Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

Connant nodded bitterly. “I’m human. Hurry that test, for God’s sake. Your eyes—God, I wish you could see your eyes—”

Commander Garry watched anxiously as Clark held the big brown Alaskan husky, while Copper began the injection treatment. The dog was not anxious to cooperate. The needle was painful, and already he’d experienced considerable needle work that morning. Five stitches held closed a slash that ran from his shoulder across the ribs half way down his body. One long fang was broken off short; the missing part was to be found half-buried in the shoulder bone of the monstrous thing on the table in the Ad Building.

“How long will that take?” Garry asked, pressing his arm gently. It was sore from the prick of the needle Dr. Copper had used to withdraw blood.

Copper shrugged. “I don’t know, to be frank. I know the general method. I’ve used it on rabbits, but I haven’t experimented with dogs. They’re big, clumsy animals to work with; naturally, rabbits are preferable. In civilized places you can buy a stock of human-immune rabbits from suppliers, and not many investigators take the trouble to prepare their own.”

“What do they want with them back there?” Clark asked.

“Criminology is one large field. A says he didn’t murder B, but that the blood on his shirt came from killing a chicken. The State makes a test, then it’s up to A to explain how it is the blood reacts on human-immune rabbits, but not on chicken-immunes.”

“What are we going to do with Blair in the meantime?” Garry asked wearily. “Its all right to let him sleep where he is for a while, but when he wakes up—”

“Barclay and Benning are fitting some bolts on the door of Cosmos House,” Copper replied grimly. “Connantʼs acting like a gentleman. I think perhaps the way the other men look at him makes him rather want privacy. God knows heretofore we’ve all of us individually prayed for a little privacy.”

Clark laughed brittlely. “Not any more, thank you. The more the merrier.”

“Blair,” Copper went on, “will also have to have privacy—and locks. He’s going to have a pretty definite plan in mind when he wakes up. Ever hear the old story of how to stop hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle?”

Clark and Garry shook their heads silently.

“If there isn’t any hoof-and-mouth disease, there won’t be any hoof-and-mouth disease,” Copper explained. “You get rid of it by killing every animal that exhibits it, and every animal that’s been near a diseased animal. Blair’s a biologist and knows that story. He’s afraid of this Thing we loosed. The answer is probably pretty clear in his mind now. Kill everybody and everything in this camp before a skua-gull or a wandering albatross chances out this way and—catches the disease.”

Clark’s lips curled in a twisted grin. “Sounds logical to me. If things get too bad—maybe we’d better let Blair get loose. It would save us committing suicide. We might also make something of a vow that if things get bad, we see that that does happen.”

Copper laughed softly. “The last man alive in Big Magnet—wouldn’t be a man,” he pointed out. “Somebody’s got to kill those—creatures that don’t desire to kill themselves, you know. We don’t have enough thermite to do it all at once, and the decanite explosive wouldn’t help much. I have an idea that even small pieces of one of those beings would be self-sufficient.”

“If,” said Garry thoughtfully, “they can modify their protoplasm at will, won’t they simply modify themselves to birds and fly away? They can read all about birds and imitate their structure without even meeting them. Or imitate, perhaps, birds of their home planet.”

Copper shook his head and helped Clark to free the dog. “Men studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick. His final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods. Knowing the general idea, and knowing the detailed structure of wing and bone and nerve-tissue, is something far, far different. And as for other-world birds, perhaps, in fact very probably, the atmospheric conditions here are so vastly different that their birds couldn’t fly. Perhaps, even, the being came from a planet like Mars with such a thin atmosphere that there were no birds.”

Barclay came into the building, trailing a length of airplane control cable. “It’s finished, Doc. Cosmos House can’t be opened from the inside. Now where do we put Blair?”

Copper looked toward Garry. “There isn’t any biology building. I don’t know where we can isolate him.”

“How about East Cache?” Garry said after a moment’s thought. “Will Blair be able to look after himself—or need attention?”

“He’ll be capable enough. We’ll be the ones to watch out,” Copper assured him grimly. “Take a stove, a couple bags of coal—necessary supplies and a few tools to fix it up. Nobody’s been out there since last fall, have they?”

Garry shook his head. “If he gets noisy—I thought that might be a good idea.”

Barclay hefted the tools he was carrying and looked up at Garry. “If the muttering he’s doing now is any sign, he’s going to sing away the night hours. And we won’t like his song.”

“What’s he saying?” Copper asked.

Barclay shook his head. “I didn’t care to listen much. You can if you want to. But I gather the blasted idiot had all the dreams McReady had, plus a few more. He slept beside the Thing when we stopped on the trail coming in from Secondary Magnetic, remember. He dreamt the Thing was alive, and dreamt more details. And—damn his soul—he knew it wasn’t all dream, or had reason to. He knew it had telepathic powers that were stirring vaguely, and that it could not only read minds, but project thoughts. They weren’t dreams, you see, they were stray thoughts that Thing was broadcasting, the way Blair’s broadcasting his thoughts now; a sort of telepathic muttering in its sleep. That’s why he knew so much about its powers. I guess you and I, Doc, weren’t so sensitive—if you want to believe in telepathy.”

“I have to.” Copper sighed. “Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists, shown that some are much more sensitive than others.”

“Well, if you want to learn a lot of details, go listen in on Blair’s broadcast. He’s driven most of the boys out of the Ad Building. Kinner’s rattling pans like coal going down a shoot. When he can’t rattle a pan, he shakes ashes.

“By the way, Commander, what are we going to do in the spring, now the planes are out of it?”

Garry sighed. “I’m afraid our expedition is going to be a loss. We cannot divide our strength now.”

“It won’t be a loss—if we continue to live and come out of this,” Copper promised him. “The find we’ve made, if we can get it under control, is important enough. The cosmic ray data, magnetic work, and atmospheric work won’t be greatly hindered.”

Garry laughed mirthlessly. “I was just thinking of the radio broadcasts. Telling half the world about the wonderful results of our exploration flights, trying to fool men like Byrd and Ellsworth back home there that we’re doing something.”

Copper nodded gravely. “They’ll know something’s wrong. But men like that have judgment enough to know we wouldn’t do tricks without some sort of reason, and they will wait for our return to judge us. I think it comes to this; men who know enough to recognize our deception will wait for our return. Men who haven’t discretion and faith enough to wait will not have the experience to detect any fraud. We know enough of the conditions here to put through a good bluff.”

“Just so they don’t send ‘rescue’ expeditions,” Garry prayed. “When—if—we’re ever ready to come out, we’ll have to send word to Captain Forsythe to bring a stock of magnetos with him when he comes down. But—never mind that.”