"Are you there?" Blair burst into gales of laughter. "Are you Connant? The beast wanted to be man*not a dog*"
VII.
Dr. Copper rose wearily from the bunk, and washed the hypodermic carefully. The little tinkles it made seemed loud in the packed room, now that Blair"s gurgling laughter had finally quieted. Copper looked toward Garry and shook his head slowly. "Hopeless, I"m afraid. I don"t think we can ever convince him the thing is dead now."
Norris laughed uncertainly. "I"m not sure you can convince me. Oh, d.a.m.n you, McReady."
"McReady?" Commander Garry turned to look from Norris to McReady curiously.
"The nightmares," Norris explained. "He had a theory about the nightmares we had at the Secondary Station after finding that thing."
"And that was?" Garry looked at McReady levelly.
Norris answered for him, jerkily, uneasily. "That the creature wasn"t dead, had a sort of enormously slowed existence, an existence that permitted it, nonetheless, to be vaguely aware of the pa.s.sing of time, of our coming, after endless years. I had a dream it could imitate things."
"Well," Copper grunted, "it can."
"Don"t be an a.s.s," Norris snapped. "That"s not what"s bothering me. In the dream it could read minds, read thoughts and ideas and mannerisms."
"What"s so bad about that? It seems to be worrying you more than the thought of the joy we"re going to have with a madman in an Antarctic camp." Copper nodded toward Blair"s sleeping form.
McReady shook his great head slowly. "You know that Connant is Connant, because he not merely looks like Connant*which we"re beginning to believe that beast might be able to do*but he thinks like Connant, moves himself around as Connant does. That takes more than merely a body that looks like him; that takes Connant"s own mind, and thoughts and mannerisms. Therefore, though you know that the thing might make itself look like Connant, you aren"t much bothered, because you know it has a mind from another world, a totally unhuman mind, that couldn"t possibly react and think and talk like a man we know, and do it so well as to fool us for a moment. The idea of the creature imitating one of us is fascinating, but unreal, because it is too completely unhuman to deceive us. It doesn"t have a human mind."
"As I said before," Norris repeated, looking steadily at McReady, "you can say the d.a.m.nedest things at the d.a.m.nedest times. Will you be so good as to finish that thought*one way or the other?"
Kinner, the scar-faced expedition cook, had been standing near Connant. Suddenly he moved down the length of the crowded room toward his familiar galley. He shook the ashes from the galley stove noisily.
"It would do it no good," said Dr. Copper, softly as though thinking out loud, "to merely look like something it was trying to imitate; it would have to understand its feelings, its reactions. It is unhuman; it has powers of imitation beyond any conception of man. A good actor, by training himself, can imitate another man, another man"s mannerisms, well enough to fool most people. Of course no actor could imitate so perfectly as to deceive men who had been living with the imitated one in the complete lack of privacy of an Antarctic camp. That would take a superhuman skill."
"Oh, you"ve got the bug, too?" Norris cursed softly.
Connant, standing alone at one end of the room, looked about him wildly, his face white. A gentle eddying of the men had crowded them slowly down toward the other end of the room, so that he stood quite alone. "My G.o.d, will you two Jeremiahs shut up?" Connant"s voice shook. "What am I? Some kind of microscopic specimen you"re dissecting? Some unpleasant worm you"re discussing in the third person?"
McReady looked up at him; his slowly twisting hands stopped for a moment. "Having a lovely time. Wish you were here. Signed: Everybody.
"Connant, if you think you"re having a h.e.l.l of a time, just move over on the other end for a while. You"ve got one thing we haven"t; you know what the answer is. I"ll tell you this, right now you"re the most feared and respected man in Big Magnet."
"Lord, I wish you could see your eyes," Connant gasped. "Stop staring, will you! What the h.e.l.l are you going to do?"
"Have you any suggestions, Dr. Copper?" Commander Garry asked steadily. "The present situation is impossible."
"Oh, is it?" Connant snapped. "Come over here and look at that crowd. By Heaven, they look exactly like that gang of huskies around the corridor bend. Benning, will you stop hefting that d.a.m.ned ice-ax?"
The coppery blade rang on the floor as the aviation mechanic nervously dropped it. He bent over and picked it up instantly, hefting it slowly, turning it in his hands, his brown eyes moving jerkily about the room.
Copper sat down on the bunk beside Blair. The wood creaked noisily in the room. Far down a corridor, a dog yelped in pain, and the dog drivers" tense voices floated softly back. "Microscopic examination," said the doctor thoughtfully, "would be useless, as Blair pointed out. Considerable time has pa.s.sed. However, serum tests would be definitive."
"Serum tests? What do you mean exactly?" Commander Garry asked.
"If I had a rabbit that had been injected with human blood*a poison to rabbits, of course, as is the blood of any animal save that of another rabbit*and the injections continued in increasing doses for some time, the rabbit would be human-immune. If a small quant.i.ty of its blood were drawn off, allowed to separate in a test tube, and to the clear serum, a bit of human blood were added, there would be a visible reaction, proving the blood was human. If cow, or dog blood were added*or any protein material other than that one thing*human blood*no reaction would take place. That would prove definitely."
"Can you suggest where I might catch a rabbit for you, Doc?" Norris asked. "That is, nearer than Australia; we don"t want to waste time going that far."
"I know there aren"t any rabbits in Antarctica," Copper nodded, "but that is simply the usual animal. Any animal except man will do. A dog for instance. But it will take several days, and due to the greater size of the animal, considerable blood. Two of us will have to contribute."
"Would I do?" Garry asked.
"That will make two," Copper nodded. "I"ll get to work on it right away."
"What about Connant in the meantime," Kinner demanded. "I"m going out that door and head off for the Ross Sea before I cook for him."
"He may be human*" Copper started.
Connant burst out in a flood of curses. "Human! May be human, you d.a.m.ned sawbones! What in h.e.l.l do you think I am?"
"A monster," Copper snapped sharply. "Now shut up and listen." Connant"s face drained of color and he sat down heavily as the indictment was put in words. "Until we know*you know as well as we do that we have reason to question the fact, and only you know how that question is to be answered*we may reasonably be expected to lock you up. If you are*unhuman*you"re a lot more dangerous than poor Blair there, and I"m going to see that he"s locked up thoroughly. I expect that his next stage will be a violent desire to kill you, all the dogs, and probably all of us. When he wakes, he will be convinced we"re all unhuman, and nothing on the planet will ever change his conviction. It would be kinder to let him die, but we can"t do that, of course. He"s going in one shack, and you can stay in Cosmos House with your cosmic ray apparatus. Which is about what you"d do anyway. I"ve got to fix up a couple of dogs."
Connant nodded bitterly. "I"m human. Hurry that test. Your eyes*Lord, I wish you could see your eyes staring*"
Commander Garry watched anxiously as Clark, the dog-handler, held the big brown Alaskan husky, while Copper began the injection treatment. The dog was not anxious to cooperate; the needle was painful, and already he"d experienced considerable needle work that morning. Five st.i.tches held closed a slash that ran from his shoulder, across the ribs, halfway down his body. One long fang was broken off short; the missing part was to be found half buried in the shoulder bone of the monstrous thing on the table in the Ad Building.
"How long will that take?" Garry asked, pressing his arm gently. It was sore from the p.r.i.c.k of the needle Dr. Copper had used to withdraw blood.
Copper shrugged. "I don"t know, to be frank. I know the general method. I"ve used it on rabbits. But I haven"t experimented with dogs. They"re big, clumsy animals to work with; naturally rabbits are preferable, and serve ordinarily. In civilized places you can buy a stock of human-immune rabbits from suppliers, and not many investigators take the trouble to prepare their own."
"What do they want with them back there?" Clark asked.
"Criminology is one large field. A says he didn"t murder B, but that the blood on his shirt came from killing a chicken. The State makes a test, then it"s up to A to explain how it is the blood reacts on human-immune rabbits, but not on chicken-immunes."
"What are we going to do with Blair in the meantime?" Garry asked wearily. "It"s all right to let him sleep where he is for a while, but when he wakes up*"
"Barclay and Benning are fitting some bolts on the door of Cosmos House," Copper replied grimly. "Connant"s acting like a gentleman. I think perhaps the way the other men look at him makes him rather want privacy. Lord knows, heretofore we"ve all of us individually prayed for a little privacy."
Clark laughed brittlely. "Not any more, thank you. The more the merrier."
"Blair," Copper went on, "will also have to have privacy*and locks. He"s going to have a pretty definite plan in mind when he wakes up. Ever hear the old story of how to stop hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle?"
Clark and Garry shook their heads silently.
"If there isn"t any hoof-and-mouth disease, there won"t be any hoof-and-mouth disease," Copper explained. "You get rid of it by killing every animal that exhibits it, and every animal that"s been near the diseased animal. Blair"s a biologist, and knows that story. He"s afraid of this thing we loosed. The answer is probably pretty clear in his mind now. Kill everybody and everything in this camp before a skua gull or a wandering albatross coming in with the spring chances out this way and*catches the disease."
Clark"s lips curled in a twisted grin. "Sounds logical to me. If things get too bad*maybe we"d better let Blair get loose. It would save us committing suicide. We might also make something of a vow that if things get bad, we see that that does happen."
Copper laughed softly. "The last man alive in Big Magnet*wouldn"t be a man," he pointed out. "Somebody"s got to kill those*creatures that don"t desire to kill themselves, you know. We don"t have enough thermite to do it all at once, and the decanite explosive wouldn"t help much. I have an idea that even small pieces of one of those beings would be self-sufficient."
"If," said Garry thoughtfully, "they can modify their protoplasm at will, won"t they simply modify themselves to birds and fly away? They can read all about birds, and imitate their structure without even meeting them. Or imitate, perhaps, birds of their home planet."
Copper shook his head, and helped Clark to free the dog. "Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods. Knowing the general idea, and knowing the detailed structure of wing and bone and nerve-tissue is something far, far different. And as for other-world birds, perhaps, in fact very probably, the atmospheric conditions here are so vastly different that their birds couldn"t fly. Perhaps, even, the being came from a planet like Mars with such a thin atmosphere that there were no birds."
Barclay came into the building, trailing a length of airplane control cable. "It"s finished, Doc. Cosmos House can"t be opened from the inside. Now where do we put Blair?"
Copper looked toward Garry. "There wasn"t any biology building. I don"t know where we can isolate him."
"How about East Cache?" Garry said after a moment"s thought. "Will Blair be able to look after himself*or need attention?"
"He"ll be capable enough. We"ll be the ones to watch out," Copper a.s.sured him grimly. "Take a stove, a couple of bags of coal, necessary supplies and a few tools to fix it up. n.o.body"s been out there since last fall, have they?"
Garry shook his head. "If he gets noisy*I thought that might be a good idea."
Barclay hefted the tools he was carrying and looked up at Garry. "If the muttering he"s doing now is any sign, he"s going to sing away the night hours. And we won"t like his song."
"What"s he saying?" Copper asked.
Barclay shook his head. "I didn"t care to listen much. You can if you want to. But I gathered that the blasted idiot had all the dreams McReady had, and a few more. He slept beside the thing when we stopped on the trail coming in from Secondary Magnetic, remember. He dreamt the thing was alive, and dreamt more details. And*d.a.m.n his soul*knew it wasn"t all dream, or had reason to. He knew it had telepathic powers that were stirring vaguely, and that it could not only read minds, but project thoughts. They weren"t dreams, you see. They were stray thoughts that thing was broadcasting, the way Blair"s broadcasting his thoughts now*a sort of telepathic muttering in its sleep. That"s why he knew so much about its powers. I guess you and I, Doc, weren"t so sensitive*if you want to believe in telepathy."
"I have to," Copper sighed. "Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists, shown that some are much more sensitive than others."
"Well, if you want to learn a lot of details, go listen in on Blair"s broadcast. He"s driven most of the boys out of the Ad Building; Kinner"s rattling pans like coal going down a chute. When he can"t rattle a pan, he shakes ashes.
"By the way, Commander, what are we going to do this spring, now the planes are out of it?"
Garry sighed. "I"m afraid our expedition is going to be a loss. We cannot divide our strength now."
"It won"t be a loss*if we continue to live, and come out of this," Copper promised him. "The find we"ve made, if we can get it under control, is important enough. The cosmic ray data, magnetic work, and atmospheric work won"t be greatly hindered."
Garry laughed mirthlessly. "I was just thinking of the radio broadcasts. Telling half the world about the wonderful results of our exploration flights, trying to fool men like Byrd and Ellsworth back home there that we"re doing something."
Copper nodded gravely. "They"ll know something"s wrong. But men like that have judgment enough to know we wouldn"t do tricks without some sort of reason, and will wait for our return to judge us. I think it comes to this: men who know enough to recognize our deception will wait for our return. Men who haven"t discretion and faith enough to wait will not have the experience to detect any fraud. We know enough of the conditions here to put through a good bluff."
"Just so they don"t send "rescue" expeditions," Garry prayed. "When*if*we"re ever ready to come out, we"ll have to send word to Captain Forsythe to bring a stock of magnetos with him when he comes down. But*never mind that."
"You mean if we don"t come out?" asked Barclay. "I was wondering if a nice running account of an eruption or an earthquake via radio*with a swell windup by using a stick of decanite under the microphone*would help. Nothing, of course, will entirely keep people out. One of those swell, melodramatic "last-man-alive-scenes" might make "em go easy though."
Garry smiled with genuine humor. "Is everybody in camp trying to figure that out, too?"
Copper laughed. "What do you think, Garry? We"re confident we can win out. But not too easy about it, I guess."
Clark grinned up from the dog he was petting into calmness. "Confident, did you say, Doc?"
VIII.
Blair moved restlessly around the small shack. His eyes jerked and quivered in vague, fleeting glances at the four men with him; Barclay, six feet tall and weighing over 190 pounds; McReady, a bronze giant of a man; Dr. Copper, short, squatly powerful; and Benning, five feet ten of wiry strength.
Blair was huddled up against the far wall of the East Cache cabin, his gear piled in the middle of the floor beside the heating stove, forming an island between him and the four men. His bony hands clenched and fluttered, terrified. His pale eyes wavered uneasily as his bald, freckled head darted about in birdlike motion.
"I don"t want anybody coming here. I"ll cook my own food," he snapped nervously. "Kinner may be human now, but I don"t believe it. I"m going to get out of here, but I"m not going to eat any food you send me. I want cans. Sealed cans."
"OK, Blair, we"ll bring "em tonight," Barclay promised. "You"ve got coal, and the fire"s started. I"ll make a last*" Barclay started forward.
Blair instantly scurried to the farthest corner. "Get out! Keep away from me, you monster!" the little biologist shrieked, and tried to claw his way through the wall of the shack. "Keep away from me*keep away*I won"t be absorbed*I won"t be*"
Barclay relaxed and moved back. Dr. Copper shook his head. "Leave him alone, Bar. It"s easier for him to fix the thing himself. We"ll have to fix the door, I think*"
The four men let themselves out. Efficiently, Benning and Barclay fell to work. There were no locks in Antarctica; there wasn"t enough privacy to make them needed. But powerful screws had been driven in each side of the door frame, and the spare aviation control cable, immensely strong, woven steel wire, was rapidly caught between them and drawn taut. Barclay went to work with a drill and a key-hole saw. Presently he had a trap cut in the door through which goods could be pa.s.sed without unlashing the entrance. Three powerful hinges made from a stock crate, two hasps and a pair of three-inch cotter pins made it proof against opening from the other side.
Blair moved about restlessly inside. He was dragging something over to the door with panting gasps, and muttering frantic curses. Barclay opened the hatch and glanced in, Dr. Copper peering over his shoulder. Blair had moved the heavy bunk against the door. It could not be opened without his cooperation now.
"Don"t know but what the poor man"s right at that," McReady sighed. "If he gets loose, it is his avowed intention to kill each and all of us as quickly as possible, which is something we don"t agree with. But we"ve something on our side of that door that is worse than a homicidal maniac. If one or the other has to get loose, I think I"ll come up and undo these lashings here."
Barclay grinned. "You let me know, and I"ll show you how to get these off fast. Let"s go back."
The sun was painting the northern horizon in multicolored rainbows still, though it was two hours below the horizon. The field of drift swept off to the north, sparkling under its flaming colors in a million reflected glories. Low mounds of rounded white on the northern horizon showed the Magnet Range was barely awash above the sweeping drift. Little eddies of wind-lifted snow swirled away from their skis as they set out toward the main encampment two miles away. The spidery finger of the broadcast radiator lifted a gaunt black needle against the white of the Antarctic continent. The snow under their skis was like fine sand, hard and gritty.
"Spring," said Benning bitterly, "is come. Ain"t we got fun! And I"ve been looking forward to getting away from this blasted hole in the ice."
"I wouldn"t try it now, if I were you." Barclay grunted. "Guys that set out from here in the next few days are going to be marvelously unpopular."
"How is your dog getting along, Dr. Copper?" McReady asked. "Any results yet?"
"In thirty hours? I wish there were. I gave him an injection of my blood today. But I imagine another five days will be needed. I don"t know certainly enough to stop sooner."
"I"ve been wondering*if Connant were*changed, would he have warned us so soon after the animal escaped? Wouldn"t he have waited long enough for it to have a real chance to fix itself? Until we woke up naturally?" McReady asked slowly.
"The thing is selfish. You didn"t think it looked as though it were possessed of a store of the higher justices, did you?" Dr. Copper pointed out. "Every part of it is all of it, every part of it is all for itself, I imagine. If Connant were changed, to save his skin, he"d have to*but Connant"s feelings aren"t changed; they"re imitated perfectly, or they"re his own. Naturally, the imitation, imitating perfectly Connant"s feelings, would do exactly what Connant would do."
"Say, couldn"t Norris or Vane give Connant some kind of a test? If the thing is brighter than men, it might know more physics than Connant should, and they"d catch it out," Barclay suggested.
Copper shook his head wearily. "Not if it reads minds. You can"t plan a trap for it. Vane suggested that last night. He hoped it would answer some of the questions of physics he"d like to know answers to."
"This expedition-of-four idea is going to make life happy." Benning looked at his companions. "Each of us with an eye on the other to make sure he doesn"t do something*peculiar. Man*aren"t we going to be a trusting bunch! Each man eyeing his neighbors with the grandest exhibition of faith and truth*I"m beginning to know what Connant meant by "I wish you could see your eyes." Every now and then we all have it, I guess. One of you looks around with a sort of "I-wonder-if-the-other-three-are-look." Incidentally, I"m not excepting myself."
"So far as we know, the animal is dead, with a slight question as to Connant. No other is suspected," McReady stated slowly. "The "always-four" order is merely a precautionary measure."
"I"m waiting for Garry to make it four-in-a-bunk," Barclay sighed. "I thought I didn"t have any privacy before, but since that order*"
IX.