“Go tell Beecham,” said Drake.
Tom Belden went away. Drake sat quite still. After a moment he said: “Something—boojer-beast or miniature—has been having a merry time in Warehouse Four while we’ve been quite unconscious of it and walking about happily outside. My flesh crawled when I first suspected it. But it doesn’t seem so horrible now that I know it’s true. Why, Nora?”
She shook her head. She stood by him. He was keeping still. He was resting. So long as he rested, since he was so weary, she would feel a certain anxious satisfaction. She stayed beside him to be sure that he continued to rest. And now she permitted herself to look at him with soft and solicitous eyes.
He looked up at her and grinned faintly.
“Nora, my dear,” he said, “if anybody looked at you right now, they’d start thinking scandal, which would be deplorably without foundation. I think a very sensible thing for you to do would be to get a notebook and sit close to me as if I were dictating a report. But you’re not to go indoors to get a notebook!”
“I’ve got one with me,” said Nora. “I’m used to following you around and taking notes.”
“Confidentially,” admitted Drake, “I started that business of ambulatory note-taking because I—well—so we’d be together otherwise than as a man and his secretary in an office. I thought I was very clever. I thought we’d get better acquainted. I think we did. It was devious and unprincipled of me, wasn’t it?”
* * * *
Nora brought another box and sat down near him. She brought out a notebook and pencil, and absorbedly made marks in the book.
“Clever, too, eh?” he asked. “How long did I fool you?”
“For fifteen minutes,” said Nora. “I was pleased, darling. You were trying so hard not to make a play for me, while you wanted so badly for me to like you. I liked you very much for being so idiotically scrupulous.”
“Damn!” said Drake. “I thought I was being Machiavellian!”
“You were sweet,” said Nora.
Drake found himself smiling wrily: “Some day,” he said, “some day we’ll be together in some wonderful place where nobody will be upset because we look at each other. Some day we will be together where—”
“Don’t!” said Nora. She scribbled. “I want to hear, but somebody’s coming.”
Drake said in a matter-of-fact tone: “For which reason I am unable to state with certainty that the creature or creatures which must have seized Thomas on his way back to the installation was killed in the fire.” He looked up. “Beecham?”
Beecham’s eyes seemed to be sunk into his head. His hands trembled. He said in a brittle voice: “Belden says the trees in the warehouse have been fed on by something. The tips of the branches are broken off.”
“Yes,” agreed Drake. “You mentioned it once. I thought—”
“I looked at the baled trees yesterday,” said Beecham in a voice that was somehow thin and reedy. “I noticed it then.”
“So something’s been visiting the warehouse.”
“No,” said Beecham.
Drake raised his eyebrows.
“No?”
“I’ve been working on the miniature monsters,” said Beecham. He spread out his hands. “I think I have them beaten. I would like very much to study one through its entire life cycle, but it seems so desperately urgent to learn to control them that I do not dare.” He wet his lips. “During last night I set out some baits. Raw meat. I spread chemicals on the ground around the baits. There is a compound, amino triazole, which seems to be specifically poisonous to the small creatures. Contact with it seems to kill them. Not only my captive specimens, but four feral monsters came and died at one bit of bait I had out last night.”
Drake waited.
“They died from contact with the poison,” said Beecham unhappily. “Only contact. DDT kills insects by contact. This kills the little horrors. They aren’t repelled by it as they are by oil. They wriggle onto it and die.”
“I haven’t the least idea what amino triazole is,” admitted Drake, “but have you got much of it? Enough?”
Beecham shook his head. He moistened his lips again.
“Not very much. It was among the basic supplies that were stored for use as the installation was completed. Somebody assumed that when the buildings were up and the airstrip finished, we’d try to make a standard official post, with lawns and flower beds. Amino triazole is used on lawns.”
Drake said suddenly: “Look here! The trees from the Hot Lakes in the warehouse have been partly eaten. But you say nothing’s been visiting them. What on earth—”
Beecham said desperately: “I’ve been guessing at things, Drake, and I’ve got some evidence. Pitiably little, but evidence. Will you look at it? I think that just possibly there’s a very simple explanation for everything that’s happened. I want to show you the evidence and have you come to your own opinion. If it’s the same as mine, we’ll know what to do. What I suspect is perfectly reasonable. There’ve even been legends about it. People have believed it for centuries.”
Drake blinked. Beecham bit his lips and said uneasily: “Nothing superstitious, Drake! I’m not talking about an actual discovery of werewolves, or anything like that. It’s quite natural. It’s even inevitable, from a biologist’s standpoint. But I want somebody to look at the evidence with an open mind.”
“My mind,” said Drake, “is wide open and eager to look at anything that will make what’s happened here seem sensible! I’m with you. Bear with my croakings while I stand up.”
“N-not just yet,” said Beecham. “I’ve found that amino triazole will protect the installation. I want to put more baits about with amino triazole around them, so we can leave everybody here quite safe. Then I’ll take you.”
“Where?”
“To the nest site,” said Beecham “and the warm springs. I’ll show you something there. And if we agree about what it means, we’ll know how to fight. And I think we’ll have to do it. We might have trouble getting authority to destroy what needs it, but—”
“Two men have been killed,” said Drake, very grimly. “Four women have been endangered. Three dogs have died very unpleasantly, and I’ve been scared to death! If I find something I can fight, I won’t ask for authority! I’ll kill it!”
“Y-yes,” said Beecham. “It will be necessary. You’ve no idea how necessary it will be. But there will be trouble.”
“I’m used to trouble,” said Drake. “Get out your baits and put plenty of poison around. It might be a good idea to put out something special for the boojer-beast, too. We should have thought of that before! I don’t think one need be sportsman-like with a beast that prowls the dark and kills men. There’s a limit to my sporting instincts!”
“Y-yes,” said Beecham again. “I’ll see to it. But it’ll be a little while before I can leave, if I’m to make everybody safe here.”
He went away, and Drake turned suddenly to Nora.
“Make everybody safe here!” he said. “My God! Can you imagine anything like that? I can’t! I’ve imagined everything—everything happening to you! Every instant I’ve been away—”
“Hush!” said Nora. She bent over her notebook. “I think that I’ll go with you and Beecham. To take notes.”
The surf boomed hollowly in the distance. Beecham and Tom Belden moved here and there. Belden carried great slabs of raw red meat, which because of the failure of electric current could not be kept frozen. Beecham followed with a cardboard carton of the chemical which had been included in the stores for Gow Island on the insane supposition that somebody would try to establish neat and tidy lawns, and doubtless white-painted fences and “Keep Off The Grass” signs about the drab quonsets which clustered underneath the leaden sky.
Belden put down a slab of meat. Meticulously, Beecham made a neat light dusting of powder in a five-foot circle around it. Belden got another bait of meat, while Beecham selected a new position. He put such a bait before the great doorway of Warehouse Four. T
he younger man had seen two midget horrors on its concrete floor.
There was a scolding noise. Spaulding protested bitterly against the placing of other baits than the one he had special orders to try. He’d put meat on the ground and brought a stepladder. He’d been sitting on the stepladder with a shotgun ready to shoot any squirming things the bait attracted. He considered that Drake had given him those orders to make him ridiculous. He had a feeling of personal insult to add to his other strident psychological difficulties.
The cook brought tables out-of-doors. He cooked on fires in the open air rather than stay in his kitchen, where another leaf-clashing creature had just been found. Beecham put a bait there, in the recreation hall, in Drake’s office, and in the barracks. Before all the baiting was finished they found two root-like victims of the special poison beside the first bait, and another at the third lure. Nobody picked up the root-like corpses, though. The power officer had tried that once. The fingers of his hand were swollen until each one was as big as his wrist. Nobody else would take the risk.
There was a meal. Whether it was breakfast or noon mess, nobody could say. Sparks climbed out of the rolled-aside plane with news that the destroyer on the way to Gow Island had been warned that it would run into severe storm conditions on the way to Gow. An extreme low-pressure center was due to pass slightly north of the island. Winds with a possible maximum of eighty knots would blow near the middle of the storm-system.
That, of course, ruled out any idea of immediate flights from Gissel Bay. The last plane had reported the Gow airstrip blocked and the people of the island insisting upon starkly impossible conditions as existing there. With an antarctic gale coming up, nobody would be foolish enough to try to reach a mist-wreathed island which could not or would not give any help in navigation and on which a landing reputedly could not be made. There’d be no new arrivals at the island until the storm was done with.
“Nice!” said Drake sardonically to Nora, when the weather news reached him. “We haven’t enough to worry about, so we have a gale!”
“We should be all right.”
“Except for one thing. Wind and rain and an antarctic storm won’t help us light the outside with open oil-burning flames!” Then Drake said restlessly: “I wish I were sure we’d killed the boojer-beast last night! Something bent Thomas’ gun almost double, as if it had been a twig. I hope it’s dead!”
His voice lost animation. He said exhaustedly: “Beecham talks as if he thought he knew something. I hope his brains are better than mine! But I’ve got to figure out some way—”
He ceased to speak. He went to sleep, sitting on a box with his back against a quonset hut. And Nora stayed beside him, fiercely watching out for any small thing that might squirm along the ground, hushing everybody who came by. Her solicitude might have caused remark at another time, but today the remaining people on the island were much too much concerned with their private uneasiness to notice what she did.
Drake slept while Beecham finished up the job of placing bait in circles of poisoned dust everywhere he considered it might be useful. The neighborhood of Warehouse Four was especially well taken care of. Then he set out larger baits in the tree thickets nearest the buildings. Those large lures were not dependent on a dusting of the ground with amino triazole. They were otherwise prepared to be deadly to anything that devoured them. Beecham made sure that the island’s one surviving dog was kept on a leash, lest he look upon the discovery of appetizing roasts and haunches as so much treasure-trove. He made the round of his first lures again, with Tom Belden. There were small dead horrors on the white dust about nearly every one.
He went to Drake, badly disturbed because there were so many of the monstrous midgets to be caught. Nora faced him.
“I hate to wake him,” said Beecham apologetically, “but we do have to go look at the warm springs and the nest site. It’s important. We may find out what we need to know.”
“Then I’m coming too!” said Nora. “It won’t be dangerous in the daytime, and I don’t care if it is!”
Beecham hesitated. “I suppose that will be all right. You can carry some extra gasoline bottles, and an extra witness will be a good thing. But—”
“I’m coming!” said Nora. “Don’t dare say I’m not!”
She bent over Drake and gently waked him. He opened his eyes and found himself smiling at her.
“All ready to go, darling,” she said softly. “Mr. Beecham has everything fixed for us to start.”
Beecham blinked and was embarrassed. But the term of endearment made it impossible for anyone of his temperament to contradict her.
Drake sat perfectly still, waking. After a moment or two he said: “What’s the time?”
When Nora told him he stirred experimentally, and then got sluggishly to his feet.
“Stupid of me to go to sleep.”
“It wasn’t,” said Nora firmly. “You needed it. And no time’s been wasted. There’s been poison put out and little monsters are dying right and left, and Mr. Beecham has even put out some unwholesome meals for the boojer-beast, though it is probably hiding out till dark. But I think it’s dead.”
Drake said slowly: “Spaulding offered reason to believe there’s more than one. I want to check that at the nest site. You’re going?”
“I am!” said Nora defiantly. “And if you try to leave me behind I’ll—I’ll say we’re engaged and cry elaborately all over the place.”
Drake considered, and then smiled faintly.
“We’ll take Tom Belden then. And be back before dark.”
“Yes,” said Beecham anxiously, “We have to be!”
Drake started to walk, and found that he moved stiffly at first. Sparks waylaid him and officially repeated the details of the weather forecast. Storm. Drake surveyed the sky. It looked leaden, but the sky above Gow Island very often looked dull and lifeless. The clouds did have a clotted look today, though. He nodded.
“We’d better make sure the plane’s tied down firmly.”
He hunted up Hollister, who was yawning over coffee. He discussed the matter of the plane with him. Hollister had made a suggestion, before. If the ship were firmly tied down, and if fuel could be gotten into its tanks, and one of her engines ran, then when storm-winds and rain made the use of oil-flares dubious, the plane’s landing lights would serve as floods to bathe much of the installation with light. There would be shadows, to be sure. But it would be a great deal better than darkness.
“Yeah,” said Hollister. “I’ll tend to it.”
Spaulding passed by, and elaborately ignored Drake. But Drake stopped him to say that he and Beecham were visiting the nest site. Beecham would join him in estimating the number of creatures which had devastated the nests, looking especially for signs of different paths of destruction from the nest area’s edge.
“Beecham seems to accept the idea,” said Drake, “that there are several boojer-beasts.” Spaulding listened stonily. “And I’m trying to figure out,” added Drake, “how the effect of invisibility could be had. I still can’t imagine a thing that could kill men being so transparent that one could look through it. But there are other kinds of invisibility. Mimicry, for instance. You may be right that we couldn’t see the thing, but do try to figure out how it could keep us from seeing it among the trees of the thicket, the first time we cornered it, and among the flames the second time. Try, will you?”
Spaulding said icily: “I shall do what I can for the welfare of the people here, whether I’m believed or not.”
Drake left him then. He found Tom Belden and told him to come along, to check on how the trees from Antarctica were making out, and for the checking of an observation of Spaulding’s at the nest space.
“That guy’s hard to get along with,” said Belden. “How’d he get picked for a place like this?”
Drake did not answer. Nora was ready, booted, with gasoline bottles and a light shotgun. There were birds on the island, so guns for hunting had been provided. The sport of
shooting had not been popular, though. Sea-birds which feed solely on fish are not exactly delicate in flavor, and nobody who ever visited a nesting area would find pleasure afterward in killing birds for the sake of killing.
They made their way almost in silence across the undulating, splotchy ground. The thin soil was dotted with uncouth cabbage-plants and tussock grass. Beecham hurried, and Belden kept pace with him. Drake and Nora followed a hundred yards behind.
Drake said: “That storm warning may be belated. I think the surf’s already a little louder than usual. It could be running higher because of stormwaves. The wind’s odd, too.”
“Do we talk about the weather?” asked Nora, “After I’ve been shamelessly insistent on coming along?” Drake grunted.
“Tom Belden’s along,” he said curtly. “I brought him because he’s more sure than anybody but myself to take care that nothing happens to you. Did you know he’s in love with you?”
“What?” said Nora incredulously.
Drake dourly told her of young Belden joining him in the search of a thicket where a boojer-beast presumably lay hidden, and of his later awkward explanation.
“You’re twenty-three,” he added, “which makes you much too old for Tom. He knows it. But he worships you, and he thinks you like me, so he’s set himself to serve you by protecting me. He explained because he didn’t want me to think him brave, but he asked me not to tell you.”
Nora said ruefully: “And I didn’t even guess! He’s a nice boy, but—”
“Beecham’s not a bad sort, either,” said Drake. “He might panic, though I don’t think so. But Belden would have to be killed before anything could happen to you. I feel better that there are two of us.”
“I feel horrible!” protested Nora. “I thought—”
“Yes,” said Drake. “And we could linger behind, and they’d both worry for fear something had happened to us, but they’d be horribly embarrassed at the idea of looking for us.”
Nora bit her lip. She mended her pace. They gradually overtook the other two.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 141
