“There ain’t no such thing as good as dead. That’s going to be dead.” Connant stated flatly. “Gimme that ice axe.”
Commander Garry laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Wait a minute Connant. I want to get this straight. I agree with you that this thing is too unpleasant to have alive, but I had no idea there was even the faintest possibility of life.”
Dr. Copper pulled his pipe from between his teeth. “There isn’t,” he stated. “Blair’s being technical. That’s dead, dead as the mammoths they find frozen in Siberia. Potential life is like atomic energy; it may be there, but nobody’s shown it yet, and we have all sorts of proof that Things don’t live after being frozen. What’s the point, Blair?”
The little biologist shook himself. “The point is,” he said in an injured tone, “that the individual life cells might display some of the characteristics they had in life, if thawed properly. A man’s muscle cells live for hours after his body dies. Just because they live, and a few things like hair and fingernail cells live, you wouldn’t accuse a corpse of being a zombie, or something. Now, if I thaw this right, I may have a chance to find out something about the kind of world it’s native to. We don’t know, and can’t know, whether it came from Earth, or Mars, or Venus, or from beyond the stars. But if we find its cells are designed for a dry, desiccated, cool climate, we can guess Mars or a planet like it. If they’re suited to a hot, humid climate, we can think about another world.
“It’s all right to thaw a chicken for the pot by using a blowtorch, or a jet of live steam, but I don’t think any of you want this Thing cooked and served for—”
“Shut up, you louse. God, what a thought!” Benning, the aviation mechanic looked green about the gills.
“All right, then, don’t suggest I thaw it over the power plant boiler the way we do beef or chickens. It’s got to be thawed in a warm room overnight. I’ll chip this ice off, and we can put it in the Cosmos House.”
“Go ahead and get the Thing off my table, then,” Kinner growled. “But keep that canvas over it. It looks indecent, whether those are clothes it has on or not.”
“Kinner’s going modest on us.” Connant jeered.
Kinner slanted his eyes up toward the physicist. “All right, big man, and what were you grousing about a minute ago? We can set that Thing in a chair next to you tonight if you want.”
“Well, I’m not afraid of its face, anyway. I don’t like keeping a wake over its corpse particularly, but I’m going to do it.”
Kinner grinned. “Uh-huh.” He went off to the galley stove and shook down the ashes vigorously, drowning the brittle chipping of the ice as Blair went to work again.
McReady grinned toward Powell. “Bar told him he’d be the most popular man in camp when he sprang his little proposition.”
“I don’t wonder.” Powell found himself glancing at the vaguely translucent ice out of the corner of his eye “You’re none too popular with me right now. ”
* * * *
“Cluck,” reported the cosmic ray counter, “cluck-burrrrr-cluck.”
Connant started and dropped his pencil. “Damnation.”
The physicist looked toward the far corner, back at the Geiger counter on the table near that corner, and crawled under the desk at which he had been working to get the pencil. He sat down at his work again, trying to make his writing more even. It tended to have jerks and quavers in it, in time with the abrupt proud-hen noises of the Geiger counter. The muted whoosh of the pressure lamp he was using for illumination, the mingled grunts and bugle calls of a dozen men sleeping down the corridor in Paradise House formed the background sounds for the irregular, clucking noises of the counter, the occasional rustle of falling coal in the copper-bellied stove. And a soft, steady drip-drip-drip from the Thing in the corner.
Connant jerked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, snapped it so that a cigarette protruded, and jabbed the cylinder into his mouth. The lighter failed to function, and he pawed angrily through the pile of papers in search of a match. He scratched the wheel of the lighter several times, dropped it with a curse, and got up to pluck a hot coal from the stove with the coal-tongs.
The lighter functioned instantly when he tried it on returning to the desk. The counter ripped out a series of chuckling guffaws as a burst of cosmic rays struck it. Connant turned to glower at it, then tried to concentrate on the interpretation of data collected during the past week. The weekly summary—
He gave up and yielded to curiosity, or nervousness. He lifted the pressure lamp from the desk and carried it over to the table in the corner. Then he returned to the stove and picked up the coal tongs.
The beast had been thawing for nearly 18 hours now. He poked at it with an unconscious caution; the flesh was no longer hard as armor plate, but had assumed a rubbery texture. It looked like wet, blue rubber glistening under droplets of water like little round jewels in the glare of the gasoline pressure lantern. Connant felt an unreasoning desire to pour the contents of the lamp’s reservoir over the Thing in its box and drop the cigarette into it. The three red eyes glared up at him sightlessly, the ruby eyeballs reflecting murky, smoky rays of light.
He realized vaguely that he had been looking at them a very long time, even vaguely understood that they were no longer sightless. But it did not seem of importance, of no more importance than the labored, slow motion of the tentacular things that sprouted from the base of the scrawny, slowly pulsing neck.
Connant picked up the pressure lamp and returned to his chair. He sat down, staring at the pages of mathematics before him. The clucking of the counter was less disturbing, the rustle of the coals in the stove less distracting. The creak of the floorboards behind him didn’t interrupt his thoughts as he went about his weekly report in an automatic manner, filling in columns of data and making brief, summarizing notes. The creak of the floorboards sounded nearer.
* * * *
Blair came up from the nightmare–haunted depths of sleep abruptly. Connant’s face floated vaguely above him; for a moment it seemed a continuance of the wild horror of the dream. But Connant’s face was angry, and a little frightened. “Blair—Blair, you damned log, wake up.”
“Uh—eh?” the little biologist rubbed his eyes. From surrounding bunks, other faces lifted to stare down at them.
Connant straightened. “Get up—and get a move on. Your damned animal’s escaped.”
“Escaped—what!” Chief Pilot Van Wall’s bull voice roared out with a volume that shook the walls. Down the communication tunnels, other voices yelled suddenly. The dozen inhabitants of Paradise House tumbled in abruptly, Barclay in long woolen underwear and carrying a fire extinguisher.
“What the hell’s the matter?” Barclay demanded.
“Your damned beast got loose. I fell asleep about twenty minutes ago, and when I woke up, the Thing was gone. Hey, Doc, the hell you say those Things can’t come to life. Blair’s blasted potential life developed a hell of a lot of potential and walked out on us.”
Copper stared blankly. “It wasn’t—Earthly.” He sighed suddenly. “I—I guess Earthly laws don’t apply.”
“Well, it applied for leave of absence and took it. We’ve got to find it and capture it somehow.” Connant swore bitterly. “It’s a wonder the hellish creature didn’t eat me in my sleep.”
Blair started back, his eyes suddenly fear-struck. “Maybe it di—er—uh, we’ll have to find it.”
“You find it. It’s your pet. I’ve had all I want to do with it, sitting there for seven hours, with the counter clucking every few seconds, and you birds in here singing night-music. It’s a wonder I got to sleep. I’m going through to the Ad Building.”
Commander Garry ducked through the doorway, pulling his belt tight. “You won’t have to. Van’s roar sounded like the Boeing taking off down wind. So it wasn’t dead?”
“I didn’t carry it off in my arms, I assure you.” Connant snapped. “The last I saw, that split skull was oozing green goo, like a squashed cater
pillar. Doc just said our laws don’t work—it’s unearthly. Well, it’s an unearthly monster, with an unearthly disposition, judging by the face, wandering around with a split skull and brains oozing out.”
Powell and McReady appeared in the doorway, a doorway filling with other shivering men.
“Has anybody seen it coming over here?” Powell asked innocently. “About four feet tall, three red eyes—brains oozing out—Hey, has anybody checked to make sure this isn’t a cracked idea of humor? If it is, I think we’ll unite in tying Blair’s pet around Connant’s neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. Personally, that sounds much more possible to me.”
“It’s no joke.” Connant shivered. “God, I wish it were. I’d rather wear—” He stopped.
A wild, long, howl shrieked through the corridors. The men stiffened abruptly and half turned.
“I think it’s been located,” Connant finished.
He darted back to his bunk in Paradise House, to return almost immediately with a heavy .45 revolver and an ice axe. He hefted both gently as he started for the corridor toward Dogtown. “It blundered down the wrong corridor—and landed among the huskies. Listen—the dogs have broken their chains—”
The half-terrorized howl of the dog pack had changed to a wild hunting melee. The voices of the dogs thundered in the narrow corridors, and through them came a low rippling snarl of pure hate. A shrill of pain, a dozen snarling yelps.
Connant broke for the door. Close behind him, McReady, then Barclay and Commander Garry came. Other men headed for the Ad Building and weapons, or the sledge house. Pomroy, in charge of Big Magnet’s five cows, started down the corridor on the opposite direction; he had a six-foot-handled, long-tined pitchfork in mind.
Barclay slid to a halt as McReady turned abruptly away from the tunnel leading to Dogtown and vanished off at an angle. Uncertainly the mechanician wavered a moment, the fire extinguisher in his hands moving from one side to the other, then he was racing after Connant’s broad back.
Connant stopped at the bend in the corridor. His breath hissed suddenly through his throat.
“Great God—!”
The revolver exploded thunderously, three numbing, palpable waves of sound crashed through the confined corridors. Two more. The revolver dropped to the hard-packed snow of the trail, and Barclay saw the ice axe shift into defensive position. Connant’s powerful body blocked his vision, but beyond, he heard something mewing, and, insanely, chuckling. The dogs were quieter; there was a deadly seriousness in their low snarls. Taloned feet scratched at hard-packed snow; broken chains were clinking and tangling.
Connant shifted abruptly, and Barclay could see what lay beyond. For a second he stood frozen, then his breath went out in a gusty curse.
The Thing launched itself at Connant.
The powerful arms of the man swung the ice axe flat-side first at what might have been a head. It scrunched horribly, and the tattered flesh, ripped by a half-dozen savage huskies, leapt to its feet again. The red eyes blazed with an unearthly hatred, an unearthly, unkillable vitality.
Barclay turned the fire extinguisher on it; the blinding, blistering stream of chemical spray confused it, baffled it. Together with the savage attacks of the huskies, not for long afraid of anything that did or could live, that held it at bay.
McReady wedged men out of his way as he drove down the narrow, packed corridor to reach the scene. There was a sure, fore-planned drive to McReady’s attack; he held one of the giant blowtorches used in warming the plane’s engines in his hands. It roared gustily as he turned the corner and opened the valve. The mad mewing hissed louder. The dogs scrambled back from the three-foot lance of blue-hot flame.
“Bar, get a power cable, run it in here somehow. And a handle. We can electrocute this—monster, if I don’t incinerate it.” McReady spoke with an authority of planned action, Barclay turned down the long corridor to the power plant, but already before him, Dutton and Van Wall were racing ahead.
Barclay found the cable in the electrical cache in the tunnel wall. In a half minute he was hacking at it, walking back. Van Wall’s voice rang out in warning, “Power!” as the emergency gasoline-powered dynamo thudded into action. Half a dozen other men were down there now, pouring kindling and coal into the firebox of the steam power plant. Dutton was working with quick, sure fingers on the other end of Barclay’s cable, plying in a contactor in one of the power leads.
The dogs had fallen back when Barclay reached the corridor bend, fallen back before a furious monstrosity that glared from baleful red eyes, mewing in trapped hatred. The dogs were a semi-circle of red-dipped muzzles, with a fringe of glistening white teeth, whining with a vicious eagerness that near matched the fury of the red eyes. McReady stood confidently alert at the corridor bend, the gustily muttering torch held loose and ready for action in his hands. He stepped aside without moving his eyes from the beast as Barclay came up. There was a slight, tight smile on his lean bronzed face.
Dutton’s voice called down the corridor, and Barclay stepped forward. The cable was taped to the long handle of a snow-shovel, the two conductors split and held 18 inches apart by a scrap of lumber lashed at right angles across the far end of the handle. Bare copper conductors, charged with 220 volts, glinted in the light of pressure lamps. The Thing mewed and dodged. McReady advanced at Barclay’s side. The dogs beyond sensed the plan with the almost telepathic intelligence of trained huskies. Their whining grew shriller, softer, their mincing steps carried them nearer. Abruptly a huge, night-black Alaskan leapt onto the trapped Thing. It turned squalling, saber-clawed feet slashing.
Barclay leapt forward and jabbed. A weird, shrill scream rose and choked out. The smell of burnt flesh in the corridor intensified; greasy smoke curled up. The echoing pound of the gas-electric dynamo down the corridor became a slogging thud.
The red eyes clouded over in a stiffening, jerking travesty of a face. Arm-like, leg-like members quivered and jerked. The dogs leapt forward, and Barclay yanked back his shovel-handled weapon. The Thing on the snow did not move as gleaming teeth ripped it open.
* * * *
Garry looked about the crowded room. Thirty-two men, some tensed nervously, standing against the wall, some uneasily relaxed, some sitting, most perforce standing, as intimate as sardines. Thirty-two, plus the five engaged in sewing up wounded dogs made thirty-seven, the total personnel.
Garry started speaking. “All right, I guess we’re here. Some of you—three or four at most—saw what happened. All of you have seen that Thing on the table, and can get a general idea. Anyone hasn’t, I’ll lift—” his hand strayed to the tarpaulin bulking over the Thing on the table. There was an acrid odor of singed flesh seeping out of it. The men stirred restlessly, hasty denials.
“It looks rather as though Charnauk isn’t going to lead any more teams,” Garry went on. “Blair wants to get at it and make some more detailed examination. We want to know what happened, and make sure right now that it is permanently, totally dead. Right?”
Connant grinned. “Anybody that doesn’t can sit up with it tonight.”
“All right then, Blair, what can you say about it? What in God’s name was it?” Garry turned to the little biologist.
“I wonder if we ever saw its natural form.” Blair looked at the covered mass. “It may have been imitating the beings that built that ship—but I don’t think it was. I think that was its true form. Those of us who were up near the bend saw the Thing in action; the corpse on the table is the result. When it got loose, apparently, it started looking around. Antarctica is still as frozen as it was those ages ago when the creature first saw it—and froze. From my observations while it was thawing out, and the bits of tissue I cut and hardened then, I think it was native to a hotter planet than Earth. It couldn’t, in its natural form, stand the temperature. There is no life form on Earth that can live in Antarctica during the winter, but the best compromise is the dog. It found the dogs and somehow got near enough to Charnauk to get him. The oth
ers smelled it—or heard it, I don’t know. Anyway, they went wild and broke chains and attacked it before it was finished. The Thing we found was part Charnauk, queerly only half-dead, part Charnauk half digested by the jellylike protoplasm of that creature, and part the remains of the Thing we originally found, sort of melted down to its basic protoplasm.
“When the dogs attacked it, it turned into the best fighting thing it could think of—some otherworld beast apparently.”
“Turned,” snapped Garry. “How?”
“Every living thing is made up of jelly—protoplasm—and minute, submicroscopic things called nuclei, which control the bulk, the protoplasm. This Thing was just a modification of that same world-wide plan of Nature, cells made up of protoplasm, controlled by infinitely tinier nuclei. You physicists might compare it—an individual cell of any living thing—with an atom; the bulk of the atom, the space-filling part, is made up of the electron orbits, but the character of the thing is determined by the atomic nucleus.
“This isn’t wildly beyond what we already know. It’s just a modification we haven’t seen before. It’s as natural, as logical, as any other manifestation of life, and it obeys exactly the same laws. The cells are made of protoplasm, their character determined by the nucleus.
“Only in this creature, the cell-nuclei can control those cells at will. It digested Charnauk, and as it digested him, it studied every cell of his tissue and shaped its own cells to imitate them exactly. Parts of it—parts that had time to finish changing—are dog-cells. But they don’t have dog-cell nuclei.” Blair lifted a fraction of the tarpaulin. A dog’s torn leg with stiff grey fur protruded. “That, for instance, isn’t dog at all; it’s imitation. Some parts I’m uncertain about; the nucleus was hiding itself, covering up with a dog-cell imitation nucleus. In time, not even a microscope would have shown the difference.”
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