“If you could stop that, I think it would be a sound policy, Mac.” Garry spoke quietly. “There are—tensions enough in this room. We agreed that it would be safe for Kinner in there, because every one else in camp is under constant—eyeing.”
Garry shivered slightly. “And try, try in God’s name, to find some, test that will work.”
McReady sighed. “Watched or unwatched, everyone’s tense. Blair’s jammed the trap so it won’t open now. Says he’s got food enough, and keeps screaming, ‘Go away—go away—you’re monsters. I won’t be absorbed. I won’t—I’ll tell men when they come—go away.’ So—we went away.”
“There’s no other test?” Garry pleaded.
McReady shrugged his shoulders. “Copper was perfectly right. The serum test could be absolutely definitive if it hadn’t been—contaminated. But that’s the only dog left, and he’s fixed now.”
“Chemicals—chemical tests—”
McReady shook his head. “Our chemistry isn’t that good. I tried the microscope you know.”
Garry nodded. “Monster-dog and real dog were identical. But—you’ve got to go on. What are we going to do after dinner?”
Van Wall had joined them quietly. “Rotation sleeping. Half the crowd sleep—half awake. Oh Christ—how many of us are monsters? All the dogs were. We thought we were safe, but somehow it got Copper—or you.” Van Wall’s eyes flashed uneasily. “It may have gotten every one of you—all of you but myself may be wondering, looking—no. That’s not possible. You’d just spring then. I’d be helpless. We humans must somehow have the greater numbers now. But—” he stopped.
McReady laughed shortly. “You’re doing what Powell complained of in me. Leaving it hanging. ‘But if one more is changed—that may shift the balance of power.’ It doesn’t fight. I don’t think it ever fights. It must be a peaceable Thing, in its own—inimitable, shall we say—way. It never had to, because it always gained its end—otherwise.”
Van Wall’s mouth twisted in a sickly grin. “You’re suggesting then, that perhaps it already has the greater numbers, but is just waiting—waiting—all of them—all of you, for all I know—waiting until I, the last human, drop my wariness in sleep. Mac, did you notice their eyes—all looking at us—”
Garry sighed. “You haven’t been sitting here for four straight hours, while all their eyes silently weighed the information that one of us two, Copper and I, is a monster certainly, perhaps both of us.”
Dwight repeated his request. “Will you stop that bird’s noise? He’s driving me nuts. Make him tone down, anyway.”
“Still praying?” McReady asked.
“Still praying,” Dwight groaned, “he hasn’t stopped for a second. I don’t mind his praying if it relieves him, but he yells, he sings psalms and hymns and shouts prayers. He thinks God can’t hear well way down here.”
“Maybe he can’t,” Barclay grunted, “Or he’d have done something about this Thing loosed from hell.”
“Somebody’s going to try that test you mentioned, if you don’t stop him,” Dwight stated grimly. “I think a cleaver in the head would be as positive a test as a bullet in the heart.”
“Go ahead with the grub. I’ll see what I can do. There may be something in the cabinets—” McReady moved wearily toward the corner Copper had used as his dispensary. Three tall cabinets of rough boards, two locked, were the repositories of the medical camp’s medical supplies. Twelve years ago he had graduated, had started for an internship, and been diverted to meteorology. Copper was a picked man, a man who knew his profession thoroughly and modernly. More than half the drugs available were totally unfamiliar to McReady, many of the others he had forgotten. There was no huge medical library here, no series of journals available to learn the things he had forgotten, the elementary, simple things to Copper, things that did not merit inclusion in the small library he had been forced to content himself with. Books are heavy, and every ounce of supplies had been freighted in by air.
McReady picked a barbiturate hopefully. Barclay and Van Wall went with him; one man never went anywhere alone in Big Magnet.
Rawsen had his sledge put away, and the physicists had moved off the table, the poker game broken up when they got back. Dwight was putting out the food. The click of spoons and the muffled sounds of eating were the only sign of life in the room. There were no words spoken as the three returned; simply all eyes focussed on them questioningly, while the jaws moved methodically.
McReady stiffened suddenly, Kinner was screeching out a hymn in a hoarse, cracked voice. He looked wearily at Van Wall with a twisted grin and shook his head. “Hu-uh.”
Van Wall cursed bitterly, and sat down at the table. “We’ll just plumb have to take that ’til his voice wears out. He can’t yell like that forever.”
“He’s got a brass throat and a cast-iron larynx,” Dutton declared. “Then we could be hopeful, and suggest he’s one of our friends. On that case he could go on renewing his throat ’til doomsday.”
Silence clamped down. For twenty minutes they ate without a word. Then Connant jumped up with an angry violence. “You sit as still as a bunch of graven images. You, don’t say a word, but oh Christ, what expressive eyes you’ve got. They roll around like a bunch of glass marbles spilling down a table. They wink and link and stare—and whisper things. Can you guys look somewhere else for a change, please?”
“Listen, Van, you’re in change here. Let’s run movies for the rest of the night. We’ve been saving those reels to make ’em last. Last for what? Who is it’s going to see those last reels, eh? Let’s see ’em while we can, and look at something other than each other.”
“Sound idea, Connant. I, for one, am quite willing to change things in any way I can.”
“Turn the sound up loud, Dutton. Maybe you can drown out the hymns.” Dwight suggested.
“But don’t,” Powell said softly,” don’t turn off the lights all together.”
“The lights will be out,” snapped Van Wall. “We’ll show all the cartoon movies we have. You won’t mind seeing the old cartoons will you?”
“Goody, goody—a ‘moving pitcher’ show. I’m just in the mood.” Van Wall turned to look at the speaker, a lean, lanky New Englander, by the name of Caldwell. Caldwell was stuffing his pipe slowly, a sour eye cocked up to Van Wall.
The commander was forced to laugh. “O.K., Bart, you win. Maybe we aren’t quite in the mood for Popeye and trick ducks, but its something.”
“Let’s play Classifications,” Caldwell suggested slowly, “or maybe you call it Guggenheim. You draw lines on a piece of paper, and put down classes of things—like animals you know—one for “Hˮ and one for “Uˮ and so on. Like “Humanˮ and “unknownˮ for instance. I think that would be a hell of a lot better game. Classification, I sort of figure, is what we need right now a lot more than movies. Maybe somebody’s got a pencil that we can draw lines with, draw lines between the ‘U’ animals and the ‘H’ animals for instance.”
“McReady’s trying to find that kind of a pencil,ˮ Van Wall answered quietly, “but we’ve got three kinds of animals here, you know. One that begins with “M’. We don’t want any more.”
“Mad ones, you mean. Uh-huh. Dwight, I’ll help you with those pots so we can get our little peep-show going.” Caldwell got up slowly.
Dutton and Barclay and Benning, in charge of the projector and sound mechanism arrangements went about their job silently, while the Ad Building was cleared and the dishes and pans disposed of. McReady drifted over toward Van Wall slowly, and leaned back in the bunk beside him. “I’ve been wondering, Van,ˮ he said with a wry grin, “whether or not to report my ideas in advance. I forgot the ‘U animals’ as Caldwell named it, could read minds. I’ve a vague idea of something that might work. It’s too vague to bother with though. Go ahead with your show, while I try to figure out the logic of the thing. I’ll take this bunk.”