The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 274
BUT IN the deeper recesses of his brain, in the levels of mind which operated on hunches and guess-work and insufficient data, McCullough refused to be reassured or even comforted. To the contrary his fear mounted steadily with every hour which passed. And when Walters's voice sounded suddenly in his phones he started so violently that he almost lost his camera.
"Sir!" said the pilot. "Drew reports activity in the corridor outside his position. Five Type Twos along the corridor in the direction of your blister. He had the lock chamber lights switched on and saw them clearly, though they didn't see him"
"Everybody out!" said the colonel. "Hurry it up! We'll go back the way we came, avoiding the corridor. I ... I don't think we should attempt a formal contact just yet ..."
"He also says there is something like a Type One in the inter-hull space, clinging to the netting."
"We'll ignore it," said Morrison, "and hope it does the same. Hollis, move!"
They went through the blister lock and along the net, with Morrison leading, Hollis and McCullough facing each other on opposite sides of the netting and Berryman bringing up the rear. They pulled themselves hand over hand towards Drew and the opened lock chamber while their eyes searched the dark spaces between the cabinets and masses of plumbing on all sides of them.
"Doctor!"
Morrison's spotlight had picked out a small, bristling alien, something like a Siamese twin porcupine, which was flip-flopping along the net away from them. McCullough still could not see what it used for hands.
"Got it," he said, replacing his camera and hurrying on.
Drew had taken up a classic defensive position outside the open door, crouching with one leg hooked into the net to steady himself. The shaft of his ski-stick was wedged against the wall plating with the business end pointing back the way they had come. A little self-consciously Morrison took up a similar position on the other side of the opening and waved the others through.
McCullough entered first, then Hollis. They turned to assist Berryman then and had a hand under each armpit when it happened.
His radio went into a howl of oscillation as four voices tried to use it at the same time, and McCullough saw aliens swarming towards them out of the dark spaces between the supposedly solid masses of equipment. Morrison and Drew he could not see at all. The colonel had lost his spotlight, and Berryman was being pulled away from them.
One of the aliens had anchored itself to the combing with two of its tentacles while the other two were wrapped around the pilot's feet. Another e-t had swarmed onto his back, its sting jabbing furiously—McCullough could hear it clanking against Berry man's air tanks. He knew that it had only to shift its position by a few inches for the pilot to be very horribly dead.
Chapter Eleven
FOR SEVERAL seconds McCullough could do nothing except stare in fascination at the colonel's spotlight as it was sent spinning to and fro by the struggling, colliding bodies around the entrance. Lit by that wildly rotating beam, the scene took on the flickering, unreal quality of an old-time silent film. The spotlight was blinding and confusing the men as much as the aliens, because it was some time before McCullough realized that Berryman had freed one foot and was using it to kick at the tentacle holding the other—he had been viewing the operation as a series of disconnected stills.
Hollis was mouthing at him—the suit radio still emitted a constant howl of oscillation because too many people were trying to use it at the same time—and pointing at the wall net. The physicist was on his knees beside the sliding door and had worked his feet and lower legs between the net and the wall. McCullough got the idea and did the same, and together they took a firm, two-handed grip on each of Berryman's arms and pulled hard.
Berryman came free of the first alien so suddenly that his visor cracked against the edge of the opening, and the force of the pull sent him shooting past so quickly that they had to grab his feet. The second alien was still clinging to his back, still stabbing at his air tanks.
A pair of legs were coming through the opening. McCullough gave one of them a tug to help whoever it was on their way. There were long tears in the fabric covering one leg, and blood was oozing out of one of them.
The constant howling made it difficult to think.
They pulled Berryman down between them, hooked his legs into the netting, then concentrated their efforts on the alien clinging to his back. Its tentacles were still wrapped tightly around the pilot's chest, and Hollis pushed the butt of a ski-stick between the alien's underbelly and Berryman's back and tried to lever it away. The alien jerked violently—he must have prodded a sensitive area—but did not let go. Then McCullough discovered the answer. If they reached under Berryman's chest and gripped the tentacles by their tips they could be peeled back relatively easily.
There was a muffled clang. McCullough looked round quickly and saw that everyone was inside. Drew was slotting his weapon into the piping which ran along both sides of the sliding door and through the ring handle so as to form a bar. Possibly the aliens could open it, but not without tearing out a chunk of their hydraulic system.
The howling in his earphones was beginning to break into fragments of words and sentences.
"... My suit's torn. I'm losing air ... Get it off me! Get it off ... Shut up, all of you, and ... Stop it wriggling or it will stab ... My leg, dammit, where's the doctor? Off your radio and open your visors ... Quiet, and open your helmets ...!"
McCullough kept quiet as ordered, realizing suddenly that he himself had been contributing as much as everyone else to the uproar. But he did not open his visors because his hands were full of alien tentacles.
For the few minutes it took to pull the twisting, heaving body off Berryman's back, McCullough had a really close look at the alien. There was a shallow recess between the roots of its tentacles, set so low as to be almost on the edge of its underbelly, and in it there was the soft, wet gleam of something which could only be an eye. The opening and closing mechanism seemed to be a double-lid arrangement operating vertically rather than horizontally and the eye was quite definitely looking at him. The ends of its tentacles quivered as they tried to pull away, and for some odd reason McCullough was reminded of the big, stupid, friendly dog he had had once and of the time he had tried to teach it to shake hands.
But this creature certainly was not friendly—at least, not as human beings understood the word—and neither was it stupid. Unless ...
He was unable to finish the thought because Berryman had wriggled from beneath the alien and the creature was bouncing up and down between them as it tried furiously to curl and then uncurl its tentacles. Berryman snatched a weapon which was floating nearby and slid it under the being. He pushed it away as Hollis and McCullough let go, and the alien went spinning helplessly into the center of the chamber.
"But I wanted to put it with its friends in the corridor," said Hollis when he had his visor open. "In here, outnumbered five to one, it might panic and injure itself—"
"Are you sure this air is breathable?" Berryman broke in, speaking through his smashed visor. There was a long incised wound across his nose and one cheek.
"Doctor," said the colonel. "Have a look at Drew's leg. And my shoulder ...."
"Hollis! Behind you!"
THE ALIEN had made contact with the wall net, steadied itself and then launched itself furiously towards the physicist. Berryman got his ski-stick up in time and the alien struck it squarely but did not stop. The butt of the weapon was driven back against the wall, but still the being did not stop. The metal collar piece holding the plate which kept the tip of the weapon from penetrating more than half an inch slipped backward along the shaft. The point, with the alien's considerable velocity and inertia thrown against it, drove into its body until stopped by the interior of its carapace.
It began to slap the shaft of the weapon with its tentacles, violently at first, then more slowly. Suddenly its tentacles tried to tie themselves in knots and it became completely still.
McCullough launched himself towards the alien, knowing that he was in no danger from it now. He gripped one tentacle where it joined the body and gently withdrew the ski-stick.
This was much worse than a little property damage or trespass. Much, much worse.
For a long time nobody spoke. McCullough looked slowly around at the other four men, trying desperately not to think. The spacesuits of Morrison, Drew and Berryman were torn or otherwise rendered useless. The colonel and Drew were injured, perhaps seriously. And, as an added complication, their wounds might well become infected with alien micro-organisms—an infection against which their bodies could have no defence. In any case they should be moved out of this place, and quickly. But there were only two useable spacesuits, the physicist's and his own. Hollis's would fit only Hollis. McCullough's might, at a pinch, fit Drew but nobody else. He was afraid to consider all the implications—they were too terrible. But more than anything he did not want to think about the contorted alien shape he was holding and the frightful things which must surely happen as a result of its death.
"Doctor," said the colonel in a voice harsh with pain, "you're supposed to know how to treat human beings. Leave that thing alone, it's dead anyway."
He was glad to be able to give his undivided attention to the injured, but somehow the alien cadaver seemed always to be in sight whenever he looked up from a patient, and it became more and more difficult not to think about it. The blood of both species was the same color, a fact which should not have surprised him considering their closely similar atmospheric requirements, and the droplets filled the compartment like dark, frozen rain. The absence of gravity, as well as making it difficult to control bleeding, made it completely impossible to deal quickly with even a simple wound.
Even with the patients cooperating by lacing their arms or feet into the wall netting, and Hollis doing his best to hold McCullough in positions while he treated them, it took a long time.
Morrison was in bad shape. An alien had tried to fasten itself onto his head and chest, but the colonel had been able to interpose his elbow just in time. His forearm was a little longer than the full extension of the alien's horn, so that while his helmet had been hammered into so much scrap metal and his shoulder and upper arm were a mass of punctured and incised wounds, he had escaped with his life. Drew, apparently, had discarded his ski-stick in favor of his feet, and one leg had suffered in consequence, although the injuries were much lighter than the colonel's. Berryman had a badly lacerated face, caused by running it against the edge of his broken visor.
But it was the spacesuits which had suffered worst of all, first from the attacks of the aliens and now at the hands of McCullough.
Cutting and extending the tears in the fabric of the suits, pulling back the plastic and metal foil and the tubing of the air-conditioning systems, affected him much more deeply at times than probing and cleaning the wounds. If they were not already fatally infected the wounds would heal—the human body was self-repairing to a fantastic degree. But increasing the damage to a suit which was not reparable was to inflict a wound of a much more serious nature. In space the suit was much more than a protective skin. Walters, who was in a position to know, had insisted that it was analogous to both womb and placenta and that losing it prematurely could give rise to a really drastic form of birth trauma.
The thought of being without his own suit in this place was enough to drive McCullough to the edge of panic, and he hated to think of how the others would feel when the shock of their injuries wore off and they realized the full extent of what had happened to them.
HIS THOUGHTS had taken a Freudian and definitely morbid turn by the time he had finished with them. He found himself staring at the dead body of the Two and wondering if any of them would see home again.
The colonel spoke suddenly. His voice sounded very weak, and either he was not using his suit radio or the Two's horn had wrecked it. He said, "You will have to report our ... our predicament, Doctor. And tell Walters to send the technical material and photographs at the same time. Hollis will have to help you with this—he is the only one of us capable of understanding what he saw in the blister and passing it on. When all this has been done you will maintain continuous radio contact with us until something has been worked out.
"We will have to move into the corridor while you are leaving," Morrison ended, launching himself slowly towards the inner seal, "so don't waste time."
"It might be better if I stayed," said McCullough awkwardly. "None of you are completely fit, and if they attacked again while you were in the corridor ..."
"I can't risk losing another space-suit," said the colonel as he checked his slow flight with his feet and good arm. "Drew will organize our defenses. He's very good at that sort of thing."
"And the first thing we do," said Drew savagely, "is take the guards off these stickers! Anything that comes at us again will get six or eight inches of metal in its guts instead of a harmless little jab. Cold steel has a very demoralizing effect on human beings—that's why bayonet charges have retained their popularity through the ages—and maybe—"
"No!" McCullough protested. "We've killed one of them already—by accident, of course—and we can't even imagine the trouble that will cause. But if we start killing them deliberately ... I mean, we must all think very carefully about this before we make another move which might be misunderstood."
"And I think we've been thinking too much!" Drew said, his voice rising almost to a shout. More quietly he went on, "If a person acts like a wild animal then that is how he should be treated! And I think we should dump that ... that carcass. The damn thing gives me the creeps!"
"While quietly bleeding to death," said Berryman hastily, in an obvious attempt to restore peace, "I have given serious thought to this problem. It seems to me that there are just three things we can do. The first is to return the body to its friends by leaving it in the corridor—a course which might very well anger them even more. The same applies if we keep it in here where they may be able to see it through the lock window. Or lastly, we can hide it from them, with little probability of them ever finding it, by having the doctor and Hollis take it away.
"I favor the last alternative," Berryman concluded, "because, while the aliens may feel fairly certain that it is dead, they cannot be absolutely sure of this—they may assume, or hope, that their friend is a prisoner. If they do not actually see the dead body there might be enough doubt in their minds to make them proceed more cautiously against us."
"My thinking exactly," said the colonel. "Take it to P-Two, Doctor, and find out what makes it tick."
"You have to know your enemy," said Drew viciously, "inside and out."
"Surely you are not suggesting ..." began McCullough aghast, then stopped. He was trying hard to think as they must be thinking. He had not had his arm and shoulder gored by an alien's horn or had his leg torn by alien claws. He was not aware, not as personally and subjectively aware as they were, that his space-suit was useless, with everything which that fact implied. McCullough's skin, and his even more precious spacesuit, was still in one piece. He had been exposed to, but had not suffered, violence.
But violence was a chain reaction with a positive K-factor. Once begun it quickly became self-sustaining. From the outset it had been the aliens who had acted violently, or reacted violently, towards the humans. Now the situation had deteriorated to the point where it was becoming uncontrollable because both sides were using violence.
If the aliens reacted violently to the venial sin of trespass, how might they react to one of their people being murdered and dissected?
Chapter Twelve
IN THE general confusion of the past few hours McCullough had forgotten one very important fact, and that was the effect of explosive decompression on an unprotected human or unhuman body. As soon as it was exposed to space the soft, almost flat underside of the e-t swelled like a great, lumpy football and burst wetly. Nothing he could have done in the way of a post mortem could have made the alien look worse than it did just then, and by the time he reached P-Two with it he was looking forward to investigating this completely strange life-form.
But there were more urgent matters to be attended to first.
It was not until they had processed the film, and the pictures taken in the blister were on their way pulse by pulse to Earth, that they were able to fully satisfy Walters's curiosity about the fight in the ship. And then it was only by having him listen while McCullough made his report to Prometheus Control. The physicist, meanwhile, had returned to the Ship with a supply of food and water for Morrison and the others.
Before leaving, Hollis reminded them that the water he was taking would be permanently lost to them, for without the P-Ship's reclamation system there was no chance of them being able to use it again. He apologized for mentioning this fact but thought that somebody should bear it in mind in case they were contemplating a lengthy stay.
McCullough agreed and added yet another unpleasant datum to his report.
"... That is the situation in detail," McCullough said a few minutes later. "Our most urgent need is for spacesuits to evacuate the injured men, or if they cannot be evacuated, food and water to extend our staying time on the Ship until evacuation is possible. There is also the possibility that their wounds may become infected with alien bacteria, against which their bodies may have no defense, and they will die. However, it seems to me that the chances are about even of the alien pathogens running rampant throughout their systems and killing them in a matter of hours or alternately, of them having no effect whatsoever because the human body is too strange and alien an environment for the e-t pathogens to survive in it. There is also the possibility that our antibiotics will be as effective against e-t infections as they are against—"
"Brady here," a voice from Control broke in. It was a gruff, impatient yet concerned voice belonging to the person on whose shoulders the responsibility for the Prometheus Project and the combined weight of eight stars did not rest lightly. It went on, "You are in a mess, Doctor, I agree. Have you considered moving one of the P-ships into the lock, taking the men on board in shirt-sleeve conditions, leaving one man with a suit to operate the lock mechanism?"
