the taxi drew up to one of the ships, many times smaller than the other vessels but of the same spherical design. The bubble on the centipede's back rolled open like an eyelid, and Boraf wriggled down the