by Basil Copper
The method is repeated, with variations, on the air-locks, except that these can be controlled from the inside and anyone in the interior can lock the doors by instrument control and prevent another person from entering. On this occasion we were unlucky; we were stopped at the entrance to the middle chamber but the telescreen over the second door, which was operating, showed us that the council chamber or conference room it depicted was empty. This meant that the occupants were away but had locked the doors. The method of gaining entry from the outside would be known only to them and we had no means of discovering the combination. It would be little use to us if we were inside, as we had come to see the people of the village and could make no investigations until we had spoken with them.
Rort said nothing as we came out from the main porch, but his eyes turned back to seawards and after a moment he pointed. Then I saw what had caught his attention. It seemed as though the entire population of the village had gone down to the beach. There were small knots of figures clustered about the shore and others were spread out towards the eastwards, disappearing towards a cape which depended from the shoulder of black rock on the seaward side. The remainder of the villagers, if there were any more, were hidden from us by the shoulder of the hill.
***
As we skirted the shingle away from the village and gritted our way onto the sand, I wondered idly what had brought them all down there at that time of the afternoon. They were not fishing, that was certain, for many of their boats, ponderous metal affairs with painted numbers on their bows, were winched up towards the foreshore or riding heavily alongside the dusty red pier that contrasted so vividly with the glowing green and yellow of the sea.
It was this pier which first attracted my attention, as a great mass of people I now saw were striding up and down its length, some like ants upon the metal ladders that depended from the spindly legs into the water itself, while still more were busied about the boats. They did nothing with the cables which secured them but poked about under canvas covers or scuttled in and out of the doors of the larger craft. As we came closer we were unconsciously veering towards the east. The people had not been aware of our presence, but now some of them hastened forward with shrill cries of welcome and a few kept pace with us as we walked.
They were clustered more thickly along the foreshore here, among the black rocks between which the sea was riding sombrely with an awe-inspiring swell, and I could see still more men and women, with long hooked poles fishing about aimlessly in pools and among the rocks, sometimes sliding precariously about until they were arrested by a fissure or projection which prevented them from falling into the water. The centre of attraction seemed to be a region of even darker sand and rock which compressed itself into a narrow wedge bounded by the sea on one side and an almost perpendicular wall of rock on the other.
Where one's eye looked for the narrow passage thus formed to end in the cliff face, instead there was a large curved archway of solid rock, perhaps a hundred feet wide, and the path of black sand, already beginning to be washed by the sea, veered away around a corner and disappeared towards the east. As though an invisible line had been drawn across the area, the groups of people from the village had halted about a quarter of a mile from the arch and were standing gazing intently across the sand. As we came up we could see that Mclver and other village elders were the centre of the group and that they had evidently been directing the afternoon's activity.
There was, it must be said, something foreboding and repellent about this quarter of the shore, even more so than the remainder. A curious stench borne on the wind had little to do with the clean wholesomeness of salt and there were strange dragging marks in the sand at this point, stretching away towards the rock archway, which even as we watched were being quietly erased by the action of the water. I soon saw that this entire area must be submerged at high tide.
McIver came up as soon as he heard we had arrived and his large, sombre face looked worried. His red beard and wild eyes reminded me of some pagan god of the dawn of the world as he stood there in the grey light of that weird shore, surrounded by his people, many of whom were as fantastically dressed and outre in their appearance as he.
As Rort and I hurried towards him, Mclver gestured towards the great arch in the distance and his companions commenced to draw back a little, keeping pace with the rise of the tide. They seemed to take heart from our presence, though why I cannot say, as Rort and I were only mortal men like themselves; but to these poor souls we seemed armed with all the authority of the Central Committee and in those days the Committee represented law and hope for beings who had lived too long on the edge of the dark unknown.
McIver explained as we walked towards the tide line; the village had been aroused because of the disappearance of one of the women. She had been traced as far as this wild shore. The area was a bad one and the people of the village kept away from it. McIver shook his head as we continued to question him; he feared the worst. The woman - she in fact was no more than a girl - had left trails in the sand. There were other things also; Mclver preferred not to go into detail.
Rort and I soon saw what he meant. Across the sand, in bizarre and fantastic patterns, the girl's imprints - I would not say footsteps, as they were more like drag-marks - were accompanied on either side by great swathes of disturbed sand. I hesitate to be more fanciful than need be, but they resembled nothing so much as huge tracks such as a slug might make. The surface of the sand glittered dully in the light of the dying day and once again we saw traces of the nauseous jelly which had so disturbed us at No. 1 Post. The wind was rising and it cut to the bone as Mclver, Rort, and I stood on the black sand and gazed towards the arch of the vast cave, whose entrance was aswirl with the incoming tide.
The tracks disappeared into the dark water. It was useless to follow and the place was such that I would have hesitated to enter with the Central Committee itself at my back. I already knew the answer to the next question I put to Mclver. Though I compared the breeder's number in my notebook with the one Mclver gave me, I was not at all surprised to hear it was my girl - the one I had already met on the path in such dramatic fashion a short while earlier; who was afflicted with the curious green fungi; and on whose behalf we had really mounted the small expedition of Rort and myself to No. 1 Post.
I knew, as I looked towards the arch, that the secret of her disease had disappeared with her, most likely forever, and that apart from the humanitarian considerations involved, a promising line of research had been lost to us. Rort swore savagely when I told him and McIver's face was downcast. I gave him instructions to prepare the whole village for medical examination. I was anxious to check whether there were any further manifestations of this unusual disease among the inhabitants. In the meantime Rort and I had a manifest duty to radio K4 with our report immediately. I knew Masters would place great importance on this.
I warned McIver to make certain all in the village was secured at night and told him to place lookouts if that were at all possible. He promised, with a touching degree of faith in our omniscience, to carry out such precautions as we thought necessary. I asked him to send a man with us to collect a portable radio transmitter from No. 1, so that Rort and I could keep in touch with the village after dark. We all felt this to be a good idea; after two visits to the post by unknown intruders and now the disappearance of the girl, it was obvious that there was something gravely wrong on the island. Mclver went off to give the necessary orders. After another look at the black mouth of that uninviting cave, Rort and I, together with one of the villagers, started back en route to our post. Though neither of us said anything about it, we both wanted to get the heavily bolted door of the post behind us well before the advent of nightfall.
IX
For a long time that night I sat in the tower of No. 1 Post, looking out over the grey-greenish ocean whose glow seemed to symbolize the half-life in which the peoples of the world were living. Rort had radioed to K4 immediately on our return from the vi
llage and Masters had ordered a general watch kept throughout the night, both at our post and at the main station. According to Rort, the Commander had placed great importance on our information and was reacting with typical vigour. I could imagine the activity which was currently going on at K4. He had approved our action of supplying the village with a transmitter and Mclver had already been through experimentally a quarter of an hour before.
There was nothing to report, but I had asked him to check with us three times a day in future. Rort was in the living quarters below, checking on the specialised equipment. I had the first watch, until midnight when Rort was to relieve me. Blown spume obscured the windows and the wind made a keening noise among the rusting antennae of the old post. Both Rort and I were thankful for the thick walls and heavy bolts on the main door. The traces of jelly-substance which our visitors had twice left behind them filled us both with a vague foreboding.
Though it was easy to become obsessed with sombre thoughts. This was why the Central Committee had decreed that research workers in the field, particularly in such spots as this, should be relieved after a year. Some of our colleagues at K4 would not be affected by such an atmosphere. I felt that Masters himself would have been posted to Hell and have felt only scientific curiosity at the prospect.
And the Australian, Lockspeiser, was a tough character; unimaginative and strong-minded, he could have worked at K4 for years without knowing such a word as "atmosphere". Fritzjof too was a man to be relied upon. The others I was not so certain about. And though Rort's nerves were not all they should be - he had gone through experiences enough to shake the strongest over the past few years - there were few companions I would have rather been within a tight corner.
With these reflections and others, I drank the coffee Rort had left me and then, lulled by the faint rustle of the gusting wind round the tower, I must have dozed for a few minutes. When I awoke it was just before eleven. I rose yawning, for I had certain instrument checks to make. I went out onto the rusted steel platform which airily circled the tower, in the manner of an old-fashioned lighthouse. We had some trouble with the sliding door some days previously but now it had been greased and moved back smoothly beneath my hands.
I stood looking idly at the green sea reflected on the underside of the dark, louring clouds; green sky and green sea made a fantastic sight for those experiencing the phenomena for the first time, but these were old scenes for such workers as ourselves and I was watching for other signs. I made a few notes, checked the instrument levels on the delicately calibrated machines in their lead-lined boxes on the windy perch, and withdrew into the central chamber. I relocked the door. This undoubtedly saved my life.
It was just a quarter past eleven when the slithering began. I could hear it even above the faint mumble of the surf and the echoing sigh of the wind. The noise resembled an unpleasant suction process; swamp water boiled in it and blown spume and a nauseous tang like corruption on the high wind. And with the rotting perfume, which I had smelled before, freedom of action returned to me. I picked up my flash-gun and buzzed for Rort. He had already heard the sounds too.
"Main doors secure!" he yelled and then I heard his feet pounding on the metal-plated stairs. Something screamed from outside, freezing blood and bone, inhibiting action, paralyzing the will. A girl's face grew at the window, distorted; it gazed in at us fearfully, hair streaming in the wind. The thing was an impossibility; we were more than forty feet from the ground - unless she could scale perpendicular walls, wet with sea-spray, in semidarkness. I recognised the girl I had met on the cliff-path, the girl we had supposed sea-drowned in the cave.
She screamed again and as Rort flung himself to the outer platform door, I pinioned his arms; we struggled silently and the air was filled with a sickly, nauseous perfume. Something like squid-ink purpled the thick plate-glass of the outer ports; suckers waved hideously in the night. A face like an old sponge, oozing corruption, looked in at us; the girl disappeared.
"Great Future!" Rort swore. He sprang to the rocket lever and bright stars of fire burst over the tower, bringing writhing daylight to the ground below, where vast forms slithered and slid and shuddered worm-like. Rort screamed like a woman then and we both made for the stairs. On the ground floor, the great door was already bulging inwards. The smell of corruption flowed under the panels. Sanity returned in this extremity; wood roasted, metal burned white-hot, and the gelid mass mewed like a cat as Rort fried the door with his flash-gun.
Sinews cracking, we levered casks, metal boxes, anything with weight into the gap cut in the door, avoiding the mewing, dying thing which dabbled beyond the threshold. I seized a coil of rope. Upstairs, in the central tower, plate-glass shattered like doomsday. Instruments fell to the ground with a clatter. Rort at the stairhead blasted fire into the central chamber. Again the bleating cries, the nauseous stench repeated. I opened a casemate on the landward side, secured the rope, hurled it into the dying darkness. I prayed none of the creatures were on this side. I called to Rort, walked down the wall on the rope, flash-gun cocked. Something shuffled, the bushes whispered in the wind. Chaos in the tower and at the central door. Rort joined me; he was crying under his breath. His flame-gun made a bloody arc through the bushes and something scuttered with a squamous step. Then we were clear of the bushes, running strong, slithering and falling and leaping again until we were splashing into the less frightening terror of the swamp.
Rort was sobbing. "By Future!" he panted. "Did you see their eyes, man? Did you see their eyes?"
Blinded by sweat, elbows tucked into my side, I had no breath left to answer. With straining lungs we flew onwards to the safety of K4.
X
Masters looked grim. Once again the silver of the lamplight on his hair reminded me of a long-gone saint. Those not on watch by the heavy-duty radiation-units sat in a semicircle and listened to his instructions. There were about a dozen of us and we had absorbed what he had to say with the utmost attention for we all knew our lives most probably depended on it. McIver had been warned; the Central Committee alerted. But we could depend on no help from outside.
Masters had questioned Rort and myself minutely, both when we had made our first somewhat incoherent reports in the privacy of his office, and then in general conference.
"What creatures could scale walls like that and still have weight to break down such doors?" asked Fitzwilliams, with that mocking touch of scepticism which I found so exasperating. It was the fourth time he had asked the question in the last hour. Rort turned a flushed face to him. Anger trembled in his voice.
"Would you care to go out there now and find out for yourself?" he asked quietly.
Fitzwilliams blew out the air from his lungs with a loud noise in the silence of the conference room. His eyes appeared suddenly uneasy. He looked away awkwardly and said nothing.
"Matters in hand, gentlemen," said Masters succinctly. Everyone gave him attention.
"Nature of creatures, unknown. Appearance of girl at window; physical impossibility under normal circumstances. Circumstances not normal. We'll leave that for the moment. Possible source of emanations; cave near the village. Correct?"
He inclined his head towards me. I nodded. Masters got up and went over to the duty chart.
"General situation: emergency, lady and gentlemen" - the use of the female singular was a courtesy due to Karla's presence. "So far as we can tell K4 is immune from any possible attack. Two first priorities. The manning of No. 1 and No. 2 posts by adequate force. This means equipping with heavy radiation-units. Two: the investigation, tracking down, and destruction of these creatures. Now, I want to see you and Rort again, when this conference is over."
The meeting continued in Masters's brisk, inimitable manner. Rort and I, sitting facing the Commander in the bright lamplight, felt the first comfort since we had emerged from the depths of the swamp the previous night.
XI
Nothing happened for a week. Rort and I were among the strong party which had
reconnoitred No. 1 Post the following morning. The burst door and windows, the smashed instruments, above all certain remains among the debris were enough to silence the strongest doubters. I noticed, maliciously, that Fitzwilliams had not volunteered to accompany the party.
A tractor vehicle with a heavy radiation-unit mounted on it, led the way. With the power available, this would be enough to deal with any known dangers. Fritzjof, who had volunteered to head the manning of No. 1 under the changed circumstances, led the party. He seemed as disappointed as Rort and myself at the lack of any tangible evidence on the nature of our visitors. There was the stench, it is true, and traces of jelly on the stairs, in front of the door and in the upper chamber. But of the creatures which Rort had certainly destroyed, there was not so much as a fragment of bone or a silver of hide.
Part of the problem was solved by careful examination of the walls of the tower. They had been scaled by some form of suction. Fritzjof smoked his pipe silently and pondered this; the grey light of the cliff-top seemed to flicker across his strong, square face. His empty sleeve, pinned to the front of his leather jacket, flapped in the wind.
He grunted. "Flying octopuses, that's what we're dealing with," he said jocularly. He strode confidently into the tower. His remark broke the tension and the remainder of the party followed in a relaxed atmosphere.
The next few days were occupied in putting things in order at the two posts and certain precautions were also taken in the village. No. 2 Post was on the far side of the island, on a point commanding all directions, both inland and to the seaward side. Masters felt it imperative to get both posts in full working trim; we did not know what we might have to face and early warning was necessary, especially if K4 itself were attacked.
Masters held another conference a few days afterwards, when he asked for volunteers to man the forward posts. I am ashamed to say so, but both Rort and I were relieved when Masters decided to second us to duties at K4. He felt that we had done our share and it was perhaps cowardice on our part to agree with him, but there was much sense in what he said; our nerves had been strained almost beyond endurance and we might perhaps have been weak links in a chain of new and untried personnel.