For a time thereafter, Norm was alone in the control room while Captain Egard and Frontain were making the injured man comfortable in his bunk amidship.
McDill was again outside. Presently his voice sounded in Norm’s phone: “Kid—you don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Where you going?” asked Norm, for the direction finder certainly did not indicate that the engineer was following Egard’s orders.
“Back where Perrin took that fall,” said McDill. “I got a hunch that it’s a likely place to look.”
“Griffin and Hall aren’t over there.”
“I know, but they’re finding no nuggets. Why should I tag along with them ? We’ve got to spread out.”
The other searchers seemed to be of this opinion also. They were now rather widely dispersed over the rugged area surrounding the Pegasus; Rives and Talbot were perhaps two miles from the ship, Hall and Griffin nearly as far away. But the impetuous McDill was choosing a course which lay on the opposite side of the ship, far from any of the others.
Norm stretched his cramped legs under the microwave panel. He longed to take a more active part in things. Presently he threw the switch over to Griffin and Hall. They had nothing to report; neither had Rives and Talbot. The latter two were still disagreeing monotonously about the surrounding scenery in whole and in part, occasionally reverting to the earlier dispute concerning frost mounds and to the exact meaning of the word “snow.”
Twenty minutes passed.
“McDill, how are you making out?” asked Norm for the tenth time.
“Stop worrying about me!” bawled McDill desperately. Then in a milder tone he confided, “Listen, kid—just between you and me—I think I’m finding something.”
At this moment Captain Egard returned to the control room. The general enthusiasm following the discovery of that first nugget had by this time cooled. Egard’s face looked tired and drawn as he received Norm’s report.
“Did McDill join up with Griffin and Hall?” he demanded.
“Well . . . er . . . no,” confessed Norm. “He’s over there where Perrin met with his accident.”
Egard snatched up the auxiliary headset.
“McDill, you crazy fool!” he roared into the transmitter. “McDill— McDill-”
There was no reply.
“Norm, why doesn’t he answer?” demanded Egard sharply.
Norm shook his head. “He was on only a moment ago.”
Egard’s hand flipped over the control switches. “Rives, Talbot! And you, Griffin and Hall—start back on the jump! McDill’s silent; something may be wrong. You’re too far away to help immediately, so I’m sending Norm—”
Norm snatched off his own headset. At last he was to engage in a little action—personally!
“Use Perrin’s oxygen suit,” directed Captain Egard. “You know where to go—or I hope you do! I’ll take your place here. Now get a move on, my lad—but watch yourself!”
~ * ~
So Eric Norm went into action. With Dr. Frontain’s help he thrust his lean body into Perrin’s oxygen suit—which was the only one quickly available—clamped the glassoplast hood down over his head, and adjusted the flow of oxygen.
The Pegasus’ airlocks were almost automatic in action. Less than five minutes after the initial alarm Norm was outside the ship, surrounded by the life-infested atmosphere of Dione.
With long strides he started out across that rough basin in the direction he knew McDill had taken. Over him the tiny, brilliant disk of the Sun gleamed coldly down, its slow advance across the blue-black sky almost imperceptible.
A green burr circled close to Norm in the thin air. Then another, and another. Some were large. Talbot’s simile, suggesting their resemblance to chestnut burrs, seemed very apt. Parasitic life, evolved through some strange symbiosis of plant and animal to resist the rigors of existence on this inhospitable moon. Was the captain right in thinking these burrs were its only manifestation?
And what was now happening to McDill? His sudden silence, through ominous, might have a simple explanation. Microwaves were very beamlike in action. If he had entered some pocket or cavern surrounded by metallic rocks—
Norm raced down a declivity, leaped a rod-wide fissure. Then for the first time he noticed that his own communication unit was not functioning. Perrin’s fall, in this same suit, had evidently broken or displaced some essential part of the instrument!
Well, thought Norm, perhaps it wouldn’t make any difference. He could still go on, though his silence would probably add to the captain’s worries. No telling what McDill had gotten into, and a few minutes’ delay might spell the difference between life and death.
As he climbed the opposite slope a thin, bitterly cold wind whispered around him—quite audible through the direct-sound diaphragm in his hood. But the oxygen suit was especially designed to maintain an even temperature. He could still see the Pegasus, although it was now a good half mile distant. From this particular side of Dione, the ringed planet Saturn was never visible. For as Dione raced swiftly around the mother planet in an orbital period of only sixty-six hours, she kept always this desolate, mountain-rimmed depression facing outward toward the depths of space.
And now, with that almost black sky staring down at him, Norm experienced a sudden foreboding. This was new work, in which he had comparatively little practice. He paused for an instant to glance around. He must now be nearing the point from which McDill had last spoken. The sight was not reassuring. For behind him now trailed a swarm of green burrs.
The oxygen suit, inflated with a pressure considerably above that of Dione’s shallow atmosphere, kept these harbingers of death safely away from him; but now, during this brief pause, he could hear the tiny tapping sounds of them against his hood.
Eyes straining sharply ahead for a first glimpse of the engineer, Norm raced on again. The ground here was very broken and rocky, with large spaces clear of frost mounds. He began shouting—although fully aware that through this thin atmosphere a voice could not travel far from the diaphragm.
He had reached a point where, according to his best judgment, he should find McDill, when catastrophe overtook him. It came unexpectedly. There was a sudden, soft s-s-swooshing sound, followed by the immediate collapse of his oxygen suit!
With stunning clearness, Norm realized the cause. Perrin’s accidental fall in this same suit had done more than damage the communication unit. Some sharp point of rock must have scraped along the tough fabric, straining it almost to the point of rupture. For the suit had now split open in a foot-long gash across the shoulders.
Immediately succeeding that loss of pressure, Norm’s lungs began to work overtime in labored gasps as the unfamiliar scent of Dione’s thin, bitterly cold atmosphere entered his nostrils.
And tending to add a note of panic to this truly grim situation, that swarm of green burrs awoke into sudden, vicious activity. Here and there they darted around him like angry hornets. The sound as they struck his hood grew continuous—tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
Despair entered Norm’s heart. Nothing in his experience indicated what should be done in a crisis of this sort, but his alert mind groped for some saving expedient.
An answer came in the very nick of time. He jerked the valve of his oxygen tank wide open.
Again he could breathe—after a fashion. For even Dione’s shallow atmosphere offered a certain pressure, enough to inflate his lungs and keep the oxygen from dissipating immediately.
He stood there for a moment, trembling, exhausted.
Hope sprang up again as his lungs absorbed oxygen. His breathing became freer. He might possibly last long enough to return to the ship!
But what about McDill?
Norm groaned regretfully. Even Rives or Talbot would not be expected to carry on in the face of such disaster. He cast a last look around for the engineer. No human shape was visible. McDill would have to take his chances.
Gathering his feet together, Norm set off in a long l
eap for the Pegasus. Immediately, a stinging pain in the back of his neck diverted his attention, brought him tumbling in a heap against a mound of brittle ice crystals.
Dione, moon of delirium, was only just starting with him!
He endeavored to clap a hand to the source of the pain, swearing in a breathless mumble, “Damn green burr—got in through that hole.”
But encumbered as he was by the deflated suit, a moment passed while he struggled to reach the thing and tear it away.
Meanwhile, a purely local numbness, like that produced by the injection of cocaine, had succeeded that first agonizing twinge; and by the time Norm finally managed to touch the area in question, a lump the size of a walnut had puffed up there—a lump, and nothing more. The burr had drilled in, embedding itself in the flesh almost at the base of the brain.
And unknown to Norm, a tiny, filament-like rootlet had penetrated even deeper, contacting nerves of the spinal cord.
Norm struggled to his feet. Even slight exertion made him pant and gasp for more oxygen. Then he noticed that all those other greenish burrs had departed from him, as if—well, as if his fate had been squabbled over, decided, sealed.
And suddenly he noticed something else, an utterly strange, incomprehensible thing—he possessed a new sense!
A sixth sense—a sense in addition to sight and hearing and the other normal senses; an alien, unfamiliar sense, and with it he could now sense—life!
Life all around him—an awareness of life as a form of radiant energy. Life that he couldn’t see or hear—
“Lord,” he muttered, “it’s got me. I’m all—”
He was going to say “crazy,” but he didn’t actually feel crazy, merely unfamiliar with himself. He could sense life here and there around him, but more particularly he could sense something off to his right, something—a monstrous organism—that had its lair in a deep cleft in the rocks; something that was calling.
He realized that he was not himself mentally. No longer could he go on; no longer could he struggle to reach the Pegasus and thereby prolong his own life. His mind seemed to be divided against itself. Yet with every atom of his reason—his former self—he tried to fight against that compelling, insidious call.
“Food . . . food . . . food,” boomed that soundless voice from the rock cleft. “Food . . . come nearer . . . nearer.”
A strange rapture seized Eric Norm.
Food—that meant him! He was food. And this realization filled him with an elation that was pure madness. For suddenly it seemed that the entire purpose of his existence lay in the fulfillment of a certain obligation to that hidden monstrosity now calling him.
And yet his reasoning powers were apparently unimpaired. He realized that he had been trapped by one of the strange parasitic life forms of Dione. The thing on his neck was a decoy to beguile and delude him—sent out by that dreadful organism hiding in the rock cleft.
But he didn’t mind this delusion. No! Above all things he longed to answer that call.
Breathless, panting, he turned aside. How long would his oxygen hold out? He had only the vaguest idea. But long enough now, in all likelihood, for him to accomplish his new purpose.
The rock cleft lay only a short distance to his right. He staggered down a talus of frost-bound rocks, into the opening. Before him he could now see that it formed one of numerous entrances into a wide gully or ravine.
Suddenly his new sense told him that McDill was down there somewhere, although it didn’t seem to matter greatly. Against his reasoning self, he entered this ravine.
“Food . . . food . . . food!” With rising clearness radiated that thought-voice ahead of him, now almost shrieking its eager commands. “Nearer . . . nearer . . . nearer!”
This was the end, thought Eric Norm vaguely. The Pegasus would return to Earth without him. Perhaps no one would ever learn exactly what had happened to him here on this frightful moon of Saturn.
But all this was misty and unimportant.
Presently, as he staggered around a jagged block of rock which rose from the floor of the ravine, he saw his fate—a vividly green, star-shaped monstrosity! Twenty feet from tip to tip, its body bulged upward in the center to form a hideous mamelon of glaucous, glistening flesh on which emerald eyespots pulsed with rhythmic dilation and shrinkage. The thing was advancing slowly up the ravine on its hundreds of short, pseudopodial legs.
“Food . . . food . . . food!” It was shrieking with that extrasensory voice. “Food . . . come nearer—nearer!”
Again that strange rapture seized Eric Norm—intensified now into an exquisite ecstasy of longing, a yearning to be consumed, absorbed, combined!
And as he reeled onward, his mind half numbed with horror, half frenzied with this nameless delirium, he noticed dully a strange thing on the rocks under his stumbling feet.
The floor of the ravine was strewn with milk-white nodules.
Hundreds of them lay there. And in a flash of odd vision he realized the answer. Thought-nuggets and green burrs were the same thing! This frightful organism sent out the green burrs, in a sporelike fashion, to snare and lure. When they failed to contact a living creature, they returned to this ravine where the monster had its lair, and here metamorphosed into thought-nuggets—retaining for some obscure reason the quality of being telepathically sensitive.
A pertinent discovery, thought Norm. But now nothing seemed to matter except the quick relinquishment of his ego as a separate being. So, blindly and deliriously, he reeled forward.
Now he was almost within the monster’s reach—so close, indeed, that one of the triangular extremities of its star-shaped body had lifted to draw him close in its frightful embrace—when a thin, distant voice bawled out behind him.
“Norm! What the hell? Norm—come back!”
It was a real voice this time, a voice edged with fear and astonishment, a voice that he knew—McDill’s voice.
McDill was trying to call him back from death. But the mystery of the engineer’s voice, of his presence here, seemed of slight importance. Not worth troubling over.
Moreover, to Norm, with his new sense, there was nothing strange about it anyway. He seemed instinctively to know McDill’s recent line of experience, just as well as his own. McDill had wandered into this ravine from a different angle. Enthusiastic over his discovery of myriad thought-nuggets, he was not even aware that his microwave connection with the ship had been occulted by these black, metallic rocks; and only this very instant had he glimpsed the Dionian monster.
All this was very clear to Norm—although unimportant. And yet McDill’s shout, fraught with urgency, did cause him to raise his eyes for a last look around before taking that final step.
“Food . . . food!” boomed that soundless voice. With a slowly flowing motion the monster’s multitudinous feet bore it closer.
McDill, corpulent in his oxygen suit, hip pouches overflowing with milk-white nodules, was bounding across the rock-strewn floor of the ravine, shouting as he came, “Norm—for God’s sake—beat it!”
The fact that McDill was not himself in any danger pleased Norm distinctly. But not so pleasing came knowledge of the loyal-hearted engineer’s determination to take an active hand in these proceedings.
Something touched Norm’s shoulder. He glanced around. The monster had heaved itself half upright over him. The undersurface thus exposed was a writhing mass of pseudopodial legs and absorptive disks pulsing with a dreadful eagerness.
“Food . . . food . . . food!” The thing seemed to gurgle.
A gloved hand suddenly clamped itself around Norm’s arm, tried to yank him back. But like a lunatic poised on the brink of a cliff, he resisted rescue, struggled to twist his arm free.
That grasp, however, was not to be broken, for McDill was solidly boned and muscled.
“Norm!” he was half shouting, half gasping. “You dope! Don’t you know me? Stop fighting! Come away!”
The affrighted and desperate appeal in McDill’s voice penetrated only
dimly through the delirium drowning Norm’s reason. He continued to struggle.
Suddenly McDill’s hard fist swung up in a crushing blow that pliable glassoplast could not divert. Norm’s hood bulged in against his jaw. His head snapped back, and forthwith all that scene of madness evaporated into mist.
~ * ~
With returning consciousness came the impression that a rather long interval had elapsed. Again Norm could breathe without gasping; there was plenty of oxygen. And even before he opened his eyes he knew where he was—back aboard the Pegasus, in his own bunk!
He opened his eyes. In the soft glow cast by the nimbus tube on the metal ceiling he blinked at the group of worried faces around him— Captain Egard, Griffin, Talbot, all the crew, in fact, except Perrin.
Possible Worlds of Science Fiction Page 17
