That was the space warp!
Craig glanced at the instruments and caught his breath.
Here was a space warp that was really big. Still following the tracks of Knut’s machine, he crept down into the hollow, swinging closer and closer to that shifting, almost invisible blotch that marked the warp.
Here Knut’s machine had stopped, and here Knut had gotten out to carry the instruments nearer, the blotchy tracks of his space suit like furrows through the powdered soil. And there he had come back … and stopped and gone forward again. And there—
Craig jerked the jumper to a halt, stared in amazement and horror through the filter shield. Then, the breath sobbing in his throat, he leaped from the seat, scrambled frantically for a space suit.
Outside the car, he approached the dark shape huddled on the ground. Slowly he moved nearer, the hands of fear clutching at his heart. Beside the shape he stopped and looked down. Heat and radiation had gotten in their work, shriveling, blasting, desiccating—but there could be no doubt.
Staring up at him from where it lay was the dead face of Knut Anderson!
Craig straightened up and looked around. Candles danced upon the ridges, swirling and jostling, silent watchers of his grim discovery. The one lone blue Candle, bigger than the rest, had followed the machine into the hollow, was only a few rods away, rolling restlessly to and fro.
Knut had said something was funny. He had shouted it, his voice raspy and battered by the screaming of powerful radiations. Or had that been Knut? Had Knut already died when that message came through?
Craig glanced back at the sand, the blood pounding in his temples. Had the Candles been responsible for this? And if they were, why was he unmolested, with hundreds dancing on the ridge? And if this was Knut, with dead eyes staring at the black of space, who was the other one—the one who came back?
Candles masquerading as human beings? Was that possible?
Mimics the Candles were—but hardly as good as that. There was always something wrong with their mimicry—something ludicrously wrong.
He remembered now the look in the eyes of the returned Knut—that chilly, deadly look—the kind of look one sometimes sees in the eyes of ruthless men. It was a look that had sent cold chills chasing up his spine. And Knut, who was no match for Creepy at checkers, had taken six games straight.
Craig looked back at the jumper again. The Candles still danced upon the hills, but the big blue one was gone.
Some subtle warning, a nasty little feeling between his shoulder blades, made Craig spin around to face the warp.
Just in front of the warp stood a man, and for a moment Craig stared at him, frozen, speechless, unable to move.
For the man who stood in front of him, not more than forty feet away, was Curt Craig!
Feature for feature, line for line, that man was himself: a second Curt Craig—as if he had rounded a comer and met himself coming back.
Bewilderment roared through Craig’s brain, a baffling bewilderment. He took a quick step forward, then stopped. For the bewilderment suddenly was edged with fear, a knifelike sense of danger.
The man raised a hand and beckoned, but Craig stayed rooted where he stood, tried to reason with his muddled brain.
It wasn’t a reflection, for if it had been a reflection it would have shown him in a space suit, and this man stood without a space suit. And if it were a real man, it wouldn’t be standing , there exposed to the madness of the Sun. Such an action would have spelled sure and sudden death.
Forty feet away—and yet within that forty feet, perhaps very close, the power of the warp might reach out, might entangle any man who crossed that unseen deadline. The warp was moving, at a few feet an hour, and this spot where he now stood, with Knut’s dead body at his feet, had a few short hours ago been within the limit of the warp’s influence.
The man stepped forward, and as he did,’ Craig stepped back, his hands dropping to the gun butts. But with the guns half out he stopped, for the man had disappeared. He had simply vanished. There had been no puff of smoke, no preliminary shimmering as of matter breaking down. The man just simply wasn’t there. But in his place was the big blue Candle, rocking to and fro.
Cold sweat broke out upon Craig’s forehead and trickled down his face. For he knew he had trodden very close to death—perhaps to something even worse than death. Wildly he swung about, raced for the puddle jumper, wrenched the door open, hurled himself at the controls.
Craig drove like a madman, the Cold claws of fear hovering over him. Twice he almost met disaster, once when the jumper bucked through a deep drift of dust, again when it rocketed through a pool of molten tin.
Craig gripped the wheel hard and slammed the jumper up an incline slippery with dust.
Damn it, the thing that had come back as Knut was Knut. It knew the things Knut knew, it acted like Knut. It had his mannerisms, it talked in his voice, it actually seemed to think the way Knut would think.
What could a man—what could mankind do against a thing like that? How could it separate the original from the duplicate? How would it know its own?
The thing that had come back to the Center had beaten Creepy at checkers. Creepy had led Knut to believe he was the old man’s equal at the game, although Creepy knew he could beat Knut at any time he chose. But Knut didn’t know that—and the thing masquerading as Knut didn’t know it. So it had sat down and beaten Creepy six games hand-running, to the old man’s horror and dismay.
Did that mean anything or not?
The blue Candle had assumed Craig’s shape. It had tried to lure him to the warp. Apparently the Candles were able to alter their electronic structures so they could exist within the warp. They lured Knut into the warp by posing as human beings, arousing his curiosity, and when he stepped into its influence it opened the way for their attack. They couldn’t get a man inside a suit, because a suit was a photocell, and Candles were energy. In a game of that sort, the cell won every time.
It was clever of them, Craig thought. A Trojan horse method of attack. First they got Knut, and next they tried to get him. With two of them in the Center it would not have been so hard to have gotten Creepy.
He slapped the wheel a vicious stroke, venting his anger.
He skidded the jumper around a ravine head, slashed across the desert. First thing that had to be done was to find the one that was masquerading as Knut. First he had to find him and then figure out what to do with him.
But finding the Knut Candle was easier said than done. Craig and Creepy, clad in space suits, stood in the kitchen at the center.
“By cracky,” said Creepy, “he must be here somewhere. He must have found him an extra-special hideout that we have overlooked.”
Craig shook his head. “We haven’t overlooked him, Creepy. We’ve searched this place from stem to stem. There isn’t a crack where he could hide.”
“Maybe,” suggested Creepy, “he figured the jig was up and took it on the lam. Maybe he scrammed out the lock when I was up there guarding that control room.”
“Maybe,” agreed Craig. “I had been thinking of that. He smashed the radio—that much we know. He was afraid that we might call for help, and that means he may have had a plan. Even now he may be carrying out that plan.”
The Center was silent, filled with those tiny sounds that only serve to emphasize and deepen a silence: the faint cluck-cluck of the machines on the floor below, the hissing and distant chortling of the atmosphere mixer, the chuckling of the water synthesizer.
“Dang him,” snorted Creepy, “I knew he couldn’t do it. I knew Knut couldn’t beat me at checkers honest—”
From the refrigerator came a frantic sound. “Me-ow-me-ow-ow-ow,” it wailed.
Creepy moved for the refrigerator door, grabbing a broom as he went. “It’s that dang Mathilde cat again,” he said. “She’s always sneakin’ in there—every chance she gets.”
Craig had leaped forward and snatched his hand away from the door lever. “Wait!” he
said.
Mathilde yodeled pitifully.
“But, that Mathilde cat—”
“Maybe it isn’t Mathilde,” Craig rasped grimly.
From the doorway leading out into the corridor came a low purring rumble. The two men whirled about. Mathilde was standing across the threshold, rubbing with arched back against the jamb, plumed tail waving. From inside the refrigerator came a scream of savage feline fury.
Creepy’s eyes slitted and the broom clattered to the floor. “But, there’s only one Mathilde!”
“Of course, there’s only one Mathilde,” snapped Craig. “One of these is her. The other is Knut, or the thing that was Knut.”
The lock signal rang shrilly, and Craig stepped swiftly to a port, flipped the shutter up.
“It’s Page,” he shouted. “Page is back again!”
He turned from the port, face twisted in disbelief. Page had gone out five hours before—without oxygen. Yet here he was, back again. No man could live for over four hours without oxygen.
Craig’s eyes hardened, and furrows came between his brows. “Creepy,” he said suddenly, “you open the inner lock. Pick up that cat. Don’t let her get away.”
Creepy made a sour face, then shuffled down the ramp to the lock. He swung open the door and reached down and scooped up Mathilde. Mathilde purred loudly, dabbing at his suit-clad fingers with dainty paws.
Page stepped out of the jumper and strode across the garage toward Craig, his boot heels ringing on the floor.
From behind the space-suit visor, Craig regarded him angrily. “You disobeyed my orders,” he snapped. “You went out and caught some Candles.”
“Nothing to it, Captain Craig,” said Page. “Docile as so $ many kittens. Make splendid pets.”
He whistled sharply, and from the open door of the jumper rolled two Candles, a red one and a green one. They lay just outside the jumper, rolling back and forth.
Craig regarded them appraisingly.
“Cute little devils,” said Page good-naturedly.
“And just the right number,” said Craig.
Page started, but quickly regained his composure. “Yes, I think so, too. I’ll teach them a routine, of course, but I suppose the audience reactions will bust that all to hell once they get on the stage.”
Craig moved to the rack of oxygen tanks and snapped up the lid. “There’s just one tiling I can’t understand,” he said. “I ^ warned you you couldn’t get into this rack. And I warned you that without oxygen you’d die. And yet here you are.”
Page laughed. “I had some oxygen hid out, Captain. I anticipated something just like that.”
Craig lifted one of the tanks from the rack, held it in his < arms. “You’re a liar, Page,” he said calmly. “You didn’t have any other oxygen. You didn’t need any. A man would die if he went out there without oxygen—die horribly. But you wouldn’t—because you aren’t a man!”
Page stepped swiftly back, but Craig cried out warningly.
Page stopped, as if frozen to the floor, his eyes on the oxygen tank. Craig’s finger grasped the valve control.
“One move out of you,” he warned grimly, “and I’ll let you have it. You know what it is, of course. Liquid oxygen, pressure of two hundred atmospheres. Colder than the hinges of space.”
Craig grinned ferociously. “A dose of that would play hell with your metabolism, wouldn’t it? Tough enough to keep going here in the dome. You Candles have lived out there on the surface too long. You need a lot of energy, and there isn’t much energy here. We have to screen it out or we would die ourselves. And there’s a damn sight less energy in liquid oxygen. You met your own environment, all right; you even spread that environment pretty wide, but there’s a limit to it.” “You’d be talking a different tune,” Page declared bitterly, “if it weren’t for those space suits.”
“Sort of crossed you up, didn’t they,” said Craig. “We’re wearing them because we were tracking down a pal of yours. I think he’s in the refrigerator.”
“A pal of mine—in a refrigerator?”
“He’s the one that came back as Knut,” said Craig, “and he turned into Mathilde when he knew we were hunting for him. But he did the job too well. He was almost more Mathilde than he was Candle. So he sneaked into the refrigerator. And he doesn’t like it.”
Page’s shoulders sagged. For a moment his features seemed to blur, then snapped back into rigid lines again.
“The answer is that you do the job too well,” said Craig. “Right now you yourself are more Page than Candle, more man than thing of energy.”
“We shouldn’t have tried it,” said Page. “We should have waited until there was someone in your place. You were too frank in your opinion of us. You held none of the amused contempt so many of the others held. I told them they should wait, but a man named Page got caught in a space warp—” Craig nodded. “I understand. An opportunity you simply couldn’t miss. Ordinarily we’re pretty hard to get at. You can’t fight photocells. But you should strive for more convincing stories. That yam of yours about capturing Candles—”
“But Page came out for that purpose,” insisted the pseudo Page. “Of course, he would have failed. But, after all, it was poetic justice.”
“It was clever of you,” Craig said softly. “More clever than you thought. Bringing your side-kicks in here, pretending you had captured them, waiting until we were off our guard.”
“Look,” said Page, “we know when we are licked. What are you going to do?”
“We’ll turn loose the one in the refrigerator,” Craig told him. “Then we’ll open up the locks and you can go.”
“And if we don’t want to go?”
“We’d turn loose the liquid oxygen,” said Craig. “We have vats of the stuff upstairs. We can close off this room, you know, turn it into a howling hell. You couldn’t live through it. You’d starve for energy.”
From the kitchen came a hideous uproar, a sound that suggested a roll of barbed wire galloping around a tin roof. The bedlam was punctuated by cries from Creepy.
Down the ramp from the kitchen came a swirling ball of fur, and after it came Creepy, whaling lustily with his broom. The ball of fur separated, became two identical cats, tails five times normal size, backs bristling, eyes glowing with green fury.
“I jus’ got tired of holding that dang ol’ Mathilde—” Creepy panted.
“I know,” said Craig. “So you chucked her into the refrigerator with the other cat”
“I sure did,” confessed Creepy, “and hell busted loose right underneath my nose.”
“All right,” snapped Craig. “Now, Page, if you’ll tell us which one of those is yours—”
Page spoke sharply and one of the cats melted and flowed. Its outlines blurred and it became a Candle, a tiny, pale-pink Candle.
Mathilde let out one soul-wrenching shriek and fled.
“Page,” said Craig, “we’ve never wanted trouble. If you are willing, we’d like to be your friends. Isn’t there some way?”
Page shook his head. “No, Captain. We’re poles apart. I and you have talked here, but we’ve talked as man to man rather than as a man and a person of my race. Our differences are too great, our minds too far apart.”
He hesitated, almost stammering. “You’re a good egg, Craig. You should have been a Candle.”
“Creepy,” said Craig, “open up the lock.”
Page turned to go, but Craig called him back. “Just one thing more. A personal favor. Could you tell me what’s at the bottom of this?”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Page. “You see, my friend, it’s a matter of culture. That isn’t exactly the word, but it’s the nearest I can express it in your language.
“Before you came we had a culture, a way of life, a way of thought, that was distinctly our own. We didn’t develop the way you developed, we missed this crude, preliminary civilization you are passing through. We started at a point you won’t reach for another million years.
�
��We had a goal, an ideal, a place we were heading for. And we were making progress. I can’t explain it, for—well, there just are no words for it. And then you came along—”
“I think I know,” said Craig. “We are a disturbing influence. We have upset your culture, your way of thought. Our thoughts intrude upon you and you see your civilization turning into a troupe of mimics, absorbing alien ideas, alien ways.”
He stared at Page. “But isn’t there a way? Damn it, do we have to fight about this?”
But even as he spoke, he knew there was no way. The long role of Terrestrial history recorded hundreds of such wars as this: wars fought over forms of faith, over terminology of religion, over ideologies, over cultures. And the ones who fought those wars were members of the same race—not members of two races separated by different origins, by different metabolisms, by different minds.
“No,” Craig answered himself, “there is no way. Some day, perhaps, we will be gone. Some day we will find another and a cheaper source of power and you will be left in peace. Until that day—” He left the words unspoken.
Page turned away, headed for the lock, followed by the two big Candles and the little pink one.
Ranged together at the port, the two Terrestrials watched the Candles come out of the lock. Page was still in the form of a man, but as he walked away the form ran together and puddled down until he was a sphere.
Creepy cackled at Craig’s elbow. “By cracky,” he yelped, “he was a purple one!”
Craig sat at his desk, writing his report to the Solar power board, his pen traveling rapidly over the paper:
—they waited for five hundred years before they acted. Perhaps this was merely caution or in the hope they might find a better way. Or it may be that time has a different value for them than it has for us. In an existence which stretches into eternity, time would have but little value.
For all those five hundred years they have watched and studied us. They have read our minds, absorbed our thoughts, dug out our knowledge, soaked up our personalities. Perhaps they know us better than we know ourselves. Whether their crude mimicry’ of our thoughts is merely a clever ruse to make us think they are harmless or whether it reflects differing degrees of the art of mimicry—the difference between a cartoon and a masterpiece of painting— I cannot say. I cannot even guess.
Adventures in the Far Future Page 24