Child of Space

by E. C. Tubb

  Scenes which flickered and changed around one that held steady.

  “Elna—”

  She said, without turning, “You should be in bed, Mark.”

  “Safely out of the way while you pass your judgments?” His tone was bitter. “You disappoint me, Elna. I thought you were above the petty emotions of jealousy and envy yet here you are engaged on a witch-hunt. What harm has Enalus ever done to you?”

  She turned to face him and he was shaken by the sudden fury blazing in her eyes.

  “More than you can imagine, Mark. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that I have no emotions. Or are you implying that I’m not a real woman at all? Not as real, for example, as the thing you grew in a garden. Is that it?”

  Boardman said, soothingly, “This is a test, Mark, nothing more. Elna?”

  “This isn’t a trial,” she said. “I’m not a judge and I would never presume to be a jury. But there is something we must know. Pierre is helping me to find out. Amanda?”

  “No change in temperature or ionic levels, Doctor,” she reported from her instruments. “No trace of energy transfer as yet.”

  “What are you looking for?” Regan looked around the Control Room. Aside from Versin the personnel was as he expected but a relief man sat at the main console. “Where’s Pierre?”

  “Here.” Elna gestured at the static screen. “With Enalus.”

  They were framed like lovers in the panel edged with metal and alive with glowing colour. From the speakers came the sound of breathing, the soft strum of a guitar, the small noises of weight shifting on the bed where they sat. Pierre Versin had his back against a wall, the guitar in his hands, the girl at his side and leaning very close.

  “Pierre,” she murmured. “Play again, Pierre, and tell me how you learned how to make such wonderful music.” Her hand lifted to caress his fingers. “You are so strong, so wonderful.”

  Regan snarled his rage.

  He felt it rise within him, a hot, tormenting flood, which tinged the picture with red and sent the blood to roar in his ears.

  “No,” he said. “No! Get them out of there! Enalus! You can’t! Enalus!”

  At his side Boardman said, quietly, “Hypersensitivity as we suspected, Elna. Is there nothing we can do?”

  “No, Trevor. This is one battle he must win alone.”

  A battle of logic against emotion, of self against responsibility. He had derided Elna for being jealous and now that same emotion threatened to tear him apart, to ruin his mind and crush his soul. He had sneered at her envy and now he would have given the rest of his life to be sitting where Versin sat, to have the girl beside him as close.

  “Pierre,” she whispered again. “Do you like me a little? Do you trust me? I am so helpless here. I have no friends. I need a friend, Pierre. Will you be my friend?”

  “The bitch!” Amanda was watching. “The filthy bitch!”

  Elna said, sharply, “Watch your instruments. The levels?”

  “Remain the same, but—”

  “She isn’t human, Amanda. Remember that. She isn’t human!”

  And, perhaps, the more appealing because of it. An ideal holds more attraction than reality. The comfort of an illusion is not quickly thrown away. And no man, attacked at his basic, primeval, survival-structure, could resist the triggers of his biological drive.

  “Enalus—you are beautiful! Enalus!”

  She moved closer towards him, the mane of her hair falling over his face, shielding them both from the watching, electronic eye. His hands fell from the guitar, one circling her waist, the other coming up to rest on her shoulder.

  “Personal contact,” whispered Boardman. “As I suspected. It would have to be something like that.”

  A touch. A kiss—why couldn’t he remember?

  Regan drew in a deep breath, conscious of a battle won, of emotional turmoil stilled. Burned out, perhaps, a demon exorcised.

  Amanda said, quickly, “Doctor! The levels—”

  “Sound the alarm. Have security move in. Quickly, girl! Quickly!”

  In the screen Pierre rolled from the enfolding embrace, his eyes glazed, his skin deathly pale. Boardman said, “Well, there it is. Enalus is the cause of the anaemia. The episode with Pierre proves that beyond question. The amazing thing is that, even now, he insists that she didn’t even touch him.”

  “A defence mechanism,” said Elna. “I suspected it from the first. Any newly born creature must try to ensure protection against the environment. Enalus, from the first, emitted either a chemical or an electronic cloud of particles which caused a reaction in every male coming close to her.” She added, dryly, “I don’t think I need to elaborate just what those reactions were.”

  Love, pity, compassion, jealousy—Regan had felt them all. The love which had gripped him in the Medical Section when first seeing the creature, the response to her plight when, later in her room, he had been overwhelmed with pity an emotion perhaps even stronger than love.

  “No one affected could endanger her in any way,” mused Boardman. “Thompson lied, of course, she must have left her room to visit Edmunds and he knew it. As Pierre lied in an attempt to protect her. As all the men with whom she came into contact lied as to the extent of their relationship. As they will continue to lie. They can’t help it.”

  As he couldn’t help his anger, thought Regan. The rage that had turned his responsibility into nothing against the need to protect the girl. As he still felt the need to protect her.

  “She’s dangerous,” said Elna as if reading his thoughts. “An alien creature who has no conception of anything other than the need to survive. You must remember that at all times, Mark. You and everyone else in Moonbase.”

  “You seem good at remembering, Elna.”

  “But I’m not the Commander, Mark. I can’t order that thing to be destroyed. You can.”

  “No! I—”

  “You must,” she insisted, grimly. “One man is dead already because of her. It could have been two if we hadn’t reached Thompson in time. More have lost blood to that—vampire. Are you going to risk the base for the sake of a delusion?”

  “Elna, you’re being unfair.” Boardman looked at her from where he sat at the desk in Regan’s office. “You must remember that Mark has been exposed to the creature’s defence mechanism. He has been conditioned to protect her at any cost and he isn’t alone. There are others who will fight to the death to prevent you from hurting Enalus.”

  “If the men won’t destroy her then the women will,” snapped Elna. “They won’t be affected by the thing’s defensive mechanisms.”

  “Perhaps not,” admitted Boardman. “And I know from Lucy Cochran that you won’t go short of volunteers. But suppose the men stand before her—will your women kill them in order to get at Enalus? And will the men permit the women to come close knowing what they intend?”

  “Civil war,” said Elna, bleakly. “And of the worst possible kind. Men against women and neither side can hope to win. Not unless they are willing to destroy the base. Damn you, Trevor. What can we do?”

  “Think.” He leaned back, face graven with thought, looking detached and a little remote as he steepled his fingers. “Consider alternatives and try to be compassionate. Enalus is, first and foremost, only trying to survive. That is the prime objective of any organism. She seems to need blood in order to achieve that end. Now, is there any substitute she would accept instead? How much blood is essential to maintain her existence? Can we afford it? Could we reach some kind of a compromise? Is there any way in which—”

  Regan leaned back, barely listening to the flow of words, knowing they were only dressing to cover the real problem. Not an impasse as had been suggested but an outright confrontation.

  And what if Enalus decided to take over Moonbase?

  The hum of his communicator broke an ugly train of thought and Regan glared at the screen. The operator was quick to apologise.

  “I’m sorry, Commander. I know you are in conferen
ce but it’s Doctor Mandela. He says it is urgent.”

  “Very well.” At least the interruption would provide a momentary relief from trying to solve the insoluble. “Put him on the communications post.”

  The screen flared to life and Mandela looked at the assembly.

  “Commander! Professor! Doctor Mitchell! I’ve discovered something that could be important. It has to do with the blood of the anaemia victims.”

  “The blood?”

  “Yes, Doctor. We have both been concerned at the absence of a visible wound, which precludes the actual removal of blood from the body as would be the case in true vampirism. And when we checked we counted only the red corpuscles, correct? Well, I got to thinking and did a total count of all cells, red and white both. There was a shortage of red, right enough, but not a noticeable diminution in the total. What appears to have happened is that the red cells somehow lost their pigment.”

  “Their pigment! But how?” Boardman blinked then said, “Of course! The haemoglobin! Elna that means—”

  “It means that Enalus didn’t want blood at all,” she said.

  “She wanted the iron it contained. The haemoglobin. Remove it and you produce anaemia. Mark, don’t you see, she wanted the iron!”

  CHAPTER 14

  It was hard now to look at the screen. To see the image it displayed, the figure held fast in the room, one that had once held so much loveliness, so much grace. The change had been too sudden, thought Regan. Too great. And yet something still remained; the hair, long, fine, a shimmering waterfall which clothed the shoulders, the upper torso, the face. The emitted particles, which still affected all who came physically close, making slaves of every male aside from Boardman who seemed, in some remote fashion, to be immune.

  Or, if not immune, then less affected than the others. As he was less affected now that he saw her only over a screen.

  “Mark, has she fed yet?” Elna joined him where he stood at the monitor. She was tense, nerve and sinew keyed as if she were an engineer defusing a bomb. A good analogy, perhaps, but she could never be certain if she was defusing or triggering a device that could destroy them all. “Has Trevor given her the ration?”

  “He’s doing it now.”

  Regan watched as Boardman entered the room, female security guards passing him through, women wearing complete space armour, armed, under strict orders to shoot if Enalus should attempt to leave her quarters. He carried a large container in his hands. It held an allotropic form of iron, one devised and produced by Elna, a chemically accurate substitute for that carried in the blood and which gave the red cells their colour.

  “Enalus?” He set it on a low table. “How do you feel?”

  “I am well, Trevor.” The music of the voice remained, the initial mental contact long augmented by vocal communication, another facet of the defence mechanism. When had it happened, Regan wondered. After I had accused her of using mental telepathy? Had she adapted then to conform? “You have brought me more iron?”

  She lifted the container and turned so that her back was towards Boardman and the scanner of the monitor. Beneath the mane of her hair her shoulders moved a little as she lowered her face over the jar. Then she straightened and turned again and set it down empty.

  “More, Trevor. I must have more.”

  “You will get it,” he promised. “Together with food. You still need food?”

  “Yes. Food and water but, most of all, iron. I need it as you need salt. You understand, Trevor? To me it is life.”

  A life that had hung in the balance. Regan remembered the discussions, the savage intensity which had almost turned into physical violence. The discovery of her need for iron had given them a weapon against her. It was a revealed weakness that had altered the entire situation. Now there had been no need to take violent action against her. All they need do was to refuse her access to the essential element.

  “She will die,” said Elna. “Deprived of it she will cease to exist. Mark, we are safe!”

  “At the cost of what?” Boardman had glared his frustration. “A new form of life, Elna, and you want to destroy it. Are we barbarians? Have we no mercy, no tolerance? Must we kill simply because we cannot understand?”

  “She is alien.”

  “She deserves a chance.”

  “She should be eliminated.”

  “She could teach us things we don’t even suspect exist.” Boardman appealed to Regan. “Mark, we can’t waste this opportunity. We had to destroy the parasite, that I agree, but not Enalus. She—please, Mark, not Enalus.”

  They had watched him, one wanting him to decide to destroy, the other for him to be merciful. For a moment he had hesitated and then—like Enalus herself guided his decision—had said, “There is no need to be hasty. Let us hold her safe, feed her the iron and see what happens. You agree, Trevor?”

  “Yes, Mark. Of course!”

  “Elna?”

  “You are the Commander, Mark. I hope you don’t regret it.”

  A wish she repeated as now they stood together facing the screen.

  “She was so lovely and now—Mark, would it have been better to have let her die?”

  “No.”

  “But look at her. As a woman I can understand what she must be feeling. If I were in her place—”

  She broke off as he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “You’re not, Elna. And don’t make the same mistake you’ve warned me against so often. Enalus isn’t a woman. She is an alien creature. She isn’t human, Elna.”

  It was his turn to give her strength, to bolster her clinical detachment and to point out the absence of need of a woman’s pity. Yet it was hard for Elna not to feel compassion. Hard for anyone who had known Enalus not to compare what she had been with what she had become.

  In the screen she moved again, slowly, turning like a billowing sail in the wind, huge, rounded, shapeless. A swollen travesty of the lithe young girl she had once seemed.

  Watching her Regan felt a yearning regret.

  *

  “Metamorphosis,” said Boardman. “It has to be. It’s the only thing that explains all the facts as we know them. Enalus is on the verge of undergoing change.”

  “Elna?”

  “Trevor is right, Mark.” She glanced at her notes. “And it will be soon. Her size has remained static for the past two days and she has ceased all ingestion of all food and liquids including the iron. She seems now to be dormant and no movement has been observed for the past three hours.”

  “But metamorphosis?” Regan moved impatiently about his office. “She came from a plant, remember. How can a fruit change its shape?”

  “On Earth it can’t,” admitted Boardman. “I’ve spoken to Lucy about it and she is positive. But we are dealing with an alien form of life, Mark, and one that must follow alien rules. And, even on Earth, there are some pretty exotic forms of lifecycle. Think of bees, for example. The grubs are the same but, when sealed into their cells, they are fed differently and the diet determines the shape they will adopt as adults; some are workers, some are drones, others are queens. Termites have an even greater variation.”

  Small insects are easily handled but Regan remembered the thing that had ridden in the pod from space and how close it had come to destroying the base. A risk he had no intention of running again.

  He said, flatly, “You want the change to take place, right?” Then, as Boardman nodded, he added, “You realise the risk, Trevor? We have no way of telling what may emerge after the transformation is completed. Enalus had strong defence mechanisms and she was, according to your theory, only an unsophisticated form of life. Have you imagined what the next stage could be?”

  Elna said, quietly, “You want to destroy her, Mark?”

  They could do it now if they wanted to and, perhaps, it was the only chance they would get. The creature was bloated, dormant, helpless. Lasers could sear it to ash, cut it into segments, burn and char whatever lay beneath the human-like skin. To kill now,
would be easy. To destroy would be safe.

  Regan looked down at his hands. They were clenched, the nails biting into his palms, the knuckles white. To kill! To destroy! To eliminate the unknown and the fear which accompanied it!

  Within the deepest recess of his mind a primitive, ape-like thing lifted its head to howl at the Moon.

  “Elna?”

  “At the moment Enalus is harmless. I must admit to a certain curiosity as to what shape she may adopt and there is medical knowledge to be gained by forbearance, but—” She let her voice trail into silence.

  A silence broken by Boardman.

  “Mark, she must be given her chance. It is a gamble, I admit, but one we have taken before. We gave her the iron and so helped her to the next stage of her development. Are we now to change our minds? And think a little of the nature she has already displayed.”

  “I am,” said Regan, bleakly. “One man dead and another placed at risk.”

  “Accidents, Mark. She had no way of knowing the danger level of diminished haemoglobin. She was driven to absorb the essential element and Edmunds provided the iron. She took too much and almost made the same error later with Thompson. But she didn’t make it, Mark. And, later, she controlled her demands. Elna, were any of the other victims seriously at risk?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Given time all would have recovered without aid.”

  “So she was merciful—was that the act of a savage? Since we gave her iron has she attempted to take it from any other source? She has been confined, I know, but I’ve been with her and so has Elna and other women. None have been touched.”

  “So you want her to be left alone?”

  “Yes.”

  For the sake of the knowledge she—it—could give. The old, old curse of the scientists who, in ancient days, would cheerfully have made a pact with the Devil for the sake of opening doors to new vistas of attainment. How many had died breathing the noxious fumes rising from their alembics? How many had poisoned themselves with the use of strange chemicals, gases, compounds? Men armed only with ignorance and the determination to know. To learn. To understand.