A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

Coeurl stopped when he was still ten feet from the nearest beings. The need for id threatened to overwhelm him. His brain drifted to that ferocious edge of chaos, where it cost him a terrible effort to hold back. He felt as if his body were bathed in molten liquid. His vision kept blurring.

Most of the men walked closer to him. Coeurl saw that they were frankly and curiously examining him. Their lips moved inside the transparent helmets they wore. Their form of intercommunication — he assumed that was what he sensed — came to him on a frequency that was well within his ability to receive. The messages were meaningless. In an effort to appear friendly, he broadcast his name from his ear tendrils, at the same time pointing at himself with one curving tentacle.

A voice Grosvenor didn’t recognize drawled, “I got a sort of static in my radio when he wiggled those hairs, Morton. Do you think-”

Morton’s use of the man’s name identified the other. Gourlay, chief of communications. Grosvenor, who was recording the conversation, was pleased. The coming of the beast might enable him to obtain recordings of the voices of all the rest of the important men aboard the ship. He had tried to do that from the beginning.

“Ah,” said Siedel, the psychologist, “the tentacles end in suction cups. Provided the nervous system is complex enough, he could with training operate any machine.”

Director Morton said, “I think we’d better go inside and have lunch. Afterwards, we’ll have to get busy. I’d like a study made of the scientific development of this race, and particularly I want to know what wrecked it. On Earth, in the early days before there was a galactic civilization, one culture after another reached its peak and then crumbled. A new one always sprang up in its dust. Why didn’t that happen here? Each department will be assigned its special field of investigation.”

“What about pussy?” somebody said. “I think he wants to come in with us.”

Morton chuckled, then said seriously, “I wish there were some way we could take it in with us, without forcibly capturing it. Kent, what do you think?”

The little chemist shook his head decisively. “This atmosphere has a higher chlorine than oxygen content, though actually not much of either. Our oxygen would be dynamite to his lungs.”

It was clear to Grosvenor that the catlike being had not considered that danger. He watched the monster follow the first men up the escalator and through the great door.

The men glanced back towards Morton, who waved a hand at them and said, “Open the second lock and let him get a whiff of the oxygen. That’ll cure him.”

A moment later the Director’s amazed voice was loud on the communicator. “Well, I’ll be damned! He doesn’t notice the difference! That means he hasn’t any lungs, or else the chlorine is not what his lungs use, You bet he can go in! Smith, here’s a treasure house for a biologist — harmless enough if we’re careful. What a metabolism!”

Smith was a tall, thin bony man with a long, mournful face. His voice, unusually forceful for his appearance sounded in Grosvenor’s communicator. “In the various exploring trips I’ve been on, I’ve seen only two higher forms of life. Those dependent on chlorine, and those who need oxygen — the two elements that support combustion. I’ve heard vague reports of a fluorine-breathing life form, but I’ve yet to see an example. I’d almost stake my reputation that no complicated organism could ever adapt itself to the actual utilization of both gases. Morton, we mustn’t let this creature get away if we can help it.”

Director Morton laughed, then said soberly, “He seems anxious enough to stay.”

He had been riding up the escalator on one side of the gangplank. Now he moved into the air lock with Coeurl and the two men. Grosvenor hurried forward, but he was only one of a dozen men who also entered the large space. The great door swung shut, and air began to hiss in. Everybody stood well clear of the catlike monster. Grosvenor watched the beast with a growing sense of uneasiness. Several thoughts occurred to him. He wished he could communicate them to Morton. He should have been able to. The rule aboard these expeditionary ships was that all heads of departments should have easy access to the director. As head of the Nexial department — though he was the only one in it — that should have applied to him also. The communicator of his space suit should have been fitted so that he could talk to Morton as did the heads of the other departments. But all he had was a general receiver. That gave him the privilege of listening in to the great men when they were doing field work. If he wanted to talk to anyone, or if he were in danger, he could throw a switch that would open a channel to a central operator.

Grosvenor did not question the general value of the system. There were just under one thousand men aboard, and it was obvious that all of them could not talk to Morton whenever they pleased.

The inner door of the lock was opening. Grosvenor pushed his way out with the others. In a few minutes they were all standing at the bottom of a series of elevators that led up to the living quarters. There was a brief discussion between Morton and Smith. Finally, Morton said, “We’ll send him up alone if he’ll go.”

Coeurl offered no objection until he heard the door of the elevator clang shut behind him, and the closed cage shot upward. He whirled with a snarl. Instantly, his reason twisted into chaos. He pounced at the door. The metal bent under his plunge, and the desperate pain maddened him. Now he was all trapped animal. He smashed at the metal with his paws. He tore the tough welded panels loose with his thick tentacles. The machinery screeched in protest. There were jerks as the magnetic power pulled the cage along in spite of projecting pieces of metal scraping against the outside walls. Finally, the elevator reached its destination and stopped. Coeurl snatched off the rest of the door and hurtled into the corridor. He waited there until the men came up with drawn weapons.

Morton said, “We’re fools. We should have shown him how it works. He thought we’d double-crossed him, or something.” He motioned to the monster. Grosvenor saw the savage glow fade from the beast’s coal-black eyes as Morton opened and closed the door of a near-by elevator several times. It was Coeurl who ended the lesson. He trotted into a large room that led off from the corridor.

He laydown on the carpeted floor and fought down the electric tautness of his nerves and muscles. He was furious at the fright he had shown. It seemed to him that he had lost the advantage of appearing a mild and placid individual. His strength must have startled and dismayed them.

It meant greater danger in the task he must accomplish: to seize this ship. On the planet from which these beings had come, there would be unlimited id.

With unwinking eyes, Coeurl watched two men clear away loose rubble from the metal doorway of a huge, old building. The human beings had eaten lunch, had again donned their space units, and now he could see them, singly and in groups, wherever he looked. Coeurl assumed that they were still investigating the dead city.

His own interest was entirely in food. His body ached with the hunger of his cells for id. The craving put a quiver in his muscles, and his mind burned with the desire to be off after the men who had gone deeper into the city. One of them had gone alone.

During the lunch period, the human beings offered him a variety of their own food, all valueless to him. They apparently did not realize that he must eat living creatures. Id was not merely a substance but a configuration of a substance, and it could be obtained only from tissues that still palpitated with the flow of life.