He realized vaguely that he had been looking at them a very long time, even vaguely understood that they were no longer sightless. But it did not seem of importance, of no more importance than the labored, slow motion of the tentacular things that sprouted from the base of the scrawny, slowly pulsing neck.
Connant picked up the pressure lamp and returned to his chair. He sat down, staring at the pages of mathematics before him. The clucking of the counter was less disturbing, the rustle of the coals in the stove less distracting. The creak of the floorboards behind him didn’t interrupt his thoughts as he went about his weekly report in an automatic manner, filling in columns of data and making brief, summarizing notes. The creak of the floorboards sounded nearer.
Blair came up from the nightmare–haunted depths of sleep abruptly. Connant’s face floated vaguely above him; for a moment it seemed a continuance of the wild horror of the dream. But Connant’s face was angry, and a little frightened. “Blair—Blair, you damned log, wake up.”
“Uh—eh?” the little biologist rubbed his eyes. From surrounding bunks, other faces lifted to stare down at them.
Connant straightened. “Get up—and get a move on. Your damned animal’s escaped.”
“Escaped—what!” Chief Pilot Van Wall’s bull voice roared out with a volume that shook the walls. Down the communication tunnels, other voices yelled suddenly. The dozen inhabitants of Paradise House tumbled in abruptly, Barclay in long woolen underwear and carrying a fire extinguisher.
“What the hell’s the matter?” Barclay demanded.
“Your damned beast got loose. I fell asleep about twenty minutes ago, and when I woke up, the Thing was gone. Hey, Doc, the hell you say those Things can’t come to life. Blair’s blasted potential life developed a hell of a lot of potential and walked out on us.”
Copper stared blankly. “It wasn’t—Earthly.” He sighed suddenly. “I—I guess Earthly laws don’t apply.”
“Well, it applied for leave of absence and took it. We’ve got to find it and capture it somehow.” Connant swore bitterly. “It’s a wonder the hellish creature didn’t eat me in my sleep.”
Blair started back, his eyes suddenly fear-struck. “Maybe it di—er—uh, we’ll have to find it.”
“You find it. It’s your pet. I’ve had all I want to do with it, sitting there for seven hours, with the counter clucking every few seconds, and you birds in here singing night-music. It’s a wonder I got to sleep. I’m going through to the Ad Building.”
Commander Garry ducked through the doorway, pulling his belt tight. “You won’t have to. Van’s roar sounded like the Boeing taking off down wind. So it wasn’t dead?”
“I didn’t carry it off in my arms, I assure you.” Connant snapped. “The last I saw, that split skull was oozing green goo, like a squashed caterpillar. Doc just said our laws don’t work—it’s unearthly. Well, it’s an unearthly monster, with an unearthly disposition, judging by the face, wandering around with a split skull and brains oozing out.”
Powell and McReady appeared in the doorway, a doorway filling with other shivering men.
“Has anybody seen it coming over here?” Powell asked innocently. “About four feet tall, three red eyes—brains oozing out—Hey, has anybody checked to make sure this isn’t a cracked idea of humor? If it is, I think we’ll unite in tying Blair’s pet around Connant’s neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. Personally, that sounds much more possible to me.”
“It’s no joke.” Connant shivered. “God, I wish it were. I’d rather wear—” He stopped.
A wild, long, howl shrieked through the corridors. The men stiffened abruptly and half turned.
“I think it’s been located,” Connant finished.
He darted back to his bunk in Paradise House, to return almost immediately with a heavy .45 revolver and an ice axe. He hefted both gently as he started for the corridor toward Dogtown. “It blundered down the wrong corridor—and landed among the huskies. Listen—the dogs have broken their chains—”
The half-terrorized howl of the dog pack had changed to a wild hunting melee. The voices of the dogs thundered in the narrow corridors, and through them came a low rippling snarl of pure hate. A shrill of pain, a dozen snarling yelps.
Connant broke for the door. Close behind him, McReady, then Barclay and Commander Garry came. Other men headed for the Ad Building and weapons, or the sledge house. Pomroy, in charge of Big Magnet’s five cows, started down the corridor on the opposite direction; he had a six-foot-handled, long-tined pitchfork in mind.
Barclay slid to a halt as McReady turned abruptly away from the tunnel leading to Dogtown and vanished off at an angle. Uncertainly the mechanician wavered a moment, the fire extinguisher in his hands moving from one side to the other, then he was racing after Connant’s broad back.
Connant stopped at the bend in the corridor. His breath hissed suddenly through his throat.
“Great God—!”
The revolver exploded thunderously, three numbing, palpable waves of sound crashed through the confined corridors. Two more. The revolver dropped to the hard-packed snow of the trail, and Barclay saw the ice axe shift into defensive position. Connant’s powerful body blocked his vision, but beyond, he heard something mewing, and, insanely, chuckling. The dogs were quieter; there was a deadly seriousness in their low snarls. Taloned feet scratched at hard-packed snow; broken chains were clinking and tangling.
Connant shifted abruptly, and Barclay could see what lay beyond. For a second he stood frozen, then his breath went out in a gusty curse.
The Thing launched itself at Connant.
The powerful arms of the man swung the ice axe flat-side first at what might have been a head. It scrunched horribly, and the tattered flesh, ripped by a half-dozen savage huskies, leapt to its feet again. The red eyes blazed with an unearthly hatred, an unearthly, unkillable vitality.
Barclay turned the fire extinguisher on it; the blinding, blistering stream of chemical spray confused it, baffled it. Together with the savage attacks of the huskies, not for long afraid of anything that did or could live, that held it at bay.
McReady wedged men out of his way as he drove down the narrow, packed corridor to reach the scene. There was a sure, fore-planned drive to McReady’s attack; he held one of the giant blowtorches used in warming the plane’s engines in his hands. It roared gustily as he turned the corner and opened the valve. The mad mewing hissed louder. The dogs scrambled back from the three-foot lance of blue-hot flame.
“Bar, get a power cable, run it in here somehow. And a handle. We can electrocute this—monster, if I don’t incinerate it.” McReady spoke with an authority of planned action, Barclay turned down the long corridor to the power plant, but already before him, Dutton and Van Wall were racing ahead.
Barclay found the cable in the electrical cache in the tunnel wall. In a half minute he was hacking at it, walking back. Van Wall’s voice rang out in warning, “Power!” as the emergency gasoline-powered dynamo thudded into action. Half a dozen other men were down there now, pouring kindling and coal into the firebox of the steam power plant. Dutton was working with quick, sure fingers on the other end of Barclay’s cable, plying in a contactor in one of the power leads.