The Source

Thoughts?' Khuv's mind, still not fully awake, sought for an explanation. Of course: Savinkov was a telepath. 'What about their thoughts?' — v

'Something… something was attacking them. In Roborov's room. I think they'd been playing cards, gambling, and that Roborov was a heavy loser. He'd been to the toilet. When he came out… Rublev was nearly dead! Something had him by the throat! Roborov tried to pull it off, and… it turned on him! Oh, God — 1 felt him die! Huh… huh… he…'

'Go on, man!' Khuv gasped.

'He grabbed the thing and turned it around, and he saw it. He was thinking: "I don't believe this! Oh, mother, help me! Sweet God, you know I've always loved you! Don't let this happen!"'

'Those were his thoughts?'

'Yes,' Savinkov sobbed. 'The rest of it was just background stuff, but it was Roborov's thoughts that really woke me up. And as he died — I saw it too.r

'What did you see?' Khuv took Savinkov's face between the flats of his palms.

'God, I don't know! It wasn't human — or maybe it was? It was a nightmare. It was… its shape was all wrong! It was like… like that thing in the glass tank!'

Khuv's blood ran cold. He gulped air into his lungs, released Savinkov's face. He grabbed his lapels and dragged him to his feet. 'Take me there,' he snapped. 'Roborov's room? I know it. Were you there? No? Then who is there? You don't know? Fool! Well, we're going there right now!'

On their way, the alarms stopped clamouring. 'Well, let's be thankful for that, anyway,' Khuv grunted. He jostled Savinkov ahead of him. 'At least I can hear myself think! Now, are you sure you can't remember who you told? I mean, did you simply forget all the procedures and come running straight to me? God, but if this is a wild-goose chase I'll — !'

But it wasn't.

Outside the door of Roborov's room a sleepy, nervous soldier stood on guard. He saluted sloppily as Khuv and Savinkov came into view. They rushed by him. Inside were two more espers, and a KGB man named Gustav Litve. All were whey-faced, shaken to their roots. Crumpled on the floor, there lay the reason. Or reasons.

Nikolai Rublev could be Savinkov's twin! thought Khuv, grimacing at what he saw. They were, or had been, much of a kind. But now there were differences, the main one being that Savinkov was still alive. And he was also intact.

Whatever it was that had killed Rublev, it had taken half his face from him. The fleshy part of the left side of his face was missing, flensed from the bone, from his ear to his nose and down to his chin. But it wasn't the work of a scalpel or knife. The flesh had been ripped off. In addition his throat was torn — torn, as by an animal — with the main arteries severed and exposed. Khuv thought: where's all the blood?

Perhaps he'd said something out loud, for his underling Litve said: 'Sir?'

'Eh?' Khuv looked up. 'Oh, nothing. Fetch Vasily Agursky, will you, Gustav? Bring him here. I want to know what kind of an animal could do this, and he might be able to tell me.'

Litve gratefully made for the door, called back: 'The other's not much better, sir.'

'Other?' Khuv's mind still wasn't on business.

'Roborov.'

Khuv realized he'd been wandering. To make up for it he snapped, 'He was your colleague, wasn't he?'

'Was, sir, yes,' Litve answered. He went out.

Behind an overturned table, amidst a litter of bloodied paper money and cards, lay 'the other', Andrei Roborov. The two espers were standing looking down on him. Khuv shoved them aside, took a look for himself. Roborov's face was a mask of sheer horror. His dead eyes bulged; his jaws gaped in a frozen rictus of terror; his tongue projected, blue and glistening. Mainly cadaverous in life, he was totally grotesque in death. His thin head from the ears up looked like it had been trapped in a toothed vise and crushed. The skull had caved in, and blood and brain fluid seeped from the cracks and the deep punctures of… teeth marks?

'Good Lord!' said Khuv; to which one of the espers added:

'Something bit his head like it was a plum! Major, look at his arms.'

Khuv looked. Both arms were broken at the elbows, bent back on themselves until the bones had parted at the sockets. Whatever it was, it had found a simple and effective way of stopping Roborov from fighting back.

Khuv shook his head, felt his gorge rising. He could almost feel the pulse of the Projekt quickening as morning came and the place started to wake up. There was a faint throbbing underfoot, like the heart of a great beast. And within the beast, a lesser beast: the one that had done this. Or perhaps, a greater beast? What sort of beast? Not human, surely. But if not human…

There was a telephone out in the corridor. Khuv ran to it and called the Duty Officer at Failsafe Concen. He didn't let the man speak but rasped: 'Have you been sleeping? Have you been asleep on duty?'

'Who is this?' came a wide-awake, alert voice from the other end. Khuv recognized the voice: a senior scientist on Luchov's team. A very responsible person.

'This is Major Khuv,' he lowered his voice. 'It seems we may have an intruder. Certainly we have a murderer in the place.'

'An intruder?' the voice on the other end hardened. 'Where are you, Major?'

'I'm in the corridor close to KGB quarters. Why?'

'Do you mean an intruder from outside, or from the Gate?'

'Well, obviously that's why I'm on the phone!' Khuv snapped. 'To find out!'

Now the other came back just as venomously: 'In which case it should also be obvious that your intruder is from outside! If it was anything else — by now you'd be burning, Khuv!'

'I-'

'Listen, I've got the screens right here in front of me. Everything is normal down there, except they're all a bit nervous because of those bloody alarms. Nothing, repeat nothing, has come through that Gate!'

Khuv slammed the phone down. He stood glaring at it. Something was loose in here. Maybe it had been let loose in here. By whom? British E-Branch?

He ran back into Roborov's room, told the two espers: 'Out, leave all this. If you come up with something let me know. But until then leave this to my investigators.'

Savinkov was making himself as small and insignificant as he could in a corner. 'You,' Khuv said. 'There are three more KGB men stinking in their beds just down the corridor, a stone's throw from the scene of a double murder. Go wake the idle bastards up. Wake them all up! Tell them I want them here, now.'

Savinkov went.

Khuv ushered the espers out into the corridor and closed Roborov's door. Viktor Luchov had just arrived, looked bewildered, only half-awake. 'Don't go in there,' Khuv warned him, shaking his head. Luchov took one look at the KGB officer's face and was sensible enough to take heed.

'But what's happened?'

'Murder — at least I think so.'

'But don't you know?' Luchov gaped.

'I know two people are dead, and if their killer is human, then it's murder.'

Luchov was waking up quickly. 'Is it that bad? Have you checked with Fail — '

'Yes,' Khuv cut him short. To both questions.'

'But — '

'No buts,' Khuv interrupted again. 'If it's something from the Gate, then it's invisible.'

At that moment Litve returned with Agursky. Khuv's eyes went straight to the tiny scientist. Except… Agursky hardly seemed that small any more. He slumped a little, yes, but if he were to stand up straight…

Agursky had on his night things with a dressing-gown thrown over them. And he was wearing dark spectacles. 'Something wrong with your eyes?' Khuv frowned.

'Eh?' Agursky squinted, peered at the Major through tinted lenses. 'Oh, yes. It comes on now and then. Photophobia. It's with being down here, out of the natural light. All this artificial lighting.'