Джон Кэмпбелл - Frozen Hell

McReady picked a barbiturate hopefully. Barclay and Van Wall went with him; one man never went anywhere alone in Big Magnet.

Rawsen had his sledge put away, and the physicists had moved off the table, the poker game broken up when they got back. Dwight was putting out the food. The click of spoons and the muffled sounds of eating were the only sign of life in the room. There were no words spoken as the three returned; simply all eyes focussed on them questioningly, while the jaws moved methodically.

McReady stiffened suddenly, Kinner was screeching out a hymn in a hoarse, cracked voice. He looked wearily at Van Wall with a twisted grin and shook his head. “Hu-uh.”

Van Wall cursed bitterly, and sat down at the table. “We’ll just plumb have to take that ’til his voice wears out. He can’t yell like that forever.”

“He’s got a brass throat and a cast-iron larynx,” Dutton declared. “Then we could be hopeful, and suggest he’s one of our friends. On that case he could go on renewing his throat ’til doomsday.”

Silence clamped down. For twenty minutes they ate without a word. Then Connant jumped up with an angry violence. “You sit as still as a bunch of graven images. You, don’t say a word, but oh Christ, what expressive eyes you’ve got. They roll around like a bunch of glass marbles spilling down a table. They wink and link and stare—and whisper things. Can you guys look somewhere else for a change, please?”

“Listen, Van, you’re in change here. Let’s run movies for the rest of the night. We’ve been saving those reels to make ’em last. Last for what? Who is it’s going to see those last reels, eh? Let’s see ’em while we can, and look at something other than each other.”

“Sound idea, Connant. I, for one, am quite willing to change things in any way I can.”

“Turn the sound up loud, Dutton. Maybe you can drown out the hymns.” Dwight suggested.

“But don’t,” Powell said softly,” don’t turn off the lights all together.”

“The lights will be out,” snapped Van Wall. “We’ll show all the cartoon movies we have. You won’t mind seeing the old cartoons will you?”

“Goody, goody—a ‘moving pitcher’ show. I’m just in the mood.” Van Wall turned to look at the speaker, a lean, lanky New Englander, by the name of Caldwell. Caldwell was stuffing his pipe slowly, a sour eye cocked up to Van Wall.

The commander was forced to laugh. “O.K., Bart, you win. Maybe we aren’t quite in the mood for Popeye and trick ducks, but its something.”

“Let’s play Classifications,” Caldwell suggested slowly, “or maybe you call it Guggenheim. You draw lines on a piece of paper, and put down classes of things—like animals you know—one for “Hˮ and one for “Uˮ and so on. Like “Humanˮ and “unknownˮ for instance. I think that would be a hell of a lot better game. Classification, I sort of figure, is what we need right now a lot more than movies. Maybe somebody’s got a pencil that we can draw lines with, draw lines between the ‘U’ animals and the ‘H’ animals for instance.”

“McReady’s trying to find that kind of a pencil,ˮ Van Wall answered quietly, “but we’ve got three kinds of animals here, you know. One that begins with “M’. We don’t want any more.”

“Mad ones, you mean. Uh-huh. Dwight, I’ll help you with those pots so we can get our little peep-show going.” Caldwell got up slowly.

Dutton and Barclay and Benning, in charge of the projector and sound mechanism arrangements went about their job silently, while the Ad Building was cleared and the dishes and pans disposed of. McReady drifted over toward Van Wall slowly, and leaned back in the bunk beside him. “I’ve been wondering, Van,ˮ he said with a wry grin, “whether or not to report my ideas in advance. I forgot the ‘U animals’ as Caldwell named it, could read minds. I’ve a vague idea of something that might work. It’s too vague to bother with though. Go ahead with your show, while I try to figure out the logic of the thing. I’ll take this bunk.”

Van Wall glanced up and nodded. The movie screen would be practically on a line with this bunk, hence making the pictures least distracting here, because least intelligible. “Perhaps you should tell us what you have in mind. As it is, only the unknowns know what you plan. You might be—unknown before you got it into operation.”

“Won’t take long, if I get it figured out right. But I don’t want any more all-but-the-test-dog-monsters things. We better move Copper into this bunk directly above me. He won’t be watching the screen either.” McReady nodded toward Copper’s gently snoring bulk. Garry helped them lift and move the doctor.

McReady leaned back against the bunk, and sank into a trance, almost, of concentration, trying to calculate chances, operations, methods. He was scarcely aware as the others distributed themselves silently, and the screen lit up. Vaguely Kinner’s hectic, shouted prayers and his rasping hymn-singing annoyed him until the sound accompaniment started. The lights were turned out, but the large, light-colored areas of the screen reflected enough light for ready visibility. It made men’s eyes sparkle as they moved restlessly. Kinner was still praying, shouting, his voice a raucous accompaniment to the mechanical sound. Dutton stepped up the amplification.

So long had the voice been going on, that only vaguely at first was McReady aware that something seemed missing. Lying as he was, just across the narrow room from the corridor leading to Cosmos House, Kinner’s voice had reached him fairly clearly, despite the sound accompaniment of the pictures. It struck him abruptly that it had stopped.

“Dutton, cut that sound.” McReady called as he sat up abruptly. The pictures flickered a moment, soundless and strangely futile in the sudden deep silence. The rising wind on the surface above bubbled melancholy tears of sound down the stove pipes. “Kinner’s stopped.” Mcready said softly.

“For God’s sake start that sound then; he may have stopped to listen.” Powell snapped.

McReady rose and went down the corridor. Barclay, and Van Wall left their places at the far end of the room to follow him. The flickers bulged and twisted on the back of Barclay’s grey underwear as he crossed the still-functioning beam of the projector. Dutton snapped on the lights, and the pictures vanished.

Powell stood at the door as Van Wall had asked him to. Garry sat quietly in the bunk nearest the door, forcing Dwight to make room for him. Most of the others had stayed exactly where they were. Only Connant walked slowly up and down the room, in steady, unvarying rhythm.

“If you’re going to do that, Connant,” Dwight spat, ”we can get along without you altogether, whether you’re human or not. Will you stop that damned rhythm?”

“Sorry,” The physicist sat down in a bunk, and watched his toes thoughtfully. It was almost five minutes, five ages while the wind made the only sound, before McReady appeared at the door again.

“We,” he announced, ”haven’t enough grief here already. Somebody’s tried to help us out. Kinner has a knife in his throat, which was why he stopped singing, probably. We’ve got monsters, madmen and murderers. Any more ‘M’s you can think of Caldwell? If there are, we’ll probably have ’em before long.”

“Is Blair loose?” someone asked.

“Blair is not loose—or he flew in. If there’s any doubt about where our gentle helper came from—this may clear it up.” McReady held a foot-long, thin-bladed knife in a cloth. The wooden handle was half-burnt, charred with the peculiar pattern of the top of the galley stove.

Dwight stared at it. “I did that this afternoon. I forgot the damn thing and left it on the stove—”