The Terrans used the trap, which, of course, was not a trap at all, but a matter transmitter. I had the other end concealed on the planetoid, and fed into it three small animals which I found in the garden. The Terrans removed them from the transmitter each time—for what purpose, I couldn’t guess. But a Terran will keep anything.
After the third beast passed through and had not been returned, I knew that all was in readiness.
So I prepared for the fourth and final sending, the all-important one, for which all else was mere preparation.
They were standing in the low shed attached to their cabin. Thurston looked with distaste at the three cages made of heavy mosquito netting. Inside each cage was a creature.
“Ugh,” Thurston said. “They smell.”
In the first cage was the original capture, the stalk eyed, lobster- clawed beast. Next came a bird with three sets of scaly wings. Finally there was something that looked like a snake, except that it had a head at each end.
Within the cages were bowls of milk, plates of minced meat, vegetables, grasses, bark—all untouched.
“They just won’t eat anything,” Dailey said.
“Obviously they’re sick,” Thurston told him. “Probably germ carriers. Can’t we get rid of them, Ed?”
Dailey looked squarely at his friend. “Tom, have you ever desired fame?”
“What?”
“Fame. The knowledge that your name will go down through the ages.”
“I am a businessman,” Thurston said. “I never considered the possibility.”
“Never?”
Thurston smiled foolishly. “Well, what man hasn’t? What did you have in mind?”
“These creatures,” Dailey said, “are unique. We will present them to a museum.”
“Ah?” Thurston queried interestedly.
“The Dailey-Thurston exhibit of creatures hitherto unknown.”
“They might name the species after us,” Thurston said. “After all, we discovered them.”
“Of course they would! Our names would go down with Livingstone, Audubon, and Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Hmm.” Thurston thought deeply. “I suppose the Museum of Natural History would be the place. I’m sure they’d arrange an exhibit—”
“I wasn’t thinking merely in terms of an exhibit,” Dailey said. “I was thinking more of a wing—the Dailey-Thurston Wing.”
Thurston looked at his friend in amazement. There were depths to Dailey that he had never imagined. “But, Ed, we have only three of them. We can’t equip a wing with three exhibits.”
“There must be more where these came from. Let’s examine the trap.”
This time the trap contained a creature almost three feet tall, with a small green head and a forked tail. It had at least a dozen thick cilia, all of them waving furiously.
“The rest were quiet,” Thurston said apprehensively. “Maybe this one is dangerous.”
“We will handle it with nets,” Dailey replied decisively. “And then I want to get in touch with the museum.”
After considerable work, they transferred the thing to a cage. The trap was reset and Dailey sent the following wire to the Museum of Natural History: HAVE DISCOVERED AT LEAST FOUR ANIMALS WHICH I SUSPECT TO BE NEW SPECIES STOP HAVE YOU ROOM FOR SUITABLE EXHIBIT STOP BETTER SEND A MAN UP AT ONCE.
Then, at Thurston’s insistence, he wired several impeccable character references to the museum, so they wouldn’t think he was a crank.
That afternoon, Dailey explained his theory to Thurston. There was, he felt sure, a primeval pocket isolated in this section of the Adirondacks. Within it were creatures which had survived from prehistoric times. They had never been captured because, due to their great antiquity, they had acquired a high degree of experience and caution. But the trap—operating on the new principle of osmotic section—had proved to be beyond their experience.
“The Adirondacks have been pretty well explored,” Thurston objected.
“Not well enough, apparently,” Dailey said, with irrefutable logic.
Later, they returned to the trap. It was empty.
I can just barely hear you, Samish. Kindly step up the volume. Or, better still, get here in person. What’s the use of beaming me, in the spot I’m in? The situation is steadily becoming more and more desperate.
What, Samish? The rest of the story? It’s obvious enough. After three animals had passed through the transmitter, I knew I was ready. Now was the time to tell my wife.
Accordingly, I asked her to crawl into the garden with me. She was quite pleased.
“Tell me, my dear, “she said, “has something been bothering you of late?”
“Um,” said I.
“Have I displeased you?” she asked.
“No, sweetheart, “I said.”You have tried your best, but it just isn’t good enough. I am going to take a new mate.”
She stood motionless, her cilia swaying in confusion. Then she exclaimed, “Fregl!”
“Yes,” I told her, “the glorious Fregl has consented to share my hutch.”
“But you forget we were mated for life.”
“I know. A pity you insisted on that formality.” And with one clever shove, I pushed her into the matter transmitter.
Samish, you should have seen her expression! Her cilia writhed, she screamed, and was gone.
I was free at last! A little nauseous, but free! Free to mate with the splendid Fregl!
Now you can appreciate the full perfection of the scheme. It was necessary to secure the Terrans’ cooperation, since a matter transmitter must be manipulated from both ends. I had disguised it as a trap, because Terrans will believe anything. And as my master stroke, I sent them my wife.
Let them try to live with her! I never could!
Foolproof, absolutely foolproof. My wife’s body would never turn up, because the acquisitive Terrans keep what they get. No one could ever prove anything.
And then, Samish, then it happened....
The cabin’s air of rustic serenity was gone. Tire tracks crossed and re-crossed the muddy road. The grounds were littered with flash bulbs, empty cigarette packs, candy wrappers, pencil stubs, and bits of paper. But now, after a hectic few hours, everyone was gone. Only a sour taste remained.
Dailey and Thurston stood beside the empty trap, staring hopelessly at it.
“What do you supposed is wrong with the damn thing?” Dailey asked, giving the trap a frustrated kick.
“Maybe there’s nothing else to capture,” Thurston suggested.
“There has to be! Why would it take four completely alien beasts and then no more?” He knelt beside the trap and said bitterly, “Those stupid museum people! And those reporters!”
“In a way,” Thurston said cautiously, “you can’t blame them—”
“Can’t I? Accusing me of a hoax! Did you hear them, Tom? They asked me how I performed the skin grafts!”
“It’s too bad the animals were all dead by the time the museum people got here,” Thurston said. “That did look suspicious.”
“The idiotic creatures wouldn’t eat. Was that my fault’ And those newspaper people...Really, you would think the metropolitan newspapers would hire more intelligent reporters.”
“You shouldn’t have promised to capture more animals,” Thurston said. “It was when the trap didn’t produce that they suspected a hoax.”
“Of course I promised! How should I guess the trap would stop with that fourth capture? And why did they laugh when I told them about the osmotic section system of capture?”
“They never heard of it,” Thurston answered wearily. “No one ever heard of it. Let’s go to Lake Placid and forget the whole thing.”
“No! This thing must work again. It must!” Dailey primed and activated the trap and stared at it for several seconds. Then he opened the hinged top.
Dailey stuck his hand into the trap and let out a scream. “My hand! It’s gone!” He leaped backward.
“No, it’s not,” Thurston as
sured him.
Dailey examined both hands, rubbed them together and insisted, “My hand disappeared inside that trap.”
“Now, now,” Thurston said soothingly. “A little rest in Lake Placid will do you a world of good—”
Dailey stood over the trap and pushed in his hand. It disappeared. He reached farther in and watched his arm vanish up to the shoulder. He looked at Thurston with a smile of triumph.
“Now I see how it works,” he said. “Those animals didn’t come from the Adirondacks at all!”
“Where did they come from?”
“From wherever my hand is! Want more, do they? Call me a liar? I’ll show them!”
“Ed! Don’t do it! You don’t know what—”
But Dailey had already stepped feet-first into the trap. His feet disappeared. Slowly he lowered his body until only his head was visible.
“Wish me luck,” he said.
“Ed!”
Dailey held his nose and plunged out of sight.
Samish, if you don’t come immediately, it will be too late! I must stop beaming you. The enormous Terran has completely ransacked my little planetoid. He has shoved everything, living or dead, through the transmitter. My home is in ruins.
And now he is tearing down my hutch! Samish, this monster means to capture me as a specimen! There’s no time to lose!
Samish, what can be keeping you? You, my oldest friend....
What, Samish? What are you saying? You can’t mean it! Not you and Fregl! Reconsider, old friend! Remember our friendship!
THE BODY
When Professor Meyer opened his eyes he saw, leaning anxiously over him, three of the young specialists who had performed the operation. It struck him at once that they would have to be young to attempt what they had attempted; young and irreverent, possessed of encyclopedic technical knowledge to the exclusion of all else; iron-nerved, steel-fingered, inhuman, in fact. They had the qualifications of automatons.
He was so struck by this bit of post-anesthetic reasoning that it took him a moment to realize that the operation had been a success.
“How do you feel, sir?”
“Are you all right?”
“Can you speak, sir? If not, just nod your head. Or blink.”
They watched anxiously.
Professor Meyer gulped, testing the limitations of his new palate, tongue, and throat. Then he said, very thickly, “I think—I think—”
“He’s all right!” Cassidy shouted. “Feldman! Wake up!”
Feldman leaped up from the spare cot and fumbled for his glasses. “He’s up so soon? Did he speak?”
“Yes, he spoke! He spoke like an angel! We finally made it, Freddie!”
Feldman found his glasses and rushed to the operating table. “Could you say something else, sir? Anything?”
“I am—I am—”
“Oh, God,” Feldman said. “I think I’m going to faint.”
The three men burst into laughter. They surrounded Feldman and slapped him on the back. Feldman began to laugh, too, but soon he was coughing violently.
“Where’s Kent?” Cassidy shouted. “He should be here, damn it. He kept that damned ossilyscope on the line for ten solid hours. Steadiest thing I ever saw. Where the devil is he?”
“He went after sandwiches,” Lupowicz said. “Here he comes. Kent, Kent, we made it!”
Kent came through the door carrying two paper bags, with half a sandwich thrust in his mouth. He swallowed convulsively. “Did he speak? What did he say?”
Behind Kent, there was an uproar. A dozen men rushed toward the door.
“Get them out of here!” Feldman screamed. “They can’t interview him tonight. Where’s that cop?”
A policeman pushed his way through and blocked the door. “You heard what the docs said, boys.”
“This isn’t fair. This Meyer, he belongs to the world.”
“What were his first words?”
“What did he say?”
“Did you really change him into a dog?”
“What kind of dog?”
“Can he wag his tail?”
“He said he was fine,” the policeman told them, blocking the door. “Come on now, boys.”
A photographer ducked under the policeman’s arm. He looked at Professor Meyer on the operating table and muttered, “Jesus!” He raised his camera. “Look up, boy—”
Kent put his hand over the lens as the flashgun popped.
“Whatdja do that for?” the photographer asked.
“You now have a picture of Kent’s hand,” Kent said with sarcasm. “Enlarge it, and hang it in the Museum of Modern Art. Now get out of here before I break your neck.”
“Come on, boys,” the policeman repeated sternly, herding the newsmen away. He turned back and glanced at Professor Meyer on the operating table. “Jesus! I still can’t believe it!”
“The bottles!” Cassidy shouted.
“A celebration!”
“By God, we deserve a celebration!”
Professor Meyer smiled—internally only, of course, since his facial expressions were now limited.
Feldman came up to him. “How do you feel, sir?”
“I am fine,” Meyer said, enunciating carefully with his strange palate. “A little confused, perhaps—”
“But not regretful?” Feldman asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Meyer said. “I was against this on principle, you know. No man is indispensable.”
“You are, sir.” Feldman spoke with fierce conviction. “I followed your lectures. Not that I pretend to understand one tenth of what you were saying. Mathematical symbolism is only a hobby with me. But those unification principles—”
“Please,” Meyer said.
“No, let me speak, sir,” Feldman said. “You are carrying on the great work where Einstein and the others left off. No one else can complete it! No one! You had to have a few more years, in any form science could give you. I only wish we could have found a more suitable receptacle for your intellect. A human host was unavailable, and we were forced to rule out the primates-”
“It doesn’t matter,” Meyer said. “It’s the intellect that counts, after all. I’m still a little dizzy...”
“I remember your last lecture at Harvard,” Feldman continued, clenching his hands together. “You were so old, sir! I could have cried—that tired, ruined body—”
“Can we give you a drink, sir?” Cassidy offered Meyer a glass.
Meyer laughed. “I’m afraid my new facial configuration is not suited for glasses. A bowl would be preferable.”
“Right!” Cassidy said. “One bowl coming up! Lord, Lord...”
“You’ll have to excuse us, sir,” Feldman apologized. “The strain has been terrific. We’ve been in this room for over a week, and I doubt if one of us had eight hours sleep in that time. We almost lost you, sir—”
“The bowl! The flowing bowl is here!” Lupowicz called. “What’ll it be, sir? Rye? Gin?”
“Just water, please,” Meyer said. “Do you think I could get up?”
“If you’ll take it easy...” Lupowicz lifted him gently from the table and set him on the floor. Meyer balanced uneasily on his four legs.
The men cheered him wildly. “Bravo!”
“I believe I may be able to do some work tomorrow,” Meyer said. “Some sort of an apparatus will have to be devised to enable me to write. It shouldn’t be too difficult. There will be other problems attendant upon my change. I’m not thinking too clearly as yet...”
“Don’t try to rush things.”
“Hell, no! Can’t lose you now!”
“What a paper this is going to make!”
“Collaborative effort, do you think, or each from his own viewpoint and specialty?”
“Both, both. They’ll never get enough of this. Goddamn it, they’ll be talking about this—”
“Where is the bathroom?” Meyer asked.
The men looked at each other.
“What for?”
>
“Shut up, you idiot. This way, sir. I’ll open the door for you.”
Meyer followed at the man’s heels, perceiving, as he walked, the greater ease inherent in four-legged locomotion. When he returned, the men were talking heatedly about technical aspects of his case.
“—never again in a million years.”
“I can’t agree with you. Anything we can do once—”
“Don’t get scientific on us, kid. You know damned well it was a weird combination of fortuitous factors—plain blind luck!”
“You can say that again. Some of those bio-electric changes—”
“He’s back.”
“Yeah, but he shouldn’t be walking around too much. How you feeling, boy?”
“I’m not a boy,” Professor Meyer snapped. “I’m old enough to be your grandfather.”
“Sorry, sir. I think you should go to bed, sir.”
“Yes,” Professor Meyer said. “I’m not too strong yet, not too clear...”
Kent lifted him and placed him on the cot. “There, how’s that?”
They gathered around him, their arms linked around each other’s shoulders. They were grinning, and very proud of themselves.
“Anything we can get you?”
“Just call for it, we’ll bring it.”
“Here, I’ve filled your bowl with water.”
“We’ll leave a couple sandwiches by your cot.”
“Have a good rest,” Cassidy said tenderly.
Then, involuntarily, absent-mindedly, he patted Professor Meyer on his long, smooth-furred head.
Feldman shouted something incoherent.
“I forgot,” Cassidy said in embarrassed apology.
“We’ll have to watch ourselves. He’s a man, you know.”
“Of course I know. I must be tired...I mean, he looks so much like a dog, you kinda forget—”
“Get out of here!” Feldman ordered. “Get out! All of you!”
He pushed them out of the room and hurried back to Professor Meyer.
“Is there anything I can do, sir? Anything at all?”
Meyer tried to speak, to reaffirm his humanity. But the words came out choked.
“It’ll never happen again, sir. I’m sure of it. Why, you’re—you’re Professor Meyer!”
Pilgrimage to Earth Page 4