The Living Death

by Nick Carter

  "Your old friend, where is he now?" I asked, having a nasty idea what the answer would be. I was right again. The round bastard smiled that unctuous smile.

  "He had a sudden mental collapse one day," he chuckled. "A real tragedy."

  "Why?" I asked directly. "Why all this?"

  "Why?" he repeated, his little eyes growing still smaller. "Because they needed to be taught a lesson. Yes, a lesson in humility. It was quite a good number of years ago that I applied to the International Science Scholars for membership. They turned me down. I wasn't good enough. I hadn't the credentials to belong to their elite little group. I was only a self-taught physics teacher at a private school. They looked down on me. Later, when I conceived my plan, I applied for my present position with them. They were glad to have me for that, their paid lackey, a glorified servant."

  Krisst was a fifteen-carat, first-grade psychopath. It was plain to see he'd been harboring his monumental grudge all these years.

  "Why only those men working with the Western powers?" I probed further. That one still eluded me.

  "Those who rejected me were all men belonging to the Western powers or working with them," he answered with some heat. "The Russian and Chinese scientists did not join the ISS until some years later, under the International Science Agreement. I am about ready now to go to the Soviets and reveal myself. The world will see how eagerly they will accept me into the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They will recognize me for the genius that I am."

  I gestured to the vials on the laboratory table. Maybe he was nutty as fruit cake but he seemed to have come up with something horribly effective.

  "Is what you use in those vials?" I asked. He nodded in triumph. "Yes, indeed it is," he smiled. "It is a concentration which specifically attacks the brain tissue, causing a fungus to grow in twenty-four hours which chokes off the oxygen supply to the brain cells."

  I felt myself frowning. A fungus that specifically attacked the brain tissues. It rang a bell for me. A few years ago I knew of a Doctor Forsythe who had been working with such a fungus in an effort to develop a growth that would halt the spread of braindamaged or cancer cells. I gave Krisst a hard look.

  "Isn't that what Dr. Howard Forsythe had been working on for positive purposes when he had his heart attack a few years ago?" I questioned. Krisst's round jaws began to shake and he reddened. "Yes, and I managed to get his formulae," he shouted. "But I developed my own use for them."

  He was apoplectic. "I made it into a powerful instrument… I unleashed its force!

  "They tried to rob me of my rightful place in the scientific community. But I showed them! I stole the minds of their so-called brilliant men. I'm better than all of them — better, do you hear, the best!"

  About that time I stopped listening to his ranting. Clearly, the man was mad. Deluded — but dangerous, making deadly use of a respected physician's research findings. I wondered how Krisst got hold of someone to miniaturize the compressed-air injection gun. What luck, for him to have a friend in the watch industry — certainly he himself was totally incapable of accomplishing such a complex feat. His voice rose to a screech and I came alive to his words again.

  "I'll get you too!" Krisst shouted, lunging for me. His shot, fired in insane fury, went wild. I had Hugo in my palm and slicing through the air in the flash of an eye. Krisst twisted away and the stiletto went right through the wrist of his gun hand. He cried out in pain and the gun dropped to the floor. I dived for it, but he kicked out and I had to roll away from the kick. Before I had another chance he kicked the gun away and I saw it slide into the narrow space beneath the lab table. I grabbed for him but, like so many fat men, he was surprisingly light on his feet and he avoided my grasp. Then, in his weird, twisted way, he did something I hadn't expected. Instead of pulling the stiletto out of his wrist, he struck out, flailing with the arm. The sharp point of the stiletto sticking through the wrist acted as a kind of spear tip at the end of an arm instead of a lance. I backed up, ducking under the thrusts of his arm, and got in a hard right to the mid-section. My arm sunk in and though he felt the blow, he had natural padding for protection. He swung a vicious right at me. I ducked under it and grabbed for his wrist to get a judo hold on him. I had to pull back to avoid getting my hand run through by my own weapon. Krisst came at me again, flailing with the right arm. I gave ground and we circled around the edge of the lab table. Suddenly I saw an opening and I stepped in with a right that was partly uppercut, partly right cross. I threw it from a crouch and saw it lift him off his feet and send him sprawling across the smooth table. His body crashed into the vials and the sound of smashing glass echoed as the entire row was swept onto the floor. I reached across the table for him. He drew back and kicked out with both feet I turned enough to avoid catching the kick full force but it knocked me backwards. He dropped off the other side of the table and raced for the stairway in an unexpected move. It took me an added two seconds to get around the long table. I reached the bottom of the steps just as he slammed the door shut and I heard the lock click. I stepped back and looked around for something to use to break the door open. Using a shoulder when you have to hit upwards from a flight of steps is pretty ineffective. I heard a hissing sound and looked up at an air vent near the ceiling. A whitish cloud was blowing into the cellar through the vent. I felt my lungs starting to contract already. Desperately, I looked around but there were no windows whatever. The room was a rectangular box. I flung myself against the door but it held. The gas was being blown through the vent in huge quantities. I felt my eyes tearing and the room was starting to swim. It was with a combination of apprehension, surprise and relief that I realized the gas was not one of the killing types but the disabling land. I clutched at the stairway bannister as the room circled faster. The thought raced through my fuzzy mind. Why is disabling gas? Why not the real deadly stuff? As I ditched forward I knew it wasn't because he was kindhearted. I wondered if I would become a vegetable in twenty-four hours. An incongruous thought minced through my mind before I passed out. If it had to be, I hoped I'd become a cucumber.

  IX

  The gas was wearing off. My eyes were tearing so that I hadn't any idea where I was. But I knew one thing. I was cold. In fact, I was so cold I was shivering. I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands. Gradually, I began to see, but at first all I could make out were large areas of black and white. I fell biting wind along with the cold and as I focused my eyes, I began to see snow, snow and darkness and feeling of being suspended in mid-air which is exactly where I was, sitting in a chair lift that was moving up along its cable over a ski slope. I looked down and saw Krisst standing by the operating mechanism. Beyond him was a darkened ski supply cabin. I could hear his voice calling to me.

  "Consider yourself lucky, Carter," he said. "My injector case was out of fluid or I would have destroyed your mind immediately. As you shattered all the vials in the lab it will be at least a month before I can ready a new batch. You, of course, will be dead in a few minutes. But it will be a clean death, much as that prospect displeases me. The authorities will write it off as the results of a fool skier trespassing, bringing on his own death."

  Krisst's figure was rapidly growing smaller as the ski chair carried me upwards, but I glimpsed the moonlight glinting from the blade of the axe he held in one hand. I saw the picture all too clearly. When I got up higher he was going to snap the cable. I'd be plunged to my death. I saw the lights of Zurich twinkling in the distance below. He had driven me up into one of the towering mountains just outside the city, deposited me in the chair lift and set the lift in motion. If I hadn't come around from the cold, I'd never have known what happened. I wondered what he was waiting for. I was more than high enough now, but the lift kept going up still farther. I looked up at the cable on which it hung. When it was snapped, the chair with me in it would be plummeted down. But the cable, I calculated, would also fall loosely. There be a moment, no more than a fleeting moment, if I knew my gravitational principles, when the snapped
cable would hang in mid-air before slackening loose to plunge the chair downward. I raised myself slowly, cautiously, bracing my feet against the straps where I had been sitting. The chair swayed and I lowered my center of gravity slightly. I didn't want to beat Krisst to his objective.

  Suddenly I heard it, a sharp crack that echoed up through the cold night air, bouncing from the mountains. I felt the cable shudder, the chair begin to plunge and I leaped upwards, my hands grasping at the air. My fingers coiled around the cable, sliding down. I got my legs wrapped around the still twitching, lashing cable and slowed my slide a little. I lowered myself along the length of the cable as I heard the soft thud of the chair as it struck the snow below. I was sliding faster than I wanted to and my hands were burning, the skin tearing off against the friction of the smooth cable. The cable, still held at the top end of the lift, had swung loosely in a wide arc and I felt like the very small end of a giant pendulum. Krisst was a long way away, at the other end of the chair lift, so I didn't have him to worry about at the moment. All I had to do was to get to the end of the cable before my hands gave out altogether and then try to avoid freezing to death in the snow and ice of the mountain.

  By pressing my legs together so tightly my muscles groaned, I slowed my descent enough to save my hands. Finally, I reached the end of the cable. There was still a helluva drop to the ground. I said a fast prayer for soft snow and let go. The snow was soft. I went in almost to my head. My teeth were chattering as I pulled myself out. I wished I had some idea where the hell I was on the dark, snowy mountain. I started downwards. It had to lead someplace. The moon had risen higher and was bouncing off the snow to give me plenty of light, at least. My feet were turning to chunks of ice before ten minutes had gone by. Krisst might win after all, I realized despairingly. Even dressed for it, a man could easily freeze to death in the snow. Dressed as I was, it was almost a certainty. I slapped my legs to find that they were rapidly losing all feeling, too. I wasn't walking any longer. I was dragging lifeless limbs through the snow. Suddenly I saw a dark, square ihape ahead. I stumbled into it, a shack on the trail, a resting place for skiers. It was only a shack and no more. There was no fireplace, but it was protection from the biting wind and free of the numbing snow. I also saw four pairs of skis standing against one wall, replacements to be used in case of broken skis or bindings.

  I grabbed a pair and almost cried out for joy. They could get me to the bottom without freezing to death. I slapped the circulation back into my feet and legs, fastened the skis onto my shoes as best I could and started downhill.

  I took it as easily as possible. Without proper ski shoes, I was in danger of losing a ski at every turn, and without poles, I couldn't make time. I was still cold, my body freezing from the wind generated by skiing, but I could stand it till I reached bottom. It was then that I heard the soft whooshing sound of skis on snow, the periodic slap of the snow as the skier made a sharp turn. I looked back to see the figure coming down after me, his round shape unmistakable. The bastard hadn't left anything to chance. He had skied out to make sure I was lying dead at the end of the cable and when he found only the chair, he knew I was still with it, still living. He had spotted me now, and I speeded up, but I knew there'd be no outrunning the speeding figure. He was coming fast behind me, and I watched over my shoulder. As he hurtled at me, I saw him lift one of the sharp poles and plunge it forward at me. I executed a sharp turn, and he hurtled past while I just managed to keep my skis on. He went on ahead and the trees were getting thicker as we neared the bottom of the slope. I lost him only to suddenly find him behind me again, coming at me again, this time from the side. He slashed again with the pole. This time the dagger-like point slashed through the shoulder of my suit as I just managed to twist away. He did a half circle and as I went by, holding to a straight line as much as possible, he tried to get me again. He came in fast, pole upraised, but this time instead of turning away in an effort to avoid him, I turned into him, ducking, slamming my shoulder into his belly as the pole hurtled over my head. He went flying backwards, the breakaway bindings parting as we collided. My shoes came out of the skis, too, and I felt myself pitching forward. Krisst was on his feet as quickly as I was and rushing at me with wild swings. He had taken Hugo out of his wrist, I saw, and wore a thick bandage there. He was on the higher part of the slope, and one wild swing caught me on the cheekbone. It didn't hurt too much, but I was off balance and I fell backwards. His heavy ski-boot caught me on the side of the head. I grabbed his ankle and twisted. He screamed and went stumbling forward on his hands and knees. I caught him with a hard right to the jaw as he got to his feet. He went somersaulting backwards into the snow. I went after him and got him with another hard right as he staggered to his feet. This time he sailed back a good six feet before hitting the snow. He got up, head down, trying to charge. I straightened him out with a shattering left uppercut and a perfect right cross. I felt the impact on the point of his jaw. He half whirled and fell backwards. As he hit the ground, I saw the snow part with an unreal quality, and he plunged down into a crevice, a deep fault in the mountain. I saw the figure go down followed by a good half-ton of snow. I didn't dare risk going too close. There was no seeing where the snow would give way and do the same with me. Once again, the silence and the wind were the only companions I had. Karl Krisst would not be found until the snow melted, if it ever did in these mountains. I got my skis on again and continued down the slope, finally reaching a brightly lighted chalet. The after-ski crowd was in full swing inside, dancing to records, a kind of alpine discothèque. I rested the skis against the wooden walls of the chalet and walked on. An old taxi stood empty at a taxi stand. I hunted up the driver, found him enjoying the warmth of a small waiting room. I thawed out as he drove me back to Zurich proper.

  The whole, dirty business was over. I had come close to death many times before, but when I thought of how near I'd come to ending up as a vegetable, alive but really dead, my flesh crawled. I had seldom been so glad to see an assignment end. I didn't even try to get a hotel for the remainder of the night. Rumpled clothes, dirty and unshaven, I went directly back to Krisst's house, getting in the same way I first did. I went down to the basement; the faint smell of gas still lingered in the air. The broken vials lay scattered about, their contents already forming a thick, paste-like ooze on the floor. I j was taking no chances with the stuff. I stepped carefully around it, making sure none of it touched my shoes. It had proven its virulence and potency. A nicked finger brushed against it might be all that it needed. Gathering the compressed-air injection gun diagrams with the miniaturization notations, I found a brief case to put them in and went upstairs. I did a fine-comb search of the house, finally turning up a sheaf of papers which appeared to be Dr. Forsythe's original notes on the substance Karl Krisst had turned to his own end. Our scientists would be able to do something with the base material, I was certain.

  It was daylight when I arrived at the airport and was lucky enough to get a seat on an early flight to London where, despite my appearance, they let me check in at the Royal Albert Hotel. I had to use my official credentials to do it, though. The English still believe that a gentleman should look the part. After a good sleep, I went out and did my best to uphold tradition, buying a suit worth buying at King's Row. The one I'd purchased in Zurich had had a short but active life. But then, not too many suits are used for siding or sliding down cables. It's hard on the threads. And, truthfully, I was damn glad I wasn't being fitted for another kind of suit.

  X

  I was feeling better when I called Hawk, more myself. I was never one to let an assignment stay with me once it was over. That was fatal in this business. Never look backwards. Never see how close death had come. Never think about it.

  "You've done a superb job on this, Nick," Hawk said in a rare moment of effervescence.

  "It was a sticky thing from the vary beginning. You were working in the dark most of tie time. You say you've forwarded all the data and material you fo
und. I'm sure our people will be able to utilize it fully. Good work, N3."

  I knew when to strike. This was as good a time as I'd had in a long while.

  "I want the rest of the week here in London, Chief," I said, plunging right in. If I hadn't been sitting down I'd have fallen right over.

  "Why, I think that can be arranged, my boy," he said. I shook the phone to make sure it wasn't static. "In fact, I'm going to do whatever I can to see that you enjoy yourself in London for a few days. Great town, London. I had a number of good friends there at one time."

  Before he got too far into reminiscing and changed his mind, I thanked him and hung up. His reference to helping me have a good time for a few days was in regard to his magnanimity in giving me the time off. At least, that's how I took it at the moment. Things were falling beautifully into place, for a change. Even Denny was home when I called. She was cool, or rather she tried to sound cool. It didn't last more than a few minutes when she was agreeing to meet me at the Royal Albert.

  "No girls emerging from closets," she said.

  "No girls," I promised. "I can explain all that."

  "It seems to me I've heard that somewhere before," she laughed.

  "Maybe you have," I agreed. "But this time I'm going to explain."

  "All right," she laughed. "If we're going to do the town tonight, I want to shower and change. Give me half an hour or so."

  The half hour was no more than that. It only seemed it. When she arrived, she was magnificent in soft beige that clung in all the right places, rounding her hips and falling from the sharp points of her upturned breasts with tantalizing effect. She came over and stood before me, her arms reaching up to encircle my neck. I found bar lips, but she turned her head away.

  "Not so fast, Nick Carter," she said. "I've waited this long and I can wait a few moments longer."