by Basil Copper
But worst of all was the almost overmastering longing to reach the source of the perfume; there was wild delight in it and I caught myself, for one mad second, contemplating the frightful action of burying my mouth and face in the loathsome thing that was devouring the girl's body. Sanity came back like a blast of cold air as sand whipped by the night wind stung my eyes—and with it a black fear; I knew now what Rort meant. There was something devilish about the island, something which as scientists we had to unravel. I knew also that I had to go back to the village and find out what it was.
But for the moment while the wind buffeted me as I breasted a spur of rock and came back off the foreshore to the preferable loneliness of the downlands that led to K4, I forgot the nostalgia and remembered only the sickly horror of that degenerate moment. Then black fear took possession of me and I was running, slipping, and sliding across the slimy turf to the comparative peace and sanctuary symbolized by the tiny spark that was the light of K4's observation tower, piercing the smoky darkness like a torch.
III
I am ashamed to say it was almost three weeks before I felt able to go back to the village, and even then it was in the early morning so that I should have time to return before nightfall. Much of the interval had been spent in research on obscure radiation conditions and my companions at K4 had not been as helpful as they might. The night I arrived back, panting, muddy, my cases lost down some pothole, there had been roars of laughter from the steadier-nerved, though I noticed Rort looked considerably pale as I told my story.
Fitzwilliams, a short, stocky figure was particularly humorous at my expense; his dark brown moustache seemed to bristle as he exploded with laughter and he pounded his fist on the table as he elaborated his ideas.
"By Future, this is rich," he spluttered—we had given up using the term "God" since the nature of creation had been discovered—and then went on to embellish his fancy with some bawdy and outrageous trimmings. I well remember the laughing faces at the supper table that night; it was almost the last time that our little group had anything to be happy about, and that a feeble excuse at best. Looking back, I suppose it was ludicrous. I, a grown man, bounding across the slimy hillocks, completely out of control, my gear flying this way and that until I fetched up against the blockhouse entrance of K4.
That my first encounter with the girl was absurd, I-was prepared to admit; my foolish fancies about the village and ravines; even my headlong flight. But the girl's condition was real enough; that was serious indeed and concerned us all if it were due to atmospheric conditions—and about that I was not prepared to laugh. I am afraid I got rather angry as the evening continued. But one man at least had not been amused.
"What do you think, Rort?'' I asked.
His answer was a long time coming and when it did it was, for him, a strange one. He tapped nervously with his thin, tapering fingers, now stained and torn like most of our hands, and did not look at me directly.
"I prefer not to think—in this instance," he said quietly and then got up and went quickly out of the bantering atmosphere of the mess-room.
I was wrong though, about one thing. There was one other man who took my story seriously. That was Commander Masters, the person most likely to be able to do something about it. He buzzed for me to go up to his private room two evenings later. I could relax with him; he was a man I liked and trusted. Immensely capable, Masters looked more distinguished, more serious than usual, as he faced me across the gleaming metallized surface of his desk, his dusty silver hair outlined against the warm glow of the wall lamps, so that he seemed to resemble one of those ancient "saints" I had seen in a printed book preserved in a museum.
"You think this could be some new mutation that we haven't come up against?" he asked. I shrugged. There might be much more to it than that.
"I don't know. I should have to make some pretty exhaustive tests on the girl to be able to come to any real conclusion. I'd like to have her up here so that we could make some proper lab checks, but that wouldn't be fair to the others.''
Masters's eyes narrowed and he shifted uneasily in his chair. "Meaning...?"
"Meaning that we don't know exactly what we're dealing with, sir. This condition—an unknown factor at the moment—may be peculiar to this one girl; it may or may not be malignant. Again, there's always the possibility it might be environmental or spread by contact."
"Hmm." Masters's nose wrinkled and he lay back in his chair, hands straight on the desk before him, and contemplated his nails for what seemed like minutes.
"What would you want in the way of gear and assistance to sort this out?"
"Little out of the ordinary. Laboratory facilities, of course; a few days uninterrupted study, someone to help me. This may be a false alarm, but it won't take long to establish the nature of the problem, one way or the other.''
Masters straightened himself behind the desk. "Tell Fitz-williams to give you everything you want from the lab. Make out the usual indent and credit the material to 'extracurricular investigation.' I don't know who you'll want to pair with you on the job."
He frowned again and consulted a panel inset into the desk which gave detailed breakdowns of each man on the station, with his duty rota, rest periods, and other information. He scanned rapidly down the columns, humming quietly to himself, while I waited, my mind half absorbed by the problem that the girl had set, half ashamed by my panic flight of such a short while ago. I wondered if Masters was secretly amused by my adventure and whether he considered this little extra assignment a means of testing my efficiency under stress.
Probably nothing of the kind. He understood well the loneliness and occasional strangeness of our work in remote places; it was a more likely possibility that he had discounted the fiasco from the start and knew that absorption in my self-allotted task would outweigh any possible dangers that might present themselves.
"Yes...." His fingers made calculations as he chopped at various names. "I can't spare Pollock''—and here he mentioned half a dozen names—"... that leaves you with Channing, Sinclair, and Rort. You'd better ask one of them if he wants a few days off."
Masters smiled briefly, for he knew as well as I that the trip might turn out unpleasantly. He stood up abruptly, with the swift, alert movements that often surprised his staff, and waved me to my feet with a suave but decisive gesture of the hand.
"Report to me before you go. And let me know if there's anything you need. If there is something down there we haven't seen before, we may not be able to help if we don't know what we're up against."
Reassuring words, that echoed in my mind long after I had gone back to my cabin.
IV
Fitzwilliams, of course, was frankly sceptical of the value of the whole business when I discussed the question of equipment with him; even the angle of the bristles in his moustache looked derisive, but when he heard that it was a direct priority from Masters he changed his manner and became instantly helpful.
"What do you expect to find?" he asked, laughing, though there was the beginning of doubt in his eyes. That was a question they were all asking during the next twenty-four hours and indeed it was a question I did not really like to ask myself. Karla seemed to be the one person who had taken my story to an extreme; perhaps it was because she was a woman, but nevertheless my description of the unfortunate girl at the cove had filled her with an unnameable terror; and my earlier uneasiness returned a day or two afterwards when we were talking the situation over.
We were sitting in the observation tower, where I had just completed a tour of duty. Karla had been taking part in an experiment that afternoon, acting alternately as assistant and subject. As we were both free for an hour or two we stayed on in the tower, idly chatting, while our reliefs busied themselves as they took over.
We sat on steel-backed chairs in a bay of one of the observation ports looking out over a dreary waste of uplands, even more forlorn in the dusk, pricked out here and there with the steel reflection of a mere that
gave back the purple-tinted cloud that served for sky. Farther out, the green phosphorescence of the sea glowed menacing and wearily as it always did at dusk.
Karla had been silent, her mind overborne by this now familiar scene, which affected each of us to a certain extent, even though we had been trained to check emotion. Now she put her hand on my arm and her eyes were dark and troubled.
"This girl... will she die?"
"I don't know." I spoke honestly, for who could say? She looked even more distraught and turned again to the green and purple vista outside the observation port. Swirls of mist were even now heralding such a night as followed one after the other in this place.
"This is a dreadful spot," she said, and shuddered. Her remark surprised me, for she was an unusually steady and sober-minded girl whose position with the unit had been attained by those very qualities.
"Take care," she said, as we went down the stairway to our own quarters. "I have the strangest feeling that there is some harm in this for me."
She clutched my arm as she turned to go, and despite myself the expression in her face almost unnerved me for the fraction of a second.
Then I laughed: "Don't be silly," and gently pushed her towards the gallery leading to her own cabin. They were almost the last words on a serious topic Karla ever addressed to me but I had good cause to remember them, as later events will show.
To my relief Rort, whom I proposed to take along as my companion, was not only glad but even enthusiastic when I indicated my choice to him. His sombre face lit up at the thought of doing something more physically positive than the statistical work he was engaged on at that moment. For Kim, his manner was almost breathlessly hilarious as we checked over the instruments and other gear Masters's generous list had secured for us.
It had seemed to me the best plan not to base ourselves in the village but in a small observation post or blockhouse about two miles out, along the cliffs, so that we might make the best of ourselves in the event of any emergency. This commanded long stretches of jagged cliff in either direction and gave us an admirable control of the situation; for we could not be surprised, either by the villagers, by animals, or anything else.
Although the blockhouse, which we called No. 1 Post, was a good distance from K4, we had wireless communication and behind it were undulating uplands which afforded us, for the most part, with an unimpeded retreat to base should we need it. Masters had some of the team carry stores and gear over for us a few days before we moved in, so that we would have an easy walk over the first day. We were to report night and morning, in between trips to the village. I did not know how long the investigation would take me, but I hoped that we would have the situation in hand inside a week.
Rort was more optimistic than I had seen him since my arrival at the island, but I put this down to the fact that we had our own small adventure to play. He was an introspective type and long laboratory sessions coupled with even longer sojourns in his own cabin had worked upon his nerves. So I was even more surprised when I saw him packing a murderous-looking flash-gun in its heavy composition case the night before our departure. It was an action that was to mean a great deal to our two-man party before many days were over.
V
A short while before Rort and I were due to move into No. 1 Post, I set off in the early morning to make contact with the village once more and prepare them for our arrival. It was a day of wild beauty with ragged cloud whirled by a boisterous wind over the downlands and far below the yellow spume of the oily breakers achieved a slow-motion spectacle that seemed almost poetic, divorced of the stench that polluted the foreshore when one arrived at closer quarters. I saw nothing in my solitary walk—nothing living that is—save for a large, hawk-like bird that plummeted downwards into the tangle of underbrush, an action followed by the chilling shriek of some unfortunate creature. As matters turned out I did not have to go the whole way, for on the rough track about a couple of miles from the village I met a gnarled man called McIver gathering pieces of wood which he was loading on a sort of primitive sledge. A wild, red-bearded man with staring eyes he was, and he turned out to be the leader of the local collective—headman it would have been in bygone times. When I explained what I wanted he was immediately cooperative. I told him about the girl and the possible dangers to the community, and he assured me that everything would be ready for our arrival at the end of the week.
Greatly excited and embarrassingly grateful for our offer of help, he would not stop for his wood but hurried back to the village as fast as his legs would carry him down the stony path. I retraced my steps to No. 1 Post to see that the provisioning was satisfactory. This was in a commanding position some little way inland but with a fine view in both directions along the coast from a stone and metal observation tower. Something unusual distracted my attention shortly after my arrival.
After a while spent putting some of my more personal kit in order, I thought I would go up the tower to see what the view was like and also to find out what we would need in the form of special gear. There was a nasty echo from the metallized stairplates as I went up the narrow passageway. Through the ports that let in a sickly light I could gradually see the winding, stony track that led away towards the west and then, eventually, the panoramic view both east and west along the rocky cliffs and beach.
This post had been carefully sited and provided a valuable link in the island's observation points. I had some trouble with the sliding door of the platform at the top as the fastenings had become corroded with time, but I was pleased to see that the equipment had suffered little, protected as it was by thick, transparent plating. It was a small chamber, the centre clear, the circular walls lined with benches and machinery. The large, elongated ports had become obscured by salt sea-spume and would need cleaning, but even so it was an impressive view afforded. Towards the south-east, even with glasses I could not see K4, but it was reassuring to think that its tower was not far off beyond the ridged higher ground that sloped up from the marshes.
As I turned to go down again I became aware of a darkening of the sky towards the west and then saw that it was a large cluster of sea birds hovering at a point in the cove. I do not know what made me put the glasses to my eyes as such sights were common along here. As first I concentrated on the birds and then, lowering the lenses, I became aware that something on the foreshore was attracting their attention. It was a long way off, too far for me to make out any detail, even with glasses, and there were rocks in between but I had the vague impression that something was crawling across the blackness of the sand.
There was a small, sharply defined object that was outlined against the dull shimmer of the sea and then a greater mass which vaguely undulated; or it may have been a trick of the sea-shimmer. But the overall impression was faintly repellent and reminded me unpleasantly of the sheen I had noticed on the body of the girl.
The incident lasted only a moment because whatever it was flowed over behind a larger spur of rock, apparently impelled by the surge of the tide, and there remained only the birds. Uneasy, I went down the stairs and turned back towards the comforting reality of K4.
VI
I did not tell anyone at the station of my uneasiness, as I had already made something of a spectacle of myself, but I followed
Rort's example and made certain that my personal effects included my heaviest flash-gun. One or two of our colleagues still affected to smile at our little expedition, but the majority were more serious and, I think, half envious of the small independent command Rort and I had achieved.
Masters had us in for final instructions and I could not help reflecting that he must have supervised many such investigations as ours over the past few years—new mutations, fresh parasitic forms, strange debased creatures appearing round the coasts; these were the aftermath of radiation, each presenting him and many other research heads like him, with a new problem wherever encountered. Though it could never become just routine with him, his easy, genial manner concealed a compl
ete lack of nerves; his was the kind of will and organizing brain it was comfortable to fall back upon and I was glad he was the directing force at K4.
Those on duty in the observation tower crowded to the windows to wave us off as Rort and I set out with our packs, and two or three of those off duty accompanied us for the first mile or so, before starting back with waves and an occasional joking remark. As we breasted the first rise after leaving base, I had given a last look behind and had seen Karla's white, anxious face staring towards us from the observation port of her own cabin. Her rigid attitude jarred oddly on my sensibilities and though I waved to her cheerily again and again, she never acknowledged the salute or made any flicker of recognition.
We walked in silence, both weighed down by the strange, indefinable atmosphere of the afternoon, weird even for this island and for these sombre circumstances. Rort was, I knew, content to leave the operational details of the "expedition" to myself, but he was a man who could be absolutely relied upon in an emergency, for all his worrying, which was why I had chosen him. Again, he was a quiet companion which was a boon when two people had to be cramped up in close proximity for some time, as we would be at No. 1 Post.
We had to make a wide detour round the marshes which even now occasionally claimed a victim, though the villagers always avoided them whenever possible. The greenish, stagnant water exuded a strange, flickering miasma, which writhed purple, green, and red, forming a fiendish backdrop all the while our walk skirted them.
I planned a fortnight's stay as the maximum at No. 1, as fresh stores were then due and, like a child, I wished to be on hand when news and contact with a larger world would brighten K4 for a little while. Besides, the investigations should last only a few days. I could have the breeder up to the post for medical examination; I had her number and McIver was making all the other arrangements.