by Jerry
Grace looked. She swayed involuntarily.
THROUGH the enfeebled light of John’s electric torch she could see they were both standing on the rim of what appeared to be a large depression or pit against which the tunnel they had been following terminated. But it was not the pit that startled her. It was its contents.
At first glance, the pit appeared to be floored over completely with the same dust that made up the surface of the planetoid.
But that twenty by twenty meter depression was more than dust-floored, There was something underneath it! A fluid, viscous unknown that vibrated gently . . .
Grace and John stared at it amazed. The light illuminated its surface more clearly now that the dust kicked up by their passage was once again settling down. John held the light on it, watching it closely with the detached air of a scientist contemplating a new experiment. Something in the back of his mind told him—get out—get away.
Grace put it in words.
“John,” she said, in a choked halfwhisper, half-shout.” Let’s get back to the ship. Please darling, let’s go.” She tugged at his arm. John’s face was a mask of disappointment. It was all he could do to tear himself away.
He started to turn, utterly fascinated mow by the little psuedopods that seemed to break through the dust so fluidly and then descent into the nameless substance again like waves on the surface of a rippled pond. How can it be alive—whatever it is, he wondered.
Grace had started back, and he followed in her footsteps. Without a hint of warning a tentacle of the amorphous substance caked with dust and as big around as a man’s forearm shot from the center of the strangely living thing. It went by John like a streaking python.
Graciously it curled itself around Grace’s waist apparently not impeding her.
She screamed and started to run. The tentacle made no effort to halt her. It flowed instead with her. John ran madly after her, the blinding dust cutting off all clear vision. The tentacle, a rigid rod alongside him made no effort to touch him and in a moment he had seen more of its nature.
Through the caked and thinned dust, he could see that it was no more than a transparent medium like a jelly. Grace was shouting at him through the phones.
“Darling,” she screamed, still running, the tentacle elongating with her, “It’s not stopping me. Burn it off. Cut it loose. Stop it before it does something!”
John had hesitated firing either the explosive pistol or the heat beam at it for fear of injuring Grace and not harming the monster at all. Then he touched the button of the heat pistol.
Ordinarily a heat beam of that size and capacity with its strong charge will cut through an inch-steel plate without any trouble at all. The tentacle holding Grace did not even feel the heat. The pistol flared and nothing happened.
Grace stood still now, horror and fear in her eyes being replaced by courageous calmness. The tentacle made no restraining efforts and this attributed to her bravery. If she moved the psuedopod moved with, encircling her but not holding her. Apparently whatever the beast was it had a curiosity of its own.
The futility of trying to do anything to it with their puny weapons struck them both at once.
Several times Grace walked farther away from the pit toward the mouth of the tunnel. The arm continued to embrace her but not to restrain her. John followed untouched.
“Keep walking,” he said. “We’ll see if we can get to the opening.”
“O.K. darling,” Grace said, her courage back now that the thing had not attempted to injure her. “But when we get there, do something—anything! “I can’t take this forever!”
THEY reached the cavern’s opening. Whatever the thing was, it seemed intelligent to a certain degree. Both Grace and John felt the subtle impact of an alien mind emanating from the peculiar monstrosity’s extension, as if it was trying to understand them.
Suddenly John said:
“Honey, I’m going back to the ship. I’ll land it here. We’ll think of something by then. That’s all I can do.”
“Don’t leave me, John, don’t. It might drag me back into the cave.” Without a word, his heart tearing in two within him, John turned and ran like mad. He was oriented correctly and he knew where the ship lay on the other side of Bergen’s Rock. Leaving Grace alone with the thing was terrible—doing nothing was still worse. They had nothing that could touch the beast or whatever it was. As he ran toward the ship his mind seethed with a thousand and one plans. There was no weapon at all aboard, outside of the puny handguns, which would have no effect whatsoever on this hideous beast.
As he ran the scientist portion of his mind could not help but speculate. Was it an organic creature? Could it be alive in the conventional sense of the word? He answered his own queries. Of course it couldn’t. Nowhere in the universe had protoplasmic organic material managed to exist in airlessness.
There was only one other possibility—two at most. It could be silicon-based. He rejected this on the grounds that the planetoid was certainly not a silicon-bearing body. Or it could be a colloid of some other substance. What? There was no answer.
It seemed as if an eternity elapsed before he sighted the ship gleaming so brightly in the sunlight. Less than a kilometer away, half way around the planetoid’s diameter was Grace, prevented from moving by a living non-organic jelly! Goaded by the thought and grateful that he had worn the magnets which allowed him to run so rapidly, John tore open the airlock, disregarding the crude anchor.
In a moment he was at the keys of the rocket console and the Tellus-243 was lofted in an instant. He was no expert pilot and he overshot himself completely but driven by desperation he performed the Herculean feat of bringing the rocket where he wanted it—not a hundred meters from Grace.
John half-expected to see nothing, but happily she was still standing unchanged, the psuedopod unmoving, still encircling her as if engaged in study of its own.
The last few minutes had made her almost speechless with terror. As long as John had been with her she had felt unafraid. But even the few moments he had taken to bring in the rocket had terrorized her completely. Through his phones John could hear her little utterances of terror.
“Don’t be afraid, dear,” he said, “I’ve got an idea that we can take care of this thing. Just don’t move. Don’t even think a thought. I’ll give you the idea now. We’ll try a little fuel on him if he doesn’t let go soon.”
DASHING back to the storage room of the clumsy little craft, John dragged out a couple of hundred meters of flexible metal hose. It was awkward to handle, but it was the only answer. Quickly he attached one end to a fuel supply manifold. He opened the valve connecting it to the forward tank. All that would be necessary now would be to touch a pump button and he’d have a super flame-thrower of nitro-compounds.
He brought out the hose through the airlock. Grace had not moved nor had the psuedopod attempted to move her.
Wired to the nozzle of the hose was a small sparker, a battery-condenser set-up that would provide just enough heat to ignite the oxygenated stream of rocket fuel.
“Darling,” John called, “I’m going to try it. I’ll try cutting the damned arm off the thing first. It’s not touching you so when I give it a dose of the flame, duck! Drop to the ground. Got it?”
“If this thing stays around me much longer, I’ll blow my top,” Grace said, and the tension in her voice was only masked by deliberate effort. But her husband knew what she was suffering.
Twenty feet from Grace, John laid down the hose. He dashed back to the ship. He ran inside and touched the pump button.
Then he tore back out again, running wildly for the hose, from the flexible metal nozzle of which the transparent fluid was already flowing. He stooped and picked it up, ran to within a few feet of Grace and touched the sparker.
Soundlessly the half inch of rapidly running fluid nitro-compound changed into a jet of flame of unbelievable ferocity and intensity. Supplying its own oxygen it burned like the fires of hell, with a brilliant w
hite light like that from burning magnesium.
The flaming jet struck the psuedopod. Instantly it reacted. It swept back into the cave with incredible speed and had not Grace dropped when she did she would have been swept with it. Apparently it was unable to act with infinite speed for not an element of it even flicked her.
A moment later in spite of the clumsy suits, Grace had thrown herself into John’s arms. He could hear her almost hysterical sobbing as the relief of freedom came to her.
Carrying her light and slender bulk back to the Tellus-243 was the work of a minute. The flaming torch still writhed and twisted, pouring its eerie light over an eerier scene. The landscape which before had seemed so barren now held the menace of a terrible unknown, a potential which neither Grace nor John could imagine.
But it made no effort to leave its hole. The cavern opening remained quiescent.
As soon as Grace had recovered enough to talk calmly, John started to talk with her.
“Honey,” he said,” what are we going to do about it?”
“Do about it!” Grace echoed stormily. “What do you mean. We’re not going to do a thing. Let’s get on the other side of this horrible rock and load up. The sooner we can get away from that—that thing, the better off we’ll both be.”
“Grace, we can’t leave that thing alive—or whatever it is. Supposing somebody else runs into it?” He reached out and shut off the fuel valve. The magnesium-like flame died.
“Nobody’s going to try and do what we did. And besides we can have this charted.” Grace said.
“You know what that’ll mean. Sooner or later this spot’ll be hit by somebody—in fact, company men if we can show them ore samples.”
“Let them burn it out, John. Let’s get away from here.”
“Be reasonable,” John said quietly, adopting his most soothing air, “We can give the thing a blast of rocket fuel right in the pit—and it won’t hurt us a bit. And it may do a lot of others good—besides us.”
Under his influence and mollified somewhat by the time that had passed, Grace finally agreed.
JOHN hopped into a suit and went through the airlock again. Very cautiously he approached the mouth of the cave. He could see nothing within it. Picking up the hose, he carried it closer. He pointed it into the cave and anchored it with a metal rod shoved into the dusty soil. Supported in that manner about eight inches above the ground it would spray its deadly load right down the tunneled aperture.
He returned to the ship.
“Are we placed right?” he asked Grace when he had taken off his suit. “When that thing goes, you know what a blast it’ll be. Are we clear?”
“Yes, we won’t have a thing to worry about. The cave certainly can’t go.” Grace was smiling. Once the horrible shock had passed she could no more be fretful than a comedian.
John went to the valve that he had closed and reopened. Fuel poured into the cavern’s mouth. In the number three tank that was being emptied there were eleven tons of liquid nitrocompound the most powerful rocket fuel devised by man. And the pumps drove it furiously in the cave. The feeble gravitation of Bergen’s Rock carried it to the pit where the bulk of the monstrous inorganic “life” waited.
John fired through a gun port with which all craft are equipped, with a heat beam. The beam licked out from the light projector and caressed the transparent vapors at the mouth of the cave. There was a brief flicker of light as it ignited. Nothing happened for a moment, as the flame traveled the two hundred meter length of the tunnel. Then Grace and John were stunned by the magnitude of the ensueing event.
As if to indicate something was about to happen a cloud of dust heralded the explosion! A fiery dusty puff squirted from the jaws of the hideous chamber in the planetoid.
Following it, there erupted the fury of hell. A tongue of flame a kilometer long roared from the cave. Mingled with dust, it created a spectacular, impossible sight.
Their arms around each, Grace and John watched the momentary fury. Nothing was like this.
“What a horrible dream,” Grace said, white faced and trembling. “John, was it real?”
“Look at that,” he said abruptly.
From the cave’s gaping, dust-shrouded opening, the remnants of the tentacular life streamed! Mixed with burning rocket fuel it poured and writhed in weird gyrations. But it was not complete. The greatest part of it was burnt to nothing and the rest went with it. It looked as if it was a gigantic bubble of steam on top of a hotplate.
Gradually, as the all-consuming, flaming, blazing fuel enveloped it, it died—or did what was a first approximation to dying. The menace was gone.
At the happy sight, Grace’s face wreathed in smiles, turned to John. “Well, Professor,” she said mockingly,” what’s your theory on this?”
“My dear young lady,” John said pompously, and then spoke seriously, “It can’t be carbonacious life nor silicacious life. Because it exists on this planetoid at such low temperatures, it certainly must have been in a low state of nervousness. I think that when it surrounded you, darling, that it had shot its bolt. There probably wasn’t energy enough in it to do anything else. It couldn’t have fed on heat or radiation. It must have gotten what sustenance it needed from the surrounding rock. We are undoubtedly the only people that have seen this thing since it was ‘born,’—I use that word loosely. It may have been created. Who knows?”
“Why don’t you write a paper on it when we get back, dear? They’ll think you’re a scientist.”
John grabbed at her playfully. “You can’t talk that way to me, to your lord and master!” He held her and mocked her struggles. After the tension of the preceeding hour, any horse-play was welcome.
Finally they went to work, removing the burnt-out flexible metal hose. Tightening the valves, closing the airlock and in general, putting things in order.
It was the work of minutes for Grace to deliver the Tellus-243 to its original position on the ’roid, the sunlit side this time. Even a touch of the sun was cheery after that ordeal.
JOHN went to work immediately with a welding and cutting torch after venting the empty tanks with compressed air and making sure they were empty. He cut a crude entranceway and shute into which they could pour the surface dust.
Tantalum ore was dragged in the lock which they left open after shutting off the air. It was annoying to have to work again in suits but the thought of their recent action made anything seem easy. In a matter of hours the fuel tanks had been jammed with tantalum ore and the ship was a mass of dust from top to bottom.
The only untouched spot was the control panel which had been adequately covered. Finally the job was done.
The airlock was closed, air pressure was built up, the radiant heaters were turned on and Grace and John started the clean-up. With a hastily improvised vacuum cleaner in the form of a hole in the side of the ship through a port, there would be no problem to cleaning it thoroughly.
As soon as the Tellus-243 was space-borne, the two of them put on their suits again, and opened the vent. The swirling air escaping from the ship took care of the dust. Things were back to normal.
They looked through the port, gazing at the harmless piece of rock they had named Bergen’s Rock.
Her head against John’s shoulder, Grace said:
“Darling, let’s not call it Bergen’s Rock. I don’t like Dad to have this for a monument. It’s a rotten, horrible place and only the thought of what we can do with it makes me even able to think about it at all.”
“I’m game,” John said, “but what can we call the damned thing anyway?” He moved over to the instrument panel to begin locating its position accurately.
“It’s simple, John. ‘Amoeba ’Roid.’ ” John laughed as she put her fingers to her nose in a definite gesture of contempt.
THE END
CONTRACT FOR A BODY
J. Francis McComas
Frank Montrose needed money badly so he sold his body, to be delivered after his death—or so he thought . .
.
EVERYONE at the bar looked at his drink as Montrose passed by. He peered eagerly for a receptive face. When he reached the end of the bar, Montrose knew it was the brush-off. He stopped then, uncertain, wondering whether to go back to the street or try among the tables in the rear.
Callaghan, the bartender, saw him standing there. Cal’s broad, Irish face softened a little. He put his hands flat on the bar and leaned over it.
“If it’s a drink ye’re wantin’, Monty,” he croaked, “I’ll give ye wan—and no more.”
Montrose managed a wry grin.
“I need more than a drink, Cal. But thanks, anyway.” He caught sight of Jack Rann, sitting alone at a table in the corner. “I—I have to se Rann.”
“Whatever ye need, he won’t give it to ye.” Callaghan’s voice was bitter, but low.
Montrose squared his broad shoulders and strode to the table in the corner. Behind him, a juke box blared above a rumble of conversation, but he didn’t hear it.
Jack Rann looked up as Montrose stood over him.
“ ’Lo, chum.” The little man’s voice was flat. He did not ask Montrose to sit down.
“Hello, Jack. Look, I want to talk to you.”
“I’m expecting company, chum.”
“It’ll only take a minute, Jack. Listen.”
Montrose paused. When Rann made no move, Montrose pulled out a chair and sat down. He stared across the scarred table-top at the thin face, trying not to hate the evil little man.
Jack Rann gave him a slow stare that took in the frayed collar, the wrinkled tie, unpressed suit.
“Yeah, I know.” Montrose’s mouth twisted. “I look like a tramp.”
“Chum, you are a tramp.”
“Maybe. Everybody isn’t as lucky as you, Jack. Most people have their ups and downs. Right now, I’m down.”
Rann shrugged. He sipped slowly at his drink.
“This is what I wanted to see you about. I’ve got a terrific tip on a hundred-to-one shot.”