The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  He stopped short and very deliberately played the light in a circle all around. If he was afraid, he would admit it. Of course the precaution was justifiable. Something had toppled things in darkness in a warehouse and scattered the trees from Antarctica while spilling piled-up packing cases. And Brown’s body had disappeared. Drake had heard something slithering across the floor of the warehouse in which these things occurred. That something hadn’t been found. It was at large. So precaution against it was warranted, especially in darkness as deep as this. A stop to look behind was not shameful. But to have prickles of fear on scalp and neck was infuriating. Drake said angrily to the darkness: “To hell with you!”

  He turned off the flashlight and deliberately went the rest of the way without light. He was almost savage with self-disgust when he reached the building’s door.

  Nora looked at him in patent relief when he came in. The recreation hall contained every member of the depot personnel except the three in the radio shack. There were no games in progress. The record player was not in use. Nobody read. They were gathered in shame-faced, haunted groups. There was no animation.

  “Any news?” asked Nora. Her eyes searched his face.

  He shook his head.

  “There’s nothing to get news about,” he said curtly. “There’s a string band on the radio, from Valparaiso. In the shack they’re watching the radar screen. But there’s nothing to see.”

  Nora’s eyes still searched his face.

  “I made a fool of myself,” he said irritably. “I set a radar watch for morale. But it’s an admission that there could be something to fear. There is certainly something around that we don’t understand, but panic’s no defense. So now I’ll have to take further steps. After all, whatever was in the warehouse was moving in the dark, and it ran or hid or—something when the lights inside went on. So we’ll flood-light the outside of the buildings here. Everybody feels better in the light.”

  He went to a group in which the depot electrician listened uncomfortably to the wild surmises of others. He gave crisp instructions. The electrician wavered.

  “What you need’s in the warehouse,” said Drake.

  The lights are still on inside it. I’ll go with you to get the stuff.”

  Spaulding came over to the group. By Drake’s manner, it was apparent that he was giving orders. “What’s up?” he asked.

  Drake was annoyed, but he said: “We’re going to set up lights outside. Everybody will feel safer. That’s the program and the purpose.”

  Spaulding said authoritatively: “I’d like to comment, Drake.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Drake told him. But Spaulding said with conviction: “The thing—the whatever-it-is that downed transport planes and undoubtedly interfered with the plane this morning—it’s a night creature. Night creatures are attracted by light. I would consider it unwise to use more light. In fact, the safest course would be to establish a tight black-out on the whole island; mask all windows and nobody carry a light if he goes outside.

  Drake counted ten. Then he said politely: “There have been happenings caused by something we can’t identify. So I am going to take precautions against everything I can imagine. But I cannot imagine a nocturnal creature which prefers darkness—whatever was in the warehouse fled from the light. I can’t imagine a thing which prefers darkness attacking things because they’re light. The thing in the warehouse didn’t. It shouldn’t attack if there are lights outside the buildings. We’re going to try it, anyhow.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake!” insisted Spaulding.

  The electrician and those he’d been talking to were pointedly listening.

  “In that ease,” said Drake sardonically, “I assign you the job of contriving a trap to catch the creature. Suppose you go sit somewhere in the dark and make your plans.”

  He turned away. The electrician said quickly: “Not much of a job. I’ll come along. Hey, Tom!”

  When Drake reached the doorway again, the electrician and two others were with him. They had Very pistols in their belts, and long-range flashlights. Drake led them outside. He left them to one side of the nearest way, and because of this swerving the lighted warehouse door disappeared. The radio shack’s window vanished. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere within range of their eyes. Drake said: “Stand still a moment and turn off your flashlights.”

  He stopped. The lights flickered off, one by one. They stood in absolute darkness. The surf roared in the distance. The generator in the room beyond the radio shack thumped and bumped between the roarings. A chilly wind seemed to finger them. There was no light in all the world. The earth was as black as the sky, and the sky as black as the Pit. Standing still, there was nothing for the eye to rest upon, and chilly fingers plucked at them, and deep bass, raging bellowings filled the air.

  A man gasped. His flashlight went on and swept all about.

  “That’ll do,” said Drake. “Come along.”

  He led the way on to the warehouse, his own flashlight showing the way. He felt relieved that other men felt afraid in this darkness, just as he did. In the warehouse he glanced about. The baled trees from Antarctica and the tumbled, scattered others from the broken bale. The toppled boxes and cases. The place where Brown’s body had been.

  “Pick out your stuff,” said Drake, “and we’ll help carry it back.” Then he added, “If it raises the electric load too much, we can start the extra generator.”

  Tom Belden followed the electrician to the bins where lighting equipment was stored. He came back with an arm-load. Drake watched coldly. Tom Belden hesitated and asked: “Why’d you stop us out there and make us turn our torches off? Did you hear something?”

  Drake said drily: “No. I wanted you to be as scared as I was, with as little reason, and to be as much ashamed of being afraid of the dark.”

  Tom Belden let out his breath. Then he grinned and went back to get more material for light circuits.

  The electrician set up a flood-lamp outside the warehouse and connected it. The shrub-like ground-cover between the warehouse and the administration building a hundred yards away was instantly and startlingly vivid in the light. The return journey ceased to seem alarming. The four of them marched quite cheerfully over the flood-lit ground on their way back. The electrician said: “Half a dozen floods for the ground, and some outside bulbs—we can run the wires out of windows—and it’ll be a lot more cheerful!”

  “Some rows of lights between the recreation hall and the barracks will help, too,” said Drake.

  “Yeah!” agreed the electrician. “No job at all!”

  Tom Belden said uncomfortably: “Mr. Drake, haven’t you got the least idea what we’re stringin’ lights against’?”

  “Dozens,” admitted Drake. “The trouble is that none of them can possibly be right.”

  * * * *

  He stayed outside as the electrician and his helpers put floods to play here, and others to play there. He observed that they invariably elected to work in a brightly lit place, preparing lights for a darker one. The darkness outside the installation looked even blacker and more cryptic than before. But it was pushed back. It was not close at hand. It was not something that one was submerged in and felt strangled by.

  When there was adequate illumination and only additions remained to be made, Beecham peered out the recreation hall door. He beckoned to Drake. Drake joined him.

  “Listen, Drake,” said Beecham apprehensively. “Do you think I could dissect one of the broken-off branches of one of those trees? It’s too small to root, and it’s queer wood! I’d like to use a microtome on it and make some microscopic slides to see what it’s really like. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “I don’t see why you shouldn’t do as you please,” said Drake. He added: “Some of the trees probably fell out the open bomb-bay. Nobody can check up on you. If you want to steal a twig, why not?”

  Beecham said eagerly: “I got one today but it bothered me. I put
it on your desk to ask about.”

  “Come along,” said Drake. “Take it back. I won’t look.”

  There was a clicking inside the office as they went in the door. Nora looked up from the typewriter. Drake raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m typing the eye-witness accounts,” she explained. “Hollister turned his in and I’m copying it for transmission. Two pages. One of the girls turned in thirteen!”

  “Look in some other direction while Beecham steals a fraction of a biological specimen,” said Drake. “Are there any guesses in those accounts of what was on the plane to kill people.”

  “Not one,” said Nora. “It’s surprising, too.” Then she added: “I’ve thought of a possible answer.”

  Drake sat down. Beecham picked up the bit of antarctic-tree branch and fingered it.

  “Bananas,” said Nora, “are shipped from the tropics up to New York. Sometimes when they get there, tarantulas turn up in the ships’ holds. They weren’t discovered while the bananas were picked and handled and loaded. I’ve heard that even a coral snake once turned up at a New York dock. It’s possible—just possible—that something traveled in those baled-up trees. It doesn’t sound likely, but something that lived in them could have acted like tarantulas and coral snakes and laid low all the time they were being gathered and baled and handled on the plane. If it was nocturnal, it would stay quiet on the ice-pack where it was day. It’s cold on the pack, you see. It might be torpid, and stay that way until the plane’s cargo space got warmed up in flight.”

  “Antarctic tarantulas?” asked Drake.

  “At the Hot Lakes,” insisted Nora, “it’s warm enough!”

  “Only,” said Drake, “nobody would try to use a pistol against tarantulas. One would try to mash them, or anything else that small. One certainly wouldn’t think of pushing them out it cargo door!”

  Beecham shook his head.

  “I looked at the trees pretty carefully,” he objected. “I’d have noticed anything that wasn’t part of a tree.”

  “Unless it seemed to belong there, so you wouldn’t see it,” Drake observed.

  “Hmmm …” said Beecham, considering. “The most likely thing would be a snake. If it had protective shape and coloring—if it was perfect mimicry—I could have missed it. But it would have to be really wonderful mimicry!”

  “I repeat,” said Drake. “The same objection applies. If it were like a snake, the men in the plane wouldn’t have wanted to push it out a bomb-bay. Nobody ever thinks of coming to grips with anything like a snake! You hit at it, but you never gather together to push.” Then he added, “What I heard slithering on the warehouse floor didn’t sound like a snake, somehow …”

  Beecham pursed his lips.

  “Then what?”

  “That’s for us to find out,” said Drake.

  He looked at Nora, sitting beside her typewriter. There was an unconscious yearning in his gaze.

  “Want to go with me to inspect the lighting job, Nora?” he asked.

  “Naturally!” said Nora. She stood up, radiant.

  Drake rose, unfolding his long body joint by joint from the chair. Nora went ahead, out of the office. He hung back long enough to say to Beecham, still fondling the little twig-like object he intended to put through microscopic examination:

  “She almost made sense, Beecham. So did you. But what happened to Brown’s body? No creature the size of a tarantula, or snake the size of one of those tree limbs could have carried off anything that size!”

  Beecham gaped after him as he moved away.

  * * * *

  In even this brief time, the look of things outside had changed remarkably. There were flood-lights which shone from the recreation hall to the radio shack and the warehouses, and from the warehouses and radio shack upon the barracks. There were bright light-beams crossing each other, as yet unevenly spaced, but illuminating everything. And once there was a good amount of brightness outside, other men were helping add more. Even one of the girls stood in a doorway, watching the work.

  “It’s a different atmosphere now,” said Drake. He went around a corner of the building. Then he said: “Damn!”

  Tom Belden was at work there, draping an electric wire along the curved roof.

  “Things feel different when there’s plenty of light,” he said cheerfully.

  “They do,” agreed Drake, without cordiality. He muttered under his breath as they turned the next corner.

  Hollister was at work there, deftly setting up a floodlight to throw a wide beam of brightness for a long way over the undulating ground, dotted as it was with tussock grass and Kerguelen cabbage and odd patches of low-growing, velvety moss.

  “Y’know,” said Hollister conversationally, “with a little bit of time I could make one of these lights scan the whole sky, swinging back and forth. Might be worth while, eh?”

  “Maybe,” conceded Drake, “but I wouldn’t call it urgent.” To Nora he said exasperatedly: “There shouldn’t be anybody around on the other side!”

  But there was. Two men, now, were digging a hole in which to plant a post for an elevated flood-light, designed to throw brightness down into a little hollow which approached the buildings. If lights discouraged anything that needed discouraging, this lamp would have a good effect.

  “I did think,” Drake said rather forlornly, “that we might get out of sight for a second!”

  Nora smiled tremulously at him. “I hoped so.”

  Drake ran his hand through his hair, irritably. Then he grinned: “But think how noble we are, behaving with such monstrous circumspection, just to keep up morale. Some day we may make up for it.”

  “Never,” said Nora. But she smiled ruefully. She touched his arm and said, “Even this—”

  “Has to be strictly rationed,” said Drake. He jerked his head to indicate a spot just beyond. “There’s a soft spot in the ground. If we walk there, it will be quite necessary for me to take your arm to help you over it.”

  She nodded very slightly. They walked to the edge of the soft place. There Nora hesitated slightly, and he took her arm and helped her past the uncertain footing.

  When he reluctantly released her, she said quietly: “It’s absurd, but I was thrilled, then. I—like you very much. When—when we both get leave, and you’re getting ready to ask me to marry you—please don’t wait to make too sure that it isn’t only—environment and such things that make me—like you. It won’t be necessary!”

  He growled.

  * * * *

  When they returned to the recreation hall, the atmosphere of uneasiness had greatly lessened. One could look out the windows and see more than blackness. There had been a feeling that something unguessable and frightening might be staring in through any of the transparent panes. But now one could look out and see starkly lighted ground. Where a rocky crop made a shelter from the west wind, there were clumps of maidenhair fern. There was one little patch of stunted trees—some seven or eight feet high. They could grow no bigger in this latitude. All these things were seeable, sharp—edged in the brilliant outside lights. They were highly reassuring.

  Drake took relieved note of the improvement in morale. Hollister, his work finished, came back and joined the maintenance engineer and two others in a poker game. The warehouse crew gathered around two of the girls and exchanged heavy-footed badinage. Tom Belden settled down with a book with a remarkably lurid title. The power officer took his girl into a corner and, while they had been desperately anxious to console each other when uneasiness was at its height, they now quarreled in low and furtive tones. There was positively a lessening of tension. Still, Drake would have felt better if the record player had been put to use, or even the long-range radio which brought in unsatisfactory programs in unintelligible languages on wave-lengths of from five to thirty meters.

  For a time, though, he was able to give undivided attention to the problem which underlay all the rest. It was still the question of what had happened in the plane. Something extraord
inary had appeared in the cargo space. The men there had fought it. What they fought and what had destroyed them was visible, or they would not have seen it. It moved, or it would not have been dangerous. It had to be large for them to think of cooperating to push it out the cargo door. So it must have been large and visible and in motion. Since they thought of pushing it out the cargo bay they’d opened for the purpose, it was of considerable bulk, but it was not equipped with claws or fangs. Yet the men knew at sight that it was dangerous.

  Such a description was frustrating. It named some things the invader of the plane must be, and some which it could not be, such as small or fanged. But it offered no basis for an idea of what it was.

  Drake considered the order that required him to write a first-hand account of what he’d seen and heard. He’d heard less than some, and seen no more than anybody else. He began to feel an acute aversion to trying to write out an account he knew he wouldn’t believe.

  Then a highly unlikely idea occurred to him. He made a note to send a careful query to Gissel Bay in the morning. He would ask if there could possibly be a creature in the Antarctic which would normally feed on the vegetation of the Hot Lakes area. If there was, could there be any next-to-impossible chance that such a creature could have been included among the baled trees when the helicopter carried them to Gissel Bay. If that could have happened by any incredible chance, then by still more preposterous probability, it might have gotten into the plane now belly-landed on Gow Island.

  But when he looked at the idea, it had no plausibility at all. Still, there were no other ideas even to ask about.

  He heard cheerful sounds outside his office, in the recreation room. They diminished. When he went out, restless and frustrated in the attempt to think, he found the place practically deserted. A group of the men had playfully insisted on escorting the girls to their barracks, against a possible boojer-man. Arrived there, they’d humorously insisted on searching the barracks before the girls entered it. There were squealings and protests, but the thing was done. Then most of the depot went to the men’s barracks and to sleep.