But the assumption was that Ben was running away. Actually, he was cutting down his velocity as fast as his converters could manage it. He reached the meteor-stream he had headed for at a bare crawl, and worked the little ship into it, and began to drift out and out toward the aphelion point of an unknown comet at a gradually diminishing rate, surrounded by pebbles and boulders and masses of inchoate matter ranging from pinpoints to quasiasteroids in size. This, while the Navy hunted for a tiny ship in headlong flight. -
“They’ll have quite a time finding us now,” said Ben tiredly, when he Cut off the drive at last. “How do you feel’?”
“I’m . . . all right, I guess,” said Sally, thinly.
She was sitting in a chair Ben had insulated from the floor. At regular intervals, Ben took a Geiger counter reading. Always the counter clattered. The metabolism of the Thing involved -the production of cosmic rays. Electric metabolism. The Thing was, in fact, an organization of electric charges. Since electric charges are essential to cellular life—such as human life—the Thing was not impossible. Electric charges in association with matter produce Terrestrial life, and the removal of the charges leaves merely dead matter. The first elucidation of ball lightning showed that energy alone can achieve organization and self-determined dimensions. So a creature which was merely an electrical pattern was not incredible.
Therefore the insulated chair. For hours after the first exploratory departure of the Thing from Sally’s body, they had hoped it would repeat its excursion. It had seemed curious about apparatus. Ben insulated the chair and brought out piece after piece of apparatus-everything from his cameras to the hand positron-beam projector which was the only weapon on the ship. He had Sally go near them. He had her touch them. He hoped that curiosity would lure the Thing into a second journey of investigation. But there was no sign. The Geiger counter aimed at Sally’s body clattered at the same rate, neither greater nor less. She said, her voice shaking a little, that she felt a sensation within her as of something which was eager, but very patient, and very contented despite its eagerness. Purring.
It was a disappointment. But the problem was not one of orthodox medicine, of ultra-microscopic organisms and the intricate interplay of enzymes, cells, and all the innumerable compounds of the body. This was a problem of a Thing. So Sally sat in an insulated chair. For three days.
“I don’t know how intelligent it is,” said Ben grimly, on the second day. “I doubt if its IQ could be estimated. But it has curiosity, it makes decisions, and it has emotion. Maybe some superorthodox scientist would say we still haven’t proof that it’s really alive, but I’ll let it go at that. The Thing is a form of life which can exist apart from any specific bit of matter, but it is not independent of matter. It has to inhabit some bit or other. It prefers you to a bar of metal, or to me. You will die if it stays in your body long enough. Then it will doubtless hunt for another body. That must be what happened on Pharona. And it must reproduce, because it’s alive. But on your journey from Pharona here it didn’t. It doesn’t seem to be now—because this is a long time. Maybe it realizes that you’re the only woman here, and if you die— It looks like it somehow feeds on the vital energy of your body. It can’t get that energy from me or from metal. It’s. . . cannibalistic. It is life which feeds on other life. Your life. I wish it would try to take mine!”
Sally spoke very wearily from the insulated chair.
“I think it’s hopeless,” she said in a low voice. “There’s only one of the Things, but it’s going to kill me. We can’t stop it. I could put on an insulated spacesuit—it can only move through a conductor—while I’m in this chair. It would be imprisoned, then. I could walk about, and it couldn’t escape me. And I could go out the air lock and—the Thing could never harm anybody. But we. . . we couldn’t ever land anywhere with this Thing alive. We couldn’t loose a plague on another planet like the one which was loosed on Pharona! I. . . was there, Ben!”
Ben said fiercely:
“Do you think I’d let you walk out of the lock? Do you think I’d leave you in space?”
“I’d like it,” she said humbly, “if you’d turn a positron beam on me instead.” -
“I’m waiting to use the positron beam on that Thing,” said Ben grimly. “How do you feel?”
“All right, I guess. But I’m not comfortable. The Thing isn’t quite as contented.”
He nodded. His jaw set.
“Maybe we’re getting somewhere. It must be a pattern of free electrons, bound into an organization which is alive. It can’t be anything else! But its metabolism involves the production of cosmics rays. Making cosmic rays involved the production of positive charges. Insulated as you are, you’re accumulating a positive charge that sooner or later is going to try to bind some of the free but organized electrons this Thing is made of. Maybe it’ll die without knowing what is happening. It acts as a disease to humans. Maybe we’ve concocted a disease or a poison for it.”
Ben could not touch Sally, lest he discharge. the positive potential they were building up—or allowing the Thing to build up for its own destruction. They were trying to kill it by the product of its own metabolism; to suffocate it by the positive electricity it created, just as a human being will suffocate in the carbon dioxide he must exhale.
But Sally seemed to shrink into herself. She spoke rarely, and then in a strained voice. At last, on the third day, she spoke in a sudden gasp.
“I’m.. . sorry, Ben, but I can’t stand it any longer. The Thing is suffering and it’s making me suffer. I can’t stand any more!”
Ben reached out to touch her wrist. On the instant her wrist glowed. The Thing gathered itself together, it concentrated itself to escape. It was visible even in the lighted cabin. At the touch of Ben’s finger a tiny spark jumped. That was all. But Sally almost fainted with relief. She tried to smile a wobbly smile.
“It’s.. . gone,” she said unsteadily. “We drove it out. We. . . exorcised it, Ben.” -
Ben turned off the light. Sally vanished into the blessed darkness. He heard her sigh with relief so sharp that it was almost a sob.
“For the second time,” she said, valiantly trying to be flippant, “I haven’t got the plague. How quaint!”
“Sit still,” said Ben savagely. “We’ll watch for it. Positive electricity is poison to it. We know that, anyhow! And I’ve got my positron pistol here. Watch for it!”
There was silence. The CC phone muttered, and muttered. There was one voice which was much louder than the rest. The muttering died away. The sound of Sally’s breathing grew steady and even. Presently she sighed deeply, and went on breathing evenly.
Then the bronze doorsill of the control-room door glowed whitely. The Thing, driven out of Sally’s body, was suddenly there. It was a patch of whitish luminosity which almost but not quite filled the whole length of the sill. In case of accident, an air-tight door would snap shut across the opening, sealing the ship into separate compartments. Ben raised the positron pistol. Tiny radium dots marked the sights, but his hand trembled with hatred. He took both of them to steady his weapon. He pulled the trigger.