by E. C. Tubb
“Nothing, Professor, but in botany you have to be patient. Do you know how long it took me to develop W725?”
“Fifteen years,” he said. “And you ran over seven hundred tests on various strains of wheat. Even then you were lucky—the project could have lasted an entire lifetime.”
“At times I think it did.” She hefted the seed. “Do you want me to examine this for any signs of germination or just leave it in the ground?”
“Leave it—I don’t want to take the chance of losing the only one which may grow.”
“If it can it will,” she promised.
“Perhaps.” Boardman wasn’t as confident. “How do we know if the environment is right? It could be too warm or too wet, too cold or too dry. The loam may lack essential elements or maybe it needs a stimulus I haven’t given it.”
And, maybe, it wasn’t a seed at all. Something Regan mentioned when he met Boardman after he’d left the cavern.
He said, without preamble, “Trevor, it would be best for us to dispose of those seeds.”
“Dispose of them?” Boardman was incredulous. “Destroy them? Mark, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious,” said Regan, grimly. “We’ve taken something alien into the base and we have no idea as to its potential danger. It’s associated with that creature we destroyed and what do we really know about that?”
They were in Boardman’s quarters and, before answering, he moved to adjust a framed certificate hanging against a wall. It was one given to him for his work in protecting a form of life threatened with extinction.
Recognising the tension betrayed in the set of the man’s shoulders, the symbolism of touching the certificate, Regan said, quietly. “I’m being rational about this, Trevor. My first concern is and must be the safety of Moonbase One. Nine men are dead and I don’t want to add to their number. So, on calculation—”
“You choose to destroy rather than to understand.” Boardman turned. “I’m going to fight you on this, Mark. I can appreciate your concern, but as yet you’ve not given me one reason why I should agree with your decision. You’ve not given a reason for your fears.”
“I haven’t made a decision,” reminded Regan. “If I had, Trevor, believe me, we wouldn’t be discussing the matter as we are. I said it would be best for us to dispose of those seeds and now I’ll tell you why. They came in the pod which carried the alien creature—right?”
“Yes, Mark.”
“So how did it get into it? Was it a cocoon spun for protection while the thing underwent a metamorphosis? In that case those spheres we found can’t be seeds. Was it a parasite living in the pod and feeding from it? If so there is still a doubt.”
“Mark?”
“You’re overlooking the obvious, Trevor. You want those things to be seeds so much that you can’t recognise the alternatives. As I see it those spheres could be either of three things. If that creature belonged in the pod they could be droppings. If it was a parasite that had somehow managed to enter the pod and then to feed on its interior as it grew, then they could be seeds. They could have been like those of a watermelon, resting imbedded in the pulp. Those possibilities don’t worry me. The third one does.”
Boardman said, slowly, “Mark, I think you’re wrong, but I know what you’re getting at. You think those spheres could be—”
“Eggs, Trevor,” said Regan harshly. “You could have planted a nest of serpents in Eden!”
*
Doctor Mandela dropped a slim sheaf of papers to the desk and, leaning against it with the easy casualness of long familiarity, said, “We’ll have to make a decision soon, Doctor. Liz Caffrey can’t be kept under constant sedation for much longer.”
“I know, Rob.”
“Already she is showing traces of fluid-accumulation in both lungs and her muscle-tone shows signs of deterioration.” He tapped the papers with the tip of a brown finger. “I’ve run a series of general physical checks and, unless she gets up and around soon, we could have complications.”
Too many and too soon. Elna stared at the papers, frowning as she read the data, facts and figures that led to an inescapable conclusion.
She said, thoughtfully, “This doesn’t make sense, Rob. She hasn’t been bedridden long enough for all this deterioration. Psychosomatic?”
“A possibility,” he admitted. “But if so then the circumstances are new to me. A girl, apparently insane, who has created her own deterioration by mental directives. I don’t like it, Doctor.”
“Neither do I.” Elna triggered her communicator. “Mark? I’m going to attempt to revive Liz Caffrey. I thought you might be interested. Why?” She smiled at his question. “Well, she did try to eat you, Mark—or have you forgotten?”
The sore spot on his throat would have reminded him if he had. He touched it as he made his way to Medical Centre, the skin torn by snapping teeth, the wound healing beneath a scrap of transparent plastic. How long ago now? Days? A week? So much had happened since the girl had held him locked in her arms.
He paused as a squad of men moved along the corridor. Technicians on their way to the exterior, to be suited, and lowered into nearby fissures, there to check if any threatening damage had been caused by the recent atomic blast.
A precaution and a part of normal maintenance procedure but to ignore or forget it was to invite disaster. On the Moon eternal vigilance was the price of survival.
“Mark!” Elna smiled as Regan entered Medical. “We’re just about to begin.”
“Is she cured?”
“We don’t know.” She anticipated his next question. “We can’t leave her, Mark. I’m aware that natural sleep is the best healer there is, but we’ve kept her under sedation too long as it is. There are odd and disturbing complications. No girl as young as she is and in such good physical condition should display her symptoms.”
He said, “Could they be a by-product of what caused her illness in the first place?”
“You’re thinking of the possibility of a virus infection?”
She shook her head as he nodded. “No Mark, we’ve eliminated all possibility of danger from that course. If we had found something it would have been easy to decide the cause of her breakdown, as it is we can only guess and hope that she has made a natural recovery.” She glanced to where Mandela stood beside the bed. “Ready, Rob?”
“When you give the word, Doctor.”
“Go ahead.”
The encephalogram, Regan noticed, had been connected and he studied the pattern of wavy lines as Mandela injected the stimulant. They flickered, steadied, flickered again.
“Normal,” commented Elna from where she stood at his side. “See how the pattern changes as she begins to regain consciousness? Now we have to hope that the previous distortion doesn’t appear.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We can hope for a cure. At least her mental condition will be as it should be. That alien pattern—” she drew in her breath as the screen flared to a jumble of lines, then released it as, again, it steadied. “Thank God for that. Rob?”
“She’s waking.” Mandela stepped back, the hypodermic ready. “If she goes crazy I’ll have to sedate her again.”
“On my order only.” Elna stooped over the bed. “Liz! Liz, my dear, wake up! Wake up, Liz!”
The girl turned and smiled and, still smiling, opened her eyes.
“Doctor! What a wonderful rest I’ve had. Did I fall asleep? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil the test. Did I spoil it?”
“No,” said Elna, quickly. “How do you feel?”
“Relaxed.” The girl stretched like a cat as she lay supine on the bed, arms uplifted, the muscles of her thighs clear beneath the skin, breasts prominent against the cage of her ribs.
Regan said, dryly, “Not hungry?”
“No—well, a little,” she amended. “And that’s odd, I ate just before reporting for the test-session.”
Days ago now—and she remembered nothing of what had happened. Rega
n met Elna’s eyes and she answered the jerk of his head. Standing at the far side of the ward he said, quietly, “Would you say she is cured?”
“No.”
“Her mind—”
“Seems clear enough at the moment,” she interrupted, “but don’t forget the amnesia. That isn’t normal for a start. And I can’t understand how her encephalogram became so distorted. Hunger,” she mused. “Rob said the pattern reminded him of a hunger-line he’d once seen. And she tried to eat you, Mark. Given the chance she would have torn out your throat. But why? Why? What made her do it?”
From where he stood beyond the head of the bed Mandela said, sharply, “Doctor Mitchell! Please!”
They looked at an animal.
The contrast was too great, the change too revolting and Regan felt his stomach contract as he looked at, what moments before, had been a young and lovely girl.
The creature was still a female and still young, but there the similarity ended. Liz Caffrey was no longer lovely and, he thought, no longer human.
“The encephalograph,” said Elna. “Look at the screen!”
It writhed with the hatefully familiar jumble of lines he had seen before.
Her voice carried a hatefully familiar whine.
“Food! I need food! I must have food! Feed me! Feed me!”
“Doctor?” Mandela lifted his hypodermic.
“No!” Elna shook her head. “Not yet. Mark, help me to restrain her.”
“No!” He looked at the girl. She was writhing on the bed in a peculiarly constricted motion, ripples running from head to foot as she inched along the couch. “Why don’t you get her something to eat?” he suggested. “Feed her as she asks.”
“Assuage her longing?” Mandela looked thoughtful. “She doesn’t seem to be as violent as before, Doctor. It could be that the Commander has a point. And, if she will eat naturally, it will help to bolster her constitution.”
She ate like the animal she had become, grabbing food and thrusting it into her mouth regardless of mixed textures and flavours, unheeding of the fragments that fell from hands and mouth to spatter her garment. A day’s rations, two, and still she wanted more.
Even when restrained she writhed and mewed and slavered, chewing at the pillow, the sheets, biting her lips until blood ran over her chin. Only when drugs had been injected into her bloodstream did she finally relax to fall into an artificial sleep.”
“Food,” said Regan. “She seems to be obsessed with the desire to eat. Is there a disease which can cause such a condition?”
“A few, but they are rare and she has none of them.” Elna was definite. “More common is the psychological desire which drives people to overeat—boredom, emotional instability, ingrained habit-patterns, things like that. Again, as far as I can tell, Liz has no problem of that nature.”
Regan looked at where she lay, knees updrawn, her face almost buried in the pillow. Thoughtfully he touched the dressing over the small wound.
Coincidence?
“Elna, when Liz bit me did you make a note of the time?”
“I did, Commander,” said Mandela. “I had to sedate her, remember, and a note is always made of the time of any injection.” He lifted the clipboard from the end of the bed. “Here it is. See?”
“And the initial distortion of her brainwave pattern? You have that too?”
“Naturally.”
Elna said, “What’s on your mind, Mark? What bearing could this have on her condition?”
“Maybe none, but it needs to be checked out. Rob, get on to Kanu. Give him all times and durations you have of the progress of Liz’s trouble. Have him check them against anything recorded in the computer. Anything at all. I don’t care if a man burped in the dining hall at the time I was bitten—I want to know about it. Have him find correlations.”
“You’ve thought of something,” said Elna as the doctor moved over to the communications post. “An association of some kind. What is it, Mark?”
“Madness, perhaps.” Again he touched his throat. “When you first sedated Liz you were running experiments in telepathy, right?”
“In extra-sensory perception,” she corrected. “I was trying to narrow the field to determine in which area her talent was to be found. I’d eliminated clairvoyance and precognition.”
“Which left telepathy?”
“It had to be that. I arrived at the conclusion that Liz Caffrey, in order to gain the high scores she did on the test cards, had to be reading my mind. I intended to enhance her sensitivity by hypnotic suggestion and see if her performance could be improved. Theoretically she could have achieved a hundred per cent success rate each and every time once she managed to handle her talent. Other advantages are obvious. But you gave the yellow alert and ended the experiment.”
Regan glanced at the bed, at the slim figure lying on the mattress, remembering his own fears, the sickness that had overwhelmed him when trying to remember details of the alien visitor. Remembering too the distortion of her brainwave pattern, her ravening hunger.
It all fitted, but he hoped he was wrong.
A hope that died as Mandela returned with the data from the Control Room.
“Kanu ran the problem through the computer and came up with certain related incidents. These, he feels, are the most appropriate and the only ones which fall into a common pattern.” The doctor glanced at his papers. “According to the computer Liz’s brainwave pattern showed an abrupt and violent distortion a few seconds after the atomic missile used to divert the pod was detonated. The distortion continued in varying intensity until, at the time the pod landed, there is an abrupt enhancing of the alien characteristics.”
Something jarred to full awareness by the impact of the nuclear blast. Something shocked by the force of the crash when the pod had split and a new and hostile environment had to be faced.
“And when I was bitten?”
“That coincides with the time when the first two men died.” Mandela looked up from his papers. “Commander, I can’t believe it. It’s incredible!”
“Telepathy,” whispered Elna. “It has to be that. Somehow a mental link was established between Liz and that creature from space. She was receiving the echoes of its mind. Its hunger drove her. Its ferocity made her act like a savage animal. Its domination even affected her basic metabolism. But, Mark, the thing was destroyed!”
Regan said, bitterly, “Was it?”
CHAPTER 8
“Alive?” Boardman shook his head, baffled. “But how? Nothing can withstand the fury of an atomic explosion and the bomb we detonated swept Schemiel clean. The rock was fused, unbroken. The dust and whatever else the crater contained were blasted into space in a column of incandescent vapour. No creature, no matter how alien, could have survived.”
“An atomic blast, no.”
“Then how—”
“Protective mimicry.” Regan was savage. A small depiction of one of the first interplanetary rocket-probes toppled and fell as his hand slammed hard on the surface of his desk. “You mentioned it yourself, Trevor. That pearl and ebon striation you spotted on the photograph. And it had time to leave the crater, don’t forget. After the rescue when Adam was hovering on guard and the other Pinnace collected the injured and dead. Dust, you said, thick enough to cover the entire area. Thick enough to cover movement too.”
His hand slapped at a button. “Amanda. Get me photographs of Schemiel taken before we blasted it, some just after and some taken recently. If you haven’t any on file send out to get them.”
“We have them, Commander.” Her face, on the screen, was bland. “The ones taken after the detonation are not very good. The dust—”
“I know about the dust. Send them into my office. No, never mind, I’ll come out.”
The doors opened as he aimed and activated his communicator and Regan swept into the Control Room. Versin glanced curiously at him from his position at the console, an expression matched by Kanu and Barnes herself. She said, “On the auxillary scr
eens, Commander. You want me to run a comparison?”
“Yes. Commence immediately.”
Three screens sprang to life, the one in the centre showing a blur of dust. It moved as he watched and he knew it was the record that had been taken by the hovering Pinnace.
“As you see, Mark, it hides all detail,” commented Boardman.
“And provides cover.”
“Yes.”
A blanket beneath which anything could be hiding. Regan turned to the first screen, studied it, then moved to the third.
“Amanda, how recent is the last photograph?” He frowned at the answer. “Flash me ones taken earlier.”
“They’ll come up as the dust-cloud settles, Commander.” The screen blurred as she spun the record, settled to show thinning wisps. “Better?”
“Yes.” Again Regan concentrated, the tip of his finger touching detail, moving to come to rest again. “Cut the first screen and spread two and three. High magnification and diverse colour. I want an overlay for comparison.”
“Any particular area?”
“H7 on both.”
“Coming up, Commander.”
Boardman grunted as the screen changed, one transparency covering another, the details of each illuminated by lights which cancelled each other into darkness when blended. One point glowed an angry red.
“Something doesn’t match, Mark. A boulder or heap of rubble is missing, but before or after the rescue?”
“It wasn’t there before we made the search,” said Regan, manipulating the controls. “See? This was taken on the preliminary survey of the wreck. And this was taken when the dust had settled enough to give clear visibility. And now?” He thinned his lips as Amanda flashed another photograph on the screen. “It’s gone. A boulder as large as a Pinnace and it simply vanished.”
“It couldn’t, Mark.”
“If it was a boulder I agree,” said Regan grimly. “My guess is it was something else. A creature that had left the crater and gone into hiding. It stayed there while we bombed Schemiel. Then, later, it moved. Where would it head for, Trevor?”