Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 5

by Eric Flint

  She was seated in the main room of Hammond's living quarters at Research Alpha. The door to Hammond's private office behind them was closed. Across the room, a large wall safe had been opened, revealing a wide double row of thin, metal-bound files. Two of the files—Henry Gloge's and Barbara Ellington's—lay on the table before Helen. Hammond stood beside her.

  He said now, "What about that trip he made back east early in the month?"

  "He spent three days in his home town, purportedly to make arrangements to sell his sister's and his property there. They had a house, complete with private laboratory, untenanted, on the grounds of an old farm. The perfect location for unsupervised experimentation. On primates? Not likely. They're not easy to obtain secretly and, except for the smaller gibbons, they should make potentially quick dangerous subjects for Dr. Gloge's project. So it must be humans he planned to work on."

  Hammond nodded.

  There was an almost sick expression on his face.

  The woman looked up at him. "You seem very anxious. Presumably, Barbara and Vince have now had two injections each. That will take them to 50,000 years from now on some level. It doesn't seem desperately serious to me."

  The man smiled tautly. "Don't forget that we're dealing with one of the seed races."

  "Yes—but only 50,000 years so far."

  He stared at her sympathetically. "You and I," he said, "are still far down on the ladder. So it's hard for us to conceive of the evolutionary potential of the Genus homo galacticus."

  She laughed. "I'm content with my lowly lot—"

  "Good conditioning," he murmured.

  "—but I'm willing to accept your analysis. What do you intent to do with Gloge?"

  Hammond straightened decisively. "This experiment on humans has to be stopped at once. Call Ames and have him put special security men at every exit. For the next hour, don't let Gloge out of this building. And if Vince or Barbara try to enter the complex, tell him to hold them. When you've done that, start canceling my appointments for the rest of the day and evening."

  He disappeared into his bedroom, came out presently dressed for the street.

  Helen Wendell greeted him with: "I called Ames and he says 'Check!' But I also phoned Gloge's office. He left about an hour ago, his secretary says."

  Hammond said quickly, "Sound a standby alert. Tell Ames to throw a guard around the homes of both of those young people!"

  "You're going where?"

  "First Barbara, then Vince. I only hope I'm in time."

  A look must have come into Helen's face, because he smiled tensely and said, "Your expression says I'm getting too involved."

  The beautiful blonde woman smiled with understanding, said, "Every day on this planet thousands of people are murdered, hundreds of thousands are robbed and countless minor acts of violence occur. People are struck, choked, yelled at, degraded, cheated—I could go on. If we ever opened ourselves to that, we'd shrivel away."

  "I kind of like Barbara," Hammond confessed.

  Helen was calm. "So do I. What do you think is happening?"

  "As I see it, Gloge gave them the first injection last Wednesday and the second on Friday. That means the third one should be given today. That I've got to stop."

  He departed hastily.

  VIII

  Gloge had become nervous. As Monday wore on, he kept thinking of his two specimens; and what bothered him was that he did not have them under observation on this last day.

  What a ridiculous situation, he told himself. The greatest experiment in human history—and no scientific person watching it through to a conclusion of the key second injection.

  There was another feeling, also.

  Fear!

  He couldn't help but remember the young man. It seemed to Gloge that he had seen too many animals show in their fashion the symptoms he had observed in Vince. Failure to respond well to the serum, the signs of internal malaise, the sick appearance, the struggle of the cells visibly reflecting defeat in the efforts and chemistry at the surface of the skin.

  And there was—he had to admit it—a further anxiety. Many of the unsuccessful animal specimens had developed tough fight-back characteristics. It would be wise to be prepared for emergencies of that nature.

  He thought grimly: "No use fooling myself. I'd better drop everything and take another look at those two."

  That was when he left his office.

  He took it for granted that Barbara was all right. So he drove to Vince's apartment, and first checked with his audio pickups to make sure he was there and alone.

  He detected at once movements; the sound of labored breathing, an occasional squeak of the springs of the couch. These noises came screeching through the hyper-sensitive receiver, but Gloge had the volume on them turned down so that they were not actually painful in his ears.

  Gloge's spirits had already dropped even more, for the sounds he was hearing confirmed his fears.

  Suddenly, all the justified scientific attitude that had motivated him until now came hard against the reality of the failure that was here.

  By his previous reasoning, he would now have to kill Vince.

  And that meant, of course, that he would also have to dispose of Barbara.

  His state of funk yielded after what must have been many minutes to a strictly scientific thought: Mere sounds were not enough data for so basic a decision, it seemed to him.

  He felt intense disappointment.

  Now, he must go and make his decision from an actual meeting with Vince. It would be improper to dispose of his two human subjects without a face to face interrogation.

  As Gloge climbed out of his car and headed for the apartment building, Vince had a dream.

  He dreamed that the man—what was his name?—Gloge, with whom he had quarreled a few days before in the corridor at Research Alpha, was coming here to his apartment, with the intention of killing him. At some deep level of his being, anger began. But he did not awaken.

  The dream—product of his own disturbed, strange evolutionary development—continued.

  From some vantage point, he watched Gloge approach his back door. He felt no surprise when the small, bald-headed man produced a key. Tense with fear, Vince watched as Gloge stealthily inserted the key into the lock, slowly turned it and quietly opened the door.

  At that point, Vince's body was impelled by his extreme anxiety to defensive action. Millions of tiny, shining, cream-colored energy bundles were emitted by his nervous system. They resembled very short straight lines. And they passed through the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, and they struck Gloge.

  Great masses of the energy units unerringly sought out nerve ends in Gloge's body and darted in their scintillating fashion up to the man's brain.

  The energy units were not the result of conscious analytical thought. They were brought into being solely by fright and carried pressor messages. They pushed at Gloge mentally, urging him to leave, to go back to where he had come from—

  Dr. Gloge came to his senses with a start. He was back in his van. He remembered running in precipitant flight. He had a vague recollection of complete panic.

  He sat now, trembling, breathing hard, trying to recover from the most disgraceful act of fear that he had ever experienced in his whole life.

  And he knew that he had to go back.

  Twice more, the sleeping Vince emitted enough energy bundles to compel Gloge to run. Each time the power available was less and Gloge retreated a shorter distance before stopping and forcing himself to go back again to the apartment.

  On Gloge's fourth approach, the brain mechanism in Vince was able to manufacture only a small energy discharge. Gloge felt the fear rise in him, but he fought it—successfully.

  He moved silently across the kitchen floor toward the door of the living room.

  He still did not realize that the sleeping body and he had fought a battle—which he had now won.

  Moments later, Gloge looked down at the exhausted
form of his male subject. The sleeping body had perspired excessively. It trembled and moaned, and, as Gloge watched, jerked fitfully.

  Unmistakably—Gloge decided—a failed experiment.

  He wasted no time. He had come prepared. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, carefully clipped one over Vince's farthest away arm and softly clicked it shut. He lifted the arm as carefully toward the other wrist and clicked that handcuff on also.

  Gloge next successfully tied Vince's legs together, and then lashed together the hands and feet.

  The victim continued his restless, feverish sleep.

  Gloge brought out a gag. As he had anticipated, forcing it into the closed mouth was more disturbing. Under him, the body grew rigid. Wild eyes flicked open and glared up at him.

  In a single, convulsive effort Vince tried to bring up his arms and simultaneously struggled to get to his feet.

  But Gloge had done his preliminary work well. The victim's intense effort subsided. Dr. Gloge realized that his control of this situation was complete. He removed the gag and said: "What I want to know is, how do you feel?"

  The half-crazy, rage-filled eyes snapped with the impulse to violence. Vince cursed in a shrill voice. He kept this up for several minutes. Then he seemed to realize something.

  "Y-you did something to me last week."

  Gloge nodded. "I injected you twice with a serum designed to accelerate cellular evolution, and I've come here to find out how you are."

  His gray eyes were steady, his bald head gleamed in the reflection of the light he had turned on. His face was serious. "Why not tell me exactly how you feel?" he asked earnestly.

  This time Vince's cursing subsided after about a minute. He lay, then, staring at his captor, and something about the pale, tense face of the scientist must have convinced him. "I feel—awful," he said uneasily.

  "Exactly how?" Gloge persisted.

  Slowly, by dint of determined questioning, he drew from his reluctant victim the fact that he felt weak, exhausted and numb.

  It was the fateful combination that had so often shown in the animals; and Gloge knew that it was decisive.

  Without another word, he bent down and started to force the gag into Vince's mouth. Vince twisted, wiggled, turned his head, and several times tried to bite. But inexorably Gloge pushed the gag all the way into the other's mouth and knotted it firmly behind his head.

  He now went outside and drove the van into the driveway opposite the back door of Vince's apartment. Wrapping the young man's body in a blanket, he carried him boldly outside and into the van.

  A few minutes later he was heading for the home of one of his subordinates. The man was on loan to an eastern laboratory and his house and yard were unoccupied.

  If he had paused, if he had stopped moving, if he had even taken his foot off the accelerator, Gloge might have faltered in his grisly plan. But his only slowdown was when he finally brought the car to a stop at his final destination. And that, in its real meaning, was a continuation of the plan.

  Its final moments.

  Laboriously, he dragged the gagged, handcuffed and bound Vince across the sidewalk, through a gate, and over to the deep end of the swimming pool. And still without pausing he shoved the tense body over the edge and into the water.

  He straightened from his terrible act, stood there gasping for breath, exhausted, watching the trail of bubbles that roiled the dark surface. Abruptly terrified that he might be seen, he turned and staggered away.

  As he half-fell, half-crawled into his car, the first opposing thought came, as much a feeling of horror as an idea: "My God, what have I done?"

  But there was no opposing motion in that reaction. He did not go back. Instead, he sat there, bracing to the realization that a few feet away a man was still in process of drowning.

  When there was no longer any doubt; when the subject of his experiment was by all laws of life dead, Gloge sighed, and stirred. There was no turning back. One gone, one to go.

  Next—the girl!

  From a phone booth a few blocks away, Gloge dialed Barbara Ellington's boarding house. The voice of an elderly woman answered and told him Barbara had gone out.

  The voice added, "She certainly is a popular girl today."

  Gloge said uneasily, "How do you mean?"

  "Several men came by a little while ago and asked for her, but of course I had to tell them also that she wasn't there."

  A sharp fear struck through Gloge. "Did they give their names?" he asked.

  "A Mr. Hammond," was the reply.

  Hammond! The chill of that froze Gloge. "Thank you," he gulped, and hung up.

  He returned shakily to his car, torn between two impulses. He had intended to return after dark to the pool, fish Vince's body out of it, take off all the bindings and dispose of it. He had a strong feeling now that he should do that at once. On the other hand, he had a desperate conviction that he must return to his office and remove the rest of the serum from the safe there.

  That last suddenly seemed the more important thing to do, and the safest at this hour. The sun had gone down below the western hills, but the sky was still bright blue. The dying day had too much light in it for the gruesome task of getting rid of a dead body.

  IX

  At ten minutes past seven, Dr. Gloge unlocked the door that led directly from the corridor to his office in the biology section of Research Alpha. He went in, closed the door behind him, walked quickly around the big, bare desk in the center of the room, and stooped down to unlock the desk drawer where he kept a key to one of the safes.

  "Good evening, Dr. Gloge," a woman's voice said behind him.

  For an instant Dr. Gloge seemed unable to move. The words, the tone, sent an electrifying hope through him. He could scarcely believe his luck: that the second person he had to dispose of had come to where he could best deal with her.

  He straightened slowly, turned around.

  Barbara Ellington stood in the open door to the adjoining library, watching him, face serious and alert.

  At no time in what followed did Gloge have any other conscious awareness than that this was Barbara Ellington.

  But the very instant that he saw the girl, at some depth of his being neural readjustments took place. Millions of them. And from that instant, subconsciously, she was his dead sister. But she was not dead any more. She was reassuringly alive in the person of Barbara.

  A look passed between them. It was one of complete understanding. It occurred to Gloge that it was scientifically wrong to kill this successful experimental victim. He even had a feeling that she was on his side and would cooperate with him. He suppressed a fleeting impulse to pretend not to know why she was here.

  He said, matter-of-factly, "How did you get in?"

  "Through the specimen room."

  "Did any of the night workers see you?"

  "No." Barbara smiled slightly.

  Gloge was examining her with quick evaluative looks. He noted the way she stood, almost motionless but lightly and strongly balanced—a pose of contained, absolutely prepared energy. He saw in her eyes bright, quick intelligence.

  The thought came to him: Nothing quite like this was ever on Earth before!

  Barbara said suddenly, "You took a long chance on us, didn't you?"

  The words that burst from Dr. Gloge surprised him: "I had to do it."

  "Yes, I know." Again she spoke matter-of-factly, moved forward into the room. Dr. Gloge felt a surge of alarm, a sharp, cold prickling of the skin. But she turned from him to the left, and he watched silently as she sat down in a chair against the wall and placed the brown purse she carried on the armrest of the chair. She spoke first.

  "You must give me the third injection of the serum immediately," she told him. "I'll watch you do it. Then I'll take the instrument and a supply of the serum to Vince. He—"

  She paused; blue eyes kindling with abrupt comprehension, as she studied Dr. Gloge's expression. "So you've drowned him!" she said. She sat there
, thoughtful, then: "He's not dead. I sense him to be still alive. Now, what is the instrument you use? You must still have it with you."

  "I do," Dr. Gloge admitted hoarsely. "But," he went on quickly, "it is advisable to wait till morning before administering the third shot. The chances of a further favorable development would be increased by doing it. And you must stay here! Nobody should see you as you are. There should be tests . . . you will tell me . . ."