Van Wall glanced up and nodded. The movie screen would be practically on a line with this bunk, hence making the pictures least distracting here, because least intelligible. “Perhaps you should tell us what you have in mind. As it is, only the unknowns know what you plan. You might be—unknown before you got it into operation.”
“Won’t take long, if I get it figured out right. But I don’t want any more all-but-the-test-dog-monsters things. We better move Copper into this bunk directly above me. He won’t be watching the screen either.” McReady nodded toward Copper’s gently snoring bulk. Garry helped them lift and move the doctor.
McReady leaned back against the bunk, and sank into a trance, almost, of concentration, trying to calculate chances, operations, methods. He was scarcely aware as the others distributed themselves silently, and the screen lit up. Vaguely Kinner’s hectic, shouted prayers and his rasping hymn-singing annoyed him until the sound accompaniment started. The lights were turned out, but the large, light-colored areas of the screen reflected enough light for ready visibility. It made men’s eyes sparkle as they moved restlessly. Kinner was still praying, shouting, his voice a raucous accompaniment to the mechanical sound. Dutton stepped up the amplification.
So long had the voice been going on, that only vaguely at first was McReady aware that something seemed missing. Lying as he was, just across the narrow room from the corridor leading to Cosmos House, Kinner’s voice had reached him fairly clearly, despite the sound accompaniment of the pictures. It struck him abruptly that it had stopped.
“Dutton, cut that sound.” McReady called as he sat up abruptly. The pictures flickered a moment, soundless and strangely futile in the sudden deep silence. The rising wind on the surface above bubbled melancholy tears of sound down the stove pipes. “Kinner’s stopped.” Mcready said softly.
“For God’s sake start that sound then; he may have stopped to listen.” Powell snapped.
McReady rose and went down the corridor. Barclay, and Van Wall left their places at the far end of the room to follow him. The flickers bulged and twisted on the back of Barclay’s grey underwear as he crossed the still-functioning beam of the projector. Dutton snapped on the lights, and the pictures vanished.
Powell stood at the door as Van Wall had asked him to. Garry sat quietly in the bunk nearest the door, forcing Dwight to make room for him. Most of the others had stayed exactly where they were. Only Connant walked slowly up and down the room, in steady, unvarying rhythm.
“If you’re going to do that, Connant,” Dwight spat, ”we can get along without you altogether, whether you’re human or not. Will you stop that damned rhythm?”
“Sorry,” The physicist sat down in a bunk, and watched his toes thoughtfully. It was almost five minutes, five ages while the wind made the only sound, before McReady appeared at the door again.
“We,” he announced, ”haven’t enough grief here already. Somebody’s tried to help us out. Kinner has a knife in his throat, which was why he stopped singing, probably. We’ve got monsters, madmen and murderers. Any more ‘M’s you can think of Caldwell? If there are, we’ll probably have ’em before long.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Is Blair loose?” someone asked.
“Blair is not loose—or he flew in. If there’s any doubt about where our gentle helper came from—this may clear it up.” McReady held a foot-long, thin-bladed knife in a cloth. The wooden handle was half-burnt, charred with the peculiar pattern of the top of the galley stove.
Dwight stared at it. “I did that this afternoon. I forgot the damn thing and left it on the stove—”
Van Wall nodded. “I smelled it, if you remember. I knew the knife came from the galley.”
“I wonder,” said Benning looking around at the party warily,” how many more monsters we have? If somebody could slip out of his place, go back of the screen to the galley and then down to Cosmos house and back—he did come back didn’t he? Yes—everybody’s here. Well, if one of the gang could do all that—”
“Maybe a monster did it.” Garry suggested quietly. “There’s that possibility.”
“The monster, as you pointed out today, has only men left to imitate. Would he decrease his—supply, shall we say?” McReady pointed out. “No, we just have a plain, ordinary louse, a murderer to deal with. Ordinarily we’d call him an ‘inhuman murderer’ I suppose, but we have to distinguish now. We have inhuman murderers, and now we have human murderers—or one at least.”
“There’s one less human,” Powell said softly. “Maybe the monsters have the balance of power now—”
“Never mind that,” McReady sighed and turned to Barclay. “Bar, will you get your electric gadget. I’m just going to make certain—”
Barclay turned down the corridor to get the pronged electrocuter, while McReady and Van Wall went back toward Cosmos House. Barclay followed them in some thirty seconds.
The corridor to Comsos House twisted, as did nearly all corridors in Big Magnet, and Powell stood at the entrance again. But they heard, rather muffled, McReady’s sudden shout. There was a savage flurry of blows, dull ch-thunk—shluff sounds. “Bar—Bar—for God’s sake—”And a curious, savage mewing scream, silenced before even Powell had reached the bend.
Kinner—or what had been Kinner, lay on the floor, cut half in two by McReady’s great knife. The meteorologist leaned panting against the wall, the knife dripping red in his hand. Van Wall was stirring vaguely on the floor, moaning, his hand half-consciously rubbing at his jaw. Barclay, a unutterably savage gleam in his eyes, was methodically leaning on the pronged weapon in his hands, jabbing—jabbing—jabbing.
Kinner’s arms had developed a queer, scaly fur, and the flesh had twisted. The fingers had shortened, the hand rounded, the finger-nails become three-inch long things of dull red horn, keened to steel-hard, razor-sharp talons.
McReady raised his head, looked vaguely at the knife in his hand, and dropped it. His laugh was shaky, almost a laugh of relief. “Well, whoever did it can speak up now. He was an inhuman murderer at that—in that he murdered an inhuman. I swear by all that’s holy, Kinner was a lifeless corpse on the floor here when we arrived—but when it found we were going to jab it with the power gadget there—it changed.
“Oh, Lord, those Things can act. My God—sitting in here for hours, mouthing prayers to a God it hated! Shouting hymns in a cracked voice—hymns about a Church it never knew. Driving us mad with its ceaseless howling—
“Well. Speak up, whoever did it. You didn’t know it, but you did the camp a favor. And I want to know how in blazes you got out of that room without anyone seeing you. It might help in guarding ourselves.”
“His screaming—his singing. Even the sound projector couldn’t drown it.” Dwight shivered. “It was a monster.”
“Oh,” said Van Wall in sudden comprehension. “You were sitting right next to the door, weren’t you. And almost behind the projection screen already.”
Dwight nodded dumbly. “He—it’s quiet now. It’s a dead—Mac—your test’s no damn good. It was dead anyway, monster or man, it was dead.”
McReady chuckled softly. “Boys, meet Dwight, the only one we know is human! Meet Dwight, the guy who proves he’s human by trying to commit murder—and failing. Will the rest of you please refrain from trying to prove you’re human for a while? I think we may have another test.”