He did not look at Drake. Drake said: “Noon mess is ready. I’m going to ask you to try to find some way to control the little abominations. Two of them inside the buildings is too much. We need something they don’t like, to keep them away. If it kills them too, so much the better.”
“I’ll try,” said Beecham thickly.
He closed the door. Drake went briskly to his own office. He entered.
Nora stood on a chair. A tiny, misshapen thing like a piece of root with revolting black capillary hairs on it, dragged itself with effort about the chair legs. It tried to climb them and fell back. It tried again and fell back. Nora watched it, white-faced, with an awful composure.
Drake stamped it to death, raging incoherently. “If—if it had found a way to climb,” said Nora in a still voice, “I meant to step to the top of the desk.”
But then she was shivering in his arms, sobbing.
She came to herself first and pushed away from him. She even managed to smile shakily.
“I think,” she said unsteadily, “that there was some excuse for that. I’m very glad you came, darling. And if I look upset, nobody will blame me. After all, the thing was trying to climb up after me. And when you killed it I simply couldn’t have stood up without you helping me. Not at first.”
Drake called. Tom Belden came.
“Get that thing to Beecham, will you?” asked Drake. “But don’t touch it! It was in my office.”
He took Nora’s arm to steady her as she walked to the mess hall. On the way, she said, still unsteadily: “It’s nice, having you near.”
Drake muttered under his breath. There were times when even an administrative officer would like to act human.
* * * *
The noon meal was not exactly a social success. At best, on Gow Island, the mess hall atmosphere was strictly of that place. In such a small number of people, distinctions would be absurd, but it was true that the mechanics and warehousemen tended to congregate in one corner, while the rest of the company sat elsewhere. Today there was agitation which upset all usual arrangements. The power officer and his girl sat together, and she cut his food for him because of his bandaged and still painful hand. They looked at each other with anguished eyes. The dumpy girl, Hortense, looked longingly at the heartily eating men in the mechanics’ corner.
Sparks came in as Drake led Nora across the floor.
“News,” he told Drake. “A destroyer put into Valparaiso three days ago, fueled up, and headed south. They got her by radio yesterday and she’s headed this way at full speed.”
“Good,” said Drake. He helped Nora to her chair. The mess officer stared. Drake told him curtly of the small abomination in his office.
The mid-day meal immediately ceased to be even faintly normal. Nora told her story in a now-controlled voice. It was appalling. The midgets deliberately attacked human beings. The reason for their entrance into the buildings became clear. There was now a new horror to be thought about in the daytime.
Beecham came into the mess hall near the end of the meal. He came to where Drake tried to eat.
“I found out something,” he said brittlely. “I had two live monsters. I found that they won’t cross oil, even to get at food. If we spray the ground with fuel-oil they won’t cross it. I was too upset to remember when you asked, but it is so.”
Drake considered. If Beecham said that, it was so. It was a very great relief.
“There may be others in the personnel buildings,” be said briskly. “For safety, until we can fumigate and certainly kill them, we’d better arrange to sleep somewhere else. There’s an empty warehouse—Number Three. We can see that there’s nothing on its concrete floor. We’ll paint a fuel-oil band four feet wide all around the sides. We’ll set up privacy arrangements and lights. We’ll move into that for tonight, and tomorrow we’ll clean them out. We’ll do it thoroughly, even if it takes more than one day.”
But he rose and followed as Beecham moved to go uncertainly back to his laboratory. He stopped him outside the mess hall.
“Beecham. You know something more about those little demons. What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” said Beecham wretchedly. “It’s impossible, Drake! It can’t be! I won’t talk nonsense like Spaulding! A scientist can’t say impossible things until he’s sure.”
Drake shrugged.
“The little beasts turned up suddenly. It looks like there may be a lot of them. Should there be more?”
“It’s possible,” said Beecham thickly. “They could—they could appear by hundreds. Thousands! I can’t guess how fast they will multiply. But it could be horrible!”
Drake tensed his lips. Beecham had dissected the crushed midgets, no doubt. Drake guessed that he’d found evidence of an enormously high breeding-rate. The guess was wrong, but—
“There’s no doubt about oil repelling them?”
“Oh, no! It does. They won’t cross oil even for food. In fact, I put oil on one of my two live specimens, and it died.”
“But there may be thousands of them,” said Drake. “In time that might mean millions, eh? We can’t hope to block off too much ground with oil—not if we have to renew it after rains! Hmmmmm.”
Beecham went away. He looked haunted. Drake was left with the unpleasing prospect of the human population of Gow Island besieged by miniature horrors, in addition to the greater creature he’d come to think of as the boojer-beast.
He stood back, mentally, and contemplated the complete insanity of the situation as it would appear to anybody who had not first-hand knowledge of its actuality. He grimaced.
Then he prepared the actions which common sense dictated, in a state of affairs which defied all common sense.
Some men returned to work on the hoisting of the plane. But Drake assigned Spaulding to oversee the preparation of a warehouse for shelter for this night. He was to check his precautions with Beecham, who must approve all decisions. Then Drake picked three men to go with him to inspect the trees from the Hot Lakes. That particular errand seemed less important now than in the early morning. There was a new errand which was more necessary. It came from Beecham’s forecast of enormous numbers of leaf-clashing abominations appearing in the future.
There were four men to start off from the establishment. There was Drake and Tom Belden and an adventurous cook’s helper named Thomas, with one of the warehouse crew. They were booted and armed and carried flashlights, though Drake was definitely resolved to be back before sunset. As they headed southward, he explained the new main purpose of their journey.
“Things look bad,” he said evenly. “Beecham seems to think the new horrors are going to multiply like rabbits or houseflies. We didn’t even guess that they existed until last night. So far, today, we’ve found five of them—three in the buildings we live in. If Beecham’s right, the island will swarm with them presently. He’s found a way to hold them off from the buildings, when we can get to it, but there’s this destroyer on the way.”
Tom Belden said: “Mmph! They’ll land men.”
“Exactly,” said Drake. “The destroyer will send boats ashore at the landing place. If the little monsters multiply as Beecham predicts, an unwarned landing party hiking for the depot could have a very nasty time. So, ahead of time, we’re putting a warning for them on the beach. They may not believe it, but they’ll at least be cagey. And the time to do it is now, before the monsters multiply.”
There was silence. The four men marched over the undulating rocky ground. There were boggy places here and there, which they went around. There were occasional patches and thickets of the island’s starveling trees, never more than a dozen feet tall. There were Kerguelen cabbages, and there was tussock grass, and there were quite preposterous areas where dandelions grew, and buttercups.
It was not a particularly long journey to the landing beach, because the island was not large. But there was need to circle swampy places, and when they came to the descent to the landing beach they were all uneasy enough to
watch very carefully lest there be three-leaved monstrosities about. The cliff was only half the height of the precipices on the windward side, but a hundred-foot climb down was time-consuming There was, of course, a hoist by which stores could be lifted, but it was not manned today.
A quarter-mile of sandy beach lay at the foot of the cliff. The sea beyond it surged restlessly, but this was the lee side of the island. Rather oddly, down at the water’s edge, here, was the only place where the surf on the windward shore could not be heard. Drake noted the silence with some surprise. The angry, roaring, bellowing surf had been a part of the surroundings for so long that he missed it.
Something came to the surface and dived again. Something else. He stared.
Four Adelie penguins came ashore and marched solemnly up the beach. They’d been feeding on infinitesimal green things in the current that flowed past the island. They regarded the men with zestful interest, their unhappy experience of capture and imprisonment in cages now forgotten. They crowded about the men, uttering the fluting notes of penguin conversation.
Drake moved along the sand, hunting a place where a sign to attract attention could not possibly be missed by a boat coming ashore. The sensation of a merely restless, heaving ocean on the same level with himself, and of towering rocky walls looming overhead, was as extraordinary as the absence of the sound of surf.
There were snortings ahead. The cook’s helper, Thomas, went running on before. He rounded a slight rocky projection of the cliff-walls. He raised his gun and fired.
Echoes rang. Something made gobbling sounds, and stopped.
The other three came up to him. Out at sea, a sleek dark head popped above water for an instant and dived again. A second fur-seal lay quite still on the sand of the beach. Its fur was stained red.
“Fresh meat!” said the cook’s helper triumphantly. And a skin!”
Drake was annoyed, but it was too late to protest.
“I’m afraid the skin’s no good,” he said. “Not at this season! And seal-meat won’t compare with frozen steak. Not that we’ll have steaks much longer with no refrigeration!”
The cook’s helper was still triumphant. He had a knife. He would butcher the seal and carry splendid steaks—perhaps roasts—back to the kitchen. The killing of a seal seemed to him so magnificent an adventure that Drake could not discourage him.
“Go ahead,” he said without enthusiasm. “We’ll put up the warning we came here for.”
* * * *
Tom Belden found driftwood. They erected a sort of cairn, of wood and fallen rocks together. Out on the sand, and definitely of artificial design, it could not fail to be noticed and examined by anybody coming ashore in a boat. But the horizon was remarkably empty. Up on the island’s top one did not see the edge of the world. One saw ground, and rocks, and the struggling vegetation of this latitude. Here it was somehow depressing to see the vast and empty waste of gray sea stretching out without limit, with nothing upon it and with countless similarly empty leagues beyond.
Drake hung a streamer of cloth from a jagged mast of wood projecting from the top of the cairn. He tied a glass jar in a conspicuous place. There was paper plainly visible inside. It contained a terse description of the small monsters. Small tufts of green leaves were dangerous. They were poisonous. Watch out for them. They were repelled by oil. Fuel-oil on one’s boots would be adequate protection. One should not sit down. One should not touch anything without making sure that no small viciously stinging creature lay concealed there. Drake also added that the creatures described were as dangerous as black-widow spiders. It struck him as an extreme understatement of the case.
They made ready to go on. Thomas, the cook’s helper, was still busy at his butchering. His knife wasn’t as sharp as he’d like, but he was making progress.
“Look here, Mr. Drake,” he said urgently, “I’m all right! You just let me finish this job and I can get back to the airstrip okay with some stuff everybody’ll be tickled to taste! Yeah? It’s daylight! I’ll be all right! Will you let me, sir? Please?”
There are times to be arbitrary and times to make concessions. At no time is it wise to be so insistent upon a merely possible danger that the men under one’s direction will become timid. This was past mid-afternoon, and there was only so much time before dark. But Drake made Thomas promise to leave within half an hour, whether or not he had done as much with the seal’s carcass as he wished. He insisted that Thomas must be back at the buildings before twilight. He must not try to carry more of a load than was practical.
“After all, Thomas,” he said, “You’ll be taking back a curiosity rather than a treat. Only Eskimos think seal-meat is really eatable. Most people will taste it to say they’ve done so, and let it go at that.”
Thomas promised happily. There were few opportunities to distinguish oneself on Gow Island. Away from the buildings there was only an atmosphere of dreariness, of tedium, of unending monotony which made the island like a jail. But the feel of things on the landing beach was so remote from terror that one could think of surprising one’s fellows pleasantly.
Drake and Tom Belden and the warehouseman climbed to the top of the island again. They headed toward the warm-springs area, to look at Beecham’s trees. But they ran into boggy ground such as is inevitable in all places with climates like Gow. The route from the installation to the warm springs was relatively clear. From the airstrip to the landing beach was not difficult. But from the landing beach to the warm springs was unfamiliar. Three times they had to turn back after coming close enough to see the steam-cloud above the springs quite clearly. Each time bogs barred the way. The fourth time they came upon a small and shallow lake with serpentine extensions which meant that they’d have to walk around so great a distance that they still had farther to the warm springs than the distance back to the depot.
“No good,” said Drake distastefully. “It’d be twilight when we got there and we couldn’t take time to look thoroughly, anyhow. And we’d get back after dark. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
He was annoyed enough, but there was nothing to be done. They started back. And Drake began to feel tenseness coming back into his attitude. In a way there’d been some accomplishment today. The airstrip was almost certainly clear. A plane from Gissell Bay or Valparaiso could land. That was good. There was no way, though, to notify the outside world that help could now be sent to Gow. That was bad. There was the unhappy appearance of deadly small abominations whose connection with the boojer-beast could not be guessed at, but whose appearance must be more than a coincidence. That was definitely not good. And the mystery and the menace of the boojer-beast remained.
It was a long way back to the buildings. The search for a route to the warm springs had taken them into a maze of soft, semi-peat-bog areas which had to be avoided. When they came to higher ground on which they could strike out directly, twilight had definitely arrived. Drake irritably checked his flashlight, as did the others. They increased their pace a little. From a mile away they saw the oil-flares lighted outside the buildings. The smoke glowed dark red from the flames beneath. Drake contemplated the possibility of storm winds which would make such flares impractical. He didn’t like the idea. An antarctic gale, by night, would make a situation very much to the boojer-beast’s supposed taste.
They went on. Now the ground was a deep gray, formless substance which was soft and springy, and again it was an uncertain surface with stones on which to stumble, and yet again it was plain bare stone. They passed beside three thickets of the island’s small trees.
Then the leaping flames of the beacons slowed clearly, with the dimly-lit buildings glowing faintly in their light. Figures still moved about, outside. Drake shouted, and there were shouts in reply, and the three of them moved into the firelight. Drake was much more weary than he’d realized.
When Nora smiled at him, her face lighted by flickering flames, he was conscious of an extreme relief. He’d been trying not to be afraid for her.
“We
didn’t get to the trees,” he told her. “Thomas shot a seal. We set up a cairn and a warning for anybody who lands on the beach. Everything’s all right?”
“Everything,” she told him. “There’ve been some more little monsters picked up. One of the dogs snapped at one. Then the dog died. We’re being very careful now. Warehouse Three is all lighted, for us to stay in, and it’s protected by oil, and everyone’s wearing boots. Hollister’s wondering if we should use the plane’s landing lights for floods.”
Another relief. With the plane sufficiently tied down and its motors running, its landing lights could be used to make a brilliant glare even in a gale.
“You’ll taste seal meat,” said Drake. “Did Thomas get back with it in time for dinner?”
“Thomas?” said Nora. She looked quickly from one to the other of the two men who’d returned with Drake. “Isn’t he with you?”
Drake felt his every muscle go tense. In a strained voice he asked questions. Thomas had not gotten back to the kitchen with the seal meat he’d so zestfully been cutting out. He hadn’t been heard from. And the seemingly perpetual clouds of Gow Island intercepted the twilight and it was already full night.
“We’ll load up with gasoline bottles,” said Drake harshly, “and try to go meet him. We’ll make a trail of wick torches to mark our path. If he sees any of them he can go to it and it will be some protection. He’s got a flashlight, too. But if he’s out there in the dark …”
He knew that he, himself, was afraid of the dark on Gow Island. The cook’s helper, Thomas, might right now be shaking with ghastly terror as he trudged through the night. But by now there’d be a faint glow in the sky above the buildings so he could not fail of direction. But Drake cursed his own amiability in letting Thomas stay behind to butcher a needlessly slaughtered seal. He might have loaded himself down too much. He might have had trouble getting up even the lee-side cliff from the beach. He might have gotten into one of the bogs.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 139
