by James White
"But I wanted to put it with its friends in the corridor," said Hollis when he had his visor open. "In here, outnumbered five to one, it might panic and injure itself . . ."
"Are you sure this air is breathable?" Berryman broke in, speaking through his smashed visor. There was a long incised wound across his nose and one cheek.
"Doctor," said the colonel. "Have a look at Drew's leg. And my shoulder . . ."
"Hollis! Behind you!"
The alien had made contact with the wall net, steadied itself, and then launched itself furiously toward the physicist. Berryman got his ski stick up in time and the alien struck it squarely but did not stop. The butt of the weapon was driven back against the wall, but still the being did not stop. The metal collar piece holding the plate which kept the tip of the weapon from penetrating more than half an inch slipped backward along the shaft. The point, with the alien's considerable velocity and inertia thrown against it, drove into its body until stopped by the interior of its carapace.
It began to slap the shaft of the weapon with its tentacles, violently at first, then more slowly. Suddenly its tentacles tried to tie themselves in knots and it became completely still.
McCullough launched himself toward the alien, knowing that he was in no danger from it now. He gripped one tentacle where it joined the body and gently withdrew the ski stick.
This was much worse than a little property damage or trespass. Much, much worse.
For a long time nobody spoke. McCullough looked slowly around at the other four men, trying desperately not to think. The spacesuits of Morrison, Drew and Berryman were torn or otherwise rendered useless. The colonel and Drew were injured, perhaps seriously, and, as an added complication, their wounds might well become infected with alien microorganisms -- an infection against which their bodies could have no defense. In any case they should be moved out of this place, and quickly. But there were only two usable spacesuits, the physicist's and his own. Hollis' would fit only Hollis. McCullough's might, at a pinch, fit Drew but nobody else. He was afraid to consider all the implications -- they were too terrible. But more than anything, he did not want to think about the contorted, alien shape he was holding and the frightful things which must surely happen as a result of its death.
"Doctor," said the colonel in a voice harsh with pain, "you're supposed to know how to treat human beings. Leave that thing alone, it's dead anyway."
He was glad to be able to give his undivided attention to the injured, but somehow the alien cadaver seemed always to be in sight whenever he looked up from a patient, and it became more and more difficult not to think about it. The blood of both species was the same color, a fact which should not have surprised him considering their closely similar atmospheric requirements, and the droplets filled the compartment like dark, frozen rain. The absence of gravity, as well as making it difficult to control bleeding, made it completely impossible to deal quickly with even a simple wound.
Even with the patients cooperating by lacing their arms or feet into the wall netting, and Hollis doing his best to hold McCullough in position while he treated them, it took a long time.
Morrison was in bad shape. An alien had tried to fasten itself onto his head and chest, but the colonel had been able to interpose his elbow just in time. His forearm was a little longer than the full extension of the alien's horn, so that while his helmet had been hammered into so much scrap metal and his shoulder and upper arm were a mass of punctured and incised wounds, he had escaped with his life. Drew, apparently, had discarded his ski stick in favor of his feet and one leg had suffered in consequence, although the injuries were much lighter than the colonel's. Berryman had a badly lacerated face, caused by running it against the edge of his broken visor.
But it was the spacesuits which had suffered worst of all, first from the attacks of the aliens and now at the hands of McCullough.
Cutting and extending the tears in the fabric of the suits, pulling back the plastic and metal foil and the tubing of the air-conditioning systems, affected him much more deeply at times than probing and cleaning the wounds. If they were not already fatally infected, the wounds would heal -- the human body was self-repairing to a fantastic degree. But increasing the damage to a suit which was not repairable was to inflict a wound of a much more serious nature. In space the suit was much more than a protective skin -- Walters, who was in a position to know, had insisted that it was analogous to both womb and placenta, and that losing it prematurely could give rise to a really drastic form of birth trauma.
The thought of being without his own suit in this place was enough to drive McCullough to the edge of panic, and he hated to think of how the others would feel when the shock of their injuries wore off and they realized the full extent of what had happened to them.
His thoughts had taken a Freudian and definitely morbid turn by the time he had finished with them. He found himself staring at the dead body of the Two and wondering if any of them would ever see home again.
The colonel spoke suddenly. His voice sounded very weak and either he was not using his suit radio or the Two's horn had wrecked it. He said, "You will have to report our -- our predicament, Doctor. And tell Walters to send the technical material and photographs at the same time. Hollis will have to help you with this -- he is the only one of us capable of understanding what we saw in the blister and passing it on. When all this has been done, you will maintain continuous radio contact with us until something has been worked out.
"We will have to move into the corridor while you are leaving," Morrison ended, launching himself slowly toward the inner seal, "so don't waste time."
"It might be better if I stayed," said McCullough awkwardly. "None of you are completely fit, and if they attacked again while you were in the corridor . . ."
"I can't risk losing another spacesuit," said the colonel as he checked his slow light with his feet and good arm. "Drew will organize our defenses. He's very good at that sort of thing."
"And the first thing we do," said Drew savagely, "is take the guards off these stickers! Anything that comes at us again will get six or eight inches of metal in its guts instead of a harmless little jab. Cold steel has a very demoralizing effect on human beings -- that's why bayonet charges have retained their popularity through the ages -- and maybe . . ."
"No!" McCullough protested. "We've killed one of them already -- by accident, of course -- and we can't even imagine the trouble that will cause. But if we start killing them deliberately -- I mean, we must all think very carefully about this before we make another move which might be misunderstood."
"And I think we've been thinking too much!" Drew said, his voice rising almost to a shout. More quietly he went on, "If a person acts like a wild animal, then that is how he should be treated! And I think we should dump that -- that carcass. The damn thing gives me the creeps!"
"While quietly bleeding to death," said Berryman hastily, in an obvious attempt to restore peace, "I have given serious thought to this problem. It seems to me that there are just three things we can do. The first is to return the body to its friends by leaving it in the corridor -- a course which might very well anger them even more. The same applies if we keep it in here where they may be able to see it through the lock window. Or lastly, we can hide it from them, with little probability of them ever finding it, by having the doctor and Hollis take it away.
"I favor the last alternative," Berryman concluded, "because, while the aliens may feel fairly certain that it is dead, they cannot be absolutely sure of this -- they may assume, or hope, that their friend is a prisoner. If they do not actually see the dead body there might be enough doubt in their minds to make them proceed more cautiously against us."
"My thinking exactly," said the colonel. "Take it to P-Two, Doctor, and find out what makes it tick."
"You have to know your enemy," said Drew viciously, "inside and out."
"Surely you are not suggesting -- " began McCullough aghast, then stopped. He was trying hard
to think as they must be thinking. He had not had his arm and shoulder gored by an alien's horn or had his leg torn by alien claws. He was not aware, not as personally and subjectively aware as they were, that his spacesuit was useless with everything which that fact implied. McCullough's skin, and his even more precious spacesuit, was still in one piece. He had been exposed to, but had not suffered, violence.
But violence was a chain reaction with a positive K-factor -- once begun it quickly became self-sustaining. From the outset it had been the aliens who had acted violently, or reacted violently, toward the humans. Now the situation had deteriorated to the point where it was becoming uncontrollable because both sides were using violence.
If the aliens reacted violently to the venial sin of trespass, how might they react to one of their people being murdered, and dissected?
chapter twelve
In the general confusion of the past few hours McCullough had forgotten one very important fact, and that was the effect of explosive decompression on an unprotected human or unhuman body. As soon as it was exposed to space, the soft, almost flat underside of the e-t swelled like a great, lumpy football and burst wetly. Nothing he could have done in the way of a post-mortem could have made the alien look worse than it did just then, and by the time he reached P-Two with it he was looking forward to investigating this completely strange life-form.
But there were more urgent matters to be attended to first.
It was not until they had processed the film, and the pictures taken in the blister were on their way, pulse by pulse to Earth, that they were fully able to satisfy Walters' curiosity about the fight in the Ship, and then it was only by having him listen while McCullough made his report to Prometheus Control. The physicist, meanwhile, had returned to the Ship with a supply of food and water for Morrison and the others.
Before leaving, Hollis reminded them that the water he was taking would be permanently lost to them, for without the P-ship's reclamation system there was no chance of them being able to use it again. He apologized for mentioning this fact but thought that somebody should bear it in mind in case they were contemplating a lengthy stay.
McCullough agreed and added yet another unpleasant datum to his report.
". . . That is the situation in detail," McCullough said a few minutes later. "Our most urgent need is for spacesuits to evacuate the injured men or, if they cannot be evacuated, food and water to extend our staying time on the Ship until evacuation is possible. There is also the possibility that their wounds may become infected with alien bacteria, against which their bodies may have no defense, and they will die. However, it seems to me that the chances are about even of the alien pathogens running rampant throughout their systems and killing them in a matter of hours, or alternately, of them having no effect whatsoever because the human body is too strange and alien an environment for the e-t pathogens to survive in it. There is also the possibility that our antibiotics will be as effective against e-t infections as they are against . . ."
"Brady here," a voice from Control broke in. It was a gruff, impatient, yet concerned voice belonging to the person on whose shoulders the responsibility for the Prometheus Project and the combined weight of eight stars did not rest lightly. It went on, "You are in a mess, Doctor, I agree. Have you considered moving one of the P-ships into the lock, taking the men on board in shirt-sleeve conditions, leaving one man with a suit to operate the lock mechanism?"
"The lock is too small to take a complete P-ship without wrecking it!" McCullough broke in. "Berryman had that idea, too. But I've already told about it at the beginning of my report."
"If this idea isn't workable," the general was continuing, "Your only hope is to elicit the aid of the alien Ship's crew in getting them out. Are you sure they are as aggressive as you say?"
"But I've already told you -- " began McCullough, then stopped. It occurred to him that the distant general was reacting only to the first few sentences of the report, and, as McCullough remembered them, they had not been particularly coherent.
"Stop talking, McCullough, while I'm trying to -- " said the general irritably, then in an aside to someone, "Yes, yes, I'd forgotten the time lag. Now let's see . . . McCullough!"
"Yes, sir," said McCullough, out of sheer force of habit. Holding conversation with a half-hour delay between each line of dialogue took some getting used to.
Walters, who was tuned to Berryman's suit frequency, said quietly, "The aliens have gone. Both corridor and interhull space are empty. Berryman says their wounds are painful but so far are not unduly inflamed."
"Since the material in your report is urgent and may require a quick decision at any time," the general went on briskly, "I propose listening with one ear to your report as it comes in while at the same time filling you in on the rather delicate political situation which is developing here. Colonel Morrison is aware of the position as of last night, fifteen hours ago, to you, but it has changed since then. It changes every time you open your mouth, Doctor, and I wish you would remember that and speak accordingly.
"Briefly, the position is this . . ."
Every transmission made from the area of the alien Ship had been relayed in its entirety by all the major networks. The same applied to the pictures taken during the approach and examination of the first airlock and the shots McCullough had taken of the aliens. The reason for such widespread coverage was simple. Public support and interest in space flight was on the wane because of the tremendously expensive hardware needed -- especially when pushing out beyond the orbit of Mars -- and a blow-by-blow illustrated account of the first meeting between humanity and an extraterrestrial culture should revive it, if anything could. But now that the meeting had degenerated into violence, had become literally a blow-by-blow affair, the idea had backfired.
People were no longer just interested, they were choosing sides and becoming fanatical.
At first, Prometheus had tried to wrap a security blanket around the whole incident, but they realized the uselessness of this when they were reminded that the P-ships' signals could be received by relatively unsophisticated equipment, and the stills, although a little more difficult, required only a moderately sized radio telescope coupled to the resources of any large newspaper office.
That was why McCullough was being urged to choose his words carefully when reporting to Control. If at all possible, he was advised to play down the seriousness of any given event or development -- the people at Control would realize the true gravity of the situation and act accordingly, he was assured -- and at all costs avoid displays of fear or anger. It would be an even better practice if McCullough could rehearse his report briefly before transmitting it so as to remove all emotionally loaded words and phrases.
"But sir -- " began McCullough, then stopped. A picture of Brady sitting in Control drifted in front of his mind's eye to be replaced by one of Berryman, Morrison and Drew, frightened and injured and hiding from an alien threat fifty-odd million miles from home, and the thought came to him that Brady must be stupid or he, McCullough, was supposed to be that way. He did not see how their situation could be described in anything but emotionally loaded language without making it sound farcical. If someone was to die, or if the three men in the Ship were to succumb to an alien infection, how was he supposed to report that? As a spot of trouble, perhaps? Or a Bad Show? If the general was really serious in what he had said, McCullough might not be allowed to report a death at all!
". . . One good point is that the eavesdropping is strictly one-way. They can hear every word you say but they can't pick up our messages to you. However, I cannot at the moment give you detailed instructions regarding your present situation. Since you are on the spot you must use your own judgment. Just be careful not to . . ."
While the general was talking, McCullough became aware of another voice in the background -- a tiny, harsh, nervous-sounding voice which fought against a constant rattle of interference. He realized suddenly that the voice was his own, speaking the wo
rds he had spoken thirty minutes earlier. He could even hear Brady interrupting him again, so that for a few seconds there was one McCullough and two General Bradys talking. It struck him as being wildly funny and he began to laugh.
Walters looked worriedly at him but remained silent. Not so the general.
". . . With the whole world listening to every word you say, you must realize that political capital can be made out of the lightest, unconsidered word. So don't even say Good morning without thinking about it first . . ."