by E. C. Tubb
As it subsided Regan said, “Carrie, when Malcolm came to see you did he say anything about Enalus?”
“Only how wonderful she was and how everyone envied him being one of her escorts.”
“Nothing else? I mean, you two were in love and—”
“Were in love,” she snapped, bitterly. “How right you are, Commander. The past tense applied as soon as he saw that creature. He tried to pretend but I could tell. He was enamoured with her and couldn’t think of anything else. Even when he kissed me he was thinking of her—I could tell it.” Her eyes filled again with tears. “Malcolm,” she murmured, brokenly. “I was a fool, but I wasn’t sure. He loved me and I wanted him to love me, but there was no hurry and now it’s too late. He’s dead and that thing killed him. She killed him, Commander—and it’s up to you to do something about it!”
A demand he couldn’t refuse and a duty he had already acted on. And yet the mystery remained. Malcolm Edmunds had been on escort duty. Together he and Enalus had listened to music in the music room, had played a game of table tennis in the recreation room and later watched several pairs of wrestlers competing in the inter-section judo competitions. He had handed over his charge, reported to Security, had been relieved and had gone directly to his room.
“That would have been about eleven, Commander,” said the guard who had taken over from Edmunds. “Maybe a little later, as you know I was on duty at the time and only caught a glimpse of him as he left my vicinity.”
“And Enalus was with you?”
“Yes.” Harry Thompson was broad, hard, his eyes deep-set and very direct. “She wasn’t out of my sight until she went to her room.”
“And you stood on guard?”
“Until relieved, yes. That was before she woke. I went off-duty after catching a snack and playing a little poker with some of the boys. You can check if you like.”
“I have.” Regan was grim. “So you are willing to swear that Enalus was nowhere near Edmunds at the time he died?”
“I am.”
From where she stood behind Regan at the desk Elna said, “What do you think of her?”
“Enalus?” Thompson shrugged. “She’s just a girl.”
“You’re not in love with her?”
“I—no, of course not, Doctor. To me she’s just a job of work.”
Regan nodded dismissal and, after the man had left the office, said, “Why did you ask him that, Elna?”
“I wanted to know something.”
“And?”
“I found out what I wanted to know. He lied, Mark. That man lied!”
Her voice held a throbbing intensity, emotion far in excess of what the discovery called for and totally at variance with her normal calmness. A blend of anger and, he thought, more than a little fear.
Quietly Regan said, “So he lied a little, Elna. You embarrassed him, perhaps, but what does it matter?”
“Don’t you understand?” Her eyes met his own, direct, accusing. “He’s in love with that thing and so is every man on the base who’s come in contact with her. But, worst of all, Mark, you are in love with her yourself!”
*
Lucy Cochran finished her coffee, looked thoughtfully into the empty container then, tossing it aside said, “The word is metamorphosis, Professor, as you well know so please don’t try to flatter an old woman.”
“Old, Lucy?” Boardman smiled and shook his head. “I can give you, well, too many years. And you know how age erodes the memory. Metamorphosis, of course, the period of rapid transformation from one form to another. But in plants?”
“In insects, not plants. It’s the change made by a larva to an adult form such as a caterpillar to a butterfly. The caterpillar eats until it’s ready, spins a cocoon, seals itself inside and waits. Then something happens and it changes into a butterfly which breaks out of the cocoon and, usually, eats it before flying away.”
“As a source of food,” murmured Boardman. “As the alien creature did the pod in which it arrived.”
She said, shrewdly, “You’re thinking of Enalus, Professor, there’s no connection. She is the fruit of a plant, simply that and nothing more. An unusual looking fruit, I’ll agree, and one with fantastic attributes, but a fruit all the same. One shaped by the initial stimulus that fertilised the plant as the Commander suspected. A pity we didn’t know that earlier, we could have fertilised them all.”
With results Boardman would rather not think about. One other, yes, science demanded at least that, but more would have been tempting a destructive fate. And there could be no need. Each single fruit could, perhaps, be sufficient to itself.
Lucy shrugged when he asked the question. They sat in her laboratory and the light from the overhead sun caught her hair and turned the silver strands into gold.
“It’s possible that she could bear other fruit, Professor, but how would you go about planting her? I hardly think you’d be allowed to bury her in the ground.” She added, after a moment, “Not by the men, at least, the women would probably dig the hole for you and fill it in with their bare hands.”
“They dislike her that much?”
“Dislike is a mild word, Professor. Say they hate her and you’d be closer to the truth. Can’t you guess why? She’s competition. Five engagements have been broken since she had the run of Moonbase. Married couples are talking of divorce. No girl stands a chance when Enalus is around and she makes every woman feel and look second-rate. And there is Malcolm Edmund’s death.”
“She can’t be blamed for that.”
“No?” Lucy Cochran shrugged. “Maybe not, but the women are certain she was the cause.”
An illogical reaction and one which Boardman didn’t want to discuss.
He said, “When Enalus stepped from the bole you took photographs of her. I’ve taken some since and I’d like to make a comparison. If I could use your equipment?”
“Help yourself.” The botanist waved to the far end of the laboratory. “The left-hand panel is static, the right-hand one is the control. Check it over while I get the photographs.”
She had them in a folder and Boardman took it, spilling prints until he found the first taken after Enalus had stepped from the pod. He clipped it to the left-hand panel, adjusted the magnification then placed another photograph he had brought with him into the right-hand section of the machine.
A knurled knob twisted beneath his hand and, on a screen, both pictures appeared, one superimposed on the other, each in a different colour.
“You’ve set the machine wrong,” said Lucy. “You’ve failed to adjust for scale-differential.”
“No.” Boardman flipped a switch and checked each of two ruby bands. “I made certain my photograph had a reference-scale. That table next to Enalus is exactly thirty-two inches in height. You used the normal scale-rod. Let’s try again.”
The pictures merged, the edges blurred a little and the woman sucked in her cheeks as she read the scales at the sides of the screen.
“She’s grown, Professor. Hips are wider and breasts are larger and she seems a little taller than she did before.”
“Two inches.” Boardman was thoughtful. “And the increase is general which makes the added height unnoticeable. The hair, also, tends to disguise the height and, naturally, her clothing acts as a distraction to her added bulk. Yet she is still in proportion.”
And still very lovely—a goddess when compared to the human imperfections of the other women. Aphrodite must have looked like that, he thought, a vision of loveliness born from the foam to set a standard, an ideal that sculptors had tried for millennia to set in stone. A female so beautiful that, even in the trapped image of a photograph, she cast her enticing spell.
“Growing,” said Lucy Cochran. “Professor, when did you take your photograph? Was it after Malcolm Edmunds died?”
“Yes, but there’s no connection. There can’t be, Enelus was cleared. She had a cast-iron alibi.”
“One provided by a man,” reminded the botanist. “
Well, there’s nothing we can do but wait. Malcolm could have been the victim of a freak accident or a rare natural condition, but if another man should die in similar circumstances, and if Enalus continues to grow—well, Professor, in that case the women will know what to do.”
*
Regan woke to the hum of his communicator, shedding dreams; nightmares in which he had run from faceless entities across an endless plain littered with bleached and ancient bones.
Elna looked from the screen. “There’s something odd, Mark. You’d better come to Medical right away.”
“Five minutes,” he said. “No, make it ten.”
He was dull with fatigue, there was no apparent emergency and a shower and cup of coffee would serve to restore his facilities. But why did he feel so tired?
In the shower he thought about it, reviewing the past few days. Edmund’s death had created a lot of work, alibi’s checked and rechecked, potential causes isolated and eliminated, a sea of faces to be questioned and tests and more tests to be made. All for no purpose. On the evidence nothing had caused the man’s death but an unsuspected natural cause. An Act of God, thought Regan, the convenient blanket-cover used in the past to absolve everyone from blame. Too convenient—and Moonbase could not afford the luxury of such self-indulgence.
“Mark?” Elna was calling again and with a start of guilt he realised that already the promised ten minutes had been doubled. He’d been dreaming in the shower, standing with his eyes closed, more asleep than awake. “Mark, are you well?”
“Yes.” The question irritated him. “Why do you ask?”
“You look pale.”
“I’m tired.” He glanced at his watch. “Be with you in five minutes.”
He made it with a minute to spare, looking around as he entered the Section, seeing the three men sitting like schoolboys on the long bench, the marks on their faces clear signals as to the violence in which they had participated.
“You called me here to see this?” Anger sharpened his voice. “Damn it, Elna, we have systems to handle such problems. Let Security take over—they know what to do.”
“This isn’t just a matter of discipline, Mark.” The chill of her own voice was a reproof to his irritation. “And there is more than those three. Harry Thompson collapsed an hour ago.”
“Dead?”
“No. We got to him in time. But he has the same symptoms as Carolyn Markson had. The same illness that killed Malcolm Edmunds. Mark—he’s been bled white!”
Regan looked at the man as he lay in intensive care. The bluish light accentuated the corpse-like pallor of his face, the sunken cheeks and prominent bone adding to the appearance of a skull. A security guard was not chosen for his weakness and Thompson, as Regan remembered, had been a strong, sturdy, bull-like man with the smouldering strength of a horse.
“Anaemia?”
“His blood is almost completely devoid of red corpuscles, Mark. But his collapse wasn’t as sudden as Edmunds’. I’ve learned from his colleagues that for the past few days he’s looked tired and jaded. They even made jokes about it—need I tell you what they were?”
“No.” Regan was aware of what they would have been. Aware too of the sudden anger which gripped him, the wave of emotion that dewed his face with sweat. “The swine!”
“Mark!”
“Nothing.” He turned from the startled expression in her eyes. “What of the others? Those men out there? What made them fight?”
“Jealousy.” Elna elaborated as she turned from the limp figure on the couch. “Something was said, someone objected and, abruptly, they were trying to kill each other. And I mean that literally, Mark. There are witnesses who will swear to it.”
“Women?”
“Yes, but does it matter?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “They were parted just in time and brought here. I’ve tranquillised them and made certain tests. Mark, they too are suffering from a shortage of red blood cells. They too are showing signs of anaemia.” |
A plague? The very thought was terrifying, a gibbering nightmare which lurked forever at the threshold of awareness, a thing of white and ancient bone—one of the Four Horsemen which had always threatened Man. And here, on the Moon, it was all the more horrible for they had nowhere to run.
He said, thickly, “What are you saying, Elna? A virus infection? A contaminating type of cancer? A mutated bacteria—for God’s sake, woman! Tell me! Is Moonbase doomed?”
“Steady!” He saw her face, the wide, startled eyes, the sudden expression of awareness replacing the previous concern. “You said you were tired, Mark, and you look paler than normal. Hold still a moment.” Her hand lifted and he felt the pressure of her fingers as she pulled down his lower eyelids. “I want to make a test, a blood-count. It won’t take long.”
“Later. I’m—”
“Now, Mark!” Her tone precluded the concept of refusal, her authority paramount in such a case at such a time. “I must find out if you too have been affected.”
“By what?”
“By the thing which has come among us,” she said, bleakly. “The thing that is draining our blood.”
CHAPTER 13
There should have been wolves, creatures howling in a wind-swept darkness together with mouldering turrets and ancient castles with mysterious servants and an enigmatic nobleman who woke at sunset to prowl until dawn. A thing of legend, born from the need to explain the death that came from the dying of the blood, the increasing pallor of the afflicted. But, if vampires had ever existed, surely they must have been left far behind?
Surely it wasn’t possible for one to be even now at large in Moonbase One?
A thing to ponder, to add to the rest, a mountain of worry and doubt which, for the moment, he could do nothing about. Regan sighed and looked at the ceiling, the bottle hanging from its support, the container of red, red blood which was being fed into his veins.
Tests had shown him to be anaemic, the loss of red corpuscles accounting for his lassitude and irritation, or so Elna had explained. But how had he contacted the condition? How?
From where he sat at the side of the bed Boardman said, “Elna is conducting a check on all personnel to determine how many are affected. As yet all those showing signs of anaemia are men.”
“Which means?”
“Perhaps nothing, but it is a fact and must be accepted as such. Men only—oddly enough Lucy Cochran hinted at potential trouble. She also suggested that at least half of us here in Moonbase would know how to handle it.”
“The women?” Regan struggled to sit upright, feeling a momentary nausea, a jerk at the connection to his arm. Redness showed beneath the tape holding the hollow needle in place. Stripping it free he removed the needle and folded his arm holding his clenched hand hard against his shoulder. “What nonsense is this, Trevor?”
“Nonsense?”
“Yes. Enalus had nothing to do with this. She couldn’t!”
Boardman said, dryly, “Did I say she had, Mark? But now that you mention it there is an interesting correlation between her and those affected. Every man showing signs of anaemia has been close to her in some way. Malcolm Edmunds was her security escort and so was Harry Thompson. Those men who fought; two engineers, and a hydroponics man, they had spent time with her. And there are others. Everyone, Mark, every male who has been close to her shows signs of a diminished red blood count.”
“Rubbish! What about me? I—” Regan broke off conscious of Boardman’s expression. “What’s the matter, Trevor? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m wondering what’s happened to your memory, Mark. You were alone with her in her room, remember? When we decided she was to be allowed the run of the base. And you spoke with her a couple of times since.”
“So?”
“What happened in her room, Mark?”
“Nothing.” Regan was adamant. “We spoke and she stood before me and… and…nothing.”
Nothing but a vague memory of something wonderful. A touch.
A kiss perhaps? He couldn’t remember.
“Nothing,” he said again. “It’s all a coincidence. And you’re forgetting the evidence. Enalus couldn’t have been responsible for Edmunds’ death. He was fit and well when he left her and she didn’t leave her room. We have proof of that.”
“Thompson’s word.”
“Proof.”
“All right then, Mark, proof. But why be so upset? If she is innocent then Enalus has nothing to be afraid of.”
“Innocent?” Regan swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood upright. Again his senses swam to a momentary nausea and he wondered what else had been fed into his blood. Sedatives, perhaps? Antibiotics? Glucose and saline together with extract of liver? “Innocent? Trevor, you talk as if she was on trial.”
Boardman said, flatly, “She is.”
“By whose authority?”
“Elna—”
“Doctor Mitchell is in charge of nothing but the Medical Section. She has no right to arrange a trial without my knowledge. Any kind of trial. Where is she? What has been going on? How long have I been here? Damn you, man, answer!”
Regan heard the echoes and realised he had been shouting. An orderly looked into the room, her face startled, leaving to make room for Mandela who came directly towards the two men.
“Commander! This is ridiculous! Get back on that bed immediately!”
“Go to hell!”
“What?”
“You heard me. Where is Doctor Mitchell?” Regan snarled deep in his throat. “Where is she? Damn it, do I have to take this place apart to find her?”
“She’s in the Control Room, Commander—”
Regan was already on his way.
*
She stood before the base monitoring screens watching the light and colour on the panels, the depicted scenes showing the various areas and those within them. A group sat in rapt enjoyment of a trio playing a complex melody on instruments fashioned of laminated metals and crystal, taut plastics and delicate ceramics. In Eden couples wandered along the paths, halting to enjoy the music of the fountain, the crops now well-established all around. In a starlit chamber with a transparent roof deep chairs and secluded alcoves formed a rendezvous for the romantic.