Warren Murphy: The Wrong Stuff

He didn't wait for a reply.

The door had already slammed shut by the time Pete Graham offered a weak "Clear, sir."

Alone, Graham exhaled.

He hated the relief he felt whenever Zipp Codwin left the room. At least he wasn't alone in the feeling. The colonel inspired the same level of fear in everyone at NASA.

As his nervous sweat began to evaporate, Graham walked over to the immobile probe. He had just retrieved his laptop from a chair next to Virgil when the lab door creaked open cautiously.

Hoping Zipp Codwin hadn't returned, Graham glanced anxiously to the door.

Clark Beemer's worried face jutted into the room. "Is the coast clear?" the PR man asked.

Sighing again, Graham only nodded. He took his seat as Beemer scurried inside.

"Ol' Zipper reamed you out, huh?" Beemer said as he shut the door behind him. "I figured you'd get off okay. At least you brought it back in one piece. Not like the Mars Climate Orbiter. Twenty-three directors lost their jobs after that fiasco."

"I'm working here, Beemer," Graham said tightly. His laptop balanced on his knees, he was entering commands into Virgil's systems. At least, he was trying to. Every time he thought he was in, the system unexpectedly dumped him out. It was like playing a game of computer chess where every move was countered perfectly.

"I'm working, too," Beemer insisted. "Unglamorous as it is, I'm the one who has to sell this thing. I wish you told me it talked. I can work with that somehow."

"It doesn't talk, Beemer," Graham insisted.

This had been going on since Mexico. The entire plane ride home Clark Beemer had insisted that Virgil had spoken to him when he first discovered the probe next to the command trailer. When pressed, Beemer wasn't exactly sure what it was the probe had said.

"I know what I heard," the PR man insisted. His brow clouded. "At least, I think I know what I heard. It didn't make much sense. Something about wishing how it could offer me a drink but that we were on a volcano and there aren't any liquor faucets on volcanos."

"Idiot," Graham muttered.

Beemer's face fouled. "Hey, this isn't about me," he snapped. "You're the one who built this mess." He crossed his arms defiantly. For a few minutes he remained silent as Graham worked.

Pete Graham continued to be frustrated by every attempt to access Virgil's systems.

"Dammit," he growled after his latest attempt failed.

"Say, Pete?" Beemer asked abruptly. "Yeah?"

"Back in Mexico..." Beemer hesitated.

"What?" Graham said, only half listening. He was attempting to reinstall Virgil's start-up routines.

"In the volcano," Beemer continued. "You know that thing you had it looking at? The shiny thing buried in the rock?" He stopped again, not wanting to sound crazy. "Well, you were looking at the monitor," he blurted. "Did you see anything weird?"

Graham glanced up. "Like what?"

Clark Beemer didn't want to have to say it. Ever since he'd first come to work PR at NASA and made the mistake of asking if he'd have the opportunity to meet an actual Klingon, he had been guarded with his questions.

"Promise you won't laugh?" Beemer asked.

Graham exhaled. "Yeah, Beemer, I promise."

Clark Beemer smiled nervously. "Well, when the camera was looking right smack-dab at that thing," he began, "it looked like-like it moved."

Graham stopped working. With great slowness he put down his laptop.

"Moved how?" he asked. And this time there was genuine interest.

Beemer was warming nervously to his subject. "First, it looked like the whole thing was sort of shimmering. Like when you pet a dog that's got an itch? You know how the whole back muscle sort of moves? That's what it looked like to me. Then just before the video signal cut out, I swore I saw the shell of the thing crack open."

Pete Graham didn't speak. He just sat there, silently contemplating Clark Beemer's words.

The scientist would have pointed out that this notion was as ridiculous as Beemer's insistence a month ago that he'd found a piece of red kryptonite in his flower garden, but for one simple fact. Graham had seen the same thing.

When they'd arrived back in Florida, the scientist had gone over the last seconds of digital images collected from the Virgil probe before it had blacked out.

He saw the shining silver orb buried in the solidified magma. And for a few seconds, it did appear to ripple. But that could have been a reflection from Virgil or even from a pool of molten lava. And, yes, at the very last instant it did seem to split apart. But happening as it did at the instant the probe had apparently begun to malfunction, it could have been some sort of anomalous static pop from the feed.

The image wasn't clear enough to enhance and it didn't really seem to matter much, since Virgil had somehow found its way home. Pete Graham had chalked it all up to ghosts and glitches and put the matter out of his mind.

Now that Beemer had brought it up, Graham felt a pang of uncertainty in his gut. Still, he was loath to agree with this nonscientist public-relations simpleton.

"Just an optical illusion," Graham dismissed uncomfortably. He returned to his laptop.

"You seem pretty sure for a guy who doesn't even know his own probe can talk."

"For the last time, Beemer, it does not talk," he snapped.

"Oh, yeah? Well, if it doesn't talk, then why does it have a mouth?"

When Graham looked up, his eyes were instantly drawn to the front of the probe. Just beneath the stationary eye of the top microcamera a hole had been punched in the heat-resistant plate. Beemer was pointing at it.

Graham almost knocked over his chair, so quickly did he clamber to his feet. "What did you do to him?" he snarled, bounding to the side of the probe.

The hole was only an inch and a half high and two inches wide. The metal around the edges seemed to puff out, forming a pair of crude metallic lips.

"I didn't do anything," Beemer insisted.

"Damn you, Beemer, do you have any idea what this is gonna cost me? A software glitch can be fixed like nothing, but these plates have to be manufactured individually."

"I didn't do it, I swear," Beemer said, his voice growing troubled. "I just noticed it there." Ordinarily, Pete Graham wouldn't have believed Beemer in a million years. However, something odd suddenly happened. When he glanced back at the probe, the metal mouth was closed.

"What the hell?" Graham asked.

Stepping closer, he peered at the spot where the opening had been. It was now a flat line. The lip buds were still visible. Soft ridges in an otherwise smooth surface. And as Pete Graham watched in growing astonishment, the mouth creaked open once more. Graham jumped back.

Until now Clark Beemer had assumed that everyone but him knew about the voice. He figured, as usual, that he was the butt of some geek joke. Sensing now that something was indeed wrong, he ducked behind Graham, grabbing the scientist's arm.

"What is it?" he asked fearfully.

"I don't know," Graham shot back.

His eyes were wide as he watched the artificial mouth open and close.

It was the most surreal moment of Pete Graham's young life. The newly formed mouth was testing, trying to work out kinks. It squeaked as it flexed.

His eyes wide, Beemer's fingers digging into his bicep, Graham couldn't help but think of the rusted-shut Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The scientist couldn't think, couldn't run. He dared not even breathe.

A pained groan that sounded like a piece of metal being torn apart rose up from the dark depths of the orifice.

And the voice that had expressed regret for an inability to offer Clark Beemer a drink at the base of Popocatepetl rose once more from the mechanical throat. And it said, "Hello is all right."

And when the impossible words issued from the cold, cybernetic belly of the probe he had built, Pete Graham's thudding heart froze in his chest.