Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “What’s the weather got to do with our taking readings?” Ward demanded.

  “Simply this: There are certain periods of intense precipitation on this area of Mars. These periods are accompanied by high velocity winds. The atmospheric disturbance reaches monsoon proportions. During such periods, for some reason, the Raspers are exceptionally active. Something in the nature of the monsoon reacts on them with very savage results. They seem to feed on the electric disturbances in the atmosphere. They go wild during these changes in the weather and search for any moving thing to destroy. In some manner they are able to cover enormous distances during the monsoon and they can travel with incredible speed. When a monsoon is threatening I never leave the station.”

  Ward listened in growing irritation to this explanation.

  “How often do you have monsoons here?” he demanded.

  “Unfortunately, quite often,” Halliday answered. “All of my instruments indicate now that one is brewing. I haven’t been able to do more than a few hours of work in the last two months. I’ve been waiting for the weather to break, but so far it hasn’t.”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Ward said incredulously, “that you’ve been sitting here, twiddling your thumbs for the past two months because you’re afraid to take a chance on a wind blowing up?”

  “That is exactly what I mean,” Halliday said. “But it isn’t the wind I’m afraid of. It’s the things that come with the wind that make any field work impossible. I’ve learned a few things about the Raspers in my three years and one is that it doesn’t pay to give them a chance. That’s all they need. That’s all they’re waiting for.”

  Ward stood up impatiently and jammed his fists into his pockets. It took all of his self control not to let his anger and contempt for the man explode in roaring fury.

  “I can’t understand your attitude,” he said at last, through tight lips. “I’m green and new here. I don’t know anything about the set-up except what you’ve told me. But I know from your own admission that you’ve never seen these things you’re so mortally afraid of, you’ve never stood up to them and given them a taste of ray juice to think about, you don’t really know anything about them, except that you’re terrified of the very thought of them. That isn’t a reasonable attitude. Only one kind of man thinks that way, and that’s a man without a touch of starch in his backbone, or a bit of honest-to-goodness guts in his make-up. If you want to hug this place like a scared school-girl that’s all right, but I’ll be double-damned if I’m going to let any superstitious nonsense keep me from doing the job I was sent here to do.”

  “That is a very brave speech, Lieutenant,” Halliday said, “and I admire you for it. But you are going to do as I say in spite of your own opinions. We will stay here and take no unnecessary chances until our instruments indicate that the monsoon weather has passed. That is an order.”

  WARD choked back his wrath. He glared at Halliday for an instant, then wheeled and strode into the small storeroom that was to serve as his sleeping quarters. He banged the door shut and sat down on the edge of the cot, his fingers opening and closing nervously.

  He wasn’t sure just what he’d do, but he didn’t intend to stand for Halliday’s craven policy of hiding in a locked room, instead of doing the work his country expected him to do. Halliday was a psychopathic case; his mind was full of a hundred and one imagined horrors and they kept him from doing his job. There was little wonder that he had been three years attempting to compile the information that should have been gathered in three months.

  The man was so terrified of imagined dangers that he was helpless to act. Ward felt a moment of pity for him, the pity the brave invariably feel for the weak and cowardly. But he also felt a cold and bitter contempt for the man who had allowed his own fear and timidity to hold up the important work of accumulating data on this section of the planet. If he wasn’t man enough to do the job, he should have at least been man enough to admit it.

  Ward decided that the next day he’d have the thing out. He undressed slowly and stretched out on the narrow cot, but sleep was a long time in coming.

  When he stepped from his room the next day he saw that Halliday was standing in the doorway gazing out over the dull gray Martian landscape.

  “Aren’t you taking quite a chance?” he asked, with heavy sarcasm.

  Halliday ignored the gibe. “No. I made a careful check before I released the door lock and opened up. Did you sleep well?”

  “Fair,” Ward said. “How can you tell the days and nights here? Is there ever any change in the sky?”

  Halliday shook his head. “Sometimes it gets a little darker, sometimes it’s lighter. When you’re tired you go to bed. That’s the only standard we have.” He shaded his eyes with his hand and stared for a long moment at the bleak, depressing horizon.

  Looking over his shoulder, Ward noticed swirling humid mists drifting in the air and, above, huge massive clouds of dense blackness were gathering. He felt a peculiar electric tightness in the atmosphere.

  Halliday closed and locked the door carefully.

  “Might as well have breakfast,” he said. “There’s nothing else we can do today.”

  “Do we have to stay cooped up here all day?” Ward asked.

  “I’m afraid so. This weather is ready to break any minute now, and when it does I intend to be behind a well-locked door.”

  Ward’s lips curled slightly.

  “Okay,” he said quietly, “we’ll wait for the monsoon to blow over. Then, Raspers or not, I’m going to work.”

  BUT four long days dragged by and there was no indication that the monsoon weather was prepared to break. Low dense clouds were massed overhead and the air was gusty with flurries of humid wind.

  Halliday grew increasingly nervous. He spent every waking hour at the periscope in a constant study of the dark horizons and he said little to Ward.

  Ward’s impatience grew with every inactive moment.

  “How much longer are we going to hide in here like scared rats?” he blazed finally. He paced furiously up and down the small room, glaring in rage at Halliday’s stooped figure.

  Halliday smiled nervously and removed his glasses. His fingers were trembling so violently that he almost dropped them to the floor.

  “I can’t even guess,” he said shakily. “I was hoping that the monsoon would blow over, but I’m afraid we’re in for it.”

  “You’ve been saying that ever since I arrived,” Ward said bitterly.

  Halliday was studying a aerograph on the wall. When he turned to Ward, his face was gray. His lips were more tightly clamped than ever.

  “If anything should happen to our front door lock,” he said, “there’s an exit we can use in the kitchen. Possibly you’ve noticed the small door beside the refrigeration and oxygen unit. That leads to a small room that can be locked from the inside. There are supplies there to last a week. I didn’t tell you this before because I was afraid it might alarm you.”

  “Thanks for sparing my feelings,” Ward snapped. “But I don’t think I’ll be needing your cosy little refuge. I’ve stalled just about enough. I was sent here to do a job and by Heaven I’m going to try and finish it.”

  He jerked his tunic from the back of a chair and scooped up his raytube and belt. Halliday regarded him in silence as he buckled on the weapon.

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” he asked at last.

  “First I’m going to flash a message to Earth, asking that I be placed in command here,” Ward said. He buttoned his tunic swiftly, and his eyes were cold slits of anger as he looked at Halliday nervously fumbling with his glasses. “I was sent here with instructions to find out what the delay was in getting the work done. I’ve found out to my satisfaction. You’ve done about one day’s work for every month you’ve spent cooped up in here, trembling every time the wind howled. When I come back I’ll have an authorization from GHQ to take over here immediately. Then you and I are going to work and damn the weather. If you
don’t want to cooperate,” Ward slapped the weapon at his hip, “I’ll use what force is necessary to make you.”

  “Please listen to me,” Halliday said desperately. “You’re impulsive and reckless and I admire you for it. Sometimes I wish I were more like that. But I know the situation here better than you do. We’d be running a terrible risk trying to work right at this time.”

  “Sure,” Ward said, “We’d be running a risk. That’s apparently your entire philosophy. Sit tight, do nothing, because there might be a slight risk involved.”

  He turned and strode to the door.

  “Wait,” Halliday cried. “You can’t go out now.”

  Ward disengaged the lock with a swift deft motion.

  “Who’s going to stop me?” he asked.

  Halliday crossed to his side with quick, pattering strides. He grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around.

  “Please listen to me,” he said imploringly. “I know what I’m talking about. I—”

  Ward shook the hand loose and stared coldly into Halliday’s, white strained features.

  “You’re gutless, Halliday,” he said in a low tense voice. “Now keep out of my way.”

  He turned to the door again, but Halliday grabbed him suddenly and pushed him back.

  “You’re not going to do it,” he cried, his voice trembling. “I’m not going to let you.”

  WARD grabbed the man by his lapels and swung him away from the door. He stepped close to him and his right fist chopped down in a savage axe-like stroke. The short, powerful blow exploded under Halliday’s chin. His knees buckled and he sprawled limply to the floor.

  Ward stared down at the still form and he felt an instant of regret for striking a man fifty pounds lighter than himself, but he realized that it had been the only course open.

  He drew his raytube, inspected it quickly to make sure that it was in perfect order, then swung open the door and stepped out into the gray murkiness of the Martian atmosphere.

  The wind had increased to a wild mad scream. Flaky particles of soil stung his face like myriad needle-pricks as he braced himself against the buffeting force of the gale.

  He couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of him, but he knew the general direction of the building which housed the materialization unit and he headed that way, bent almost double against the wind.

  He heard and saw nothing but the wild wail of the monsoon and the gray swirling murk. There was an awesome feeling in staggering blindly on through a dead gray world of howling dust-laden wind.

  He felt as if he were the only person left alive in the universe. But he plowed stubbornly forward. There was work to be done and he felt a grim exaltation in the knowledge that he had enough fortitude to let nothing stop him from doing his job.

  Hell! What was a little wind? This thought came to him and he smiled grimly. He’d show Halliday! He’d show ‘em all! Nothing was going to stop him!

  There was a peculiar crackling sound in the air about him, as if bolts of unseen lightning were slashing through the turbulent atmosphere, but he forged ahead. He knew there was little danger of an electric bolt striking him as long as he was out in the open.

  The distance to the goal was not a matter of a dozen yards or so, but it took him fully five minutes to cover the stretch. He had trouble breathing; each breath was snatched from his open mouth by the fury of the wind. And his eyes were rimmed with dust and streaming from the stinging bite of the flaky soil.

  When he reached the wall of the building he was sobbing for breath and blind from the whiplash of the wind. He sagged against the comfortable bulk of the squat, solid structure and wiped at his eyes with a handkerchief, but the wind soon tore the flimsy cloth from his fingers.

  There was nothing to do but find the door of the building as quickly as possible. Using his hands as groping feelers he staggered around two corners of the buildings until his fingers closed about a door knob.

  The gale was increasing in intensity; the roaring lash of the wind was wild and explosive, as if the floodgates of Nature had swung open to unleash this maelstrom of fury and destruction.

  The sputtering crackle of electric energy he had noticed seemed to be swelling in volume, rising steadily in pitch and fury. And then a new sound was added to the hideous cacophony. Ward heard it faintly at first and it failed to register on his consciousness.

  The new sound was an unearthly rasping noise that roared about his head and crashed against his ear drums with terrifying impact. The sound seemed everywhere; it seemed to emanate from the unleashed forces of the storm itself; its marrow-chilling, rasping moan was a demoniacal cry, screaming a weird defiance into the teeth of the mighty monsoon.

  WARD, hugging the building, heard the rasping sound, and he remembered what Halliday had told him. Crouched against the side of the structure, listening to that weird, desolate wail of unnamable horror, he felt his heart thudding with sudden fear against his ribs.

  The door of the building was jammed. He slammed his shoulder against its solid unyielding surface again and again—without avail! The harrowing rasping undertone of the crushing gale was growing and swelling—it seemed to be converging on him from all sides, a creation of the gray whining murk of the monsoon.

  Ward’s hand tightened on the butt of his raytube. He wheeled about, pressing his back to the wall of the building. His eyes raked the swirling turbulence of the storm.

  And through the raging, eddying mists of gray his wind-lashed eyes made out dreadful, weaving shapes, slithering through the fury of the storm—toward him!

  An instinctive scream tore at the muscles of his throat, but the wind whipped the sound from his mouth and cast it into the gale before it could reach his ears.

  He crouched and raised his gun.

  The shapes were vague misty illusions to his straining eyes. Then a blanket of wind swept over him, buffeting him against the wall at his back, and in a momentary flick of visibility that followed the blast, he was able to see the things that were advancing toward him.

  There was one nauseous, sense-stunning instant of incredible horror as his eyes focused on the nameless monstrosities that were revealed in the gray mists of the monsoon.

  One instant of sheer numbing horror, an instinct a billion years old, buried beneath centuries’ weight in his subconscious, suddenly writhed into life, as pulsing and compelling as the day it had been generated.

  The lost forgotten instincts of man’s mind that warn him of the horror and menace of the unknown, the nameless, the unclean, were clamoring wildly at his consciousness.

  For these things were hideous and repellent in their very essence. Whether they were alive or not, his numbed, horror-stunned brain would never know. The dry, rustling rasping sound that emanated from them seemed to partake of the same nature as the electrical energy generated by the monsoon, but that was only a fleeting, terror-strained impression.

  The raytube fell from his palsied hand; but he didn’t notice. There was only one blind motivation governing his thoughts.

  And that was flight!

  The unreasoning terror of the hunted, of the helpless, gripped him with numbing force. There was no thought in his mind to fight, to face these things that emerged from the dead grayness of the monsoon, but only a hideously desperate desire to escape.

  WITHOUT conscious thought or volition his legs suddenly churned beneath him and he lunged forward blindly, desperately, lurching through the buffeting force of the gale toward the sanctuary of the building where he had left Halliday.

  The rasping, nerve-chilling sound roared about his head and the lashing screech of the monsoon was a banshee-wail in his ears as he stumbled and staggered on, driven by the wildest, most elemental fear he had ever known.

  Suddenly the squat structure loomed directly ahead of him, only a yard away. The door was standing ajar, and, with a broken sob of relief, he lunged into the lighted interior of the room.

  Halliday was crawling dazedly to his feet as Ward staggered blindly
through the door, his breath coming in great choking sobs.

  “My God—”

  Halliday’s voice broke and Ward saw that his eyes were staring in horror beyond him, to the still open door where the gray swirling fury of the monsoon was creeping in.

  And other things were in the open doorway!

  Ward knew that without turning to look. The horror mirrored in Halliday’s face told him that more plainly than could his own eyes.

  There was horror and fear in Halliday’s face, but the tightness of his lips did not relax into the flaccid looseness of hysteria.

  With superhuman control he was keeping a grip on himself.

  “Don’t move!” he snapped, through set jaws. “I’ll try to get at the rifle.”

  Ward’s heart was thundering a tattoo of terror. Halliday’s words made no impression on the horror-stunned brain. He lunged wildly across the room, dimly he heard Halliday’s sudden shouted warning.

  Without a backward glance he lurched into the small room that served as a kitchen. Through the fog of terror that swirled about his mind, he remembered only one thing: Halliday’s remark of a refuge built there for emergency purposes.

  His fingers tore open the small door alongside the refrigerator unit. A black passage stretched ahead of him and he plunged into dark shelter, jerking the door shut after him.

  A light snapped on when the door closed and he saw that he was in a small, stoutly reinforced storeroom, with bales of supplies and equipment packed against the walls.

  He threw the heavy bolt that locked the door and sagged against a wall, his breath coming in deep shuddering gasps. There was no sound from outside. Gradually his labored breathing subsided and he stared with dull, unseeing eyes ahead of him.

  And in that moment Ward Harrison came face-to-face with what he had done. In a single gleaming flash of understanding, he realized that he had bought his life with his honor.

  A shuddering sob passed through his body.

  He remembered with scalding self-hatred the things he had said to Halliday—a man who had endured the horror of this isolated base for three years. He had called a man cowardly who had more courage in his smallest finger than Ward had in his entire body.