Clark sighed. “O.K„ dad, you win. I’ll bet you’d find your beloved teticol in the middle of outer space. Only please don’t get tight! We need our wits about us. And don’t forget those things have a pretty strong potassium basis. Too many of them will send you to sleep.”
“Yeah; but before I get that far I find—hup!—bliss,” Henshaw observed wisely, and he licked his lips in satisfaction in the cold starlight.…
II.
In ten minutes the three had gained the edge of the long slope. Carefully Clark lay down on his face and peered into the abyss below. It was wreathed in either dense mist or frozen air; he couldn’t determine which in the faint light. Either way it was a terrific drop, would be certain to smash the spaceship when the thaw allowed it to fall.
He stood up again, his serious face faintly visible inside his helmet.
“Only one thing for it,” he said worriedly. “At the first signs of sunrise we’ll come back here, take a chance on getting inside the ship. Then when the congealed oxygen in front of it breaks up, we’ll let the ship take a natural chute into the air of this valley. By snapping on the under-jets we’ll perhaps save ourselves from dropping down. Gravity’s pretty weak here, so we might manage it. It’s the only chance.… Down there will perhaps be nitrogen too. If there isn’t—? Well, I guess we’ll go up like shooting stars. That’s all in the cards.”
“And in the meantime?” Nan quietly asked.
Clark glanced toward the frowning mass of the cliff along the slope edge. Dimly visible dark holes were distinguishable on its main ledge.
“Might as well try that,” he shrugged.
“Be able to shelter in one of those caves and watch for sunrise at the same time. It won’t be so very long according to my calculations.… Come on.”
They began to return up the slope. Henshaw was chanting to himself, entirely oblivious to his surroundings, to the possible danger, to the possibility indeed that split seconds lay between life and death when the dawn-thaw came at the rise of the far distant Sun. Far distant, yet sufficient to raise the temperature during the fourteen-hour day to create an admixture of oxygen, hydrogen and argon—and it was to be hoped, nitrogen.…
Overhead, the stars loomed with steely glitter against a backdrop of misty nebulae and cosmic dust. Against this the upper mountain heights, the base of which formed the immense cliff, were etched out like the teeth of a monstrous saw.… Cold—merciless cold—is the lot of the Callistian night.
As they gained the long, frozen ledge leading to the caves, Clark turned.
“Better hand out the guns, dad. We never know. If anything attacks us we’ll have to chance starting a fire. Not so much water vapor around here as on the ship jets, so it might be O.K. The guns will make their own firing mixture, of course.”
“Huh?” Henshaw’s huge, bloated figure came to a stop. “Guns? What guns?”
“What guns!” Clark yelled. “The ones I gave you on the ship, of course—” He broke off, staring fixedly as Henshaw drearily raised his arms. He was not carrying anything in them.
“I—I dropped them,” he hesitated. “When you threw me aside from the ship. I remember they fell in the crystals. You see I—”
“And you were so darned interested in those teticol tablets you forgot to pick them up!” Clark groaned. “Lordy, what a sweet mess you’ve made of things! We can never find them now; they’ll be buried in the oxygen.… Even if we knew where to look,” he wound up unhappily.
“I’m sorry…,” Henshaw mumbled. “Darned careless of me, I guess. Don’t see why we need them, anyhow,” he finished irritably. “No life can be on this hell-fired planet, anyway.”
Clark smiled bitterly. “Think not? My conclusions after trips around space are that life can exist anywhere. It exists on Jupiter, with nearly absolute space temperature—same on Io. And it lives in the steamy heat of Titan. So why not here…? But what’s the use?” he growled. “We’ll have to take a chance. Come on.”
The journey along the ledge resumed. Henshaw, realizing he was in disgrace, clumped at a little distance behind, hanging onto the connecting cord. Another teticol tablet relieved his contrition somewhat; he felt his head swim pleasantly. With a supreme effort he fought down a desire to yodel.
Then suddenly Nan stopped, pointing. Clark bumped into her and stared blankly as he followed her finger. A cluster of objects like children’s toy balloons were gathered on the acclivity—perhaps twenty of them in all. One or two of them went floating away into the starry dark, suddenly distending their bodies to accomplish the feat.
“What do you know about that!” Clark whistled, staring at their bulging, bladder-like bodies and scrawny, silly necks. He turned and cried. “Here you are, dad! Life already! Birds!”
“Some place to have an aviary,” Henshaw grunted, stopping. “More of them there. Look.”
Further along the ledge a veritable flock of the things were collected, remarkably like long necked Sun-fish when inflated; little better than a cast-out inner tube when deflated.
“So they fill themselves with hydrogen and float around with it inside them,” Clark mused, watching closely. “No wings at all; they just rise and fall by inflating or deflating. Nice going!”
“But how?” Nan questioned, frowning. “How do they manage to separate the hydrogen from the argon—presuming it is argon?”
He shrugged. “How does a plant break down inorganic compounds? Nobody really knows; nobody can predict the exact nature of chlorophyll in plants. We have the same thing here: some internal chemistry on the part of these birds makes them able to separate hydrogen from argon. That shouldn’t be difficult, since argon doesn’t mix freely with hydrogen.… Since hydrogen is the lighter gas, these things float— Well, not entirely on that account,” he amended, thinking. “A balloon only rises because of the heavier air pushing from beneath it. Same thing here, I suppose, and inflation or deflation raises or lowers them.”
“Wonder what they do when the air becomes normal at dawn?” Nan mused.
“Ever hear of a butterfly that lives only for a day?” Clark asked dryly. “Well, it may be something like that. Birds of the night, to be born, spawn, and die in the space of the Callistian dark, leaving behind them eggs, which will hatch with the dawn. Maybe somewhere right at the top of this range, way up where the warmth will never have much effect, where hydrogen and argon are eternal.”
Nan shook her head. “Poetic, but not very convincing. In that case they would probably retreat up to the heights at dawn and wouldn’t die at all.… Or even, dawn may not have any thaw effect at all up here.”
That was too startling a speculation. Clark took the girl’s arm and the climb resumed. In the main the hydrogen birds seemed quite docile; only a few scattered away as the trio clumped through their midst. Then in another ten minutes they had reached the nearest cave and crawled gratefully into it, sat down heavily where they could look out over the cold, relentless frozen slope toward the sunward horizon—when the luminary rose.
Clark snapped off the cord and rolled it up, lowered his pack of provisions and small instruments. Nan did likewise. Henshaw swallowed another tablet and hiccupped solemnly.
“Still sorry about those guns,” he muttered. “Darned stupid of me. You forgive me?”
“Of course, dad—” Nan began cheerfully, then she broke off in bewilderment as a hard, cracked voice cut across hers, distinctly audible in each helmet receiver.
“Implements of destruction! Foolish things! Disseminators of incredible violence, the outcome of bellicose yearnings.… So atavistic! So incomprehensible!”
III.
The three jerked erect and stared at each other in the dim starlight.
“Say,” Clark whispered, “who slung those jaw crackers around?” He looked suspiciously at Henshaw. “Was it you, dad?”
Henshaw gulped. “Heaven—hup!—forbid! Elocution and grammar soured om me years ago.”
“You, then?” Clark twisted to Nan, but her hea
d shook. She was too startled to speak.
Clark got anxiously to his feet and switched on his torch. The beam penetrated clean to the back of the cave, framing an object that nearly dropped him to his knees in astonishment.
“Sweet Heaven, what is it?” he gasped helplessly. “Or am I nuts?”
“Or am I drunk?” whispered Henshaw, staring through his one soundly focused eye.
“Cla-Clark, let’s go,” Nan breathed nervously, scrambling up and clutching his arm. “It’s—it’s alive!”
“We are all alive. Life is variform—flux and confluence, yet it continues. In the void, in the air, in the planets—even in the stars.”
“Gosh!” Clark whistled, and still stared in confusion.
The object might have been a man, only it was mummified beyond all comparison with a normal being. Perhaps it had once been Earthly, but now it was all skin and bone—a curious skin, with a dry, leathery aspect. The arms were of matchstick consistency; the legs were crossed and as thin as tapers. The skinny chest heaved up and down spasmodically with the effort of breathing—breathing hydrogen and argon at that!
There was a tiny chin, cracked, scar-like mouth, hooked nose, and beady, almost hidden eyes, the entire face swelling out into a preponderant, mighty bald dome on which the skin was stretched as tight as a carnival bladder. An utterly fantastic presence—a brain with a decrepit, featherweight body.
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” hazarded Henshaw. “Or have I got ’em at long last?”
Cautiously, Nan clinging to his arm,
Clark inched his way forward. Henshaw came up unsteadily behind them.
The object closed its eyes in the glare. Clark lowered the beam to the floor so the reflection alone served to illuminate the Thing.
“Who—who are you?” he ventured.
“I have no name,” the Thing answered. “What is a name? Only an appellation or patronymic by which certain bipeds, and at times quadrupeds, to say nothing of other ramifications of life, are known or distinguished.”
“If only he’d compile a dictionary!” Henshaw said regretfully.
“But how did you get here?” asked Nan, gaining courage. “What are you doing?”
“I have always been here—I shall always be here. Maybe it is centuries since I was born. Maybe only yesterday. Who can say?”
“From the look of you it sure wasn’t yesterday,” Clark observed dryly. “Just what are you doing?”
“I brood. Sometimes I think actively—such as now, when I read your minds to ascertain your language, which you all speak so atrociously.… But most of the time I brood. And brood.”
“He broods,” Clark told the girl wisely, and she nodded and said,
“You’re telling me! But what do you brood about?” she asked.
“My body. My existence. Why things are.”
“Who doesn’t?” Clark sighed; then seriously, “But how do you come to be here breathing pure hydrogen—or is it hydrogen and argon?”
“It is not argon; it is unknown to you. It has practically no freezing point. I do not breathe it. I breathe hydrogen. Why should I not breathe hydrogen?”
“Oh, no reason—only it seems kind of funny. You’ve got an Earthly body, and we breathe oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and an admixture of various other things.”
“But you are of Earth—I am of…of Callisto, as you call it. Therein lies the difference. I am the last…last man of Callisto. The end of my race. When I go, intellectual Callistian mankind will have gone too. My body only happens to resemble yours. I have never been to Earth.”
“But listen,” Nan put in quickly; “doesn’t it get rather cold in here—just brooding? I mean, it’s cold enough to freeze oxygen and nitrogen, yet you sit here with nothing—er— Well, unclothed!” She coughed demurely.
“Here it is always cold. It never alters. But it is only cold to you. The atmosphere does not mingle any higher than the edge of the slope where you left your spatial projectile.”
“What!” Clark gasped in alarm. “There’s never a thaw around here? Good Lord, then the ship—”
“I am not cold,” the decrepit voice interrupted him. “I have not flesh and blood, but a mixture of hydrogen, oxygen, and water at a low temperature, kept from absolute solidity by a skin which is proof against external conditions, just as your skins are proof against some cosmic radiations. If you were to touch me with a bare hand, the cold would turn your fingers to powder. Only liquid air can compare with my exterior skin.”
“I don’t get this at all,” Clark muttered. “How did you get this way, anyhow?”
“Evolution,” said the creature impassively.
“For how long?”
“Maybe untold ages. Once Callisto was hot, when it left the primary. That was the time when our life flourished. We were an active race; then, as our world and the primary cooled, we used our bodies less and less. Nature, ever adaptable, gave us bodies that we’re able to deal with the changing conditions, until there came the final species of hydrogen breathers, like me. I am the last. Intelligence of surpassing power—but physical ability nearly gone. Held in place only until I master it.”
“You want to die?” Clark demanded,
“One day. I shall stay here and brood until the time when I detach mind from body, limb by limb, organ by organ. That may mean ages; it may be tomorrow.”
“Limb by limb!” cried Nan aghast. “How—how horrible! And painful!”
“Pain is unknown; pain is begotten of ignorance. The arm or the leg does not think for itself. Detach the mind from the limb or organ in question and it ceases to be of interest. In time I shall detach my mind from my body; limb by limb I shall fade away. The hardest task of all will be to leave behind my brain.”
“There may be something in it,” the girl acknowledged, thinking; then glancing at Clark, “You know! Like the devotees who hold a hand up until it loses all feeling, or the guys who lie on a bed of nails and face the east.… Or is it west? Anyway, mind over matter.”
There was silence for a moment. The intellectual monstrosity was so coldly logical about everything there could be no room for doubt.
“You evolved rather rapidly to an intelligent state like this?” Clark asked presently.
“Why not? Pressure here is slight. Pressure hinders the circulation of blood, or my own particular fluid, to the brain. Where there is slight gravity and low air pressure the brain is well fed, develops accordingly. Therefore I am intelligent.”
There was another silence and the three stood looking at each other. They were each thinking the same thing—the possibility of Earthly life perhaps ending in such a creature as this—hideous, incredibly intelligent, impartial, brooding alone in a forgotten cave amid sub-zero cold. There was something terrifying about the thought. The pooling of endless ages of knowledge and culture into the brain pan of a gargoyle.
Henshaw broke the silence with a comment. “What d’you say we call him ‘Zero’?” he suggested, grinning. “A step removed from Nero, who fiddled instead of brooding. Huh?”
“Good name, but this is no time for levity,” Clark answered seriously. “Zero here brings home pretty forcibly the pointlessness of Earthly struggle—of anybody’s struggle, for that matter. And besides—” He broke off and twisted round at a sudden noise. He stared unbelievingly at the cave entrance, seeing for the first time that it was blocked with stunted, hideous creatures, all mouth and ears, on blocky legs with short bodies. Wicked little eyes glinted in the torchlight. Every head was totally bald.
“Magnified germs, so help me!” Henshaw gasped—and his simile was oddly accurate. The things certainly looked like the real thing from a preventative advertisement.
“The others of my race—de-evolved,” stated Zero placidly. “There must ever be two sectors—worker and intellectual. You have but to study your Earthly ant life to determine that. If the brain deteriorates, the body gains control and becomes a weapon of evil; in the opposite direction intelligence gains, a
nd you have such as me.”
“Are they dangerous?” Clark demanded.
“To me, no. To you, very.”
Nan gasped in terror. “Oh, dad, if only you’d brought along those guns—! We might have stood a chance!”
She fell silent, clinging to her father and Clark, backing into the cave between them as the chattering, mouthing monstrosities came slowly forward, obviously intent on only one thing—destruction. Possibly their cave was being invaded; that might explain their presence. Clearly they were beyond reason.… Clark was more concerned for the fact that their sharp claw-fingers would rip the spacesuits. That meant instant, painful death.
Zero took no part in the proceedings. He sat on in impartial silence, still cross-legged, still brooding.
The three backed further into the cave until at last they were brought up sharp against the rear wall.
“Zero, do something!” Clark implored frantically. “Turn these things away! You’ve got the intelligence; we haven’t.”
“Only the fittest may survive in the course of evolution,” Zero droned back. “Extinguishment—victory—survival—procreation— What are they? The evanescent, transitory movements of a race—”
“Oh, nuts!” Clark interrupted, and looked round him desperately. The creatures had stopped for the moment, as though deciding on a scheme of attack. Their vast mouths were still wide open, grinning caverns; their terrible clawed hands were extended.
“I’ll bet they feed on either hydrogen birds or oxygen crystals,” muttered Nan, trying to be brave.
“One rip from those things and we’ll be playing harps,” her father observed. “Guess I need a stimulant.…” His helmet clicked faintly as he dropped a teticol tablet in his mouth.
“Clark, can’t you—?” Nan began shakily; then he cut her short and twirled round, clutched the surprised Henshaw by the shoulder.
“Quick, dad—you said something about an extra supply of those tablets of yours. Where are they?”
“Huh?” The old man stared in the torchlight, then slapped his equipment belt. “Right here. But say, about my heart—”
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